A/N: Just so you know, I'm not going to use 'stones' and 'marks',
Mobius' official measurements according to Archie. This is because
they're annoying, but rest assured I did take the time to accurately
translate measurements to feet and pounds. However the measurements
didn't make sense with one another, so I'm using any heights I came up
with but making the weights up as I feel appropriate.

Chapter VI.

"It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,"
-Schmendrick the Magician, 'The Last Unnicorn'

He looked dubiously at the winding staircase previously hidden in the
large tree trunk. Was Knothole Village some sort of underground bunker?
He'd never gotten that picture from the people he'd interrogated. Well,
he'd see soon enough.

He looked at the furry girl. "This is it?"

She nodded. "There's another way in, the great oak slide, it was a
little closer, but I didn't think since you were injured at all..."

"Ah, thank you." Great oak slide? He didn't like the sound of that.
It conjured images of a pastime he'd never really liked as a child,
Overlander fun parks. Maybe the girl had a bit more sense than she
looked, but he wondered if she could manage to string even one whole
sentence together properly. She certainly didn't seem to be having
much luck at it.

"Well, uh, c'mon, you need to see the doctor," she started down the
shadowy steps.

For a moment he gazed sourly back out at the forest. That woman had
better not be leading him into more trouble than this was worth. But
he was fairly sure that she was, and that this evenings affairs would
be only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. He turned sharply and
began picking his way down the stirs, careful not to trip on anything
and pitch head first down into the blackness. He noticed that the
door of the tree had slid shut behind them.

They walked approximately as far down as he had walked up from the
place where he had awakened. He didn't bother to count this
time, he had other things on his mind like the way the back of his
head was throbbing and probably loosing blood like, well, like a nasty
head wound. But he guessed that they were probably seventy-five to a
hundred feet below ground when they came to the exit.

The strange thing was that the light coming from that egress was not
artificial, and when they passed through the door, again inset in a
large tree, they came out just as surrounded by trees and greenery as
they had entered. Perhaps they had come into some sort of large valley
somehow hidden from all means of location. He looked up at the clouded
sky and then around at the trees and paths, seemingly chaotic and
unintentionally placed, but he could see a strange sort of order to it
all. Then he perceived the houses, buildings set in the tree branches
like the ultimate expression of some child's play fort. Well built, he
could see, seemingly architecturally sound, with little walk ways
connecting some of them like streets. He chuckled silently to himself.
So this was what was so valuable that for ten years not one captive
would speak it's secret.

It didn't seem so very wonderful to him as he followed Mina through
it, under the trees to where ever Doctor Quack lived or kept his
practice. Give him a sterile, temperature controlled, pest free
environment any day. This place was probably crawling with insects. He
shuddered at the thought, he had something of a phobia about crawly
things with too many legs and hair, or slime... He shook of the thought
in disgust.

"It's up here," the young girl said quietly, taking hold of a ladder
on one of the tree trunks, and started climbing.

Snively winced. He just knew he was going to fall, or get a splinter
the size of half a matchstick, but he followed her slowly and
cautiously up anyway. Happily he got to the top without a single
unpleasant incident. He breathed a small sigh.

"This way," Mina, said. he still didn't know quite what sort of
creature she was, it was very dark and he couldn't make out any
features beyond the yellow of her fur.

She led him down a little ways on one of the overhead sidewalks, past
three or four small, unlit houses. And then something occurred to him
which sparked his curiosity.

"Er miss," he asked as politely as he could manage, which was
actually quite polite as he had a lot of practice with his Uncle, "If
I might ask, what exactly were you doing out so late?"

"Oh, ah, just out running," she replied, a little evasively.

Just running, hmm, he thought. "At midnight?" he asked aloud.

She laughed nervously. "I needed a little space."

He smirked and asked concernedly, and privately ironically, "Isn't
that just a little dangerous? Who knows what sort of villains you might
run into, skulking about with who knows what on their mind." And then
for effect he said musingly, "I wonder what I was doing out so late."

It seemed she had almost forgotten his 'amnesia' because she
hesitated mid-stride and said, "I'm sure Doctor Quack will know a way
to get your memory back."

"I certainly hope so, its rather unnerving to be walking around with
no notion of who one is or what one is doing." The last bit was true.
He was exasperated by the fact that Geheivia had given him such vague
instructions. Damn her, he knew that things weren't going to stay as
easy as they seemed at the moment. What if he accidentally did or said
something that would make the next part of whatever he was supposed to
do harder, or impossible, just because he didn't know what he was going
to have to do? He'd have to choose his words and actions carefully.

"We're here," Mina announced, stopping in front of a dark house which
didn't look any different from the others. She knocked on the door.

Snively drew himself up just a little from his normal skulking
posture since, if anyone would, Quack was one of the people most likely
to recognize him, thanks to when the Robotnik had him prisoner working
on the Nullifier.

For a moment it seemed that no one was home, or no one had heard, but
then a light went on inside and someone could be heard shuffling toward
the door. It opened revealing a tired, bleary-eyed duck man with a lab
coat and stethoscope on.

He yawned. "Mina? What are you doing here so late?"

She shuffled a foot shamedly. "I was out running and I knocked
somebody down and they hit there head," she said slowly but spoke
faster as she got going. "And he's bleeding and now he can't remember
anything!" She wailed quietly. "And I didn't know what to do but he
definitely needs a doctor so I brought him here!"

Quack raised an eyebrow. "Come in," he said, turning and walking into
the room.

Mina hung her head and followed him in, as did the 'patient', through
his waiting room and into an office with a hospital bed much nicer than
one of those doctor's beds with the paper on them, and a chair and
several shelves of medical equipment.

