After the events of "A Journey's End"

"Adventure!" Ivor leapt through the red portal with hardly a second thought. Even though he had brought the Atlas along on his impromptu new journey, he didn't need it for this specific mission. He knew exactly where the red portal with the redstone frame led. There were a few loose ends that he needed to tie up. Specifically, a person he wanted to talk to.

He fell a few feet and then landed in the Mesa World. Specifically, he landed in the midst of a sandy path beating its way over the plateaus of sun-baked clay. He had already been this way before, so he knew how to get to Crown Mesa. He started on a brisk walk, hands in his robe pockets. He was glad to not have any encounters with creepy chipped zombies on his way. After about fifteen minutes, a plateau loomed up in front of him. Wooden stairs reached up to its top. Ivor climbed the stairs, thinking of the right thing to say when he got to where he was going. He reached inside his Pocket to check if the rose was still there. It was. Good. He needed the rose, because he had a special someone he wanted to give it to.

Crown Mesa had significantly improved following PAMA's defeat. The water wells had been replenished and canals built. Because of this, farms could now be established. There were healthy green farms and gardens instead of a sea of dried-up clay and sand. The houses had been improved once rebuilt, so now they kept cool even better than before. The best part, though, was the sight of the citizens. The Crown Mesans were going about town as clear-thinking, free-willed citizens, moving around in delightful disorganization. There wasn't a red eye or a jerky movement to be seen.

Ivor flagged down one man who was painting clay for a new house. "Excuse me."

"Yes?" he replied.

"I'm looking for Harper. Do you know where she is?"

The man thought about it for a moment, trying to remember, and then he said, "Oh, right. She's inside the wreckage of PAMA over there. I don't know what she's doing. Maybe you'd better not bother her."

"She won't be bothered. I'm a friend. I admire her work."

"Mmokay. If you say so."

It had been impossible to miss PAMA the first time he was at Crown Mesa, so Ivor didn't have any trouble re-locating the remains of the computer. The computer's giant screen was cracked from people kicking and breaking it. They had also written some naughty things about how much they hated PAMA on the glass with black ink. Ivor was disappointed, but was too busy with his task to stop and wipe off the graffiti. Someone else could do that later.

It was strange that Harper would be inside the wreckage of PAMA, of all places, but after thinking about it, Ivor could draw some logic behind it. Maybe she was salvaging redstone wiring, or helping to dismantle the machine from the inside. He climbed through a hole in the glass large enough to pass through and entered the inner chamber.

Just as he theorized, Harper was at work inside the wreckage. She had built a hasty scaffolding from sandstone and was collecting redstone wire and quartz from the defunct machinery. She was so engrossed in her work that she did not notice Ivor approach. She kept collecting materials and stuffing them into her Pocket until he walked up to her and loudly cleared his throat.

"Gah!" Harper yelped, dropping the redstone dust and quartz she was carrying. They fell off the scaffold and disappeared into the depths of the machinery. Harper watched them fall, disappointed, then looked up to scold whoever scared her. She stopped short when she saw that it was Ivor.

"H-h-hello, Har-harper," Ivor stuttered, not so confident all of a sudden.

"What are you doing here? I thought you went back to your homeworld." Harper stood up and brushed redstone dust off her overcoat.

"I had to come back!" Ivor said. "I, um...There's something I have to give you!"

"Like what?"

"Uhh...Um…" He pulled the rose out of his Pocket. "Here. I should have given you this before you left in the Portal Hallway."

Harper took the flower out of his hand. "You came all this way just to give me a flower?"

Ivor nodded. "Is...is that not right?"

"No, it's fine, it's just...something that takes a lot of dedication." She squinted at him. "Wait a second. Why do I get the feeling that...people usually don't give each other roses for no reason…"

It was a good thing that the ambient light inside the wreckage of PAMA was bright red, because Ivor was blushing severely. "I...I think you're a very intriguing person. You're amazing!"

Harper chuckled. "Oh, Ivor, why didn't you just tell me you felt this way about me? We could have arranged something. I could have wrapped up my projects in Crown Mesa and then come home with you. You didn't have to run all the way over here to give me a rose."

"I...um…"

"In any case, I like it. Roses are nice flowers." She pocketed the rose. "Say, while you're here, would you like to see my main project?"

"Isn't it cleaning up the mess PAMA made?"

Harper smirked like she knew a fantastic secret. "That's what the Crown Mesa people think, but it's not quite it. That's my main project everyone knows about. My real main project is a secret."

"I'm intrigued."

"Come with me if you want to see it."

"It's not here in the village?"

"Too risky. We're going to my old secret lab."

Harper and Ivor walked side by side down the corridor to her lab. Cool, dry drafts blew through the hard clay tunnel. Their footsteps echoed softly in the wide space.

