A/N: Quite obviously the most important thing we learn in this chapter is that Sima is a genwunner.

It's a really obscure reference but still.

You stop being Tark so you can be Creeper. This is a pretty big change. Brace yourself. Please keep appendages on the far side of the fourth wall at all times.

You, Creeper, are practically skipping in the brisk night air. It's lovely to stretch your legs again after two nights in a cage! You were getting worried Skeleton wouldn't turn up at all, but of course that was just a bit of negative thinking and you were not surprised at all when she and the others got you out. Not at all.

Now the curly blades of the plains you don't call Edgegrass brush against your thighs and withers, your black maw wide so the olfactory senses on the roof of your mouth can pick up the scents of prey. Mostly insects will be out at this time of night, which you really don't care for, but if you're lucky you'll stumble across a sleeping herd of cows or pigs. Perhaps a flock of sheep. At the moment you'd even go for chicken. Horrible tiny bony things, useless for eating. No respectable creature has that many bones. It's downright inconsiderate.

Skeleton, who is supposed to be helping look for prey and failing miserably, is fighting the tangled underbrush some distance away. The length of the grass is surprising considering how many mobs live in the cave network with Enderman and Spider! Don't they tend to the area at all? You make a habit of keeping the area around your cave relatively clear so you can move around easier. Perhaps they're mostly cave mobs and don't surface often. Skeleton wanted to live in the system when the two of you first arrived here, but it's far too close to the village for your tastes, not to mention overpopulated. You don't do well in crowds. Besides, you get any number of delinquents and ne'er-do-wells in big systems like that one. The gods know the kind of company you could be keeping! You and Skeleton eventually settled on your current cave, which is a more reasonable distance away. You would vehemently deny any sort of pigheadedness on your part. You are quite obviously a logical and compromising person.

"I think I've found the thorny bullshit plant party," calls Skeleton from a few blocks behind. You turn to see her tangled in spiky tendrils. Crackling a laugh, you spring over to her like a gazelle since it's easier than battling the grass and stop a few blocks away with a click of worry. You lift your head to peer at her over the greenery.

"It's not dangerous, is it? I wouldn't want to delay our departure by being poisoned or anything of the sort."

"Just stay there, useless lump, lemme chuck my quiver over." She navigates its strap carefully around a knot of thorns she's managed to get tangled in her ribcage somehow. Once she's got it in both hands she tosses it at you over the plants. Clicking in surprise, you rear up and flick out your three-tenth-long black tongue, managing to wrap it around the leather bundle and fall back onto your hooves. Skeleton stares at you in horror.

"Did you just catch it with your fucking tongue?"

"Wa'w I don' hath hanths!" you retort, setting it down gently. You spit and blow raspberries to clean your tongue. "Ugh. Don't you ever wash it?"

"You are so fucking disgusting. Grow some arms." Swearing and tripping, she struggles out of the thicket and brushes off a few clinging sprigs. "Why does this place suck so much?"

"Don't say anything about Enderman, please." You nudge the quiver with a hoof while she makes her way over. "Why didn't you toss over your bow? It would have made things easier."

"I don't want your yatzeg gross drool all over it." She crouches to pick the quiver up and slings it over her scapulae again, dusting off her hands.

"I don't see why you're being so squeamish about it. It's not as though you can feel it. "

"Because pissing you off is fun." She flicks you in the head. You give a revolver rattle and swing your head to bat her on the humerus. "Come on, meaty buggers won't kill themselves."

"Oh, you know how I adore our fine comestible friends and their suicidal tendencies." The two of you continue; you're jumpier than usual, black eyes tracking every fluttering shadow and twitching bush. It always pays to be on your guard, of course. You remind Skeleton getting too far from the cave would not be favourable at the moment. As usual, she doesn't care. Her assurance that she's going to turn anything that so much as looks at you funny into a pincushion makes you feel better.

Your curiosity is growing as it is wont to do, so after an unsuccessful while broken only by encounters with home-headed mobs you think to ask, "Why are you truly coming, Skeleton?" She tenses almost defensively, so you give her as close as you can get to a smile in an attempt to reassure her.

"What, not convinced I'm in it to get out of this boring shithole?"

"No." She rolls her eyes. "At least, not only that."

She makes elaborate faces for a couple of minutes, most likely trying to put words together in a way that won't make her look soft. Her and her obsession with image. Eventually she gives up. "You take care of me, so I take care of you. Basic logic, Creeper."

