The Blinding Light of Sunrise: The Las Nevadas Arc - AU Short Stories

Chapter 18.5 Charlie the Spy: Part 2 - Charlie Slimecicle

Charlie stood at the counter in the hotel kitchen staring at the armful of things he'd just spilled onto it. Sandwiches were made with bread, weren't they? He nodded to himself. He'd seen them made with bread. Or maybe it was stone slabs...? He didn't have any stone slabs, though. He didn't see any in the kitchen, either. They must be out. He had bread. Bread would have to do. Hopefully Bad wouldn't mind that they weren't stone slabs. He took out two slices from the bag.

Then what?

Peanut butter! Yeah, peanut butter was a thing! He took a spoonful of peanut butter and plopped it down. And that weird red stuff, ketchup! People liked that! He squeezed the ketchup all around the lump of peanut butter. And the yellow stuff too! And what else? Maple syrup? Did that go on sandwiches? Probably. It couldn't hurt, right? He poured syrup on the peanut butter. Oops! That was probably too much. Syrup flowed over the edges of the bread and pooled on the counter. Then there was green leafy stuff. He looked over his spoils. Kale? Kale was green and leafy. He put that on the bread. It stuck in the peanut butter.

Suddenly, he stopped. He'd heard the elevator ding. Who was coming down at this late hour? He sunk down to a green blob on the floor and peered around the door frame, just catching a glimpse of that familiar green hoodie as its wearer passed into the lobby.

Dream from Pandora's Vault! The boss said to keep an eye on him. Bad would just have to wait for his sandwich!

Charlie stealthily followed behind Dream as he left Las Nevadas. That was weird. Dream always took a few of Technoblade's wolves if he was leaving Las Nevadas, even if he was only going to Paradise, just in case Quackity was nearby. Which meant... what? That this was something more important to him than Quackity?

But what could be more important to him than that?

Dream stopped suddenly as he passed the burger van. Charlie melted and reformed behind a tree, his back braced against the trunk. Had Dream seen him?

He listened but no sound of breaking branches or shuffling grass came. No, he hadn't been spotted. He turned to slime and flowed quickly up the bark of the tree trunk to the branches, reforming on a thick, sturdy set of branches.

He watched as Dream took out a bow and arrow. Using a flint, he lit the tip of the arrow and, with a twang, fired the flaming point into the deepening twilight sky. It flared brightly as it reached its zenith and then went down, leaving only an arc of pale smoke where it had been. Dream stood, mask pointed up to the night sky, watching expectantly.

Nothing happened for what seemed, to Charlie, an interminably long time as Dream stood, unmoving, black dots and smile staring into the ever-increasing darkness. And then, just as suddenly, from the side of a mountain far in the distance, a spot of orange appeared, rising up into the night. The flaming arrow crested and came down.

Dream put away his bow and ran off in the direction the arrow had come from. It was all Charlie could do to keep up as he raced through the densely wooded mountains. Dream skidded to a stop and walked slowly into a small glen with a burbling stream running through the edge of it. Charlie could smell the thick scent of moss and decaying logs.

Dream took a few more tentative steps, surveying the glen. Charlie was about to follow when something came tumbling down from above. It hung there, enveloping the upper half of Dream's body.

It took Charlie a moment to realize what he was seeing. It was a human hanging upside-down from a tree with a large axe held to Dream's throat. A small human in a mask obscured by their long, sandy-brown hair. Dream had his hands up.