Chapter Text
Grian’s plan to pass on the tag hat was simple: he would dig a little space under the house of one of Lizzie’s villagers- or, well, animal people? Whatever they were- he would dig a hole down there, invite her to a tea party over the void, and then cut the rope holding her up.
He already had everything set in place to avoid genuinely upsetting her, of course. He had put everything he could think of in his new and improved ‘Did you die?’ box! From an elytra to plenty of rockets, to food, tools, weapons, and armor, everything was accounted for.
He picked one of the houses near the center of the fox district. That seemed to be Lizzie’s main base of operation, so it was much more likely for her to come by during her mayoral duties, or whatever. What the emperors did exactly in their day-to-day lives was still unclear to him.
Their world was weird and they were the ringmasters of the circus.
He disposed of the wood planks carefully, making sure not to damage them, and then pulled out his shovel and started digging straight down.
Now, some may say that it was a horrible idea. The risk of either falling straight into an underground pocket of lava and dying a quick but excruciating death or ending up in an unexpected ancient city and dying of a heart attack as soon as a shrieker summoned a warden on top of you as you dug was far too great for most people.
Grian never listened to those worries. They were nothing but useless superstitions in his opinion.
He should have listened.
After only thirty to fifty blocks of digging, his pickaxe hit empty air and he fell down into a pool of water.
What he saw when he looked up was worse than any of the dreadful scenarios the most paranoid people he knew could have ever come up with.
There was a small stone pathway leading to a central platform in the middle of the underground lake. From there you got a perfect view of the walls which were covered from ground to ceiling by plushies of Tim. Some of them seemed newer than others. Some had been mended where the water or use had damaged them. But all of them unmistakably wore the face of his kinda annoying friend.
They were all only illuminated by candles, giving the place even more of an eerie atmosphere.
At the center of the platform stood a lectern with a sheriff badge hanging off of it and a glowing book resting on top. He didn’t know about the book, but the badge was definitely also Tim’s. Honestly, the place was only missing his stupid hat to reach the maximum creep factor.
“Oh- oh I don’t know if I’m allowed in here” Grian chuckled nervously backing up a bit toward the entrance of the cave. “This place isn’t right”.
It didn’t matter how annoying or generally kinda pathetic Tim could be, he didn’t deserve that. Because, perhaps Grian was wrong, but it looked like the sheriff had a stalker. One that was willing to put the time and energy into collecting all the toys and building a shrine to them…
Was it Lizzie? Had she done that?
The building style didn’t look like hers…
His eyes fell on the book again and with growing dread, he decided to look into it. Maybe it would explain everything. Maybe the whole thing was just a prank. A weird, creepy prank that didn’t feel at all in good taste, but just a prank nonetheless.
He opened it carefully, slowly.
He didn’t know what he was afraid of, it was just a book, it couldn’t harm him! It could, however, confirm all his worries about the place…
The book inside looked… normal.
It was just a boring law book. The same exact one he and all the other Hermits had been handed a few days after crossing the Rift and that they had been ignoring since. It had all the rules of the land… or what the sheriff had decided were the rules. Like ‘don’t try on other people’s hats’ for example, useless, boring, and completely worth ignoring.
In any other situation, he would have just laughed at the book and thrown it away.
That wasn’t any other situation though.
Those were Tim’s laws, Tim’s badge, and Tim’s face plastered all over the walls.
There was no denying what the place was. Nothing could justify the obvious obsession someone had for the sheriff.
It was just… wrong.
On every possible level that place was wrong. It made him extremely uncomfortable, so he couldn’t imagine how Tim felt about it.
“This is weird… even by my standards” he commented again stumbling toward the edge of the platform.
His eyes scanned the ceiling for the hole he came in from, and he quickly rocketed out of there, not even thinking of exiting by the door and perhaps finding out who actually built the place. He just wanted to run. He just wanted to get out and as far from that place as possible.
He hit his head on the ceiling of the villager's house outside in the hurry, but he didn’t care.
