Chapter Text
Twixxel stood by the crafting table, sifting through the items in his inventory for anything that might be useful for him or Mob. He had made some progress toward finding his friend a solution, but there had been no safe opportunity to tell Mob about the things he had found. The time would come, though, he felt sure of it. Verity was not a problem beyond what he and Mob could solve.
Twixxel had dealt with worse than this, a rogue Minecraft mod, computer virus, or whatever he was, had to have a weak spot he could take advantage of. Twixxel had taken care to hide his plotting, put off by the strange creature that haunted his friend. While he hadn’t shown anything abnormal to Twixxel, he knew Mob wouldn’t call upon him for no reason. Something was wrong here and he had to find a solution.
His secret base was hidden underground, far enough from Mob’s home that he wouldn’t stumble upon it by accident. Twixxel knew he needed to find the time to tell Mob where it was. It was hidden well enough that Verity would be unlikely to notice it, but that also meant Mob probably wouldn’t find it unless he knew where to look. He had written some notes to Mob in books, knowing it was the one place safe from Verity’s prying eyes. The chat was not safe, talking was not safe, but he needed Mob to find the solution.
Twixxel pulled out a new book and quill, leaning over the table to write some notes in it. He wrote coordinates and scrambled the numbers, hoping Mob was smart enough to understand the cipher and if Verity found it, that he was not. It seemed unlikely, but as long as it was more likely to end up with Mob than Verity, he would be fine.
Just as he finished the last stroke of his pen, the door swung open. It slammed back against the wall, making Twixxel jump. He slammed the book shut, not taking his eyes off of the little yellow ball that sat in his doorway. Verity stared up at him, this tiny smiling sphere that was barely the size of his own hand. The smile looked visually indistinct from his normal expression, nothing was different about him, but Twixxel felt his stomach drop. “Hi Twixxel!” Verity chimed in his cheerful, friendly voice.
Twixxel did not speak. He shoved the book between the crafting table and the wall, hoping with everything he had that Verity had missed it. There was no hope for him, he had no chance to even raise a fist to the ball before it happened. The transformation was sudden and unnatural, the stretching of a body where there had not been one before. Verity’s smile only grew wider, his grin large enough to have consumed the entirety of his small form. Twixxel would’ve screamed, had he been given enough time to process what he was seeing.
Too late, he backed up. His leg hit the crafting table but Twixxel barely noticed. The last thing he saw before his world went black was the unhinged jaw of the emaciated, unnatural entity that stretched like a snake, consuming his upper half in a single bite.
Verity wasted no time shrinking back into his smaller form, letting the lower half of Twixxel’s body fall to the floor where he had stood. Verity wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily, though. Where would be the fun in that? A creeping silence fell over the room as he focused, settling on a memory of what once was, what had just been. It took a few seconds, with a few visible glitches as he worked, but within moments, standing before Verity was exactly what he needed.
An extension of his own code, the perfect form. Hovering mere inches above his own severed lower half floated Twixxel. Not him, not really, but for all intents and purposes, he might as well have been. The new model looked perfect, if a bit hollow-eyed. The entity standing over Verity now was an entity of Twixxel’s mirror image. He smiled up at him, the same standard smile he always wore.
His voice was hesitant at first, as Verity put effort into the perfect match. Twixxel had a certain sound to him, a way he spoke, but Verity had heard enough. This would be easy. The entity flexed his jaw, testing it for the first time before he spoke. “Hi... Verity.”