#I’m excited to get me some shulker boxes and elytra

[thebloggerthatjesusloved]

Just defeated the Ender Dragon, feeling good.

[shepard-ram]

End Busting [Hc!Reader & Tommy, Tubbo, Ranboo Headcanons]

(P!Fluff, Request: *sees requests are open* *kicks down your door* Hello- hi! I hope you don't mind me sliding in!

So remember how the end is inaccessable on the Dream SMP? Could I maybe request headcanons or a fic about Tommy, Ranboo and Tubbo going end busting with the hermit!reader on the Hermitcraft server for the first time? Maybe to help the reader get shulker shells to make boxes for the boys? Thank you in advance! -🍯)

(This is canonicaly a filler episode in the series of Ambassadors Work)

At this point the three of them had gotten fairly accustomed to Hermitcraft

Still there were a few key differences between your two servers that you had yet to show them

They had gotten use to the loads of shulker boxes around bases, shops and projects

You even taught them to fly!

(No you didn't cry when used rocket's for the first time)

You knew the Smp didn't have access to the end

Hell the boys didn't even know what the end was

So when you ran short on shulker boxes you were excited to share a sort of custom for the hermits

End Busting.

They were hyped to see this completely new dimension together (and help you out but mostly Adventure Tm.)

Before going to the end you all just hung out by the portal for a minute

Both running through supplies, plans and just admiring the portal

That's when you brought up a little competition

The classic "who can get the best loot" hell yeah

When they saw all the enderman Tubbo instantly went "Ranboo look it's your family!" "My people!"

Yeah that joke never got old

After making in through an end gate they were very nervous about flying over the void

Still after some reassurance (and friendly teasing about the competition) you were soaring again

They had more fun than they should getting hit by shulkers-

"Who needs rockets!" "Hey I'm gonna go ahead and take these shells-" "Oh no get back here-"

Every time it was a race to get to the ships since elytras were worth a ton of points

And the dragon heads-

Dragon Bros 2.0 over here

Seriously for most of the trip you wore the heads just because they were cool

And it was funny as hell watching them get stuck in the smaller corridors

You took a break in a chorus fruit forest (forest? Grove? Whatever)

Y'all spent way to much time just messing with chorus fruit

When you had finally made it home you tallied up the points

Turns out Tommy won! (He may or may not have stolen a few items from the group)

Between the four of you, you had more than enough boxes for a long while

Of course you let them split most of what was left after you took the shells you needed

Some notions of fixing up the better armor and tools were tossed around while you made the boxes

You were happy to know that this would not be the last time the four of you did this together.

[riacte]

Happy Birthday to HC7!

Wow man, I can’t believe it’s an actual year... so I’mma go off the tangent for a bit.

I’ve been following HC since May 2019, but I only watched Grian (and eventually Ren) in HC6, so when HC7 started, I was excited to branch out. Unfortunately I couldn’t watch as many episodes as I like but still, I feel like I’ve known a lot more about the hermits and their projects this season!

The beginnings of HC7 always gives me good vibes. It’s just so... humble. Magical. Exciting. The hermits are stripped off their elytras and rockets and gear and shulker boxes and they have to start from the beginning, in the old-school way. And you get to see them do all their crazy grinds and builds from the very start, when they had nothing but determination and motivation.

I was also really proud of how the hermits grew MASSIVELY in the beginnings of HC7, especially Scar and Iskall. I was ecstatic to see more hermits reach 1mil subscribers, because they deserve that and so much more. HC fandom was also growing exponentially, with many fancontent made of wizard Scar and Pesky Bird and Bumbo Baggins and the infamous Doc-Bdubs divide (I mean, they’re the popular creators, but it still makes me super happy and gives out the GoodVibes). I remember staying up till 3am, totally engrossed in HC fanfic.

I know for y’all in the Western world, HC7 starts with quarantine and Covid, but since I’m in Asia, Covid has already been going on for like two months when HC7 began. The hermits provided a lot of comfort for me when I was sad or just bored. Like... the world is changing, but Hermitcraft is still there, as cheesy as it sounds.

I remember the night the HC7 E1 episodes were uploaded, I was vibrating with excitement. I was telling my friends to watch them. I had no idea who to watch first but I remember I clicked Impulse. I stayed up past 12am and I think I watched most of Doc’s episode and wondered why tf did I stick to Grian when there’s so much more out there.

