Grian's POV

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Five minutes later, the three were busy making a plan for what they'd do once they got to the Watcherlands. "After all, if you remember," Pearl had said, "normal players-like you-aren't exactly allowed there." Grian did remember that; something to do with the players' code not being stable. It made sense. Hence why they had to figure out how to get to the Creators-the de facto leaders of the Watchers-quickly and without drawing too much attention to Grian himself. After all, not only was he a player, but he was a former Watcher, and that would undoubtedly cause some...discussion.

Rumors. It would cause rumors. The Watchers were a highly gossipy bunch.

Once they finished their plan, the three stood back and relayed it to each other. "Okay, first," Gem began. "I travel back to the world and get Grian on the whitelist because, more likely than not, he's no longer on there, so I gotta put him back. I also make sure that the Creators aren't doing anything important."

Pearl continued from there. "In the meantime, Grian and I will be planning a path to get from spawn to the Creator's lodge."

"I dunno why I'm involved in that," Grian admitted. "I haven't been there in years."

"Oh, it hasn't changed much since...-" Pearl went silent for a moment. "Okay, scratch that, I will be making the path. Grian, you work on how we are going to explain all of...this...to the Creators." That would be difficult.

"Great, so then I come back, and we travel to the world; luckily, spawn isn't out in the open, so we don't have to worry immediately."

"Then we follow the path I made to the Creators' lodge..."

"...and then we have a chat, and I go back to the world I was before!"

The three attempted to high-five, which turned into Grian and Gem hitting each others' hands awkwardly and Pearl missing entirely. Hopefully, this was not an omen.

...

The mission started out just as planned. As Grian set up a semi-script and Pearl made a quick map of the Watcherlands, Gem snuck back and whitelisted Grian. Getting him in was no difficult feat, and that went just peachy as well. Lucky for them, the chat was always active, which got really annoying with all the constant, barely nonuniform dings, but for them, it was great; that way, no one would notice the messages that said:

GeminiTay joined the world
GeminiTay left the world
GeminiTay joined the world
Grian joined the world
PearlescentMoon joined the world

Things were going great. That is, until...

"What do you mean, you punched Eggs Benedict???" "It was an accident! I was just trying to pet her!" "And your entire fist slipped?!" "It doesn't matter! Just- help me figure out how to calm her down!" "Why is Eggs Benedict flying around and attacking people?!?!" "Mistakes were made!"

On their way to the Creators' lodge, the trio was stopped by a huge commotion. There had to be at least six Creators, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, as an ender dragon flew overhead, roaring and screaming. "Ah yes, a quite docile ender dragon you have there," Grian remarked.

"She's not usually like this-?!" was Gem's response. "I swear this was not going on while I was here three minutes ago!"

As Grian and Gem bickered, Pearl immediately took action. She began running around, grabbing Watchers and important items, and getting them out of harm's way. As soon as they noticed, the other two joined in. This was decidedly the opposite of sneaking past everyone, but dragons were no laughing matter, even to Watchers. While doing this, Grian recognized a face or two from his time here. There were many new additions as well, and the world itself was hardly recognizable from what he remembered. It was so much cleaner than he left it, and the equipment seemed newer, too.

Even with all the changes, Grian still felt almost at ease in the Watcherlands, despite currently fearing for his life from an ender dragon. It felt almost like home. Almost. There was something that wasn't sitting right, a dull ache in his bones. When he noticed this, he also realized that he had felt it before; way back when he proposed the concept of Evo to the Creators all those years ago.

"Yes, that would be your player code breaking down, Grian." The three now stood in the lobby of the Creators' lodge, once Eggs Benedict had settled down. One, rather short (but not shorter than Grian), Creator stood in the center of the room, staring down at the gremlin. His brown eyes seemed to sag into his skull, while a murky gray shadow seeped downward under his eyelids. "Which is precisely why is it a terrible idea for you to be here," his monotonous voice droned on. "And who in the worlds thought otherwise?" He clearly knew exactly who in the worlds thought otherwise, as he proceeded to glare daggers at Pearl and Gem, the latter of whom glanced off in another direction.

"Look, I just wanted to figure out why I wound up here and how to get back," Grian said, raising his arms in the air. "I don't need a lecture."

The Creator rolled his eyes, and turned to Pearl, who jumped a bit at the sudden attention. "Pearl, I trust you know what's going on?"

