class GreetingSan { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello World!"); } }
Hello, Sanctuary! I've been told I can talk to you, which is cool! I'll probably need a translator, seeing as I'm not your admin, but hopefully Lucid won't mind ^-^. I think you're my favourite. Some of the others are my favourite players, but. I don't know, you just make me happy.
Anyhow, I hear you have cats. As a cat lover myself, I was wondering if you could tell me about them? :D!
(To Lucid: Sorry ^-^; but San is just too cute and if anyone is gonna tell me about the cats it's gotta be them, right?)
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Dream Prime–aka Lucid–blinks several times in surprise.
There’s a beat before his senses are, to put it mildly, assaulted with an unholy amount of information from his world–Sanctuary, San–in a flurry of attempts to convey things about both how they feel and the cats.
Lucid can’t even see past the dozens of overlapping images being projected into basically his soul. “Wait wait wait, slow down, I can’t–that’s too much, I can’t even tell what you mean,” he begs, and the multisensory overload abruptly stops. In its place is guilt and insect wings against his skin.
The admin gives a shaky sigh. “No I–I know you’re excited. Not many people ask you things. Especially not about your favorite subject.” He can’t help but smile as he feels sunlight warm his skin, along with the press of a wet dog’s nose and what could best be described as the smell of yellow.
Not all of the things he hear-feels from San make sense when said out loud. He’s given up on explaining some of them in words.
They show him a series of images that are…confusing. Most of them are of Lucid himself, usually with the faint glow to his eyes that he’s familiar with as the sign that he’s using the admin console. On its own he could probably guess the meaning, but it’s those with the rest of them that throw him for a loop. The other ones are flashes of, of all people, Lee and Daz.
His confusion must be obvious, because he hears twigs snapping and spiders chittering in impatience. The images are repeated, slower and more emphatically; a scene of himself working in the admin console, then Lee nearly entirely hidden by a small mountain of dogs, then another scene of Lucid at work, then one of Daz laughing brightly with Atlas over something, then the pattern repeats.
“I still don’t–wait.” He pauses, brow furrowing for a moment. This had been sparked by the question, which used a string of code that had been what Lucid had seen when he opened the admin console for the first time. The connection hits him with all the force of a baseball bat to the face.
He’s baffled by the implications, though. “Achilles and Daz could become admins? How do you even know that?” His non-answer comes in the form of images of a dozen dogs all tilting their heads in unison. It makes him sigh softly. “San, that’s not really–okay, I’ll need to look into this. Day might know something, at least about Lee. I can ask Daz about himself, but that’s…” Lucid makes a slight face, remembering the times he’s talked with the bright and cheerful version of Tommy.
The guy was a little dense. He was like a golden retriever made into a person, all excited energy and eagerness to befriend everyone and everything that moved. Then again–Lucid remembered the state of his code when he first arrived.
The version of Loyalty that had been put on him was barely functional; it was, frankly, a miracle that Daz had survived it being crammed into his code. And crammed was putting it kindly, too. There was an…anger, almost, with how the strangely-written program had been inserted. It gave the impression of being jagged and being done punitively. Whatever it was that had happened between Daz and his original Dream hadn’t been pretty.
But after a brief period of skittishness, Daz had bounced back with a vengeance. He quickly became one of the main people who greet newcomers and act as the one they turn to for support and to answer questions. It’s led to Daz being the one everyone knew in one way or another.
Cheerful, kind, warm, and occasionally shoved his foot in his mouth by saying the wrong thing; that was how Lucid pictured Daz.
The idea that he could be an admin felt weird. It wasn’t that he hadn’t proven his kindness a hundred times over by now, but more that he was a bit…airheaded. He would mistakenly say that someone liked a food they hated, or verbally trip over a dozen sore subjects and then would profusely apologize with the most hangdog, kicked puppy look Lucid had ever seen a person be capable of. Ranboo lip wobbles had nothing on Daz’s apology face.
