#hels!drista

[votederpycausemufins]

I'm finally back with another chapter of the hermit tommy fic, Surprisingly Familiar, after months of writers block caused by depression (among other things). A full explanation is found in the notes of the Ao3 version. A link to that is featured in the masterpost of the fic which itself is linked on the masterpost of my writing that's pinned to my blog (a lil complicated, but it keeps things organized)

I am also willing to talk to people on discord if people want. The main server I'm a part of is the Daily Grumbot server. I won't give a link since tumblr doesn't like posts with external links, so just go look for the post at dailygrumbot.tumblr.com!

With that, reminder that the hermit tommy au was created by @petrichormeraki and also anything suspiciously specific said by hels!techno might have some meaning to it, and enjoy the story!

Techno was put in charge of helping carry Doc around. Out of the group, he was the needed balance of being able to lift someone or something that heavy as well as having good mobility. Also Doc didn’t seem to want to be helped if his amount of hissing was anything to go by. 

While his missing cybernetics didn’t remove a leg or anything, his missing arm was heavier than his remaining one, so it was more of a difference compared to when he lost his original one. That paired with also losing his eye at the same time made him both unbalanced and without depth perception. They originally tried to let him walk on his own, but Doc instead quickly managed to start falling to the side before crashing into a wall after dealing with the uneven, vine-covered ground. So he was carried.

Without needing to focus on trying to keep upright, Doc instead was left to start mumbling to himself. It was a mix of various languages he knew, but for the most part in ones the others didn’t understand. And even with what they could understand every once and a while, it still wasn’t enough to know what exactly it was about. But at the very least, it seemed to be that he had some theory on what was causing this. Probably.

But they couldn’t really slow down to try and get an answer out of Doc. With what they had found earlier in the treehouse base and the strange animalistic noises they heard when finding Doc, the remaining members of the group knew they needed to keep moving.

“You know, if we can’t get answers from Doc, we might have to circle back.” Techno spoke up.

“We’ll have to circle back sooner or later. It’s not like we have a lot of space.” Mumbo replied, gesturing above them. They were still in the large dome of vines, which seemed to keep them mostly safe from the vines themselves, but whatever monster was around was a different story.

“Yeah, I get that.” Techno huffed. “The thing is, while I can carry Doc around better than most of you. I still can’t do it forever. So it might be nice if we head back or someone else tries carrying him.”

Since Mumbo had been the one to reply to Techno, everyone else used that as a bit of an opportunity to move a little bit faster and let it seem like Mumbo moved closer to offer. Once he realized, the redstoner sputtered a bit before relenting and taking Doc from Techno. The hand off didn’t go quiet so well, Mumbo nearly collapsing when he was given the brunt of Doc’s weight, but he recovered quickly and managed to carry him rather well.

“I guess carrying robots all day builds muscles, eh mate?” Phil asked, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.

“I suppose that’s part of it. But moving blocks around for building and redstone helps some too I would think.” Mumbo suggested, though it only got a shrug.

“I thought building wasn’t really your thing. I thought others did that.”

“We all do a little bit of everything.” Xisuma spoke up, though his voice was a little muffled from the vines over his helmet. “Mumbo tends to work more on the redstone side of things, but he’s not stuck there. And he does better at building than Grian at redstone.”

Phil laughed a bit at that before conceding. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Plus redstone’s not all that practically useful if it’s not built somewhere, huh? Can’t really be a door if there’s no building for it.”

“I mean I can still share the designs.” Mumbo huffed a little, his mustache turning into a frown, which simply drew more laughter from Phil, up until Paul, who had been quiet that whole time, shushed them all.

Everyone stopped, not saying a word, even trying to breathe as little as possible. They stood still other than adjusting their feet to best stay in a still position as well as ready to run or fight if necessary. Sounds that were distinctly not from the group came from the foliage around them, the question was if some creature was making them, or if it was simply some sort of breeze through the leaves.

Just as it looked like they were safe enough to keep moving, Doc hissed loudly, and then the creature Xisuma had seen before pounced from some bushes and other nearby greenery. Phil was the first to react, not as burdened by vines as the others. He slashed at the creature with a sword before it tried swiping its claws at him, barely being blocked by the sword in time.

Techno jumped in to help, attacking the creature from behind, hitting it with his axe, which ended up being rather ineffective. In the bit of stunned surprise that caused Techno, the creature swiped at him with enough force to knock him away and onto the ground. 

Since he had only just handed Doc off, Tech was already feeling a little exhausted. That and the fact that the creature seemed to be affected by combat differently made everyone worry. One of their remaining fighters was practically out for the count and they still didn’t know what would happen if any of them died. 

Before the creature could attack once more, Paul ran in, not with a sword or anything, but just slamming into the thing with his body. The group was still close to the edge of the dome of vines, close enough that with that attack, the creature broke through the wall of vegetation. Though it also seemed to be a sort of foe to Doc, the vines didn’t seem to care and also started wrapping and restraining the creature, it trying to escape its growing prison.

While the group was thankful that the jungle was taking that thing away, they were not so pleased that in getting the creature that far, Paul had to do the same. The vines also attempted to pull him away, likely to trap him with all the others that had been taken.

Xisuma was the first to try and drag him back, Techno and Phil still recovering while Mumbo dealt with Doc. Still, with Xisuma already being so covered that his breathing was hindered, the most he caused was that now the both of them were being dragged in.

Just as Phil rushed to help, there was a yelp from Mumbo as Doc had escaped his grip and rushed as best he could to Xisuma and Paul, hissing loudly. Everyone braced themselves on instinct, ready for an explosion, but it thankfully never came. The vines receded and let the pair go, allowing them to leave the edge of the dome and drag Doc with them.

“Holy fuck, what here you thinking?!” Phil shouted at Doc. “Were you trying to get some of us killed?!”

Doc just sat on the ground quietly, Mumbo and Xisuma both worried for their friend, but unnerved with how vulnerable he seemed. Doc wasn’t even mumbling or hissing any answer, just being completely quiet. 

“Fine, I guess we’ll just rest here. Hopefully whatever you did didn’t also give that thing a chance to possibly escape and attack us again.”

“Phil, calm down.” Techno tried to speak up. “Whatever he did worked. We don’t need to dwell on a what if right now.”

“I can’t calm down right now. We have been stuck in this whole thing for who knows how long and we’re going to be here for who the hell knows much longer. And while I would love to leave, I also don’t want it turning into a giant waste of time because someone almost screwed it up for all of us!”

“Can’t die here.” Came a mumble and everyone looked towards Doc. “They won’t…” Doc continued before it devolved into hisses.

“Doc, we can’t understand that last bit.” Xisuma spoke up, making Doc quiet again. “While he shouldn’t be yelling, Phil does have the slight point about how we should try and find a way out of this quickly. What you know would help a good deal.”

After a moment, Doc looked at his right arm, at least what little was left of it, as well as moved the stump. While the message that there was something related to his missing arm involved, Paul was the one to provide more context. “What’s Dinnerbone got to do with this?”

“Wait, you’re saying he really lost his arm to Dinnerbone?” Techno piped up. “Bruh, that’s kind of cool to hear.”

“If I recall correctly from what Doc has said, the two fought and Doc won, and as a sort of revenge, Dinnerbone just removed his arm.”

“Sounds like a sore loser.” Phil joked, having calmed down a little bit with the discussion helping to find a solution as opposed to running around more. “Is this all supposed to be more revenge?”

Doc shook his head, speaking again, but in a language none of them understood all that well. Still, the little information already given was a clue. They just needed to figure out what it meant.

“So,” Techno spoke up first. “Is this being caused by at least one of the gods?” It was that or it was supposed to be revenge by something else, which could have been the case, but was unlikely. And with Doc nodding, then of course it was the first idea.

“Is it still revenge?” Mumbo asked next. “You said it wasn’t more revenge, but maybe… another one got upset?”

“You think multiple gods could be upset at him?” Phil asked incredulously.

“I interacted with Notch, Dinnerbone was on the Mindcrack server a few times, Herobrine is a hermit as well as one of the Deaths.” Paul paused before adding on one more piece of evidence. “And also there’s Etho.”

Mumbo also jumped in before Phil could say more, looking like he might try to refute it. “Doc also has a knack for breaking the laws of the universe simply because he can. While most of it is taken well… I wouldn’t be surprised if something wasn’t.”

“Okay, fine, divine punishment. What for?” Phil conceded, looking at Doc, but was really fine with anyone answering. What he didn’t expect was Doc to nod and manage an answer, simply repeating “punish”. “Well… that’s just great.”

“So… punishment for something. The question is what for.” Mumbo spoke up, rubbing his chin before then asking. “It’s not due to another fight you had, right? Because then that would be the revenge we already said it couldn’t be. So, is it for any of your… disruptive redstone?”

Doc shook his head, doing the same when he was asked if it had any connection to the hivemind Doc had mentioned here and there. From there, there was a bit of sidetracked conversation with Techno comparing Doc’s hivemind to his chat and Phil’s crows. But eventually, they got back on topic.

“So, if it’s not any of those other things, what exactly could they punish you for?” Xisuma asked, and then everyone was quiet to let Doc respond, but he didn't. “Doc, whatever it is, we can’t help unless you tell us. It may be bad, but if we want to-“ 

Xisuma was stopped as Doc finally spoke up. “Knowledge.”

“What?”

“Know… shouldn’t.” Doc tried explaining, but only half the words could be understood. “…punish too…”

“That’s not great.” Phil huffed. “It’s something you’re in trouble for knowing, forbidden knowledge or some shit, so we can’t help out since we can’t know what it’s about?”

Doc agreed with Phil’s explanation, which had Mumbo place a reassuring hand on Doc’s shoulder. “Doc, I’m sorry that we can’t help you with that part… but if The Jungle was your punishment for… whatever it was, it already happened.”

“He’s right.” Paul spoke up, looking back towards Doc from where he stood leading the group along. “It seems this is about you worrying about the secret slipping and everyone else getting punished, but here we are, surrounded by that happening, probably to a greater extent than it would actually be, and you’re still tight lipped. I think that means you wouldn’t let it slip.”

Doc nodded in agreement, but the group could tell he didn’t fully agree. “Want to… though…” Doc spoke, careful with his words this time to make sure they could all be understood.

“Sorry, that’s not something we can really help you with.” Techno spoke up, the tone of his voice more lighthearted to try and lighten the mood at least a little. “Phil’s already a dinosaur, so Paul must be just as old, plus he knows some of the gods for better or worse.”

“I belong in a museum.” Paul responded, with a tone of voice that implied some sort of inside joke, especially with Phill laughing and even Doc managing a weak laugh.

“Whatever. What I’m saying is he might somehow know what you’re having trouble with. And if not him, then someone else. It can’t be everyone is off limits, right?”

“If not me, someone else from your server?” Paul suggested. “If it’s godly punishment, then for someone safe you might want to talk with I-”

He was cut off by a hiss from Doc, loud enough that no one could tell what Paul said, at least until he apologized and spoke again. “Sorry, I’m uh,,, bad at remembering chosen names it seems. Joe I believe then.”

With that mention, Doc nodded, and everyone took that as the answer to what had been said, not realizing that it was less of a mistake and more of an excuse.

“Even if you can’t talk with any of them, it doesn’t mean you can’t talk to anyone at all.” Xisuma then said, hoping to give a suggestion. “Even though you can’t talk about it directly, you can still voice your worries. Being direct could get you hurt, which is a reasonable fear, but hopefully being indirect won’t get you in trouble. And now that we know the… safe information, you could come to me or Mumbo, or any of the other hermits. Though they would need a summary of what we’ve learned. Not to say we learned what you’re being punished for!” Xisuma quickly corrected at the mention of learning making Doc hiss.

“I think what they’re all trying to say.” Phil spoke up. “Is that there’s ways to get around the whole di-vine punishment and still talk about your feelings so it doesn’t screw you up on the inside. Because keeping it all close to the chest could hurt you.”

That seemed to be what finally got to Doc, because as he nodded, the vines started to disappear, followed by just about everything else around them, before being replaced by the next false reality they would have to go through.

.

.

.

Everyone was still silent from Grian’s question. No one was sure exactly what to say, though for wildly different reasons. One thing that was certain was that Death, any of them, having an interest in you, likely wasn’t a good thing. 

Sahn, who had been the only one making noise with some humming, finally clued in and spoke up first. “Oh wait? Was that question for me? Sorry, I didn’t realize. …Um, what was it again? I already forgot.” 

“I uh…” Grian nervously started, unsure now with the shift of tone in the room. “I don’t exactly know who this ‘Warrior’ is. I’ve heard about him a few times, but not enough details. And so I want to know who he is and what exactly is going on.”

“Oh, that first part is easy!” Sahn smiled, cheering up quickly. “He’s officially known as The Warrior of Death! He’s got another name too but I’m not allowed to use it. He’s one of… two? Or wait was it four… I think it was four deaths. But I help him out! And have been since I died.” Despite Grian not liking Sam and not knowing too much about Sahn, he still winced at the mention that Sahn was indeed, and had indeed, died. “I forget exactly why. I think there was something weird. Maybe something about… tents? No… hurts… no it was… somewhere in the middle. Anyway! He wanted me to find you for some reason! I don’t know why because you have Sally, and what should have been enough.”

Grian tensed at the mention of his recently acquired pet chicken, now questioning if there was more to the animal. “And how would she have been ‘enough’?”

“Well my boss really likes chickens. Oh, and other similarly related animals! He can know what just about any of them see. Wait is it any, or all? Maybe both? I don’t remember.”

‘This is probably just because of your current time stuff.’ Astrid signed. She had no clue if that was the case or not, but it was better to come up with an excuse just in case.

“Yeah, she’s probably right.” Flora agreed. “Maybe he’s just wondering why a new death kid just appeared.”

Sahn looked like he wanted to disagree with that, but was stopped as Silski walked through him and picked Grian up. “This isn’t going anywhere. You’re coming with me to an… emergency meeting.”

Grian just kicked at Silski. “First put me the hell down, second, what are you even talking about?”

After a moment, Grian was put back down, though with a huff from Silski. “I’m in a team with a few people. We call ourselves the council. One of the people included is your mom. Other than the actual Deaths, she’ll probably know the most about this. Unlike this ghost.” And Silski attempted to gesture to Sahn, but had no clue where the ghost was and did so in the wrong direction.

“Wait what d'ya mean his mum? I thought he was like, Grifter’s cousin? Though I also think I heard Eepr say he was a clone.” Toob was the one speaking up.

“Uh, well I was supposed to pretend to be some sort of relative, but Flora figured out quickly and so I just didn’t bother?” Grian admitted sheepishly, Flora butting in a moment later.

“Yeah I didn’t know about faking it. But enough has already happened in this world, so one more thing isn’t all that surprising.”

“Well I don’t care.” Silski grumbled. “Are you coming with me or not?”

“Sure…” Grian replied hesitantly. He wanted some sort of explanation. There was already enough going on and enough unanswered questions that he wanted some of them to be answered. That being said, the possibility of seeing his mum felt off. Some of it probably came from the fact that this wouldn’t be his actual mother. But it also might be the simple fact that… he didn’t remember her at all. Grian still had a few memories he was clinging onto of his brothers and dad, but his mum was a different story. She was barely ever around due to her ‘job’. That, mixed with Grian having been so young and it having been so long, he honestly didn’t remember what she looked like, how she sounded, what she was like at all. He would know this warped copy of her better than his own mother.

As Silski started to leave, Grian followed, Astrid managing to tell him that she and Flora would keep in contact with their comms. It reassured Grian a bit, which helped, though when he turned back, Silski had gotten pretty far already. 

Grumbling a bit, Grian flew to catch up with the sculk hybrid, nearly face planting into the ground when he landed. “The offer to get carried still stands.” Silski piped up. “Last time I am though, because honestly I’d like to stay away from you and your smell.”

Grian accepted, though instead of being actually carried, he instead perched himself on Silski’s shoulders, which apparently stunk less to him. “Okay I know I tried cleaning myself up when we got back from getting the stuff on my wings checked out, I shouldn’t smell that bad.”

Silski was quiet for a moment, trying to think of what to say that also wouldn’t reveal the secret Astrid had told him. “For all we know, whatever time magic sent you here is ender based. Which is weird since that’s almost impossible to find in pretty much any world, but what else would explain it?”

Grian was pretty sure that by any world, Silski meant the worlds of this reality, not the one he and Grifter were from. Which could make sense if whatever was annoying Silski was unique to the other world he had recently come from and why here and there, the sculk hybrid had mentioned the smell not being as bad. Still, he mentioned that Sense apparently smelled, so what did that mean for him? Just another question to ponder, Grian supposed. In fact, he could even ask about that. “So wait, then what about Sense?”

“Ugh, him. I’m not exactly sure why he smells like death and rotting and whatnot, which makes you seem a whole lot better in comparison. But even ignoring that, I can’t say I’m a fan of him. In the short time he’s been here, Sense has been a prick to me. I didn’t think I did anything wrong, and he sure won’t explain if I ask. I have some guesses, but those might not even be right.”

“Some people can just be assholes.” Grian replied, but then thought about it more. In a world where Taurtis was gone, he had found Perfect Sense. They had been together and seemed madly in love with each other and even had kids. And here was someone saying how bad Sense actually was. Or probably was. He didn’t really know either of the two well enough to know who had more of a point. And, if he did end up the same way, like Grifter, would he potentially turn a blind eye for love? Not if it was really bad, right?

“I can hear your brain going at full steam.” Silski spoke and pulled Grian out of his thoughts, which he realized were probably being spurred on by his audience. “Oh good, that worked. I’ve been trying to talk to you for a while.”

And Grian found that they were already approaching the cottages where Flora had taken him to when she dragged him along while visiting her mum. He hadn’t realized he had zoned out that badly, but Silski also seemed to move pretty fast, so that also probably helped with how short it felt.

He shivered a bit, ready to go into the hopefully warm cabins, only for Silski to walk right past them. Grian complained, but was threatened to be thrown in the snow, so he reluctantly kept quiet. Finally, they reached a bit of a clearing, but nothing really seemed to be there. Which was even more frustrating since Silski stopped moving. Grian still waited a moment, but when nothing happened, he started to say that it all seemed to be a waste of time. Unfortunately, before he could continue, Silski yanked Grian off his shoulders and into his arms before essentially throwing Grian into the middle of the clearing. 

Grian yelped at being thrown, before quickly wrapping his wings around him to help brace for impact. He hoped the snow would also help, and it seemed it did because when Grian did land on the ground, it didn’t hurt at all. It was really cold, but didn’t hurt. But, when he went to sit up and yell at Silski, he found it hard as the snow seemed to have swallowed his wings. Enough snow to weigh them down and make them hard to lift. As he tugged to pull one of his wings free, his audience was suddenly pointing out that his wings weren’t the only things the snow was covering. 

The amount of times Grian had seen quicksand be mentioned in stories had made him assume it would be more common that it was in everyday life. Suddenly finding himself being swallowed up by quick snow made him try to think over what had happened in all those stories. Unfortunately , all he could come up with was people grabbing onto nearby vines. He wasn’t really in a vine filled forest. And there weren’t even any branches due to them being in a clearing.

Grian ultimately resolved himself to the fact he had been betrayed. He was probably going to die, though thankfully it wasn’t going to be permanently. Unless, of course, Silski had planned ahead. As the cold started to become so unbearable that it hurt, Grian figured he would just have to see when he died. And then he fell onto some wool.

Silski fell down from the ceiling a few seconds later, though he landed on his feet. “Come on, we still need to get to the meeting room.”

Grian didn’t move from the floor, just staring up at Silski. “I’m not dead, right?”

Silski huffed before yanking Grian to his feet. “No. It’s a secret entrance through the snow. There’s others around that are traps to trip people up, so don’t go telling people how to find this place.”

“I thought you guys just met out in the open?” Grian said, recalling when he had first seen the group.

“Yeah, that’s for the public club stuff.” And Silski led Grian down the halls of what seemed like some sort of old structure. “Sure, that’s fun and all, but really, we tend to focus on stuff like this.”

Silski gestured, before cursing and realizing that they were still on the wrong side of a door, which he then led them through, and showed the place off again, though with a little less grandeur. Still, despite that, the room definitely looked amazing to Grian. The room was still clearly the room of the old structure, but at the same time it had been updated in a way. Banners hung to the walls proudly and torches held in what looked like sconces adorned the walls. In the center of the room was a strange table. There was a large wooden disk on top to make it into a table, but the base seemed to be something else. 

Curiosity getting the best of him, Grian moved to the table and lifted the disk, staring at the dark magic in the center and the sort of scarlet colored hints accenting it, looking like stars covering the sky. Before he could admire anymore, a hand slammed down in the disk, nearly pinching Grian’s fingers. Grian looked up to see who had done that and found a girl glaring daggers at him. He assumed she would be frowning if it weren’t for the bubble gum she was blowing, which made him flinch when it popped. But he didn’t seem to be the only one startled by the noise as a hiss came from his left. 

Grian took a step back at seeing a creeper, not dealing with them all that much so far, but knowing what they could cause. However, after a moment when it didn’t explode, Grian realized that it was actually a hybrid rather than an actual creeper, and also they had a lot of cats with them.

“Oh come on!” Bubblegum girl glared at the creeper. “How are you still flinching at that?”

“Y-you did it t-too soon.” The creeper shuddered out, almost like they were still cold despite how warm the room was compared to the temperature outside, or should it be considered above? “I d-didn’t get a ch-chance to process it.”

“I duh duh duh- that’s what you sound like. You’re still just a little cry baby.” Grian, though the insults weren’t pointed at him, still winced at them since they were coming from an unfamiliar person that could potentially turn to him at any second.

“F-fuck you.” The words sounded more confident than the stutter would imply. “I got in here j-just like everyone else. And I d-didn’t get a f-free pass, like s-some people.” And then their gaze turned to Grian, also being a glare, which did not help Grian’s confidence with being there. And Silski had yet to say a word, so he didn’t expect the sculk hybrid to speak up and tell them to back off. But someone did.

“Leave him alone. Unlike everyone else, as you are comparing him to, it seems like he wasn’t here willingly.” And Grian looked to see another person enter the room, someone both familiar and not. Someone, though he had forgotten the face of, he could still remember that it was different. His mother, or this version of her at least.

“Speaking of.” Silski now spoke up. “I’ve got answers to your questions about that, as well as a bit more. But the simple answer is that Grian is apparently just Grifter from the past.”

“The simple answer?” The alternate version of his mother asked, and Grian wondered if she could tell he wasn’t the real Grifter. It was probably because of his wings. Grifter apparently made his look more like the real one’s, so maybe he could pretend the opposite?

“Well, he wanted me to pretend otherwise to try and keep things simple. Who knows what someone might want out of the possibility of time travel. So he helped with changing my appearance to really throw people off.”

“I see.” Was the answer before his not mum looked over at bubblegum girl. “Ekke, I believe you had wanted clarification on something?”

Elle popped another bubble before sitting up in her chair. “Yeah. We saw him before. I think he saw us too, but didn’t come running over even though you two said he went missing for a couple of years when he was like this, right?”

“W-we were really y-young then.” The creeper spoke up. “He pr-probab-bly wasn’t sure i-if it was us.”

“Okay fine, whatever.” She chewed loudly and leaned back in her seat, the chair teetering on its back legs. “If ya don’t remember their names, they’re Euro and Krys.”

“Ekke!”

“Whaaat? Just make it quick for the kid so Sil can actually start the meeting.”

Silski sighed before moving Grian to sit in Silski’s chair before the sculk hybrid propped his arms up on the backing. “The main reason we’re here is that someone outside of Grian’s immediate family seems to be taking an interest in things, which could lead to some extra insight on Grian appearing, but could also be cause for concern. Grian’s here to supplement any information I haven’t pieced together from the rumor mill as well as be a sort of… well, not lie detector exactly. But you know what I mean.”

“Uh, I don’t.” Grian spoke up, before being silenced as Silski reached a hand down before covering Grian’s face to shush him. That worked all of two seconds before Grian shoved the hand away and then sulked in the chair.

“S-so… your m-mention of n-non imme-“ Euro wasn’t able to finish his sentence before Silski started to answer. Grian thought it was a bit rude for a moment before noticing Euro didn’t seem upset by it, so maybe it was a normal thing.

“Yes I did mean it was still about someone in your extended family. It seems to be Death. The other one of course.”

Grian watched as Krys clapped a hand to her mouth before slowly lowering it at Silski’s added clarification. “Oh. That’s… strange. You’re sure it’s him?”

“Considering Grian’s got a chicken following him around plus someone saying they literally work for the guy, I’m fairly certain.”

“Lovely…” Krys sighed, rubbing her temples before pausing to pick a cat up off of the floor and hand it to Euro in a fashion that seemed like it was a common action. And it seemed helpful since Euro had not reacted well to the confirmation.

“Is he okay?” Grian asked the group in general, concerned about his… pseudo brother? He guessed that was probably the best way to describe Euro, though he obviously wouldn’t say it aloud.

“Right, you wouldn't know about it, would you?” Silski spoke up. “Did Fleur and Astrid at least tell you about how people get into this world?” Grian thought it over, thinking Flora may have made some small comment about it. But apparently needing to take that long to answer was an answer of its own. “Alright, who wants to explain?”

“I will.” Ekke raised a hand. “So before you were admin, we had this asshole named Nightmare. He said the place was open to just about anyone to join, but to make sure the place wasn’t completely flooded, there was a sort of test in the way. He got ahold of a way for people to have to deal with their ‘biggest fear’ or whatever. If you could get past it, it meant you were strong enough or some bs. Plus, if you showed up together with someone, then you had to go through theirs as well. And if you failed the test by succumbing to it or dying, you would fail. Depending on how, it could just be you booted, or could be everyone. Turns out part of the reason he was so insistent was because this place is screwed the hell up because of the guy interested in you, and trying to get out is only easier than getting in because of that test.”

Grian’s heart dropped at the last bit of information. Sure, most of it didn’t sound great, but he kind of wanted to leave to get back home eventually, and time travel wasn’t really the easiest thing in the first place. Plus, if the person interested in him had messed things up that badly… well, who knew what that meant for him. “Well… uh, what does that mean for Euro?”

“A few things really.” Krys was the one to speak up before showing off some scars on her neck that made Grian flinch. He had seen similar ones on Flora, but they were mostly covered with fur. Without that, they looked a lot worse. “As you know, your father is one side of death. Nightmare knew that and… didn’t want him involved. So he made sure to find ways to cut contact between him and us. Some of that included him involving your uncle once he did learn about what had happened to us.”

“Oh… so dad’s…?” Grian trailed off. It wasn’t his dad, not really, and he hated that he needed to keep reminding himself that. But again, he still wanted to see his family again, no matter what version of them it was.

“Wile sees him most often, your father makes it a bit easier to leave. Not by too much, but enough.”

Grian nodded before thinking of another question. “Uh, do you guys need to go through that whole test every time? Or did I guess, since it’s not around anymore from what Grifter told me.”

“Th-thankfully n-no.” Euro hissed out. “If I h-had to see th-those two every time, th-the potato t-torcher w-wouldn’t be en-nough.”

“Potato torcher?” Grian asked, eyebrows raising in a mixture of shock and concern. “Is that-?”

“A sentient potato really screwed Euro over.” Ekke spoke up. “One day it was ‘oh you are suck a close friend! Come to my wedding because we are such good friends’ to ‘why are you so upset I tried threatening a child with doxxing’ all the way to ‘here’s every time I and some others you thought were friends actually hate you for that we decided to tell you all at once instead of pointing it out in the moment for you to work on, why the hell didn’t you ever improve or change?’ ignoring the fact that they changed the context of some of those things. It, pardon the language, really fucked him over for ages. He tried joining this place not long later and I’m surprised he made it through alive. It was like a reverse beacon stealing nightmare. Not the person of course.”

“That… is a lot to unpack.” Grian spoke up, glancing at the creeper hybrid. “Are you sure he’s okay with you sharing all that?”

“Pretty much.” Ekke shrugged. “He’s terrified of sharing it directly, so doing it through other means works better. I’m totally free if you ever want to do the same. As long as it’s not also something that causes you disdain for potatoes and certain conifer trees because I don’t think I could handle two of that.”

“It’s uh… mainly rabbit based.” Grian admitted quickly, hoping it would resolve the topic. Which it seemed to with Ekke nodding before Silski coughed to bring attention back to him and then get them back on topic.

“Anyway, again, Warrior named death is involved again. I already mentioned he has someone around that’s working for him. That someone said they were here for Grian specifically, but also for someone going by the same of Spore.”

“Oh n-no…”

“I can’t be certain that it’s anything related to sculk though.” Silski paused to give Grian some clarification. “The Dark, aka what’s through the portal that is this table, is fungal like, and fungi have spores.” And Silski lifted the board on top of the table enough to show off the portal briefly to Grian. “The worker specifically mentioned that Spore was asked to interact with Perfect Sense and help with his redstone poisoning.”

“Which could be from redstone immunity which fits if it is sculk based.” Krys agreed. “Or might not if they’re interacting with his kind.”

“His kind?” Grian asked, wondering if it had something to do with Silski’s ‘ender’ mentions.

“There is a very long story about that.” Krys answered. “But a simple thing is that he’s not really from around here.”

