It wasn’t enough. Zed threw the covers off, ignoring the buzzing of his comm as he woke up in early June again. It wasn’t enough. He needed to save everyone, and last time Cleo and Etho and Bdubs had been missing, and so he’d stayed behind just long enough that he knew he’d die again and go back to the start. The previous time, he hadn’t been able to stop Tango leaving. The cycle of failures continued as far back as Zed could remember, over what had to be years and years of looping by now, but it was almost over. He had a plan.
As he made his way out to the front of his base, he ignored the fact that his pitch drop experiment was now overflowing.
Zed went through the motions of his exchange with False, waving cheerily, meeting her halfway, making sure his beheading scar was well hidden so she wouldn’t notice, making a friendly ‘for science’ remark, the same as usual. It all went off without a hitch, and Zed allowed himself a brief sigh of relief. Maybe this loop would finally turn out alright. Maybe, just maybe, things could finally come back to some semblance of the old normal.
Zed went inside, ready to pick up his notebook and Worm Man costume; and move on to the next stage of his plan.
———
Zed held up the nether star, as always.
“Don’t get me st—”
Zed switched off the lights before Tango could finish speaking. He yelped, turning around, displeased (to say the least) at being suddenly bathed in darkness. It really wasn’t as funny this many times around.
“Turn them back on!” he yelled, pounding frantically on the glass. Zed waited a carefully-measured two seconds, then did as he was requested.
“Subject appears to be deathly afraid of the dark,” Zed spoke, ‘accidentally’ letting his words filter over the intercom. Tango let out an indignant squawk. “Sorry,” Zed lied, “Meant to say that privately.”
“Uh-huh.” Tango folded his arms. “Sure you did.”
“Now, I’m going to test your mathematical capabilities,” Zed informed Tango. “Answer the questions as quickly as you can.”
“Uh, okay—”
“Pick a number between one and ten.” Zed’s voice was measured and calm. He couldn’t let any excitement or grief or sorrow or delight slip into his voice. The drawbacks outweighed the perks, here, as much as it hurt Zed to bleed the joy from this moment.
“Seven?”
“Between twenty and fifty.”
“Forty, uh, forty-two?”
“Between fifty-nine thousand, three hundred and sixty five and seventy-four thousand and two.”
“Eighty-three thousand and five… I think.”
“Please add them together.”
Tango stared at his hands, trying to do the mental maths, but eventually failing. He sighed, dejected.
“I dunno,” Tango shrugged, “A billion?”
“Close enough,” Zed replied, marking a big bold x in his notes. “Thank you.”
“Wait, that’s it?” Tango asked, confused.
“Well, I’ve seen enough to know that you should never, ever go to space,” Zed informed him. Tango’s disappointed expression sent a pang of pity through him, however, and, in a moment of weakness, Zed caved: “You can mess around with some of my equipment though, if you want?”
The light of joy and mischief that sparked in Tango’s eyes was enough to bring a fresh joy to Zedaph that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
———
Zed fluffed up his hair, trying to put on his best heroic grin. No matter how hard he tried, the weight of exhaustion dragged it down. He sighed, disappointed. He’d need to find a workaround, or something, because Worm Man was supposed to be all over-the-top all the time. That was half the point.
Still, Zed figured this would be the last time he’d have to do this, and he only had to hold the grin until the first bolt of lightning anyway. Shaking his head, he put his mask on, for all it was worth, and set off for the Empire.
“EXy!” he yelled as he kicked down the door. He was gonna have to pay the siblings back for all the doors he’d destroyed once they got to season 9. “I’m here to save you!”
“Really? That’s cute.” As expected, the scarf that Zed had added to his costume served to hide his beheading scar well enough for the purposes of not making this fight any more complicated than it needed to be. Zed dodged the first bolt with ease—he’d long since memorised exactly which way to dodge each lightning strike in order to line himself up perfectly for his sprint up the stairs.
Sure enough, he finished off the fight pretty much as expected, sending X away again. EX didn’t say anything, this time. Just buried their face into his scarf, an occasional choked sob forcing its way out. Zed cradled them close, letting them breathe and unwind from however long that thing had been controlling them. It was almost over, anyway. It would all be okay this time. It had to be.
