Chapter Text
This wasn’t one of the glitches they planned for. Well, part of it was, but not the whole… forgetting thing. Grian made them sign a whole waiver before this series about the potential dangers of version traveling like they were going to be doing. In that list were potential injuries from glitching, visual static, lack of depth perception, and all the things that came with the way the world had used to be before The Developers changed them. Gem was anticipating the worst part of this all being that she couldn’t run, or that food inexplicably wouldn’t stack on itself, frankly.
A glitch she had honestly been kind of looking forward to, if only to laugh at people, was that going back to earlier versions might cause people to physically age backwards. So when she hopped into a world as it was 14 years ago, she immediately looked around and was pleased to find that the glitch had clearly happened to some: an 18 year old Joel who looked far more ogre-ish, a scruffless 28 year old Bdubs who lacked his moss cloak, a much paler and much blonder 21 year old Martyn and, much to Gem’s delight, the youngest member of the server had gotten even younger.
Pearl, who Gem already teased for being younger than her by less than a month, was now a proper teenager. For the first time, Gem thought they might be around the same height (though Pearl probably still inched her out just a touch). Fifteen year old Pearl was all long thin limbs she hadn’t grown into yet, awkward with none of the grace and confidence adult Pearl would gain, not helped by the classic teenager hunch to her posture that screamed ‘Don’t look at me!’. Long (probably box-dyed) black hair that had started to grow back as brown at the roots hung over her face, which still had just a touch of baby fat clinging to her cheeks, covering fully half of her features in a black curtain. She wore a grey camisole trimmed with white lace, meant to look like she was wearing two shirts when it was really one (Void, Gem thought, so 2011) and baggy black sweatpants. The only color to her was her one exposed eye, a practically neon cyan which Gem did remember as being her eye color when they first met. That one eye was pointed squarely at the ground, Pearl bouncing back and forth on her (bare? Was she actually in pajamas?) feet.
Except, she didn’t look any more sure as Grian began to speak.
“Welcome to Past Life!” He announced. The rest of the group looked around at each other, Gem only half paying attention as they had already discussed the rules over comms before they entered the world and they had all participated in the games before. Even Grian kept it short, “We will be starting in this version, as it’s the earliest We can access with our system, and the world will evolve every week until we reach the present. We hope you’ll enjoy! You have six lives, go!”
Gem chose not to ask who ‘We’ were. They all knew there was someone else who encouraged Grian to make these games. He might be a prankster, but he wasn’t cruel enough to come up with these on his own. She sidled up to him. Technically, there were no rules against discussing what they were going to do beforehand, and she and Grian had already agreed to be a team.
The two of them went off in one direction, starting the day one ritual of chopping trees and getting stone tools. Grian teased her a bit for the raspiness of her voice and Gem cursed herself for getting sick the first week of a new game.
Soon, they stumbled upon Joel and Bdubs messing around in a cave. Both were a somewhat startling sight, even though Gem had seen them earlier. Bdubs was around Gem’s age now, face clean shaven, hair still a deep dark brown all throughout, the texture not yet permanently changed from years of bleaching. All his teeth were present in his wide grin, the smile lines around his mouth not quite as deep when it stretched across his face as he waved to them.
“Hey! How’s it going?” Bdubs had an iron pickaxe already, Gem noticed. Gem just shrugged.
“Could be better, we aren’t set up yet,” She winced as her voice broke. Bdubs hummed in agreement, shivering as a cool chill ran through the cave.
“Man, I miss my cloak,” he complained. He did look small without it. Naked, somehow. “But we didn’t have moss yet, the Developers didn’t add it until a lot later. I forgot just how cold the world was before,”
“You think that’s bad? Look at me!” Joel gestured to, well, his whole body. His outfit was the same as he normally wore, but Joel himself could not look more different. He was probably a half a foot taller, skin completely green, tusks protruding from his lower gums. His hair was coarser, a bad shaggy cut that laid between two almost antennae like ears. He picked at the tusks nervously, compulsively, and Gem could see small chips coming off of them. They weren’t teamed up this season, not family, but Gem still had the urge to slap his hand away. She didn’t of course. It wasn’t her problem this time.
“How did you even end up like-“ She cut herself off, not sure if what she was about to say was genuinely offensive or not. Joel seemed to get the gist anyways.
“Would you believe it’s true love?” His lips curled up around his tusks, “At Lizzie and I’s wedding, when we kissed, I became a human,”
“Ew,” Gem responded, uncomfortable with this level of sincerity. They weren’t supposed to get sincere this early in the game and certainly not when they weren’t allies. There was just a certain etiquette (Never mind that Gem was really the only one who followed her own arbitrary rules. Never mind that no one else seemed to care as much about what was supposed to be done in this kind of game).
