Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cubfan135 approaches Xisuma on a lovely sunny day, midday heat bearing down on the beginnings of brand-new builds: starter bases belonging to brand-new hermits. It is Cubfan’s fourth day on the Hermitcraft server. 

Xisuma’s collected more than a few players by now from a great many walks of life— well, from walks of life and from whatever Cleo was doing; Xisuma’s not entirely sure that could be called a walk of life, but the point does stand— and he has to say he’s pleased with his little budding server. It’s filled with lots of wonderful players from lots of places, very many different places. This has to be the first time that he’s felt like he’s picking up strays, though. 

When Python asked if Xisuma would take them, he’d sounded terribly uncertain— as though he were asking for quarter. He’d looked at Xisuma like Xisuma might do something much worse than saying no. But Xisuma did not say no, and he doesn’t think he did anything much worse than that— the players from Kingdomcraft have been adjusting well, at any rate, settling in and building and socializing and whatnot. They were dreadfully tentative at first— this Xisuma has chalked up to the loss of their server, the details of which he has not asked for. These things can be traumatic. 

And they are, of course, complete with their sets of bizarre quirks that Xisuma has come to expect all players will have. That Rendog character in particular seems prone to fits of theatrics. Xisuma thinks he’ll want to keep an eye on that one, for the entertainment if nothing else. 

Cubfan135 is— odd, also. 

“I’m going to need your help with something,” he says on this lovely sunny day, and maybe it’s a trick of the light, or maybe there’s something off about his eyes as he says this— the faintest blue sheen to them. Xisuma could miss it if he weren’t paying much attention. The air between them tastes almost sweet. 

Xisuma has gleaned in the days that Cub has been on his server that the man is not exactly a player, or at least being a player is not the full story to him— that happens, sometimes, players that aren’t quite players, or they aren’t just players— and he does have the sense that anything more than a cursory glance at Cub’s code would give him all the answer he needs, but that seems a bit forward, doesn’t it, just to ask for that right off the bat. Hey there, friend, mind if I poke around your insides a bit, just like chums do? Promise I wont break anything important! Well, he’s embarrassed just imagining it. He can live with a bit of curiosity. 

“My help,” says Xisuma. “Well, I can certainly try, friend. What are you needing my help with?” 

“It’s a friend of mine,” says Cubfan. He’s got an easy smile on his face, hands in his pockets. “From the old server. He’s in some trouble, and I’ll be honest, man, I can’t do much about it, but I have a feeling you’ll be able to.” 

“Right,” says Xisuma, hesitant. He sets his console aside, disregarding the logs he’d been probing through for the time being. He is not sure he likes where this is going, but it does seem polite to give it his full attention. “And what sort of— trouble— would that be?” 

“The kind of trouble that he’s not supposed to survive. That doesn’t really work for me, you know? I like my friends alive. So how about I make you a deal,” says Cubfan, and Xisuma is realizing by his tone that that easy smile is not to be trusted. Cub’s eyes are gleaming blue, aren’t they, and Xisuma is suddenly sure he can even place the shade of it. Sometimes players aren’t quite players, or they aren’t just players— Cub’s teeth are sharp, aren’t they. “You’re going to help me get him back.” 

“Get him back,” Xisuma echoes, attempting to follow and finding he hasn’t been given much with which to do so. “Well, that’s— I think I might need some more details than that, friend. Starting with who’s involved and where, and— when—” He fumbles for prepositions; there are standard questions one asks in these kinds of situations, if he can just remember them. “—and why he’s in it?” 

“Sure,” Cub says, and his eyes are very, very bright. “They wanted a vex, and he’s a vex. I don’t know what the fuck they wanted one for, but I have a few guesses, and none of them are good. We were out on one of the trading servers near Hypixel two weeks ago, and they— took him.” Cub’s voice catches slightly. “I know where they are, I know how to get there, but they’re friendly with a server whose admin’s looking out for them, so I can’t do shit. That’s where you come in.” He tilts his head. “You’re going to help me get him out of there. You don’t have to keep us here after that, we can figure it out, but you’re going to help me get him off of that server— you just tell me what you want in return.”

He hasn’t stopped smiling. “Whatever you can think of, you tell me, and we’ll have a deal. I can be a pretty good ally to have, or I can be a real problem for you. I don’t know how much you know about vex. I’m not a player, Xisumavoid, I’m a hostile fucking mob.” 

Xisuma would like to submit the opinion that Cub is almost certainly at least partially a player, even if he wasn’t always one. Xisuma’s had experience with these things before. A player can be a player as well as a “hostile fucking mob.” Nevertheless, this does not seem like the time to argue semantics. 

“Oh, dear. That does sound like the kind of trouble it’s better to get involved in than not,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.” 

Cub is still smiling, but it looks a little less evil and a little more— well— confused. “You’ll— see what you can do,” he repeats. 

“Well, yes, I’m not going to promise anything just yet,” says Xisuma apologetically. Surely this is reasonable; he’s not even sure he’ll be capable of what Cub is asking of him. He’ll at least need more details first. “But I can say that I’ll do my best— these players sound like very bad news. I don’t think I could leave a friend of yours in such a nasty situation, goodness— that would be me being a very poor admin, wouldn’t it?” 

Cub’s smile falters slightly. “Yes?” 

“Yes, I thought so,” Xisuma says. “As for what I’d like in return— I did have something in mind to ask you, as a matter of fact, so you’ve caught me at the perfect time. You’ve killed the dragon by now, I think?”

Cub stares. “Couple times, yeah?” 

“I saw you had one of those duplicators running, over at your starter base— those aren’t strictly allowed, mind you, but it does make a nice decorative block in some cases, and I have a place in mind for one, so if you’re offering then I might as well ask.” 

Cub continues to stare. “You want— a dragon egg?”

“Surely that’s not too much,” Xisuma says dubiously, the tone of voice of an admin who’s recently checked the contents of Cub’s storage via his console and found eight double chests full of dragon eggs.

“No,” says Cub. “No, it’s not— too much. Of course not.” 

“Excellent,” says Xisuma. “You take care of that, and we can hash out details about this mystery server and its admin.” 

And so Cub heads off toward his base, presumably to grab a dragon egg, and Xisuma returns to the bizarre task of scrubbing through various server logs for mentions of himself, which has kept him busy all morning. He has had an eventful few days. The new players from Kingdomcraft (and the mysteriously waylaid friends of these players) are not Xisuma’s only new arrivals: there is another Xisuma on the server, apparently, and he can admit he didn't see that one coming. That surprised him. Went on a bit of an incomprehensible monologue, the fellow did, and then ran off to do— to do Xisuma things, presumably? 

Xisuma has never encountered other hims before, so he can’t say with certainty, but he can guess that there is probably tea involved and maybe a bit of industrial farming. Seems like a nice chap, though, if a bit strange. He doesn’t look half bad in red. 

Retrieving Cubfan135’s missing friend proves the work of a few more days yet. The sorts of players who nab other players are often the sort to cover their tracks about it, but Cub seems to have indeed done all of the necessary tracking-down, and all that’s left is a way in— and a way there, mapped out over servers that Xisuma is friendly enough with and can ask for passage through, as he’s not keen to do any more hacking than is strictly necessary to get the job done. 

Once on the server it’s a matter of finding where on that server, and this does not prove difficult, either. Really, Xisuma feels like the duplicated dragon egg might’ve been a big ask after all, what with how easy this is turning out to be and how terribly necessary a rescue it is. The player called GoodTimesWithScar is being kept in a build that looks like it was thrown up in about half a day, with no security measures at all to keep Xisuma from strolling right inside. 

He is huddled into the corner of a little room at precisely the coordinates Xisuma expected to find him, username gleaming bright above him through Xisuma’s visor, GoodTimesWithScar — bingo— and, goodness, he’s certainly living up to that name, isn’t he. Xisuma chokes a little on his breath and hurriedly averts his eyes, caught off-guard. The player isn’t wearing any clothes at all, only a lead around his neck, that’s— a bit barbaric, isn’t it, keeping him that way. Like he really is just a hostile mob. 

He sits upright at the presence of someone else in the little room, eyes brightening the way Cub’s had, like something deadly— a shaky smile spreads across his face, and his posture loosens from a huddle to something a little more— posed— carefully relaxed, like draped fabric. 

“Well, hello there,” he says as Xisuma steps inside. “I have company.”

Xisuma shuts the door softly behind him. “Company. Yes, you can call it that. I believe I’m looking for you,” he says, stepping further into the room and glancing over the diagnostics that his visor displays— nothing intrusive, just a malware scan that’s finding nothing on him. That’s a relief. “You’re the player called GoodTimesWithScar?” 

GoodTimesWithScar blinks up at him for a moment, seemingly confused. It was a rhetorical question, for dramatic effect, because Xisuma thought that would sound appropriate, and it was not meant to be a difficult one. He feels a bit awkward. “Well, that sounds like a trick question if I’ve ever heard one,” Scar says at last, very quietly. He doesn’t sound like he’s talking to Xisuma at all. “But I’m not sure how you’d even— know to ask me that, so now I have to wonder if you’re real, or if I’m imagining you. Not sure which of those is worse!” 

“I can assure you I’m real, friend,” Xisuma says, coming a bit closer, and Scar’s smile— changes, becoming more deliberate. “My name is Xisumavoid.” 

“Xisumavoid,” Scar says. “That’s a nice name.”

“Why, thank you. I am fond of it myself,” Xisuma says. 

“Well, if you’re here to— to use my services, Xisumavoid, I can happily provide,” he says, his voice smoothing over, dripping honey or something just as sweet. “I am very convenient, very conductivous about things, I can do anything you’d like. I pride myself on user experience, in fact. Five-star ratings, across the board!” 

Ah. That’s horrifying. 

“No, none of that, I’m afraid,” Xisuma says, and then fumbles, feeling hapless. “Ah. Not afraid, that’s poor word choice. Glad, I am very glad about it, I am glad there will be no more of that— I am getting you out of here, Mister GoodTimesWithScar.” He tries to sound upbeat about it. Reassuring— GoodTimesWithScar looks like he could perhaps use a bit of reassurance. 

Xisuma crouches, extends a hand. This part is very simple. The hard work is behind them, little backdoors coded into places where backdoors shouldn’t be coded. The world they are both standing in was as receptive to an admin’s touch as Hermitcraft is, and then it was just a matter of poking holes in its security; Xisuma has been around as an admin long enough for that bit to feel like child’s play.  

All there’s left to do now is walk right out, ideally before anyone finds out that Xisuma has been here at all. 

“Oh,” GoodTimesWithScar says, blinking at Xisuma’s outstretched hand, and Xisuma is seized, suddenly, by the awareness of how fragile he looks. His skin looks fragile, marked up and scarred terribly, his eyes— all of him does. All of him is. Players are so terribly fragile to something like Xisumavoid. 

But he doesn’t have to worry about how fragile Scar’s hand is when he extends it to meet Xisuma’s, looking distinctly bewildered. Xisuma can almost feel the warmth of the touch even through the glove of his suit, although the fabric protects the fragile animal of Scar's body. It was custom-coded, just for this: an admin’s touch is a powerful thing, and a player is as malleable as a world is, as easily edited and molded into whatever shape a clumsy hand might leave it in. Xisuma does, unfortunately, have clumsy hands from time to time, and he loves his players very much. He could tear right through any one of them without trying. 

“You’re getting me out of here,” Scar echoes. 

His smile hasn’t dropped; his posture is still carefully relaxed. He wouldn't look afraid at all if not for his white knuckles around Xisuma's hand. He is clinging so tightly that it might be painful, if a player could inflict pain on an admin. “Out of— here,” he repeats, and his voice shakes the smallest bit. He speaks softly, like he is afraid of being heard by whatever walks these halls. “Well, that’s very nice of you, kind stranger, that’s— that’s very nice of you. I don’t think I like it— here.”

His throat bobs. His eyes are green and abnormally bright, and there is a sheen of vex blue over his sclera. “I’m a very rare thing, you know,” he says, his tone shifting and warping into something carefully convincing. “Good to have on a server, you’ll be— you’ll be very glad to have me, I'm— talented. I could be all kinds of talented at all kinds of things.” 

“That is— excellent, that is, I’m sure you are,” Xisuma says a bit awkwardly, half-focused on his heads-up display, which is letting him know he has about five minutes before their little guaranteed safety window closes. He’d really rather be off the server by then. “And I’m sure you’ll be an excellent hermit, just as long as the things you’re talented at don’t involve breaking server rules— or if that is exactly what you’re talented at, you don’t tell me anything about it, and that’s just as well, really, all the same in the end. You have a friend on my server who’s very eager to see you again.”

There is a silence. Scar takes a shaky breath, and it is the loudest thing in this little room. 

“Your server,” he echoes, and there is a weight to these words in a player’s mouth.

“Yes, that’s right,” says Xisuma, giving Scar's hand a friendly little squeeze, and Scar seems to almost flinch, though it is not a kind of flinch that Xisuma has seen before. He doesn't exactly move. His eyes get tighter. 

“My server,” Xisuma says, more carefully and gently this time, because he has been around a good long while, and he's heard by now the sorts of things that some admins get up to, never mind that Xisuma has never gotten up to any of them himself— messing about with code and whatnot, the kinds of terrible tortures that leave scars on players’ bodies. Some of those things have clearly been gotten up to on Scar. He speaks as he might to a little wild ocelot, or to someone’s cat run off and gone feral. “It’s a nice place, Hermitcraft is. You’ll like it there. Do you know someone by the name of Cubfan, by any chance?” 

Scar's eyes widen an almost imperceptible fraction.

“Oh,” he says. “Cub. I know Cub.”

“That’s good,” says Xisuma. “It was a clever little joke, see, because I know that you know Cubfan, I was playing up the dramatics a bit, since this is a dramatic rescue— would’ve been a mite concerned if the answer had been no.” 

“Yeah,” says Scar. His voice is shaking still. “Cub. On your— server.” 

“And I’d like you to come back with me,” Xisuma says, as gently as he can. “You and all your— er— talents.” 

Scar’s throat bobs. His eyes are shining. The air tastes sweet between them. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He seems to steel himself, and then he shifts, and he— does not use his grip on Xisuma’s hand to stand up, and their time is running short, down to four minutes left. Instead he shifts closer, hand sliding up Xisuma’s wrist, feather-light. 

“Okay,” Scar says again. “Me and all of my talents, of course, I’m— a talented man. Customer satisfaction, it’s off the charts, and— have I mentioned how handsome you are? I don’t think I’ve mentioned that yet. That’s a very dapper suit you have going on, very dapper, very flattering, and I can— I can get you right out of it.” Scar is smiling like a salesman with a brand-new product on offer, eyes gleaming like a vex’s, and Xisuma realizes very suddenly that Scar thinks he’s asked for something he has not asked for. 

“Hold on,” he says, thinking, abort mission, stop immediately, go back, undo, rewind— “Goodness— stop, please, hold on just a minute.”