"So what is this top secret project you've been working on?" Ivor asked as they trekked along.

"Wouldn't be much of a secret project if I told people, now would it?" Harper winked. "I'll show you as soon as we enter the lab."

They walked for a little ways longer and turned a bend. Then the hallway opened up into a foyer lit by the teal glow of sea lanterns. Below a sculpture resembling a funny face lit by lava, and beyond a glass panel on the floor, was the laboratory entrance. Now that PAMA was no longer on the attack, the water-based security system was unnecessary; Harper and Ivor could directly enter the lab without fiddling with pouring water buckets into cauldrons. So they did. Ivor sped to the doors and held them open for Harper.

"Ladies first," he offered with a cheesy grin.

Harper rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Oh, Ivor. Come on in the lab already. It's something very exciting."

Harper's lab was a cavernous room carved from the hard clay, with polished andesite stone patching the walls at some points. Wool lined the floor, and the whole place was lit by sea lanterns. Bookcases towered above their heads and all kinds of utilities for engineering were scattered about the room: crafting tables, furnaces, anvils, chests of supplies, tall water tanks, and some other random scientific gizmos. The greeter-robots were gone; Harper had pulled them out and discarded them when the population of Crown Mesa was freed. Now that the people were in their right minds again, she didn't need weird talking statues for companionship.

In the middle of the room was a metal table, with trays on the side for holding tools. Mirrors diverted some of the light from the lanterns to the surface to better illuminate the projects on the table. It was the high-tech cousin of a workbench.

On top of it lay Harper's latest project. Ivor didn't have a clue what exactly it was, but it was absurd. It looked like a child made out of steel plates. It had spiky "hair" colored green and a large pair of goggles over its face. The plate of casing over its chest was removable, and Harper had taken it off and set it on the table beside the body. She was working on the internal mechanisms inside its chest cavity. Even though robots don't really need to wear clothes, Harper had dressed the robot-kid with black shorts and a pair of red sneakers. Probably a modesty thing.

"What is that? It looks like a child made out of metal," Ivor commented.

"It's a robot. It's ambulatory. It can move and walk around by itself."

"Interesting."

"I call him Mini-PAMA."

Ivor did a double take. "Mini-WHAT?!" He backpedaled several steps away from the workbench, as if 'Mini-PAMA' was suddenly going to spring up and attack him despite being deactivated.

Harper smiled, sheepish. "Mini-PAMA. Look, I know what you're thinking, but don't jump to conclusions. Yes, this is PAMA reprogrammed and put in a little robot body, but he's just that—revised, redone! I programmed all the evil out of him."

Ivor was still skeptical. "How does that work?"

"Well, I'm not going to go into the very technical details, but I added a new block into his code to fix his obsession with making things 'useful.' His morality chip, if you will. He can recognize humans and will not try to make them 'useful' anymore. I'm also scaling back his capabilities so he can't get out of control again. I put a barrier into his AI so he can't independently advance beyond the average 12-year-old's intelligence. I'm also installing a less potent power source. The Redstone Heart was too much for him to handle."

"What do you have in mind for a replacement?"

"This." Harper took a small object out of her Pocket and showed it to Ivor. It was no bigger than a can of soup and about the same shape, too. Wires stuck out of either end, and the whole deal was plated in shiny yellow metal. Between pieces of plate, a green glow pulsed from within the power source.

"Fascinating. What is that?"

"It's a battery. I call it Mini-PAMA's 'heart of gold.' Pretty fitting name, wouldn't you say?"

"Fair enough, but I'm still a bit hesitant. Are you sure this is safe?"

"If I did everything right, there's not a thing to worry about," Harper reassured him. "If I screwed something up, well, it's won't be as hard to fix it this time. He's much easier to deactivate in this form. If you can catch him, that is."

She crossed over to the workbench, carrying the heart of gold. She fit it into Mini-PAMA's chest cavity and attached the wires. The battery neatly clicked into place. Then she put the casing plate back on the body and secured the screws. As she did it, Ivor backed away from the workbench, super paranoid.

"Okay," Harper said when she was done. "Everything's in place. All that's left is to power him on…"

Ivor took shelter behind a bookcase.

Harper pressed a switch on the robot's upper arm, near the shoulder. There was the whir of electricity powering up. PAMA's "loading" dot appeared on Mini-PAMA's goggles before playing the "active" sound and changing to the digital image of his eyes. Harper stood back and stayed quiet.

She jumped back, startled, when Mini-PAMA abruptly cried out "Noooooo!" and punched the air with his small metal fist. In Mini's mind, he was picking right up where he left off as regular PAMA. He screeched again before realizing that he wasn't fighting Jessie anymore. Sitting up, he dropped his theatrics and glanced around the room instead, a bemused expression displayed on his goggles.

"...Where am I?" He glanced down at his little robot body and got even more confused. "What am I?"

