Chapter Text
“So what’s beyond this corridor? A room full of zombies?”
“Yup.”
“Then you might have to lend me a weapon. And some food, actually. I’ve just realised I haven’t eaten in six thousand years and I’m bloody starving.”
Honeydew laughed at the scientist as they continued their walk back down the long corridor, tugging on Xephos’ satchel as he did. He managed to root around in it for a moment before retrieving a worn paper bag and passing it to Lalna.
“It’s only Jaffas, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.”
“Jaffas is fine by me,” replied Lalna, gladly biting into one of the cakes.
“You can just ask me for my bag next time, you know,” grumbled Xephos as he adjusted the satchel over his shoulder. “I’ll gladly hand it over.”
Honeydew just waved him off and helped himself to a Jaffa Cake. After leaving the ruined clone laboratory, the trio had ventured back down the corridor which led them there, amicably chatting with the newest member of their party as they went. The man seemed certain he could help them find their way around The Hand, insisting that it had once been a very organised facility which- as far as he could remember- had generally been on the right side of ethical science.
“I could be wrong though,” he had elaborated, “who knows how much changed here since I got put under.”
After wandering for ten minutes or so, Lalna stopped abruptly and looked to his right.
“What is it?” asked Xephos.
“Shh,” Lalna replied, putting a finger to his lips, “can you hear that?”
Xephos and Honeydew both raised a distrustful eyebrow before falling silent and listening out. They stayed silent for half a minute or so, and the dwarf was about to call bullshit, when the unmistakable screech of a giant spider interrupted from beyond the wall. Lalna immediately pressed his ear up to the metal before lifting up his hand and knocking. The knock echoed distinctly through the passage.
“Aha!” he said triumphantly, turning back towards the other two, “It’s a one way window! This corridor- or at least this section- has got fake walls. From the other side it’s a window.”
“Why would anyone make that? To spy on people, or what?” asked Xephos, grimacing.
Lalna shrugged. “Probably for monitoring an experiment without altering it? I don’t really know. I didn’t make it, I just know it exists.”
He looked at Honeydew. “Wanna smash through?” he asked.
Honeydew just grinned and, using the spiked mace he’d found in one of the previous rooms, bashed at the wall which immediately broke beneath the force, shattering into metal-looking-glass shards on the floor.
“Nice,” said Honeydew. “Well, onward then?” he asked as he stepped over the pile of glass and into the newly discovered room. The other two clumsily followed after, ducking awkwardly to get through the rather dwarf-sized hole which Honeydew had made. The room they found themselves in seemed to be rather as Lalna had guessed- a room for monitoring the corridor they had just left. It was long and not terribly deep, housing chairs looking out at the deceptive window at regular intervals, each with a small table at its side. Like most of The Hand, it was surprisingly well lit with the same white lamps the other rooms had in abundance. It was also home to a large spider sitting in a web hanging from the ceiling; it looked towards it’s visitors with a slow curiosity.
“You gonna get that Xeph?”
The spaceman just sighed and pulled out his bow, carefully took aim and hit the creature dead on. It squealed terribly but did not move again.
“I fuckin’ hate those things,” he said, returning the weapon to his back. “And I’m running out of arrows too.”
“Blondie, do you know if there’s a store room here?” Honeydew asked Lalna. “Gotta' be an armoury or some shite, right?”
“Mmm, not in this area I don’t think…” he replied, putting a hand to his chin. “We’d have to go a lot deeper to get to the actual storage area, and honestly if anywhere is full of spiders, it’s there.”
“Well let’s not do that,” the dwarf huffed. “Do you know this area, at least?”
Lalna shook his head.
“Welp, let’s continue wanderin’ aimlessly. It’s got us this far, after all!” Honeydew said with dramatic enthusiasm. He clapped his hands together and started parading toward the only door in the room, secluded in the far corner.
Xephos sighed. “Aimlessly wandering it is,” he said, and looked at Lalna. “Maybe stay behind us, you don’t have any weapons afterall. Oh!” He pulled the arrow quiver from his back and clumsily retrieved a worrying looking metal weapon which had sharp protrusions towards the top. “I don’t know what this actually is, but I found it earlier with that spiked-mace ‘Dew has. You fancy it? At least till we find something better?”
“Oh, hell yes,” said Lalna, taking the stick with a manic smile. He swiped it through the air a couple a times and looked back at Xephos. “This thing is fucking cool.”
“Glad you think so,” the spaceman replied with a smile, as they both followed after Honeydew.
The trio cautiously continued further through metal room after metal room, their new location seeming more like the first few they had encountered in The Hand. Lalna seemed at a loss when he found he didn’t recognise any of their whereabouts as he claimed he would. He could make sense of some of the signs and notes they found scattered along various walls -most of them being settings for ‘simplistic machines’ which Xephos and Honeydew had never heard of- but others left him completely confused. References to the so called ‘robot’ (which the Heroes attempted to explain to him as best they could) meant nothing to him, and he was worried by the extreme amounts of simplistic cloning vats they found along the way.
