on temporizing || Dream SMP Timeloop Fic

Chapter 21

Back to our regularly scheduled crack!

101.

Schlatt was having the shittiest month of his life. No, that was not an exaggeration.

It all started when Tommy died trying to escape Manberg. At first, Schlatt had been happy about that - not only did it remove a potential problem from the equation, Wilbur had also gone ballistic and attacked Punz, losing his second life in the process. Tubbo unfortunately got away, but Schlatt wasn't too worried about him - Tubbo was a yes-man at best, and without someone to order him around, he'd probably just waste away in the wilderness. And of course Quackity had been pretty upset about the kid's death, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

Tommy was dead, Wilbur and Tubbo were on the run, and Schlatt was the president of Manberg. So yeah, Schlatt was pretty satisfied with how things turned out.

And then Tommy came back as a ghost. Because of course the one time things went right for Schlatt, they'd go sour immediately afterwards. The ghost had appeared smack-dab in the middle of Manberg a day after the elections, named himself Toast of all things, and proceeded to become a gigantic pain in the ass. He'd randomly pop up behind Schlatt, say something in that fucking echoey voice of his, and slowly sink into the floor while maintaining eye contact. Schlatt did his best to ignore him, but holding a cabinet meeting was really fucking hard when all the cabinet members were staring at the ghost hissing ominous threats (in Latin, for no apparent reason) behind him.

Things went from bad to worse when Dream's ghost turned up a week after Tommy. Nobody knew where or how he'd died, but Schlatt was pretty sure he'd drowned - kinda obvious, given how he was constantly dripping water. The ghost had the irritating habit of pelting hapless passersby with water balloons that apparently just appeared in his hands. For some reason, he seemed to go out of his way to antagonize Schlatt-- Schlatt had been woken up more than once by a balloon to the face.

The last straw was when every fucking bottle of booze disappeared from Manberg-- even the ones Schlatt had hidden. He knew the ghosts were behind this somehow, but not only was proof difficult to produce, it was also impossible to punish an incorporeal being whose continued existence depended on pure spite.

Which led to where he was now, hunched over his desk as he tried to finish a contract draft. His eye twitched as his patience finally snapped, and he slammed his hands down on his desk and turned a withering glare on the entity hovering above him.

"What," he snarled, "the fuck do you want?!"

Tommy, who had been looming over him in a T-pose for the better part of an hour, offered him a ghastly smile. "Ỳ̨̳͉̩͎̮͚͆͘͞o͉̭̓̆͛̂̎͘͝u͏̶̘̞̝̟̋̏͢͝͠r̶̛̼̰͖̒̂ ͕̃͗̃̍͋̓͝s̛̰̰̮͋̄̓͟o̢̘̹̍̏̓̓͟û̫̖̺̭̲̘͆̑̌ͅl̙̬̞͖̈͋̇͞."

Great, he could do a freaky voice too. Schlatt took a deep breath, doing his best to fight through the pounding in his head (seriously, quitting alcohol cold turkey was not fun), and made a valiant attempt to reassemble his composure. "Don't have one, try again."

Tommy's smile just widened. "I take payment in cobblestone too."

Schlatt ground his teeth. "If I give you a stack cobblestone, will you leave me alone?"

"Two stacks, and you'll have a deal!" The ghost chirped. "But you gotta mine it yourself-- I won't take it otherwise."

"Fine," Schlatt growled. "Deal."