Chapter Text
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
The night was cold and quiet. The crescent moon filtered onto the ground through the wispy clouds. The SMP was tranquil.
In a house half-buried, a spider hybrid opened one red eye. Shroud wasn’t usually very sneaky, but this was an important occasion. He needed to make sure that his dad was asleep.
Gingerly, he opened the door to his glass enclosure at the top corner of the house and jumped down to the ground without as much as a grunt. Once he was on the floor, he crept over to the bed of the other occupant in the house. Sure enough, Tommy was sleeping soundly. The teen’s face held no sign of the stress it held when he was awake.
Shroud smiled briefly, then slipped out the front door. He bounded along the Prime Path, a wide grin on his face. He’d always loved the nighttime. The air was the perfect temperature and even if there were mobs about, they never bothered him. He was running so joyously that he almost missed the place where he was supposed to turn. He screeched to a halt and then turned to look at the tree. It looked innocuous, but Finley and Junior’s treehouse was the perfect place to meet with his friends.
A pang of guilt went through him. He wasn’t supposed to be out here, but it wasn’t his fault that Tommy and everyone else’s parents didn’t get along as well as they should.
So, with a deep breath, the spider hybrid climbed up into the tree and through the window and waited for his friends to join.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
“Goodnight, Michael.” Bo whispered to him as the goat-hybrid closed the door and Michael closed his eyes. He waited around a minute and only opened them when he heard hooves clunking against their wooden floor, signaling Bo had left.
Michael yawned and sat upright, waking his chicken in the process. He looked around and huffed. No Dream. He knew his smiley friend couldn’t come every night, but it was still slightly disappointing. That was, until he remembered what he and his friends were gonna do tonight.
With a grin and quiet steps, Michael moved slowly out of bed, picking up his pace once he saw the light coming from his parents’ room turn off.
“Okay, Mr. Fluffy.” He whispered to his chicken, who didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. “We gotta do a secret mission, like in that Paw Patrol episode where they’re spies. We gotta meet up at a super cool base! But you gotta be quiet.” He pressed a hoofed finger to his chicken’s beak and looked out the window.
He could easily escape through the window, onto the tree and jump onto the ground. He'd tried it before, but he had to be much quieter this time. Normally if he got caught his parents would make it much harder to escape, and he’d have to miss his super secret meeting. So he looked around again, hearing the muffled voices of Bo and Boo from their room, they often planned stuff concerning a weird thing they called Las Nevadas and burgers they made (what was up about that? Burgers were good, but they seemed obsessed at this point).
Michael decided it was safe to go, and he opened the trap door as quietly as he could that led outside. He held his chicken with him as he moved slowly and shut the trapdoor behind himself as he inhaled the fresh pine-scented air of the forest.
He lived closest to the forest, being practically surrounded by it, so Michael found it no problem at all finding the path, even through the snow and ice of Snowchester. He trotted happily, Mr. Fluffy in his arms, and approached the familiar treehouse, knocking on the wood to signal his arrival before climbing up the rope ladder.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
“Alright, I’m going to be a while, okay? Karl commissioned me for a build, so I have to go out for that. Puffy should be here in the morning, and I’ll come back within a few more. It’s not anything big.” Foolish knelt down to his children and hugged them. Finley and Foolish Junior reciprocated it tightly.
“You know us! We’ll be fine. I’m the most responsible person on the entire server.” Finley pointed to herself, and Junior snorted.
“Yeah, sure. Say that to the silverfish you tried to grab last Wednesday!” He teased, and stuck his tongue out.
Finley reciprocated the motion, and Foolish just laughed.
“Alright, alright, no fighting. Do whatever you want, just be safe, okay? Food’s in the fridge, you know what to do.”
Both of the kids nodded, then waited until their dad was out the door. The moment it clicked shut, they turned to each other with a knowing look.
“Treehouse time?” Finley asked with a wide grin.
“You better not be annoying to my friends again, Fin! This is a super secret meeting, so you can’t blab to Dad, either,” Junior told his sister.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. They’re my friends too. Let’s just go! I swear I saw Michael’s chicken just now!”
“And I’m a Ravager,” Junior rolled his working eye. The other was a jewel, matching his sister’s in everything but color and shape. While his was rectangular and green, hers was diamond-shaped and purple. It was pretty easy to tell them apart with that, even if they looked similar in every other manner.
Again, Finley stuck out her tongue. “You’re boring.”
“You’re boring!” Junior argued, opening the door.
“No, you’re boring!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
Junior and Finley continued the argument all the way to the treehouse, where two of their friends waited for them.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
In another house, two fox hybrids lay close together, the atmosphere sleepy. Yoghurt was curled up close to their father, drifting off to the sound of his voice. Fundy ran his hands through his child’s fur with all the care he could muster, gray eyes warm.
“Goodnight, my little champion.”
With the soft words, Fundy laid Yoghurt down to sleep, tucking the blanket tight around them to stave off the cold. The door gently clicked shut as he left.
Yoghurt yawned. They had half a mind to just go back to sleep, but they knew that skipping this meeting would only mean less excitement in the future, so they slowly stretched out, yawning and arching their back. Soft, padded feet hit the floor again and they adjusted their yellow sweater so it sat right again. It wasn’t hard to sneak out after Fundy. He wasn’t expecting to see Yoghurt out and about after they’d been so tired, so the whole thing went without a catch.