He ran out of the building and into the freezing morning air outside breathing a bit too quickly from the panic and still chuckling hysterically every few seconds.
Why Tim?
Of all people, why did someone get obsessed with him?
He wasn’t special! He was just a little toy man with way too big of an ego and nothing to back it up. He was just the guy who kept getting into wars with the God of Thunder by insulting his child like an idiot. He was just the dumbass who died first every time they got transported to the Life Thunderdome but somehow still remembered everything regardless despite that supposedly being a privilege reserved for the winners and Grian.
He was pathetic… but he didn’t deserve to handle a stalker on his own with no one standing up for him, and Grian doubted he had many allies left among the emperors. Not that they wouldn’t help if they knew, they seemed nice people. But he doubted many had entered the shrine with how stale the air smelled in there.
He assumed that Tim knew about the stalker, or at least suspected he had one, since his sheriff badge was down there, but you could never know for certain with the guy. He could be incredibly dense sometimes. He still hadn’t noticed Tango’s flirting attempts for one thing, to the ice witch’s great frustration.
Still, whether he knew or not, he’d need a warning about how serious the situation was.
Without a moment of hesitation, he flew away from Animalia. The game of tag could wait.
He arrived to Tumble Town in the afternoon. Even while flying with rockets the empires were all still very far away from each other. It gave him a feeling of loneliness and desolation every time he thought about it.
He always found himself living in small communities back on Hermicraft. And even those outside of his specific community were never too far off.
Despite his personal gloomy feelings about it though, it was genuinely impressive how united the Empires’ community was despite the distances.
One positive outcome of the long flight was that it gave him the time to properly consider what he should do.
Obviously, he couldn’t leave Tim with no protection. Not before he managed to figure out who the threat was and have a long serious talk with them they might not return from. But alerting the sheriff directly of the danger may not be the smartest idea. He read somewhere at some point that stalker behaviors got more extreme when the person thought they’d gotten found out.
It could be completely untrue, but he wasn’t willing to risk it.
He decided to look around and noticed Scar happily building some colorful wooden homes that starkly improved the look of the city. Honestly, anything would be an improvement to the poor and simplistic vibe it had going on before.
It really wasn’t the moment for aesthetic complaints, but he still couldn’t believe that the only impressive feature of the town before Scar came along was the wallpaper that hadn’t even been built by Tim. And then the sheriff wondered why people had little to no respect for him.
Anyway, Scar would be perfect for his current plan.
As much as people underestimated him for anything outside of his building abilities, his friend was an amazingly good shot and he could be surprisingly observant as well. For an ‘I owe you’ he’d definitely be willing to watch the sheriff’s back without asking questions. He’d been basically doing that already with no rewards aside from the vague possibility of maybe receiving a deputy badge in the future.
“Scar!” He yelled as he flew directly into him sending both of them sprawling to the ground. He quickly helped the other back into his wheelchair with a hurried apology and fixed him with a serious stare. “I need your help Scar”.
“Uh oh. Did you break some redstone machine again? Because you know I’m no Mumbo Jumbo-”. “No, no, none of that. Something serious is happening, but I can’t tell you about it. I need you to watch out for Jimmy though” He tried explaining.
He noticed Scar’s surprise at his usage of the sheriff’s actual name and was taken aback himself for a second. It wasn’t the time for mocking little names though, he’d hardly ever been as serious as he was then.
“Sure, I mean, I’m helping him already” Scar pointed to the buildings beside him to show what he meant. “I’m sure keeping a closer eye on him can’t be that hard”.
“Yeah… by the way… have you noticed someone aside from you and Tango that isn’t from this town but comes around often?”. As subtle as an elephant in a glass house.
Scar gave him a curious look but, despite it obviously taking all of his restraint, he didn’t interrogate him on the weird wording of his question. “Hm… Joel is here often to mock Jimmy… and Fwhip is around here being Fwhip I guess. He really likes deputy badges” The last sentence was uttered together with a longing look in the direction of the offices where the extra badges were stored.
