Chapter Text
“Dear Technoblade,” it began, “ we have a bit of an issue.”
Techno stared at the letter from his seat at his desk. The envelope it came in was obviously an expressive, high-quality parchment that had been through hell and back to get to him. The once-white exterior was riddled with black marks and smudges from who knew what. The sear, a red wax pressed into the paper with a stamp marked “H” was somehow completely intact, seemingly miraculous until you saw the shimmering enchantments that preserved its seal. The letter itself was white and perfect, tiny in his large hands and dotted with tiny, perfect script. It was small, unassuming, and yet asked a life's debt of him.
It seemed a lot like the people of Skyblock had screwed themselves over, to be honest. Over ninety percent of Skyblock’s clearly intelligent population had voted for an obvious dictator, and now they were upset that they were stuck under a tyrannical government. Sounded a bit familiar.
That’s what they got for not voting for Barry, Techno supposed. What Dante was doing was certainly a crime, but Barry losing 100% of his elections was an even greater scandal in Techno's eyes. Such a shame. The mayor was only trying his best. Techno was vehemently against government control, but if he had to pick a dictator, one that increased alchemy experience and did literally nothing else wasn't horrible.
The voices whispered in the back of his mind a bit louder and more frantically than usual, mostly lots of Skyblock, POG and the usual chanting requests for Blood. The E 's somehow sounded even more repetitive than usual, ringing through his ears like a bad case of tinnitus.
Techno grimaced. He didn't have the best memories associated with Skyblock. His metal, prosthetic foot clanked against the floor as he thought this, and he shuddered thinking about the seemingly innocent speed talisman that sat in one of his many pouches back on Hypixel. He’d never completely forgiven Hypixel for the “prank” that left him one foot poorer and one talisman richer, nor himself for winning the prestigious Minecraft Monday that week. The stump of his leg still ached when it snowed, which was all too often in his humble opinion.
Then again, he thought, it did sound interesting, and he would never pass up the opportunity to overthrow a tyrannical government. He might even be able to see a few friends. He hadn’t seen many of his co-op members in years, and he wouldn’t be opposed to exchanging a few words. (And, he considered silently, he maybe really wanted to see Simon again. Just maybe. Possibly.)
Right, he decided. He wasn’t too busy right now; the egg seemed to have calmed down after the Banquet or whatever it was Quackity dragged him over to help with. Tubbo, despite the threat of nuclear war, seemed to really just be chilling in Snowchester, so he wasn’t a problem (yet). He should probably check up on Dream sometime, but he’d already been in the prison for a few months; he’d be fine on his vacation for a bit longer, Techno thought.
He stood up, ready to get packing, and he was halfway through a list detailing the care of his pets when Philza pushed open his door with his wings dragging in snow behind him. Phil took off his hat, brushing away a few snowflakes, before looking over at Technoblade.
“Hey, mate,” he greeted with a smile, glancing down at his cluttered desk.
“Oh good,” Techno said, continuing to scribble on the page, “I needed to talk to you for a second.” Phil raised his eyebrows, settling down onto the couch behind him.
Techno finished writing the list and turned back to Phil. “So, I’m going on a vacation for a while, and I’m not sure exactly when I’m getting back.”
“A vacation?”
“Yeah. Could be a few days, a few weeks, a month. I dunno exactly.”
Phil shifted, knitting his eyebrows together. “Where are you going? I’m happy you’re taking a break for once,” he said, ignoring Techno’s snort (as if Phil could ever take a break), “but the way you’re acting it doesn’t seem very relaxing.”
Techno looked down, taking in the way his tail flicked rapidly behind him and he wrung his hands together, barely avoiding clipping himself with sharp claws. He forced his hands by his sides, running his fingers along the fabric of his cloak instead.
"Uh, there might be a bit of trouble back at home- at Hypixel, I mean." He looked over at Phil, whose eyebrows furrowed.
"You sure, mate?" he queried. His eyes flickered unconsciously down to Techno's prosthetic and Techno shifted in response, forcing Phil's gaze upwards towards his face.
"Look," Techno started, pushing himself up and over to Phil. He placed his hands onto Phil's shoulders, and Phil leaned into one unconsciously. "I'll be fine. Trust me. I may or may not be assisting with a little tiny revolution, and I've mostly gotten over the whole chopping-off-my-leg thing. I think he was trying to do me a favor in making me another speed talisman because I'd been nagging him for a while. He just forgot that some people aren't admins. I'm okay Philza, and I will be."
Phil stared back, nodding with Techno's words. "Alright," he sighed. Just be safe."
Techno leaned forwards, pushing his furry forehead against Phil's and smiling at his partner. "Don't worry, Philza. Technoblade never dies."
Techno's hooves clunked across the wooden boards of the stairs as he headed towards the main area of the Dream SMP, and more notably the portal from which he could leave the server. He didn’t have much with him other than the cape on his back, the glasses on his face, and the crown on his head.
Most of the gear in Skyblock was custom, and items other than the players’ most personal belongings tended to be server-specific regardless. It was nothing short of a miracle and very complex magic by the Hypixel admins that his crown managed to stay on his head in the transfer between servers.
He clomped his way through the snow, barely managing to avoid cursing several times due to holes in the snow-covered ground below (he had to preserve chat’s innocence and, more importantly, his monetization), stepped into the nether portal a few miles from his cottage, moved through the nauseatingly scorching nether, and towards the center of the server in which the server portal resided. Techno glimpsed a few server residents on his way there, but all of them seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere but where he was. Fair enough, he supposed.
The portal itself was fairly nondescript, looking similar to a nether portal but larger and closer to a mix of silver and gold than the glossy back of obsidian. The universe twinkled back at him from where he stared into the opening, and he prepared himself for a moment. He took a deep breath in, and let it out with a shaky determination.
