"Dream!" Tubbo yelled as he barged into the small clinic. Stress, who had been checking on the stock of medicine and herbs supplies in the pantry peaked her head out of the doorway. The moment she laid eyes on the little lamb, who was frantically looking around the entrance hall, she smiled, stepped back, closed the pantry door and locked it with a key, which she dropped into the pocket of her white coat.

" 'Ello, Tubbo!" she greeted him. Just a few days ago, the boy was in a similar state to that of his brother's, although less beat up, less bloody and with less bullet holes marking his body. Whilst he had been a patient at the clinic, he had told Stress that he had been given first-aid by Tommy's uncle's friend, Mumbo. She had recognised the name, of course -most, if not all, of the hybrids in the shelter knew of Grian's closest friend (aside from Scar). Thankfully, he had had enough energy to tell Stress what had happened, so she could be assured that she hadn't missed anything during her examination of both brothers. Tubbo couldn't provide any information on Dream's condition, seeing as they had separated the night they had acquired their wounds, but in the end, all was well and both boys were alive.

"Pipe down, will ya? Your brother may be awake but he is still restin'." she warned him with a sweet smile as she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and walked him to the impromptu kitchen exam room.

"Ah, sorry. How is he?"

The woman hummed thoughtfully, though the smile on her face was reassuring enough for Tubbo to not be alarmed.

"He's fine. I changed his bandages a couple o' times and we managed to get his energy up, so he should be good t' go in a day o' so."

When they entered the room, Tubbo beelined to his brother's bedside. Stress closed the door and brought a stray stool over. Dream had been sleeping a few minutes ago, when she'd checked up on him, but apparently, he was awoken by Tubbo's shouting. He looked sleepy but as his eyes landed on Tubbo, he seemed to become more alert.

"Dream!" Tubbo screamed right into his face, throwing his arms around the young man's torso without holding back his enthusiasm. "You're awake! You lazy ass, you've been sleeping for half a week!"

"Tubbo!" Dream choked, sounding more distressed and surprised than happy to be hugged by his little brother. Stress quickly stepped in, gently pulling Tubbo's arms away from the bandages wrapped around his chest and closer to the neck. She would have removed him completely but he was holding on like a baby koala. Dream nodded thankfully at her, and she smiled knowingly before withdrawing herself from the picture. She would stand to the side and discreetly observe. Her patient was still recovering, and she had to make sure Tubbo wouldn't accidentally poke at the stitches in his excitement. "It's good to see you too, you little rat!"

Somehow, he managed to pull his arm out from beneath Tubbo to ruffle his hair playfully.

"Hey, stop that!" Tubbo swatted at the hand, managing to slap it away like an annoyed cat. "You're so annoying."

The other chuckled and slowly sat up. Tubbo let go and adjusted the pillow behind him.

"Well, I'm awake now. How have you been? How is the shelter?"

"The shelter is alright. It smells like shit and radioactive waste but my nose has grown used to it now." Tubbo shrugged as he sat on the stool which he hadn't even seen appear behind him, hands idly gripping at the cushion. "Tommy is around too, and I've met Scar Goodtimes. Dad's polititian friend, remember him?"

Dream looked like someone had just slapped him across the face. "I- Stress mentioned a Scar but I didn't think it was that Scar." he admitted. "Of course I remember him. They're in different parties but I remember dad both curse and praise his name. We've never had any contact with him, though. You met him?"

"Yeah! He's a supervisor-slash-founder of the Sewer Cats. I sleep at his house for the time being. Oh! Oh! You have to meet the others too! Bdubs is a little grumpy but he's actually very kind when his moss isn't wilting, Impulse is this big, scary imp, his name is a pun if you think about it- but he's actually a huge teddy bear and..."

And he went on and on about every member of the Sewer Cats' main cast. Stress, who was looking through the list of stock for the fifth time during their conversation, looked up when she heard the doorbell be rang.

"Okay, boys, be good. I have a new arrival to take care of." with that, she left the room.

Stress was perhaps the only good thing to being bedridden, Dream had found. Whilst he was recovering, she would sit with him whenever she had time, tell him stories of how the Sewer Cats managed to steal each building from the city above them, and she had a small bag of jokes. He couldn't believe his ears when she told him how they disassembled a whole passenger plane in one night to carry it underground. Or how Impulse and Ren had done the same thing to an excavator only to use it in order to create sink holes to steal whole buildings (abandoned or not) in the middle of the night.

His time in the clinic was full of surprises, one could say. Stress' presence was a wonderful constant even when she was treating new arrivals in other rooms of the house. She was a pure ray of sunshine in the darkness that veiled the shelter. He had joked about them not stealing a few lamp posts. He had not expected that they had stolen a whole lighthouse.

"Alright, luv, you're bein' discharged!" Stress announced as she walked into the room. Tubbo burst into the room, throwing his arms in the air. It had become a routine for him to visit in the 'morning hours'. Only, that time was different because Stress had told him the news in advance.

"Finally." Dream said with a breath of relief. "Don't get me wrong, you're wonderful but staying in bed all day is boring."

"I know, sorry about that!" she did not look very sorry. "Tubbo is here to pick you up and- oh. Oh, I forgot. Scar wanted to meet you if you're up for it."

Even though unsure of what to expect of that interaction, Dream nodded. "Yeah, sure. I don't mind."

Stress exited the room.

