Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Xisuma walked into his admin room and sighed. The explosion had done a number on his setup, and he had to admit that what was untouched by the explosion was still a mess of his own making.

The last two weeks had been a mess.

It all started with a freak accident. Doc’s code had been wrecked, and Xisuma tirelessly researched player splicing to resolve it. The rest of the server was run ragged, doing every errand asked of them and helping Doc manage his symptoms, waiting for good news from Xisuma. Eventually, he invited an expert, Xelqua, to help solve the problem, and that was that. Case closed. Another crisis taken care of. Another job well done.

Except that Xelqua turned out to be Grian, and he opened up to Xisuma about Evo. About the Watchers.

For everyone else, the pain ended as soon as Doc’s code was fixed.

For Xisuma, it turned out that this was just the beginning.

“Hey, Xisuma. Are you feeling okay? Keralis and I have got it, if this is a bit much for you right now.” Zedaph put a hand on Xisuma’s shoulder, bringing him back to the present. Back to his tattered admin room.

X laughed. “Nah, it’s alright. I have an idea for a new floor plan, actually. Of course, we'll patch up the corner.” Xisuma gestured to the damage in question. “Then I was thinking we put my new equipment against this wall here, and that desk could turn the other way for writing. I’m hoping that’ll give a sense of separation between my equipment and the sitting area. Everything else can go.”

Xisuma wouldn't be spending long nights here anymore, if he could help it.

Keralis smiled, eyes bright. “That's a great idea, Shashwam!”

Xisuma set down his shulker box and started unpacking the new equipment.

“I'll be honest, I was pretty impressed that you took a few days break from the admin panels.” Zedaph noted as he and Keralis moved the furniture. “A few years ago, you would've been quite wound up after something like this.”

“Yeah. Our little Shashwammy is growing up on us.” Keralis gushed. “Not so anxious anymore.”

Xisuma rolled his eyes, blushing. Yeah. He had made a lot of progress. “Thanks guys.” Xisuma didn’t know if he was annoyed or relieved by their presence. Patching up a creeper hole barely counted as a one person job, let alone three, but his friends had insisted on hanging out and having a chat.

“Are you sure you aren’t pushing it, even a little?” Zedaph asked.

There it is. Of course. Xisuma smiled. “Don’t worry, Zed. It’ll be fine. Grian’s mentoring me, and he’s the one that insisted I take a break in the first place!”

Keralis chuckled, “It’s still so weird to me… I’m not sure I believe it. Grian? Not just a game host but a veteran admin under our noses this whole time? Absolutely crazy.”

Zedaph nodded. “An interesting development for sure.”

They didn’t even know half of it. “Zed, will you hook up that monitor?” Xisuma asked, almost finished with the rest of his admin equipment in the new layout.

“Sure thing, X.”

A moment later, as Keralis was replacing the last few blocks from the explosion, the door opened. “Wow, a new arrangement, huh? Noice.” Grian said, unslinging a bundle from his shoulder. “I went and picked up some supplies for our lessons, but I figured you'd want to check the logs first.”

Xisuma nodded, letting his equipment boot up. The logs had been itching at him throughout his break, but he stayed disciplined. “Yes. That's the plan.” He confirmed. “Thanks for your help guys. I think I'll do the rest on my own.”

“I guess we'll see you later.” Keralis said.

“Yeah, you two have fun.” Zedaph added, as the two headed for exit.

X waved. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure thing.” Keralis called back before Zedaph shut the door.

“Alright. I’ll try to make this quick.” X told Grian as he turned to his admin panels. Grian sat quietly, letting him sift through the logs for some time, and Xisuma found himself tense. He scanned each line at least twice, reading each value carefully. The memory of his previous typo, and its consequences, was a bit too fresh in his mind.

Nobody had complained about any lag, though, and the server was feeling pretty healthy when he was out and about on his break. Seeing nothing out of place, X determined that he could put his nerves to rest and prepare for whatever crazy ideas Grian was going to share with him.

“Looks good. Where do you want to start, Gr-een?” He said with a smirk.

Grian smiled and dug through his bundle. “Okay. So back when we were on the admin community server, I noticed that you had a ton of books on splicing studies.” He started pulling different titles from the bundle. “If reading is your thing, I recommend you focus on these three. Salted, for integrating server-friendly _playerState(); properties, Traben, for _entityModel(); infrastructure, and FreshLX for reading and mapping fluid values.”

“That’s…” Xisuma looked at Grian, a dozen things clicking in his mind all at once. He stood up and darted over to G, taking the books from him and looking over the covers. “That’s genius!”

“It’s admin optimization fundamentals, we’re just using them weirdly.” Grian laughed. “Player splicing will make perfect sense when I show you. It might even be intuitive, considering your skills as an admin.”

No wonder it seemed so confusing to Xisuma. He’d been working backwards. Like trying to find a Euler's brick without charting square roots first. “I’m all ears, G. Which parameters should I pull up first?” He asked.

“We’ll look at everything related to entity rendering. Cosmetic changes are the simplest part to wrap your head around, since it isn’t so ingrained in functions.”

They went over to his admin panel and Xisuma typed a command. They sifted through all kinds of mob files together, and Grian explained the different rendering splices that could be derived from them.

“So, it should be pretty clear by now that for minor adjustments,” Grian explained, “It’s pretty easy just to add a few integers and let it map out as normal, but as things get more complicated, you have to dig deeper into how the server reads code and add to the base construction.”

“And that’s where both intended-effects and side-effects come into play. Making splices act the way they do.” Xisuma reasoned, expanding on what he learned and applying the idea to _playerState(); data.

“Exactly. You’ve got a knack for the logic behind it.”

Xisuma snorted. “We’re not talking about logic, Grian.”

His mentor rolled his eyes. “Right. If you want to be pedantic about it.” Grian snarked back. “You knew what I meant. You have a good sense of reasoning.”

X laughed. “Yes. Thank you.”

