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Something pitter-patters inside the cave.
As far as Zedaph is aware, nothing is supposed to pitter-patter inside the cave.
Zedaph rubs the sleep out of his eyes, throwing himself out on the good side of the bed before getting up to investigate the curious noise.
It’s not Clifford, his dog, he’s still sitting right where Zedaph told him to sit. Nor is it any of the bees, they’re all still safe inside of their sugary home. Pitter-patter. There! Zedaph turns his head, and sees something white before it hides behind one of the stone pillars.
Zedaph crouches, sneaking closer to the intruder. Is it a chicken? Grian in a chicken costume? Or perhaps a chicken in a Grian costume? All possible, but…
“HONK!” the white goose all but screams into Zedaph’s face before flapping its wings and running straight towards the combrewter.
Zedaph forces himself to take a deep breath, to calm his nerves before running after the animal. He doesn’t know how it got here, but he knows that it is very much capable of breaking every single contraption inside the cave.
Sure enough, when Zedaph enters the combrewter, he catches the goose mid-button press, many items already flying through the air, clogging up the hopper in the middle of the room.
The goose turns its head back, lets out another loud “honk!” before grabbing an empty potion bottle and honking into it while Zedaph chases it around the room.
“Come back!” Zedaph yells, as if it could understand him. Who knows? If it knows how to use the combrewter, there’s a good chance it might understand human speech. “Let me get you outside! It’s not safe here for a goose like you!”
“Honk!” the goose retorts, and it runs and flaps up the stairs back into the main cave. Armour stands with diamond gear pop up and down as the goose runs across their corresponding pressure plates. Zedaph chases after the goose until it finally lets go of the glass bottle. Zedaph bends to pick it up, but when he gets up again he sees that the goose has grabbed another item. One considerably more dangerous than a glass bottle.
The goose is now carrying a diamond sword, which it must have taken from one of the armour stands. The goose is wielding a diamond sword, swinging it around dangerously oh god-
“Oh no, mister goose, please don’t, I-”
“Honk honk!”
Zedaph can’t even get close to it. Imagine the death message in chat! ‘Zedaph was slain by Goose’, yeah, right. He watches as the goose drags the sword across the cave, scratching marks into the ground. It hops down the stairs into his storage pit, and Zedaph looks from above as it nips at a double chest and tries to pull it out of place.
When this doesn’t seem to work, the goose pauses in its mischievous movement, honks in Zedaph’s general direction, and turns around and pries open another chest and starts rummaging through it.
Zedaph hops over the ledge into the storage pit and quickly grabs the sword off the ground and pushes the chest back into its place. He sighs, turning back only to find the goose tossing items out onto the ground left and right.
“I just cleaned that!” Zedaph groans. The goose simply wiggles out of the chest, grabs a redstone comparator, and drags it up the stairs and through the cave.
“Oh my goodness me.” Zedaph looks at the mess the goose leaves in its path. Minecart rails are destroyed and wet goose-footprints are left in the carpets. This goose needs to get out, and it needs to get out quick before anything can go horribly, irreversibly wrong.
Then he gets an idea. Of course! Zedaph quickly digs through a chest, not unlike the goose had done earlier, and takes out a few slices of melon.
“Hey goose, hey friend, I’ve got something for you,” he says, holding out the treat as he slowly approaches the animal.
The goose looks back at him with small, beady eyes, but when Zedaph puts some chunks of melon down, it drops the redstone it was holding in its beak and begins to follow him, gobbling up the melon.
Zedaph walks backwards, always keeping the goose in his sight. When he gets to his front door he mines through it so he has easy access to the outside, and continues dropping bits of melon many blocks into the desert in front of his base.
And the goose follows, happily eating every little bit in its path.
Once it’s outside, and Zedaph feels comfortable enough about the distance, he darts back into his base and blocks off the hole in the wall with cobblestone. The goose can be heard honking angrily, but after a while it thankfully gives up and Zedaph assumes that it has finally flown away. He sighs, turning back to look at the state his cave base is now in. Looks like he has his plans for the day laid out for him.
Bdubs grumbles and throws himself out of bed. What a rude way to be woken up, with all this rustling outside. He drags himself up the stairs, cursing at Doc under his breath, “Just because I don’t mow my lawn doesn’t give you the right to do it for me! Stay on your side of the fence, neighbor.”
But when Bdubs steps out onto the grass he doesn’t see Doc anywhere on his side of the lawn. Huh.
Doc is, however, over on his own side, looking intently at something. Bdubs wades through the tall grass over to the fence. “Good morning, neighbor!” he says. “What are you doing?”
Doc gasps and snaps around, an angry look on his grumpy creeper face.
“Sleep well?” Bdubs asks, yawning. It’s a little early for his liking.
Doc huffs and shakes his head. “Did you just wake up? I thought that was you making all that noise!”
