Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Techno lived with a hard-ass father who spent his free time breathing down his son’s neck and barking out orders between beer cans. The childlike heartache that crept in from constant failure to impress his father with tiny feet pathetically chasing a pipe-dream of praise, gradually swirled downwards, churning his gut with the passage of time, until something far more repulsive took place inside him. With age came anger, it rose with a taste of bile up his throat each morning, coughing some out left his head hot and reeling and his father pissed and berating, defensiveness sat in his gut like a coiled spring and left his posture rigid and guarded. Anger was a slow spreading stain across his insides and maybe, like Heracles, Neleus was refusing to purify him. 

Techno spent his free time handling all the household chores, biting his tongue until the taste of bile was replaced with copper, and vehemently ignoring his father’s reminders that it’s, “Best to get used to this, when it’s all the future's got for ya.” 

That man had a way of making the already compact trailer feel like it had walls that were slowly inching inwards and Techno was ready to let it crush them flat. Probably the only positive side-effect of this formed temperament was a new spite-fueled motivation, he was fifteen when he decided he’d claw out of this place tooth-and-fucking-nail if need be. Despite the brewing restlessness to find an escape he, admittedly, was not making any progress in life. With social anxiety severe enough to nerf him in just about every aspect of life he was constantly weaving through mental fog in classes, clamming up at interviews— hell he wasn’t even holding conversations well enough to make friends let alone land a job, and struggling with working out his lacking transportation options outside of school. Up in North Carolina even the public school buses were poorly performing and consistently unavailable in the mornings, having to double-up on routes and bringing in students almost half an hour after classes actually started. Stuck in stagnation, suppressing explosive fits of rage, and constantly rerunning the same unfixable issues through his mind; the fuel towards change was running hopelessly low. He started to wonder if he’d already been condemned to the dreadful fate his father sealed.

Until the second semester of junior year threw him a bone. 

At the time, those military recruiters flooding his high school had felt like Prometheus handing humanity fire. Stepping into classes, setting up tables in the cafeteria and courtyard, wandering through halls. They always spoke cheerfully, indulged in the schoolyard-goading of flaunting physical feats on pull-up bars and pavement floors. Encouraged students to give it a shot too, never knocking down those who failed. After four days of observing from afar, he finally worked up the nerve to approach a table during his lunch period. They began their spiel before any creeping doubt could try to tug him away. They harped on about the benefits, the experiences, the first taste of freedom, had him fill out his information, and by the end of it Techno walked off with: a packet, a pen, a merchandised keychain, and a weight off his shoulders. 

When Techno scores a 96 on the ASVAB his phone is practically flooded with contact attempts from recruiters. His last year of high school is hardly even a memory, the day of graduation Techno already has a packed gym bag by his bedroom door, two days after his recruiters share the information on his travel arrangements. He doesn’t mention a word of it, cleans the dishes, folds the laundry, mows the lawn. One week after graduation he steps foot into Basic Training. 

The military's Space Force branch had undergone large internal alterations when humanity breached far enough outside The Milky Way to make the first contact with an actual honest to god alien, or well aliens, probably. Techno had been six years old and peering around a couch corner when the living room TV shared the news to the world. “First Contact With Alien Species" bold and scrolling along the bottom of the newscast. Not too long after an “Extraterrestrial Negotiations Network Chat” was uncovered to the masses, humanity's beginnings of learning an apparently universal (literally) language shared between galaxies, otherwise dubbed Enchant by nerds. There was a good amount of backlash across the globe when this language was not being openly shared to anyone outside of high ranking officials, and while the occasional article or forum post may still pop up from time to time, for the most part as the years passed the perceived injustice faded into the background. As often does. Everyone has too much going on in their own life to spend time pondering on the worlds beyond. 

The first portion of Basic Training, the beginnings of the transition from civilian life to becoming a soldier, otherwise called “week zero” were days filled with paperwork, vaccinations, physical exams, and presentational alterations. Goodbye overgrown-shag and thrifted-tees, hello repulsive-buzz and fixed-uniform. It came as a shock when gaining a barebones grasp of the hush-hush language, Enchant— not a nerd it's just convenient, was also included as part of their duties. The brief respite from the seemingly unending mountains of paperwork and form-filling was instantly overshadowed by the reveal of lessons meant to be done wholly through speech and speech alone, much to the bewilderment of all the desk-bound soldiers. The teacher would not put any of the language into writing, and assumedly worried that anyone would attempt to do it themselves; all students were barred from any sort of writing materials during the classes. (What are we gonna do, write out the fucking phonetic spelling and tweet it? Start posting 'oo-aa-eh-clk-clk-tss' means hello in Enchant, spread the word! They have our phones locked away anyways!) 

No questions about whether there was or wasn't a written form would be answered, but Techno found it highly unlikely that this universal language was completely oral reliant, yet found it equally difficult to understand why the World Leaders would be going so far as to gatekeep even the slightest physical evidence of this languages existence, even when the furthest these lessons went was akin to picking up the greeting basics before vacationing to a foreign country. Well, it’s good to know if he ever contacts an alien he can confidently greet, “Hello, my name is Technoblade and I come from Earth. I am a United States military soldier. Yes, no, cooperate, don’t, where, leader, food, stay, follow, give, take, injured, planet, drink, stop, me, you, we, help.” A charming introduction. 

Though no one of his lowly rankin’ was doing any real communication with aliens anyways, so it mostly took a backseat in his mind as years went by, despite how exciting the prospect of alien communication may have been, it was just too far a fantasy. 

Communication with these galactic neighbours is definitely the governments carefully guarded project, aside from acknowledgement of other sapients' existence in this universe and knowledge of a paywalled top secret language floating around in the upper ranks, there hasn’t actually been any other information released on the topic. Not even a basic physical description or any sort of message sent by the alien, aliens? How far has the communication branched by now, how many were there in the first place? And why the hell did they think a bunch of newbies would ever need the knowledge on how to speak to one? The blind followin’ was pissin’ him off. 

The other half parts of Basic Training were unexpectedly easier to handle, maybe it should've been expected. Combat training was punishing, exhausting, and relentless, yet not entirely unfamiliar. He’s never before had muscles this sore in his life, or tried out combat-techniques, or held a weapon, but he has worked himself to the bone under the orders of someone else, he has adapted to the expectations of another without searching for praise in return, he has already learned to stay-put with obedience, and bite on command. His first shot was a lousy show of marksmanship, not out of place among fresh recruits, there was a small variety of firearms the lessons cycled through: rifles, pistols, and automatic rifles. With time Techno found he operated best with a rifle, suited for medium to longer ranges, and could be a bit of a crackshot with an automatic. In contrast, the close range Combatives was where he flourished almost immediately. 

Of course, in the beginning trainees were only tools for the instructors to display the array of grappling and pinning techniques, any fight he was put in had only resulted in getting his ass handed to him and slamming onto the ground hard enough to leave bruises. Basic combative training usually included a rifle-related focus of hand-to-hand, teaching how to gain physical control over an enemy to create enough distance to shoot, or hold them long enough for a teammate to come to your aid. Techno had made progress in this kind of training much faster than the others, easily grasping the tactics of disabling blows and forced submission, when put against peers instead of instructors the amount of losses he faced quickly decreased.