Gradually more episodes came out, including those of my faves Grian, Scar, and Ren. And I was super mega happy to see Grian and Scar be neighbours because that’s all I wanted in S6, actually. A proper collab between those two crazy builders and cat lovers with chest monsters. And I was beyond excited to see that practically everyone I watched at that time (Grian, Mumbo, Scar, Stress, Iskall) lived in the same jungle. (Ren was the exception but he later moved in and I kinda lost it).

Early HC7 Jungle Gang and their builds have a very special place in my heart just because it’s so hopeful and funny and full of possibilities. I loved watching Grian annoy Mumbo, I loved every bit of Scar’s magical village, I loved Iskall bringing a brown panda to Stress’ place as a gift. Bdubs VS Doc was also extremely entertaining, and I still laugh over how cute BeeDoubleO is. And Ren! Ren’s Loser Island was so quaint and charming and cute and I’m so sad he blew it up lol. Something about his starter base just gets me. I even modified my survival starter base after his.

And the streams! The stream weekends! I was never into watching streams but HC7 convinced me. The hermits saw that we liked them, and kept on making them. I don’t remember a lot about the streams, but I do remember popping into Ren’s late at night, and he talked about living alone and the pandemic and how this Minecraft stream united people from all over the world, and he started listing out the countries people wrote down in chat, and I just started crying. It sounds stupid and parasocial, but fuck man, I really love the hermits.

I remember when there was a time Ren uploaded at 12am Saturday for me, so when I had a rough week, I would tuck myself into bed and refresh my feed until I saw Ren’s new weekly episode. (Ren’s my comfort YouTuber.) It was like... a habit of me, like when I felt bad I would be like “at least there’s gonna be a new Rendog episode by the end of this horrible week :D”. And that made me happy.

And then it sort of became a habit... I watched different hermits according to my moods. Whenever I felt more attentive, I watched Grian. Tired and bored? Stress. Wanted to calm down? Xisuma. Wanted to laugh? Bdubs. And when I just wanted some comfort? Ren.

Hermitcraft and its community has given me a lot of joy. I would go longer about how I met friends etc etc but I started being active because of Blue Bats lmao, and that’s a different story.

Just wanna send the hermits and the community some love <33 sorry this got so long lol, I really am very nostalgic haha.

To me, there really is something magical about Hermitcraft, and I don’t fully understand it, but maybe that’s the beauty of it.

[skywillsometimeswrite]

So since I went back and rewatched/watched the Sahara opening from all three perspectives, I gotta just make a list of my favorite parts because it was so good. Some of these can only be found specific to one POV or two POVs so I highly recommend watching all of them because it’s so worth it.

Episodes: Grian’s 71 Mumbo’s 105 Iskall’s 111

Pre-Opening:

-Mumbo and Iskall trying last minute to make all the redstone work before Grian finds out that it isn’t done -Mumbo having a Grian head in his inventory while he is working on Sahara for seemingly no reason -Mumbo’s “YES!” when the stocking (i think) works and how excited he gets -Mumbo just completely gushing over how much he loves the project

-Iskall pro-speed-slick-recording of Mumbo’s ice confession (as well as Grian in the background “He’s totally recording. Don’t fall for it.”) and then saying that Mumbo went on to say he loves ice -Iskall: I’m gonna meet up with the boys. *opens a chest full of stuff and deeply sighs* I’m gonna clear this up then I’m gonna meet up with the boys.

Opening (under a read more cause it got long):

