#And how if Jimmy is near the group he tends to be near Tango

[aplatypusshapedkite]

Team ranchers Week-Oct 27: Canary in the deep dark

There once was a thriving cavern city that had the ability to jump to another world. Over time something seemed to make people sick and violent. The town above destroyed any way for people to leave, hoping to stop, whatever came through the portal, from killing them all. Only tall tales and legends remain of its destruction, a warning.

Background

Under a town there was a huge city in a cavern, the massive portal was often on. It wasn’t until a canary bird flew through that it stopped shining. They caged the bird, hoping for answers unaware that something else had entered through the portal before the golden bird. Sculk. Sculk has made its way through the portal. It started covering parts of town, seemingly appearing out of nowhere (The infected people spread it). A group of traders had entered the city but when they had suggested to get rid of the sculk as it made them feel ill. Most were violently thrown from the town, somewhere never seen again.

Once the Town above heard of this they tried to investigate, however only 2 of the 3 recon team returned. Fearing an outbreak of whatever had caused their sister city to descend, they took every tool and sealed every entrance and exit. Some affected people of the city begged to be let out, others violently tried to make their way out of the dark. But as the final entrance was sealed they were left in the deep dark nothingness, except the light blue glow of the sculk. Any survivors either starved and or took desperate measures to eat the remaining sculk. Everyone else was already one with the Sculk.

Jimmy is from the portal, he came through in his canary form trying to escape the sculk that was consuming his world. He was trapped in a cage unable to shift back. Unable to warn them of the dangers on the other side of the portal. Unable to tell them of the  infection that they allowed into their world. He was trapped as they were sealed in. Someone came and picked him up. In the chaos the cage was dropped, breaking on impact. He immediately flew away from everyone and everything. (I.e. he found a hole to hide in so he could unshift safely.)

Jimmy tried to show the survivors soul fire but everyone soon died. Jimmy tried to culling the sculk back. Due to the lack of resources and him being one person he couldn’t stop the spread completely. He needed food and he needed to rest so desperately he set fire to the edges of the city before turning into his canary form one last time before he slept. There he stayed fixing the wall of fire anytime he woke up. He wouldn’t let what happened to his world happen here.  

Wardens are a mashup of the people who were infected, their bodies were torn apart and their souls screaming. Wardens always try to find a way out both from the people wanting to to get out and the Sculk’s need to spread. (‘baby’ Wardens are horrifying as they are mostly just torn flesh and broken bones as the sculk hasn’t covered everything yet)

Tango is the mechanic of an expedition team that consists of Pix (The leader and Anthropologist), TFC (Miner expert), Scar (The Naturalist), VintageBeef (The Cook) and Cub who is the navigator/ cartographer.

Plot Ideas

Pix learns of a City underneath a ghost town that is surrounded with warnings about a dangerous infection that took over the city. Along with the stories of adventures going missing looking for it.

Pix got in contact with Doc, Joe, Cleo, Vintage, and TFC for either them to join or help out. Cleo told him about Cub, Cub brung on Scar and Doc suggested Tango to go with them. Cleo and Joe couldn't go on the full expedition but they would check on them and help bring them supplies. (Joe is a medic)

After 2 weeks of mining they find a cave near the main cavern. Joe and Cleo stopped by with more supplies before they breach the cavern.(Last time they ever see some of their friends)

Tango meets Jimmy first. Jimmy heard something abnormal and went to investigate, he stole a bag of chex mix. As he was flying away Tango heard a bird. Upon investigating the noise he found a yellow feather and saw a bright almost glowing canary flying above a ruined city surrounded by blue fire. (There's no way a bird could have gotten down there, there was no way it could have with no one noticing)

After they discovered the cavern their tunnel collapsed trapping them (Alot of their stuff is back there)

Cub’s hand gets cut while they inspect the cave in

They officially meet Jimmy who tells them to go back and that its dangerous to be here. After explaining their situation Jimmy tells them where it's safe, and to stay away from the sculk while they try to get out (Light is an issues down here (Jimmy has a half working redstone lamp in his ‘home’))