Scar sure had adapted to his being part goblin fast!
Now Grian had two suspects at least.
Since Joel was the one selling the toys he would have the easiest access to them, so for him filling a whole room with them wouldn’t be too hard. But Joel also hated Tim with every fiber of his being. Grian wasn’t sure why that hate had come to be, but that wasn’t something you could simply fake.
Fwhip wasn’t as easy to read.
It would have been easy to just chuck up his behavior to him also hating the sheriff, but it was obvious to everyone that there was something more there. A bitterness and sense of betrayal no one dared to mention hung heavy in the air every time the two saw each other.
Grian personally didn’t think either of them was the culprit, with Joel being the least suspicious of the two only by the thinnest margin. It was enough for him to pick the god as his starting point. If anything because the man was the one selling the toys, so, even if he wasn’t behind the creepy Tim shrine, he should have been able to direct him a bit to who bought his whole stock of sheriff toys once before.
That wasn’t the kind of sale one simply forgot about.
He flew off once more, this time to Stratos.
For once he didn’t care to take the time to admire the impressive floating structures of the constantly expanding Upper Stratos. He simply flew past them and into the arena down below where he could see Joel fight his newest challenger, Pearl, to the sound of cheering from his child.
Joel got his ass completely handed to him, unsurprisingly.
Pearl might not have been the Moon God or the Mother of Sunflowers like some of the people on Empires believed, but that didn’t mean that one should ever underestimate the cleaning lady.
He made a note of that in his mind in case Joel ended up actually being Tim’s stalker and he needed some help bringing down a god. Not that he would need it. He wasn’t known for his fighting abilities, but Grian was far from defenseless. He’d won a cruel and pointless death game before, and he was more than willing to show Joel exactly how.
Once Pearl left, Grian floated down to Joel’s level.
The man was muttering something to Hermes about how ‘he would get her head next time’. Horrifyingly dark and mighty suspicious at the moment. Also, definitely not an appropriate topic for the barely five-year-old demigod he was speaking to.
He cleared his throat both to get their attention and to avoid overhearing more creepy talk, and immediately Joel spun around. His eyes were blown wide in shock, and his cheeks were slightly dusted pink from the obvious embarrassment. Hermes was chuckling to themselves, obviously having noticed that Grian had been standing there before their dad had.
Smart kid and also a prankster? He’d definitely gotten raised right.
“Grian! Hello! You didn’t- how long have you been standing there?” Joel’s voice was high-pitched and nervous. He looked more like a sentient pile of insecurities than a god at that moment. And he was the guy always making fun of the sheriff for being a toy, huh? Projecting much?
“Hello Smallishbeans”. Joel flinched at the cold formality in Grian’s tone, but it wasn’t the time for him to worry about it. “I’ve heard some rumors I wanted you to confirm for me”.
Joel knelt down and whispered something in Hermes’ ear. The little demigod pouted and crossed their arms, but, at Joel’s insistence, they gave in. They pulled on their adorable winged shoes, and flew up to Upper Stratos, away from the conversation.
Perhaps Joel was worried that someone had found his weird shrine and was now trying to hide the truth from his family. Or maybe he just didn’t want Grian to be a bad influence on his child, knowing the avian’s reputation as a prankster.
“What rumors?”.
“I heard from a little birdie that there’s one special fan of your toys…” He started vaguely, only wanting to test the water a bit.
If Joel really ended up being the culprit it was much better for him not to be alerted of Grian’s suspicions.
Joel just seemed incredibly confused. “In what way? Most people buy more than one plushy if that’s what you mean. Some buy them in stock to use them as gifts”. He pointed in the direction of Chromia and added: “If you mean Scott, I know they come with the room at his tavern. So he needs to replenish them for pretty much every new guest”.
As shady as Scott could be, he wasn’t really one of his suspects.
He knew that he and Tim had had something going on in the past. They’d been close allies for him and Scar in Third Life, it would have been hard not to know about their marriage. But things hadn’t worked out on either side from what he remembered. There didn’t seem to be any lingering feelings left there by the time Double Life came around and the universe picked Tango for Jimmy instead.