Then again, Daz was, at minimum, on friendly acquaintance terms with what Lucid would guess to be around 95% of the server. There were hundreds of people in Sanctuary, with large chunks of that population being different versions of just a handful of people. it wasn’t a huge surprise that he would get a few things mixed up–there was only so much a person was capable of remembering.
Lee, meanwhile, sort of made sense as a potential admin. It was hard to imagine anyone being more trustworthy to give that much power to. Achilles wasn’t just clever, he had accidentally gathered an army for a reason; he was stubbornly determined to be kind to those who needed kindness. He was frequently there when Lucid and Day had to excise harmful or broken parts of a newcomer’s code. The usual reasons that happened were due to the Egg corrupting something, or else the depressingly common case of Loyalty being put on someone–Tommys, in very nearly every case. Sometimes it wasn’t explicitly written code, and closer to a fucked up tattoo.
It made Lucid’s skin crawl to know that it happened in one way or another often enough that there were protocols for it.
Lee had become a part of how those people began to heal. He would spend time with any new Tommy who had to go through the removal of Loyalty, quietly letting the fact that he was a Dream and he was there keep the enchantment neutral. Technically it would be just as effective for any Dream to do that, but…well. It was easier to trust a ten year old who would go and sit nearby with a book than it was to trust the spitting image of your worst nightmares.
Especially when that ten year old had a habit of stealthily putting bandaids on you when you looked sad.
He realizes he’s been quiet for too long when San shows the images again. “Sorry,” Lucid tells them, and then has to parse what their actual meaning is. It takes a few seconds before his eyes widen. “...Oh. Oh. That…hmm. So…uh, whoever it is that asked that–San wants to know if you’re an admin, too. I guess it’s not…out of the question that you are? But I think there’s…maybe other possibilities, too.”
It had been a surprise, to put it mildly, that there was so much overlap between admins and the language that the programmers of some worlds used. Lucid hopes that’s what this is; he really doesn’t want to worry about the potential consequences of another admin being able to watch his world and the people in it.
Lucid may have been able to redirect his possessive nature into a significantly healthier protective one, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still think of the people here as his.
He’s given up a lot for them. The biggest one being relaxing or discarding some of his previous restrictions–like opening the End. The other major thing is his dignity.
The second most effective form of therapy on the server is messing with him. He’s accepted that it’s a necessary evil by now. It lets people who only know the cruelty of their original Dreams believe that he’s not like that, not any more. Pranks, jokes, and generally dunking on him aren’t met with retaliation via TnT or an axe to the chest. Hell, he’s still cautious of who he pranks back–he’s afraid of it distressing others.
His only strict rule is that it can’t harm the cats. It’s part because he cares about them, and part because San cares about them. If the cats get hurt, the world would very literally start to flood out of their distress. Lucid would really rather not need to calm them down because someone got careless with their prank.
Once again he’s yanked from his thoughts by San showing him images. They make him smile, because it’s the cats. Of course; how could he forget that was what San had been asked about? “Alright, alright, I’ll translate,” he tells his world. “I know you have a favorite, but–”
Lemongrass and pine are all he can smell for a moment. He rolls his eyes a little at it. “Don’t get indignant. I didn’t say you don’t love them all, just that you have one you like a little more. I’ve seen you distract the rest of them so Dre can hide the treats he stole from others.”
There’s a pause, and then he tastes bittersweet chocolate and feels the sort of…snap, almost, of peeling a banana. Reluctant agreement, and the faint hum of insects that means that San is sulking a bit.
It makes his smile grow. “I know, I know, you can’t help it. Voice-cat has a way of making everyone love him.” The taste of rose petals and the phantom feeling of cats settling on his lap let him know that San agrees with that–and that they’re thinking about how much they adore the cat in question.