The only hard part was walking all the way there in the cold. Sure, Yoghurt was an arctic fox, but that didn’t mean they didn’t love to be warm. And it was pretty out of the way, so they made a quick venture through the nether, bounding across the path towards the main portal. Sure enough, when they got to the Overworld again, they were many times closer than they had been.
With a small grin and more alertness than they’d had only a few minutes ago, Yoghurt climbed up the treehouse ladder.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Michelle yawned as her Papa kissed her forehead before walking out of the room and closing the door. Michelle heard the clunking of boots get fainter and fainter as her Papa walked out.
Like every night, Puffy had told her a story of tragedy across the oceans, of captains betrayed by their very crew, followed by a lullaby that Michelle never learned the name of.
Michelle wanted to sleep, she hadn’t gotten too much the night prior, going to bed at an outstanding 11pm instead of her typical 7:30pm bedtime.
It wasn’t until she was sure Puffy wasn’t coming back that she leapt out of bed and tip-toed down the hallway, easily sneaking through the door. The second she was out she ran, hoping to not be caught.
Michelle looked in all directions and made sure to stay hidden as she weaved through the trees and bushes before she came to a halt as she met the edge of the forest.
She huffed, rubbing her arms to prepare for the cold, before she stepped inside. The canopy of leaves sent a shadow on the forest, making it a bit harder to see but still manageable. Michelle felt the grass below her hooves turn into snow, and she knew she was getting close.
Almost two minutes later, she saw the glow of the familiar flashlight shining through the treehouse’s window, and she grinned as she ran toward it, climbing up the ladder quickly.
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Michael huffed, looking at his friends sitting around the small wooden table in the treehouse, with assorted broken crayons and wrinkled paper settled on it as if they were having a serious business meeting.
“Is everyone here?” He asked, despite already knowing the answer.
“Mhm!” Michelle nodded, and Michael grinned. Now he could explain what was going on.
“Okay! We all know why we’re here, but in case anyone doesn’t, we’re here to make a plan. A plan to have a sleepover!” Michael grinned, petting his chicken as he sat. Finley, who’d previously been drawing a flower with her tongue stuck out, stopped and looked up.
“But we can’t! Tommy hates Yoghurt’s dad and my dad, and our parents are all on different sides of fights!” Finley grumbled before drawing a pretty little butterfly landing on her flower.
“That’s why we’re doing this! We gotta secretly get the sleepover!” Michael grinned, petting his chicken a bit faster as his curly tail wiggled. “We’ll make an operation! A mission!”
“But how are we gonna do that?” Shroud tilted his head, confused as he stopped his drawing. Shroud liked drawing a lot more, and probably was the most talented of them all. On his page was a simple figure with a red and white shirt and blonde hair.
“I don’t know! At all! That’s why we’re having this meeting.” He slammed his small hooves on the creaky table, startling his chicken. “Junior! Gimme an idea!”
“Uhhhh... “ Junior blinked. “I have no clue, I wasn’t prepared to be called on.” Finley giggled beside him.
“Okay. Uh, Michelle! Give me an idea!” Michael pointed at his other friend, who was looking at Finley and Shroud’s drawings.
“Oh! Ummm… We pretend to be our parents and get permission that way?” Michelle offered, shrugging.
“Good idea, but the grown-ups will know. They all know each other, and I sound nothing like Boo or Bo.” Michael slumped back against the wall.
“Ooh! Call me!” Finley raised her hand, and Michael called on the young totem.
“What if we make our parents best friends? Like we pretend to run into each other, and we get them to talk and stuff!” Finley suggested.
“That would work, but our parents really hate each other. And some of us aren’t allowed to go outside of our houses, cause the grown-ups say it’s dangerous.” Michael groaned. “But I like the idea of making them friends.”
“What if we pretend to write like them so we don’t worry about sounding like them? I can mimic handwriting.” Shroud suggested, and Michael remembered how good his spidery friend was at calligraphy and writing.
“Maybe, but if they decide to meet up the idea could get busted really quick.” Michael yawned, his eyes feeling droopy as he repeatedly pet his chicken. It was getting really late and he wanted to be able to sleep tonight, so the meeting wouldn’t go along for much longer.
“What if we do what My Little Pony did?” Yoghurt suggested. Michael tilted his head, confused.
“Huh?”
“Yeah! In My Little Pony, you have to be put in really scary situations to become friends so you can fight the bad guy together!” Yoghurt elaborated, ears pricked with excitement towards their idea.
“But how do we make it realistic? What’s something they’re all scared of?” Junior blinked, looking slightly interested.
“Ooh! Everyone’s really scared of the, uh… the Smile-Guy!” Shroud suggested, raising two of his hands.
“Dream?” Michael blinked.
“Yeah! Didn’t you say he visits you sometimes at night?” Shroud put their hands back down at the table.
“Yeah, he does! This might actually work!” Michael’s grin widened. He was gonna get his first ever sleepover with all his friends in no time!
“Yeah!”
“Yay!”
His friends cheered, and high-fived, and all agreed to their plan. Around a few minutes later, they disbanded for the night to get some sleep and go to bed.
“Come here tomorrow! I’ll bring Dream!” Michael called, climbing down the treehouse with his chicken. After he heard at least four of his friends make some confirmation, he trotted off back to his own house, excited for what the next day would bring.
Little did they all know, a certain smiling figure was analyzing, watching the scene play out before him.
"Interesting..."