The clone dropped to the floor unconscious with a twisted look on her face as her body absorbed the potion. False took a step back, flinging away the now empty vial. She didn't entirely know what the potion did, but she didn't want to touch it. On second thought, she picked up the bottle again and set it aside to test the potion for later.
Across the room, Doc groaned; him and Cleo trying to stem the blood flow coming from an enormous wound in his middle. Everyone else crowded around him and someone managed to get a healing potion from somewhere. "I'm fine," Doc grumbled, but he didn't shove them away as Cleo poured the healing potion on him. "I've got other first aid stuff upstairs," False said, and Bdubs climbed the ladder to go and get it.
"Cleo?" Jevin called out, sounding groggy. Everyone turned to see the blue slime slide into his clothes lying on the floor and then morph into his regular humanoid form. "What happened?" "You don't remember?" False asked, slowly developing a theory about the potions. Jevin paused and then shook his head. "The last thing I remember is us leaving for your tower..." "The potions must cause amnesia," False murmured, looking at the broken vial.
Then Jimena stirred and started to get up from the floor. "What? What happened?!" The girl shot to her feet and glanced around at the hermits. She stared at hermit False for a few seconds and then she noticed the clone still unconscious on the floor. Horrified, she dropped down and started to shake her awake. "False, wake up!" "No!" Hermit False shouted. She reached out, not knowing what to do, but she didn't want her clone to wake up and then start attacking them again.
Cleo grabbed the computer and hit Jimena on the head with it. The girl slowly turned to look at her with an angry expression and then keeled over, knocked out next to False. But False too was waking up. Cleo hit her on the head with the computer too. And then both of them were asleep on the floor.
False let out a sigh of relief that the two of them would pose no threat, at least for now. And then she realized what computer Cleo had just used to knock them out. The important computer that was needed for the mindwiping chair. "Cleo!" False said. "What?" Cleo asked. "My computer!" Cleo glanced at the computer she held. Awkwardly whistling, she slowly put it back down on the table she'd found it on.
False just stared at the broken gadget sputtering sparks from multiple cracks on its surface. "Great, now I need to get a new computer!" "It's not that bad, right?" Jevin asked hopefully. "No," Doc growled, getting up even though his wound told him not to. "Without that computer, False isn't going to be able to fix her clone's memories." "Well, we just get a new computer, then," Jevin said, still on a hopeful note. "Have you seen these empires, Jevin?" Cleo rolled her eyes. "They're straight out of a dnd world. I don't think they even know what a computer is."
"Oh," Jevin said, deflating. Just then, Bdubs came down the ladder, having finally found the first aid kit, and Cleo took it to use on Doc. "Them too," Bdubs said, pointing at Jimena and False. Then he caught sight of the unfortunate computer and jumped back slightly. "Cleo, did you hit them on the head with a computer?" "Yes," Cleo replied promptly.
False wasn't even listening. She just bent down and looked at her clone's face. With her eyes shut and expression fading to peaceful, she looked so innocent. And yet she wasn't. How close False was to finally fixing her and then now they'd had a setback. A setback that probably wouldn't get fixed for a while, considering the limited technology available. Still, maybe she and Doc could cobble together a rudimentary computer out of scrap metal.
"Doc, do you think we can build a computer?" False asked. "You're still trying to get rid of her memories?" Doc asked. "You saw what just happened!" False shouted. "She literally stabbed you and she's not even fully evil yet!" "Technically because I tried to chop her with an ax first," Doc muttered under his voice. "Wait, what?" Jevin asked, blinking rapidly. "Why are you guys defending her?" False asked, frustrated. "Because why not?" Bdubs said.
False sighed in frustration and ran her fingers through her hair. "Just- just listen to me, okay? I know her better than you guys do and I'm already being gentle with her as it is. I know some people would rather kill her but I'm just trying to keep her past in the past. And I can't do that if she remembers everything." Everyone looked at each other and then at their feet. "She's evil, got it? If I get rid of that side of her, then everything will be fine and maybe we can stop worrying about her."
"I don't think she's entirely evil," Cleo said. "You saw how she reacted when Jevin suffocated her." "Wait, I did what?" Jevin blinked. "Tried to suffocate her," Doc pointed at Jimena. Everyone looked at the little girl lying still on the ground, peaceful and innocent and pure, except for the lone trail of blood rolling down her forehead from where Cleo had hit her with the computer. The zombie took the first aid kit and gently started to patch her up, whispering comforting things to her softly.
"She can't hear you, Cleo," Doc said, but Cleo ignored him and continued to do so. False bent down next to the zombie and took some bandages and healing potions out of the kit and used them on her clone. But she wasn't entirely paying attention to her actions. Inside her mind, she repeated Cleo's words over and over. Not entirely evil. You saw how she reacted when Jevin suffocated her.
Something new blossomed within the inventor. It was hope. Hope that maybe this time she could finally fix her clone. That she could save her. "How long do you think they'll be out?" False asked. Cleo shrugged. "Based on experience, about two hours. Maybe three." "Experience?" Bdubs echoed. "You do not want to know," Jevin shuddered. They took his word for it.
False took a deep breath. I need to word this right, so they'll be on my side and I don't have to argue a lot to convince them. "I was thinking," She began, "That we can do something to not make this day a total waste." Cleo raised an eyebrow. "What are you thinking?" "You saw how long it took for us to take her down," False said, gesturing at her clone. "And that was even because she was distracted." "Your point?" Doc muttered uneasily, like he sensed where she was going.