“Ah.” Grian nodded, realizing that was probably more connected to him and Grifter not being from around there either.

“Okay next bit.” Ekke spoke up, getting a frustrated sigh out of Krys.

“We still need to be careful about the ‘entrance exams’ apparently.” Silski spoke, using air quotes around entrance exams. “Astrid came back mentioning a pretty big group was stuck in a reenabled test. There’s a chance it’s still connected to Warrior because of how big the group supposedly is. The person who showed up already is a ghost, so they likely got a free pass.”

“How m-many is a large gr-roup?” Euro asked, getting an answer of ten people, which made him hiss and hide by snuggling into cat fur.

“They hopefully won’t come through then.” Krys spoke, though she still looked concerned. “Did Astrid mention any progress?”

“Not directly, no.” Silski started, then quickly added before anyone could reply, “She did mention a ‘king’ is part of the group, so if they do make it through…”

“I understand. If something happens to you, we won’t fault you for it.”

Silski shrugged, and Grian looked for some sort of answer, though he wasn’t given one. “I still might as well give the rest of the information I’ve put together. It’ll go to a whole lot more use if it’s not stuck with me.”

“Okay spit it out half n half.” Ekke got glares from everyone with working eyes, but didn’t seem to mind, just waiting for Silski to continue.

“This next part is probably going to get me in trouble, but I don’t trust Grifter.”

“What?” Grian turned in his seat to look at Silski. “Uh, but he’s me?” He then wondered if Silski had realized that they weren’t the real Grifter. “Why say it in front of me if-”

“Because you should get a heads up.” Silski replied, cutting Grian off, then further explained when Krys asked him to. “Look, he’s the new admin and everything, and I swear my distaste isn’t just because of the company he keeps, though to me it’s a very good reason.”

“That’s my future husband you’re referring to.” Grian complained before Silski whacked him.

“Look, he’s your future version. I’m sure you think that makes him immediately trustworthy, but I don’t think that’s the case. You want to go to your home and change the past? Well what if he’s in the version of the timeline where he tried that and it’s a lost cause? You were mumbling about someone completely different when you came back from some ‘training’ with Grifter, and based on context clues, I think it’s someone you want to change the past for. Maybe Grifter thinks it’s fine to screw them over to keep things how they are, but you might not.”

“Who’s to say it wouldn’t be purposely screwing them over that I want to cause?” Grian asked, getting an answer from Euro.

“W-well, if you wa-ant to do that, then y-you would just want to d-do it f-for you, but Sils-ski said you w-want it f-for the other p-person, which i-isn’t a dist-tinction made lightly.”

“Okay, fine. So what if that is what he’s doing? Maybe he’s right.” Grian spoke back, though if it were the case, he wouldn’t be happy with it.

“That’s just one possibility. There could be other things that are going on. Like the fact that he’s training you at all is worrying.”

“How so?”

“What exactly is he training you for?” Krys asked, and Grian quickly gave the answer, which seemed to concern her. “Oh, yes that is worrying. Listeners are particular about things, Watchers just as much.”

“Watchers?” Grian asked. It wasn’t something Grifter had mentioned, at least not that he could really recall.

“They’re counterparts to Listeners. It’s not something I’m an expert on, not in the slightest, but the two are made to be balances to one another in more than one way, to the point that just one Listener can affect things on the other side greatly. If you’re learning early, it could cause some issues.”

“Well, Grifter’s been constantly going to wherever other Listeners are and telling them about what’s going on.” Grian explained from what he had been told. “If they haven’t made a big stink about it, then it must be fine, right?”

“G-grian, you k-keep saying th-things that you’ve b-been told.” Euro spoke up. “B-but have you g-gotten any p-proof? Saying th-things c-can be r-really easy comp-pared to actual p-proof.”

Grian wondered for a moment if maybe Euro had a point before he remembered that Grifter had given him some proof. “Yes, I have.” He looked over at Krys, knowing she would be able to verify what he was saying on some level. “The other person who’s been staying with you, Flora’s mom Sadie, she’s seen the physical proof I’ve been given about everything.”

Krys paused before nodding. Sadie had mentioned something to her of that sort. That confirmation seemed to help Euro and Ekke, but Silski was another deal. He knew a bit more than he could say, for fear of completely screwing things over. Sure, proof could be proof, but it still wasn’t something first hand. Even something like what Grian was mentioning needed to be verified. And if it was anything like what he assumed from what little info he’d gathered about what the so called proof was, it seemed like something that could be manipulated, giving half truths and leaving out certain parts to cast Grifter in a better light than reality.

“Now, I would like to circle back to something you mentioned before.” Krys spoke up, directing her statement to Silski. “This ghost you mentioned could have easily gotten through to this world, but it sounded like this Spore person is also around if the ghost has already contacted them. That is what you meant, yes?”

“Right.” Silski grumbled. “My guess is they either managed to be separate from the big group, or they got in through alternate methods.”

“Like what?” Ekke asked, then Silski patted Grian’s head. “Him?”

“Me?” Grian asked, looking up at Silski for some sort of explanation.

“Just because it could be they’re connected to sculk doesn’t mean they definitely are. You guys crashed at our house after you met with Cerus, which happened because you owed Wassa. And you owed Wassa because after Grifter took you off-world to train, you came back with some sort of substance on your wings that appeared after you were in a mushroom valley or something.”

“Uh… cave but the rest is pretty accurate.” Grian mentioned. “How much are they talking about me behind my back?”

“Just stuff they want another opinion on.” Silski tried reassuring Grian. “Plus, they’re not entirely convinced Grifter’s telling the full truth either. Fleur’s wondering things with the ghost around and Astrid’s still wary of him after her whole curse incident.”

“Right, that.” Grian reluctantly agreed. He still didn’t think that was the case, that Grifter was lying. He had been handed proof, shouldn’t that be enough? “Well, uh, if we’re worried about the Spore person, since we know they’re connected to the death you’re talking about, if they were somehow brought over by me, someone should have noticed.”

“You mean like noticing you had gunk stuck all over your wings?”

“Not all over them!” Grian argued, then hesitated before adding on. “Just… noticeable enough that it bothered me. But that doesn’t take much!”

“Then show your wings off to the others.” 

Grian froze at the suggestion. Not because showing the mycelium off could be bad, but more the idea of him showing his wings off to two people who were supposed to be his family. They would know he wasn’t supposed to have these bright colorful wings, so the best explanation would be that they were disguised that way. But you couldn’t really color them differently since the shape was different too. So it would have to be some sort of illusion, but something like that should also hide the mycelium. And since they knew he was supposed to be Grifter’s past version, he couldn’t use some other excuse. He didn’t know how to make an actual illusion himself to make his wings look like how they were ‘supposed to’ while also showing off the mycelium they hadn’t quite gotten rid of. Especially since he couldn’t really look at his wings since they were on his back.

“You hesitating isn’t a great sign.” Ekke spoke up, then made Grian flinch as she blew and popped a bubblegum bubble.

“I… I’m not a fan of anyone looking at them. I barely tolerated getting them inspected before, and that was only because Flora and Astrid were there.” Grian fumbled before giving his excuse. It wasn’t exactly a lie, he had gotten used to his wings being messed with back home… mainly by Sam. If the circumstances were a little different, he probably would let the group look, but for now, he couldn’t. “I know technically you’re part of my family, well I mean you are.” Grian then had to quickly cover almost revealing things. “It’s just, I haven’t seen you guys in years. If it weren’t for showing up here in the future, it sounds like I still wouldn’t have seen you for a few more years. We might be related, but you’re still pretty much strangers to me.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Krys agreed. “However, if you could potentially come back with one of those two at a later time, this is pretty important.”

“We’ll see.” Grian answered, then looked at the others. “So, is that about it?”

“I th-think so.” Euro said, then looking to Ekke, who nodded.

“Alright then, let’s go.” Silski spoke up, then started to stand before Krys held up a hand, making everyone pause.

“There is one more thing I think we should discuss.”

“And what’s that?”

Krys sighed before speaking again. “We’re under the assumption that The Warrior is after Grian due to his time displacement, but I’m not completely sure. Technically, it could be that, but it may not be just from curiosity.”

“What do you mean?” Ekke spoke up, now sitting in her chair properly and looking at Krys. Looking over to Euro, Grian saw he looked just as concerned.

“My husband is not the biggest fan of Grian, or rather, Grifter. It takes a bit of explanation, but the long and short of it is that despite being death, they can be killed, and Grifter could potentially do that.”

“He could what?” Silski asked, surprised and nearly shouting. Grian was just as surprised. Was she saying that he would want to- no, it was just speculation, right?

“How do you know that?” Grian asked, voice wavering, before getting his fears confirmed that Grifter had tried to kill Deathza. The only thing reassuring Grian at that point was the following information that it occurred before Grifter was put in prison, meaning before he was replaced with the current Grifter.

“Okay, let me get the full explanation out of the way, it will make things a whole lot simpler.” Krys spoke, then pulled out a sword. Grian worried about why the weapon was drawn before the blade was used to carve into the table. “Our universe is really two universes. Once upon a time, they were just one, but that’s not the case now.” And she caved a line down the middle of the square she had originally carved. “Most people think of them as mirrors to one another, but that’s not exactly the case. Think of it as more of a set of scales. If you put weight on one side, a matching weight needs to be placed on the other side. It doesn’t need to be immediate, but the longer one side weighs more, the more likely it could eventually crash against the ground and potentially break the scale itself.”

Grian looked at the scale that was carved onto the table, one side on each side of the middle dividing line. While the scale example worked, the mention of most people thinking of the two as mirrors made Grian also take that into account. If it was so common, then there had to be some things that fit better with that explanation. Like, if he were here, could the actual past version of Grifter be experiencing the same thing? Or if the real Grifter were also on this side, what did that mean for the side Grian was from. “Uh, do the sides have names at all?”

“A few.” Krys agreed. “Aey and Enne, Wels and Hels, Kall(Kæll) and Glöd, there’s a good amount. We’re in Aey and the other is Enne. People are usually from one or the other, but the gods are not, and there are rumors that there are some people who could still be from the before. I would doubt that’s the case since again, the scales. They can be tipped for a while, but certainly not that long.”

Grian nodded, but then looked up from the diagram to ask a question. “So, what does that have to do with now?”

“I’m getting there.” Krys assured, then dragged her sword over the place where the scale connected. “Aey and Enne can still interact with one another. Mentioned before were the Listeners and Watchers. While they are mainly considered part of Aey and Enne respectively, they interact with both sides, with at least one of each assigned to each world. Along with that, their kind are not restricted to which side they come from. Another example of interaction is for the deaths. Two deaths for each side. They represent the two sides to death itself for their respective half of the universe.”

Krys drew a pair of circles on both sides of the split, putting an extra dot in one of the circles on what Grian assumed was the Aey side. “Despite them being the embodiment of death in its various forms, they aren’t gods. I wouldn’t say demigods either, but even lesser gods isn’t right. And then powerful practically immortals is a mouthful.” Krys sighed. “As long as the deaths are deaths, they are able to go between worlds at will, ones from both Aey and Enne. For the most part, they will stick to the side they belong to, but for certain cases they will interact with the other. The biggest reason for that is that there’s one rule placed on them by the gods. They cannot be the ones handling the souls of their family.”

While it made sense, Grian was still surprised by it. Whenever he was dealing with the possibility of dying back home, he always recalled that his mother was death. He didn’t know the full ins and outs of it, which was obvious now, but he had hoped that if he did die, stuck as a ghost or not, he would still potentially get to see her again. “So… if I end up dying…”

“Your father wouldn’t be involved, even if it would fall on his portion of death.” She paused when Grian opened his mouth. “This explanation is already long enough, I’m not explaining those sides.” And Grian’s mouth snapped shut. “Your uncle also wouldn’t be involved due to that as he is still part of your family. It affects mostly direct bonds, children, marriage, adoption too for Flora’s case. But because of all that, neither death of this world could deal with any of us, so that would fall upon the deaths of Enne. Or, it could fall upon the duty of a new death.”

“Which would happen if one of them were killed?” Grian asked, pretty sure he was following along.

“If they were killed or retired or whatnot. Their title would pass on. If they willingly leave the position, then it would be given to who they also willingly pass it to. But if they are killed, it passes to the one who defeated them.”

And suddenly a lot of things made sense. “So, you’re saying that my uncle, this ‘Warrior’, might be interested in me because Grifter could kill him. And… and he might want to kill me first? To erase Grifter so he couldn’t even try?”

“Smart kid.” Ekke spoke up, but then looked to Krys to confirm if that was what she was trying to imply, earning a nod.

“Before, I would have said that it couldn’t be the case, but there’s also the fact that Silski has implied your… ‘scent’ could be from something connected to Enne. But that doesn’t entirely matter right now. What does matter is why the Warrior is really interested in you.”

“Then I guess we’ll need to start grilling the ghost he had show up. You guys owe me and Toob for kidnapping Jane. And making him stay at our place. And making me deal with the ender fucker more. Just, you guys are in charge of interrogation.”

“Okay fine, that’s fair.” Grian agreed. “So, now are we done?”

“Yes, now we are done.” Krys agreed, then stood from her seat and flipped the table board over, revealing other carvings. “Oh, uh. I guess we need another one of these.”

“Not it.” Silski spoke up, then picked Grian up, ignoring as he squawked a bit. “I need to get him out of here and then back to my place. Among other things. So bye.” 

By the time they were back out in the snow, Grian didn’t really notice the cold all too much, instead focusing his thoughts on everything that was talked about. Okay well he did eventually focus on the cold because it felt like it was freezing his wings off. The feeling did subside enough for him to start thinking again, making him think he just got used to it. And that was a fair assumption, seeing as how he was right before with the fact that he couldn’t see his wings well, including how the mycelium stuck in them receded in time with his feeling of the cold.

.

.

.

Jrum, along with a number of the Hermits, were at spawn. He held a weapon in his off hand, but his main hand was sparking slightly. Not because he was damaged or anything, no. Vee, along with some help from Hoodie, had been teaching Jrum fairly well on how to use magic. And by fairly well, he meant he had learned the basics well enough to not explode and said it was good enough for him. 

While Jrum trusted the two enough to teach him, that still wasn’t by much, but the only Hermits who could have taught him were busy or unavailable, and the other magic users weren’t in a compatible style or whatever Joe had said about it. 

Speaking of Joe, he and the other opped Hermits had finally found the issue with the whitelist. Whether it was Grifter’s doing or someone else’s, people who were supposed to be ignored by the whitelist, specifically Watchers and Listeners, were now being checked. And since they weren’t officially on the list, they couldn’t get through. That being said, the reason Vee had gotten in was because of an exception Xisuma had added for those under a certain listed age. He had added it after a small fiasco that had happened when the bots were first given their bodies. There was also supposed to be more to the rule, but it was assumed that the fact Vee was from Hels was messing with it.

Either way, it led back to why everyone was at spawn. After adding the main people who were being kept out by the issue, Vee had been allowed to add her father onto the list. Though the Hermits were reluctant since he had associated with Grifter before, he hadn’t seemed to know the actual truth. Still, he probably knew the most out of everyone involved that would be willing to talk to them. And if he did cause issues, then Pix or Zloy could be called in.

When someone finally appeared, the Hermits all prepared just in case there were problems right off the bat. Fortunately that didn’t seem to be the case, and the Listener just looked over the Hermits before Cub gestured that they could relax a bit. As soon as he did, Vee ran out from the crowd, no longer being held back by Stress. 

The Listener merely let Vee tackle him with a hug before attaching herself to one of his arms. One of his six arms. The arm lifted until Vee was in front of his face, which had milky white eyes that probably couldn’t see well if at all. “Papa! You’re here!”

“I am.”

“And you’re like this! Jungle gym time!”

The Listener laughed before bringing another arm up, which she also hugged onto. As she continued to hang from his arms, the Listener looked at the Hermits to answer the main question he assumed they had. “I don’t feel comfortable showing off my regular look to you guys. This is how I look when all… Listener-ified. I think you have seen how Grian looks when he’s the same.”

“You mean when he looks more like a giant harpy?” Scar spoke up, getting another laugh out of the Listener.

“Yes, like that. I managed to get these things.” And he moved his extra sets of arms that Vee wasn’t clinging to.

“Jungle gym Papa!”

“Yes, it could also be called that.” And then he pulled Vee away and put her back on the ground. “But it’s probably better if you go play somewhere else.”

“Aww, but you just got here!”

The Listener sort of seemed to glance up at the Hermits before speaking to Vee again in a stage whisper. “Well I think these guys want to make me do boring adult things with me. Probably meetings and paperwork and presentations.”

“Nooo that’s dumb!”

“Well you can run off so you won’t have to suffer through it with me.”

Vee nodded before running over to Jrum to play with him again. Jrum reluctantly followed, but did his best to go slowly to hear as much of what he could.

“Alright, so are we going to be talking here, or do you guys have a special meeting room?”

“We have one of those if you don’t mind the travel to get there.” Cub was the one who spoke up, and then Jrum caught the Listener nodding.

“It’s no problem Mx…?”

“Huh? Oh don’t bother with that, just call me Cub.”

“You never know, better safe than sorry.” And then Jrum saw him shrug, which looked weird with extra arms. “You can call me Joeyish.”

And then Jrum was finally pulled out of hearing range, and also dealing with Vee panicking from seeing a fish.

[petrichormeraki]

All this talk of Hels!Tommy has got me thinking... got any other ideas for Hels versions of dreamsmp members?

so far the only other dsmp folks in hermitcraft are ranboo, tubbo, and drista......👀👀👀👀

[thereisabearonmyceiling]

here it is, by popular demand (like 2 people told me to do this, blame them) and because i am a man of my word:

The (in)Complete Terrible Horrible No Good Awful MCYT Cinematic Universe Family Tree

SOME NOTES

- this is done mostly from memory (plus the occasional glance at the dsmp wiki, that shit's complicated) and so i might have missed some things

- i am aware this looks less like a family tree and more like a map of the subway. i did my best, deal with it

- "canon" covers anything that was mentioned/referenced by the creators ever, no matter how ridiculous

- as far as headcanons go, i tried to include the most popular ones/the ones that would make the most sense (like characters who are the same species being related). some are a bit of a stretch and also some of them contradict each other, but i had to make this work somehow cut me some slack. most of these aren't my headcanons, they're just ones i've seen floating around a bunch

- assume a general /rp for the entire thing, especially where romantic relationships are concerned. i don't ship real people and this is supposed to be a lighthearted bit of fun, don't take it too seriously

- there are a grand total of 63 characters on this thing, or 62 if you don't consider the dragon egg to be a character. 46 of them are actual mcyts (48 if you consider drista and mumza to be mcyts). the rest are either mobs/npcs or other characters played by the same people

- i drew this with crap glitter pens because that's what i had on hand. i tried to make it readable (would have digitized it but i don't have my tablet on me and it would be too much effort anyway), but in case i failed there's more detailed notes under the cut (as well as some explanations)

- if you want to make any additions go right ahead, feedback is also welcome but if you find a spelling mistake keep that shit to yourself

ok here's the stupid amount of notes:

(from left to right. sort of)

ethoslab - docm77: doc has said multiple times that etho is his dad. this is a joke but we're taking it as canon here

doc - awesamdude: creeper dudes

sam - foolishgamers - ponk: they have a sort of love triangle going on i think

foolish jr & finley: foolish's totem kids

foolish - captainpuffy - michelle: papa puffy adopted both of them

puffy - nihachu: canonically were dating at some point. no idea if they are still

puffy - dream: popular hc that puffy is dream's mom

dream - drista - dreamxd: dream and drista are siblings and xd is probably related to them somehow, i mean just look at the guy

dream - georgenotfound - dreamxd: idk which one of them george is into, maybe it's both

george - shubble/shrub: shroom people

shubble - katherine elizabeth: (empires) nature wives

dream - ranboo: i haven't seen anyone hc them as family for a bit, but it was a thing at one point and so i'm counting it

ranboo - tubbo - michael : they're married. michael is their adopted son

ranboo - ranbob: ranbob is ranboo's descendant in tales from the smp

tubbo - captainsparkles (is it sparkles or sparklez?): i used to see a lot of posts about captain being tubbo's dad, again idk if it's still a thing

dream - fundy: is their wedding canon to the dream smp? unclear. is it canon to this chart? absolutely

fundy - yogurt: fundy's adopted fox child

fundy - eret: failed (?) adoption attempt. i'm counting it

eret - herobrine: canonically related

herobrine - joehills: is joe related to herobrine? are they the same person? is herobrine hels joe? is it the other way around? i don't know, but something sure is going on here...

eret - karl jacobs - quackity: according to the dream smp wiki, eret used to be engaged to karl and quackity. i did not know this

karl - quackity - sapnap: fiances

sapnap - badboyhalo: bad is sapnap's dad

bad - skeppy: this is the only one with 'other' because i don't know what category to put 'their canon lives are directly connected to each other' in. the wiki said 'life source' but i don't have a colour for that

quackity - purpled: i know these two are bussiness partners at most but! technically and legally speaking, if purpled is a minor then quackity would sort of count as his legal guardian. no i'm not grasping at straws shut up, and also ignore the fact that the dsmp doesn't have the same laws we do

purpled - punz: mercenary bros

purpled - xisumavoid: clearly purpled bedwars and xisumavoid creator of bedwars are related. or at least enough people think so for me to put it on the chart

xisuma - evil x: are they brothers? is one of them a clone of the other? are they both clones? who cares, it's going on the chart

wilbur soot - sally - fundy: fish fucker #1, fish, and fox son

wilbur (technically ghostbur but i couldn't fit him on the chart) - friend: he also fucked a sheep apparently

the entire mess of the sbi family dynamic. is here. includes a fridge

wilbur - grian: button eyed chaos brothers. just look at them side by side and tell me they aren't related

grian - grumbot - mumbo jumbo: grian and mumbo created a robot son for the purpose of winning an election. they then left him in a box in season 7. they aren't good dads but they are dads, and that's all that matters here

grian - pearlescentmoon: something something sun and moon siblings

grian - dragon egg: he yoinked the dragon egg and now he's gotta raise a baby dragon, what more is there to say

geminitay - dragon egg: she also yoinked the dragon egg and wants to raise a baby dragon, but for much nobler purposes (at least i think so. i should really watch that episode)

dragon egg - ender dragon: the actual owner of the dragon egg, could all these people please stop taking it it's very rude

ender dragon - illumina: dragon hybrid illumina is a thing and i totally didn't just really want to have a speedrunner on here, i would never tamper with this very serious scientific document like that

gem - fwhip - mythicalsausage: wither rose alliance are also siblings. empiresblr said so

grian - jimmy solidarity mr gaming: jimmy has a cod head. grian's head is a cod head. i thus conclude they both have cod genes and are therefore related

jimmy - ldshadowlady: royal fish siblings

jimmy - ijevin - slimecicle: it is my personal headcanon that all minecraft slimes originate from one single massive megaslime, and are thus all related. also for the purposes of this bit of the chart, jimmy is now a slime hybrid instead of a fish one

jimmy - scott smajor: in 3rd life? flower husbands. in empires? fishfucker #2. yes jimmy is back to being a fish

lizzie - joel: they are married! also fishfucker #3 (last one, thank god)

joel - scott - wilbur: someone on my last post said to make the fishfuckers relatives. here you go, i hope you're happy

scott - xornoth: kind of brothers in another life maybe? good enough for me

xornoth - joey graceffa: it might be a one sided relationship but it is a relationship and so it goes on the chart

scott - zombiecleo: this one is probably the biggest stretch but it's their hypothetical 'widows alliance' from 3rd life. no it didn't happen, and even if it did i don't think it would belong on a family tree, but it's here anyway

cleo - bdoubleo100: if bdubs dying would make cleo a widow then that means bdubs and cleo were married in 3rd life, and that's just a fact you'll have to deal with now

IN CONCLUSION

i am tired, this took way too long, i don't think it was worth it, please reblog this so at least i don't feel like i completely wasted my time. if any ccs see this i am sorry, especially if i called you a fish fucker. good night

[lockoutkey]

This idea won't leave my head so

Techno finds out about the Xisuma truthers from Squid, who thought Techno's sudden interest in obscure mythology was because he was part of the club and came to mock him for it

At this point Techno has talked with Dream and Drista a few times and learned 1) Drista won't trust him and 2) Dream remembered nothing about being the god of life. He was determined to find some kind of source. He also knows squid is his long time enemy in every life, though squid doesn't. This makes him want to beat squid at everything even more.

Squid finds him in the mythology section and confronts him about being in the xisuma truthers. It's basically the buzzfeed unsolved meme where Squid is like "I've connected the dots." and Techno is like "You didn't connect shit."

Squid also thought he was in it because of Wilbur. Wilbur didn't tell Techno he was in the Xisuma Truthers because he had the idea he was protecting the gods and in this au Tech is still the favorite and Wilbur wants to make Phil proud and confusing the club. So Techno confronts him about it and Wilbur is like *shrugs* it's fun.

THEN Techno finds out about the Starbucks antis and their rivalry with the truthers. He interviews them, thinking they'll be on his side. Hel's basically tunnel visions though as soon as he hears the word truther and goes into a caffine induced rage. He roundhouse kicks at Techno who of course dodges it and runs out of the store. No way, he is staying far away from them.

Techno is back to square one and Squid is laughing from the corner. Finally, he can be the only student in their department with a 4.0.

[moved-19871997]

Hey wait hasn't dream said he doesn't have a car? what if this entire time all the fic writers have been fantasizing about dream picking george up at the airport in his car when in reality it's gonna be dream's mom with dream and sapnap sitting in the back

HEL P its gonna be george squished between sap and dream in the middle seat because he's the smallest with drista in shotgun or something

[weareallstardustfallen]

!!! all your aus are so coool!! any other things to say about it like the plot stuff and evil people? (i dont know much about the whole thing but still 👀)

like i said i Love talking about this so i have Many things to say!

the evil hermits, in this au, are essentially created when a god attempts to divorce themself from a part of their own divinity that they see as undesirable, and end up creating a separate person from it in the process. they're not full gods, but are simply reflections of the parts of themself that a god didn't like- although, with time, they can certainly become their own person and maybe their own god? not certain on that yet.

anyway, helsknight is basically the manifestation of dishonor and injustice, made when wels, the god of honor and justice, attempted to cut out his own flaws, hoping to turn them into something that could be beaten. it... didn't go to plan, obviously, and now they've got an evil version of wels running around who deeply, deeply resents him! fun times.

evil xisuma, on the other hand, is made of the parts of x's domain (guardianship and protection) that tend towards being selfish and possessive. he's much older than hels, created in a fit of desperation by x, and at this point has definitely become a lot more than just a corrupted reflection of x! he's still like. morally gray at best, but he's a lot less "i want to watch the world burn for what's been done to me" than hels is.

so that's the evil hermits, onto the dsmp parts!

so there are essentially five gods on the dsmp, plus drista and kristin. those gods are:

foolish, who... doesn't do much in this au tbh. sorry dude. he's the god of cycles

dream, god of manipulation and power and owner of the server. the way xd works in this world is that he's dream's godly power, used basically as an enforcer while dream mingles with the mortals on his world. he can be recalled if dream needs access to that power.

ranboo, the god of endings, the end, and destruction. ranboo isn't a fully-fledged god- instead he's a godling, who hasn't fully come into his power and his domain, and who is mentored by other, fully grown gods until he's ready.

phil, the god of death, and techno, the god of war and blood, are his mentors! they're both protector and teacher, basically meant to help ranboo as he grows up until he's properly a god, rather than a godling.

the problem is dream. he has such control over the server that the fact that they are more powerful than he is doesn't really matter, and he's able to cut off the end, which, y'know, ranboo is the god of, and that does pose a problem as far as ranboo being ready to be a god goes. what kicks off the plot of this au is dream trying to kill ranboo- ranboo, with some help from kristin, escapes to hermitcraft, where the hermits care for him until they can get in contact with phil and techno, which grian does at MCCP21, and bring them back to hermitcraft as well. afterwards, several of them go back to the dsmp to take it from dream's control, as well as strip him of his godhood, which results in a surprise new god 👀 i am happy to talk about that but it should probably be a separate post cuz this one's getting kinda long

[its-elvie-innit]

the problem with my mcyt writing is i forget i ever even started? like it just pops out of my mind. I have pages full of thousands of words somewhere in my drafts, and i forget that i ever wrote it, like the time that was used doesn’t exist anymore. would you like me to list off drafts that I remember? too bad im doing it anyway

this list got fuckin lomg

--------

Ranboo glasses fic, about 11 paragraphs

Niki nihachu antarctic empire fic

An exile MCD fic that I started two weeks before exile. I’m on chapter four.

