They had blown up his tunnel bore. They had blown up his tunnel bore. They had blown up his tunnel bore. They had blown up his tunnel bore.
Needless to say, Doc was seething.
He was, in his defense, trying his best to not overreact. This wasn't like the heist. The heist had been actively malicious, even if Grian and Tango hadn't fully understood the emotional anguish he'd gone through to create that armor-stand bush. The destruction of the tunnel bore was... unfortunate. But Grian and Scar still should have known better and so Doc was absolutely furious, actually.
Doc paced in his base, plotting how to get his revenge. He knew how to build a charged creeper cannon, after all. But no, maybe responding to destruction with destruction wasn't the best move. That would just lead to a war of attrition until either one side surrendered or until the server was a smoking crater.
Instead, Doc realised, he could just give them a scare. Something to warn them off doing anything like that ever again. After all, he was a creeper, and even though he was more reluctant to blow up than the average member of his kin, he still had the ability to explode pretty much at will. Better still, he could do it silently – the hiss of a creeper was not, as many believed, connected to the explosion, it was just that both actions were typically used as part of the same defense mechanism.
So, rather than building another charged creeper cannon, Doc decided to build a fully-aimable, high-powered, fast-firing, top-of-the-line charged Docm77 cannon.
The first step in the process, of course, was to build the cannon. Doc didn't want to be building it while charged, of course, that would spell disaster! So he set to work, weaving redstone through the very fabric of reality in order to make his insane contraption come to life. He may or may not have spent at least one all-nighter doing that, but generally speaking, revenge must be swift lest it simmer into a smaller, pettier grudge. Or something.
The second step, then, was to build a contraption that could charge him with minimal issue. Doc didn't particularly enjoy the concept of being repeatedly struck by lightning, so he needed another solution. Thankfully, the hivemind had been going through a similar thought process over the past few weeks, for assorted chaotic reasons, and so Doc pretty much immediately got a solution dumped directly into his skull.
It turns out that the flag that sets a creeper to be charged can, in fact, be manipulated by hand if the creeper in question is being constantly pushed and pulled by a honey block attached to a piston going through a series of zero-tick pulses (something about the code not being able to keep up). All Doc had to do was get violently wiggled at a very specific y-level, and then he would instantly become charged, no lightning needed!
So Doc set up the contraption at the y-level the hivemind told him would instantly charge a creeper (y=193, for the curious). He stepped up onto the honey block, grimacing at the way his crocs sunk into it, before pulling the lever and waiting for the rush of power that typically came from being charged.
That decidedly did not happen.
Instead, Doc was hit by a wave of nausea, and staggered off the honey block, suddenly very disoriented. The hivemind informed him, with no small measure of alarm, that they had made a grave miscalculation. See, Doc was not your bog-standard creeper. As a player, he had more flags that could be set than any old mob. So, basically, he should have been wiggled at y=-35 instead.
However, one of Doc's flags had, in fact, been set to a different value. He very quickly realised which flag had changed when he made eye contact with his reflection in one of the iron blocks that made up the contraption. See, the eye he made contact with was very much not that of a creeper. No, it was green, with a white sclera – a human eye. It was a human eye, set in a human face (mostly – he still had his cybernetics), looking down in horror at his human arm and body.
This was, to put it bluntly, sub-optimal. Especially because now Doc couldn't make a charged Doc cannon, considering that he was now unable to be charged.
However, looking a this reflection, and how he still looked uncannily like himself, another plan crossed his mind. Maybe, until he figured out a way to fix this, he could get his revenge in a much subtler manner.
☇◎✮⚙︎✮◎☇
When BDubs had received the whisper from Doc to act natural and pretend nothing had changed, he had been expecting some kind of shenanigans. What he hadn't been expecting was this particular kind of shenanigans, but sure. Ok. Doc was a human now, and he clearly wanted BDubs to pretend things had always been that way. BDubs could do that.
"Hi guys! What's going on over here?" he greeted, approaching where Doc, Grian, and Scar are talking.
"These two are saying something looks different about me, man, I have no idea what they're talking about!" Doc protested. Ah, so Grian and Scar weren't in the loop. This was a form of revenge.
"Did you get a haircut recently?" BDubs asked, playing along. "I can't really tell, you look the same as ever."
"Wh-what-" Grian spluttered out.
"But he's-" Scar gestured vaguely.
"He's what?" BDubs asked, tilting his head. It was a miracle he was able to keep a straight face.
"He's not a creeper-goat man anymore!" Scar yelled.
"Creeper-goats?" Doc asked. "That's a story."
"Scar, I think we've gone to the wrong timeline or something," Grian observed, dragging Scar away.
The moment the two were out of earshot, BDubs collapsed into a fit of giggles.
"What- how- why?"
"I made a miscalculation."
"Of course! Of course it was a miscalculation!" BDubs paused, then grabbed Doc by the lapels of his labcoat, staring as earnestly as he could into Doc's eyes. "Do it to me. We can keep messing with Scar and Grian, slowly switching everyone in and out of hybrid mode. Assuming you can do that."
Doc paused, frowning thoughtfully.
"I think I can, with a little adjustment and some help from the hivemind."
The two hermits chuckled evilly. Shenanigans were afoot.
☇◎✮⚙︎✮◎☇
>:Dc
This is one of the prompts i was really proud of myself for putting together :D
I just realised, I haven't really explained what's going on here. Basically, there's a challenge (hermitadaymay.tumblr.com) to do a piece of fanwork for a specific hermit each day. I took their list and made myself a list of what-if prompts. Basically, none of these are canon to my other fics. (I might expand on some of them in the future though)
I've been Entropy, peace out from the present!