 He grew particularly fond of the muzzle-thumping technique, driving back enemies with a simple harsh jab of a rifle right to the solar plexus; it's not anything that would be close to fatal just a kneejerk reaction to an unknown in your path, but it's enough to make a grown man fold like a stack of cards. The sight was always entertaining. When knives and bayonets were brought into the mix, his proficiency became most notable, it was during a lesson of knife fighting where he had his first real victory against an instructor. Grappling and pinning until a sturdy hold had the instructor's knife-wielding arm trapped firmly between Techno’s thighs, where Techno then lurched forwards enough to drive his own training knife to the instructors neck, just about even with his Adam's apple. The spectating peers had disobediently whoop’d and hollered at the sight, and even after the spotlight had receded the recruits had already made a habit of bringing up "The Blade Fight" alongside him. It’s not often a nickname in the military spawns from something positive, so Technoblade will treasure this mercy. 

Somewhere along the way, maybe around four weeks after finally finishing Basic Training and being deployed into his permanent first duty station, he begins the slow, slow realization that he may have just gone from living under one persons thumb to an entire fucking armed forces. After the first three months of swearing that oath of enlistment you have no right to leave until you have served the minimum of four years. He is far past a three month mark. It’s dawning on him that this is a commitment he should’ve made with more resolve than just running away from dad but fuck, he was there now and what's done is done. So, he takes orders, has no one to visit on holiday leaves, saves paychecks, gets wasted on weekends, thrifts a hefty collection of books to store in his dorm, always bounces back for his shifts, and spends his hours despondent but mostly collected. He sits, he shakes, he rolls over, he barks, he bites. 

“Four years,” was the only motivator, “just three more, just two, just one, just finish these months–” and then the only orders you’ll follow are your own.

But life is far from uncomplicated. 

After you’ve finished, the military still has the right to recall you for active duty should the time come. It’s just Techno’s luck that his first ever positive performance would only drag him down in life, getting the closest he’s ever gotten to freedom for one year before being dragged right back to the feet of his master. 

He’s seven months into living life on quickly dwindling military savings in a rundown flat in Colorado, states away from his past and yet not distanced enough. His dusty pink hair and face are still habitually trimmed, freezer stocked with frozen dinners, a fitness routine from Basic Training followed daily, it’s as though he hasn’t comprehended how to be anything else. His apartment is tiny yet looks almost spacious with the lack of furniture, holding nothing more than a frameless mattress and stacks upon stacks of books in the corner beside it, clothes spilling out of a cheap hamper, cabinets that don’t even hold dishes after having gotten so used to takeout and microwavable meals paired with cans of beer. His anxiety seems to have only worsened now that he’s out in the real world again, if he thinks too hard about how he’s walking his legs forget how to function and he starts moving like a newborn fawn before overcorrecting to a stiff march, overhead lights and obnoxious radio hits buzzing from old speakers make him feel alien in the aisles of his local grocery store, he can feel the eyes of everyone around him boring through his flesh, time is constantly slipping away from him– both abnormally slow and incomprehensibly fast. At interviews he gives answers that are clipped and literal as he sits with a stiff back and a carefully neutral face. He is not progressing.

When one afternoon, after he unlocks the door to his section of the apartment building's multi-unit mailbox and is greeted by a large manila envelope sat among the usual pile of standard white ones, he is immediately put on edge. An envelope like that typically carries nothing other than documents, real official record shit. Techno does not want to be receiving real official record shit of any kind right now, thank you very much. He doesn’t stall, once he enters his barren kitchen he chucks the white envelopes onto the counter and splits open the outlier. 

ORDER TO REPORT TO INDUCTION— alright, straight the point— printed across the top with The Great Seal impressed upon a space just below it, to confirm the real official record shit of it all. There’s more words below, a lot of them actually, but those five alone are enough to paralyze. Why? There isn’t any active war going on. He finished his four years. The rest of the document doesn’t even offer explanation, just instructions and a promise of fine and imprisonment if compliance is not met. His father’s words haunt his mind, a prophecy already foretold, a prophecy for a fate Techno had misinterpreted. He wasn’t doomed to kneel at the foot of his father for eternity, he was doomed to always be at someone's beck and call, doomed to be a drifting soul when without someone to tether him to this plane. He contemplated giving up and leaning into the subject of being a drifting soul, the Greeks viewed the concept of a soul much differently from modern world interpretation, Homeric poems described souls as a life-force, the battery to the body, having one simply meant you were alive. It was not the source of most psychological activities, that role lay within the body; which would carry the beliefs, desires, pleasures, and fears of a person. Once severed the soul travels to the shadowy underworld and spends a pitiful afterlife as a diminished afterimage of what they once were, a “shade.” He could let go of this body, this world, these expectations. He isn’t even confident that his shade in the underworld would appear any different to this current aimless body. 

He could bite the bullet now. 

Thetis, mother of Achilles, foretold her son's split-road fate: meet an early death with glory, or live long into obscurity. To die as a warrior or cattle. Technoblade was sure he was no warrior, no demigod, and certainly no hero. He was a soldier, and not much outside of that, he already was cattle. Achilles chose glory, took part in the Trojan War. Denied insignificance. 

Why should I be the one to keel over now? If the Fates had already spun, already measured, then surely they would already dictate where he is cut. While not knowing where this order was leading him to, with just the possibility that he’d come to face a war, he decided he could find himself a death worthwhile. Spill blood for something closer to glory. Destiny may be predetermined but this last bit of agency would remain his. He could die on the field, and he would not go down alone.

His fate is not split into two choices anyways, just one dirt road to the same destination. At the very least it’d be easier there, if he gives in early, he’ll have a firearm placed directly into his palms.

Placing himself back into the role of a soldier is both easier and harder than the first time, he’s had to abandon his only saving grace: the acquired collection of books, this time around, but falling back into systematic routine was a familiar detachment. He doesn’t spend half as much time sitting around looking at computer screens as he did those previous four years of active duty. The normal responsibilities of satellite monitoring/driving, communications, launch infrastructure, operating ground stations, overseeing spacecraft/drones, and all the other boring corporate like officework have been put on a backburner mostly. The Superior officers have them moving on a tight schedule at every hour of every day, primarily delving deeper into lessons on Enchant, including writing and reading the language this time, thank God. Instructors explain that the alien species— the Panoplia’s, had become foe after years of attempting to establish a peaceful exploration deal with them.

 If you ask me, it kinda sounds like our Leaders really wanted to dig their grubby fingers into the spoils of whatever the Panoplia’s had to offer and are throwing a fit after being rejected, or something. 

Now they’re essentially breaching the planet's borders to take planetary samples in uninhabited areas, while countering any attempts at pushback. Leave it to humans to make an enemy out of their first and only contact off-world. 

At least the combat training has been amped up as well, mental blankness enchantedly dissipating in the rush of ferity. Lessons on strong-arm tactics and weapon training alleviate the overwhelming numbness for middling moments of something comparable to clarity. 