Snively squinted, the light hurting after the long bout in near
darkness. He shaded his eyes with a delicate hand and waited for them
to adjust.

It was barely a moment before he heard a small intake of breath.
"You're an Overland," Mina said, seeing him in decent lighting
conditions for the first time. She didn't sound particularly frightened,
just rather surprised.

So she hadn't noticed that before. She'd taken him to be a furry like
herself. He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes having gotten used to
the brightness quickly. He looked at her, feigning puzzlement. "Am I?
...Ah, what exactly does that mean?"

She blinked. "You don't even remember that? Oh no!" she sat down
heavily in one of the doctor's waiting room chairs. She put her face in
her hands, and might or might not have been crying.

The doctor on the other hand regarded him. "It means," he said with
all the authority of a public servant, "that you come from a land other
than this one. Specifically Overlander refers to the race which you would
seem to belong to, which is in the main, devoid of fur or feathers, and
as a race, has a tendency to the warlike."

"Oh," he said, looking curiously at his own pale skinned hands, and
then at the doctor and at Mina.

He took this chance to get a good look at the girl. Besides the
yellow that covered most of her body, her hair, or the fur on her head
or whatever, was long and violet. He wondered if she perhaps dyed it.
She possessed no tail that he could see, and from her general body form
he judged that she was most likely a bear or a badger or maybe a
ferret.

"Are you alright Miss Mina?" he asked warmly.

She looked up. "I'm a horrible person, I made you loose your whole
memory."

"Well, not ALL of it," he said optimistically, "I'm fairly sure my name
is Davin. And besides, I'm sure your doctor can help me." All this
syrupy dialogue was leaving him a faintly ill feeling.

"Quite probably," Quack said, giving Mina a pat on the shoulders, and
then approaching his patient. "Now, you said you had a head wound? I'd
better take a look at that first."

He turned so the doctor could do his job. He prodded the cut a little.

"This isn't so bad, most of the bleeding's stopped, but we'd better
clean it out so it doesn't get infected and bandage it." He got a jar of
something and some adhesive bandages off a shelf. "Now, this might
sting a little," he said, unscrewing the jar.

Snively gritted his teeth. Doctors had a habit of understating pain,
and he discovered that this one was no better. The moment he started
rubbing the salve on his cut it started burning and the sensation got
worse and worse as the stuff permeated his wound.

"Eep," he squeaked smally, closing one eye. And the pain stopped. He
blinked, what on Mobius? Then he remembered the god's promise to negate
pain if he cried out. Apparently she'd been good to her word, that time
at least.

"That wasn't so bad was it?" the doctor asked rhetorically, fixing
the bandage to the back of his head. "There. Now, let's see," he
picked up a pad of paper and a pen. "Patient's name, Davin, yes?"

He nodded.

"Patient is... male, I presume?"

Another nod.

"You probably don't know how old you are do you?"

He shook his head.

He sighed, "Well, I'd guess you between seventeen and twenty. Alright,
why don't you stand up and come over to the scale. Take off your shoes
first."

He slid off the bed and walked over. It was one of those scales that
also measured height. He pulled off his boots and stood on the scale.
The doctor fussed over the balances and measurements. He muttered a bit
to himself and then, "you're three foot five inches tall."

He winced inwardly at the mention of his height, as it was only
slightly better than half the average Overlander, though it WAS the
average for a furry. He sometimes wondered about that, and it made him
quite irate.

"...and," the doctor clucked, "sixty...three pounds. You definitely
need to eat more, it looks as though you've been starved."

That was because he practically was, and it didn't help that he had a
metabolism like nobody's business. "Wonder why that is?" he murmured
curiously, not forgetting his role as amnesiac.

"Well, have a seat again," he nodded to the bed.

The Overland sat down, setting his boots by the bed. Quack shined a
bright. little light in his eyes that made them water. "Mmhmm, follow
my finger with your eyes," he said, moving it slowly in front of his
face with his patient's gaze following it. "Well, if you had a
concussion you've recovered now." He took another long look at his face.
"Do I know you from somewhere?"

He chuckled, "Damned if I know doctor." He hoped that the thought
would be dropped without the doctor figuring out that yes, they had
met before. Although, with the cushion of his 'amnesia' he might be able
to work around it if they figured out who he was and gain their trust
anyway.

Thankfully the duck man seemed to have shrugged it off. "Well, take
off your shirt."

Snively frowned slightly but did so, noticing that Mina had averted
her eyes. The doctor pressed his cold stethoscope to his chest.

"Breath in...and out. Good," he put the device on his back. "In
again... and out. In, out. Good. Heartbeat's a little fast but not
abnormal. I'd wager you're a heavy coffee drinker. Open your mouth."
He stuck a tongue depressor in. "Mmhmm, definitely a coffee drinker.
Okay. You can put your shirt on, we're done."

"What?" Mina said, interrupting for the first time. "But his memory!
You didn't do anything!"

"And I can't, not until tomorrow when I'll have access to Sir Charles'
lab. At which point I will run as many scans and tests as possible to
determine the cause of this young man's amnesia. He can spend the
night resting here. And as for you, Miss Mongoose, I would suggest
you go home and get some sleep yourself."

So that was what she was. "You ought to," he told her with false
concern. "I'll be fine."

She looked at him, her own concern genuine. "Are you sure?"

He nodded.

She sighed. "Alright then," she said, standing up. "I'll see you
tomorrow." She walked out.

"My house is upstairs," Doctor Quack said. "I'm going to bed. If you
need anything..."

"I'm sure I'll be fine doctor, turn the light out when you leave,
will you?"

To be continued...

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