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Quackity is a strong and independent man, a hard worker who very literally clawed his way to the top of his field. Some would call him an inspiration, more would call him creepy, and even more would call him a drug peddling nuisance that the cops just can’t seem to arrest.
Wilbur, though, could call him a godsend and the embodiment of the devil himself within the very same sentence. On one hand, Quackity sold his wares with guaranteed credibility and reasonable prices. On the other hand, the Elytrian is very, very interested in any rumors of a human and very suspicious of the SBI.
“So,” the Elytrian says with still feathers and that same odd happy expression he always wore. Almost like a mask, if not for its realism and the wings sprouting from his back. “That would be the second shipment of caffeine in the same number of weeks. You must have someone you want very dead….or someone who needs it.”
“I’ve been…studying the makeup of it,” he lies again. “The ship’s air conditioning has gone awry, our Piglin’s back to hibernating. We wanted to—”
“Piglins don’t hibernate unless they’re on the brink of death,” Quackity says. “Ships don’t get that cold and stay functional.”
“Well, see, Phil likes the taste of poison…?”
“Try again,” Quackity suggests with a shake of his tail feathers in thought, eyes still squinting in that permanent grin. “Phil’s a pussy. Every time he’s on my ship, he acts like he’s the star of an ICA-issued drug PSA.”
“He’s an old man, let him be,” Wilbur defends Phil with all the energy of a man one misstep from being caught with his hands bloodied and his fangs dripping red. He laughs despite it all, handing over the price of his caffeine. “Phil freaks out when a crewmember trips, I’m lucky he’s let me buy torture liquid without getting his feathers in a puff about it.”
“Your captain acts like I’m about to kidnap you and sell you everytime I even look at you,” Quackity laughs, an uproarious and guttural sound, a distinctly human sound. When he speaks next it's in a chittering, light language, the Elytrian tongue. Wilbur has to fight the urge to lash his tail or press down his ears.
Why does Quackity sound so human? He had assumed it was an odd version of a piglin’s chuffing—some noise that he had picked up over his time as a drug peddler—but now? Now he knows what that noise is and what it means.
“Be careful,” Quackity warns, smiling and uncaring. “Smugglers are getting antsy. Looking for easy money. If you’ve got anyone rare on that ship of yours, keep an eye out for them.” Quackity flashes his wing—showing the crude, broken pattern of an eye. Showing your wing like that is taboo for an Elytrian, though Wilbur has never known Quackity to obey social norms.
“Thanks for the tip,” he bids the man farewell with a bow and a clipped, “Good luck.”
~⚫️~
The next time Wilbur comes in for a refill, Quackity looks…
Well, he looks upset to say the least. His normally scruffy feathers have gone from reasonably messy to completely awry, sticking out in the wrong places and puffed out in worry.
“You have a human, don’t you?” he asks. “I know you do. Phil wouldn’t touch this shit if his life was on the line, ships don’t get cold enough for a piglin to hibernate. I know you were lying to me.”
Before Wilbur can do anything more than whip his tail, Quackity continues, rushed and rattled. He grabs him by the shoulder with unfiled talons and tail feathers shuddering as he unfurls small wings.
“I need you to tell me where he is, tell me now, before I stop trading with you once and for all—!”
Wilbur pushes him off, snarling and lashing his tail, his ears pinned to his skull as he scrambles away from the panicking elytrian. “Have you lost your damn mind—?!”
“I need a human,” Quackity… glares. He glares and speaks in a flurry of clicking yelps and hums, speaking human english. “I need one. I have one. He’s—there’s something wrong with him and he’s not telling me. I need your human, let me speak to him—!”
“Why would I believe you—?”
“Fuck it,” Quackity growls, a low sound, something far from elytrian. “Follow me. I’ll show him to you—just promise me this—don’t tell. Snitch and I’ll never trade with you. Snitch and I’ll pull every favor I have out to make your life a living hell, that is a promise, not a threat.”
Wilbur combs a clawed hand through his hair, stills his tail and pushes his ears back to a normal position. He can’t stop himself from snarling, a slight show of teeth as he grits his fangs and gathers his wits.
He can’t endanger Tommy like this—Quackity is a black market salesman, the chances of him snatching a human up aren’t miniscule, no matter how fond Wilbur happens to be. He can’t leave this be either, it would eat away at him.
“Fine, lead me to him,” Wilbur takes Quackity’s offered hand—another human gesture, more evidence in his favor.
~⚫️~
What Wilbur sees is this: A lump of blankets on softly carpeted ground, a room with random objects strewn about, and a Quackity so filled with dread he looks like a violently vibrating ball of fluff.
What Wilbur hears is this: A groan as the lump shifts, the steady hum of an air conditioner, the tension of the room snapping as a human hand reaches out for Quackity.
