Chapter Text
When it came to the list of things that made Zedaph happy, meetings didn’t usually rank in the top ten. Not even the top fifty, probably. Sure, it would depend on what the meeting was for - a ‘let’s give Zed free diamonds because he deserves it’ meeting, now that he could get behind. But typically, a meeting was a long, boring process, usually involving him saying very little and hoping that nobody tried to call attention to him.
However, today Zed found himself actually enjoying the gathering. It had been several weeks since Tango and Impulse had moved out from his base, and although he was happy that they felt comfortable being alone again, the newly returned silence in the cave had left him feeling a little lonely. These weekly updates were an excellent excuse to see them again - even if the purpose was a little more serious than just hanging out.
He fiddled with the pen and clipboard he’d been given, letting the voices of Tango, Impulse, and Xisuma wash over him as his mind and gaze wandered. He hadn’t had much of an excuse to travel to Xisuma’s base before this new building had been constructed, and even though they’d met here many times before, he could still find something new to look at in the tangled jungle outside the windows. Failing that, he could always find distraction in the squeaky-clean reflections on the laboratory tables inside, and failing that, he could always -
“Zedaph?”
He blinked back to attention to find everyone staring at him.
Right. He could also, you know, attempt to pay attention to the meeting.
“Do you have any questions?” Xisuma arched his eyebrow from behind his visor, an amused gesture that made Zed sure he knew that he hadn’t been listening at all.
“Um, yeah, actually.” Zed rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It sounds like it’s all going well, and I appreciate the update, but my main question is really just: could you repeat that last bit? And maybe the beginning too?”
“And, let me guess, also the middle?” Tango said dryly.
“Yeah…”
Impulse summoned a chuckle. “It’s okay, I think I drifted off a bit there, too. Thankfully, I should know enough to catch you up.” Zed noticed that the tired smudges under his eyes had darkened since they had last met. Impulse certainly would know more than enough to fill in the gaps - he’d been working on this new project with Xisuma for weeks, and if Zed knew him at all, his hours of research were probably double his hours of sleep by now. He felt a soft pang of guilt at not being able to help out more, but the truth was, he just didn’t know how. Two cooks seemed enough in this particular kitchen, and he didn’t want to get in anyone’s way. At least attending these meetings made him feel like he was doing something.
A method that would only work if he didn’t space out again. He leaned forward, determined not to make Impulse and Xisuma repeat themselves twice.
Impulse steepled his fingers in front of him, elbows leaning on the pristine iron surface of the laboratory table. He cast a quick glance down to the haphazard stack of notes piled in front of him before giving his report:
“We’ve finally figured out how the totems work.”
Zed sat bolt upright. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Impulse pulled a pencil from behind his ear and gestured at the notes. “We had our suspicions, since we already saw the totem’s effect on Tango, but we wanted to take some extra time to make sure that that’s actually what we were seeing. The alternative would be to believe something that came from Reflex at first glance, and, well…” He chuckled bitterly. “Not happening. But now, we can be confident about what those things actually do.”
“Well, the most we can without actually testing them,” Xisuma amended.
“Which you’re not going to do.” Tango leaned back in his seat and cast a suspicious glance at the glass cases on the edges of the room, where the only three Totems of Dying left in their world lay. “Personally, I don’t even think you should be messing with them at all. You should’ve thrown them into lava the moment you collected them.”
Zed winced. They all knew Tango didn’t like this project - he’d been uneasy and unwilling to help since day one - but this was the most open he’d been with his disapproval yet. It was a sore subject, and Zed wasn’t looking forward to the argument that would likely follow.
Impulse drew a deep, impatient breath. “Like I said before , we’re being very careful. Any totem we aren’t actively experimenting on stays locked up in that case, and neither of us work on them alone. I know they make you nervous, but I would rather know more about them than just leave them to -”
“Leave them to not hurt people? Because all you’ll get is pain if you keep messing with them -”
“Guys, please!” Zed waved his hands in a futile attempt to calm his friends down. He agreed with Tango that the totems were dangerous, and he agreed with Impulse that a known danger would be better than an unknown one...but after all the arguments they’d had about it, he doubted that this would be the one to resolve the matter.
“This entire meeting is about how you’ve found the solution to the totems, yes?” He turned to Impulse and Xisuma. “That means that you can stop working with them -” he turned to Tango “- and you can stop worrying about them working with them.” He trained his eyes on the table in front of him, suddenly self-conscious of his outburst. “Right?”
Tango sighed, slumping down in his chair. “Right. Sorry.”
Now that the aggression had drained from his face, Zedaph could clearly see that the only thing behind it was worry. Tango knew firsthand what those totems could do, and he also knew the guilt and pain of the aftermath of an attack from Hels. His fear that Impulse and Xisuma were pushing themselves too far in pursuit of a solution was justified.
But so was the pursuit itself. With Reflex banned and Tango’s clone long gone, Helsknight even more so, these totems were the only link to the Hels dimension they had left to work with. They were the only path to a solution, to stopping this from ever happening again. As nervous as the items made all of them, they were a necessary evil.
