Grian tried to put his mind into focus. But all he saw was False. The clone. False attacking him, False tearing down his builds, False brutally stabbing Gem, False burning his house to the ground. And these were long lost memories from back in the hermit world. Memories that had been overridden by a false one. And Grian thought he knew what happened to those memories.
Around spawn, all the hermits were either clutching their heads or looking around blankly in a daze or both. They were all remembering things that they'd forgotten, and based on their expression, it was the clone False. Jevin was shaking as he was currently reliving being slain by the clone twice and had to be comforted. Pix seemed to also remember something but looked really confused about it, but other than him none of the emperors seemed to have been attacked by False.
All the hermits started to move towards each other for comfort, whispering about their newfound memories. "False." Cleo said flatly. "What about False?" Joe asked. "The clone. She killed me back on our world. But for some reason I forgot it. Or someone made me forget." She growled.
"Did you get a false memory too?" Grian asked, wondering how many of the hermits were hurt by the clone and had been affected by the amnesia. "I think so." Cleo said after a pause. "There's something in my head that made me think that I didn't die that day and instead something else happened. But it's gone now."
"I remember something like that too." Grian said softly. All the hermits began to whisper more and it soon came out that all of them had actually seen the clone False back on their world going on a killing spree and they'd had false memories implanted to make them forget her.
Cub was shaking in his seat and people were beginning to notice. A few dropped down to his level and asked if he was okay. "No. No, I'm not okay." Cub said quietly. "What do you remember?" Jevin asked. "What did she do to you?" "The clone?" Cub looked up. "No. It's not what she did to me. It's what I did to her. I worked with our False to experiment on her."
Everyone stared. "You did what?" Doc asked with a hissy undertone like a creeper ready to blow up. Cub buried his head in his hands. "I remember now. False approached me one day and then she showed me her clone, which she'd said had been acting erratic. And then we worked together to run some tests on her... but everything went downhill after that."
No one asked what he meant by 'downhill'. They either had a good idea of it already or they didn't want to hear about anything bad. "Why didnt you tell us?" Xisuma asked at last once everyone had processed Cub's words. "Well, first False told me it was better left a secret because she was worried about what you guys would think... but then she wiped my memory of everything to do with the clone." Cub said, his voice barely audible.
At first no one spoke. Then Shelby, who'd apparently been listening the whole time with the other emperors, awkwardly raised her hand like she was in school and wanted to say something. "Wait, False had amnesia potions in your world too?" "I mean, all of us apparently have had memories of her that were gotten rid of." Gem said.
"No. It wasn't the clone False who wiped out memories and then replaced them." Cub whispered, but somehow everyone still heard. "What? Who did it? Who are you talking about?" Everyone wanted to know. Cub took a deep breath and then raised his head. "False. Our False. Hermit False was the one who erased our memories."
---
False's eye was practically glued to the telescope as she watched her clone's every move. The other False was seemed to be too preoccupied with chores to do any more murdering that day. But what puzzled False was what she told Jimena.
Jimena came rushing in and told her that she'd been sleepwalking all the way to Chromia but then False didn't believe it. She said she clearly remembered just going out for a walk. Hermit False wasn't sure if she was just lying or if she truly believed she didn't do anything that day.
It had happened before that the clone had shown signs of not remembering attacking her victims, but this was the first time she seemed to have a false memory. But did she generate it herself? She's clearly fine with murdering people in brutal ways so why would she want to pretend to herself that she didn't do anything wrong? What goes on in her head?
Then there came loud knock from the door. False was startled enough to jump slightly in her chair and her eye painfully collided with the end of the telescope. Wincing and rubbing her eye, she made her way downstairs and unlocked the door to find all the hermits standing on her doorstep. And none of them looked happy with her.
False let them in and didn't ask any questions until after the door was safely locked behind them again. "What are you all doing here?" She asked, surprised. "Don't you have that meeting you should be at?" "The meeting's over, False." Gem said. "Well, that makes sense. But why are all of you here?" False asked.
She noticed the hermits shooting significant glances at each other, like none of them wanted to tell her but wanted someone else to do it instead. "Guys, what's going on? Just tell me already so I can go back to watching my clone." She said, somewhat impatient. Finally Cub spoke up. "Shelby brought some potions to the meeting that made us remember everything we forgot. It was for the other False but apparently it works for both."
False finally put the pieces together and she paled, a sure sign of guilt. "No. You remember." She whispered, baking up a bit. "So you admit to wiping our memories." Grian said with a steady glare. "Yes but- but I had a good reason back then!" False said hastily. "Well, then, spit it out." Doc growled. "Tell us what's so important that you had to mess with our heads without permission.
