They stood in the cave, where they always performed the Scar Test. Basically, the Scar Test was testing if the vex were confident enough that Scar would be willing to use it on Cub. If they were, and it worked as intended on Cub, they'd consider it safe, and use it openly.

"You ready, Cub?" There was a whisper of guilt and fear in Scar's voice.

"As I will be." Cub swallowed.

"Which do you want to start with?"

"Well, let's try removal first. They always say to go big or go home. So let's completely blank my memory."

"Are you sure?"

"If you're not confident, we can just declare the Scar Test a failure."

Scar tensed. "Okay. Let's do this." He raised his hand, picturing the runic pattern Cub had scribbled in their notebook in his head. Vex-blue fire swirled around him, before reaching out to the other Vex. The tongues of flame lashed at Cub, each time they struck removing a little more. The duration Scar was going for was five minutes. The flames resolved themselves into a timer for that long, and vanished. So far so good.

Cub looked up, disoriented. His eyes were unfocused, and he was only standing because some vague old instinct was telling him how. There was a stranger standing before him. The stranger was wearing an outfit suited for adventure, down to the cowboy hat. Over their face, the stranger was wearing a mask of an oddly familiar kind. Reaching to his face, he realised he was wearing a mask identical to the stranger. Perhaps they were friends?

Scar approached his friend. Cub looked at him, eyes frantically darting about. Scar pulled off his mask, in the hope that Cub would calm down. Cub just stared at him, not recognising his good friend. It broke Scar's heart, even though this meant things were going okay. Cub was utterly lost, and Scar wanted to just undo it. But he had to wait until the time ran out.

The two just stood there, staring at each other, looking for something familiar, for all three remaining minutes. Suddenly, a loud ringing broke through Cub's ears, like all the alarm clocks in existence were going off at once. Magic poured out of Cub, swirling around him and restoring his memory. It had worked.

The girl in the eyepatches sat alone, watching her domain dance around her. She felt a time skip coming on, and cast it over the land.

The spell was in the final stages of development. Even though there were a few hiccups that needed ironing out, it was ready for the Scar Test. Sighing, Scar looked at the note Cub had sent him the night before when asked who he was going to think he was.

Grian. Why? It's funny. Besides, I could cause so much to go awry. Feel free to record it!

Cub was obviously giddy with the excitement of the spell nearly being done. It was, after all, their greatest project. He stood up gradually, and made his way towards the cave. He had already obtained a copy of Grian's memories, ready to plug in.

Cub was grinning like a madman when Scar arrived. Of course, Cub was basically a madman, so this was no surprise. Scar looked at Cub solemnly. There were so many ways this could go wrong, but they'd ironed out most of the problems. Scar raised up the fireball of memory he had copied from the hapless Architech. Linking it up with the second third of the spell, Scar closed his eyes, and began casting.

A flame grew in his hands. It swirled, dancing with the beauty of memories. Scar looked into it, and blew. It washed over the other Vex, wiping him clean and replacing him with itself. Scar could see a projection of his real friend behind his possessed form. Scar smiled, distracted for the briefest of moments, and something snapped, Scar falling backwards, eyes filling with blue fire.

When Scar woke up, Cub was gone, and Scar felt oddly... free. He didn't notice that his eyes and mouth were leaking magic from the sheer power of the spell he had just cast.

Part one of two. It has a reason for existing, trust me.

682 words. Below average, but that's okay.

This has been Pi, and I'll see you all at some point in the future!