"Wait, Phil. They're with me."
The clearing erupted into different magnitudes of confusion. George saw the man in the bucket hat, who Dream had referred to as Phil, furrow his brows and lower his wings slightly.
Techno scowled and stepped away from Sapnap, who audibly sighed in relief but still didn't move - apparently unsure weather the pig-man would attack him or not.
Dream himself took a moment to recover from his fall properly, even grabbing an apple from his pocket to munch.
It was all very strange, and George still had no clue what was happening. He cleared his throat and everyone turned to him, which was slightly unnerving. "Um. What the heck is going on?"
Dream swallowed a bite of the apple. "Oh right! George and Sapnap, meet Phil," He nodded to the man in the bucket hat- "And Technoblade" The pig-man gave a small wave.
"Techno and Phil, meet Sapnap and George. I've been travelling with them to Hope. Y'know, that city out North?" When Sapnap heard himself being introduced, he gave a small 'hey!' as if to protest giving the two strangers knowledge of his nickname so quickly, but decided not to further.
Phil nodded, but still didn't smile at Dream."I apologise, there have been occasions where people have come with... ill intent, against me and my family. We just wanted to be be careful, right Techno?"
"Yup" Said Technoblade, with a pop on the 'p'
"We, uh, kept your old room Dream: do you guys need a place to stay for a bit?"
Sapnap had reached his limit of being out of the conversation, "Room?" he echoed, "Do you have some sort of house out here of something?"
Now Phil did smile, "Even better. Is that a yes then?"
The Dream team looked amongst themselves and there were nods all round. "It'll be nice to see you guys again," Dream said as the group began to walk through the trees, "Is Wilbur still around?"
As Phil was leading the way, Technoblade took it upon himself to answer, "Yuhuh, we also got a new kid. Name's Tommy"
"Is he- y'know?"
"Yep- Same as the rest of us. He's like a fire demon"
"Dunk"
Techno turned to Sapnap and George, "So. What're you guys' mutations?"
"Oh we dont-"
"-Yeah we're plain human my dude."
The pig-man hummed curiously but said nothing more. The journey was mostly quiet, and Sapnap sensed an underlying tension with Dream and these other two. What had happened with them? Soon the question was lost in Sapnap's mind, as they came up upon a section of the forest with much taller trees. At this point, Phil stopped and turned around.
He spread his arms and wings wide to announce, "Welcome, everyone, to the Sleepy Bois Inc." And he gestured up into the trees.
"Oh. My. Goodness."
George was right, in fact he may have been understating it. In the canopy Sapnap could see the biggest tree house- probably ever! There were bridges between trees and on the trees there were platforms. Most had walls (and were likely to have roofs - but Sapnap couldn't see that high) while others were like Balconies with railings. It all looked to be made of wood.
Sapnap thought he could see a figure on one of said bridges, but they quickly scampered away to one of the rooms. Phil drew everyone's attention again and said, "Hang on, I'll go get the ladder." Then he winked once before launching into the air by flapping with grey wings. Sapnap noticed icy-coloured diamond patterns at the bottom of each wing.
"What!! Those wings actually fly!?" Dream wheezed at George and Sapnap's surprise, and even the monotone Technoblade chuckled slightly.
The laughing was interrupted by some sort of rope ladder falling from the tree canopy. It looked insanely fragile, but while the boys froze the other two casually started climbing the ladder. Dream went first considering his enhanced speed and Techno followed. George and Sapnap had no choice but to go as well.
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Reaching the top of the rickety ladder, George's legs felt like jelly. It wasn't as though he was afraid of heights - it just felt very unstable.
Phil was already at the top, and smiled when he saw them climbing over the top of the ladder. "Alright guys, do you want to do introductions now or..?"
"Might as well, I've got nothing pressing to do." (Sapnap)
"Me neither." (George)
"Yeah, it'd be nice to catch up with everyone!" (Dream)
"Alright then!" Phil turned to Technoblade, "Hey Tech, do you mind rounding folks up? Just tell them we'll be around the main tree."
"Sure thing Phil. Catcha later nerds." Techno saluted, and wandered off.
"Let's head inside."
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Oho the influx of characters has been postponed a chapter! Was this clever cunning on my part? Or was it me underestimating how long it would take the characters to walk a short distance and climb up a ladder?
We will never know...
♓︎⧫︎ ♓︎⬧︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ●︎♋︎⧫︎⧫︎♏︎❒︎ ●︎□︎●︎ ♓︎ ♋︎❍︎ ♌︎♋︎♎︎ ♋︎⧫︎ ◻︎●︎♋︎■︎■︎♓︎■︎♑︎
Sincerely, W. D. Gaster (lowercase edition)