3rd Person POV
"Guys..." Jesse cautiously called to the others as the light that Addie had cast faded and in the place of where the animal companions had been, there were three kids, two girls and a boy, about 10 years old, laying on the ground in front of Addie.
Reuben was now a boy wearing a pink hoodie, blue pants, and brown shoes with pink hair, sandy skin, and the same black eyes.
Benedict was a girl who had long dark black hair with white highlights in her bangs framing her black eyes and a white bow with a red jewel in a gold setting similar to her pendant around her neck and was wearing a white dress with red lining and a gold belt with black shoes and white socks.
Lluna wore her same blue and purple striped scarf with a big, white fluffy wool sweater, light blue leggings, and brown shoes while her white hair was done into two pigtails on her head as her thin bangs trailed the sides of her peachy face and blue eyes.
"It's done." Addie stated simply as she kneeled down to wake the kids up.
"What happened?" Rueben asked groggily as he lifted his head off the ground.
"Did it work?" Benedict questioned as she rubbed her eyes and saw she had hands.
"It did work!" Lluna jumped up, only to fall back down since she had no experience with walking on only two legs.
"It'll take a little getting used to the whole 'being turned human' thing, but they should be alright since they can shift back into their previous forms whenever they'd like to." Addie clarified as she started to help the kids up as they wobbled around on their new legs and Jesse and Lukas came up the platform to help her help them.
"Jesse!" Reuben practically threw himself at Jesse trying to hug her, but almost ended up falling back down to the ground.
"Hey Buddy... are you feeling OK?" Jesse asked as she told hold of Rueben to steady him.
"I feel good. Just a little wobbly." Reuben answered as he smiled at Jesse.
"What about you Benedict?" Lukas asked the small girl.
"I feel good too, but I don't know how to walk on these two legs like my old ones." She responded as she continued to hobble around the room with Lukas holding onto one of her arms.
Meanwhile, Addie was helping Lluna get herself balanced and she was a quicker learner than the others, but they soon caught on and were quickly starting to chase one another around the treasure room.
"Now it's really celebration time." J said as he pulled out a new disc from his inventory and popped it into the jukebox.
"I thought you said you showed us everything you two got." Jesse cocked an eyebrow at her twin.
"I forgot I had this disc from when we made a skeleton shoot a creeper when passing through a desert to get to a desert temple."
The kids stopped running around and started to dance to the music, everyone else following until Jesse and Lukas noticed Addie standing off to the side looking out at the dancing group from the corner of the room.
"What's up, you don't look too happy about this?" Lukas asked as he and Jesse approached her.
"No, I am happy for you guys, it's just... my family used this power to hurt people and... I'm just glad it's finally being used for something good. So it just feels a little bit of a mix."
"Like I said back on the island, 'your abilities don't define you, what you choose to do with them does'." Jesse said.
"Well you didn't say exactly that back there, but I get the general gist of you're trying to say. Thank you guys, I'm really glad I came here." She pulled them into a hug as they dragged her out to celebrate with the others.
Time Skip to Night
"See you guys later!" Addie called down from the sky above the Order Hall as she flew off towards the district her house was in.
"Man, that doesn't freak you two out?" J asked and Jesse and Lukas shook their heads no and, even, Jack and Nurm weren't that surprised anymore.
"Get it over it, I already have." Petra said with a straight face, but when J went ahead of her she turned back and mouthed 'what' as she and J went to go midnight monster slaying and Jack and Nurm went back to the emporium.
"Well, I'm glad that worked out, but we should be getting home now. You three need to get to sleep." Jesse said as she was carrying a sleepy Reuben, holding Lluna's hand as she trudged along sleepily and Benedict was on Lukas' back breathing slowly as she slept.
"Tomorrow we should teach them some stuff they might need to know about being human." Lukas suggested as they got to Jesse's treehouse and he passed Benedict up to her from the middle of the ladder.
"Yeah, and my brother and Petra can teach them some self-defense methods while they're here."
"Can't wait." Lukas said as he jumped down to the ground and waved back as he went back to town.
"See you tomorrow Lukas." Jesse smiled as she closed the trapdoor and went to her room to sleep, unknowing that someone was watching her from the treetops nearby...