"Do be careful or I might think you're capable of rudimentary compassion." She stares stonily ahead so you sigh and nuzzle her side. This turns silence into a banshee shriek and spectacular leap sideways, which has you laughing like a breakdancing saltshaker. Eventually she can release her bones from wire tension again and stand properly.

"Yeah, check out my sweet moves. Can't touch this."

"You're an incredibly majestic dancer, Skeleton."

"No, really, don't touch me. Fucking fleshies and your electric bullshit." She shakes her skull rapidly. "I thought you'd've got this by now."

You didn't forget about that at all. Not at all. Time to change the subject. "Go on, then, tell me why you intend on coming."

She yanks on the knifelike backs of her cervical vertebrae. Walking skeletons are comprised mostly of sharp edges. "Maybe 'cause of some misguided sense of duty."

You cock your head. "Oh?"

Her skeletal grin widens further than a lack of lips ought to permit – a projection from the electric consciousness lurking in her skull – and she makes jazz hands with chipped phalanges. "Guess who it's my duty to protect, O wise and faultless creeper." Despite your best efforts a smile sneaks into your eyes, even if it can't change your mouth. "Seems it's also my duty to stop you from starving. Come on."

"Oh, fine then, you terse bag of bones." You skip backwards and, tossing your head, spring off into the grass again. She follows.

-{}-

Your name is Doctor Miranda Chatburn, and you are the only one still working on the case of Sima Mauheni.

You sit with your elbows on your desk and head cupped in your hands, the results of your sixth test mocking you from your computer screen. The one piece of evidence from a missing persons case, a pile of what people have been calling 'dust' sitting on the little girl's bed. You'd hesitate to call it anything but 'the evidence', considering that as far as you are aware dust is not flat greyish-white squares as big as your bloody palm. You are a particulates scientist, so you have seen a whole lot of dust in the ten-odd years you've been in this job. That is not dust. You don't know what it is, but by now you know a lot about what it's not.

Not any of the most common substances found in particulates. Or the second most common. Or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. The percentage graphs now sitting on your screen continue to inform you that the evidence's composition is exactly zero percent of anything.

The tests have taken months. The police have stopped looking. There are no leads. It's like she vanished off the face of the Earth. Sucked into another dimension or something. Despite all the TV shows you enjoy screaming at with your husband for their inaccuracy, forensics labs are understaffed and overworked. You've got too much work to do to keep at this.

At least you're not the one who has to tell the girl's family that the one piece of evidence in her case is nothing.

-{}-

You are now Sima.

You had to eat raw meat last night and you really don't want to talk about it.

Shortly after that and managing not to vomit you dropped off to sleep, since the creeper was kind enough to get materials for another plant-nest. It's not all that comfortable but it's better than sleeping on rock, which the other three are doing. You guess things are different when you're a giant black game enemy with teleportation abilities. Or you would if you were not currently asleep, seeing as it's around three in the morning. The mobs all went to bed early, which you are not aware of. You are not aware of a lot of things, except for the no doubt prophetic and mysterious dream you're having right now. It's bound to be amazing. If we look through your dream-eyes right now instead of staring at your curled form while you sleep we're definitely going to get some gorgeous imagery. Let's do that, in fact.

Is that-

Are you dreaming about getting drunk with the Cookie Monster?

Disappointing.

One of the many things you are not aware of is that you're almost healed from the mockery of bruised ribs the Enderman gave you, as usual due to game mechanics. Bloody game mechanics, you wouldn't be thinking at all if you were conscious because bruised ribs are terrible. Were it not for game mechanics you wouldn't have been walking. Ah, game mechanics, you would be thinking instead, how ridiculously convenient you are.

In fact, it's really quite pointless to be you so early in the morning. Unless we're interested in sitting here for hours and watching you sleep. However exciting it would be to spend the next four thousand words on that, no.

You successfully engage in a timeskip and sleep in until noon, spending a few groggy minutes wondering why no-one is awake.

It occurs to you that mobs are nocturnal.

Fuck.

