Switcheroo, Who? - A Dream SMP Fanfiction

Ch. 2: Little Duckling, You Are Not Mine

"What?" Puffy blinked.

"You heard me," Sam deadpanned.

The prison warden was standing in front of Captain Puffy's rip-off McDonalds establishment. It had been a little over an hour now since Sam had put up the lava wall again to Dream's prison. He had taken some time to process everything the imprisoned male had said, then used more time to think about what kind of help he suggested bringing in. 

The answer was apparently obvious enough after a while, and he had set off to find his wanted person.

The sheep hybrid therapist stared in disbelief at the man towering above her as her expression morphed into perplexed annoyance. All he had told her was that something was really wrong with Dream, and he needed her to come check things out with him as a second opinion. The male himself was acting strange, and it only made her want to decline more. Puffy had more important things to attend to, and Dream was meant to be a thing of the past now for all that he'd done. She turned away with a huff and began walking back inside her fast food joint.

"The answer is no," she stated firmly.

"And why might that be?" 

"You know very well why," Puffy whirled back around, frowning. "You're asking me to go into a cell with the person who killed Tommy and brought him back to life, just because you think something's wrong with him?! There is something wrong with him! Have you forgotten everything else he's capable of? What else he's done here? Dream has lost a lot of my benefit of the doubt, and it's nearly impossible to get it back. I'm not going to see him right now, Sam."

"He's not making any sense, and I'm telling you that I think this is really serious," Sam cleared his throat, shifting from foot to foot.

The short captain threw her hands up in the air. "Serious?! I'll tell you what's serious. You're seriously out of your mind! I've got bigger situations to worry about at the moment. You're not even telling me what's really wrong with him, for God's sake."

"I can't," Sam looked around, almost nervously. "This....This isn't something I believe I should really be saying aloud."

"...No one's in the vicinity right now," Puffy arched an eyebrow. "You're only talking to me. Nobody could hear you."

"And those blood vines?" Sam motioned to a place with his trident. "Can't they listen?"

Quite a few meters away, many red vines had bundled together and overtaken a large patch of grass near the food place. These same vines, all different shapes and lengths, had expanded quite a bit across the immediate area. Puffy had done her best to keep it off people's property, but it was a hard job against something pretty powerful. Sam had begun to get a little antsy nowadays around the Egg and its expanding empire, as well. But this was a whole new level of paranoid for him, if he thought the roots could hear him speak.

Something must really be wrong, Puff thought to herself, studying Sam's anxious expression. What would he be so worried about a bunch of plants hearing? The Egg couldn't hear everything, could it?

"Even if I considered what you were telling me to do," Puffy huffed, "I doubt I could really do much. After all this time, I don't think I could say anything that might get through to him or change him for the better. The damage he's caused is irreversible, and no one will be able to forget what he's done."

"I'm not asking you to fix Dream in one night," Sam turned back to Puffy in exasperation. "I'm asking you to at least see what's wrong with him. He's acting stranger than usual, and he.....He...."

"He what?" Puffy tilted her head to the side.

Sam looked away again at the nearby blood vines, not answering. His silence was really starting to get on Puffy's nerves. As much as she loved the man, she didn't like it when anyone left her in the dark. If he was just going to distract her from her current work, it wasn't worth the wasted time to talk with him.