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“Soooo… It’s good Gramble’s come to his senses, huh?”
Filbo gets a noncommittal grunt from Wambus, who was busy digging a new row for the cheese plants he was preparing to transfer to the garden proper.
“He seems like he’s a lot happier. Hasn’t, um… yelled at anybody lately.”
Wambus does not reply, his back to Filbo, the only sound the metallic scrape of the hoe against the soil.
“And he’s even letting people eat some of the snax out of his barn. I figured you’d be happy about that.”
“Filbo.” Wambus rounds on him with a heavy sigh. “You cannot look at what’s goin’ on with that guy and tell me everything’s fine. This ain’t right. It ain’t natural.”
“Aw, c’mon Wambus! Is it really that much weirder? We’ve all got snak limbs…”
“Snak limbs don’t talk, Filbo.”
“I mean… that’s true…”
“And it ain’t even a limb. It’s more like a… a second head.” Wambus shakes his own head, planting his free hand on his hip. “I don’t like it, Filbo.”
The two of them look across the path to Gramble’s yard, where he was staining the wood for some new addition to the barn. Assisting him are a flapjackarak, holding its own brush in its curly bacon tongue, and a fryder, scuttling up and down the sides of the structure to get at difficult to reach spots.
Gramble sways along to the music drifting from the record player he’d borrowed from Wiggle, smiling to himself as he paints. His new incisors, long and sharp and strawberry-red, glint in the sunlight. He’d begun to gain back some of the terrifying amount of weight he’d lost over nearly a year of trying to live off sauce. His fur is no longer dull and mangey, although it does look rather sticky, clumped together in spikes along his back. Instead of his sweater vest, he’s wearing a light, knitted poncho he’d recently made himself. Something that was a bit easier to move in, he’d said. Snaking out from beneath the fabric and laying their cake wedge head on his shoulder is Cakerie.
Cakerie notices their staring and looks over, followed by Gramble, who waves, smiling. Filbo waves back. Wambus does not.
“…alright, maybe it is a little weird,” Filbo says as he lowers his hand. “But he didn’t make it sound like this was an accident. It’s not gonna just happen to you if you eat any old snax.”
Wambus bends down to pick up a rock and toss it out of the garden. “All the same… think I’m gonna stick with vegetable-based bugsnax from now on.”
Filbo leaves him to his gardening and walks over to Gramble’s yard, leaning on the fence. Cakerie raises their head, layers of cake flapping as they speak. “Hi, Filbo!”
“Hey, Cakie.” He smiles. “How are you guys doing?”
“Oh, we’re super!” Gramble says without turning around, brushing stain on a long board Chandlo had sawed for him that morning. “I figured I’d rework the stalls a bit, give everyone their own space.”
“Bugsnax don’t live in stalls,” Cakerie says. “We want it to be more like home.”
“Oh, uh, that’s cool…” It’s hard for Filbo to tell what exactly Gramble is building at this stage, with everything still being in plank form. Various other snax mill around the yard, but they’re careful not to step on any of the wet boards or knock into his container of stain. “How are you feeling? You seem… better.”
“I’m feelin’ much better, thank you. Forgot what it was like to not be tired all the time. Wish I’d figured it out a long time ago.” Gramble reaches forward to paint the upper part of the board. The motion tugs his poncho higher on his back. Something wet glistens in the fur around his spine.
Filbo leans over to try and get a better look but sees Cakerie staring at him and eases back. “O-oh, good! I’m glad to hear it. I’m gonna go see how the others are doing.”
“Stop by anytime!”
As mayor, Filbo thought he should probably get a read on how everybody else felt about the whole situation. It’d be rude to call a town meeting and exclude Gramble, but surely there’s be no harm in just asking a few of the folks who were around right now what they thought. See if they had any concerns like Wambus did, and what could be done about it, if anything.
Beffica’s the easiest to track down. She was in Cromdo’s hut, looking through his collection of poorly-painted signs. Cromdo himself had left a few hours ago to look for new wares to barter for snax, perhaps even catch some for himself. Prime snooping opportunity.
“Hey, Beff!” Filbo greets her.
“Can you like, not make so much noise.” Beffica looks over at him, frowning.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “What are you doing? I thought you went through Cromdo’s stuff yesterday.”
“He was going on about some big sale he’s about to have, but I’m pretty sure he’s full of it, like always.”
“Oh.” Filbo supposed that made sense, as far as reasons for going through someone’s stuff went. “Can I ask you something?”
“I guess.”
“What do you think of this whole… thing, with Gramble.”
Beffica lifts up a sign from the pile. It says YARD SARD on it. “It’s weird, but I can’t deny I’m a little jealous. Can you imagine how useful it’d be to have another set of eyes? Not to mention the way the snax all listen to him now. It’d make them so much easier to catch.”
