Cave Story: A Novelization

by JackmanB

A novelization of the popular freeware-PC game created by Daisuke Amaya a.k.a "Pixel".

8. Chapter 8

The area he was in was huge. It easily dwarfed the Mimiga Village and maybe even the Sand Zone, but the far walls did not eclipse into the horizon, so it was considerably smaller than the Labyrinth, thankfully. Above him was a second layer of earth, held in place by chains and platforms and scaffoldings, allowing for twice the amount of farming land available: he could see plant roots dangling underneath the clods of airborne dirt. In front of him was a sea of green grass and flower stems, brown, rich soil, and red petals: more budding red flowers than he could count sprawled in front of him, reaching into infinity as far as he could tell. Their otherwise beautiful appearance made him sick to his stomach, knowing just what those flowers were being raised for. He didn't know if the flowers needed to mature enough to bloom to be effective, or if they could be eaten at any stage to achieve their effect, but either way, his first plan upon seeing the sea was to burn it all.

The spot he stood on connected to the land directly across from via a rather shoddy and unprofessional bridge, but it also sloped downhill towards a large lake at the bottom of the room. The water looked crystal clear and healthy enough to drink from, much like the reservoir in the Mimiga Village–

Wait! The reservoir in the Mimiga Village connected directly to the Labyrinth's waterways, which was where he woke up after getting knocked out in the water. So, if he dared to hope, Curly could have washed up here, assuming this lake was also connected to the Labyrinth. Considering he was way up in the mountains of the island, he knew the chances of her actually being here were harshly slim, but he held onto his hope that she was here, waiting for him to find her. He immediately set out towards the mainland, his eyes peeled for any sign that Curly might be here somewhere.

Just as Kazuma and Itoh had told him, Mimiga absolutely littered the Plantation. There were dozens and dozens of them out in the grassy fields of the room and several dozen more farming away on the patches of earth suspended in the sky. They were each slaving away, ploughing the dirt between already blooming rows and placing seeds, while automatic sprinkle systems were placed in between lots of two-by-two, showering every patch of land with a steady stream of clean, clear water from the lake below, showering him as we walked past them and sometimes causing the device on his neck to flare awake. The Mimiga were all soaked through their clothes and their fur, but they didn't seem to mind the conditions or even the work itself; some of them were watering and placing the flower seeds with a kind of devoted tenderness, apparently unaware of what the flowers would do to them if one of them carelessly breathed too deeply or something.

Oddly, none of the Mimiga were willing to speak to him, or even look him in the eye when he tried to get their attention, although considering the reputation 'killer robots' had with the Mimiga, he wasn't too surprised, ultimately. There were also huge, man-shaped beasts supervising the grounds, as well: the definition in their muscles were pretty intimidating, and their stoic expressions and mannerisms gave him the chills, knowing that they were always watching. They had flat faces with perfectly white eyes, and their uniform was a tattered green sheet that covered their entire body below their necks. Their skin was a caramel-brown, and their postures were usually low, ready to pounce at any given moment. They were also fairly passive towards him as well; even equipped head-to-foot with all sorts of gadgets and weapons, they didn't seem to offer him more than a passing glance as they kept watch over the fields. He supposed he should have been thankful for that.

Halfway through the fields of red flowers and toiling Mimiga was a man-made ditch going straight down into the dirt, with some wooden boards making for stairs leading from the surface down into the well. At the bottom was a door placed into the dirt horizontally, with the hinges to the door drilled into another board of wood just to its left. Curious, he made his way down the steps, when the door flung open, and out came a pair of Mimiga, talking to themselves about their recent work and how they were doing such a good job harvesting the flowers and nurturing them to bloom. When they saw the robot, though, they immediately hushed themselves, saying nothing at all as they walked past him.

He allowed himself into the small underground room. There were a healthy amount of candles and torches lining the walls, clearly illuminating the many paths and halls of the bunker, and the entire place was alive-but-lazy with activity: there were several different Mimiga of all shapes and sizes roaming the rooms and halls, either speaking to themselves or sleeping in the plush, comfortable beds within each quarter. None of them spoke to him, however; they gave him odd looks and uneasy glances in his direction, but they generally just pretended like he wasn't even there.

Some of the Mimiga wore old, beaten and dirty clothes, but they looked quite content with their lot in life: the grass stains on their overalls and messy, dirty fur along their faces said that many of them were farmers, and the area they were in was just a rest area for them to relax their backs and legs before going back out to hoe the fields. Some were so old their fur was falling off in patches; some were so young they only stood up to his waist. Some were wider than the door he came through. But they all looked genuinely happy to be working for the Doctor in his fields and tending to his flowers. He wondered if they knew.

One of the Mimiga was different; he wasn't dirty or tired, and the clothes he wore weren't really meant for the strain of the fields. He didn't carry a shovel or spade or rake like he saw some of the others use above ground, and instead slung a long fishing pole, easily twice his little size, with a red-and-yellow bobber on the end of it. He didn't seem quite as excited to be working there as the others, and he was on his way back aboveground. Just as he walked past Quote, their eyes met for a moment, and the first thing he was going to do was brush him off, just like the others, before stopping just as they passed each other.

"Hey!" he called, grabbing onto Quote's left arm to get his attention. He turned to look at the Mimiga, somewhat relieved that someone was finally going to acknowledge him. The little Mimiga burned a hole through him with his stare, as if Quote were a puzzle and he was trying to solve it. "Have," he said slowly, his eyes squinting, "we met?" He was unsure himself: he had seen so many Mimiga that he was sure he'd have difficulty picking out Sue if she wasn't so short. But nonetheless, the fisherman Mimiga did have a point: something about him seemed vaguely familiar.

The fisherman kept looking him over, but just couldn't place Quote's face to any name. He was sure they had met sometime, but it was going to bother him knowing that he just couldn't realize where. He finally sighed in defeat. "I guess I must be mistaken," he said, beginning to turn back away. "Sorry to bother–" Just as he began to turn away from Quote, his eyes managed to catch the glint of the silver fish-shaped locket attached to his belt, bouncing off his left hip. "Hey! That locket!" The Mimiga pointed to the silver locket, and Quote looked down. When he grasped what the Mimiga had realized, Quote instantly remembered the fisherman at the reservoir in Mimiga village – the Mimiga made the same connection that very moment. "You're that robot! That I met at the village!" His excited yammering drew the attention of the other Mimiga resting in the barracks, but they couldn't bring themselves to stop him from speaking; it would have meant possibly speaking to Quote as well.

"It's been a while, stranger," the fisherman continued, extending his paw for Quote to shake, which he had accepted kindly. "You're looking pretty decked out since last time I've seen you. A gun, a rocket launcher, a sword…not a bad set, man." His tone changed once he stopped appreciating Quote's weaponry. "How did you get here? I got zapped here by some witch named 'Misery'. Did she get you too?" Quote shook his head, but offered no other explanation; the fisherman likely didn't know about the outer wall, and he probably wouldn't have bought the story anyway.

The fisherman sighed, looking around the room. "You know, it's not that bad here. Fresh, clean air; lots of exercise; plenty of food to eat…" Quote was very interested in that last one. "Not the red flowers, though. The Doctor and the Drolls don't want us eating them until they're ready. He says they'll 'give us strength' or something to 'fight back' or whatever. But I hate farming. Too dull; it's just dig a hole and plant a seed, over and over again. Now fishing," he continued, showing Quote his fishing rod like it was a trophy, "that's where the excitement's at. Each catch is its own story, you know? A battle of wits and attrition between you and the prey! Who'll give in first? You? The fish? Your fishing rod?" Quote hummed: he was beginning to lose interest – the Mimiga made it sound very exciting, but he was busy already and didn't need and further distractions.

"You'll never know what'll show up!" he continued, very enthused by his own words. "Like, I caught that locket, yeah? And just a while after showing up here, I caught some key!" He opened up a small pouch that he had kept on his own belt – revealing to Quote all sorts of different lures and baits the Mimiga kept in there – and pulled out a small metal key with only two teeth. It appeared rusted, and the lettering etched on its stem, probably to tell what it was for, was too faded to read. "I have no idea what it might be for, and it's not fish, but I've been jamming this thing into every door and every chest I could find since I caught it. You never know; it might just unlock untold riches, or a way out of here.

"But the one thing that I got that's most exciting," the fisherman pressed, his eyes lighting up with every word, "was a robot. Just like yourself! But it was a girl robot, though. Blonde hair, wore a pink tank-top and a pair of really heavy-duty work pants like yours." Just as he had hoped, Curly had somehow found her way from the waterway under the Labyrinth and into the Plantation's reservoir. He gripped the fisherman's shoulders lightly, and opened his mouth to ask him to take him to her, but the Mimiga continued before he could. "I knew you'd start paying attention to me if I brought her up," he laughed. "Turn left at the end of this hall; she's being nursed back to health in the fourth room on the left. She's a little waterlogged, but she seems to be okay."

Quote nodded once thankfully, and didn't stick around to entertain the fisherman any further than that. "You're welcome!" he called, not the least bit peeved at Quote's rude urgency: he really looked worried over Curly's health the moment he brought her up. He was off like a shot, thumping noisily down the dirty halls in the direction the Mimiga had told him. At the end of the corridor, the path forked to his left and to his right; without missing a step, Quote turned hard to his left and kept running, counting the open frames in the walls as he ran past. Each room contained a bed, a desk, and a dresser, yet no door leading into them: some of them either had a Mimiga sleeping soundly or changing their clothes (the lack of privacy apparently wasn't an issue), but most had no Mimiga at all.

Just as the fisherman had promised, in the fourth room on his left, was a robot with long, blonde hair sitting quietly on the bed with her head down, and the Polar Star was clearly visible on the end of the bed. Standing next to her was a tall man in a green hooded robe; he couldn't really see a lot of details on the guy, other than the fact that he was a good head-and-shoulders taller than either himself or Curly. But who he was wasn't his concern: he immediately ran up to Curly's bed, sliding into a kneel in front of her to get a better look at her.

She seemed fairly unimpressed with Quote's quick movements, looking up only enough to see him in the eye. He smiled wide, happy to see that she was fine and that she wasn't 'flooded' like before. Her deep blue eyes looked kindly into his; neither of them said anything. He felt that there was nothing they needed to say. Before he could think to do it, he quickly brought himself up, wrapping his arms back around her into another tight embrace. Hopefully now, there won't be any more unexpected surprises, and they could keep going through this cave together without any more issues.

Peculiarly, she did not return the hug. In fact, she didn't even look that happy to see him; he was too busy wrapped up in his own relief to notice that she was only giving him a confused, unassuming look. After a moment of her not responding – at first, he thought it was because he had his weapons on both his sides, and she couldn't get her arms around them, but she wasn't even making an effort – he slowly loosened his grip to back away so he could see what was wrong. Was she actually hurt somehow? Had she flooded in the waterway, and she hadn't been rebooted yet? He would gladly go through the procedure again if it meant getting Curly back…provided the man in the robe left the room.

But she didn't display any of the earlier symptoms. Her eyes were wide open, and she was breathing normally. She looked at him, and her expression was changing as they looked each other over, so she was consciously aware of him. But she remained unmoving and unfeeling all the same, as if she wasn't entirely there. "Who…" she said softly, and Quote immediately brightened his demeanour, ready to hang on her every word. It was reward enough to hear that she was still alive and well enough to speak. "Who are you?"

Like a bullet to his chest, the delight from seeing her okay was immediately torn apart with three little words. She looked totally oblivious when she noticed his suddenly broken face. "Do we know each other?" she asked. Quote leaned back on his knees with his hands still holding onto her shoulders lovingly; she wasn't kidding. She curiously looked his body up and down, trying to figure out just who this boy was that suddenly came bursting into her room and started to embrace her like a lover. He was so happy to see her at first, so she knew they must have some kind of history together – further emphasised how he looked so despaired when she didn't recognize him. He looked as though he was about to start crying; his eyes narrowed into pained crescents while his lips kept deftly still. His grip was loosening on her shoulders as well. "Hey, come on," she said, suddenly feeling a little guilty, "don't look at me like that. You're going to start making me feel bad, too."

