Work Text:
Notebooks sat like skyscrapers around the pink haired cat hybrid as they frantically sketched out their racing thoughts. The sun was setting outside their quaint two story house in the sunflower fields, but they didn’t take note of the dying daylight. Their thoughts too consumed by the one question that had been rattling around in their mind.
It had been years since the question had first been asked. Years fixated on the words of a dead man. Years of research into lost forms of crafting. Years of mocking and gentle ribbing from friends. Years that were about to pay off.
All the pieces could be found in the notes around them. Now it was just about putting the puzzle together.
The feline hybrid was vibrating with eager energy at the thought of finally having an answer, and their fervor grew as they heard the front door opening followed by familiar heavy footsteps. They couldn’t help but let out a happy trill at the appearance of an unplanned guest, hopefully it was just who they needed.
“Yellow! I’m here to pick up the bone blocks for Banana’s build! I’m just gonna take them and head out, also please set the time to day if you’ve got a second, I don’t want to teleport into an army of skeletons,” the voice of Yellow’s guest rang throughout the open plan cottage. Barely containing their excitement, Yellow jumped up and ran down before the other could just grab the blocks and leave.
Yellow’s excitement shone through in their voice, “I figure it out Aster. I’ve found the solution.”
Aster raised a curious eyebrow, “What exactly did you figure out?”
“Come upstairs, my notes are there and I can explain better,” Yellow didn’t give the other a moment to think about it before running back up the stairs. Aster looked between the chest containing the needed blocks and the stairs before shrugging and following. Banana could wait a couple more minutes. Or hours. Yellow and Aster were known for getting lost in conversation for grand periods of time.
The second floor was, in short, an organized mess. Papers and notebooks were stacked around in what Aster assumed were categories that made sense Yellow. Carefully they stepped around them to reach the center where Yellow was frantically aligning papers from different stacks.
“So what’s this about? Figure out a new family tree?” Aster asked jokingly.
With a shake of their head Yellow handed Aster a sheet of paper. Looking at it, it looked like some kind caged block, like an abstract version of a spawner. As Aster tried to decipher the scribbles Yellow began explaining, “Not this time. Remember that weird thing we heard a while back. About iron golem spawners?”
Aster’s eyes widened as they realized what exactly was in their hands. “You can’t be, you’re not, you’re not talking about Wilbur’s stupid theory on the existance of Iron Golem spawners. Please tell me this isn’t another attempt at understanding that bullshit,” genuine fear bled into Aster’s begging. They looked pathetically between the sheet of paper and Yellow’s rapidly twitching tail. “Yellow please lie to me,” came one last whisper.
Yellow slowly rose to their feet coming up to their full 10 foot height. Slowly they leaned over the much shorter human and it would have been intimidating if the two hadn’t known each other for months at that point. With a rolling purr Yellow said, “I have the schematics all I need is the resources-”
“Absolutely not,” Aster cut the other off. Without an ounce of hesitation they dropped the blueprints and walked to the stairs.
Yellow places an arm on Aster’s retreating form and quickly offered, “I’ll spawn a panda in your base if you give me what I need.
Silence rang throughout the house. Taking a deep breath Aster turned around once again. Their face was carefully blank as they considered the offer, as if they hadn’t already made up their mind, “What do you need?” Letting out a cheer Yellow tackled Aster to the ground with a hug. “HEY! I DIDN’T SAY YES JUST YET! Get off me!”
“You love me though,” Yellow’s energy was infectious and Aster couldn’t help but give in a little to the affection with a small smile. Still they had a reputation to keep up and scrambled out from the other’s hold.
Taking a look in their backpack, Aster frowned, “I don’t usually keep a lot of things on me so we're gonna have to head to spawn and grab whatever you need.”
Yellow nodded and grabbed their own backpack before stuffing the blueprints into it for safekeeping, “Let’s go!”
Sighing, Aster shrugged on their own backpack. As they walked out the door and towards the Waystone they mumbled, “I feel like I’m forgetting something though.”
Somewhere a couple hundred blocks away sits a lonely enderdragon hybrid hiding in their half completed build waiting for a bone block delivery in the pitch black surrounded by skeletons that would never come.
“You are not taking the spider spawner.”
“Come on Aster, no one uses it anyway! The blaze and cave spider farms are so much better! And you already made a new enchantment area! It’s just collecting dust,” the argument had started as soon as Yellow brought up the need for a working spawner for their ‘project’.
