Chapter Text
Having a shulker hybrid kid was hard, don't get him wrong. He loves Hermes, he is a sweet little boy that barely cries. He is a really calm baby which is great for him. But taking the shulker shells out of his knees? That was a nightmare, even Sausage tried to avoid it. He couldn't blame him, it was stressful even if it just happened twice a month. It meant risking to burn the bathroom, their clothes and their hands or other body parts. They would often try to get another person to do it. Someone that could handle heat and fire a little bit better than them. Which normally would be only three people. Grian, Jimmy and Scott, it was the order to ask for the favor. If Grian couldn't do it they would ask Jimmy, if Jimmy couldn't either they would ask Scott. Why Scott last? Simple, Sausage didn't know him well enough. Like sure, he knew who Scott was, but he never imagined that the heir of the second most powerful family in the city would be friends with the same people he is.
It was a really funny experience seeing Sausage meet Scott for the first time. How he started mumbling to himself in spanish something along the lines of "¿por qué rayos está un Smajor acá?" and "ay virgencita santa que no me vaya a aplicar una latam" or something like that. Then after Scott explained that he was going to help with Hermes' shulker shells his face changed completely, turning into the friendly Sausage he knew.
But now they didn't even need to ask for the favor, Scott offered. Which was weird, even if Scott liked Hermes a lot, it implied taking time to come to Joel's house and taking a couple hours at least to deal with Hermes' shulker shells. It wasn't bad or any of that, it was just a sign that Scott wanted something. At least, that was what Joel understood when he was on the phone with him.
When Joel opened the door of his apartment and saw a tall brunette man, who he was pretty sure was Jimmy's boss, standing next to Scott he confirmed it.
"Joel hi, do you remember my friend that I told you would be interested in meeting Hermes?" Scott started with a smile.
He just nodded.
"Let me introduce you to each other. Pix meet Joel, the father of Hermes, a little Shulker hybrid boy. Joel meet Pix, your local archeologist who is also a nerd of End hybrids and yes, before you ask, he is Jimmy's boss." Scott said.
"Well, get in, don't get in the way. Come inside" Joel said.
"Wait, you know Jimmy?" Pix asked, apparently surprised as he walked inside.
"Yeah, Grian, his older brother, is the one that usually help us with Hermes"
"Us?" Scott asked.
"Oh yeah, you haven't met Sausage, have you?"
Scott shook his head.
"He is a friend of Pearl. He offered to help me with Hermes"
"Are you talking about me?' Sausage said as he walked to the living room with Hermes in his arms.
"Oh yeah, I remember you now. You were mumbling in Spanish when you opened his door.
"Yeah, that was me" Sausage responded as a little giggle escaped him "and this little fella is Hermes" he moved Hermes hand making a little wave.
He left Hermes carefully on Pix's lap.
"Hi little boy" Pix said as he played with Hermes' hair.
Hermes giggled softly.
Joel's clap grabbed everyone's attention.
"Welp, this is cute and whatever but Hermes really needs that shells off or he's really gonna be pouty about it."
"Wait" Pix started "doesn't it hurt him?"
"Right now not really, if we wait like three or four days it would start to hurt him. If we wait like a week supposedly he would be in a lot of pain. But we're not gonna risk it"
Sausage nodded in agreement.
Most End hybrids require air from the End for surviving. They could survive with Overworld air, however every six months they need to go back to the End for at least a week to keep themselves healthy. Recent studies show that kids from End hybrids that grew up on the Overworld could survive without End air and they can also breathe End air without problem. This confirms the theory of hybrid evolution proposed by Mery M. Soldier in her book "Hybrids and evolution". The theory also mentioned that every hybrid could adapt their body to a different dimension more easily than humans, since the hybrid genes had the quality of being adaptive.
Pix was being extremely precise with whatever he was doing. It was ridiculously fast, no more than 30 minutes and all the shells were removed.
"What did you do? It normally takes about two hours!" Sausage asked.
"Oh, I read once that their bodies acted like human bodies with water, so I simply gave him a bath. I'm immune to fire so it wasn't a problem"
"And he is great with kids," Scott added.
"Yeah, that too," He agreed. “Hermes is a really calm kid anyways so it wasn’t a real problem. He was mostly trying to make me float. I don’t think he realizes that his projectiles aren’t that strong enough”.
Joel took a second to look at his son, he seemed happy about the whole deal. Hermes was still hugging Pix, the man being fireproof seemed to be a quality that his son liked. So, naturally, if his son approves the man, he also will.
"So, Scott said you wanna meet Hermes because you are a big End nerd and that but, exactly, why did you want to meet Hermes?" Joel asked.
"Oh simple" Pix started "First, not everyday I'm offered to meet someone like him, and second I wanted to know about Shulker hybrids. During the period of the shulker boxes crisis a lot of information about Shulker hybrids was burned or returned to the nether. Supposedly to protect young Shulker hybrids, however it had the opposite effect. Since the information about them was almost extinct, neither schools, nor hospitals or any other public necessity they could have would receive them. Afraid of attacks from illegal hunting groups or black market kidnappers. Getting information about them is basically banned from the Overworld."
"Great, now they could be bullied at school, what a great future awaits for him" Joel responded sarcastically.
"Relax" Sausage said as he put a hand on his shoulder "he would go to the kindergarten I work at and then Grian would keep an eye on him"
Joel sighed.
"I just…" he started "I don't wanna look like an overprotective father that doesn't let his kid do anything on his own. He deserves to have a normal life, is that too much to ask?"
Sausage gave him a weak smile and was about to respond but was interrupted by Scott.
"Aww Joel's going soft?" A laugh accompanied the phrase "relax boy, Hermes is going to be fine. Just trust yourself, you're not giving yourself enough credit for what you do for this boy"
"Anyways" Sausage interrupted "let's go back to the living room, shall we?"
Shulker hybrids were not a natural evolution, hence why some of their hybrid traits hurt them even if they're part of their bodies. It is believed that the first Shulker hybrid was an experiment created by injecting Shulker DNA to a fetus in a clandestine hybrid experimentation laboratory.
As we know, most of these centers would take children with a not developed hybrid gene so they could modify their DNA by injecting DNA from another species, forcing their bodies to activate the hybrid gene and adapt their bodies to the DNA that was being injected to their bodies. If the modification was successful, they would often sell these kids to the black market forcing a new hybrid species to be born and perpetuating the creation of non-natural evolution hybrids. Which could cause a lot of health problems to the future generations of these species.
The first record of a Shulker hybrid dates back to the Evolution civilization with written records from soldiers that had large amounts of Shulker shells around their chest, knees, and arms. Since none of the records found to date specify if this was a part of their bodies or some type of armor provided by members of the army, theories had been created trying to explain this information. The most popular theory suggests that the Shulker shells grew from their bodies larger, covering areas that could be considered unprotected, as a natural response from the constant feeling of danger that they're subjected to everyday. This fear was passed to new generations and they developed it as a defense mechanism against it. Some fossils found in the area reinforce this theory, since apparently they had the same type of bone structure around these areas that modern Shulker hybrids have around their knees, the only place they grow shulker shells. Other theories suggest that the giant Shulker shells were the result of the Void infection as a weird type of symptom, these giant shells suffocated them allowing the infection to rapidly increase the area affected by it.
However, since most of the information about Evolution is lost, most of these theories could not be endorsed.