Chapter Text
Fuckin hell that hurt. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Fuckin ow . What hurt? He didn’t know. Fuck.
“I did it again.” Shhhh, bein’ that loud is just not necessary. Really, it's rather inconsiderate. Talkin’ at a normal volume, how dare you.
“Holy shit, oh no, I did it again. That’s not good. That’s not good at all . Oh no. Oh no. I’m dead! I am most certainly dead. Welp, I had a good run. Robbed a few banks. Finished highschool. Got on national television. Made an entire holiday about me. But I guess my time has come to an end. I leave everything to Enderchest, except for my mask, which I give to Phil. He shall know what to do with it. And under no circumstances should Tommy ever get his hands on my glasses. Those are to be given to my stuffed pig, Micheal, not my brother Micheal, and he is to wear them at all times.” He opened his eyes. Shit, light. That exists. Why tho. Why. Why was it necessary? It has absolutely no benefit.
In front of him there was… a string bean writing in a notebook. Were they wearing a suit?
“And I would like to have 4.20$ translated over to Canadian dollars and given to Tubbo, who will find that funny under penalty of death.” It took a sad amount of time to realize that the literal 1:700 aspect ratio in front of him was the one talkin’. To be fair, it was hard to think with all the ringing. Of which there was a lot. He wondered where it was coming from.
“Wilbur is to get nothing but my judgment. Moving forward, I wish to have the press be told to commemorate my death with a twenty-four hour time period in which every news station is to only play Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. Only after the twenty-four hours will they be allowed to cover the story of my death. The rick-roll will go unexplained to the public.” Oh, the ringing was coming from his head. That was an internal thing. He must have hit his head too hard again.
Again? What other time had he hit his head? He couldn’t remember.
Groaning, he sat up. Surprisingly, that didn’t hurt anything other than his head. That struck him as odd. Usually when this sort of thing happened his head was that last pain on his mind.
Usually? He frowned. Did this sort of thing happen often? Why would he be expecting to have other injuries? He couldn’t remember.
“And lastly, I would like Niki to know that she was my favorite and that I will respect her even from my grave, for she could calm Tommy down, and therefore the walking headache that he is. Truly, she is an inspiration and deserves the world. Sadly, I don’t have access to that, so Niki can have full access to my recipe book. Might I recommend the cake. Though I don’t recommend actually consuming- oh you’re awake already. Huh, I’m gonna keep writing if you don’t mind. I haven’t finished my will yet,” said the Empire State Building, who was now looking in his general direction.
“Heh?”
“Uh, Aimatheos, are you okay? It’s okay if you’re not, really. I did kinda um, do the thing again,” Eiffel Tower laughed awkwardly, tucking the notebook in a pocket. They began to fidget with their hands, tugging the fingers of the glove individually, before poking in between the fingers to put the gloves back on properly.
Mismatching gloves? Weird. What kinda cartoon character is this guy?
“Aimatheos? Are you alive? Or- shit, you don’t know what’s happening, do you? Fuck, knew I shouldn’t have come today. Now I’ve broken my three year streak and taken your memory, probably.” Mount Everest stopped fidgeting and took a tentative step towards him, “Do you know who I am? Or like, what’s happening? Or who you are? I guess?” He snorted, rubbing the back of his head. Fuck, it hurt.
“Not really, to be honest. Mind tellin’ me your name?” he asked, attempting to stand up. It was weirdly difficult. He was wondering why, but after looking down it was pretty easy to tell why.
Stilettos. Fuckin stilettos. Why was he wearin’ stilettos? Not complaining, they were nice heeled boots, rather stylish, but what was the occasion?
Actually, why were they both dressed up? He was wearing a white long sleeved poet’s shirt and black dress pants. The black stiletto-boots went up his knees. The giant across from him wore a half black, half white suit, split down the middle. Rather disorienting to look at.
Is that a crown??? Who is this guy?
“Uh, Mellohi, he/him. You sure you don’t remember who you are, or who I am?”
“Not particularly, no. Mind fillin’ me in?” He went to meet Mellohi’s eyes, but stopped. Mellohi had a mask on to match their suit. And sunglasses. Odd. Did he need to hide his identity or something?