The resource list had started off easy; 4 iron blocks, 3 blaze rods. Then came the more rare materials; an enchanted god apple and a totem of undying. And finally, the thing Yellow really only could get from Aster; a working spawner. Aster was technically the owner of every functioning discovered spawner on the server, having been the one to discover and then convert them into farms for easy use when Yellow first opened the server. They were builds of pride for the resident humans of the SMP.
“There’s nothing you could say that can change my mind. These builds are my life Yellow! My babies! And you want to destroy it? You want to kill my baby?” Aster threw their hands up dramatically before crossing them and pouting.
Yellow rolled their head around, an over dramatic way of mirroring an eye roll, “We both know that the spider farm is barely functional. You complain about it all the time, and you’re never going to take the time to fix it anyway. Let me use it to further our understanding of the MCU.”
“I’m gonna fix it…” Aster muttered under their breath.
Yellow took a step back and raised their hands. Taking a deep dramatic breath they once again began to bargain, “I didn’t wanna have to offer this, but I’ve got one last trick up my sleeve,” they took a pause and watched Aster’s eyes widen in interest, “I’ll whitelist Blood if you give me access to the spider farm’s back room.”
Neither party said anything for a good moment. Aster judged Yellow carefully in an attempt to see through any possible lie, but found only honesty. Without another word Aster began moving down the hall towards the farm, a nod of the head and wave of the hand was the only indication to follow.
It barely took the two of them a minute to reach the door marked “Authorized Personel Only”, spelled incorrectly on purpose of course. Aster gave Yellow one last appraising glance, “Are you sure about this? You do remember what context the iron golem spawner was mentioned in, right?”
“I’m counting on it,” Yellow joked.
Rolling their eyes Aster opened the door, “There’s another unlocked door at the end of this hallway, I recommend using some torches to light up the area. Spiders are bitches to deal with. I’m gonna block off the entrance with some obsidian so no one wanders back here and add an ‘Out of Order’ sign, break yourself out when you're done.” With that the human left the hybrid behind, not at all wanting to be around when whatever was gonna go down went sideways.
Yellow followed the simple tunnel back before finding an identical spruce door as at the entrance. Slowly they cracked the door open to find the carved out spawn area thankfully desolate. Quickly they placed torches on each wall to stop the spawning process, before lighting up the spawner itself for safety. After completing that process they built up to be eye level with the spawner and built a bit out to create a platform so they could work on all sides of the spawner easily.
The blueprint was placed to Yellow’s left and the supplies to their right. Most people in the past had tried to craft different types of spawners without much success. The basis of Yellow’s theory was something they hadn’t seen anyone try before. Replicating a crafting table but on a larger scale. The first step was to create a 3x3 grid using wooden planks with the spawner sitting on top of the platform at the center. It wasn’t a secret that spawners couldn’t be picked up, even with silk touch, but creating a new type of spawner would more than likely need something to work off of. Hopefully a larger scale table was the answer.
The second step was to fill in the rest of the “recipe”, in this case, the iron blocks were placed diagonally from the spawner in the four corners of the wooden platform. The blaze rods were placed in the left, right and bottom middle spaces of the platform, and lastly the golden apple sat at the top middle of the makeshift crafting table.
Yellow took a step back to look at what they had placed and compared it to the blueprints, it looked correct. Breaking the excess blocks they used to get around the area without disturbing anything and then building up to get a better vantage point, they found themselves standing on a tower looking down at their creation.
Adrenaline began coursing through their body, they were so close. The sound of their heart beat in their ears became a steadying presence as they pulled out the final piece of the puzzle.
The cold metal of the golden totem contrasted heavily with Yellow’s sweating palm. A totem of undying usually was used to cheat death and that’s it, but over years of studying different types of magic Yellow had discovered separate uses. The originators of the totems, the Evokers, would use them as a magical source to summon creatures. Not many people thought much about the vexes other than the fact that they were annoying in the quest to obtain the god-like item, but thinking about their origin led Yellow down the right train of thought. The Evokers weren’t just summoning the creatures from another plane, they were giving them life. So if Evokers could give life to vexes, why couldn’t a player use it to give life to something as well.
The illager language had taken long to decipher, but Yellow’s feline hearing allowed them to start to pick up on the different sounds in their grunting. A couple months hiding out a pillager outpost, reading their writings, in a hardcore world was all it took for Yellow to find the right words for what was about to happen.
Softly and stumbling a bit at first, Yellow began the chant that would hopefully turn into a real spell after a few repetitions. Upon the second recitation, Yellow noticed a faint glow coming from the Totem, the grunted chanting resonating with the magic inside the totem. Yellow’s tail and ears began to twitch in excitement and they continued chanting, this time more confidently.