TFC is trying to figure out how to get the tunnel open again without it collapsing, Pix is trying to get as much information from Jimmy about the town/ trying to get a closer look. Scar is trying to get a closer look at the Sculk with cub,Tango is helping Vintage prepare dinner 

Cub slipped where a fire had gone out, face planting. He and Scar laughed it off  as he pushed himself up and went to go eat with everyone. (They told Jimmy and helped him relight the fire, as he explained how it worked) (They didn’t realize the cut on Cub’s had was enough for him to get infected)

After meeting Jimmy/ the tunnel cave in: some of the fires that kept the sculk in check started going out (Jimmy is extremely low on resources to restart the fires, fires go out for many reasons but this is starting to be abnormal)

Someone suggests that if they got the tunnel back open and caused a cave in to trap the sculk then Jimmy could come with them. Jimmy is very against this as more people may come and find it only for the fires to be out, causing an apocalypse.

Scar is the first one to find out Cub got infected. He had noticed something was off about him but after being trapped for a while he brushed it off. It wasn’t until after he interviewed Jimmy about the sculk (Read: Bothered Jimmy about the sculk cuz he was curious) and the fires where being put out when he realized that something may be more deeply wrong with Cub 

Scar tells Jimmy about his worries and they go together to confront Cub (Telling no one smh). They find him at the edge of the city. Scar jumps towards him and asks a bunch of questions but Cub cuts him off. Cub confesses that he thinks he got infected when he fell a while ago. He tells scar he’s liked him for quite sometime. That he wishes they had said everything sooner but it's too late now. He says he loves him, he always will. With that Cub runs through a gap in the fire, into the city. 

Scar yells after Cub and tries to follow him but Jimmy stops him. At this point everyone hears him and rushes over.  They also help keep scar from running into the city (Jimmy couldn’t keep it up much longer)

Jimmy tries to tell him that Cub is gone.

Despite Jimmy being extremely against anyone going into the city, he’ll go look for Cub. Solidarity says he’ll see if he can see where he is and what he's doing (Some newly infected once tried to activate the portal. There's no way he could ever handle an outbreak like that. This is one of the main reasons he does go looking)

Jimmy gets injured/ attacked while looking for Cub (A Warden ‘woke up’ and heard Jimmy flying). The Pix grab him from the edge, saving him from being infected. (It's a very VERY close call) (Cub running into the city is what woke the warden up)

Pix gets infected while saving Jimmy and he discovers the soul sand under the sculk (He drops a normal torch on a patch of sculk and it turned blue. Killing the sculk around and leaving a patch of soul sand exposed)

They know they need to leave immediately, Jimmy is against leaving as the fires are going out and if they all got out, the Sculk would follow them. Vintage brings up the food situation isn’t looking good.

They try to figure out how to kill the sculk and or keep it from getting out forever

Cub isn't dead. Not fully. 

More Wardens wake up. They can't pass the soul fire but they do have ranged attacks. (Jimmy's 'base' is on the opposite side of the city however it is high enough to avoid any major warden attacks)

Their only saving grace is wardens can't see, the problem is Infected Cub still can. 

Pix tells TFC about his Infection. TFC Grabs Jimmy under the guise of the structure of the cave. They talked about Pix’s infection and the soul sand under the sculk. 

They talk about how if they could set the city ablaze it would kill the sculk, that's when they go get Vintage, Tango, and Scar to tell them of the situation and their idea.

Tango says if they can blow up certain areas carefully then it would almost kill all the sculk. They could go in soon after and burn it by hand. 

????

Jimmy stays with Tango after everything 

Scar moved in with Grian and Mumbo so he wasn’t alone after Cub died

Other things

Pix and TFC are old friends

Cub and scar are Roommates

Cleo and Joe almost joined but they had other commitments and couldn’t join/ They do supply runs

Doc was contracted to build machinery for the expedition 

Jimmy has a very limited amount of food. He tends to sleep most of the time (Your hunger doesn't go down when you’re sleeping). He also tends to stay in one form for long periods of time as shifting takes a bit of energy. His Canary form is much more convenient to travel through the deep dark and to keep an eye out. While he mostly only uses his human/ hybrid form to relight fires  

Both worlds have hybrids but only Jimmy’s world had hybridization (I.e. he wasn’t born with wing nubs)

Jimmy’s world is dead. Jimmy knows that at that point there was no way for the Sculk to have been stopped. If Jimmy had been there for a few more days, he would be dead. He knows this.

