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The Reasonable Next Step (Cannibalism)

Cub did not understand. Never for a second did he think he was wrong, nor did he doubt himself now, but if he wasn’t wrong (which he wasn’t), then why did Mumbo say no?

It did not make sense. (and his feelings were a little bit hurt) It did not make sense.

Mumbo had always been a bit of an oddity, and Cub used to attribute this to the fact that he was just so.. normal? Mumbo was jumpy, yes, he’d always been on the edgier side, but other than that, he was just human, just doing his own thing, standing out only because of how painfully ordinary he was minus perhaps the height and the gaunt figure.

Cub wondered if Mumbo had looked more haggard lately, in the past few years maybe, or if that was just his mind playing tricks on him. Those eyebags, whew. Cub had truly never seen anyone get so little sleep.

But Mumbo was not normal. Mumbo was not even the slightest bit ordinary, however Cub had only started noticing in season eight.

Maybe that’s when Mumbo started losing his grip, Cub didn’t know, but two events over the course of those months stood out to him as particularly insane, those being the stealing of Grian’s soul and the sacrifice of Bdubs to ‘appease the moon,’ which was a perfectly on brand thing for Scar to do, but Mumbo? ‘Peace, love, and plants’ Mumbo?

That’s what had gotten Cub’s attention in the first place actually; Mumbo had always been famously uncomfortable around blood and gore, uninterested in murder on a good day, even as part of a game, but he had seemed particularly unwell then, not only because he was so damn skinny that a small gust of wind could’ve knocked him clean over, but the insistence on only eating certain foods, bordering on not eating at all; it had worried Cub, to be frank. He and Mumbo were never close, but he remembered stopping by once or twice to check in, and generally hanging around to make sure he was okay. Mumbo always insisted he was just fine. And then Cub heard he threw Grian into a meat grinder and was a tad more concerned.

Technically Mumbo had not been the one to put Grian into his killing machine, but he may as well have been, tricking Grian into signing a contract than leading him to his own gratuitously violent death- Now all of this Cub heard from Scar, so perhaps there was a bit of hyperbole going on, but Cub had checked out the machine, and even compared to Cub’s own violent history it looked.. intense.

Maybe not intense coming from some other hermits, but out of pocket from Mumbo.

Now, with the moon growing large and crashing into the server, it was safe to say everyone was a tiny bit off their rocker, but Mumbo didn’t sleep well on a normal day, so Cub wasn’t sure he believed the whole idea of the Boatem Mooners as they were called, making a pact not to sleep, which, inevitably, drove the whole lot of them off the deep end. But Mumbo lived like that normally; Cub couldn’t recall more than two times he’d actually seen Mumbo asleep over a period of years, and in his passive observation, it felt like something was off about Mumbo’s behavior in the Mooner cult. It felt.. like an excuse. And maybe that was just a hunch, it’s not like Cub had any real evidence, but participating in a ritual sacrifice seemed severely unlike Mumbo, even if he only hauled Bdubs up to the pyre in the first place and Scar was the one who set the flame.

Cub didn’t care of course. What Mumbo did with his time was his own business, and Cub certainly wasn’t judgemental but.. well, he was interested. It was like your reliable average joe experiences a short burst of pure unbridled mania, then goes back to normal the next day pretending none of it happened. Cub just had a feeling there was more there, more to him, and god if he didn’t want to know what it was.

He considered stalking to be a strong word. What he did was not stalking.

However, if Mumbo was around, or Cub caught a passing glance of him sneaking off by himself, he may have followed, never revealing his presence. And that- in the back half of season eight and the start of season nine. Cub had seen some things. He had certainly seen some things.

Now, Cub was no stranger to rituals. In general vex and their counterparts were ritualistic creatures, drawn to performance and sacrifice and dance. He was always drawn to violence, as was Scar, and they had shared more than a couple vile displays of lust and brutality. It was indulgence, it was a show, and in truth, the only reason the sacrifice of animals was not a more common occurrence is because Scar shied away from it, preferring to use their own flesh and blood. It did not bother Cub either way. If the treatment of animals was among his top concerns, he’d have quite a few issues with some of the other inhabitants of the server.