“You’re not worried at all…?”
“Filbo, this is Gramble we’re talking about. I don’t care how many heads he grows, he’s still four feet tall. You could punt him like a soccer ball if he tried to attack you.”
Filbo scratches at the back of his neck. If he and Beffica were agreeing over something, it had to be serious. “I guess so.”
“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m really busy.”
Filbo leaves her to it and heads over to the mill. Snorpy and Chandlo must be around since he can hear the whirring of the saw blades. Chandlo is busy chopping a huge log into boards but gives a wave to Filbo as he heads upstairs.
He finds Snorpy by his bed, leering out the window with a scowl on his face. “Snorpy?”
Snorpy doesn’t turn around. “Yes, what is it, Filbo.”
“Are you looking at Gramble?”
“Of course I am. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on him.”
“He told me he was just renovating the barn…”
“Filbo.” Snorpy turns to him sharply. “Can you honestly tell me you see nothing suspicious about this situation? Gramble gets that thing installed in him, and suddenly he’s acting like an entirely different person.”
“I- I’m pretty sure it’s just because he’s actually sleeping now,” Filbo says, folding his paws together. “Getting a good night’s sleep can really do wonders! A-and he’s eating, too, so that’s gotta help his mood.”
“Think about it, Filbo. Gramble’s sleep deprivation and hunger would drive him into a state of lesser mental acuity, making him a perfect candidate for subjugation. Something preying on his need for affection would have no problems at all taking over his mind. That thing-” He points out the window. “might no longer be Gramble at all.”
Filbo wrings his paws, wondering if it was such a good idea to talk to Snorpy. It was important to get everyone’s perspective though. Snorpy takes his hesitation as an opportunity to continue.
“We have no idea what he might be capable of. We’ve never seen how that creature attaches to him. It can move in and out of his body, seemingly displacing his flesh and bones and organs. And! You were just out there, you saw it with your own eyes how the snax are following his orders. He doesn’t even need to command them.” Snorpy takes a breath, clenching and unclenching his paws. “If any of us angered him, he could set the entire island on us.”
“Gramble wouldn’t do that!” Filbo cries, finding his voice again. “He’s our friend! I thought you guys got along.” He’d overheard Gramble and Snorpy chatting at times about the strange things they’d seen all over the island, both grateful to have someone to listen and believe.
“Gramble was my friend,” Snorpy practically spits. “But that thing out there? That tool of the Grumpinati? Absolutely not.”
“I, um…” Filbo glances around helplessly, as Snorpy moves to his shelves, grabbing a scrapbook of evidence he’d collected.
“I have plenty of records of mind control, and you’ll see just how similar they are to this instance. For example-” By the time Snorpy finds the right page and turns around, Filbo is gone. He shuts the book with a huff and goes back to sitting by the window.
Outside, Filbo leans against the side of the barn. Snorpy wasn’t wrong about some of that. Gramble could obviously control the snax, or at least get them to work with him, but why would he use them to attack anyone? At least a week had passed since he’d shown up with Cakerie, told them all about how the snax were connected, that they wanted to communicate with him as their ambassador. That Lizbert was alive, but they couldn’t see her now. If he’d had any ill-intentions against any of them, he could have easily struck when they were asleep in their beds. Maybe he’d been a little too excited about the prospect of being attached to a giant alien hivemind… That part was definitely weird, but nobody had been forced into doing it, and things were pretty much back to the way they’d been before.
He lifts a paw to rub at his eye, and when he turns the corner, Cakerie is staring directly into his face. “Hi!” they flap their pastry jaws at him. “Were you guys talking about us?”
Filbo yelps, stumbling away from them and Gramble, who was standing with his paws (one flesh and one candle) held sheepishly up to his chest, tapping his claws together. “Is Snorpy upset? I see him watchin’ me…”
“No! No, he just,” Filbo stammers. “He’s… just worried about you, I think! We all are. This whole…” He waves a paw at Cakerie. “Situation you’ve got going on, it’s just new, is all. Everyone’s gonna take a little while to get used to it, I think.”
“Oh.” Gramble frowns slightly. “Well… You can tell ‘em they don’t have to worry. We’re doin’ just fine.”
“I figured! You seem like you’re both pretty happy, so… I’ll let them know.”
“Thanks, Filbo!” Gramble throws his arms around Filbo, hugging him tightly enough to squeeze all the air out of his lungs. Filbo didn’t remember him being capable of that a few weeks ago.
“Yeah, no problem,” He wheezes and pats Gramble on the back. His paw comes away sticky. When he sniffs it later, once Gramble’s walked away, it smells strongly of birthday cake, warm and fresh-baked. He can’t help himself. He licks it clean.