———
“Hey X!” Zed waved to Xisuma, reminding himself to keep casual. Acting like all this was a serious existential threat this early on would just drive X into extreme overwork and doom the server. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“I co-own the Void Empire.” X chuckled. “It’d be weirder to see not-me here.”
“No, I think EXy wouldn’t be all that surprising to see here either.” Zed glanced up nervously. The moon was rising slowly over the horizon. Zed figured that, based on what Tango had told him about fake bedrock, Grian and Mumbo would be making the same observation Zed was about to make. “...Huh.”
“What?”
“X… is the moon big?”
“Well, I mean, yes. I thought you were a science guy this season.”
Zed resisted the urge to facepalm. X was really a derp sometimes—although to be fair, his sibling wasn’t often that much better.
“No, no. I mean, is it bigger than usual?” Zed asked.
“...Oh.” X paused, squinting. “Huh. It might be.”
“It’s probably nothing?” Zed guessed.
“Probably.” X shrugged. “Still, I should probably check it out.”
“Make an escape protocol,” Zed suggested, half-forcing out a laugh.
“Sure. Make an escape protocol.”
The two stood there in amicable, if worried, silence for a moment or five.
“Well, I'll see you around, Zed!” X called, heading off to the main building of the Void empire. Zed stuck his head in Jevin’s shop, bought a totem just for an excuse as to why he was there, and headed home.
———
Zed landed in front of the Mooners temple. It had been a couple loops ago that he had accepted that confronting Impulse wasn’t worth it, and he’d started just going to cure the disease at its root - getting Mumbo to sleep was the key to dissolving the Mooners, all the rest was just fluff. And Zed, as much as he wanted to see Impulse, didn’t have time for fluff if he was going to deal with all the other roadblocks ahead of him.
“Knock knock.” Zed entered the temple, the sight of the soul flames still sending a momentary flash of fear through the back of his mind, even after all this time. “Anyone here?”
“Zedaph!” Mumbo greeted, stepping out of the same shadows that he’d come out of every time. “So glad you could join us!”
“Join you?” Zed asked. “I was just wondering what this build was? Is it a new shop?” He liked to think that he was getting very good at playing confused.
“Oh! You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“The moon! It’s big!”
“Yeah, I, uh, gathered that.” Zed backed away carefully, stepping outside the temple once more and baiting Mumbo to follow.
“Well, there’s got to be a reason the moon’s big, right?” Mumbo moved closer. It was working.
“I suppose?” Zed took another few steps back.
“And that reason is that people keep skipping the night!” Mumbo explained, now outside the temple.
“So you don’t want me to sleep?” Zed asked.
“Yep!”
“Until?”
“Forever!”
“...That’s a bit of a commitment.”
“It’s the only way, Zed.”
“No, no, I’m sure there’s gotta be—”
“Unless, of course, you’re part of the problem,” Mumbo interrupted, his tone taking on a dangerous edge, his hands twitching to reach for his inventory. Zed took another step back and, expertly, fell over in such a way to cause minimal pain while still looking like an absolute fool. Mumbo seized the opportunity and lunged forward, pulling out his explosives, causing Zed’s chest to constrict in involuntary fear, until—
“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” There they were. Zed let out a sigh of relief as EX tackled Mumbo, red lightning flashing from their fingertips. That was another threat down, only a few more to go.
———
When the familiar shudder ran down Zed’s spine while entering the room with that moon rock, he was prepared for it. To be clear, that did not make the situation any less unpleasant, it was just a small comfort that he knew what was coming, that he was one step ahead.
Speaking of being one step ahead, he pulled out the Heart of the Sea from his inventory. Like X had shown him, he cracked open the artefact, letting the ghostly water flow out. He held his breath as the sensation of being miles beneath a nonexistent ocean briefly washed over him, but that quickly passed. Smiling, he screwed the heart closed again and, with a quick flick of his wrist, threw the heart at the rock like a Pokéball, like X had done last time.
