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"Psst. Hey, Sausage."
Sausage felt a tap on his arm. He looked down to face the goblin the height of his waist. "Yeah, fWhip? What's up?"
fWhip grinned and handed Sausage a curved bottle of shimmering, clear liquid. "I got this from Joel," he whispered. "We should get Jimmy with it while the Rifties are here messing with their weird machine."
Sausage took it, but protested, "Why me? Why don't you throw it?"
fWhip's ears pinned back slightly. "Because, uh, I can't throw things as far? It'd be really obvious, trust me. It's gotta be you."
"Hmm. Okay..." Sausage watched as three people gathered around a fourth, who had just stepped out of the strange glass chamber. In a moment when most of them had their backs to him, he lobbed the potion high in the air.
His aim was more perfect than he had hoped. The bottle smashed apart right at the Sheriff's feet.
Jimmy flinched a little, frowning at the broken bottle. What-
Oh no.
Jimmy barely had time to feel like something was wrong before everything happened at once.
His legs wobbled. His ankles didn't feel like they could hold him - nor like they were even there. Something foreign traveled up his body, replacing everything in its path with nothing. Numb. Fluff. His anxiously churning stomach fell still. His lungs stopped working mid-gasp. The force of the transformation carried it outward - Jimmy gagged, and coughed up something white.
Wool. Stuffing. He curled up and dropped to his knees, feeling dizzy, so, so dizzy. Black spots danced across his vision, so he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were sky-blue buttons. He felt a hand on his back, dimly heard Oli ask if he was okay. No, he wasn't okay! How could he possibly be okay??
His skin - the fabric that had replaced his skin - tightened, pressing inward, shrinking him down, down. The wool that had only just formed inside him compressed, shifted, spilled out from his throat, until he had finished shrinking and the curse sealed over his mouth with an embroidered copy of what it should have been.
Jimmy was tiny now. Smaller than fWhip, much smaller, the perfect size for a human child to pick up with one hand. The size of a toy. He lay on his side in the grass, curled in on himself, staring at a pile of too-clean stuffing, and shivering.
Sausage could only watch the transformation with his hands over his mouth in guilty horror. If he had known... Jimmy had been hit by a similar potion before, as a prank. But when that happened, he had only become a tiny human for a short while - nothing as torturous as this. He looked so small and scared, lying out in the open, surrounded by people, some of which he barely knew...
"Oh, my word," Xisuma commented, sounding a little sick. Sausage wouldn't blame him. "What..."
"Potion effect." fWhip looked on, just as stunned as Sausage. "It... must have been a fly-by drop. Yeah. Nobody here, definitely..."
Xisuma nodded and immediately rocketed away toward the main tower of Hermitopia. Jimmy looked up at the remaining people still crowded around him: three friends, and two hermits. He locked eyes with another pair of buttons, fixing Grian with what he hoped would be a pleading expression. Or an angry one. Or any expression at all. "This is your fault somehow, I just know it."
Grian held up his hands innocently. "I genuinely have no idea what's going on."
"Don't lie to me. You're in cahoots with Joel, aren't you? Helped him figure out how to actually turn me into-" Jimmy's sentence trailed off. He still wasn't going to say it.
"Wait, this was Joel's idea?" Grian laughed.
Jimmy struggled to get his feet under him. "It's not FUNNY!"
"Alright, Tim, geez-"
In a flash, Jimmy was running at Grian. "Don't-" he yelled, accentuating each word with a punch to Grian's leg, "call - me - that! This isn't a JOKE!"
"Ow, ow!" Grian flinched. "That actually kinda hurt! How dense are you stuffed, anyway??"
Jimmy glared up at him. "It did, huh? Well, how about THIS?" He drew his netherite sword and pointed it threateningly upward.
Grian took a step back. "Whoa, whoa, easy now, Timmy!"
"Why don't you get on my level?" Jimmy growled, brandishing the sword. "I know you can. You've shown me."
"Ah. Yes. Well," Grian hemmed and hawed. "You see, I actually can't right now."
"You're lying again."
"Ti- Jimmy," Grian pointed out. "Why would I bring my truebody through a mysterious Rift into an unknown and possibly dangerous world? We could have ended up in, I dunno, an apocalyptic desert wasteland ruled by evil undead overlords or something. So it's safe back on Hermitcraft, and since we're stuck here, I can't access it. Which is frankly rather disconcerting."
Jimmy tried to make it look like he was rolling his eyes. He did not lower his sword. "Well, I'm just so sorry that you've been mildly inconvenienced by-"
Xisuma returned at that moment. He looked from Grian to Jimmy, both completely expressionless as Jimmy aimed a miniature sword in the general direction of Grian's torso. "Did I... miss something here?"