He looked hard into her deep, forgiving eyes, hoping, even praying that somehow, if he just stayed there with her long enough, her memories about meeting in the Sand Zone and walking through the Labyrinth and fighting that beast in the core would come back to her. Curly was the second person on the island he felt that he could really trust, and he wound up killing King himself. There was no way he could simply rebuild or relay those experiences with her, so there wasn't any way she could feel the same way towards him. He was happy – he was ecstatic – that Curly Brace, the robot, was physically okay and would live to adopt many, many more Mimigas in her orphanage, but for all intents and purposes, Curly Brace, the friend, was dead.

His hands left her shoulders and softly trailed down her arms and ended in her hands. Her skin was cold, being a robot, but he could still feel the smoothness of her arms and the tenderness of her hands when he squeezed them. She squeezed back, but, by the look on her face, she was only entertaining him: she knew that it was a very emotive moment for him, and in a way, she hated being unable to reciprocate the feelings he was practically broadcasting to her. The guy was absolutely torn in half, and as much as she wanted to tell him that it was okay, the words would be too hollow for either of them to cling to: she couldn't even remember her own name, after all.

Still holding her hands gently in his, he pulled himself onto his feet. The weight of his weapons and the Booster on his back were as light as a feather compared to the weight on his emotions. Still looking into her apologetic eyes, he told her goodbye by letting go and turning his back to her, towards the way out of the room. In a cruel sense, this was something of a reprieve for his heavy, addled mind: now, at least, he had no further tasks, and he could focus entirely on stopping the Doctor.

The tall man in the hooded green robe had left the room and was standing just outside in the hallway. Quote couldn't see any feature on the man's face other than his lips, which looked human enough, although the visible skin on his chin and neck were textured oddly, almost reptilian. His stature was hunched, and its lips were curled upward in a condescending smirk. "Oho," it laughed darkly when Quote approached, revealing each of its horribly misshapen and improperly groomed teeth. He had a feeling that he knew this guy from somewhere. "How inspiring," it said slowly, seemingly spitting each of its words. "I've…seen many of the robots from the surface, but…you're the first that's really shown any…affection towards anyone or anything."

The man in the hooded green robe didn't look like any human Quote knew, and he wasn't in any mood to entertain anyone; he needed to focus only on his mission, if he didn't want to suddenly break down over losing Curly for good. He was about to walk past the man and back towards the exit when a large, deformed, scaly four-fingered hand stopped him. "Hey," it said, almost amused by Quote's brooding, "no need to be…rude. I'd just like to…talk with you about the girl. I have…interesting things to tell you. You won't be disappointed, I can…promise."

Quote looked down the hallway, towards some Mimiga that stopped what they were doing to watch the two interact. When they realized Quote knew they were watching, they quickly picked up their activities, trying to be nonchalant about being caught eavesdropping. To be frank, he'd like to go back to what he was doing as well; this guy in the hood wasn't giving him the greatest of vibes. "You're nervous," the man slithered, amused. "I…get that a lot. I'm not very…popular, among the Mimiga. But that's okay. Just listen." He wasn't sure if he should trust anything the man said, but if he wasn't considered an enemy by the Mimiga to the point where he was allowed to stay in their rest area, and if he hadn't hurt Curly, then maybe he might have something worth listening to.

"Good," the man said lowly, his ugly teeth lining his lips. "The poor girl was…found in the spring just outside. Doesn't even…remember who she is, although you…know as much by now." Quote wasn't amused by this person's dancing around what he was supposed to be interested in hearing. It was like the man was trying to get a reaction by reminding him of Curly's condition. "She's just a…piece of junk, I suppose. A robot that can't even remember what it's…programmed to do is just metal waiting to be…recycled."

That certainly got a reaction: Quote immediately raised his left arm against the man, pushing him against the wall and pressing his forearm against where he assumed the man's neck to be in anger. It was the second time he felt rage on this island, after the incident in the Sand Zone's storehouse, but this time, his target was in arm's reach. He reached for the sword with his right, not really sure if he was willing to split the guy apart over just a few words, but he was obviously fishing for a response from Quote, and he was about to get it.

"She can be saved," the man sputtered, the creepy smile never once waning from his lips, although his breath was forced and ragged underneath Quote's force. He stopped – his hand was wrapped firmly around the handle of the blade, but he kept from drawing it. He loosened his grip on the man's throat. He knew he really shouldn't listen to the man any further, but he was desperate for any way to bring Curly back to him.

The man coughed roughly when he could, trying to get some air back into him. "Oho," he laughed darkly between hacking coughs, "such emotion. From a robot! You certainly are…unique. There is a…mushroom, I am told, that can bring back a person's…memories. Mimiga, human, Gaudi, and even…creatures like myself. There are stories, and there are…testimonies to the fact." Quote eased up, his undivided attention kept on the man. "Who knows? Maybe it'll…work on robots, too. But, these stories are from many…years ago. Centuries. I am unsure if the strain of mushrooms are…extinct, but it couldn't hurt to…know, could it?"

Quote eased his grip on the man's neck, although he was still firmly held in place, reminding him that he wasn't going to be going anywhere. A centuries-old strand of mushroom that could restore a creature's memories…he hadn't been on this island too long, so he wouldn't know too much about the plants of the island. His eyes trailed down as he thought about who he could talk to or where he might be able to find such a thing – even knowing that a robot might not even be physically capable of 'swallowing' anything, he was at his ropes end, and he'd be willing to try anything.

The first person he thought that might know something about it was Professor Booster. While he didn't exactly look hundreds of years old, he and his crew had been exploring and studying the island ever since they arrived here however long ago. He might have been able to get up some sort of information about something like that, although, considering the jetpack he made, it actually might not have been his field. That sounds more like something the Doctor would be interested in, and he wasn't about to go up and ask him.

Who else did he know that might have some kind of clue about ancient mushrooms? He scoured his mind, trying to think of names and faces that he might be able to ask for some information. He didn't know where Jack was; he knew exactly where King and Toroko were; Sue and Kazuma wouldn't know; Balrog might, but for all he knew he wasn't even on the island anymore; Misery might, except–

Thinking of Misery immediately reminded him of her mother Jenka, the old crone living with her puppy Hajime in the Sand Zone. She did say herself that she was hundreds of years old, so she must have heard about a medicine like – wait! She made him some medicine! She even said she had churned mushrooms into the mix. He still had the bottle in his pants pocket!

He released his grip on the man with the hooded robe, who took some heaves through his sore neck, but seemed to be laughing through his whooping coughs all the same, amused and intrigued from Quote's abrasive behaviour. He dug into his right pants pocket, his nervously excited fingers digging through the cloth to find the small jar. Jenka said that it'd bring back anyone who ate it, be it human, Mimiga, or even robot; she didn't mention anything about memories, but it was still worth a shot. His fingers finally managed to find the small container, and, wrapping his hand protectively around it, he fought his fist against the pulling fabric of his pants until he managed to yank his hand free.

He brought his hand up to his face, opening his fingers and revealing the present Jenka had given him seemingly so long ago. It was a tiny thing made of glass with a bronze spigot on its top; it was awfully small for a jar but it was too big to really be called anything else. Its red, jelly-like contents sloshed around on the inside, slowly and thickly sliding side-to-side with each movement his hand made. It didn't look very appetizing. "Oho," the hooded man laughed when he laid his own eyes on the tiny jar, "that's very…interesting. May I?" He extended his left, scaly hand towards Quote's own, expecting him to entrust the medicine to the man. In response, he closed his hand and brought it back to his side. "Ohohoho!" it laughed heartily, his voice cackling down the halls, "I mean no harm, but…good choice anyway. I can tell, her welfare means very…much to you. I wouldn't risk it either, if I were in your…position."

The hooded man pushed past Quote and back into the room with Curly, with Quote hot on his heels. "My dear," the man said, and Curly immediately looked up; Quote guessed that she had felt more comfortable around the man than him, since he was probably the one looking after her since she woke up. "This gentleman here has some…medicine that we'd like you to take. We think it might…help you with your amnesia." Quote ran up to the foot of the bed, nearly tumbling over it himself in his anticipation with his hand extended to give her the jar.

She accepted the small jar from his hand, and looked it from top to bottom. She shook the viscous red liquid on the inside, noting the several solid chunks throughout it. "Are you sure?" she asked incredulously. "I want my memory back too, but you think a drink is going to fix it? And it doesn't look that healthy, either. Look at all the chunks of food floating in it."

The man laughed to himself again, understanding Curly's hesitation. "Most medicines don't look…appetizing, dear. Anything I make myself would…probably come out looking just as bad. Please, just…give it a try. It couldn't hurt, right?"

Curly hummed to herself as she looked the jar over again, defeated but still uncertain herself. "Yeah, I guess not." She placed her other hand on the top of the vial and pulled hard on the spigot; it came off cleanly with a thick 'pop' after some effort. She brought her nose to the open end and took a deep whiff. "I doesn't smell like anything."

"I'm not too surprised," the man responded, his own nose twitching at the powerful scent wafting from the jar, his smile still as creepy as ever.

She turned to Quote. He was hopeful, and he was practically bouncing in anticipation; whoever he was, and for that matter whoever she was, must have been very important to them both. He looked so hurt when he was forced to turn away from her when she said she didn't remember who he was, and while she didn't feel any sort of obligation towards him, she'd like to at least remember her own name. She looked back at the opening of the bottle, peering down its opening and into the liquid. "Well, bottoms up," she said with a smile, lifting the glass bottle to them both before swigging the entire contents all at once.

In only a moment, the entire medicine had flowed easily down Curly's gullet; she didn't make any swallowing motions as it simply drained down her throat. Quote was suddenly having some doubts over the concoction Jenka had given him – she said it would work on robots, but it defied all reason, really. For all he knew, the panacea was simply draining down her insides and the most it would accomplish on her would be oiling her gears. But he held onto the hope that Jenka wasn't as senile as she might be, and the hope that the medicine would even recover her memories, which Jenka didn't mention. The tension in the room, from both the anxious Quote and the intrigued man in the hood, was nearly palpable when she took the jar away from her lips and placed the cork back into it.

She eyeballed the vial some more, ignoring the few drops that she missed. "Doesn't taste like anything, either," she noted innocently.

"But that aside, dear…how do you feel?"

Curly looked over both her hands, their backs and their palms, as she considered her answer. "I don't really feel that different just yet," she stated. Quote's shoulders began to slump. "I guess I feel a little weird. From drinking it, I mean. I'm a robot, you know; I don't really think we're meant to eat or drink anything. Too much water can flood us, even: Quote and I, we had a little scare over drowning a little while ago." His eyes widened when she called him by name, and when she recalled the incident perfectly. She turned her eyes from the man to him, her grin going from ear to ear. "Sorry to scare you like that, Quote."

Before he could respond, she practically leapt at him this time, quickly wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder. He flinched at first, but when she felt her arms squeeze protectively around him, he knew that she meant it this time, and that she really had come back to him. He returned the embrace, gripping her tightly behind her back. "Quote," she said, repeating his name several times softly as they shared their reunion, her voice shaky. The man in the green robe silently turned towards the opening and left the room, having enough decency to let them be for now. Not that either of them noticed. "I'm sorry," she said again, her earlier attitude totally replaced with a much more frightened one. "I didn't even know how close I was to losing myself, until you saved me just now. I remember that look you gave me just a few minutes ago; you looked…" She stuttered for a moment; she was clearly shaken to her core from the experience. "You looked so defeated. Like I had died, and you had to watch me go. I would…" She stopped, and did not start again, instead choosing to simply pull him tighter. He felt the same emotions she was feeling, but above all else, he felt victorious.

They enjoyed each other's comfort for a moment. While he certainly didn't mind the relief he felt while they embraced, this was the second time he'd nearly lost her; once was too many, and he hoped they wouldn't have to bear the stress and potential loss again. "You remember when I named you 'Quote'?" she asked, keeping her grip on him. He was too choked up to respond, so he nodded instead, knowing that she would feel the movement. "In the Sand Zone, remember? I said that you looked like a 'Quote' to me? That's because your name is Quote. That medicine you gave me really had some kick to it. I remember everything! All the way back to the war a decade ago."