Techno stepped into the portal and the world twisted around him. It was black, completely dark around him and he wouldn't see his own hand if he had raised it right in front of his face. Even the voices had quieted down for once and faded into a faint hum in the back of his mind.
He scrolled through a list of the lands he had known and cherished and hated but never forgotten, and of the names he saw Hypixel was the most vibrant, diverse, and present. He’d spent more than half his life on Hypixel, and though he had spent quite some time away, it was ready and eager for his return.
He pictured messy cobble streets and old, worn houses, and huge arenas and maps in which a singular misplaced step would mean plummeting to your death. He pictured friends, and enemies, and allies all at once, and the tears, the sweat, and the blood that he put into all of his years on that server.
In the absence of everything around him he felt the universe surrounding him like a blanket. and it said you are loved. you are love. you are chosen and you are worthy and you are the Player and then the server took hold of him and he fell.
He stumbled on the cobblestone path he found himself on, hooves clomping noisily as he tried to regain his bearings. The brief force of the universe as you became aware of its own awareness was never easy to comprehend; in fact, it was almost impossible, and as one of its beloved Techno often found it the hardest to bear. The few times he was been to the End properly and not just through the portal hub had been indescribable experiences that left him shaking and glued to his spot as a ball on the ground. (Phil, he knew, was much the same way; after all, he was so treasured by the universe that it granted him his precious wings, an Elytra that transcended even the boundaries of servers.)
He brushed imaginary dirt off of his pants and straightened, lifting his head to see a lobby he hadn’t glimpsed in many years; not since he had left to fight in those tournaments, and then to Pogtopia to help fight their losing battle.
He heard the cheer of the crowds, the rush of adrenaline in everyone’s veins as they ran to the next fight, the aches and groans of fighters that had been pushing themselves non-stop for days, whose hands and feet had bruises upon calluses upon bruises. The structures were high and mighty, towering high above him. Bright signs pointed to the next arena with excitement, funneling the crowds to whichever fight they wanted to pick next. He saw a girl with vibrant orange hair fist-bump a giant anthropomorphic bear, he saw a pile of walking redstone gesture to a friend whose hair was made of grass and vines, and even what looked like one of Ranboo’s cousins entering one of the bloodthirsty arenas ahead. He grinned, tusks stretching his lips into a toothy grin. Technoblade, the Blood God, the pig who never died, that you had to train for five hundred years to even hope to fight on even ground against, was back.
He started jumping around the server, just to get a taste of what had changed over his years away (he was definitely not stalling, what do you mean? That’s ridiculous). The Arcade lobby was more stylish and contained many more games than before (he swears on the universe, if they’d combined the party games like he thought he’d seen, Simon was getting a strict talking-to later); the Skywars lobby which he used to know like the back of his hand was bigger and more vibrant than before. Everything was just so much more than what he was used to, which was to be expected, he supposed. From what he heard they were the biggest server of all time; a far cry from the tiny, upcoming minigame server of his youth. He wandered around the Bedwars Lobby, checking out the new game types and the updates they made to the game since he’d last been there. 1817 was scrawled onto the surface of a rock near the entrance of the lobby, and the corner of Techno’s lips twitched upwards around his tusk.
The voices grew louder with every step forward that wasn’t taking them to his destination, some as excited about the sights and changes as he was and others frustrated at the lack of “content,” in their words.
“Okay, chat,” Techno sighed, rolling his eyes at the voices in his head. No one in the lobby even batted an eye. “I guess it’s time. No more stalin’. Let’s go overthrow a tyrannical government.”
The initial teleportation took him to his own island, and he landed as gracefully as he could onto his fancy cobblestone stairs. Abandoned potato fields grew unkempt and unmanaged in unreasonably large quantities in the distance, and evidence of his old mob farms were scattered around randomly (he wasn’t the best at interior design, or exterior design, or design in general to think of it).
He rummaged through his chests for a few minutes to gather enough armor to flex and stay alive until he figured out the specifics of what exactly was going on. “Bruh,” he rumbled after an entire ten minutes of looking for his Superior Dragon boots to accompany the rest of the set, finally giving up and replacing them with some from his spare Strong set. The lack of a bonus gained was frustrating, but it was the best he would get right now and it wasn't like there was anything strong enough to chip through his health as he was right now.
Techno had done enough stalling. Time to do some investigating, he guessed, and find out how to destroy this dictatorship. He hopped through his portal to the main island before he could question himself again, and the world materialized around him.
The floors of the main Skyblock island were all stone and the houses a combination of wood and wool that felt like home. People bustled through the streets, some wearing armor he had once worn himself and others clad in metals he didn’t recognize, with ancient runes carved into them that he had never seen before. Necks and bodies were weighed down with amulets and talismans and necklaces containings gems completely foreign to the eyes resting behind wire-rimmed glasses. Chat went by too fast for him to hear upon seeing some of the weapons players just casually carrying around.
Everything was so strange and unusual to him; it seemed like places and technologies changed after decades of being distanced and unaccustomed to them, he thought with some surprise.
Even back before he’d looked into more championships, and then eventually Dream’s server, he’d largely spent his time pouring over books about potato farming, building equipment to aid potato farming, altering the economy regarding potato farming, and the act of farming itself. Farming five hundred million potatoes wasn’t conducive to a social life or combat training, and he was starting to regret the fact.
Despite this, despite a feeling of confusion and worry and even a tiny bit of fear about what he’d gotten himself into (what Simon had gotten him into), he saw the same basic wood buildings, the same idiots running around and showing off their fancy critical damage stats, and the same amateurs soldiering off to grind experience and items and armor for hours on end. Despite everything, it was Skyblock. Despite everything, it was still home.
He smiled. Techno was home.