Technoblade is shipped out to fieldwork after training is completed, the timeframe is lost on him but he knows that eventually he’s sat within one of the space vessels he’d spent endless hours– days– surveilling from ground control, and for the first time ever it was taking off with him inside it. Uncomfortably strapped in the packed seating along the walls of the spacecraft, he sat still and silent save for the idle twiddling of dog tags that dangled and clinked along his chain. The necklace brings an odd comfort with the feeling of objectification paired with it, dehumanizing; and surely the others pressed around him are still people under all this armor, but Technoblade is unsettled at the thought of being viewed similarly. There isn’t anyone under his armor. He isn’t meant to be viewed the way others are.

Four years of obedience training, one year off-leash, and now a newly gained status of perpetual war dog. 

Before he knows it he’s three nauseating years deep into being sicced onto whoever to explore more land over wherever. The Panoplia troops have sturdy armor to tank the rounds released from most weaponry, but like most armor it has cracks. The armor isn’t worn, it's biological, essentially thick plates of skin that shift around to form shielding defenses, but those moments between shifting, the crease that has to exist to allow movement, is a weakness. Technoblade knows how to exploit those. While the main tactic remains a focus of intense gunfire, Technoblade gains a role of infiltrating the cracks in their defense. A hands-on position of sinking knives between plating and tearing off protective layers from backline soldiers. Their gunfire hits harder but the reload is far too slow, this infiltration rattles focus and gives his side the upperhand to deal real damage against panic-stricken soldiers struggling to save a lost battle-formation as Technoblade wades his way through enemies, back to the security of his comrades. 

Taking an early leave from military work is virtually impossible if you want to make quite literally anything out of yourself in the future, but taking an early leave from active war? There’s only two kinds of those, and Technoblade already decided he wasn’t looking to be anybody's Old Yeller. 

However, a beneficial part of humanity's inability to ignore this allure of gory warfare comes in the form of pre-existing strategies, there's an extensive past of strategic battle concepts dating all the way back to prehistoric times, and Techno’s pretty sure his current one? It’s got them all beat. The third, undocumented, never-before-seen plan of: successfully escaping your own side of the war. Don’t get him wrong, fleeing the battle grounds is not original at all, but in modern times getting away with this disobedience is far trickier than before.

Alien abduction, most likely, is a strategy not many have refined. He hadn’t really planned on being the first to try either, but revolution waits for no man. 

It isn’t even during one of these desperado-tactic, enemy line infiltration escapades where he finds himself being captured. Stationed outside camp standing guard beside a fellow soldier who’s been bobbin’ for cock the last two hours— nodding off and jolting back up on loop, real security here folks. Technoblade has found himself having the exact opposite problem, even at times where it’s permitted, sleep is elusive; he remains wired deep into nights and far into mornings. Slowly, there’s a creeping buzzing permeating his limbs, and it’s almost faint enough to be dismissed but then there’s yelling, and his vision is tilting on an axis as he finds the source of it to be his comrade training their gun at something and barking out status updates through a headpiece. Something is slithered around Technoblade’s body, trying to pin his arms as he wrestles against the grotesque appendage quickly dragging him across the blue hued terrain, and it shouldn’t be this hard to move his fuckin’ arms or aim his rifle properly but his vision is growing as spotty as his limbs are heavy. 

“Son of a bitch!” His continuous shouted expletives is the most control he manages to find over his body as the coarse tentacle continues its slithering restraints and Technoblade’s consciousness slips alongside it.

And then, he’s groggily coming to, atop solid orange ground and surrounded by the oddest looking trees he has ever seen in his fuckin’ life. 

Chapter Text

Technoblade begins the grueling process of waking up completely face planted into the ground and feeling like he’s taken a horse tranquilizer or two. With heavy limbs and confusion fogging his brain his first attempts of propping himself up are met with concerningly strained movement, and the view that eventually greets him only drags his mind further away from any cognizance of the situation; there's rough orange terrain, red contorting trees, and bright cyan fauna blossoming all around. The dark orange of the ground seems to overlay the entire atmosphere itself, a misty sunset-like radiance bouncing from each surface making a permanent warm hued haze akin to a permanent sandstorm. 

By the time he gets himself to a proper upright position he’s panting uncomfortably with a heartbeat that’s definitely too prominent in his eardrums. With forearms braced behind him and ass planted on unfamiliar but solid ground there’s an alarmingly long stretch of breathless fatigue before the full-body ache and chest concaving wheezes subside enough for his first lucid thought to make itself known. 

A simple bewildered realization that this is not where I was deployed and it sure as hell ain’t Earth. 

His military-forged cognition kicks in faster than any suitable health discernments, eyes automatically flickering around the surrounding area as his mind races back to tactical concealment techniques.

Shape, it’s hard to pinpoint any irregular forms in an environment that appears entirely unnatural to him, even harder to attempt to blend in with the oddity, but he puts his best work in. He gives himself a quick once over: his basic black long-sleeved compression shirt is still fitted onto him, tucked into monochromatic camo-print cargos, that are then similarly tucked into sturdy combat boots.  He’s just about the same as usual though lightly dusted by whatever coats the ground beneath him, however he is notably without his tactical vest and his thigh straps contain only empty holsters. 

Bruhhh. Did someone loot my damn body? 

The ground's orange dusting is at least a good start in concealment. He further props himself up with splayed palms to quickly move into a kneeling position, what would normally be a simple maneuver for entering a familiar firing position instantly caused a nauseating dizzy spell that left him briefly collapsing on trembling knees before his hands meet ground in a fight for better purchase. He stills in a frustrating moment of recollection and then swipes his palms along the ground to pick up the grainy orange substance, making quick work of further smearing it across his clothing and face. There doesn’t seem to be anything worth attracting notice around him, well aside from the alien terrain, no questionable movement or sudden shifts of fauna.

Shine is an easy one to check off, there’s no guns left with him to give away any glint of location and his headgear is completely absent as well. Though upon closer inspection of the surroundings he spots a slight gleam on the ground just a few inches away from where he’d been passed out, for whatever reason his combat knife remains within his reach and he is quick to lurch for the familiar defense. His head quickly reminds him of how stupid this jerk of motion is with an intense throb of displeasure. He’s been injured in battle before, bruises, aches, and slow trickling blood wounds; there's no reason he should be this sloppy under pressure right now. Especially when there’s not even a real enemy in sight.

He holds his crouch slowly backing towards the warped trees whose branched out leafing casts a decent shadow, knife wielded protectively along the way. The forest is unfortunately filled with unfamiliar sounds, even the rustling of those cyan leaves above don’t sound like home, oddly clacking with each moment of contact. Short distant noises come off as bubbling and wailing all at once. The inability to distinguish audible potential threats from neutrals keeps his heart pounding uncomfortably, and maybe a few other things play their own parts in it too.

Captured, you’re shittin’ me. Going AWOL in the middle of war can’t be good. Though at least I ain’t POW, unless these aliens have got the weirdest idea of imprisonment. Is this even still those Panoplia's planet? Could be based on some.. further off point on it, but can’t say I recall any mentions of stark biome diversity there in our little history lessons. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose, agitated, Fucks sake, my head’s killin’ me.

