#prpweek

”In the Nether—” Ranboo pulled a face, which had the particles laughing at him immediately. He hated the Nether. ”Yes, in the Nether, our Ender prince. There is a Piglin king. He is strong. Stronger than the dragon. His bastion wants to expand, but a clade of Endermen block the Piglins’ path most violently."

Ranboo perked. “So I go, order the Endermen to back down, and tell the Piglin king that if he kills the dragon, they will leave his territory entirely.”

The particles made a pleasant hum. They warned him again of danger, but yes. Ranboo knew. If he was strong enough to kill the dragon, he was more than strong enough to pose a serious threat to Ranboo’s life. Heck, if the particles were right, he’d might even be strong enough to kill the clade that blocked his path. Why didn’t he try? Ranboo had never heard of a Piglin being overly cautious.

Well, either way, Ranboo was thankful for it. Reincarnation might return the dead Endermen’s Pearls to The End, but nobody liked dying, and a peaceful, mutually beneficial resolution to the conflict was more than welcome. He donned his elytrian cloak, put chorus fruit and weapons in one shulker box, three diamonds in another, and closed his eyes and breathed.

Nether.

He opened his eyes, his Pearl thrumming behind his diaphragm, and scrunched his nose at the oppressive heat.

“I have arrived in the Nether; which way do I go?” he asked his particles, and they led him on a long and frankly confusing journey, during which he mentally recited what he was going to say. His path bottomed out in a stretch of warped biome, where he was promptly attacked by a hoglin. Okay, maybe he should’ve kept his weapons out, and only put them away after he’d reached the bastion. Shows of peace didn’t do him much good with wild animals.

But he dropped the hoglin carcass into the shulker box with the diamonds and called out for all Endermen in the area to come to him. Being their prince, they didn’t have much choice but to obey, though all seemed quite happy to see him.

“Are you alright?”

“Why are you here?”

“Are we able to go home yet?”

“Are we able to go home soon?”

“How can we help you?”

“What are you doing?”

Ranboo raised his hands, his tail flicking in a smile. “I am here to negotiate with the Piglin king that’s giving you trouble. Please refrain from attacking any Piglins unless they attack you first, at least until I say otherwise.”

All gathered Endermen bobbed their tails in a nod, and Ranboo flicked another smile at them. “Have any of you picked up blocks with gold in them? I hear Piglins like those; I can add them to my gift if you have any.”

So in the shulker Ranboo had three diamonds, a hoglin corpse, and two blocks of gold nuggets. Perfect gift, honestly. “I will return with the verdict. Stay away from the bastion for now.”

He warped to the bastion, the Piglin guards immediately on alert, but Ranboo made a show of dropping his weapons into his shulker, and then set the second shulker down between them.

“Please take this to your king. It is a gift from me. I would like to speak with him.” Nailed it.

They regarded him with open hostility and wariness, looking at his face (but Ranboo did not attack, despite their baiting him to do so). One guard kept a crossbow trained on him, the other tapped the box open like it might explode when he did. But, seemingly content with its contents, the guard nodded at the other with a grunt and took the box in.

Ranboo stayed right where he was, and he and the guard pointing the crossbow at him had an honestly wonderful interaction. The guard’s tail kept flicking and twitching, and so Ranboo flicked his own smiles back in kind. What a friendly guard! Ranboo was expecting them to be far more hostile, for their conflict with the nearby clade! How nice :).

The bastion’s main gate opened once more and a group of Piglins poured out, their king at their center. Ranboo certainly thought he was king, his hands had golden rings on nearly every finger, and his body language spoke of confidence.

“Piglin king,” Ranboo greeted, giving another friendly flick of his tail. Here’s hoping the king was as personable as the guard, whose tail was practically wagging, now.

“Enderman. I thank you for your gift. You wanted to speak with me?”

“My Pigspeak is rarely practiced. Forgive me if I misspeak.” Ough, Ranboo was pretty sure that was the word. Pigspeak was a tough language, their sentences structured differently than Voidtongue, but Ranboo wanted the dragon dead more than he wanted to avoid social interaction with a member of a different species in a language he barely knew. “I have a problem. You have a problem with my Endermen. I would like us to,” Ranboo’s tail lashed in a frown, searching for the right words.

“Make amends?”

His tail and ears flicked up. “Yes! Amends. I will help your problem with my Endermen. You will help with my problem.”

“Ah, workin’ together then.”

Another issue was that Ranboo had learned Pigspeak with Ender tutors. The accent was… rough, to translate around.

“Workin’ together, yes. Together amends?”

“Right.” The Piglin king’s eyes were sharp. “What are you proposin’?”

Ranboo’s tail lashed in another frown, his eyes pinched around the edges. “Workin’ together is easier if you do not staring at my face,” he hissed, and tried not to give in to his urge to deathcall about it. That would summon all the nearby Endermen, and he wanted to prevent a bloodbath, not start one.

“A Piglin looks his opponent in the eye,” stated the king.

“We are not opponent! We are together amends!” Ranboo all but shouted, and mercifully the eyes did leave his face, the king now looking amongst his entourage.

