As the moon rises beyond its midpoint, a small figure begins its plan. Scar emerges from his hiding spot in the omega store and begins his way over to Stress's potion shop. Slowly, as to not disturb the sleeping birds who had taken residence in the tree the day before, he collects the feathers and tucks them away within an empty shulker box. Silently he closes the now-full box and makes his way to grab the next part of this prank.

Scar's excitement grows quickly, each step bringing him closer to playing the prank. Cackles leave him as the honey shop comes into view. He rushes over the Honey Pot with little sound. Quickly he scoops up the honey into a different shulker and exits the shop with great haste.

Quietly he makes his way back to the sleeping piles of hermits that stayed on the island. He gazes out among the group.

"Who to choose? Who to choose?" he questions. He floats over his sleeping options and thinks.

"Doc would be fun but he would be too angry afterward. Maybe Mumbo, the brit always liked the sticky substance. Perhaps Beef or Zedaph, no... not good enough for this prank." He continues to lazily float above the group considering his choices, then his eyes land on the perfect victim.

Ren.

The werewolf was just off the side of the group curled in on himself sleeping with little care. His thick fur would be an absolute mess with the honey and feathers. Laughs leak from the Vex's mouth as excitement boiled up in his chest.

He pulls the honey-filled shulker from his inventory and rises until he's hovering over the hapless werewolf. He grins, his mouth twisting into a horrific smile as his eyes glow a bright blue. Vex magic sparks from the open hand casting a spell on the werewolf. Ren's muscles relax further as a sleep spell weaves a tight hold on his consciousness. The magic pulsing through his hands heats the honey-filled box, letting the honey flow easier. Carefully he floats from the tip of Ren's nose to his tail coating the thick fur in a thicker layer of honey.

Scar softly cackles as the honey sinks into the fur already creating mats in the coat of the werewolf. The honey drips down to his paws and slides across his body to his stomach. After the honey is thoroughly covering the wolf, Scar pulls the box of gathered feathers from his inventory and shakes it open. A cascade of feathers falls upon Ren's body becoming stuck within the mess of fur and honey. Scar laughter grows louder as he gazes upon the honey-and-feathers werewolf. Too loud.

Zedaph is roused from his slumber curdled next to Impulse by high pitched laughter.

"Hello?" he sleepily bleats out.

Startled by the sudden statement, Scar loses his grip on the box of feathers, and his concentration slips from the sleep spell. The box crashes onto Ren's head, waking up instantly with a confused growl. Zedaph leaps to his hooves at the growl stumbling into Impulse, awaking him with a startled grunt of pain as Zed's hoof lands on his stomach rousing more hermits from their sleep.

Ren goes to rub at the impact point of the box and finds that his limbs are a bit heavier than when he fell asleep as well as harder to move. Ren reaches to rub the growing bump on his head when his paw meets a sticky and weird texture mess of fur. He pulls back his paw to see it coated in honey and feathers.

He spins around looking for whatever did this to him in confusion. A laugh brings his attention to the small Vex floating just a few feet above him. Scar's laughter stirs something in Ren. Something deep and primal. His confusion turns to anger as growls and barks leave him. The remaining hermits snap awake from the loud, deep barking.

Ren lunges at the Vex and Scar's laughter is brought to a sudden stop. Hastily Scar flies higher to get away from the enraged werewolf only to be snapped at again. A fearful yelp escapes him as he tries to fly somewhere safe. Ren quickly gives chase to the blue spirit's retreat. They crash through the other hermits nearly knocking some over as Scar zig zags to attempts to lose Ren.

A chorus of yells and screams only adds to the chaos. Scar races up towards his gardening shop finding shelter among the large leaves of the monstrous plant.

Ren, in his blind pursuit of the Vex only watching where the creature was and not was in front of him, crashes into the glass window of Scar's shop. Glass shatters on impact as Ren falls through the window cutting into his skin and lands in the now glass, dirt, and foliage-covered store floor. Bits of glass cut into Ren more as he falls in a heap on the ground. The impact knocks the anger from his mind, replacing it with throbbing pain.