Jimmy hasn’t had a proper conversation with someone since a little before he went through the portal

Soul fire doesn't go out on its own- it needs to be punched and or water to extinguish it. (There is a huge reservoir of water above that dips down and occasionally puts out the fires)

Jimmy and Scar become really good friends after as Jimmy understands the horror of sculk and losing people to it

Jimmy stole his boots from a corpse (He's gone through a few pairs of shoes, one pair was gifted and the rest were stolen ) 

Tango used to be apart of a company called ‘The Boomers’. He knows his way around explosives, including how to make em

The Expedition team isn’t the first ones to find the cavern. Only about ¼ ever find the cave but very few of them leave. The first two times Jimmy didn’t find them till they were already infected. Some of them tried to escape so in a panic Jimmy pushed them into the soul fire. After that he started to look for people every time he wakes up

Art

From the initial page to my most recent for 4 am

*Not pictured the designing hell of Jimmy

[pixiemage]

Domino Effect - Part 8

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(Discussions arise in the bunker beneath the Hobbit base, and while some are humorous some most definitely are not. Also there are feathers, feathers and wings.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Time, Martyn found, was a strange thing. It tended to slow to a crawl whenever you wanted to rush through something and it never failed to fly by in those precious moments where you wanted everything to just stand still. Of course, after being stuck in the same time loop for as long as Martyn had, he found that time had two more qualities that he hadn’t ever experienced before. After years of playing through this game, after years of living through the same two months over and over, time had become both unquantifiable and far too easy to measure all in one fell swoop. The spans of time between key moments in the game paced themselves out as predictably as clockwork, and Martyn could often pinpoint - down to the exact minute - when certain unchangeable events would occur. Scar’s first death, Bdubs’ fall from the Crastle - the explosion at Dogwarts. When you had lived through one hundred and sixteen iterations of the same two months and when, even when you changed things, people didn’t fail to say the same things or make the same kinds of choices at least half the time, everything started to feel…predictable. Calculatable. Time, as he’d said, was far too markable with how much he had learned from each run…but even as he lived on and on with that knowledge written into his bones, he also knew from prolonged experience that - after so so long playing the Watcher’s game - time itself also felt meaningless. It felt dull. When the only forward progress he made was undone with each third death and when he knew he’d never run out of chances to get it right, it often felt as though he had no deadline and no pressure, even in those runs where a part of him itched to rush to some kind of finish line. Even in those runs where he told himself this time, this time I’ll finish it, this time I’ll be free. It was an oxymoron that wasn’t lost on him.

And if his strange and warped concept of time wasn’t enough, the ways his perception of people had changed was almost worse. It had been so, so long…

Martyn felt eyes on him and he was derailed from his spiraling train of thought, frowning and glancing around the room until his eyes focussed on Ren. Ren, who was sitting on one of the two chairs placed just past the end of the bed, his eyes warm and concerned behind his sunglasses. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Martyn, one he understood immediately. You okay? Martyn managed a strained smile and a nod in return. Okay enough.

Their strange group had been down in Jimmy’s bunker of a base for going on an hour by now, conversations and explanations being swapped between them not quite as easily as breathing. Even after having to explain it twice, Martyn still wasn’t quite used to having to put the entire ordeal into words.

(Grain, thank void, was an excellent listener when he needed to be.)

Not long after they had arrived in the bunker, Jimmy’s bed had been dragged away from the corner and closer to the middle of the wall, and a second had been added beside it. A few chairs had been circled around it so they could chat, and while normally they would have sat ‘round the table, Scott had been fairly insistent about helping Jimmy with his lake-drenched wings.

“I know what they get like when you put them away a mess,” the other player had sighed, all but strong-arming his husband into listening to him. “Let’s just take care of it now before it gets worse.”