The figure stealthily made their way through the treetops and jumped through the open window, somersaulting onto the treehouse floor without making a sound. Then, they made their way to the room where the kids were sleeping and placed small devices on the backs of their necks that beeped as they implanted themselves in.
Smiling in satisfaction, the figure got out of the room and shot out of the window into the night...
In The Morning
"Alright, let's get started with the basic parry and thrust move." Petra got out a wooden sword, to her dismay.
They had decided to meet at a special corner of Beacontown that had been reserved for training with different kinds of training equipment from parkour courses that were changed weekly to underwater obstacle courses to improve underwater agility.
Petra began to demonstrate how to lock swords with an opponent, with J as the stand-in, and knock their sword away before thrusting her sword between J's arm and side to pretend she was skewering him, with him faking he was dying and choking and sputtering which earned a laugh from the kids.
"Now all three of you will go against each other, last one standing wins!" Petra announced and the kids started trying to smack and block each other with their swords.
"Don't you think that you're maybe starting them off with combat too early." Lukas asked with concern.
"Would you relax? What's the worst they could do with wooden swords, those things are useless?" Petra asked before they heard a yelp from Lluna who cried out because Reuben almost ripped her sweater and they began to tackle each other to the ground with Benedict trying to separate them, but caught in the middle of them rolling around and wrestling each other.
"You were saying?" Lukas smirked at Petra and she rolled her eyes as she went to break up the fight.
"Let's take a break from combat and practice shifting between your forms since you three are able to change back to your animal forms." Jesse suggested as she pulled a lever on the side and some dummies with mob heads and levers for arms came up from the floor.
"When you're facing an opponent that has the advantage in size, it will give you the advantage of dodging their attacks by ducking underneath them." Lukas began to explain before they heard whooshing noises from above.
They looked up and saw Addie flying high above their heads waving her arms around and yelling to them, but was too far up to be heard.
"We can't hear you, get down here!" J screamed up to her and regretted it when she came diving down so fast she couldn't control her landing. She ended up ramming, headfirst, into a tree that was around the training area for punching practice and came crashing down onto the ground, looking dizzy and blind without her glasses.
"Are you OK Miss Addie?" Reuben came running up to her and pulled her to her feet, with some help from Benedict, and Lluna placed her glasses on her face.
"Yeah, I'm good, fortunately immortality means that I can't die from fall damage." Addie replied as she brushed herself off.
"Don't you mean being indestructible?" Lukas asked.
"I don't know, I hit my head pretty hard so it's hard to think at the moment."
"What was so important you had to crash into the trees for?" Petra asked.
"I need to talk to Jesse and Lukas for a few minutes about something really important." Addie said as she grabbed their hands and began to tug urgently before Jesse said,
"You three keep training with Petra and J, we'll go see what's up."
"Alright Sis, we'll see you later." J replied as they got back to the kids' training.
"Come on, we have to shadow travel to get where we need to go fast." Addie pulled them over to the alley of some buildings and Lukas and Jesse looked at each other skeptically.
"Now, whatever you do, don't let go." Addie said and they nodded their heads uncertainly with concern written on their faces. She tightened her grip on their hands and pulled them through the shadows.
To Jesse and Lukas, it felt like being dunked in an icy pond, which brought back bad memories for Lukas, then chucked into a raging river full of prismarine shards right before they felt the warming sun as they exited the shadows.
"How do you deal with that feeling?" Lukas shivered and rubbed his arm, trying to shake off the creeping cold feeling.
"It takes some getting used to." Addie admitted as she let go of their hands and began to walk toward a small grove that was sunlit.
"This is what I wanted to show you two." Addie pointed to a small patch of glitched out grass that was gradually spreading out and as they looked around, the glitches were all over the surrounding trees, making their way to Beacontown.
1828 Words
Cliffhanger! So I managed to churn out this chapter today and hopefully I'll be able to work on the next chapter soon, but I would like to know how I'm doing with having my OC in the story?
Other than that, I hope you all enjoyed this little filler chapter before all the intense stuff starts to happen with the mysterious figure, speaking of whom, who do you think that figure is?
Until the next chapter, Bye!