Scar stops so completely it makes Xisuma’s heart pang. He stills, and then he waits in perfect stillness, eyes gleaming the faintest sheen of blue and fixed with rapt attention on Xisuma. “Okay,” he says, and his voice shakes again. “Okay— I’ll hold on. Whatever you’d like. Should I wait until we’re back on— on your server, with Cub? Or I should stop talking, shouldn’t I, and let you tell me what you want and just do that, I can do that.” His voice goes quiet again as he scolds himself, and Xisuma blinks. That’s—

Right. Alright. Whatever this is, even had he been interested before— which he must say, he was not!— he is certainly firmly uninterested now. Xisuma has the sick sense that this is the form that GoodTimesWithScar’s terror takes. 

Carefully, he takes Scar’s hand and removes it from his wrist. He puts it— back— and pats the top of it gently. 

“I’m not— interested— in any of that right now, please, thank you,” he says. “No, ah, no problems with— if you’d like to— well, I’m not saying that I’m entirely— I wouldn’t judge, of course, what you get up to in your spare time, I just mean that I’m not going to— require that. Of you. And I’m afraid we really don’t have the time for it right now, and— I think we’ll steal some clothes on our way out of here, in fact, just to get you covered up, that seems a fair trade for stealing a player.” Yes, that seems like— an appropriate enough rejection, with all the right caveats. He is feeling very awkward at the moment and would like to move on immediately if possible. Scar is looking at him with very, very bright blue eyes. 

“Okay,” he says after a long moment, looking as confused as he’d looked when Xisuma asked him his name. 

So Xisuma brings another player home to Hermitcraft, and Cub does not drag Scar into a desperate hug on their reunion the way Xisuma had thought he might— Cub is deceptively casual about the whole thing, smiling and saying things about what mischief they’ll get up to together, but his grip on Scar’s wrist is very, very tight. Xisuma is relieved, and he feels sort of guilty; he does end up paying Cub properly in diamonds for the dragon egg. 

All in all, it’s an eventful week. Xisuma’s a busy man, that’s all being an admin seems to entail sometimes, isn’t it— being very, very busy— dragging new players out of the depths of hell one day, and come the next there are clones to deal with! Evil clones? The other Xisuma has decided on a name, it seems, which Xisuma will learn about the next morning while sitting (alive, bemused, and not strictly trapped ) in a malfunctioning spawntrap. 

“You— stay there,” Evil Xisuma snarls at him periodically, pacing and cursing outside of the spawntrapping chamber. It’s— well, it’s certainly a name, and it’s his decision, isn’t it, whatever he’d like his name to be, and he seems to like it well enough. Xisuma's not sure how he feels about all of this “evil” business, but he supposes as long as the fellow cleans up after himself it shouldn't be anything that he has to stick his own head into. 

(Xisuma has no initial intention of staying in the trap as instructed, but does feel compelled to humor him, so he hangs around until the shadows start to look a little longer and then makes his excuses to a very disappointed other Xisuma. He has a schedule to get to, unfortunately— the server won’t maintain itself, now, will it?) 

The other Xisuma visits him for tea three days later and that goes rather strangely, though Xisuma has had stranger teas with strangers— aha, a pun! How clever! Stranger teas with strangers. This particular stranger is all talk of evil monologues and evil plots and— evil farms, that comes up, and then they get stuck on the topic because Xisuma is curious what exactly makes an evil farm different from a typical one— the goods being farmed, do they need to be evil in their own right, does the evil need to be inherent to the farm design? Or is it enough for the farm to be designed in service of some evil end? And answering this question alone takes the better part of an hour, so the tea stretches on and becomes more of an all-afternoon-and-then-evening affair. 

Once the other Xisuma has gone, he checks his storage and finds that all of his red dye has been stolen. 

Chapter Text

The sixth season of Hermitcraft might be their biggest and busiest yet, with great big plans cropping up and coming to fruition and games spiraling out beyond all reason from almost the very moment there are boots on grass and pickaxes in hands. 

Xisuma has had many excellent days so far in this sixth season, many endeavors turning up success. The same cannot be said for the other Xisuma, who is up to his tricks as usual. He has tricks, now, and he is up to them quite a lot these days— mind control apparently among them, though he does not seem to be very good at it, so perhaps that one is more of a trick-in-progress. He wasn’t too pleased with the results last time, but that’s alright, Xisuma supposes, everyone does have to start somewhere— he doesn’t think he’d be very good at it first try, if he ever did have a go at mind control. Ooh, there’s a spooky thought. 

A distracting one. Xisuma brings his mind back to the present, what was he thinking about, again— right— successful and not-so-successful endeavors, and the other Xisuma’s tricks, such as the trap that he finds himself having briefly fallen into. Rudimentary, as traps go. That’s a little embarrassing. 

“You have fallen for my trap,” the other Xisuma announces loftily, and he seems delighted by the whole affair, stalking ominously in a half circle, back and forth. The heels of his boots click against the stone.

“So I have,” says Xisuma, displeased. “To be honest with you, friend, this isn’t really the best time for me to be falling in traps and all of that— would it be possible to reschedule? The grand opening of Cleo’s sweet shoppe is in half an hour, and I promised I’d be there.” 

“What?” The other Xisuma stops his ominous stalking. “No, I’ve kidnapped you. I’m not letting you go for some silly little game with your puny little players.”

“That is unfortunate,” says Xisuma. “Are you sure you couldn’t make a little exception? What is it you want this time, anyway— is it mind control again, is that what we’re doing? Wasn’t a big fan of that, I can tell you. I was apologizing to xB for weeks.” 

“I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation.”

“Ah. Sorry about that,” says Xisuma, regretful but unsurprised. That is a recurring character flaw of his, it’s always giving him trouble. He tugs on the restraints and finds they are about as rudimentary as the rest of the trap. “Listen, friend, I would stay, but I really don’t like to disappoint my hermits. I try to be an admin worth keeping around.” He laughs a little awkwardly; the other Xisuma does not. “Your trapping abilities have improved, though, haven’t they— that’s good news! I’d give these restraints a— well, not an A-plus, can’t say that, can I, seeing as I have gotten out of them.” He sets them neatly to one side and goes about clambering his way out of the trap, taking care to avoid the lava dispensers just in case they decide to start working. “An A-minus, then, or perhaps a B-plus, and you can get an A-minus next time if it takes me longer than— five minutes? That’s a good goal to shoot for, I think, that’s a fair requirement for an A-minus in trapping alternate selves for evil schemes. This was for an evil scheme, wasn’t it?” 

“Of course it was for an evil scheme,” says Evil Xisuma. “Get— get back in those, that wasn’t— how that was meant to go.”

“I’m sorry,” Xisuma says. “I would, but it’s Cleo I’ll be apologizing to for weeks if I’m late for their grand opening, and— you’ve met Cleo, haven’t you? She’s a tough cookie, she is. She might just see fit to strap me down and perform some evil schemes on me herself if I don’t make an appearance.” 

“ZombieCleo is a player,” the other Xisuma says. “Not an admin.”

“Yes, well, sometimes I start to wonder,” Xisuma says, thinking of how Cleo sounds when she’s scolding rulebreakers. She’s very good at positioning herself as though she isn’t a rulebreaker herself. “She’d make a very good one.”

“She cannot strap you down and perform evil schemes on you against your will,” the other Xisuma says, incredulous. “Players aren’t capable of that.”

“Well, let’s be fair. Neither can you,” Xisuma says. 

Cleo’s new shop is as delightful as Xisuma could have hoped it would be, and Cleo is indeed pleased by his appearance at the grand opening. Grian is in attendance as well, though only briefly, and of course Xisuma does not see much of him— this does not stop him from stealing the show with a clever little prank that he’ll no doubt aggressively deny under questioning. 

Grian is new to the Hermitcraft server, and he is new to most of Xisuma’s players, but not all of them— he is certainly new to Xisuma, and he’s been an interesting character to observe. He becomes only more interesting as the hermits settle into yet another season on yet another world. 

He’s a very apprehensive little character, perching on things and hiding and sneaking and generally pesking about— he sticks very close to Mumbo for the first little while, plays pranks on other hermits that he denies religiously. He is insistent at first, very serious about the whole thing no matter how apparent his guilt is— sometimes he seems to start to verge on real terror— and then he is cheeky about it, even gleeful, as the days wear on into weeks. He settles in. 

Much of this Xisuma learns secondhand. Grian has apparently built a little ship in a bottle to live in near Mumbo’s storage system, so he hears plenty of updates from Mumbo, and then of course he’s roped into Grian’s little tag game along with the rest of the server, but their face-to-face conversations are few and far between. If Grian is an apprehensive player as a rule, then he is especially apprehensive of Xisuma, perching up in high and hidden places and flitting out of sight when he’s spotted, crouching around corners and dissolving into giggles when his pranks are discovered and taking off the moment he’s suspected for them. He rather reminds Xisuma of a flighty little bird. 

So it’s all very surprising when Xisuma arrives home at his base after a long day out gathering resources in the Nether, neatly discards his elytra and other adventuring gear into the set of chests near the door, and finds Grian waiting for him. In his bedroom. 

Xisuma startles, standing a bit awkwardly now in the doorframe. 

“Xisuma,” Grian blurts, snapping to attention. He is seated right at the center of Xisuma’s bed, looking terribly startled, and Xisuma’s eyes flick to the rows of chests up the wall, having landed on the most likely reason he’s caught Grian here of all places. 

“Grian,” he chides lightly, admittedly amused by the way his hands fidget and his eyes dart. Squirming like he’s been caught red-handed. Xisuma strides further into the bedroom, relaxing into the game. “Have I caught you going through my things, is that what’s going on here?”

“What?” Grian asks weakly, and there is something off about his tone. It gives Xisuma pause. “No, that’s— no. I haven’t gone through any of your things. You can— check my inventory, here—” 

He thrusts an arm forward, presumably providing an interface for Xisuma to pull open and have a look, and Xisuma goes still for a moment, surprised. Well, that’s— a bit of an intense response, isn’t it. 

“No, that’s— that’s alright,” he says, touching Grian’s arm and gently pushing it away from him, a bit baffled. “I don’t tend to go through my players’ inventories without a good reason.” Not that he couldn’t. It just seems a little bit rude, seeing how inventories are contained in bodies. He does try to avoid needlessly mucking about with bodies that aren’t his. “If it turns out you have stolen my things after all, well, I suppose I’ll just have to steal some things of yours back to have my revenge.” He tries to resume a jokingly scolding tone, and Grian stares up at him. Cross-legged on the bed, hugging his legs a bit. 

Xisuma stares back for several moments, uncomfortable in the silence but unsure what else to say to break it. He clears his throat and says, “Can I ask what you are here for, then, if you’re not going through my chests?” 

Grian blinks. His eyes are dark and reflective, light gleaming off of them like little drops of obsidian. “I want— to stay on the Hermitcraft server. In the— the permanent sense of things, ideally, if that can be— arranged,” he says, and nothing else for a long moment. Xisuma’s brow knits together, wondering if he’s missed something. “I’m not sure— how you handle things here, exactly, but I’ve— well, I’ve been around, I’ve met more than a few different admins, in my time.” He says this very officiously, which is a little cute; Xisuma would guess that he is something close to Mumbo’s age, hardly a fraction of the time Xisuma’s been around. But then Xisuma has met very few players who have been around as long as he has— Bdubs and Etho, maybe. Joe and Cleo both come close. 

“I know there are— things that admins tend to expect from players. And different admins want different things,” Grian goes on, eyeing Xisuma uneasily, like he expects some very dramatic reaction to this. 

“I’m not sure I follow, friend,” Xisuma says apologetically, and Grian’s lips press into a thin line.

“I don’t know what— you want from me,” he says at last, quiet and upset. “I thought you would have just taken it, whatever it is, or maybe demanded it, but you haven’t done that, I’ve just been— just been running around on your server, and I don’t have much of anything to offer, except— except for this. And I’m not— stupid. I’ve lived in multiplayer a long time.” This he says hotly, defensively. “So I thought maybe I should be— more— forward. I should take some initiative. That’s what this is, I’m taking initiative.” 

Xisuma is still not sure he follows. There’s something he’s missed that Grian seems to think should be common knowledge between them, and Xisuma is not keen to admit to having missed some— some basic universal administrative convention, perhaps, so he just nods along for the moment and hopes that he’ll catch on. 

“Taking initiative,” he tries. “Ah, that’s— always good. I do like players who take initiative.”

Grian’s face lights up a little, so Xisuma takes this as a sign he’s said something right. “You do? You do. I thought so. I can be— very full of that, initiative. I’m not sure what your— your tastes are, exactly, and I wanted to come prepared whatever the case, so I—” 

Xisuma startles slightly— he is suddenly less confident that he has said anything he means to say— and Grian pauses speaking to rifle through his inventory a bit frantically. 

“Here,” he says, thrusting a bundle into Xisuma’s arms that clinks, and embarrassingly Xisuma has to scramble a bit to catch it. It is— filled with potions? Thick potions, weakness potions, but mostly healing potions, and Grian goes on to explain: “I’m not sure exactly what sort of things you’re— interested in, so I’ve tried to cover the, the basics— I can be good for just about any of it, I’m— I’m very versatile.” Xisuma startles again, almost violently this time. “You— this way, if you— I’ve made it easy for you, see, if you want to do any sort of painful things, injuries and all of that—” If Xisuma wants to do what. “—you can set those up and I’ll just heal right up— or of course I’ll heal whenever you want, or I won’t heal at all. Whatever you— whatever you’d— prefer.” His voice weakens, trailing off a bit at the end. 

Xisuma searches for words and finds very few available to him. He hardly has the chance to form a coherent draft of a theoretical response in his head before Grian is moving to shimmy out of his jumper, and that’s— well, that’s moving quickly, isn’t it, this is all moving very very quickly in a completely unexpected direction, was he meant to expect this— 

“Grian, stop,” Xisuma says, more harshly than he means to, one hand snapping out to catch Grian’s wrist where it grips the hem of his jumper, and Grian flinches backward violently, head smacking up against the wall behind him. He freezes in place there on the bed, looking at Xisuma with an intense focus, his dark eyes wide and shining, his chest moving quick as a little bird’s— he looks so much like one, suddenly, like a little prey animal hunted by some much larger mob, staring right into the face of its own demise. 

“Grian.” Xisuma stares, going still. He is going— still. Whatever this is, it’s not something he has any interest in participating in, and he’d like to communicate that as efficiently as possible. Slowly, carefully, he pulls his hand back. Reaching to grab him seems to have been a mistake. 

“It’s— fine,” Grian chokes out, sounding almost as though he is in pain, and Xisuma is liking this less and less. He has half a mind to comm— Mumbo? He should call Mumbo for this, shouldn’t he, or— Scar, perhaps. GoodTimesWithScar, new as he is to Xisuma and to Hermitcraft and, indeed, to life as a player at all, has shown himself to have quite a way with talking Grian into and out of things. Xisuma would appreciate the presence of someone somewhat more poetically gifted to talk Grian out of whatever this is. 

“It’s fine,” Grian says again, insists— he sounds like he is begging — Xisuma takes a full step back from the bed, just to be safe. “I can— I swear I can— please. Don’t— have I messed it up? Please don’t tell me I’ve messed it up, I can still be— I won’t react that way again, that was, that was silly of me. I’m not even scared, really.”