All of this preface to say that the things Cub witnessed Mumbo doing to animals was enough to make him think that pigs and chickens had orphaned him, stolen all his most precious possessions, burned down his childhood home, then ate all his children and cursed his bloodline, because seriously, what the hell?

Cub was not someone who was easily disturbed, but watching Mumbo set animals from various farms loose, chase and maim them for literal hours (sometimes whole nights) leave them with horrific injuries, then only when they couldn’t stand to run any longer, eat them alive- It was a deeply fascinating, deeply unnerving display, coupled by.. whatever the fuck Mumbo was. It sure as hell wasn’t human, something Cub was relieved to figure out quickly.

Mumbo was tall, but even then, he was too fast. There were moments when parts of him were too long, a leg or fingers, and sometimes too sharp- From a distance, Cub didn’t know how Mumbo was inflicting such brutal lacerations, and even with a spyglass, Cub couldn’t quite tell, but he had to be changing, his body had to be adapting to his physical needs. Mumbo was too strong as well; this was something Cub had witnessed in places other than remote locations thousands of blocks from spawn, but it was true! No one that skinny, bordering on emaciated, had enough muscle to sustain activities like this, much less break bones with a snap of a hand and restrain terrified animals twice his size.

All of this was inhuman, however, most of these things could also be explained away as tricks of the light, or misunderstandings of human anatomy. Unlikely, yes, but possible.

Cub really knew when he saw Mumbo eat for the first time.

And when he said the first time, he meant the first time; even when Mumbo had made eating potatoes his whole identity, Cub had never actually seen him eat anything. When he asked Scar before this whole ordeal, the thought had never occurred to Scar before, but when he asked Grian, he had only told Cub that Mumbo was private with his meals, too anxious to eat in front of others. Honestly, Cub had thought Mumbo had some kind of eating disorder. Given the state of him, it wasn’t a poor assumption, and Cub got the sense Grian felt similarly, though he wouldn’t give any more information other than ‘Mumbo is anxious,’ stubbornly close-lipped. Cub got the sense Grian knew a little more than he was letting on, and given how nosy he was, Cub found himself wondering if Grian had seen Mumbo eat before, really eat.

After pressing, majorly pissing Grian off in the process, Cub was a little more sure, though, Grian getting pissed off could just as easily be a symptom of Cub being an asshole and nothing more. Sometimes Cub didn’t know when to stop, but Scar had a pretty good system of letting him know. (“Cub, you’re being an asshole.” to which he would respond “Oh, okay.” For some reason people avoided telling Cub to shut the fuck up even when they really wanted to, but it would make his life a lot easier if they did.)

But yes, it was quite clear that Mumbo was not human when the hunt was over and he finally started to eat.

Mumbo didn’t.. Cub wasn’t exactly sure if he chewed, rather than just.. swallowing. A lot. Too much at a time. Mumbo’s body seemed to accommodate him more than a human body ever should- he had teeth, Cub knew he had teeth, but it seemed instead he preferred to eat as much as he could whole.

Snakes could unhinge their jaws, striking, then positioning their prey so they could eat it head first, killing it faster, reducing the chance they may get scratched or bit.

Mumbo did not do this. Perhaps he did unhinge his jaw, but a human mouth, even broken in every sense of the word, could not possible take as much as Mumbo did at once, his body distorting and bubbling in ways that couldn’t be anything less than painful, bones and muscles rearranging, skin stretching, it was horrible, but Mumbo didn’t even take his prey head first.

It made no sense. Why would he start at the back, where he could be kicked, scratched, where it was easier for whatever he was consuming to bend over and bite him, hurt him. Is that why he tired his prey out so completely? Waited until they were completely exhausted? But even then, they still fought. Nothing being eaten alive like this could simply let it happen, the will to live was too strong, regardless of the inevitable hopelessness.

Cub wondered if Mumbo wanted to be hurt. If Mumbo thought he should be hurt by kicking feet and flailing jaws, larger animals struggling so fiercely that they would snap his entire face out of shape, a sight so particularly horrific, Cub found himself flinching, though he never looked away. Mumbo seemed like the type of person that wanted to punish himself, not that Cub knew him particularly well, but he was so weird, so oddly puritan when it came to standards set for himself, it made sense.