Alivebur resurrection 

not even a fic, but a one-page [at least] essay on political status-quo in L’manburg, when L’manburg was still a thing

about three responses to analysis and debate that i Forgot I Was In

A Ranboo, WWI morse code fic that i forgot i was writing until i checked in my drafts just now

oh shit i forgot to respond to that person too im sorry uncertain it’s still in my drafts fuck

hoo boy there’s so many drafts with half cut-off words in here

a ghostbur hug fic this time, jeez elvie you really want physical comfort for wil huh

A completely done liveblogged disc analysis that I never posted wtf

In a three-draft succession; Technoblade dealin with his Voices [tm], Ranboo being a forgetful bitch, Tommyinnit being an older brother to tubbo fic. All of these have like two paragraphs I think i did them all at the same time

There’s so many jokes in here that I wrote at four am, tommyinnit does Not set his stream schedule around teatime elvie shut up

just got down to December 26th in the drafts, more to go hold on

HOLY SHIT ADULT-DUCK WINGED QUACKITY HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT THIS MASSIVE COLLAGE I SPENT LIKE AN HOUR LOOKING FOR WING PICS

we’ve gotten to the 169 follower count post, and I’ve passed about thirty half-finished posts that are one to four sentences. I do not care to mention any of them.

Quackity dissociation/guilt fic over the butcher army oooh i like this one

Ranboo enderman fic first draft!! that was fun :]

Ghostinnit concept, i very much like this

drista drista drista, more drista, some tommy and ghostbur and wilbur then some more drista, dri- what the fuck is a “tubbeatle”

“Dream want’s to become the new Wilbur” analysis post because i was sooooo metaaaa

Half of a “Tubbo looks like he’s from the beatles” post, so hey maybe Beatlebo does make sense

Dadza snooping through his kids discord drabble

my stupid liddle “dream is the traitor” drafts, i was proud of those

wait I wrote dnf???? when??????? when did i write this how did i not remember???? it’s finished??? did i ever post it>??????? what the hel???????????????

RIGHT BELOW IT IS A DRAFT THAT JUST SAYS “QUIT IT” ELVIE FUCK OFF

wait brotherly purpled and quackity that’s actually a really good idea

[mellos-hellos]

Random thought: So, I know EX is probably X’d hels but I had an X hels idea: someone with admin powers who uses creative and goes around causing chaos like Drista (Dream’s sister) but probably eviler -🌖anon

OoooOOO that's a good concept ! like a funny mischievous trickster sorta person that's a bit on the fucked up side? mwah! chef kiss! a good character trope !

[votederpycausemufins]

it's been a while since I posted a chapter. Would someone like to tell me wtf is up with tumblr's post formatting? who changed it? i don liek.

Well, the first section gave me major writers block but the rest was smooth sailing. well, other than the fact i was delayed from kinda graduating. I am a very happy muffin due to that, and now you can deal with writing from someone with a gd degree, so take that or whatever.

Remember to check my pinned post to find all the chapters for this fic if you need a refresher.

and lastly since this is a hermit tommy au fic, thanks to @petrichormeraki for first creating the au.

Xisuma landed on what should have been the shopping district, but instead of the terraformed mushroom island filled with buildings, it was a plains area with creeper holes littering it and a few simple and broken builds. There was a cracked nether portal, not able to let anyone through, but still humming with magic, something that worried Xisuma more.

Tommy had been living with the Hermits for a good amount of time. At first he was terrified of all of them, Xisuma especially, but over time he was able to relax and feel safe. Tommy had also shared some of what was going on before ending up in Hermitcraft, but they all knew it had to be worse than he was describing it. But this was even worse than Xisuma thought if it was all real. The large open space meant it was easier for mobs to spawn, worsened by the lack of structures for safety. Then factor in the damaged portal, and things could get… messy.

Xisuma was used to hearing his own voice come from elsewhere, whether from recordings, or from his brother’s mouth, but neither of those should have been around. But as he approached the log walls of what fit the description of what Tommy’s home had been in exile, Xisuma still managed to hear someone talking that sounded too much like himself. And then when it stopped, there seemed to be a quiet reply from Tommy.

Though the walls of Logstedshire stood fairly well, everything inside the wall was gone, replaced with a deep hole from who knew how many explosions. And standing in the center of it all was Tommy, a copy of Xisuma right behind him.

Not wanting whatever was happening to continue, Xisuma slid down into the pit, running over to Tommy and the fake, calling out for the teen. Tommy looked up, then between the admin and his copy before the copy seemed to whisper something in Tommy’s ear.

“Hey! Get away from him!” Xisuma called out, wishing he had some way to easily separate the imposter and Tommy. Even more so when he finally reached Tommy and the teen flinched. “What were you saying to him? What did you do?”

Sure, Xisuma could be a bit of a derp, and while he knew the ins and outs of actually being an admin, in practice he wasn’t always the ‘best admin’ as everyone claimed he was, the start of season six being an example of that. But when it came to his hermits, he hated the idea of them getting hurt on his watch. Especially the younger hermits. If he had a way to keep them safe, he was going to try it. So seeing Tommy like this, especially due to a copy of himself, really hurt.

With a few quick movements, Xisuma moves Tommy to him and his own body between the teen and his copy. Tommy was covering his ears and had his eyes squeezed shut, his body tensed. Xisuma wasn’t sure how to help with any of that, too worried about making it worse, so he went to look at the other version of him again, only to find them gone.

After whirling around to look just about anywhere, the imposter seemed to really be gone, which on one hand was good to not deal with, but also worrying, as Tommy could be more likely to mistake him as the fake Xisuma. 

“Tommy. Tommy, Tommy. Can you tell me what I was just saying?” He asked while carefully pulling one of Tommy’s hands away from his ears. Sure, the easy thing to do would be to claim everything the fake said was a lie, but after one too many hermits having come to him in the past convinced him otherwise. Tommy’s former admin had isolated Tommy like this, hurt him, then claimed that they alone were Tommy’s friend. And the teen was in a situation where he was desperate enough to believe it. So in saying the imposter was lying, they could have not been and were just twisting truths.

‘ban.’ Was the only word Xisuma could hear from Tommy. He had said more, but they were too quiet to be heard. “I said I was going to ban you?” Xisuma asked to be sure, and Tommy nodded. “I would never ban you.” And then Xisuma was reminded of how this place worked. It was based on what the other person thought or believed in. On one hand, that fact hurt, but it was only because Tommy had been hurt so much already. “Other than me saying it, why would you believe that?”

Tommy flinched at the question, likely interpreting it as accusatory. He spoke again, but had to repeat himself, Xisuma finally catching the word ‘brother’. Immediately Xisuma’s thoughts went to Grian, him being the one they were after, but Xisuma still asked which brother, only to be shocked when his own brother’s name was spoken. He was quiet, trying to figure out what to say while also keeping his emotions in check. “I… you’re right. I have banned him before.”

Tommy tried to pull away from Xisuma, and while he loosened his grip, the admin didn’t let Tommy go fully. “I know, I’m sorry. Tommy, I’m sorry it’s hard to believe, but I would never ban you. Especially after what happened with my brother. He… he had been a pain since we were in season two. Trying to destroy the world again and again. The closest I got to banning him before had been trapping him in a lava pool until he left on his own.” Tommy tensed and X quickly clarified. “Xannes is immune to fire and lava. I think due to his hacking.” And that seemed to calm Tommy down a little bit.

“I said he couldn’t come back until a certain time. He wasn’t officially banned, he just followed the unofficial rules.” Xisuma then smiled for a moment. “I helped him a bit and he hung around season five for a time. Made a friend, told me a little about his own server, which I now know is Hels.” And with the mention of the somewhat alternate reality, his smile went back to a frown. Sure Tommy couldn’t see the admin’s mouth behind his helmet, but the sadness in his eyes was enough. “In season six, he was back to being evil again. And one day I couldn’t deal with it anymore. So I did what the others had suggested multiple times in the past, and finally banned him. I… didn’t know what would happen.”

“For most things outside of Hermitcraft, if I needed to ban him, I would. Done it a few times with some solo worlds. He’d of course always find a way back in. And then hermitcraft himself, he’d find loopholes in unofficial bans. But when I actually banned him, it all went wrong. Normally it sends you to what is considered your home world. If that place was the one you were banned from somehow, you would be sent to the world you frequent most after that. When I banned my brother, he was mostly living in Hels at the time, so, when I banned him, whatever natural magic tried to move him there didn’t work, trapping him in the void. I didn’t even find out until a bit after he escaped, and he was immediately upset at me. I don’t blame him for that though.”

“But because of all that, unless the situation is dire, I’m not planning to ban anyone again. And I doubt I’ll have much reason to.” At this point, Tommy had mostly calmed down, so Xisuma was able to look him in the eyes. “Sure, maybe you’re not the ‘ideal’ hermit, but who is? Doc finds a break in reality to exploit at least once a month, Mumbo’s machines create time distortions that affect anyone nearby, and Grian’s likely created more chaos than any one hermit on their own. I’d never consider banning you and if for some ungodly reason I tried what your last admin did and sent you to a place like this, the Hermits would come to visit you anyway.”

Tommy pulled away slightly. “You’re still admin. You could make them stay away.”

“Tommy, has anyone ever told you about someone named GenerikB?”

Tommy shrugged. “Maybe? Sounds sort of familiar.”

“He was the original admin. Hermitcraft is named after him like how your old world was named after Dream. But he only made it because he was jealous he wasn’t invited to a different world. Then once he was allowed there, we didn’t have an admin. And not having an admin for a while can be dangerous, so eventually I offered. I had some experience before and I especially started learned more after the fact, but from the start I was only admin out of nessity. Legally, I’m listed as admin, but I’m not the only hermit who has admin abilities in the world and I normally just act as any other player. Remember back when you first joined, you were around Grian so much, you didn’t know I was admin.”

Tommy nodded to that, but still was looking away from Xisuma. “You’re still admin… Dream didn’t have his fancy powers, but he was still admin.”

“That’s true.” Xisuma agreed. “I’m sorry. I wish I had whatever words would reassure you. To be completely honest, I’m a little hurt.” And out of the corner of his eye, Xisuma could see Tommy suddenly look back at him, likely worried he had messed up. “I’m hurt I didn’t notice that you were hurting this much. We’ve all been dealing with what scares us here, if the other things we’ve gone through are any indication. Obviously you’re still worried about me turning out like your old admin. I’m sorry I never noticed you felt that way. I don’t know if I could have ever helped it, but I want to care for all the hermits. And that includes you.”

It was quiet for a bit before Tommy spoke up again. “It’s not just ‘cuz you’re admin. The Dream SMP was just really fucked up. My friends abandoned or betrayed me, those that didn’t do either got killed, the one person who said they were my friend was pretending and manipulating me, and my family was fine to pretend I don’t exist. ‘Course I’ve been hanging out with Grian since he’s pretty pog and right up my alley with his pranks and shit, but he’s always around Mumbo and the bots. The bots always called you their grandpa, which I thought was because of the whole shit with you being admin or whatever, but then one time I heard Mumbo calling you dad.”

That last bit seemed to be news to Xisuma with how much it surprised him, and Tommy made note of that, but otherwise kept talking. “My guess is because he was around my age when he showed up or whatever. Basically grew up here. There. Whatever. But before then, I was fucking fine, I was dealing with it. But I’m practically family with them and then he spouts the bullshit of you being his dad and… suddenly you’re like family, friend and admin all shoved into one, and none of those worked out for me.”

“And you started waiting for the other shoe to drop again.” Xisuma finished for Tommy, who nodded. “If you would like, when this is all done, I can leave you alone. If you want something else, you don’t have to contact me directly, you can ask someone else to do it for you.”

“Thanks.” Tommy replied, quietly, the spoke up again in a sadder voice. “This was stupid. I was just stuck here and everyone had to go through more traumatic shit.”

“That’s not true. You’ve told us about this place. I and the others have seen how your’re- …you have a distaste for plains biomes. Just being here must have been bad enough. Not to mention whatever was going on before I arrived.”

“What about the others?”

“Well I was the only one able to get here, I think because of my being an admin, though Wilbur was able to see something on what was going on here.”

“Ghostbur was one of the people who was in e-exile with me.” Tommy explained, struggling to say the word directly.

“Ah, well, that explains that. Now, would you like to go over to the others? Or do you want to start by going elsewhere that’s quiet to calm down first?”

“Can we do the first one?” Tommy asked, and Xisuma nodded, then asking whether they wanted to fly or for him to teleport, which Tommy picked the latter option.

Xisuma took them to the replica of Cleo’s base, the zoo setting being one that Tommy enjoyed normally and seemed to find calming enough in the present. The pair took some time to ground the teen, trying to think of topics less related to the current issue, but Xisuma knew that there was still something going on, since they were still stuck in this imagined scenario’s world. “So, what do you think the others are up to?”

.

.

.

“Alright, so you’ve got a lot of hybrids and shifters in Hermitcraft, right? Like you’re a creeper hybrid.” Paul spoke up. They had been waiting a while, so he had been trying his best to keep the conversation going and not make the wait seem so long.

“Yeah.” Doc agreed. “And I guess also cyborg at this point. Before you ask, the goat horn is just cosmetic like the metal one.”

“Got it. And I know Bdubs has latent genes. Anything come up yet?”

“No, not yet. He’s still holding out hope. You know I’ve taken a couple looks at him.” Doc paused, thinking something over before speaking again. “To be honest, season 5 was… a mess in more ways than one, but it was the first time something tried coming out. At least it seemed like it.”

“So something jungle or arboreal based most likely. Ever talk with Joe about it?”

“Nah, he may know more in general because of the, y’know, Herobrine thing. But he doesn’t know anything about that.”

“That’s a shame.” Then Paul went over what he knew. “Well, let’s see, so you and Bdubs are both hybrids, Joe’s a higher being. I know Beef’s just human.”

“Hey, I don’t think you can call any of us Hermits ‘just human’ man.”

“Well, it terms of the scale, yeah he’s human, unless I’ve missed everything from the past however many years.”

“Nah man, you’re right. Beef’s essentially just human.”

The two walked along a bit before Paul spoke again. “So, you’re friends with Ren, who’s a shifter, but says he’s a werewolf most of the time.”

“Yeah, he’s fine with that term. He just dealt with a lot of hybrid stigma growing up so it’s easier to have people call him a werewolf instead of going at old wounds.”

“Makes sense. Now let’s see. Grian’s obviously an avian, based on what I know he’s more on the shifter side of things?”

“Honestly, who knows man. Watcher stuff makes it weird. Normally he stays the same but it’s when that Watcher stuff happens. And apparently that happens with any Watcher, human or being.”

“Got it. Well your admin’s a voidwalker. Tommy might have latent genes from his heritage, but he might just be like Wilbur and just be human. Keralis I’m ninety percent sure is human.”

“More sure than we are.” Doc replied, half laughing.

“Zedaph’s a sheep hybrid as well as being the Reaper. He’s friends with… Tango and Impulse I believe? The first of which is netherborn and the second is… are they human?”

“Yeah Tango’s netherborn, but Impulse is actually a demon.”

“No kidding.” Paul said, a little surprised, but ended up just nodding his head, accepting it as fact. “Oh, is Biffa still around?”

“No. He left. He’s ended up more secluded than you. But it’s fine. He needed the break.”

“Well I hope he’s doing well.” Paul paused as EX walked over. “Any updates?”

“Ugh, no. Either Xisuma has forgotten, the derp that he is, or he can’t actually change it to let any of us in. So he’s stuck out there alone with Tommy to fix things.” The Xannes looked between Doc and Paul. “What are you talking about?”

“Well I thought I’d ask Doc if Bdubs’ latent genes had come out yet.” Paul explained.

“Alright?” EX just looked more confused, then turned to look towards Doc.”

“Bdubs is a hybrid, but we don’t know what of yet. Then we just started covering what all the hermits are since half of us aren’t really human.”

Xannes looked back and forth between Doc and Paul before huffing. “Fine, just leave me out of it.”

As the hels walked away, Doc chuckled. “Well sort of obvious. He and X are brothers.”

“Yeah… Well, let’s see who’s next. Oh, right. How could I forget Etho?”

“Because of the fact that no one actually knows? Even with some actual testing, I still don’t know because he manages to screw up the results.”

“I’d suggest it could be magic, but that’s, what, Scar Cub and… Her name was Stress, right?”

“Yeah. Some vex dealings and then fae lineage with Stress. She and Impulse get on well enough though.”

“Good to hear.” Then Paul counted on his fingers, knowing the number of hermits, but not recalling off the top of his head how many he had named compared to how many he knew. Then, he seemed to remember more and snapped his fingers. “Right. Cleo. Easy enough to just say zombie hybrid, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Then Jevin. He’s aetherkind, right? Modded world? Swet hybrid?”

“Yeah, you know your stuff. But I mean, he’s the obvious one.”

Paul had to take a moment to realize what Doc meant. “Right! Wels. Also Aetherkind as counterintuitive that is.”

“Yeah. Named after the dimension his home doesn’t even naturally belong in. I’m sure someone out there has it the other way around.”

Paul shrugged. “Maybe. Then you’ve got TFC who’s at least partially an ancient with what I know. And everyone else except Mumbo is human.” Doc was silent for long enough that Paul doubted what he had just said. “Wait, are one of them not human as well? Sorry, Your letters always implied-”

“Mumbo’s human too.” Doc spoke, making him and Paul stare at each other like the other of them was crazy.

“No… He’s a being. Latent hybrid maybe. But I can tell something’s there.”

“But he’s not like Etho. There’s no way he’s messed with the results.”

“Then something’s up. Maybe if he had stayed in Hermitcraft, I could concede being wrong. But he’s been with us the whole time. I know he’s something. You know I know.”

“Yeah well…” Doc stood back up. “For once, I think you’re wrong.”

As Doc walked off, Paul looked over to where Mumbo stood, getting into a small argument with EX. “And I know I’m right. I just don’t know the full answer.”

.

.

.

Things had not gone that well when Grian and the girls got back to the castle. Finding Aven hadn’t helped much. It was frustrating enough with him calling them ‘Grifter two’ ‘yellow Nightmare’ and ‘Wile’s kid’ the entire time, but anything he knew about The Dark was shaky at best since he was mixing up facts and sometimes sprinkled in unrelated information. They tried piecing some stuff together after the talk to learn that the place has some sort of stupid strong creature guarding the place you first showed up in, and you had to kill it to get anywhere else. How to get anywhere else was the question because then Aven started talking about a ‘Finny’ and the Warden Soul and maybe a gateway? It was practically incomprehensible, so eventually Flora was the first to give up and dragged Astrid and Grian away so they could rest for tomorrow.

They woke up bright and early, or maybe even dark and early because the sun wasn’t even up yet when the door to the room in the castle they were staying with was broken down. Astrid and Grian woke up easier than Flora did and were quicker to notice that there was someone else in the room that wasn’t supposed to be there. The lights were turned on and Grian was even more freaked out to see a dragon standing in the middle of the room. It had black eyes that contrasted against its toxic green scales that screamed danger. For a moment he wondered if this is how he was finally going to die, when he was more upset if it was going to be embarrassing as, in an almost cartoonish fashion, a tiny bipedal goat walked from behind the dragon, their legs moving in a near blur as they moved at a normal walking pace.

“H-hello?” Grian asked, not sure how to react to the current situation. He was trying to have a nice greeting but it just came off terrified. The goat seemed to notice this and turned to the dragon, waving one of their little cloven hooves, hands? Whatever they were, and the dragon suddenly shifted into a more hybrid form, scales seeming to change into a royal looking jacket and the black eyes becoming cracked sunglasses. “R-right, that’s less terrifying.”

“Slatt!” The little goat man spoke up, then continued with some loud chewing noises? Grian had gone so quickly from terrified to extremely confused he had a bit of whiplash. Some other phrases the tiny thing had were ‘Kiddie.’ ‘They thought I was gay.’ ‘Rice man.’ and also some slurping noises? Eventually they were stopped when Astrid threw her bat, er, umbrella at them, opened up the side room’s door, and brought out Jane. “Kiddie! Kiddie! Slatt!”

The goat man grabbed Jane’s hand and left the room, and the dragon hybrid nearly did too before the door shut on its own. The dragon looked back towards the trio, hand changing into claws before they were bonked on the head with a pillow by Flora. “Next time Toob wants something from us, he can ask us himself instead of sending you two.”

“We were visiting anyway. World is shut for a reset, so we’re here for the day. Slatt was very upset to learn our granddaughter was missing.”

“Ah, so you’re whipped is what you’re saying.” Flora huffed. “It was a goddamn prank. She was fine. Silski and Astrid are good enough… acquaintances that he could have shown up or gotten Toob to send a message for him., made this simpler.”

“Oh well, guess we were too rightfully concerned.”

‘I hope you choke on a sweet roll.’ Astrid signed, but it didn’t seem the dragon hybrid knew sign since he just nodded and left.

After that, Flora fixed the door and the trio tried to get back to sleep, and at the very least she was able to, but Grian and Astrid, not so much. And that was about where they were now, lying in the dim light, listening to Flora snoring. Fortunately, it was easy enough to have a silent conversation. ‘You can’t sleep either?’

Astrid frowned, not immediately signing back. It gave Grian a chance to actually look at her, since she didn’t wear her mask to bed. She was still mostly encased in her hoodie, but grian could at the very least see everything below her eyes, noticing a few freckles on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose as well as a few scars littering her face. Her lips looked a bit chewed up, but otherwise there weren’t any fresh wounds, which was slightly comforting to know those scars probably weren’t recent. ‘Not really. Not a fan of getting barged in on.’

‘You too?’

‘When your brother is the admin, no locks can keep him out.’

‘I stopped locking the door because they kept getting broken and we couldn’t afford it. Just had to live with getting barged in on.’

‘It sucks’

‘Yeah it does. Though a friend of mine managed to get something set up so we had one day to ourselves.’

Astrid just nodded, seeming to think something over before signing again. ‘My sister’s like this too.’

‘Yeah, I knew about the animal thing. What’s the sign for HYBRID?’

Astrid quickly showed Grian the signs related to hybrids before giving some clarification. ‘Vee and I are both adopted. Our dad was in a shitty situation growing up, so he ended up finding us, saw the shit we were dealing with, and decided we were his kids now.’

‘Oh, that sounds cool.’

‘Yeah. Vee mainly lived with her actual mom when she was little. Her dad was out of the picture, which sucked because her mom was fucking horrible. Liked exotic pets, decided a five year old was perfect to look after them.’

‘That sounds horrid.’

‘Yeah’ Astrid signed, nodding, ‘So she only really associates animals and their parts with danger and bad. Claws and beaks hurt, ears and nose track her, tails trip her up, wings hit her, etcetera.’

‘Yikes. At least I could hide my wings if I tried meeting her. Doesn’t seem like Flora can do that.’

Astrid shook her head, then looked over to Flora. ‘Well, we should try to get a little more rest like her.’

‘Yeah, thanks for letting me talk. Or- you know.’

Astrid gave Grian a thumbs up, then rolled over and pulled the blanket she was using back over her. Grian looked over at her for a few more seconds before doing the same and before long, he managed to get to sleep again.

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Hours later, Grian had been led to the foot of a giant temple thing. It was sort of like if someone had shoved a snow tower on top of a pyramid of ice, but also giant as hell. Though he still didn’t know how Cerus really was, one look at this place made him get some ideas. It also didn’t help that just before stepping into the perimeter of the place, both Astrid and Flora drew their weapons, leaving Grian to do the same.

As they walked through, Flora seemed the most alert, her ears swiveling every which way to catch any sound she could. Grian was also hoping that he could pick something up since based on what little he knew about hybrids, most if not all also had heightened senses of some sort. But it didn’t seem to work out when he looked in the opposite direction of the other two and only noticed one of the stone statues was different not even a second before it grabbed him.

The girls pointed their weapons at whatever Grian was being held by, but didn’t get a chance to attack before Grian started kicking and managed to hit a weak point enough to get away. Turning, he was finally able to get a good look and see it wasn’t a stone statue. Though shaped like the other statues, it was metallic, and also seemed to have some sort of pink cloak over it. Lastly it seemed to have ruby eyes, like no, it wasn’t a red color, but actual rubies as its eyes.

“Cerus.” Flora spoke up, and even though it should have been obvious, Grian was still a bit surprised that this was the person they had come to see. “Look we just owe someone and they cashed it in to make us get info out of you. We would have loved to ask Aven, but he’s…”‘No brain cells.’ “Yeah he’s got no brain cells.”

“What information could you possibly think I would give away?”

“We’ll fight you for it if need be.”

“Wait, no I don’t agree to this.” Grian spoke up.

“Smart kid. Fine,” And Then leaned down and spoke in a babying voice. “What do you think I’m gonna tell you about?”

“The Dark. You’ve been there, and my uncle opened it up again, but we don’t know what’s on the other side and Astrid’s older bother already fucked with it.”

“Older bother?” Cerus asked, a metallic eyebrow raising, making Grian wonder how that was supposed to work.

“I can’t think of a better way to insult him. Suggestions would be lovely. I stuck all my brain cells on a trio name and Wassa ended up being the one to pick it.”

“Oh. That explains it. He wants a catalyst or some growths, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, essentially.” Grian spoke up, not sure if when Cerus turned to look at him, they were glaring or not, because the eyebrows could move, but the gem eyes didn’t change shape at all. “I had some weird shit on my wings, we got it looked at because it was mushroomy, and now he wants more as payment. Or more, he just wants to know if he’ll get permakilled to get it.”

“Oh, well that’s simple enough.” Cerus said with a slight chuckle. “I’m sure Flora-” “Fleur.” “Whatever. Your uncle fixed it properly. Nightmare was still fucking around so things would have been broken there. The only thing that would screw things up is if the place closed up again while you were in there. Respawns were working fine until that happened.”

Astrid and Flora were fine with the information and started to leave, but Grian hesitated. “Who didn’t get out? Was that Aven? Is that why he’s a ghost when no one else is?”

Cerus was taken aback for a moment before huffing. “I heard that there was supposed to be a younger Grifter about, but I didn’t realize you would be just as nosy.”

“Sorry… I was just curious.”

Cerus crossed his arms and the rubies seemed to glow for a moment, maybe in anger or something, but then he sighed. “Someone… working with us got trapped in there when the place first got locked down. That was their punishment similar to Aven’s… current situation was his punishment and my consistent residence in this world is mine.”

“You mean you can’t leave?”

“That’s correct.” Then he looked at Flora, definitely glaring this time. “You can thank a relative of yours for that. Not your grandfather.” He tacked on at the end when Flora started to open her mouth.

‘Well I think that’s all we need. Aven had enough wits about him to mention there’s a monster on the other side. We just needed respawn info.’

“Well I’m glad I could help you so you won’t just stick around bothering me. Now, leave before I make you.”

And not wanting to test the patience of the statue man, Grian grabbed Flora and Astrid and ran them out of there. “So, I guess we got what we needed?”

“I mean I think? Now I’m wondering who in my family Cerus dealt with?”

Grian’s wings twitched slightly and the mycelium grew a little quicker for a moment. Neither of the other teens noticed, instead focusing on his following question. “Does… Does the name ‘The Warrior’ mean anything? I ran into Aven before since I’m living in the castle, and he mentioned that name.”

“Ugh, yes it does.” Flora grumbled. “Great Uncle. Also death, but in his own way. He’s the chicken guy. Well, the big reason they’re a death omen.”

“Ah, I guess that makes sense. Speaking of chickens, let’s get home. I want to make sure Sally’s fed well enough. She keeps not wanting to eat normal food but instead he’s getting into people’s chests and eating icestone?”

“That’s weird. But yeah, you can figure that out, I think I want to ask Grifter about the guests we’ve got.”

‘And I should check in with dad. Meet up in a few hours?’

And the teens parted ways to meet back up later at the castle, though while Flora and Astrid did as they said, Grian didn’t make it to Sally, someone else getting there first.

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“Hey, there they are!” Techno shouted, getting everyone’s attention. They looked to see Xisuma and Tommy in the distance, walking towards them. Tommy looked a little tired, leaning against Xisuma who was helping keep the teen up, and at the very least they could see Tommy’s mouth moving sometimes, so there was probably some sort of conversation going on.

The first person to run over to the pair was Grum, who when he reached them, tackled Tommy with a hug with enough force he almost fell over. After that, Xisuma picked Tommy up and just teleported them the rest of the way to the group before helping him sit down. “So, what took you so long?”

Xisuma rolled his eyes at his brother before hugging him, which just left Xannes frozen with surprise even after the hug ended. “Tommy just needed to talk for a while and I talked with him.”

“If that’s all he needed, why are we still stuck here?” Phil asked, getting a jab in the ribs from Paul, hand enough to leave him doubled over from getting the wind knocked out of him. He was still able to flip him off before fully recovering, though it wasn’t helped by Tommy nudging him enough to cause the avian to fall over. “What the fuck was that for?”

“I’m getting a new dad.” Tommy answered, Getting a confused look from Phil once he realized Tommy was serious and not just making a joke.

As Phil started to open his mouth, Xisuma stepped in and held a hand up to silence him and then gestured to Tommy. “Give him a chance to talk.”

It took a bit before Tommy got the confidence to actually speak. Before he got any words out, Mumbo had his hands over Grum’s ears, almost sensing just how vulgar Tommy was about to get. “Look. I went through a lot of shit that you three didn’t give a fuck about. Tech was acting like a cunt from almost day one with his bullshit about anarchy as if that shit had anything to do with the crap we had to deal with growing up. Wilbur was a pussy that gave me ptsd well before that green bitch did shit to me. Like I looked up to you and you treated me like shit and then were too much of a pussy in the end to kill yourself and made dad did it first. And then Dad, you showed up because you only fucking finally paid us enough goddamn attention to figure out the bullshit we were dealing with from that green motherfucker, but you still acted like a dick and shut yourself away and didn’t give a shit when I disappeared. I’ve got no fucking clue how true it was, but I’ve heard from at least someone that you and some others thought I fucking deserved what I got. You only gave a fuck when you thought I killed myself because you suddenly realized you were down to one kid and maybe realized that maybe you could be less of a fuckface and try to fix it, only managing to screw me over more. Because because of you guys, I might have gotten an actual goddamn good family but I was so fucked over, I thought they would be just as shitty as you three. So yeah, maybe you’re technically still family, but I’m getting my own fucking peace of mind and getting Xisuma to adopt me or some shit so if you fuck things up again, I’m not stuck with you people.”