He heard that nowadays the guy was dating llamas instead, and honestly, he had zero intentions of looking into that mess.
“Quite popular, huh? So, is there actually nobody that bought a lot and never gave them away?” He tried again, this time a bit more openly.
If he didn’t suspect Joel much before, his complete and utter confusion about Grian’s words had all but cleared him in his mind.
“I mean… when I just opened someone bought my entire stock once. But I never found out who it was. They did it while no one was manning the shop… but why are you asking all of these questions?” He didn’t seem suspicious yet, just genuinely confused.
Grian entertained the possibility of just leaving without saying anything for a moment.
He didn’t owe Joel an explanation, and the fewer people knew, the better it was since it would be easier for them not to alert the stalker. But having someone from Empires helping out would be huge. Joel knew the people there much better than he could ever hope to. He may have noticed certain suspicious behaviors that Grian simply couldn’t see from up into Hermitopia’s farms.
“Well… I recently found something quite worrying. If I tell you though, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Especially not Tim”.
Joel scoffed as if the notion of him ever telling the sheriff anything willingly was completely ridiculous. Grian was starting to think that he’d been wrong to assume that theirs was nothing but a friendly rivalry. Perhaps there was more going on there.
He had more important matters to take care of at the moment, but he’d definitely try to figure that one out later on.
“Done, promised. I don’t speak to the Toy anyway”.
“Right. Well. Jimmy has a stalker”. Softening the blow wouldn’t have been useful, especially not to someone that didn’t seem to be too attached to Tim. It was better to be as direct as possible, so there could be no misunderstandings.
Joel laughed. “Jimmy? The little toy? Oh please!”. He just kept laughing.
Grian’s expression didn’t change at all. He stared straight into Joel’s eyes until the other quietened down. “You’re not joking, are you?”. Grian shook his head.
“I found a room under Animalia. There are toys of the sheriff covering every wall of it, and a pedestal in the center with a sheriff badge and a law book on it. The whole thing looked sacred, there were only candles illuminating the place and there was clean water with no source covering everything but the viewing platform. It was obviously a man-made cave” He never stopped staring at Joel once during the explanation, so he could pinpoint exactly when his disbelief turned into horror.
He may have disliked Tim, but Grian was right. People in Empires were largely kind. None of them were willing to let someone deal with something like that on their own.
But then the horror on Joel’s face abruptly turned into an even more terrible realization. “You said the room was under Animalia?”. Grian nodded. “… That’s where the Goblands are…”.
Grian knew the two kingdoms were close, but he hadn’t realized that they were actually on top of one another.
Just like that, his attention was back on his other suspect.
He could never quite read Fwhip. Unlike Joel, he never met him before joining the server either. He was in none of the death games, and he wasn’t the copy of someone on Hermicraft like False. He was an unknown.
Sure, he had seemed kind. He invited three Hermits to live with him rent-free and he’d gifted them all wings, armor, tools, protection, and even their very own home. He’d gone above and beyond, just like the ruler of Sanctuary had.
He had even helped Scar bring out his goblin nature.
But, despite how much he’d done for all of them, he hadn’t really bonded with any of them. No one really knew him, not even the people who lived in the Goblands and worked directly for him. Tango had mentioned that he hadn’t seen Fwhip once while he was working on some wonky machines for him either.
The one who had seemingly seen him the most was Scar, and he’d seen him mostly around Tumble Town.
“How much do you know about Fwhip?”.
“We’re friends. He’s been a good ally of mine ever since Jimmy fired him. And I know he and Lizzie are very close… but I thought he disliked Jimmy after everything. I mean, Jimmy did try to hire Scar to kill him a couple of times already and failed miserably as Jimmy tends to do”. His brows were furrowed the whole time as he spoke as if he was trying to figure out a particularly difficult puzzle, but a piece was missing. He couldn’t make out the whole picture without that piece, but he still didn’t like the outline of what he could already see.