They disengaged as she leaned back into a more comfortable sitting position while he knelt on the edge of the bed, digging his knees into the dirt below. "You and I were…" she started, grinning as she recalled everything, happy that she could finally remember it all after all this time. "We were…" she said again, her smile slowly waning as she remembered the leftovers of the war vividly. She remembered finding entire scorched villages and charred Mimiga bodies. She hated it, and she remembered hating it, too, and it reflected on her face as she recalled it. "Back then, a huge number of robots were sent to this island from countries on the Earth's surface. We had robots of all makes and models and versions, from every corner of the globe, all invade this place at once. We – you and I, too – were all after the awesome power kept within this island…the 'Demon Crown'." Quote remembered Balrog go on about how he can't fight against whoever wears such a crown back in the Labyrinth, and he recalled seeing the ugly blue helmet on the Doctor both times he had seen him.

"But you and I," she continued, smiling again and she placed a palm on Quote's left shoulder. "We were different from the others. The others were sent to find it, but we were sent to destroy it. When we got here, the island was a mess, and the war was well underway. We couldn't go an hour without seeing some robot destroy a house or cold-bloodedly kill a Mimiga." She closed her eyes as she recalled the event: walking across the surface of the island, having to watch innocent, docile Mimigas that hadn't eaten the red flowers get hunted down by the other robots. She even remembered meeting General Bracket and his platoon as they sliced open the throats of an entire family. Remembering the sights and the screams so vividly nearly caused her to wretch the medicine back up. "The robots had torn it all to pieces, and countless Mimigas had been slaughtered. It was…"

Quote reached forward, cupping her left cheek in his right hand. She opened her eyes; Quote was looking at her like she didn't need to tell him if she didn't want to. "No, you need to hear this," she said sternly, surprising him. "We've gone through so much on this island, and we couldn't even remember ourselves. You need to know who you were before you woke up." As painful as it looked for her to tell the story, she was right: his identity was a total blur ever since he woke up in that first cave so long ago. He had to admit, he was morbidly curious about his past self.

"Finally, after so much, one man had managed to get the Demon Crown in his possession. When the robots got what they came for, they stopped their genocide, and the entire island fell silent. But not us. Our objective was different. We pressed forward, towards the man who claimed the crown for himself, before he could begin a whole new tragedy. We were too late, though; by the time we had gotten to him, he managed to turn the Mimigas into killers, using just the crown, and he began his own assault back onto Earth.

"I tried to stop him," she said. She held onto Quote's hand as she continued. "You were there too, right next to me. We fought hard – tooth and nail – but he was hitting us with stuff I'd never seen before. It was as if he was manipulating the very ground we stood on with the powers of his crown." She stopped, her eyes shut tightly as she tried to remember what happened next. She sighed when she couldn't. "I don't remember anything after that. We must have lost the fight, although I'm pretty sure we managed to wound him. We were way too far out of our league, though; the guy walked all over us." She perked herself back up, looking at him excitedly. "Do you happen to remember anything?"

He shook his head no; none of it sounded familiar to him at all. If he had some more of that mushroom that Jenka used in her medicine, he might be able to recall some of it himself, although judging from Curly's pained look as she told him the story, he might actually be better off without his memories. "Ah, that's okay. I don't know why I expected you to remember anything. But, before I forget again…" She paused as she reached around her neck, gripping the string of her necklace as she pulled it over her head, through her messy blonde hair. On the end of the string was a small green block with a simple red dot right on its centre; it didn't look too particularly outstanding or important. It appeared to be made out of a thick metal, as well. "I remembered that I wanted to give this to you once we completed our mission. Just…as a gift, is all. I've had it since longer than I can remember, and I can remember a way back now. I'd decided to give it to you once we were in the clear, to show just how much I trusted you."

Quote was humbled as he accepted the necklace from her. He felt a tremendous amount of trust and camaraderie with her too – he'd trust his back to her, without so much as a thought – but he had nothing tangible to show for it, until now. He removed his red cap to fit the necklace over his head and down to his neck, placing the small, simple brick of iron that bonded the two of them together down the front of his shirt. "As for right now," she continued as Quote worked the necklace over his own dirty hair, "I believe you have a Doctor to speak to."

He gave her a confused look when she said it the way she had: wasn't she going to go with him? "Sorry to…eavesdrop," the man in the green robe said as he entered the room, startling Quote a bit. Curly was totally calm when she saw him enter uninvited. "But our friend…you said your name was Curly?"

She smiled as she looked up to him from her bed. "That's right!" she said jovially. "My name's Curly, Curly Brace." Having been treated for her minor injuries and entertained while she had her amnesia, she felt comfortable around the man in green, which was more either of them could say for Quote.

The man's smile was still plastered on his face, although it seemed more warm than devilish when she responded. "Oho. Curly Brace…" He drew out the last syllable in her name, nearly hissing like a snake. "And you said our…visitor is named Quote?" She nodded once. "I see. My dear Curly, how do you feel now that the…medicine has had some time to work?"

In response, she sprung off the bed, flexing each of her legs and arms in something of a show, proving to them both that she was feeling totally fine. Quote pulled himself to his feet as well, a goofy grin on his face when he saw that Curly was feeling better than okay. "I feel pretty awesome, actually! Whatever Quote gave me had some real kick to it. It's almost like I was never in any pain to begin with. But," she drew out as she sat herself back onto the edge of the bed, "I'm still pretty tired. I guess 'rebooting' doesn't really count as rest for us robots."

"That's good to hear," he replied earnestly. "Just try to take it…easy, Curly, and I'll see you out of this hole in…a little bit." He turned to face Quote, and brought one of his ugly hands up between them, crooking his two middle fingers towards him, in a 'come with me' gesture as he left the room. Quote turned to look at Curly, double-checking with her and her opinion on the guy.

"He's looked after me since I woke up here in the Plantation," she said warmly. "He's a little creepy, yeah, but I trust him. He knows how to handle a patient." Reassured, Quote left the room right behind the man in green, catching up to him just a few paces outside of the room. The glow of the lit candles lining the corridors giving only enough light to frame the walls and the ceiling – he'd been so excited to find Curly that he didn't notice it until now. Their feet tromped through the moist dirt underneath their feet until the man stopped several metres from Curly's room, just in the middle of the junction leading back aboveground.

"She will be…fine with me, soldier," the man said slowly. Quote didn't like how he would pause on certain words, like on Curly's condition, all the while that odd smile would never falter on his face. "But she needs rest. I do not…doubt your medicine, but she's been through a lot. It would be…best if she did not ever-exert herself." Quote could at least agree on that. After fighting that beast in the core and then that event in the waterway, he remembered how stiff he felt when he awoke in the Mimiga village's reservoir. "In the meantime," the man continued, raising his right hand and pointing towards the far end of the hall with two of his four fingers, "there is a…device in the far room, down this corridor. Nobody knows how to…use it. An elongated tube of glass with metal panelling on its…top and bottom, connected to an electronic control panel on the…outside." Quote was taken aback by the description; not because he found it odd that a teleporter might be in the Plantation, but because he hadn't expected the man to give such a good description of it. "You might find a…use for it."

He didn't really think of a use for it at first, but it might still be a good reason to have a backup or fallback in case things in the Plantation somehow got sour. But he didn't really know how to configure a teleporter and its destinations. On the other hand, if the teleporter was already pre-configured towards someplace where he can get himself back to the Egg Corridor, then he could get Kazuma up here and reconfigure it for him. At the very least, it was worth a look; he gave a nod to the man as he walked past, heading towards the door.

The knob on wooden frame had a keyhole, but the door itself was unlocked, as if someone had entered the room recently. Inside was a fairly simple room, not unlike all the others in the rest area: a trio of torches, one for each wall, with a number of wooden support beams lining the walls and across the ceiling. Bits and pieces of earth would trickle down from the roof as the Mimiga thumped around above him; the ends of the roots from the flowers lined the ceiling above him, each of them extended downward less than a foot as they groped and sucked for water and nutrients. In the corner of the room was a teleporter, as promised, and in the other was the electric generator that powered it. The machine was humming with activity, its many lights on but dim as the machine awaited its next command.

Standing in front of the left room, however, was another of those tall, tan-skinned groundskeepers clothed in some green tatters. The fisherman called them "Drolls", although he didn't know if that was what they were actually called, or if it was just generic insulting slang. It stood totally motionless, its arms bent at the elbows and its legs tense, ready to pounce, just like the ones aboveground. It made no movement when Quote showed himself into the room; just its eyes moved as he slowly walked from the door to the teleporter, his own eyes locked onto his nervously. The Droll's breathing was steady and calm, like it had been trained specifically to just stand there and watch over the machine.

Apprehensively, Quote made his way to the control panel on the teleporter, forcing himself to stop looking at the Droll to see what the coordinates for the machine were. After using the teleporter in Arthur's house so many times, the exact digits were cleanly etched into his mind, and he recognized the numbers on the panel as leading directly to that very machine. That was a happy coincidence, but who did he know worked in the Plantation for a time before getting themselves to the village? Kazuma and Professor Booster were both teleported to the safe-house in Grasstown, so neither of them could have done it. The only other person that might have fit the description was Sue. If she was brought back here by the Doctor's goons, could she have fought her way back here? Could she have warped herself back to the village?

He tacked in a few confirmation commands on the control panel, and the large machine immediately began to whir, its many gears working and its lights shining. Even if Sue wasn't back in the village, he could at least check up on Professor Booster, and see if he was okay. There was no telling when Misery or even the Doctor himself would be making another–

"Killer robot!" the Droll suddenly yelled, its voice loud, low and reverberating, shaking more dirt off the walls with its volume. Quote jumped in surprise at the sudden yell, as first unsure where it could have come from, but the Droll was the only other person in the room. He felt very exposed, suddenly, inside a hill with a bunch of Mimiga that won't even look at him, in a room alone with a large, muscled body that was suddenly accusing him of being a 'killer'. He twisted to his left, towards the Droll, as his right hand went for the silver sword on his left thigh, ready to draw it if he had to, but he didn't get the chance: with practiced speed, the Droll nearly catapulted through the air towards him, and before he had a chance to even know that he was under attack, the entire weight of the body rammed into his, slamming him into the dirt wall behind him. He fell to his knees before falling unconscious altogether.

---

He awoke in a much darker room sometime after. His head was throbbing – an all too familiar sensation lately. The room was very cold and damp, and there was a steady drip of water from between the rocks above him landing right on his chest. There was an outside source of light only a short distance away from him, helpfully illuminating the rest of the details in the room for him to follow as he pulled himself to his feet, wearily rubbing the dizziness from his eyes. He lay on the cold, hard, jagged stone, and the entire room around him was uneven and unprofessional; as if they just tossed him into a random crevice in the wall. He turned his eyes toward the source of light: there was a door leading out and back into the familiar open walls of the Plantation, but there was a wall of iron bars blocking his way out. The walls, the light, the colours, the iron bars, and the generally pained and dizzy feelings he had reminded him of the first cave he woke up in; he remembered wondering if it was a prison, just like the one he was in now.

He shuffled himself into a sitting-up position, feeling the familiar drag of all his gear as he pulled himself up. He checked his shoulders for his guns and his hip for his sword, although they all seemed to be shifted unnaturally-yet-comfortably along the ground as he slept. The jetpack was still strapped around his arms, and his tow rope was still wrapped around his waist. They hadn't taken his equipment, peculiarly, although he wasn't about to complain. His hat was still firmly on his head, but it felt lopsided and crooked; he shifted the cap a bit on his head, to a more natural position on his skull. He remembered everything up to being knocked out: reviving Curly, getting to the teleporter, and then one of those Drolls rushed him before he had a chance to think. He took a slow look around his cell – Curly wasn't in there with him, and he wasn't sure how to feel about that. Either she simply hasn't been found yet, or she's been taken somewhere else. Or she managed to fight off the Droll with her Polar Star.