He sounds like he’s chiding himself, trying to convince himself— desperate— “I’ve done this before. Loads of times, I’ve gotten properly good at it. You— want me here, on your server, I swear you do, I’m— I’m good to keep around.” His voice breaks. “Or I could offer something else. Is there something else I should be offering?” 

“Grian, buddy, I don’t think that I’m interested in anything you’re offering,” Xisuma says, feeling a little pained himself, and Grian flinches again. Xisuma takes care to move slowly and not toward him at all, afraid of being whatever thing Grian is apparently so afraid of. Incredulous, he continues, “Not that you need to be offering anything. Mumbo made a perfectly good case for your being on the server, he was— very convincing, did all the convincing that’s going to need doing, I think. Why, he was over here convincing me some more just yesterday. You’ve been an excellent hermit to have, and you’re very welcome to stay one.” 

Mumbo doesn’t seek Xisuma out too often, but whenever they do get the chance to chat he’s always saying something or other about Grian, practically effusing about Grian, like clockwork. His face will light right up, and his eyes will go a little misty the longer he talks. Xisuma is sure that’s all the case that he’s ever going to need to hear. 

“You can consider your— your dues all paid, if you’d like to think of it that way,” he offers. “No debts outstanding. How does that sound?” 

Grian’s throat bobs, and he says, “Oh.” Something has changed behind his eyes. If he looked afraid before— whatever it is in his eyes now is something much worse than fear. “Do you mean that Mumbo has already— oh. That’s—” His throat bobs again. In a very small voice, as though he doesn’t mean for Xisuma to hear it at all, he says, “He didn’t— tell me. Why didn’t he tell me?”

Mumbo has already what, Xisuma is thinking with no small amount of pain. Grian is still talking, louder now, with the distinct affect of a little dog puffing its chest out and barking like it is much bigger than it is: “You know— I could be much— much better than Mumbo, I think, for that— for that purpose. You could give me a try. You should, really, I’m— I’m told that I’m terribly pesky. Really it’s best if you put me in my place sooner rather than later, get it over with, or I’ll be a real nuisance, and Mumbo’s— I mean, you’ve seen Mumbo, he’s very well-behaved, he must be practically boring compared to me—” 

Give him a try. Xisuma has heard enough. “Grian,” he snaps, and Grian’s mouth clicks shut. 

“Grian,” he repeats, taking pains to speak softly this time. His chest aches. “I don’t know what Mumbo’s told you about me, or about Hermitcraft—”

Grian looks like he may just pass out. “Nothing,” he cuts in. Xisuma’s a little bit sick of Grian cutting in. “Nothing— nothing bad, he’s barely told me anything at all, I swear —”

“—and I’m not sure what other admins you’ve encountered and what all they’ve seen fit to do to their players,” Xisuma continues, narrowing his eyes. Grian goes still again. “But I’m not interested in—” His face flushes a bit, and he’s terribly grateful for the helmet. “— making use of my players in that— fashion, and I’m not asking for payment just so that you can stay here.” He has no idea where Grian even got the idea. He certainly hasn’t been attempting to communicate it. 

Grian narrows his eyes. He’s drawn into himself a bit, his small frame hunched even smaller.

“...you’re not,” he repeats at last, disbelieving, and his eyes are very very dark, fixed suspiciously on his admin. Xisuma feels a bit incredulous. “You’re not— even a little?” 

“Not at all,” Xisuma says. “I think I’m— I’m fairly upset by the whole idea, as a matter of fact.” Xisuma has never even thought about making use of— of admin privileges this way in any detail— he isn’t sure why he would. He doesn’t think it’d earn him many positive opinions. Perhaps if a certain hermit or two came to him with the— the express desire to— but that would be a very different matter. 

Grian doesn’t seem to know what to say. He doesn’t seem to know what to do about that, either. 

“Well,” Xisuma says after a long moment. “I have had a long day out in the Nether, and that’s— that’s settled, I think, we’re not doing anything like that. Grian, do you fancy a cup of tea?” 

Grian stares. 

“A cup of— tea?” he echoes.

“Tea, yes,” says Xisuma, already standing. “That’s something you have to learn about me, isn’t it, me and my cups of tea. There’s a kitchen downstairs, have you seen that yet? Recent addition to the build— why don’t you come and have a look? I’m fairly proud of it myself.”

Putting the kettle on does wonders to settle Xisuma’s nerves, that’s good, that’s— excellent. They’re feeling a bit frayed. He realizes he’s still carrying the potion bundle and sets it on the counter, nudging it out of the way a bit awkwardly. 

“Just tell me what you like, I’ll brew it right up,” he says, once Grian has followed him into the kitchen and perched himself on one of the bar stools. “That is if you enjoy tea. Don’t let me force it down your throat— although if you don’t enjoy a quality cup of tea, well, then we might just have to discuss your staying on the server after all. Choose your answer carefully.” He turns to offer Grian a friendly wink, then remembers the helmet and feels a bit embarrassed for forgetting it and has to awkwardly try to assume some sort of jovial body language instead. There he goes, derpiness interfering with each valiant attempt at wit. He’s afraid he’s not making a very composed or competent impression on his newest player. That’s unfortunate. If admins are meant to be formidable, well, he’s sorely falling short in that department, isn’t he. 

“Oh,” says Grian in a small voice, and Xisuma realizes with some distress that his joke did not in fact land as a joke. “Tea— I like tea. I like— quality teas, the very best ones. Which ones are those?”

“You tell me, friend,” says Xisuma, continuing to make valiant attempts at friendly and jovial body language as he opens the cupboard. “I have quite the selection. In fact it might be more of a challenge to name a tea I haven’t got…” He trails off, roving over his collection and deciding for himself. Birch bark is a classic, of course, and always plentiful near the start of a season before the bone meal farms have made a wider plethora available, and he’s been especially fond of anything with dandelions lately. They’ve got a little bit of a kick to them. Most of his favorites are brewed from custom-coded plants and spices— fruits of all exotic sorts from far-off servers, bright sour citrus that grows in trees, warm earthy spices that come in sticks— rare artisan work that he haggles for whenever he goes traveling, so he tends to save those brews for special occasions. 

“Oh,” says Grian, in a voice that is still small and now much higher-pitched. “I’m— do I get— may I ask how many tries do I get, if I get it— wrong?”

…what? 

Xisuma blinks and then turns back to him. Grian’s body language is as small as his voice is, perched on the little wooden stool. 

“Grian, I’m asking you what tea you like best,” he says. “I don’t think there’s a wrong answer to that question at all— I suppose technically the only wrong answer would be a dishonest one. And even then, you can lie to me if you’d like, I couldn’t exactly stop you. And I believe in that circumstance you would end up with a cup of tea that is not your favorite.” Terribly unfortunate, of course, but survivable.  

“Right.” Grian does not sound any less stressed. “Of course. Um— do you have anything with— roses? Is that— alright?”

“Oh, excellent choice,” says Xisuma, reaching for the box of rose hip tea, and Grian visibly relaxes, to Xisuma’s bafflement. He is a strange little character, that’s for certain. Xisuma squints at the label on the box. A holdover from last season that he’d carefully saved— this one has a few specialty flavors coded into it as well, which are apparently meant to accentuate the delicate floral notes of the rose hips, doesn’t that sound pleasant. “Is a— hint of lemon zest alright?”

“Yes, absolutely. Oh, I love lemon zest, lemon zest, that’s— one of my favorite things,” Grian says, and his tone has Xisuma wondering if he knows what lemons are. 

Xisuma brews the tea, and Grian watches from his perch on the stool, eyes tracking the very tiniest of Xisuma’s movements. (It’s a little spooky, the way he watches; Xisuma could swear he can feel Grian’s gaze prickling up and down his back when it’s turned.) He asks whether Grian would like cream or sugar in his cup, and Grian seems so stressed by this question that Xisuma cuts in to just— to just make the decision himself, save them both the headache. A little cream, a teaspoon of sugar and then a second one after a moment’s thought— Grian seems like the kind of fellow who’d have a sweet tooth. 

He takes the way Grian’s pupils dilate on bringing the mug to his lips as confirmation that he’s guessed correctly. 

He debags his own cup and sits on the stool across from his newest player. “So,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve gotten the chance to sit down and have a chat just the two of us yet, have we? You’re a hard man to pin down. Been up to some hijinks, I’ve heard.”

Grian is still eyeing him suspiciously. He takes another sip of his tea— he has snuck another spoonful of sugar into it when he thought Xisuma wasn’t looking, and he has conspicuously avoided commenting on Xisuma’s light ribbing comments about obsidian cages and rollercoasters and beginnings of prank wars that have started to escalate beyond all reason. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, sniffing. “That was obviously Rendog. There are signs to prove it and everything, haven’t you heard from Cleo?” 

Xisuma hasn’t even named the prank in question. Grian couldn’t be any more obvious if he were coming right out and confessing. 

“Goodness, no, I haven’t,” he says. “It’s like I live under a rock sometimes, never knowing what’s going on on my own server— a rock shaped like a redstone farm, that is.”

Grian snorts into his tea mug, and Xisuma grins, delighted. He’ll dare say that’s the first of his jokes that’s made Grian laugh all evening. “Why don’t you tell me all about what Rendog’s been up to, then,” he says, and in return he gets a giddy smile. 

(The bundle of potions lies discarded on the kitchen counter where he’d set it aside. Xisuma’s eyes keep catching on it. He has the passing thought that if he really did want to hurt Grian, if he were the type of admin to— enjoy that sort of thing— to take a player and crack him right open, muck about with his insides— well, potions would hardly be any use at all, against that kind of damage. Proper damage. Code damage. It isn’t a helpful thought. He doesn’t know why he keeps thinking it.) 

Chapter Text

A very long time ago, and quite some time before many of Xisuma’s hermits are made hermits at all, when his server is small and the universe around it is very big by comparison— before the other Xisuma has come up with a name for himself because there is no other Xisuma at all, to his knowledge, when Xisuma’s world is still small, no pesky birds in it at all, no prank wars that rival multi-server events in scale or dungeons developing sentience or massive mail systems that span a whole server— 

A very long time ago, when Xisuma is a very young and very new admin, and the few players he’s collected are fairly new at being players at all, Joe Hills— one of said few collected players— approaches him with a problem. 

“So,” says Joe, when Xisuma asks him what the problem is. 

“So,” says Xisuma, raising his eyebrows. He’s been busy with one of the community farms, its walls beginning to rise up behind him, neat and orderly and carefully designed to complement Keralis’s just across the street. Countless years on, he’ll have built many more spectacular builds than this, but he doesn’t know that yet, and he’s very proud of this one, cheerfully dreaming up the shapes it’ll form when it’s properly finished. 

“You know my friend the zombie?” Joe posits, hesitant. “Cleo.”

“Your… friend, the zombie,” Xisuma echoes slowly. “You mean the… mob that you’ve had nametagged?” 

“Yeah.” Joe’s steepled his hands in front of his face; he exhales through his fingers. “Yeah. About that. She’s— about that. The thing is— maybe this is easiest if you just— come with me? Do you think you could come with me, maybe, is that— something we can swing? So I can just, uh, show you.”

Xisuma shuts his eyes briefly. “Yes, alright then,” he says, already feeling very tired. It’s not even half nine in the morning. “Go ahead.”

Joe’s friend Cleo the zombie is, it turns out, a player in her own right who has been building up a house on one of the hillsides near Old Hermiton for the better part of the hour that Joe has left her unsupervised. Xisuma stares, uncomprehending, at the walls of this proto-house, and at the large pile of sandstone beside it that she has apparently gathered herself. For— later. She has not elaborated on her plans for the sandstone. Joe stands behind him and also stares, one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. 

“I think you need to add her to the whitelist,” Joe says. Xisuma has so many questions. “Or else…”

He trails off. Cleo is admiring a spot that she has carved out for a window, and she seems to be waffling between making it three blocks or four blocks wide. She’s muttering to herself. Standard zombies certainly do not do any of these things, generally, as a rule. 

“I think you need to add her to the whitelist,” Joe starts again, “so she can, uh— set a respawn point? Or else— I don’t know what else. This hasn’t happened to me before?”

Xisuma isn’t sure this has ever happened to anyone before. 

Cleo the zombie is rifling through chests now. Standard zombies certainly don’t do that, Xisuma can be very sure, and if it were the result of some bizarre new update then he’d be hearing about it from more of his players than just Joe Hills. 

She stands up from where she’d bent to look through a chest, puts her hands on her hips and looks up at her work for a moment. It’s the beginnings of a nice little house. She’s one of the better builders on the server, Xisuma is realizing, feeling a bit faint. “Would one of you go and tell Tango that his insane portals are causing problems for every chunk in range, and I don’t appreciate the space distortions on my property,” she hollers over one shoulder, and she doesn’t sound anything like Xisuma expected her to sound. 

She’s tucked a little pink flower into her hair. 

“She knows who Tango is,” he remarks once he’s gathered enough of his brain to form a coherent response, because he can think of very little else to say. Cleo the zombie has started to fill her windows in with glass, slowly but surely. She seems to be a fan of circles. 

“Apparently,” says Joe. “I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, should I be surprised? We have arts and crafts parties every morning at nine, and I’m the one who does all the talking, usually, for what I think are fairly obvious reasons, so the other hermits come up in conversation all the time— you know, she’s been getting good at the glitter glue lately. Maybe that should’ve clued me in.” 

“Ah.” Xisuma can’t think of anything to say to that. 

“Xisuma.” 

He turns to meet Joe’s gaze. There is an intensity to it, and there is a weight in his voice that Xisuma did not notice before now. “You do have to add her to the whitelist, or— look at her code, or something, make sure she’s— you know, anchored right?— or I don’t know if she’s going to stick around.”

“Right,” says Xisuma. “I think you’re right. I’ll just— get right on that, then.” And he will go ahead and let Tango know about the portals. Space distortions— well, that doesn’t sound right, does it, that sounds like something an admin should get right on. (It doesn’t sound possible, either— Xisuma thought he was building replicas. Tango had assured him that all of his programming was for aesthetic ends only.)

He has the sense that Tango is going to be a fascinating player to have around. Just then Cleo yells something incomprehensible about glitter glue, and Joe yells back “I told you that’s a bad idea,” and she yells back, “I’m a free person, aren’t I, and this is my build, so you can fuck right off,” and Xisuma corrects that thought: he has the sense that he is in for a fascinating season. 

Xisuma is much older, and so is Hermitcraft, seasons and seasons on— he is sitting underneath an overpass in the city that Keralis has built up, and Keralis is beside him, murmuring his name. He leans closer and gently bumps his head against Xisuma’s helmet. 

“Get out of that head of yours,” Keralis says softly. “Look at you, stressing over work when there’s no work that needs doing— I know that silence. It’s a very loud silence.” 

He takes Xisuma’s hand and squeezes it, and Xisuma aches for the warmth of it. He can almost feel it through the suit— this damned suit. Custom-coded to keep Xisuma’s player’s safe, so he can touch without always having to think about reining himself in, without needing to hold himself hyper-aware of how any one of them could crumple like wet paper underneath him. 

“Believe you me, I would if I could,” Xisuma says, and his voice sounds so much more ragged than he means for it to come out sounding. He’d get out of this head, out of this body. 

