Chapter Text
<TommyInnit> has joined the game
One simple sentence that should have been a good thing, should have been met with celebration and joy and relief. But it wasn't.
Hermitcraft was a server full of the weird and the strange, full of gods and monsters, not that there was a much of a difference between the two to begin with. Because of that, Xisuma hadn't questioned it 15 years ago when one of his players said that she'd received a message from an alternate version of herself. Cleo had been one of his players since season two, and her counterpart Joe had been a member since the fifth week of season one. He had a special fondness for those tried and true hermits who'd been around every season since. Xisuma also held a fondness for the child Cleo had accidentally created a couple months into that second season.
Such was how Hermitcraft came to welcome it's first and only member to be actively born on said server. One that would apparently get kidnapped in a near future. Cleo took every precaution necessary. Tommy wasn't the only child to be raised on the server though. An orphaned voidwalker was adopted, and when Doc joined he brought with him a son. The three were inseparable. Tommy wasn't kidnapped as the other Cleo forewarned, but the other two still were.
Tommy left Hermitcraft for the first time when he turned fourteen. He snuck out, obviously, Cleo hadn't wanted to let him out of her sight until he was at least eighteen, but he was a clever thing and the touches of divinity all around his home server had left prints across his code. He disappeared with the intent of finding the other members of his trio. If Cleo and Joe could be defined as soulmates, so too could Tommy, Tobias, and Ran. It'd made it all the more painful when he was the only one left behind.
When he left he made sure that Xisuma wouldn't be able to get him back easily, keeping Hermitcraft as his home server but disguising his escape with all the cleverness of an admin in training. Tommy promised he'd keep in touch. The last time they heard from him was more than three years ago. Time could be funny on servers, especially comparing high tick servers like Hermitcraft to low tick ones. Even some players aged at different rates, a player's true age only being revealed by their code. Xisuma could still access Tommy's baseline profile, since he'd made sure to Whitelist the boy with the newest season. According to his code, he was just shy of seventeen.
For Xisuma it'd felt like three years, but some of his players thought it'd been longer. Some even shorter. Etho who'd pop in and out of his single player world had the most skewed sense of time, but as an Admin Xisuma liked to think his was the most linear.
The moment the boy joined the chat started to go absolutely wild. Pearl and Gem were too new to have met Tommy, but they'd heard enough stories. The other hermits though, the ones who'd known him personally since before he came up to Cleo's hip, Xisuma could read between the lines and see the concern. Especially given the lack of a return greeting.
The hiss of fireworks alerted Xisuma to another presence. Seconds later, Cleo was peering over his shoulder, eyes sharp, watching as Xisuma flipped through his admin panel to get to Tommy's profile. Usually Tommy handled his own code, Xisuma having taught him how to, but he and Cleo had standing permission to look at and fix things as necessary. Especially after he'd given himself a glitch or two when he was younger. Xisuma's fingers were flying across the panel as the zombified mer next to him gave a throaty kind of growl. She was old enough and powerful enough to shift, but he could see the patterning of blue-green scales across the back of her hands, anxiety loosening her control.
Name: Tommy
IGN: TommyInnit
Core Server: Hermitcraft
Birth Server: Hermitcraft (Season 2)
Age: 16
Species: ℸ ̣⚍∷リᒷ↸ ᒲer (⍊ᔑr╎ant unꖌn𝙹∴n)
"That isn't good," Xisuma whispered while the growling from Cleo got all the louder. The fact his specie wasn't human anymore was, well, that alone was a lot to unpack. Variant unknown raised even more questions. The fact it was written in the same language as enchanting tables though... This wasn't something done by an admin, this was a protective measure done by something else entirely. Various other details popped up written in old tongue, though Xisuma could only translate some of it. He wasn't as familiar with it as some of the other hermits like Joe or Grian might be.
Aside from that though, there was also a substantial degree of corruption.
"His health is dropping," Cleo yanked Xisuma from his thoughts, pointing to a health tracker.
Health: 3.5/20 ᔑ∷ℸ ̣╎⎓iᓵiaꖎ ca!¡piリ⊣
Xisuma forcibly bumped up his health, but it wouldn't go above fifteen. "Artificial capping," Cleo muttered to herself. Xisuma tilted his head slightly. It wasn't unusual for admins to cap the health of hybrid players for the sake of fairness on certain combat oriented servers, or even outright temporarily lock abilities, but he knew Tommy hadn't been a hybrid before leaving Hermitcraft so something wasn't adding up. There were two major categories of hybrids. Natural born hybrids, like Grian or Scar, were always hybrids. It showed up in their code before manifestation and they started showing their traits before the age of eight, sometimes even before they were born. A regular human player turning into a hybrid was a form of trauma response. A way to cope with extreme situations or traumatic events. Cleo was Turned, both as a mer and a zombie. Neither traits were ones she'd been born with. She didn't often talk about how she came to become a hybrid but the fact she was a hybrid of multiple different mobs spoke to how many traumatizing situations she'd faced down in the past. Tommy shouldn't be a mer, and yet, history seems to find a funny way of repeating itself.