The other hermits rush over to help the now whimpering wolf. Stress runs over the side of the wolf to pull large shards of glass cutting into Ren's body and applies some pressure to stop the blood flow. She is soon joined by different hermits doing the same. With each shard, Ren lets out a gasp or whimper in pain.

Soon after, the sound of whimpers are overtaken by hysterical laughter. Tears begin to form, creating a horrible song of confliction. The sounds echo from within the greenhouse causing even more unease. Cub slinks over to where Scar is and watches the grin twist to an ashamed frown on the Vex's face. Scar turns to Cub and sobs, no longer laughing, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mea- It wasn't supposed to hurt anyone, but it did and I can't do anything to help, it's ba- it's so bad, I'm sor-" Scar gasps for breath, but the words and tears continue to spill out.

"Why do I- why is it still funny? It's not, it shouldn't be- I don't like this, I'm sorry- please make it stop, please, please make it stop being funny- I hurt Ren, what if I hurt everyone? I don't want to.. I don-" the words are uncontrollable, becoming more incoherent as time goes by. Tears keep rolling down Scar's face, and the sounds of both his messy crying and overwhelming emotions echoing around them become more and more oppressive.

Recognizing that his friend needs some help Cub pads over and curls around the sobbing Vex, "It's the influence of the Vex. C'mon, let's go somewhere where there's not so much magic. Apologize to Ren after he's been taken care of."

Scar nods duly as he settles on Cub's back. "Thank you, thank you, I am so, so sorry-" he continues to ramble and apologize. Cub carefully takes Scar away from the crowd of hermits, walking through the empty streets of the shop district to the undeveloped part of the island Scar had claimed earlier in the season. The light and sound fade away the further the two get from the district till just the sound of crying gasps and Cub's paws scraping against the ground. Then Cub comes to a stop and lays down, curling his paws under neither himself but remaining upright.

"Scar," he says softly, "Scar, come on let's talk. We're away from the rest of the hermits and the magic."

Scar peels away from Cub cautiously, coming to a stop at Cub's eye level. Scar hung his head in guilt and fear. Tear tracks streamed down his face and he curled in on himself from the self-scrutiny.

Something breaks in Cub seeing one of his closest friends so small and scared.

"Hey, you're fine," he soothes.

"No, it's not! I'm not fine!" Scar cries out. "I hurt Ren. I hurt my friend, and-" He gasps, "I thought it was funny. But it's not funny." Fresh tears roll down his cheeks.

"Scar listen to me," Cub states, "The Vex did that to Ren, the meteor made you become a Vex, you were not in your right mind when you pranked Ren. You did not know Ren was going to chase after you. You didn't know he was going to crash into the shop's window."

Scar wipes some tears away, "I know, but I feel terrible for hurting Ren."

"You can say you're sorry to him. Everyone can understand that you weren't yourself. We're all being affected by the meteor." Cub bumps his nose against the small Vex in his own form of a hug. Scar lets out a small cheerfully giggle, "Stop no, your nose is wet. It tickles."

Cub moves his head back from the Vex with a chuff. Scar floats over the top of cub and sinks in Cub's main right between his ears in an exhausted lump. The Vex burrows into the warm sandy yellow fur. They sit together till Scar breath evens out more to a calm pace, Scar braiding and unbraiding small pieces of Cub's mane.

"You feelin' better?" Cub asks.

"Yes," Scar replies, "And sleepy." A small yawn escapes him, confirming his statement.

"You ready to go back?"

Scar pauses in his ministrations, "I guess... no time like the present."

"Ren will understand, the others will understand. You have me to help too, don't forget that," Cub says walking back towards the cluttered shopping district.

Scar sinks further into the lion's mane, the pulse of Cub's heart and walking acting as a lullaby for the Vex.

'Maybe I'll take a little nap before we get there," Scar thinks to himself as he slips into sleep.

..........

If someone would've told False a couple of years ago that in the future she would be washing honey and feathers out of her shifted and hurt werewolf friend's fur, on a grass filled mushroom biome, she might've given them a sarcasm filled side-eye. But now that she was actually doing just that, she realized that it was a type of weird that only could happen on Hermitcraft.