"Yes, actually," she said, quickly regaining her composure. "Grian wound up in a world Gem and I were briefly visiting to test that trapdoor glitch. He complained-"

"It was not a complaint! It was a... an observation-!"

"-complained of an odd feeling that led him to the signia in a random world, then found himself here. We brought him to the Watcherlands for a quick stop so we can get him home." Wow, Grian almost forgot that Pearl was a Rememberer. With all the chaos, he himself had nearly completely forgotten the script. "I suspect," she continued, "that he was not fully removed of the Watcher status, and when he was hit with that...-" she paused and glanced at Grian- "That some sort of... something wanted to return here, but since he was blacklisted, he wound up with us."

That was completely off-script. Grian was forced into a stunned silence; Pearl spoke with such dignity, it was hard to imagine that she was the same Pearl that he and Gem would mess around with on their time off. Not to mention whatever had just happened. Hit with what? Pearl had clearly changed the course of her sentence on the fly, but why?

Why didn't he remember?

Did Pearl know more about him than he did himself?

"Grian? Grian!" The next thing he knew, he was being violently assaulted by Gem slapping him in the face. "Hey, dummy, come back to us." Grian shook his foggy head out and Gem rolled her eyes. "Big man here asked you a question," she said.

"Yes, Grian, do you remember the IP of the world you were in before this one?" The Creator's piercing gaze bored into Grian's own and he started to sweat a bit.

"Ah, about that, yeah I have no idea," Grian admitted. In fact, he completely forgot that was a thing. "I was only there for a few hours, anyway. Though, I think it's one of the newer ones, from what I saw, it hadn't been developed much." That made sense, now that he thought about it. If what Cultie said was correct, then that world was probably not around for very long. Granted, he had no idea how long "not very long" was.

This was not as useful as he thought, though, for the Creator just sighed and started typing on his communicator. "Yeah, that's not gonna do any good in any way." He grimaced, and was quiet for a moment, and then sighed. "Okay, well, I'm just going to throw you in a random world until I can figure out how to get you back...somewhere, I guess. This world isn't going to sustain you for much longer at this rate."

Grian...did not much like the sound of that, but it was hard to argue with the leader of the Watchers, so he'd just have to deal and live alone for a while. That is what he thought, at least, until Gem piped up next to him.

"I'll go with him, make sure he stays out of trouble and all that," she offered. By her tone of voice, it seemed like she would have wanted to go with him regardless, but Grian wasn't complaining either way.

And neither, apparently, was the Creator, as he stared thoughtfully at her for a minute, then said, "....Alright, yeah, I don't see why not. Keep your earpiece on so I can stay in correspondence with you." He then turned to Pearl and said, "You too, keep an eye on the IP of the world or any others I may send you to." Grian thought he also heard something about making sure that Gem and he didn't do anything stupid, but he chose to ignore it.

Pearl shook her head. "Hang on, I didn't volunteer-!"

"Yes, well I am volun-telling you to go with them," the Creator said. Gem laughed and lightly punched Pearl in the arm.

"You're stuck with us," she chuckled.

Grian didn't know what to make of all this. Unfortunately, he didn't have much of a choice, as the Creator was adamant that he couldn't just stay here until he figured something out. It was all perfectly reasonable, but for some reason, he just couldn't shake a bad feeling.

However, he didn't exactly get the opportunity to mull over, or even voice his concerns, as the Creator announced, "Okay, hold on to your hats. I think I found a world that kind of matches your energy-" What?- "I'm kicking you in three...two...and..."

PearlescentMoon left the game
GeminiTay left the game

Pearl and Gem blinked out of existence. Grian braced himself for it as well, but nothing happened. Huh? He looked around at his unchanged surrounding and then at the Creator, who sighed, the sigh that someone makes right after walking out of an important meeting. "Ok, Grian, we're going to have to talk," he said. Okay...? He beckoned for Grian to follow, then walked out of the lobby and into a side room. After closing the door, he turned back to Grian and said plainly, "You're hiding something."

Grian didn't know what to say. He glanced side-to-side, as if he was still expecting the other two to step in. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said tentatively. Did the Creator know something he didn't? Something about him was off. Some distant bells in Grian's mind were ringing that he just couldn't quite place.

"You have never shut up a day in your life. And now, you're all quiet," he reasoned. He kicked a pair of headphones out of the way and sat down on a chair. "There's gotta be something else going on." Grian sat down in another and crossed his arms. He pouted.

