#ecstra content

Then the castle burns, more than once, and you really should have expected that. With time you'll start seeing burning houses as a sign, maybe a metaphor, but not now. You aren't yet aware of your penchant for bases susceptible to fire. You're more worried about your things.

Then the war hits, and you're not sure when, but you realize this guy- the one who was on your side, the one who lived with you- has turned on you. Is it turning on you if he was never on your side at all? But you thought you were friends, so it kind of hurts when he's the one who takes your last life.

The second time you do this he's not your friend at all- he chose the south, and that's alright with you. Your team is, frankly, the best. You have a best friend who might be something more, and though you have no castle, he helps you build a snow fort. Things are good. Then they aren't so good anymore, but you make them good again, even if at the expense of your other teammates. To you he matters more, so you keep him close.

You don't think of him much, the guy who betrayed you and killed you. Maybe you should have, but you have better this time.

Until he helps spawn that wither, and then it all comes crashing down, and in the end you choose being a survivor over being a friend. In the end, you can't give your life to a dead man. In a way, he killed you again.

The third time you don't quite believe it when your best friend is soulbound to him. Your best friend says they're happily married; you ask him if he's sure, he says of course he's sure, and that's how he takes you best friend from you twice.

You're not sad with your soulbound- it's a new experience, you never talked to him much before. This time your ally is the one who builds a base. No one wastes any time in pointing out how flammable it is. You both know it will burn soon enough.

But when it does you burn the whole world down with it, and in the end you both team up with your best friend and the one who killed you in more ways than one. You think he's happy, though. You kind of wish he weren't.

They betray you again. The portal's trapped, it couldn't have been anyone but them. It feels fitting, that you burn too. It's the third time he takes your life.

(If you asked he would tell you it wasn't them- your best friend would tell you they would never, and you'd believe the latter but not the former. You never ask.)

The two of you are there for the fourth round, too. By now you know how these games work. You ally with the people you were with when you truly first met your best friend, except this time he isn't there.

This time, you look at him- at the man who's killed you twice, now- and he looks back. You know he's not sorry. You aren't either.

He asks you about your cows, if you want to combine forces. You aren't fully sure what it means when you accept it, this feeling you get, but it doesn't feel wrong when you're allies. You know what he is- he's one to play from all sides, he's a traitor, he's your ally, he's the one with the backup plan, he's the reason you've died so many times. He's resourceful, he's smart, he's tricky, he's the type to pretend he's less than he is.

You can never fully trust him, but vaguely, you know he doesn't want that. You cheer for him, when he's the last of your team standing.

It was what stayed true, when he had a nightmare and none of them were there to help, either busy having disappeared (as all dads do, naturally) or doing something far from his room.

It still stays true, to this day. He knows that. It has to.

Papai Felps told him to believe everything his dad Cellbit said, and he had said they love him, so it must be true.

He shifts in bed, rolling to the side. His tail occupies the rest of his bed, that way, and he can see the lights of the nearest neighbor's house through the window.

He pretends he can see one of his dads howling to the moon, beastly form taking over as he looks, mesmerized and scared. When his other dads get him home, where it's safe (but never safe enough, all his dads had said, at different times, in their own ways. He never stopped sleeping with the gun next to his pillow and a sword under his bed.), Richarlyson had asked if he'd be able to do that too someday. Papai Felps said he hoped not, with an anxious chuckle- daddy Pac said he probably could, if he tried enough, and if not they'd find a way. Richarlyson hugged him, then, and the memory of that warm, loving embrace almost lulls him to sleep.

Tallulah's flute cuts through the night, a sad melody he knows too well by now, nothing like papi Forever's howling. He turns in his bed again, trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. The closest hand wraps around the hilt of his gun (Bobby gave it to him, the second time they met, when Richarlyson knew himself better and so did his dads. He doesn't plan on letting go of it) instinctively, its presence soothing.

He remembers when he first successfully killed a monster with it, and his dad cheered and hugged him like it was the greatest thing he'd ever witnessed- and to him, at that moment, that was all that mattered.

Pai Mike taught him how to shoot upward- bala perdida, aimed at nothing in particular. He began shooting at the sky when he was happy, and sometimes it'd startle one of his dads, but he never hit anyone besides the Christ. He never meant to hit anyone, except for monsters and the vast sky.

At some point he began pretending he did want to hurt people with it, because papai Cellbit told him he had to keep up appearances, pretend he's mean and superior so no one would pick on him. Make them scared. But also that it was ok to be soft and find things cute too, in private, or with his dads. Never hide anything from his dads, because they love him, and they'd never judge him.