Who he suspects is off running his little heart out on the cat zoomies track. The others would be nearby, in that case. They tended to travel as a little pack with the exceptions of Gogs and Hope. The former was likely still burrowed into the lingering warmth of the pile all the house’s occupants left behind when they got up for the day. The cats tended to act as a very effective deterrent against getting up in the middle of the night when sleep seemed like it would be too elusive.
Hope, on the other hand, was…a little odd. She had shown up on his doorstep a few days after Day had gotten a cat himself. Lucid had mistaken her for a pile of snow at first–at least, until she trotted inside and refused to leave. Any time he would try to shoo her out, she just went under his bed or got on top of a high shelf. After spending most of a day trying to get her back outside, he’d given up and just accepted she would be staying.
He now knew that it had been San’s doing, his world having decided that he needed a cat too. They just hadn’t been able to tell him that, not back then–his connection had severely degraded during the time he had been trapped in blackstone, obsidian, and lava.
For reasons beyond his understanding, San’s voice and sight were scrambled by those three things. He had known they were harder to hear-feel in the nether, but had never even considered that it could be…almost severed, like it had been in the Vault. Or that in building his bunkers, the trophy room, and generally using a lot of blackstone and obsidian in his building, he was slowly eroding his connection to San.
Which was a problem, given how connected they were. He hesitated to say that what he, Techno, and Day had started calling soul erosion was the main issue with how…unhinged he had gotten, it certainly didn’t fucking help anything.
Neither did the fact that he had been ignoring San to the point of not noticing they were getting more and more quiet. Not that the taste of salt-and-licorice ever really left his tongue, though–not until he was inside the Vault. San had worried–for both him and everyone he had once created an entire world to give a home to.
One of the only times he had ever known them to be fully angry at him (tornadoes in his ears and burning hair in his nose) had been when they had mustered up enough energy to make him listen.
It had been exile; when he had seen the tower. That was what had thrown him off so much that it let San break through his mental walls to demand to know what had happened, why he had turned cruel and was hurting someone he had called a friend not long ago. They had demanded to know why he had stopped his job, his duty, as their voice. Why, why, why he was doing any of it, what had changed, to stop, to see what he was doing–
And he hadn’t answered. Couldn’t, not then–not now, either. He still didn’t know why, what drove him to be so–
There’s the feeling of a sandpaper tongue on his arm, and a quiet meow.
Hope blinks up at him, her bright blue eyes ever so slightly reproachful, like she was unhappy with him working himself up yet again. Though given she had seemingly appointed herself his therapy cat, she very likely was unhappy with him.
She only ever really would leave his side if there was another cat or a visitor near him. She sat next to him now, watching to see if she needed to further calm him down by pushing her head under his hand or re-settling herself on him.
San seemed to have a similar thought process, or at least decided to start with the cat in the same room as him. Flashes of images and emotions from them filter through; the nights he would wake up in a cold sweat and choking down a scream, how he would spend too long awake to stave off those nightmares, the way he would stare at a door for too long after someone left. Licorice-and-salt on his tongue, blending nauseatingly with too-spicy mushroom soup and feeling restrained; concern and fear for him.
Fear of someone was very different. That was an animal backed into a corner, staring down something bigger and scarier and knowing it was ready to close its jaws around the both of them–
There’s a nudge at his hand from Hope worming her head underneath it. Lucid realizes the licorice-and-salt taste has gotten worse, and the fear for him has been swapped out for insect wings and guilt both brushing against his skin. A combination of guilt and regret–he shakes his head slightly.
“Not your fault,” he assures them. He runs his hands over the soft furred cat at his side, who is watching him more closely than she was before. “Hope decided early on that she was my therapy cat. San brought her here a while before the T3 started traveling. She’s…been a big help.”
He grins a little as pride in the form of lavender and the crunch of biting into a fresh apple is conveyed in response. “San was…hard to hear for a while. But one of the first times something got through was when Hope first calmed me down after…” he trails off, trying not to let the bad parts of the memory overwhelm him.