Curly's absence aside, he wasn't alone in his prison cell. Just a few metres away from his was a rather fat Mimiga, its face buried in some rations that were provided for the cell. Its head was nearly as wide as its body, and the simple green shirt it wore strained to cover its body entirely, is fabric torn in locations to compensate. Sitting next to the fat Mimiga was another; a much more modestly-sized Mimiga wearing a thick, heavy cap and glasses with frames thick enough to rival Jenka's. He recognized the latter as Jack, the Mimiga he had met only once before in the Mimiga village, although he wasn't acquainted with the plus-sized Mimiga stuffing himself next to him.

"Hey," Jack said, noticing Quote sitting back up under his own strength. "Mahin, stop gorging yourself for a minute." The larger Mimiga turned to face Jack, his mouth surrounded in crumbs and spare food-stuffs that hadn't made it down his maw. Jack pointed towards Quote, and Mahin turned to follow the finger, noticing for himself that the soldier was awake. His narrow eyes, mostly obscured by the thick fur of his face, lit up and his messy mouth curled into an awkwardly friendly smile.

"Well, look who's awake," Mahin said, his voice sounding a little lower than most other Mimigas he had heard. "We thought you were dead. Jack was worrying himself to starvation over you."

Jack rolled his eyes. "I just wasn't hungry, man. You're the glutton that needs something to chew all hours of the day unless he passes out."

"No I–" Mahin began, swallowing the mouthful of crackers he had practically inhaled before continuing to further his point. "No I don't. Right now just happens to be lunchtime for me. We've lived together for years, Jack, you know when it's time for me to eat."

"Uh-huh. That was your excuse two hours ago."

"Yeah, and its still lunchtime. It'll be dinnertime soon, too, so grab what you can before I get to it."

Quote picked himself onto his feet while the two squabbled like children over their food. He walked himself over to the iron bars keeping him out of the Plantation and in this jail cell, wrapping his fingers around the bars. From just outside the door, he could see a small chunk of the farmland, growing a sea of budding red flowers across every last inch of viable soil. He could see small dots of white, roaming over the fields and tending to the crops. He could also make out a large divot in the ceiling, where the entire roof just seemed to collapse into itself into a hole going straight up. He hadn't noticed it before, but the jail cell he was in was fairly high off the ground, and the Plantation was an enormous place. He couldn't see where the hole was leading to from his angle, but, considering that the Plantation was already high up in the mountains, he was willing to bet that the opening would lead him to the Doctor. The biggest issue, though, was making it up that opening; his Booster would overheat before he could even reach its mouth.

"This is the jail," Jack said lowly as he approached Quote from behind. Quote had figured that much out. "Those who try to defy the Doctor get thrown into here, to be a part of his next experiments. Mahin, Kanpachi and I were the only ones left in the village when King had left for the Sand Zone; Mahin and I fought back as hard as we could, although Kanpachi willingly gave himself up." Quote didn't know any 'Kanpachi' off the top of his head, although given how few Mimiga there were in the village at all, he was willing to guess that he was actually the fisherman Mimiga that he had been reunited with just recently. "We want to get out of here, bad, but we don't know how. I wanted to ask you to blow up the bars with your missile launcher, but Sue said that was a stupid idea. The walls around us are hardly glued together as it is, and she's worried a big disturbance like that would cause a cave in." Quote let go of the bars to look inquisitively at Jack. Sue was here? And not too long ago? His eyes ran over the room once more, trying to find corners and holes Sue might have been hiding in. "She's not here," Jack said sadly. "We tried to wake you up before they took her, but you didn't flinch no matter how hard she smacked you."

"You must mean a lot to her," Mahin said, sitting on his rump and wiping the crumbs from his lips, apparently finally feeling satiated. Even with Jack nearly whispering, Mahin had managed to pick up the entire conversation; his ears must have been pretty good. "She was caring for you the whole time. Besides the whole 'smacking' bit. She was moving you around as best as she could to make you more comfortable, and she put your hat back on your head when it fell off, and everything."

"She wrote you a letter," Jack continued for Mahin, downtrodden. "We don't know what's on it. It's in your right pants pocket." Quote dug his hand into the pocket, and sure enough, there was a stiff piece of paper crammed in there, jutting upright in his pocket. He fished it out: it was a single piece of paper, folded four times to fit into his pocket, and on it was some barely-legible handwriting. She must not have been very good with her Mimiga fingers. "I'll be in the corner," he said, already making his way back to Mahin, "brainstorming some other ways for us to get out of here if you need me."

Quote nodded as he turned back to the letter Sue had written for him. The writing was messy and her lines were squiggly, but, considering that she wasn't used to her own hands and she had nothing flat to write on that he could see (he briefly wondered where she got the pencil), it was still a pretty good job. He began from the first word, paying close attention to each line; anything Sue went through the trouble to write down was no doubt important.

This is Sue, it began simply. I don't think I ever told you much about all of us, or why we're all here on this island in the first place. We came to this island from the surface by helicopter, for research. Booster was on our helicopter, and so was my mother, my brother, a few specialized assistants…and the Doctor as well. His name is Date Fuyuhiko. Although his name wasn't really that important, it was still interesting to know that the monster could actually be called something. He was there to, well, be a doctor, I guess. For the most part he was actually pretty good at what he did, which made his sudden change once he got that Demon Crown all the more surprising.

That crown, once the property of the master of the island, grants monstrous magical powers upon its wearer. I thought it was a load at first, but, here I am, writing a letter with a pencil I can hardly hold. Date knew about the crown long before even getting to the island – it was why he wormed his way into our group in the first place. Once he had that crown, nobody could stand up to him. I tried. It can't be done.

We didn't have much choice other than to keep conducting our research under his watchful eye and his iron grip. Date wants to rule the whole planet, with this island as his stronghold, using the Mimiga as weapons. You saw what the flowers do to them in the Egg Corridor. Try and imagine hundreds, if not thousands, of them, all at once.

Anyway, I managed to slip out of the Plantation when nobody was looking way back before we met, but I'm worried about the others. He's managed to manipulate the other Mimiga into growing his garden for him – they have absolutely no clue what it's going to do to them when they eat the flowers. Once he's ready to attack, he's going to have them eat them all, all at once, and send them all in a murderous rampage on the surface. And with the magic from that crown, he'll be able to control and maintain them all to do his bidding. I'm not going to lie: he'll probably succeed. And with me being a Mimiga, however unnaturally, I'll probably be no different.

Me and my fate aside, there's a passage in the far end of the prison cell, under the water and in the wall. You're a hardy soldier-type, but that passage goes too deep for me to follow, so I don't know if you'll be able to make it yourself. Jack knows about it, but Mahin doesn't, since I'm worried that he'll hurt himself trying to get down it, or worse. Mahin's not exactly the most buoyant Mimiga ever, you know. I don't know where it leads, but if it gets you out of the cell, I need you to find a hidden hideout in the east end of the Plantation. If my mother is alive, she'll be hiding there, thinking up some plan to counter Date for us. I guarantee she has something in mind for us. The password to get into the hideout is 'yrots evac'.

The letter was signed in her name as best as she could with her handicap. He looked up from the slip of paper, towards the far end of the prison cell. There was a small body of water there, just like she said, and it looked fairly deep, considering its dark colour. He reread the letter, double-checking that he hadn't skipped any detail or instruction, and folded the latter back up into the small square he found it in. Rather than place it back into his pocket, he placed it underneath his cap, knowing that the device on his neck won't activate until he's neck-deep in the water, and he didn't want the lead on the paper to run or for the paper itself to tear.

Quote began walking towards the back of the room, towards the pool of water in the back. He didn't really know how he was going to be discreet behind Mahin, if it was worth attempting at all; he was going to notice Quote disappear under the water and then not reappear for a good deal of time, if at all. If he wanted to keep with Sue's attempts to hide the passage from him, it was going to be difficult.

"Hey," Mahin suddenly asked as Quote approached. "Are you hungry?" Jack shrugged his shoulders amusingly when Mahin asked the question; it was all he ever thought about. Quote chuckled under his breath when he saw Jack's expression, and shook his head. "Oh, good," he said to himself, turning back to the rations. The crate they were stored in was considerably empty. "More for me, then. It's supper-time." And with that, he began gorging himself on the foodstuffs remaining.

Quote kept walking, watching the huge Mimiga bury his head back into the food, his noisy mouth chomping and gulping noisily as he ate. "Don't worry about Mahin knowing," Jack whispered as he approached. "No amount of noise is going to break him away from the food once he starts. You should be safe." Jack must have shared Sue's concerns over whether or not Mahin would be able to swim the distance. "Just try and not forget about us, alright?" He nodded, promising to himself that once he found Sue's mother and they worked out some kind of plan, he'd find his way back to this prison and rip the bars right off the walls if he had to.

Looking over his shoulder towards the distracted Mahin, just to make sure he was still busy, he quietly trudged himself into the water, the familiar cold wetness creeping up his ankles and shins steadily until the water splashed onto the device. It beeped and quickly sprang to life, the air bubble enveloping his entire body, head to toe, and flushing out any water caught in its field. He was a little wet, but he could breathe easily for a time. The light under the water was very poor, though, and while he found the passageway leading further into the wall easily enough, he had a tremendous amount of difficulty following it in. Thankfully, at least, the water was still, making feeling his way along the walls not too bothersome.

The passageway continued only for a few metres, but it was still deep and long enough that an untrained Mimiga like Sue or Jack wouldn't have been able to make it without some assistance. He wasn't too sure about himself; he was happy for the device on his neck. Eventually, the path broadened up on both sides, and the ground curved upwards towards a shore. There was still no light, though, and he was still feeling along the walls and the ground with his hands and feet. The ceiling was still tall enough for him to stand up straight, which he was thankful for, since it meant he wouldn't have to take any more surprises to the skull.

Even out of the water, the path continued upwards in a sharp spiral, leading him around and around as he climbed upwards. The walls still remained wide open, which concerned him as he climbed – as far as he knew, he might be taking wrong turns and paths as he climbed, leading him to who-knows-where. The rough walls wore down his palms as he felt along them, and he occasionally tripped over the odd fallen rock or step up or even his own two feet. Soon enough, however, the passageway came to an end: light seeped in through a hole in the wall large enough for him to fit through at the end of his climb, making the last few steps for him an easy chore as he pulled himself to the cave's mouth.

He was facing back into the Plantation. Given the angle and how he could see the gardens below, he was probably standing right on top of the prison cell's door, a few stories below. He guessed that the Drolls just didn't know about this obscure opening so high up, which was why it was totally unprotected or secured. From his new view point, he could see everything the Plantation had. He could see the crystal-clear reservoir below him, with the fisherman Kanpachi sitting lazily on the shore, toying with the bobber on his fishing rod. He could see the pit in the gardens below him, separating the field into two parts, with the pit itself leading to the rest area underneath the hills. He could count the Drolls sitting patiently among all the flowers, watching over the Mimiga that were tending happily to the flora.

He sat down, reaching up underneath his hat and withdrawing the letter he kept safe in there. Like the rest of his head, it was totally dry – he unfolded the letter and read the last paragraph a third time, just to be sure that Sue had told him to search the east side of the Plantation. He brought the missile launcher back over his shoulder and peered down its scope, switching it on and activating all the neat features it had. The radar immediately blipped to life with dozens of little dots, and each Mimiga and each Droll that he could spot through the lens was outlined with a small red square, with labels and estimated times listed next to them. The digital clock in the upper corner of the lens told him that it was very early morning. But most importantly, the compass on the bottom of the screen told him that he was already facing east, which meant that the hideout was on the very opposite end of the Plantation.

He switched off the lens and placed the missile launcher back over his shoulder. He peered over the edge of the cliff he was sitting on; it was a solid four or five stories straight down, onto the next 'island' of dirt suspended in the air by those chains and scaffoldings. If he were just a story closer, he'd be able to simply leap down – he'd been practicing his landings, and he was confident his abnormal strength could take the punishment. But he was just a little higher than he was comfortable with to make that jump alone. He checked his jetpack, rotating his right foot very slightly and feeling the machine growl to life and the slight force it made in any direction he began tilting his foot. It had been switched on since the outer wall; Professor Booster was right when he said he wouldn't have to worry about any fuel.

Standing back up, he looked over the edge again, to gauge how high up he was. He steeled himself as he mapped out just how he was going to make the leap: he'd jump off, fall for only a short distance, and then kick up the jetpack when he was about halfway down. He thought it was a fairly foolproof plan as he finally got up the nerve to make that broad leap out of the opening in the wall high in the sky.