Grian smiled. “Really, though, that attention to detail is what makes you so good at this.”

Xisuma shrugged. “Well, I have been doing this for years now. What I struggle to wrap my head around is how you came up with all this on your own.” He wrinkled his nose. “Fixing your own code, no less.”

Grian faltered. “Well… some of it I could figure out by checking what had been changed throughout the process. I knew what my code looked like before all of… that. So I wasn’t working from nothing.”

“Still…” Xisuma breathed. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about this.”

Grian shrugged, seeming mostly unaffected, and Xisuma looked back down at his notes. “So, how does _playerState(); fit in with all of this?” X asked, tapping his pen.

“Right. That’s where things might get overwhelming. Pull up your code for Demise at the start of this season, and we’ll go over the basics of player data integration as a whole.”

Chapter Text

Xisuma had just accomplished something incredibly stupid, and was quite proud of himself. That is why he was now tearing through the nether hub and jumping into Zedaph’s portal. He ran around Zed’s wacky builds before eventually finding him in his potion brewery, which made sense, seeing as his supplies were running low after last week.

“Hello, Zed!” X called out to him, running over.

“Oh hi! What are you doing all the way out here, X?” He asked, pressing what was thankfully the last pressure plate he needed for another batch of fire resistance.

He quickly flicked the game shutoff as X replied, “I have something that I really think you should see! It’s only fitting, as you inspired it in the first place.”

Realizing that X was excited about something, Zedaph cracked a smile. “Oh! Really? Sounds interesting!”

“It’s amazing! Come back to my base with me and I'll show you!” X waved for him to follow, before darting off on his elytra. Zedaph scrambled to follow him out of the brewery.

“Is it a minigame of some kind?” Zed called out, a smile plastered on his face as they dipped into the nether.

“Just you wait. You'll see!” Xisuma egged on, glancing back at Zedaph as they flew through the nether, ending at the swirling of X’s nether portal. He grabbed Zedaph’s wrist and pulled him along the inside of his base. As they turned the corner, all was made clear.

Grian had helped Xisuma figure out how to practice on individual mobs, letting him learn a lot of new details about different types of splices. So, naturally, Xisuma had to test his skills with something fun.

“Behold, a real, living, breathing shicken!” X revealed, gleeful at his ridiculous creature.

Zed gawked at the fluffy, sheepy body that was now adorned with a chicken head. A chicken mixed with a sheep. A shicken, or a cheep. It was his own strange little brain child, the imagery cooked up among many other wooly combinations for Zedaph’s game show, Is That Sheep Looking At Me?

“No way!” He laughed. “This is absolutely insane! I can't believe you made it real! Oh my word, Xisuma. I love it. Can I keep it?”

“Yep! She's all yours.” X said. “What are you gonna name her?”

“Oooh, that's a good question. I'll have to think on that one… but- how did you make this thing!? WHY did you make this thing?” Zed asked, laughing.

“I used the splicing techniques I’ve been learning from Grian, and it was great practice to test my skills.” Xisuma turned to Zedaph, a smile clear in his voice. “You know, the funny thing is, every time I see Ren or Tango, hermits with different features like that, I can’t get it out of my head the different splicing methods I’d use to get similar results.”

“Gosh, I hadn’t thought about it that much when you started working with G, but this opens up a lot of possibilities on the server, doesn’t it?” Zedaph mused.

“Hey! Exy-zooma?” They heard just outside.

“Speak of the devil.” Xisuma said, before Grian joined them.

“So X, I was- wha-?” He stopped himself short, processing the majestic beast before him. “What have you done here!?” He laughed, giddy and baffled.

Zedaph struggled to keep his own composure, amusement reignited as he informed Grian, “It’s a shicken!”

They giggled together. Then, as if right on cue, the shicken popped out an egg. That’s when Grian lost it. He completely doubled over with laughter, clutching his stomach. “It lays EGGS???” He asked, his laughter so infectious that Zedaph found himself unable to catch his breath either.

“It’s beautiful! Isn’t it?” Xisuma urged, as they melted into hysterics.

Yeah…

That was how Xisuma liked things to be.

Not this pit in his stomach as he tried to fall asleep. He turned over, trying to relax. He needed the rest, he knew he did. The break was good. Taking things slowly had done him so much good. In fact, Grian’s suggestions had helped Xisuma reignite everything he loved so much about being an admin.

He had checked the code before going to bed. Everything looked good. So he should just sleep.

Except- what if he had missed something? He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had missed something. He must have. It was a lot of information, and he hadn’t given it much time recently. Still, he should sleep. Then he could double check it in the morning with plenty of rest and a fresh pair of eyes. Surely it could wait.

Right?

It’s not like he would wake up the next morning to a suspicious death in chat, with a dozen more problems to solve than a simple typo. What happened with Doc was a fluke, a rare glitch. It wouldn’t happen again, and it- it wasn’t his fault. Sure, if he had just checked his code one more time before turning in for the night, then none of that would have happened. But, that didn’t mean that he had to-

Xisuma threw off his blankets and sat up. “30 more minutes in my admin room can’t be any worse than this.” He murmured, rubbing his face. He stood up, dragging his feet. X lazily fastened his helmet and peered out of his bedroom, looking either direction as if Zedaph would jump out and tell him to go back to bed.

No, they had long since moved past that.

So Xisuma walked to his admin room and shuffled behind his desk. He flicked on the lamp and entered a command, then started scrolling through the server files. He examined each piece of information on the diagnostic tools carefully. Then read through it again. He dug through the processing logs and sprawled open the logic of different programs, making small tweaks to streamline any redundant functions. Then he would read through it all again before executing the change. Then read it again. A lot of reading.

He opened a desk drawer, looking for a particular notebook, then realized how much brighter it had gotten. He stood up and lifted a curtain back. It was almost sunrise.

“Now, when did that happen?” He groaned. “People are expecting me today.”