"Nope, you're wrong. Everything is fine," he protested, but even he could tell that it was not convincing in the slightest. It was so odd; just a few days ago everything was perfectly normal, and he then proceeded to experience: watching someone fall out of the sky, world-hopping, finding out he's an amnesiac, finding out that there are more amnesiacs just like him that apparently used to be his friends, and winding back up in the Watcherlands. And that was off the top of his head. "Okay, fine, I lied, you got me," he conceded, kicking back in the chair.

"Wow, I'm genuinely so surprised," the Creator exclaimed, miming a brain explosion. Classy. He kicked back in his seat. "Now, start at the beginning. What's going on?"

Grian realized now that he didn't actually get to explain himself; Pearl went through everything herself. He fumbled to get his words together, but ended up stringing together a mostly-coherent explanation that went something like: "Alright, so I was just chilling in my world with my friends the other day, and this guy fell from the sky-"

"Who?"

"-I have no idea. Anyway, he told us we were all amnesiacs or whatever, something about forgetting our pasts? And that he can fix it?" He waited for the Creator to butt in and explain, but he never did. Alrighty then. Grian took a breath and continued. "Then he brought us to another world, where apparently there were others too? And long story short, we ended up in another world where one guy apparently remembered all of us. And I went wandering off that night because I felt weird? I guess? I'm not sure. Anyway, I found the thing, then suddenly had the urge to leave the world and wound up in that testing world with Pearl and Gem. Then, we came here." He breathed out. Phew.

The Creator nodded, stared into space for awhile, then said, "So...players do tend to lose their memories of specific worlds after they have been abandoned for awhile, but usually it takes a long time. It- nevermind. What moreso intrigues me is that this falling man from the sky says he can 'fix' your memories. As far as I'm aware, only Creators can do that." He crossed his legs, then rested his chin on his hand. "And also as far as I know, none of...us have been missing as of late. I'll have to look into that." He spun around again. Grian noticed that he seemed a lot less mopey than he did before. A lot more like how Grian remembered.

"Say, is it good for me being here this long?" Grian suddenly remembered that he was technically on a time limit. He noticed again the heaviness of his bones.

The Creator shrugged. "Eh, you're fine. If you pass out, just let me know." Ah. Okay. Will do. "Anyway, you probably should definitely not have been able to come back here, that's weird, and people falling out of the sky is weird, and non-Creators claiming to 'fix' your memories is weird, and I'm starting to understand why you didn't want to tell me because you sound like a nutjob and-"

"Hey!"

"Aaaaanyway, I'll look into all that, and contact you if I find anything. For now, I'll just send you to that random world."

"Oh yeah, what was all that about 'matching energies'?"

"Oh, complete and utter nonsense! I just thought it sounded good. May as well get some fun out of this job," he laughed. "Anyway, I'll send you over in three-"

Grian suddenly thought of something. "No, wait-" The Creator looked back up from where he was typing. "Do you have a clock here? I know time doesn't really work well here, but do you know what time it is in the worlds?"

The Creator glanced above Grian and the latter turned around to see a clock hanging on the wall. It appeared to be around sunset. That was odd, his scars should be doing the thing now. He rolled up one of his sleeves and gawked. The scars were gone. "Why?"

"Oh, it's just something weird. At roughly this time every day, my friends and I all have-or, had?-these weird scars that glow and hurt and...that's not normal, is it?" Grian very astutely gathered this from the bewildered and frankly mortified face that the Creator was giving him. "...yeah. It must not be working here because time doesn't exist."

The Creator regained his composure and sat back in his seat, folding his arms. "That sounds like some kind of glitch. The more you talk the more I feel like I should be coming with you." He sighed. It was one of those sighs where you can't tell if he was exasperated or upset he was missing out. "Alas, I have work keeping all the servers afloat and working on updates and stopping rogue Creators from ruining everything."

"What?"

"Nothing. If there's nothing else, I will be kicking you in three, two, one."

"Oh, by-"

Grian joined the world

"Woa-h!" He did not have the fortune of falling into a lake this time; rather, he toppled into a particularly tall tree. And then fell through the branches. And then landed right on his face.

"Ouch," he grumbled as he stood up. He pressed a finger to his nose, which was now bent all out of shape. Oof. Once he finished recovering from the fall, he surveyed his surrounding and found that he was in the middle of a jungle, with nothing but dense trees and vines as far as the eye could see (and that wasn't far, considering the fall of night). He looked up to see Pearl and Gem sitting in a tree, having made a small shack. "Oh, hi," he said. "Uh...nice shack."