There was a bit of shocked silence as people tried to comprehend what just happened before Paul shook Phil’s shoulder a little to pull him from his thoughts. “Well… fuck, I can’t really just apologize to fix that.” Phil started but then sighed and nodded. “But fine. I’m sure if I said no, you’d still do it. I already dealt with a bit of a mess with Wil and Fundy, I don’t want to deal with another, so go ahead.”

“Well fuck that!” Grum spoke up, getting a quick scolding from Mumbo. “Family’s weird but I’m still calling you my brother like we covered before. Stop trying to be an uncle because it’s not working on me!”

Mumbo went to scold Grum again, but Tommy just laughed and ruffled Grum’s nonexistent hair. And that seemed to do it, because in a few moments, the scenery changed, and instead of the enlarged base, all but one of them found themselves standing in a sort of cross between residential and shopping districts that looked unfamiliar to most of them, but clearly overgrown. The cheerful tone immediately shifted to a more grim one as simultaneously, Paul, Mumbo and Xisuma all spoke. “This is Doc’s.”

[votederpycausemufins]

the next chapter of Something Familiar.... haha... ha...

Okay look... So, uh. I wrote one scene in this chapter, and I wanted it to be mostly mysterious, where you don't know who is involved until later. That being said, the mysteriousness of the section makes it come out… pretty freaking dark. Enough that this is a bit of a warning. There's like… mind control? brain watching? uh… mind fuckery that I'm not entirely sure how to categorize. I will put in bold where the start and end of the scene is as well as put the whole thing in italics. a summary will then be right under the second warning in case you skip it.

otherwise, as it's a hermit tommy influenced story, i am tagging @petrichormeraki

Grian and Flora had quickly agreed that Sahn couldn’t come back to the castle. Flora was sure Sahn would cause a fuss since he thought her very nice uncle could somehow be a bad person. Grian, on the other hand, knew that Grifter was really future him, having replaced the real Grifter. So if Sahn saw him, he would assume Grifter was actually Grifter, while Grifter would think Sahn was Sam like Grian had just done.

While staying in the castle had been nice, Grian originally wanted a place of his own. That was how he met Flora in the first place, from damaging the forest around her base for resources. Come to think of it, Grian didn’t remember actually seeing her base, so perhaps he could also suggest that. Except Grifter liked to visit Flora, so they needed to find someone who he was less likely to visit.

The two of them started trying to figure out where else Sahn could stay, Grian giving suggestions based on his limited knowledge of the place and Flora for the most part explaining why those wouldn’t work. Fortunately, after multiple bad ideas, they were given a saving grace in the form of Astrid returning. At least they thought that all of two seconds before Astrid noticed Sahn, and asked who the new person was, though in less pleasant terms.

Grian and Flora explained to the best of their abilities about who Sahn was in relation to Grifter and why that meant he couldn’t see Sahn. Astrid was quiet for a few moments, her clasped hands with index fingers out and against her mouth being a clear indicator of her both low key judging as well as just trying to comprehend the mess she had just walked into. 

Finally, after staying that way long enough the pair thought Astrid was about to chew them out on even considering keeping Sahn around, she finally walked over to Sahn, who was having a one sided conversation with one of the chickens near him, and grabbed the collar of his shirt to yank him to his feet.

‘Do you understand me?’ Grian watched Astrid sign, though Sahn seemed to be completely clueless. ‘Do you understand me?’ She signed again, and Grian was about to say it was unlikely that Sahn would understand a second time, but then Sahn nodded. As Astrid told him to come over to the group, Grian thought it over again to realize that while she said it twice, and he understood what was being signed both times, the two sentences had been signed differently.

Before he was able to think on it more, Astrid had finished a quick discussion with Sahn and was starting to lead them somewhere, causing Flora to pull him along and break him out of his train of thought. He was a bit distracted by Sahn trying to make conversation, but Astrid and Flora clued in to his discomfort and made sure to stay between the two, and Flora held more of the conversation. Grian felt a little guilty though, since Sahn kept trying to talk about the Grifter he knew, which were not great stories and were obviously upsetting her a bit, but when Grian tried to say she didn’t need to help out with this, she brushed him off saying it was fine.

After that, Grian hung back, leaving a large gap between him and the others. This whole thing felt really conflicting. He was pretty sure he liked hanging out with Flora and Astrid. They were around his age and weren’t as blatantly psychopathic as Sam was from time to time. But now with Sahn showing up, he was second guessing if that was real, or if he was trying to make it real. He hadn’t been gone from the drama of high school for that long from his point of view, but he was so desperate for something different and potentially safer, was he just pretending it was like that here?

He knew going back wasn’t the best place, at least not until he could prevent whatever was going to happen, but there was also this part of himself that was telling him that he couldn’t be here either. This wasn’t his world, not yet, and his current situation was leaving him almost powerless. 

Grian tried not to listen to whatever that part of him was, he didn’t need those insecurities bothering him right now, but instead of turning it out completely, he just made himself more aware. While before it was almost just white noise, he was now very aware of the voices of his audience. All of them tried to give their two cents, and it felt a bit overwhelming. Though covering his ears did nothing as the voices were essentially in his mind, he still kept his hands there, hoping that blocking out other sounds would make the ones that wouldn’t go away more bearable.

Grian got a bit further before he couldn’t take it anymore. He just wanted quiet. And suddenly it was. A mix of purple and a little bit of green magic had formed from his hands, casting away most of the sounds inside his mind and muffling anything outside. For a moment it was bliss before a wave of exhaustion hit, and a second later, Grian had collapsed to his knees, sure he would completely fall over moments later. He thought he could hear someone saying something, and maybe a hand touching him, but it all just seemed fuzzy. The only thing that got through was a calming voice that was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, telling him to rest. And then he was on the ground, asleep.

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Silski's house was probably the last place any of them wanted to be right now after what happened with Jane. That being said, it was also probably the last place Grifter would want to be too. And that was what Astrid was counting on. They needed a place to keep Sahn that would also keep him away from the admin. Plus, at least for Astrid, she might be able to talk to someone about what was going on that wouldn't be found out and get them all in trouble.

"I still don't like him being in here." SiIski said, turning to Astrid and away from the others. Grian was still passed out, Flora having carried him the rest of the way once they realized he was no longer following along. He was placed on the couch in the base, but took up most of the space. And Toob refused to give his seat up, so Flora was left lying on the ground as she caught her breath. Sahn stood at her feet since there wasn't really anywhere else.

'Look, I know having him around isn't the best.' Astrid signed slowly. 'But you can't even see him or I guess hear him.'

"I'm not talking about him. Because you're right. I can't see or smell him. Hell, I don't even know if he's still at Fleur's feet."

"He is." Flora answered, though her voice was muffled by the floor.

"Right, well, I'm talking about the bird." And he pointed to Grian. "I know he's not Grifter, but still smells awful. Like overripe fruit and Wassa smoking."

"I mean, he's got some mycelium stuck in his wings still last I checked. I probably smell like it too since I carried him." Flora spoke up again.

"That's just it, you don't." Silski continued.

Trust me, if he thought you smelled too, he would have mentioned it." Toob explained further. "You think he wouldn't?"

"You got me there." Flora conceded.

'Okay, fine. Can I talk to you privately in the next room?' Astrid signed. Silski huffed, looking over to Toob before nodding and grabbing Astrid before dragging her through the base to a mostly empty room lined with wool. Here? You're sure?'

"Might as well. Makes it easier to hear you and harder to be heard."

'Can you sign too?'

'How bad is it. I mean, if we can't even talk...' Silski signed, though it was rough and took a moment for Astrid to figure out what he meant and what words he left out or signed wrong.

'That is not a younger admin.' Astrid started to explain. 'That's his Wels.'

'You're joking. I mean, that explains some things. But doesn't he think...?'

'No, he does.' Astrid corrected him before wringing her hands nervously, still thinking. 'Admin used magic, wiping a chunk of his memory. He's supposed to be a Watcher, but admin has him using Listener magic. Which, and I am not being dramatic here, could be world ending. No, universe ending!'

'Then why?' Silski asked, but Astrid just shrugged her shoulders.

'I can't let anything happen to fox. You would do the same for husband, right?' And Silski nodded. 'That's why I can only tell you. And why I need help.'

'What could I possibly help with?' Silski asked, a bit hesitant.

'First, cover for me if you ever get the chance. Second...' And she paused to make sure he knew how important this was. 'A king and crew are going to join soon.'

Silksi froze for a moment, before slowly nodding. He then moved, starting to open the door as he said, “Okay. Well, we should probably head back. Your friend might be awake now.” 

Astrid then gave the hybrid another nod before walking out of the room, Silski following behind. For a moment, Astrid thought the Grian was actually awake when they returned, but a second glance showed it was, which was odd as she could have sworn she saw one of his eyes open.

“So, what was that all about?” Flora asked, still on the ground but now on her back instead of her face.

“They’re obviously cheating on us.”

“What?! No! Why didn’t you tell me you were straight!”

“Guess I need a divorce. I’m keeping Jane though.” Toob finished before he and Flora laughed a little. “But seriously.”

“It’s Dark stuff. And since Listeners use the magic of the Dark, she knew a bit about it.”

“Wait, then that’s an idea!” Flora said, quickly sitting up. “Grian’s doing magic training, wouldn’t it go faster if we went there? It’s supposed to be open!”

“No.” Silski quickly hissed. “I can bear that bastard in my house, but if you think I’ll let him desecrate The Dark, you’re better off dead.”

“So… that’s a no then…”

Silski huffed once more, muttering under his breath. At first Astrid was glad he was playing along, until she noticed he was serious. Well, she supposed it worked either way.

“Can you shut your comm up?” Silski said next, leaving Astrid to leave the room again.

“Astridddd guess what!”

Astrid smiled, glad to hear Vee’s voice before typing a message back through the video call that Vee had started. ‘What’s up.’

“Well firsta all, there’s a big problem! Grian’s not even here!” Astrid froze for a second. She had moved back to the wool room just in case, but she still looked around in case she was heard. “But good news is I’m helpin’ Jrum! He’s my Watchin’ pair! I toldja, right?” And Astrid nodded. “Well, a buncha his friends think that the stuff that happened with him used Watching and Listeny magic, so we’re gonna try and uhhh… I forget what they called it, but they’re gonna do it again so they can figure out how to undo it!”

‘I think they’re referring to reverse engineering. I haven’t been able to get in touch with Papa. Has he talked with you? Is he with you?’ Astrid typed back. Grifter was talking a hands off approach right now with her and Flora around, but before long, Grian would probably be taught more about being a Listener. And obviously that was affecting her and Vee’s dad.

“No, no one can get in still. Kinda. Cuz I mean I got in, and Mr. Hoodie did too!”

‘Well I think whatever happened means Watchers and Listeners can’t get in. But somehow you don’t count so your magic worked to get you in.’

“But I didn’t use my magic or anything! I just got in!” Vee explained, confusing Astrid.

‘But the server is white listed. You shouldn’t be able to get in without magical means. That’s the only way Ely and Lyarrah can get in.’

“I dunno, maybe I’m whitelisty?”

‘That doesn’t make sense. Wait. Where’s the admin. Xisuma? That’s the name, right?’

Vee nodded. “Uh huh! I dunno. I can ask Stress! I’m staying at her place right now. And then someone else named Joe came to visit because I realized Grifter is not a nice uncle and he likes to lie!”

‘Oh? What happened? Was it just realizing Grian was missing?’

“Yeah, kinda. And I told Joe other stuff too, but then he got really really upset cuz I told him that Grifter told Papa about vigil something or other.”

‘Right. Well. Do you know Papa’s secret name? Because you should see if you can get Xisuma to whitelist Papa so he can help you.’

“Oh that’s a great idea!” Vee agreed. “Imma gonna go onto that now! Also somethin’s on your mask k bye!” And Vee hung up before Astrid could type anything more. 

Astrid just huffed because of course Vee didn’t say anything until the last minute. So before heading back to the main room, Astrid took her mask off to see what was on it and get rid of whatever it was. She saw the patch of gunk and grabbed it to pull it off, only to realize from the spongy texture and purplish gray color, it was more mycelium. Which meant the stuff on Grian was growing. Well, that explained the smell.

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“Alright, everyone grab a cat.” Paul spoke up as they found themselves on the other side of the nether portal, back in the overworld of the fictional reality they were in. The spawn area had looked overgrown enough, but now there was barely enough room for all of them to stand. “Anyone want to cut through the foliage, or should I do that too?”

“I can.” Techno spoke up, pulling out a sword to cut through the vines with. But then Grum moved next to him, pulling out a pair of shears.

“Wait, I thought only your brother kept one of those around.” Mumbo spoke up, wondering if now he needed to keep an eye on both of the bots around his mustache.

“He does. I just made sure to bring every possible tool. I’ve even got a hoe and a fishing rod and a pufferfish! Well technically I don’t have that one right now. Stuff keeps disappearing and reappearing each place, and I guess this is only with stuff present at the time this is from?”

“Makes sense to me. Let’s just see if we can find the center of this mess.” Techno said, getting everyone ready to move. As he and Grum led the charge, everyone else followed along with what Paul said and then did, picking up a cat the moment they could. There were only two at the portal, but that was better than nothing.

As they moved further into the jungle, eventually Mumbo asked everyone to stop. “Does anyone else hear that?” Everyone else tried to listen, but not knowing what they were listening for, they couldn’t tell. Though Grumbot was able to pick out a noise that sounded out of place since he had the hearing of a robot instead of potentially weaker normal ears. “Did someone mention woodpeckers before, because that’s what it sounds like.”

“Yeah, in the past, Bdubs pranked him with some noteblocks acting like those things.” Paul verified. “They were right on his base too, so following that sound should help us find him.”

“Would be a lot better if I didn’t keep tripping every two fucking seconds.” Tommy cursed from the back of the group. He had gotten his hands on a ginger cat, but holding it, trying to keep up and also keep from tripping on any vines left on the ground was slowing him down a lot.

“Need us to slow down mate?”

“Fuck off, I don’t need your pity.” And Tommy tried to flip Phil off. But trying to upset the cat as he tried to also shift it into just one arm. And then it wriggled until Tommy dropped it and it ran off. Plus the struggle mixed with the vines caused Tommy to trip.

One moment, Tommy had fallen to the ground, the next, the vines realized he couldn’t easily get away and seemed to come to life. They wrapped around Tommy, and before anyone could try to grab him, he had already been dragged away into the forest.

Now that everyone had seen what could happen if they stopped, Techno and Grum did their best to cut through the remaining leaves. Unfortunately the quicker pace meant it was easier to trip up, and before long, both Xannes and Wilbur had also been dragged away. Paul was doing his best to help with anyone who was getting caught in the vines, but was getting tripped up himself. The only reason he hadn’t gotten dragged away like the other three was because he was the only one in the group who had some idea of what they were walking into, so keeping him safe was the priority.

Just as Techno and Grum finally cut through the last of the vines and into a clearing, the vines behind the group managed to catch up with the group, twisting around most of them. Techno cut through a few vines to shove people into the clearing, which thankfully these vines didn’t seem to enter, but both Paul and Mumbo found themselves caught by the vines and further back. Since one of the two trapped was his dad and the other was important, Grum ran over to cut the vines up, letting the two escape, but at the cost of finding himself dragged away.

With half the group gone, the remaining members cautiously walked into the clearing. In the center stood a large treehouse, but seeing it was hard in the darkness. Some spots of light came in from above, signaling that it should have been light out, but instead, the sun was blocked out by vines. The entire clearing was made from the vines creating a sort of dome around the base in the center, but there were still vines all over the tree itself, showing that they needed to be cautious even in the clearing.

“So, mind telling us why we’ve got cats?” Mumbo asked. He had picked up a tuxedo cat along the way which was currently flopped over his head like a pair of fuzzy headphones. “I know he’s a creeper hybrid and all that, but that doesn’t explain why there’s so many of them around.”

“Creepers actually adore cats.” Paul answered. “In a completely natural environment, creepers are perfectly fine being near cats. They won’t run, they won’t hiss, they love the things. I once even managed to spy on one purring to a cat. That was a good day for research, let me tell you. Well, anyway, creepers love the things and don’t want to hurt them, but they’re intent on going after us. There’s plenty of research why already, so you don’t need that explanation. But if there’s a cat nearby, they’ll run off so they won’t end up exploding anyway and hurting it, and then they try a different way to you to uh… kill you and not the cat.”

“So if Doc is full creeper, as long as we’re holding these cats, he can’t get us without also getting the cats?” Techno asked, picking up a Siamese one off the ground since he hadn’t gotten the chance before while constantly cutting the vines.

“Pretty much.”

“Well, it might be nice if we stop standing around and maybe deal with the woodpeckers?” Mumbo spoke up. “The sound is getting to me a little, plus creepers aren’t the loudest mob in the world, so it would probably help to make things a bit quieter.”

The group carefully split up, each one of them heading to a different part of the base to disable a woodpecker. Once they were done, they met back up, but one more person was missing. “I know I saw Xisuma turning one off from where I was. So not like he didn’t make it there.” Phil spoke up. “We should probably check there in case he found something. Or… if something else is going on.”

With how many of the group had already been dragged off, no one was really wanting anyone else to end up with the same fate, so they cautiously followed Phil to where he had last seen Xisuma. And then they found him, but he wasn’t the only one they found.

Xisuma was standing still, trembling slightly from the action or lack thereof, of moving didn’t seem like a good action at the time. Especially with the group arriving behind him and the movement catching the eye of whatever thing was in front of him.

It wasn’t Doc, that much seemed to be true. The closest part of it that resembled a creeper was its gaping maw, but even that seemed too wide of a grin of sorts to come close to what was more of a smaller natural frown on a creeper. But otherwise, it was a stark white color other than the vines covering its body. Claws decorated the ends of its arms and legs, which were hopefully red and just had been dirtied to have patches of black, as the other way around would not have good connotations.

The thing slowly moved towards the group which meant also moving towards Xisuma. And since he was also closer to it, that meant it could notice he was moving slightly and go after him again. And that could end up with him being attacked and possibly killed. No one knew what would happen if one of them got killed. None of them had yet as far as anyone was aware, but it was definitely a danger now. If they hadn’t even found Doc and had dealt with the vines and now this, it didn’t bode well for what would be coming.

The thing was inches away from Xisuma when it finally noticed him for real. It hissed at him and looked ready to attack when there was a scream from elsewhere, catching its attention and drawing it away at the last second. But even after it left, everyone still held their breaths for a little longer before finally feeling safe to move again.

“What the fuck was that thing mate?” Phil spoke up first. He was looking between Xisuma and Paul, hoping one of the two would know what that was, but Xisuma was clueless and even Paul had no idea, which was a bit surprising after all of the knowledge he had surrounding mobs of all sorts. “Well, do either of you have any ideas?” Phil asked again, looking at Mumbo and Techno.

Before either one of them could potentially speak up, Xisuma did instead. “I know that yell though. The one that lured it away.”

“One of the Hermits?” Mumbo asked, getting a nod. “Which one?”

Xisuma shook his head after a moment. “I’m not entirely sure. It sounds unfortunately familiar. But I can’t place it. I mean, I can narrow down who it might’ve been a bit. But not quite enough.”

“Better than I could do.” Paul said. “I probably wouldn’t be able to figure out something like that for the most part. I think maybe only my kids since knowing that much is pretty important more often.”

“Do you have any names that feel more likely than others?” Techno asked. “Because depending on what’s going on around here, looking for whoever might lead us to Doc.”

Xisuma was quiet as he thought it over some more. “Possibly Beef, Etho or Ren. They’re closer to Doc compared to some to the other Hermits, at least enough they’re more likely to appear here like… that. Bdubs and Scar are also close enough they could be… but I know that wasn’t either of them. They’re more… distinctive.”

“You mean they yell more, got it.” Techno vaguely summarized before waking past Xisuma, realizing the area they were in had some chests to look through. “Well, this is mostly useless. Just a lot of vines and leaves and other nature stuff. One gapple though, who wants it?”

Once everyone had mentally regrouped, they went over potential plans on what to do next. While Paul had enough knowledge of the Mindcrack days to get them here, now that they had arrived at the base, he was a bit less helpful. It was clear at this point that while the setting itself was from that old world, whatever was taking place was something he was unfamiliar with. 

Phil and Techno were of less help since they didn’t really know Doc all too well. They knew of him, but other than this whole fiasco, they hadn’t really done much with him.

That left Xisuma and Mumbo to take charge, and even though the former was the admin, Mumbo was actually the one to take charge. “I remember a bit about the jungle days in Hermitcraft. I went there to put together some redstone. It was a bit of a mess… but…” and he trailed off before leading the others. He wasn’t the best at guiding them, managing to trip on just about every vine he could along the way, but it was better than nothing, especially when things started to change up. 

Hidden beneath the various pieces of foliage, instead of jungle wood there was stone. And the stone continued upwards, causing the others to follow it and see a vague shape in the darkness, almost like. “Is that a skull?”

Mumbo nodded, not even glancing at Techno. “When I was around to do my redstone project, I kept hearing this… well it was sort of a buzzing. I mean, if you pay attention, you can hear it from most redstone things if they’re powered or active or whichever. But it just sounded off enough that I went looking. Apparently Etho had been building something called the Nexus before he, er, disappeared. And that’s what I came across. Because of that fact and looking at the redstone made me a bit curious, so I went poking around just a tad. After what had happened with La Revolution, I didn’t want to dive too deep, but I got a slight lay of the land. Vaguely.”

“And so we’re going off your potentially shoddy memory?” Phil asked before shrugging. “Though I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Mumbo replied sarcastically. "Besides, it's not like a perfect memory would work here. We did just go from one world to another. So it's obviously not a one to one."

"He's got a point Phil." Techno agreed. Or were you never going to tell us our uncle had a kingdom not even a day's trip away."

"Whatever. Let's just find the kids and X's hels. Hopefully that will also lead us to Doc."

"That's assuming they're in here."

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TW/CW: brainwashing(?) scene, reader discretion advised.

Getting a moment alone wasn’t too hard, it was stepping away that was the issue. Sort of. After deflecting asking where the closest river was, a message sent not too long after helped keep anyone off the trail. 

As far as anyone had to know, they had any plans distrusted by Grifter’s whim. Though at the very least, she was heading there anyway. This whole place was a mess. But it wasn’t a complete waste. Death’s connections were abundant here, and she knew how to graft herself in. 

Finding the castle wasn’t too much of a hassle. Wing made things so much easier for travel, it was such a shame that this side of the universe made it inaccessible. Pity that connection to the wels wasn’t easier. 

That being said, while flight was useful getting to the castle, exploring inside was another matter. It was much harder to navigate, and there was barely a guide inside. But finding her prey wasn’t too hard. Their unique self made it easier to spot where her influence had already landed.

The prey didn’t even notice as she entered the room, too entranced in its project. Almost as if it knew her distaste for the substance it held in its hands. But she could bear it for now, approaching from behind before draping herself over it. “I’m a little busy right now. I just want to get this redstone right first.”

“Oh by all means, finish up. I can wait a little longer.” She cooed, frightening her prey a bit. But she did love to toy with them first. 

“What the fuck are you do- who the hell are you?!”

“Aww, don’t struggle, it will only kill you faster~” And the words seemed to work, making it freeze in her grasp. “You don’t have to die, you know. You can be fixed. You can have worth again.”

“I’m not some shitty worthless-”

She shushed it, not letting it finish its complaint. “Oh but it is easy for certain people to replace you. Not I. You are so invaluable to me. I know you want to stay.”

There was silence from her prey. A good sign. A weaker body did mean a weaker mind. And a weaker mind is just easier to claim. “And you can be healed. But those people will just want to keep it from you.”

“I- I won’t again…” That was odd. Why would they resist now? Perhaps their lineage was stronger. Living in a standard home could help with some resistance.

“Oh but I am different. I am not like them. I will not harm you. I will not try to claim this place as my own. This is why I ask for you to follow. Not force.” Though she knows she could force an acceptance, though it would tire her greatly.

There was more silence before she could feel a mental barrier open its doors to her. “So good. The spores will keep you safe. So good for Mother Spore.”

Scene over, summary: Mysterious person travels to the castle in the NSMP where Grifter, his family and others reside. The person finds who they are looking for, referring to them only as ‘her prey’. The other person is frightened until being told that they will be killed/die if they struggle and that they can be fixed if they give it. They relent and it is revealed the first of the two is Mother Spore, who has now infected them with her spores in some capacity, implied to be their mind.

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“Well, we found them.” Techno said as they entered one of the rooms of the skull. They were cautious when entering, the vines seeming to have cillected more in there, even just from looking at the door frame, but they were pretty sure it would still be safe as they were still probably in the vine dome. 

Getting to that door also hadn’t been the easiest. Though they hadn’t been outright attacked by vines, the vines had definitely found them. Each of them was covered in vines to some degree. Xisuma had the most, enough that it was affecting his breathing as they had wrapped around his helmet, meanwhile Phil had the least, which he was grateful he didn’t need to deal with too many in his wings. 

That being said, even Xisuma was fine with how many he had because more coated the bodies of the stolen group members. A wall seemed to be made entirely of vines. Trapped within them like flies caught in a spiders web were not only those who went missing, but also a few people who had been crafted by the fictional reality. Etho and Bdubs were woven into the vines along with what Mumbo recognized were Scicraft members and Paul picking out a few Mindcrack people. But there were also a few none of them could immediately recognize.

Carefully moving through the room, the remaining members of the group looked over the wall. Until they knew that saving all those trapped would release them from this place and onto the next , they weren’t going to bother. It would waste time and potentially also trap them. Even releasing Xannes, Wilbur, Tommy and Grumbot was out of the question for now because none of them seemed to be in any real danger, just trapped and unconscious.

Doc also didn’t seem to be one of the trapped. After also having it pointed out that nor was Beef, the last member of the NHO, Xisuma explained, or reminded in Mumbo’s case, that Beef managed to stay around the longest, Doc disappearing before anything happened to Beef.

“What's the chances he’ll be near Beef?” Phil asked before Paul spoke up.

“Currently looking very unlikely.” And moments later, the other four were following his line of sight before their eyes fell on a creeper hybrid, who mostly resembled Doc, but was missing all of his cybernetic parts. “I would suggest one of us try to approach him, but in our current states,” and he paused to gesture at the vines that adorned them. “I’m worried it would just freak him out more.”

“None of us have been fully hybrid minded during these.” Techno spoke up, though he was probably the worst one to say that.

“Well the one exception to that so far is you mate.” Phil pointed out. “And it was also because something triggered it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was going on here.”

“Fine then. Let me try.” Techno then offered. “Who knows, maybe that will help it. I mean, I’m the only other competent hybrid here.” 

Phil was slightly offended by that, but Techno was off before he could be stopped, quickly getting close enough to be noticed by Doc before slowly moving closer. Doc hissed at first, but noticed the cat Techno was holding in one hand, so wasn’t attacking. “Hey, sorry to barge in here or whatever. I don’t know if you can talk or whatever, but can you understand me at all? That should be easy enough to nod or shake your head at.”

There was nothing for long enough that Techno thought his assumptions were wrong and Doc was in a more feral mode, but he then slowly nodded. “The jungle stuff is probably a lot, right? Creepers are supposed to like lots of green stuff to hide in, don’t they?” Another few moments before another nod. “But you’re used to it holding bad things.”

Doc didn’t nod, he instead moved his remaining arm near a horrible wound Techno was surprised he hadn’t already noticed. “What caused th- it looks fresh actually.” There was then a noise from elsewhere in the jungle. It was somewhere between a growl and a screech, yet also neither of those. “Doc… what is in that jungle?”

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“That was pretty short, huh?” Flora spoke up, plopping herself on the couch next to Grian.

“Yeah, I’m kind of tired out though.” And he flopped his head onto Flora’s shoulder. He was mostly awake. Barely. He vaguely recalled waking up and then immediately ending up training with Grifter. Honestly he’s pretty sure he ended up learning more from Sense who was there overseeing or something than Grifter himself.

“We got into some magic stuff, so that probably wore me out. I haven’t done that much before, so my stamina is probably shit.”

“Darn, guess I can’t ask you to show off or anything.” Flora joked, but then Toob spoke up.

“He better do something to pay for staying here, I don’t like freeloaders coming around this often.”

‘Oh fuck off.’ Astrid started signing, though she was sure Toob would understand it all. ‘I can pay you if that’s what you want.’

While he indeed didn’t understand most of the signing, payment being suggested did get to him, and then a few diamonds were passed his way. And it was also passed in front of Grian, which was enough to get his attention. 

“Wait, do you think I could just summon diamonds?” Grian asked, making both Toob and Flora’s eyes light up, Flora then looking to Astrid to see why she thought.