The sensation of approaching the ground as quickly as he was wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he got too caught up in trying to remember to react to actually react; he pulled up with the Booster too hard and too late, and wound up falling over himself when he hit the ground roughly. The patch of dirt didn't even bob underneath the weight of his hit, giving him absolutely no lean to recover with. He didn't hit it harder than he could have – any thrust from the Booster was better than none – but he still felt the impact recoil into his ankles fiercely as he fell over himself, trying to regain his balance and stability. Failing, he eventually came to a rest on his side, his feet aching but he was otherwise alright.

He picked himself back onto his feet, moaning to himself with each movement, before the Drolls could have a chance to throw him back into the prison, although his concern was mostly misplaced: the three that watched his performance didn't even make the slightest of movements to try and take him in. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking at any time; even the Droll in the underground rest area looked like he was just going to let Quote pass until he suddenly realized that he was a robot. He hoped that if he just kept to himself and not make any more scenes like that, they'd leave him be.

The far end of the lower level of the Plantation curved upwards, to meet the 'second layer' suspended in the sky. It seemed like a good place to make a hideout, but he didn't expect finding the way in to be easy – it'd be a poor hiding spot if it was. He made his way across the suspended islands, easily crossing the small gaps between the clusters of dirt. The Drolls wouldn't take their eyes off him, but they were all very passive towards him all the same and simply let him go. The Mimiga were a bit different: they'd only take fleeting glances at him as he passed them, and they'd specifically move to another lot of their individual farms as he got near them.

The Plantation was an enormous place, although, perhaps simply because he could see the limit to the area's expansion, the jog to the far east wall of the cave was fairly brisk. The lower area of the Plantation arced upwards unnaturally, with a miniature cliff-face pressed into the rising dirt. More red flowers grew on it, with more Mimiga tilling them, with more Drolls watching them. The cliff only rose as high as the second layer of the Plantation, and simply flattened out into a wide plateau once it got high enough. The left side of the cliff's face had been manipulated into a pseudo-staircase using only loose rocks and stones, making climbing the cliff to get to the second level easier, though perhaps more treacherous.

He stood atop the plateau of the cliff, searching all along the rough wall and its far corners for anything that could give him a clue on the hideout's location: some oddly-placed stones, or a crevice in the wall, or something that could tell him where it could be, but it was clear that they couldn't take the risk of making the entrance stand out – the only way a person was going to find the entrance was if they knew there was something to find in the first place. While he looked, he took the opportunity to peer up the enormous hole in the ceiling that he noticed earlier; an upwards pit that seemed to just shoot straight up for several hundred feet before it tapered into darkness. The hole appeared unnatural, like it was drilled, but the only place he could imagine it leading to was wherever the Doctor was hiding, being pretty close to the island's peak already. He resumed his search for the hideout: he figured he should try being inconspicuous as he looked, but seeing as how he was the only robot in the Plantation – not to mention all the weapons he was carrying – he figured he was going to stand out no matter what he tried.

He looked all over the Plantation's eastern side as he walked its wall, heading north. He walked slowly and paid close attention to everything around him, doing his best to not miss a detail as he continued: he inspected every wide crease in the wall and dug around the ground whenever he found an unusual plant or stone or marking on the dirt, making sure that no suspicious mark was left unchecked as his search for the entrance. The eastern wall connected to the reservoir as well – even though the odds weren't likely, he stuck close to the wall all the same as he searched, and that included dipping into the water directly in his search. After nearly an hour of searching and picking through the minutest details of any suspicious marking he found, he was confident that he had scoured the entire north-eastern section of the Plantation and that the hideout wasn't on this side. Although he had only spent half of his possibilities, he still felt a little apprehensive over not finding it yet.

After taking a quick detour back to the underground rest area to check and see that Curly was still safe and that the Droll hadn't gone after her too, he resumed his search on the south-eastern end of the wall. Like last time, he didn't let the slightest hint slip past him as he leisurely walked all through the corner of the Plantation. The Mimiga became nervous whenever he stopped by their acres of farmland as he looked all through their crops and pathways looking for anything, like a handle or a lever to a trap door. He found himself playing Chicken with the Drolls whenever he needed to see if they might be guarding an entrance, intentionally or not. He hadn't found anything out in the open, though: while it seemed obvious that they wouldn't keep a hideout right in the centre of their crop fields, he still couldn't risk not examining everything.

He led himself back to the far eastern wall, having examined the brunt of the south-eastern area. He examined each rock and boulder lodged into the wall, looking for anything that might stand apart from the mouldy-green uniform. As he kept near the wall, searching high and low and paying attention to everything he was stepping on, he noticed a small partition closer to the corner between the eastern and southern walls. It was just barely wide enough for a person to wiggle into while facing forward, and from a distance, it blended into the rest of the wall almost perfectly. The partition only reached a few feet above his head as well. Inside the closet space, the floor simply dropped down several feet, but there wasn't any trap door on the bottom of the hole or in the opposite end of the crawl space. Nevertheless, he'd have to inspect it anyway; looking around the Plantation to make sure nobody was watching him (he was a fair distance away from the nearest farm), he pulled his machine gun and his missile launcher closer to himself to be able to squeeze in, and dropped down the hole.

Behind him, leading back into the ground of the Plantation, was a simple wooden door. It was rotten and its hinges were rusted, but he was positive this had to have been the hideout Sue mentioned in her letter. There was a sliding, wooden peephole on the door, just a foot away from its top. The damp, mouldy brass knob was locked, however; it wouldn't twist or turn no matter how hard he tried. Instead of trying to force it, he simply knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.

He could hear light footsteps from inside the room that grew louder as however was inside approached to answer the door. With a quick, sudden movement, the sliding peephole opened quickly, and he could see a pair of dark blue eyes with wrinkled crow's feet peer through the hole and look him over immediately. The eyes narrowed, and he heard a woman hum to herself through the door as she judged him. "What's the password?" she asked quickly and sternly, wasting no time.

He opened his mouth to speak, and at first, he only managed to convey a squeaky, scratchy sound instead of anything resembling words. He cleared his throat loudly and rubbed his neck – he felt like he hadn't spoken a word in years, and he was trying to remember how to. Coughing lightly to oust the rust in his throat, he looked back into the eyes behind the door and tried again. "Yrots evac," Quote said loudly, clearly and definitively. The peephole shut immediately, and he could hear several locks clicking and unlocking, when finally, the brass knob turned over by itself and the door swung open, showing him the Sakamoto hideout. The tall woman that asked him for the password stood adjacent to the door, allowing Quote to enter; she quickly shut the door and relocked each of the door's sturdy locks again once he was inside.

There wasn't a whole lot to the hideout. It was the size of a small hut, with a fairly low ceiling. There was a pair of mattresses with thin blankets sitting in the far corner, and a single chair with no desk or cushion to sit on in the other. In the centre of the room was an peculiar device; it was about twice as wide as he was and half as tall, with a thick, sturdy sheet of metal welded onto its top like a platform. It had a series of rockets mounted all around its circumference, although it appeared unfinished; it seemed to be missing some components for them all to connect to on the central 'master' device. Other than a clay jug sitting in the far wall, half-empty with fresh water, there was nothing else to this hideout.

"So," the woman began once she finished locking the door. Quote turned around to face her; she had Kazuma's hair and height, and Sue's eyes. She looked middle-aged, and her skin was wrinkled under her eyes and all across her worn hands. Her form was slender, although he couldn't see much of it behind her long, white lab coat that opened to reveal a pair of black, torn jeans and a simple burgundy shirt. "You must be the saviour Sue spoke of." Sue had never addressed him as a 'saviour' of anything, so he wasn't too certain about that title, but he nodded once anyway; aside from Curly, whom he was pretty certain Sue hadn't met, there weren't a lot of heavily armed robots still active on the island to be confused with. "Thank goodness," the woman sighed with relief as she approached him. "My name is Momorin Sakamoto. Sue's and Kazuma's mother.

"We don't really have a lot of time with formalities," she began, heading towards the single chair, taking a seat as she spoke. Quote chose to stand. "So let me just get right to business. I used to take my chances working at the Doctor's side, but once he found the seeds, he had no more use for me. So he had me tossed off the edge of the island." Quote did a double-take when she said that; he remembered not being able to see the ground when he was climbing the outer wall, the island being as high up as it was. And she was just thrown off the island, the moment she was deemed 'unnecessary'? "Chivalry is dead, let me tell you. Luckily for me, his throwing arm wasn't that good, and I just wound up getting caught on a precipice after only a few stories. But this is neither here nor there.

"Right now, I'm working on building this rocket," she said as she gestured to the large device in the centre of the hideout. He had no idea how she was going to fit it out the door and up that narrow partition in the wall. "Have you seen the enormous gap in the roof of the Plantation?" He nodded, recalling the hole in the ceiling that went up for a huge distance before simply melting into nothingness. "The Doctor's hiding up there. This rocket will get you to his throne. Or, well, that's the plan, but I don't quite have all the parts yet. Which brings me to you and the Booster you're wearing." Quote glanced over his shoulder towards the jetpack. It was suddenly obvious what she wanted from him, although he hadn't thought of it himself until just now. "Would you mind if I borrowed it for a bit?" He was already working to take off his weapons first, before moving onto the secure leather straps that kept him to the Booster.

"Thanks a lot," she said as he finally managed to remove the jetpack and place it on the ground, leaning against the device. "But even with Professor Booster's most prized machine, I'll still need more parts to finish the rocket. Are you busy right now?" Aside from his primary objective of defeating the Doctor, meeting with Momorin was the most urgent objective on his agenda, so he shook his head. "Ah, good answer," she hummed, smiling at him as she picked herself up and walked towards the mattresses. "Our saviour indeed. When you're done strapping all your guns back onto you, I need you to put this on." She reached underneath one of the two mattresses, and pulled out a rubbery mask with eyeholes; it was adorned with fluffy, white, obviously fake fur, and it had a pair of ears that reached down to the hole in its neck. Its long, oddly flexible snout told him it was an obvious Mimiga disguise – obvious to the point where there'd be no question that it was just a mask. For one, the mouth was sewn shut and the eyes would appear too depressed into the skull to be natural, and for two, the mask did not cover the rest of his tall, metallic, very un-Mimiga-like body.

"It looks ridiculous for a disguise, I know," she said, noting his sceptical expression. "But the Mimiga and the Drolls have the worst eyesight ever. It sounds unbelievable, but Kazuma wore this thing for a time, and they all seriously thought he was a Mimiga, just like them. They opened up to him, tried to give him work, let him rest with them in their rest area, everything. Just trust me on this one."

He accepted the rubbery mask, looking its eyeless face over as he held it flat in front of him. It looked a little small for him, to say nothing of the ridiculousness of the idea that the Mimiga could actually fall for this. He looked back towards Momorin; she looked dead serious about the mask and her own story. "It'll only be for a short while," she confirmed. "There are some parts in the Plantation that I need you to get, and the Mimiga won't even consider giving them to you if you're not one of them." He looked back to the mask. He wished Kazuma was here to verify her story, but nonetheless, he took off his red cap, and fit the tight mask over his head. It pulled on his hair and tried to stretch his skin, and when he managed to wrestle it over his face, it clung tightly, too tightly, to his skull. He wasn't too fond of the mask already and he hadn't worn it for more than a moment.

"It looks good on you," she said, suppressing a giggle while Quote flattened out the wrinkles on the rubber. He didn't find it to be quite as funny. "It's very charming. Perhaps a little misshapen for a Mimiga, but it's very convincing all the same." His peripheral vision was totally cut off from the latex of the mask creeping up on his eyes. His mouth was forced shut from the tight pull on the mask, and his throat felt stiff and compressed. When he was convinced that the mask wasn't going to look or feel any better than he had it, he placed his cap back onto his head, completing his laughingstock of a disguise.

