Jesse looked down at herself with a sigh. No extra legs in sight. So, she definitely couldn't be a spider hybrid. Definitely not. Nope. No possible way.

So why was she carefully patting herself down anyway and just touching her sides lightly just to check? She wasn't a spider hybrid. There was really no need to...

To...

Jesse patted herself down again, slowly, her hands slowly moving down her sides again. She looked down at herself again. She felt some slight bumps on her sides- about two on each side. She looked down at herself again and patted it. Yep, no doubt about it- they were there. They were, most possibly, probably,

"They're not... too noticeable... right, Reuben?" Jesse looked up at her pig with a worried look on her face. Reuben squealed and shook his head seriously at Jesse, who looked down at herself, worried. "Well, I sure hope it stays that way."

Jesse climbed down from the ladder, a bit faster than she usually did, Axel and Olivia patiently waiting for her. She felt a little guilty for internally freaking out about whether or not she should tell them about the whole thing or... well, you know, not. She'd finally decided not to. "Got everything?" Olivia said, smiling warmly at her.

"Yeah," and Jesse nodded, her hands crossing behind her back. She felt kinda guilty for not telling her best friends about the whole thing, but she wasn't sure that they wouldn't freak out and attack her. After all, monsters weren't exactly... liked, here.

"Let's roll," Axel said, waving a bit. Olivia rolled her eyes at the large, burly male. "Yeah, dude- roll."

Jesse rolled her eyes at the two of them, smiling widely. "Let's go," she laughed, voice filled with amusement, shoving the thought as far back as she possibly could.

That was a problem she needed to worry about in the future. And she wasn't future Jesse right now. So, this wasn't her problem.

Yet.


Axel hadn't been too worried when he'd woken up this morning to find his arms faintly green.

He'd just figured, oh, he must've accidentally gone to sleep with a bottle of green ink on the bed. That wasn't weird.

He had MUCH weirder stuff in his bed. Once he'd had a live raccoon on the mattress and nearly gone to sleep on it before it scratched him and darted out of the window.

Yeah. He still wasn't sure why that had been there.

So, he'd just figured, okay, he'd wash it off, no biggie.

Until he'd... realized that the green was more mottled. And, it didn't wash off. No matter how much soap he'd used.

And yes, he HAD used a lot of soap.

Actually, if he were being honest, he'd nearly flooded the bathroom with soap suds before realizing he probably shouldn't do that and stopping. And then he'd done a quick cleanup of the bathroom, which mainly consisted of him dumping most of it out the window into his neighbor's yard. No wonder they didn't really like him that much...

So, he'd panicked a bit and decided to hide it. And, after all, what better to hide it than with his usual hoodie?

So, he'd pulled it on, and went to go get the box of fireworks.

I mean, he couldn't just TELL people... not when people reacted to monsters and strange people the way they did... especially not his friends. Who KNOWS how they would react... they'd probably attack him with... I dunno, Jesse'd probably use her wooden sword... which definitely hurt a lot.

And, okay, if Axel was being completely honest... he didn't want to lose the only friends he had.


Olivia didn't feel weird at all. Not in the least. She hadn't even felt odd.

Well, I mean, she'd moved WAY too fast from her room to the bathroom, but she waved that off as being distracted while going there. After all, it had been at around six in the morning. She was going to be a bit weird about grabbing stuff, probably a bit fuzzy. But still, that had been kinda weird.

And then on the way to Endercon, she'd tried to grab a random block to move it out of the way, and ended up with the block in between her hands neatly.

That wasn't weird at all- what WAS weird was how... I dunno, NORMAL it felt.

It had felt pretty nice, actually, which was really scary to her. Why did THAT feel nice at all? It was just holding a block, that wasn't anything... special or anything.

Okay, so I GUESS she HAD felt odd... but what was she supposed to say? 'Hey, I'm holding a block, and it feels cool!'

The only people that held blocks most of the time... and moved them... weren't even people. It was a monster.

And there was no way that she was going to just go TELL someone that she was feeling like that... especially with her right eye, which had always been kinda bright, getting even brighter than usual. People were going to think she was insane.

Of course, their reaction to those people never WERE too good.

And she DEFINITELY couldn't tell Jesse or Axel. They were her closest friends. Who knows how they would react?

So no.

She hadn't felt weird.

Not in the least.


Lukas patted his head absentmindedly on the way to Endercon.

He froze in mid-walk, even as the others chatted and laughed and walked ahead.

He patted his head again.

There were two small bumps rising on his head. Not from being injured- no, if it had been from being injured, he would've felt it.

Well, he said bumps... but, they were more like stubs. They felt a bit like... well, like ears.

He adjusted his hair nervously. There was no way he had two little... ear-like... stubs on his head. No way. Seeing is believing, and since he couldn't see it, he didn't believe it.

No matter how many times he told himself that, he found the whole thing just... unbelievable.

"Lukas?"

He started violently. Aiden and his friends were looking back at him in concern. "You okay there?" Say what you want about them, they could be jerks, but they were still his friends.

"Y-yeah. Sorry. Just... lost in thought, is all. Haha." Lukas walked forward, trying to get the thought out of his head and deciding to worry about it later.

I mean... they were just bumps. Nothing too bad. He didn't have to worry about that.

And he wasn't going to worry his friends about the whole thing. Especially if they reacted badly. Like... if they attacked him, or something. After all, monsters, and people who were thought to BE monsters... weren't exactly liked. Or, accepted.

And if that meant denying the obvious, he'd do all of it. Just to keep his friends.

That was all he ever really wanted, after all.


Petra's eyes had always had a gold tint to them. She didn't much mind, especially since they didn't look half-bad, and, okay, if she were being totally honest, looked awesome. Because, they were, they were really awesome.

However, she drew the line here at a gold arm.

Petra poked her arm. It DEFINITELY had a gold tint to it. And it seemed a bit stiff and rigid, for some reason. She poked it again. It still felt like skin, but, you know... harder.

Petra carefully took her sleeve/glove-thing and pulled it up over her arm. Like always, it covered her arm entirely. It looked pretty normal. "Okay... this is okay. It's not a big deal. Probably just because it's one of those days."

And she almost relaxed at that. After all, she had some days where her arm stiffened up. That was okay. It happened all the time, there was no way she was going to get hurt, on a day like today.

Almost is the key word here.

Because it hadn't been this bad before.

She shook her head. Nope, it was just one of those days. If she stressed about it, she was just going to end up giving herself a headache. And, headaches in the Nether, are bad things. As she'd found out by complete accident. This... mental conversation with herself... it was over.

And so, she set her pickaxe on her shoulder, took a deep breath, and headed out. If she hurried, maybe she could make it to Endercon and go chat with Jesse for a bit before the competition, and before she had to go head off to go get the Wither Skull.

A/N: So, some of you notice the rewrite of this chapter. Some of you won't; but Toni42 (who wrote Movie Mode and is amazing) commented on this story and made a note about it, so I decided to rewrite it and ease them into the discovery of their being hybrids.

They don't realize that they're hybrids, except maybe Jesse, so they're all really freaked out. I dunno, just, comment/review and let me know if there's something I could do to improve this chapter. I wrote this on a tight schedule, so, yeah. :/ I think it kinda sucks, but what do you all think?

x.X. A.L. X.x.