Joe had found his way over to help while he had seen that she was carrying a bucket of water over to the victim of the prank and its aftermath, Ren, who is attempting to pick some of the feathers that he can reach out of his matted fur. It's not going well as he's planned mostly just pushing the feathers and honey around, mixing it further.

The two got to work with their collected materials, finding or asking to borrow most of them, which consisted of a bucket of water, a couple of sponges, some soap, a pair of tweezers to get the remainder of the glass out, and a spare pet brush that they got one of the hermits to go and retrieve from Joe's place at the Strait of Joebraltar. The two hermits positioned themselves next to the wolf; False holding onto the tweezers, while Joe sat next to her on sponge duty.

"You're certain that you don't want me on the tweezers, right?" Joe motions towards the object in question in False's hand.

"I can handle a sword better than you can, so I'm fairly sure I can take out a couple of pieces of glass." Patting the fur next to the shard of glass she was focusing on as a warning to Ren, she carefully pulls out the first shard of glass. A whimper is heard from the hermit in front of the two as she places the sharp object into a piece of cloth they found. While she does this Joe takes the sponge in hand and cleans the wound with water to remove anything left in or around it.

Continuing this process in quiet concentration the two make their way around Ren, removing the remaining sharp objects from his flesh. Ren moves every so often when they hit a deeper piece of glass, a small whimper replacing what would likely be hisses of pain in his human form.

"So what do you think we should do next?" False asks in concern for Ren.

"Let's start getting the honey off of him," Joe decides, as he starts to move him and their equipment over to a smaller lake nearby, patting Ren on the back as a signal to follow him over. He gets the wolf form of their friend into the shallow pool of water, taking off his shoes and rolling up his pants before stepping in himself. False picks up the glass shard pouch, placing the tied up cloth in her inventory to be more safely discarded later, and follows behind Joe and Ren with the bucket of water.

"Well then let's start this, honey is not gonna be fun to get out of his fur. To be fair honey isn't fun to get out of any fur, but we're gonna have to watch the areas where the glass was and make sure to wash them out after." Joe takes one of the sponges and starts to wash the sticky substance out of Ren's heavily matted fur as he talks, pulling the feathers out as he goes.

"Yeah this isn't exactly what I planned for my morning but I'm not gonna leave Ren like this all day. It seems like something that would not be fun to deal with. I'd hate having something like this congealed mess in my hair." False rattles on as she joins Joe, slipping off her shoes before stepping into the shallow pool herself.

As they get to rinsing the soap out from Ren's fur, they move to toss the sponges back into the now-empty bucket. Making sure all of the items they had used ended up in there for easy clean up later. Joe picks up the pet brush, planning on turning around and helping to get out the tougher knots that didn't untangle themselves when removing the honey, but as he does so he finds himself getting into a situation that he usually finds himself in while at the dog sanctuary as Ren shakes the water out of his fur himself. Ren's shaking leaves Joe chuckling in surprise as False has a shocked but amused look on her face, neither of the pair expecting their friend to do that, but now both covered in the shaken off the water.

"Did he just do that?" False asks, still in a state of shocked amusement. As she looked at the now slightly ashamed Ren, he realized what he'd done, and his ears flattened down on his head and a whine escaping his throat in something similar to an apology.

"Indeed I think he just did. It's not like he did it on purpose though, dogs do that to get the water out of their fur, it's a lot faster than waiting on it to dry. It happens all the time with the dogs at the sanctuary." False hums a slight agreement at Joe's somewhat explanation before taking the brush from his hand getting to work on some of the worse knots in the werewolf's fur.

"I think we should leave the cuts alone for the most part, since we don't know when any of them will change back, and we don't have the proper materials on hand. Just keep them clean and deal with them later with proper materials if this whole thing persists. Is that okay with you too Ren?" False asks look towards the dog in question as he nods in agreement with a slight wag of the tail, understanding the plan.

