Unfortunately, Q's only weapons training is watching the Games every year, and he's not exactly taking notes on the combat form. He is vaguely aware that axes aren't usually glowing purple. 

He would like to have something enormously clever and also convincing to say. However, see above re: exhaustion, stims and fumes, etcetera. "Man," he says, "I am way too fucking tired for death threats. And I think to be a parody I'd have to know who you are." 

Quackity steps forward, forward, crowding the other man's space. He smiles and tries to calm his voice into a mimicry of a salesman giving a pitch and doesn't put the axe away. "You know what you're doing? You're disrespecting me. Now, I don't know who you are, but I don't like when people disrespect me. I--look, I like to think I can be reasonable. Okay? I can be reasonable. I don't want to hurt you. I'm tired too, alright? So how about, instead of talking back to me, you go home and--whatever sick fucking prank you think you're doing, you cut that shit out. And then tomorrow, maybe you come back and we can talk this through like fucking adults."

What space. Does Quackity strike you as the sort of person who is generally allowed to have personal space. Admittedly, getting this close to him would usually be a different kind of threat, and he should really shut up right the fuck now, but never let it be said that he isn't fucking stupid. 

"Do-- what do you even think is the prank here? Are you used to a world where people can just go home and put a different face on! Are you imagining that is a thing I can do!" 

"I know Foolish has been wearing Wilbur and Dream's faces, got them off DreamXD. I don't know how the fuck you're doing my voice but you're doing something and-- you know what? I'm tired of you talking back to me. Get out of my country."

He brings the axe down onto the other man's shoulder. He's not trying to kill, just to--injure him, scare him off, show him that he means business. 

Unfortunately, he doesn't have control of the axe, and the other Quackity is tired and weak and not wearing any armor.

Quackity_V68 was slain by Quackity.

Quackity_V68 doesn't leave a body behind, just a pile of items. So... hopefully it wasn't a canon death, at least.

He drops:
- Wil's Earbuds (Borrowed), a tangle of purple cords;
- Quackity's ID, a small piece of rectangular plastic saying that its holder is Quackity, Victor of the 68th Hunger Games, District 10, associated with the Victor Affairs fund tied to this twelve-digit number;
- Assorted Drugs, a box full of pills of a variety of colors and sizes;
- Schlatt's Jacket, a brown leather jacket lined with wool, which smells like someone smoked in it quite a lot but hasn't done so in more than a year;
- Notes, a folded-up piece of paper on which "note 2 self: do the thing for T, dipshit" is written;
- a cookie.

He keeps his pager and the non-jacket clothes. 

Back at the incredibly ugly not-quite-forest, Quackity yells "FUCK" at the top of his lungs, and then gets to climbing the walls again. 

What the fuck.

The president of Las Nevadas, who had been looking through the other man's stuff, drops Wil's Earbuds (Borrowed) and Schlatt's Jacket back on the ground like they burned him. 

Whatever. He's made his point. Quackity_V68 has five minutes to get his stuff back; this Quackity's not touching it. He turns on his heel and walks back into his country.

This time at least Quackity knows exactly where he's going; he ignores the buildings and the other portals and Ranboo's castle and heads straight to Las Nevadas. Picks up his jacket, puts it back on, and shoves everything else back into his pockets. 

...and then he's left staring at Las Nevadas.

He doesn't, in fact, have anywhere else to go. He is at this point kind of dead on his feet. He could tell Ranboo that actually things came up please can he stay at the castle; he could pop more caffeine and keep walking in a different direction. 

Or he could just curl up in the tollbooth and go the fuck to sleep. 

Yeah, okay, when you put it like that. He curls up in the tollbooth, under the jacket which he has (fucker), and he goes the fuck to sleep. 

The other Quackity calls Foolish in for a meeting, interrogates him until he's mostly satisfied that it wasn't him, at which point he sends Foolish away to find who the hell it was and pours himself a drink. 

He doesn't sleep much, these days. A little bit, enough that he's not dead on his feet. But he has to keep an eye on his country, with Wilbur's Paradise to the left and Eret's pyramid to the right and Tubbo's military fucking outpost right in front of it, with people walking up to his gates speaking in his voice and wearing coats named Schlatt's Jacket. (With Sapnap and Karl still--God knows where.) He drowses a little, with the help of the alcohol, but the nightmares get him back up and pacing soon enough, and he's awake most of the night. When the sun starts to come up he goes up the elevator in the Needle to watch it. Tommy's voice haunts him (--a good place to jump off and end it all--) and he tries to push it out of his mind. He's not as much of a fucking coward as Wilbur. Besides, he wants to live.

Still. He can't stop thinking of it. How he and Wilbur had both rushed to pull Tommy away from the edge. Jesus, the poor kid. 