Jimmy stepped back, lowering his sword with a sigh. "Nothing."
"They were arguing over who wears it better," Oli supplied, earning a laugh from most of the gathered group. "Personally I'm partial to Jimmy's baby blue buttons, but..."
"...Thanks," Jimmy chuckled.
Xisuma set a bucket down next to Jimmy - then realized a problem, as Jimmy looked up to see the rim of it. "Ah. Oh dear."
"Is that milk in there?" Jimmy asked.
Xisuma nodded. "Someone here said it was a potion effect?"
"It's different from before, though," Jimmy mused. "Also how am I meant to drink this?"
"Just kind of stick your face in it?" Grian suggested. "As long as it gets absorbed into your body, right? That's what I do."
"I am not dunking myself in milk in front of half a dozen people," Jimmy declared. He slumped a little, shying away from the stares he could still feel on him. "Actually, I think I need to go back to Tumble Town. For now."
"Do you need an escort?" Sausage offered. "Or a ride?"
"No," Jimmy grumped. "I've still got my elytra, haven't I?" He opened and closed his brass-studded elytra a couple of times. "I can handle myself just fine, thank you." Not waiting for a response, he rocketed into the air and headed southwest.
-
A faint rustle, like wind through branches, accompanied the flap of wings. Jimmy fired another rocket.
The wingbeats drew closer. One gust from them buffeted him in the air, but he righted himself quickly. He looked over at Sausage, who was now gliding next to him on mossy, branch-like wings. "I said I didn't need an escort."
"It's not!" Sausage said. "I just... happened to be going in the same direction, so..."
"Sausage, your base is in the literal opposite direction from here."
"...Yeah, well, um." Sausage fell silent, his excuse evaporating.
"It's fine." Jimmy made no attempt to outfly his friend. When they reached Tumble Town, Jimmy pitched himself downward. Sausage circled at elevation for a short time longer; when Jimmy had landed safely on the road below, Sausage winged his way east back to Sanctuary.
-
"Hello? Is someone home? I heard elytra..."
"Scar!"
"Jimmy? Where are you-" Scar floated around the corner, looking around. Then he looked down. He flitted backward in surprise. "Oh! Oh my gosh. Wait. Jimmy??"
Jimmy waved sheepishly. "Hi, Scar. Good to see you."
Scar dropped down, phasing into the ground up to his chest in front of Jimmy to match eye level. "Oh, whoa! You're like a, a-"
"Don't say it," Jimmy warned.
"Aaaan action figure?" Scar corrected himself. "What happened to you??"
"Joel happened," Jimmy grumped. "I don't know how, and I don't know why now, but he's done this to me. And I don't know if I can reverse it."
"I'm sure he could do that!" Scar eagerly fluttered his blue-white wings.
"Yeah, but will he?"
"Oh." Scar's wings drooped. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the ground as if he were sitting at a table. "Maybe I could? I haven't used magic for anything very serious in a while, but..."
"No offense, but I'd rather not risk it," Jimmy decided. "This world's got its own magic, and it's all been going a little nuts since you guys showed up. What if whatever you do just... makes things worse?"
"Ohhh. I see. Well... Maybe I could talk to Joel? I could convince him to change you back!"
Jimmy tried to smile, then was reminded that his face couldn't move that way. "I mean... I don't think it'll help, but I won't stop you from trying. Not that I even could stop you, like this."
"Aww, it'll be okay!" Scar barely resisted the urge to pat Jimmy on the head. "You're still a big, strong sheriff in our hearts!"
"Yeah," Jimmy replied noncommittally. "You go talk to Joel if you want. I can't say I really like being looked at right now - I want to take some time to figure out how to get around Tumble Town... like this."
"Okay, if you're sure!" Scar started to rise into the air. "Oh! By the way, um. You might want to be careful."
"I am still capable of defending myself, Scar."
"No, no, it's not that." Scar swooped side to side a little, as if shifting nervously on feet that he couldn't use. "It's just, you know the plushies that Joel keeps dropping off around town? The ones that definitely aren't you! But they do look a lot like you? And you've been telling me to dispose of them however I see fit?"
"Yeah...?"
"Theeeey make amazing cat toys. Norman and Jellie can't get enough of them! Hunting, stalking, biting... anyway, you might want to be careful about going near any cats." Magic sparkled around Scar as he lifted off. "Goodbyeeee!"
"Wh-" Jimmy ran after Scar for a few steps. "Scar!"
Jimmy slowed to a walk. He looked around, suddenly aware of how many dark spaces he had made, under every plant and porch. He could imagine the yellow eyes - or green, or blue - watching his every move.
Even more than before, Jimmy fervently hoped that he would be back to normal before long.