‘Theoretically yes, but only in a way Grifter would notice, and while I’m sure he loves some of you very much.’ She was mainly referring to Flora, but keeping it vague also implied Grian though she knew that wasn’t the case. ‘He’ll probably want to keep the economy balanced or whatever. But I’d totally magic up more decorative stuff if you want.’ And she paused before adding, ‘For special occasions.’

Toob huffed, which caused Silski to come over and comfort them. Grian seemed to have noticed subconsciously that the sculk hybrid didn’t like him, so he scooted away as far as possible when Silski got closer. Flora helped by moving to sit on the arm of the couch before Toob turned to glare at her, leaving her to end up uncomfortably squished against  Grian up until Sahn entered the room.

“I’m all done setting up my room thing!” The ghost basically shouted, shocking Silski so much he jumped, setting off some sort of alarm in the house. “What’s going on now?”

“Ugh… great.” Was all Silski said before he was tearing up the floor, leaving Toob to explain instead.

“We’ve got the place hooked up with redstone. Sculks in general can interact with it, so for emergencies, we have a bit of a security system. Usually what would happen is if we were being threatened or something, Sil would set it off, but you freaked him out enough he accidentally triggered it from fear I guess.”

“I was just startled.” Silski huffed, having removed the boards but was now working on a second layer of the floor. “Goddamn ghosts…”

“Do you need us to leave for a moment?” Flora piped up, but Silski shook his head. Grian looked at Flora curiously, not knowing why she asked the question. He was on the other side of the room, so they probably weren’t in the way. He had offhandedly heard from Sense that redstone could be complicated, so maybe he might have needed quiet to think? Especially since ‘seeing’ meant echolocation of some sort, so more sounds could mess with that. Apparently, he was looking too long with a confused expression that Flora noticed him. “That’s right, you don’t know how dangerous redstone is, huh?”

“What do you mean?” Grian asked, now not just looking to Flora for an answer. He expected it from her or Astrid, maybe even Toob or Silski since they were the ones using it. He just was not expecting Sahn to say anything.

“Oh, redstone is radioactive, meaning too much exposure can kill lots of people. Um… not everyone does… oh! Like sculks and stuff are like… part redstone or something so they’re immune! Oh right, and if you don’t keep yourself safe, it kinda poisons you until you die! Or no uhh… no not poison… but that’s the name… Oh right! It actually messed with your code! And It makes it so you can never ever ever respawn.. My boss has had to deal with so many people with redstone poisoning because so many people forget! Like me! Well not forget redstone like me, I didn’t even know about it before I died! I meant that I just have lots ‘n lots of trouble remembering stuff here and there and uh… everywhere too I guess!”

“You know, you mentioned a boss when you showed up.” Grian pointed out. “You never said just who they are. Especially since you said they’re the reason you showed up, and that they told you to look for me.”

Sahn didn’t get a chance to answer Grian’s question. The redstone alarm turned off with Silski having fixed the redstone, which took everyone’s attention long enough for him to butt in. “So that was you I talked to… not Aven.”

Sahn tilted his head, obviously confused, probably from forgetting having met previously, but the others were also confused since none of them knew what Silski was talking about. “You mentioned your boss, and you also mentioned that Perfect Sense was dealing with redstone poisoning. You were also here to see someone called ‘Spore’ to deal with it.”

Sahn looked more confused for a moment. “I did? Hmmm… Oh wait yeah I did! I needed to find them and get them to do that! Well… it was one of the things I needed to do. I think it was just that and Grian… probably… Oh no what If I’m forgetting something else! Hmmm… oh wait, we were talking about Spore! Oh and that Sense person! Well the chickens say he’s aaaaall better! Spore went and helped him! And pretty recently!”

“Is that why he helped me out during this last training session or whatever?” Grian asked, forgetting his first question hadn’t been answered.

“I have no idea! He probably shouldn’t have… but I wasn’t there!”

Astrid then signed at Sahn, not able to keep her hands from glowing with magic slightly. ‘What are you hiding?’

“What? But… but I’m not hiding anything.”

‘You are. Even if you weren’t there, those words mean you know more than you should about either just that, or everything in general. Who sent you?’

“Oh my boss? Oh that’s right I didn’t even get to say… I’m sorry, I guess I forgot again.” And Sahn hit his head a few times. “Stupid Sahn… and he didn’t even say I couldn’t tell you… right? Well… I don’t think he did. Oh and I’m not doing it again… Uh, well, my boss is the Warrior!”

Everyone but Grian froze, faces paling in shock on what that meant, looking to Grian because of what that probably meant for him. “What? Who’s the Warrior? …What’s going on?”

[votederpycausemufins]

Alright, first chapter since I've gone back to college. That mixed with the weather we've been having meaning more time cut out of working to instead travel as well as some writers block means it took a little while. But hopefully this long chapter will help make up for that.

I'm likely going to work on the hermitcraft scattered au fic for a bit after this, so another long wait for this fic unfortunately. But hope you still enjoy what's here.

hermit tommy au created by @petrichormeraki

If there was one thing Grian did not miss about having wings, it was actually having to deal with the extra limbs when he wasn’t flying. He needed to preen them after all his flying and the chaos that followed, which was very clear with how much they were itching. But actually seeing the problem area was tough because it seemed to be coming from the base of his wings, which was even more sensitive than the rest of the limbs.

On one hand, Grian was pretty sure he could shift his wings away and they would stop itching. He had done that a few times when he was younger and they had gotten injured. But on the other hand, that was when he was younger and he hadn’t had the practice he did back then. Plus, it needed focus, and while Grian was pretty sure he could still focus in pain from being in pain so often, itching was another thing entirely.

Walking down the halls of the castle, Grian tried his best to scratch his back with little success, only pausing when someone came running out of an adjacent hallway in front of him. Or more accurately, three someones. Astrid was in front, holding her bat out, ready to hit anyone in her way, nearly hitting Grian in the process. Behind her was Flora, who was dragging along her axe in one hand and pulling Jane along with her other hand. “Oh thank fuck! Grian!”

“Hey, sorry.” Grian spoke up, apologizing for startling the group. “Why are you running around?”

“Looking for you, I thought that would be obvious.” Flora replied, hooking her axe onto her belt to free her hand. “My uncle just rescued you from who knows what, I don’t want him getting pissed at me letting you get into something new when you’re already hurt.”

“Hurt?” Grian asked, pausing to try and scratch at his back again. “I’m more itchy than hurt. Electric shocks are surprisingly easy to get over. I just want whatever shit is in my feathers to get out!”

Astrid still didn’t put her bat away, but she moved around to Grian’s back, her free hand touching the problem area, though it also made Grian jump from it being extra sensitive. “What’s it look like?”

Grian didn’t know what Astrid signed since she was still behind him, but Flora then followed along to look at what the problem was. “So? What’s going on?”

“Well you have something stuck in your feathers. What it is, we’re not really sure. Grifter didn’t say what you were up to before coming back, so maybe that would help?”

Grian paused to recall everything that had happened in the other world, everything a bit fuzzy after having slept for a bit. “Well, Grifter took me to a world for some training, though he started with wanting me to learn to fly again. I’m not exactly at peak performance, but I can take off and fly alright. Landing’s a different story though. After getting some confidence with the basics, I started flying around and exploring the place. See, apparently there were a bunch of people living there, but they used up so many resources they moved out pretty far to the East and just abandoned their old homes.”

“Wow, privileged much?” Flora commented with an eye roll.

“Yeah, they left a lot behind, so I checked it out until I sort of… crashed. Really badly.”

Astrid facepalmed and Flora snickered a bit. “You mean you died?”

“Yeah…” Grian answered in a much more serious tone that made the girls remember the fact Grian was used to a hardcore world. “I woke up in a bed I didn’t remember in a place I had never seen, so for a little bit, I thought I had actually died. But then I went exploring and realized that probably wasn’t the case.”

“Huh, that’s sort of weird.” Flora said, rubbing her chin for a moment before stopping and grabbing Jane again before she could run off. “You should only really respawn in beds you’ve linked up with.”

‘Could be because of Grifter.’ Astrid suggested, hoping neither of the other teens noticed the franticness of her hands to reply with an excuse. ‘He could have used it.’

“Good point. The world probably got super confused with all the time travel and so you got sent to wherever he set up last. Anyway, continue?”

“Right.” Grian nodded, pausing to remember where he was. “Well, I explored around the new area before something caught my eye. It was some sort of gate, and the signs there made me think it was some sort of amusement park, which I really wanted to check out. But apparently that was one place that wasn’t abandoned and the people there attacked me and tried to capture me. Of course, I tried flying away, but they had some sort of electrical fence and I ran into that. Grifter showed up a bit after that and took me to some sort of safe room filled with mushrooms and that’s where I passed out.”

“Oh so this is probably some sort of nylium.” Flora suggested, moving around to look at Grian’s back again. “Though I don’t really recognize what kind. What sort of mushrooms were there? Red or bluish?”

“Uh, yes?” GrIan answered. “There were some of all sorts. Red, blue, green, brown, pink, yellow. A number of them were even glowing and see through.”

“Ugh, that’s not normal.”

‘Think we need to take him to ---?’ Astrid asked, more to Flora than Grian, especially since he didn’t understand whatever word Astrid had signed for where to take him.

“Yeah, probably. You can start heading that way. I’m going to see what I can do about Jane. No way we send her home that soon. Aven can probably keep her occupied. Goodness knows they did that for us enough growing up.”

‘Well yeah, it’s easy for ghosts to blow the minds of kids. Plus they’ve got an attention span to match.’

“Oh yeah. Grian have you met Aven? They’re sort of the resident ghost of the server. Been around as long as anyone can really remember but they’ve been hanging around the castle ever since it showed up.”

Grian nodded. “Yeah, I remember seeing them when I got the tour of the place. They called me Grifter off the bat and part of me thinks they still would even if I told them my name was Grian.”

“Oh definitely. Well, I’m going to look for them while you guys start off to visit Wassa and see what he thinks.”

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“Did you really have to take on who knows how many traffickers?” Sense asked, pressing a potion soaked cloth to Grifter’s chest, making the avian hiss.

“Kinda. I’m already getting bored. I mean, I know now Grian’s going to be all freaked out when any of the hermits show up, especially that seventy-seven guy. And Grian’s going to trust me more since I protected him. But come on. They’re taking foreverrrr.” Grifter complained, flopping back onto the bed and then pulling the cloth away to look at his now scarred injury. “I mean, I know I still need to actually get him using magic.”

“And do you even know how to go about that? End and Dark don’t like to mix, right?”

“Yeah, which is why people are so scared when it gets mixed together, and why it’s so powerful. If I can get Grian stuck under my thumb doing that, we could do just about anything!” Grifter explained happily before getting an idea. “I could even use it to get you to try some magic yourself.”

Sense started laughing at the joke before it dissolved into coughing, Grifter’s lighthearted mood immediately changing to one of concern as he sat up and got to Sense’s side. His hand ran through Sense’s hair, pulling a few clumps of hair with it before Grifter used magic to put them back and then work on healing Sense. “No, what we’ll really do is finally make it so you’re immune to redstone poisoning. I just wish I could figure out how to fucking do it on my own.”

“Hey… not your fault.” Sense spoke up, leaning against Grifter. “It’s just stupid like that.”

“I know. But if anything it should be easy! Stuff from the Dark is immune to this shit.”

“Well, you know what Silski always says. Apparently redstone makes me smell like the End. they’re probably immune because of their opposites.”

“I guess.” Grifter reluctantly agreed before finally stopping his healing spell. “Would explain why none of my magic wants to work well on you. On this.”

“I’m still not giving up redstone.” Sense spoke up, making Grifter scoff. “Oh please. I knew you were thinking it.”

“Well if that’s how you want to act, then you can sit in here alone!” And Grifter stood up, leaving Sense behind as he weakly argued. The avian didn’t listen and walked off, mentioning something about going to check on their kids. Sense just smiled and rolled his eyes, sitting down on the bed and watching until Grifter was out of sight before letting his smile fall to look at his hand.

In the middle of his coughing, he had coughed into his hand. Normally if it was serious, he would show Grifter his other hand, which was always stained with redstone and could be mistaken for blood. At least, for what would be normal blood for most people. Sense was officially married to Grifter, they had kids, they flirted and of course had sex. But even with all that, the redstoner still kept one secret. And just showing off the fact he had green blood sort of messed with that secret.

Looking at the blood, it fortunately wasn’t as bad as it could get sometimes. Just a little smattering that might have easily come from a bad cut or something. Easy enough to just wipe away on his pants and forget about the whole thing. And Sense nearly did that, before he noticed something else stuck to his hand, intriguing Sense and making him poke it. It was some sort of greyish thing. Vaguely spongey.

Sense grabbed the cloth he used on Grifter to try and wipe his hand and get rid of whatever this was, only to find more of it on the cloth itself already. With a bit more inspection, it was also on the tunic Grifter had taken off, which gave Sense the answer he was looking for on the origin of the unknown substance. Glad with the answer, Sense dusted himself off and then went elsewhere into the castle, not noticing how much still stuck to him.

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It was getting late as the trio of teens travelled to Wassa’s home. Flora had rambled on about plenty with Astrid signing back here and there, but Grian wasn’t really paying attention. Thinking back on the past few days, Grian realized he hadn’t really been out at night before. The first day he was stuck here Grifter had mainly kept him in the castle to learn how to use various weapons and other necessities of the sort of survival world they were living in. The next night, he had a bit of a breakdown when reading the notes about what happened with his family, and then last night was the training which left him stuck recovering until it was just about noon.

And thinking it over didn’t really help Grian either as it reminded him just how long he had been stuck away from his home. Sure, time travel meant he probably would show back up right around when he first left once he did go back, but while time wasn’t passing for Sam or Taurtis or anyone else, it was passing for him. And since it had been Saturday for him when Grian first showed up, now it was definitely getting to him just how long he had been separated from his normal life.

He didn’t get to think too much more on it, however, as Astrid spanned her fingers a few times in front of Grian’s face, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Oh good, he’s alive.” Flora said when the snapping seemed to work. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Sorry, guess I zoned out.” Grian explained, though there was the slightest hint of a pained tone from thinking about why that was.

“Well… we can talk about that later.” Flora said, obviously catching that there was more to Grian’s words. “We’re basically at Wassa’s place.”

Sure enough, up ahead was what looked like a small village of houses shaped like giant mushrooms, like fairies or the like were drawn living in from some stuff back home. “This does look like someone who could help with our fungi problem.”

“He might have a friend over. Well, less of a friend and more like a freeloader. He- he? They? Some other pronoun? Who cares, said freeloader is named CX. Imagine Astrid, but taller, wearing blue, and a big C and X on the mask.”

“Are they related to Astrid?” Grian asked, remembering that there was some mention of Astrid having a brother.”

‘Fuck. No.’ Astrid signed back, emphasizing the signing. ‘My brother is dead as fuck. It’s just that this place has more than one shapeshifter and for whatever reason, one of them likes to look like my brother did.’

“Oh, that sounds horrible.” Grian responded after a moment. He thought it was worse than horrible, but he was used to a normal world. No magic or coming back from death or hybrids everywhere. Learning about shapeshifters was just something to add to the pile and lead to his mind trying to comprehend that instead of thinking of something better to say.”

The land that belonged to Wassa was very clearly defined by the fact the grass changed suddenly to a bright aqua substance. It was even decorated with similarly colored glowing mushrooms. Grian would have admired the terrain a bit more if he could, but the moment they stepped onto the faux grass, someone jumped out of nowhere with a sword drawn and attacked Astrid.

Off the top of his head, Grian couldn’t recall their name, but he definitely recognized one of the robots that belonged to Grifter. Astrid pulled her weapon out to deflect some of the attacks, managing to block all of them. That being said, she was still getting pushed back and separated from the group.

Flora quickly noticed that and pulled out her axe, swinging it at bot. Before it could hit him, the robot, managed to move his hand to press against the flat side of the axe head and guide it away into missing him, then kicking the head so that the handle of the axe was pushed towards Flora, which at her current angle, it jabbed her in the gut.

With Flora recovering from being attacked, the robot went after Astrid again. Grian for the most part had just been standing there, trying to comprehend what was going on, but seeing what had happened to Flora, it finally shocked him enough to move. While he had been given an axe and sword and whatnot, obviously that wouldn’t work against the robot. That all being said, he had been given one weapon that wasn’t standard here.

Before the robot could push Astrid further, Grian took out the gun he had been gifted and loaded it. Then as he watched another blow of a sword move towards Astrid, Grian aimed and fired, shooting the robot’s side from behind, causing them to drop their weapon and then hold their wound, yelling in pain. Flora was close enough that a moment later, she swiped her leg to knock the bot’s feet out from under him, causing him to fall to the ground, and then letting the trio gather around him.

“Hey, what the fuck’s going on our here?” Someone new spoke up, making everyone look to see who it was. Standing off to the side were a pair of people, the one in front with their hands on their hips while the second stood behind and slightly to the side, not really showing any emotion at all. Looking the first person over, Grian noted the sunglasses the person wore, their blue shirt with white spots, and what seemed like a flower crown on their head, though made of mushrooms.

“One of my cousins started attacking Astrid!” Flora explained, gesturing to where the robot was still lying on the ground and holding their wound.

The second person stepped forward, standing over the robot and looking down at him. Grian realized pretty easily that this was the person that Flora had mentioned a few minutes ago. “Astrid hasn’t been around for a few months. Isn’t this Sefter? One of the newbies?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Flora asked, crossing her arms, getting confused when CX turned to look at Grian.

“Unknown person near family can seem worrying around here, wouldn’t you say?”

While Flora and Grian both looked confused, the mushroom guy sighed. “I think e’s tryina say th’ kid freaked out ‘n tried attackin’ what ‘e thought was a threat.”

“Pretty much. Though I honestly think you’re all a threat. Why are you here?”

“We needed to see Wassa.” Flora spoke up, gesturing to the mushroom guy who Grian was glad to have the name of. “Grian here’s an avian. Something happened and he ended up in a room filled with all sorts of mushrooms and now there’s some shit stuck in his wings. We want to know what it is and if he can get it out.”

“Color?” Wassa asked, moving towards Grian and then grabbing his wing.

“A sort of purplish grey.” Flora replied. “Right, you’ve got some color blindness, don’t you?”

Wassa shrugged. “Yeah, but purple’s not really ‘fected, so this should be easier th’n identifyin’ other shrooms. Anyway, this is definitely from somewhere modded er somethin’. Alright, jus’ follow me ta m’ base. I’ll get a better look at ‘em there.”

Grian and Flora followed along behind Wassa and CX, but Astrid stayed behind, focused on Sefter. Once The group was far enough away, Astrid knelt down next to Sefter and drew a symbol over the bullet wound with her finger. A moment later, the bullet came out and the wound healed, followed by Astrid taking the robot’s hand and pulling him up.

Sefter dusted himself off, then glanced around, making sure the others weren’t coming back for Astrid. After noticing they weren’t, he pulled out a file folder from his inventory and handed it to Astrid. The teen’s eyes widened behind her mask as she took it, opening it to see what was inside.

“Keep quiet.” Sefter spoke up, making Astrid look up from the file, watching as Sefter started to leave. Astrid frowned, flipping the bot off before looking back at the file, then stuffing it in her inventory to run after the group and catch up.

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It ended up that everyone gathered at Doc’s base. With Mumbo and Xisuma looking for the others, they met up at the copy of the hybrid’s base since it was safer compared to False’s base to the Northwest and Cleo’s base to the south was built to be spread out, so it was even more unwieldy with how the nightmare was portraying everything.

At this point, everyone knew Tommy was stuck in the center island. It was the only place left to look. Plus, there was also what was going on with Wilbur. Here and there, it was like he suddenly started flickering. The first time Phil saw it, he panicked and mentioned Ghostbur, which helped with them figuring out what was happening. Since his revival, Wilbur had been revived and Ghostbur became a part of him.

After that came them slowly learning from Wilbur what was going on. Wilbur would have loved to fill them in better than he was right then, but the vague feeling of being ripped apart in opposite directions and having a migraine so bad he wasn’t sure how much he was actually seeing and how much he was imagining or remembering from the past.

And then all that would be enough, but it was worse from how the others were acting. Phil was touchy about them not having Tommy nearby. Paul was still a bit suspicious about what was going on, even though he kept trying to catch himself and correct how he was acting. Mumbo and EX had gotten into some sort of argument, which pulled Xisuma in and got them all going. And then Doc was talking with Techno about some sort of plan or formula or something Wilbur couldn’t understand, though they also kept getting distracted making sure Grum was alright making it even more confusing. If anything, actually getting pulled to wherever Tommy was was better because of how much calmer everything was.

On one of the times he was pulled back to the group, everything must have gotten worse when he was gone because it just felt so loud and he just broke. Wilbur remembered that he said something, but what exactly he said he didn’t recall. All he did know was when he stopped, it was quiet and he wasn’t back with Tommy.

“I think Wilbur’s right.” Techno was the one to speak up. Wilbur wasn’t sure what he was right about, but was glad it worked. “We need to stop arguing. I mean, I’m not the only one who’s noticed it’s been getting worse, right?”

There were some slight mumblings of agreement, and then Techno looked over to Xannes. “Hey, you showed up because you were told something about all this, right?”

“Vaguely. I thought I was helping you get past a whitelist, but then Theseus mentioned there was some sort of test instead. And that’s all these weird nightmare things.”

Techno nodded a little, mostly thinking it over. “Dream had this whole thing about connections holding people back. I know you know hels better, but if this is supposed to be a test, maybe it’s testing that too. Making us tense and getting us arguing.”

“I doubt it. If anything he’d keep that thing about attachment. He wouldn’t want people that are close getting in easily. That’s why we’re all stuck here together instead of everyone doing their own thing. It wants us to break that bond or whatever you want to call it.”

“So the sooner we can get out of here, the better.” Phil summed it up, though Doc shook his head.

“Easier said than done, man. These things have been getting tougher. I mean you already tried just flying out to the middle island and couldn’t get past whatever was there.”

“Xisuma did though, right?” Wilbur asked, getting everyone to look at him. Sure, he still had a bit of a headache and things felt fuzzy, but it was much better than before. “He’s there. Or someone that looks like him is. I-Instead of Dream?” Wilbur finished off, losing confidence in what he was saying, but the others seemed to be happy about the news.

“That’s got to be it then!” Mumbo explained. “Xisuma, you remember how he was after he first arrived!”

“Right, it took forever for him to be comfortable with people mentioning my name, much less being around me.”

“I’m guessing since you were the admin, he was worried about you being like Dream?” Techno asked, getting a nod from Xisuma. “Well, maybe none of us can get there since it’s his exile like Wil’s saying, but the only one allowed to go there was Dream since he set it up. If a fake you is in Dream’s place, maybe the real you can get in?”

Xisuma looked unsure, but Paul spoke up. “It’s worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, at least we tried and aren’t left debating it.”

“I unfortunately agree with him.” Xannes spoke up, though then attempted to shove over Paul when he gave a thumbs up to thank him. “We try to see if it works, then go from there. We already saw with the spoon that this is all based on what the nightmar-ee thinks should be going on. If the fake one is there, the real one should be able to get there too.”

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The trio as well as CX all sat down in the main room as Wassa was off elsewhere looking into a sample he had taken from Grian. For the most part they were all silent, except for when CX offered them some bags of some sort of pink powder which Flora and Astrid passed up on, though Grian accepted, putting into his pocket. Hey, drugs were drugs after all.

After that, Grian just looked around. The place was decorated with mushrooms, mainly in a pink that was a little darker than the bag of drugs he was given or in the blue of the terrain outside. Anything else all seemed to be fake or kept in what seemed like very special glass cases. There were also a number of pigs walking around, mostly in blue but a few in pink. One came close enough for Grian to pat it on the head.

Apparently a certain someone didn’t approve of that, because Grian’s back suddenly clucked, making everyone look over to him as he froze. “I’m sorry, did I hear what I think I heard?” CX was the one to ask, confirming to the others that, yes, they weren’t the only one who heard that.

“Probably not?” Grian tried to lie, but was quickly found out by a bit more clucking as well as his bag moving around a bit before a chicken poked its head out from the bag. “No, get back in there!”

“Why… why do you have a chicken in your bag?” Flora asked.

“So I may have also gotten myself a pet chicken when I went training with Grifter.” Grian explained. “Her name is Sally.”

CX leaned closer and let Sally rub her beak against his outstretched finger. “You know, a flock of these things can pink a triceratops clean in around ninety seconds.”

“They can what?!” Flora asked, getting a chuckle out of CX.

“It’s a joke. But they can be pretty ruthless. That’s why they’re an omen of death.”

“Wait, chickens, like actually chickens, are supposed to be an omen of death?” Grian asked, looking at Sally like she would suddenly do something to help him understand.

“Well, a lot of things can be. Crows, solar eclipses, fans, mushrooms, opals. Heck, even umbrellas, so we’ve got a nice group.”

Grian paused, confused by what the heck CX meant, though before he could ask, Flora seemed to realize. “Oh yeah, shit, of course you don’t know. Astrid, wanna show him?”

Astrid shrugged then took her weapon out. What Grian had thought was a sort of metal bat this whole time suddenly opened showing that it was, indeed, actually an umbrella. “What the fuck?”

‘There’s a long story behind it.’ Astrid started after closing the umbrella again and putting it aside. ‘Long story short, my brother was a fucking asshole.’

That didn’t help much, leaving Grian just as, if not more confused, so then CX spoke up to clarify. “Alright, so a bit over a decade ago, I was on okay terms with Nightmare. And since I was cool with him, I was cool with Astrid, her being his younger sister. A lot of people think I’ve got magic or something, but I’m just really good with admin commands. I figured I would give them each something pretty cool because why not. Nightmare asked me for some sort of mechanic as a replacement for whitelists which I set up. As for Astrid, she was five at the time. Nightmare decided to ask what she wanted, specifically at a time where she would ask for something that, y’know, a five year old would want. I told him that with what he asked for already, I probably wouldn’t be able to do much for her, plus with how young she was, why not wait a few years.”

“But he convinced you otherwise?” Grian asked, getting a nod from CX.

“I mean, to be able to do the shit I do, the world admin needs to give some sort of permission. I didn’t want to lose that, so fine, I would do what he wanted. Apparently Astrid had at the time been in love with an umbrella that looked like a frog, but a few days ago, it had gotten destroyed. She was devastated, so the first thing she asked for was an umbrella. Of course I tried to convince her of something else, but nope! Kept asking for an umbrella. So who was I to refuse? I made it but added plenty of bells and whistles so it also functions as a hybrid weapon and shield.”

“And then Nightmare decided you had too much power.” Wassa’s voice spoke up as he walked into the room.

“Well someone’s sober.” CX replied, turning to face Wassa. “Figured out what it was?”

Wassa slapped the back of CX’s head, just earning a laugh from him. “I’m glad I was with how loud you guys started getting. You’re bad enough by yourself, so along with the omen trio here, it was enough of a headache.”

“The what now?” Grian asked, extremely confused.

“Oh shit, didn’t tell you that. Enough people group up sometimes to simplify who they’re talking about with shorter names. Like Silski and Toob are the posture duo since neither of them stand straight, Silski, Euro, Ekke and my grandma are the council, stuff like that.”

“And why are we the omen trio?” Grian asked, still a little confused.

“I said you guys were being loud. You were just talking about death omens. I mean, one of you has a pet chicken, one of you has a thing with an umbrella, plus you could argue that gaudy gem encrusted mask is like a death mask. And then you have someone who is literally related to death being their granddaughter and all. So yeah, omen trio. You’re welcome.”

“Hey, not that I'm not glad about the name, because I’ve honestly been trying to figure it out.” Flora spoke up. “What did you find out about the shit on Grian’s wings?”

“Oh right. Nothing too bad. Stuff you mostly find in modded worlds called mycelium. It’s not directly harmful, though if it builds up too much on his wings, he might have trouble flying. Now, about payment.”

“Hold up.” Flora started, jumping out of her seat. “Who said anything about paying you? I thought you loved mushroom stuff? Isn’t that enough?”

“Not exactly. See, mycelium isn’t the most common thing, but it’s also not the rarest in the world if you know where to look. I mean, I’ve got a culture over here.” And Wassa picked up one of the glass cases, which had what seemed to be a pair of mushrooms with mycelium covering whatever they were planted in. “Look, I’m not asking for too much. I just need you guys to talk with Cerus.”

With the way Flora was shocked, Grian knew that probably wasn’t the best thing. “Who… who is Cerus?”

Wassa put the mycelium case away and then looked to Grian. “Cerus and Aven were two people who lived here well before Nightmare showed up and claimed this place for himself. They fucked up and got cursed as well as locking up a whole dimension. When Nightmare first arrived, he teamed up with the two of them to try and reverse the curse and get back to The Dark, and it sort of worked, but then they screwed up more. In The Dark are something sort of similar to a type of fungus called sculk growths. Nightmare was a btich and wouldn’t let me see what he managed to collect, Aven is scatterbrained and also literally a ghost, so he couldn’t do much. That left Cerus, but I haven’t had much luck with him.”

“Why not go to The Dark yourself? My uncle opened it back up when he became admin here.”