“I heard–after months of nothing, I heard hope; the feeling of butterflies breaking through cocoons and the sound of the sun rising. What else could I have named her, after that?”
For a moment, he’s awash in green. Every sense he has and then some is the bright, warm green of sunlight seen through the leaves of a tree.
Green is love, to him. It’s why he had started wearing lime green, why he was so attached to the color. It embodied freedom and safety and unrestrained joy, all rolled into something nobody else could possibly begin to understand in the same way he does.
…Well. Aside from one person.
A person who had stopped wearing that color when he felt that he had lost the right to it. Lucid knew that for a fact, because he had asked Day that, once, during a conversation when he had been in a better mood.
That hadn’t lasted long, as a dark shadow passed over the less vibrant eyes of the man that Lucid had very nearly been. “I ripped out the color of love when I sold my world so I could stay alive. I forsook them and everything I once stood for. Why would I wear that, when all it would be was a mockery of them? I killed them, but I would be damned before I taunted them by putting on a pale imitation of their misplaced love.” He laughed softly, bitterly, even as San had done the equivalent of shouting their indignation at him that he was ever undeserving of their love.
Not that Day had been able to hear-feel that outrage. The world had been a silent place to him for a long, long time. “And even then, I never could give up green entirely. All I could do was mute it, the same way I–we–had silenced them.” There had been an accusation in Day’s far less vividly green eyes; a judgment that only ever ebbed and flowed but never faded entirely.
Why was it you, he always seemed to ask without saying it, and not me? Why have I been made to give pound after pound of flesh, while you only ever had to give a few drops of blood? What makes you worthy to sit and gain everything from all my sacrifice?
Lucid didn’t know the answer to that first time he had realized what that look meant. He didn’t know now, either, nor did he know how to ever repay the impossible debt he owed his almost-self.
All he could do was try and do better, be better. He could, and has, and will swallow his pride and accept snide remarks and being the target of endless pranks to make the faintest dent in that debt. He’ll open his home and his world to those who Day, Theo, and Vio decide need to be saved from their own worlds; he’ll make himself smaller and less threatening–no mask, no cryptid-like skulking around, not responding with anger unless others were seriously hurt–to make those same people feel more at ease with him wielding the power he does.
He can peer into the cosmic essence of a person, untangle and read the very atoms that make up who they are both body and soul. He can change it, too–that’s what being an admin means. At least, that’s what being the flavor of admin he is means. From what he understands, that’s not always the case.
It’s a lot to ask from those that seek refuge. They rarely have a real choice–the faint hope that Sanctuary might be the place it was claimed to be, in spite of Lucid and San themselves being as they are, is better than the nonexistent hope of their own world. The unstoppable spread of the Egg, or one in which someone–nearly always Tommy–is enchanted like a fucking item, or people are staring down the barrel of a war of attrition against their very souls after making a faustian trade for magic.
Hope suddenly rises, only to lay herself back down on his chest. The weight and the reproachful look she gives him help pull him from those thoughts.
“Sorry,” he tells the cat quietly, letting his fingers comb through her fur. San’s confusion makes him smile weakly. “Don’t worry about it. What about the other cats?”
There’s a pause, and he can tell San doubts that it’s nothing to worry about. They then seem to decide that, for the moment, Hope has it handled. They flash though images of a brown and cream siamese cat with heterochromia; Gogs, rarely seen not asleep. The most he ever seemed to do was make his way over to where Lucid and the rest of the cats were, if the latter had settled into the seemingly inevitable pile they would make.
A few times, Lucid had woken up after a movie with his friends to find Gogs sleeping curled up on the chest of George–Prime, that is, the one who had lived here first. Bad theorized that it was because they were both Georges, while Sapnap insisted that it was just because once he fell asleep, George wouldn’t be moving for a while.
The hypersomnia was far better than it had apparently been while Lucid was in the Vault. Even after, it had been…sort of terrifying. Guilt always gnawed at him when he remembered all over again that George, while a little more likely to oversleep and harder to drag out of bed, had never been like that before Lucid had…spiraled.
