on temporizing || Dream SMP Timeloop Fic

Chapter 24

116.

"Where'd he go?!"

"He just-- disappeared," Punz muttered. His gaze raked over the foliage. "He has to be in here somewhere - it's open plains for another half-mile in every direction. We would've spotted him if he ran."

"So he's hiding," Sapnap grumbled. "Great."

George groaned. "Can we just go home? He's a kid, he probably doesn't have much information--"

"He's Wilbur's right-hand man," Dream said. "We can't lose him."

"I'm with George on this one. There's like, a hundred trees. Tommy's probably hiding in one of them, waiting to get the drop on us." Sapnap shuddered, eyes growing distant. "Prime knows how he acts like a feral raccoon. . ."

Punz coughed out something that sounded suspiciously like rabies.

Dream's axe disappeared in a flash. The others turned to him, alert, but Dream just ignored them and took a deep breath.

"JUMP IN THE CADILLAC!" he hollered. Just in case Tommy couldn't hear him, he cupped his hands around his mouth and projected his voice as far as he could. "LET'S PUT SOME MILES ON IT! YOU DESERVE--"

"TO DIE!" Tommy howled, bursting from the foliage with his axe swinging. Dream ducked under the attack and pushed him over when he overbalanced, then proceeded to disarm him and sit on his back while he spouted expletives.

"Caught him," he grunted, twisting Tommy's arms behind his back and attempting to tie them together. Tommy wrestled one arm free and nailed him in the ribs. "Ow! Just stay still--"

"FUCK YOU!" Tommy screeched, thrashing wildly. "I WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT!"

"Oh no," Dream droned with the air of someone who had received the same threat many times before. "What a tragedy. I definitely don't have a way to bring them back."

Twisting his head downwards, Tommy sank his teeth into the collar of his Revolutionary uniform and jerked his head around. Yellow powder puffed into the air, dusting Dream's face. The man reeled back, loosening his hold on Tommy, and Tommy bucked up and threw him off, rolling away from Punz as the mercenary tried to grab him.

At that moment, Dream began to sneeze uncontrollably. Tommy began sneezing as well as he rolled to his feet, his eyes watering with the force of it. Ducking under Sapnap's swipe, he withdrew a glass bottle from his inventory and smashed it open. Sapnap reared back, but it was too late - he, too, began to sneeze. George and Punz met similar fates when they stepped in. Tommy escaped in the ensuing chaos.

Two hours later, when they had managed to sneeze the drugs from their system, George peeled his face off the floor of the Community house and squinted at Dream. "So what was with the whole Bruno Mars bit?"

Dream, who had previously melted into the floor in a puddle of misery, burst into cackling. The sneezing left him sounding like something between an obnoxious koala and a cat choking on a hairball. "317," he wheezed. "I'm-- never gonna-- let him live that down."

". . . 317?"

Dream just cackled some more, and no matter how much his friends pressed him, he refused to elaborate.

117.

Ranboo was very confused.

It had been five hours since he'd joined the Dream SMP, and now he was standing in Niki's bakery, nose pressed to the window and eyes wider than dinner plates. Niki, standing behind him, let out a chuckle.