So Jimmy, with a sheepish smile, had taken up a cross-legged seat at the end of one bed with his damp wings spread out behind him, Scott sitting behind him near the headboard. He carded careful hands through canary-yellow wings as they all spoke while Tango held a flaming hand aloft from his chair beside the bed to aid in the drying process. (The blazeborn had offered after watching Martyn attempt to do something similar one-handed and with a torch of all things, and every party involved had been more than willing to accept Tango’s help.)

Martyn, meanwhile, was seated comfortably on the end of the second bed with one hand still intertwined with Jimmy’s, and though he had found himself occasionally distracted by the preening process going on next to him, most of his attention had been on the conversation they had all - until very recently - been having.

It was only a few minutes ago that he and Ren and the slightly-distracted Hobbits had finished telling Grian (and, by proximity, Tango) what they knew, and since then Grian had been wearing a path into the floor on the opposite side of the room, his wings twitchy and his arms folded over his chest and his teeth worrying over the thumbnail of the hand that hovered, fisted, near his mouth.

Clearly he had a lot on his mind.

(Not unlike Martyn, apparently, since he’d managed to drag himself down a mental rabbit hole of his own without even trying. Thank goodness for Ren, was all he’d say.)

“D’you need to take a break?” Scott murmured toward Tango, his eyes glancing toward the flames still emanating from the blazeborn’s palm even as he continued carefully arranging feathers and distributing oil from a glass bottle positioned in his lap. “I don’t know how blaze hybrids work, but I’m close to being finished anyhow, so the rest can probably air dry if you need to stop.”

“Uhhh…” Tango, who had been frowning at Jimmy, blinked his attention back over to Scott with a shrug. “...nah, I’m fine for a while. It takes a lot to douse my flames. ‘Sides, it’s the least I can do as thanks for making sure I didn’t get murdificated by some sorta gods.” His eyes trailed back to Jimmy and he frowned again. “Is he okay?”

Martyn cast an eye toward Jimmy and snorted, grinning in amusement at the sleepy and contented smile on his friend’s face. The avian was slouched forward where he sat, and at some point in the last hour Scott had wordlessly handed him a pillow to lean on, one which he was now curled around with his cheek buried in its fabric. He let out a quiet trill of contentment and Tango nodded toward him in some kind of pointed gesture.

“That.”

“Eh, he’s fine,” Martyn waved it away. “Don’t worry about it. He’s all blissed out on happy bird brain chemicals is all. Void, I forgot how out of it he can get…”

Scott stifled a chuckle as well, and Tango nodded with a soft,

“Ohhh, gotcha. Hybrid stuff.”

“Yup.” Martyn popped the ‘p’. Then he shrugged. “Avian wings are just sensitive or something, ya know? Not sure if demons like your pal Impulse deal with that or if it’s ‘cause of the feathers, but Jimmy and Grian basically get high off endorphins any time they have a preening session.”

“I didn’t know you used to help Jimmy preen?” Scott asked, curious. He cast Martyn a glance between arranging feathers, and Martyn actually laughed.

“Oh, gods no,” Martyn denied immediately, shaking his head with a grin. “No. I doubt I have the patience for that. I mean - don’t get me wrong, if Tim asked I’d do it. He’s practically a brother to me an’ that’s family enough to be allowed. But - no, that was all Timmy and Grian.” He cast a look toward the other avian in the room, though Grian didn’t seem to have heard his name being mentioned at all. “Sometimes I swear they’re like fraternal twins or something with the way they get along. Or siblings at least. But back on Evo, they helped each other preen when they needed it. I just happened to stick around the ol’ Property Police building often enough to be there for it more than a few times.” He snorted, flashing a cheeky grin at Ren and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “‘Course I wish I’d gotten video of it back then, because between Timmy and Grian, it always sounded like I had a couple of chickadees trapped in my basement – oi!”

Martyn ducked as a canary-yellow wing thwacked him upside the head, shooting an affronted look at Jimmy, who apparently wasn’t quite as out of it as Martyn had first assumed. Jimmy’s face was still half-burried in the pillow he was hugging, but a lone red eye peered up at him with a tired sort of annoyance in its narrow-eyed stare. He huffed indignantly, his free wing puffing up and his arm curling a little tighter around his pillow.