And then George always seemed to notice, because his friend was too good at reading him, and would tell him that he was fine. If he wanted to worry about someone, he should worry about himself–because half the cats weren’t in the room and that usually meant trouble of some variety.
He huffs a soft sigh at himself, forcing himself to split his focus between the rhythmic motion of petting Hope and hear-feeling San. Affection in the form of phantom cat weight and rose petals on his tongue; love, in the form of a tint of green across his vision; and laughter in the sound of delicate windchimes and the exhilaration of running.
“Gogs is the George-cat,” Lucid translates, unable to help his slight smile. “The cream and chocolate sealpoint siamese. He sleeps a lot but usually wants to do so around the others. If he’s left behind for too long, he’ll grumpily follow them and get cozy again. When he is awake, though, he sticks his nose into everything but especially my food. I’ll sometimes go over to Techno and Phil’s to eat just to escape. He’s faster and sneakier than you’d think he’d be. My working theory is that he saves all his energy to release in a burst and specifically to steal my sandwich yet again.”
Indignation is the response he hear-feels back. With a roll of his eyes he argues, “San, he doesn’t need more food. He gets plenty, and you need to stop falling for all of them pitifully wailing over not being given lunchmeat. They’ve figured out if they do that they get food of some sort. You’re encouraging them when they really don’t need to be encouraged.”
Annoyed disagreement, next; the sounds of fire popping and wind whistling through trees. “You can’t just give them infinite food. They get fed more than enough. Some have argued they get get fed too much already–”
The disagreement grows more pointed, and Lucid sighs softly. It’s a familiar argument, one he never seems to win. San is just as stubborn as he is, which makes sense; he did create them, after all.
“Well, at least Gogs will actually eat what he steals. I can think of others who just hoard their ill-gotten lunchmeat.” San is, as planned, redirected to the duo he means; Funds and Mike. Fundy, despite the fox muzzle, had scowled at him when he heard that the equally orange somali cat had the same nickname as him.
“I don’t even understand,” he had said, desperately, paw-hands pressed together in front of his muzzle, “why the cat version of me even likes the cat you so much! I would have adopted him!” “Ah,” Lucid had said as he looked down at the cat in question, who had been contentedly watching from his arms, “That’s because he has taste.”
The sputtering in sheer outrage had been worth the resulting pranks. He did have to hand it to Fundy–the setup to the laser pointer that would dart around but only turn on when the lights were off and he was in his bed was very clever. Or, at least, it was complicated enough to seem that way.
Not clever enough that it saved the fox hybrid from what others later described as ‘guerilla warfare but for pranks’, in which Lucid would wait until Fundy had relaxed his guard a little only to be pelted with a brief barrage of water balloons. Then Lucid would vanish like smoke as Fundy shrieked in anger and tried to repay him in kind.
Lucid had stopped doing that after he had been cornered by a surprise attack from Tubbo, of all people, and soaked to the bone. Turns out it’s a lot less fun to gain half again your weight in water when you live in a snowy tundra.
While it had been very satisfying to see Vio chew the two of them out for that. The guy was still his doctor, despite there now being plenty of others he could see if he so chose. Vio had even said as much at one point.
It actually hadn’t occurred to him, but Lucid had made a split second choice. “Nah,” he had answered, grinning at the alien, “I’d rather make you drag yourself up here to the snow, which you hate, than go to the trouble of doing that.”
Vio had glared at him. “One of these days, I will destroy every single fucking snowflake on this server. You will regret those words when your home is flooded by the melted snow.”
Those sorts of threats had been a cause for concern from San the first handful of times they heard them. Then they realized that they were just Vio being Vio, and were probably just him playing up his hate of snow.