"Yeah I can come back with some more appropriate supplies later and dress the wounds but for now they've stopped bleeding mostly, so they should be fine for now. The dogs can get into all kinds of trouble so I have a small stockpile of materials back at my place I can bring later."

"Sounds like a plan." False agrees as she hands Joe back the pet brush before making her way back to dry land to finish picking up what they had used. As she does so, however, she spots Cub heading back into the main area and waves to him. The lion looking fellow spots this with a head tilt and changes his direction towards the trio on the bank of the small pond drying off with borrowed towels. As he makes his way over she spots the small blue form on his upper back that appears to be sleeping.

"Oh, hey Cub. I didn't see you there at first." Joe looks towards the hermit coming closer to their group. The hermit in question lets out a small chuff in greeting, laying himself, and therefore the second hermit on his back, down near the group. The hermit on his back, and in his mane, moves as Cub stops but doesn't stir yet.

"Well, I think me and Joe need to not only dry ourselves off but pick up some of the stuff lying around here, so we'll both be taking our leave now." False moves to get up with this statement, picking up the bucket with some of the materials in it, pulling up Joe after her, and grabbing her shoes. She nods away as Joe gives her a look of confusion and understanding crosses his face as he follows her towards what was becoming considered the main camp in the shopping district away from the three transformed hermits.

"Hey Ren, how are you feeling?" Cub asks as the werewolf in question makes himself comfortable in the space next to him, watching his friends leave to return or pick up their equipment.

"Well man, I'm for sure a lot better now that all of that sticky goop is out of my fur." Cub notices him glancing over to the Vex responsible lying down on his back.

"He said he wanted to apologize but I'll let him do that himself when he's awake but for now I'm gonna let him sleep cause this whole situation has worn him out. The two sides of him were definitely both not on the same page for that. Well, he can explain what went through his mind but the Vex influence isn't anything to mess around with, that much I can assure you."

"This whole thing is new for most of you so I can understand that whole predicament, especially since similar reasoning is behind why I crashed through the window. Instincts overtaking everything else, I was tracking and in pursuit. If you don't pay attention to where you're going you can get hurt." Ren's tail pats the ground as he speaks, and his head moves to watch Scar as he turns over in his sleep.

A few moments later he slowly wakes up. He gives a slight startle as he sees Ren looking at him, falling backward off of Cub in surprise, before peeking back up over the lion body of his friend.

"Hey, Ren. Nice to see you here." A tired voice shakily makes its way from Scar as he slowly pushes himself up to leaning on Cub, tears already welling up in his eyes from looking at his friend that he had unintentionally hurt, "Look I just wanted to say how sorry I am for getting you hurt like that. It was just supposed to be-" he paused to take a breath in as tears flowed from his eyes, "a small little prank, and then all of a sudden you had crashed through the glass. I only stopped laughing when I had started crying, yet some sadistic part of me still found it funny. I could have seriously hurt you. I feel so bad for what I did to you still."

Ren pulled himself up, stretching his back out, before making his way over to Cub where Scar now sat down leaning against his side. Scar had tear tracks down his face as small silent hiccups ran through his body from the tears he wiped away. Ren made his way over to the Vex before a small whine was made in the back of his throat from seeing his friend like this. Ears now laid down on his head, the werewolf placed his head onto his much smaller friend's head, like a hug without the arms.

"Look dude it couldn't have gone much worse than that. Especially with such a harmless prank as honey and feathers and everyone on the server within a shout or two's reach. I'm tellin' you now that I forgive you, it's just a bit of fun gone wrong." Ren's voice rumbled in his chest as he spoke to Scar who in turn found himself throwing his arms around Ren's neck in a rendition of a hug, small hiccups still escaping from the Vex.

"Thank you." Scar spoke, voice muffled and still scratchy from crying, into Ren's fur. The werewolf's tail in turn wagging wildly back and forth as he enjoyed the modified hug with his currently smaller friend.

..........