"What took you so long?" Gem demanded. She didn't even say 'hi' back. "We've been waiting here for at least like fifteen minutes." She angrily took a bite out of what appeared to be raw beef. Ew.

"Sorry, I got held up by the Creator guy," he explained. After a moment of awkward silence, he said, "We're sure he didn't make this world on the spot? There seems to be no one here." Usually, from what he remembered at least, it's tradition for the spawn spot of a world to be decorated.

Pearl turned to him. "No, there definitely are people here," she said slowly, like she was trying to hide a chuckle. She showed him the message log on her communicator.

<JoeHills> Who are you two?
<iskall85> and where did you come from???
<Keralis> And how did you get here??

Very reasonable questions, in his opinion.

"Oh hey, I just noticed, are those people the...?" Gem began as she peeked over onto Pearl's communicator, but quickly shut her mouth.

"Are they what?" Grian cocked his head. On second thought, that Iskall one did sound a bit familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Do you know them?" He looked over at her, but after staring intently at her communicator for a moment, she shook her head.

"No, no, it's probably nothing," she responded.

Before Grian could question her any further, his thoughts were so rudely cut off by a chorus of dings.

<iskall85> oh come on
<Keralis> why are there more.
<iskall85> where even are you???

Judging from the fact that neither Pearl nor Gem made any move to respond to these messages, it was not hard for Grian to infer that, "Are you hiding from them?"

Pearl seemed like she was going to refute, but Gem nodded. "Yeah, we wanted to wait for you to get here before we did anything," she explained. "We weren't one hundred percent sure that you weren't like, dead or something." That was a bad example considering that people come back after they die, but he got the gist.

"Well, I'm not," Grian said with a flourish. "Tada! Anyway, should we go find them?" Before anyone got a chance to answer, however, Grian was thrown off his feet by a sudden presence right next to him. "Bah-!"

"I found you! Surprised I didn't think of this sooner." Grian stood up and turned to the newcomer, a man with brown hair, those rectangular glasses that people wear when they don't want to look like they wear glasses, and a blue shirt with an @ symbol on it. "First of all, hi, nice to meet you, I'm Joe," he waved. The three others took turns providing their own names, and Joe nodded at each. He then clasped his hands together. "Great, okay. Now. What in the Nether are you doing here?!" Joe asked calmly.

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No one's POV
[[TlueT M=not_fhs]] Ago

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The small one clung to Grumbot's leg like it was a branch hanging off the side of a cliff. Its body was crudely made out of scrap metal, hidden by a battered 'Mumbo for Mayor' T-shirt. "Hey, um, what exactly awre we doing?" It said this so slowly, like it had never spoken before. Really, it was just trying to make sure it spoke in questions. It took four months, but it finally managed to get it right every time (almost).

"Right now, we are waiting for Sage to get back with materials," Grumbot answered simply. This would be the third time they switched worlds in two weeks; they kept accidentally creating new ones, and without the presence of a player admin, they didn't last long.

Jrumbot let go of Grumbot and walked a few feet away, where it kicked a rock and sat aggressively on the ground. "I don't want to keep switching worlds, Gwum. It's tiwring and annoying and booooring," it complained. It looked up at Grumbot. "I just want stay with you."

Grumbot didn't respond. He couldn't speak, but He didn't respond in any other way either.

It was nearly midnight by the time Sage arrived back at the camp. Jrumbot had long since activated its sleep mode, and Grumbot sat on a log and stared at the campfire He couldn't even feel.

"I....I got the goods," Sage exclaimed, out of breath. "Are you ready?"

"...no. Let Jrumbot sleep."

"I thought you two didn't need sleep though?"

"I don't. But I'm going to take a walk."

Sage frowned. "Fine," he finally said. From an outsider's glance, he would look annoyed. "Be quick."

Grumbot got up and left. Minutes later, there was a loud crash. When Grumbot returned, the light of the dying flames highlighted a small crack in the corner of His screen.

-(Author's Rambling)-

Yeah, I don't have an excuse. At least I didn't abandon this? In my defense, I am taking two of the most difficult classes I have ever taken this year. I'll try and have at least one chapter a month from now on, maybe more over summer break. Just 20 or so more days of school!

I am also currently working on a real, non-fanfiction book right now as well. I will not be posting it anywhere until I publish it, though. I just thought it'd be nice to mention. :)

Happy [insert any and all holidays that have happened since August], and see you in the next one, my little Readers!

Promise out!