“Because I want to be informed before running in there blindly. With how that place was broken, respawns might not work properly. I don’t want to risk my head just like that.”

“Alright.” Grian spoke up. “We can try talking to them. Where do they live?”

“North of spawn. Giant ice temple. Can’t miss it.” Wassa answered, then handed Grian some sort of charm. “Here, use this and it should help with the mycelium if it becomes a problem.”

“Uh, thanks.” Grian replied, stuffing it in his pocket, then left to follow behind Flora and Astrid. For now they would just be heading back to the castle to rest, and possibly also one of them could find Aven and talk with him. But if that didn’t work, then tomorrow, they would speak with Cerus.

[votederpycausemufins]

hehehehe. We got some hels lore in this chapter! that's totally the only thing going on here. nothing else. nothing with the nightmare crew or stuff with grian. nope!

hermit tommy au by @petrichormeraki

Phil looked away from the scroll and towards the window of his study. Wherever they were all stuck, time was moving faster than normal, obvious by the fact that he could see the sun moving. As far as anyone that was part of this false reality was concerned, the day was progressing normally, so any attempts to point it out didn’t go well. That also meant that as far as his kingdom and the other one were concerned, they had been fighting for a number of days by now. And whether that was a good or bad thing, Phil couldn’t tell.

On one hand, with time moving the way it was, things were progressing faster, so he didn’t have to wait days for a message to arrive and be left sitting, waiting for an answer. On the other hand, if everyone was imprisoned to get at him, they likely weren’t being treated well and possibly tortured if this place thought that was what he feared most. It wasn’t, but it could get at that.

Fortunately, the scroll in his hand assured him they were unharmed. They were being held captive and weren’t taking well to it, but they still had food and shelter. The one problem was the messages implied that it was just the princes, meaning Tommy, Techno and Wilbur, but a few made mention of others, so Phil couldn’t be sure.

No answers had been given in terms of a trade, since apparently they had captured some of those belonging to the other kingdom, but apparently they weren’t of the same worth as a prince. Though, as Phil mulled it over, the most information he had was through the means of the letters he got or what those in his castle told him. If he talked with the captured guards, he could interrogate them, learn more, and then possibly work from that.

“Someone prepare the prisoners for questioning. I want to speak with them and see if I can’t weasel something out of them that we can use.”

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Grian looked at the house in front of them, then back to the other teens, both Flora and Astrid not taking their eyes off of the building. “Alright, here’s the plan. Neither Toob or Sil know about Astrid being back, plus she knows the layout of the place. Grian, Silski obviously doesn’t like you, so you’re going to be with me distracting both of them. I’ll disguise it as getting off on the wrong foot and also introducing you to Toob.”

“What after that?” Grian asked, a little lost since he had only caught half of what Astrid had been signing to Flora on the way there.

“Well, once Astrid gives the signal, which is probably bashing some kneecaps, we book it out of here. Wait, Grian, you’re avian, maybe you can-”

Grian stopped Flora before she could continue. “I haven’t tried flying in years. My wings were never in the best condition, and while they might be good enough to fly on now, I’m probably really rusty.”

“Yeah, okay, probably not the best thing to find out when we need it. Uh, hey, you could try shooting Silski if he doesn’t have his knees bashed in enough. He’s a sculk hybrid, so they’re pretty tough.”

“I… don’t know what that is.” Grian said. Grifter had told him plenty about the people and things they had made here, but not really much about what was different compared to the world he grew up in. Flora obviously wanted to help explain that gap if her expression were anything to go on, but Astrid nudged her and signed. “Astrid’s right. We’re already here, with a plan. Let’s do this prank and then you can talk as much as you want.”

‘Bold choice of words.’ Astrid signed, then pulled out a bat, resting it on her shoulder and holding it with her head. ‘You two head in first.’

Flora gave a thumbs up and then grabbed Grian’s hand, pulling him over to the front door of the house and knocking on the door. There was a voice from inside, and then after a bit someone answered the door. As opposed to Silski, who Grian had seen at the trek to see Flora’s mom, they were instead faced with someone who Grian was surprised to see was shorter than him, though part of that did seem to be that they were hunched over a bit. They had curly blond hair and large light grey horns coming out from it that made Grian wonder if maybe that was why they were so hunched. “What do you want, Fleur?”

Flora gave a sweet little smile that Grian could tell was a bit forced. “Well, my uncle invited another family member of mine over! His name is Grian and I’m helping him meet people.”

“And why the fuck are you bothering me about this?”

“Well, I met someone else earlier, I think they were named Silski?” Grian spoke up, immediately finding a groove. “Well, we got off on the wrong foot and I wanted to try and start over.”

Toob looked Grian over before scoffing. “Whatever. You act like Wassa. Just less drugs. Let’s get this over with.”

“Well, is Silski here?” Flora asked, getting a glare from Toob, but he hobbled off and soon returned with the hulking teal and pink person Grian remembered before. This time, the avian was able to get a better look, the person having weird sort of antler things on his head and wearing an unbuttoned dress shirt that revealed a pattern of shifting and glowing dots that were almost hypnotizing. Almost. “Hello Silski!”

“Why’s short Grifter here?” Silski asked with a huff, making Grian move a step closer.

“Uh, my name is actually Grian. I’m a relative of Flora’s.”

“Who spends too much time with Sense no doubt.” Silski spat at Grian, causing Flora to pull out her axe. “What? It’s true. That unnatural little fuck shouldn’t be around here.”

“That’s my uncle you’re talking about!” Flora shouted, swinging her axe next to Silski as a warning.

“Who’s fucking your cousin or something.” Silski shouted back, pointing to Grian. “There’s no way he smells that bad otherwise!”

“Ew! Gross!” Grian said, now with that unfortunate thought in his head. Technically, that was probably true because of Grifter… but gross.

“Well not even Grifter smells that-” Silski stopped, antler things twitching before he turned around just in time to get hit by Astrid and her bat.

“Go go go!” Flora shouted, whacking Toob and then grabbing the sack Astrid had brought with her but set down to attack. True to Flora’s words before, Astrid’s attacks didn’t do much, so Grian pulled out his gun and shot Silski a few times before running after the other two, catching up at the cliff where they started. “Whew! That was close!”

“Yeah, but we got what we wanted, right?” Grian asked, and Flora held up the bag. “Okay good. Can we get back to the castle before I can think about what Silski was saying again.”

“Yeah yeah yeah let’s go!” Flora agreed, giving the sack to Astrid and then heading to the castle. Once they arrived, Astrid went to deal with the sack, leaving Flora a chance to explain things to Grian. “So, what do you want to know first?”

“Uh, I guess anything that leads up to the sculk stuff, whatever that is.”

“Okay, so I’m sure you know most peaceful animals like pigs and sheep and rabbits.” Flora started, making Grian nod and internally disagree with one of the animals being on the peaceful list. “The only weirder ones are probably the nylpigs. Wassa has a lot of them. Astrid even has a few deals with him because she can get mycelium which he apparently really likes. Anyway, right, uh, so the more monster stuff show up in different dimensions. Main overworld stuff is like skeletons, zombies, spiders- uh there’s two kinds of those, big purple ones that you can only find in certain caves, and really big brown ones that are all over. Creepers are exploding things. I’m sure you know about that since Euro’s a hybrid.”

Grian shook his head before catching himself. “Uh, you seem to like talking about it, so go ahead.”

“Right! Well for the most part, they’re just really quiet and like to sneak up on you and explode, or explode if you sneak up on them because they get scared. Silverfish are annoying as fuck and guard the gateway to The Dark, but Grifter is still trying to fix that place up so we can access it. There are slime you can sometimes keep as pets, illagers- right, forgot. There’s a native population of other humanoids that are just known as villagers. Anyway, where was I?”

“You mentioned the villagers because of the illagers.” Grian reminded the fox hybrid, who lit up.

“Right! Well illagers are outcast villagers that want to get revenge or something. Then there are like water zombies called the drowned, and then there’s the barnacle and greater barnacle. I know, sounds silly, much deadlier than the name implies. They live in sea temples. Uh, there’s also zombies called husks in the desert and… oh yeah! The Great Hunger. Also in deserts. It’s actually pretty cool!”

“Well, glad to know all the-” Grian started, but Flora stopped him.

“No! There’s still two other dimensions! I mean the aether is filled with stuff like Aerwhales, sheepuffs and kirrid, but also hostile monsters like tempests, valk and swets. And then The Dark has sculk and the Warden and shriekers! There’s so much more!”

Before Grian could object or Flora could continue, there was a knock, and the two of them looked to see Astrid in the doorway. ‘Hey …, everything’s set up.’

“Hell yeah!” Flora cheered, jumping up, then helping Grian to his feet.

“Hey, little confused about something Astrid signed there.” Grian spoke up, following as Astrid led them to a different room.

“I’d tell you, but we’re- oh who cares, let them learn. This sign-” and Flora repeated the movements. “Is for bitch. Astrid was saying bitches. You need to learn more curse word signs.”

“I’ll agree with you there.” Grian said, then they reached the room Astrid was leading them to. For the most part it was an unused but messy cross between a bedroom and storage room, but sitting on the dusty mess of a bed was a little kid with shimmering blonde hair and a pair of silvery wings that were poking out of an oversized t-shirt that they wore as a dress. They also were very quiet due to the candy cane in their mouth. “So then… this is Jane?”

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When guards came to pull one of them out of the cell, Doc was the first to volunteer. He hoped that being outside the cell, if only for a little bit, would help him get some information or item to break them out, even if that ended up being swiping the keys off a guard.

As the hybrid was pulled to a different room and chained to a table, he couldn’t help but wonder what this was about. They had thought that they were imprisoned to keep them out of the way of whatever was going on, but here Doc was, suddenly pulled into the events.

He sat quietly at the table, mulling things over when the door started to open. Doc looked over to see who it was and froze, Phil doing the same as they stared each other down. “Doc?”

“Oh thank void.” Doc said, relaxing a bit. “Me ‘n a few of the others have been stuck in a dungeon cell or something.”

“Yeah. My dungeon.” Phil said. “I… Look, apparently I’m at war and you were supposed to be some captured soldiers from another kingdom.”

“Not the case here.” Doc shrugged, making the chains keeping him to the table rattle enough to draw Phil’s attention to them and then uncuff Doc. “I’m with Mumbo, X and EX. We woke up in the cell and have been trying to break out since. I mean, we figured out this is supposed to be your nightmare, but other than that, we’ve got nothing.”

“Well, Tommy, Techno, Wilbur, Paul and Grum are probably all hostages to the other kingdom if you guys are here. They’re trying to get me to surrender in return for their freedom.”

“I’m sure they can handle it.” Doc said, leading Phil to the cells so he could free the other three. “Paul has his prison expertise, Grum has a number of tricks up his sleeve, and Tommy has that knack for finding his way out of things. I’m sure the other two also have their own things they can do.”

“Yeah, but none of this is running on real logic. I mean, a day barely lasts an hour around here and I still don’t know who I’m fighting.”

The pair reached the cells and the other three were very glad about being let out. Phil led them out of the dungeons and into the main area of the castle, showing them to a large room near his study which they could use as a sort of meeting area that wouldn’t concern the guards. After everyone was settled, Phil grabbed some parchment and started writing, eventually sending a message to the other kingdom, hoping this new development would change some things.

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Jrum raced out of the storage room to find out what was going on. The first thing he noticed was the giant box made out of bedrock that wasn’t there before. Meanwhile, curled up and huddled against one of the nearby walls of the base was Vee, who seemed to be scared of something, probably whatever was trapped in the box.

Those suspicions were confirmed when Jrum asked what was wrong and Vee pointed to the box. “Do you think you could open it again?” Jrum asked, pulling out a sword, but Vee just curled up tighter and started shaking her head. “If you let whatever it is out, I’ll fight it.”

Vee didn’t seem completely convinced, but she at the very least was convinced enough to make an opening in the bedrock that Jrum could get through. The bot nodded at Vee and then turned back to the box, only for her to scream again as the thing inside managed to escape. As it did, Jrum put his sword away, now upset at Vee than wanting to protect her. “You trapped Ren?!”

Before more could be said, magic suddenly wrapped around Ren and he was suddenly shoved back into the box, a groan of pain coming from inside it a moment later. Angrily, Jrum stomped over to Vee who had, for some reason, stuck all her fingers in her mouth. “What are you doing?!”

“W-well…” Vee started, moving her hands to sit on them instead. “Papa said you lick your fingers before putting out a fuse so your saliva helps put it out, and that using magic is kinda like that, so I-”

“Not that! Why did you trap Ren?! Is it because he followed us? The others probably didn’t like us going on our own, that’s all!”

At that point, Ren escaped the box again. “Yeah, that’s exactly it, and I think it might be that she knows I’m a werewolf.”

“Ugh! I’m getting Basil to see if petti-” Jrum stopped, gears turning in his head. “Wait, do you know who Perfect Sense is?” He asked Vee, who nodded. “What about Grifter?”

“Y-yeah… h-he’s friends w-with my d-dad.”

“And what server are you from?” Jrum asked, eyes narrowed.

“M-Mystic P-Paradice.” Vee answered quietly. “W-well, my dad m-made a world for us… b-but it doesn’t really have a name.”

“Don’t care. What do you know about my dad?”

Before Vee could answer, Ren came over to Jrum and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, calm down. Even if she knows something, I doubt you’ll get much out of her.”

Jrum crossed his arms, but looked at Vee again, who he had to admit did look terrified out of her mind. Almost like… “Fine, whatever. But I’m gonna find out later.”

“Alright, now what were you up to going all the way out here?” Ren asked, and Jrum ran back down to the storage system before returning moments later with a shulker box. “Redstone?”

“Of course redstone! A lot is going on and I want to make something comforting with all the chaos going on. It's… it's too much chaos for even me!”

“That does sound pretty serious. Here, now that you have that, we should head back to the shopping district.” But then Ren paused to look at Vee. “Well, I’m not sure how we’re getting them back yet. Unless you can carry them?”

“Why can’t you?” Jrum huffed, before Ren reminded him that Vee was freaked out because of him. “Oh… right. Uh, can we get another hermit to help?”

“Yeah, let’s see if anyone can-” Another scream came from Vee, leaving the two hermits to look over at her in time to see a second, smaller bedrock box forming. “Vee, what did you put in the box?”

Vee refused to answer Ren, so he nudged Jrum over. The bot resisted for a bit, digging his heels into the ground, but then Ren leaned down to whisper to him. “No no no! Don’t hurt them!”

“Me?” Ren asked. “I’m not going to hurt him. Look, I may be a werewolf but-”

“Just take the bad thing and go away!” Vee sounded through her tears and pointed at the second box. Sharing a glance with Ren, Jrum walked over to the box, which opened enough for him to pick up a Jellie clone.

“She doesn’t like Jellie?” Ren asked, before Jrum thought of something. He handed the Jellie to Ren and then ran off, leaving Ren to stand awkwardly nearby until Jrum returned with Professor Beak on his shoulder and a sheep on a lead.

Seeing the animals made Vee freak out more, which Jrum responded with letting the pet parrot fly home and ‘accidentally’ pushing the sheep off the edge of the base. “So…” Jrum started, looking back to Ren, who seemed to realize what Jrum had.

“She’s not scared I’m a werewolf. She’s just… scared of animals in general.”

“Yeah.”

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Paul gripped the scroll in his hands, trying not to lose his cool. None of this stuff was actually real. It couldn't be. He didn’t actually have anyone betraying him and joining the other kingdom. This was all just trying to mess with him. “Um, H-Hoodie? Any word on that group of travellers I’ve asked the guards to be on the lookout for?”

“I’m sorry sir. Nothing yet. I… don’t wish to worry you, but if I may be honest with you your majesty, it has been many a day, and I fear the worst at this point.”

Paul nodded. “Then, if that’s the case, I have no other choice.” And Paul got up off of his throne, leaving Hoodie to stumble after him. “I will go out myself and look.”

“Your majesty!” Hoodie objected. “We are at war! You leaving the castle walls seems like a horrible decision at this time.”

“Then I will be careful. Have some prepare Pickles for me.”

“Sire, please. At least have someone accompany you.” Hoodie begged, but Paul ignored the suggestion.

“Pickles is the only pegasus we own and even if we did have another, I am the only one who knows how to handle such beasts.” Paul spoke as he walked out of his castle and through the kingdom’s streets. “Hoodie, it is best if you stay here to watch the kingdom in my absence.”

“But sire-!”

“You will stay and-” Paul stopped as he got closer to the stables, a guard running up to him. “What is it?”

“There’s a problem sir.”

“Take me there.” And Paul immediately followed the guard. While they still crossed the bridge over the river, they turned left instead of right to head to the amphitheatre instead of the stables. Paul’s first guess was there was a scuffle of some kind between the workers, but that changed when he started hearing the sounds of some sort of alarm. “What… what is that?”

“We’re not sure. It sounds like it’s coming from the prison. With the reficuls in there, it’s not advised that you leave to see to the problem yourself, but what should be done is your decision.”

Paul thought it over before coming to a decision. “Let’s go into the amphitheatre so I can get a better vantage point of outside the walls and towards the prison. I’ll make my decision from there.”

The guard agreed and both he and Hoodie followed Paul up the stairs to the second floor seating. The king looked out towards the jail trying to find any sort of sign for what the sound was, when movement caught his eye. Pointing in the sky to the right, everyone looked at a person donned in reficul armor flew in. It was an avian hybrid, one whose wings Paul quickly recognized, but he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad right now.

“Stay here. I’m going to the prison.” and before the guard or Hoodie could object, Paul jumped down and broke through the kingdom’s wall to get through to the prison, only to have the walls of the building explode moments later.

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Grian shoved some boxes out of the way and collapsed on the couch with Astrid. The avian was regretting agreeing to this prank, and the other teen seemed to agree. Fortunately Flora was still doing fine, having taken Jane to run around the castle, especially if it meant finding Sense apparently.

Grian was just closing his eyes, hoping to take a nap, when he was suddenly flicked on the forehead. “Ow hey! What the fuck?!”

‘Can’t talk to you if you aren’t looking at me.’ Astrid signed back, and then hit Grian’s shoulder when he started closing his eyes again with a playful grin. ‘Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch.’

“What? Is that the only curse you know?” Grian taunted, earning him another punch.

‘No, but it’s the only one you know.’ Astrid replied, then paused, clearly showing her weapon ready to be drawn and used. ‘Now, you and I need to have a little chat.’

Grian immediately stopped being playful and was now fully awake, ready to grab his own weapon and fight. “What is this about?”

‘Something doesn’t add up. Who are you? Who are you really?’

Grian stared at Astrid, trying to figure if there was some way out of this, but the mask she wore covered her face and hid her emotions, so Grian had nothing. “Why do you want to know?”

‘I don’t like you lying to Flora. I don’t care if anyone else knows, I’m not planning to tell them. But I want to know for Flora. Plus, she’s already suspicious because of something she found before.’

Thinking it over, Grian realized the hybrid probably saw the papers Grifter had given to him about his past. His future? Stuff that had happened at the very least. “Well, Grifter didn’t really want me-”

‘How about this. You answer, and then you can ask me other shit.’ And Astrid finger spelled the last word for Grian, making him laugh a little.

“Alright. Well, to start off, yes Grian is my name. I mean, I haven’t gotten the chance to legally change it, but that’s my name.” Grian paused to look at Astrid, who nodded to show she was following along. “Uh, I’m… actually kinda… from the past.”

Grian paused, waiting for Astrid to be surprised at least a little, but she wasn’t. ‘My brother messed with time stuff all the time to torture people. Accidental time shit doesn’t seem that bad.’

“Oh. Alright then. So, Grifter is future me, but he’s also Grian.” And that was something that got a reaction from Astrid. “Okay, see, something happened when I was a kid, getting me sent to another world away from my family. Apparently later on, me slash Grifter got the power to go looking for everyone and it worked, but… everything was a mess.”

Grian paused, pulling out the balled up piece of paper that hadn’t been taken back from him by Grifter. “My… my youngest brother is dead. He killed himself. Then my twins, one of them is some sort of murdering monster who betrayed our younger brother, and the other one is also dead, killed off by my dad.”

At this point, Grian had teared up a bit, and Astrid did her best to comfort him, unfortunately knowing that whatever Grian was saying had to be true. Papers like that couldn’t be forged, especially since her dad had mentioned helping to get them.

With Astrid’s support, Grian wiped his eyes, looking the paper over again before stuffing it back in his inventory. “W-well, apparently after finding all that out, Grifter went looking for someplace to stay. We’ve already dealt with other universes with different versions of ourselves, so he went looking for that and… found here. Instead of needing to kill his other version or trying to keep him away, the real Grifter was stuck in some sort of prison and he took their place.”

From there, Astrid did a bit more comforting for Grian, but inside she was fuming. It was a perfect sort of lie to tell. She couldn’t tell anyone the truth since Grifter had threatened her, she couldn’t give half of the ‘truth’ Grian had been told because then he might try correcting her, and she couldn’t tell the full ‘truth’ because that would upset Flora.

‘Alright. That sounds like a lot. I won’t tell Flora, but, I would consider telling her yourself at some point.’

Grian nodded in agreement, calming down a little bit and just sitting there quietly until there was some buzzing, and Astrid had to pull out her comm. ‘Can you call for Flora. I need her right now!’

With how quickly Astrid was signing, Grian nearly missed what she was saying, but caught enough to know what she needed and based on how frantic she was acting, it was really important. “Flora! Something’s wrong! Astrid needs you, like, right now!”

Almost immediately Flora came skidding into the room, asking what was wrong. Astrid’s answer was to hold up her comm, which drew Flora nearer as the non-hybrid pressed a button. She then pressed a second one and suddenly crying came from the speaker of the communicator, Astrid and Flora now huddled around it as the comm was passed to Flora and Astrid started to sign.

“Vee? Vee it’s Flora, and Astrid’s here too of course. What’s going on, what’s wrong?”

“Bad things! Bad things are here a-and they’re tr-trapping m-me and I’m s-scared!”

“Hey hey hey, calm down. Can you tell us a little more detail. What bad things? What do they look like?”

“Th-there are two of them. T-there were four, b-but one flew a-away and one l-left.” Vee explained through the comm.

“Okay, and what are the two that are left.”

“O-one i-is a feline thing… it’s gray and white.”

“And how big is it?”

“Um… I-It’s a l-little s-smaller than… than… a tv?” Vee explained, getting Flora to look up with a shrug and Astrid to quickly sign something to Flora in an explanation. “A-are you still there?”

“Yeah! Yeah we’re still here. That’s a cat. A normal cat. It might scratch you but you should be fine if you leave it alone. What about the other one?”

“It’s… it’s really b-big. Bigger than p-papa. They l-look like a p-person… m-mostly… but they g-got ears and a tail a-and they s-said they’re a w-werewolf.”

“Oh shii-oot, that’s not good. Can you find someone who can keep you safe? Can you try calling your dad?”

“I h-have a fr-friend here, b-but I c-can’t call p-papa!”

“Okay. Okay okay okay. Uh, and I left my comm in the other room!” Flora said, more to herself than anyone. She then looked around before shoving the comm into Grian’s hand. “Hey, my uncle is here too! He’s gonna translate for Astrid while I get my comm, okay?”

There were a few sniffles before Vee said “Okay.” And then Flora rushed off.

Astrid turned to Grian and started to sign, slower than she had been signing to Flora, but still faster than normal. “Okay, uh… how close is your… your friend to you? Keeping them close… should help out. They’ll keep you safe from any ani- er, bad things.”

“Ok-kay. J-Jrum… c-can you-”

Vee was stopped when someone else spoke. Their voice was quieter, but got louder as they got closer. “Now what is it? I’m not really in the mood to try talking to anyone right now.”

“Y-you don’t h-have to. A-Astrid just s-said I should k-keep you c-closer r-right now.”

“And Astrid is mute, so she’s signing to me and I’m translating.”

There were a few moments of silence before Vee’s friend asked a question. “And who’s translating?”

“Flora s-said her uncle was g-gonna translate. H-He’s the o-one married t-to Perfect Sense.”

After that, there was the sounds of some sort of struggle before the other person’s voice came through the other side, louder than before. “What did you do with my dad?!”

[votederpycausemufins]

another chapter for Something Familiar. not as long as last one, but there's more going on. Reminder that you can find the links to all the chapters for this fic and the sequel in a masterpost pinned to my blog (which has other fics of mine as well)

hermit tommy au made my @petrichormeraki

Techno tried once again to break the bars that surrounded him and his brothers. After they had suddenly been reunited with the bots, there was a bit of a process helping them work out what was going on with them. At the very least it had been explained why they were going through all these fictional realities.

But after that, it was a matter of Grum dealing with his own fear. And surprisingly, Wilbur was the one to help the bot out. Techno was trying not to think too much about what exactly Wilbur had said, saying he knew all too well some of what Grum was going through. The implications were… well, again, he wasn’t going to think too much about it.

But then they were thrust into the next false reality, only for a number of things to make themselves immediately clear. For one, they seemed to be in some sort of cell. The other is that there were only four of them there.

Along with Techno were Wilbur and Tommy, but in Wil’s arms, currently sleeping, was Grum. No one was walking him up yet, wanting the kid to have some rest before seeing what they ended up in, but also because it would just be one more thing to deal with.

Neither Tommy nor Wilbur were doing particularly well coping with their situation. Sure, the cell was good for one person, but four felt a little cramped, not to mention how it would be with claustrophobia or cleithrophobia, something those two had.

So with them currently incapacitated and Grum asleep, Techno took it upon himself to try and break them out. That was, until a guard came by. “Now what are you up to?”

“Trying to get us out. You’ve got the wrong people.” Techno answered coolly, though his eyes briefly flicked back to his brothers. With how they were reacting, this could have been one of their nightmares to face. But at the same time, it didn’t seem right.

“No, of course you’re the right people. Anyone would recognize you three, though the kid did trip us up. Technoblade, Wilbur and Tommy Minecraft. Sons of king Philza Minecraft.”

And that gave Techno more information. That was some sign of Phil at the very least, and the fact that they were dealing with his kingdom days meant this was likely his ‘test’ if any of theirs. “Ah, then you do have the right people. The question is if you are prepared to fight against the Antarctic Empire.”

“Of course.” The guard replied. They said more about a ransom and other things, but Techno mainly tuned it out after the first two sentences. Instead, he was looking the guard over, looking for a symbol or emblem on their armor and uniform.

There weren’t any animals, which knocked a number of kingdoms off the list. The thing was pink for some reason, which knocked just about everything else off and for a moment Techno wondered if it really couldn’t be Wilbur’s nightmare, though while the emblem was pink, it wasn’t the flag Wil made as a kid, pretending he and a new friend of his were in charge of a new kingdom.

No, instead the sigil the guard wore was a pink skull and crossbones with a black backing, obviously nothing good. “So,” Techno started, cutting the guard off. “You’ve got a name?”

“Of course I do. But that matters not to you.” The guard replied.

Techno rolled his eyes, then looked at the bars on either side of them. “Well, can you at least split us up into different cells? It’s cramped in here and you obviously have the space.”

The guard seemed to contemplate the question before pulling out a sword and opening the cell door. “Fine. Those two will stay here-” He started, pointing at Wilbur and Grum. “You will be moved to the right, and the other to the left.”

Techno didn’t struggle as he was moved, instead taking a look around the prison. There were a total of six cells, the three across the hall all seeming to be occupied. On one end of the short hallway was a table and chairs for the guards to sit at, the other end being the doors to the exit. Getting moved had Techno being moved further from the exit, which made sense, him being the most mentally sound at this point.

As opposed to the first cell, while it was still equipped with a bed and cauldron, Techno was at least glad to have some windows. Even though they were barred, he could at least see a bit out of the prison. He couldn’t tell if Tommy had one window on the same wall that all the cells shared, but he definitely didn’t on the other wall of his corner.

Techno had to hand it to whoever made the prison. He wasn’t sure how, but they had gotten ahold of bedrock. Well, he had some idea. But with that, it made it so even breaking the walls would be impossible in the long run. And if he tried to get through the main hallway, the guards would be there.

Techno looked back to the cell door and across the hall, hoping to get attention from the inmate over there. He didn’t recognize the person, but at this point, any information would be helpful. After a number of attempts, the other prisoner noticed him, and they waited until the guards were on the other side of the hall to try talking.

“So, who are you and why are you in here?” Techno asked.

“The name is Nancy.” The woman replied. “And I’m in here for attacking the kingdom.” Techno made note of that, hoping they could get help from someone so bold. “And if I’m not mistaken, you’re one of the princes from the Antarctic Empire, are you not?”

“Maybe I am. That answer depends on how much you want to get out of this place with my help.”

The woman smiled slyly. “Ah, a good choice of words. Well, seeing as how we’re both prisoners of the king, well, other backgrounds don’t have to matter, now do they?”

“No they do not.” Then Techno gestured towards her, though more towards what was behind her. “What can you see out your window?”

“The corner of the kingdom walls since we’re just outside them. You should see them continuing your way.” And looking out his window, Techno saw what she described.

“And who’s in the cells next to you?” Techno asked next, assuming she could also see into her adjacent cell.

“Some reficule knights that assisted me in the past.” The woman responded. “I’m surprised we’re not directly at war with them at this point.”