While we perform a spectacular Timeskip x2 Combo, you spend an incredibly boring afternoon dozing. It sure is a good thing we don't have to do that ourselves. The next time you're woken is with a thump of a huge black hand next to your ear. You jolt straight from drowsiness to bolt upright panic. The enderman walks off with warbling laughter, leaving you to slump back and wait for your heart to realise you're not being murdered. After a moment you can pick off a few clinging burrs and fern leaflets, chancing a look around; the spider is slightly less horrible, currently limping towards the entrance and saying something about rinsing more of the blood off. An eight-legged limp is a pretty impressive thing to watch. The creeper is nowhere to be seen, but the skeleton is on the stone couch, hunched over what looks like a piece of wood. Upon closer inspection you can see it's carving it. With its fingers. Only its fingers.

"I need to figure out how to use an inventory," the enderman says from further into the cave and most of the way into an alcove. Rummaging and clinking noises shuffle guiltily over from it and a pile of what looks like miscellaneous junk broods behind it. Is that an old boot? That's an old boot. There's also something that looks like a potato peeler. "How the fuck am I going to carry all these incredibly important things?"

The skeleton looks up and regards the pile for a moment. "How about not taking a bunch of useless shit."

"I said this is all incredibly important." It straightens up, something vaguely triangular cradled in its head-sized hands and glinting in the glow from its eyes. "How are we going to even survive without… without… without whatever the fuck this thing is?" It brandishes the thing for emphasis.

You squint. "Is that a cheese grater?"

It glares at you with a look that says your opinion is incorrect and irrelevant before you even conceive of it before looking back at what's probably a cheese grater. It turns it over a few times. "Maybe," it concedes finally, tossing it back into the alcove and resuming its rummaging. "I'm still watching you, by the way, eyusait."

You roll your eyes. "Yeah, I nnnnknow." Experimentally you get your feet underneath you, which almost doesn't hurt, and manage to stand. Your neck cracks spectacularly when you jerk it from side to side, your back and even fingers joining in the fun. It is one of the most satisfying things in the world. "Um, is it okay if I go outside?" you ask and feel stupid. Like you need permission from these things.

It warbles. "Don't take forever, don't bother anyone and don't get yourself killed. That would disappoint Creeper. Otherwise, I don't care." 'You probably disappoint everyone you meet by not dying,' you would retort if you were a snarky heroine who is good at insults and standing up to people. You snatch a torch from the pile, strike it on the floor (and freak out and drop it) and slink out of the cave. You don't know where you're going or what you're looking for. 'Away' is nice. For that matter 'a way' is too. A way to get back home or know why this happened or, something. Something would be great right now.

This torch is bigger, but the lump of coal rammed into its wooden handle must be shoddy or something because it's guttering like it's being paid to give off as little light as possible. With this piece of shit only lighting up a couple of blocks around you the cave seems around ten times bigger. Infinite, even. A void. You are not fond of that image and attempt to push it out of your mind, which it sees as an invitation to invite some mates over and camp out on the metaphorical mind-couch. Now it's eating your mind-chips and smoking. The fact that you imagine this happening makes it a little better.

Did you mention you're scared of the dark? Probably not. You can't recall doing so.

The irregular cuboids of stone are jagged, the floor littered with foot-seeking sharp pebbles. You're so glad you have shoes now. One hand on the veins of sediment along the wall, the other flailing ahead with the torch, you walk. It's harder than coming in here since it's uphill and you're doing a lot of jumping, but at least you have a torch now! You've almost stopped falling on your butt every five seconds when you try to hop up the blocks. Almost. You're getting there. For the sake of your sanity you remind yourself you are not in fact in the real world. This is a video game, which is impossible and stupid. All of this is impossible and stupid and horrible. Maybe you're in a coma or something and having a vivid coma dream. That's actually pretty plausible. You really hope that's the case.

You also know that is not the case and you hate it.

Shortly you reach a junction, where half the cave slinks further upwards into the dark and the other half sinks into even deeper void. Not void. Not thinking about scary voids. You intended to head for the surface, but now curiosity is niggling at you. The mobs mentioned other monsters living in this place. Half of you is beating yourself up for so much as considering deliberately seeking out fucking monsters, but imaginary Katie and imaginary Lynette are egging on the other half. That's what they'd do, if they were here. Come on, it's fine, let's go see! Nothing to be afraid of. Except everything. You wish they were really here. How does time here translate into time back home? It could have been just a couple of minutes over there like some shitty Alice in Wonderland knockoff, or the same amount of time you've experienced here, or ten times longer. Are they worried about you? Have they even noticed? Would anyone notice or care or miss you or anything? You're too busy being irrational about this to realise you're being irrational.

Eventually you head down.