…Probably. The guy did use spite to reform the server, which was still an impressive feat. It had seemed like a lie, when Lucid was still Dream and still trapped in an obsidian box. It never stopped being a baffling, impossible thing–that he had snapped the cycle of revenge over his weird knee with kindness. Even if that kindness had been something he then demanded be given to everyone, which he suspected was the only reason it had worked.
The server had been too far into the cycle of revenge earning only revenge to be led back out gently. Instead, it had been grabbed by the metaphorical throat and told to shape the fuck up or else. Vio had proven willing to back his threats up. That, and…
Everyone had been tired. They had wanted to believe that, despite what he had already done and could easily do again, there might be a chance to stop. To lay down their weapons, to not have to look over their shoulders. One by one, and some far more readily than others, they gave him a chance.
It was a miracle that it had worked. Or maybe not quite a miracle so much as a combination of, as Vio himself put it, boredom, spite, and a willingness to abuse the hell out of everything he knew about them in both worlds.
Bastard was good at convincing people to do things by hook or by crook. Lucid shuddered to think what someone like him could do if they were actually malicious.
San almost audibly sighs at him, pushing the images of Funds and Mike at him again with heavier emphasis. He doesn’t want to deal with his world sulking at him, so he lets the train of thought drop and continues to translate.
“Funds is an odd little guy. He follows Dre around to the point where he, like the others, was part of a package deal with him. Mike too, actually–I have no clue why they’re like that. Nor could I explain how weird it was to meet the cat version of someone before I met a human one.” What a surprise that had been, when the T3 had returned after a world and told him that they had to rescue a group of people from an Eggpire world, one of them was an entirely new person, and said person had the exact same name as the cat who had, seemingly, been the outlier among the feline versions of people on the server.
It had been a very awkward conversation between him and that version of Michael McChill. He was one of the more uncommon ones who came back. It was another mystery of the multiverse that some people just didn’t seem to be as prone to being devastatingly traumatized as others were.
Before San can get more annoyed at him, he continues, “Funds is the orange one, Mike is the solid brown one. They’re cat-Fundy and cat-Michael McChill. The two of them will hoard food seemingly just to give me ‘fun’ surprises when it starts going bad. That takes longer than you’d think it would up here in the snow.” Lucid gives sarcastic air quotes around the word; he’d like to stop finding bits of food squirreled away behind chests and under his bed. “Funds also has a habit of suddenly and randomly leaping straight up into the air. There’s no predicting it and he seems to decide to do it when it’s least expected. It’s just a thing he does. They all have their quirks. He also likes to wiggle his way under Snap or Tek when they all pile together. It’s probably because they’re larger and warmer.”
He can’t help but smile a little at the affection and delighted images of the cats all curled up together that San sends to him. “Mike likes to observe people; if there’s anyone over, he’s got to make sure they don’t do anything too interesting. He gets offended if he thinks he missed something. I can tell because he climbs up onto one of the bookcases, turns around, and shows me his back for hours after they leave.”
Though that’s far from the most annoying place one of the cats will decide to sit.
It’s only slightly surprising that San seems to be running on a parallel train of thought, because a solid cream cat with long, glossy fur is shown next. Nearly every instance has him sitting in the most inconvenient place he can find; sometimes on Lucid’s arm, sometimes on a chest he needs to open, sometimes managing to drape himself over top of the TV.
Naturally, his world does not see anything the cats do as an inconvenience. If anything, it only endears the cats to them more.
“Za,” the admin says, as he hear-feels the sheer delight San has when showing him one of the many times Za decided to plant himself square in the middle of Techno’s favored chair right when said piglin hybrid entered the room, “Likes to make things interesting. Sometimes for Techno and Phil, but mostly for me.”