Keralis shifts, and his other hand comes to rest on Xisuma’s inner thigh— Xisuma’s breath catches in his throat. 

“Why don’t you let me help,” he offers, and there’s a familiar look on his face, a little mischievous smile. His eyes glitter in the orange glow of the torches they’ve brought with them. There is a shimmer of redstone dust left on one of his cheeks— he was up in one of his skyscrapers earlier today, hard at work— Xisuma wants to touch it, wants to brush it off with his thumb. 

He could be careful enough to do that. Keralis would trust him to be careful enough to do that. 

Keralis’s hand slides up a little higher on his thigh, reaching for one of the zippers on Xisuma’s suit. 

Another season, another year, another build and another player— it is Cleo, another night, reaching for zippers on his suit, telling him she’ll pry him out of his head herself if she has to, laughing at something ridiculous he’s done. She is gentle with him. He is terrified of hurting her— either of them, any of them, any one of his hermits— and so she takes the lead. She kisses him and touches him, touches his neck and his chest and his thighs and then reaches between them, and the touch is so warm and alive that it burns. He wants more of it than he can ever allow himself to have. 

On a bright sunny day toward the end of the ninth season of Hermitcraft, like many sunny days that have come before it and that will come after it, Joe Hills once again approaches Xisuma with a problem. This problem is in his code, and it is going to kill him if nothing is done about it. Neither of them is fully aware of this yet. 

Xisuma hasn’t been spending a lot of time with much of anyone lately, and indeed he is not even aware that it’s a bright sunny day, all holed up in the bowels of his copper aging farm as he is— the other Xisuma has been busy, as well. He checks in from time to time, and Xisuma can sometimes convince him to stay for tea, but sometimes all he has time for is a quick evil monologue and then he’s off to do Evil Xisuma things, whatever those may be. (Generally Xisuma gets a full rundown of the agenda included in the monologue.) 

Lately he’s been having trouble with those Withermen of his. The Withermen are the other Xisuma’s most recent creation, and supposedly they are his players who are much better than any of Xisuma’s players and more evil and more loyal and much better minions and all of that, but he does not seem to be having much luck with them, which Xisuma could have predicted. (It’s not so much that players can’t be made from scratch— they can be, and Xisuma certainly knows how. The other Xisuma has the technical details of the whole thing mastered, to his surprise, but in order for it to work you do need to love them. That’s the important part.) 

“There you are. I thought I’d find you here. Have you— have you slept since the last time I saw you?”

Xisuma sits back, wiping redstone dust from his gloves onto his pants. “Cleo,” he says, pleasantly surprised. “Fancy meeting you down here.” 

“Well, I’m not sure where else you’d fancy meeting me,” Cleo says. “Seeing as you haven’t left this copper-filled hole in— has it been two weeks now? Xisuma, when was the last time you saw sunlight? Be honest with me.” She’s shaking a finger at him. Joe is perusing the rows of redstone behind her, and he gives Xisuma a little wave. Xisuma reaches for the chest full of sticky pistons, and she swats at his hand. 

Perhaps he could have seen this development coming. Joe Hills and ZombieCleo are two players he can generally count on to come and bother him out of wherever he’s holed up working himself half to death— they’re not so flighty as the younger hermits tend to be around him, not particularly anxious over securing their places on a server they’ve called home nearly as long as it’s existed. 

“It’s a beautiful day,” Joe is saying. “Real sunny, real beautiful, you should come on up, take a break— stand in the sun! Sun’s great. I think absorbing a little sun is good for the soul. Soak it right into your skin and let it wrap your insides up.”

“That’s not actually what we’re here to talk about, though,” Cleo says, nudging him, and Joe fumbles and drops the torch that he’d picked up, and it sparks dangerously close to a circuit that Xisuma would prefer didn’t get shorted. He’s hard at work here. 

“Right, yeah,” Joe says. “Not what we’re here to talk about.” 

“Joe, can you put that back, please,” Xisuma says.

“Right, yeah—” Joe picks up the torch and puts it back not at all where he had picked it up from, lighting up a line of redstone that Xisuma does not want lit up. Xisuma frowns. “Sorry about that.”

“You two—” Xisuma cuts off with a sharp breath when Cleo kicks his water bottle over with a little whoops and just barely catches it before it can spill and mess up a whole morning’s worth of work. Or— afternoon? He’s actually unsure. “ You two. Cleo, I saw that. What are you here to talk about, then, if you haven’t just come to give me trouble and bother me about sunlight?” 

“Sunlight, yep, gotta recommend it,” Joe says, which is not an answer. 

“Saw what?” Cleo says. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. I’m very coordinated, and well-behaved, and there’s nothing to see—” They shift their footing and nearly do it again.

“Telling fibs, are we,” Xisuma says. “That’s not well-behaved at all. Naughty Cleo.” 

“Ooh, naughty Cleo, am I— scary admin,” Cleo teases, lips pursed the way they get when they’re trying to look like they’re not smiling. “Are you going to have to punish me for that?”

“You be careful, I just might,” he says, and he’s the one shaking his finger at her, now, and she snorts and giggles. “I mean it! You break my redstone, I’ll be scarier than Doc is—” 

“Anyone’s scarier than Doc is, Xisuma—”

“I’ll be a very scary admin. Full of scary punishments, I am.” 

“The exciting kinds of scary punishments, I hope,” Cleo says. “Will I have to make it up to you — should I go and get the bedroom ready? You seemed to like the new cuffs, I’ve been meaning to give them a try myself.” Xisuma chokes. 

“Cleo. We have— company,” he says, red-faced.

“Joe is not company,” they scoff, and when they continue it is pointed. They are trying to mean business. “And speaking of Joe Hills—”

“Hey, if you think about it, this whole section kind of looks like a smiley face,” Joe is saying now, ignoring all pointed attempts at meaning business, hands on his hips. “With the, uh, the circuits. Are these called circuits, X, do I have that right?”

“What?— You know what circuits are, Joe.” Cleo frowns. “Also, this is not you telling Xisuma.” 

“Smiley face. It looks like a smiley face.” 

Cleo tilts her head. “It really doesn’t.”

“No, it definitely does. Turn around. Tilt your head the other way? Yeah—”

“Oh, I see it. Bit of a lopsided smiley face, isn’t it.”

“Yeah, I was thinking a lopsided one— or, like, a smiley face carved into a pumpkin, and the pumpkin’s rotting. Halloween’s over.”

“Well, that’s morbid.” 

Xisuma takes the opportunity to reach for the chest and pull out another stack of sticky pistons while Cleo is distracted. He returns to the circuit he’s been puzzling over, realizes Joe’s meddling and torch misplacement has in fact provided the solution and the circuit is now working exactly as intended, and feels nearly too embarrassed to keep working at all. 

“Or it’s on a lollipop,” Joe goes on, “and someone’s been licking the lollipop.”

“I’m sorry? Licking the lollipop? Does that leave lollipops lopsided, now, do you melt your lollipops when you eat them?”

“You smudge the dye a little! So if a lollipop had a face, uh, painted onto it— look, you wanted a less morbid example, this is less morbid—”

“I didn’t say I wanted one, I’m perfectly fine with morbid things, I was only commenting on the presence of morbidity—”

“There was judgment in your tone.”

“Joe, are you going to tell him,” Cleo asks, and their tone has abruptly become much more serious. Their face has taken on a worrying expression— the laughter in their eyes is gone. 

“You know, I’m working up to it, Cleo,” Joe responds, and his tone is off, too— if they want Xisuma’s attention, they have it. “I’m— cut a man some slack, alright, I’m—”

“Stalling,” she cuts him off. “That’s what you’re doing, you’re stalling, and you’re not clever enough to get away with it around me. Maybe you could fool Etho, but that’s a maybe.” 

“I am not stalling. Also, that is hurtful.”

“Then tell him, or I will.”

Xisuma has decided to pick up one of the observers, shuffle some things around in his inventory, and put the observer back down, for the sake of appearances and for the pleasant feeling of seeing the redstone light up like he’s just solved his problem himself. “Tell me what?” he asks lightly as he puts the observer back in place, and two pairs of eyes flick toward him at once. 

It’s rare that he really feels like an admin around these two in particular, rather than just another player, someone to mess about with and bother and swat the hands of when he ought to be sleeping instead of working. He feels it now. 

“It’s just— a bad respawn,” Joe says at last, which is a little alarming in this context but does not exactly answer Xisuma’s question. “We’ve all had bad respawns. Happens sometimes.” 

“Which is what he told me the first time, and the second, and the third— and three’s a pattern, Joe.”

“And I listened! I listened, Cleo, and here we are, and— here I am, talking about it. A bad respawn. Three bad respawns.” 

“You’re— I think that you might be sick,” says Cleo. “Ill. Not— well. Something’s— not right, in your code, that isn’t normal.” They turn to Xisuma. “We need you to have a look at it, make sure it’s nothing serious, or— fix it, if it is serious.”

“Cleo,” Joe says, sighing. 

“No, Joe, you know what, you're fine, I've— changed my mind, and you can let me do the talking. You have your issues about being a nuisance and a bother and being demanding, but you’re not any of those things and you never have been and— this is serious. It’s appropriate to be demanding about something this serious, and Xisuma’s our friend—”

“He’s our admin, Cleo.” And Xisuma is expecting this correction before Joe has even opened his mouth, but the words sting more than he is prepared for them to sting.

“Which makes this— literally his job,” Cleo says, exasperated. “Xisuma, please, back me up here.” 

“Cleo’s right, this is my job,” Xisuma says, frowning. “Could you elaborate on— what you mean, exactly, by a bad respawn? Three bad respawns. Something’s not right in your code?” 

“We don’t know that,” Joe says.

“No, we do,” says Cleo, “because you’ve been glitching, and that is not normal — and anyway, if it’s really nothing, Xisuma will be able to check and confirm that.”

“Right again,” Xisuma says, properly worried now. “Why don’t we— take this somewhere else to chat? Somewhere a little more comfortable? A little more secure. I think having a look is in order, after all.” 

He’s not sure how to place the look that Joe gives him— it is very brief, and there is something very intense about it, and then it is gone and Joe is turning to look at Cleo, who is standing close enough to reach out and squeeze his hand. 

A preliminary glance over Joe’s code makes apparent that this little bug will take more than a preliminary glance to identify. Xisuma has fixed bugs in his players before— it is a fairly standard admin responsibility; things happen, sometimes, edge cases crop up and variables are passed around to unexpected places. And so many of Xisuma’s hermits are— a little unusual in origin. 

It’s never pleasant when the problem starts out stumping him, but Xisuma reassures himself that he has found and fixed all manner of bugs that started out stumping him. He needs a deeper look, that’s first on the agenda. “I’ll have to put you under for that,” he says apologetically, and the look in Joe’s eyes is— 

Xisuma is not a fan of it, and he is not a fan of this situation at all, in fact, but it’s what needs doing. 

It’s a very dangerous thing, a respawn-related bug— glitching on the respawn, that’s not ideal at all. That’s a very dangerous place for anything to go wrong. Xisuma’s players are very, very dear to him, and Joe—

He has known Joe Hills for a very long time. It wouldn’t be very proper of him to play favorites, would it, with so many hermits that are all equally his responsibility, but Xisuma has known Joe Hills a very long time. This little bug needs fixing, if Xisuma is going to know Joe Hills for a longer time yet. 

“We thought you might have to,” Cleo says. “Didn’t we? This is— serious, isn’t it.” 

“It could’ve been nothing,” Joe says.

“But it wasn’t,” Cleo says. She’s known Joe a very long time, too— for all of her life, and most of his— and Xisuma can see it in her eyes. 

“It’s certainly going to be serious if we don’t do anything about it, but I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t handle,” Xisuma says, and he tries to sound— upbeat about the whole thing, light and reassuring. He tries to think of jokes that he could be cracking to lighten the mood and comes up unhappily empty. 

He puts Joe under, and Cleo stays, wringing her hands anxiously, watching with wide eyes as Xisuma opens Joe up— he has interfaces designed just for this, screens that make things a little more human-readable, plugins to automate some basic diagnostics that’d be a chore to do manually, debuggers designed for stepping through all sorts of places in a player’s code. 

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” he says lightly, after he’s been working for the better part of an hour and found nothing very informative yet. “Not that I’m going to force you to leave— but this can’t be very entertaining, can it? You must have had things to get done today— I’m only saying that I don’t need your help here, I’ll be alright. Joe will be alright.” 

“He’s my best friend,” Cleo says, and then nothing else.

She still has that look in her eyes. Frighteningly intense, not fixed on Xisuma— fixed on Joe, who is not conscious because that would be exceptionally cruel, who has had all the parts of his code that’d wake him screaming in agony disabled— Joe, who is stretched apart over screens and connected to keyboards, all of the most necessary parts of him pulled open one by one. 

Xisuma has taken his gloves off. He reaches for another file, following the traceback— segfault, why would there be a segmentation fault here, why would it only ever come up now, he’s thinking, frustrated— and it shifts and pops out of place obediently, putty in Xisuma’s fingers. 

Cleo shivers. Her eyes are very wide. 

“Maybe it would be better if you didn’t— stay,” Xisuma says, awkwardly. It would be— kinder for Cleo not to see this, he can’t help but think, if it’s distressing her this much. And he feels terribly guilty for it, but it is distracting, also, and he’d prefer to be as focused as possible for something this important.

“Maybe,” she agrees after a long moment. “No, you’re right— I should go. This is difficult work, and I should let you focus.” 

“Difficult,” he says, very focused on picking through an array of… pages in Joe’s virtual memory, or at least that’s what they should be— addresses that he realizes with some distress he’ll have to check individually and manually. “Yes, this is— difficult. I’d say it’s a mite more intensive than fixing bits of broken redstone. You might just— have to make it up to me, after all. What was that about—” He tries to remember the joke she’d made earlier. “Cuffs? Scary admin?” He offers a lighthearted smile. One she can see, as he’s set the helmet to the side, to be sure none of his vision is obstructed. 

Cleo stills, and her eyes flick to meet his. 

“I will, will I,” she says in an odd tone. “I’d— you know, if it’s Joe’s existence in the balance, you could have— just about anything you wanted from me, Xisuma, couldn’t you. Ooh, scary admin after all.” And she tries for a laugh but doesn’t get far into it, and Xisuma realizes abruptly that she is either not entirely joking, or she is not confident that he is entirely joking. The humor is— gone, for a moment, as the question hangs between them. His hand stills over the screen.

“I wouldn’t— even try to say no, would I,” she says, sounding like she has only just realized this herself. She is still looking at him. 

For a moment Xisuma feels as though the world has dropped out from under him— as though he has been sundered from it, and there is nothing below or around him as far as the eye can see— as though there is no anchor and nothing to grab hold of, only himself and a vastness on all sides. This world that he has built, the world his players have built— negligible, at best, hardly realer than a flicker on a silver screen. It would crumple like wet paper, if he told it to.

He is the universe cradling his players, holding them in his palm above a silence that’d claim them if he let it claim them. It would have had Scar. It would have had Cleo. It would have Joe, now, if he allowed it. They are so terribly fragile.

Cleo looks fragile right now. Xisuma forgets that they are not equals— Xisuma forgets this so completely that the reminder stuns him past all speech. 