“You only became friends after Fwhip got fired?”.
Joel nodded. “He was always on the Toy’s side before. He even helped him sue me! But I guess being fired and dumped at the same time with a sign would make anyone bitter… or not, apparently”.
“Dumped?” It was Grian’s turn to be confused. He knew the two used to be allied, but he never knew they used to be more.
“I don’t know much, Lizzie probably knows more about that one. But yeah, I’m pretty sure there was something more there. I think Jimmy wouldn’t have fired him otherwise, even with the warden prank. I mean, I don’t know if you noticed, but he never retaliated against me for ninety percent of my pranks. He usually doesn’t care. But I think Fwhip doing it was different” Joel shrugged “But, again, I don’t really know much. I don’t really pay that much attention to Jimmy’s life”.
Quite frankly, Grian was surprised Joel knew anything at all about anyone besides himself. He just didn’t seem like the type of guy who would. He tended to be a bit self-centered.
That said, if Joel was right he needed to have a very serious talk with Jimmy about his taste in men because it really was starting to look like he’d settle for anyone who showed him any signs of kindness. He really needed some standards, literally any standards.
That wasn’t to say that there was anything wrong with either Scott or Tango. They were both nice people. Or, well, Grian mostly assumed that Scott was nice. He was a bit too good in death games, but he didn’t show any other red flags. And, well, Tango had his rage issues sometimes, but, honestly, some form of lashing out was to be expected in extremely high-pressure situations like the Life games.
But it didn’t feel like Tim was into them for anything other than them being somewhat nice to him for a while, and that was the main issue.
And with Fwhip he didn’t even have that excuse as far as Grian could tell. He had interacted with the goblin very very little, but it looked like the man was fully on board with all the toy jokes. And, as far as he could tell, that wasn’t a recent development. It hadn’t been a recent development brought on by his bitterness toward the breakup, that was just how things had always been.
And, don’t get him wrong.
Grian had taste when it came to jokes, and the whole Toy Story thing was absolutely hilarious.
Tim was funny when he lost his temper. His face didn’t change color as one may expect from such a cartoonish individual, but Grian knew it would have if he wasn’t made of fabric. He did start wildly gesticulating and his voice got all high-pitched and shaky though, it was great.
But it was funny for him because he never thought he’d find himself on Tim’s side again after his betrayal in Last Life.
It was funny for him because they were friendly acquaintances at best and most of the time not even that.
And, even if Joel didn’t remember his time during the Life trials, he assumed that the same applied to him. Though maybe he did hold Tim somewhat dear to him considering the fact that he spent more time pranking him than he did building his own empire.
If he wasn’t busy with the stalking case he may question that weird obsession.
But, unlike them, Fwhip was supposed to actually be on his side. At least at first. He was supposed to be Tim’s right-hand man, maybe more if Joel was right.
He should have noticed that the jokes were hurting Tim. It was plain to see even for Grian.
He didn’t think they were going too far, and Tim always seemed to bounce back from them easily, but it was obvious to anyone that they bothered him a lot. That was the whole point. They were meant to tease him and knock him off his high horse a bit since he’d gotten it in his head that he was the rule-maker now and that everyone had to do what he said.
It was fun because they antagonized him as much as he antagonized them.
But Tim tended to be overly lenient toward his allies.
He ignored when Tango broke the rules again and again, and he looked especially hurt when he went along with the Andy joke. And Grian knew that Tim was growing especially attached to Scar because the man had found some kind of respectful way of still calling him a toy. So, while he still got upset at him, he also stuck by his side like a lost duckling.
Anyone with a brain would notice that from a friend it would be going too far. It was why Tango stopped after the very first time he did it. It was why Scar never really took part in the jokes, not in the way the rest of them did.
It really genuinely lacked respect.
“So… what do we do now?” Joel asked interrupting his train of thought. “We can’t exactly go up to Fwhip and say ‘stop stalking the sheriff you weirdo!’ and call it a day”.
A few solutions quickly flashed in Grian’s mind, most of which were definitely some kind of violation of human rights.