“We might be able to stop working with them now.” Impulse spoke gently, an apology in his tone. “But I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that.”
Tango waved a hand towards the scattered papers, still not meeting Impulse’s eyes. “We’ll figure that out later. Just tell Zedaph what you already told me.”
Zed peered at the notes, unsuccessfully trying to decipher the tables and graphs upside-down. Most of it looked understandable (if it were right side up, that is), but there were a few odd symbols in a language he wasn’t familiar with, and what looked to be scribbled lines of code in Xisuma’s handwriting. He suddenly felt a little less bad about missing out on the research process - as neat as everything else about their admin was, his handwriting was atrocious.
“So, if you haven’t been testing the totems, what have you been doing? Just poking at them with magnifying glasses and whatnot?” Zed cast a glance to the rows of tools organized along the counters.
Xisuma cleared his throat and began to speak, calm and professional. “We did a little bit of that, but it wasn’t very useful. They’re exactly the same on the outside as the totems we know. However, I was able to look into the totems’ code enough to figure out how they operate. They’re coded the same way as a regular Totem of Undying, with only a few key lines changed. They look the same, activate under the same conditions...but the transfer of energy is different.”
Zed’s brow furrowed. “Transfer of energy?”
Xisuma flipped open the communicator on his wrist, projecting glowing lines of text out into the air in front of him. The other three leaned in, attempting to trace where the normal code ended and the evil began.
“When a Totem of Undying activates, it transfers energy to the player,” Xisuma explained. “That energy is what gives you extra regeneration and resistances when you would normally just die. A Totem of Dying, however, takes energy. It pulls it from the player’s body and sends it to the master totem, to be stored as charges.”
The gears in Zed’s brain began to turn. “But the master totem is in Hels right now, with Reflex….”
“....but it’s still linked to the totems we have here.” Impulse gestured to the case. “Which means there’s a link between Hels and the Overworld.”
“Which means…”
“Which means absolutely nothing.” Impulse gave a frustrated sigh, making the pile of notes flutter. “That link would only let energy travel, not a whole person. We’re at a dead end. We know how the totems work now, but it’s given us no clues about how the clones get into this world, or how to keep them out….”
X rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out eventually. Maybe the totems are the way to do that, maybe not, but we’ll figure it out.” His words were soft, but his eyes were fire and steel. Zed could tell that he wasn’t giving up any time soon.
He understood that. He felt the exact same way - he wanted to feel safe in his own world again, and he wanted that for his friends, too. He would do whatever they needed him to if it would help find a way to keep the Hels Hermits out, to stop one of them from returning and making his friends’ lives a waking nightmare again.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” He turned towards Impulse and Xisuma, hopeful. “I know you’ve said before that you don’t really need anything, but we need to figure out how to stop this as soon as possible. I really don’t like the idea of you guys getting jumped by Horrible Tango and Jerkpulse again…”
He trailed off. A sudden silence had overtaken the room, planting a sinking feeling deep in his chest.
“Guys?” He smiled nervously. “Anything I can...do…”
“Well, actually, yes,” Impulse started carefully. “But it’s not really about the research.”
“We aren’t very worried about a clone who we’ve already seen returning,” Xisuma explained. “Statistically, it’s much more likely that we’ll see a new one in the next little while.”
Something about the way Xisuma was looking at Zed did not alleviate the sinking feeling. At all.
Zed swallowed. “So what does that have to do with me? It could be anyone, right, just random…?” The question fell flat, like a lifeline gone slack, thrown just a little too short of its mark.
“Not...exactly.” Impulse took a deep breath, the corners of his mouth tightening in that way they always did when he needed to say something tactfully. “When I got frustrated with staring at the totems all day, I started to think about how Reflex managed to disguise himself so convincingly as me. He got everything right, my voice, my movements, every detail of my clothing…” His eyes got distant for a moment. “I don’t know how, but he must have known a lot about me, to be able to fool everyone like that. And Tango’s clone knew a lot about him, too - he knew how Decked Out worked, he knew what would lure Tango there without making him suspicious… These people seem to get most of their power from information. They like to have a lot of it before they make their move.”
He paused for a moment, searching for the right words, before seemingly deciding to just say it plainly. “Zed, you’ve been directly involved with both of our Hels incidents. The person that they have the most information on right now is you.”
“Oh.” Even though he had anticipated it, the confirmation that this was where the conversation had been leading made his stomach lurch.
Zed’s sinking feeling could now be classified as fully, completely sunk. How had he never thought of this before? He had been so focused on surviving and helping his friends overcome their own doubles that he’d entirely forgotten to worry about the possibility of his own. He’d fought Tango’s clone directly, he was the first one that Reflex approached - who knew how much the Hels Hermits knew about him? The idea that both of them had reported back to some shadowy, horrifying, hypothetical mirror image of himself made him want to scream, made him want to hide in his cave forever and never let anyone in again -
“Hey, hey, it’s okay!” Impulse rested a hand on Zed’s arm, which he only now realized had been shaking. “It was just a thought that I had, just a theory. You know I like to over prepare. I was just wondering if maybe a few extra precautions would be a good idea.”
