Jimmy wandered through Tumble Town, smiling every so often when his citizens pointed out the fact that he was human again. It almost made him forget that Joel made him short. But he still had to look up to everyone except maybe Bdubs. At least it was still an improvement, though.
He watched as his citizens began digging trenches in the ground as well as bunkers within their own homes, preparing to either fight or hide from it. They only had three more days to prepare for the Watchers. Jimmy hoped that the little they'd done in the past week would be enough to help. He knew that there would probably be some losses. He just wanted to lessen it. One bad thing about remembering past lives is that you remembered how all you friends died.
The sheriff was startled out if his thoughts by a familiar hand tapping his shoulder to gain his attention. Jimmy turned around to see Scott standing there. "All good, Jimmy?" He asked, nodding at the preparations. "Mostly." Jimmy said. "I'm just worried we won't be able to do it in time." Scott nodded in understanding. "Come with me; I need to show you something."
Curious, Jimmy got an elytra and flew behind Scott as he made towards spawn. Jimmy shuddered slightly as he realized how loose the elytra was. When he was a toy he had to get a new custom elytra to fit his size, but he'd gotten rid of it once he was almost back to normal. But he was still too small for his original elytra and now it was dangerously loose. Thankfully they landed on the great bridge before anything bad happened.
Scott opened the gate to his segment of the bridge, which happened to be a very colorful llama pen surrounding a stone stayed of a llama with sunglasses and a pop necklace. "Hey, Pirate Joe's animal statue is more colorful than yours," Jimmy suddenly noticed, pointing out the stark difference between Scott's stone gray llama and the pirate's multicolored and much larger parrot statue not so far away.
Scott rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me." He muttered. As he moved around in the llama pen, avoiding trampling some of the pretty flowers that he'd planted there, two llamas who'd been grazing stopped what they were doing to come over and nuzzled the colorful collector.
Scott patted their heads fondly. "Hello, Crow." He said to the one that wore a black carpet and apparently a supervillain costume. Then Scott turned to the llama wearing a soft lime carpet. "Hello, Mia." He said. Both llamas bleated and then spat at him. Scott just laughed it off and continued to pet them.
"Scott, why are we here?" Jimmy asked. "Shouldn't we be doing something important, like preparing for the Watchers?" "Oh, we are," Scott assured him. "I just wanted to say 'hi' to Crow and Mia first." Once that was out of the way he wandered to the far side of the llama pen where there were quite a few shrubs in the way. Then he brushed it aside to reveal a trapdoor in the ground.
Jimmy gasped. "What is that?" He asked, pointing. "A trapdoor." Scott said smugly. "Obviously." Jimmy rolled his eyes. "I know that it's a trapdoor, but what's down there?" "Just look ad see." Scott said as he opened the trapdoor and began to descend down into the depths of the bridge. Jimmy hesitated a moment but Crow headbutted him into the hole and the sheriff fell down there anyway.
Dazed and lying on the dank, dark ground, the sheriff could just make out the sound of Scott scolding the llama that had pushed him down. "Crow! For the last time, mind your manners!" Crow bleated and made a sound that sounded an awful lot like he spat on someone. Groaning, Jimmy got up and blinked. Scott noticed this and hurried over. "Are you okay?" He asked. "Yeah." Jimmy nodded.
He got to his feet and then he realized where he was. He was inside the great bridge, which was apparently hollow. And the inside was full of rows and rows of tables containing things that he, as sheriff, was pretty sure were illegal. "Scott, what is this?" Jimmy asked. "Black market." Scott shrugged.
"Black market?!" The sheriff yelped. He went closer to the tables and realized that some of them were selling copies of his sheriff hat and badges. "Who did this?!" He shouted, his voice echoing through the hollow bridge. "Don't shout, Jimmy. Use your indoor voice." Scott said reprimandingly. Jimmy rolled this eyes and then realized something. "You?!" He blurted.
"Well, I was technically the one who set this whole place up but I'm not the one who's selling your stuff." Scott admitted, waving over at the table of Tumble Town curios. "That's fWhip, I think." He added thoughtfully. Jimmy sighed. Of course it was. If it weren't for the Watchers I would go and immediately revoke that apology of his.
"How many people were in on this?" He asked instead. Scott hesitated a second before answering; a rare occurrence for the colorful collector. "Everyone." He finally said. Jimmy's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. "Everyone but me?!" He yelped. "I'm the last person to know about this?!" "You're kind of the sheriff, Jimmy." Scott pointed out. "If you knew then we wouldn't even have this place."
Jimmy grudgingly nodded. "Okay, is this what you wanted to show me?" He asked. "This whole black market?" He gestured wildly at the enormous hollowed-out place. "Fessing up to the sheriff, eh?" "Not really." Scott said, making the sheriff deflate somewhat. He moved over to the side and approached a stall that Jimmy hadn't even noticed before.