Obviously, they could kill Fwhip, but Empires was similar to Hermicraft on that front, people never really seemed to truly die. It wasn’t like during the Life trials. They didn’t get a limited amount of lives they could simply run out of. It made things like tag fun instead of horrifying, but it was also hugely inconvenient at the moment.
The other option he thought of was building a little cage under bedrock to dangle him over the void and leave him there. But, while cool, that option presented way too many complications, together with not being a permanent solution at all since Fwhip could always end it and respawn elsewhere, which left them all the way back at the starting point.
Any other form of entrapment had the same issue.
He even tried to consider the impossible: tackling the issue with some therapy. But, well, there was the small little problem of no therapist existing on the server. And Fwhip probably wouldn’t even accept to see one, because that meant seeing his little shrine as a problem which, considering how recent the badge addition apparently was, Grian doubted would be a possibility any time soon.
“I don’t know… maybe we could ask someone smart for ideas” He proposed.
“Sausage?” Joel offered, because, of course, his first thought was to rely on the other father of his child.
It was sweet to see that they supported each other so much, but Sausage was about the last person they should tell. He was kind and definitely smart, but that man could not keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. He was the biggest gossip in all of Empires.
If they told him, Fwhip would be aware of their investigation before the end of the day, and that was a generous estimate.
“I was thinking more of someone like Pix? He is just a news reporter in our world, but I know he’s a scholar in this one. Maybe he could have read about some kind of solution”. Even if he didn’t know anything, the man was smart enough to be able to create a redstone contraption fit for their needs, Grian was certain of it.
“Right. Maybe Shelby too. She’s not a scholar, but she is a pretty powerful witch. Maybe she could magic us a solution” Joel offered. “Not that I wouldn’t be able to do that too… I definitely would… just, you know, not gonna waste all my energy on a stupid toy is all”.
Honestly, could a god be more insecure than that?
Grian almost pitied him. Almost.
He fixed him with an unimpressed stare, one eyebrow raised for maximum doubt. “Sure you could. Just like you’re actually eleven feet tall”.
“I am incredibly tall, powerful, and sexy, yeah, thank you for noticing” Joel shot back without a second of hesitation. The denial was too strong in him it seemed.
Maybe that was why he was so obsessed with calling Tim a toy. Maybe he was genuinely just so insecure about his own autonomy that he needed to remind a doll that he was, in fact, a doll and therefore couldn’t be as good at being an average human as the rest of them were.
If that was the reason, it clearly wasn’t helping Joel’s self-esteem as much as he’d hoped it would, because that man was one bad hair day away from a mental breakdown.
“Right. Let’s just go to Pix, shall we?”.
“I’ll bring Hermes over to Sausage first. I left him alone in Upper Stratos once before already and I found every gold block in my empire with a bite taken out of it when I got back” He smiled apologetically before flying up to where he’d told his child to wait.
That may be the first time ever he genuinely wanted to babysit a kid. They could do so many pranks together!
Grian was willing to bet that Hermes would love the idea of taking away every single door in Empires with him. That could be amazing!
Maybe they could do a few other fun pranks too, some more explosive ones for example. He’d been wanting to play around with TNT more ever since the last Life trial had ended. With withers as well, though he wasn’t certain those were too safe for a kid.
Well… they were a demigod, so, maybe?
“Don’t even think about it. I’m not making the same mistake twice of letting one of you people around them. I let Cub babysit once and I ended up getting shriekers hidden all over my base” Joel shattered his fantasy as soon as he floated back down.
Hermes was pouting in his arms. They seemed as unhappy as Grian was about not being allowed their mischievous playtime fun.
It was fine, he was certain they could convince Sausage at least.
“So you’re short and boring. Pick a struggle” He huffed. Joel spluttered and made some offended god noises, but Grian didn’t give him the time to protest. He spread his wings and took out some rockets before looking back at him. “Meet you back at Pix’s”.
And, just like that, he was off laughing like a maniac as Grian does.