Zed took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”
Tango, who had been rapidly taking notes from the time Impulse started speaking, grew thoughtful. “Hmm...I might have a few ideas. Frequent check-ins, a safety code that changes every day...I think we can make this work. Whatever we pick, I’m not letting some dorky villain-Zed feed you to a herd of vampire sheep or something.” He elbowed Zed playfully.
“Hey, what makes you think Evil Me would be dorky! He could be really scary!” Zed protested, managing a smile. As serious an issue as this was, he was more than willing to accept Tango’s gift of humour. It always made him feel just a little bit better to banter instead of worry.
“Does a vampire sheep burn in the sunlight if you shear it?” Impulse pondered, eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter.
“I think our goal is to avoid finding that out.” Xisuma chuckled. “Right, so Zedaph and Tango can run through some ideas and create a system to keep Zed safe, Impulse and I can talk about where we want to go next with the research - but for now, I think we can be done here. This meeting has gone on more than long enough, and I, for one, am a very busy bee.”
~
“Ow!”
Zedaph disentangled himself from his front door and stumbled into the cave, exhausted. He didn’t regret building any of these contraptions, even if they were a pain to deal with sometimes, but on nights like these when he could barely keep his eyes open, a front door that likes to bite you wasn’t exactly a gift.
Still rubbing his head, he dragged his feet all the way over to the bed and flopped down without even bothering to take off his armour. He had been worried that he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, with all his spinning thoughts of evil totems and research plans, but the meeting had actually left him feeling more safe than he had in weeks. In spite of promises to be “finished” with the meeting, the process of wrapping up had taken an extra half hour due to the storm of ideas and reassurances he’d been given. He smiled as he recalled the lengthy talks over how frequently he was to be checked in on, what the best codewords would be and how often to change them, and the host of other solutions his overprotective friends had suggested to ease his worries. He felt a pang of regret that none of these systems had been in place when Impulse or Tango could have used them, but he supposed that was the sad reality of life: learning by trial and error requires error . Costly, painful error, that all of them were keen to never repeat again. If an evil Zedaph did decide to show up? Good luck to him. He was going to need it.
Zed cuddled down into his sheets, allowing the cool embrace of the fabric to soothe him. Faint, fluffy silhouettes of vampire sheep pranced in the last remaining fragments of his thoughts as he slowly faded into sleep.
~
Magenta. That is how it starts. How it always starts, he realizes, as the memory returns to him in a rush - he has been here before, in this dreamscape. He cannot recall when it started, and he doesn’t try to. He just loses himself in that glimpse of purple and pink, feeling the wash of emotions it sends rippling his way. Happiness, trust...the magenta is a friend. It feels safe.
The scene switches. The magenta is gone, the next thought-fragment pushed forward to replace it. A garment of clothing settles around Zed’s shoulders - heavy, but not too heavy. A spark of accomplishment, joy at a job well done. A hand unknown presses a clipboard into his arms, and he finds himself holding a pencil without ever commanding his hand to take it. It feels right, though, like an extension of his body. He taps the tip against the paper and begins to write.
NO CHANGES OF NOTE.
He nods decisively. The words are not his, but he doesn’t mind them pretending to be. The clipboard disappears, but the dream allows him to keep the coat, as though rewarding him for a job well done.
The next scene creeps in in stages, parts manifesting as soon as Zed notices they are missing. He is standing in a pristine white room, featureless in all but the three figures standing before him. Two of them appear to be bleeding. Red drips and splashes onto the ivory floor, more than is safe, more than is possible, but both of them are smiling. They show no sign of pain - they are happy, grateful. The smiles are the only parts of their faces that aren’t a blur, the only part that registers as human. Zedaph wants to ask if they’re okay, if they need help, but the third, unbloodied figure reassures him that they don’t. And he is right: they don’t. How can he be anything other than right? His eyes are the colour of safety, and he wears this dream like reality.
He raises the clipboard to take another note, but he doesn’t have the clipboard anymore. The clipboard should know better than to pretend it still exists. Out of shame the paper transforms into a bedsheet, and the clipboard into his arm, and the pencil into his finger, and Zedaph awakened.
He blinked, disoriented. The details of whatever dream he might have just had blow away like loose feathers in the wind, leaving him with only the feeling of missing something. He sat up and tried unsuccessfully to rub the sandy feeling from his eyes. Might as well not have slept at all, with how tired I still am , he thought. Some kinds of sleep are more exhausting than waking.
He glanced at the position of the sun on the Cosmodrome and winced. Late, too late. Long past noon. The stress and busyness of the day before must have gotten to him more than he thought, for him to sleep so late and so strangely. Oh well. There was still plenty of time to get cracking on a new project, or at least to plan one out.
Zedaph shed the remnants of the restless night and planted his feet on the ground of a new day, firmly on the right side of the bed.