Grian’s POV

Present Time

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"And so the shopkeep says, 'You look like you're in...a pickle!'"

"Grian, that might be the worst joke, I've ever heard.”

“No way, it can't have been that bad!”

“Uh, yeah, it was, and you spent like five minutes setting it up.”

“Come on…Hey, you all don't even remember everything! You have to have heard a worse one soooometime.”

“Oh we don't need to, in my heart of hearts I know that I have never wasted a worse six minutes in my life.”

“:(“

Totally bummed out by the harsh criticism of his so-called friends, Grian cut ahead of the group. Clearly, no one had wanted to check out the cool cliff, because the greenery was still present next to the rocks. He instantly wished he had a sword to slice through bushes—he was practically a shrub himself with all the twigs sticking out of his shirt and pants when he emerged out the other side of the batch. Ouch. 

There was plenty of abrasive nature around but there was also…something else. A glint of something shiny was hidden beneath a tree branch. “Huh,” Grian murmured. “What's that?” The branch was almost the size of him, but he grabbed it anyway and pulled it as hard as he could. “Oumph!” He stumbled back as the branch rolled off with much effort. Cool. He plucked off yet another leaf that got stuck to his shirt and leaned over the branch to take a look. “Alright, let's see what that i- OH-!!” 

It was a hand. 

“Grian?? Everything alright over there?” A flurry of leaves descended upon Grian as his friends burst through the shrubs. Wels led the pack, slashing through the bushes with an iron sword (how did he have time to get that?), and ran up next to Grian. “What's wron-...?” He trailed off and stood still, staring at the hand like Grian was. 

It was metal, splayed out to show four stubby fingers. Attached to it was a wrist. The end of it was cracked, bent, and torn, with ripped wires and plates lying against the grass and rocks. They sparked quietly, frantically against the dark.

The other people formed a clump soon enough. Doc briefly touched his own robot hand. Scar jumped back. Cultie made a noise well out of human range. Iskall stepped forward and poked it with a stick. “Huh…the wires are live,” he helpfully observed.

“Great observation, Iskall, very useful,” said Keralis.

“No, no, that means it probably got disconnected from…whatever it was attached to…recently. Hey Doc, you still got-”

“Yup.”

“-right. So something, or someone else must be here, then,” Iskall confirmed. He crossed his arms. “Guess we'll just have to find them and give their hand back!”

“Yeah, what a great ice breaker. ‘Hello, we found your detached limb, nice to meet you!’” Grian agreed wholeheartedly. “Hey, maybe it'll be another one of our old buddies that Cultie can introduce us to! Wels, you recognize this hand at all?”

Wels shook his head. “No, unless something drastic happened in the last few months, I'm pretty sure we've covered all of the cyborgs. I mean, there's Gru- but, no, that wouldn't work. Cultie, do you recognize it? You seem to know more than me about this whole situation, and Hels still isn't talking.” 

It was hard to distinguish Cultie’s face from under his hood, but he seemed to have recovered from his shock. “Um…no,” he said at the pace of someone who was being paid by the minute to give a twelve-word speech. “No, I don’t think any of you would recognize it.”

“Then let's go find its owner!” Grian proclaimed. “They've gotta be around here somewhere.”

Maybe it was because it was dark. Maybe it had just been a long day, and everyone was tired. But nobody could find the owner of that darn hand, no matter where they looked. Everyone had split up and searched in different directions where the person may have traveled, and the chat was spammed with “hello? anyone need a hand?” messages. Still, nobody could be found. Eventually, everyone just gave up and went home; they had guest rooms to build after all. 

But, plagued by intrigue and determination (stubbornness), one person stayed. 

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Iskall’s POV

Present Time

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Why was he doing this? Everyone else was long gone. Iskall remained next to the cliff, poking around for any sign of another being. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. This must've happened recently; the torn wires were still live, for Nether’s sake. What if the hand's owner was in trouble? Besides, it wasn't like Iskall had any worries out here. It was his native world, after all. 

Suddenly, a small rustle came from an area of bushes. It was then that he noticed something vaguely humanoid-shaped mound underneath a ledge of the cliff. “Hallo? Anyone there?” Iskall called, walking over to the ledge. It was obscured partially by more shrubs, so he struck a torch and held it out. Having his vision improved by Scar's magic whatchamacallit was amazing (he could really see for the first time in all he could remember!) but it just wasn't enough this time. “No wonder we couldn't find you,” Iskall called out as he stepped through the brush. “You're…ah…”

The thing wasn't responding.

“You okay over there? Hallo?” He heard a low sound emanating from the figure, like a buzz. Iskall crouched down in front of it and held out the torch. 

The flickering light revealed a small robot; its lying form was maybe four feet in length, and it was sprawled out on the ground. Instead of a head, it had a big, dark, splintered screen. It had an otherwise humanoid (except metal) body. It appeared to be wearing a dirtied, torn shirt. From the angle Iskall was crouched at, he couldn’t read the words, but was that supposed to be a drawing of a moustache?