“Noise? Me? What?” Bdubs holds a hand up to his chest, shocked. “You know me! I need my beauty sleep! I got woken up by all this rustling in the yard! I thought that was you!”
“Always blaming me, I know, I know. But I swear, I’m just as innocent as you claim to be,” Doc says. “But if you didn’t wake me up, then…”
There! More rustling! Bdubs turns around, peering through the grass. He leans back against the fence. “Doc, I think there’s something in the grass,” he whispers.
“It’s on your side now, so you deal with it,” Doc replies.
“Hey!” Bdubs yells, and the creature, or whatever it is, makes a startled movement, rushing with a big curve around Bdubs, straight toward the… pool?
“Oh my god, I thought those weren’t supposed to exist?” Doc gasps.
What-? Bdubs looks at the goose with big eyes. “Did you break the game again, Doc? Is that why this thing is here?”
“No, of course not! What do you take me for?!”
Bdubs rolls his eyes, and crouches. “I’m gonna catch it.”
“Wait, I can set my foxes after it-”
“And let them trash my beautiful green garden? Keep your foxy menaces over on your side!”
“Do you want this thing honking you awake all night?!”
But Bdubs is already slowly approaching the animal.
Before Bdubs reaches it, something flies through the air from behind. It lands in the poor and the goose is startled, flapping its wings and splashing Bdubs with gross pool water. It honks, and Doc laughs. Bdubs spins around, furious, storming back and yelling at Doc. “I had this in the bag, you idiot! I was going to capture it and take it to Xisuma so it wouldn’t bother either of us anymore! Is this what you want?!”
Doc simply shrugs. “You weren’t even carrying a leash or anything.”
“So your solution is to throw-” He looks at the item bobbing in the pool. “-a clock at it?”
“I dunno. Maybe the goose needs to know that it’s about time that it left.”
Bdubs rolls his eyes. He can’t believe his neighbor sometimes. Actually, he can’t believe him most of the time. But when he turns back to get the goose (and the music clock, what a waste) out of the pool, he sees the goose paddling up to the item. It grabs it carefully with its beak, and then swims to the side and climbs out onto the grass. It shakes itself out, looks around, and waddles over to one of the rooms with an open wall.
“Come on now, you stupid little-”
The goose looks back. Bdubs gulps.
“Lovely little goose, I mean, of course.” He coughs. “Just give me the clock, and all will be fine, okay? Don’t get your wet little tootsies inside before wiping your feet, okay? Hey-!”
The goose hops inside, and Bdubs runs after it. It’s going to absolutely trash the place, oh no…
Doc is snickering behind him, but Bdubs ignores it for now. He’ll get Doc back later.
The goose waddles into one of the living rooms, locating a note block that was used as decoration. It puts the clock down and pecks at the sides of the block, generating rather annoying bump- like sounds with each tap.
“Stop that!” Bdubs yells, but the goose keeps doing what it’s doing, honking loudly in what might be considered a laugh.
Bdubs approaches the goose from another angle—from behind the couch, to be exact—and startles the goose into running outside again.
“Aha!” he cheers, watching as the animal flies off, white feathers floating down.
It takes Bdubs a moment to compose himself enough to not throw the clock back at his laughing neighbor. What a way to start the day. In an ideal world he’d go back to bed, but he’s wide awake now, after the debacle with the note block and the water and the honking.
He looks up at where the goose had flown off to. …Dammit. If it’s really going straight towards the shopping district, he should at least make sure his shops are safe.
Bdubs grabs his elytra and flies off.
Impulse is up early, going down his list of shops to check for profits and to restock. It’s usually rather quiet this early in the morning, many of the other hermits like to sleep in.
Then, suddenly, he hears music playing. A music disc? He didn’t set anything off, did he? Impulse checks for hidden pressure plates or string, but there’s nothing to be found.
The ominous tunes of disc 13 haunt the halls of Lamps Plus. Impulse chuckles to himself.
“Is that a ghost? Oh no!” he says out loud. “I sure hope no Grians come in to ruin my day!”
The disc stops, and Impulse thinks he knows exactly what’s going on. But then, instead of an invisible Grian or someone wearing a Grian mask, a goose walks into the shop.
“What in the…”
Impulse watches with wide eyes as the goose waddles around inside. He’s not sure if the goose knocks items off of their shelves accidentally or on purpose. But… Geese aren’t supposed to be on this server at all, are they?
“Honk!” The goose grabs one of the lanterns off of the display with its beak, and stares straight at Impulse.
“Wait a minute! No-! Bad goose. Bad! Put that back! Let go!” Impulse runs after it, quickly catching up. He grabs the lantern and tries to yank the lantern loose, but the goose’s grip is strong.
But not strong enough. The goose lets go, sending Impulse falling backwards. The lantern falls to the ground and shatters into many small pieces. Impulse sighs.