Chapter Text

Xisuma dug through his storage, eventually coming up with a nearly finished packet of caffeine tablets and a strength potion. He pushed the jaw release on his helmet and took a tablet, chasing it down with the potion. He was not going to let an accidental all-nighter stop him from hanging out with the hermits today.

“Hey Xisuma!” Ren’s voice cut through the room. X quickly shoved the bottle and packet back in the shulker and turned around. 

“Hi Ren.”

“You ready to play some mad Ghastketball, my dude?” Ren asked.

He smiled. “That I am. Did you come over to pick me up or something?”

Ren laughed. “Yeah, I figured I’d check in. Is there something you need to finish up around here?” He asked, looking around at the mess.

“No, I’m good to go. I was just checking on some supplies for later.” He walked Ren out of his storage, hoping he wouldn’t think about it too hard. “Grian and I are headed to an admin server event soon, so it’d be good if I have my things prepared in advance.” At least that much was true.

“Nice, dude! You’ll have to tell me about it after.” They stepped out into the open. It was a foggy morning, feeling like rain. “Cub’s excited to have so many of us at the arena. If I’m being honest, I was hoping to convince you to be on my team, man. I’ve been practicing, but I need a solid 3-point runner on my side.”

Xisuma laughed. “Trying to make up for your performance in the tournament?”

“Hey, you don’t get to throw shade, you weren’t even there!” Ren gave his shoulder a tap with his fist. “But yeah, for sure, dude. The dog has got to stay on top!” He punched at the air, eager to prove himself.

Xisuma fondly shook his head, glad to see Ren was energetic. “I feel bad that I couldn’t be there. I heard it was a lot of fun.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it, X. You were busy. Now come on! We don’t want to keep anybody waiting.” With that, Ren deployed his elytra, flying out toward the gaming district. Xisuma followed close behind, and when they arrived at the Ghastkeball arena, teams were mostly settled already.

Ren wasn't kidding when he said he'd been practicing, either. He held his own alongside Xisuma, even with Cub and Pearl on the other team.

X was jumping across a lucky chain of ghasts with good height, gunning for another 3 point shot after Ren evened the score. False denied Cub what would have been a fast 2 point run, and Xisuma pushed forward on the left side, taking advantage of the extra time Cub needed to reset.

“Where do you think you're going, mister?” Pearl quipped as she suddenly dropped down to his position, giving him a solid shove with her shoulder.

The surprise almost let her send Xisuma off the edge, but he found his footing in time to pivot and turn the tides.

“Oh you're in for it now, little miss.” X returned, seeing a risky play opportunity that he couldn't pass up. He dashed forward, grappling around her middle with one arm and jumping off of the ghast.

“HUH?” She was caught off guard by the weird move. He shoved her down in midair just before rolling onto the next ghast, a rougher landing than he intended. Still, the move forced her to reset her run and got him within the 3 point shot, where he couldn't afford to hesitate, seeing as Cub was right above him.

Cub clipped him in mid air, trying to deny him, but Xisuma’s jump was clean. He easily cleared the 3 point goal, and he heard the other hermits whooping and hollering from their ledge above the box. The cloudy sky finally started to drizzle, and Xisuma checked the settings on his helmet as he ran back to the starting position.

He couldn't quite catch his breath, but that was to be expected, with the humidity overworking his filters. He cleared the court, going back up.

On his next run, Xisuma was pathing right through the center. Ren scored another point for their team, falling just short of a 2 point jump. Xisuma watched as Skizz dashed a chain out of his reach, scoring another 2 points for the other team before False was reset.

X and his team still had a 2 point lead, but the ghasts weren't cooperative, forcing him to take some difficult jumps. He was feeling a bit light headed as he crossed the distance. When he landed on the 2 point platform, he stopped and braced himself against the wall in an effort not to black out. He could feel the game behind him slow just a little as the others realized he hadn't scored yet.

Cub backtracked and landed next to him, despite being on the other team. “Woah. X, are you okay?” He asked, putting a hand on his back.

“Hah… yeah, I…” He pointed up at the sky. “Filters.” He panted. His chest hurt.

“Argh… stupid rain!” Cub grumbled. “Claim your points and go take five. Etho, you're subbing in for X!!” Cub shouted up to the other hermits.

X nodded. “Thanks Cub.” After claiming his 2 points and taking a more relaxed jog across the court, he was back at the starting area. Ditching his jersey, he walked into the supply room and opted to sit on a bench up against the wall. Resting his head on the mossy cobblestone behind him, he heard the halftime call ring out.

Maybe he would rest his eyes for a bit.

Someone jostled his shoulders. “-suma. Hey, X. Wake up.”

“Hm?” He blinked, shifting.

“Are you alright?” Zedaph asked. “Cub just said you were out of breath.”

Waking up a bit more, he realized the game had ended and he'd drawn a small crowd. Cub was checking his vitals, and Doc gently turned his head to examine his helmet.

“Ah, sorry guys.” Xisuma chuckled. “I feel fine. Just last week's exhaustion catching up with me.”

“I knew you weren't sleeping enough.” Doc huffed, stepping back. “Filters are fine.”

Cub let out a relieved sigh. “So it was just the humidity sneaking through. Good. You had us worried about a malfunction for a moment there.”

“Wait- humidity’s bad for Xisuma?” Skizz asked.

“Triggers airway constriction.” Doc explained. “Basically asthma.”

“Ouch. Unlucky day for group games.” Ren noted.

“Yeah, but it’s alright.” X said. “It was still a fun game.”

Ren’s tail started wagging as he raced about the game. “Oh! That move, X, that was awesome, dude! I don’t think anyone has taken Pearl down from an exchange like that.”

He laughs, “It was risky. The next ghast practically caught me, and I still almost didn’t land it right.”

“I was so shocked when I realized you were still up there!” Pearl says. “And then you scored the full three points with Cub after you!”

“Yeah, you better tell me next time you plan on stealing my plot armour!” Impulse quipped, making Skizz cackle.

Xisuma rolled his eyes. “Thanks guys.”