“I see. Well, we’ve got some friends on the outside, and I’m sure Phil can get us out without too much trouble.”

“Well, here’s hoping I suppose.”

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She scrambled to grab her mask again, pulling her hood up. Her hand reached for it, only to find a foot trapping it. “How about we try this again Astrid.” She didn’t look up as Grifter spoke, just tugged on the porcelain.

“Oh fine!” And Grifter moved his foot. “If that will get you to listen.” And Astrid took the mask, putting it back in though still mostly hiding in her hoodie. “Here’s how this is going to go. I’ve got my Wels around and I’m having some fun with him. But of course he’s hanging out with Flora and might visit her often. And I doubt you want to stay away from her while you visit. I can’t send you back to your dad, because then he’ll ask questions that I don’t want him asking. So, you get to stay here as long as you don’t tell him what’s going on and as long as you don’t tell Grian anything.”

Astrid thought it over before signing, slowly due to being injured. “Well if you don’t, well, if this hadn’t happened, Grian would have been put in a little place you’re probably aware of. And because of that it’s all prepped. If you really want to cause some issues, we can put you where your brother thought you belonged.”

Astrid winced, tightening the drawstrings on her hoodie. “Well, it seems you know when to listen. Now another thing. No magic.” Astrid’s head shot up to look at Grifter. “I want to teach Grian magic, and since we have slightly different kinds, there’s excuses that have to be made. Such as purple being weak common magic and green being stronger. But of course, you’re not that strong, being in training and all that. Unless of course, you can make an excuse.”

Astrid thought it over, carefully signing out an idea, one that Grifter seemed to approve of. “That works very well. Now you can go off on your merry little way. If you want, feel free to message me of any little issues you need help with, or just keep me updated in general. Not like I won’t be keeping an eye on you anyway.”

Moments later, Astrid found herself at Spawn, Grifter no longer around. She pulled out her comm to message Flora, ignoring the messages that were coming in at her ‘arrival’ to the world and instead changing to the private messaging system.

You whisper to ThatsFlora: Hey, finished up some training and dad’s making me take a break

You whisper to ThatsFlora: So I’ve got plenty of time to hang with you o3o

ThatsFlora whispered to you: hey! What a surprise! Got room for a +1 on the activities? (Kissing not included)

ThatsFlora whispered to you: new person in the world who’s about our age. I would rather he not end up hanging with Toob or idfk, maybe Shocker

You whisper to ThatsFlora: you replacing me?

ThatsFlora whispered to you: fuck no. 1, im gay, 2, he’s like space boy except w/ time. Kinda.

You whisper to ThatsFlora: explain more when we meet up?

ThatsFlora whispered to you: sure. At grandma’s. Sense is here.

You whisper to ThatsFlora: whomst?

ThatsFlora whispered to you: my uncle’s husband.

You whisper to ThatsFlora: Euro finally tied the knot? :oc

ThatsFlora whispered to you: ffujvdfhbbkgxdfvv

ThatsFlora whispered to you: just fucking get over here bitch!

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Phil growled, nearly ripping the paper in his hands. When he first appeared in this new place, finding himself in the throne room of the old castle of the Antarctic Empire, Phil was hoping he wouldn’t have to go far to find the others, but that apparently wasn’t the case.

He was here, apparently at war with another kingdom. One that sent a message of some family being held captive for ransom or surrender. Obviously that had to be where everyone else was. The problem was the fact that there was no identification on what the kingdom was. No sigil or crest or flag or anything. So that meant Phil found himself going into this blind as well as alone.

Well, that wasn’t completely true, as in moving through the castle, Phil found himself greeting a familiar face. “Wisp.”

“Hello Philza.” The other man answered. It didn’t feel completely genuine to Phil, but he supposed that was in part due to knowing that this wasn’t really Wisp.

“I got a ransom letter.” Phil said as he held the message up. “It’s for my family.”

“They got a hold of the princes?” The fake Wisp asked, letting Phil know that this was something that wasn’t completely new, conflict with whatever other place being pre-existing. “What is your plan with that? Are you going to start with communication? Or go straight to battle since these are your sons we’re talking about?”

Phil thought it over. “We’re starting with negotiations. In the meantime, see if you can scout any of their troops to capture for a trade.”

“Of course sir.” And Wisp left, leaving Phil to leave for his quarters and write up a message.

He tried to ignore how quiet the place felt. When they still lived in the castle, someone was always nearby, usually Tommy who was messing around with some of the workers or arguing with his brothers. The last time it had been this quiet was… well, he supposed it was similar to then.

Before long, Philza had written up a response to the ransom and handed it to a guard to deliver it. Once it had been taken, Phil left the castle to fly up to the roof. The surroundings of the place were… mostly familiar. But in the distance, he could see what seemed to be trees springing up, likely to whatever false kingdom he was dealing with. At the very least the short distance would speed things up. Who knew how closely time here matched everywhere else.

After watching the horizon line for a while, a guard got Phil’s attention, mentioning about capturing some of the other kingdom’s knights, and that they could use them for negotiations.

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Grian didn’t quite remember passing out, but based on the fact that he found himself waking up, that had to be the case. The feeling of gunk around his eyes was obviously from crying, and remembering what about left him tearing up again. But it was stopped by another odd sensation.

It felt like something was on his head, moving around. Shifting slightly left it shifting as well, so it wasn’t resting on his heads it was almost as if… Grian jolted, sitting up and leaving Sense’s hand in the air from where it had been messing with Grian’s hair. “What were you doing?!”

“Playing with your hair?” Sense replied, though said it more like a question. “Gri- Grifter likes when I do that. Something about it feeling calming like getting his feathers preened. It looked like you had been having a nightmare, so I thought it would help.”

Grian looked Sense over. He supposed it made sense. “Yeah, well maybe don’t. A lot changes in a decade or whatever.”

“Right. Of course. Well how are you feeling?”

Grian was quiet at the question, using all his effort to keep from tearing up. “I’m holding up I think. I… honestly I should be used to stuff like this. Not like I’ve never known anyone to die before.”

“I suppose that’s true, but obviously it’s a bit different this time.” Sense said, rubbing his chin. “Quite different meeting between you and I.”

That piqued Grian’s interest, though partially just because it was a change in topic. “Oh? How did it go for you and Grifter?”

For a moment, Sense froze, tensing up at the question. “Er… well… It uh, gets a little complicated with the uh… real Grifter having been around. Left a bit of a mess. To sum it up, he showed up when Grifter was still around. I wasn’t a fan due to some personal problems of my past. It didn’t help that it was conflicting between the counterparts. The amount of times I was nearly killed…”

Grian watched Sense, not wanting to interrupt, but he couldn’t help but hesitantly put a hand on one of Sense’s, which were currently so clenched that his knuckles were white. The man flinched at the touch, pulling his hands away, then tightening his tie while regaining his composure. “Anyway, we managed to figure things out and got together.”

“I see.” Grian replied. It wasn’t enough information for him to actually understand, but it was enough to give him some idea. “Well, maybe I can get to know more some other time.”

“Unlikely.” Sense spoke, in a much colder tone than before, leaving Grian flinching from that alone. Seeing Grian’s reaction made Sense sigh then speak again in a softer tone. “It’s just not something I want to go over.”

Grian nodded and then Sense pulled out his comm. “I was here instead of Gri because there was an issue with someone else getting in the world. Looks like he fixed that up a couple of minutes ago. Flora’s probably gone that way, so if you want to head there too, I can take you back towards the castle and spawn.”

“That sounds good to me.” Grian agreed. And with that, the two of them left for spawn.

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Mumbo paced around the cell he and the other three were in. It was fairly large, so he didn’t really get in anyone’s way, but Xannes still tried tripping him whenever he came near unless he was stopped by his brother. “How about now?”

Doc shook his head. “Still nothing since you last asked me two minutes ago.” The creeper hybrid said as he was knelt down, looking at the hinges of the iron door keeping them locked up. “This place has some sort of land claim modifier or something. Trying to get around that is a mess with Xisuma out of admin abilities and Evil blocked from his hacks.”

“Xisuma, what about you?” Mumbo faced the admin instead, who also shook his head.

“Comms don’t seem to work here. I’m not sure if that’s related to the claim modifier that Doc mentioned or due to this still being whatever all of this nightmare business is.”

“Well, how about we focus on the other mystery at hand.” Xannes spoke up, making everyone look at him. “What? None of you thought of it? Seriously, why us four stuck here and not anyone else?”

“I thought it was because of us being from Hermitcraft and not the others.” Mumbo spoke up, almost immediately getting smacked upside the head by Xannes. “What was that for?!”

“First off, I’m not from Hermitcraft. Sure, I’ve infiltrated your servers in the past, but I’ve never been an official member. Second, both Tommy and Grum are also part of Hermitcraft, more so than me, so going off your assumption, they would be here too.”

“Might be Phil’s nightmare or something.” Doc spoke up. “Instead of looking at what we share, better to look at what the others share. Phil is obviously himself, then you’ve got Wilbur Techno and Tommy who are all his kids. Then Grum is one of his grandkids and Paul is of course Phil’s brother. Grum’s nightmare pulled him away to get him in a situation without us. Same might be going on here. Getting the four of us out of the way to make Phil deal with whatever fear he’s got and that we’re not a part of.”

“Then why are we stuck in a dungeon?!” Xannes asked angrily. “Why not anywhere else?”

“Well, Phil was a king, wasn’t he?” Mumbo suggested. “It might be related to his time as king. I mean… When Grian disappeared… It might have something to do with that.”

Everyone was quiet for a while, mulling it over, before finally EX spoke up once more. “Let me look at this fucking claim whatever. Maybe I can figure out some way to help you hack into it.”

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“So, what are you up to now?” A younger voice spoke up from where he was surrounded by chickens, trying to feed them.

The reply to the question came from a man sitting in one of a pair of thrones, the other sitting empty. “The pieces aren’t falling into place fast enough, so I need to make some changes to the scope of things. Because of that, well, I believe you’ll be helping out.”

“Wait, really?!” The first person exclaimed, startling a few of the chickens and making them run about. “I really get to help?”

“Of course. If I directly involve myself, it will create so many issues. But you… Well, there might be a slight issue, but I doubt there won’t be too much trouble for long. Though just throwing you in there wouldn’t be wise, so first we’ll be sending a scout.”

“Oh! Really? Which scout? Tempo? Or maybe Eggy. Tictac’s still healing and both Kokko and Lolo are sick.”

“No, none of them. I have someone else who is a much better fit. A first task for her too. Now then, can you retrieve Sally for me?” The first person lit up, nodding happily before running off, a group of chickens following behind him. As they left, the man on the throne called out. “And make sure you keep your ears out of reach. I don’t want to pry beaks off of them again because you keep forgetting about your hybrid traits Sa-” And then there was a crash.

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.

.

“Hello there Benny. Your day going well? Have you seen anyone new about town?”

“No sire. Can’t say that I have.”

“Well, can you be on the lookout? I… I got word that there are some people coming in from a neighboring kingdom for refuge. A number of hybrids. I know our kingdom is not quite so diverse in that capacity, so I wish to make sure they settle properly.”

“Of course my king. Though it may help to have a guard watch for them. Unfortunately Beans is currently out on another task if you recall. Er, not that I’m saying you may have forgotten.”

“No no, you’re perfectly fine. I thank you for the reminder. I actually have a lot on my mind right now, so I wouldn’t mind a few reminders here and there.”

“I would assume, thanks to this… well I suppose at this point it’s all but war. I know you’re trying to calm things down, but I still think it’s only a matter of time before an official declaration of war is called.”

“Which is why I am so adamant about making sure these refugees are taken care of. They may have a few warriors in their party, but there’s only really one or two standard humans in the lot of them.”

“Then I will make sure to keep an eye out for them, King Soares.”

“Of course. Thank you Benny.”

[votederpycausemufins]

it's been a crazy time because i've been dealing with finals, so it's been a while and the chapter is shorter than others, but hey, content!

@petrichormeraki is at fault for all this existing by making the hermit tommy au so yay for them (or boo if you don't like the au for some reason)

As soon as Grian and Sense arrived at the castle, Grifter pushed Grian over to the other teens and then stepped to the side with Sense. “So, how did it go?”

“It went alright.” Sense replied, attempting to run a hand through Grifter’s hair, only for the Listener to move his head and give a quick glare. “Hey, you promised.”

“I didn’t promise that.” Grifter said, rolling his eyes. I promised… certain bedtime activities.” And he quickly glanced over his shoulder to make sure the teens were out of hearing range. “Now, what happened with Grian?”

“I calmed him down and he asked about how we met, that’s all.” Grifter then gestured for him to go on. “We didn’t get along at first, mainly due to you and the ‘real’ Grifter causing conflicting meetings. Nothing to be concerned with.”

Grifter walked his fingers up Sense’s chest. “Well, that’s mostly the same. But of course we know it wasn’t because of two of me. It was because… oh dear, what was it again?”

Sense grabbed Grifter’s hand and moved it away. “Nice try, but that’s still my one secret.”

“I swear I’ll find that fucking file someday.”

“You can try your best.” Sense replied, kissing Grifter’s cheek. “Now calm down. They’re coming back this way.”

Grifter turned around to see, indeed, Grian and the other two were coming over, Flora starting to run when they were halfway there to run at Grifter and jump into his arms. “This is so great! Someone new to hang with and my girlfriend is visiting? Can this day get any better?”

Grifter looked down at Flora before dropping her. “Nope.”

“Oh come on! You gave Grian a bunch of shit!”

“Because he didn’t have any gear. I don’t want to spoil you with more presents.” Grifter said, crossing his arms.

“But I’m your favorite niece.” Flora pouted, finally getting up off the ground where she had been dropped.

“And my only niece. Euro and Theseus don’t have any kids and you’re an only child. And in terms of favorite kids, I’m sorry, but Grifect takes that title.”

“Fine! But you will rue the day you said that! Rue!”

“I’m sure I will.” Grifter said, rolling his eyes before getting serious. “But for now I want to talk with Grian.” And then he moved past Flora to get to his wels self. “How are you holding up?

Grian looked away from Astrid, who he had started signing to. As Grifter approached and drew Grian’s attention, Astrid moved away, glaring through her mask at the Listener. “Um, I don’t know. I guess I’m holding up fine… but I’m also trying not to think of it.”

“Well, I didn’t expect you to binge the whole stack.” Grifter pointed out. “I was planning to offer you some training. Since we don’t know how long until we can get you home, might as well teach you to use magic.”

“Why can’t we try that now? If I can have any chance to make sure-” Grian started to argue, but Grifter stopped him.

“Right now using magic might be volatile for you. I mean, normally magic is fueled by emotions, but it’s also from the control of those emotions. So, while we don’t do regular training, think of this as… a part of it.” Grifter then smiled. “You’re getting along with Flora and I’m sure you can get along with Astrid too. Hang out with them, get to know them. You’ve had enough shit in your life, having something better will help.”

Grian thought it over before agreeing. “I guess that makes enough sense. But I’m gonna try on my own until then.”

“I would expect nothing less from myself.” Grifter joked, and then let Grian run off with the other two teens, apparently off to the north and the town that direction.

“Aren’t you worried about someone showing up before you can ‘train’ him?” Sense asked, making Grifter scoff.

“Oh please. Sure, they got through three of their little tests, but that was with Astrid’s help. Plus, those were the easy ones!” Grifter then pulled out his communicator, swiping through it. “This one has them pretty split up and apparently at odds with each other. I mean, look how pathetic your wels looks all locked up.”

Sense looked at the screen that was shoved in his face. “Alright, but how much do they have after this?”

“Well…” Grifter took the comm back. “There’s one other overlap coming up, so between that one and this, I’ll have to process them, but there’s still this one and four others, so I’ll have time. Not to mention- Oh god fucking dammit.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Apparently Astrid’s father could tell something was wrong. He’s trying to get in.” Grifter started to call on his magic, but then paused. “Well, I could leave him in there for a few more seconds. If this all goes south… I wouldn’t mind the data.”

“Just go deal with him before he gets suspicious.”

“Oh alright! Fine.” Grifter pouted. “Stupid admin duties.” And then he was gone.

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Jrum was not the happiest person in the world right now, not in the slightest. Both his dads were away, along with his brother and Tommy. He was left dealing with his brother’s pet chicken, who wasn’t even actually a chicken and was sent as a spy. They had a mage in the world that was invited by someone who wasn’t even here anymore. And now…

“Do ya do ya love, jelly beans? Uh yeah I do, I love them beans! Do ya do ya love, chocolate cake? Yeah sure, I love that scrumptious cake. Do ya do ya love, ice cream pie? Oh why ya gotta ask me, why why why?”

“What are you even singinggggg?” Jrum groaned, looking back at Vee, who was following behind him. He had tried ditching them, hoping they would stay with the other hermits, but instead, they decided to stick to him.

“Caramel Soup. If you don’t like it, I can do a different one. There! They! Go! Three boys surfin’ on the-”

“No! No singing!” Jrum said, covering Vee’s mouth, only to put his hand away when Vee licked it.

“Why’s it so bad? My dad thinks it's fine. And my sister likes it too!”

“Okay, maybe it’s okay, but not right now! A lot’s going on and you following me around and singing isn’t really helping!”

“Oh… sorry.” Vee said, sounding sad, which made Jrum feel guilty.

“Ugh, okay! You can at least hum until we get home.”

Immediately Vee was bouncy and bubbly again. “Ooo! Where’s that? I’m guessing it’s your home since I don’t have one here, but it also wouldn’t hurt to double check.”

“We’re headed to my daddy’s base. He’s got all the redstone stuff I need.”

“Ooo, you do redstone? My dad does a little bit here and there, like he made an amusement park aaaaand… hmm, I don’t actually know. He hasn’t really talked about much, just mainly that since he started with the cactus petting zoo.”

Jrum looked over at that. “I’m sorry, c-cactus petting zoo? But those hurt!”

“Not if you’re gentle.” Vee argued. “They are just as lovely as Cardamom.”

“The spice?”

“No! That’s what I named my pet!” Vee explained. “He’s very fuzzy and I love him very much and he has a wonderful little terrarium and do you think he’s gonna be okay with me not there to take care of him for a few days? I mean what if he doesn’t get enough to eat? Papa could forget to feed him or where I keep the food shaker or-”

“Calm down.” Jrum cut Vee off before gesturing to the ruins that were in front of them. “Daddy is horrible about keeping his base alive but it works out. And he’s been at this way longer. A few days won’t hurt. Now you stay here while I grab some redstone.”

Vee nodded and Jrum went down into the storage system, rooting around in the chests to put together a shulker box. As he was doing that, he didn’t pay much attention to the other noises, like Vee walking around exploring the base, or the sound of distant fireworks that were getting closer. But he definitely heard when there was a scream from upstairs.

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Techno regretted having Grum stay with Wilbur when they were moved. The cell they were sharing didn’t have any windows that, while barred, would have given them the opportunity to break said bars and then had Grum crawl through. Instead, what they would need to do is break the window bars as well as the bars separating the rooms, which would be more obvious.

Sure, they were only trying to have one of them escape at all, mainly so they could have some way of figuring out what was going on. But too many of them would be too obvious, and Grum would have been the option because he was the least involved. “How’s everyone doing in there?”

“Well, I think I’ve calmed down… enough.” Wilbur admitted, though Techno could tell he was still a bit shaky. When he first found Wilbur again when everyone was trying to rescue the bots from the SMP, his brother wasn’t doing well. He had been confined to Techno’s house due to the botched revival Grum had attempted. Suddenly going from a carefree ghost who could literally walk through walls to someone trapped in a house and suddenly dealing with two of yourself wasn’t… great.

“Tommy, what about you?” Techno asked, but only got a shaky thumbs up which was obviously a lie. The boy was curled up in his cot and was silent, which was the complete opposite of the loud teen Techno knew, that not having changed with him moving to hermitcraft. And that made Techno look back to Grum. The bot had woken up a bit ago, but had then been stuck buffering as he tried to figure out a plan.

If it hadn’t been for them just getting out of Grum’s nightmare, he would have thought this were it. The kid was separated from his dad and now the other family he was getting close to was trapped. Techno wanted to make sure the kid would get out of this alright, whether because he somehow saw this as like a second chance after what happened with Grian and Tommy, or regret with what he did to the kid before, or something else.

Thinking it over, Techno couldn’t help but give the slightest huff of a laugh. If he could hear chat here, they would probably be yelling at him about being soft or whatever. “What’s got you in a good mood?”

Techno signed and looked out through the window of his door to see where Nancy was standing with her face poking through her own door’s window. “Well nothing now that you’re talking.”

“Hash, but justified. I couldn’t help but notice you’re trying to think of some sort of escape plan or something.”

“We’re not trying to escape. We’re just… hoping to find a way to learn more about what’s going on in this place.”

Nancy laughed. “Oh that’s easy. Before the king learned of my real alliance, I ran a bakery in his kingdom as a cover. But of course that stupid little mage of his foiled my plans again.”

“Mage… of his?” Techno asked. It couldn’t be… could it?

“Yeah, surprisingly strong.” One of the other prisoners spoke up, joining the conversation. “See, Nancy had tried-”

Conversation suddenly came to a halt as everyone covered their ears to the sudden alarm. For a moment, Techno thought someone was trying to escape while they were talking, or it was something from the castle, but looking around, Techno’s eyes fell on Grum again, his screen flashing red and the blaring noise coming from him. That… probably wasn’t good.

[votederpycausemufins]

It's finals week here so I am going aaaaaaaaaaaaa but hey here's a chapter. pls send validation so i can get through my finals

hermit tommy au made by @petrichormeraki

Astrid was glad that she was both wearing a mask and that Grian was staring at the comm so he couldn’t see the panicked look on her face. Fortunately, there seemed to be a slight scuffle on the comm as Vee tried to take it back, and Flora also returned with her comm. “Hey, I’m back with the videos. Is Vee still there?”

“Sort of? Grian answered. “Vee’s friend is upset about something to do with his dad.”

“Oh, Vee, are you getting another sibling?”

“No. Uh, m-maybe? I d-dunno if it counts or not.”

“Absolutely not! Now what about-”

There was a thunk on the other end of the line. “I w-want the videos.”

“Alright then.” And Flora messed with her comm before a voice came from whatever video was playing. Grian didn’t know what it was about, but whoever was in the videos seemed to be calming Vee with their voice, until eventually, Vee thanked Astrid and Flora before finally hanging up. Also apparently because someone new had arrived to help with her getting somewhere. “Well stay safe. And that’s a message from the both of us.”

When the call ended and Astrid put her comm away, Grian looked between the two other teens for some explanation. “Right. You’re always confused.” Flora said, causing Grian to give her the stink eye. “Well it’s true. Well, that was Astrid’s sister Vee. She’s got a really bad fear of most mobs, even peaceful ones or… hybrids.”

“But, you’re very clearly a hybrid. What does she do around you?” Grian asked. He wasn’t exactly a pro at hybrids and anything with them, even if he was one himself, but seeing as how Flora’s face was literally a fox’s and she was always dealing with a big poofy tail, it was extremely hard to mistake her for anything else or try to hide it.

“She kinda… doesn’t. I’ve only really met her once, and that was with their dad using magic to disguise me.”

“Sorry if this gets off track for a moment, there’s of course other stuff I’d like to know and ask, but first, uh… magic?”

Astrid nodded, and then a moment later, in an aura of blue, white headphones appeared over Astrid’s ears, the earpads decorated with a sort of spiral symbol that to Grian vaguely resembled an ear. ‘Magic.’

“Astrid and Vee’s dad is like Grifter… and I guess you too. They’re this race of magic users called Listeners. While you can’t actually be born a Listener or anything, other Listeners can train people to become new Listeners, which is what their dad did for Astrid and Vee. They’re both still in training, but as you can see, Astrid’s doing pretty well.”

“That’s really cool!” Grian exclaimed. “Well, even though I shouldn’t, Grifter thinks I’ve got a bit of magic I can train with, which could really help me if I can get back to my own time and maybe change a few things.”

“Just don’t do anything to mess us up.” Flora warned jokingly. “Now, what else do you want to know?”

“Uh, is it okay to ask why Vee’s so scared of mobs?”

Flora glanced to Astrid, who shrugged and then signed what seemed like an unrelated answer. ‘Vee and I are adopted.’

“Wait, you are? How does that fit into this?”

“Astrid’s brother was a piece of shit and their birth parents kinda ditched them ages ago. Vee’s, on the other hand, well, her dad wasn’t around much, so she stuck with her mom. And her mom essentially ran a zoo or something else with a lot of animals. Stuff as simple as a pet bird or cat all the way up to horses, panthers, even some fucking dinosaurs! And while they took care of the animals pretty well, it wasn’t the same for Vee, who essentially got punished by getting shoved in with some of the other animals, even if they were hostile towards her.”

Grian winced. He was terrified enough of rabbits just from Sa- a certain someone being a hybrid, but to get tortured by animals of all kinds, no wonder she had been freaked out so badly. “So, I’m guessing she’s not a hybrid, nor is your dad.”

‘Nah, our dad is a human. And Vee is okay with hybrids of certain kinds. Especially ones that have traits they can hide like you can, or ones not associated with bad memories, like my dad’s friend Ely-’ Astrid paused to spell the name out. ‘-who’s a cyclops.’

“Alright, good to know.” Grian nodded, before Flora piped up once more.

“But, she does have a pet of her own, it’s a moss ball named Cardamom. I have seen pictures and he is adorable. Here, Astrid show him some pictures.”

Astrid rolled her eyes behind her mask where no one could see, but then pulled her comm out and swiped through, bringing up a few pictures of a moss ball in a terrarium tank. ‘She started with just a large potion bottle, but thought he would get too cramped. Now it’s pretty much too big for just one, but she refuses to get another.”

Grian laughed at that, swiping through the pictures, before pausing and looking back over to Flora. “One last question for now. What were those recordings?”

Flora looked to Astrid for her to give the answer, only for her to shake her head. ‘No. He’s got to be a level three friend for my traumatic backstory.’

“Aww, but Astrid! What is a level three friend if not someone who will kidnap a toddler with you for a prank?”

Astrid didn’t look convinced at first, but finally relented after a few minutes where Grian just stared at the other teens awkwardly. ‘Fine, and you can be the one to tell him.’

“Yes!” Flora cheered, then grabbed Grian’s wrist as well as Astrid’s hand before dragging them to a better part of the room so they could sit down. “Alright, the simple answer to your question is those were recordings of Astrid.”

“But she was talking.” Grian said, causing Astrid to flip him off.

‘I wasn’t always mute, bitch.’

“Oh.”

“Yeah, that’s where the long version comes in.” Flora started to explain, before getting a look from Astrid. “Okay medium version. So you know how your dad is kind of the embodiment of death? Or one of them at least.” Flora paused for Grian to nod. “Well, seeing as how you were stuck wherever, you didn’t know there’s a phrase to essentially summon him. It only really works for certain people, but before you- or future you was admin, it was Astrid’s brother. He was worried about you dad messing with him and his plans, so he kinda… cut out the vocal chords of anyone related to him in some way.”

Grian choked on air at the statement, not helped by Flora having rushed through the sentence and him needing a few extra seconds to process it. “He what?!”

Flora nodded, taking a moment to center herself again. “He got to my dad, my grandma, Theseus, Euro, and even my mom. You didn’t live here at the time, so you were fine.”

“O-okay… but how does that relate to those videos?” Grian asked, trying not to picture what had probably happened.

“Well, when Astrid was offered by her dad to do magic, she wanted some way to fix us. With her just starting out, she couldn’t really do much, but she found an old spell and used that. Because of her skill level and the spell being old, it took a while for her to get it right, but just when she was getting close to having it ready, you showed up and fixed it yourself. My family’s all fixed up, but because of that, Astrid’s spell couldn’t finish or something, so until then, she kinda can’t talk.”

Grian nodded. “And we can’t just…” he was going to continue by saying they couldn’t just make someone need the spell used, but then he looked up. “I’m sorry, who fixed it instead of Astrid?”

“Future you?” Flora said, though in a confused tone. “What, did you not want me not telling my girlfriend? Sorry, but that’s where I cross the line.”

‘You already knew?’ Astrid signed, glad she didn’t need to hide everything.

“Uh, yeah. He told me when I nearly killed him from chopping up my forest.” Flora explained, making Astrid glare at Grian through her mask.

“Oh yeah. I did do that, didn’t I?” Grian said, thinking it over.

‘You’re an idiot.’ Astrid replied, along with a slap to really get the point across.

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“That… does not look good.” Phil spoke up as he and the others saw smoke ahead. At first, the group had tried holing up in Phil’s castle to think of a plan before just running into things, but after already being locked up in a cell, changing scenery didn’t change things up. Before long, Xannes was causing some arguments, mainly with Mumbo, who was the most concerned from being separated from Grum again. So after everyone was snuck out of the castle, they went in the direction of the other kingdom.

Seeing the smoke made the group speed up, weapons ready. On the way there were various people in armors of either black and red, or silver and pink. People in both sorts of armor attacked them as well as each other, which didn’t help with various concerns and worries. And then they actually reached the gate.

“So Phil.” Doc spoke up. “I think we might have some trouble getting everyone else together.” And the hybrid pointed up to a banner hanging from the gate with a pink skull and crossbones.