"I don't know if it's the artificial capping that's keeping his health from going above fifteen right now, but I can't remove it. Whatever server he's been on butchered his code. I'll need to be closer to start actually fixing it, not to mention there's a good chance I'll need help," Xisuma said, the corrupted portions already pushing back against any attempt to fix them. Grian was his go to, the man having played admin for quite a couple servers on top of his Watcher status, but even the two of them might not be enough.
"If he just became a hybrid, there's a pretty good chance he doesn't know how to shift yet so he'll be water locked," Cleo muttered more to herself than Xisuma, already running through scenarios in her head to find the boy. Not every hybrid was capable of shifting, in fact most weren't without access to outside magic resources. Cleo was old and powerful, so she could trade her fins for legs. There was no telling if Tommy would even have a natural inclination towards shifting. If he did it'd take months if not maybe years to develop the ability and if he didn't they'd need to find an alternative altogether.
The variant unknown was still bothering Xisuma as he scrolled farther down Tommy's profile. His breath caught in his throat for a moment and he was quick to turn the panel away from Cleo. "Start organizing the other hermits to search for him while I work on doing what I can for his code. Any hermits who wouldn't be good in the water, it might be safer to build something isolated so we can keep an eye on him for the time being."
Cleo nodded, taking off again with a quick nod. He decidedly didn't show her the piece of code that'd cause the breath to catch in his throat.
Lives: -1/3
Tommy was Cleo's kid. He was an accident while she was messing around with magic, but that didn't change the fact he was Cleo's. He wasn't just Cleo's though. Especially after the loss of Tobias and Ran, Tommy had been a pillar of support. He was the entire server's kid in one way or another. Whatever admin had been messing with their child, there was going to be absolute hell to pay for it.
(~)
It was early in the season, so finding Tommy was going to be hard. They all knew that. It didn't stop any of the Hermits from being more than ready to take on the task, even the newest two who'd only heard about Tommy in passing. Cleo was organizing search groups while Doc and Grian in the background were arguing over the ethics of making their temporary holding area look like an overgrown fish tank. A couple hermits already had access to water breathing potions, but not many. The rest were equipped with doors and willingness to do what was necessary. Most of the groups had 3-4 people between them and were given a small section of the surrounding waters to search, hoping that Tommy hadn't gotten far.
Cleo was pretty grateful they'd decided to stay on one continent this season because it meant that Xisuma still had up a pretty tight world border. It made their search easier, especially since Xisuma couldn't pin down the kid's cords.
Her own group only included two people, herself and Scar who could use his magic to breathe underwater. The vex hybrid had offered to go with Cleo knowing what was in store. The moment she hit the water she let go of her tight grip on the magic maintaining her more human form. It was a quick and rather painless transformation at her age and skill level. Her legs were replaced by a tail in a matter of seconds, her fins flaring out in the water. Her spines and long fins were as beautiful as they were deadly. Instead of the red typical to her species, the soft white lines going down her sides were broken up by large swatches of blue and green scales, closer to her skin tone.
Unlike a regular red lion fish, her fins looked even more daunting than the long sharpened spines, considering they looked to be made out of bone. While most would consider her two hybrid statuses to be separate from one another, that wasn't entirely the case. She'd been a Mer first and acquired the traits of a zombie later, but they'd meshed together the same was a villager hybrid would have their traits combine. Zombified mer were very much a thing. Even on modded servers there were few predators quiet as dangerous either as the undead mer.
She waited a moment after plunging to the water, not only readjusting to her altered form but also waiting for Scar. He jumped in second, careful as he tossed her what looked like a lead. He'd made the mistake of grabbing at her dorsal spikes all of one and only one time and it was a mistake he'd never made again. The same went for a lot of hermits who didn't have a natural immunity to poisons. She carefully wiggled into the loop of the lead and tightened it around her midsection, where the human part met fish. Scar tugged the lead once to make sure it was secure before tying it around his own midsection, grabbing it for extra security, and giving her a quick nod considering neither of his hands were free.
He still let out a noise that sounded like a drowning cat as she shot off. If Grian was uncontested in the skies as an avian, than Cleo held that right in the sea. There were a few other Hermits with natural inclinations towards water, but none of them mer. Ever since she'd first transformed it'd been her playground, and the oceans had only grown more beautiful since. No double it'd be difficult for a potentially injured and malnourished baby mer to get to the far corners of the map, but there was always a chance, especially with a kid as resourceful as Tommy always used to be. That's what her and Scar were for.