The most important thing Iskall noticed, though, was that its right arm was cut off right at its wrist, exposing several wires. Electric light bounced off of the frayed ends. 

The form was perfectly still. Iskall carefully placed an arm on its shoulder. “Hey, I'm gonna move you away from the cliff, alright?” No answer. “...I'm gonna take that as a yes.” 

For a four-foot-tall mass of pure metal, the robot was surprisingly light. Iskall set it down face up in a patch of flat grass. Now that the moon was also aiding in illuminating it, Iskall could more clearly take a look at what he had here. The metal was all dented and dirtied, and the screen was spiderwebbed. Its left arm, while whole, was bent at an odd angle, and its legs were not in good shape. On top of its head was a blue bauble, attached precariously by a thin metal rod. The rod itself was bent slightly, and it looked like it might snap off at any minute.

“Jrum-” The wind carried a whisper from behind. Iskall whipped around to see a soft torch light illuminating the cloaked person he met earlier that day. He was previously unable to see this mystery person's face, but the torchlight now glinted in heterochromatic eyes—one orange, one silver. “Hello, Iskall.”

“Hallo…person whose name I forget,” Iskall said slowly. “Sorry, did you say something?” 

The figure walked over. “Just call me Cultie, it's what everyone else does anyway,” he said nonchalantly. Cultie? Like, as in a cult? Iskall supposed he did kind of dress in cult garb, but who was he to judge? He had a giant mechanical (and magical) bit over his eye. “And I said hello, but that's it.”

“Really? I could've sworn you whispered something.”

“Nope…well, I did trip on my way over—can’t see for a slime—so maybe that was it.”

No, Iskall was pretty sure he heard a word. Nothing he understood…but something nonetheless. He hadn't really begun to trust this Cultie guy yet anywho. Never trust a man who hides his face. Either he's hiding an ugly outside, or an ugly inside. Maybe both. Iskall just got the chills from him. 

“Alright, then,” Iskall relented when it was clear that Cultie would not be elaborating. “Well, why are ya back? I thought you returned with the others to make a guest house.”

“I was curious,” Cultie replied. “about the hand's owner. I had to come see for myself. I see now.”

“Yeah, it doesn't look good.” Iskall looked back to the robot. “I mean I’ve seen worse, but I’ve also never operated on a humanoid robot before, just redstone contraptions.” 

“...right.” 

See, there it was! That weird hesitancy he always carried around. 

“Well,” Cultie continued. “Do you think you can fix it?”

“Oh, of course! I’m offended you even would think I couldn’t; what do you take me for, some kind of amateur?” Iskall laughed. He really had no idea if he could fix it or not. “Of course I can fix it, it just might take awhile.”

Cultie sighed. “Alright, good. Good.” He peered over Iskall at the robot. “Hey, do you know what that shirt means?”

Oh yeah, the shirt! Iskall had completely forgotten about it in his analysis of the rest of its state. Mumbo for Mayor, it read. “Oh, this was back when we were trying to figure out our new mayor.” He paused. He looked up. “...how do I know that?” 

“It must be from your memory being unlocked.” Blank stares from Iskall. “You know, that snap snap thing I did earlier?” Cultie waggled his finger about and mimed a snap and a big explosion. “I gave a whole speech about it?”

Not a single thought traveled through Iskall’s brain. “Okay.” At Cultie’s exasperated sigh, Iskall immediately jumped to his own defense. “I was still focused on my new eye!! I was appreciating what Scar did for me!” 

Cultie chuckled. He leaned up against the cliff face. “Alright, that's fair, I guess. You get a pass this time. But I'm not explaining it again: basically…” And so, Cultie spewed a fantastical tale of friends living in harmony but then getting separated and having amnesia. “I was…good friends with one of you, and I’m trying to make up for what happened.”

Iskall looked back at the robot’s screen face thing. His reflection was splintered, repeated over and over. So that’s why he felt like he was missing something. Because he was. 

“Right. Well, good luck with that,” Iskall said plainly. “I'm going to bring this guy back to my private lab and see if I can't fix it up,” he said, directing the subject back at the most critical subject at hand (get it). 

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Yeah, just don't tell Joe where I've gone.” Every time Iskall tried to get anything done in his secret lab, Joe always managed to find him. It wasn’t fair; he could teleport, for Nether’s sake! 

Cultie turned to leave. But, before he did so, Iskall called out, still staring at the bot. “Oh, and one more thing.” Cultie stopped. “What's your name.”

“I already told you, just call me Cul-”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll call you Cultie.” Iskall shook his head abd looked back at the man. It had been bothering him during the whole conversation. “But what's your real name?”

The man was silent. Finally, he said slowly, carefully, like one would approach a wild animal, “...Sage.” 

“Okay-”

Iskall crashed into the grass, his broken elytra clinging uselessly to his back. The world was spinning, fuzzy, mute and blind and deafening and blinding. He stumbled to his feet and ran ahead towards something that couldn't be seen. His sword was clutched in his hand, his metal eye was flickering, his heart was beating beating beating. He was shouting something at the figure in front of him, but the words faded in and out of focus. “You……kill……fight……now!” The figure turned around.