The goose keeps honking, running around to the counter where Impulse and Bdubs keep their profits. The goose pries one of the chests open and throws out all the diamonds, scattering them across the floor.
“No! Stop that! How did you even know- Oh gosh-” Impulse ducks as one of the diamonds flies past his head. This goose has an incredible aim.
Luckily, Impulse manages to chase the goose out without too much extra damage to him or the shop. He chases after it down the cobblestone path, making sure that it won’t run into any other shops to completely trash them.
The goose does, however, manage to grab onto one of the leads of the bee balloons outside of Five Goats.
Mumbo, who had been standing nearby, runs to keep up with Impulse. “How did it just do that?”
“I don’t know!”
Beef appears from around the corner. “It’s tearing the whole place down! All my beautiful posters of Mumbo’s face are destroyed!”
“Stop that evil goose!” Bdubs screams from above, and when Impulse looks up he sees him and Doc coming in for a landing.
They land right in front of where the goose is headed, and it lets out a startled “honk!”, releasing the bee-balloon.
“Not my bees!” Doc yells. He pulls out his sword and joins the others running after the goose.
He’s cornered. The hermits have backed him into a wall, and they’re closing in. He only wanted to have fun and now it’s all gone wrong. There’s no way he’ll get out of this without getting caught or trapped or-
Xisuma stands still. The people eye him warily, keeping their arms up and weapons pointed right at him. He takes a deep breath, and then…
“HONK!” he screams, flapping his wings as quickly as he can, turning in circles continuing to make noise to get everybody to back off. And it works! He keeps honking, making bigger and bigger circles until he has the opening he needs. He takes a running start, continuing to flap his wings, and takes off into the sky.
The hermits below yell after him, and he honks back for the hell of it. If they don’t want to help him and only chase him away, then that’s their loss. It’s not like he can perform his admin duties with wings for hands.
After circling the shopping district once more, he glides down to the water, and makes a smooth landing, continuing his way back home by swimming peacefully.
Once he reaches the jungle he calls home, he climbs out of the water and waddles the rest of the way back. He doubts he’d be able to reach his home through the dense jungle foliage by flying. And his poor goose legs and wings are quite tired after everything today!
He reaches his many honey-coloured towers after a little while, and he sits down at the bottom of the nearest one, curling up against the smooth, cool material.
He doesn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he’s woken up by footsteps crunching the many jungle leaves and twigs that litter the ground. He opens his eyes and sees… it takes him a moment to remember… Etho? It’s his neighbor Etho! He honks happily at his arrival. What a surprise to see him here!
“I’m glad to see you too, X,” Etho says. He stops, and cocks his head a little to the side. “You are Xisuma, right?”
He nods, as well as he can, anyway, and Etho sighs in relief. “I knew it couldn’t be anybody but you.”
He grabs something from his inventory, crouching down to meet Xisuma at eye level, holding the object out for him. “Looking for this?”
Xisuma looks at the small, black, rectangular object. A communicator? …His communicator!
“Yes, yes!” he honks happily. He finally got his communicator back! He must have lost it upon accidentally turning himself into a goose in the first place, he’d been looking for it all day!
Etho holds the little machine up for Xisuma, and he attempts to control it with his beak, but he keeps pressing the wrong buttons. He hisses at the thing. Why couldn’t he have made it goose-compatible? How stupid.
“You need to get in?” Etho asks. Xisuma nods. “Maybe try your feet? I… I dunno if it’d work, but it’s worth a try.”
Xisuma thinks it over for a second, but it really does seem like his next best option. Etho puts his communicator on the ground, and Xisuma uses his webbed feet to navigate to the control panel that was still open in the background. It takes him a little while and a lot of coordination, but eventually he manages to type in what he needs.
Etho hesitantly reaches out and pats Xisuma’s head. He allows it, but not without scaring Etho a little by pretending to bite at his fingers.
Letting out a goosey chortle, he presses the ‘enter’ button with his foot, and within the blink of an eye he turns back to normal.
“Phew, that was quite the workout,” Xisuma sighs.
“Welcome back, dude,” Etho says. He frowns a little. “Are you alright? Nothing fishy or feathery left behind?”
Xisuma looks down. Huh. His armour is still white, it seems. He shakes his head.
“That can be fixed with the press of a button, don’t worry,” he says. “I don’t recommend coding with your feet, by the way.”
Etho snorts, “Noted.”
Xisuma flops down, resting his head back against the tower. “I think I’m gonna take a nap right here,” he chuckles. “Being a goose is hard work.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Etho waves, and with the throw of an ender pearl he poofs away.
Xisuma lets his eyes fall shut, thinking back to this morning, and why he feels so exhausted. His memory is a little blurry. He can’t remember much of what happened today, but it feels like he got a lot done.
Today must have been very productive, he smiles.