“It was a close game.” Etho said. “We just barely won, and I’d say it’s because you gained us that lead in the first half.”

It was just then when Grian and Xisuma’s comms both pinged. “Oh! It’s starting.” Grian exclaimed. “X and I gotta run. Hopefully the weather clears up by the time we get back.”

“Sounds good!” Cub said. “Go have fun.”

Chapter Text

The Admin Community Hub was bright and full with convention activity. Grian and Xisuma themselves were putting together a booth for Hermitcraft TCG collectables, when a clearly cow-hybrid admin approached them.

“Grian? Is that really you? Wow, you’ve changed a lot since we worked on Wynncraft together!”

Grian glanced up. “Salted! Good to see you. How is the Rekindled update going?”

“It’s been great! It was so much work rewriting the questlines, but I think it was worth it, and the subclasses are still getting a lot of community attention from the Spellbound update.”

Xisuma smirked. He knew it. Grian did run a fantasy server at some point.

“How’s Hermitcraft been treating you?” Salted asked.

“It’s been amazing. Such a talented group, and I really feel at home with them. This is Xisuma, by the way. He’s been getting into _playerState(); coding recently, so I showed him some of your work.”

“Nice! We’ll have to exchange notes later. I’d love to learn more about server optimization, especially since we’ve got a lot of players with a lot going on.”

X nodded. “Yeah, that sounds great. I'd like to see how you and your team made so many unique monsters.”

Salted spread out a handful of cards with a fancy “W” insignia on their backings. “Here, both of you, pick a class card. We put these together recently and it’s fun to see what people get.”

Grian grabbed one and laughed. “Archer. Looks like it was just meant to be, huh? Ooh, trapper subclass? I saw you working on that and it looks like fun.”

“Chaotic as always.” Salted replied with a smirk.

Xisuma pulled a Shaman card, and he smiled at the similarity to Keralis’s nickname. “Shaman, with the acolyte subclass.”

Salted raised his eyebrows. “Ah, Shaman is our newest class, and it’s a difficult one to play. In the details section, you’ll see that the acolyte’s spell track is a support role, based on sacrificing health to make you and your team more powerful.”

“Wow.” Xisuma responded, both fascinated by the coding involved and a little taken aback. Salted’s description hit a little too close to home for his taste. “You should take a starter deck for TCG. Some admins are keen on collecting, and there's a new tournament area that way.” Xisuma supplied, passing a packet over.

“Oh, thanks! I'll go check it out. It was good meeting you, Xisuma.”

“Yeah, same here.”

Grian nudged him as Salted left. “Hey Xisuma, why don't you go mingle and give out some starter decks? I can man the booth while you're gone.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Go have fun and exchange info. You're a veteran here, and you don't get this opportunity every day.”

“Alright, if you insist.” Xisuma took a few starter packs and stepped into the hubbub of the convention. There were a lot of interesting faces. One admin was showing off some of the crazy gear that they'd built, and Xisuma got a copy of their logic sheets to see how they'd done it.

Then, somebody bumped into Xisuma, a bit too hard to be an accident. They were adorned in purple robes and a white mask, an eerie symbol carved into the front.

It was the same getup that Grian was in when he introduced himself as Xelqua. He felt a hand ghost up the back of his neck, undoing a latch on his helmet during their brief contact.

The figure walked on, and Xisuma absently moved the latch back in place.

Somebody clearly wanted to get his attention.

It was working.

Xisuma followed them through a narrow hall, away from the bustle of the crowd. “Hey, what was that for? Who are you?” He asked when the figure stopped.

They turned around. “I’m whoever I need to be. In your case, a Watcher.” The voice was deep and airy, and they moved to sit down at an empty table, much like the other stands out in the convention. Except this one was isolated in a shady corner of the hub, and stood at a slightly off angle, likely abandoned for that reason.

A Watcher. A hacker, the kind that had stalked Grian and his friends on Evo. Wrecked his life in a way that took ages to fix. The kind that every new admin heard legends about, thanks to their volatile experiments and overall penchant for psychological warfare.

“Xisumavoid… take a seat. I’m here to strike a little deal, hm? I think we could both walk away with something we want.”

“Yeah?” X raised an eyebrow at the slender figure, ignoring the chair in front of him. “What could you possibly want from me anyway?”

“You’re an admin, a born voidwalker, and you’ve got a clean record. My friend and I… we got what we wanted from our experiments a long time ago, and we’re done running from the authorities. We discontinued our… less ethical practices, and we’re just looking for a way to settle down, privately. A copy of your admin ID as a base for forgery would be perfect for such a thing.”

Spoofed authentication through security. Writing a passing ID from scratch was nearly impossible, but probably laughably easy with a hard copy and its ingrained checks. If this figure really was a Watcher worth their salt, then any traces of their operations wouldn't find their way back to Xisuma.

Xisuma could singlehandedly keep them hidden for a long time, where they could keep doing whatever they wanted.

Or he could turn them in, right here, right now.

Xisuma slammed his hands down on the table. “I don’t know what kind of scam you think you’re running, but there’s nothing you could offer me to-”

The figure in front of him let something drop down from his hand, stunning X into silence. A hard copy of Grian’s admin ID, and a thumbdrive, both hanging from a slim purple lanyard. “Ah ah ah… Don’t be so hasty now. You can learn everything we did to your little shapeshifter friend out there, and we’ll even toss in the secret to Voidwalker splicing, just to sweeten the deal.”

Xisuma could hear the devilish grin emanating from behind the Watcher’s mask. “Who knows? Maybe you could breathe easy in the overworld, or help sweet Xelqua, if ever his unconventional splice… acts up?”

It might have been a thinly veiled bluff, but there was no way to know, and Xisuma’s heart clenched at the mention of Grian’s Voidwalker splice. He had no idea what these scoundrels had done, but he knew that Grian had to pick up a lot of the broken pieces. A personal hell of altered code. This final piece, Voidwalker splicing, was a mystery to every admin out there except for the monsters that did it to Grian.