Why was that where his mind went to?
“Oh, um. Like I said, I'm Mellohi.” Mellohi took a step back. Towards a window. Where were they? In a building. A weirdly industrial one. Lots of gray. And from the looks of it, they were probably on at least the second story.
In fact, there were more buildings outside the window. And people. Was that a helicopter?
“Basically, I was fighting you, right? And I did the thing again, touched your head I think. I don’t think you remember much. So, I would love to help you, but I think I hear people yelling about Amorphous in the distance and I would prefer to not see him, so I’m gonna go,” Mellohi finished. He started walking towards the window, looking back at him every few seconds, concern written in his posture.
“Oh,” he breathed out. Huh, they were fighting. Why would touching his head matter? Something to do with memory? His head hurt too much to think right.
“Why were we fighting? I don’t think I can remember.” Mellohi tensed. He curled into himself, and slowly turned completely to face him again.
“You don’t remember? Shit, uh, we were fighting ‘cause I was robbing a bank nearby. We ended up a ways away from it, sadly. There go my billions,” Mellohi ended wistfully, as if mourning a lost family member, begging for a former time.
“Heh? You must have strangely high expectations of me to think that I would fight some guy robbin’ a bank. No, no, you must be sorely mistaken,” he said, crossing his arms.
Mellohi tilted his head, “I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t remember.” Then more quietly, “How much did I erase?”
“Aimatheos? How much do you remember? Like in general? What’s your last memory?” Mellohi asked, taking out his notebook. There was a pen attached to it. Huh, convenient.
What kind of name was Ai-meth-ee-oh-se? Rather ugly name, if he was to have an opinion on it.
Which he did, and so he told Mellohi as much.
“Rather ugly name, if you ask me.”
“That’s not answering my— You know what, I don’t even care. Aimatheos is your name, as far as I’m aware,” Mellohi crossed his arms and leaned against the window frame. His head was angled to be able to see out the window. Smart.
Wait, what was that?
Huh. Huh. Huh . Huh. Heh?
“Alright, if I’m this Aya-math-eos guy, why the fuck do I not recognise that name?” He raised an eyebrow. This Mellohi guy must have been on some sort of drug. He would never be that guy, he would have changed his name a while ago. No way would he ever allow himself to remain named something so unbelievably strange. And uncool. The name sounded Greek, which seemed like something he would do, but bruh, it just did not sound cool. He would have at least picked something with a ring to it, like… Blade. Tech-blade. Techno-blade. Technoblade. Yeah, that was cool.
Okay, not cool , but better than fuckin’ Eye-math-ios.
“I think that was my fault, actually. See, I can erase memories and stuff, and I think I accidentally erased all of yours. Which isn’t good because the last thing we want is for the entire city to be after me for decommissioning the city's most powerful hero!” Mellohi exclaimed, voice raising as he spoke.
That would explain quite a bit, honestly.
Now only if it wasn’t so inconvenient.
“Okay, so can you give me my memories back? Is that how this works? Or do I just gotta go through life unaware of like, my credit card info, social security number, my name because I refuse to believe that I-meth-eos is actually my name , and like, my address. I don’t really know what that is either. I’m kinda just rather confused, generally speaking,” he ran his hands through his hair, almost methodically, listing even more things he couldn’t remember internally.
Family? Did he have one? He would assume so, but there was no real way to tell.
Friends? He doubted that he didn’t have friends, but he also doubted that he did even more. Socializing didn’t sound like him very much.
Age? Alright, process of elimination time. He definitely didn’t feel like a teenager, so that was off the table. Twenty-five seemed old. Twenty felt young. Twenty-two? That felt right.
Birthday?
Today’s date?
Fuck, the day of the week?
Monday. Only a Monday could be this awful.
“I don’t think I can, actually. I can erase them, and change them, but I doubt I can return them, sadly.” Oh, Mellohi was talking.
“Well, that’s rather inconvenient,” he muttered, sighed, and looked back towards Mellohi. “You said my name was I’m-ah-thes, or somethin’?”
Mellohi blinked. “Uh, Aimatheos, yeah. Well, that’s your hero name. I don’t actually know your real name. Secret identities and stuff.” Mellohi was writing in his notebook.
