#xb is my little funny guy though… i have so many headcanons and ideas at this point i had to write something | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

radi0dontt · 1 year

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Fisheye Lens

ao3 link

xB has carried a camera around for years, taking pictures to collect memories. xB is now alone on the Hermitcraft server.

xB took a step back, having to tilt his head up to fully take in the sight of the, honestly kind of ridiculous storage solution.

For some reason, one of them had pitched that the best early game storage solution available to them, was a colossal chest about 15 blocks tall and wide in the middle of their sky base.

xB would like to blame Hypno for the idea, but he thought that Hypno should be blamed for most things. So what did he know.

He cracked a smile and started to dig through his inventory for something.

Hypno, once he himself had finished laughing at the stupidly oversized chest, glanced over his shoulder to watch xB curiously.

Eventually, xB pulled out what he had been looking for, what was essentially a modified polaroid camera. He held it up in victory.

“Hold on, I’ve gotta take a picture of this thing.”

Hypno burst into laughter again, running to stand in front of the chest. “Get me in it, for scale!”

xB backed up a few more blocks on the stone path sticking out from the central platform. He messed with all of the cameras buttons and bits until he had the shot he wanted lined up.

He hadn’t put too much thought into it, the whole height of the chest and a waving Hypno peeking out at the bottom. The endless void of their skyblock world stretched out in the background.

As it instantly developed, he glanced between the image and what he could currently see. Hypno had returned to intermittent bouts of laughter at the sheer scale, instead of posing for the camera, but the picture had captured most of the moment.

The clouds kept rolling across the sky, and they continued to laugh.

He had tucked the photo away, and they had moved on.

———

“Hey, want a picture?”

xB teased, switching his sword for the familiar camera that he dragged between servers. Beef rolled his eyes, readjusting his now dented iron helmet on his head. The camera was visibly old now, covered with half-peeled stickers and stories, but it was waterproof and sturdy, the cyan colour only slightly faded with time.

“Oh yeah, great, to commemorate this occasion. I definitely want to remember this.” Beef teased back, huffing a laugh. He was well accustomed to xB taking his random pictures. He had long since accepted that it was just one of those things about xB, everybody had a thing or two. Who was he to judge, he had slightly bigger problems right now anyway.

With a sigh, Beef gave his best smile and thumbs up to the camera. He had the very distinct, disheveled look of someone that had definitely just been blown up by a creeper on the first day.

It took all of xB’s willpower not to start laughing again as he and Beef huddled around the picture in the tiny, terribly lit deepslate hut, to get a look under the torchlight.

That was his first picture of the season actually, he realised as he put it safely in his inventory.

He would call Beef around by the end of the season, show him the picture again, they would get to look back and laugh.

———

But Hypno wasn’t here anymore, and he hadn’t seen Beef. He hadn’t seen anyone.

He stared up at the rift, glassy purple coating the whole cave with a slight tinted purple glow.

Staring wasn’t doing anything. It hadn’t done anything, and it would continue to not do anything. xB knew that, rationally, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

His friends were on the other side, wherever that led to, and he could do very, very little about it.

———

“I’m not gonna talk to you for a week!”

Keralis crossed his arms, stomping away through the sand, turning his back to xB dramatically.

“A whole week!” Keralis continued as xB giggled, already fishing for his camera in his inventory.

“Seven whole days.” Keralis turned back to look at xB, his pout breaking into a wide grin. “Princess! Are you taking pictures of me?”

xB had the little cyan camera raised, the harsh desert sun illuminated Keralis clearly in his view. He was almost glowing.

“Well if I’m not gonna see you for a week I’ve gotta make this moment last.”

———

xB held his camera tightly as reached the edge of his starter base and dropped off, unceremoniously, into the water surrounding the platform.

With a splash he let himself sink. The world muffled briefly and turned blue as he watched bubbles rise to the surface.

He blinked, and for a moment he swore he could see wide eyes staring down at him. Keralis leaned over the edge of his base, looking down.

But spawn was empty, the shopping district was empty. The lake was empty too, his conduit was taking care of that, and his base was very, very empty.

He swam back to the shore, camera in hand, tail pushing him lazily through the water.

———

He naturally retreated to the back of the group as Grian started his speech to announce the already-obvious winner of the turf war.

xB didn’t really care who won though, they had all had fun, that was what mattered to him. He glanced around at the other hermits and knew he wanted a picture of this.

The whole group was smiling, clearly tired from all of the games, but it was the good kind of tired. xB felt it too.

He turned around and messed with his old camera, quickly holding it up to snap a picture of the whole group, the score board already half lit-up in the background.

The click of his camera wasn’t heard through the laughing and cheering and joking of the crowd. He nestled the produced image into his hoodie pocket and tuned back in for the rest of Grian’s speech.

False was stood to his right, and… and Etho to his left? Or cub?

The rest of the memory dissolved into fuzziness, the details melting into hazy laughter, cheering and fireworks.

xB was left staring at the picture clutched in his hands. Water had dripped down onto it, now distorting the image itself. He blinked. It didn’t clear.

His hoodie was wet, the same as his hair and fins, dripping water onto the deepslate floor and into a small puddle at his knees.

All of his polaroids were scattered in front of him.

xB was alone.

He knew that he was alone. xB had been alone before. He knew how to be alone. He would go so far as to say that he was actually very good at it.

One of the things about being alone, xB had noticed - and because he was so good at being alone, he would guess that he was right - is that it really took a while until you realised it.

xB knew that he was alone, but he hadn’t really known until he had crawled back to his base, soaking with river water, and sifted through pictures that stared back.

He didn’t know what he was looking for. The pictures stared back with smiles and laughter. A line dangling bait in front of him, of a place he could never go back to. A time he could never have back, distorted in his memory. Friends he might never get back.

———

The raft swayed gently with the movement of the ocean.

One of the things about being out at sea, xB knew, is that you were always, very, very alone.

#radi0dontt writes #agh scary!#thankyou to joy luigra and pep cosmosisfold for contributing to this headcanon i was never gonna finish this otherwise #i havent actually been able to sit down and write and Finish anything in over 2 years uhm! So a bit out of practice #xb is my little funny guy though… i have so many headcanons and ideas at this point i had to write something #xbcrafted #beef hypno and keralis feature but this is mostly about xb ^^#now on ao3 for better organisation of my stuff because it makes me crazy

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