He changes into new clothes not long after; Ranboo and whoever-the-fuck the new guy was may cause problems at night but Wilbur and Tubbo get up early, and he needs to be ready. (Not too ready. He can't give them--especially Wilbur--the impression that he cares too much, that he's easily riled up, defensive, overcompensating, weak. So he puts on new clothes and waits inside for news, doesn't go out to meet it himself yet.)

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck Q slept through his alarm, didn't he. And he forgot to take his makeup off, his prep team will be annoyed about that, and-- 

wait why's he on the ground, what the fuck kind of choices and decisions--

He opens his eyes.

Right. Okay. Not just an incredibly weird dream. Something weirder. Possibly something worse, he hasn't decided yet. 

Quackity is probably not going to be allowed to stay in Las Nevadas. He isn't even totally sure he wants to stay in Las Nevadas; what seems appealing late at night after three back-to-back engagements and a bunch of wandering is distinctly less so in the daylight, especially now that he's had a minute to properly consider getting threatened with a battleaxe. (Relatedly: what the fuck.) 

He gets up. He brushes the sand off of himself as best he can, which is not very well. He leaves the tollbooth, and looks around. 

Las Nevadas: it has buildings. And sand. And snow. And a fountain. And a huge sign that says LAS NEVADAS.

The buildings include:
- a strip club, or at least a building advertising itself as one; it seems empty
- a restaurant, which does have someone (...something? it's humanoid but acts more like a machine than a person) behind the counter, advertising food in exchange for emeralds
- a tall tower with a column of water in the middle
- a particularly large and glittery building with the doors barred
- a small white building, open to the air
- something planned and outlined in stone on the ground but not yet built

Outside of Las Nevadas is Ranboo's castle, which has two main buildings and a courtyard; the courtyard has a few small farms and chests scattered around it.

He doesn't have emeralds. He has a combination ID/debit card, which is probably not accepted as legal tender outside of Panem. 

...eh, he'll give it a shot anyway.

The person(?) behind the counter just looks uncomprehendingly at it and then at him.

(There's also a chest in the room behind the counter; if he wanted to, he could just steal.)

You know what? Sure. He'll just steal. Thank you, person(?) behind the counter for not objecting to or impeding his stealing. 

He will also eat the cookie he got from Ranboo, since he's eating now. Thank you, Ranboo. 

The chest: has burgers in it. Hooray for theft!

(They’re solidly mediocre burgers. Maybe a bit below average. The cookie is actively good; not phenomenal, it’s dry and stale, but definitely homemade.)

Hey, man, food is food. Probably shouldn't stick around here once he's eaten, though, staying in other Quackity's front yard just sounds like it's asking for problems— let's check out the forest over this way? 

Across the river but before the forest starts in earnest, there’s a short stone ?column? with a circle in the middle and a wider base, like:

 |
o
 | 

Just past it is a small stone building labeled Fort Big. A blond teenage boy wearing a red and white baseball shirt, who Quackity may recognize as Tommy, the friend Tubbo volunteered for, is running around; he stops and waves when he sees Quackity approach. 

Yep, he sure does recognize Tommy. He's Tubbo's best friend, and they've been neighbors for eight months now, and Tommy does not exactly make himself difficult to get to know. It's just, like, oh shit, you know? 

Or, like, this makes sense, right. If there's an alternate version of Quackity, it stands to reason that there are alternate versions of other people also. Including, potentially, people he knows. Except--

--No, actually, he's not doing this right now. Shut the fuck up. He waves back at Tommy. 

“Eyyyyyyy big Q!”

"Hi, Tommy." He's close enough that the lack of scar will probably be obvious now?? Wow he is not looking forward to explaining his deal over and over. 

Tommy’s not going to ask why Quackity is down a scar, that just seems rude. Things happen. If he wants to talk about it he will. “And what are you doing today in Paradise, my friend?”

...yeah okay of course the universe has conspired to make him use his words. Why would he expect anything else. "Is that what this is called? I'm, uh, kind of new to... everywhere." 

"Hey, Wilbur named it, not me. I'm just the messenger. I am immune to bullets."

"Course you are. Completely bulletproof. --but no actually I meant that I found the ...Dream SMP... yesterday and I don't know where anything is." 

He is just simply not going to think about Wilbur. Or other-Wilbur having set up right outside other-Quackity's property. Or anything else along those lines! 

Tommy makes a confused noise somewhere between "HUUUUHHHH?" and "WHAAAAAAAAT?", as though he is trying to say both at the same time.

He takes a moment to consider.

"...So you don't remember anything? Like, not the cartel, not the sewers--"

"I was not here for those things. There's a guy who looks like me in Las Nevadas who I'm guessing was, but we didn't get much of a chance to talk."