So far, Wels hasn't been having a very good time. It's difficult for him to move in his full dragon form as it's huge compared to what he's used to. He's not even that big by dragon standards; he's on the small side for a young red dragon, not even full-grown as Joe had decided. After the first night's Vex related shenanigans he had dragged himself away from the main group until everything had calmed down. He still left the following night just to air on the side of caution.

He stretches out like a cat and stands up. As he makes his way back to the others something catches his eye. Diamonds.

Diamonds glittering in the large trees leading up to the town hall. Something inside of him stirs as he stares transfixed at the glittering blue gems. His tail flicks excitedly as he follows the trail up the steps and into the town hall easily fitting through the door. As he spots the glistening pile of diamonds he instinctively curls around the middle of the pile and lays his head down on the seat.

He stays this way for quite a while until Scar and Cub enter the room.

The small Vex immediately shoots into the air, "Hey, that's my pile."

Wels picks his head up and looks at Scar breaking free of the instincts for a moment, "I know, I just can't bring myself to leave. It's my horde," The last bit is hissed as Scar crosses his arms and pouts.

"But... my diamonds..." Scar laments as he sinks to the Vex magic flooring.

Cub pads over and moves Scar off the ground, "Wels? What if I give you a pile of gold?"

"Gold?" The dragon's eyes light up thoughtfully, "I would move."

"Alright, you come with me and we can get someone to go into my shop and make a pile."

Wels scrambles off the diamond throne and follows Cub down to find someone with actual hands. Scar settles into the diamond and pulls one out to chew on; his Vex instincts and tastes have increased quite a bit since the meteor did this to them.

The first person they come across is TFC, the man is watching Zedaph attempt to follow Impulse up a ladder. He's not doing too well, he's just putting his front hooves on a rung and bleating insistently.

As TFC notices the pair standing nearby he turns to them, "And what can I do for you?"

Cub nudges Wels into speaking as he can still speak in human languages, "Oh, Um we were wondering if you would mind getting the gold from Cub's shop and making a pile out of it?"

"I can do that," Tinfoil decides, "I'm going to assume you're trying to hoard shiny things."

"Yes," both the hermits say in unintentional unison. TFC chuckles, turning towards the gold shop.

"These kids are going to be the death of me," he laughs to himself.

...........

Xisuma paces back and forth his tail flicking anxiously. EX has yet to come back to the End after he left in a hurry the day prior to help the other hermits. He had woken up the empty void with no clear way to communicate with the others as his communicator was left in the shopping district during his transformation. He had no idea what was happening to everyone in the overworld as panic gripped his chest in it's tight hold.

Then a rumble in his throat started to revierdate through his body. Slowly his pacing came to a stop and felt the vibration running around his chest and head.

Purring, the end beast realized, he was purring. It was deep but quiet, like a distance motor. The worried hermit laid down on the smooth end stone, listening to himself purr.

The anxiety that was coursing through his veins began to bleed out as the purring continued till after a few minutes it slowed to a stop. Within the newfound peace, Xisuma takes a deep breath relishing in the End's thinner air. It's a rarity that he was able to breathe without the assistance of his face mask that breathing unobstructed was a luxury to him.

'This is nice,' he thinks to himself. Minutes past where he just breathes, deep long breaths of the End's air, or feels the smooth rocky texture of the end stone beneath him. He pulls himself up from the floor and begins to walk around the island at a more casual pace. He can feel how his claws grip onto the gaps in the endstone and how his tail keeps his balance in his quadiped form. For the most part, the current island he's on is barren, with small chorus flowers sprouting from the endstone. Xisuma looks out into the distance, finding his eyesight to have increased with his transformation. He could see the far island in crisp detail.

He saw a large island just about 30 meters away from his little island, with small islands dotting the space between them. The closest island couldn't have been more than 10 meters away, X figured. Xisuma started to pace again, but instead of worry, thought caused him to walk from one end of the island to the next. He kept his eyes set on the island and slowly backed away from the edge of the cliff face then took off.