"Maybe we could put like a... chip on her?" False suggested. "Like a dog tracking chip?" Bdubs asked. "Or a way to keep her in line," Doc growled. "It's just to tag her," False said quickly. "To track her, or maybe to sedate her sometimes. Just to make it easier to catch her the next time we try to fix her." "Technically, we didn't really try this time," Jevin pointed out. "We just went because you were worried about your tower."
"Nevermind that," False grumbled. "Just- when the computer's fixed, we can use the tag to find out where she is and make it easier for us to get her in the chair." "Is it going to be one of those cool spy chips?" Bdubs asked excitedly. "Like it'll go under her skin?" "Probably," False said thoughtfully. "She needs to not notice it." Then her eyes lit up as she got another idea. She poked around inside her clone's pocket and pulled out another amnesia potion. "Let's give them a small dose of this," False said. "And then we'll put them in bed and they'll not remember that this ever happened, or they'll think it's a dream. It's to buy us time with the computer."
"Not a bad idea," Doc admitted grudgingly. "Not too much, or they'll forget too much," Cleo said. False nodded and started to measure the dosage. Then she gave the job to Jevin to do while she and Doc rummaged around for a tiny chip that they could program to do the stuff they wanted. It took them a while to find a singular computer chip; technological supplies were running thin since they weren't readily manufactured in this dimension. Or invented yet, for that matter.
When they finished outfitting the computer chip with the things they wanted it to do, Cleo carefully cut open False's skin and slid it in. After disinfecting it, of course. Then she sewed the wound shut with careful stitches, and poured a healing potion on top for good measure. "That's a very neat job," Doc said unexpectedly. Cleo shrugged and absentmindedly rubbed her own stitches. "I'm good with stitches," She said simply.
Once False was tagged, they brought the two unconscious girls to their rooms and put them gently to bed. As False left, she turned back a moment to look at the sleeping form of her clone. "I'm going to save you," False whispered to her. "Bring you back to the way we used to be. And then we can be like sisters again."
---
Groan waited impatiently at spawn for everyone to arrive. He'd spread the word that he was calling a meeting for all hermits and emperors, but so far no one was really showing up. As he waited, the hermit wondered how things were going at False's tower. I wonder what False will do with Jimena, now that she overheard all that stuff?
Then came the sound of elytras and Grian looked to see several people landing and going over to him. "Finally!" Grian said. "Took you guys long enough!" He waited for everyone to gather near and sit down and he started counting. The hermit frowned. "Is this everyone?"
"False isn't here," Shelby said, looking around. Grian figured she meant the empress of Cogsmeade,ñ. Hermit False hadn't showed up to the meeting, but that was because she didn't trust the emperors to keep her existence a secret to the False that they'd knwon and befriended. In her words, she wasn't entirely sure which side they would pick. Hermit Gem wasn't there either, but she'd left an excuse letter saying she was on a mining trip.
"Jimena isn't here either," Groan said. "Yeah, but this is a meeting for hermits and emperors," fWhip said. "Jimena's a citizen." "Oh," Grian said, slightly embarrassed. "I just see her around so much that I forget that she's just a- normal person." He quickly bit back the words that he'd almost said. No one needed to know about what else Jimena was, because she definitely wasn't a normal person.
"And don't worry about False," Joel said. "She never attends meetings. It's because she sleeps so much she misses them." "Yeah, remember the time she slept a whole week?" Scott laughed. "We thought she died and then it turned out she was just in bed." "And then completely forgot about the incident afterward," Princess Gem grinned, recalling.
"Um, anyway," Grian said hurriedly, "I've called this meeting because I have a special announcement about a special game I've just come up with!" "It's not going to be better than Decked Out," Tango said. "It will," Grian retorted. "I call it... wait for it... tag!" He whipped out a multicolored jester's hat and put it on. No one said anything.
Finally Lizzie spoke. "Sorry to burst your bubble, Groan," She said, "But tag's already been invented." "Ah, but this is a different kind of tag," Groan said slyly. "Come over to this handy machine here and I'll show you." He lead the group a little closer to Hermitopia and then they saw it.
It was a strange machine with way too many buttons and levers on it, just sitting there on the ground. It was Grian's brainchild, the result of his hoarding various pieces of scrap and then stringing them together every once in a while for the purposes of his game that had been in the works for quite some time.
"You just press a button or flick a lever to start," Grian said. He punched a button and a chute in the machine opened to spit out a small scrap of paper, which Grian grabbed. "Whoever's tagged has to wear this ridiculous hat until they tag someone else as incentive," Grian said, tapping his jester's hat. "When you're tagged, you get a slip of paper from this machine. The paper will tell you a way to kill someone. Cactus, raid, etcetera. To tag someone, you kill an emperor if you're a hermit and vice versa, with the method written on the paper."
"So if my paper says 'sweetberries'," Lizzie said, "I have to kill a hermit with sweetberries?" "Yup!" Grian nodded. Everyone stated to murmur; once they'd understood the rules it sounded intriguing. "Now, since I'm wearing the tag hat and have a paper, I'll be it." Grian said, unfolding the slip and reading it aloud. "Fall into the void. Huh, guess I'll just- wait, where'd everybody go?!" Grian looked around frantically but all the emperors had somehow disappeared.