#and technoblade immediately goes 'oh god something that incredibly stupid WOULD happen to you. oh no.'

[theminecraftbee]

Normally, traitors aren’t frog-marched to the Emperors themselves, regardless of what rank of information they had. These aren’t normal circumstances, though, Techno bemoans to himself. For one, the man is refusing to speak anything but French and a tiny amount of broken Bayesh. For another, on being made, he immediately handed over about three folders of classified information then loudly waited for handcuffs to be put on him.

Phil is lounging in his throne; he’d never been one for propriety. This leaves Techno to be, uh, the actually serious one. The one adorned in uniform, sitting and glowering down. It’s lucky that the traitor isn’t a pigman, because Techno isn’t actually great at glowering, but humans are weird about pigman facial expressions so he should be fine?

The traitor stands before them and grins. In perfect Bayesh, he says: “Finally. It took way too long for you to catch me, bitch.”

Techno pauses. He stares. In Piglish, he barks to his guards: “Everyone out. It’s Leader business.”

They file out. They’ll be waiting outside. Phil straightens in his seat and reaches for his own sword.

Techno, laboriously, drags his hand across his face. He switches back to Bayesh. God, does he regret being fluent in multiple languages sometimes. “What are you doing here, Tommy.”

“Showing you your intelligence weak points, fucker. Do you know how easy it is to slip Bayesh spies in here? I was smooth. A smooth customer. I was hearing classified milkitary secrets—”

“You were caught within two hours,” Techno says.

“That’s—that’s just what you think, innit?” Tommy says. Phil laughs. He’s the real traitor here.

“Tommy. I don’t wanna have to cause an international incident, but I’ve had a really long day, so if you just tell me who hired you to run a spy op, and why you decided it was a good idea to run it yourself, instead of sending one of your experts…”

“No one,” Tommy says.

“Hey, don’t lie you little shit. Techno might not want to start an incident but I don’t care,” Phil says. He grins and holds up his sword. “You wanna wake up in a jail cell and reveal some secrets? We may all be Leaders but it won’t stop torture from hurting.”

“What the fuck, Phil,” Tommy says.

“No one’s torturing anyone. We’ll just bomb them later if we must,” Techno says.

“And I wasn’t lying. It’s—can I take the wig off by the way? It fucking itches.”

“I despise you.”

Tommy takes off the black wig, revealing his blonde hair. “Anyway, I don’t want to work with you guys either, so I figured I’d get your attention by like, acting like we’re enemies and stuff. Got hired for espionage enough back in the day to pick up that much.”

“Who the fuck wanted you as a spy?” Phil asks.

“Fuck you,” Tommy says and doesn’t elaborate.

“Please just tell us what you want,” Techno says. “Please. I can’t handle this much you at any given time.”

“This needs to be Leader to Leader,” Tommy says, and something heavy laces his words. The hairs on Techno’s arms stand up.

“You coulda asked,” he says, in one final desperate bid for normality.

“No, I couldn’t have,” Tommy says. “I think Chip’s dead.”

Techno doesn’t notice that he’s standing until he is.

“What?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah. And, uh, I fucking. Need your help to figure out what happened. Before we get blamed. And I know, politically, you’ve got no reason, but if we don’t figure out—”

Techno sits back down, heavy.

“I know you understand Piglish. Let me talk in my native language. Phil.”

“Yeah, mate?”

“Go get the stuff.”

Phil’s eyes darken. “Right. That. Well, I’ll be back.”

Tommy’s voice, for the first time since Techno met him as a newly-minted Leader, standing on a wooden bench and yelling about executions, is small.

“You believe me?” he says.

“Why else would you come here?” Techno asks. “Not like we like you.”

“Good, because I’m shit at infiltrations. Would have been embarrassing if you, like, didn’t know your enemy well enough to know that,” Tommy says. He’s saying something else underneath it. Techno is neither good enough at Bayesh or at Tommy to guess what.

“Let’s work out an excuse to make a treaty. And you tell me everything.”

#smp earth #WELL THAT'S A TAG I HAVEN'T HAD TO USE IN A WHILE. #a bee fic #anyway have you ever had to excise a story hook that's appeared in your head? #anyway: in which business bay gets framed for murdering chip and unfortunately as much as tommy would like the notoriety #he can't afford to let a guy who could kill chip just run around. also no one believes him. #so he goes to the antarctic empire hoping to ruffle enough feathers to at least get them out of the way #and technoblade immediately goes 'oh god something that incredibly stupid WOULD happen to you. oh no.' #AND THEN THEY ARE FORCED TO WORK TOGETHER TO CATCH THE GODKILLER #for the record. i probably won't write this. #if you're in a certain server with me please ignore how much i've been going 'but i COULD write bedrock bros' recently i PROBABLY WONT #anyway. i thought maybe you all would like this. the worldbuilding is like. ADJACENT to empires earth? with a lot of months in-between #like it definitely has influences from when i was doing the empires earth stuff.