“Cleo,” he says, startled enough that he sounds almost like he is chiding her, and her brows knit together, and her eyes are very bright, lips pressed together. 

How long, he is thinking, disbelieving— How long, now, have I known you? And it is a longer stretch of time than many of Xisuma’s hermits have even been alive— it is so long that he forgets there was a time he was an admin without a Cleo at his side, leaning over his shoulder to bully him about all his silly ineptitudes or advise him on mediating disputes. 

It is only a moment, and it passes, and Cleo blinks, expression returning to something more normal. “Well,” she says, and her voice is softer than she normally wears it.  “It’s a good thing that you’re you, isn’t it. I think I’m very lucky to have ended up where I did.” 

Xisuma searches for words, and he finds very few available to him. 

Among all of the things he forgets, he forgets especially that Cleo was not quite a player at all before he finished the work of making her into one. Joe looked at him strangely then, too, and Xisuma thought he understood these strange looks— Xisuma understands, now, that he did not understand some things then at all. 

“I’ve never been afraid of any admins,” she says, still very soft. “I’ve heard— stories, you know, all sorts of things— the other hermits. Joe. Even Joe— they all had to come from somewhere, before they ended up on Hermitcraft. You know— exactly what I mean, don’t you.”

Xisuma does.

Xisuma’s been awake for more hours than he can count, staring at tracebacks, poring over them and the files they point him toward, and he’s looking at sets of addresses and things stored in them that aren’t adding up, and it hits him all at once: a memory leak. He’s looking at a memory leak. He is looking at— a segfault that shouldn’t be showing up and that’s never shown up before, because memory that should be free and once was free is not free anymore, because the garbage collection’s not doing what it should— because this is a very little problem that’s built up over a very long time into a big one. A memory leak in the respawn code, the thing that keeps one of his oldest players anchored to the world and brings him back each time he dies. 

He has to— stop, and breathe, and carefully not think very hard at all about what might have happened if Cleo hadn’t pestered Joe into coming to Xisuma about this when they did. Players are—

They are terribly fragile. They are terribly fragile. 

Xisuma finds it, digs his fingers into it, pries open the code in question and reads it over. This is— fixable, he tells himself. Fixable, if only he looks at it long enough, if he can only pinpoint the source, the line of code that’s allocating something that never gets freed, leaving things to pile up and pile up and overwrite information that should not be overwritten— that has already been overwritten— 

He’ll come up with something. And he’ll keep Joe here until he does, safe in this suspended state, pulled apart under Xisuma’s hands. Surely players have had this problem before and survived it, surely— he is— 

He pauses. He is not alone with a player in this room anymore. 

“Hello there, friend,” says a voice behind him— it is Xisuma’s own, but deeper, and Xisuma goes very still. “My, what are we up to here?”

“Evil Xisuma,” he says, keeping his voice light. “Now, how did you get down here? This is a very private operating room— I did think that I’d put up some security.”

“Well, you did, but I’m not just a puny little hermit, am I? Wasn’t difficult to get through at all, for something like me. Goodness, would you look at this,” says the other Xisuma, strolling closer until he is in view, step by slow drawn-out step. He is very close. “You have one of your little players all pulled open. Didn’t know you did that sort of thing.”

“Stay away from him, old friend,” Xisuma says, and he finds he does not have to make any effort at all to sound ominous— to sound rightly terrifying, like he is chilling the room by several degrees— to sound like something dangerous, even as his tone stays light. The other Xisuma is very close, and if he gets one step closer to Joe, Xisuma won’t be feeling friendly anymore at all. “You don’t want to do that, I think.” 

“Don’t I?” the other Xisuma says, but he turns away from Joe. 

The other Xisuma is not wearing his helmet or his gloves, either. He is— very close. Xisuma wets his lips, and he can see how the other Xisuma’s eyes track the motion. 

He closes some things down as casually as he can, takes a few steps away from Joe, and the other Xisuma’s eyes follow him. He never is primarily focused on Xisuma’s hermits, in the end. 

“Private operating room, you said,” the other Xisuma says. “And is anyone going to come looking for you in this private operating room anytime soon?”

Xisuma takes another step away from Joe. “Whatever you’re thinking, bud, this isn’t the time,” he says. “I’m in the middle of something very important, and that has to take precedence over any evil schemes, I’m afraid.” 

“I don’t think I’m asking for your permission,” the other Xisuma says. “You really do have trouble with that idea, don’t you.” 

“And I don’t think you’d like to find out what happens when I really want someone off my server,” Xisuma says. 

“Oh, go on,” says the other Xisuma, and the tone of his voice feels not unlike a trickle of ice water down Xisuma’s back. He has stepped still closer. Uncomfortably closer. “Try. Try and boot me right off.” 

Xisuma reaches for his console, and he finds that nothing responds. 

He fumbles, and he makes a strange and embarrassing sound in his throat— it is like finding a limb or an entire sense suddenly missing; it is like reaching for his inventory and finding it gone, it is— something that has never been possible unless Xisuma himself has made a series of very inept and comical errors in the server’s code, which has, admittedly, happened a few times before. 

The icy feeling down his back has grown. The other Xisuma has never been— a threat, before. Well. This is a new development. 

“Well,” Xisuma says, attempting to recover. He is running down options, in his head— he is not e ntirely incompetent as an admin, contrary to what some might believe, and if he’s right in guessing how the other Xisuma has achieved this— he does tend to plan for things to go wrong— “Well, that’s— a very neat trick, that is. You’ve done— a very good job with that. You—” 

He takes a step back— he realizes he has taken several, and this time his heel hits a wall behind him. When did that happen, he is thinking, incredulous, and then there is a hand at his throat, a light grip on his jaw, and his back is hitting the wall and the other Xisuma is looking at him, eyes just inches away. 

“You’ve certainly gotten me in a pickle this time, haven’t you,” he finishes unsteadily. 

There is a hand on his jaw. It squeezes, and Xisuma’s breath catches— it is not gentle. It is nothing at all like Cleo’s hand, nothing like Keralis’s. It is— realer than that. Another admin’s hand.

The other Xisuma’s eyes don’t look exactly like his own. 

“I think I have,” the other Xisuma says, and he sounds delighted. He is evidently distracted by parts of Xisuma that he keeps looking at— his lips, his throat, and there is a hand sliding down over his Adam’s apple— and Xisuma takes advantage of this momentary distraction to slip an executable from his inventory into his hand. He jams it into the back of the other Xisuma’s neck, and the other Xisuma stalls in place, hands freezing on Xisuma’s body. 

“Unfortunately I— really do need to get back to work,” he says, a bit breathier than he means to be, stuttering a bit over his words. “You with the schemes— I can always count on you for evil schemes, can’t I? We’ll just have to see if we can— reschedule, though I’m afraid you’re going to have to try a bit harder next time—”

He’s sure the other Xisuma would have all sorts of things to say in return if he were not frozen— quips and whatnot. Xisuma is very glad that he is frozen. He pulls another file out and runs that one, and finds he can access his console again and all of his commands. There, that’s a relief. 

“I do have backups plans for backup plans,” he says apologetically. “Bit of a bad habit of mine, overpreparing. That ZombieCleo, she calls me a workaholic, but it pays off, I think. Here I am, perfectly prepared. I’m giving you a time-out from Hermitcraft, now, how does— a week sound? Yes, I’ll see you in no less than a week.” 

And the other Xisuma is gone, and that’s— settled. That’s settled. He has work to get back to. Important work— he would feel bad about this, is the thing, but there is very little more important to Xisuma than his players are. 

He reaches up to touch his mouth, his jaw, his neck— his skin seems to burn, still, where the other Xisuma touched it. He realizes abruptly that he wants the touch back.  

He is really not sure what to do with himself about that. 

“Are you serious?” Cleo says.

The sky is pale, and the air is cool. It will be a sunny day. It’s very early in the morning, and Xisuma’s been awake for— he does not know how long he’s been awake. At least forty-eight hours, but that might be a lowball estimate. Cleo doesn’t look like she’s slept, either. Her curls are frizzier than normal, and her skin is sallower. 

Joe doesn’t look like— well, Joe doesn’t look like anything he has ever looked like in the past, so it’s hard to make any real judgments about whether he looks sleep-deprived. He shouldn’t look sleep-deprived, Xisuma figures; while he did not exactly sleep for the duration of his surgery, he wasn’t exactly awake, either. 

Cleo reaches up to run a hand through her hair again. “That’s— that is the solution. That is Joe Hills. I am looking at Joe Hills right now?”

“It’s a temporary solution,” Xisuma stresses, feeling a bit embarrassed. Not ideal, he is aware. Joe Hills is not generally this blue, or this small, or this— fuzzy— muppet-like. He is currently all of these things, as he is a muppet. “I’m sure we can find something more suitable eventually, but it was something of an emergency—”

“No, no, I think I like it,” says Joe, holding out his little blue muppet arms to examine them, and Cleo snorts and covers her mouth and snorts again and continues to fail to hold back her laughter. “I could get used to this. Joe Hills, coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee—” He strikes a pose— a little muppet pose, because he is currently in the body of a muppet, and Cleo doubles over, sounding like she’s holding back sobs of laughter. “What do you think?”

“I think—” Cleo reaches up to wipe tears from her eyes, and then starts giggling again and has to start her sentence over several times. “I think you— god— I think it suits perfectly. Your outside finally matches your inside—”

“Hey!”

“That’s a compliment. You’re a muppet and I love you, Joe— Xisuma, don’t you dare fix this. I mean it. Don’t you dare.”

“He’ll be fine in terms of— well, the memory leak is dealt with,” Xisuma stresses, “at least for the time being, though I’m afraid there might need to be some more body-switching in future to continue dealing with it. He’ll be fine— that’s the important bit, I’ve made sure that he’s definitely not going to permanently die in the near future. We can deal with— aesthetic preferences— secondarily to this.” 

“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Joe says, striking another pose and sending Cleo into a fit of giggles again. “Aesthetic preferences— I think that I officially aesthetic preference blue muppets for the foreseeable future. Do you think we could make any changes to the nose? That’s the only thing, I think, the nose—” 

“I know,” is what Cleo says to Xisuma. “I know he’ll be fine. I know he will be, Xisuma, I know you’d never— I know.” 

She looks at him like she’s trying to say more with her eyes than she can say with her words, and she reaches over to squeeze his hand. 

Chapter Text

The end of season nine is not nearly as stressful as the end of season eight was, but oh dear, it is certainly trying to be. The things just keep piling on top of the other things. There are sentient dungeons now. Xisuma didn’t want to be dealing with sentient dungeons while attempting to wrap up a season, any more than he wanted to be dealing with memory leaks in his players. 

In related news, the other Xisuma’s Withermen have been giving him more trouble. They’re certainly not just mindless little world-destroying minions anymore, which would have pleased him, as he’d been struggling very hard with the aim of achieving this, but the trouble now is they don’t seem to like him very much. Apparently there’s been talk of unionizing lately, which has the other Xisuma in an absolute fit. Xisuma can admit to a bit of curiosity as to how that little debacle will play out. 

But of course the trouble with the Withermen hasn’t stopped him at all from being a pain in Xisuma’s side, or from insulting Xisuma, which he seems very fond of, doesn’t he, even when Xisuma should really be the one entitled to insult him after another of his evil schemes has been thwarted or undone— which is what is happening right now, interrupting the hour between two and three p.m. which Xisuma could have been spending with a book and a nice cup of tea. Instead here he is with his console pulled up and a test suite running on a great big screen back at his base— he’s finishing up rolling back the server to a version that hasn’t been blown to smithereens. Again. 

“That was a good effort, friend,” he says, feeling tired. “Very solid. Nine out of ten. Definitely an A-minus this time, at least, goodness. I think you’ve given me a headache.” 

The other Xisuma glares at him where he’s restrained against one wall. “I’ll have you next time,” he snarls. 

“I am glad you stopped by. It’s good to see you every once in awhile, though I have to say I prefer our talks over tea. This was a bit much, don’t you think? And while you’re here—”

“Stop saying that. I’m not ‘stopping by.’ I’m here to destroy the Hermitcraft server, you pathetic excuse for an admin—”

“Yes, and you’ve done that, haven’t you, and you can check it off your list. Can you ask Zedaph if he’s seen Tango around since the Decked Out incident? If you’re headed out that way anyway, I mean, if it wouldn’t be any trouble. It’s just that I have a full schedule this afternoon, and I’d really prefer to get this out of the way sooner rather than later.”

The other Xisuma stares at him. 

“I’m not headed to see Zedaph,” he says after a moment.

Xisuma blinks. “Oh, that’s odd. You usually stop by his base on your way out for a chat, don’t you?”

There is a pause. “I do not do that.”

“Hm.” Xisuma will have to check on the tracking plugin, if that’s the case. “Must be an issue with the sensors, then, I told Etho to have a look at them weeks ago. Well, never mind. Go on, then, scram. I have a lot to do this afternoon.” He sends the command to release the restraints. 

“You know,” Evil Xisuma says before he leaves, “you are a bit pathetic, as admins go. I’ve never met one who treats their players the way you treat yours, and I’ve met more than a few other admins.” 

Xisuma is not happy to admit how long he turns these words over in his mind after the other Xisuma has gone. 

Tango stands in place, fidgeting a bit— squirming like caught prey, and Xisuma feels a bit silly about the whole thing, standing here so superciliously, like he’s about to hand down some dreaded extreme punishment with all of his administrative power. 

By all rights he should be very stern about this, and he is trying valiantly to summon up the affect of a very stern admin. An intimidating admin, perhaps, that would do. The other Xisuma’s words run through his mind— pathetic, as admins go, is he? Unfortunately he does not think he is succeeding in the least at the stern intimidation, and he is mildly despairing over the fact that EvilX might just be right about this. 

“Right,” he says finally, clearing his throat. “Tango. Glad to have you here, thank you for your— cooperation.”

He pauses. “Not that you have any choice in the matter, being here. Goodness. You’ve been— you’ve been a very troublesome player, lately, haven’t you. You’ve been up to some naughtiness. Causing some problems for me.” 

Naughtiness may be an understatement. The dungeon’s latest trick was to corrupt all respawn points that weren’t located inside of the dungeon. (Pearl was able to negotiate with it to relocate the acceptable respawn points to the dungeon entrance, which at least reduced the frequency of accidental ravager-related spawntrapping until Xisuma could get a handle on the situation.) 

“Right,” says Tango. He glances around the interior of Xisuma’s base, wringing his hands a little. Fidgety. “Problems, yeah. Well, I wouldn’t say I caused them, exactly, it’s more— the universe conspired a little bit, for problem-causing to end up happening? I don’t think I can take all the credit.” 

“You built a dungeon game that is attempting to not be a game anymore,” Xisuma says. “Tango, friend, you— built the game.” 

“Well,” says Tango. “Well, I— well, yeah. I did do that, sort of, except for how I didn’t, and it— built itself, I think? Toward the end there? I didn’t tell it to do some of those things. Most of those things.” He pauses, fidgets a little bit more, and when he speaks again he sounds a little bit awed. “I didn’t even know it could do some of those things.” 