It feels like every section of his head is attempting to self-implode at once, sinuses waging a war of their own now that he’s away from any actual action. The red trees he’s backed himself up against have a texture that’s almost similar enough to the bark back home, despite their contortionist form, mostly rough and scratchy against his palm but oddly smooth if he brushes at the right angle. The leaves remain a complete oddity however, continuing to clack-clack-clack against one another, sounding like soap bars being played as tambourines or wax melts tapped together like glasses in a bustling bar. 

He’s split between categorizing the current world around him and attempting to theorize about the journey here, or maybe more pressingly, where exactly “here” is.

Earth has biomes. We’ve got all types of trees, grass, leaves, dirt, air. Biodiversity and all that. Panoplia troops coulda dumped me off their west coast or somethin’. Somewhere where all the blue turned orange and the air turned.. filmy. Somewhere where American soldiers get discarded, still alive, for some reason. 

The attempts of reason and rationalization leave nothing but open ends and unanswerable questions, trailing off into repetitive maybes. Maybe they did this because of that, maybe they did this to get that, maybe they left me alive because... 

Maybe they, maybe I. Maybe means fuck all right now. 

Hypotheticals were the closest thing to a solid conclusion he could draw about his circumstance. In the confusion of it all only the simple first assessment remained substantial: he is not where he was deployed, there are no comrades or camp bases to come to his aid, and this is definitely not anywhere on Earth. 

The next step of this conclusion seems obvious enough, survive. Despite the stereotypical imagery of military life they don’t actually teach much about wilderness survival there, his lessons ranged from weaponry-heavy combat to astral navigation machinery, and didn’t usually stray far from the two. The impromptu galactic foreign language lessons and a personally chosen knife combat course were as atypical as it got. At best, he might have some higher chance at survival when going hand to hand with whatever extraterrestrials are crawling around this land, but in terms of actual survival skills he and any other American civilian are on pretty equal footing. Knife work won’t save him from food allergies or air pollution. 

He feels uneasy in all kinds of ways about the reality of his situation. Thoughts of rescue are a distant hope quickly extinguished by doubt, cynicism leading him to calculate the military’s gain from any sort of rescue operation for a single soldier. The benefit to loss ratio doesn't come up pretty, he’d been getting tossed into the depths of battle like some sort of cannon fodder for months– years, by this point.

A cannon fodder turned loose cannon. A soldier who had to be reminded to aim at the enemy, not the sergeants, a soldier whose ingrained animosity made the lines between ally and foe get blurry at the edges. A bitch that didn’t know what it was barking for. 

He pushes off from the tree, prowling through the weaving trunks and keeping a low form as he moves further away from the direction he’d woke up, taking short deliberate steps and slightly leaning forward enough to watch the balance carried in each one. He pushes past the churn of his gut and sway of vision, letting his knife remain comfortably in his hold as he strains to listen to the new world around him. With his head still uncomfortably rushing with blood, auditory analysis is proving to be harder than it had any right.

Fuck the rich man's war, he thought bitterly, continuing on with the miserable trudge. Licking boots and being tugged by a chain for a fight I couldn’t even get full insight into. Who knows what I’ve been spilling blood over. Achilles: destined for glory in early-death or long-lived insignificance, but despite it all even he ended up weathered by the battles, yeah? He’s eventually called savage and unrelenting with a heart heaved by rage by his very own brothers in arms, motivated by anger and revenge rather than any sort of ‘eternal glory’ as time passed. 

Dead men aren’t moved by the victory of war.

What’s so different from his fork path if every destination’s the same? Who’s to say Achilles is any different from the cattle I’ve become? It’s just as he’d said, ‘The same honor waits for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death,’ seems he wasn’t so special after all. We’re all bound to be another whose name was writ in water, all bound to an inevitable fate, all searchin’ for something worth death. Then, left with nothing but grief by the end. 

Technoblade halts his sweep to eye a particularly noisy area of shrubbery, vinery entwines a large dreary looking porous beige mound, with one larger hole towards the bottom of it and smaller pockets surrounding its surface. Looks a bit like some kind of rock monstrosity that could wash up from a shoreline. Strange aquatica aside, his focus is pulled towards it for a different reason. He watches as the now familiar clack-clack of leaves mixes into a dull scrape as some of the vines are tugged into the structure. He keeps quiet while lowering further into his crouch, eyes never pausing in their surveillance. With heavier scrutiny he makes out the next vine that slips into the cave and catches a glimpse of what seems to be pulling it, a flash of a pale spike picking between the vinery, sawing its way through until the vine splits in two leaving the small pockets unobstructed.

It’s difficult to make out any details beyond whatever is slicing the flora; the height of it seems to be around Technoblade’s waist but the distance and obstruction makes him less certain of any calculations. It’s likely to be some kind of horn or tooth if he had to guess, but it could be weaponry, they could be sapient. Though he isn’t too confident about the company of any sapient being living in a glorified barnacle in the middle of a forest.

Either way, it’s his first point of contact in uncharted territory and he knows, logically, that he’ll need to work out a proper plan for how he’s going to go about this. Despite logical thinking, no matter how many times his brain repeats this information, his body has its own ideas. While fairing better than when he first awoke it’s still bordering on agonizing to move in the compact stealth position, breaths coming out wheezy and harsh, therefore louder than preferred. 

While attempting to slowly encroach the barnacle habitant’s surrounding area his mind doesn’t properly stick to the here and now, one moment he’s quietly treading through terrain and the next he’s clutching at nothing with his knees planted to the ground, apparently having fallen straight into a cluster of those clack-clack-clacking leaves. 

Shit. 

The tumble was definitely a far cry from tactful and though there’s really no memory of his blunder, it's clear those leaves would’ve caused a racket when crushed. The sight of a familiar boney tusk exiting the stupid little barnacle shelter is also a pretty telling sign that he majorly-fucked-up. 

Now having fully exited its cavity the creature is in full view; those tusks, plural, are connected to a boarish snout. The creature’s skin is a pig-pink only disrupted by a black tuft of fur leading further down its spine. The entire creature itself is comparable to a wild boar-pig hybrid. If put onto steroids, of course. The hog displays a sturdy physique and that height estimate is holding up, much to his own misfortune. 

Technoblade is also in full view it seems. The grove clearly isn’t shielding him from the sight of off-putting beady white eyes. He scrambles for the knife that had been knocked from his grip somewhere in the fall the second the hog begins a hasty charge forward. It managed to traverse easily at least 7 feet towards him in the time it took to gather his full bearings, just barely getting into a proper stance and hoping to hold his own in the abrupt fight. His right foot is planted forward and its matched-dominant hand wields the knife offensively, while his left arm remains closer to his torso, jutted out vertically with a clenched hand ready to shield. 

He has to shield his stomach almost instantly against the weaponized teeth, keeping an angled stance as he braces for impact of the ramming boar. The cut he catches is worse than he’d hoped, tearing straight through cloth and digging into skin, his breath is damn near knocked straight out of him as his back meets spindly tree trunks.