"The Mimiga of the Plantation aren't allowed to speak with humans, and you're human enough to them. But not with the mask; Kazuma said they were fluffy little chatterboxes: they'd talk to him over anything once they saw him. They probably enjoy fresh faces. Are you with me so far?" Considering just how uncomfortable the mask was, he wished he wasn't, but he nodded. "To complete the rocket, I'm going to need some supply of electrical power, like a battery. There are sprinkler systems all over the Plantation, right? One of those will do just fine. Get me one of those, and I'll get you started on the next thing I'll need."

He frowned – it wasn't like she could tell – at how she finished that sentence. Just how many things will she need, and, by extension, how long will he have to wear this thing? He left the hideout, his hands constantly pulling and itching at the mask, trying to ease the tension it had on his face before he had to speak with any Mimiga.

---

He didn't really know where to begin looking for a sprinkler system for the rocket. There were plenty all throughout the Plantation – one sprinkler for four square plots of farmland, and there was a ton of farmland in the enormous Plantation. He couldn't just pick up a system straight out of the ground, not because it would be difficult, but because he'd attract too much attention. Not that he hadn't already: after wandering around the Plantation for only a few minutes in search of an unmanned sprinkler set or something similar, he was nearly always accompanied by a Mimiga or three, each holding their own individual conversations with him over whatever came to mind. It wasn't the constant conversations that were making his head spin, either: it was the fact that Momorin was telling the honest truth. The Mimiga did not recognize that Quote was not a Mimiga, and that he was just wearing a silly rubber mask. Some would comment on his abnormal height or his hairless body, but these things seemed like common deviations to the Mimiga, and they simply mistook him for a very tall, very hairless Mimiga that happened to be carrying a missile launcher and a machine gun. Even the Drolls weren't looking at him suspiciously anymore either. It totally rattled his mind!

It was nearly impossible to keep track of every word of every conversation directed towards him, but he tried his best, just in case one of them said something useful about the Doctor, or about some sprinkler system he might be able to take. "The surface dwellers are planning an attack on us," one of them said, which alarmed Quote. "So we're raising the red flowers to prepare. If what the Doctor says is true, then these flowers better bloom, and fast."

"With the red flowers on our side, those killer robots will be a piece of cake!" another, younger one chimed in. Quote agreed, knowing all too well what the flowers would accomplish. He looked down at the small, fluffy creatures, trying to impose Toroko's frenzied, wild eyes and bleeding gums on the small, cute, harmless faces on the adorable Mimiga. "Bloom away, my crimson dainties!" it said happily as it went back to hoeing the fields and distributing the seeds equally in its toed lines. Knowing what he knew, and knowing what they didn't, they'd finger him as an enemy if he tried to even pluck a flower before it was ready. Not to mention, some of them just seemed so ecstatic over farming the flowers; he couldn't bring himself to simply torch the whole place, even if the sprinklers weren't on.

He continued searching the fields for a sprinkler he could take back to Momorin. There were entire groups of Mimiga each singing gospel praises specifically to the Doctor as they planted and tilled, the idea that he was genuinely doing them a good deed firmly etched into their heads. Some wished he lived a long and glorious life, looking after them as their hero and saviour. They all seemed to forget their individual homes and villages that the Doctor had kidnapped them from; the houses he's burned and the people he's killed. He couldn't decide if the Doctor had used his crown's power to brainwash them into believing in him and forgetting his crimes, or if he was simply an excellent speaker and managed to convince them that he was a good man. Quote found himself believing the latter – after all, if a mask as obvious as his could fool them…

Not all of them were singing the Doctor's praises, but that was only because they were too focused on their work to bother. Some of them berated Quote for not picking up a shovel and getting to work himself, although one of them was fussing over a mangled piece of metal, just to the south of the plateau in the far east end of the Plantation. His clothes were dirty and there were some farm tools lying idle in his own, currently vacant, plot of farm and his dirty paws tried fruitlessly to get the device to sputter back to life. "It busted again!" he cried, his hands dropping from the device in exasperated exhaustion. "The third time this week! Man, he's going to have my head over this…" Quote didn't know who 'he' was, but he had a hunch the Mimiga wasn't referring to the Doctor specifically.

The Mimiga stood up, the chunk of metal gripped in his hands. It had a damp spout sticking out of what was otherwise an unintelligible mess of pipes and wires – the spout, though, looked exactly like the nozzles of the other sprinkles all throughout the Plantation, so Quote assumed it was a sprinkler system he was holding. Luckily for him, the Mimiga turned around and noticed Quote, but more importantly, his empty hands.

"You're the new guy, right? The tall, hairless Mimiga with the hat? It's gotta be you." Wow, news travels fast. "We'll have a plot of land for you to look after soon. Gotta keep your hands busy – can't let the Doctor down! But until then, I need you to take this busted sprinkler system and change it for a new one in the rest area in the centre of the fields. You know where it is?" Quote turned around, searching the dozens of farms for the pit that dipped straight into the ground about halfway between the plateau and the room he met Itoh in. He turned back to the Mimiga and nodded, the fake snout on his rubber mask bobbing unrealistically with the movement, although he didn't seem to notice. "Good. We have dozens of spares in there lying around; give this one to the technician there and bring back a fresh one." The Mimiga heaped the entire awkward load onto Quote's hands, all at once, when he finished the order. "Hop to it."

The sprinkler system in hand, he turned back towards the rest area and walked until he was out of the Mimiga's sight. He looked at the mess he was carrying: would Momorin be able to use this? She said that she needed the sprinkler for its electrical charge, and he was carrying a sprinkler, but he wasn't certain if the sprinkler he was carrying would fit the bill: it didn't look like it could carry any sort of charge in the condition it was in. It didn't look like much of anything, for that matter. He figured it couldn't hurt to stop by the rest area for a new one. He could go back and check on Curly again, and maybe lighten her day with his mask.

He was just as popular as ever as he got back to the rest area: he was hardly left alone each step he took, constantly swamped with Mimiga all asking him questions and conversing about how awesome the Doctor was and how the hard work was worth what the Doctor was working towards and everything. Things were no different in the rest area itself; all the Mimiga that were milling about between rooms were all over him, always trying to strike up a conversation over whatever, and as much as he enjoyed being treated so well by them, he wasn't exactly the talkative type: his unmoving mouth would have given him away in an instant. One of them was keen enough to notice the half-destroyed sprinkler in his hands and figure out why he was even in the area in the first place; he was pointed towards the third room on the right in the main corridor of the area.

The room he was directed to had no bed or desk or dresser, unlike the others, but there were several other, brand-new sprinkler systems lining the corners. A small Mimiga with a flat head was busy with yet another system, his focus solidly on the tools he was using to keep the system together and in working order. He wasn't nearly as dirty as all the other Mimiga in the Plantation, although judging from his thin fur and clouds in his eyes, he was probably too old to keep up with the backbreaking field work and instead stayed in the cool underground room, toiling away on his sprinklers.

He lifted his head as he heard Quotes footsteps fill the otherwise silent room, and right away he was drawn to the pile of scrap metal he was carrying. "Another one?" he asked, his shoulders slumping when he noticed that he would have to give up yet another of his sprinklers, just for it to be abused again. He recognized the handiwork in destroying his inventions right away. "Just set that one down anywhere," he said, turning back to his current project as he waved his wrench around, gesturing to the whole room, "and just pick up any of the other ones. And tell that walking wrecking-ball that if he breaks another one, I'll have his head. This is the third one this week."

Quote complied silently, placing the broken pile of metal on an unoccupied space on the floor, and then reached for another, solid sprinkler set to take back to Momorin. Before leaving the rest area, he went back to check up on Curly again, finding her safe and sound – the man in the green robes was keeping his word, for the most part. She found his mask to be absolutely adorable, convincing him to pull it off (the rubber and latex dragged painfully across his skin and pulled on his hair) so she could try it on for herself. She played with its floppy ears and flicked its thick snout, giggling all the while, although she felt the uncomfortable squeeze of its rubber and the drag as she pulled it off. He was happy that someone enjoyed it, at least.

The walk back to the hideout was still just as noisy, but otherwise smooth. He was looked around as he loitered the south-eastern section of the wall, making sure he wasn't being followed – there were no farms nearby, so none of the Mimiga could stick around with him before having to fall back to their separate sections of farm. He dropped down the small alcove hidden in the wall and knocked on the door when he realized that it was still locked.

The sliding peephole on the door flew open, and Momorin's eyes looked down at him, noting the sprinkler he was carrying. Her eyes curved into arches as she smiled at Quote's mask, but she did not make a move to undo the door's locks. "What's the password?" she asked, her tone serious although her stuffed laughs still sounded clear through the door. Quote looked up at her, a little surprised that she had to ask that. Was the mask not identification enough? "Sorry," she said, knowing that he was a little perplexed by the question, even through the stiff mask. "Better safe than sorry and all that."

He could at least appreciate the sense of security she had. "Yrots evac," he said loudly, although the rubber mask muffled his voice a little bit. She heard him clearly enough, though, and quickly went to work undoing the locks on the door, allowing him into the hideout with the sprinkler.

"Welcome back," she said warmly as she stepped aside to let him walk into the room, locking the door back up when he was in. The large rocket sitting in the centre of the room looked like it had some work done on it; the Booster was connected to it through a series of wires, and a small, simple monitor the size of his fist was lit up in simple pixels on the rocket itself, with a appropriately small keyboard resting on the ground just below it. He wasn't a genius like Kazuma when it came to computers, but to him, it looked like she was calibrating the rocket with the Booster's own programming. He placed the sprinkler he brought with him on the floor just next to the rocket as he entered.

"Let's see here," she whispered to herself as she looked through the sprinkler system her brought back. After simply flipping a switch to activate the machine, it quickly burst to life; its long nozzle was spinning and clicking rapidly, trying to disperse the water it was not receiving. "Awesome," she concluded. "Plenty of juice in these batteries. This will be fine. Good job! You have any problems out there with the mask?" Quote shook his head, his busy fingers already fumbling with the mask's line across his throat, in a hurry to get the painful thing off his face. "Whoa there," she said hurriedly, her hand reaching up and grabbing his own. "You're not done yet. I need you to get one more thing for me." He grunted in disgust as he dropped his hands to his sides; she laughed openly in response.

"Just one more thing, I promise, then you never have to put it back on again," she reiterated. "I need you to track down a man named Itoh. He's an 'engineer of considerable talent', in his own words. He's been turned into a Mimiga, like Sue, so he might be a little difficult to find among all the others." Well, at least it was going to be easy; knowing Itoh's character, he probably hasn't moved an inch away from that glorified closet he was hiding in. "But he's also one of the most timid men I have ever seen. You so much as snap your fingers near the guy and he'll decide he's under attack." Quote agreed there, remembering how badly Itoh reacted to him just opening a door. "He fled from the Doctor right off the bat, but he can't have gone far, knowing his 'disability'. He knows the plan, and he'll recognize the mask; he should have something for you when you find him."

Momorin got right to work disassembling the sprinkler, after its fully-charged batteries and its complex electrical system, leaving Quote to undo each of the locks on the door himself. He tried sticking closer to the outermost limits of the Plantation, practically clinging to the rocky walls, in an effort to avoid some of the more densely populated areas and steer clear of too much attention. He was worried that if Itoh heard him and his fan club coming, he might panic and try to hide, or something worse. He was also hoping to avoid catching the eye from the Mimiga that told him to get him a replacement sprinkler. The only really safe areas away from the Mimiga was on the other side of the Plantation, across the reservoir, but jumping right into the water just to keep himself from getting too much attention seemed counterproductive.

It was unavoidable that he'd attract some friendly attention, considering how the farms covered nearly every little piece of dry land on the bottom level of the Plantation, although all the attention he garnered was in the form of some friendly greetings and some casual chatter as he passed by. Given how every Mimiga seems to know all the news fit to hear within the single, huge cave within minutes of it occurring, they already felt like they had known him ever since he got here. As a result, his popularity was slowly waning, although the Mimiga simply couldn't get over their fascination for his shape and oddly short fur all over his body. By the time he got back to the closet Itoh was hiding in, he was, mercifully, alone.

