"I am so poor."

Glancing into my ender chest that had been a gift from Mumbo, I could see two diamonds and a stack of iron. Almost nothing in terms of resources.

What the hell should I do? I could take a few hours to go mining, but that was a lot of effort. I could beg, but that was Iskall's deal.

Wait.

"I could open a shop!"

But what would I sell?

I equipped my elytra, taking off gracefully. I could decide based on what other hermits sold, maybe open new markets. Decided, I travelled to the shopping district to get an idea of prices and items to sell.

The coral shop was beautiful, and the dead coral shop was appealing in its own way. iTrade was tall and big, full of wonderful trades I'm sure, and Mumbo's slime shop was sold out. Tango's rocket shop was nice as well, begging me to buy rockets and fly with the little money I had.

Most shops were selling stacks of blocks for a diamond each, maybe two stacks for one diamond. That seemed like a reasonable price, especially considering the specialty coral blocks were half a stack for a diamond.

Now, what isn't being sold here? One block that I tend to use a lot of is sand, due to the nature of my base. Sand, gravel, maybe quartz? Though selling quartz would be competing against Zedaph's shop... whatever, I'm gonna do it anyways.

Using my last rockets, I flew back to my base and gathered shulkers full of materials. The first two layers were officially done of my tower, and my mess of chests and shulkers was growing. I should organize myself soon... but for now, I loaded up a few shulkers with building equipment and extra supplies, and flew back to the shopping district.

I landed right as my elytra broke, stumbling on the beach. I sighed, keeping the broken wings on for now as I headed to a small corner of the district.

~

I pulled back, taking a look at the finished result. The dark spruce wood of the cart was a nice contrast to the other buildings scattered about, and I thought it looked homey.

I filled up some chests, left a sign with prices, and decided to leave it be for now. I took off from the district, flying back towards my base with a few rockets.

~

A meeting room buried deep below the surface. Nine people were gathered around a circular table, each with their own assigned seat. There was a space between two of the members, one that went unnoticed but was as if something was missing.

"Thank you all for gathering here," The ringleader stood, sliding his helmet off. His dark eyes seemed to absorb any light in the dim meeting room.

"Why did you call us here, X?" Stress was sitting patiently in her chair, hands folded in front of her. Her expression was cool and composed as always.

"This meeting is about our... new member." X waved a hand, and the center of the table projected a hologram of a guy in a hoodie and jeans. "I managed to glean small things off of the Scan before it... glitched."

"Glitched?" Tango leaned forward, red eyes flashing a brighter shade.

"When we went through the Scan, he was under for a few minutes. I got some information off of him, but... as I dug deeper, he moved. He was in pain, that only grew more and more until I broke off the Scan."

Mumbo, from his space at the table, covered his mouth at the thought of his 'friend' in pain. Iskall moved closer to Mumbo, shooting a look over at the two members of ConCorp also at the table.

"So it failed." A new person, wearing some bright pink and yellow suit, spoke up. His voice was quiet, calm and collected.

"Essentially... yes." X stood from the table, pacing. "There were these... these scars on his back, right between his shoulder blades."

"A mod mark?" Scar questioned, gesturing to the scars that littered his own face and arms.

"Maybe, but... it doesn't seem right."

"Well, I don't think we should worry too much about Grian right now." Tango glanced around the table. "We have some bigger issues that Biffa has been noticing. Bif?"

The pink and yellow guy nodded, taking a stand. "As we know, the three Admins are myself, Tango, and X. X is in charge of the code for this server, Tango is in charge of the overworld generation, and I'm in control of the Nether and End generation. While spending time in the Nether specifically, I... saw things."

He flashed different structures on the hologram, showing off the Nether. "There was a glitched nether fortress. No blaze spawners whatsoever. I added some in manually, but even then the spawning of the blazes were messed up."

"The same thing was happening with a water temple," X replied, "There were 4 or 5 sponge rooms, which should be impossible, but along with that the guardian spawning was 2 or 3 times the normal rate."

"Do you think it could be a Virus?" Cub's quiet question shook everyone to the core.

"It's impossible," X shook his head, "If there were a Virus we would have known and we would have worked around it. No questions asked."

"What else could explain everything going on?" Mumbo's eyes pulsed a faint red, his nervousness showing. "I mean, someone that's a stranger shows up with no memories, an Admin Scan does nothing to him, and there's more than one glitched structure. Oh, and none of us can leave here. What else could be happening."

"Chill out bro," Iskall warned, the room dropping a few degrees. "You're stressing Stress out."

Mumbo settled back into his chair, pulling a button out of his inventory to fidget with. Iskall pressed closer to Stress as the last member of the group stood.

"Well," The girl's green skin was a severe contrast to her bright red hair, stitches along her arms and face holding her body together, "What do we do?"

No one really responded to her. So with a sigh, she backed up from the table.

"Until we have a way out of here, or more of an idea of what's going on, I think these meetings are somewhat pointless."

The girl left the room, leaving everyone else in silence. Slowly, the others followed suit, leaving only the Admins at the table.

Tango glanced up at the others, now that they were alone. "I still haven't figured... it out."

"Tango, this is a matter of our Server's survival," X explained, his tone dead serious. "If you can't recover your full Admin capabilities, the overworld could fall apart."

"I know, I know!" The blonde groaned, dropping his head onto the table with a solid thunk. Biffa reached out, gently resting a hand on his shoulder.

The three fell into silence, alone in the cavernous meeting room. The weight of the Server was on their shoulders alone.

~

"Alright, my elytra should be fully repaired!" I slid the wings back on, hopping down from the Nether pigman farm Impulse had opened to the server. I glided through the hole in bedrock, letting the hot drafts from the Nether carry me all the way to my portal with ease.

I stepped through into the basic structure of my house, still only a few layers tall. It was no longer a coffee mug, Mumbo! It's obviously a cake.

I glanced up through my open ceiling, looking to the sky above. Day was turning to night, which meant monsters would be about soon. I let out a sigh, heading to my bed and lying down.

A tug of loneliness hit my gut as I realized how quiet my base was. No redstone to ease me to sleep, no humming of Mumbo staying up late into the night working away at his machines.

I rolled over in bed, closing my eyes in an attempt to sleep. Besides, it was better I stay alone right now. I was as much of a stranger to them as they were to me... it would be better if I didn't intrude.

I groaned, tossing over once more so I was on my back. I looked up to the sky as the first stars began to shine down on the world. I slid my hand into my hoodie pocket, pulling out the slip of paper once more.

'Trust no one'

I wanted to rip it apart. I wanted to throw the paper into the ocean, lose it to the tumbling waves. But instead of doing any of this, I just slipped the paper back into my pocket.

"My name is Grian," I racked my brain for any facts, anything about myself. Since being on my own, thinking like this had been a nightly occurrence. "I appeared on this Server two weeks ago. I was unconscious for one week. I knew Tango, he was in a... a dream? He gave me a code, something broke. He bound something to me, I think. I remember nothing before that...

"But if that's the case, then why is everything here so familiar?"

~

Here we go! Another part, and I think it's finally time I direct you to other places you can find me. Bug me about the lore of this story or somethin on my tumblr, over at welcomebackbeckblinghere, or on my AO3 at WhenWeNextMeetMyFriends. On my AO3 I have a second story going on that takes place in SGCBarbierian's Crafting Dead universe.

Anyways, I'll see y'all in the next chapter.

~Parker