Chapter Text
On some lonely, village peninsula on the DreamSMP, rain pours down from stormy grey skies to land with an innumerable amount of tiny thunks onto Technoblade and Philza’s helmets. Philza rarely wore the damn heavy thing, preferring his signature green and white hat, but the two partners figured the extra protection was warranted for what they’re about to do. Partners in crime, the two had planned for this moment for days and everything they needed had finally arrived: a raging storm, Philza’s favorite trident, and a hissing creeper, completely unaware of the chaos about to occur.
Wordlessly, Phil hoists his trident, sparing a glance for his soaking wet observer before he hucks the trident towards the unsuspecting mob. For just a moment all is still, until everything happens at once. It hits with a clang that sounds like the bells of Aether, calling divine lightning down from the angry grey clouds like a wrathful god’s arrow. It smells like petrol, ozone, and potent, pure magic, the rain singing a discordant hymn in the partners’ heads as they hold their tongue in anticipation. Brilliant, electric, and pulsating with the universe’s blessings, the creeper is already quietly stalking towards Phil when the ashy smoke from the lightning strike has cleared.
Techno stands further out on the bank of a small incline, hands empty and relaxed as he watches the mob creep towards Philza and the nondescript spruce shield Philza hoists in front of him, legs planted far apart and letting the creature approach him. 12 feet, 9 feet, 6 feet. Philza is dangerously still with focus, acute senses able to pick up the cloudy hollowness deep within the creeper’s eye sockets and smell its sour, chemical scent when the instinctually blood-curling hiss sparks up from the mob’s depths. All is quiet in the eye of the storm, until Philza feels the ground go loose underneath him and Techno hears the echoing BOOM of the explosion.
It takes a few seconds for Phil to pick himself back up to his feet in the center of the newly-formed crater. Techno, having started steadily approaching when the mushroom-shaped fury of the explosion had faded away, hooves a few feet from the edge of the crater when Philza, glancing around the dusty hole, located the chartreuse, hollow head he was looking for.
“I got it!”, he shouts in glee, shell-shocked arms and scraped palms forgotten as he scrambles towards the item, holding it over his head with both hands for the equally enthused Technoblade. The two break into joyful hoots and hollers, rain sweeping away the scent of smoke and deadly focus with ease. (From an outsider's perspective, they’d look like two fresh players, revelling in the joys of the world’s secrets and each other’s companies long before companionship would become a thing to be taken for granted.) (Such a thing has yet to happen to Philza and Technoblade, loners by both nature and choice and so, so aware that what they have can never be permanent.)
“Put it on!” Technoblade hollers, nether-native vocal chords gruff and seemingly unsuited for the language he speaks. Philza rips off his helmet and tosses it away into the spring-scented grass, sleek, mussed platinum hair visible for a moment before he drops the explosively taxidermied head on his head. The partners let out twin cackles, Technoblade clutching his stomach as the corners of his mouth start to hurt. The head only remains Philza’s helmet for a token few seconds before the smell starts to hit him. Tearing the nightmarish thing off, Philza bends over onto his knees, choking out laughter between his coughs. He only manages a “Smells so fuckn’ bad” before he succumbs to endless hacking coughs.
Tears streaming down his flushed piglin face, Technoblade wheezes himself hoarse, bent over alongside Philza as they fight to regain composure. It continues on like this for a while, every creeping sense of finality ruined when they lock eyes over humor-dense silence and set each other off again.
The rain is still pissing down to earth, the clouds are still wrathful and rolling like the sea; but here on land, on this lonely village peninsula, two souls bump in sparks off of one another. Twin comets caught in each other's orbits hurtle into the endless adventure of space. Twin beating hearts, twin high-maintenance machines. Technoblade and Philza shake off the rush of their hysteria and throw their arms around each other's shoulders, sides bumping together as they stumble through muddy ground back home, warm beds awaiting them and the sharp shiver of victory high in the air.
(It is not so much the end of what was than it is the beginning of what comes next.)
(A long, long time ago, the Universe felt their first meeting like a ripple in a pond or a flap of a butterfly’s wings.)
(Infinite and deep, unknowable and inevitable, the Universe smiled.)