The second he swung the door to the storeroom open, there was a frightened yelp echoing through its narrow walls and the busy sound of someone scampering away at a frightened pace, knocking over some of the crates Quote had emptied earlier. It was reassuring to know that Itoh was still there, at least. He allowed himself into the room, clicking the door closed gently behind him. Itoh was not difficult to spot: he was cowering in the corner, facing away from the door, hastily camouflaged by the metal containers surrounding his stark-white fur. He was quivering and panting as he tried to keep himself concealed, his breath short and ragged, wheezing with each inward breath. Quote rolled his eyes.

He took a few steps forward, towards Itoh's hiding spot; he didn't intend to scare him, and he wasn't going to antagonize him, but it would be awfully difficult to hold a conversation with the man if he couldn't be flushed out of his hiding spot. He rapped his fingers across the metal, the loud, shrill tapping noise causing Itoh to simply leap right out of his hiding spot in surprise. "Please don't kill me!" he shrieked, whipping around to face his attacker. Quote recalled that very same cry being the exact same thing he said when they first met. "I'm a human! I've just been–" Itoh paused between his practically-rehearsed holler for mercy to look the soldier over. He seemed to recognize him at first, but it was clear he was having trouble placing faces to names.

"Have we met?" he asked, his eyes narrowing as he tried to focus on Quote. "You seem familiar, but I can't tell from this far…my eyes have been near useless ever since I've been turned into a Mimiga." Quote wasn't sure if he should be surprised: it would explain why the other Mimiga couldn't see past his disguise, but at the same time he was already practically standing right in front of him, and he still couldn't tell. He brought himself closer to Itoh – who only made it more difficult as he tried to lean back from the looming entity, still convinced that he was in danger – so he could see the mask clearly and help him with Momorin's plan.

"Oh!" Itoh yipped happily when he finally recognized the clothes and the hat. "You're that killer robot that doesn't kill!" He frowned at the description. "We met only a few hours ago, right? You climbed up from the outer wall?" He nodded, extending his hand to pull Itoh out from in between the containers. With a rough tug, Itoh was back out into the open, standing on his feet rather than curled into a ball. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that…I've been pretty cowardly even before my transformation, and now that I've been turned into this, I've just become all the more insecure and self-aware of my limits, you know." Itoh was a huge contrast to Sue, who took her transformation in stride; she tried to fight a frenzied Mimiga, and she even relearned how to write. Not that he could blame Itoh for being a little apprehensive – he'd been in the same position when he first woke up.

Before he could ask Itoh about Momorin and her plan, Itoh got right up in his face and took a good, hard look at the mask. "There's no question," he said as he eyed the fur and the snout and the holes for eyes. "That's Kazuma's mask. You've found Momorin, I'd wager, and she's ready to go through with her plan." Quote nodded enthusiastically, glad that he wouldn't have to explain it all himself. "She had that plan of hers way back when the Doctor just got in charge and tossed us all into the Plantation. If I remember right, she was literally picked up and thrown off the island just a little while ago, when the Doctor got his hands on the flower seeds. It's good to know that she's still alive. She's too fierce to let a little fall like that keep her down." He sighed as he walked himself back in between the metal containers. "Nothing like me, that's for sure." He sounded a little wistful as he said that.

"She had me whip up a controller for her for her rocket," he said loudly as he squeezed himself between the metal. "It's not programmed to work with anything specific yet, but she knows enough to handle that herself. It'll point her rocket where it needs to go; I'd stake my title on it." After fumbling around with some empty boxes he had hidden away back there for a moment, he shimmied himself back out from between the containers with a small, green device kept in his left paw. It had a very simple digital readout and only a few buttons on its side, and it was missing a rear entirely, letting all its sensitive circuits hang out. "You have no idea how difficult it was to build this thing with these hands," he said, grinning as he passed the device onto Quote, "but I'm not one of the world's best for nothing, you know. Give Momorin my best for me, will you?"

Quote carefully placed the device into his left pants pocket, nodding back to Itoh before turning around and leaving the room. He took the same route back to the hideout in the far south-eastern wall, although this time he was trying to avoid the sprinklers more than the Mimiga: he wasn't sure just how sensitive the device he was entrusted was, especially considering it had no back covering to it, and he didn't want to risk getting it even a little wet. While the farms grew sparser the closer he got to the boundaries, there was still no definitive was of avoiding the active systems; he did the best he could.

His hands were already itching and pulling on the rubber mask, unable to contain his excitement over the promise that he wouldn't have to wear it any more when he delivered the controller. Back to the familiar partition in the wall, he took another look around the area before dropping down, to make sure nobody's prying eyes were on him. He knocked on the door a little louder than he knew was preferred, but he was just too anxious to get the mask off him.

The sliding peephole on the door opened up quickly, and the same dark blue eyes stared down at him, quickly amused by how greedily his fingers were gripping at the line around his neck. "What's the –"

"Yrots evac," he said impatiently, much to Momorin's entertainment. She shut the peephole and got to work undoing each of the door's locks, finally managing to swing the door open just as Quote finally got the rubber mask up and over his head, feeling the unfriendly pull on his skin and his hair for the last time. He was in such a rush that he forgot to remove his hat, which fell to the ground with a clack as he pulled the mask over his face. He was too wrapped up in the feeling of finally being rid of the mask – feeling his metallic-yet-oddly-flexible skin and hair finally relax after being bunched up against the rubber for so long – to notice right away. He only realized it after Momorin had set all the locks once more and she tried to hand the red-and-white cap back to him.

"Kazuma didn't like it either," she laughed as he accepted to hat sheepishly. "Said it pulled on his hair whenever he tried to take it off. It gave him a rash for a few weeks too, but luckily for you, you won't have to worry about that. Just throw it back onto one of the mattresses." He did as he was told, giving the rubber mask a light toss onto the nearest mattress lying in the corner of the room. The rocket sitting in the centre of the hideout looked to be even further along than before: each of the rockets were firmly wired and secured to the 'master' rocket in the centre, and the 'master' rocket appeared to be nearly finished entirely itself. It still needed some panelling on its underside, but other than that, all of the circuits it borrowed from the sprinkler system appeared to be wired in correctly and efficiently. He could clearly see the two large batteries from the sprinkler hooked into the underside of the panels as well. The Booster was still hooked into the rocket, and the simple little monitor still displayed a calibration progress bar, so he didn't expect to get his jetpack back anytime soon.

"I assume you've found Itoh?" she asked expectantly as he readjusted his cap. He was in such a hurry to get that mask off him that he nearly forgot about the controller. He dug his hand into his left pants pocket and gently wrapped his fingers around the controller, bringing it out and showing it to her. Hopefully, this little gizmo was what she was after. "Ah, that's it, all right," she said as she admired Itoh's handiwork on the controller. "This is the controller that he's so proud of. It's not the best he's ever done, but considering what he's had to work with, I'd really expect no less from the man."

She sat herself down in front of the small monitor and pulled some loose wiring out from behind it, plugging them directly into the controller. The monitor suddenly displayed some new windows and notifications about the new application that it was connected to, and at the same time, the digital readout on the controller lit each of its diodes up at once, displaying no message but confirming that it was in working order.

"This analysis would be a lot easier if he were actually here with me. He knows this stuff front to back, but I only know enough to get around." He tapped on her shoulder to get her attention, then pointed back towards the door inquisitively. "No, you don't have to go get him," she said, reading him like a book. "I can manage by myself, and besides, you'd probably have to drag him by the feet to get him out in the open. I appreciate the concern, though." She smiled warmly up at him. With how she spoke and acted around him, he didn't doubt she was a mother. "Thank you very much for all your help. I wouldn't have lasted too long out there by myself; Sue was right to trust you. It'll be a while before I'm finished here, and I don't need any more help with supplies or anything, so why don't you take a rest while I hammer out the details with this thing?"

He looked up from Momorin and towards the two mattresses in the corner. His feet did feel a little stressed – he hadn't had a chance to lie down since he woke up in the prison cell with Jack and Mahin. A chance to let them rest for a little bit sounded appealing to him, but he glanced back towards the door, worried about the hideout's safety. "Don't worry about us," she said soothingly, recognizing his apprehension. "Nobody knows where we are, and there's no way you'll be able to sleep through any commotion they make if they do find us. Don't worry your handsome little head over it and get some rest." And without another word, she was back to work on her rocket, clicking away at the keyboard with her eyes glued to the screen.

He wasn't totally reassured, but Momorin sounded like she wasn't going to let him say otherwise, so he made his way towards the mattresses. They were wet, torn, and discoloured from spending so much time in the damp hideout underground; not at all like the mattresses in the Mimiga rest area further in the Plantation. She wasn't complaining about it, though, and he wasn't too picky about how comfortable his rest was going to be anyway: after having been knocked out so many times and waking up on the hard, cold stone floor of some new and unfamiliar area every time, anything soft at all was a very welcome change of pace. He didn't really expect to fall asleep – he never had whenever he took a voluntary break, although he assumed it was more a 'robot' thing than how tired he was – but, after removing his weapons and laying them between the mattresses, he lied on his back on the wet comforter and shut his eyes.

---

He awoke with a start. Not because of any noise or emergency, but because he awoke. He had actually managed to fall asleep on this dirty wet mattress under the ground in the Plantation. It was the first time he really managed to actually sleep at all since he first woke up at the beginning of this whole mess: every other time he just sat or lay still. He must have been quite a bit more exhausted than he thought. To fall asleep without being knocked out was really rejuvenating, he felt – his feet felt like they were never in any pain in the first place, and the stress from the constant weight of the weapons on his shoulders seemed to have evaporated entirely.

He raised his head from the cushion, looking around the small hideout for Momorin, but she wasn't with him. Neither was the rocket she was working on, or the jetpack he had leant to her – the only thing remaining was the shell of the sprinkler system he had brought her. What's more, the door leading back out to the Plantation that was normally locked up air-tight was wide open. He suddenly felt panicked; had they been attacked? Had something happened, and he just slept through it? He imagined some Drolls finding their way down here and pulling the door open, right off its locks, while Momorin yelled and screamed at him to wake up and help her. He quickly strapped on each of his weapons and ran out the door, his machine gun held firmly in his hands, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

The first thing he noticed when he emerged from the hideout and back onto the floor of the Plantation was that there wasn't a single Mimiga anywhere. The sprinklers were still running, but there were no red flowers remaining in the fields. Every last flower had been uprooted, and every last Mimiga had been taken with them. Along with Momorin and her rocket missing, just what had he slept through?! Was the Doctor ready to begin his attack? Was it too late to save the Mimiga?

He was about to begin sprinting up the plateau of the Plantation to get a better view of the area, when he heard a loud, feminine voice carry through the still air from the centre of the cave, directly underneath the enormous black pit in the ceiling. "Hey!" she yelled, grabbing Quote's attention easily. He was just glad somebody was still around to give him some information. "It's about time you woke up! You're a heavy sleeper than Kazuma on a weekend!" His focused his eyes, trying to get a better image of the woman that was yelling to him. He couldn't recognize any definite features from his distance, but the tall, slender figure and the long white coat identified her as Momorin easily. Next to her was her rocket, and next to that was one remaining Mimiga, its busy paws hard at work putting the finishing touches on the machine.

He was relieved that Momorin was safe, but the fact that there was nobody else left in the entire Plantation still made him nervous. Knowing that Misery or the Doctor himself must have had something to do with it, he felt as though he were being watched with each step he took. Although Momorin clearly didn't feel the same way, if she was comfortable enough to raise her voice like that towards him. As he approached the rocket, he got a clearly view of the Mimiga that was working on the rocket: he had hoped it was Jack, and that he had somehow not only evaded capture like the rest of them, but he had also managed to escape from his prison cell high in the wall of the Plantation. Surprisingly enough, the elongated face and the blue collar told him that it was Itoh instead; he had apparently gathered up the courage to leave the safety of his hideaway to help Momorin when he realized everyone else was gone.

"I hope you had a good rest," she called, placing her hands on her hips as Quote approached, shifting the machine gun back across his right shoulder, confident that any threats in the room had left with the Mimiga. "Because the rocket's all done. Just as soon as you're ready, we can have you strapped in and you'll be sent straight to the Doctor in no time." Quote looked past her and eyed the rocket that he was supposedly going to be riding: there were no little monitors hooked into it, and most of the panelling on the underside had been bolted into place firmly to the main rocket in the centre. Itoh was only fine-tuning the wiring on one of the 'legs' of the overall machine, to make sure that each of the rockets fired simultaneously and with equal strength. "You look like the strong, able type. I believe you'll be able to take down the Doctor, no problem." He felt a little awkward towards her praises – not that he didn't appreciate them, but he didn't need any more pressure on him than he had already. "Itoh was kind enough to show up and lend us a hand in the endgames. He finally got over his phobia of being next to another person."