"Hello, Mini-PAMA. Do you remember me?" Harper asked gently.

Mini-PAMA processed it, dredging up the old information from the corners of his robotic brain. "You are Harper, my creator."

"Good, good."

He looked sad. "My morality chip tells me that I have been a very bad computer."

Harper didn't want to be harsh with Mini, but she wanted to be honest, too. "Yes. You have been. You should have obeyed me."

"I hurt a lot of people, Miss Harper."

"True."

"And I tried to kill Jessie when she went into my core."

"Also true."

"You shouldn't have reactivated me. I'm a bad computer."

"Not anymore," Harper said. "I reactivated you to give you a second chance. I know you want to be a good guy. And I think you can do it."

Mini looked down at his sneakered feet, doubtful.

"Well, I still don't trust him," Ivor chimed in, emerging from his bulwark behind the bookcase. "Can you really 'reform' him out of his obsession with making things efficient?"

"Oh, dear!" Mini shrank back. "It's Mr. Ivor. Is he still angry with me?"

Harper sighed. "Oh, Ivor. Give him a chance, please."

"I'm not hearing an apology from the computer," Ivor grumped.

"Mr. Ivor, if you still don't like me, I understand," Mini-PAMA said. "I now know that what I did in the past was wrong. I'm sorry for hurting your friends. But please give me a chance...find a place in your heart to forgive me if you can. I don't want to be evil anymore. I know that, from reading memories in the past, people can change. Well, I think that computers can change, too. I want to be useful, but this time in the way that my creator decides. I'm not going to use the chips. I'm very sorry for hurting the people. Too much control isn't good. Free will is...more useful."

Ivor crossed his arms, eyebrows perked in intrigue. "Well, I'll be. That was actually quite impressive."

"I want to be a good guy," the robot kid concluded.

"You're going to be. I can help you." Harper struggled to fit a long-sleeved shirt over Mini's head. Then she slipped a thin leather jacket on his shoulders.

"You had an outfit planned for him and everything," Ivor remarked. "You know, Harper, you have a penchant for treating your creations like your children."

"Well, who's going to make sure his battery stays charged, if not me?" Harper defensively put her arm around Mini's shoulders and pulled him close. "He can't be useful if his battery runs out. Then he'll just fall asleep right where he stands."

"Depleted batteries are not useful," Mini mumbled.

Harper fussily smoothed Mini's shirt sleeves. "And I have to protect him from the Crown Mesa citizens. I don't think very many of them are ready to forgive him yet."

"I wouldn't expect them to be," Ivor said.

Harper shuffled through a crate placed next to the workbench. From it, she retrieved a black electrical cord with a plug. It must have been Mini's charging cord. She rolled it up into a coil and put it in her overcoat pocket.

"There," said she. "Now I can have his cord on hand at all times."

"What's the first thing you have planned for him?"

"We're going to start with a security grid," Harper said, half to Ivor and half to Mini. "Now that we don't have monsters chipped anymore, they're a nighttime threat again. I'm planning on building smart traps that will catch monsters but not people. Mini can help me with that."

"Let me look through my apps list...Oh yeah! Ms. Harper installed all the mathematical algorithms that I'll need to be useful," Mini chattered. "I can draw circuit maps and estimate the resources she'll need. She can update me with more features as time goes on. Right, Ms. Harper?"

"Right, Mini." She turned to Ivor. "I don't want to give him too much at once. Anyway, once we're done with the grid, I'm going to figure out a way to clean up the damage from the old PAMA monitor. There's still a lot of glass and redstone wire and quartz to get rid of."

"I'm gonna be useful! I'm gonna be useful!" Mini cheered, prancing around the room.

"I have high hopes," Harper said to Ivor.

"If you say so."

"You know, if you're so afraid of Mini causing trouble, why don't you stay behind so you can help me keep an eye on him?" Harper suggested.

Oh! Getting to spend more time with Harper? Ivor tried not to sound too excited.

"I'm taking you up on that offer!" he blurted.

After all, he came here for another ADVENTURE!

A/N: We be done!

Portal Party is now completely finished.

This is satisfying. What I originally planned to be a series of quick, funny oneshots turned into something so much bigger. I had a lot of fun exploring the personalities of the main cast, having them explore new settings, and meeting a cast of funky OCs.

I'm honored that people liked Portal Party so much, and I've really enjoyed becoming a part of this community and making friends here. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the MCSM fandom is the best fandom I've ever been a part of. You guys are so creative, friendly, upbeat, and understanding. I hope our smol, awesome fandom stays active for a good long time.

Stay tuned for upcoming Silly Mode shorts and new chapters for A Touch of Magic. I will be releasing chapters of the sequel to Portal Party, MCSM Rebuilt, as soon as possible.

Lots of love!

Tealy