Child's Play - A Hermitcraft 8 AU

Surprisingly Normal (in Hermitcraft Standards) - Doc

Summary: Doc signs himself up to take care of four small hermits. It's not the weirdest, most chaotic thing he's dealt with... but it is... something.

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It was a normal day on Hermitcraft—

Well, relatively normal?

Not even remotely normal?

Doc doesn't know anymore. What with all the Hermatrix stuff he's been getting up to, his definition of "normal" isn't what one would expect, really.

But hey, it could've been worse!

(That's Doc trying to be optimistic, if you couldn't tell. Because one does have to try to be optimistic when they're in the room with a bunch of children ranging from ages five to seven.)

When ones friends die in a world cursed with becoming children at a respawn, they are needed to act as a responsible adult. That being said, the people who he was with were as follows: Beef, who while still healing from a previous death (at age fourteen) was tested on by Zedaph and died while being tested on; Bdubs, who had gotten himself hurt with over-aggression toward Pearl and Keralis for stealing his clocks and ended up getting in a war with the latter; Etho, who had been on his own personal server, so when he came back he was reset to the age of six; and Ren who had "coincidentally" let his wolfish instincts take over and fought monsters roughly one night after knowing that Doc was going to meet up with the NHO the day following as their "sitter".

Honestly, he wouldn't be so frustrated with this if Ren hadn't purposefully put himself in danger so he could accidentally die so he had an excuse to come along and act like a kid (or what was now his age). But one against four... this was going to be interesting, to put it lightly.

Well, if Doc learned anything from already being on this server for over two months now, it was that children needed to get their energy out or else. So hypothetically, it would be a good idea to take them out for a walk (it sounded like he was treating them like pets, but really, if Ren was going to act like a dog, he would be treated like one... to an extent).

By some way, somehow, Bdubs convinced Doc that he could safely ride Lulu on the trails. The pony wasn't too huge and too fast, and Doc assumed Bdubs would complain about his feet hurting halfway through, so doing this couldn't be the worst idea... right?

"You didn't tell me we could bring our horses." Etho huffed, seeing the unfairness of his situation.

"I didn't know what we were going to get up to today," Doc reasoned lightly.

"What if you let me and Etho ride on the pony too!" Beef suggested.

"No." Bdubs responded pointedly.

"What about meeeee?" Ren whined nearly the same time. "Don't forget about me!'

"It's not like someone can really miss out on your presence," Doc grumbled more to himself. What had he gotten himself into?

Things such as this went on for quite some time. Eventually the group got fairly quiet though, and there was finally a moment of peace in the group.

Of course, that didn't last long.

"I'm tiiiiiiired!" Bdubs complained.

"You're always tired," Etho pointed out.

"Suck it up." They had only gone about ten minutes and Doc wasn't sure if he could take any more of this. "We'll find somewhere to take a break in a bit."