Her eyes darted this way and that as she scanned the sea floor, staying close to the surface so that she could take in every detail. That's why she came to abrupt stop when she noticed part of the seafloor looked... strange. Slowing down, she made her way towards a patch of sand that looked strangely disturbed, a number of rocks piled up in a way that almost felt too intentional. Scar seemed to notice it too, but he hung back behind the bulk of Cleo. There was always the danger that Tommy wasn't in a proper state of mind. There was always the risk for hybrids that they'd go feral in extreme situations, but for Turned hybrids, especially freshly Turned ones, that risk practically doubled if not tripled. Since turning in and of itself was a survival tactic or a trauma response, it tended to pile on top of the instinct to turn 'feral'.
While none of them wanted it to actually come down to that, all of Hermits before they left had been prepared for the chance that whatever state of mind Tommy was in right now he'd lash out and attack them.
For mer, it was an especially dangerous risk.
While mer tended to take on traits of whatever fish they were reminiscent of, it was important to remember that mer weren't that fish in the same way an avian was the type of bird they resembled. A crow avian was closer to the mind of a crow, having instincts specifically associated with crows. There was no such thing as a salmon mer though or a cod mer, there were simple mer who resembled those species. While mer like Cleo might inherit the venom of the fish they're associated with, it didn't mean they were going to be any more aggressive, or any more peaceful, than their mer relatives who resembled more docile species. That was Cleo's greatest concern in approaching Tommy. If he was too far in his instincts then no matter what he'd fight, and that could be extremely dangerous depending on what other kinds of traits he picked up.
Mer also tended to be extremely territorial, and most had a tendency to get even more aggressive when injured.
She'd barely made it within twenty feet of the disrupted sand when a lithe serpentine body shot out from under the rock pile. She ignored whatever noises Scar was making as she swerved to the side. He had the right idea letting go of the lead and getting out of dodge as quickly as possible because the being had all of its attention focused on Cleo. She pulled up quickly, the lead floating idly in the open water as the creature stayed close to the ocean floor. Both mer paused for a moment and Cleo found precisely what she was looking for.
However long it'd been, it still wouldn't have been enough for Cleo to forget what he looked like. That was Tommy. A messy tangled head of blonde hair was the first thing she saw, his upper body covered by an all too familiar white shirt with shredded red sleeves. Was looked like burn holes pockmarked the surface of the fabric. It was threadbare at best. The most eye catching part of the boy though was his newly manifested tail. Serpentine really was the best descriptor. His lower body was long and coiling, soft black skin that almost bordered on translucent in some ways. Looking closer, he didn't really look like a fish. He wouldn't be the first mer to take after an aquatic creature that wasn't a fish though. Some kind of water salamander maybe? That train of thought was supported by the fact that what originally she'd thought to be long flowing limbs along the bottom of his tail were actually two sets of legs. Tauric in nature, but Cleo wasn't sure if they'd be able to hold his weight even if he turned out to be amphibious. She wasn't even sure his body where the waist met the tail could bend back far enough to function like a taur.
She was about to try and motion that she wasn't a threat when the last poignant detail finally stood out to her. Tommy's bang floated upwards slightly and it's then that she saw them. His eyes were completely blue. And not like, regular blue, they were a deep blue bordering on black, taking up the entirety of his eye. There was no sclera, no pupil, just endless blue. Watching the way he tilted his body, Cleo was willing to bet on the fact he was blind. It didn't seem to impair him much. Along the sides of his head were a pair of frilly looking appendages that caught in the current. Probably some kind of sensory organ if she had to bet on. He opened his mouth, and she expected at least some attempt at human words, but what came out instead really told her that the boy was feral.
Danger-Threat-Leave
Cleo swallowed hard, gills flaring. It was messy and rough the same way Cleo's pronunciations had been when she'd first turned, but it was very obvious the instinctual 'language' of the mer.
Safety-Pod-Home
She tried to make her voice gentle as she replied, but her throat was made for deeper and more threatening sounds.
Lies-Stranger-Threat-Hurt
It made her heart ache watching the way that Tommy pressed himself flush against the sand, snarling dangerously in a noise that she knew all too well baby mer made when they felt threatened. Still, whatever distress call he would have let out to alert an adult member of the pod was quickly repressed, only coming out as a half choked chirp before he covered it was a growl.
Pod-Guardian-Here-Home
She tried once more, but it was obvious Tommy didn't believe her. They weren't making any progress like this, and she was starting to feel the strain of the situation. Tommy's entire focus was on her though. Which meant he never even noticed the vex in the water. Not until a potion bottle was thrown in his direction, smashing against a rock. The potion exploded in a cloud of colored liquid that burst into Tommy's face, lingering due to the lack of movement in the water. He reeled, but just as quickly the potion started to work its magic, the boy's body starting to fall limp. His big blind eyes were hidden as his eyelids slipped shut.
It wasn't the way she wanted things to go. But perhaps it was for the best. Scar grabbed back onto the lead as Cleo came down to the ocean floor and did her best to bundle Tommy into her arms. Stress would heal him when they got back to spawn, and they'd coax him out of his instincts no matter however long it took. Then they'd get their answers, and Cleo well. Retribution to whoever left her boy in this state would come quick and vicious. That was a promise.