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“No way.”
Everyone glanced up as they traded some of Skeppy’s diamonds for some new clothes. There, standing right beside them, was a familiar face. At least, familiar for some of them. Hands ran up into dirty blond hair. Bright red wings stuck out of an equally bright red jumper. Black cargo pants and matching scuffed combat boots, which had smears of paint and other building materials across the molded material. The laces were chewed by cats. There was a smile across his face.
“Grian!” Tommy ran over without thinking about it. Grabbed onto his hands and jumped around a little bit.
Leaning over, Wilbur whispered to Phil, “Is it just me or is Tommy oddly energetic today?”
“It’s Grian’s chaos energy.” Phil whispered back, smiling. The two of them laughed, looked back to Tommy and Grian. Both of the young men were flapping their wings excitedly. From the look of it, they didn’t even seem to have realized it. Walking over, Phil extended his own wings. He reached the others, and Grian looked over with bright eyes.
“You have wings!” Grian said. Pacing around Phil, Grian tipped his head to the side. Smiled lightly. There was another pause. “You don’t know how to treat them properly, do you?”
“What?” Gently, Grian indicated Tommy’s wing. Extending it out, Tommy let the man take his wing and extend it. Then, he looked over the feathers, compared them to his own wings. Then, he showed Tommy and Phil the difference.
“You haven’t been able to preen them properly, I can tell. How about Pearl and I help you with your wings—“
“Oh, some of the others—Quackity, Wilbur, Tubbo—might end up getting wings. Wait, actually, Big Q has wings too I forgot…” Grian glanced over at Tubbo as Tommy chattered on. Oddly enough, he blinked. Tipped his head to the side slightly. Looked to Phil and Tommy, then back to Tubbo. Raised his eyebrows. Quietly, Tubbo shook his head. Then, casually, Grian grinned.
“Alright. We can show them, then. Come on. Pearl!” A shadow drifted over them. All of them looked up to see someone gliding down to them. Wings extended out fully, feathers glittering white with beautiful pearlescent tones over them all, was Pearl. She had a dark beanie and brown jacket on, a blue and white striped shirt and armored jeans, and brown combat boots. Landing gracefully and gently, she looked over. Smoothed her hand out over her hair and looked around. Smiled softly.
“Hey. You got wings now?” She asked, looking at everyone. Swallowing, Tommy nodded quietly. “Alright. Come on, we’ll help the ones with wings preen and teach the other kids how to preen so you don’t have to deal with anything when your wings come in. And if not, then you can help your pals because trust me, it’s a team effort.” She strode off, and Tommy and Tubbo followed with the others. Watching them go, Ranboo swallowed.
“There you are. I thought Grian and Pearl had a reason for showing up.” Another voice said. Turning, Ranboo saw someone he recognized walking up. Zombie Cleo.
“Cleo!” Dream said, grinning. “How are you?”
“Pretty good. So, y’all are hybrids? Or…shifting?” She nodded to Fundy, then looked at Schlatt and Puffy.
“Sort of. We have some powered. Some people don’t have powers—“ Glancing around, Dream paused. Tipped his head to the side slightly. “Uh…I think Karl, Niki, Minx, Tubbo, Wil—no, maybe? Right now? Quackity, uh…” Shrugging, Dream said, “I think most of us have something.”
“Haha, that’s normal.” Looking to Fundy, Cleo sort of raised her chin and said, “You’ll want to check in with Etho. He’s a werefox. Alyssa, Connor, I would adv—you know what, I’ll just take y’all to our camp. Probably will help settle things out.” She glanced at Ranboo. Frowned slightly. “You naturally that tall?”
“Yeah.” Ranboo said, kicking the tiles beneath him with the toe of his shoe, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Huh. Thought you got taller.” Shrugging, Cleo mused, “Maybe I’m just short. Did you run into any type one zombies?”
“Type one zombies?” Charlie echoed, catching up to Cleo. Ranboo was a couple steps behind. Nodding, Cleo started walking backwards.
“Minecraft type zombies. You know, green skin, wants to eat your flesh, vicious and hollow eyes.” She explained. “We have two types of zombies. I’m the other type.”
“You’re what ?” Kristin asked. Looking Cleo up and down, she said, “But you’re not quite dead.”
“Yeah,” pulling the corner of her black-striped, dark blue shirt down, Cleo showed off a vicious looking scar. It scraped from the upper edge of her left collarbone down over her heart, the scar tissue a pale greenish tone compared to the otherwise healthy pink tone of her skin. Reddish orange hair fell around her shoulders, currently braided in some places to keep some of the strands from her eyes. Adjusting her shirt back into place, Cleo elaborated. “Got hit by one of those six-legged monsters. One of the claws hooked me with the tip . Got sick. Didn’t make it. Came back a couple hours later, freaked the life out of basically all the other Hermits when it happened. Now I’m a zombie.”
“But you don’t seem all…” Huffing, Sapnap mused, “Brains-eating.”