The light only grew brighter, and then when it became unbearable for anyone with eyes the totem began to shake. It pulled towards the spawner, taking a leap of faith Yellow let go of the totem and watched it float gently towards the spider spawner. Silver shimmering dust gathered in a sort of tornado around the wooden platform. The pieces on the makeshift table began to draw together and meld to create something new.
Yellow watched in awe as the new spawner formed. A loud shear scratching sound could be heard as the final pieces clicked into place, then the light flickered out and the room returned to the low light the torches on the wall gave off.
Still coursing with adrenaline, Yellow quickly jumped from their perch and into the water below. They grabbed the torches off the wall and plunging the room into complete darkness.
And they waited, but they didn’t have to do so long.
With the normal “poof” sound that came accustomed with the spawning of mob’s, four large grey-white bodies came into being around Yellow. The hollow thunking sound of their bodies moving around as they tried to observe their surroundings was joy to Yellow’s ears.
“I did it…” it was barely a whisper, filled with both relief and disbelief that their journey had come to an end, but it caught the attention of the Iron Golems. Four pairs of eyes turned themselves to the cat hybrid, all weirdly intense.
Slowly they began to shuffle forward towards Yellow, clearly with some kind of purpose. One lifted it’s perfectly sculpted hand up to Yellow’s hair and gently ran it’s stone fingers through it. Yellow allowed themselves to melt into the touch, letting out an involuntary purr. This seemed to encourage the others to start placing their hands on Yellow’s body as well. Glancing around themselves, Yellow saw that they really were boxed in by the golems that seemed to be getting a bit too close to know what “personal space” meant.
Yellow’s tail curled around their leg and their ears perked forward in interest, “Well hello boys.”
The journey wasn’t quite over yet.
It had been 3 days and Aster was starting to get concerned.
How much food had Yellow taken in? Did they get overwhelmed by spiders? If they had, why wasn’t there a death message? Did they remember to bring a diamond pick? Were they stuck because of the obsidian? Too many questions, no answers. So when Aster found themselves above ground working on spawn they couldn’t stop the spiraling thoughts. Eventually it became too much and they rushed down to their cave home to check on Yellow themselves.
The obsidian couldn’t break fast enough for Aster’s comfort, but when it finally did Aster almost dropped the pickaxe in their haste. At first they couldn’t see anything, the main area of the farm was desolate, the spruce door still open with “Authorized Personel Only” written above it. Quickly Aster rushed past it and to the main spawning area.
The area was dark, Aster pulled out some torches from their backpack and quickly lit up the area, a bit confused by the lack of spawned anything in the area. The answer came though as the room brightened. The area where the spider spawner used to hang out in mid-air was gone, Aster briefly mourned its loss before refocusing on finding Yellow.
Panic settled in as Aster couldn’t locate their friend in the area, but just before they started to full blow hyperventilate they heard a weird crying sound. Hastily they closed their mouths in an effort to minimize their own noise output. The sound had been familiar, it almost sounded like their pet fox Dangus, but that didn’t make any sense, Dangus was in the lumbar farm.
Thankfully, soon after the sound came again, from the small tunnel that would funnel the spiders into the affectionately named “Kill Pit''. Stumbling over themselves Aster rushed to the lower tunnel, and slid into it without hesitation.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Aster let out with the most disappointed yet expectand parental tone they could muster, because there was Yellow, covered in… something that Aster didn’t want to think too hard about and the remnants of whatever sweater they were wearing when Aster dropped them off at the farm. The other seemed to be peacefully asleep, curled around something that was making a weird screeching noise.
Gently, Aster lifted Yellow’s arm to find soft orange fur burrowed into Yellow’s side. Growing a bit concerned Aster shook Yellow awake, “Yellow, man please wake up I have so many questions. Please, god why me.”
It took a few moments, but eventually Yellow began to stir. It was hard for Aster to gage the hybrid’s level of alertness, but hopefully it would be enough for the conversation they were about to have. “What’s up?” Yellow tilted their head in confusion, “When’d you get here?”
“You were gone for three days! I was worried! What happened, why do you have a fox? Where did you get a fox? What happened to your clothes?” Aster’s questions came out rapid fire, there were too many things wrong with the scene to focus on one thing.
Yellow stretched out sore muscles during the onslaught, letting Aster run through everything before deciding to answer. When they did, it was casually, “I was just enjoying my time. I got the spawner to work, but I think it broke somewhere around day 2,” they paused head tilting once again, “What do you mean fox-” Yellow’s attention was grabbed by small paws digging into their side, “Oh. So that’s how Fundy was born.”