And the answer was literally dangling right in front of Xisuma.

“Either way. The choice is yours, Xisumavoid.”

“Fine.” He relented. “But my copy will be planted with a week-long tracker. If I find out that this isn’t what you claim it to be, then I will find you, and I will tear your code apart piece by piece myself until you wish it was the authorities taking care of you.”

The Watcher must have noticed something in Xisuma’s hardened expression, because they didn’t argue with his condition. Instead, they responded in a softer, more hesitant tone. “So be it… Thankfully, for both our sakes, you can rest assured that it won’t be necessary.”

Xisuma pulled out his comm and inserted a spare chip, loading it with a hard copy of his admin ID and coding the promised tracker.

“Alright. Run your program onto your own device and I’ll do the same.”

Xisuma switched executables, showing that his copy was free of destructive malware. The masked figure nodded, and pulled their own comm out to do the same with their thumbdrive and Grian’s ID, showing Xisuma the loaded information.

X set down his chip, and the figure before him slid the lanyard over. “Pleasure doing business with you, Xisumavoid.”

“Get out of my sight.”

Chapter Text

The weather seemed a bit nicer when Grian and Xisuma came back, and the hermits were really enjoying themselves. Between Ravager Rush, Hungry Hermits, Tennis, Scootball, Mace Race, Ghastketball, Minigolf and Metro Mayhem, they had plenty of entertainment whether they were in the games or not. Still, Xisuma felt the weight of the lanyard in his pocket, and all the mysteries that came with it.

It had been a long day before he was finally back in his base, where he sat on the edge of his bed, in front of an impromptu admin desk. Sure, he could use the sleep, but he needed to figure out if this mess was worth it quickly. He wouldn’t put it past the Watchers to put a self-destruction trigger on these chips, and X wasn’t going to risk losing the data.

He had thought hard about the trade throughout the day, and its many different possible outcomes.

There was an expansive black market for ID brokers, and as the Watcher had insinuated, his ID was a valuable type. However, it was insane to go after a veteran like him without an escape plan, and they didn’t need to establish contact with him to get the kind of ID they were looking for, so the story the Watcher gave him was a partial truth, at best.

No. This was something else entirely, and he should take everything he reads on those chips with a grain of salt, considering their usual operations.

Looking back, he’s thankful he was enticed by their offer and didn’t try to play them. That would have ended badly. Either they would’ve escaped with their guards on high alert, or it would have put X in more danger than he was already in. Maybe both.

Now he had a potential location of some kind, for now. With all the possibilities running through his mind, maybe his plan of action was a bad idea… but nobody else would get a chance like this, even with a window so slim.

Xisuma took a breath. He inserted both chips and ran them under a separate scanning and logging program, capturing the information in frozen time. If the chips should change or self-destruct after his stunt, then he could at least rely on those files. As soon as they were secure, Xisuma hit send on a message he’d drafted to a new friend in security earlier.

<Xisuma> I met an alleged Watcher during the convention. Don’t know what I did to get their attention. I took a risk and exchanged a valid ID copy. It has a tracker, so if you mobilize now, you might catch them. /view file/

<Fundy> That was stupid risky dude. I’ll try not to mess up the chance you gave us. Hope the exchange was worth it.

<Xisuma> We’ll see.

With that, Xisuma opened the new files, starting with voidwalker splicing. He wasn't sure he was prepared to invade Grian’s privacy like that just yet.

To his surprise, he was met with dense tables of Galactic. The documents outlined phrases of Voidwalker code, and slowly explained an entirely new operating system for player data. This was clearly a monumental amount of work to put together, real or not. It was a lot to take in.

Being able to read Galactic was a huge advantage to understanding the methods put before him, but he needed to see this for himself before giving it credence.

He got up and dug around for a player sensor, which he soon realized he didn't have any spares of in his room. So Xisuma took a deep breath and held it as he darted over to his admin room, slightly cursing himself for the open floor plan of his base and not wanting to deal with breathing equipment for the small trip. He went straight to his regular desk and opened a drawer, taking a couple sensors alongside a notebook and pen. When he finally made it back to his room and felt the door click shut behind him, a few deep breaths cured his lightheadedness.

Xisuma stuck a sensor to his wrist and changed programs, laying his own code open in front of him. It was a wall of information that he'd seen a few times, written in Galactic. Except now some pieces in his head started churning, and he recognized the foreign variable structures as they shifted. He bit down on his pen and opened his notebook to the Voidwalker code studies he'd been digging through. The language was less precise, leaning on theory, but it supported the same conclusions he was turning over in his head.

He flipped to a certain phrase of code that he understood, found it in his own code, and then looked at it through the Watcher's charts.

What he saw made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The Watcher's files were very, very real. In fact, the more he dug, the more he could verify. It mapped so well to his own code in such large swaths that it made him nauseous. Clearly, they had spent a lot of time digging around in a true Voidwalker’s system. Probably more than one.

X closed his eyes, hand over his mouth. Experiments, the Watcher had said. That thought was almost enough to send Xisuma running for the bin. He knew that splicing knowledge in the admin world was built on blood. Knowledge of the body that could only be forged by studying the work of twisted minds with unchecked power. Seeing it up close, though… and reflecting his own inner workings.

Xisuma switched to Grian's ID files, pulling the sensor off his wrist. He smoothed down his sleeves, trying to soothe himself against the lingering chills. He'd deal with that another day. He needed to know what had happened to his hermit.

The files loaded in, and he froze.

They had gone as far as changing Grian’s admin name and number. Was nothing sacred? He gnawed on the pen harder. Surely they could have learned what they wanted to without stripping him so completely of his identity?

Then he realized that the new number was an A0Z25 cipher. Typical for programmers.

3.22 19 2 7 17

3.W T C H R

The pen nearly cracked. Xisuma was fuming. They had basically branded Grian, and a breach like this in the admin system was unfounded.