[hollenka99]

The Life and Times of TommyInnit

Summary: Tommy was born into a loving family. He dies long before he should have with no-one there to help him.

Warnings: Death, abuse, manipulation, violence

Tommy is born into a loving family. He has grandparents, an abundance of aunts and uncles, not to mention even more cousins. All of them ready to welcome the newest member of their family with affection. In the first week or two of his life, a number of his neighbours from their village make brief visits too. When he learns to walk then subsequently run, his father prepares to tell him once he's older of how he regretted letting Tommy discover his legs. Permitting his son to figure out how to control his mouth and tongue in a way that forms words is something else he will one day jokingly claim he shouldn't have done either. If the little boy isn't playing with nearby cousins or local children his age, he is making himself heard. Most of the time, he does both. Tommy is an incredibly happy toddler. It comes to an abrupt end during the late autumn he is three. Pillagers arrive and with them comes trouble. Both of Tommy's parents are good fighters. In a world like this where danger could appear from any dark corner, you somewhat have to be. But Tommy is far too young to have their skills imparted upon him through lessons in their garden like he was due to begin years from now. So his mother takes several supplies, grabs him and leaves him a relatively safe distance away. On a hill overlooking their village, he is handed an iron sword and instructed to stay safe while he waits. She tells him it will be all over by nightfall, that the weapon is only a precaution, that she loves him and will be back soon. A peck on the forehead is the last interaction they will ever have because unfortunately for everyone involved, these pillagers have developed a tactic to deal with those who are harder to suppress. His parents and their families before them have traveled far from a place known as Spawn. With no sufficient bed to rely on anymore, anyone who doesn't permanently fall to an arrow will be too far to interfere as it is. Night does come with no rescue for the three year old in sight. His parents are fine, they're still resisting the assault on the place they call home, but from the darkness mobs arise with the intent to harm any individual unfortunate to cross their path. Tommy is one such individual. He had been advised to make a hole in the dirt if worse came to worst but he has no time to do so when faced with the skeleton that will destroy the life he knew. When he respawns, he wakes an inconceivable distance from home. His parents will look, oh how they will search, but it will all be for naught. He will grow up with no real recollection of them and no awareness of how the initial realisation that he is truly gone causes them to crumble. By the time an 11 year old boy with a brown fringe long enough to potentially warrant a trim stumbles upon him, spring is starting to get underway. Tommy himself isn't quite sure how he managed to survive the winter months. There was a great deal of trespassing on people's property and eating whatever he could get his hands on though, he knows that. Yet here was this much older boy speaking gently, offering shelter and decent meals if Tommy trusted him enough to follow him back home. He risks allowing himself to take this chance. Besides, he's made himself into a child that's faster and more agile than a stranger would expect from someone his age, all for the sake of survival. If really necessary, he could escape back to this spot by the stream and find a new place where 'Wilbur' can't find nor hurt him. He tells himself as they walk that he's only going because he's being living in a state of perpetual hunger, cold and with an anxiety he can't place because it hasn't left him since he first respawned. Gaining a few hours' reprieve from that can't be an awful idea, right? The truth is that he is on the cusp of 4 (although he had no way of knowing this) and he needs someone to take care of him, he should not be responsible for his own survival at this age. So yes, he goes with Wilbur, meets the boy's winged father, gets handed a mushroom stew which he scarfs down too quickly for his stomach not to ache shortly thereafter before being directed to Wilbur's bed for the night where he cries because wow, this truly seems like luxury after months on the ground. Phil and Wilbur insist that he remains in their care. With nothing to lose, he doesn't say no. Before getting separated from his family, he had been an only child who hoped for his parents to give him a sibling. They hadn't, at least not by the time the raid happened. Wilbur, however, was the brother he had longed to have. Better yet, Wilbur was older so the responsibility of being the eldest fell on him rather than Tommy. He could be a nuisance and, so long as he didn't push his luck too much, he was allowed to get away with it for the most part. Phil wasn't always present as a father figure so that role subsequently fell on Wilbur as well. His brother shows him a cave in a cliff face that he'd made his secondary base for when the rations Phil had left ran too low to last however long this trip would go on for. By the time Tommy is perhaps 8 or so, once Phil has met Technoblade and chosen to make the piglin his travel companion, he and Wilbur visit that cave so often it is practically their new home. No, that place was home. With its small fireplace, the colourful beds by the wall and sign declaring it theirs positioned next to the exterior of the front door, it was