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Xisuma says tiredly. “Right, and that’s part of the problem, isn’t it, so why don’t you start with— er. Explain to me exactly what went— wrong, there.”

“Oh, I can do that, yeah,” says Tango, and there’s a look coming over his face. Xisuma knows that look, has known it a very long time, now— Tango was a hermit not even a week before he was mad sciencing all over the place, playing with portals that shouldn’t have been able to behave the way he got them to behave— he was young, then, and so was Xisuma. The look he gets— that hasn’t changed, in all this time. “Some of it, I can explain— some of it, I mean. Emergent behavior,” he says. “It’s—” 

He cuts himself off with a breathless little giggle. “X, man, I didn’t know that I could do that. I’m still not— exactly sure what happened? Decked Out is— it’s a game, right? It’s not that it doesn’t want to be one anymore, it’s— designed entirely around the player, it’s player-obsessed, it’s— you make the experience exactly what you want the experience to be, that’s game design— mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, you start at the end and go backwards from there, you make the mechanics with that in mind, thinking like that. You start there. And so I started there, and I was thinking— give it a brain, right? Not a real one. Just— a little one. We started with— a little brain, a game design brain inside the game—” 

“A brain,” Xisuma echoes weakly. 

“Right. Just a little one,” says Tango. “Okay— do you want the long version, or the really long version?” 

Xisuma despairs slightly more. “Could I have a short version, please, if at all possible?” Oh, dear. That didn’t sound very stern admin of him at all. 

“Short version. Uh, sure. Yeah. Let me— workshop that. Real quick.”

Tango is quiet for a moment.

“I have no idea what happened,” he says finally.

Xisuma stares.

“That’s the short version,” Tango clarifies. “Uh. I have— no fucking clue. I’m gonna have to do some investigating and figuring that out. Checking the logs? Yeah. I have no idea.” 

Xisuma stares a little longer, and then he reaches up to— he can’t rub at his forehead, and he realizes this after he’s already committed to the motion, so he just awkwardly rubs at the spot on his helmet that his forehead is underneath. To communicate— forehead-rubbing emotion. Well. This is a derp moment for him. 

“Right,” he says. He is being very stern about this. Goodness, Tango could have brought the whole server down, for all he knows, mucking around like that with such— emergent things. “That’s worse. That makes it worse, what you’ve done. Now I can’t say that you know what you’ve done wrong and you won’t do it again and send you on your way.” 

“You could probably still do that,” Tango says. 

“You don’t even know what you did,” Xisuma says. 

“Well,” Tango says, and then he doesn’t say anything else for a long moment. “Uh, yeah. I don’t.”

There’s another silence, and Xisuma decides to— to walk around a little bit, and see if that will be stern and ominous, clearing his throat and hemming and hawing a little bit while he thinks over what to do. Tango looks at him appropriately anxiously once or twice, so that’s all well and good. 

“Well, I’m going to have to punish you,” he says at last, once he has probably exhausted the stern ominousness of the hemming and hawing. 

“Uh— right,” Tango says. “Uh-huh.” He looks— confused? 

“It wouldn’t be— very adminly of me not to,” he goes on, feeling almost apologetic. “We really can’t have this happening again.”

“Right, no, yeah, of course,” says Tango. “Dungeons kidnapping people, that’s— bad, not good, no bueno. What did you— uh— have in mind? For a punishment?” 

And here is the trouble. Xisuma attempts to look as though he is not floundering, even though he very much is. He chooses a posture that might look intimidating and— adminly— and says, “Well, that’s— I think that’s a question that you should try to answer first, isn’t it. Why don’t you tell me what you think you— deserve?”

Yes, that sounds excellent, Xisuma is thinking, proud of himself, and then Tango seems to— light up, a little bit, and at once Xisuma stops feeling proud of himself and starts feeling as though he has made a mistake. 

“Oh,” he says after a second. “You’re— yeah? You mean like— actually? I can— I have some ideas. Yeah yeah, absolutely, I have some— do you mind if I just—” 

He places a few blocks down to make a table. “Uh, sorry, is it okay if I do that? I know you, uh— you did the thing so that I can’t place blocks down—”

“Right, I did do that,” says Xisuma, “because it’s just that the last time you put blocks down, you built a dungeon that kidnaps people—”

“Right, yeah, but this is just a table. See, oak planks. And paper.” He adds a stack of paper and a bit of charcoal. “Here. I will un-hack myself now—” He pulls up an interface that Xisuma doesn’t get a good look at, swipes at a few things. “Un-hacked. Okay— so this is easiest if I just draw you a diagram, right? Here’s what I’m thinking. You start with, like, a little glass chamber— well, you start with taking all of my clothes off. Glass chamber after that.”

Xisuma chokes. He does not recover in time to say anything before Tango has launched into his explanation headfirst, putting the charcoal to the paper to supplement his vivid description of the— punishment— setup. He includes a list of required materials sketched out over to the side, which he continually updates as he adds components. 

Xisuma does not know what else to do but attempt to nod along— he must admit he is impressed that Tango is coming up with something so elaborate on the fly. Then it continues to get more and more elaborate as he keeps talking, and Xisuma slowly realizes, with dawning horror, that Tango could not, in fact, have possibly come up with this on the fly. 

“—and the potions dispense here, obviously, like, uh, that thing Imp and Skizz like to do, y’know?” Xisuma does not know. “—and then that’s where your admin powers come in— you know— just grab me and mix me up a little, I dunno, have some fun. Turn stuff off— turn stuff on?” He wiggles his eyebrows up and down. “For— punishment, obviously, because I’d hate that. This is your, uh, divine right as admin, that’s what we’re talking here.”

“Right,” Xisuma says, feeling a bit faint. 

“Just an idea,” Tango emphasizes. “Just, uh— a suggestion. You know. I think I’d probably learn my lesson. If you did all that.” 

“Right,” Xisuma says again. Tango glances down at his diagram, thinks for another moment, nods to himself and opens his mouth again. 

“—and that’s when you can shove the—” 

Xisuma’s mind goes blank with— panic? Sure, call it panic— and he sends a command before he can rethink the impulse. Tango abruptly stops talking, mouth clicking shut. He blinks and stares.

“That’s. There,” Xisuma says. “That’s— I’ve decided. That’s your punishment, that’s— it’ll wear off in— fifteen minutes. By which point you’ll be outside of this base, and probably back at your— somewhere— and you’ll have learned your lesson, won’t you, about unleashing dungeons with emergent behaviors on my server. From your punishment, which is this.” 

Tango blinks at him again, diagrams in hand still.

“Go and— get on your way, then,” Xisuma says, trying to drudge up a tone that sounds remotely more stern and intimidating than flustered.

Once Tango has left, Xisuma has to take several deep breaths. He is— re-centering himself, that’s what he’s doing. His face is— very hot, as are some other parts of him, and he is determinedly not running over and over in his mind the way Tango’s voice had sounded around the words and that’s where your admin powers come in— you know— just grab me and mix me up a little.  

Turn things off, turn things on. Well. He did that bit, didn’t he, turned Tango’s voice right off, that’s— his divine right as admin, exercised. Wonderful. 

Chapter Text

Xisuma wakes to the feeling of being restrained. His wrists, his ankles, his chest, his knees. He’s on a hard surface— a floor?— arms shackled up to a surface behind him. He’s not wearing his helmet or his gloves or his outer layers of armor, and he wonders for a moment, once he is aware enough to form a coherent thought, if he’s negotiated something with Keralis again and just— managed to forget about it? That does seem like something he’d do, he thinks with mild despair. 

Then he tugs against the restraints and finds them— solid. And now he is much more fully awake, blinking sleep from his eyes that is strangely sticky and resistant to fall away. The restraints don’t give, and that shouldn’t be possible, he thinks, still sleepily delirious, unless— 

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” the other Xisuma says, and a chill runs down Xisuma’s spine. “A real sleeping beauty, aren’t you? I was starting to wonder if you’d ever come around. Maybe that’s not fair, though, is it, as I’m the one that drugged you.” 

Xisuma wets his lips. “Evil Xisuma,” he says. 

“Well, don’t you sound chipper,” Evil Xisuma responds. “Have you missed me? It’s been a little while, hasn’t it.” 

Xisuma swallows, tugs against the restraints again and finds them equally solid. They don’t give. They should give, the way any part of a world will give the moment Xisuma asks it to— they don’t give.

“How,” he manages, a little bit feeble from leftover sleep in his system (drugs? drugs in his system? potions, maybe) and a bit of fear, voice cracking. “How…” He tugs again, and his breath comes faster, now, verging on panic. He can’t move. He reaches for his console, and then his inventory— no access to commands. No access to anything at all. He’s been thorough this time. 

Well, that can't be good. 

“Custom-coded,” the other Xisuma says, seeming very pleased with himself about the whole thing, “just for this. Took a few notes out of your book, with the suit of yours, that’s very clever— let’s see, I think that’s worth better than an A-minus, isn’t it? I’ve certainly had you longer than five minutes. Or is it five minutes conscious, should I let you struggle a bit first, is that only fair? You can give it a go, if you’d like.” 

He reaches out to pat Xisuma’s cheek, and Xisuma’s breath catches at the touch. Mortified, he hopes that it was not a very noticeable catching of breath. 

“You might have some trouble rolling your server back so quickly from this position,” he goes on. “That’s what I’m here to do, I think, destroy the whole thing, blow it all to smithereens, the usual business— unless I get any better ideas— I haven’t decided exactly how I’ll do it yet, I thought maybe you’d want to be conscious for the whole deciding monologue.” He’ll have trouble holding his hermits up out of the silence underneath the server from this position, too— something dark and horrified and intense starts to stir in Xisuma’s chest, like the opening of a great chasm, a feeling he has not felt in a very long time— the restraints feel so much tighter, suddenly, and Evil Xisuma must see something on his face because he adds hurriedly, “Of course we’ll give your puny little hermits time to evacuate, because it wouldn’t be a properly evil scheme if no one were around for all of the evil aftermath, would it. Can’t have anyone getting caught up in any destroyed servers by mistake, that’d just ruin the whole thing.” 

And— of course— of course. Xisuma takes a breath, feeling a bit emotionally dizzy now in addition to whatever potion effects he’s under. He swallows. “Well,” he manages, giving the restraints another hesitant tug to test them— trying to feel for what they’re made of, and it is something like the suit, isn’t it, but the other Xisuma has made— changes. To the construction. “I think I’d— prefer if you didn’t destroy my server at all, really. Could that be arranged? It’s always such a pain to restore it, and someone’s bound to run into trouble with entities ending up where they shouldn’t. Like clockwork, every time. It’s— it’s a real annoyance, you understand.”

Evil Xisuma sighs. “You continue to be a foolish, pathetic— where is all of your TNT, why is this chest full of terracotta —”

“Ah. It’s over to the left, see, I’ve reorganized. There are signs now, look.” 

“Oh.”

“You can read signs, can’t you?”

“Of course I can read signs.” The other Xisuma opens a chest to the left of the terracotta chest. 

“Oh, sorry, of course you can— no, not that one, a bit further down— I suppose they wouldn’t have let you into flower arranging school if you couldn’t at least read a little. Are you still thinking about going back to finish your degree, by the way? You mentioned it over tea last time.” 

“Yes, but the bursar keeps ignoring my calls—” The other Xisuma opens a chest further down to the left. “Aha! You fool, you’ve told me where all of your TNT is.” 

“...I have, haven’t I.” Xisuma frowns, disappointed in himself. That’s particularly derpy even for him. “You know, I’d really rather you didn’t use it. Today just isn’t the best day for any of this, I’m afraid.” He is thinking fretfully, now, of Skizzleman— his newest hermit, collected earlier this season. “Had a build tour scheduled later this afternoon, you know, and I’m sure I’d be missed if I didn’t show, Skizzleman has been— a tad bit anxious, I think, so if there were any chance I could just skip on over there first— and goodness, these are— these restraints certainly are tight, aren’t they, I can hardly move at all.” His voice sounds a bit higher pitched than he remembers it being supposed to sound, oh dear. 

“That would be the point, yes,” Evil Xisuma says, annoyed, and Xisuma swallows. His throat feels thick. He twitches against them and finds them impossibly solid again. He feels the tickle of something not quite foreign at the back of his mind, purring at him, How many times are you going to try that? 

(...That really should not do the things to Xisuma’s body that it does.) 

“And I’m not letting you run off and play with your little hermits,” he goes on, sounding steadily more annoyed, “and I am not sure why that is always so difficult for you to understand—”

“I don’t know, I do usually tend to manage it one way or another,” Xisuma says a bit cheekily, and he gets a snarl in response.

“Well, you’re— you’re staying right here this time. Quiet.”

Well. He thinks that he’s funny. 

The other Xisuma returns to assembling stacks of stolen TNT in his inventory, presumably for blowing things to smithereens. Xisuma returns to frowning. Skizz has been anxious, so he does feel bad that he’ll probably be missing the build tour. Xisuma’s not sure what exactly Skizzleman’s circumstances were before Impulse asked if he could have a place on Hermitcraft, and he never does pry about these things— he lets hermits come to him with that, if they choose to, and many of them do choose to, sooner or later. Bits and pieces come out, fractured stories told over years and years and years. 

(There are names burned into Xisuma’s brain. There are players who will never be allowed to set foot on Hermitcraft— who will never be allowed anywhere near his server, if Xisuma can help it, and as a rule Xisuma can. ) 

Grian in particular has been a little flightier than usual about the whole Skizz situation, glancing at Xisuma with a little more unease, skittering away a little more often and dragging friends with him and making Xisuma’s heart ache. He was the same way when Pearl was new to the server— it is the specter of that old fear inside him that Xisuma saw laid bare years ago in his bedroom, when Grian was a much younger player and much fresher off of the horrifying ordeal that caused it. 

Something not quite foreign at the back of Xisuma’s mind curls its fingers around this thought.

Wouldn’t that fear taste just delicious , it whispers, coaxing. Xisuma could have more of it— wouldn’t Grian be cute that way? He could find out what Grian sounds like screaming and weeping with his code torn open to the source, couldn’t he, the way Grian’s last admins had him; he could take that fledgling pride and snap it right in half, could dig his fingers into every one of those fault lines and find out just what it takes to push him to beg—  

Xisuma’s heart skips several beats, and at once the foreign thing in his head frays and snaps, thoughts stuttering to a halt. “Absolutely not,” he says out loud, soft with disbelieving fury, jerking again against the restraints. “Absolutely— absolutely not— don’t even try something like that—”  

“Goodness me, that upset you,” Evil Xisuma says, and he looks down at one of his hands, seeming almost confused. “You can calm down, it wasn’t me who had the thought, now, was it? Mind control can only do so much, we’ve both learned that lesson—”

 “Absolutely not,” Xisuma snarls again— hears himself snarl it; he didn’t know that he could snarl like that. That chasm is opening in his chest again, darker and wider. His heart is pounding against his ribcage. The other Xisuma looks taken aback. “If you touch my players,” he manages, terror crawling up through his throat, “if you lay a hand on them— on their code —” 

He’s looking at the other Xisuma’s face— not through any visor; neither of them are wearing their helmets— the other Xisuma’s eyes don’t look exactly like his own. He’s never been able to manage that, has he— the eyes. 

