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Horse Head Farms was doing...creepily well, in xB's opinion.
When Beef had come along and he and Hypno decided to use IOUs as payment, xB didn't think much of it. Thing is, everyone who had come looking for something used the IOU, no matter how skeptical they were of it.
The other, probably weirder thing was that Hypno always cut himself on the paper or object the customer used as their IOU. At first, xB just thought Hypno was clumsy, but after the fourth IOU, xB was getting suspicious.
The woosh of the nether portal indicated a customer's arrival just as xB finished restocking. Pearl came through, gliding and stopping a couple feet away from xB.
"Howdy, Pearl!" xB greeted with a wave and a blink of the guardian eye on his tail, "Welcome to Horse Head Farms."
Pearl laughed at his exaggerated accent, "Howdy to you, too, xB. I noticed the, uh..."
Pearl gestured to the giant horse heads behind the stalls, "...Logo?"
xB grinned, "Mhm! Took me and Hypno a couple hours, but I think they turned out well. Is there something besides our lovely horse heads that brings 'ya down, though?"
Pearl perked up, "Oh, yeah! I was wondering if you guys sold logs. I didn't want to go all the way to the Octagon, and I heard you started a tree farm."
"I just finished gathering some stock!" Someone--Hypno--shouted as he came swooping down next to them, "Took me ages since the stupid creepers wouldn't stop harassing me, but I have plenty of logs for all your log needs."
Pearl chuckled, "Good, because I need a lot of 'em. How much?"
Hypno and xB shared a grin. xB rested a scaly arm on Pearl's shoulder--a difficult feat considering she was taller than he was--and pulled out a piece of paper.
"It's a diamond per stack," Hypno said, "But, we have an alternative offer, if you're interested?"
Pearl raised an eyebrow, "What kind of "alternative offer"?"
"Easy," xB grinned, "You sign a piece of paper, we get said piece of paper back, and you can take as many logs as you need."
Pearl looked skeptical, "Yeeah, that sounds a bit shady to me."
Hypno paused a moment, pulling something off of Pearl's hoodie, "Sorry, the hair was bugging me."
Pearl laughed, "It's alright. My hair tends to get stuck to my stuff."
xB faltered a moment, noticing that Hypno didn't flick the hair away or toss it, instead keeping it firmly in his palm.
And then something...definitely not normal happened.
Pearl's expression softened, her posture slackening. She rubbed at her eyes with a yawn.
"Sorry," Pearl shook her head, "I got tired all of a sudden. Anyways, what were you saying about that paper?"
xB did a double-take, "Wait, didn't you say it sounded like a scam just a moment ago?"
Pearl shrugged, "That was a moment ago. I wouldn't mind signing something if it means I get free logs."
Now it was xB's turn to be skeptical. He still offered her the paper, which she signed without hesitation, and sent her on her way with her logs.
Hypno grinned, holding the piece of paper in his hands, "Ayy! We got another one! Pearl's a good builder, too, so I bet it'll go for a lot at the auction."
xB's brow furrowed, "Yeah, I bet--did you notice something...off about Pearl?"
Hypno tilted his head innocently, but xB spotted something new and shiny clutched in his hand, "How so?"
xB felt a wave of drowsy calm wash over him, and he nearly collapsed, if not for Hypno hoisting him upright, "Yikes, you look tired. How about we hold this conversation off, and you can take a nap? I think you and Pearl should get on better sleep schedules."
xB found himself agreeing with Hypno's words through a thick fog, "Yeah, I...I should."
Hypno lead him through the stalls, xB following sluggishly behind. xB's foot caught on something, a rock, he realized, and he was sent tumbling to the ground with something soft in his hand.
The drowsy feeling abruptly vanished, and xB blinked, shaking himself awake. He picked himself up, but yelped in surprise when he realized that he was holding Hypno's severed arm.
It looked like he had torn the arm off of a plush doll, with pale blue stuffing oozing out of the tear. xB threw the arm away from himself, backing up and staring at Hypno who looked...mildly annoyed.
"Dangit," Hypno sighed, picking up his severed arm, "I knew I should've surged the hem after that creeper explosion. Those ladder stitches never hold up."
xB stared at Hypno incredulously, "I--what? Hypno your arm--you--what?"
Hypno sighed, "Well, cat's out of the bag, I guess. C'mon, I'll tell you the story, but I want to get my arm back on."
xB followed Hypno into his mushroom base. Hypno pulled a sewing kit from one of the top shelves and hung his coat on a nearby coat rack. He threaded a needle and began to methodically stitch his severed arm back to his body.
"I'm what you'd call a Poppet," Hypno said once he had gotten through a couple of stitches, "Except I'm a bit more...well, alive than a regular poppet. Witches and magical folk used to use them to represent another person. Sometimes they'd use poppets to curse people, other times to bless people."
Hypno continued stitching as xB looked at him like a man who had just seen a ghost, "I can do that, except with myself. If I have something of another person's, say a hair or a piece of paper they've signed, I can influence them."
"And that's what you did with Pearl and I," xB said, "Pearl's hair, and, a...?"
Hypno stopped sewing for a moment to pull something out of his pocket. It was a shiny, teal guardian scale covered in little spines.
"I found and kept one of your scales," Hypno said, "And sorry for earlier, I panicked a bit."
"It's okay? I think," xB picked up the scale, "This is from my autumn molt a couple months ago."
Hypno hummed, "I found it on top of a barrel. If you want it back--"
"No, you can keep it, just promise not to, uh, influence me again."
Hypno chuckled, "Can do, bossman."
The poppet finished sewing up his arm, giving it an experimental stretch. He hemmed and hawed over his work for a minute.
"I should get some embroidery thread, it holds up better than this stuff. Actually, if you'd be willing to serge the hem...?"
"Hypno, I literally don't know what that means."