where he felt most safe. That is why, when the time came for him to leave in order to see more of the world than the view from the windows, his heart was afflicted by a bittersweet pang at the sight of it. He loves Wilbur, would follow him anywhere by this point. So when he shows up on the SMP, talking about making drugs in a van and fighting to gain freedom from tyrannical oppressors, Tommy can't help but be his ever loyal right hand man. He is 16 and ready to go down with a fight. He's made friends, Tubbo especially, all of whom are in it together. Until Eret decides they do not believe in the revolution. While dealing with the aftermath, Tommy's mind refuses to stop reminding him he was the one to press the button in that dreadful room. Perhaps if he hadn't but no... rationally, he knows full well someone else, likely Eret themself, would have simply done it instead. But when has trauma ever been rational? Besides, it's hardly like Eret's betrayal has ended the conflict so he hasn't got the time to dwell on what could have gone differently. He is a teenager who is down a life yet refuses to let that stop him. He challenges Dream with no intention of forfeiting his second life. He does anyway. Then L'Manburg finally wins the right to be free so any sacrifices he's made to get to this point are internally deemed worth it. By now, Dream has stolen two of his lives, reduced him to a point he's been more mortal than anyone his age should be. Tommy has suffered fatal trauma to his head and later bled out following a fight. There's a pattern here to be seen yet he'd rather ignore it. Dream's backed off anyway so what threat would he be? The owner of this place can return to the guy who enjoys the company of his friends, separate from Tommy and his own circle of friends, once more. Tommy will stay out of his way for obvious reasons however, there is less reason to now. A part of him hopes it will stay that way. He senses something has begun to change with Wilbur during the elections, That said, he isn't entirely sure and waves it off as the consequences of Wilbur leading the war effort. His excuses are not permitted to remain for long. Schlatt wins, they sprint away from the home they made only for Tommy to be left with the task of carrying Wilbur's invisible temporary corpse before the duo settle in a ravine he'd discovered. Pogtopia is where things truly go to shit, he thinks. Or perhaps they'd already been going downhill but their exile accelerated it all. Techno grows an abundance of those stupid potatoes shortly after his arrival and Dream is promising stacks of TNT for the sake of obliterating the newly rebranded Manberg. Meanwhile, Wilbur has gone off the rails in a big way. Try as he might, Tommy can't seem to figure out what the right words or actions to get him stop are. So Wilbur deteriorates further into paranoid, pyromaniacal madness. When things get worse and he wishes, though god knows he would never allow himself to openly admit it to anyone else, that he'd never left that faraway cliff face. Wilbur has them trespass on the festival in Manberg with the intent of it being the nation's final hour. All that comes to pass is Tommy watching his best friend be executed for being a spy then listening as Wilbur cheers while Technoblade triumphs over him in a fight. In a messed up way, he is somewhat glad when mid November comes. They fight, win, witness Schlatt's pathetic demise, feel as though they can look to a better future, lose Wilbur as well as a huge chunk of land, protect themselves against Techno's withers and get left with the task of rebuilding their home. It's an eventful day which Tommy is happy to leave behind him. Although, he isn't quite so pleased to deal with its aftermath. It's... two or maybe three weeks, he believes, before shit hits the fan as it inevitably was due to once again do. It would seem that Dream wasn't satisfied with messing with people's lives from the sidelines anymore. He drives a wedge between Tommy and Tubbo with his threat of sky-high walls, as if the weak points in their friendship were always easily accessible for the purposes of exploitation. Then he's being led away to a far off location with only the ghost of his brother and the man who will immediately take advantage of the situation for company. Ghostbur is nice yet Tommy yearns for him to be different, for him to keep his disarmed personality while regaining the memories that would allow for them to resolve the pain Wilbur left him with. Whatever... it's not like he stays. Dream confuses his mind with all his assurances of friendship as he robs him of his right to property. When it finally ends (on his own terms but thankfully not the ones he was planning to go through with hours before), he attempts to find a new beginning with Technoblade. He should have known it would end badly. Everything always seem to do so nowadays. Even L'Manburg. Or should he call it something akin to L'Mancrater after the events of Doomsday? He's pleasantly surprised when he is granted the ability to sit on the bench by his house, Tubbo by his side, and listen to the discs he's fought to regain for so long. He'd nearly lost so much in that room far below the earth. Part of him wonders if it's a cruel prank, whether something will come later in the week to say 'ha, look at you getting your hopes up'. It... doesn't. He begins work on his hotel with the help of Sam Nook. The tasks come across as menial and he complains yet finds them oddly satisfying. Nook is building the actual thing but he's playing his part. It's going to be great once it's finished. He's recruited Jack Manifold