Wound so tightly you are going to hit the ceiling if anything spooks you, you creep downwards, seeing daemons in every trick of torchlight on the walls. Rather than jump from block to block you're practically sitting on them to ease downwards. This is a terrible idea and you are a terrible person full of terrible ideas. You are completely and utterly sure of this. You flatten yourself against walls to sneak past the yawning maws of side tunnels as though they'll reach out to snap you up. This is stupid.

A while's painful progress rewards you with the sight of dim, flickering light around a side tunnel's corner. Holy shit, is there a person down here? You're pretty sure cave-dwelling mobs don't use torches. Why a person would be down here you have no idea, but you're going to go see them anyway because fuck yes, people. Perhaps someone used HM05 and a blinding FLASH has lit the area. The thought amuses you. Oh god what if it's actually a monster.

You keep so close to the wall you are in danger of phasing into it and turn the corner, creeping up blocks that are gently climbing again. After a while it bulges, dipping to the right so it forms a bowl with a raised lip just over a block high. Sitting with her back against that barrier, a gargantuan longbow unstrung across her knees, is a young white woman. Her face is tilted to the ceiling, her eyes shut. A ceramic bowl of an oil lamp, alight at one end, sits beside her. It's actually a better light source than your torch. Wow. It's a good deal quieter, too, so you spend a couple of minutes figuring out how to blow yours out before creeping over to her. Moving quietly in these boots isn't all that hard, surprisingly enough. She looks, what, eighteen-ish? When you're within a couple of blocks her eyes snap open. You jump. Their dull grey irises look you up and down for a moment before she raises a long, pale finger to her lips and beckons you closer. Okay then. Is she hiding from something? Once you comply, she hooks a thumb over her shoulder at the lip of the bowl. You reach out your free hand to grip the top of it, jerking your head at it and looking at her questioningly. She nods, so you move a little closer to put both hands on it and peer over the top.

Creepers! Tiny creepers not much bigger than cats, sprawled all over each other like a heap of puppies. You estimate there's a little less than ten, in all shades of green from the light coat of the one you rescued to near-black, even a couple of brownish ones. A couple of them twitch in their sleep, black mouths considerably less frowny than that of the one you know. They're so cute and fuzzy holy shit. The bottom of the bowl is lined with ferns and mosses like the nests the creeper made for you and itself. You smile at them for a couple of minutes, fighting the urge to squee like a little girl, before ducking back and sitting against the rim beside the teenager. You are a teenager too. You forget this sometimes.

She makes a face, which you don't understand in the slightest, and seems to wait for a reaction. When you don't give one she looks as puzzled as you feel. Shaking her head, she leans over to unfasten the buckles on the leather messenger bag you didn't notice on her other side. After rummaging in it for a moment she pulls out a tiny cube of dirt, which she taps against her other palm and now there are two tiny cubes what the fuck. She hands the second to you, which you take with both hands and wide eyes. You turn it over a couple of times, trying to figure out what the fuck she did. She looks at you like she's concluded you are completely and utterly stupid. Setting her bow down beside her with the slightest of clicks, she twists onto her knees and raises herself above the rim. Her torso's not much longer than yours, but her legs are ridiculous. She's probably at least a head taller than you on her feet. She runs a thickly calloused hand through her close-cropped shock of ginger hair, taps her dirt block against her other palm to produce a third block, and lobs it across the bowl. It hits the far wall, where it rebounds barely half a block before it expands like popcorn and sticks in place. Whoa. You are impressed by her superior blocky majyyks.

The girl flicks her grey gaze back to you, miming chucking the block remaining in her hand at the one now stuck to the wall. After staring at your minicube for a moment you try tapping it against your other palm. You successfully create a brand new minicube! Congratulations!

[ 1 = 15]

[ 2 = 1]

You just heard stats. Okay. You are now aware that the first minicube is a stack originally containing sixteen blocks of dirt. You split it apart to remove one block from the stack.

Terraria in real life.

Once you have decided this can't get much weirder you chuck your single block at the one the girl threw before and watch it stick in place, growing to full size. This is. Okay. For a few more minutes you help the girl by chucking additional blocks at hers, slowly realising that she seems to be covering the creeper babies' sleep-bowl-thing with them. You stop, staring at her questioningly. Once she notices she just blinks her flat grey eyes at you and gestures for you to continue. You don't really, um. You're not sure what she's planning, but this is weird. You spread your hands to the ceiling at her. She shakes her head and points at the blocks again.

