from eden, part V
Word count: 13,626
Warnings: Violence, strong language, mild body horror, blood/injury, death, emotional and physical abuse, manipulation, unreliable narrator, shipping (nothing explicit, just kissing and suggestive implications), grooming (non-sexual)
Summary: Following Tango’s escape from Hels Tek, head scientist Atlas finds himself in hot water. With his sponsors unhappy and his scientists’ faith shaken, the situation quickly spirals into a full-on nose dive, and he suddenly faces losing everything he’s spent decades building. But fate is a funny thing, and after receiving help from an unexpected place, Atlas just might discover that some things do, in fact, happen for a reason.
A/N: WELP I did it again. This oneshot has to get split into two because Atlas’s ego wouldn’t leave enough room for another POV (he needed over 13k to himself, greedy bastard). So, the next one will pick up right after this and will hopefully be out in a timely manner (no promises ofc). Here’s a link to read the previous parts of the au and all the other info!
Note that there are some Helsmits in this, but there are also lots of random OCs/NPCs in the background. They’re not important, they’re just there to help fill up the Hels roster. And ofc, Atlas himself isn’t supposed to be the Hels of anyone we know, he’s purely an OC. Hope y’all enjoy, please reblog if you do! This was a labor of love so it’d really mean a lot <3 - Aqua
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from eden, part V - to the strand, a picnic plan for you and me
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Somewhere in Hels, a player just woke up to very bad news.
“Drowned?” Dr. Atlas Syn, head scientist of Hels Tek Laboratories, demands furiously as he leaps out of bed. “How could he have possibly drowned?!”
(An addendum: he’s not leaping out of his actual bed. Rather, he sleeps on a 2x2 pad of moss, the softest substitute for wool available. His real bed is hidden deep beneath his feet, within an obsidian safe room that’s fully stocked with armor, weapons, food, and whatever other resources he might need in the event of his untimely demise.
Owning a bed is a prestigious thing. Not all players are well-off or well-connected enough to obtain a bed from the scarce wool merchants in Hels, all of whom guard their rare sheep fiercely. Instead, most players utilize respawn anchors to set their spawns, as the materials required to craft one are far easier to come by than wool.
The only players who are aware of the bed’s existence are Atlas himself and the man who gave it to him, and that’s how Atlas likes to keep it. If certain enemies or rivals of his were to discover his bed, them breaking it is the least of his concerns.
It’s a privilege to own a bed, allowing him to bypass the thousands of blocks of treacherous terrain he’d have to travel if he died, but it’s also a great risk. Setting one’s spawn via bed or anchor doesn’t allow for the same protection as afforded by the default world spawn and its anti-griefing perimeter. Knowing the location of a player’s spawn allows for the deployment of traps- the longest death loop Atlas has ever seen lasted a solid month, and only ended because someone got fed up enough with the constant death messages to free the poor chump.
Anyways, this is all besides the point. Atlas leaps out of ‘bed.’)