to assist in running the place, Tubbo is safe in Snowchester, the Egg stuff is dumb but if he keeps his head down it will hopefully leave him alone for the most part. He's ready for closure and moving on from the pain that's been constantly inflicted upon him over the past several months. He believes the best starting point is visiting Dream in prison one last time. Just one quick trip then he can carry on with his life. Nobody, least of all himself, has any idea how much of a mistake this will be. The final days of his life, as oblivious to them being so as he is, are miserable. He does his best to stay strong, to defy Dream's attempts at worming his way back into Tommy's head with his verbal poison. Sam must be sick of him given how many times he screams to be let out already when the possibility of Sam being within hearing range arises. He hates it here. He doesn't want to look at the lava which acts as the main source of illumination, he wishes the cell was less confining, all he can taste is the starch from the potatoes. Perhaps the worst part is not knowing how far into the week he is. Then Sam, the bastard, announces it's been 7 days but due to the security breach still going unresolved, Tommy will have to hold on a little longer. An argument erupts between the inmates. It begins to get physical when the subject of Schlatt's resurrection book is brought up. He acts so confident that he will survive this hellhole, that he will endure it out of spite for Dream as well as sheer defiance alone. But in the end, he's crying, begging, pleading for Dream to stop. In the end, he's simply a 16 year old kid who is getting beaten to death by the man who has been abusing him for months with no-one there to conceivably rescue him in time. He remembers Wilbur once explaining to him that life wasn't fair. Not quite in a 'life sucks and then you die' kind of way. More like 'life isn't easy, especially not for people like us who were put at a disadvantage early on, but you persevere with your best effort since life isn't obligated to care... and then you die'. Life wasn't fair when pillagers raided his village, when he was forced to survive on his own, when the only adult figure in his life left a kid in his early teens to raise him, when he watched the man he considered a brother lose his way, when his best friend was executed in front of him, when another adult manipulated others so that he would be vulnerable to abuse and it certainly wasn't going to be fair when he wanted some semblance of closure from all the shit he was put through. He wishes he could be 7 again, back when he could easily wriggle his way into Wilbur's bed on the other side of their makeshift cliff home and be comforted without any resistance. As much as he hated it, he longs for that dumb piece of carpet in the corner where Wilbur would make him sit if he made too much of nuisance of himself. His brother used to tease him and bemoan his behaviour when he was sent there but if Tommy ever became genuinely upset, Wilbur would quickly cut it out and apologise. He misses the coziness of it and all the fond memories of him and his big brother growing up on their own terms since they were the only family the other truly had. He wishes he could be laughing with Tubbo and the rest of their friends. He knows he hasn't been the most present recently but for good reason. His brain is tired of figuring out whether he's alright and even when it's offered a chance for serotonin, it's hesitant. That day after they beat Dream and retrieved the discs, he'd been filled with so much euphoria. The stress of that day's events and the weird place Wilbur's disembodied voice had temporarily sent him to aside, he'd been happy. It had only been some 5 or so weeks ago that Tommy had been hopeful and looking forward to what came next. He had the BigInnit Hotel to return to. God knows how it's been faring in his absence. His best guess is that Jack has probably taken control temporarily which was good. He was going to leave, take a second to breathe then get right back into managing the hotel. There were so many things he planned to do once he got out. Pranks on guests, the ridiculous amount of overpricing he wished to get away with, the feeling of doing an MLG water bucket trick off the top floor... it was going to be a good time. Was supposed to, anyway. Despite everything, he has experienced happiness time and time again. He's had friends who cared and were willing to help him in their own ways. Sam had been on his side... he thinks. No, he's sure Sam has just been busy with all that was on his plate this week. He hopes so since he doesn't think he could stomach another realisation that he's placed his trust in the wrong person. Besides, Sam Nook was Sam's creation and why would he put the effort in to make something to assist Tommy if he didn't actually care at least a little bit? No, no, he feels Sam is genuinely good, he does. However, Sam's not coming. Even if he can hear the fight, the lava takes forever to drain and who knows where Sam was situated in this massive prison when he realised something was wrong. Even if Sam's attempting to stop this, there's not way he'll make it. Tommy wants to convince himself it's fine. It is not. If you're aware of them, there are a few spots around the human skull you can hit that will result in a fatal injury. And Dream, ever aware of what he's doing at any given moment, makes no attempt to avoid them for the final blow.

#dream smp #tommy prison arc #tommyinnit #wilbur soot #dreamwastaken #awesamdude #twobur au #my writing #tw death #tw abuse #tw violence #tw manipulation