The other Xisuma falters, and then he hardens back into a scornful glare. “Calm down, you useless little derp, I’m— I’m obviously not interested in any of your players,” he snaps, making a show of stepping away from the line that they both know is there, and the chasm closes, Xisuma’s chest settling. His heart still pounds. “You remember the Evil Emporium as well as I do, they— well, they made terrible minions, frankly, and being a minion isn’t even that difficult, so I’m not letting them anywhere near my pursuits of evil.” 

He never is primarily focused on Xisuma’s hermits, in the end. 

“I’m just having my fun with you,” he goes on with some bluster. “You like to have fun, don’t you? That’s what you do here— you play, you run around pretending to be just one of your puny little players? That’s all you ever end up doing whether I’m in your mind or not.” He pauses, and his voice takes on a strange tone when he continues, “You do react— so strangely to that.” 

His gaze is suddenly distant, like he has been struck by some far-off memory. 

“You really aren’t like other admins I’ve met,” he says quietly, and he sounds— frustrated by it. Like Xisuma is a puzzle that he’s been stuck on for years and years and years. He seems to realize this a moment later, and with some bluster he goes on, “And you don’t— run a very tight ship around here, do you. Worried about build tours while you let your hermits run around and play prank wars and rope you into pointless little trapping games—” Well, Xisuma has to take offense to that, Demise was lots of fun this season and if Evil X had only been willing to give it a try he’d have enjoyed it plenty. It would’ve been a perfect fit, really, for someone all about pursuits of evil. “A pathetic server,” he is saying now, contemptuously, “full of players who are terrible at being minions, fit for a useless derp of an admin.”

Xisuma takes another shuddering breath. He thinks again of the Withermen. “And yet you keep coming back here,” he says, light and acidic. “That’s funny, isn’t it? If I didn’t know better, I might call you jealous, old friend.” 

“Well, then it’s a good thing you do know better,” the other him snaps, and then he returns to— what is he doing now? He seems to be assembling a whiteboard. Ah. This will be entertaining, then. 

“Now,” he says. “To decide what evil plan I will execute today to destroy the Hermitcraft server, with the admin of Hermitcraft as my helpless witness.” He throws in an evil laugh, there, and that’s a nice touch, Xisuma thinks. 

“You don’t have to do any server-destroying, you know— you could try and run a great big scam again, couldn’t you, I remember that all going fairly well,” says Xisuma. It was nice to be business partners! A fun change of pace. 

“I am not taking suggestions,” the other Xisuma says. “This is an evil monologue.” 

“Ah, yes, but if you take suggestions, it’s an evil dialogue,” says Xisuma. “Switch things up a bit. Variety is the spice of life, isn’t that right?”

“An evil dialogue would require two evil participants,” says Evil Xisuma. “And ideally neither of them would be puny pathetic little fools.” 

“Ah, I guess I can see that logic. Perhaps you could consider it an evil monologue with interjections, helpful ones— like a peer-reviewed evil monologue—” He winces. “I’m sorry, these are just very tight.” 

“Once again, that is the point.”

“Oh, I know, they just— they’re starting to hurt, and I think they’re interfering with my circulation. My fingertips are tingling. Do you think you could just loosen them a little? Not enough to escape, of course.” 

The other Xisuma works his jaw for a moment. “Fine,” he snaps at last, and he comes closer, summoning an unfamiliar-looking blade from his hotbar. It must be custom-coded as well. “Hold still or you’ll get nicked. I’m not undoing these knots.” He cuts through the bindings around Xisuma’s wrists with ease, and Xisuma lurches forward. 

“What the— hey —”

The image of Grian still tickles the back of his mind— Grian sobbing and writhing, the things he could do to a player like Grian— the things he could do without even trying, without wanting to, the things he has nightmares of doing— he grasps frantically at the other Xisuma for the blade that he’s holding and he is met with something real and visceral, like solid flesh where there has only ever been wet paper crumpling away into nothing; it is resistance, strength, it is solid. 

It is what Xisuma himself is made of, and only one of the two of them is drugged. The front of his suit is seized, and he’s shoved backward against the wall easily, too easily— Xisuma feels, he feels— 

“Oh, that’s a good effort,” the other Xisuma says, mocking and indulgent, and Xisuma takes a sharp shuddering breath against the helplessness that washes over him, feeling all of a sudden like a— a scolded pet. “Good effort, I’ll have to give that— an A-minus, how does that sound? Or maybe it’s only a B-plus, and you get an A-minus next time if you manage half a heart of damage.” 

He takes both of Xisuma’s wrists in one hand, slams them back against the wall above his head. “You’ll have to try harder than that, though, if you want to get away,” he says, and he holds Xisuma in place there while his other hand reaches for more of the custom rope from his inventory. 

He ties Xisuma back in place, and this time the bindings are slightly looser— snug enough to be very secure, but not painfully tight. Xisuma is also in a bit of a— a more compromising position, now, much less upright, his arms stretched wider which gives him less wiggle room. 

“This— seems like a bit much, doesn’t it,” Xisuma says, dazed. “For the purposes of discussing server destruction.” 

“Be quiet,” the other Xisuma says. “It’s a more humiliating position, because you tried to get away. I’m humiliating you, are you humiliated?”

“More confused than humiliated, I think,” Xisuma says, and he tries not to make clear how else it is making him feel, because that would be too embarrassing to recover from. “Alright, I’m a little bit humiliated— I’m five percent humiliated. That’s not an A-minus, either, I’m afraid—”

There is a hand around his throat, and Evil Xisuma (who is overtop of him, who is— by necessity, due to the position that Xisuma is now in— having to lean very much overtop of him ) snarls, “I told you to be quiet,” and Xisuma makes a sound that is terribly close to a squeak, and— 

Evil Xisuma goes still for a moment, his hand going still and resting on Xisuma's throat. His eyes have gone wider, his nostrils flared. 

"Oh," he says, and Xisuma would perhaps feel as though he'd like to— melt, to just melt right away into an embarrassed puddle of goo, or to fall into a hole opening up suddenly in the floor— it would be a good time, he might think dazedly, for a sentient dungeon to get ideas about acceptable respawn points— Xisuma would perhaps feel this way, except for how he is focused wholly and entirely on the hand on his throat. The touch— how warm it is, how real, how he thinks he might be able to feel the curved ridges of his own fingerprints pressed up against his neck, if he concentrates.

"Oh," the other Xisuma says again, delighted, and Xisuma swallows against the hand on his throat. It presses a bit harder, and he makes a small, almost inaudible sound.

 “— do you like that, Xisuma?” he taunts, and Xisuma has to shut his eyes, face enflamed. “My hand on your throat—” He moves, pulling back a little, trailing a hand down to the binding that crosses over Xisuma’s chest. “—being bound down like this? Bit of a new experience for you, as I understand. That’s another way we could play, isn’t it?” 

Xisuma shudders almost violently and tugs again, helplessly. Uselessly. He has the distant, absurd thought that this whole situation is really not ideal for his image as a stern and intimidating admin. 

What image, something in his mind thinks back at him, startling him a little. You’re hardly much of an admin at all, are you? Much less a stern and intimidating one. You look much better like this, look at you— 

“It’s pathetic,” the other Xisuma says in chorus with the voice in the back of Xisuma’s mind, and Xisuma startles again. His boots click against the floor of Xisuma’s base as he steps backward to stalk around him in a half-circle. “Like you aren’t even trying. Goodness, it’s like you want me to overpower you— can that be right? Do you want to be bound up and humiliated like this, Xisuma? Do you want to be— ravished? Oh, that one felt good to say, it did. Ravished. I could do some ravishing, I think, that’s very evil-sounding.” 

His eyes rove down Xisuma’s body, enthralled, and he says— with the tone of someone about to give into an impulse whether or not it’s a good idea, with the tone of someone who just can’t resist what’s been laid out in front of him— “Well, if I have you to myself already, anyway…”

He waves a hand over a console that Xisuma can’t see, and Xisuma finds his position abruptly adjusted half a block vertically, a bed underneath him now. 

“Maybe I don’t want anything to do with your server or your players tonight, after all,” says the other him, and when he gets close again his hand drifts much lower this time. It shifts to slip between his legs, and Xisuma’s breath stutters. 

“Ah,” he says. “That’s— well, that’s— good, I’m glad about that—” he starts, and the other Xisuma squeezes lightly, and the sound that comes out of him next is not remotely under his control. 

“Are you,” the other Xisuma says. 

Xisuma is an admin. He is the universe cradling his players, holding them in his palm above a silence that’d claim them if he let it claim them. Xisuma’s hands could tear their way through any player’s body, corrupt and corrupt until it would never work again, kill it past the point of ever respawning— he has seen the truth of that in Cub’s eyes, in Grian’s, in Cleo’s— a server is his little sandbox, and his hermits are toys inside of it that Xisuma could break the moment that he chose to break them. 

The other Xisuma kisses him and drags a hand down his chest and Xisuma is none of these things. His hands are only bound above him, and he is only a player underneath another one, only a body that can be wrung out for pleasure as easily as any other body. He moans into the other Xisuma’s mouth, accepts the tongue that pushes its way past his lips, hot and close and more intense than anything Xisuma has felt in— in a very long time, or maybe in his entire life. It burns against him— the other Xisuma’s mouth, his tongue, his touch, all of it. It burns. Xisuma wants him to keep touching him. Xisuma wants him to touch him more. He wants it so desperately he does not even know how to form the words to ask for it, and the thought of trying is mortifying. 

“Why don’t we get you the rest of the way out of that suit,” the other Xisuma says, and Xisuma’s breath catches again, and this time Evil X notices. Xisuma can see it by the way his pupils dilate. 

He shucks Xisuma of his remaining clothing easily, cutting it away with the blade that had sliced so easily through the restraints, and Xisuma breathes faster and shallower with anticipation— dread, excitement?— and then he is bare. He feels more raw and exposed than he can ever remember feeling— more exposed, even, than he feels for Cleo or for Keralis, the rare times they’ve seen him bare, stripped of all his armor, stripped of everything— like he is uncovered down to the code level, pulled right open and held that way. As fragile as a player on an operating table. 

“I hope—” He wets his dry lips, heart pounding harder in his chest. “I hope you— have plans to replace that, old friend, these suits aren’t— they aren’t easy to come by. Although come to think of it, neither are restraints that’ll bind an admin in place this way, so I suppose— I suppose you probably have that covered, somehow? You’ve really thought of everything this time, haven’t— you—” 

He cuts off at the hand on his chest again, tracing the skin around his bindings. “I’ve half a mind to turn that voice of yours off,” the other Xisuma says, “but then I couldn’t hear you make fun little noises for me, could I?”

His thumb finds one of Xisuma’s nipples and Xisuma arches, eyes blowing wide. “Ah,” he gasps, “hah— haah—”

“I’ll just have to settle for taking you apart until you can’t form words. Oh, you like that, do you,” says the other Xisuma, and he works his hands over more of Xisuma’s body, experimental, enthralled— teasing out reactions and enjoying them. If he looked pleased with himself before, it’s nothing on how he looks now, delightedly working him over until Xisuma is a desperate shuddering whimpering mess. 

And then he is cutting away the rope from above Xisuma’s knees and pushing his legs apart, hand ghosting over his cock which makes him whine desperately and then lower and Xisuma realizes where this is going and then immediately feels very silly for not realizing sooner. There is a potion in the other Xisuma’s hand. “Wait,” Xisuma says, overwhelmed, and his throat feels— he feels— 

Evil Xisuma waits, watching closely. Xisuma shudders against the bindings, feeling too open, too exposed, and after a moment’s silence Evil Xisuma pulls back, eyes narrowing. 

“No,” Xisuma blurts, aching at the loss of the hand on his inner thigh. The touch. He doesn’t— want him to stop. “No, please— just— I’m— please just be careful.” 

He’s never— gone this far before, not even with Keralis. Or it’s not right to say they haven’t gone this far, they just haven’t done— this, exactly. Xisuma’s never been— well, he’s never been penetrated. 

Evil Xisuma doesn’t respond, but he holds Xisuma’s gaze for a long moment, and runs a hand up Xisuma’s inner thigh again and the little voice in the back of Xisuma’s mind murmurs, Relax. This will feel good. When he moves again, he is slower, more deliberate. He dribbles some of the thick potion over his fingers, then some more over Xisuma’s entrance, rubbing it in gently with one finger, and Xisuma shuts his eyes and breathes. 

Slowly, he starts to push one finger in. 

Xisuma gasps. “Ah— ah.”

He crooks it, pushes deeper, and Xisuma shudders at the stretch— he’s not sure yet if this is pleasant — “That’s the first knuckle,” the other Xisuma says, sounding almost gentle, and he pauses, shifting his finger around and stretching the entrance. “Good. You’re taking this surprisingly well.” 

Maybe he means to sound more condescending and villainous than he does right now. Maybe he really does sound very villainous, objectively, and Xisuma is only— only falling prey to that pathetic sentimentality of his. Xisuma is mildly overwhelmed for probably obvious reasons, so he has to open and close his mouth a couple of times before he successfully manages a reply: a weak little “yay.” 

“Take a deep breath,” the other Xisuma says, and something in Xisuma’s mind is coaxing along with him, take a deep breath, relax, that’s right — Xisuma takes a deep breath, and Evil X pushes his finger in deeper on the exhale. 

He fingers Xisuma until he hits something inside him that— oh— oh. Oh. Xisuma gasps— “There,” he whimpers, “there, please, there—” and he hits it again and Xisuma sees stars, arching and keening, and Evil Xisuma’s other hand wraps around his cock, oh god— 

“Please,” Xisuma is babbling before he can stop himself, before he even recognizes the words forming on his lips— “please, please—”

He works a second finger into Xisuma and Xisuma makes sounds he didn't know he could make, guttural ones from his throat— desperate sounds, overwhelmed sounds, pleasure sounds. The other Xisuma’s fingers are thick and insistent, stretching him wide and pushing in deeper and deeper and a part of Xisuma still feels like he should be begging him to stop. But he’s not. It’s too much, too close, too much, it’s— he doesn’t want the other Xisuma to ever stop touching him.

“Please,” he gasps, “please—”

The rough pull of the hand over his straining cock, reddened and leaking, every touch electric. Burning like it's electric. Overstimulation that threatens to tip over into pain. Xisuma has not ever been touched this much, this roughly.

He comes with the other Xisuma’s fingers inside him, with the other Xisuma’s hand around his cock, milking the orgasm from him— it spills over his hand, coating it in white, and the other Xisuma says as he works him through it, “That’s right, come for me. All mine. You’re all mine, aren’t you?” 

“All yours,” Xisuma slurs. 

Then he is being adjusted, shifted, and Evil Xisuma is gripping his thighs and pressing them back toward Xisuma’s chest and the head of his slicked-up cock is pressing at his entrance. “ All mine,” Evil Xisuma says again, sounding thrilled, and then— 

He presses inside. “Oh, my days,” Xisuma whimpers, and Evil Xisuma hardly gives him a moment to adjust before he starts to fuck him. 

