Micheal was missing.

Dozens of thoughts raced through Tubbo’s mind as he examined the room that used to house the baby zombie piglin. Could he have been kidnapped? Killed?

As he frantically searched around the room, he noticed that one of the windows in Micheal’s corner was open and had a few scuff marks on the wall below, like someone had climbed out of the room.

He rushed to the window, and lo and behold, there was a large indent in the snow preceding a bunch of tiny hoofprints. 

Tubbo immediately ran back to the ladder slid, slid down it, and quickly followed the prints. After running for about a minute, he came across a clearing, and in the middle of it sat Micheal, in his winter coat, playing with some of his toys.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re okay. I thought I had lost you for a moment there,” Tubbo laughed.

Micheal smiled up at his father before grunting and pointing to the trees, like there was someone there.  

Slightly confused, Tubbo picked him up and started carrying him home, before Micheal started making a fuss and pointing with more vigor towards the same spot.  “Micheal, no one is there,” Tubbo said to his son.

Micheal looked at Tubbo, looked at the spot, and calmed down.  The rest of the trek home was pretty much silent, aside from a few snorts from Micheal.

Tubbo would have loved that to be the last time Micheal went missing, but that wish was shattered a few days later when him and Ranboo had found Micheal in the same clearing as before, seemingly communicating with an invisible entity. They brought him home, only for him to go missing every few days under the same circumstances.

They had no idea why, until all of the golden apples in their chests went missing.

They had no idea why, until a random cobblestone tower appeared inside the walls of Snowchester.

They had no idea why, until they found their child bopping a bell back and forth with the ghostly apparition of Tommyinnit.

The ghostly eyes of Tommy seemed to shift towards the two onlookers, before his face shifted from amusement to confusion.

“Tub-bo?”