Iskall blinked. What. But Cultie—Sage?—was gone. That was weird. What just happened? He couldn't remember. His memory was foggy. With the robot now slung over his back, he trudged off in the opposite direction, trying so hard to comprehend what just happened that he didn't notice the severed blue bauble on the ground behind him.

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Sage's POV

Present Time

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Now seated comfortably on the couch in his new guest house, Sage wrote in his journal. He was significantly calmer than one would expect considering that he had to mark another person that knew who he was. 

“Alright, so Scar and Hels know,” he mused, scribbling down notes. “Hels probably remembers a lot and Definitely hates me for it—reasonably, I guess, on his part. Scar remembers significantly less, considering that I'm still alive.” He chuckled to himself, but brushed his chin. He winced. It still hurt. “Oh, and Wels knows what I look like, but Scar basically cleared me of any suspicion to him. So that's nice.

“And I'm pretty sure Iskall didn't know my name before, so we're good on that front,” he continued. “He doesn’t really know who I am, per se. And now that I was all honest with him and told him my name, when he eventually gets his memories back he should, in theory, not hate me as much? How's that logic sound, Bee?”

That bird, who was perched next to the singular window looked over. “Sage, that was a horrible idea. It's going to backfire,” she said bluntly. “I've seen my fair share of bad ideas, and this is probably one of the worst.”

“What's one of the worst?” Came a muffled call from through the window. Bee jumped a block into the air and started flapping her wings furiously, and Sage fell off of the couch, desperately trying to put his hood back up. Moments later, Sage's window was broken and Scar was standing in Sage's house, covered in shards of glass. “Are you guys plotting evil doings?”

“Um-” Sage, now recovered, barely got a chance to speak before Bee landed on the arm of the couch and piped up.

“Scar, you need to stop breaking into houses, that's super illegal,” she squawked, her feathers fluffing up. If she had a mouth she'd probably be pouting.

“We don't have a judicial system here,” Scar shot back, folding his arms. “And besides, I'm pretty sure identity theft is a crime, too.”

“Wait, hang on,” Sage butted in, ignoring that last comment. “Scar, how do you understand Bee?”

The trespasser pointed at the crystal clasp holding together his cape. It was glowing a greenish-yellow color. “This turns my language comprehension thingamajig into bird-speak,” he explained. “The more accurate question is why can you understand me? I'm speaking in tweets and chirps right now.”

Sage gestured vaguely at his head. “I can understand anything that speaks. It all sounds the same to me. More importantly, you're not socking me in the face right now. Why?”

Now it was Scar's turn to shrug. He rubbed his hands together absently. “Well, you don't seem very evil right now,” he explained. “and I kinda wanna see where this goes, so….”

Huh. That was an odd rationale. But, if it meant that Scar wasn't going to attack him, then he'd certainly take it. 

“Oh, by the way, Wels is catching us all up on things we forgot. You should come over and fact check,” Scar said. 

Hm, Sage had been wanting to pick Wels's brain. It was so odd that only Hels's memory got erased. Sure, they were different beings, but they shared the same communicator and body. Plus, Hels's words still plagued Sage’s scattered thoughts. They really needed to talk. 

But for now, Sage merely obliged and followed Scar to the main area of the machine city, where everyone was gathered around Wels, sitting on picnic blankets. Sage sat down on a ledge looking over the situation. Wels was giving some big storytime about search parties and normal parties and a whole bunch of stuff that apparently happened while Sage was busy stealing Mumbo’s identity before he came to the surface. 

Oddly, enough, he still didn’t feel bad about that part. Yeah, he felt bad about murdering him; that was horrible, and Sage couldn't even remember it all that well. All he remembered was a lot of yelling. That was enough, he thought. But regardless, he didn't feel bad about impersonating Mumbo at all. It was just a job; didn't hurt anyone (well it wouldn't have if it didn't fail. It's the thought that counts).

“Sage, I hope you know I've tuned you out,” Bee, who was actually appearing to listen to Wels's spiel, muttered. “Maybe I should go back to letting you think I was dead just so I don't have to listen to your ramblings anymore. Don't you have an internal monologue?”

“Haha, not really,” Sage replied cheerfully, flicking Bee in the wing. She screeched and he continued. “It's mostly just static up there, and when it's not, I remember things. … Wait a minute, did you just threaten to go missing again? That's low, Bee, I was really sad about…Bee?”

The bird was nursing her wing, preening it frantically. “Ow, ow-”

“I didn't flick you that hard, did I?” 

Bee held her wing out. A purple and black splotch now covered one of her feathers. 

Huh.

-(Author's Rambling)-

Hiya There! It's me, back again! Bit of a slow one, but sometimes they gotta be that way. Lots of big things have happened in my life recently; thanks for your patience!

I wonder what will happen to our boy… until then, thanks for coming, and I'll see you in the next one, my little Readers!

Promise out!