They continue a tense back and forth, the boar is reckless and frenzied with each attack relying heavily on blindly ramming around its bulk and lunging with the points of those sharp tusks. Technoblade is stuck on the defense, trying to keep careful distance as his mind settles back into a cold focus brought upon in the need of self-preservation. Eventually its weaknesses become prominent; that bulk of the creature slows each turn it makes and every thrust of its tusks results in a pause of agility, it’s largely unable to pump the brakes on its own momentum and severely lacking any skill for redirection. 

If it were to get trapped, escape would not come easy. The realization inspires a rework of perspective instantly, every wild movement that once appeared formidable now carries a sloppy and futile look to it. Something within him clicks into place, that cold-focus now spreading from his mind down to the overheating aches of pain and panic, and for just a moment it’s as though he’s been plunged into a freezing body of water. The boar itself looks to be struggling to fight against the tides he’s found composure in. 

It hardly even registers that his next realization is spoken aloud, “This thing can’t kill me.” The words scratch at his throat on exit, and the sensation drags up a faint awareness of a dry throat that pairs with painfully chapped lips, freshly split open by a wild teeth-baring smile. 

He takes the next moment of separation to maneuver further into the odd multi-trunk trees. The gaps between are thin enough for him to have to side-step into the cocooning structure, arm squeezing through first and the rest just barely following. It essentially creates a barred barrier, properly separating him from any ‘threat', though the descriptor feels flawed when considered. The boar is not at all discouraged by the obstacle, instantly ramming into the tree's trunks without planning, its tusks and body frame are too large to properly reach Technoblade and he watches hysterically as the creature's barrage of senseless strikes only persist. 

Eventually, when the boar rears back for yet another strike, Technoblade sheaths his knife and shoves his now empty hands out of the gaps to meet it halfway, letting his fingers wrap around the tusks and yanking them properly into the gaps. Once the thin teeth slip past the barrier he uses his built up momentum to tilt them horizontal, only slightly straining with years worth of built-up muscle mass and firm footwork to act with. The alien loses its own footing with the sudden misdirection and any attempts of escape are fruitless on unbalanced hooves and trapped tusks. Outraged squeals and thuds begin to fill the air and an eruption of laughter joins the cacophony, still coming out wheezy with a frenzied hilarity behind it. Technoblade steps out from a different side of the tree and makes his way back around to the rear of the agitated, captured hog. 

The Fates spin the thread of destiny for all those mortal; it was the three of them who would weave, measure, and sever as destiny saw fit. Assumedly, animals may fit this category as well. But, as Technoblade stood before the squirming beast he could've sworn that very same thread was clutched between his palm. A rush of satisfaction follows the unfamiliar feeling of complete control. 

How many of these threads have I already cut short? Every life taken on the field, were those soldiers all really destined to die by my hands? With a destiny like that, they must’ve been even closer to livestock than me. 

The laughter has hushed to a titter as he reaches for the knife's sheath, unveiling the stainless blade. He saunters forward all the while letting his thoughts trail out freely, “Achilles bloodthirst towards the Trojans was considered to be brought upon only after both a wounded dignity and a grieving loss, though I’m personally doubtful that this rage was spawned rather than.. resurged. I mean, he held a thirst for glory through sacrifice, the very definition of that heroism every Greek honored, but a thirst for ‘honorable’ sin is still sin. It was hubris and wrath that guided him to battle in the first place. At the end of the day the Trojan War was still just another war, another pyrrhic victory for some no-named mortals.” 

He kneels atop the squirming prey, further pinning it to the ground and bringing the blade up to the side of stout neck. Its cries are ear-splitting now. “I bet he was always angry, deep down. Resentment for the parent who foretold his fate, for those who enchanted him with the prospect of battle, for the deep nasty wrongness that arose from his very birth.”

Bet he could’ve thrived in the wild, down that alternate path of old-age and unpraised freedom.

His blade slices through the thread of fate like butter, and through flesh with only mild-resistance. He leans into the push of the blade, listening as squeals are swallowed by a tear of skin and spurting of blood, and when the knife's hilt blocks any deeper puncture he drags the blade further towards himself. The small neck wound becomes a parting gash for a steady burst of golden-hued blood, incision arcing along the side of the stilling creature. He doesn’t pause the slow drag until what remains is only a crude mimic of a high-school lab specimen. An unmistakable, but still unidentifiable, slew of innards and protruding skeletal structure are left peeking out from the spilled mess of bloody remains. 

When he loosens his hold of the knife a hand trembles up to his own neck in search of a routine comfort. But the search leaves him empty handed. There’s no sleek steel, no loose chain dangling identification tags, his bloodied hand simply paws at bare skin aimlessly for a moment. The absence of the dog tags feel like an opened void of his soul. The previous elation replaces itself with a hollowness and the broken off tittering begins to sound an awful lot like weeping as he drags himself back to a stand. He drifts towards the hog's previous hideout, instinctively claiming the barnacle for his own as the sky outside ominously dulls in color. 

At the base of the temporary shelter he stands listlessly, staring up at the sky and noting the utter lack of celestial bodies present, despite the dimming light there's no sun, no moon, not a single trace of any scattered stars to match the clear passage of time. It almost seems opaque, much like the general atmosphere of this land, orange, orange, haze. He glances back down at amber-coated hands, wondering how accurate that color really is. 

He has to crawl to enter the geode and only once inside does he consider the fact that anything else in these woods could try their own hand at entering it too. Exhausted and still vaguely nauseated he leans stiffly against the wall opposite the opening, keeping his knife in hand as he opts for simply keeping guard until the sky brightens up again. Even the smaller slits along the walls offer a hazard of their own, he has no idea what inhabits these lands, big or small. If he lets his vision stray from the entrance he can just barely make out the woodlands around him through the small windows, the openings dredge up an unwelcome paranoia, if he can see through them something else could easily be looking back. 

Oddly, the world outside only darkens slightly further than when he entered, his vision never once dips into complete darkness. The dim-period remains filled with sounds he can’t quite grasp: every clack, gurgle, and wail he picks up only further fuels this rampant fear. He tries to occupy his mind by wrapping up the almost-forgotten arm injury, it seemed to have only bled mildly from the shallow cut, though he’s rather displeased about the torn sleeve. It doesn’t leave him with much to keep his hands busy, uselessly picking at the threading to keep his eyes from drooping.

He fails to shake that feeling of eyes upon him, continuously smoothing his hands over his arms to try and wipe off the sensation of surveillance, subsequently wiping off the more reality based sensation of slick blood. He keeps jolting into alertness for one reason or another, but by the time the orangey terrain begins to reach its previous luminosity all his anxieties remain ultimately unfounded.

When he notices the nausea has quietly passed and instead brought upon a much simpler sensation of hunger he slowly exits the shelter and sets sight upon yesterday's kill, approaching it anxiously. Shelter and food seem a decent starting point for abrupt wilderness survival. Unfortunately once up close it’s clear he isn’t the only one who considered the meal, chunks are already missing from the corpse and grotesque miniscule holes weave in and out of both flesh and innards alike. Some parts of it are practically mush.

“That’s a hell no.” He nearly gags at the sight and smell of such quick decay. Looks like the next step of survival starts elsewhere.