“What are you-” And Phil looked where Doc was pointing to see the flag before needing to stab someone in black. “Oh that’s fucking great.”

“Well, I’m sure that means the others are okay.” Mumbo spoke up, barely dodging someone who attempted to attack him from behind. “I mean, I doubt he would let them get hurt, right?”

“Well, up until five seconds ago, I was perfectly fine being at war with him. Plus you were stuck in my dungeon or whatever without me knowing who you were. Paul could be under the same situation.”

“Well! How about some good news?” Xannes shouted. “I think we don’t have to deal with half of these guys. Some of them are actually listening to me for some reason.” And just as EX said, the warriors in black were listening to any orders he was giving them. “No clue if that’s actually good in the long run, but I really don’t fucking care right now.”

“Can you get them to get us a clear path into the kingdom?” Xisuma asked, getting a response from his brother in the form of the warriors making the requested path.

Inside the kingdom was just as chaotic as outside. People were running about with any of the silver guards focused on those in black armor as opposed to Phil and the others. Mumbo and Xisuma both helped out with getting people to safety, even if they weren’t actually real, while Doc and Phil along with EX’s help got them a path towards the castle.

When the group had reached a courtyard that was halfway to the castle, they were stopped by lightning striking near some of the warriors Xannes was ordering around, causing them to go into a bit of a frenzy. The commotion managed to separate everyone, only Doc and Phil knowing enough of where they were to keep most of their bearings about them, Phil most of all since he was able to fly out of the mess.

Once he was in the air, Phil looked around, hoping to quickly find the others and pull them up, possibly landing them on a roof. But instead, the avian’s eyes landed on someone both pink and back, specifically- “Techno!”

The piglin hybrid looked up before knocking a silver guard out and leaving Phil room to land. “Phil, you doing okay?”

“Well I’m apparently in a war with my brother.”

“So you’re saying-” Techno was stopped by another silver guard that he knocked to their feet. “-that all of these guys are supposed to be working for Paul?”

“Well the ones with the pink sheep kingdom logo on their armor.” Phil clarified, ducking to dodge a stray arrow. “The guys in black are a different story, though I assume you know that from you wearing their armor.”

“Well duh, you gave me this.” Techno answered, leaving Phil a bit confused.

“What are you talking about?” He asked, but Techno could barely answer when a few more guards showed up. In the middle of fighting them, Phil grabbed Techno before carrying him up to the roof of a nearby church. “Alright, tell me what the fuck is going on mate.”

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Wilbur and Grum were holed up in a library, using the bookshelves as barricades from the fighting outside. Though it wasn’t as loud as before, Grum still had some sort of alarm going off, which Wilbur was doing his best to muffle to keep anyone from coming after the noise and subsequently them.

They had gotten warning from Nancy before the prison blew up enough to disable the redstone keeping everyone trapped. Techno was able to pull Tommy out of his cell and Wilbur carried Grum out of theirs before they met up with Phil. He was glad to see everyone was alright and then handed out some armor and weapons to everyone, and everyone included the other prisoners as well.

The first of the other prisoners was Nancy, who was handed what seemed to be a wand. She used it to give herself a cloak matching the armor Phil was giving out, though with gold accents of her own at the hems. The second was a balding man with a beard, who took a bow and armor that started off unenchanted, but seemed to enchant itself as he took it. The last was an avian that ignored an offered chestplate, but took plenty of daggers.

When Phil turned to the others, Techno gladly took the offered armor and weapons, Tommy doing the same and Wilbur blindly grabbed some things as he tried to figure out why Grum still seemed panicked. Before long, everyone was moving past what was a very broken wall. Techno said something about finding the others as Tommy raced off, Techno following behind leaving Wilbur and Grum alone.

Grum was still giving off some sort of alarm, so Wilbur just picked the bot up and ran to the nearest building that didn’t have people essentially surrounding it. He took them upstairs and set Grum down to make some sort of barrier, and that’s where they were now, barricaded in a library.

“Grum, please. What’s going on?” Wilbur asked, worried about the kid. “Is this related to the fighting? Is there something about it that’s causing a problem?” But Grum doesn’t answer, which just gets him upset. “Okay, how about this then. You keep making that alarm, and I bet the thing that set it off in the first place will come over here to track down what’s making that sound and shut you up.”

That seems to work as Grum is finally quiet and Wilbur can finally hear himself think again. “Okay, that’s better. Now what was that all about?”

Grum doesn’t answer verbally. Instead, he’s suddenly clinging tightly to Wilbur. “I… I know it’s not supposed to be real…”

“Okay kid, we just dealt with your nightmare, and we’ve escaped from prison even though part of your issue was getting trapped.” Wilbur pauses, realizing he’s sounding a bit too harsh. “I don’t understand. What’s so bad about getting out?”

Wil nearly misses the words that Grum says next, but the quietness of the words and the fear that surrounds them is enough to make a shiver go up his spine. “He’s out too.”

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Doc isn’t sure how many people he’s slain by the time he finally gets a chance to breathe. The armor he was given is already pretty damaged, but with him being on the castle steps right now, he’s pretty sure he can make it. That is, if Paul is even in the castle right now with all this fighting. Doc knows the other Mindcracker wasn’t really the type to hide away from a battle, especially with others potentially in danger. And who knew how much that factor was increased by this being the kingdom Paul was in charge of.

Just as Doc is going for the door into the castle, he spots someone else in black armor and grabs his bow. He holds the drawn string without firing, though, as he actually recognizes the face of the person wearing the armor. “Tommy.”

“Oh fuck thank goodness.” Tommy says, relaxing a bit, though Doc still has his bow drawn and ready to fire. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Phil’s dungeon.” Doc replies, and then his natural eye is narrowing as one of the other black garbed warriors is moving closer to Tommy. “Behind you!”

Tommy whirls around, sword out and ready to attack, but he stops upon seeing the other person. “No, hey, this guy is with us. He helped us get out of the dungeon we were stuck in. Said his name is Markus.”

The name makes Doc’s eye snap wide open and he fires the bow, immediately loading and firing a second before grabbing Tommy and pulling the teen behind him. “How the hell are you here?”

“Nice to see you too Doc.” The person speaks, getting another arrow shot at him.

“Woah, woah, Doc, what’s going on?” Tommy’s asking, trying to move to Doc’s side to look the hybrid in the eye, but Doc blocks him from getting even a pixel forward.

“You lucked out with having someone so young to lie to.” Doc says to Markus, completely ignoring Tommy.

“Well now, whose fault is that?” The armored man asks, taking a step forward. “Now while I would love to stay and chat, there’s someone I really need to find.”

Doc’s next response is a hiss that makes Tommy worry the hybrid is about to explode. “As long as I’m around, you’re not getting near anyone, Notch.”

[votederpycausemufins]

God this was a long chapter, but there was a lot that happened that based on the location, I didn't want it to be split into multiple chapters.

so for the most, we're staying with the rescue group (but we do get some Grifter and Sense at the end)

hermit!tommy au originally made by @petrichormeraki

Arguments had been put on hold as the group combed through the strange shopping district. As they searched, Wilbur, Techno, Paul, Phil and EX were actually doing better of searching the place, Mumbo, Xisuma, Tommy and Doc so used to the current shopping district that they were turned around by expecting something different. Still, even with the large group, actually searching the place was difficult from them also trying to stay together mixed with Mumbo’s panic. So it ended up less of trying to search for Grum and more of keeping Mumbo in check.

“For goodness sakes!” EX finally yelled at one point in frustration. “You’re making this difficult! We could have found him by now but you’re just acting like we could turn the corner and he would be right there!” And then they happened to round a corner and find a robot standing there. “…what the fuck.”

Before Paul could try to point out something about EX managing to do whatever it was he was complaining about again, Mumbo rushed over and picked Grum up. “Oh thank goodness you’re alright!”

Only moments after Mumbo had picked the robot up, Techno stood next to him and pulled Grum away. “There’s no way it’s going to be that easy. You should be more careful than that.”

“Well it sort of has been so far.” Phil spoke up, Paul nodding while glancing over at Xannes.

“Okay, how about we get the main question out of the fucking way.” Tommy spoke up, pushing through the others to get closer to Mumbo and Techno. “Grum what the fuck happened when you got here?”

There was silence from the robot and then Techno looked down at them, the thing blinking and obviously active, but not responding. “Uh kid, you going to answer?”

The robot looked up at Techno when he spoke, then looked over to Tommy. “Apologies. It was not clear the request was posed to this unit. ‘Getting here’ refers to this location of about a three to five foot radius and also the general location of the island. Which is preferred for your answer?”

“Well, that’s obviously not good.” Doc said, stepping closer. “I’m guessing that’s enough of an answer for now. Whatever separated him from us did this.”

“The question now is how we fix it.” Xisuma said. “Or if we even can.”

“I’m sure we can.” Mumbo spoke up, taking the robot back from Techno. “Let’s search the shops, see if there’s any redstone supplies I could use to try and fix him. Uh, Doc you could help too if you can.”

Before Doc could respond, the robot escaped from Mumbo’s arms and then turned to look at him. “Redstone is in a shop towards the north west.” And then he started walking, leaving the others to follow.

As they started to move Tommy hung towards the back of the group. He was looking around and slowly separating from the group, so he was the only one to see some movement from a different street. It made him pause to draw a weapon and start to approach it, forgetting to tell anyone. He changed his path when he saw more movement going into a building, so he carefully followed whatever it was.

He paused in the doorway, staring at the source before glancing back in the general direction of the group. They had found Grumbot, at least he thought they had, but here in front of him, digging through some chests, was another Grumbot. “Uh… Grum?”

The robot jumped from Tommy talking, banging their head on the chest lid. “Wh-who? Oh… uh… who are you?”

“Tommy.” He answered, noticing the voice definitely did not belong to Grum. “I’m guessing you’re not actually Grum. Sorry for the mixup.”

“That’s okay. Um… I was just hoping to find some stuff for campaign things. Do… do you want to help?”

Tommy thought about it for a second. Obviously this was supposed to be a robot still doing political things. “Sure. Got any shirts or stuff?”

“Yeah!” The robot smiled “Follow me! They’re this way!”

“How about we meet up with the rest of the group I’m with. I’m sure they’ll want to help.”

“Yes! That sounds great! With all that help we’ll beat everyone else! Let’s go let’s go let’s go!”

While that bot was distracting Tommy, the group noticed his absence. Since there had already been the trouble with Grum, they panicked a bit and split up to look for him. So by the time Tommy got back to where the group would have been, they were all over the place instead, the only one having stayed nearby being Xannes. “Oh, there you are. Where had you disappeared to?”

“I saw something moving around and found another version of Grum.” And Tommy gestured to the robot he found. “Where’s everyone else?”

“They went looking for you. Running off like that made everyone freak out.”

“Everyone? You’re still here.” Tommy pointed out, making EX sigh.

“I thought that if I didn’t try looking, I wouldn’t get in trouble again. But oh look, I just so fucking happened to find you again.”

“Hey! That’s a bad word!” The robot chastised EX, pulling their hand out of Tommy’s so they could rest them on their hips. “That’s not a good thing to do!”

“Since when do you care?” Xannes asked. “I thought you would have spent enough time near this one to not care.” And he gestured to Tommy.

“Hey, he didn’t recognize me when I found him.” Tommy explained. “Plus he’s still trying to win the election or something.”

“Hey!” The robot shouted, crossing their arms. “It’s she. Get it right!”

“...It’s what.” Tommy and EX said in unison, staring down at the robot.

“You’ve obviously got me mixed up with someone else. My name is Gorgeous, not Grum. And my pronouns are she/they!”

“Well that’s not-” Tommy started to say, but then the robot looked at him. “Well, so we don’t get more confused, why don’t you do the same?”

“Me?” Tommy asked, pointing at himself, Gorgeous nodding in reply. “Uh, Tommy. He/him?”

“Why’s that a question?”

“I don’t fucking know! I’m just confused by this shit happening right now!”

“Again with the bad words! Now, what about you?” And she looked at Xannes.

“Xannes, EX or Evil Xisuma. He/him and they/them.” EX said, though obviously not enthused. “We don’t really have the time for this, Tommy, you take them and look for the others. Make sure you don’t tell them you ran into me first because I do not want to deal with any more arguments right now.”

Rolling his eyes, Tommy complied and grabbed Gorgeous, dragging them along to find someone else. Of course, as he started to walk, Gorgeous started asking questions. “Why is he getting into arguments?”

“My fucking uncle showed up and doesn’t seem to like people that much. He already got upset at my brother cause he had a fucked up time growing up and now he’s arguing with Xannes because of a bunch of coincidences surrounding him.”

“Oh. Well, maybe there’s some truth to it.”

“Don’t even start on that. You’ll probably make it worse when we find the others.” Tommy said, then paused, thinking of something then speaking again. “Might hurt your election efforts.”

“Right! Not going to bring it up! Got it!”

From there, Tommy led them around the island, searching for the others who had gotten surprisingly far. But finally as the pair was approaching town hall, Tommy was glad to see Mumbo. “Did you all have to go so fucking far? And before you complain, I saw this kid and went after them. Their name is Gorgeous. Ring any bells?”

“Slow down a little. Since it’s just you two, you haven’t found anyone else yet, right?”

“No.” Tommy replied quickly, following Xannes’ wishes. “Just you right now. Any clue which direction the others went?”

“No, not really. We’re probably best wandering around and hoping for the best.”

“So basically what I was already do-” and then Tommy was cut off from an explosion nearby. He and Mumbo both looked out from the building and from their higher vantage point, they saw Paul facing off against an avian with a chicken mask. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Oh my word. That’s Poultry Man.” Mumbo answered.

“Wasn’t that supposed to be Grian’s alter ego? So they’ve gotta be fake. Probably why they’re fighting him.”

“No! But fighting him is bad!” Gorgeous spoke up. “He’s really nice and everything!”

“Tommy? What do you think?” Mumbo asked, putting a hand on Gorgeous’ shoulder.

Tommy looked between Mumbo and Paul and Phil, then had his answer. “Let’s break it up and talk it out to see what at fuck is going on.”

The trio ran down the steps and got over to the fight, standing in the middle. It made the pair of brothers stop as Poultry Man was able to take a breather. “Thanks for the help.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Paul asked.

“I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is going on here.” Tommy answered. “I found this kid that looks like Grum and they seem to trust him. So how about we trying hearing him out before other shit happens. Because I’m assuming you attacked before asking questions.” And neither Paul nor Phil argued against that point.

“Thank you. I’m guessing you already know I’m Poultry Man thanks to Gorgeous. I’m not actually the original, more Grum’s interpretation of the stories he heard. I’m meant to be a protector, not an enemy.” And he glared slightly at Paul and Phil.

“Well so far we’ve only really found people who are trying to mess with or attack us.” Phil spoke up. “Plus we’re supposed to be in Hels, and there’s kind of a god there that uses chickens for evil or whatever.”

“Hmm, I guess that does make sense why you would attack me. Alright I forgive you. However…” and he looked over to Mumbo. The redstoner raised an eyebrow in questioning, especially as the avian walked towards him. But then everyone’s attention was drawn away by someone else.

“Hey! We need some help over here!” Wilbur was the one to be yelling as he ran over, dragging what they were no longer sure was Grumbot along. “Another thing like Grian before is attacking but it’s not exactly the same. I mean, it’s got the same symbol he uses a lot and purple wings and stuff.”

“Oh no, that’s probably Eyes.” Poultry Man said. “Here, can you lead us towards them, I should be able to help them calm down.”

As they started to walk, instead of everyone approaching another fight, they instead ran into the group who was headed their way, Doc holding a bundle of purple feathers in his arms. “Oh, I’m guessing this means he’s not attacking anymore?” Wilbur asked, poking the bundle before being swatted away by Poultry Man.

While most of the group was focused on Doc and what was in his arms, Gorgeous tugged on Tommy’s pants, proceeding to point between Mumbo and… Mumbo.”

“How the fuck are there two Mumbos here?” Tommy asked, getting everyone to look around and notice that the redstoner indeed had a copy of himself.

“That’s something I was worried about.” Poultry Man said, looking between the doubles with a glare.

“Is that why this guy,” Techno spoke up, gesturing to the feather bundle, “Started attacking Mumbo in the first place.”

“They did, did they?” And Poultry man looked at the Mumbo that had come with Doc’s group.

“What? Why is that a problem?” Mumbo asked confused and looking for an answer.

“Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“But I really don’t know!”

Then Poultry Man looked over to the first Mumbo. “What about you?”

“The only clue I have is that obviously one of us shouldn’t be here… but we did find the version of Grum that’s with Wilbur as well as Gorgeus, and we haven’t really been going through reality I don’t think, so… maybe it’s just part of all this?”

Poultry Man crossed his arms. “That’s the thing, it is a part of all this.” And he looked back to the second Mumbo. “Drop the disguise Dream.”

The name had an immediate effect on everyone except for Paul, who didn’t know of everything that had gone on a month ago and anything before that. “What? How would I be Dream? I thought Grian said he was killed by Grifter.”

“Grum kept differentiating between Dream and Admin Dream. Apparently the former was one of his chat voices.” Techno spoke up. “No clue if the same name is a coincidence or not, but rather not take chances.”

“Well, if we don’t want to take chances…” Paul started, before pulling out his sword and whacking both of the Mumbos to the ground with the broad side of the blade, then pulling our leads to tie them up with. “Sorry for the one of you that’s real, but I don’t want to take the chance of getting it wrong and letting the bad one have free roam.”

“No, I believe that makes sense.” One of the Mumbos spoke, getting a glare from Paul.

“Alright, the best test is simply asking questions that only the real one would know.” Poultry Man spoke up. “But we need to exclude things that Grum would possibly know since there’s a good chance that Dream would know.”

As everyone tried to figure out what to try, the first Mumbo caught Grumbot’s attention, mouthing something to it. The robot took a moment to process the message then went over to Gorgeous and took their hand. Still no one noticed as she was pulled away by the other bot, not until they were drawn back by laughter from the first Mumbo.

“So then… you’re Dream.” Poultry Man said, crossing his arms.

Paul pointed his sword at the revealed copy. “What did you do? What happened to make you change your mind about revealing yourself?”

“I did what I wanted. Technically I could do more, but it seems Eyes is out of commission.” And then the clone’s appearance shifted before being hidden under a mask that matched Dream’s or Theseus’.

Xisuma was the first to notice the missing bots. “What did you do with them?”

As Dream laughed again, Phil worked on untying Mumbo, Paul still pointing his weapon at the former copy. “I merely told Console where to go. It’s very obedient no matter what I ask it to do.”

“Don’t call them an it!” Mumbo said, rubbing his wrists after rope was removed from them.

“But that’s what it is. What it wants to be. It chose that a long time ago.” Dream paused to look over at Eyes. “They would actually agree with me. And I’m sure Poultry Man would too.”

The avian crossed his arms. “Don’t try and turn them against me.”

“Well how about a little more information. Eyes is in that current state due to Listener interference. Which I already took care of.” Dream bragged. “But of course I can’t take care of them myself, and only I know where they are, so I really suggest you let me go.”

“Likely story.” Poultry Man growled, but then Doc spoke up.

“Nah, something about this hasn’t been adding all up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s telling the truth. I say we let him go, but we have to have at least someone follow along.”

“Phil and I can go.” Paul immediately volunteered. “We’re best suited for combat in this scenario. You’re still carrying who’s apparently Eyes, and while Techno would be helpful, the kids are also missing, so while we follow Dream, you guys will be able to look for them.”

“Well, if it keeps us from confusing us again, I’m fine with this setup.” Mumbo agreed. “Especially if it means finding Grum again. Though I do have one question.”

“And that is?” Paul asked, though with how Mumbo was directing his question, it was obviously meant for Dream.

“Where exactly is the Listener you captured? Where is it you’re heading? Because I have a slight suspicion on where Grum is, and I want to see if you’re going there.”

“Well…” Dream started, looking to the side. His response made Mumbo frown and Poultry Man’s wings puff up.

“Are you saying to left them with the others?!” The avian shouted, not caring who tried to stop him as he grabbed Dream and started throttling him. “Change of plans then, Mumbo, you lead them. I’m staying with Dream to knock some sense into him.”

.

.

.

Grum huddled in the corner of a cage, trying to ignore the other person with him in there. Console had show up recently, dragging them along and trapping them in here with him. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t he just be let out. He… he wasn’t that broken, was he?

He covered his ears as there was tapping from the other half of the cage, the person reminding him of their presence. It worked to block it out, but it didn’t help when he was suddenly hit, something being thrown at him. In shock, Grum looked up, only to see the person’s appearance had changed. At first, they matched the description Techno had given before of the Nightmare thing messing with them, but now the mask was missing, their face instead hidden in their hood, only a braid of hair escaping the closed hood.

In looking for the mask, Grum found that it was what had hit him, now to his side on the ground. He quickly scooted away from it to another corner away from both the person and the mask. After he had done that, the person pulled out a weapon, making Grum hold his arms up in defense. But instead of attacking, they just used it to pull the mask back to them, then stuff it in their pocket. Once the mask was gone, they put the weapon away as well and showed Grum their empty hands.

“G-Go away.” Grum mumbled to the person, but they just banged on the bars of their shared cage, obviously not able to get through them. “T-Then let me p-pretend you’re not here.” And they shook their head. “Then what do you want?”

The person carefully revealed some of their face from the hood, just their mouth and chin. Their hand moved in a mimic of claws and then they proceeded to hit the middle finger of the gesture against their chin before pointing at Grum. They mouthed along with the motion, but in trying to watch that and the hands, Grum was just left confused. “Wh-what are you doing?”

Grum jumped as the person’s hand turned to a fist which they then slammed into the bars, making the cage rattle along with a large clang. As Grum trembled from the noise, the person looked at the bars, then hit them a few more times, though with a lot less force. Eventually, they were alternating between two noises of clangs from the bars, forming some sort of pattern. For a moment Grum thought they were trying to make a tune or something, but then he realized it was a different pattern.

Looking at his own bars, Grum tried the same until he too was getting the noises. He looked over to the other person, who had stopped, then he hit against the bars, the first one four times, then a pause, then the first again twice. A moment after he stopped, he looked over to the person, who waved. Morse code.

Grum quickly tapped out a message to the person, asking for their name. After it was given, he greeted them, then asked why they were there. Slowly, through plenty of tapping, they told Grum how they were trying to help the group get through their nightmare tests.

“Why did you bother using the word nightmare? Xannes already explained the tests and we were headed to the NSMP.” Grum asked and explained at first before the person responded. They had used the phrase because the tests were nightmares. “But then… are you saying that all this… is just a nightmare of mine?”

The person didn’t even need to tap, they just nodded. “No. That’s… I mean I guess, but then how do I get out? I mean, I know none of this is real now, right? When Daddy and Techno found out, it all ended.” But that got the person to shake their head.

The next message was much shorter. A simple ‘face your fears’ which while it made sense, wasn’t very helpful. “Well, I’m facing them right now, aren’t I? So it should end now cause I did that and know it’s not real.”

It took a bit for the person to get Grum to notice they were giving another message, but eventually he realized and translated. “What I’m afraid of? Well, being stuck here obviously.” But they tilted their head and waved for Grum to explain further. “I… It doesn’t matter. It’ll go away soon.”

The pair sat in silence for a while before another message was tapped out. “What about your brother?” More tapping. “How is that your fear?” And then they pulled the mask out again, tapping it before hiding it again. “Wait… s-so your brother is…” Grum was answered by a nod, then some tapping.

“Okay… okay…” Grum relented. He sighed in trying to calm himself, thinking it all over. “Um… mine is with my dads. Most of my family really. I’m just… I wonder if they just think of me as a robot sometimes. I mean I am, but…” Grum paused, collecting his thoughts again. “I broke really badly. It even happened here. Well, the real life version of here.” And with that the person started looking around, getting a better sense of where exactly they were. “They tried fixing me after the shock of it all going wrong, but at first, m-my dads… th-they just…” And Grum broke down crying. The bot didn’t care when the person came to his side and hugged him, glad for some comfort and soon hugged back.

After he wore himself out a little, though still teary eyed and hiding his face in the other person’s chest, he continued his story. “R-Recently, my brother and I got stuck in a different world. W-we were stuck there for a l-long time, but that was because of s-someone messing with time-” Grum’s voice caught as there was a rumble in the person’s chest like a growl. “-A-and while it s-seemed like my brother and I were stuck there for a month or s-so, it was only a few days. But for m-me, it just seemed like o-our dads left us. It… it was like when I b-broke all over a-again.”

Some tapping came from the bars, and Grum looked up slightly to get a better angle to hear at. “Yeah… I guess you’re right… I… I guess I’m scared of being seen as broken.”

But everything stayed the same. There was still something else to it, and the person had one idea of what it was. So, they tapped out their question. “The other- That… That’s Console. That’s… It’s… Console’s like a part of me. Well, not like… is.”

There was a long silence before three quiet taps, four quiet taps, two quiet taps, and finally a single louder tap. “What’s wrong?” Grum asked, but before he could get an answer, someone else further away spoke, pulling away his attention.

“No! No no no no no! I don’t want to be on the island! I want to be in the shopping district! Let go! Console let me go!” It was Gorgeous who spoke, struggling against the other bot as they dragged them along.

“Orders were to bring you to here. That order must be completed.” Console answered. “You must be out of the way.”

“What about you?”

“The order is the same. Go to the creation island and remain in the cage until further notice. That is what will happen.” And before Gorgeous could argue further, Console was shoving her into the cage with Grum and the other person before joining them and closing the cage behind it. “Now it is time to wait.”

“Did… did you see anyone other than Dream?” Grum asked, mainly towards Gorgeous, but Console answered faster.

“Those seen since the Listener’s arrival here include Paul, Phil, Doc, Xisuma, Evil Xisuma, Techno, Wilbur, Mumbo, Tommy, Eyes, Gorgeous, Dream, Poultry Man.”

The person tapped out a message, making Console look at them. “As many were located simultaneously, the list was given in aged order. Do you believe that is incorrect in some form? Prior connection with Eyes signals that these are correct. Do you perhaps wish to swap Techno and Wilbur as they are twins? Or perhaps mixing between the last four? That order is indeed the order of their forming. Eyes first due to the addition of the mayoral reservoirs, followed by Gorgeous as the rewiring and Dream at th-” Console was stopped as the person slammed their fist against the cage, making the bars rattle and causing Grum and Gorgeous to cover their ears at the sound.

The person moved their arms in some fashion that Console seemed to understand, making the robot nod and causing the person to continue, finally pausing to let Console speak again. “Beginning with a translation, your question is if there is word about Eyes’ condition as well as the location of the group. The answer to those questions is that Eyes is currently in a fragile state due to the interference from multiple Listeners. The second answer is that the group is likely on route to this location due to discussion previously from Mumbo. One exception may be Evil Xisuma, aka Xannes, as they were separated from the group at this point.”

There were a few more hand gestures from the person, Grum managing to realize it must be sign language, though not understanding what exactly was being said. Signed? Either way, Console could understand, and that was enough. “Due to no use of magic, but presence instead, should the problem not be solved soon, irreparable damage could be done.”

The person immediately tensed up and looked over, not to Grum, but to Gorgeous before looking back and signing once more, pulling their mask out of their pocket and showing it to Console. The robot took it, inspecting the mask and banging it a few times to test it. That caused a few of the added gems to fly off, but Console didn’t seem bothered as it handed the mask back. “Very well. The situation does indeed allow for changes.” And then he opened the cage. “Discussion will begin at the point of your spell’s ending.”

The person nodded, then looked back to Grum and tapped out another message. ‘Finish this. Sooner is better. Help others. I’ll try helping your dad.’

Before Grum could respond, he flinched back as the person started using magic, specifically in the same color that Grifter used. Grum closed his eyes due to what the magic was doing, but when he looked up once again, he and the other two bots were no longer in the cage, but instead on the shopping district island where the other group was starting to set up boats.

.

.

.

“Where are you going so late?” Sense asked, Grifter getting some items together.

“A message from Flora.” Grifter answered. “It seems Grian reacted poorly to the papers I gave him. More so than I initially expected. Because of that, I need to head over there and-” Grifter stopped at the buzz of his communicator, especially when he realized Sense’s hadn’t done the same. The Listener pulled it out, initially expected more information from Flora, but instead he growled and shoved all his gathered items to Sense. “Change of plans. You’re going to help Grian.”

“What? Why the hell am I going to help? Isn’t he supposed to be over at, eugh, Krys’ place? The one Silski always hangs out at?”

“Yes and I know you don’t like him.” Grifter spoke, cupping Sense’s cheek before giving him a kiss. “But I really need you to do this right now. A certain Listener in training is trying to help that group we noticed in the captcha. And she’s been hiding it all along until now. I don’t want her interfering, but if I send her home early to her dad, he’ll ask questions. And if she just stays here, so much will go wrong unless I can… tell her what she needs to do.”

“So while you threaten her, I’m in charge of Grian?”

“Exactly. Now, I can make things easier by teleporting you closer, but the trip back is on your own. That being said, we’re likely both getting back late, so once we’ve pawned off the troublesome teens, I wouldn’t mind some relaxing quality time with you.” Grifter purred, making Sense smile.

“Mmm, only if it's without the wings.” Sense replied, getting a nod. “Then absolutely.”