There's no one here to tell him that now.

Tallulah's tune comes to a stop, as all things do. He finds he doesn't like the silence, as he finds many other nights.

He misses his fathers' snores and his papi's howls and his dad's mutterings of murder in the night.

Richas gets up with a yawn, grabs his gun, drags himself to the window and shoots upwards through it, twice. He half expects to get a message from Bobby, something like a singular middle finger emoji.

No sounds come from the phone.

He plops back on the double bed where once many of his fathers (and sometimes him, when he was too scared to sleep alone in his too dark not-captivity and didn't think papi's decorations would be enough to keep the creeping feeling of something watching him away) slept, not bothering to tuck himself in, this time. The egg- not egg, a dragon, who's hatched and who's a teen and who doesn't need his dads anymore- simply lays there, arms spread over the empty bed, staring once more at the ceiling.

Sometimes, Richarlyson feels he's being watched. Tonight is one of those times.

He can't tell if it's a result of his own dads' paranoia or his own, or if something really is watching him. They did warn him about Them.

He thinks of how easy it would be to shoot Them, how easily papi Forever would tear Them apart, how his dad Cellbit would maim Them, if They touched him, despite all his fear of Them.

They're not here (they haven't been for a while), but Richas has the gun Bobby gave him and a sword one of his fathers gave him, which must be enough to kill whatever crosses his path.

They'd be proud of him, if they were here to see him.

He curls his tail around his body, pulling his legs up until his knees reach his chest. He can almost imagine it's not his tail, but daddy Pac, hugging him after that scary dream where he got trampled over by bulls and pai Mike died with him. Papi Forever called them all the way from the other side of the server, and their fighting was comforting.

He may never hear them fight over silly things again.

He decides he needs a pillow, so he untucks himself from his own wrap and painstakingly extends his arm to grab one. It's softer with that under him.

Pai Mike taught him how to steal things unnoticed. Sneak in and out, deny any knowledge of what was happening if you get caught. They stole from 1% dad Quackity, since his house was closest. It wasn't much, and pai Mike didn't say it out loud, but he knows he was proud of him.

Papai Felps later helped him steal from Foolish, or so he remembers. That's around when he met Leonarda.

Richas wonders how she's doing.

Richarlyson had been the late bloomer among the eggs- according to tio Phil, and his siblings themselves, the day his dads arrived (and he appeared from seemingly nowhere, knowing only who his dads were, and the vague shape of a mother), everyone thought their eggs would die. Instead, they showed up with cracks on their shells, meaning they'd either die or hatch soon- Richarlyson didn't have those cracks at that point. Dapper had been almost completely out of his shell by the time his own began to crack.

Daddy Pac said it was okay, though. That it would just mean he's stronger- after all, the younger you are, the more naturally healthy you are. His siblings wouldn't even be able to hold a gun anymore, but he'd still be strong and he'd be able to do and get anything he wanted.

He laughed and pecked his dad- memory says his face turned into a perfect :o when he did. Richas chuckled; his dad picked him up and spinned him around.

Maybe things began getting weird when the first of his siblings began to hatch, but... he had his fathers, then, and what were Leo's distressed messages regarding her dads when his own were waiting inside to teach him more about tax evasion?

Dad Cellbit and Papai Felps were there when he hatched- they were so, so proud of him, hugging him and showering him in compliments, telling him he'd be as big as Foolish's statue one day. Then it gets hazy- papi, barging in, some emotion clear in his face, although he cannot remember which. It turns into happiness, when he sees Richarlyson, bits of egg shell still on him, but it doesn't last nearly long enough. He says... something, calls his other two dads and puts them on speaker.

They're out the door in a flash, telling Richarlyson to wait for them to come back.

He thinks someone screamed something, outside. "FEL- FOREVER!", or along those lines.

He's been waiting ever since.

His dads taught him how to play football, how to evade taxes, how to sleep with an eye open because you never know who's after you. They taught him how to kill those devilish bulls, how to make tapioca, how to tend to the farms. They taught him each other came above all else- that the world was unkind, but they weren't, not to him. His dad told him he used to be a criminal, kill hundreds of people. His dad never hurt him.

They loved him, and he loved them- still does.

They'd be proud of him, now, for laying on bed with a gun in hand and an easy to get sword. For shooting at the sky with no regard for what happens after. For not trusting people because they're not his dads.

He shoots himself upwards, shooting at the window with precision he's been practicing since he was a baby. Cucurucho does not move, barely noticing the shot. It simply stands there, watching, for a few minutes, until it gets tired of his unrelentless stare back and runs away as always.