Nowhere To Go But Up

Deduction and Dejection

"Huh? Wait, what? What's happening? Where are we? How are you here?" Marx wasn't exactly calm with this turn of events. Or ever, really.

"Relax, Marx. This is my home. I brought you here after I found you conked out in a dirty old crate. The look suits you, I must say." Magolor giggled. "I hope you don't mind the method. You looked like you were about a week away from dying, so I felt like I had to take you somewhere safe."

Marx rolled off the couch. "Agh... how did you find me? I was in a hole in a cave in a forest that was covered in mist! What kind of magic did you pull?"

"I guess you could say I just had a feeling."

Marx had shifted himself into a more comfortable position, and had his wings sprawled out on the floor next to him. "It is so good to bring these out again! That wire was a real pain, you know?"

Magolor finally closed his laptop and hovered over to Marx. "I imagine it must have been. It was covered in your blood. Now that you're awake, I wanted to ask you a few things about that cave."

"Screw that! I wanna eat something that's not an overripe banana I found in a box!"

"Fair enough. How do we feel about spaghetti with garlic bread?"

"I LOVE the way you think! Get me some of that!"

As Magolor went to prepare the meal, he took a good look around the pantry. Something about the room seemed amiss, but he couldn't quite place it. He took a long, hard look at the bowl of fruit on top of the pile of boxes he had in a near corner. Boxes, fruit. Could it be a coincidence? The boxes were all the same make and size, and stacked in a 3x2x2 pattern. The big bowl on top always sat on the box in the middle of the back, or at least it did until now. The box it was usually on was gone, and it instead sat in front of it, making the gap harder to see. There's another clue to add to the mental pile.

As he waited for the water to boil, he started to silently indulge in his own thoughts. I'm looking for a few people. The identity of R1-G, the break-in culprit, the person who lives in that home behind the waterfall, the one who wrote me that note, the one who put that fragment in my brain, the one who stole that crate, the one who attacked Marx, the other survivor(s) of the facility's explosion, and the one who planted the bombs. There's an extremely high possibility that the answer to most, if not all of these people are one and the same. Now, for leads.

Marx. He'd be able to clear up a few things, so I'm anxious to see what kinds of things I can learn from him. He could even fit the bill for a few of the things I'm looking for. The mist appeared fourteen years ago, and that approximately lines up with when Marx disappeared from Another Dimension. The mist is produced from that big flower in the cavern, so for those fourteen years, someone had to be watering it. Depending on when Marx got injured, that could explain why the mist started thinning until I got back. If he was the one who created the mist, it's likely that he was also the one who lived in that house behind the waterfall. That would mean he would at least know something about the photo in the nightstand, or the bookshelf that opens when i scan my own name.

As far as other information goes, when I woke up after losing my memory, I was just lying in a hole in a floating rock. That would make sense, if not for the fact that it doesn't. I was stuck in a transparent case when I was thrown out of the facility. When I woke up, the case was gone. Where did it go? How long was I unconscious in there? Did Marx take it? Or was it gone before he found me? The book was in the secret room, but it used to be in the case. It looks, from that, that Marx might be the one behind everything, but from what I've already heard from Kirby and his friends that they've seen him around on Popstar regularly enough before his stunt with the clockwork star.