As soon as he had the chestplate, TommyInnit logged out.
They were safe now.
Dream breathed in deeply, feeling for a moment as if he could feel the breath coming in through his mask. It was wonderful to feel wind again.
Liberty, at last.
Or... He thought it was.
Dream looked down at the other Dream.
Alone, abandoned by his enemies. Left behind, forgotten, useless, like an old wrapper.
Empty.
Wasn't he?
Then why was the emotion around him not grey or black?
It was...
Red.
The Nightmare.
What had he done? That color only came up when he did something that worked with his goals. But... how could losing the discs be good for him?
Unless....
Unless they were fake.
The other Dream had expected to get tricked, or at least hadn't wanted to give away the real leverage. It was a gamble, but he had taken it, and it worked. For now.
How? Dream wondered. His thoughts were slowing down without a purpose, with peace.
He knew this was not the end, but he had to wait.
Luckily, it didn't take too long. TommyInnit came back the very next day, and Dream perked up, sensing his presence. Where TommyInnit was, there was sure to be excitement, most likely bad excitement. Dream found that he now looked forward to the action, the periods of lethargy between events becoming dreaded. How strange.
Once, he had been furious at TommyInnit for bringing conflict, and now he wilted without it? What had happened? In between, there was only one thing.
TommyInnit.
Following him, understanding him, knowing him. It was different. Good.
This was the sort of feeling that people crave. Power, influence. Or to go along with those who had it.
Dream floated behind TommyInnit, watching him frantically rush to find Tubbo.
Tubbo was at the socializing club, talking with Fundy and Purpled. A small spat had risen up between them. It had drawn some of Dream's attention, but not much. For some reason, it just wasn't as interesting. Dream could see it fuzzily, like it was a great distance away, and getting closer didn't help.
TommyInnit burst in, shouting about the discs and generally being loud, waving his sword around, but the other three all shushed him and stated firmly that there were no swords allowed in the socializing club. It was a peaceful place, where no violence was allowed.
So, naturally, TommyInnit stepped outside.
The others followed, and they fought outside instead, which resulted in Purlped and Fundy losing. What strange people. No fighting in the socializing club, where they had gone to solve their argument, so they just stepped outside and fought there?
This event was also slightly fuzzy, but much less so. This distortion of his vision was strange. What did it mean? Surely there was some reason. Dream thought back to the not-light that had come from the ender pearl. There were clearly things going on in this world that he did not understand, and he was determined to discover them, eventually.
TommyInnit had realized that the discs were fakes. That was why he had come to Tubbo. They needed to find the real ones.
And they were right back where they had begun.
TommyInnit and Tubbo decided to search for the other Dream's secret base using an X-ray glitch.
As they set up the simple machine, the blocks pulsed softly with a strange light. It wasn't the same as the ender pearl's light, but it didn't seem to have a color. It made Dream want to look away. His eyes, even through the mask, felt like they were being scorched by the light. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn't make out what they were doing.
It must have worked, though, because TommyInnit and Tubbo soon found what they were looking for, after trying it in a few different spots.
The other Dream's secret base was right there.
Excited, and vibrating with a bright yellow aura, TommyInnit mined into it, with Tubbo right behind him.
They looked around the room, and it was full of chests, along with a few basic items such as a bed. TommyInnit and Tubbo started rifling through the chests. TommyInnit, finding a stack of diamonds in one, tucked it in his inventory, leaving a few dirt blocks from his full inventory to replace it.
The two of them looked around the room.
And resting atop the bed, there it was.
A single chest, labeled with a sign.
Tommy's discs.
They had done it! They had found the secret!
But as TommyInnit threw open the top, beaming...
There was nothing there.