#compound;

    Cazwell herself wasn’t too far away. The cat-eared scientist grumbled under her breath as she dug through a chest to find wherever Summer had stashed her tools; as helpful as they were, they could at least use signs to label things that weren’t completely incoherent. 

    She half-turned to ask Summer what they’d done to her poor, poor storage, but paused as something caught her eye. Standing out against her assistant’s blue fur was a yellow ear piercing. She’d seen it before, of course, but for some reason her eyes were drawn to it now.

    Moving quietly, she sneaked up behind Summer. Now that she was closer to them, she could see a set of numbers printed on the yellow plastic. 351? Curiosity got the better of her. Not bothering to alert Summer to her presence, Cazwell reached out and flicked the tag. “So, what is this?”

    “GAH!” Summer jumped, dropping the block they were carrying. They whirled around to glare at her; Cazwell gave them her best innocent look as Summer raised a hand to cover the tag from sight. “It’s—” They hesitated. The annoyance drained out of their tone as they glanced away, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “...it’s… It’s my ID tag.”

    Cazwell gave them a look of confused concern. Summer fidgeted, nervous, then took her silence as a reason to continue. “Like… as in, uh.” They clenched their fists and closed their eyes. “As in I’m… maybe an escaped genetic experiment? Or something?”

    Cazwell tilted her head, baffled. “How are you maybe an experiment?” Summer fluffed up in response.

    “I— I’m— I am one,” they confessed. “It’s… Look, it’s fine, it’s— I mean, I guess it’s kind of weird, but it’s… just a thing about me?” They curled their tail around themself and started running their fingers through the feathers on the end. “Like, it’s not bad or anything, I just kinda… uh. Well.”

    Summer stood still as Cazwell examined their tag again. “Huh,” she said. “Well. Okay!” As Summer watched, confused, Cazwell stepped back and looked them over. “I thought you were just an alien or something.”

    “I might be?” Summer shrugged. “I’m a chimaera— like, uh, just a bunch of bits put together at this point.” They started ticking off their fingers. “I’m part genet, part crow, part cat probably?, part velociraptor—”

    (“Part what?” Cazwell interrupted. Summer ignored her.)

    “--part red panda I think?, maybe part banded linsang too but it’s kinda hard to tell, uh…” They rubbed at the two V-shaped vents on the end of their snout where their nose should be. “--part alien, yeah. This is definitely an alien genetics thing.” Summer brightened. “I’m mostly genet, though! With… with linsang markings, maybe. And feathers. And human-shaped.”

    Cazwell pulled out her phone, opened Google, and typed in some search terms. Summer waited as she pulled up an image and squinted at it. “You do not look like a genet.”

(they were originally part of a story project in 2010 ~ 2013 called “Denlocked”, so a lot of it was just... taking that, and adapting it into minecraft universe stuff. as well as adding worldbuilding stuff & references from things they like, mainly yogscast)

the story begins with the one, the only, Cazwell Cazari. or Cazwell Hector. she cant decide which last name to use but for the record her actual name in-system is Cazwell Cazari. let’s just call her Caz.

Caz is a mad scientist! specifically she likes fucking around with machines, building complicated redstone garbage, stuff like that. she’s very heavy into tech mods which is fun because none of the rest of us understand how they work. she’s also rather... uh, morally ambiguous? she’s gotten better about it in-system but in Craftlocked she’s rather self-centered and apathetic about the consequences of her actions, and is actually kind of a jerk sometimes. she also has a fascination with glitches and bugs, and a lot of her mad science stuff as of around meeting Summer is centered around exploiting them

enter Summer Taylor! from the sky. they’re not copying Bdubs Hermitcraft, they’re copying Nano Fluxbuddies. dont mind the colour inconsistency with every other picture of them, its a plot thing. they’re also an escaped genetics experiment, apparently? thats not canon to Denlocked, thats entirely something made up for this au. although now that i think about it a side thing in Denlocked was the implication that Caz was doing weird genetic experimentation stuff to them uH ANYWAY

so Summer drops out of the sky, Caz is curious abt what their deal is, and they become friends! specifically, Summer becomes her lab assistant. they’ve got some Nano and Lalna parallels going on, which is entirely because we got into Flux Buddies in the first place bc a friend showed it to us and went “hey so these two are totally Summer and Caz, right” so yknow.

things are going pretty great so far, but Summer is starting to get suspicious of Caz hiding stuff from them and acting weird. turns out she’s starting to slip from “morally ambiguous” to “the villain of this story”! Summer finds out Caz is literally going to crash the server if she doesnt quit while shes ahead, and Caz doesnt like this 4′11″ twerp getting in her way, so the Remote Control animatic happens and Summer gets put in a box.

(kind of. it’s a bit of a mix between Nano getting shut in her tower and Lalnable getting locked up, which is funny considering Caz is the closest to Lalnable in this scenario)

what does Summer do when put in a box?

THEY DOES DARK MAGIC ABOUT IT.

meanwhile, Caz isnt doing so hot. the guilt over mistreating Summer is stuck in her, but for some reason she just... cant seem to focus on it all that much? instead she keeps going back to her work, even though the more rational part of her is going “hey wait maybe they were right about this being a bad idea”. cause, yknow, blowing up the server doesnt sound super great when shes one of the people on it.

Summer breaks out, and all hell breaks loose shortly after! they corner Caz (again), except this time with the power of satan and anime on their side, and are basically gonna kill her in the hopes that respawn will knock some sense into her.

it doesnt go well.

turns out Caz’s fuckery with the laws of nature (which is a different kind of fuckery than Summer’s fuckery with the laws of nature) led to her getting possessed! the living glitch controlling her wants to fuck up the server by corrupting it beyond repair, then spread from server to server like a virus; Caz accidentally discovered it shortly before meeting Summer, and its been infecting her bc it needs a player to have an “in” to the server so it can start setting things in motion.

so Summer gets vibe checked and instead of respawning like they normally should, they get dumped elsewhere in the server and have to find their way back to stop glitch!Caz before she kickstarts an apocalypse.