Immediately, the aura of the room shifted. The blood disappeared from the amethysts caking the walls, and the whispers vanished from the back of Zed’s mind. Sunlight streamed in through the window, causing the amethysts to cast beautiful spectra on every other surface. It was quite beautiful, actually. Without the foreboding weight sinking in the pit of his stomach, Zed was able to comfortably move further into the room. He scooped up the Heart of the Sea, and tucked it into his other lab coat pocket.
One more threat dealt with, and—if Zed’s suspicions were correct—even if something went wrong with this loop (which Zed didn’t think he’d be able to emotionally handle, but still) this one was now safely stored away for good. Unless someone made a conduit with it. But Zed liked to think he’d be smarter than that, and chances were he actually was.
He cast one last look into the room before he left. It really was beautiful without the moon rock’s dreadful influence. He’d need to experiment with amethyst farms when this was all over.
———
“Cub?”
“Yeah!”
The hermits were preparing to get offworld, just in the nick of time. Xisuma was doing one last headcount, to make absolutely sure nobody got left behind. That was what had gone wrong last time, so Zed had insisted until X relented.
“Doc?”
“I’m here.”
Zed bit his lip. Something felt wrong. A quick headcount by him had turned up that they were one short, and he was desperately hoping that that was a miscalculation on his part. Finding and bringing home even a single missing Hermit would be difficult, if not impossible, at this point.
“Etho?” X called. He was met by awkward silence. “...Etho?” he called again. Again, nothing.
“Etho?” Zed called, his heart falling as his worst fears were confirmed. He sighed. “I’ll find him. If we’re not back in ten minutes, leave without us,” he told X, and took off, flying as fast as he could to Etho and Iskall’s base.
As Zed touched down on the shattered savanna, he looked up at the sky. He hadn’t felt this nervous, deep down, since the very first time he’d gone through the apocalypse. He’d known, of course, that the moon had touched down here, at Etho and Iskall’s place, but looking up at the sky and realising that there was imminent death hurtling towards your exact location was a fresh level of terror.
Zed quickly looked back down, but that didn’t help much with the whole ‘avoiding the heart-stopping fear’ thing, as the ground was tearing itself apart at his feet. Zed swallowed back his apprehension as best he could, and, rockets held in a white-knuckled grip, began to search the eerily quiet base.
Zed found Etho sitting against the wall of his bedroom, eventually. He was staring into space, eyes glazed. Zed felt panic begin to rise in his throat. No. Etho couldn’t be AFK. He couldn’t. That would move the task of getting Etho out of here straight out of the ‘difficult’ category and plunge it into the deepest depths of ‘impossible’.
“Etho?” Zed called quietly, walking into the room. Etho remained still, other than the imperceptibly slow rising and falling of his chest. Zed crouched down by Etho and gently shook his shoulder. “Etho? You with me?”
Zed took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, force back the terror and despair that threatened to subsume him. He shook Etho again, harder this time. Medical advice generally suggested not violently shaking AFK players, but this was an emergency situation, Zed knew, and he’d honestly take any shot he could at saving Etho. Still, Etho didn’t wake.
Outside, the sky was catching fire. Zed desperately tried to choke back the sobs that forced themselves out of his mouth as he tried to do something, anything, to wake Etho. He knew it was pointless. Either X and the others had already left, or it was too late for them to escape.
Zed fell back, sitting down. The tears were flowing freely now. He curled up into a ball, braced for the end. It was an undignified way to go, sure, but Zed honestly didn’t care. He couldn’t care. He was drowning in layer after layer of grief, agony, desperation, and, deep down, the bone-deep exhaustion that only grew worse and worse every loop.
The moon crashed into the server and, as always when the end came, Zed knew no more.
Zed opened his eyes, a breath of air shoving its way into his lungs. He didn’t get up, though. His limbs and mind felt too heavy. It didn’t matter, anyway. None of this mattered. He was cursed, or something, and he’d never be able to succeed. He pulled the blanket closer around himself and closed his eyes, trying to return to the nothingness that had so comfortably embraced him so many times before.