-The fact that Grian didn’t put on any sort of skin to begin with. I know he put on the Steve Jobs skin, but idk I find it amusing he didn’t put on his business suit for the actual opening part -Mumbo’s “Oh this is a nice tent” as he hides behind it because you can clearly tell by the other two’s laughter that that hadn’t been apart of their original skit -The failed first launch -Ren. Just... Ren. -How Mumbo mentions that the exploded door matches the one in the warehouse and immediately telling Iskall that no, he hasn’t fixed it and that it’s staying forever -Iskall and Mumbo (of all people) questioning why Grian killed a wandering trader and Grian innocently responding “I found him like that.” -The entire “It’s glasses!” interaction in response to Grian’s Steve Jobs skin -Iskall trying to keep a straight face even though you hear him quietly laughing -Violent Mumbo 1: hitting Ren towards the ordering part of Sahara -Mumbo barely being able to prevent himself from directly telling Ren how the system works and how to work it -Grian responding to Ren’s comment of a long wait with “But look at the lights go on! Ding, ding? We’re on two lights now, how exciting is this Ren? -Grian: ...thats it i’m closing the company, Sahara is over- -Iskall: NO WAIT! HAVE SOME FAITH! -”I got a beacon... receipt.” ”That’s Sahara in a nutshell. You get charged for things that don’t actually arrive.” -Grian and Iskall’s laughter sounding like they’re crying -Grian hitting all the armor stands out the door -Violent Mumbo 2: “So here’s my idea... we kill him.” -All three of them clearly having an idea of how that huddle should go and then not agreeing on it. Grian trying to have this act of employer to employees, Mumbo just saying they should kill Ren and start again, and then Iskall trying to work off that  -Iskall trying to think of something that might be near and dear to Ren without mentioning family and only managing to come up with his sunglasses -Iskall: Think about his sunglasses. -Mumbo: I haven’t been able to think about anything else since he’s arrived. -Iskall managing to keep a straight face when talking about mispricing the beacons and that finally cracking Mumbo’s facade while Grian is just in disbelief -Honestly this whole huddle is the best thing -”Where did we put the payment chest? We forgot about the payment chest.” “Are you kidding me????” -Mumbo: I only put one minecart in I wasn’t expecting him to order this much *cue them all breaking down even further* -”He ordered rockets... And they arrived! I don’t know how! How have they arrived?” “Don’t question it!” “No- why has he just broken the shulker box? Ren stop yourself!” “Because there’s no instructions!”  -Mumbo: Oh gosh! I’m setting myself on fire. Where’s my flint and steel? *looks at Grian* You took it. I hate my life- bye. *disconnecting* -Grian actually checking to see if he took Mumbo’s flint and steel because that’s something he would do -Violent Mumbo 3: hitting Grian and basically threatening him not to ever touch the system again -Iskall clearly not seeing the Beta sign on Sahara if his laugh is anything to go by while Mumbo and Grian already knew about it -All of them doing this zoom in on Ren as he stands on a chimney (which by itself is hilarious) -How the second-first opening fails and Grian is exasperated, Iskall is dying of laughter, and Mumbo is hopelessly embarrassed -”For goodness SAKE! I hate this! I don’t want to be part of this group anymore! Bunch of useless people!” -Ren witnessing all of this and inviting Mumbo to come chill on the chimney with him (”Yeah I’m going up on the chimney.”) -Mumbo having to stop himself from saying anything to Ren during the ordering process -Mumbo forgetting he doesn’t have an elytra on and trying to fly (this seems to be a common occurrence with him in S6) -Mumbo’s EEEEEEEE when he sees the minecart working -Ren’s carrots going into the machine and Grian just going “Now it’s not my fault!” -Grian: This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever been apart of and I didn’t do anything complicated so I feel great. -Violent Mumbo 4: “Did Ren ever pay?” *before even checking* “No. Should we beat him up?”  (Bonus: Mumbo cutting to the next part with a transition of him saying “One serious beating later”) -Ren: Do I get a discount for being the first customer? “No.” “No.” “Absolutely not, we’re a business.”

[hermits-that-craft]

Forgetting and Leaving - Part Two

Welcome to part two of Forgetting and Leaving. 

Once again I am recommending people go to @target-block for more information about Ray’s Stuck Au.

Daisy looks up at Rose, yawning as they make their way to the end. The world has been glitching recently, and Orchid nearly died when Daisy transformed, the transformation causing some lag that made everything nearly stop. Orchid clearly didn't want to leave this world, and Daisy doesn't blame him, the world certainly has something that the two men recognise, though its as though they are seeing it through a pane of fogged glass - nothing is clear.

Rose doesn't recognise anything, although they do bring it up with him. He recognises how the world works, knowing things that they shouldn't know about the update, but the buildings don't make sense to him like they do to Daisy and Orchid. Orchid swears on his life that he knows the mansion that they hid in, but he can't remember any of the rooms. A robotic voice calls Orchid Impulse, and calls Daisy Ren. Neither of them don't recognise the names.

They walk over to the end portal, Daisy leading the group as a second nature. Rose shakes nervously as they stand on the edge of the portal, and Orchid pats his back. Daisy pushes them in before jumping in himself, something sad tugging at his soul, longing for a few more minutes. He doesn't understand it.