Claws provided traction, new muscles and bones work in tandem pushing him forward, tail kept him balanced in his dash, everything was working together. Then with the edge growing closer and closer, his hind legs land just a foot away from the edge and coils back only to push off with great force. His leap carries him closer to the island still in his sights and lands his front paws onto the surface of the other island. His claws drag grooves into the ground as he stops. Xiusma looks back to the small island he was left on and pants with exerted from the force he called upon to perform the jump.

He rapidly gathers his strength to leaps between the floating planes till he reaches the largest island, panting a bit after the bounds between islands; he wasn't tired, just unused to the movement. He looked around the island, bustling with more activity than the other one he was placed on. Enderman walking about the tall stalks of the chorus and even an End city lay towards the eastern side of the island.

Xisuma wanders around the large island, waving between endermen and chorus plants till he hears a voice ring through the quiet End.

"Xisuma!" it cries out, "Xisuma, where are you?" His ears perk up toward the voice and turn to face where the sound is coming from. He looks into the void sky, scanning the horizon for the source of the cries, then he spots red armor among the yellow and purple features of the End.

"Over here, Exy!" Xisuma roars out finding his voice, "I'm over here!"

He can see his brother whip around towards him and quickly glances back down at his arm. He vanishes from sight quickly, only to reappear a few feet in front of Xisuma.

"Oh thank goodness, you're fine," Exy says rushing towards the end beast. Xisuma lowers himself closer to the ground as his brother crashes into his side. "I panicked when I couldn't find you. How on earth did you get over here?"

"I jumped between islands," he explains.

Exy gasped, "How-, what? I, you, what? That is the least crazy thing I've dealt with in the past 24 hours, it's fine."

Xisuma chuckles hearing his brother so exacerbated. "What happened to the others?" He asked.

"Well," Exy starts, "After I had left you in the end, everyone finished their transformations and we had to retrieve Keralis from being stuck in a hole. Wels claimed the throne but we bribed him to leave it alone. We lost Grian and Tango for a bit but found them in Stress' tree." Exy listed out counting on his fingers, "Oh and last night Scar pranked Ren with this honey and feather prank but Ren chased after him into the gardening shop and then Ren crashed through a window and got cut up."

"What." Xisuma states.

"The rest of the hermits were dealing with the aftermath when I remembered you and I came to the end."

Xisuma sits back on his haunches confused, "Wait, how can you understand me?"

"Scar has a spell," Exy explains waving his hand dismissively.

Nodding Xisuma bobs his head, "Did you bring food?"

Exy grins, "I sure did." He begins to pull steak and pork chops from his inventory, setting it on the ground. Xisuma starts eating, just now noticing how hungry he is now and devours the meat.

After finishing his meal he rises to his full size, over twice as tall as Exy, "Ok then, let's get back to the overworld." He nudges Exy as if to add to his points.

"You can't be serious X," he states flatly.

"I am incredibly serious. The others need my help. I'm their admin and I need to protect them. Now let's get going."

"Xisuma, you have no way to breathe in the overworld. Your mask is destroyed and making a new one for your face now will take too much time." Xisuma growls at his brother. "X, please be reasonable."

He turns away from his brother and flicks his tail in annoyance. Exy sighs before walking in front of Xisuma. "I know, I just feel useless..."

"Things are ok, everyone's adjusting and figuring things out. Nothing server-wide has broken and if worse comes to worst we can have Joe do admin stuff."

"He knows what he's doing," Xisuma laughs flicking his tail at his brother. The pair sit in silence for a while.

"Wait, do you think you could fix your mask?" Exy asks slowly formulating a plan.

"If I have all the pieces I could probably magic it back together."

"I'll be right back I promise," at this Exy disappears after he types a command into his communicator. So he can collect the different mask parts. He's gone for about five minutes, "Ok here, fix it."

Xisuma stares blankly at the helmet parts scattered at his feet. Carefully he concentrates and slowly the mask reconstructs itself. Once it's complete he realizes something.

It's far too small for his face and it wouldn't be able to help him.

"Can't you change its size?" Exy asks as he picks up the mask and holds it out.

He shakes his head sadly, and Exy tugs his helmet off and gives him a hug, "I'm going to stay with you."