Chapter Text
Its been days (weeks? months?), since Ozzy disappeared.
At least. Zeemyth thinks thats what happened, his memory banks of the last few.. days have become a distorted mess that he has no energy to deal with.
Truthfully, he has no energy for anything anymore. Despite constantly resting he feels like hes always running on low battery. The only thing keeping him going is the need to check his door, to see if Ozzy has come home yet.
Not today though, today Zeemyth was going to. get up and go do something! he wasnt actually sure what, yet. Just that sitting in his dark, empty base was starting to get to him. A bot can only take so many weird. strange things before a screw gets loose after all!
Pulling himself up and out of his bed, Zeemyth stretches his arms up high into the air, listening to his joints pop quietly. Dropping his arms back down to his sides, he takes a couple steps to cross the distance from his bed to his chests. Sat gently atop it, is his trusty mining hat and gloves. Donning the hat, then his gloves, he flexes his fingers gently reaccustoming himself with the now slightly odd sensation of them on his hands.
Moving his attention back to his original goal, Zeemyth lifts the chest open. A sigh softly leaves his voice box as he takes stock of his dwindling inventory. Letting the chest fall shut with a soft click, Zeemyth turns away and begins towards his door, a plan already forming in his head: get food, get coal, get home asap (check for Oz?).
Zeemyth quickly goes through each of his carefully set locks, counting silently to himself as he slowly unlocks each. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 —). Taking a deep breath, he turns the handle and steps out into the brightness. He pulls his door shut with a click and turns slightly to insert and twist a key into the lock.
Zeemyth finally steps away from the door with one last test twist of the doorknob — to ensure it was locked properly. Zeemyth raises his hand up to his face to try, and block some of the sunlight out of his optics as they shuttered and readjust. (How long has it been? How long has he been shut away? Did it even matter?). Heaving another sigh, Zeemyth dropped his gaze back to the dying yellow grass around him and moved to take a step forward. Before he could get anywhere, a voice suddenly called out to him.
“Zee? gosh is that you friend?” shifting slightly, Zeemyth turned to face where the voice was coming from. Keeping his eyes glued downwards, despite — belatedly, realising the voice belonged to someone he knew.
“Its been sometime since I, well, me and Trouble have seen you, friend.” the voice — Spagheters, steps closer as he speaks. “We’ve been quite worried about you, especially after.. well.. Everything.” Zeemyth could hear him shift nearby, he lets his gaze wander up at the lower half of his friend. Zeemyth sees Spagheters lift his hand up as if to pat his friend comfortingly on the shoulder, but hesitates and thinks otherwise, dropping his hand back down.
“But uh! Here you are, I'm so glad to see you out and about and doing better!” Zeemyth, suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation as the implications connect, he lets gaze drop back to the yellowing grass below them. His face morphing into a frown, what did he mean by after everything? What happened? What was he forgetting? Did they know about the books? — Zeemyth clenches and unclenches his hands, his stomach sinking, he sucks in a deep breath, panic begins to—.
Spagheters shifts at the uncomfortably long silence, breaking Zeemyth out of his impending spiral, “Well uh, what were you up to today?” he pauses briefly, “If its nothing crazy you could come join me and Trouble, I think they’d be pretty thrilled to see you! Even if the dork wont admit it” he chuckles to himself gently as he shifts slightly again.
Zeemyth releases his breath as he quickly taps out (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 —) against the side of his thigh as he thinks, it wouldn't be so bad he figures. It might even be good for his mission, even if it had been sometime since he had last received an update from the ARG.
“I guess.. I’d like to join you, sure” Zeemyth says, mentally noting the grating uncomfortable feeling of his voice box finally being used. He files away his questions from before into his memory bank, almost thankful for the distraction being provided.
“Oh! Wonderful, let’s get going then! I was just on my way to meet up with Trouble over at their labs” Spagheters says before turning away and beginning to walk, Zeemyth could almost feel the positivity radiating off the other as he followed suit. They walked in relative silence broken only by Spagheters occasional humming, Zeemyth took the time to glance around as they passed by the homes of others. He made mental logs of any changes to the area, if anyone else was nearby, how long it would take to run back to his shelter, but, slowly, he let himself relax to the sound of the grass crunching underfoot.
It didn’t take them very long to reach Trouble's lab, Spagheters quickly made his way up the stairs and knocked on the two big iron doors. Zeemyth dropped his gaze once more as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, almost trying to blend in with the pillars decorating the lab front. Momentarily tensing as he hears the doors swing open, and a loud voice calling out.
“Well! Hello there! Glad to see you finally join me Spagheters!” Zeemyth hears Trouble say stepping out of their doorway.
“Ha! Sorry for the wait friend, I made a quick detour and look who I found!” Spagheters says chuckling. Zeemyth can feel the attention on him now, he shifts in his spot before raising his hand up in greeting awkwardly.