After a while, they arrived in a small corridor with a door at the end, and a door on the right. Xephos looked through a small looking glass at the end door and hummed.
“Well, good news, we’re back where we started. Bad news, the zombies are still there. Lalna, come see.”
Lalna stepped up to the door and squinted an eye through the peep-hole. “Oh shit, that’s me alright. Wow, that is...that’s unsettling.”
In the room beyond, little visible was of use. The trio could just about make out a corner or two of giant skeleton, and hordes of zombie-clones of Lalna.
“I don’t get it,” the scientist said, stepping back with a frown. “I don’t get what happened here. I know six thousand years is a long time, but still, this is mental. Who would make brain-dead clones of me? I don’t even know how a person turns into a zombie, let alone makes it into an automated process.”
“As interestin’ as that all sounds,” said Honeydew, who couldn’t reach to look through the peep-hole, “how ‘bout we check this other room before we get all existential? Looks to be computers n’ shit.” Xephos and Lalna turned to listen before Honeydew pushed open the right-hand door and the three examined the small computer room.
Barely three metres in diameter, the room resembled so many others that the Heroes had come across on their adventure. Like those in the Nether, Skyhold, the Turtle and of course The Hand, it had long desks pressed up to the walls looking up at twenty or so screens which either flickered weakly or were completely dead. Machines with exposed wires and damaged pipes protruded out of the ceilings and walls, their original purposes lost to time. The Heroes and their new companion took in their surroundings, dimly lit by one persistent overhead light.
“I hate these fucking rooms,” said Xephos.
“You’ve seen this before?” asked Lalna.
“Yep. All over the place. In Minecraftia you can’t bloody move for weird little decaying computer rooms.”
“Huh,” replied Lalna, stepping over to one of the desks. “I wonder if any of these still work.”
He steadily began messing around with the computers at every desk, hoping they would blink to life or connect to one of the monitors above. Honeydew meanwhile, was exploring a cupboard by the entrance.
“Hm,” he said, pulling the door open. “Xeph, do these look like anythin’ to you?”
Xephos joined his friend by the cupboard, the pair both pulling out a handful of what looked like lanyards which had been hanging on small hooks inside.
“‘Access card: Section C, Access card: Section C’, guess they must be keycards or something. Kinda doubt they work now though. What have you got?”
“Mine say ‘Section F’, I can see an ‘E’ in the cupboard too,” Honeydew said, pulling the last few off their hook. He flicked through the bunch before pulling one out and examining it closely.
“What you got there, friend?” asked Xephos, leaning over.
Honeydew screwed his face up, before turning to his friend. “I don’t really know mate, it says ‘Access card: YL:P.G.L2’. You seen that anywhere?”
Xephos shook his head. “Nope. Might be useful if we hang onto these though, right?”
“Aye,” said Honeydew, handing over the cards so Xephos could store them away in his satchel. “I expect they will be.”
The two then jumped as Lalna yelled ‘huzzah!’ behind them. They turned to see him stood over a computer with several of the monitors above- now turned on- displaying the same grey screen with the circular logo saying ‘YOGLABS’ in the middle, just as they had seen in the Clone Storage before.
“Success?” asked Xephos.
“Success!” replied Lalna, who was already typing in a password. The monitors loaded again, and changed to reveal a simple desktop with neat lines of files along the sides. Lalna seemed to be reading their names carefully.
“Do you recognise anything?” Xephos said.
“I’m...not sure,” said Lalna. “Some of these seem really normal, but some of them are really weird. See-” he pointed at the monitor, “‘Clone Notes, Coffee Machine design alpha, Coffee Machine design beta’, these are all in the common space on the system; that’s just normal admin stuff. But these files, ‘Dragon Status, Dragon Status UPDATED, HD Clone Reports’, I don’t have a clue what they are. Holy shit, ‘Missile Launch Plans’?” he immediately clicked on the file, revealing pages upon pages of detailed blueprints and notes.
“Hell, I know that missiles are fun and all- don’t get me wrong- but this, this looks like fuckin’ war plans.”
“Sorry, what was that about missiles being fun?” Honeydew asked, but the comment didn’t seem to reach Lalna, who was clicking through pages and documents at an alarming pace as he quickly scanned each one. He only stopped when he opened a file which was named ‘Moonbase Family Photo <3’ which simply brought up a photo.
The screen flickered as it displayed the image. In front of a large red dome, stood on top of a pale, rocky surface, were three familiar faces. Xephos stood tall on the left, smiling as he raised his hand to his head in a salute. To his right stood Lalna, who had a much floofier head of hair. He held a clipboard to his chest with one arm, and smirked as he saluted with the other. In the middle of them stood Honeydew, who was beaming a great, cheesy grin as he saluted. They all wore what seemed to be gaudy, orange space suits emblazoned with a brown logo across the breast and great goldfish bowl helmets on their heads.
The three stood in silence for a moment as they stared at the image.
“Woah,” Lalna eventually said. “Look at us.” He turned to the other two with a sad smile and said, “I told you we were friends.”
“Yeah,” mumbled Honeydew. “Are we- is that on the moon?”
