J had completely disregarded everything Terra had said before she had left, and was trying to teleport in front of the house when she returned.
"J, I thought I told you not t-"
"Terra! You have to see this! I know you said not to practice while you're gone, but I think I'm getting the hang of it! Watch," J said as Terra walked over. J closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then focused on a rock a few feet in front of him. His eyes burned purple, and he took a step forward.
And another step forward. And another. He kept walking, growing more frustrated and confused each time it didn't work. "I swear I did it when you were gone, I don't know what happened," he muttered.
"J, it's fine. Here, let's keep working on it." Terra continued working with J until the sun began to set. In that time, he managed to teleport once. "Terra, can we stop for the night?" J asked.
"We haven't even done that much!"
"Easy for you to say, you've just been standing there this whole time. I'm starving!"
Terra knew J was overreacting, but she was hungry too, so she gave in. "Fine, if I go back to the house and get the stuff to make mushroom stew, you have to cook it."
"Deal."
"Go ahead and set up the place for a fire out here, I'll be right back," Terra said as she went inside. It took her a moment of rummaging through chests to find the ingredients, but there was no flint and steel anywhere. When she emerged from the house, she called over to J, "J! I can't find any flint and steel to start the fi…" She trailed off when she saw J tending an already large fire. He smiled when he saw her walk back up with the ingredients.
"J, I thought we were out of flint and steel."
"Oh, I had one with me."
"Can I have it so I can go put it back in the house?"
"I pretty much used it up when I did this, sorry. Hey, you got the ingredients! Hand them over, or I'll make you cook," J said, and Terra forgot about the fire.
"What? No! J, I went and got all this shit for you, come on!"
"Nah, I think I changed my mind. You can cook tonight," J said, trying not to smile.
"Fine, fine. I'll cook," Terra said, turning to the fire.
"You will?" J asked incredulously. He'd only been kidding, he thought Terra had been as well.
"Yeah, I'll cook. Of course, if something accidentally makes its way into your food, that's not my fault. What do you say, J? I think I have blaze powder somewhere, want me to make yours extra spicy?" She grinned, and her eyes glinted. J rushed to stop her. He knew she wasn't kidding, and he didn't want a repeat of the last time she'd volunteered to take over cooking.
"Hey, you know, I think I'd like to cook tonight. Terra, why don't you hand me all of the ingredients, and go put back anything extra you might've brought out. Please," he said, and Terra laughed. She handed him almost everything, and he watched her walk back to the house with a small jar of yellow powder.
When she returned, they began talking, and Terra brought up their plan.
"I still can't believe it's working so well! So the Queen still doesn't know you're part human?" J asked.
"She doesn't have a clue."
"So, I believe a thank you is in order, then," J said, grinning.
"A what?" Terra asked incredulously.
"Well, actually, I'd prefer a 'thank you for this amazing plan J, it was all your idea and without you none of this would be possible and I'm forever in your debt', but I guess I'll take a simple thank you."
"Fucking a, you're arrogant, aren't you?" she asked, but laughed. "Fine J, I guess just this once, I'll admit that this was pretty much your plan."
"And?" J prompted.
Terra sighed. "And without you none of this would be possible."
"And?" J asked again, but Terra rolled her eyes.
"J, now you're just pushing it. I'll admit this is your plan, but forever in your debt? Really?"
"Fine. You think you could be in my debt long enough to go get some bowls?" J asked, and Terra raised an eyebrow. J tried again. "Do you think that because I came up with the plan, you can go get some bowls to make us even?" Terra shook her head slightly. J paused and sighed. "If you go get a couple bowls, I'll give you the bigger serving of soup."
Terra grinned. "There you go. I'll be right back." Terra stood and began walking back to the house, but froze when she saw a glint of purple around the corner. "J, did you see that?" She didn't wait for an answer before she walked towards it. "Hey, we saw you! Come out!"