He can’t help his laugh as he says, “I still have the pictures Techno took of Phil staring at the cat version of himself, who had mysteriously appeared over at his cabin and climbed into the pot he was just about to start cooking in. This happened on multiple occasions and every time Phil was more and more baffled. It turns out that some of the cats had learned how to open the windows of both of our houses and would let themselves in for their own amusement. We installed child locks on all the windows and it stopped. Sure, there were about two weeks of psychological warfare where I had an unjustified mutiny from all the cats and San–”
He snorts softly as San pointedly disagrees with him, citing the very compelling evidence of it being a crime to not allow the cats something they wanted. “San,” he says, “believes strongly that the cats should get to do whatever they want.”
His world lets him know in no uncertain terms that yes, that’s correct, and that they’re in the right for thinking so.
“In the interest of not having another argument about this–” Naturally, San loudly declares their offense–the feeling of fluffed up feathers and cats turning their noses up–over the implication that they’re not right. “I’ll just say that that’s how they feel and nothing else,” Lucid finishes, just as emphatically. “Because we won’t get to the other three if we don’t.”
Just like he hoped, it’s enough to redirect them.
It’s no surprise that the next cat shown is a large, fluffy, brown, mainecoon tabby. Unsurprisingly, the cat version of Techno was one of the more standoffish cats. He had certain people he liked and wouldn’t spend time with anyone else. Though he joined the cat piles, he wasn’t interested in being a snuggler with people. One of the few people he favored was Philza; when the winged man visited Lucid, Tek would go up to him and greet him.
Images flash by of the cat mostly tagging along with Za. He rarely strayed too far from the oriental longhair, though did have a few other cats that he seemed to enjoy the company of.
Specifically, the feline versions of Wilbur, Tommy, Ranboo, and Dream. The last of whom was the entire reason Tek had been part of the package deal. Tek was one of the two cats that could and would stop Dre from becoming a little amber blur for the entire day.
Tek and Snap would do so by launching themselves on top of Dre, who would fairly quickly calm down. The dynamic was a great source of entertainment for many of the denizens of Sanctuary. Especially Sapnap, who always grinned when he saw a tiny bit of amber peeking out from the cloud of fur that was his own cat-self.
“Tek isn’t as openly affectionate as some of the others,” Lucid starts, once he’s had a moment to think through what San is telling him about said cat, “but he’s sweet. At least, when he wants to be–he’s a menace when he decides he’s mad about something. He, Za, and Dre will go and visit with the cats that the Bench Trio adopted from time to time. Those are the Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo, and Wilbur cats; Mellohi, Bumble, Janus, and William. Neither the Bench Trio nor myself were very interested in either group sulking because they miss the other.”
He shrugs a little, still combing his fingers through Hope’s fur. More images are shown, all of them layered with the rose petal taste and phantom cat weight of San’s affection. “The other big thing about Tek is that he treats Dre–the Dream cat–like a weird kitten. Both Tek and Snap will also do what has been referred to as squishing. Tek only does it for Dre and William, but Snap does it to show affection. If he likes another cat or anything approximately the same size, he will plop himself down and purr his little heart out. His favorites are Dre, Gogs, and then the two cats that Karl Prime has–cat-him and cat-Quackity. Snap and Gogs will go and visit them too, sometimes. I would have considered taking those two as well, but Karl would have found a way to murder me for good and steal cat-him back. Aeon and Duckie are both spoiled rotten and fixtures in Karl and Styll’s book shop.”
San seems pleased with the slight diversion, and sends him images of the bobtail calico and Burmese dozing together on one of the many beds dotted around the shop that the two time travelers ran–though they weren’t the only ones who worked there. A handful of others, mostly versions of Karl, also counted themselves as employees.
The version of Sam from the same world that Vio, Day, and Day’s sons were from was a cheerful, upbeat optimist with a passion for historical builds and history in general. He had chosen Styll as his name, and was very happy he no longer had to be tossed through time. He was still technically a vessel for Time, but neither he nor Karl Prime had heard anything from said god in quite some time.