“Say ew all you want, I know when this is over I get to go home to her,” Joel shrugged. Gem couldn’t think of a clever response to that and so chose, for once, not to say anything at all. She and Grian split off to leave the cave soon anyway.
“Do we want anyone else for our team?” Grian asked as they looked for a place to set up, “I was thinking Pearl, but she might have someone by now,”
“Oh, she’ll join us if I ask,” Gem insisted, “She can never say no to me!”
Soon enough, they came upon Pearl, kitted out with stone tools and clumsily stabbing at some spiders in an exposed spawner. Her poorly made stone sword was too big for her, meant for an adult with developed combat skills and not a lanky barely pubescent teenager. That was Gem’s first clue that something was deeply wrong. She had known Pearl longer than anyone else on the server, and for as long as she had known her, Pearl was pretty damn good at making a sword.
She perked up as Gem and Grian walked over, clutching the sword closer to herself. Gem gave her another once over, wincing as she noticed Pearl’s bare feet were already dirty and cut up. Why hadn’t she at least gone for some iron already?
“Um, excuse me? Where am I?” Pearl’s hand was raised like she was asking a teacher a question. Gem’s first instinct was to laugh, sure that Pearl was joking. But she looked dead serious. Her mouth was twisted into a crooked pout and her eye was darting between Gem and Grian nervously. One arm was across her torso, clutching the other. Grian chuckled nervously at Gem’s side.
“Pearl? We’re in the new Life Series, come on,”
“Life Series? Wait, how do you know my name?” Pearl sounded terrified. Gem stepped forward toward her, and Pearl flinched, holding her sword out. She stepped back, hands up, trying for the first time to not seem like a threat.
“Hey hey, it’s okay,” Gem’s voice strained as it pitched up, placating. Pearl lowered her sword, once again looking between Gem and Grian. She seemed to decide they weren’t a threat, clumsily putting her sword into her inventory. It wasn’t Pearl’s usual inventory that she had the games, which was attached to her hoodie pocket. Instead, it seemed to be linked to her sweatpants.
“You didn’t answer my question, where am I? Who are you and how do you know who I am?” Pearl’s accent was thicker, Gem noticed. Not mixed from ten years of time around people with any number of other accents.
“You’re in something called the Life Series. It’s a game we all play together. You agreed to play this,” Grian tried to explain. He blinked and seemed to realize something, the same thing Gem was starting to suspect, “Pearl, how old are you?”
“I’m fifteen, and I didn’t agree to anything! I don’t know if my parents did or whatever but I didn’t!” Pearl’s visible eye was wide open. Her stance had somehow become more hunched in her indignance.
“Okay, dammit, okay,” Grian pulled out his communicator and began typing rapidly. He spoke to Gem, low enough that Pearl couldn’t hear, “Can you deal with this? I need to check on something and shut down the session,”
“Got it,” Gem whispered back.
“What are you two talking about?”
“Just trying to figure out how you got here,” The lie came out easily. Gem had gotten used to lying in this series, “Listen, let me get you some boots at least. It can’t be comfortable walking around like that,”
Pearl shrugged, but willingly followed Gem while she set up a furnace to smelt the little iron she had gotten. A minute later Gem could at least breathe a sigh of relief that they wouldn’t have a barefoot teenager on the server. The silence between them was awkward. Pearl had clearly gotten the idea that Grian was in control from his opening speech and so wasn’t asking Gem any more questions. But Gem took the chance to ask Pearl some questions of her own.
“Can I ask why you weren’t wearing any shoes? Where were you before you ended up here?” Pearl looked at her like that was a silly question.
“I’m in my pajamas, obviously. We started in the middle of the day,” As though remembering that she was tired, Pearl yawned. Gem struggled not to find it kind of adorable, especially with her sitting on top of a crafting table and kicking her feet (adult Pearl was tall enough that her feet touched the ground if she was just sitting on one block).
“You’re actually nocturnal?’ Gem inquired. She had always kind of assumed it was a joke Pearl made about her poor sleep schedule.
“Yeah? I’m a shapeshifter,”
“I know, I just didn’t know that meant being nocturnal,”
“How did you know? I can’t seem to shift here so I know you haven’t seen it,” Gem stumbled to come up with an explanation. She sighed, deciding to just try and explain the truth.
“Pearl, I don’t know how it happened, but you got de-aged somehow and lost your memory. I know this sounds crazy, but I know adult you, we’re the same age,”
“Oh,” Pearl’s brow furrowed, her mouth setting into a thin line. “Uh, how old are you?”
“Twenty-nine,” Pearl silently mouthed the words to herself. Gem watched carefully, ready for Pearl to not believe her. But Pearl just slumped, accepting it.
“Okay, so what am I supposed to do?”
“Honestly? No clue.”