“Well, that’s a stupid name. What kind of nerd am I?” he shook his head. Aimatheos. He’d have to look up how that was spelt later.
The ringing had stopped a bit, luckily. In its place was a weird pressure, though. Like, there was something there. He could feel it around him. No, not around him. It… was coming from him. Weird. He’d have to come back to that later.
“I don’t know, uh, you did pick it, though. As far I know, at least. But um, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna make my great escape now. I don’t want another hero to show up and take me to prison. That would never end well,” Mellohi joked, moving towards the window again.
“Thanks, I really appreciate your total concern about my current mental state. Truly, you are just the most carin’ individual,” Aimatheos quipped, voice laced in easy sarcasm.
Mellohi awkwardly stepped onto the windowsill, struggling to fit through with his height, and began to climb down. Once he was out of sight, Aimatheos began to look around for a way out. He needed to figure out where to go. Who would he go to? Where would they be?
He should have been panicking a lot more than he was. For some reason, though, he just couldn’t bring himself to care enough. Odd.
Seeing a door, he began to walk towards it. Staircase. Nice.
—
Standing outside of the building was weird. It seemed to just be a random office building. It had ‘Eggpire State Building’ written in white lettering above the doors, and it was much taller than any of the other buildings in the area.
But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was the people crowding around him. Honestly, personal space.
“Did you defeat Mellohi? Where is he?”
“Aimatheos! Can I have an interview?”
“What’s your lovelife like? Aimatheos, let us know!”
“Aimatheos! What happened after you and Mellohi went into the building?”
“What is the extent of your power? How far have you gone with it?”
“How do you feel about Amorphous’s open challenge of you last week? He wants to be number one, do you feel threatened by that?”
“How does the GHDC plan to handle the SBI? Do they ever plan to defeat them?”
To be honest, it was a bit nerve-racking. Aimatheos (he vowed to pick a better name as soon as he had the time to think) realized that he had no concept of what any of those questions meant. Much less how to answer them. And there were a lot of people. And cameras. And microphones. They seemed a little surprised to see him.
He wondered if he ever made public appearances before today. They didn’t sound like something he would enjoy.
The pressure from earlier was back, but it wasn’t just coming from him anymore. It was all around him. It felt familiar, but suffocating. He needed out, he needed to leave . He didn’t like it, not at all. He began to walk away, and people just parted for him. They just let him walk away. None of the dozens of reporters and camera people seemed surprised by his lack of response. The whole situation felt wrong somehow. How? Fuck if he knew, but it did.
He was just walking in a general direction. Didn’t know where he was going. Just was. It was getting annoying, not knowin’ anything. He frowned.
There was a caw from above him. Looking up , he saw a crow. It was just kinda vibin’. Was pretty cool. Until it looked at him.
Beedie black eyes stared into his soul. They were way too intelligent to actually be allowed to exist. It unnerved him more than it should have. What kind of hellspawn was that? Something about it yelled danger, and so he proceeded to walk in the opposite direction.
He felt the pressure again, from behind him. It was approaching rapidly.
“Aimatheos! Please! Crowfather took my family hostage! They were in the bank, uh, Kinoko Bank? Please, you have to help them!” Someone grabbed Aimatheos’s sleeve, and he turned around. There was someone with pink hair and a light yellow T-shirt.
“Uh, sorry, ma’am, sir, person of prestige, but I don’t really know how to help you here. Now if you could let go of-” He didn’t even get to finish his sentence. How rude.
“But, you have to! You’re the only hero I’ve seen anywhere near here for the last hour! Mellohi already left, but Crowfather and Trimythi are still inside and are keeping people there! They want to talk to you! Please, talk to them! They’ll-” their voice broke off. They looked lost, and Aimatheos almost felt bad, but he didn’t really know what was happening at the moment, nor how to really help, so he just sort of stood there.
Another pressure to his right. He looked over, and there was another person. They had fluffy hair and a sweater.
