"Doc, can I talk to you for a second?"
Doc glanced up from his stuff to see Jevin looking at him. "Sure."
He was a little surprised to see Jevin of all people here. The only person who the slime had really interacted with was Wels, who fed him flowers and poked him. Right now, Jevin was purple, matching the alliums Stress had found a couple of days ago.
Jevin sat down, his slime body bobbing around a little. Absentmindedly, Doc wondered what would happen if he fell from a high place or slammed into a wall at full speed.
"You are...you were an experiment for Cub, right?"
Doc glanced over at Cub, who was examining one of the ravines with Zed and Tango. "Yeah."
"Can I talk to you about something that happened?"
Since Jevin wasn't talking to Wels, Doc assumed this was something only he would understand or Wels already knew. Either way, he was curious. "Sure."
"It's to do with Cub. Back before I came here, in the swamp. Well, obviously, a hybrid slime isn't normal. So one day I heard some movement nearby--and I don't have any neighbors in the swamp except for regular slimes and witches.
"Anyway, I heard movement and a couple of voices. I peeked around a tree and saw maybe four or five people wearing lab coats. They held some devices and seemed like they were looking for something."
Jevin took a break to nibble on a dandelion. He immediately turned bright yellow.
"What do those taste like?" Doc asked, unable to help himself.
"A little bitter, but I can't really taste it. Different slime DNA or whatever."
Doc took a petal off of a poppy nearby and took a bite. He spat it out immediately. "That's disgusting."
Jevin cleared his throat. "Anyway...I watched one of them kill a nearby slime. The others were still looking around. Sometimes I can leave a slime residue behind me-I can usually control it, but sometimes it happens without my noticing.
"One of them, who I later found out was Cub, was examining a puddle of water. I didn't see it, but I guess I had left a trail there."
Doc was starting to see where this was going. "Let me guess. He followed the trail, and then spotted you?"
"Yeah. And along with being a hybrid slime, I'm also blue. So naturally, people like Cub are going to want answers."
Jevin found a crumpled lily of the valley in his pocket. Eating it, he turned light gray. Doc was starting to think that Jevin stress-ate his flowers. If he kept this up, someone would have to build a flower farm.
"Anyway. They chased me around, and I was almost caught. I was really scared that they were going to use me in some sort of experiment."
Doc was getting irritated with Cub. He interrupted again. "How did you turn blue?"
Jevin looked a little flustered. "I ate the blue orchids in the swamp."
"Wait, so your original color was green, like all the other slimes?"
"I guess so. I don't really remember much."
"Just curious. You can go on now."
"No, that's kind of it. I just wanted to tell you, since you kind of went through something similar."
"Yeah. Thanks, Jevin." Doc got up. "Will you excuse me for a moment?"
Jevin nodded, and Doc strode over to where Cub was.
»»————- ★ ————-««
"You hurt the slime!"
Cub jumped, looking slightly terrified at the sight of his former experiment shouting at him. "W-what?"
"You hurt Jevin!" Doc gestured at the blue slime, who looked scared of what he had done.
"What? No! When?"
"In the swamp! You were chasing him around!"
Cub glanced around. Everybody else looked down, pretending they weren't eavesdropping.
The memory came back to him. He was at the swamp months ago, back when he was at the lab. He hadn't made the connection before, but he realized: "That was Jevin?"
"Uh, yeah. How many blue slimes do you know?"
"I didn't get a good look!" Cub protested. "And I never even touched him! We just...chased him around..."
"What were you doing in the swamp anyway?"
"We were going to collect some blue orchids, but we didn't see any. Then I saw some sort of slime residue, but it was blue."
"Then you followed the trail and chased Jevin around. I know. And why did you do this?"
Cub was about to say, Well, for an experiment, you idiot! but then he realized that wouldn't do him any good.
"For...scientific purposes?"
"Okay, yeah, capturing a living slime and plopping it into a test tube isn't terrible at all."
Could you shove Jevin into a test tube? Cub shook his head--he was getting off track. "Why are you so worked up about this? It happened months ago!"
"Because I know how he felt. You did this to not just one, but two people in this clearing. And you probably did it to other people too!"
Cub stayed silent. They both knew what he had done.
Doc scoffed. "That's what I thought." He walked away, apparently satisfied.
Everyone who had been watching quickly got back to what they were doing. Jevin shot Cub a guilty look, then went over to Wels.
Cub watched Doc stalk away, feeling annoyed more than anything. Doc was yelling at him for something that happened in the past. Didn't he know how to move on? This whole argument they were in was his fault, after all.
Things would be entirely different if he had just chosen to move on.
(WC: 932)
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Hermitcraft: Origins
Fanfiction"Each world has its own story. Even if you tried to get a story from me, I wouldn't be able to tell you half of it. There is so much life in each build and block, and each event has told their own tale. But it has to start somewhere." Fate has the o...