Chapter Text

Another vine is haphazardly slashed out of his eyeline, this “hunt” has already gone on longer than he’d hoped, and far too quietly. The strange ambient sounds around him never relent in their incomprehensible nature; wailing, popping, clack-clack-clacking– he tears down another one of those vines for good measure, but not a single critter has actually crossed his path. Not since that boar.

He’s trying really hard not to think about what out there had shredded and tunneled through its carcass like that, trying even harder not to imagine his own corpse looking the same someday. Mostly, he manages, it helps that he has to let the larger half of his mind concentrate on keeping track of his path while simultaneously scanning the area for some sign of life. There’s greenery (well, cyan-ery?) blossoming all around, but the list of safe plants to eat raw on Earth is already pretty dicey and he isn’t in the mood to roll the dice on any alien planet's shrubbery, so meat it is.

“Today’s checklist: find an animal, hunt it down, create a fire, and fucking eat,” He remarks aloud, counting them out on his fingers and mercifully deciding not to remind himself of all the directionless walking needed for just the first step, nor all the more purposeful walking he’ll have to do to reach back to the barnacle he’s marked as homebase. He’d kill for a frozen dinner right now; one of those with the Salisbury steak and mash potatoes that he kept stocked in his apartment, honestly he’d kill for any of those freeze dried meals they gave out during his military transportation, even the hellish textured pureed foods they’d resorted to years into the war. Instead, he’s stuck killing for (hopefully edible) mystery meat, he really hopes the creatures on this planet are still made up of something meat-adjacent, that boar seemed to be at the very least.

Likely sick of the silence, his thoughts escape as a steady mumble, “What’re insects made of? That's not technically meat, right? Probably not– no way they’re stickin’ bugs into lollipops if they're made up of meat, s’like stickin’ jerky into a tootsieroll. But it isn’t inedible so maybe it doesn't matter all that much. I could eat alien bugs, if it came down to it.”

Despite the confident claim he can’t help but privately beg the gods for no human sized beetle interactions. Maybe a shrine to Artemis is in store for him, a ritual or two for Demeter if he’s ever desperate enough to try his luck with whatever counts as a crop on this planet. His back is still uncomfortably aching throughout the journey, he’s not quite limping but his steady pace is definitely teetering more towards sluggish trudge than casual stroll, and the air is still dry in a way that’s doing no favors for his thumping headache and itchy throat.

⊱⋆⊰

Technoblade leans against the base of a rather withered looking tree, not paying any mind to the blackening of its branches, too grateful that those horrid leaves seem to have fallen off of this one for good, all mushed and melted around the tree's roots. And isn’t that food for thought, melted leaves, this place is seriously fucked. Hoping to catch his breath after all this time spent walking, his head continues to pound in a way that could quite possibly be translated into morse code, though any plans of rest are quickly cut off as a skin-crawling squelch sounds from beside him.

The strained yell he lets out is less than flattering. Something close to humiliating, even.

From between the branching of trees a small, bird-like creature has just plopped face-first onto the ground below; orange substance pooling out of.. somewhere and making a puddle around its dark-red poultry form. When Techno lunges at it, there’s only the delusional imagery of a proper chicken dish floating in his mind. The second he makes a move for it the creature spurs to awareness, gargling up an awful sound and flinging itself up properly, and out of Technos reach, well out of his reach. In just a split second the creature managed to propel itself a solid 3 feet ahead and continued a steady trek onwards.

Now with a proper view of it, he could make out a golden beak which spread back all the way to red-orange eyes, the wings were something closer to a bat's; no feathers coated them, just a dark ribbed texture and yellow translucent slits, furling and unfurling like an accordion. As Techno hoisted himself into a sprint, his grip around his knife tightened, but he couldn’t ignore the hysteric thought that it looked uncannily similar to a dodo bird. On a wild goose chase… towards a dodo bird. His boots stomped against the terrain, determined to catch up before another 3 feet of distance could suddenly appear, and right as the distance narrowed the critter’s wings spread out properly but before they could push off the ground Techno heaved the rest of his momentum to dive onto it.

The crash is clumsy, grappling with something the size of a small child was much harder than it had any right to be, the creature refused to relent in its struggle and Techno quickly lost any resemblance of a proper form in his grapple. It wriggled in his hands letting out more dismayed gargles, he’s really put himself in an awkward position with this hold; the bird was small enough to be mostly pinned by his hands in theory but the wings had splayed themselves out, angrily smacking into his face, which forced him into using his forearms for further restraint and left his hands awkwardly clasped around its neck. The knife is still clutched within his palm but he can’t move his hand enough to make any use of it without risking escape, somehow he’s equally as trapped.

“How am I experiencing public humiliation, without there even being a public? I’m bein’ judged– someone somewhere is laughin’ at me in my moment of struggle,” he heaves the complaint between breaths, “this is poultry punishment, dodo damnation, you don’t even count as a bird! Featherless! ‘Behold, a man!’ Oh– shit.” With a particularly aggressive jerk it frees one of its wings from the hold, in a desperate act of gaining back control Technoblade loosens the grip of his right hand, hoping to drag the blade and quickly snuff his catch.

Before he could even process it his arms that were once encompassing the critter were uncomfortably slick with an orange substance and cradling a thick textured layer of shedding.

“HEH?” He shouts out in confusion, quickly scrambling to stance, and yet again launching into another chase of the outer-layer-shedding, slimey-substance-exuding, dodo-bird-looking alien creature. Because of course this is his life now.

This abnormal pursuit wraps around trees, trails through shrubbery, and gives him insight into the absolute horror that must have plagued that poor cat– Tom's existence. Maybe Tom and Sisyphus could console one another, Jerry should go to hell. Am I losing my mind? He worried, perplexed by even his own line of thinking he tries to put more energy into keeping his focus. His movements are sloppy and impulsive, he may not be a hunter but he’s a soldier for fucks sake, he should be able to plan before he acts, or at least think further than kneejerk responses. Technoblades clearly at a disadvantage– stumbling to turn as quickly as the critter, navigating unfamiliar terrain, trying to keep the little thing in his sights– but even so he’s sickeningly frustrated at the struggle of it all. Particularly disgruntled at the performance of his own body, he can’t have been running long enough to justify the fatigued limbs, nor the heavy panting and queasiness.

His target swerves out of view behind a thicker tree. He pinches his eyes closed, attempting to stave off the headaches, and his vision comes back with a dizziness as he staggers to the tree– he only barely registers that it’s the first tree he’s seen with a large singular trunk and red leafing. How far am I? This headache is splitting me in two, now I’m getting dizzy as if the introduction to asthma wasn’t enough already, and my throat is still unbearably dry. I need a.. Oh. Oh fuck off.

He wants to laugh, or cry, or really just grab that bird by the neck and shake it between his teeth because he’s thirsty. He needs a drink. This place is dry as a desert and I managed to forget the existence of water. I’m chasing after food while dehydration can wipe me out in… He cuts his thinking off short, any measurement of time that comes to mind sounding too real. Too soon. The shock that comes from finding the animal stood stock-still, just a few feet in front of him swiftly quiets the low monologue of his mind anyways. It definitely should have been able to get away after that dizzy spell, yet here it rests, paused in time and staring dazedly off to its right.