Or maybe he just wanted them to struggle. He wanted them to live longer, draw out suffering, just as he’d been doing for hours prior. Mumbo never flinched, even when he’d been bit or scratched particularly badly. Cub never saw blood or injury. And he was looking for it. He was watching closely. That first night, he slept just as little as Mumbo did, though both of them seemed not to need it.

Cub didn’t think he’d sleep ever again. He had to know more.

But Cub was a busy man, he had his own projects to work on, and he didn’t make a habit of following Mumbo around, but he did keep tabs. He was curious, but that curiosity started shifting to concern, especially after the switch from season eight to season nine.

Mumbo was visibly deteriorating, those lonely acts of violence feeling a lot more like desperation than real cruelty. Maybe it had always been desperate. Or maybe Cub was mistaken. He was not the best at reading other people.

But you didn’t have to be good at reading people to know that Mumbo was losing his grip. Mumbo was jumpy on a good day, but after the first weeks of season nine, he didn’t react to anything at all. He hardly even looked up when Grian approached him, trying his best to cheer Mumbo up, which Cub knew because Grian told Scar, and Scar could never help himself but tell Cub, just as Cub could never help but keep anything from Scar.

Scar knew about Mumbo the morning after Cub witnessed the hunt on the first night, Cub not even sleeping before he shook Scar awake at 7:00 AM, relaying everything he’d seen. Bafflingly, Scar could not have given less of a fuck.

“I knew something was wrong with him,” he’d said, mildly amused, and then closed his eyes, settling down to go back to sleep. Cub did not understand. It just did not make any sense that Scar did not care because this was one of the wildest things Cub had ever witnessed. He had so many questions! How could Scar not have any questions? Why did Mumbo keep this a secret? What was the point of drawing out his hunts? What was Mumbo? He had teeth, why didn’t he use them?

“Cub.” Scar said stiffly, eyelids fighting against Cub’s claws as he tried to pry them back open and make Scar listen, “You’re being an asshole.”

Scar still had no interest in answering any of the questions that kept Cub awake at night, but he did humor Cub when he theorized for hours, trailing Scar while he worked on his base, landscaping, was stuck sick in bed- Cub was more anxious when Scar was sick, worried he was boring him with chatter he knew Scar cared little about, but Scar insisted otherwise, engaging far more than he ever did when he had something else to do. Alien. Alien. Mumbo’s an alien. Alien. He’s an alien. He’s from the void. He’s an alien. Scar’s theories were not often rooted in sense, but it was fun to listen to him regardless.

But Scar cared in season nine. He cared because anyone close to Mumbo could see how poorly he was doing, and Scar would do anything to ease that pain. Cub would have approached Mumbo himself, asked about his excursions directly, but Scar had insisted that was the wrong way to go about it, not when Mumbo was so frail and already so depressed. Mumbo would accept help easier from someone closer to him, and Scar knew how to be subtle.

Scar came back to their shared tree home later that day wearing a grimace and a hand stuck permanently running through his hair.

“It, uh.. I may not have handled that as well as I could have. He may be upset. I dunno.. I didn’t think it was that bad, but Grian really chewed me out when it was just the two of us.”

“What happened? What did you say?” Cub’s tone may have been too harsh, a bad habit he struggled to shake when he was so invested. “I’m sorry-“ he snuck the words through when Scar winced, speaking before he could, “I don’t think you’ve done anything, I just want to know what happened.”

“I know,” Scar said, and Cub knew he did, no one knew him as wholly as Scar did, but Cub knew him in the same way, and knew he was sensitive after plans turned sour. Regardless, Scar continued, “So I meet up with Mumbo and Grian, right? We were just hanging out, talking about blueprints, nothing too crazy, but I wanted us all to get together anyway, since Mumbo’s been so down. He’s always a little more relaxed when Grian’s around, I don’t know what it is about those two, they’re like each other’s emotional support cats.”

“That’s true,” Cub nodded, trying to engage but antsy in the fluff of Scar’s story.

