The Red Moon Always Shines

Chapter 18: The gathering

As Doc and Death were wandering around the Nether, Joe and Cleo where wandering around in a desert, looking for Enderman. With no luck.

"I can't believe this!" said Cleo, shooting the fiftieth husk of the night, "Where are all the Enderman?"

She tuned to look at her companion when he didn't say anything, "Joe? You ok?"

"Something's wrong," said the poet gravely, "Very wrong"

This made the zombie panic a bit, "What's wrong? Is it one of the others? Did something happen that you saw?"

"No, nothing like that," said Joe gently, eyes still looking out for tall black end people, "It's more like something feels wrong, like I'm doing something horrible"

"Something horrible? Like what?" asked Cleo, looking at her friend with worry, "And why do you feel like this? You haven't done anything bad"

"It's almost like I feel like I'm possessing someone, corrupting their mind," said the brunette weakly, "And the worst part is that I can tell that they trust me, I'm someone they look to for protection. I'm using them, and they have no clue. And I don't know why I feel like this, it started a few hours ago..."

Cloe put a hand on Joe's shoulder, a comforting smile on her face, "It's just a feeling, maybe it has something to do with that dude arriving? Whatever it is, I'm positive it's not you"

"No, Cleo, you don't get it," said the blue shirt wearing man, eyes locked with ten girls, "This isn't just some made up feeling, I know it isn't! Some part of me is hurting someone!"

"Your not kidding," breathed Cleo at the serious tone Joe used. And at his nod she looked up blankly, "Someone's using some part of you to corrupt another person's mind? Why? And who's doing it?"

"I don't know, I wish I did, but I don't," whispered Joe, looking up at the moon as if that would answer his questions, "We better continue to look, maybe go hunt in the End instead of a desert"

"Are you sure you're ok to continue?" asked Cleo, "You seem pretty shaken"

"I'm fine-"

"Your not," said a calm, yet stoic, voice, "Far from it"

The two whirled around to come face with-

"Grian?"

Behind them stood a figure resembling their lost friend, but at a closer inspection they could see it clearly wasn't Grian. First he was way too tall to be their gremlin, second his hair was black, and lastly he was made out of metal. This was the robot they'd seen the first day, Robot Grian.

"No," responded Rodger dryly.

"Why are you here?" asked Cleo suspiciously.

"Why do you think? To help you clean the desert of sand?" asked the robot sarcastically, "No, I'm here to help you get the Enderman eyes"

"Alright, but no funny tricks!" threatened Cleo, she wasn't going to let this hunk of junk hurt her friend, not as long as she could stop it.

"No funny tricks," promised Rodger, "Now can we get going? I'd prefer if we got done as quickly as we can"

And so the newly assembled hunting group set off to find Enderman.

In a completely different part of the server, at Xisuma's raid farm to be more exact, the rest of the Hermits where discussing how they'd get a ravager and a Vex put without dying over and over.

"It's impossible!" cried Zedaph for the hundredth time in the last minute, "Why can't we just go near villagers with the bad omen effect? Why is that so hard?"