The moment is surreal and although it’s unreasonable Technblade pauses right along with it; leaned against a sturdy trunk and drawing in breaths as deep and quietly as he can manage. That orange haze still permeates every inch of the land, but the new trees are clustered with leaves that fan out thickly, shadowing the grounds below. A low hum rings in the air, a serene alternative to the sounds of distant screams and clattering trees from the other forest. His eyes flutter partially closed, the waves of adrenaline washing off and leaving an unfair awareness of every inch of ache along his body. Every unnecessary drop of sweat. Over a minute is spent suspended in time, at least it felt so, but that can’t be accurate, his head has lolled forward and eyes drooped further to follow. The ambiance distorts with a pace that’d give whiplash, peacefulness snatched away with a cruel swiftness.

There’s mumbling, it’s faint and incoherent, hard to detect over the atmospheres buzzing, but he picks up on it all the same. He snaps focus to the right, limbs locking back up stiffly as his hearing becomes hindered by the sudden spike of fear. He clutches his knife properly, planting his nondominant hand in front and keeping the knife pointed outwards. Techno was straining to make out the incoherent speech, homed in on the direction of the murmurs when a blur of movement came from his left dragging his attention right back towards the animal just in time to witness something pounce.

The critter lets out a horrible fearful croak, wings pinned to the ground by pawed feet attached to a large but angular creature. Croaks and gargles are cut short quickly, teeth are revealed from an unsettling wide split of jaw and they dig into the critters throat cleanly. The executioner stands on four legs, lanky but hunched as it feeds, a canine-like figure with even dark fur coating, growing more voluminous at the base of its head down to spine where a slim tail rests. His brain immediately links it to a wolf although the slenderness doesn’t quite fit– neither does the length of its unhinged jaw.

Still holding a practiced form, he watches with disdain as the whole reason he went this far, the whole reason he’s wasted precious energy, the whole point of the chase, is gorged upon, snatched effortlessly right before his eyes. His fists and jaw clench uncomfortably and he knows it’s irrational but he’s already given his all to stupidly chase after the wrong goal, he treads cautiously towards the wolf. It’s dumb, he’s being dumb– the wolf eyes him warily on its next bite, he takes another step. I don’t even know if this planet has water, maybe every decision is pointless. There must be some limit the wolf has; a warning snarl follows the next step he makes, he only pauses for a fraction of a second.

It bites at air with a promise after the next step, sharp teeth clack together, the blood glistening off them sends stray drops flying. Snarls pick up in volume. Caution is thrown to the wind with a swift sprint to take its place, the wolf backs from his reach immediately when his blade swings out and it counters with a swipe of paw. It twists off to Techno’s side, he follows with less of a quickness; pressing his palm on the snout that had been aiming for his stomach. The misdirection is only temporary; he tries to make use of the opening, raising his blade and going for a quick cut, but the second he maneuvers the snout away from its path the wolf continues with momentum, ducking between his legs.

A tug at his boot has him glancing down to find the wolf biting angrily, attempting to rip a chunk off. He shakes it off, attempting to stomp its bowed head and only managing to lose his own balance in the process. Shit. When the wolf lunges it puts paws to his chest this time, with the balance it can remain on hind legs and just slightly reach his neck. The snap of jaw just barely misses, he pushes it off him by its chest and a swing of his blade cuts through paw.

It backs off after the shove, the damage to its paw is only on the back of it, not seeming to hinder its movement much. Technoblade’s panting over the exertion, that sensation of teeth just barely grazing his throat scares off whatever hubris he’d let lead him into this fight. He side steps the next angry lunge of teeth and decides instantly to use the moment to run. He races off, boots crunching against foliage and heart beating a mile a minute. The sound of paws crunching follows too closely behind.

He weaves around trees, stumbles over mounds, taken over by a fear so primal his own thoughts fall silent in concentration. He’s running fast enough that the hum of the land mixes with the whistle of wind. There’s mumbling again, sounding high and delighted. Something humorous in its tone– he swears there’s a giggle after the next crunch of underbrush. Unnervingly, glimpses caught the wolf in peripheral vision, occasionally ahead of him already, off to the side and watching his own path.

When he takes a right around a tree the wolf purposefully goes left, gracefully looping and winding through the woodland. Balletic in its movement, keeping pace in a way that could seem unintentional. Sometimes he thinks he catches the scrape of teeth against his boots again, or a paw tripping him up.

On one stumble the wolf shoots straight through the gap of Techno’s legs, it slides its paws against the ground to slow momentum and turns to snap at the air in Techno’s direction. Bowing and tilting its head to the side, Techno doesn’t give it a chance to dive at him, immediately picking up his own pace and breaking off towards a clearing.

The trees thin out and he slows pace to take in the scene: there's a flowing stream and much like the rest of this planet it’s a worryingly warm-hued color, but it’s fucking liquid, it’s wide enough that he’d have to swim to cross it– seemingly long enough that there’s no place to walk around. When the wolf began zig zagging out the forest to Techno the decision was already final. Breaking from the tree-line with lungs on fire he pushes his limits in an act of desperation, and tumbles straight into the stream.

It’s deep, he couldn’t see the bottom from a distance but plunged into it now he’s definitely able to ascertain the depth– or well enough to say that it’s deep enough to submerge him fully. The cold sinks into him comfortably, extinguishing the blur of emotions that wouldn’t shake. There's a pressure of silence that encloses his form and with his eyes closed he feels swaddled and weary.

He relaxes further, and suddenly an influx of fluid rushes into his mouth, the tiredness lifts from him to greet familiar panic. Right, underwater, now drowning, and a wolf still chasing after me. Arms pull their way back to the surface, he comes up gasping and sputtering for air, ready to take off swimming but the surrounding water is completely empty. He wipes his eyes clear as best as he can and spots the wolf eyeing the stream warily, keeping a safe distance.

His senses come back slowly and he notes the way his mouth is no longer arid, in fact, the taste of water lingers on his tongue. He looks down and sees his own body clear as day, legs kicking out idly to stay afloat.

He slams his face back under. Taking in a massive gulp and coming back up to swallow. Water, unmistakable. And it tastes clean, straight from the tap— better than the tap; the type of water they’d bottle up and sell on the shelves for $5 a piece at the airport— actual highway robbery. Price gouging has to offend at least a few gods out there, surely. Hair is slightly plastered to his forehead, too short to affect his field of vision, the wolf is standing a few feet away, tracking Techno’s floating figure but making no move towards him.

Within the safety net he taunts, “Guess you can’t swim, huh?”

Its head tilts at him; back there under the shading of forest it looked almost black, but out in the open clearing he sees it’s a dark brown, maybe a little reddish– though all things on this planet seem to be infected with a warm tint. Its eyes look pitch black from here and come across unnervingly calculative, the rest of its body holding a stillness that he believes is deliberate.

As Techno reaches the other side of the river he hauls himself out, the sensation of wet cloth clinging to skin makes him cringe. He star-fishes onto his back letting the events process and indulging a much needed rest-stop.