An Enderman walked out from around the side of the house. Terra sighed in relief, but the Enderman growled. She tried speaking to it, and was almost scared by its response. J was able to listen in on the conversation, and although he hadn't spoken to an Enderman in years, he was able to remember the language well enough to translate in his head.
"What's wrong?"
"Why are you working with him?" the Enderman snarled, gesturing to J.
"He's helping me with a plan to kill the residents of a village near here. It's something personal, no business of yours."
"What does the Queen have to do with any of this?" the Enderman asked, which caught Terra off guard.
"How long were you listening?"
"What does the Queen have to do with this?" the Enderman insisted.
"We're convincing Her to destroy the village. Happy?"
"You know what he's done, right?" The Enderman asked, trying to push past Terra to get to J. Terra stopped it and held her ground.
"I know he used to kill Endermen. He did it because he had no other choice, but he doesn't anymore. It's fine."
The Enderman let out something between a cough and a growl that J assumed was a laugh. "He doesn't? So it wasn't him that killed another Enderman yesterday? It looked just like him."
"It couldn't have been him. You're mistaken," Terra replied with complete confidence.
The Enderman nodded, but it was obvious it didn't believe Terra. "Fine. Tell him I wish him good luck with his plan," the Enderman sneered sarcastically before disappearing into the distance. Terra immediately turned and came back to J.
"Explain. Now."
"Yesterday, an Enderman attacked me. I think it was because it recognized me from when I was still doing jobs for the village. I was up on top of the mountain training, and I didn't want to kill it, but when I pushed it off me, it went over the edge of the mountain and down the other side. I tried to help it, but it was dead before it reached the bottom."
"And you were going to tell me when?" Terra asked, outraged.
"I wasn't. How could I? No one would believe me—I finally give up killing Enderman, and then accidentally kill another one a month later? No one's going to think it was an accident. You don't believe me either."
"No, J, I believe you, really, but one of these days something's going to go really wrong because you don't tell me this shit."
Right," J said. There was a long pause. "So, I don't suppose you're still going to go get the bowls?"
"Go get your own damn bowls!" Terra said, pushing J off his seat and towards the house.
"I get more soup!" he called as he walked away.
"Not on your life!" Terra called back, laughing.
J continued to practice, pushing himself to teleport farther each time. A week later, he had worked up to teleporting a full 10 feet, and Terra made him start practicing teleporting onto raised platforms. Tougher, but J was able to do it almost flawlessly by the time another week had passed. Since neither of them saw the point in building anything special for him to train on, he would practice by teleporting up the side of the mountain near their house. There wasn't much for Terra to do anymore; as J grew more powerful, she simply sat by and watched what she had created. By the end of the third week after Terra left the note, she was challenging his speed, racing him up and down the mountains and around the valley they lived in. She was also continuing conversation with the Queen, getting details about the attack.
"Terra, I'm bored! Come on, you said you wanted to race me again," J said, lying on the bed.
Terra turned from the bag she was digging in to face him. "J, I never said that, and besides, I'm about to go talk to the Queen again. I think this time she's going to tell me when she's coming!" Terra grinned, and J sat up.
"You really think so?"
"J, I know so. I'll be back later, alright?" Terra asked as she walked out the door, not bothering to wait for an answer. She headed straight for the cave to begin speaking to the Queen again.
J, meanwhile, laid back down on the bed. He knew Terra would want him to practice controlling his powers more, but he'd already been up the mountain and down the other side so many times, and he thought he was already amazing. He hardly needed to practice anymore, so a quick nap couldn't hurt, right?
An hour later, J was startled into consciousness by the door closing behind Terra as she walked back into the room. He'd never seen her so pale, and her eyes were wide and blank. She walked into the room and dropped her bag on the floor without a word. She set the Eye of Ender on a chest and sat on her bed, slumping into a heap and putting her hands over her face.
"Terra? You alright?"
"J," she said, hands muffling her words, "I'm fucked."
"Why? What happened?" She didn't speak another word, she just fell back onto the bed. "Terra, come on, you need to tell me, I can help."