The elytrian abandons any pretence of stealth, flying across the room like monsters from the abyss were snapping at his feet to stuff the arm back into the pile of blankets. He grabs another—small, patched together, yellow and purple with red spirals—and adds it to the nest.
“You’ve seen him, tell me what’s wrong with him,” he turns back to Wilbur. “Tell me how to fix it.”
“I haven’t really seen him as much as I’ve seen a pile of blankets?” he doesn’t quite see what he’s supposed to do without even seeing the guy. “Is he.. is he ok under there?”
“He’s absolutely fine,” Quackity kicks another one of the blankets onto the pile as the human shifts. “He loves it. It’s our thing.”
“He doesn’t look like he does…?”
“Karl is fine, shut the fuck up,” he says. “He’s also dying, maybe. He—I think he is—he’s been running a fever for the past day and a half, he’s been sniffling. He—”
“That sounds fine?” Wilbur assures. “That sounds like he’s fine.”
“I need your human to check up on my human,” Quackity makes a high whistle, a low hum and then a series of chirps to the nest.
“…..it’s up to him but,” he sighs. “I’ll bring it up.”
“Good.”
~⚫️~
Wilbur tells the crew—or really just Phil and Tommy for now—about the second human.
“So, your drug dealer knows a human and you thought I wouldn’t wanna meet them?” Tommy raises a brow. “Bitch I haven’t seen another human in years—of course I want to meet him!”
“Quackity. Him? ” Phil startles again. “Shouldn’t you be careful—?”
“Fuck that, I haven’t seen another person in forever,” Tommy grins. “We should go.”
“If you bring Techno, that would be safer,” Phil suggests.
“Bring everyone—” Tommy suggests.
“We’ll bring Phil and Tommy, leave Techno with Ranboo and Tubbo on the ship,” Wilbur offers. “In case things go wrong.”
“I’m fine with that,” Tommy says.
And so, they set off.
~⚫️~
“Hey Phil, you want some capsaicin? A bit of theobromine—?” Quackity has his eyes squinted in something between an Elytrian smile and a Human glare. “Maybe a bit of high fructose glucose sweetener straight from Earth? Humans like all sorts of poisons you’ve never bought from me.”
Phil side eyes the various vials, powders and chemical compounds at the newest meeting place. He has a worried look on his face, feathers puffed up and his wings spread out a bit as Tommy rushes forward.
“The fuck is that?” Tommy points out a large, bubbling vat of clear liquid, a light foam rising to the top. It burns his nose, sweet smelling but painful. “Do you have soda? In space?! No one ever—??”
“Yep! I made it myself,” Quackity brags. If Wilbur hadn’t seen him panicking before, he wouldn’t have even guessed something was wrong. His permanent grin is back. “You can buy it at a discount. I need you to check out my…I need you to check out a human.”
“Are you sure about that? I ain’t a fucking doctor—?”
“You’re the closest thing we’re getting to one,” Quackity barks out a laugh. “No doctor this side of the galaxy would ever fucking meet with me, let alone treat my human.”
“What’s his name?”
“Karl,” he tells them. “You both look nearly the same, like you’ve been caught midmolt….”
Quackity widens his eyes in a distinctly human expression of shock before grinning again. “You’re uh…you’re a fledgling, aren’t you? Goddamnit. The only human I can find and you’re a—!”
“A giant and massive man with so many fucking wives it violates the Geneva Conventions?”
“Romantic partners can be a war crime?” Quackity startles. “I’ll have to ask him how to do that…”
“You’re sure nothing… undesirable is going on?” Phil whispers in a hushed hum-click to Wilbur. “Do you really trust him?”
“I trust him well enough to buy dangerous poison from him, and follow him into a hidden room in a ship so stealth-oriented the Council itself couldn’t find us.”
“What if he catches something?” Phil frets. “We don’t know how to treat human illnesses, not anything serious.”
“From what I saw it’s mild.”
“Hey! Are you following?!” Tommy grabs Phil by the claws and tugs him closer to a corner filled with bubbling vats and vials. “There’s a whole ass secret trapdoor.”
“Yeah mate, I just wanted to ask something,” Phil lets himself get pulled, stepping carefully over wet carpet stains and foaming poisons, wings furled over Tommy.
~⚫️~
“Bitch I can’t see your guy if he’s suffocating under a mound of blankets!” Tommy has his eyes wide, prodding the blanket pile. It shifts and makes a pained noise. “Is he even breathing under there? Guy, if you need help then move three times, I’ll help you—!”
“He’s fine! And asleep!!”