"No use in hiding anymore, you know?" he asked, his eyes trained on the rocket he was working on, not bothering to respond to the jab. "The rocket couldn't be finished without me here anyway. Momorin's no engineer, unlike yours truly." His voice sounded very prideful and haughty as he ended the last sentence, causing Momorin to groan in amusement over his own delusions of grandeur.

"I have a feeling you'll need this." She said, changing the topic, as she stepped around the rocket and reached down, just out of his sight, to pick up the Booster he had leant her. "Thanks a lot for letting me use it," she grunted as she lifted the jetpack to give him. It wasn't all that heavy, but her arms were tired from lugging around that huge rocket. He quickly took it from her tired hands, setting it back down while he moved his weapons off his shoulders. He noticed that she had turned the Booster off for him; he found the simple ignition switch on its collar and flipped it on. He didn't want to find out it wasn't even on when he needed it most. "Professor Booster's handiwork is pretty incredible. It would have taken me weeks to finish building this if I didn't have this jetpack to base my own project off of."

She looked up, staring straight up the dark pit above them. "Directly above us," she began, "is a path leading directly to the island's throne room. You'll be able to get there using this rocket; I'll stake my life on that." Easy for her to say; she wasn't going to be the one riding it. "There's nobody left in the Plantation. No Mimiga, no Droll, nobody. I looked everywhere, from the top of that man-made mountain to the reservoir to their rest area underground. Every Mimiga – young and old, fat and thin, strong and weak, all of them – are gone. There isn't a soul left." He looked up towards her when she mentioned the rest area, the Booster only half-strapped to his back. He was hoping for her to say something about Curly or Jack and Mahin, but when she didn't continue, she must have meant what she said. Curly, and probably that man in the green robe, weren't here either. Had the Doctor picked them both up too? Even worse, what if Misery found them? "So, it'd be safe to assume that the Doctor is about to use the red flowers, if he hasn't already."

"Do you guys think…" Itoh brought himself back up from beside the rocket, apparently all done with whatever he was doing. "Do you guys think I'll be a human again if the Doctor dies? I'd really like my thumbs back…"

"Only one way to find out, Itoh." Momorin looked back towards Quote, expecting a specific answer from a question she hadn't asked yet when he was done getting the shoulder straps from his weapons back onto him. "Are you ready to go? Once we send you up there, there isn't any turning back, I'm afraid. The Doct– Date is about to get his army of frenzied Mimiga ready to go, and if we want to stand half a chance of stopping him, we can't waste any more time."

Quote had his problems with the whole scenario. To start, there was the rocket he was going to ride as it sent him straight up a tunnel with no end in sight. There wasn't any secured seat anywhere on the machine, leading him to believe that he was expected to simply lie on the top as it shot him upwards. Working with the jetpack was one thing, but he didn't have any training or practice with something of this extreme calibre – he was worried the G's alone would crush him flat. For that matter, when did the rocket know when to stop before it either broke free of the surface, or it crashed into the ceiling that was probably on the other end of the pit? Assuming he even survived the trip, he'd have to fight the Doctor, likely Misery, and possibly even Balrog, all by himself, probably all at once; he was getting queasy just thinking about the stress of keeping up with that sort of battle.

But there was no time to worry about those sorts of details, unfortunately, considering the Doctor was ready to move forward with his own plan now. As nervous as he was, he nodded towards Momorin, answering her question. "I can tell you're not," she said, reading his body language easily. "If I had more time to work on the rocket, I'd have at least installed a seatbelt in there somewhere. But I only started working on it a little while ago, shortly after Date had come across the seeds and started cultivating them here. I don't have nearly the building experience Itoh does or the programming know-how that Kazuma has. And since Itoh was too chicken to help me out when I really could have used it, I'm afraid this was the best I could do in such a short amount of time." Itoh didn't respond, lowering his head shamefully, knowing that she was only telling the truth. Momorin didn't even look at him when she mentioned his name.

"Just lay flat on your stomach on the top of the rocket," she instructed. "Your back would be preferred, but you're carrying an awful lot across your shoulders. Itoh and I will handle the rest." The top of the rocket was perfectly flat, comprised entirely of a simple thick sheet of metal that was welded to the actual computers and mechanisms below. He did as he was instructed, sprawling himself out wide on the large rocket – there was more than enough room for him to spread out his limbs – and he lay perfectly still, waiting for Momorin and Itoh to tell him what to do next.

"Okay," she sighed deeply, sitting herself down in front of the little screen that was still attached to the rocket's underbelly. "We've already run diagnostics, and we're absolutely positive everything is in totally working order for you. Here's the plan: once we boot this thing up, we'll have fifteen seconds to run ourselves to a minimum safe distance before lift-off. You'll probably feel a little heat, but it won't be anything the average human couldn't survive." Her word choice wasn't the most encouraging. "We only have enough fuel to do this once, so you positively need to jump off once you hear an alarm that will go off after exactly twenty-one seconds after you leave the ground. Once you get to the apex of your flight, you'll be looking for a simple ledge for yourself to leap to. On there will be a wooden door, not unlike every other wooden door on this island, and just past there should be where the Doctor's hiding. Once you're up there, Itoh and I will start looking for a way off this rock. Sue told us about the egg that was ready to hatch in the Egg Corridor, so we'll be heading there first.

"The negative-G's you'll feel on your back will be uncomfortable, but since you don't breathe air or pump blood, that should be your only concern." She finished tacking her fingers on the few buttons the machine still had attached to it. "This would be the part where I ask if you have any questions, but I've run through everything you really need to know. Just keep totally still during lift-off, and remember to jump off once the alarm rings, and you'll be fine." Before she pressed that final button to send him on his way, she removed his cap from his head and offered it back to him. "You'll probably want to lie on top of this, if you want to keep it." He lifted his torso off the machine, allowing her to place the red-and-white cap underneath his chest.

She hesitated once more before pressing the launch button on the machine. "I haven't had the chance to say," she began, causing him to look back up at her, "thank you for saving my kids. Sue was about to get killed in the Egg Corridor, and Kazuma was locked in some building in Grasstown, starving to death. I know this seems like an odd way of repaying the favour – putting you on a rocket without a lot of safety features, to fight Date by yourself – but I just want to say that you're my hero." She was very nearly about to cry when she thought about nearly losing her son and her daughter. "I don't know what I would do if I lost either of my kids. The rest of the world, and maybe even the island, might forget you and your sacrifices, but I promise that the Sakamoto's will not." Quote didn't know what to say, or what to do, in response. He hadn't expected to hear Momorin say any of this at all, especially not now, but he guessed that he couldn't really understand what she was feeling since he wasn't a mother. All he could really bring himself to do was to simply give her a thumbs-up, which caused her to giggle through her sniffles.

"Good luck up there," was the last thing she said before finally pressing that button. She and Itoh quickly retreated from the launch area, leaving him lying flat of his stomach on a thick sheet of metal welded to a rocket that was going to launch him hundreds of feet into the air at a crippling velocity. The hum of the machine was low at first, but quickly escalated as the fifteen seconds slowly passed by. He was facing towards the prison of the Plantation, and couldn't help but feel guilty, knowing he hadn't checked to see if Jack and Mahin were still there. He knew Momorin said that everybody in the Plantation was gone, but having not seen for himself, he still had a nagging feeling that he was going to wind up going back on his promise towards them. It was far too late to ask if they could put off the launch for the five minutes it would take for him to check, though.

On the fifteenth second, each of the rocket's thrusters immediately kicked on, and a deafening boom filled the entire cave as they each focused their firepower directly below him. Like Momorin had promised, he felt a sudden wave of intense heat rise up from over the corners of the rocket once the thrusters each began to fire. His vision rattled and vibrated as the rocket pulled itself into the air. In just a few short seconds, he began feeling a pressure on his back as the rocket picked up speed and rose in the air faster: it wasn't too terribly unbearable, but the unnatural feeling of it made him believe that he was being pressed into jelly by some invisible press. He was unable to focus on any one point on the far walls of the Plantation as the rocket shook, each of the many boulders and pebbles in the walls melding into one impossible painting.

The rocket slowly, then quickly, started to race upward, pressing his body flat against the hot metal surface of the device. All he could hear, particularly with his ear pressed flat against the machine, was the unbearable booming of the thrusters, and all he could see was a nonsensical canvas of dull browns and greens as he rose. His first thought was how he was going to hear the alarm on the machine ring if all he could hear were the low, constant explosions of the rocket.

The colours of the Plantation immediately shifted to a much bolder black, and the noise from the rocket reverberated and intensified as the sound bounced off the suddenly much more compact walls of the tunnel. The pressure on his body built upon itself with each passing second; he didn't know if he should be worried about passing out, because as Momorin, said, he had no heart to withstand the strain. That aside, though, he felt as though his arms and legs were going to burst and deflate from the weight he was feeling on his back as he climbed. The necklace Curly had given him earlier was beginning to forcefully make an impression into his chest. He was worried about the missiles in his missile launcher, and if the weapon would discharge accidentally during the climb. The ride was only supposed to be twenty-one seconds long, but already he felt as though he had been spending twenty-one minutes aboard this thing.

Just as he began to feel like his chest wouldn't be able to handle the pressure anymore, each of the thrusters suddenly quit. Just like that, the rocket calmed and began to slow its climb, living in the air solely on the remaining momentum. The noise in the tunnel stopped all at once, and the heat that was pooling over the sides of the machine slowly began to cool. The shaking of the machine, and by extension his eyes, had ceased.

The ringing in his ears from the thrusters drowned out the sound of the alarm that was loudly ringing at a very rapid pace from just below his platform. He didn't notice it at first; his mind was too busy reeling from the feeling of the weight lifting off his back and all the other intrusive sensations stopping almost as suddenly as they started.

Once the wind rushing past his ears began to subside and the rocket was beginning to ease off its ascent, he finally realized where he was and what he had to do. His arms and legs were bruised and in a tremendous amount of pain, but he forced himself up as quickly as he could, grabbing his pressed-flat hat from underneath himself, trying to focus his eyes on his immediate surroundings. He was looking for some ledge to jump to, he remembered. It wasn't difficult to spot; the end of the tunnel in the sky opened up into a flat ledge that surrounded him on all sides. He could even see the door Momorin had told him about. But he was already beginning to descend with the rocket, and he didn't jump as quickly as he needed to: before he could leap of the rocket, he was already below the floor he needed to leap to.

He sprang off the rocket with as much power his legs could give him, but in their crushed, unenergetic state, he could leap high enough to grasp onto the very edge like he needed. Rather than panic, he pointed his right foot upwards, and the jetpack on his back burst into its own life, lifting him that last little bit upwards. Once his feet cleared the hole, he kicked his foot forward, towards the safety of the ground surrounding all sides of the hole, before the Booster finally overheated itself and gave him no more lift. He crashed to the ground, falling over his own ankles, before coming to a rest on the safety of the floor over the tunnel above the Plantation.

He lay still on his left side before turning over and coming to a rest leaning against the Booster on his back. He was still dazed; he still couldn't see straight; he was still extremely hot all over; and the nervousness from nearly missing the ledge and falling back down hundreds of feet to the Plantation finally caught up with him. He knew he couldn't rest for too long, what with the Doctor being right there and all, but his tired arms and legs still needed to relax for only a moment. The low boom of the rocket impacting the ground below him faintly reached his still-ringing ears only a few moments later.

After spending a few minutes recuperating, he pulled himself onto his feet, placing his hat back onto his head, and faced the wooden door in the corner of the room he was standing in. His limbs certainly felt better, even after such a short rest, even though they still stung a little bit. He couldn't risk waiting any longer, however: doing his best to walk off his injuries, he brought himself up to the simple door, twisting the knob on the door and pulling it open with a gentle tug.