Shoutout to Idon'tlikecheese for correctly getting the reference! (dances around)
There was an almost tangible silence in the room as everyone stared at where Hadrian had just rather painfully died, his inventory floating on the ground while the gladiators dealt with the two respawned Old Builders.
Finally, there was the sound of something breaking, and Otto let out a sigh as he stepped out, looking a bit ruffled while Nell came out, blinking and squinting. "Whoa, that's so bright, dude..." she mumbled, blinking in the light.
Magnus cleared his throat, making everyone look over at the Order of the Stone member. "Great. Everything's all great. Now... does anybody mind explaining what in the name of Notch just happened?"
Cassie raised her eyebrow, crossing her arms and looking at the huge congregation of people on the grass. "Yeahh, I'd like to know that too..."
There was a bit of an awkward silence as everyone looked at each other. Well, except for Reuben. He just nudged his way into Jesse's lap, making the spider hybrid's eyes light up happily as she started petting him, making the pig hybrid make a soft squeaking sound in pleasure.
Finally Soren cleared his throat. "Okay, well... perhaps I should start?"
"Perhaps you should," Harper said simply, from where she was standing next to Otto's obsidian prison with a pickaxe, which dangled airily at her sides.
"All right, so this starts back during the hybrid project at the Bureau of Amalgamology," Soren said, leaning back and crossing his arms. "Back when I was still an... 'Old Builder'. Does that name bother anyone else, by the way? Seriously, no dramatic flair at all. Makes us sound like living fossils or something."
A good deal of the people in the arena, excluding Isa, Cassie, Soren, Harper, and Otto all choked, coughed, or jumped in surprise at the sound of that. "YOU WERE AN OLD BUILDER?!" Ivor finally managed to sputter out, looking utterly shocked.
"And Isa, and Cassie's aunt. By the way, what happened to Cassandra?" Soren asked Cassie, looking around.
Cassie's smirk grew masklike, the smile practically melting off her face. Soren spotted the look and his own face fell a bit. "Oh. I'm sorry," he said, in a more hushed voice than usual.
Cassie made a noncommittal grunt. Soren cleared his throat, looking rather awkward.
Magnus snorted a little. "Dude, are you scared of a seventeen year old girl?" he asked, arching his eyebrow.
"Said seventeen-year-old girl has been trained by one of the best axemen ever born and could probably smash your face in if she truly wanted to," Soren said pointedly.
"Fair enough."
"Anyway!" Jesse interrupted, barely beating out the Rogue, "so what happened?"
"Cassandra didn't like what we were doing to Jesse and Jace," he inclined his head at the two hybrids, "so she quit and stormed off about a year or two into the experimentation. Once we'd gotten back to our home base, here," he inclined his head again, "we started playing the games. However, about one year into the games, Hadrian and Mevia..." he paused, as if at a loss for words. "... changed."
"Changed how?" Ellegaard asked, from where she was sitting next to Magnus.
Soren grimaced. "They weren't quite as bad as they were just now, but... it was a pretty close contest. Isa left the team in protest then, taking one of the Eversource chickens with her, and then I left. Which left just Harper, Otto, Hadrian, and Mevia on the team."
"And then I left," Harper said, making a bit of a face.
"Ah, yes, I remember that rather vividly- you shouted us all down, including Slab and Emily here, and then ran out the door holding the Redstone Heart," Otto said, looking faintly amused.
"Did I really? I forgot the details," Harper said, her cheeks rather noticeably red. Ivor chuckled, covering his mouth a bit to hide the fact he was doing it.
Soren chuckled lightly. "Ah, yes... but that explains how I know Isa and Cassie. The whole story is far too long-"
"Summarize, Soren, summarize," Isa said from where she was standing next to Reginald, who was guarding the Eversource. Milo had gone back to examining the obsidian, but you could see from the way he kept looking 'round at them that he was pretty curious as well.
Soren rubbed the back of his head, making his already unruly ginger hair ruffle up even more. "All right. I was invited back as a member of the Order of the Stone, we did a lot of stuff AS said Order of the Stone, then the hybrids escaped," Soren was counting off on his fingers, "then Jesse reunited the Order and defeated the Witherstorm, and then they disappeared for four months-"
"Oh, we've been gone that long?" Jesse asked in surprise, blinking at the architect.
Soren winced at the looks the three hybrids and Ivor were giving him. "... yeeeeeees. Well, back to the summary, I spotted Mevia kidnapping Axel and Olivia and taking some DNA from Reuben-" Reuben snuggled contentedly into Jesse's lap. "- I rallied up my old teammates, we went to the old temple, met Isa on the way, brought her and some other people with us, and then ran all the way here, where we found Jesse in the middle of a fight with Mevia."
"Way to summarize," Gabriel said, looking a bit overwhelmed at the amount of information Soren had just overloaded them with.
"Indeed," Ivor agreed drily.
Jesse rolled her eyes. "Be more dry Dad, you still haven't achieved desert-level."
Ellegaard bolted to her feet, almost tripping over Magnus, who'd also bolted upright. "Dad?!" they sputtered, almost simultaneously. Not that they were the only shocked ones- Gabriel was wordlessly mouthing at Jesse, while the others were staring at Jesse.
Jesse blinked from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. "Oh... yeah, I never mentioned it to you guys, did I..."
"Well, at least it's accurate," Isa said with a straight face. Actually, it was so obvious that she was keeping a straight face that they all were pretty sure she was trying to repress a smile.
"So what now?"
Everyone looked at Petra. The Blaze hybrid blushed a bit at the questioning looks. "I mean, what do we do with Hadrian and Mevia? What do we do after this in general?" she asked, crossing her arms with a faintly defensive air.
"I actually have a suggestion for what we could do with Hadrian and Mevia," Jesse spoke up, raising one hand while the other ones cuddled Reuben, who looked ridiculously pleased from where he was nestled in Jesse's hug. "Olivia and I used to play a game back in our treehouse."
Olivia looked confused, before her pink eyes almost seemed to spark, a smirk coming over her face. "Would you rather," she and Jesse chorused, mischievous grins on their faces.
Ivor blinked from where he was sitting. "... I have a feeling I'm missing out on friendly history here, but I am not going to ask. So what are we going to do in general?"
Soren absentmindedly twirled his beard around his finger, staring at the sky. "You know... I've been wanting to go through the portal networks again for a while. Perhaps I could label them? I've been wanting to visit places without having to rely on memory..."
"That sounds interesting," Cassie agreed, perking up a little bit for the first time since the mention of her aunt.
"I must agree with that," Ivor agreed mildly.
"Well, all of these ideas sound pretty good," Lukas spoke up, everyone looking at the ocelot hybrid (and most of them doing a facepalm when they realized he was lying down on one side of Jesse, who was petting him, along with Jace, who was on the other side). "But first...
"Let's go home."
A/N: Yep, next three chapters or so are gonna be filler chapters. x3
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, everybody!
Toni42: A very accurate statement, my friend. And aw, thanks xD
MissyMattingly: I think the Bureau's been shut down... there aren't any new hybrids in the story, are there?
Kaos Ruin: Lol interesting name choice xD
DemonCatLady: The next few chapters are really more like fillers, so not much happens xD
LittleAngelbun: Nope, sorry :/
NoItsBecky: Can't tell if you're unhappy or happy about this development... xD
ChoyofBonk: Sadly, he respawned... But yeah, you have to wonder when he was born... xD
angelwings: They're all great!
RapidSammi: Yeah don't xD
rebekahtpe: UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE FANDOMS xD And tea, actually.
Idon'tlikecheese: Yep! Good job!
x.X. A.L. X.x.