“We aren’t,” he thankfully agreed, his gaze now settled somewhere around Ranboo’s neck, which was a little intolerable but much better than his face. “Come inside. We can discuss this further privately.”

Ranboo strode forward and pretended that he was not bothered by being encased in blackstone and surrounded by Piglins. He was the prince. He could kill a Piglin easily enough, and teleport away when their numbers overpowered him. Even so, it was easier when he and the king settled into a small, clean, and well furnished room. Well. Small in terms of height, the size of the room was about average but Ranboo had to stoop.

“For Piglins, not makin’ eye contact means you’re a coward and a weaklin’. I couldn’t keep havin’ this conversation with you out front; I’d lose face.”

Ranboo desperately tried to keep up with his accent and the confusing terms he was using as he took his seat. “Your face… will be torn off you?” Ranboo asked. That seemed a dire consequence for not doing something that no reasonable species would ever do in the first place.

“Er, no. It means they’d stop respectin’ me as much.”

Then why not just say that? Ranboo huffed, his tail lashing with agitation, but he only let it lash once. He was being polite. Well mannered. He was ignoring that Piglins had some terminal fucking issue with not saying what they meant. No, no, rude thoughts, he was being polite he was being polite.

“Thank you for conversation with me in here,” he said instead, “I have asked my Endermen do not attacking your bastion already. They are waiting for me. If you help me, they are leaving here total.” Ranboo’s tail lashed with a frown. No, that wasn’t the right way to say that. “They are leaving here entire? Entire…”

“Entirely.”

“Leaving entirely.”

“And you’re some kind of big hotshot who can make that kinda call?”

Call? Hm. He supposed he had called them to him. “I am Ranboo, prince of The End.”

That seemed to give the Piglin king pause. He leaned back in his chair, and dipped his head. Ranboo was pretty sure that this was a sign of respect? Endermen’s heads didn’t really move much, except to look at things. It involved him removing his eyes from anywhere near Ranboo’s face, so he would go ahead and assume that meant it was a respectful gesture.

“I am Technoblade, king of this bastion. What do you need from me?”

“Slay the dragon.”

The Piglin king did not move for a very long moment. Ranboo was content to sit in the silence while his thoughts moved; such things were commonplace in Ender conversation.

“Heh?!”

Oh, maybe Ranboo had used the wrong word. “Kill? Kill the dragon. Dragon stop aliving.” No, wait, that wasn’t a word—right? Ranboo was pretty sure that was not actually a word.

“I, yeah, okay, I got that, actually, but you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you, I don’t know, do it yourself?”

“No. You know the game Fruit, Seed, Stone?”

“I’m… not familiar, no.”

“Fruit defeats seed, because without fruit, seed does not have energy to grow. Seed defeats stone, because stone cracked open by seed–” he didn’t know the word for germinating in Pigspeak, “growing. Stone defeats fruit, it can… fruit open.” Ranboo mimicked the act of bashing a rock against a chorus fruit to open it. “Each weak to one opponent and strong to other.”

“And this is like that? The dragon’s strong against Endermen, but weak against Piglins?”

“Yes! You understand.”

Technoblade sighed and pushed his ringed fingers through his hair, head tilted back towards the low ceiling. “What happens if I don’t agree?”

Ranboo’s tail waved in a shrug. “My Endermen cannot leave. The dragon locked The End. She guards it. They cannot go home. I told my Endermen do not attacking your bastion. They will not. But they cannot leave.”

Technoblade’s head bobbed forwards and backwards, which was a very strange motion Ranboo couldn’t decipher in the slightest. “Right. But if I kill the dragon, that frees The End, and if I unlock The End, they’ll go home with you.”

“Yes.”

“And we can send our hunting parties out to forage mushrooms and kill hoglins that way without issue, once they’re gone.”

“Yes.”

“What makes Endermen so weak against the dragon, anyway? She stare at you too hard?”

“Fire,” Ranboo said, stone serious. “Her breath deadly to Piglins, yes, but her breath very deadly to Endermen. I can,” he mimicked bashing again, “Piglin with my hands until Piglin dead, but I cannot punch fire, and I cannot reach her when she flying.”

Technoblade huffed out a laugh, and sat forward again, extending a hand. “Fine. I play pest control for you, you get your people outta my backyard.”

Ranboo’s tail flicked in a smile at Technoblade’s outstretched hand, but he didn’t have any block to put in it. Oh well. He pulled up a block of the blackstone floor and placed it in Technoblade’s palm, happily leaving his own hands on the brick.

“Yes! I am happy you together amends with me.”

Technoblade laughed again, and set the blackstone back where Ranboo had pulled it up from. “Sounds good. But you gotta either let me teach you better Pigspeak, or teach me your language. Listenin’ to you talk is makin’ my ears bleed.”

Ranboo’s tail lashed with a concerned frown, his head dipping this way and that to examine the king’s ears.

“Er, ah, no, not literally bleedin’, it’s a figure of speech.”

Ah, more Piglin nonsense. “I will teach you Voidspeak, but you must saying what you are meaning.”

Technoblade snorted. “Fair enough. I look forward to workin’ with you, Ranboo.”