He is not gentle. He fucks Xisuma hard and fast and Xisuma’s hands are curling in around the rope binding his wrists, desperately clinging as his whole body is rocked, as the bed creaks underneath them, obscene moans being dragged out of his throat and little desperate incoherent pleas— 

“Beg for my cock.” There is a hand in his hair, gripping it tightly and dragging his head backward to expose his neck, and Xisuma whines sharply. With every thrust his body is rocked forward against the hold in his hair, causing it to tug painfully, rhythmically. “Beg for it. Tell me how badly you want me to ruin you.”

“Please,” Xisuma sobs, “please—”

“Beg for my cock.” The hand in his hair yanks, and Xisuma cries so loudly and sharply it is nearly a scream. “Be specific, please what —” 

“Your—” He chokes on the words, on his own tears. There is drool bubbling at his lips. There is a hold on his mind, a voice that’s nearly his own murmuring how nice it must be to do as he’s told— doesn’t that feel good, skin on your skin, being touched? Doesn’t it feel good letting go this way? It does, it does, it does, please, he wants it, he needs it— 

He echoes the words that he is given. “Your cock,” he begs, “please, please, I want— your cock, please—”

“Beg me to ruin you.”

“Please,” he sobs, “please, ruin me, please—”

He begs until he can’t beg anymore, can only manage desperate punched-out moans with every thrust, the other Xisuma pushing deeper and deeper into him, hard and fast and he cries “ah, ah, ah,” and jerks and shudders against the restraints binding his wrists and his ankles, binding him open .

He comes again all over his stomach, sobbing with the force of it, overstimulation tipping over into pain. He writhes, trying to get away, but the other Xisuma holds him by the hips and fucks him relentlessly, bruising fingerprints into him that’ll stay. He fucks him and fucks him and chases his pleasure and Xisuma can only moan and moan, lost to it, sinking into it. The hand in his hair loosens, tightens again, grip readjusted, and then Xisuma is being dragged forward into a rough kiss, and the other Xisuma’s thrusts get much faster and rougher. Dimly he registers the wet slap-slap-slap of skin on skin, sweat and lube, the sound of— of Xisuma being fucked, and he imagines another hermit overhearing them, he imagines what it must sound like, what he must look like, disheveled and begging and weeping, flushed and sweat-soaked, and he nearly comes again just from the thought. 

“Look at you,” the other Xisuma pants as he fucks into him, “look at you, coming on my cock, just for me, moaning for me —” 

He cuts himself off with a low groan as he comes, burying himself to the hilt inside Xisuma, their hips flush together. 

They lie tangled for several long moments afterward while Evil Xisuma catches his breath, and Xisuma drifts, dazed, still panting and shuddering with the aftershocks of his own orgasms. (Xisuma is, presumably, also meant to be catching his breath, but that is not happening.) Xisuma blinks sleepily against the potion that is still running through his system, and he thinks, well, he’s certainly going not making it to Skizz’s build tour in this condition, is he. Falling asleep right here in this bed is in fact sounding like a very appealing option. 

Only a few minutes have passed when Evil Xisuma curls a hand into Xisuma’s hair again, and Xisuma whimpers helplessly, nuzzling into his hand. 

“Oh, Xisumavoid,” he murmurs, and Xisuma realizes his other hand has moved between his legs, stroking himself back to hardness. “ Look at you. You want more, don’t you?” 

He is soft and coaxing, trailing a hand from his hair down to his neck, down his chest, and Xisuma feels his resolve beginning to crumble. He arches into the touch, whimpers at it, and the other Xisuma laughs. 

“Oh, I don’t think I’m finished with you yet,” he breathes, and Xisuma thinks a bit deliriously, heat rushing to pool in his stomach, Well, alright then, that’s— that’s fine too!

This time when the bindings are cut away and redone, Xisuma is on his knees by the bed. The other Xisuma coaxes his mouth open and he obliges, dazed, hardly in any state to refuse— whimpering and leaning into the touch of a hand on his jaw. Evil X places the head of his cock in Xisuma’s open mouth and Xisuma whimpers again around it.

“Let’s find out if you’re any good at this,” he says, and his voice is inexplicably almost— gentle. Fond. His hand finds Xisuma's hair again. “Go on, then— suck.”

Xisuma follows the instructions he’s given. This is something he’s done before, but his experience is not much use in the wrecked state he’s in now— he works his lips and tongue messily, trying his best anyway, whimpering pathetically and mouthing and sucking and gagging around his clone's cock until Evil Xisuma groans like he is— breaking, composure breaking, and he makes a fist in Xisuma's hair and starts to fuck his throat. Xisuma chokes helplessly, eyes going wide and arms jerking instinctively against his restraints again— his restraints which hold him in place, the hand in his hair which is real and solid and holds him in place, and now he is sinking further into that soft place in his brain, coaxed there— good, that’s right — helplessly allowing his mouth to be used. “Good boy,” Evil X groans, fucking deeper into his throat, and Xisuma can only whimper some more for him and sink deeper, where he is not an admin at all, just a soft body to touch, a hot mouth to fuck into, a throat to paint with come—

He chokes on it, coughing, come flooding his mouth and dribbling out around the cock inside it. He sobs, tears squeezing out between his eyelids and rolling down his face, hitting his lips, salty. Evil X keeps fucking him through his orgasm, chasing his pleasure higher and higher, and Xisuma takes it because it’s all he can do, trying not to gag and choke. Gagging and choking anyway. 

The other Xisuma pulls back, and Xisuma’s mouth makes an obscene sound when it is pulled off of his cock, a string of come and saliva connecting his lips to the tip. ”Good boy,”   Evil Xisuma says again, and his hand slips down to cup Xisuma's cheek, warm and real, and Xisuma makes a helpless guttural sound in his throat, leaning into the touch. Nuzzling into it.

He is still crying, shuddering and overwhelmed. 

There is a potion bottle at his lips, and Xisuma whimpers, hands twitching forward to— to touch it, to grasp at it and feel for its code, to check its contents, but his arms are trapped in place still. He feels bizarrely weak— if the world is all paper, then he has been made into paper, too.

“Drink,” the other Xisuma says, tipping the bottle upward. Xisuma chokes a little and coughs and tries to oblige, and the potion is bitter but it runs blissfully over his throat, soothing the soreness away. A healing potion, then, he registers dimly. 

“Good boy,” he says again, hand ghosting over Xisuma’s Adam’s apple and pressing lightly to feel him swallow, and Xisuma sinks further at the praise combined with the touch, soft and warm.

The other Xisuma does something he doesn’t quite follow— shifting, a bottle in his hand for a moment and then not— he has downed a potion himself? He seems to blink and then there is a hard cock at his lips again, and Xisuma is whimpering, lips parting to accept it before he can form a conscious thought about the matter.

“You can take one more for me,” Evil X says, panting and ragged with lust, thrusting in deep enough that Xisuma chokes again. “All to myself— I don’t want to waste the— ngh — the opportunity—”

Xisuma does take one more, struggling around the cock mercilessly fucking his throat until Evil Xisuma comes again, and he is sputtering, trying to swallow it all this time and making a mess anyway. 

The restraints are loosened again around his wrists, and when he thinks he’s finished, it’s over, he doesn’t know if it is with relief or despair. And it is not over: Evil Xisuma guides him back up onto the bed, adjusts the bindings and then tightens them again so that Xisuma is on his back, now, hands bound up to the headboard.

“You can take one more for me,” he says, climbing on top of him again, and Xisuma keens when a hard cock bumps between his legs once more. “Yes, you can. Look at you, so soft and pliant for me—”

Xisuma is soft and pliant, shuddering underneath him, whining helplessly when he presses inside— fingers first with a fresh drizzle of thick potion, checking that he’s ready, still stretched and warm and open for him. He remarks on how desperate Xisuma is, and then— his cock, again. And Xisuma takes it, sobbing with overwhelm but he takes it. He takes it. It’s too much. It’s not enough— he never wants the other Xisuma to stop. The other Xisuma fucks him and fucks him and kisses him roughly and touches him, fingers tracing over fault lines and curling, digging in, prying right open. 

Xisuma loses himself, pulled between pleasure and pain, sagging against custom-coded rope and then into the other Xisuma’s arms, when the bindings are finally loosened and pulled away completely, when the other Xisuma decides that he’s finished. He sobs weakly, clinging and curling into the touch, and the other Xisuma— 

The other Xisuma speaks to him in a way he’s never spoken to him before. “You’re— alright,” he says, stilted, “that’s right, that’s— let it out, buddy—”

He wraps his arms around Xisuma more completely, and Xisuma turns his face into his shoulder and weeps. “There you go, that’s— good,” the other Xisuma says, softly, awkwardly. Warm. He is so warm. “Just like— that. Good.” 

He shifts, and Xisuma allows himself to be shifted. “Stay— here. Stay right here, you just— hold on.” There is something soft on his shoulders— a blanket around him, and the other Xisuma is gone, and then there’s another voice calling out his name, coming closer, and Xisuma shudders. 

“Ker—”

He coughs a wet cough. “Keralis,” he manages feebly, and he doesn’t have— his suit — his gloves, any of it. Keralis has sunk to Xisuma’s side on the bed. Keralis is— touching him.

He cups Xisuma’s face and kisses his hairline, says softly, “Shashwam.” Xisuma feels weak. Raw and exposed, ravaged, wrung out— it is a kind of weakness he has not felt before, like he’s been doused in a potion that has been distilled and distilled and distilled, and it has dragged him to a depth he can't crawl back up from. A depth he doesn’t want to crawl back up from. Made into paper, too, and Keralis is here— Keralis is touching him. 

“Could you grab him a water bottle, they’re in that chest— yes, that one.” 

Keralis speaks very softly, over his head. Xisuma’s not sure who he’s talking to, but he finds he hardly cares as long as Keralis is here and touching him. He wonders where the other Xisuma has gone— if he will come back— when he will come back. 

“Thank you, Beef, honey bunches— shh, Shashwam, you’re alright. Here, come here.”

He drifts. Keralis’s body is warm, and his hands are soft on Xisuma’s face, soft all over Xisuma— gathering him up and holding him.

It is a bright, sunny Hermitcraft day, all blue skies over the shopping district. Those’ve been fewer and farther between than usual, what with the rain-and-thunder-related hijinks that Xisuma still hasn’t been able to nail down the cause of, though if he has to guess it’s probably something Doc’s done and he will be honest, he is a bit terrified of asking. 

The other Xisuma has been by today to steal his things again— all of his red dye, of course, but also his spare suit (why) and a box of his favorite tea ( why ). Absently Xisuma wonders if he dyes the tea, too. Are Evil Xisumas required to drink evil tea in addition to wearing evil suits and having evil names? 

Well, at any rate, he may just be finally living up to that name, because Xisuma’s only just gotten around to replacing his spare suit last week, after— well— after things happened which resulted in his spare suit needing replacing again, and his favorite tea is made exclusively by a little artisan who lives a two weeks’ journey from this server, and the world-hopping involved in getting there is a political mess. So he is not in an ideal mood, and he puts on his very best unimpressed expression when the offender in question sweeps in to announce more of his evil intentions. He is starting up a shop himself, apparently, which will sell evil goods and is now hiring evil employees, and Xisuma is thinking, hmm, don’t I distinctly recall you saying that my hermits made for terrible minions—

“Evil goods,” Grian echoes suspiciously before Xisuma can raise his own wisecracking retort. He’s perched atop Pearl’s bone truck, where he’s been cheerfully writing up citations and pretending not to eavesdrop, dressed in his work uniform (which is looking suspiciously more disheveled since Cub pulled him aside earlier to “discuss work-related spreadsheets and other work things”— yes, those were his exact words). “What evil goods? You’d better have permits for those goods, you know, or we might have to take legal action about it. My manager might, I mean, as I won’t be doing any work at all. I hate my job very much.” 

Bdubs and Keralis— whose conversation Grian has been pretending not to eavesdrop on— are not paying much attention to Evil Xisuma, but Bdubs perks up at the mention of legal action. 

“Evil wood is what we will start with,” Evil Xisuma says, and oh, wonderful, that’ll be a headache when Doc finds out about that. “We will collect it with an evil tree farm—”

“Hold on,” Grian says. “Back up, please, what’s an evil tree?”

“No, it’s not the tree, it’s the farm. An evil tree farm.”

“What makes the tree farm evil? And what’s evil wood, then, if there’s no evil trees?”

“Well, here is some evil oak wood, for example,” Evil Xisuma says, tossing a stack onto the ground, “which I have collected a starting stock of—” 

“That’s just wood,” Grian says. “That’s just normal oak wood. Which you don’t have a permit for.”

“No, it’s evil oak wood, you little fool,” Evil Xisuma says. “I said that, didn’t I? I distinctly remember saying that.” 

Grian frowns. “You can’t just take normal things and say they’re evil like that makes them different things now—” 

“No, no, he’s right,” Bdubs says, crouching to examine the stack. “It says ‘evil oak wood,’ right here, that’s the, uh, the ID on this stuff. The whole stack of it. Dang.”

Grian narrows his eyes. “Well,” he says with a long-suffering sigh, “I suppose I can’t argue with that, but you’re still going to need a permit, you know.” After a suspiciously long and intrigued-sounding moment, he adds, “...and what about this hiring of evil employees?” 

“Minions,” Evil Xisuma clarifies, and Grian starts to look bizarrely giddy, “evil minions. I would enlist my foolish clone for this role, of course, but I imagine I’ll have other ways of keeping him busy—” 

“I think you have— you have evil tree farms to get to,” Xisuma says loudly, cutting him off, “in fact, why don’t I just— help with that, actually, I know of an excellent place near here, lots of trees—” 

Evil Xisuma is abruptly gone, and Grian blinks. “Did you just kick him?” he asks, sounding like he might be about to pout. 

“I did not,” Xisuma says, struggling for a tone that approaches something like dignified. “I have transported him to a lovely forest full of trees, about—” He does some quick math. “Eleven thousand blocks from here. Very nice area, very— scenery.” 

“Ah, right, gotcha,” Grian says, pulling a stack of rockets from his hotbar. “In that case I have to go, right now, immediately, for unrelated reasons.” And then he’s taking off. Well, that’s probably going to be— interesting. 

“Why, Shashwammyvoid,” Keralis says, with a knowing smile, “Can I be seeing that right, are you blushing under there?” 

“I have— absolutely— no idea what you’re talking about, Keralis,” Xisuma says, with a face that is not burning bright red underneath his helmet, nope. “And in unrelated news, I’ve just remembered I have— very important business to attend to back at— somewhere that is not here, and I will being going to attend to that immediately—”

Keralis raises his eyebrows very high. “You also have to go right now, immediately, for unrelated reasons?”

He trips no less than three times equipping his elytra and taking off, and he hears Bdubs snickering and starting to make some comment that would no doubt embarrass him only further. “Hey, Keralis, d’you think—” 

Xisuma is in the air, the sound of his rockets drowning out whatever the rest of the joke is. The sun is bright overhead and warm on his back. As he flies, he glances down at the shopping district below him and he sees Keralis laughing, head thrown back. He catches sight of Pearl on her horse, in the direction of Tango’s base, and there is Joe leaning on a fence post outside Cleo’s cafe, spotting Xisuma and raising a hand to wave.