“Snap is the other large, brown, fluffy cat. He’s the one with the bandana over his collar. He gets up to a lot of things, including coordinating with the other cats and San to get to the treat jar and gorge himself on them, convincing San that he definitely needs to have more chickens to murder–” His world stubbornly tells him, for the umpteenth time, that they don’t see the issue with letting the cats have chickens or mice. They’re always so happy when they get to hunt! And it’s all in the cat zoomies track, anyway, so it’s barely even messy!
Lucid sighs softly. He’s tried to explain the problems to San many, many times. San, as if to remind him that they were created by him and remain a part of him, refuses to listen to him and continues to give the cats small prey animals. They’ve remained at an impasse over the issue for years now, and Lucid sincerely doubts it will ever be resolved.
Instead, he continues, “--and other things that San will cheerfully inform me of either too late to fully stop him or well after the fact.” The sensation of being full and vindication flash through him, the feeling of smugness.
It makes him smile a little, because he does like that San adores the cats so much. His world deserves to have something that they cherish like that, after what they had been through at his hands. If them being happy means he has to clean up chicken carcasses and stumble across stashes of pilfered feathers and toys, well…it’s not that high of a price to pay.
He knows the price could be a lot higher.
He shakes his head slightly to clear that train of thought. “And last but not least…Dre.” He lets his eyes close for a moment as he’s awash in green again, the feeling wrapping around him like a blanket. There’s that, candy fizzing on his tongue, sunlight on his skin, and the combination of an echo of the very living room he’s in with the warmth of being where you’re meant to be. Love, delight, happiness, and home.
He lets his eyes open again, smile growing. “He’s the amber one with a white splotch on his face that looks like a mask, and San utterly adores him. They always refer to him as voice-cat, since he’s…well, he’s a version of their voice. Me, if that wasn’t clear. Dre is a stubborn little guy; he never seems to want to show too much affection. For instance, he’ll go and sit by someone but won’t look at him.” The most common people it happened to were Lucid himself and Tommy Prime. Tommy never seemed to pass up the chance to laugh at Lucid over the cat version of him liking him so much.
“His favorite things are finding the highest spot he can to observe his domain, and then…running. When he decides he’s going to have the zoomies, only Tek or Snap squishing him will stop him. If they let it happen, he’ll be a blur in the zoomies track for the rest of the day. Paying Foolish to build that and the heated catio was more than worth it.”
There had been a fair bit of surprise that Lucid had wanted to go from one cat to eight nearly overnight, but, well…nobody really objected to him caring about more things. Hell, it was one of the pieces of advice that Day had given him–to find things that he could be attached to.
The man was mercurial as hell towards him, sure, but Lucid couldn’t really argue that he’d been wrong. Repairing the friendship he had ruined, his cats, his world, and the people in that world mattered to him. He was infinitely better in every way than he was when he was thrown into the hell that was the Vault.
Hope makes a little mrrp noise and places a paw on his cheek. He smiles faintly, using both hands to scratch her cheeks. Her eyes shut in contentedness and her purr vibrates through his fingers.
He takes a moment to take a deep breath before continuing. “San likes all the cats, but they have a special fondness for Dre. Despite his refusal to admit he likes others, he’s a sweetheart. And very stubborn, and likes to hoard treats and toys. They’re all good cats–great ones, even. I care about them, and maybe more importantly, San loves them.”
Green wraps around him again, comforting and familiar. It makes his smile grow wider, because he’s happy that his world is happy. They’re a part of him, and he’s a part of them–they’re linked in a way that goes beyond what Lucid could hope to use mere words to describe.
They are his home, and he is their voice.
He laughs softly as curiosity and excitement comes from the world he created. “San is very happy you asked them that and is very curious about you, too. I hope that answered your question well enough. I don’t usually have to translate that much at once, but…it is my role.”
OOC:: There are reference images for Lucid's cats right here, for those who want to see that. It's also reachable via the doc of docs link in the pinned post. There's neat bits of info in those docs, like equipment names, the unholy monster that is both jewelry docs, and appearances! I refer to it as inane bullshit, and there's so much of it. It's not even all done, either!