“Come off it, Martyn,” he grumbled, sounding offended. (Though if the dancing smile at the corner of his mouth was anything to go by, it was all in jest.) “I do not sound like a chickadee. I’m a canary. That’s a completely different avian call.” He snorted and buried his face a little deeper in his pillow, letting out a quiet, contented coo as Scott straightened one last feather. He sighed softly and stretched his wings lazily before folding them comfortably against his back. His next words were mumbled and a little drowsy. “Mmm…though maybe I shouldn’t be surprised you can’t tell the difference; you’re only human afterall.”

Martyn gasped and clutched a hand to his chest dramatically.

“Only human?” he repeated, mockingly aghast. “How dare you! That’s - that’s humanphobic, that is!”

It took a moment for the avian to register his friend’s words.

“Human– what?” Jimmy spluttered, baffled and bemused, and from his chair beyond the end of the bed Ren burst into laughter. Tango, too, devolved into barely-concealed giggling, and Scott snorted with a bit of a smirk dancing across his lips. Jimmy sat up a little straighter and shook his head, looking more perplexed than anything. “There’s no way that’s a real thing.”

“As the standing minority here, I can say it absolutely is.”

“Minori– hey!” Jimmy was rightfully ruffled now, his wings puffed up around his shoulders and a grumpy pout on his face. “What are you on about now? If anything it’s hybrids who’re the minority.”

Martyn shrugged, grinning all the while.

“Not sure if you noticed, feather boy, but if you take a look at the whitelist on this server the hybrids outnumber humans two to one. I’d add Etho to my side of the list but I think we can all agree he’s not entirely human, even if we don’t know what he is.”

Tango muttered an amused, “You’ve got that right,” under his breath and Martyn gestured pointedly toward the blaze hybrid.

“See? And only thirty-three percent of the people in this room are human, hence minority.”

“You absolute tosser–” Jimmy attempted to smack Martyn with the pillow he’d been holding, but Martyn was quicker. He grabbed it one-handed and yanked it away, landing a very fluffy blow across Jimmy’s left wing when the avian brought it up to shield himself.

“Jimmy, I just fixed those feathers!” Scott protested, earning a sheepish smile from his husband. The scotsman sighed and pointed at his own lap. “Wing. Now. I’m not letting you put them away ruffled this time.”

With a murmured apology and thanks, Jimmy dragged the wayward pillow back against his chest to curl around it again and Scott quickly combed through the small section of feathers Martyn had managed to muss in the chaos.

After a moment, Scott spoke up.

“Not to actually contribute to the point Martyn’s making,” he drawled, his eyes still lingering on the last few feathers he was combing his fingers through, “but technically only sixteen percent of us are human here.” He glanced up to meet Martyn’s curious stare with a smirk. “I may look human, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got magical blood in my family tree.”

“HAH!” Martyn punched the air in victory, revelling in Jimmy’s groan of defeat and the laughter that arose from the two Hermits sitting by the bed.

“What in the world are you all doing over there?”

Grian’s voice drew their attention and Martyn smiled in the direction of the admin, whose tense pacing had come to a standstill for the time being. He was watching them all with unveiled curiosity and Martyn grinned at him from across the room.

“Oh, you know…” He smirked. “...just calling Jimmy out on his humanphobia.”

“Oi!”

“Jimmy, love, sit still.”

The quietly bickering couple went ignored. Grian blinked owlishly at Martyn, opened his mouth, then closed it again with an audible click.

“Why do I get the feeling I don’t want to know what that means?”

“Yeah, probably not,” Tango chimed in, his eyes bright and his face slightly red from laughter. “Ohhh man…ahah...probably smart to stay away from that one.”

“It’s an awful joke anyway,” Jimmy grumbled.

“Listen,” Martyn protested over Ren’s poorly-stifled bark of laughter, “if anyone deserves to be making horrible jokes right now, it’s me, yeah? I’m the one who’s had a bunch of gods mucking around in my head, aren’t I? I think I deserve a bit of a laugh.”