<Xisumavoid> New security problem. The Watchers have access to admin system files. No wonder they’ve been invisible. I’ll send the lead tomorrow. Let me know how the raid goes.

<Fundy> shit. will do. thx.

Xisuma swallowed, looking over his equipment. There was no way he could sleep now. He shouldn’t sleep now. There were a whole lot of new security holes that he needed to look into and patch up yesterday. He moved everything to the floor, making him less comfortable and, hopefully, keeping him awake for longer while he scoured the system and wrote new fixes.

Hopefully, he could get ahead of a major problem. He wished, even more fantastically, that this was all a sleep deprived paranoia that wouldn’t make sense after a few days’ rest. Except he had Grian’s real admin ID on the server, and now he could clearly see the message it contained.

Chapter Text

Zedaph had messaged Xisuma about a project he was interested in that morning. It had been a couple hours now and… no response. Now he’d stopped by, concerned. As he wandered X’s base, hoping that his friend was just distracted by some sort of project, an askew shulker box in his storage room caught Zed’s attention. He pulled up the lid to fix it, figuring it was closed in a rush. Of course, at the top of the box sat a package of caffeine tablets and an empty potion bottle.

Zedaph let out a heavy sigh. “Xisuma… I thought we were past this.”

“Oh hi, Zed!” Bdub’s voice cut in from behind him, and Zedaph almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around to face Bdub’s big goofy laughter. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare ya, Zed. Did I catch you snoopin’ around or sumth’n?”

“Gah, Bdubs!” He complained, before continuing. “No, not exactly. I was looking around for Xisuma, since he didn’t answer my messages this morning. The real question is, what are you doing here, Bdubs?”

The man before him grinned wide. “Oh, I was snoopin’.” He quipped, then waved his finger at Zedaph, all toon, as he elaborated. “There’s somethin’ fishy goin’ on around here, I tells ya. Keralis may take him at his word about the whole ‘speedy recovery’ shtick, but I don’t buy it.” He huffed, quieting down. “Not with how he was last time, after that security breach. Makes it hard for me to trust him, dangit.”

Zedaph scratched at the back of his neck. “Yeah, well… you might be right about that, unfortunately.” He showed Bdubs the packet. “Looks like he’s hiding things again. I still want to give him a chance to come to me about it on his own, though. I’ll let you know if I think…” He trailed off, as both of them turned to see Grian walking into the area.

He was carrying a shulker box that was clearly quite heavy. Stranger than that, his hair was a wreck and he was still in pajama pants and a t-shirt, his boots obviously thrown on from when he rolled out of bed. Trailing behind him was a fellow small-statured hermit, upper-half completely obscured by the 3 boxes he was awkwardly… carrying wasn’t the right word for it. They were more-so piled on top of him as he shuffled behind Grain. The heavy duty redstone-stained work pants and fiery tail quickly recognizable as Tango’s.

“Sorry, ‘scuse us, coming through.” Grain said. “Admin equipment.”

Bdubs quickly took two of the boxes from Tango, revealing the top of his far more well–rested face. “Gak! Thanks.” He squawked out, slightly surprised.

“What’s going on, G?” Bdubs asked, falling in step with them. “You’re a mess!”

“There was a massive admin security alert in the middle of the night. Apparently something cropped up after the convention.”

“OH, I just HAD to open my big fat mouth about the LAST incident!” Bdubs groaned, making Zedaph laugh as he helped everyone into the admin room.

Grian smiled a little. “I figured Xisuma had things covered here, so I went back to the hub. The security experts teamed up to problem-solve, and the rest of us handled more physical tasks.” Grian sighed as he set his box down. “I’ve been working my tail feathers off since 1 in the morning. Just got back.”

Tango was more spry as he rifled through the boxes contents. “Take a load off, G. Oh, maybe check in on Xisuma first.” He noted, pulling out a folder and a cobbled-together device of some kind, wiring it into X’s setup.

“I’ll come with you.” Zedaph said, stepping out with Grian as he yawned and stretched.

Bdubs started in the other direction. “I’ll go make a proper breakfast for you guys. You must be starvin’, G.”

“Absolutely. Thanks, Bdubs.”

Zedaph followed Grian to Xisuma’s bedroom. When they opened the door, Zed took mental notes of the scene. Xisuma was on the floor, dead asleep with his laptop, a chip reader, and his handheld comm. There was also a notebook and pen, chewed on the end. He was in a shirt and cargo pants, not necessarily sleep-wear, and his hair was a similar wreck as Grian’s.

Grian knocked loudly on the door frame. “Hey, X, get up! We’ve got to keep moving!”

Xisuma groaned and started peeling himself up off the floor. “Mmm, right.” He rubbed his face, regaining his bearings. Grian tossed a strength potion at him and X drowsily uncorked it, downing it quickly. “Ugh. Thanks.” He turned to his laptop, typed a command, then sighed with relief. “Looks like my program ran successfully before I knocked out.”

“Phew.” Grian nodded. “I’m here for whatever you need. Tango is setting up a hotfix, but you tell me what has to happen next.”

“Alright.” Xisuma cracked his neck painfully, rough from sleeping on the floor. “I’ll take a look at it.” He checked his comm as he fastened his helmet, seeing Zedaph’s message. 

Which now, to Zedaph, felt so trivial with everything else happening at the moment. To his surprise, though, Xisuma laughed.

“I’m shocked it took you this long to come up with the idea, Zed. It’s just so you.”

Zedaph smiled, face red. “It’s been turning over in my mind for a while, actually. I’m just more particular than Doc is, so, never got the chance to do it how I wanted.”

X nodded, walking across the hall with the group. “Right, okay. We’ll work out the details later, then.” Xisuma looked around at Tango’s handiwork. “Looks good. Thanks, Tango. Grian, you sit down and rest, Tango and I have got it from here.”

Grian ruffled his feathers a bit. “What? No! I’m in this with you. You haven’t had much rest either.”