“Niki, hey, why don’t we leave Aimatheos alone. I think he’s a little dazed at the moment. Why don’t we go find someone else to help, okay? I think I saw Pyre nearby, why don’t we go find him instead, okay?” the fluffy-haired guy walked over and began to comfort the person grabbing his shirt. They gave Pink-Hair a hug and began to guide them away, looking over their shoulder at Aimatheos with a strange expression.
Aimatheos stood there for a moment. Should he do something? What would he even do? He didn’t know who any of those people were, nor where they were, nor how to help. As much as he hated to say it, he couldn’t help even if he wanted to. He was effectively useless.
It felt so, so wrong to not be able to do something. It was an alien concept, being unable to step into action, to be unable to take the leap and dive headfirst towards something. Anything . It was wrong. So very wrong.
Much like that crow. Wrong.
Speaking of, there was another one. Another crow. Sitting on a window sill not twenty feet in front of him. Deciding he had nothing better to do, he walked towards it.
“Okay, now what?” he muttered as he stood in front of the little crow.
Said crow did not respond, as that is how crows work. They don’t speak english. Or any language for that matter.
Caw! Aimatheos jumped. To his left, there was another crow. This one seemed to judge him even more.
Pitiful mortal, it seemed to say, you jump at my call? Fool.
But this was impossible, because birds do not have the ability of telepathic communication. That is a fact. He refused to believe otherwise.
The crow in front of him flew to join the one on his left, and Aimatheos followed.
This is a smart life decision that I will not be regretting later .
—
I am most definitely regretting this , Aimatheos thought as he walked up to a group of ten crows. One of them sneezed. He felt judged.
“Aimatheos? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on duty,” someone to his left yelled. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of crows. What is Crowfather up to?” Aimatheos looked over at the nearing voice to find… a white guy.
Literally. His skin was the literal color white. Like, paper white. Kinda terrifying, to be honest.
But not as terrifying as the person(?)’s face.
It was a fucking lime green smiley face. It looked like it had been drawn on with a Sharpie.
“Uh, hullo,” Aimatheos greeted, shifting away from the crows.
“What are you doing? I heard you got in a fight with Mellohi earlier and were acting weird after. Like, you actually managed to get surrounded by the press. Did you finally decide to be social? Captain would be proud,” Demonic Smiley Face Of Death teased, pretending to wipe a tear from their face.
“Ah, yes, so um,” he stumbled out, debating on how to go about this. Would it be in his best interest to keep the memory loss tucked under wraps? Or should he tell someone? This guy seemed to know who he was, so maybe they could help?
“So, what if I told you that I have no idea who you are, or who I am for that matter? Mellohi explained some things for me, like the fact that apparently he accidentally wiped my memory. How? Still not sure, but honestly I don’t particularly care all that much at the moment.” He rubbed the back of his head before running his fingers through his hair, and was a little surprised to finally realize how his hand just kept going.
How long is my hair?
“You… have no idea who you are? Well, shit. I need to get you back to the GHDC before something happens to you. Way too many people would love to take advantage of that,” Ugly Lime Abomination said, seeming very concerned.
“And why should I go with you? And where would we be going? Who are you?” Aimatheos asked, crossing his arms.
“Oh, I’m a hero. Number two, second only to you, I guess. Amorphous is my name. He/him. The GHDC is the Greater Hero Decisions Council, they’ll be able to help you get your memories back,” Amorphous explained, then added “Probably.” It was an afterthought, and it didn’t sit right one bit.
“We should probably get you there sooner rather than later. The more people who see you acting weird, the more problems we’re gonna have. You comin, Aimatheos?” Amorphous began to walk away, back towards where he came from.
Aimatheos weighed his options.
Option one: Follow Amorphous and maybe get his memories back. Or he could die. Amorphous could kill him. He’d be dead.
Option two: Just stand here. Like, literally. That was an option. Just stay where he was and slowly become one with the ground beneath his feet.
Option three: Continue following the crows to who knows where. He could see the next crow, the eleventh one. It was about 50 yards away, and was planted on a second story windowsill. He could feel its judgment from here.
Looking away from the terrifying prospect of the crows, he yelled to Amorphous, “Yeah, comin’ I guess. You better not kill me.”
Amorphous’s smile became wider. A little too wide.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”