"No, you can't!" she yelled, voice cracking on the last word.
J was legitimately terrified at this point. "Terra, what happened? Did she refuse to come find Rythian?" Terra removed her hands from her face, and J saw that her eyes were shining and red. His stomach dropped; Terra didn't cry. Ever. She had to be screwing with him—this was the girl that had destroyed cities and murdered people by the dozens! She didn't cry!
"J, She knows." Her voice, hoarse and strangled, was barely above a whisper.
"Knows? Knows what?"
"She knows I'm an Enderhuman, too."
J stopped. He looked as if he were trying to process what she had just said, as if he were trying to come up with some conceivable way that Terra had been found out. All he could say was "How?"
"I don't know. J, I don't know! I think it was that Enderman we saw the other day while we were eating. The one that recognized you. It heard us talking about all this before we saw it, and it went to tell because it recognized you. It recognized you," she snarled, sitting back up. Her eyes were blazing, and J swore she was beginning to look more and more like the abomination she'd become in the town all those weeks ago. "This is your fault! It recognized and hated you because you used to kill them! You killed them! J, what were you thinking? I'm going to die because that Enderman had a grudge against you! I'm going to die, and it's your fault!" she shrieked, then grew quiet and pale again. "I'm going to die," she whispered.
For the first time in her life, Terra was faced with her own death. She had always thought about death, always believing that her power kept her invincible. No one could kill her—she knew, many had tried. She always assumed she'd go out from old age, or take her own life. She'd thought she was capable of handling anything or anyone that tried to stop her. She'd never considered this. It had always seemed like such a when-pigs-fly scenario, the Queen of the End rising to kill her. The Queen would never busy Herself with someone as small and insignificant as Terra, or so she thought. Apparently, the Queen had heard many things about the Endergirl that roamed Minecraftia, destroying villages and killing humans.
When Terra had been talking to the Queen, She said that She knew a great deal about Terra, but none of the Endermen would reveal her name or location, even under threat of death. They wanted to keep indifferent, but if the Queen were to come attack, they would help simply to stay on the good side of the one that could kill them all without a second thought. It would be a simple matter for the Queen to go out and find Terra, of course, but she never did. Partly out of contempt (She wanted to see how long Terra could continue exterminating the humans before she was eventually overwhelmed), partly because She just didn't want to put forth the effort of leaving the End for one being. Of course, now that She knew where not only Terra, but another Enderhuman and his group of human friends were, She couldn't pass up the chance to get rid of them all at once.
Terra was acutely aware of the fact.
"J," she said, breaking the deafening silence that followed her outburst, "My entire life I've managed to hide from death. I've invited it at every opportunity, but I've always thought I was too careful to let myself die. And now that I'm actually going to die, now that I actually have to accept it, I… I can't. I can't wrap my head around it."
J had only one question on his mind, but he couldn't form the words to ask. "Did you tell Her… Is She… Am I…" he asked, and Terra closed her eyes and sighed.
"No, J. I didn't tell Her about you." J let out a breath he wasn't aware he'd been holding, and he went numb with relief.
"Why didn't you? You could have easily told Her about me and taken me out, too."
"I could have, sure, but why? What would be the point in ensuring your death along with mine? J, if I'm about to die, I don't want what I've done to die with me. I've shown you everything I know how to do, and you're just as powerful as me. You're going to get out of here and keep a low profile until after the Queen is gone, then continue with my work."
J was speechless. What Terra was asking him to do was certainly intimidating. "Terra, I don't think I can-"
"J, I just need to think about all this, alright?" she asked as she laid back down on her bed. J nodded and stood to leave, leaving Terra alone to think about what had happened.
Terra hardly spoke the next day, and every time J saw her, she looked deep in thought. Almost a day and a half went by before Terra said a full sentence.
"J, I think I figured out what I'm going to do," she said, startling J, who was brewing potions.
"You say that like you think you can do something about all this."