The words rolled off his tongue before he could stop them, and he didn’t miss the imperceptible twitch of Grian’s feathers once the word hit open air. He didn’t miss the way Ren’s ears flicked back or the way Tango winced in the background. Whatever light humor had taken up residence in the little bunker fizzled out and the weight of what they had been discussing earlier returned, Scott’s hands freezing for a tick or two in Jimmy’s feathers. Martyn winced internally and pushed onward, forcing a smirk in Grian’s direction.

“Anyway, are you plannin’ on sitting down? Or are you just gonna hypnotize us with the damn metronome act you’ve got going on? There’s only so many times folks can pace in circles on that floor before poor Timmy’s gonna need to start replacing wood planks.”

For a moment, Martyn wasn’t sure if Grian would even join them. For a moment the avian stood still on the opposite side of the room, a tension pulling at the corners of his mouth. He looked away toward the side wall, and Martyn caught the faintest glimpse of purple flash across his eyes before they fell shut. For a moment, Martyn thought he might leave to collect his thoughts in peace. But then Grian let out a heavy sigh and dragged a hand through his already-unkempt hair and he finally obliged and approached the cluster of players that were still gathered on and around the beds. He hopped up onto the chair he had vacated earlier and perched himself up on the back of it, his feet planted on the seat. For a moment he was silent.

“...I know Martyn and Jimmy were there on Evo, and I know they already explained what Watchers are,” he began, his voice low and his words hesitant. “But I…but if–” He hesitated, chewing on his bottom lip. His eyes were fixated on a snag in the blankets draped over one of the beds. He let out a wavering breath. “I wouldn’t drag everyone here into this if I had the choice, but I get the feeling you’re already involved whether I want you to be or not. And if - if the ones who found us here are the ones who found Evo, then – then I don’t want any of you to go into this blind.”

Grian raised his eyes, glancing from Scott to Tango to Ren in turn. There was an ache in the depths of his expression, a sort of world-weary pain that had Martyn offering a weak smile in return.

“...if they are who I think they are, then I know them better than most. They’re possessive. They’re self-important. I would call them cruel, but in truth I don’t think they understand what cruelty is. They just don’t understand how players work. They don’t understand emotions the way we do, and because of that they–”

Grian winced, his right wing twitching slightly, and Martyn watched as Grian reached back and trailed his fingers over a spot on the inside of the wing. The feathers there were a slightly different shade, Martyn noticed. Paler, if only slightly. Duller, if only by a fraction. He wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking for it.

Something about the action must have meant something to the Hermits, because Ren let out an airy canine whimper and Tango sucked in a harsh breath, both of them exchanging a look of understanding and recognition.

“They’re who you were escaping from, aren’t they?” Tango hazarded a guess, his red eyes wide and his hair sparking slightly. “When you crash-landed on the server, back in Season 6. They’re the reason Xisuma asked for my help in boosting server protections.”

Grian nodded stiffly.

“Exactly.” He glanced between them, looking guilty and maybe a bit apologetic. “Xisuma knew where I came from. So did Mumbo, and so did Stress since she spent so much time helping me heal when I arrived. TFC found out not long after, and Joe had to help with some errors in my player code, but - nobody else knows. It wasn’t just you I’ve kept in the dark, it was everyone.” He raked a hand through his hair, his fingers getting tangled in the unruly waves of blond. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I’m sorry. Maybe if I had, then–”

“Hey, whoa, it’s all good my dude,” Ren cut him off quickly, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. “We’ve all got stuff in our past we don’t like talkin’ about. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I get free reign to dig into your tragic backstory. Don’t sweat it.”

“Yeah, what he said,” Tango jerked a thumb at Ren and tossed Grian a smile. “We’ve all got a history, man. I tell Impulse and Zed and Skizz stuff I’ll probably never tell the rest of the Hermits, but we’re still family. Right?”

“...of course we are,” Grian murmured. He ducked his head and took a breath, his wings curling forward around his shoulders. “Right. Of course.”

He reached out and ran his fingers through that pale patch of feathers on his right wing again, and it was only then that Martyn wondered if maybe it was the site of an old injury…an old scar. Potions could work miracles, but some wounds never quite healed fully even with the aid of magic. Some wounds left a mark. Perhaps, if the Hermits’ reactions said anything, it was an injury Grian had been sporting when he first arrived on the Hermitcraft server. Perhaps they remembered. Perhaps it was how they knew.