“So I bring us all together, you know how it is, and I suggest we have a little party, the three of us! None of us really have any birthdays coming up, but in my mind we can’t really afford to wait, so I suggested we do one now! Grian was teasing me, saying something like ‘Is it really a party if there’s only three of us?’ But I think so, and I said I think we could all use a bit of a pick me up, and Mumbo agreed with me, he said he thought it was a good idea! So I went on, I said we needed to have a themed party, because unthemed parties are no good, just as joyless as an unthemed amusement park, not awful, better than nothing maybe, but come on! You have to have a theme!”

“You have to have a theme,” Cub agreed, solemnly serious.

“So I told them it should be cannibalism themed!” Scar threw up his arms grandly, just like he’d probably done for Mumbo and Grian, but here the gesture was more frustrated, “And I didn’t want to get shut down right away, so I just kept talking about the details; maybe we could hire another hermit to be our lamb, y’know? Or we could just take turns with each other, or even just drain some blood, y’know, throw it around- and this, I still think this is genius- we could put blood in water guns and shoot each other with it! Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“Gruesome,” Cub said, not disagreeing, but more amused than anything.

“Maybe a little bit,” Scar snickered, good natured, but he straightened, looking awkward, “But uh.. Mumbo did not like that idea. I could see him not liking it, so I kind of panicked y’know? Anyone would! So I just kept talking, hoping I could convince him before Grian bit my head off, but Grian was trying really hard to do that, and I just kept interrupting him, kept talking, and I know Mumbo isn’t squeamish, he can’t be given everything you’ve told me, but you would have thought it, and in fairness, I may have gone a little too far..” Scar slowed down, shrinking in on himself in his guilt, “I just want him to feel better. He was so- so distressed. I just want him to feel better. He- he fell when he was trying to get away from me. I wasn’t keeping him anywhere, but he was just so upset he fell and.. I don’t know. He’s just so frail. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get up again.” Scar rubbed the back of his neck. “He did. I mean, of course he did. He didn’t even have any trouble. He didn’t stumble. He just looks that way.”

Cub nodded slowly, sympathetic. A small silence lingered as Cub thought, opening his eyes when he was done. “I think a cannibalism party is a great idea. We should gather up a bunch of hermits and airdrop the lot of us in the woods with Ren on the full moon. He wins if he kills all of us by the morning.” Cub paused, “Well, maybe that’s not really a cannibalism party. Tangential cannibalism party.”

Scar snorted, mood ever so slightly lifting, “I think that’s fantastic. Better than my idea.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Scar shrugged, “I think your mind is beautiful.”

Cub wasn’t sure what to do with that, quietly flustered, but he must have made some kind of face because Scar laughed, wrapping Cub in a tight hug that made him squeak, shaking him in the same way a dog might shake a chew toy, though less violent given they were sitting down, just an expression of Scar’s restless energy. Cub was no good at comfort, they both knew this about him, but somehow Scar managed to find it anyway, wrestling it out of him when Cub couldn’t dig it up himself.

He did not think about Mumbo for a little while, resting instead with Scar, listening to him mumble rambled nonsense for the next thirty minutes until he fell asleep.

Cub did not interact much with Mumbo in the following weeks, not wanting to push when he was clearly so sensitive (and the two of them weren’t much more than strangers), but from what he heard from Scar, things weren’t getting any better. Grian was doing his damned best effort to cheer Mumbo up in his own way, Mumbo creating a vault for Grian to ‘break in to,’ and Cub heard from Scar that Mumbo sat out there for hours watching Grian (literally) bash his head against a wall, so at least Mumbo wasn’t alone.

And then Mumbo announced he was leaving. That he didn’t know for how long, or even where he was going, but that he just needed a break, he needed to go. Burnt out, was the reason he gave. He was burnt out. Anyone with eyes could see through the lie, and Cub wondered how many hermits were noticing for the first time just how bad of shape Mumbo was in. But no one said anything. No one stopped him. And if anyone had more in depth concerns, they weren’t brought up to the group as a whole, kept between whispers and close friends.

But Mumbo said he would be back. The words left him grimly, almost as if against his will, but he was firm, certain. A tone that said his return would not be a good thing, but it was inevitable, and he was resigned to the knowledge of that future.