"If She wants to kill me, She can come try, but I'm not going down without a fight."
It was all J could do to keep from laughing. "You're kidding, right?" Terra glared at him, and his laughter died. "Terra, you can't fight Her. You're not strong enough."
"Yeah, I figured that out, thanks. And I'm not strong enough on my own, but I think that just this once I'm desperate enough to ask for help."
"But I thought you wanted me to leave so the Queen doesn't try to kill me, too," J said, confused. Terra nodded. "You don't mean humans, right?"
Terra shifted, and wouldn't look J in the eye. "Well, not exactly."
"Well, there isn't anyone else you'd a-" J stopped talking there, and his eyes widened. "Terra, no. You aren't."
"J, he's the only one that's powerful enough to help me! If I can get him and his friends to help, I might have a chance."
"He wants you dead! From what you told me, it sounds like they all do! Why would they help you?"
"Because if they don't, they'll die too. They have no choice."
"But what are you going to tell them? 'Hey, I know I tried to kill you, but now I'm going to die too, so could you help me?'. Yeah, that'll go over great," J said sarcastically.
"They have to agree. They have to," Terra repeated. She sounded like she was trying to assure herself more than J.
"I'm not letting you go!" J burst out.
Terra went deathly silent, and the pause seemed to last an eternity. "You won't let me?" she asked quietly.
"No, I'm not letting you go over there. They're going to kill you on sight, you're not asking for their help!"
"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware you're capable of doing a damn thing to stop me," Terra said, and J bristled at the obvious challenge.
"Terra, I don't want to fight you, but I-"
"That's because you know you won't win."
"No, I just-"
"You're not as powerful as I am, and you know it. Try to talk me down all you want, I'm going, and you're not going to stop me."
He couldn't believe Terra was really being this stubborn. Could she truly not see why this plan wasn't going to work? "Terra, this is idiotic. Don't go."
"Idiotic? What happened to the J from just a minute ago? What happened to the J that wasn't going to let me leave?"
J was shaking with anger at this point. His grip on the potion bottle in his hand tightened, and had he been thinking more clearly, he probably would have been able to stop what happened next.
Terra looked like she was about to say something else, but her eyes were drawn to the bottle in J's hand. The water in the bottle was boiling, and as Terra watched, the bottle shattered from the heat of the water. J leapt back and hissed in pain as some of the boiling water splashed his leg. Terra could only stare at him.
"What?" He snapped. Terra only continued to stare openmouthed. "What?" Terra could only point to his face. He shook his head and turned around to clean up the glass, but stopped dead when he caught a part of his reflection in the metal of the brewing stand.
Both his eyes were glowing bright orange.
"What… what are you?" Terra finally managed to ask.
In that single moment, everything J had built up crashed down around him. "Terra, it's not- I'm not-"
"J," Terra said, fighting to keep her voice even, "Tell me the truth, what are you?"
"You weren't supposed to find out," J whispered.
"Those weren't Blaze powers. Tell me those weren't Blaze powers."
"Terra, don't freak out. I'm just like you," J said, trying to calm her down.
"No, no you're not," Terra said through humorless laughs. "You're nothing like me. I don't know what you are, but we're not the same. I'm weird, but you're some kind of freak mix of-"
"I'm what?" J screamed. His eyes were blazing orange, and sparks crackled at his fingertips. Terra scrambled backwards, pressing herself as far back against the opposite wall as she could. "No I'm NOT! I am NOT a FREAK!" J seemed to be growing bigger in the room, which was steadily becoming hotter. "I trusted you! You're just like me! I'm not a freak! I AM NOT A FREAK!" At this point, J was hulking, all muscle. He looked like he could knock anyone out with one punch. His face hadn't changed much, but his eyes burned an orange so bright it looked like a blazing fire was contained in each. His Jacket had been all but shredded with his sudden increase in size, and while the rest of his clothes had mostly held together, they were beginning to smolder at the edges from the heat J was giving off. The small sparks at his fingertips had increased to balls of flame in the palm of each hand.