“Technoblade: 1, Wolf:..” He lets his voice trail off, unable to brush past the source of chagrin, “we’ll give it a 0.5, at least.” He props himself up on his arms, looking across the stream and seeing only empty landscape. He doesn’t believe at all like he’d won the fight, but maybe in some way the enemy had decided he didn’t deserve to lose it either.

He mumbles softly, “We’ll call it a draw.”

⊱⋆⊰

There’s no telling how long he spends there with his eyes closed, soaking in the guarantee of hydration and temporary relaxation of safety, occasionally sitting back up just to cup his hands for a sip and plopping right back down beside the steam. Eventually reality overshadows novelty, he grows restless with the chatter of his mind. What are the odds? This desert of a planet has a pristine flow of water, perfectly drinkable, not a creature in sight either.

He hums, disgruntled, “Plot armor. The main character of this wasteland has arrived.” He lays on his side, fingers drumming against the coarse terrain, trying to ignore the moments where the current’s flow sounds like suppressed complaints and instead only growing more unnerved with the effort it takes. Having had enough he jumps to his feet, shaking his limbs out to shed the skin-crawling sense of surveillance.

“Alright, going back to the base of operations….. is a no-go. Crossing the stream and an entire forest just to reach some ugly barnacle hut while a wolf could still be stalking the area is ridiculous,” he rationalizes.

“Better off searching this side of the river, don’t want to stray too far from it if possible… What was that checklist I made? It’s getting revamped– it’s called adapting to your situation, alright?” he jabbers on with a need to explain himself, “I achieved a new goal of locating water, now the rest of the day revolves around this: finding nearby shelter, freeing myself of soaked clothing, and- and resting, advantageous rest. To be first in the field, of course.”

He looks down a little miserably at his sopping-wet state. And you will do this all drenched head to toe. Yes, he will be, and preferably without any more unhelpful commentary from unwelcomed internal monologues.

Lame.

The land around him is scarce in plant-life, far different from the forests he was first introduced to this planet in. Introduced is a rather polite way to explain waking up post-abduction. He sets onwards trudging uncomfortably through rocky terrain.

⊱⋆⊰

He is definitely being shown mercy. Not far out from the river he stumbles across another porous looking hollow rock, as hideous as the last. An unseemly orange set apart from the surrounding grey, the exterior design is wholly unimportant right now– the one difference it has from the last barnacle house brings a spirit-lifting relief: it’s uninhabited. Not a boar in sight.

Welcome back, Bikini Bottom home. Just outside the shelter he starts the slow process of stripping off his uniform– unhooking blousing straps after freeing himself from heavy boots, unclasping belts, and sticking his knife into the empty gun holster. The already torn sleeve of his shirt looks even worse than before, he decides to just rip the rest of it off completely, stuffing the scrap of fabric into a pocket of the pants which he then lays out on nearby rocks. His shirt is still wet enough to cling so removal is a slow peeling, he lays it out beside the rest of his clothing. He’s left uncomfortably vulnerable with nothing but underwear on.

The sky is already dimmed; he worries about how long it might take for his clothes to dry when set out during the night but the arid atmosphere and lighting that never fully leaves might be enough to get them at least partially dried out by morning. He stares above at the celestial-barren sky, wondering if the concept of sun-down even matters, or exists, on this planet. His skin is grossly damp but nowhere near cold– the temperature of the water was quickly replaced by the constant warmth of this world– and even with night creeping in he doesn’t feel even a slight dip in temperature. At best, he’s clammy from the lingering moisture and removal of clothing but nowhere close to a goose-bump raising chill.

Technoblade is exhausted, however. The entrance to this shelter is a tighter squeeze than the last, the walls are still riddled with small openings but as much as it bothers him the fatigue pulls him down easily, he slumps against the walling knees bent slightly. His knife is outside, laid with his clothing. The realization makes him extra restless as his consciousness fades.

The night isn’t pretty. Sleep is evasive yet simultaneously inescapable, vivid dreams startle him into wakefulness while heavy eyes drag him right back into them. His body twitches and jerks throughout it all, trying to escape subconscious unease, too sluggish to commit to any real action.

Shoulders spasm and his eyes flutter open with the motion, blearily taking in his surroundings: he’s hunched at his kitchen countertop, slumped over an open book, a few bottles of beer still scattered around. Must’ve nodded off, he thinks, dazed. He stretches his back out lazily, there’s no satisfying crack to follow, which he’s mildly disgruntled over, and swipes up the book to go hunker down in the living room.

He flops haphazardly atop the mattress, laying on his back with his knees curled up and head cushioned by pillow, he settles the book in his lap and opens it again; it’s familiar, and if the highlighting is anything to go by it’s been read many times before– possibly even annotated before he bought it. It’s easy to get lost in the pages, it’s definitely a classic he recognizes the writing quickly, he’d left off on a scene of chaos: one with a crashing chariot and reckless horses, where the world is set aflame.

Someone taps the page of his book, gaining Techno’s attention. He looks up at the figure and isn’t entirely sure what he’s facing, but it speaks to him politely, keeping his thoughts at bay.

It asks, “Is this one yours?”

Techno feels confusion over the question, glancing back down to the book. The words are now unfamiliar and he spots his name scattered among the paragraphs. His focus intensifies, and he reads on: strange flora, alien fauna, it details somewhere far from home. Something about holding the pages is bizarre, but the events are memories, not fantasy. It is his.

“Yeah,” he eventually responds, “just started it.”

He’s met with laughter and though he looks back up to sense out the nature of it, the layer of obscurity continues to cling to the far-out presence. But the surrounding area is clear, the woodlands are hued with blue, there’s gunfire nearby muffled only slightly with distance. They stood within the midst of Panoplia-Human warfare. The laughter mellows into another question, “You seem pretty close to the end to me, though?”

Lowering his gaze back to the book he notes the thickness of the left side, and the slimness of its right; he doesn’t need to count out the amount of pages left to flip through, there’s hardly any. There’s a burn of emotion stinging his throat. Dread sinks into him, like a hot wax dripping down inside his chest, and yet, much the same, it cools off quickly. A slow solidification of cold-terror inside him.

“I didn’t realize I got this far,” he replies with a faux nonchalance, peeking back up. However, his company has gone with the wind. Back in his apartment again, slouched on the mattress and surrounded by his jenga-towering library of Greek mythology; re-tellings, hymns, and epic poems all stacked precariously, as if they weren’t all he had. As if they weren’t a lifeline.

He stares ahead at the piles of tales: heroism, tragedy, love, loss, hospitality, hubris, betrayal, control, greed,

self-fulfilled prophecies.

Technoblade holds his frozen gaze forward, not wanting to look down at the story cradled in his hands. His chest is uncomfortable, cold and heavy. With a torturous drag the living room fades into a dusty orange, and he’s slumped upon a rough ground to match– blinking away discomfort. Distant incomprehensible noises fill the spaces left between his mind, he decides he’s given plenty of attempts at slumber. Morpheus is a terrible conversationalist.

He sits up properly, stretching his back and reveling in the pops and cracks that follow. He pops his jaw and quietly utters, “Alright, what's on our itinerary for today?”