In Hindsight

Let the Show Begin

Tubbo was, first and foremost, a hacker, and a damn good one at that.

His earliest memory was being held by his mother, calloused hands guiding his pudgy fingers to rest against a glowing firewall, letting Tubbo feel the tingling sensation of his magic against the crackling code. Home, his mother had said. It was the only thing he remembered of her, the sadness in her voice.

According to Schlatt, she had been trapped inside the disintegrating server some time later, admin powers useless against the corrupting virus that ate away at the strings of code that held the server together. Schlatt and Tubbo had gotten out— not that it mattered in the end anyways— but Tubbo's mother had stayed behind, expending the rest of her magic to try and keep the world from collapsing. Schlatt always stopped telling the story there, shaking his head and cursing. "Dumb bitch. Should've known better. Should've known."

As much as Schlatt tried to discourage his son from going down the same path as his mother, the brief connection Tubbo had made with the corrupted firewall left a lasting impression on him. Even years later, when father and son had hopped from city to city, leaving their broken server far behind them, there was a sort of tug, a curious yearning to dip his fingers into code once more, twisting it to his will, shaping it into something more reliable than 'home'.

Schlatt left when Tubbo was eight.

Tubbo's hacking career began with Hypixel. He'd met Tommy in one of the pod stations; Tubbo had been woken from a nice nap on a bench to Tommy's gap-toothed grin, a poke at his forehead, and a low whisper— "Wanna play bedwars with me?"

They were too young for any pvp-based servers, but Tubbo poked and prodded at the ticket machine's redstone while Tommy distracted the station officers, and then eventually when they got caught and kicked out of the station it was him poking at Hypixel's firewall while Tommy distracted the admins. Luckily for them, the aforementioned admins were too busy to care about a couple of mischievous kids, and grudgingly allowed them to join the server if Tubbo would "for the love of god kid stop changing the sky to RGB we don't know how you're doing it but we've had to close the server seven times to fix it".

Well, the hacking didn't stop at Hypixel. Tubbo practiced and honed his skills on smaller servers, which usually resulted in an immediate ban, but the point wasn't to get into the server, it was to get good. Which— he didn't really achieve until his. . . training, but breaking even the weakest strings of code in a firewall was still an impressive feat for a ten-year-old.

So yeah, Tubbo was a good hacker.

But standing in front of the Hermitcraft firewall, staring up at the towering dome of reinforced code, feeling the hostility radiating off it from the server's magic. . . Tubbo had to admit he was a little out of his depth here.

Tommy must have sensed his anxiety somehow, because his tail whipped around and smacked Tubbo's leg. "Hey, don't stress man, it's just like Hypixel, right?"

"It's literally nothing like Hypixel," Tubbo said. He exhaled and shook his hands, trying to dispel the tension in his muscles. "Please tell me you know the plan from here, bossman?"

"Of course," Tommy muttered, "this is the part I actually studied."

Tommy released Ranboo's tail, taking a step away. His ears stood straight up, on full alert, straining for any sound from any direction. Ranboo, meanwhile, came around to Tubbo's side, eyes darting around the massive firewall before he glanced back at Tubbo and smiled, eyes crinkling above his mask.

Tubbo's earpiece crackled. Proceed, Underscore.

Tubbo took a deep breath and stepped forward. His eyes slid closed as he raised his hands and pressed his palms against the firewall.