When J finished his rant, chest heaving, he looked around. There was smoke swirling at the roof, and when he shifted slightly, he saw that the floor beneath him had two footprints burned into the wood. When he looked up, he saw Terra.
Her eyes were glowing neon purple, and she'd grown just as much as J had in all the opposite ways. Where J was massive and covered in muscle, Terra was thin and lithe. She looked fast, her movements quick and twitchy. Her fingernails had elongated into claws, and her teeth into fangs. Her mouth had grown bigger, her head had lengthened and sharpened to the point of looking emaciated, and her eyes had narrowed into slits. She'd grown taller, and her back was hunched over far enough that the claws on her hands were brushing the ground.
J instinctively backed up a bit, but Terra's instincts had taken over the second she saw J begin to change, and she was ready for a fight. She advanced, growling softly as she did so. J knew he wasn't going to get out of this. He tensed, but Terra launched herself forward into him, sending them flying through the wall of the house. They hit the ground moving, Terra raking her claws down J's back and across his face. He rolled so she was underneath him and punched at her face, but she threw him backwards away from her. He let out an inhuman roar and swung his arms out, using the new distance between the two to shoot a ball of fire at her. She threw herself at him again, and they kicked and clawed their way farther and farther from the house, each managing to get in several good hits. Neither of them was watching where they were going, and before they could stop themselves, they had fallen into the pond near the house.
Normally, the water would have done little to them except shock them out of fighting, but in their states, they might as well have rolled into a vat of acid. Each screamed bloodcurdlingly loud, and Terra teleported up onto the grass, leaving J to pull his way out of the water and onto land. Terra lay writhing on the ground, water searing her flesh. It was having the opposite effect on J, chilling his skin to the point that it might as well have been frozen as the heat coming off his body reduced the water to steam. He couldn't move, he could only lay there paralyzed as the water hissed and bubbled on his skin. It had taken both their energy, and they had returned to their normal human forms.
Terra recovered much more quickly than J, and managed to haul herself to her feet. Without even stopping to get anything from the now wrecked house, Terra walked in the direction of the new Blackrock fortress. She was too injured and exhausted to teleport, but she didn't want to risk stopping and letting J recover while she was still around.
Once she'd made it far enough from the house, she allowed herself a moment to pause and rest, then began teleporting away to begin what she hoped would be a peaceful negotiation with Rythian.
It hadn't gone nearly as she'd hoped. Once she'd arrived outside the fortress, she paused, then teleported up onto the wall and into the camp. She was bruised and cut from her fight with J, and she could hardly stand, so she wasn't able to move out of the way when she saw Rythian pull back his arm and throw his katar. Before she knew what was happening, it was embedded in her right arm, and she dropped to her knees trying to pull it out and stop the pain. Rythian came over and pushed her onto her back. She knew he said something, but she couldn't make it out; her head was ringing and every noise seemed deafening.
She was only able to choke out "Rythian, please, I need your help," before she gave in to the pain and fell unconscious.
After everything was said and done, she began on her way back to her home. Rythian wanted her back in three days, and she had no choice but to wait until then for an answer. Any pushing for an answer before then would only hurt her chances of getting help. Only when she was minutes away from arriving back at the house did Terra realize that she had no idea what she would be walking back to. There was no way J would want to stay with her after what had happened.
She approached the house with caution, and found the wall still in pieces. She checked all around the house several times, but she didn't see J anywhere. It was only when she gave up did she see the note left on her bed. J had written then crossed out "If you're still alive to read this after visiting them", and the true note started below it.
I'm so sorry for what happened. You weren't supposed to find out at all, especially not like that. I took some food and supplies. I won't be coming back.
Terra flipped the paper over, but there was nothing on the back side. She read and reread those four sentences, but no more appeared. It was then that she realized how well and truly exhausted she was, and although it was only the middle of the day, she crawled into her bed to sleep.