"This is what I wanted to show you." Scott said, and he picked up one of the items being sold on that table. Jimmy yelped and jumped back when he realized what it was. It was a rocket crossbow. Those things were dangerous weapons. They only had to erupt near you to kill you. Martyn had done considerable damage with those during the end of Double Life.
Scott chuckled a little at Jimmy's shocked expression and he carefully put the crossbow away. "Don't worry, safety was on." He said. "Who's selling that?" Jimmy demanded, walking over. As he nesred where Scott was standing be realized that those crossbows weren't the only things on sale. There was a multitude of weapons being sold at the table. Pistols, bows, rifles, axes, etc.
"Sausage." Scott said to the sheriff's incredible surprise. "Sausage is the one selling these weapons?" Jimmy asked in shock. He picked up a gun and fingered it cautiously. "I thought he's a vegetarian pacifist." "Well, he is," Scott acknowledged, "But he's got some trauma involving his old kingdom being practically razed to the ground in one night so he's kind of paranoid about preventing it from ever happening again by making sure everyone can defend themselves."
He picked up some of the weapons and ignored the price tags. "Sanctuary surprisingly provides the best weaponry among all the empires." He continued to the sheriff's growing surprise. "Anyway, this is what I wanted to show you. I'm sure Sausage wouldn't mind if we borrowed some to distribute among the empires. It could help in the Watchers fight."
While Jimmy agreed, he had one qualm about this situation. "If Sausage wanted to do that, wouldn't he have done it himself?" He wondered. Scott hummed in agreement. "Probably yeah, but I'm getting the feeling that he completely forgot about this place. Now help me carry these weapons." Scott added as he passed some to Jimmy.
"Can't you just teleport them or something?" Jimmy grunted as he realized that some of the bigger weapons were a bit too big and heavy for his smaller form. "I've gotten a bit rusty." Scott confessed. "And I'm not risking teleporting incredibly dangerous weapons across the empires without even checking who gets them." Seeing the logic, the sheriff helped pack up the rest of the weapons and they left to distribute them around the empires.
They finished up in Chromia and Scott hid a few guns under his bed. "I need to make sure Owen doesn't decide to borrow it." He muttered half to himself. "Owen? Your llama?" Jimmy asked, remembering the orange-carpeted llama. "Yeah, Owen." Scott shuddered slightly. "What's wrong?" Jimmy asked. "The llamas decided to become Chromia's new military." Scott said without any context.
"They what?" Jimmy shot him a double take. Scott just sighed. "You heard me right." He said. "Just look out the window." Jimmy curiously pushed aside the patchwork curtain to see some llamas marching in a sort of straight line all around Chromia, and some of them were even holding weapons in their mouth. "How did they..." Jimmy trailed off. He got the feeling that he didn't want to know.
"Llamas are surprisingly as good as dogs when it comes to guard animals, but this was not what I had in mind." Scott muttered. Jimmy just nodded as he continued to stare at the marching llamas. "Uh, I'll take the rest of the weapons back to Tumble Town," He said when he realized that he still had some on him. Scott waved goodbye and Jimmy flew off.
He had just finished distributing the weapons among his citizens when he was approached by Grian and fWhip. "Timmy, where did all those weapons come from?" Grian asked as he stared at the guns and whatnot. "Black market." The sheriff said simply and he stared at fWhip, who seemed to get even shorter as he realized that Jimmy knew about his stall.
"We left some st Hermitopia for you guys to use against the Watchers." Jimmy informed Grian. "You did? I didn't see. Oh, that must've been when we were already out looking for you." Grian said. "You're looking for me? Why?" Jimmy asked warily. Usually that meant Grian wanted to prank him. "There's an... issue with Grumbot." fWhip said.
"I thought things were all going well now that Mumbo's here." Jimmy asked in confusion. "Yeah, but now Grumbot has a lot of extra power that I don't want to know what he plans to do with." Grian said, shuddering somewhat. "Other than summon Mumbo he hasn't done anything. It's giving me the creeps. Plus he's also been talking about more power and I don't want to know what happens when an all-powerful multiversal AI gets power hungry."
"Oh. But what do I have to do with this?" Jimmy asked. "You're the gunpowder exporter." fWhip pointed out. "Could you like prepare some of it in case we need to blow anything up soon? Or anyone?" Jimmy nodded in understanding. "Okay." He said. "Let's go see if I have any gunpowder left."
They went to his farm which surprisingly had enough gunpowder in it for a decent amount of tnt. "This'll do." Grian decided in satisfaction. "And the rest can be for the rocket crossbows." Jimmy added. They all parted ways to head on home as it was getting dark, leaving the sheriff alone to ponder just what kind of damage war and the weapons of war would cause. And what sort of casualties.