“It seems to be,” said Lalna.
“You never said we went to the moon!”
“Well, I’ve never been! That must’ve happened after I was put under. Look at my- oh my goodness, look at my hair.”
“I feel like you're missing the point,” said Honeydew. He turned to Xephos looking for support, but the man was staring rigidly ahead. “Xeph?”
He didn’t reply.
“Hey- earth to Xeph, are you in there?”
“That’s really us?” he said quietly.
“Huh?”
“Is that, is that really us? Lalna, is that really us?”
Lalna seemed to take in Xephos’ quiet panic and slowly said “Yeah, it’s definitely us.”
“From six thousand years ago?”
“From six thousand years ago.”
“And...we went to space?”
“It seems like it, yeah.”
Xephos seemed to deflate. “I don’t know what to do with all this,” he said.
“Well, if it’s causing you that much bother, how ‘bout we just ignore it?” said Honeydew, taking Xephos' hand and forcing him to look at him. “We’ve got our own quest goin’ for us right now, and if this history shite is gettin’ in the way, I say we ignore it. Or come back to it later, if that helps. After we’ve saved the world, maybe. If Lal’ over there can’t make sense of owt’ on that computer then we’ve no reason to stay here anyway, right?”
Xephos continued to bite his lip with worry before he sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, no, you’re right. As always,” he smiled dazed. “You always know what to say.”
“It’s my dwarven charm,” Honeydew said with a smile. “Honestly though, space? I didn't even know going to space was possible.”
“I’m from space you utter pillock,” Xephos pointed out. “Is there anything else you need to do here Lalna? I’d honestly rather deal with the zombies than stay for much longer.”
The scientist sighed as he looked at the monitors. “Not really, though...let me look for one last thing,” he said, as he brought up a bar which said ‘Search for something… inside. Lalna typed ‘Jaffa Factory’ and pressed go. The page was flooded with files marked with envelopes- most unopened- as well as notes upon notes. He sifted through them until he found a handful of image files, which he clicked on.
As another image filled the screen he smiled. “Looks like we did make Jaffas,” he said quietly. There was a photo of a tall, white building with a pixelated dwarf on the front, above the words ‘HONEYDEW INC.’
“Holy shit! That’s my face!” yelled Honeydew.
Lalna skipped through to another image which showed a box labelled ‘JAFFA CAKES’ being put onto a large blue van. Lalna, looking almost the same as he did in reality, was levitating a few feet off the ground, watching as the box got taken on board. Honeydew was also in frame, eating a Jaffa Cake with a party popper in his hand.
“Wish I could remember,” said Lalna a little bittersweetly. “I wish we all could.”
It was silent for another moment before Xephos suddenly said “...wait, are you flying?”
“Oh, yeah,” replied Lalna with a chuckle and pointed to the ring on his finger. “Ring of flight, we all had them. Makes life a lot easier when you can just zoom around everywhere.”
“Can you do it now?”
Lalna chuckled nervously. “I can try, but I doubt it works after all this time.” He stood up and twisted the gem on the top, which changed from white to red. He lifted up his right leg, as if he were climbing up an invisible set of stairs, and then cautiously followed with his left. Miraculously, they both stayed hovering off the ground.
“Holy shit! As if this still works!” he said, laughing. He started to move around the room, levitating a little higher and in different directions.
“How do you even control that thing?” asked Honeydew.
“It’s pretty instinctual when you get used to it, actually. Stepping off to begin is the hardest part, but once you get going it's pretty chill- woAH!” Lalna yelled as the gem on the ring suddenly rotated back back to white and he fell to the floor.
“Owie,” he said. “...I think I twisted my ankle,”
There was a moment of silence before Xephos and Honeydew both burst out laughing.
“Hey! It’s not my fault this thing is busted!”
“You, you fuckin’ egit, that was hilarious,” Honeydew laughed. “And you went for it so hard, oh Notch-” he barked before breaking down in giggles again.
Xephos clumsily held a hand out to Lalna and pulled him up. “Wow,” he said, as he wiped his eyes, “I’m literally crying, wow,”
Lalna chuckled. “Nice to know you two are still arseholes, then.”
The two just nodded. “That we are! Bastards through and through,” Honeydew bellowed.
“Bastards that need to get a move on,” Xephos remarked once he’d recovered his breath.
“Aye, you’re right there friend.”
“But my ankle hurts,” said Lalna, pouting, which just made Honeydew burst out laughing again.
“Ah come on ya’ big girl! We got zombies to kill!” the dwarf yelled as he pulled out his mace, stepped back out into the corridor and kicked open the door to the room with the giant skeleton.
“Honeydew! Don’t, don’t do that!” yelled Xephos, running after him and pulling his sword out.
“Too late! I’m already gone!”
“Then come back!”
“Nope, see ya’ later shitlords!”
Lalna shook his head and smiled to himself, grabbing the weapon Xephos had given him with a stiff grip. “Bastards through and through,” he said to himself.
He walked away from the photos on the computer monitor, and entered the other room to go watch his friends argue as they killed zombies that looked just like him.
A day like any other, really, he thought.