“If you want me to tell you he’s fine you’ll have to move the blankets,” Tommy starts disassembling an Elytrian nest, wait what is he doing—
Phil stops Tommy from making an awful mistake, feathers puffing up again as he pulls Tommy away from the angry drug-peddling birdman’s nest. Wilbur heaves a sigh of relief. “Do not destroy a nest!” he whisper-clicks. “Remember how I got midmolt? This is that times a few thousand degrees.”
“Yeah but I can’t help him if I can’t see—!”
The nest rustles. An arm bursts out and Quackity tries to kick another blanket onto the mound. A head bursts out, with messy brown hair and green eyes. Another arm, two legs, eventually the whole human has crawled out of the prison/nest.
“Are you ok? You look ok—?”
“Yeah I’m fine,” says Karl. He looks normal, other than the multicolored jacket and the sweat. Understandable, considering what Elytrian nests can be like. “I had a cold. I got better. I took an extended nap. I barely remember my name but that’s just the time travel.”
“What—?”
“You can’t fucking time travel, Karl! It’s not a thing. I’ve tried, trust me, you're not going to time travel in your sleep!” Quackity cries. “You’re fucking dreaming Karl. That’s how dreams work. You experience bullshit for a bit and then you wake up!”
“Oh hey! Wacky time travel one off character. What’s your name, you remind me of my fiance?”
“I still don’t know what marriage is, you refuse to tell me—!”
“Your malewife is fine but I think you need to start girlbossing,” Tommy laughs, suddenly incomprehensible. What is a girlboss? What is a malewife? What is this?
What does it mean? Wilbur doesn’t know and may never know.
“He was fucking coughing, he was expelling liquid from his face just a day ago! What is wrong with him, has it been fixed?? Tell me!” Quackity is attempting to shove Karl back into the nest, but the human isn’t having it. “No, back into the healing mound. Back, back!”
“He’s fine physically. I don’t know a single fucking thing about mental health but he’s not going to die,” Tommy assures.
“Fine, fine. No healing nest then,” Quackity says. “I can finally give them back their blankets then.”
“Who?”
“None of your fucking business,” he laughs. His eyes are scrunched up in a smile, very solidly not a glare or leer anymore. Probably back to normal.
Wilbur’s ability to get drugs has been saved! And Tommy maybe has a human friend now? Or an acquaintance? Tommy knows another human now.
“Well, I’ll be off then. Karl, you have a number we can call?”
“Nope! No trackable numbers. If you want to meet up again, you’ll have to go through Wilbur,” Quackity explains.
Yeah. Trackable data is a bad idea when you're harboring drugs and an entire ass human being. “I’ll bring you the next time we need caffeine,” Wilbur tells Tommy.
“Oh. Sci-fi world? Huh?” Karl wonders. “I think I saw a void. Can’t remember. That hurt? I think it hurts. I saw a large lady, saw a hunched over… thing?”
“That’s called dreaming, for the love of god,” Quackity sighs. “No wonder I thought you were dying, you keep muttering about Lady Death.”
“We have to leave,” Phil rushes to say, clearly uncomfortable.
“What? Are you one of those superstitious fuckers, don’t even want me to say Her name?” Quackity turns from Karl to tilt his head at Phil in curiosity.
“No. Just a personal thing really—!”
“Fine with me,” he shrugs. “Go. Ships on autopilot for now. If you steal, I will know. And Tommy? Take a big helping of that vat with one of the empty vials, a bit of the brown powder next to it too. The latter stuff is—sort of a chock-oh-lah-t bar when you heat it up for a few minutes.”
“I— thank you? Thank you!” If Tommy were Elytrian Wilbur would half expect him to start a chirping ballad in gratitude. As it is he just has that… look on his face. When things are going good, like he expects to wake up from reality any day now.
That shocked, happy look, the kind he’d hide back before he trusted them.
Before he knew he was fam—
Before he knew he was part of the crew.
“No problem—now leave. I have to return some shit to…like eighty percent of the people I live with.”
With that said, they climbed out the hidden ship compartment and called for Techno to pilot back to them.
~⚫️~
“God I haven’t had soda in so fucking long!” Tommy had grabbed at least twenty vials of the stuff on the way out, and half the available powder. The only reason he hadn’t taken more was because they physically couldn’t hold anymore. “Human. Soda. Chocolate. I’m living like a goddamn king—!”
“More like a prince,” Phil muses, more focused on his thoughts than anything else.
“Bitch I’m a king, a massive man with many wives—!”
Kristen. The void.
That human mentioned Lady Death. You don’t mention her without it meaning something, especially not when you’re human.
Phil gathers his wits—it’s probably nothing, it probably doesn’t mean anything, he’s had dozens if not hundreds of red herrings in this year alone—and continues on with his day for now. It means nothing.
Yeah.
Nothing.
(Deep within hollow bones. Deep within a beast’s mind. Deep within the core of a planet, festering like a disease.
Death lives on, even if he doesn’t know she does.)