False sighed and closed her eyes, trying to remember what went on in her head the day she did the deed. It was so long ago. Her clone had just started hurting her friends to hurt her and she couldn't stand it. False had retreated into her lab and started to brew up something that she thought could help stop her, maybe even fix her.
"False? What are you doing? What's happening?" Cub had asked as he entered her laboratory and found her working on what looked like a funny camera gun. "She escaped." False said without looking up from her work. "Well, that explains the murders." Cub said grimly. "But why is she doing all this?"
"To get back at me. And at you too, probably. You helped experiment on her." "But I was just running tests!" Cub protested. "What did I do to make her act like this?!" "Yeah, uh, look, when you weren't around I did some... stuff to her. She didn't like it, for lack of a better word. She probably thinks you were in on it too." "False, what did you do?" Cub asked, stepping away from her with wide eyes.
"Don't ask, Cub. Now, do you know where she is?" False asked, finishing putting on the final touches to her gun. "Uh, I think Gem said she was at her base trying to kill her. But what are you doing?!" Cub raced after False, who had started to leave the lab with the fun in tow. "I need to stop her, Cub!" False shouted as he tried to grab the gun away from her. She wrenched it from his hands.
"What is that, anyway?!" Cub asked, staring at the new machine she held in her hands. "Amnesia gun." False said promptly. "I just hit her with this and it'll wipe her memory too. I hope. But if she doesn't remember I did anything to her she'll stop seeking revenge on me and she won't hurt the other hermits!" False exclaimed, sounding the teensiest bit unhinged.
"I- I see where you're coming from," Cub said slowly, "But-" "But what, Cub? She needs to be stopped and I'm stopping her!" False shouted. "Don't try to stop me!" "I'm just saying the gun might not work!" Cub said. "You didn't test it yet! It might cause more harm than good!"
False paused and then turned to face him. "Cub, I- I'll apologize later. But I don't have time; I need to do this now. Ask for forgiveness, not permission, right?" "What- what are you doing?!" Cub finally pieced it together too late to dodge the shot from the amnesia gun that False fired at him. The beam knocked him off his feet and he sank to the floor, no visible wound on him but clearly unconscious.
False gently shook him but he didn't wake up. Slowly growing horrified, False took a step back. And then another. And another. She ran from her lab and the things she had done hidden inside it. She ran all the way to Gem's base, where she saw a redhead fighting a certain blond. "False!" False screamed. She pulled her gun out and readied it.
The clone turned her head to manically grin at her. "Hello," She said, still fighting Gem. "Go ahead, shoot me." Without another thought False pulled the trigger. "What? False, what's going on?" Gem asked, pausing for one second to process what was going on around her. But one second was all that was needed for the clone to grab her body and push her in the way of the beam. Just like Cub, Gem fell to the ground unmoving.
False screamed and started to fire more shots wildly. The clone grinned and ran off; False chased after her. The two Falses moved from one base to the other, and it was always the other hermits who got hurt by that gun. Not the clone. Them. It just made False angrier and more prone to mistakes.
But finally, one sure shot managed to hit the clone straight on the head. Her eyes bulged and she flopped to the ground, shaking and shrieking. False grimly dragged her back to the lab along with the other hermits to check what had happened to their psyche. And she didn't like what she found.
The amnesia gun didn't give them amnesia. It just derailed their minds. False was forced to lock them up in her laboratory along with her clone as they screamed about seeing the floor beneath their feet transform into a carpet of writhing snakes and ghosts that weren't there. Angry and upset and unsure what to do, False tore her blasted gun into scrap metal and then threw her blueprints for it into the trash.
Eventually, though, False found a way to fix her friends. She created a new device that let her create false memories to cover up what really happened and stabilize their psyche. Soon everyone but the inventor herself had forgotten about the clone who had gone so, so wrong. But the other False needed to be fixed too.
False tried everything. The clone's mind was too... strange for her to do the same thing that she'd done to the hermits. It rejected everything she tried to put into it to try and fix her. Eventually False started to try and wipe all her memories away; give her a clean slate of life to start over. But it took forever for that to find a proper means of doing so.
In the meantime, the clone False kept on breaking out and False found it was getting harder and harder to cover her tracks. Finally, after a break out that nearly got another friend killed, False couldn't take it anymore.
She used her mindwiping device on the clone even though she wasn't sure it would work and then sent her to another dimension using a prototype invention that she'd been working on before the whole evil twin drama had happened. And so the other False was gone.
At first, things had gone back to normal. But False had eventually started to regret what she did. She should've tried harder to fix her clone, her friend, her sister. And then maybe they wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. Which brought them back to today.
False let out a long, low sigh as she finished explaining herself. She stared back up at the hermits crowding around her. She waited for her friends to do more than watch her with judging eyes, to either forgive her or not. Knowing Doc, it would probably be the latter. And then Gem moved toward her and hugged her.