“Yup.” They passed the food court, emerged into the parking lot and started walking towards a big old tour bus. The Hermits were gathered outside of it. “Some of us drove across the land bridge stretching from what used to be Iceland and Greenland to Canada. The primary land bridge stretches to Britain.”
“There’s land bridges now?”
Nodding, Cleo leaned against the bus. Knocked twice with her knuckles casually. Kicked one leg up to brace it against the bus wall behind her. “Yup. World’s changed. We’ve changed with it. Apparently the people who caused the Apocalypse anticipated this, they wanted that and so they triggered a…change of sorts.”
Glancing up, Puffy asked, “How do you know?”
“Turns out that Impulse, Tango, and some of the other people who used to be web and game designers are pretty good at hacking, too. They found the website from the people who caused this, some of them are pretty happy about it. They call themselves something stupid.” Pausing, Cleo looked right at Dream, and Techno, too. Then, she spoke softly. “They’d be looking for someone like you two. You’re an Admin.”
“Admin? Like…administrator?” Dream echoed.
“So’s Xisuma. Some hybrid hunters attacked us. Tried to kill the rest of us, but really, really wanted Xisuma. As for you, Techno, you’re a werekind that’s nothing like what we’ve seen before. I can tell.” She paused. Then, softly, she added, “Once you hang out with enough werekind, you can tell. I don’t know what you are.”
“Weird.” Techno mumbled, looking at his hands.
“Oh, also—“ Cleo glanced over to Ranboo. “You need to see Joe. He’s another person who can tell hybrid types. It’s got a name, but I don’t remember what the exact title is.”
“Ooh. New hybrid types?” Joe appeared at the door, peering around with wide eyes. He grinned brightly. Then, he threw his legs forward, landed on the asphalt and hurried over. “Whose fate has fallen into my hands this morning?”
Immediately, Ranboo raised his hand, “I want to know if I’m going to be a hybrid.” He replied. Blinking, Joe held out a hand. Ranboo settled one of his own in Joe’s palm. Swallowed anxiously. There was a long moment of silence. Somewhere, a bird was chirping. It was a dove.
Heart pounding, Ranboo shifted slightly as Joe tipped his head to the side. He frowned lightly. Hummed softly. “Is that a bad thing?” Bad’s voice betrayed how worried he was.
“Joe?” Ranboo asked nervously. His heart was squeezing, and he stared down at his fingers. They were shaking. Everything was shaking. The ground dipped beneath him. He could feel a weird pulse of something in his head.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back and staring at the sky. Someone’s legs were bracing up his head. Blinking, he tipped his head to the side. Swallowed. “Hey, Ranboo. You’re alright.” Niki said. Stroking his hair back, she smiled down at him.
“Wh-what happened?” Leaning over him, Joe smiled apologetically down at him.
“I don’t know what you are, Ranboo. But the…there’s something, kid.” Reaching down, Joe scrubbed a hand through Ranboo’s hair. Smiled lightly. “You’ve got a good group with you. Let them take care of you, and take care of the others. You’ll all be fine.”
“The others?”
“We know what we are. We’ll be alright.” Niki replied, smiling. Some of her hair brushed at his forehead. Blinking, Ranboo closed his eyes slightly.
“I’m going to take a nap now.”
+++
Tubbo was looking curiously at Tommy as Pearl showed the others how to properly preen their wings.
Bracing his palm on his chin, Tubbo watched with bright eyes. Chuckling, Grian glanced at Tubbo. “You know, you lean forwards a lot more than a normal human. You sure you’re not developing wings yet?”
Smiling, Tubbo looked over, “I’m not developing wings. No worries about that.” Laughing, he shook his head. Looked back to Tommy’s primary feathers, reached out and poked them.
“Hey!” Tommy yanked his wing away, feathers ruffling slightly in annoyance. “The wings are a no-touch zone right now!”
“Like you weren’t falling asleep a second ago.”
“Like you won’t be doing the same once you have your wings! I bet you’re going to be sicker than I was when you get them!”
“Please. My immune system is a thousand times better than yours.” Leaning back, Tubbo braced a foot on Tommy’s knee, supported himself on the heels of his hands as he pushed Tommy to the side. “Not to mention my pain tolerance is infinitely better.”
“More like infinitesimally better.” Tommy fired back.
“Ooh, big words from a small man. Have you been hanging out with Wilbur?” The pair exchanged looks, and Tubbo started snickering. Then, Tommy did his usually, barking, explosive cackle of a laugh. Shaking his head, Grian continued shifting Tommy’s coverts back into place.
“Some of this you’ll need help with. Like little spots on your back that you can’t reach anymore. Oh, and if you want to fly better then you might have to get used to some pain. I know I usually have to do some funky things with my shoulders in order to fly faster.” Grian explained. As he spoke, he shook his wings out. Showed them off.
“Oh, that’ll be fun.” Tommy groaned, laying back until Grian and Pearl caught him.