“Huh,” Zeemyth can feel Trouble’s surprise, before the other regains their composure, “Well! Good to have another fellow of science join us, wish you had reached out sooner but alas! Water under the bridge. Now get in here! Times awasting!” Trouble says before ducking back into their lab, Spagheters chuckles again before following suit.
Zeemyth takes a few steps up the stairs before pausing, suddenly the feeling of being watched creeps along his spine, he glances around at the sunny landscape around him. Yet, seeing nothing out of the unusual does little to calm his nerves. Zeemyth takes a step back towards the door, fingers rapidly tapping against his thigh, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 —), before quickly turning and going inside trying to shake the unsettling feeling wrapping around him.
Zeemyth spots Spagheters and Trouble crowded over a small table overflowing in papers, seemingly arguing about something with each other. Yet, as soon as he steps closer, they suddenly grow quiet, Spagheters looks up at him then back at Trouble, who looks up at Spagheters, both of them surrounded by a tight silence as they seemingly communicate with each other with just their eyes.
Zeemyth looks at the table, their backs, then the floor, uncomfortable with the silence but letting the two sit in the corners of his peripheral, as they finish their silent argument. Suddenly Spagheters clears his throat and moves from the table.
“Right! Uh, we were planning to take a small trek into the woods for research purposes. Trouble hasn’t really explained it to me beyond needing “samples” of something, but I figured itd be good fun! So..” Spagheters said, gesturing to the red bot with his hands as he spoke.
“Ah! I suppose that's true, I didn’t really explain, did I?” Trouble said straightening up from their hunched position over the table of papers.
“I am in dire need of material samples for a series of tests I have planned for an entity I recently captured! I must show you it some other time, its really quite interesting.” They say, excitement clear in their voice.
“Now!”, they begin clasping their hands together with a clank, “As for supplies I’ve prepared some bags with my tools, normally I’d carry one but, with your addition you can take it Zee! As I will be graciously leading the way to a couple important spots I’d like to check out” Trouble explains as they quickly move about the cluttered lab, collecting seemingly random items.
Zeemyth hears Spagheters snicker to himself, before reapproaching Zeemyth with a bag in his hand, “Here you go, it seems we are glorified pack mules for today” Spagheters jokes softly, a smile evident in his voice.
Zeemyth nods and takes the bag, easily slipping it over his shoulders, the bag is heavy and something clinks within it as it settles against his side. He hears Spagheters follow suit before the other moves back towards the messy table, curiosity somewhat peeked, Zeemyth follows behind, peering around Spagheters shoulder and down to the piles of paper.
Zeemyth raises a brow as he tries to decipher the messy handwriting, and drawings scrawled across the papers. His optics rove over the mountains of paper before something grabs his interest out of the corner of his eye.
Stepping around Spagheters (and making sure there was ample room between them both), he reaches out to uncover the paper. Lifting it up, his body whirs to a shuttering stop, there inscrawled on the paper was some.. Some person, thing, creature. His eyes race around the paper, drinking in the details as some sort of primal fear sets thickly into the gears and wires in his body.
Zeemyth tried to place why he recognized it, why it made him feel so unsettled, but he couldn't. His head ached as he tried to reach farther into his memory, to find this, thing. Something akin to dread crawled up his spine, something felt wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong, but it escaped Zeemyth no matter how hard he tried to recall. He wasn't sure which part of that was more terrifying. He does not take notice of the shake in his hands or the whir of his fans as they tried to desperately compensate, his optics shutter and refocus but they remain locked on the figure as it grinned up at him, the image searing itself within the depths of his memory banks.
“Hey man, are you okay?”
Something gently lands on Zeemyth’s shoulder surprising him into dropping the paper, nearly leaping into the air with it. He quickly takes several steps back, locking his gaze to the stone flooring as he belatedly realizes that it was Trouble who had put their hand on Zeemyth’s shoulder.
“Ah. uhm, yes, yep, sorry I got lost in my uh. thoughts, sorry” Zeemyth quickly mumbles out, rapidly drumming his fingers against his leg, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 — 1, 2, 3, 4 —).
“You uh, you sure friend? Do you need a minute?” Zeemyth hears Spagheters ask as he steps a little closer to him, hand reaching out in concern.
Zeemyth takes another step back, shaking his head no, “No, uh no, It's good, let's just uh, ill wait outside till you guys are ready to go” he doesn't wait for a response before turning around and quickly heading out the doors.
As soon as he hears the doors click shut behind him, Zeemyth takes a deep breath, then another, trying to calm the thoughts in his head. He pulls the gloves off his hands, tucks them into his bag, and rubs his eyes, enjoying the cool cold against his now too hot faceplate.
Zeemyth feels exhausted, his head hurts and the feeling of missing something had only doubled and tripled, after seeing that illustration. God, he just wanted to go home, and lay down for the next month, but he couldn’t now, it'd be too suspicious, and they might catch on to what he was really doing here. He couldn't bear to be alone.
Zeemyth couldn’t risk it. He drops his hands with a sigh and pulls his gloves back on, its fine, everything would be fine.