“I’ve had more than you since the alarm. Plus I’ve got our honorary admin, Tango, here.”

Tango smiled, flicking his tail. “Fully rested and reporting for duty!”

Grian huffed and sat down. “Fine.”

His frustration might have just been his appetite, though, as any hints of it disappeared as soon as Bdubs walked in with two plates full of warm food.

“Breakfast is served for our sleep-deprived admins!” He announced with a smile, handing Grian a plate and walking the other over to Xisuma at his desk. While Grian immediately started scarfing down his eggs and bacon, X was more distracted with the contents of his admin screens.

Zedaph walked over to pat Bdubs on the shoulder, gesturing with his eyes to follow him out into the hall. He looked at Zed, confusion playing out on his face momentarily as he deciphered the cue. Thank the void Bdubs was more covert than Scar.

“What’s wrong, Zed? What’s going on?” He asked once they were out of the way.

Zedaph took a deep breath. “I think Xisuma’s relapsing.” Bdubs eyebrows shot up at his words. “Grian’s helped a bit, but X hasn’t been sleeping like he says he has.”

“Yeah, I figured as much after Ghastketball. He can’t just brush that off like nothing, but… relapsing? What makes you say that?”

“He felt like he had to lie to me about his caffeine supply, for one, which he’s dipped into recently. Plus he was in cargo pants when we got to his room, suggesting that he didn’t even prepare to go to bed before 1 in the morning, when Grian said the alert went off. And, well, he hasn’t had a single conversation with me about his symptoms since everything happened with Doc, good or bad.”

“Okay, I see you.” Bdubs rubbed the scruff on his face. “What do we do now? I mean, this security breach will probably send him hurtling.”

“I think we tell Cub and Keralis, and just keep an eye out for now.” Zedaph answered, making Bdubs scowl. “I know, I know. Let’s just give him a chance, until the first sign of phantoms. Then we all step in directly. Promise.”

Bdubs softened a little. “M’kay, but if this goes sour, then I’m sentencing YOU to skyblock next.”

Zedaph laughed. “Alright, alright.”

Bdubs took a deep breath. “I know you’re looking out for his best interest. I just hate fighting with him when he’s like that.” Bdubs put a hand up sharply, cutting Zedaph’s response off just as he opened his mouth. “I KNOW. It’s not him we’re fighting with when it comes down to it, but it really feels like it sometimes.”

Zed shut his mouth, teeth clicking together. He just reached out and let Bdubs fall into his arms, hugging him tight. “You okay?”

“Jus’ worried.”

“Yeah.”

“This one’s gonna be bad, huh?”

Zedaph rubbed his back. “Probably… we’ll see.”

“Right…” Bdubs breathed out. “Then I guess that’s that. Glad I’m not crazy, I guess.”

When they rejoined the group, Bdubs was grateful to see that Xisuma was eating the food that had been prepared for him. It made the next four hours a little easier. As time crawled forward, Zedaph left to go talk with Cub. Grian woke up from his nap and left when he realized that Tango and X were nearly finished. Even Tango left when the only thing to do was watch the final program they wrote to make sure it ran successfully.

Bdubs stayed for all of it, until it was just the two of them left in the admin room.

“Hey, Xisuma, you’ve been sitting at that desk all day. Take a stretch break, rest your eyes. I can watch the program for you, let you know if it stops for any reason.”

Xisuma straightened up and rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea, thanks.” Bdubs stepped behind the desk and let X stand up. He kept an eye on the progress bar at the top of the screen, lines of code scrolling past beneath it.

Xisuma sprawled out over the couch, on his stomach, easing his back with a small pop and an exhausted sigh that morphed into a yawn. Bdubs glanced over, watching his friend as his shoulders slowly relaxed and his breathing slowed. Out like a light, Bdubs realized. His offer hadn’t been a ploy to get Xisuma to sleep, but apparently he was just that tired.

Bdubs turned on the air filter and watched that progress bar until it was fully complete. Then he gently set a blanket over Xisuma, watching until his equipment said the air was safe before carefully unlatching his helmet and sliding it off. Xisuma shifted, face scrunching as he hummed a question, and Bdubs held his breath, but X quickly settled again.

“Just… sleep.” He whispered, turning off the lights. “Void. Take care of yourself.”

Chapter Text

Xisuma woke up on the couch, helmet off and cozied up in a blanket. It was difficult to tell what time it was. The room was dim and the air was cold. He could hear the rain hammering down outside, accompanied by the occasional clap of thunder.

X could have drawn the warm blanket closer around him and gone right back to sleep. In the back of his mind, he knew that he’d done all he could. He’d been one step ahead of the public alert when it came to fortifying his server, and the back door access had been sealed off, for now.

Except… all the stress, danger, and tension didn’t stop swirling around in his mind. He pictured the server crumbling apart from the inside, and how his friends might hate him when they found out. Xisuma took a risk, and now he was wound tight like a rubber band about to snap.

He sat up. Breathing. Stretching. Deliberate. He switched on his handheld comm to find out that it was 9:26 in the morning. X rubbed at his neck, sore from sleeping on the couch. He'd been sleeping hard since they finished the program yesterday, and waking up so many hours after all that frenzied work felt a bit strange.

Xisuma scrolled through his message exchange with Fundy from around the time the alert went off, collecting his thoughts on the situation.

The raid had mixed results. X figured that the Watchers would've scraped the information and ditched his tracker as fast as possible. It wasn't in the cards to just… catch them, and while that wasn't exactly what happened, Fundy and his team were weirdly close.

He threw together a squad of officers as soon as Xisuma’s first message came through, determined to act fast. They closed in on the tracker, where they discovered a small storage unit with admin equipment scattered around, fashioned into an office of sorts. It was a mess when they arrived, clearly abandoned in a rush.

A strange structure made of bedrock stood in the middle of the room, resembling a fractured portal. The Watchers’ calling card.

An oak sign left on it read, “Xisumavoid. An agreement was spoken. Your promise is broken. A duel of high acclaim. Now begins the game.”