A few minutes later, Stress returned with a familiar blond boy in toe. It was Tommy, who had come to see how his two friends were doing. Dream was calm and so was Tubbo, whose excitement level had visibly decreased to nervous fidgeting. Following Tommy was another man, tall, walking with a magnificently crafted cane and a ridiculously oversized top hat. Tubbo's eyes sparkled at the sight of him.

"Dream! Tubs! How are you two doing this fine morning, ey?" Tommy cheekily grinned at them, before he was pulled to the side by Stress, who gestured at him to hush.

"Hello, Dream!" the stranger greeted him with a happy grin as he approached the bed. "I am very happy to hear you're doing well. I'm Scar Goodtimes."

Dream hesitantly raised his hand, giving Scar a firm handshake. So, that was Scar Goodtimes, huh? It was an odd encounter. For so long, he had only heard of the man's name be thrown around a room. To finally meet him in the flesh and under such unique circumstances seemed surreal to him; almost like it wasn't happening at all. Yet the present didn't wait, and he quickly realised that he wasn't dreaming.

"It's nice to meet you, sir. Thank you for looking after Tubbo."

"Oh, you're welcome. Your brother is great company in these dark times." and then he leaned in, covered his mouth with a hand and whispered, "He's a bit of a handful at times."

"I'm right here, you know!" Tubbo batted at Scar. Dream's first instinct was to hold his brother back from making any physical contact with that man. Out of respect or out of fear of stranger-danger, he wasn't sure, but he felt like that action was putting them in danger. However, before he could act, Scar chuckled and stepped out of Tubbo's reach.

"Anyway, anyway," -he waved as if to clear the previous exchange- "I'm here to possibly deliver some news. I wanted to tell Tubbo but this conversation probably has an R rating, so I decided to wait until you were coherent."

"What is it?"

The man's smile fell and his face grew serious.

"Are you the children of Schlatt?"

Tommy's jaw almost hit the floor. And Dream would have had laughed if the question wasn't as significant as it was.

"I, uh, yeah. You know him, right? Dad talked about you a lot. He was the one who sent us here."

"Actually," Tubbo piped up with a finger raised. "He told us to find a grey cat with green eyes and follow it to the Sewer Cats."

Dream blinked owlishly at him. "Thanks, Tubbo."

"You're welcome, bro."

"Yes, I knew him. We had our fights over laws and other boring politics stuff but we were mostly on good terms." Scar said, a smile that looked sad creeping on his face.

"Wait." Dream cut him off, "'Knew'? 'Were'? What the hell happened?"

The man looked uneasy, almost like he wanted to leave. But he didn't. Instead, he remained and told them the cold, hard truth.

"Dream, Tubbo... Schlatt is dead."

"Still nothing?" Quackity asks when Sam returns from his patrol. The rest of his squad has already dispersed, gone home or stayed in the station. The man turns to the sound of his voice. "I thought you would have caught at least one of them by now."

"If they were in the streets, I would have caught them, Quackity. I have a team looking for Mumbo K. Jumbo too, since the blood samples came back hybrid-positive." Sam told him, sounding almost bored. There were no sightings of hybrids since the sweep operation, which was to be expected. Those who didn't die either crossed the border or fled to nearby settlements. The decrease in activity was nice for Sam, because no sightings meant no killing his own kind in exchange for his own life but at the same time, it increased his anxiety tenfold. It was like the calm before the storm.

There were three hybrids on the priority list. Two of them were the late governor's children, Dream Schlatt and Tubbo Schlatt, who had vanished on the night of the breaking-in of the Schlatt Manor. Rumour had it that they escaped through a hidden passage and later found shelter in the streets. Later, as Sam learnt (thanks to a civilian bystander who gave him the stink eye), the two had nestled in Mumbo K. Jumbo's house.

Then came the third one... Tommy Minecraft, a human suspected to be an avian. Sam had seen the kid once, back when that unregistered avian attacked his colleagues, hidden behind some boxes in the back room. He looked nothing like an avian nor a hybrid. For some reason, the higher-ups didn't seem to care so much about it. He was a child born to an avian man, who had another son with wings studying in a university in a neighbouring city.

It was a mess. A mess that made Sam panic about what would happen to him and so many other hybrids in the force once the cleansing was over. There was... a place he could go. A place that had been offered to him when the news of the purge had first been discussed within the confines of the station. A place that his cousin talked about frequently: a place where only creepers lived, far away from the dangers of human society.

The Perimetre, a giant hole in the middle of the earth. Doc said a lot about it but Sam didn't believe him. A giant hole in the earth with a diametre of a hundred square kilometres? Who would believe that such a place existed and was yet to be discovered by geologists? But the more things quieted in the city, the more the idea of fleeing to that fantastical place grew. Soon enough there he would be desposed of and if he stuck around, there would be nothing he could do but accept that unfair fate.

Maybe giving Doc a call wasn't a bad idea...

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Hello! How are you all? Good? Good, amazing! You may have noticed that I've been, hm, how to put it... Not very active as of late. Truth is that real life has been hitting harder than ever and I'm trying to catch up to lectures and equations and theories and all that good stuff, so I'm going to take a break till around mid-June? Somewhere around that time, which should be when exam season ends for me (who knows if inspiration will hit me in the forehead and get an update out while on break though). I'll probably update A God's (weird) Hobby soonish to give the same update to the peeps who read my lifesteal content.

That should be all... *looks at notes* Yup, that's all! Thank you for reading, peeps! See you in summer! :D