“...the point is,” Grian finally went on, drawing Martyn from his musings, “if the Watchers on this server are the same ones who took me from Evo, then they’re not good news. They’re not the same kind of straightforward evil you might expect from a dark player. Their motives wouldn’t be the same as a player’s, and more often than not if they have their figurative eyes set on something it’s extremely difficult to dissuade them from their goal.

“They’re also clever.” Grian glanced around at them all, and despite the serious and professional air he was putting on, Martyn could see the wavering anxiety hiding just beneath the surface. (He was certain Jimmy could see it too.) “They’re clever, but not as clever as we are. Players are notoriously more creative than They could ever be. It’s the reason many Watchers become so fascinated with our worlds in the first place, and it’s–” Grian’s breath hitched, his words stuttering for half a breath. “–it’s why they were so fixated on me.”

“Grian…” Jimmy’s whispered word broke the chilling silence that followed that sentence, and when Grian let himself meet Jimmy’s gaze, the compassion and care in the younger avian’s expression was enough that even Martyn could feel the warmth in it. Grian maintained his composure for a few long seconds, but then Jimmy lifted a wing in silent invitation, and Martyn could spot the exact moment Grian’s resolve crumpled.

Martyn didn’t have to have wings himself to know that avian flock instincts were hard to ignore.

There was a moment of brief movement, of Martyn taking Grian’s chair beside Ren and Grian taking Martyn’s spot on the bed and Jimmy switching which hand Martyn was holding, then Grian was being tucked comfortably under a protective yellow wing. Behind them, Scott had settled back against the headboard, his aqua eyes looking a shade darker in the dim torchlight of the bunker.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked, his accent coming through thick around the murmured words.

“Well…” Martyn glanced toward Grian, whose head had dropped onto Jimmy’s shoulder for the moment. “...I mean if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think your Watcher buddies are big fans of yours anymore.” Grian snorted out a humorless sort of chuckle, so Martyn carried on. “Honestly, they hated it every time I tried to befriend you during a run of this voiddamned game. They never said it outright but I kind of suspected they wanted me to take you out. ‘Course I never did, not really, but–”

“Wait, they want you to kill me?” Grian pressed, his brow furrowed and his head raised from Jimmy’s shoulder. He looked thoughtful, if not a bit puzzled. “Why would they want me killed? It wouldn’t do anything. I’d just respawn, or go into spectator mode if…” He trailed off and cocked his head to the side, squinting into the middle distance as if staring at something Martyn couldn’t see. Ren shot him a look and Martyn just shrugged in response. “...the server wall. There was something poking at the server wall, but it wasn’t trying to get in. What if…”

Grian trailed off again with a low hum, and Tango leaned forward in his seat.

“Admin stuff?” he guessed, peering past Jimmy to try and spot Grian beneath the former’s wing. “I’m pretty well versed in server security if you need a hand lookin’ at code.”

Grian nodded, slowly at first then more steadily. He bit his lip and turned to the blazeborn, and this time when he smiled Martyn could spot a bit of that old Grian spark lighting up his eyes.

“You know, Tango, I might just take you up on that offer.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

[A/N: Domino Effect returns! And so do our brave heroes. So this was an interesting one to write. For a while I was stuck trying to figure out how to proceed, and as of today I finally managed to push forward to the end. Also, though Tango wasn't initially part of the greater group in earlier drafts of the timeline, it ended up working out really well because him having admin status on Hermitcraft means he can assist Grian in ways others in the group cannot.

Also, to anyone who may have read my other Hermit-centric fanfic, Through a Crack in the Void...any chance Grian's backstory sounds a bit familiar? ;3 I tend to view this story as either a later continuation of TaCitV or a VERY similar parallel universe, because some things said here might not end up being quite as canon in that fic depending on how it plays out. But Grian's entrance into Hermitcraft is absolutely referenced directly in this scene. The injury on his wing was created using void magic, hence the slight lingering scar and faded feathers after the fact. Fun plot stuff! :D]

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