You keep helping.

When there's only one block left uncovered along the rim of the bowl she makes a weird motion with her hand which, you figure out after a moment, means 'stop'. She gets to her feet, gesturing for you to be quiet again, and bends to rummage in her messenger bag. She pulls out something palm-sized and shiny, then two of the somethings, then four, and sets them on the dirt. She tugs on them gently and they expand again with popcorn suddenness. They're iron buckets filled with water, maybe three litres each. Realisation of what she's planning sneaks into the back of your skull and loiters in a corner, but is reluctant to come forward. A worm of unease is wriggling in your gut. Taking a bucket's handle in both hands, she jerks her head towards the other ones, so you pick one up. Fuck, that's heavy.

The girl staggers to the hole, sets her bucket on the ledge and pours the water in.

"What are you doing?" you whisper, arms slack and eyes huge in horror. She glares at you, presses a finger to her mouth and snatches the second bucket from you, upending it into the hole. Clicks and rattles sound from inside now, bleary queries of "What's going on?" and "Creeper? Creeper, what's happening?" in high voices darting close on their heels.

"What are youdoing?" Your voice is rising as she grabs the third bucket and tosses it in.

"Is this water? Why is there water?"

"Are you going to help me or not?" she hisses, but without waiting for an answer hefts and empties the third bucket into the nest of creepers. The water level inside slops at the hole's lips. Their screams ring in your ears but you're frozen. In one fluid movement she taps out another dirtblock and flicks it into the hole.

It expands.

You can't hear them anymore.

"Wwwwhat did you do?" you cry, feeling rushing into your limbs. You practically fall towards the covered bowl, clutching at the dirt.

"Killed some mobs," says the girl, not bothering to keep her voice down anymore. She dusts off her hands and gives the nest a look that shows it's closely acquainted in her mind with mosquito poop. "Duh."

"But- b-b-b-but, they were like-" You whip around to face her, slack with horror, arms wide. "Like, babies!"

"Baby creepers grow into big creepers. Big creepers kill people." She doesn't even look at you, stacking the buckets into each other. "Science."

"But how could you do that?"

"Easy as one of them could kill us." She shrinks the stack of buckets by taking them in both hands and pressing her palms together. You look from her to the bowl and back again, gaping.

"But they're babies!"

"They're just mobs." Slinging her bag over her shoulders, she turns to face you with the only emotion on her face faint bewilderment. "It's not like they're people. Aren't you a little young to be down this far, anyway?"

"I'm o-o-o-o-o, uh, not… that… young." Excellent question dodge, +10 to agility, but fuck. Fuck, you feel sick. Why are you standing here talking to her when fuck they're drowning why are you standing here. Oh god, you helped. You whip back around and scrabble at the nearest block, ears strained for any sound from them. At all. You can't hear anything. You claw and dig. They aren't making any noise. Fuck. They're all dead. You're too late. You helped. You helped and now they're dead.

"Kid, what the Nether?" Strong hands grip your shoulders and tear you away. You want to scream at her. "Are you nuts or something?"

"They're fucking babies!" you yell, struggling. "You k-k-k-k-k, k-k-k, murdered a bunch of babies!"

"I culled a bunch of monsters."If she hit you or something you could hate her, but she just stands there, holding you, nothing but puzzlement in her voice. "You're overreacting. Haven't you seen what one of those buggers can do to a person? You're lucky if you have a face left. My brothers weren't lucky. These fuckers are better off dead." You don't understand. You can't understand. The mobs did things like this but they don't look like humans. Don't look like… people? Fuck. Some part of you has been counting seconds. It ticks off the two minute mark with sick finality. You sag in the girl's grip. Fuck.

"Look, you from the village or something? I can take you back there, no problem. I'm a nomad passing through, see. You can get help or whatever. Don't you want to go home?"

Yes. Yes, yes, more than anything, yes. "Nnnno, lllook, I'm. Ffffuck." You take advantage of her loosened hold to duck free, snatch your torch, stand facing her with it in pale knuckles by your side. The dirt cover is in the corners of your eyes and when you aren't looking at it it's ringing in your ears. "Iiiii." You choke on the vowel. "I. Um. Bye."

You run. She stares, shakes her head and picks up her bow.

The dark is more comforting than the flicker of her oil lamp.

-{}-

Neither you nor she are present when six mothers come home to find their children dead and buried and turning to dust.