Xisuma’s traced ID was in a dual chip reader, with no second chip to be found, as expected. The stunning realization was that whoever left in such a hurry was in the middle of running a program, which had been canceled and corrupted, on a computer that they left behind.

The recoverable data exposed more about the security risk Xisuma had warned about.

They'd learned a lot and solved some problems thanks to the raid, but the Watchers hadn't been captured or brought to justice. Still, it was more than expected, but left Xisuma with more questions than answers about the Watchers’ motives. Reading Fundy’s description of the cryptic sign definitely wasn't helping, either.

Xisuma stood and picked up his helmet, mind buzzing as he considered making breakfast or changing his clothes. Instead, he fidgeted with the clasps, unmoving. Click. Click. Click. Click. As much as he wanted to do… something to feel a little more put together, he couldn’t resist the pull of his anxiety. He just had to double check.

The same way he had to go to the door. Check the hallway. Lock, unlock. Lock, unlock. Click. Click. Click. Click. 1. 2. 3. 4. It felt like something in him might snap if he didn’t. He was too worn down. Too anxious. Too tired. Too… everything.

He sat down and clicked through the system logs. Opening and closing files. Switching tabs. Eyes scanning line after line after line after line of code. Information. Potential weak spots. Click. Click. Click. Click.

It was only a couple weeks ago that Doc was just outside this room, crumpled on the floor and hyperventilating. Xisuma had been staring at code for days and days and days and days. Then, instead of a fun convention and a step away from all the server work, his hermit gets threatened by the most wanted hackers in admin history.

One pass over the server code quickly turns into two. Everything was running normally, but his brain just wouldn't shut up. The possibilities buzzed through his head as he stared at too many different numbers to calm down.

His comm rang, and he picked up immediately, barely glancing over. “Hello?”

“Hey, Xisuma.” It was Zedaph’s voice, a bit static through the weather. “Sorry I can’t come over. The storm is horrible. I just wanted to check in and make sure you’re okay. You’ve at least had some sleep since yesterday, right?”

Xisuma’s breath hitched. “Yeah. I did.” He swallowed. “Uh, Zed… I-” He paused. How could he explain everything?

Across the server, Zedaph very carefully set down his coffee, as quietly as he could, so he wouldn’t miss a thing through the static of his comm. “Xisuma?” He asked quietly at the extended pause.

“I- I think… I’m having a bit of a mental breakdown over here…” X confessed.

Zed closed his eyes. What an unexpected step forward. Of all the times for a storm to hit the server so badly, it had to keep him away from his friend right now? “Okay… Tell me whatever you need to.” He encouraged, getting a little choked up as Xisuma opened up to him.

“It’s uh… well, things are complicated, I’m catastrophizing. At the convention, a certain group- uh, threatened Grian and… now the admin security issue along with investigating it. I don’t know how to tell anyone. Now I’ve got to hurry up and wait, see if there are any signs of things going downhill.” Xisuma took a breath. “After Doc… I keep feeling like there’s an error somewhere and I can’t take my mind off it.”

“Okay, Xisuma…” Zedaph started, wiping his eyes and thinking through the situation. “You’ve been looking through the code, right?”

“Mhm.”

“You haven’t found anything suspicious?”

“No.”

“Okay. Do you know what you’re looking for or are you just panicking?”

“I- I don’t know…”

“I suggest you make a checklist. Get the anxiety out of your brain and onto paper. Then you can rely on physical evidence to prove that you haven’t missed anything. Trust yourself. Do you need someone to come over?”

“No, not for now. Thanks, Zedaph. This really helped.”

Zedaph smiled, heart swelling with pride and relief. “Anytime. Have you had anything to eat? Do you feel more in control?”

Xisuma dug around for writing material, feeling more grounded with Zedaph’s calm suggestions. “Not yet, but I think I can manage for now. Would you mind staying on the call? I’ll tell you if…” X trailed off, pen and paper in hand, as he looked out the window to see a figure battered around in the storm outside, the rough, wind-whipped flight unmistakably Toon. “Is- Is that Scar!? What is he doing out there?”

“Wait, he died to a creeper just a few minutes ago. Do you think…?”

Xisuma rushed for his helmet, switching the call off of his handheld comm and shoving his boots on. “His bed must’ve been destroyed! I can’t believe nobody checked in. I’m going out to help him.”

Almost immediately, the static Zedaph was hearing grew louder as Xisuma left his base. “Be careful! Ugh, we’re all too used to tuning out the death message spam in chat.”

Xisuma’s voice cut in and out through the overpowering sound of the storm and wind as he flew. “I know. - - - Scar! Ov - - ere!- - - you - - -right? - - - Of cour- - - y- - would. Just - - - get - - -” Then a loud bang cut off through his mic, followed by a message in chat.

[Xisumavoid was struck by lightning]

“Xisuma?” Zedaph asked, static raging through the comm. “X, are you okay?” Surely he would respawn soon and tell Zed that everything was fine, that he was regaining his bearings from the rare death. Instead, he just heard static. “Xisuma!?”

The line went dead.

Zedaph started a group call right away, naming it Emergency. Cub and Scar were the fastest to pick up.

“Zed?” Cub asked.

Scar’s voice was a little more staticky. “That was crazy!! What are the chances?”

“Guys, Xisuma’s comm just went dead. Scar, what happened?”

“Oh my void, he’s not in his base.” Scar responded, voice suddenly much clearer. “He didn’t respawn in his bed!”

Cub whistled. “Oh dear. That’s a problem.”

Doc’s comm chimed into the call. “Am I seeing this right? Zizuma really just got hit by lightning?”

Ren joined before they could answer. “Hooooly cow dudes! That was right over my base! Is X alright?”

[Xisumavoid suffocated]

Impulse and Tango both joined the call. “What’s going on?” Impulse asked first, panicked.

“We need to find him, guys. Fast.” Cub said, sending a message into the server chat.