So easily it could have been mistaken for apathy. For sadness that he was leaving behind friends, that it would be awhile before he saw everyone again. But Cub saw through. He wondered if Scar did too, Grian, maybe Iskall.

Cub thought Mumbo might have looked at him then, seconds before his departure. Their eyes met, and for a long moment Cub was sure Mumbo saw something in his; knowledge, intent. And then Mumbo looked away, and the moment passed. And then Mumbo was gone.

“You look like you’re seconds away from killing someone, you okay?” Tango elbowed him, and the gesture was playful, but all the same there was that underlying concern, the kind that told Cub plainly that Tango was telling the truth.

Whoops.

It was possible Mumbo was staring at him because Cub looked like he wanted him dead.

“I’m alright,” Cub shrugged, and he was, “Just sad to see him go. Don’t like losing anyone, you know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Tango mused, shaking Cub’s shoulder in a gentle gesture of encouragement, “But he’ll be back. Honestly, I bet he won’t be more than a month, he just needs some space to get those creative juices back in action. Can’t imagine him functioning without Grian at his hip for much longer than that,” Tango laughed, and Cub joined him, though the chuckle was somewhat joyless.

Mumbo was gone for a hell of a lot longer than one month. Nine months actually, he was gone, to the point where most hermits were pretty worried, some wondering if he was really returning at all (thoughts never expressed when Grian was around).

But Mumbo did come back. And when he did, he looked great. Truly great, Cub couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Mumbo looking so genuinely healthy and happy; still skinny as a stick, but more filled out, less gaunt. He looked strong, and even his eye bags had lightened a little, though whatever he’d been doing, it clearly hadn’t fixed his insomnia; that being an observation Scar said to him in jest.

But it was good. It was good.

Honestly, Cub had expected his mild obsession with Mumbo to flare up again the second he stepped foot back on the server, but almost the opposite happened, where everything Cub had previously felt; the curiosity, the intrigue.. it all simmered down. Mumbo was healthy, he was high energy, and Cub found that he didn’t care all that much what was going on with him so long as he stayed that way. He’d had nine months to burn himself out on theorizing anyway, he’d moved on to other interests.

But Mumbo did not stay healthy.

Cub was too busy on the back end of season nine to notice, not keeping tabs on Mumbo hardly at all by then, but at the start of season ten, when everyone was together, Cub saw it right away.

The difference between the Mumbo returning home from his break and the Mumbo at the start of season ten was stark, at least to Cub, since no one else seemed to notice, or at least didn’t say so. It wasn’t like Mumbo was deteriorating as severely as he had been before traveling, but Cub was sure he had lost weight, and something was just wrong; maybe he was a little too neurotic, a little too snappy. It was almost nothing! Hardly noticeable, honestly, to the point Cub thought he might be going crazy, but really. What would happen if the problem escalated to the point of season nine, Mumbo so miserable that just the mere suggestion of violence was enough to do him in completely. Whatever Mumbo was doing now, it wasn’t sustainable!

Cub waited a couple months, partially to see what would happen, but admittedly, he wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of confronting him directly. He didn’t want to tell Scar this time, he wanted to do this himself, but working up the nerve was a beast within itself.

But it was fine. It was going to be fine, because Mumbo had literally no reason to say no. If Mumbo needed to eat, however convoluted the way he had to do it, he should just do it, and Cub became so convinced of this that he was certain Mumbo would see it too. So he approached him, not accusatory of course, not even questioning Mumbo’s thinly veiled humanity, but simply giving him an out. Scar would be more than thrilled to have Mumbo drag him around by his innards or whatever the fuck Mumbo would come up with. He would not say no.

(He said no.)

This was going to be a tough case. Cub really hadn’t anticipated this going wrong in any way, because put simply, it made no sense for Mumbo to refuse, but regardless, this was fine because Cub was not going to give up. He would not let this get as bad as it had before. He’d go for a more subtle approach instead, and not the Scar kind of subtle either, real subtle, not even mention eating people at all. Cub was going to make this work.

He was going to seduce Mumbo.

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