They land on an obsidian platform, and Rose leads them towards the centre of the main island. He turns around, tugging on the white sleeve of his jacket and smiling nervously. There's no wind in the End but Rose's blonde hair still sways in the breeze.

"Ready to go?"

---

Iskall lands, his inventory filled with shulker boxes of wood. He is ready to get started on his mega base - a giant tree with a large canopy, larger than life and bigger than all of the jungle trees around him. It's safer to think about building then about his friends. Not just the missing ones - Iskall doesn't trust himself to think about Mumbo or Stress without breaking down. He's gone a week without a breakdown, the longest since -

No, don't think. Build.

Iskall places blocks, planned and timed and he's so tired, he wants a break but to let his mind wander is to break his streak. He doesn't think, he just builds. He doesn't even notice it when his axe breaks, nor does he notice Stress as she visits with some logs she had spare. No, Iskall just works. He doesn't think. He just builds. He hardly notices his elytra creeping dangerously towards breaking. He doesn't think. He doesn't notice it as he uses up shulker box and shulker box of wood. He just builds.

He notices his elytra breaking.

Iskall falls towards the jungle canopy, a scream ripping from his throat. His eyes wide open. The world doesn't slow like people claim it would. He doesn't watch, outside of his body, as he crashes onto the grass.

Iskall wakes up in his bed, his heart races as he finally lets himself cry.

---

Evil Xisuma has been alone, stuck in season 5, for too long. It's painful, thinking of the hermits, but he lets himself stay in Xisuma's base. It's alright, he thinks to himself, it's alright that the hermits left him behind. He's safe here, at least. It's better than the void, cold and empty and falling with no end. He's safe here.

But Impulse, Grian and Ren aren't.

They shouldn't be here, but as Evil Xisuma watches them walk through the shopping district he realises that Ren and Impulse are just as lost and confused as Grian is. They shouldn't be - they built the shops they stop outside of. The ones that they look longer at, spend more time asking about who built it. It confuses Evil Xisuma. 

He could stay and watch them, but he can’t let them walk around as though they have no idea what they are doing. It’s risky, though. The risks outweigh the benefits, but he can’t stand to watch them anymore. Evil Xisuma glides down behind them, landing on the ground with a precision that only someone who’s mastered the elytra can claim. He doesn’t land silently, however, and the three men spin around, Impulse pushing the other two behind him. Funny, Evil Xisuma thinks, he can’t be better at fighting then Ren.

“Woah, I’m not here to fight.” Evil Xisuma raises his hands in surrender as Impulse raises an iron sword to his throat. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Oh, is this your world?” Grian asks, and Evil Xisuma frowns at him. “I’m sorry if it is, the last world we were in was corrupted and I has to-”

“Hermitcraft is corrupted?” Evil Xisuma gasps, looking at them. “Is Xisuma alright?”

“Who’s Xisuma?” Impulse asks him, and there's no hint of sarcasm in his voice. 

“What’s a hermitcraft?”

“It must have been the world we were last on.”

“Of course it is, Grian. Hermitcraft season six, or is it season seven now? Xisuma hasn’t been telling me anything.” Evil Xisuma grumbles to himself.

“My name isn’t Grian.” Grian says blankly. “I’m Rose.”

---

Scar flies out of the jungle, careful to avoid the areas that he knows have been built in. He and Doc have agreed to meet away from the hermits, to both protect the hermits from what they want to do and to make sure that they aren’t caught. Again. To make sure that they aren’t caught again.

Scar lands in the mining mesa, watching the nether portal as a figure begins to appear in it’s frame. Doc walks out of the portal, some quartz in his hands. Scar can hardly contain his excitement to see the man, and he pulls Doc into a hug. The two men don’t hear the nether portal update, someone coming through the portal. No, they don’t notice anyone else in the area until it’s too late.

“Well, I don’t mean to break this up,” Xisuma says. “But, next time, I’d suggest having your secret liaisons in places where the rest of us don’t go.”

Doc and Scar jump away from each other, trying to make it seem as though they hadn’t planned on meeting here, but Xisuma just sighs, disappointment as sadness in his eyes.

“I had to contact Stress and Bdubs. You two know you aren’t allowed to meet up without supervision- Is that quartz Doc?” Xisuma’s voice begins to shake, anger and fear mixing together. Doc tries to hide it behind his back, stammering out excuses, but Xisuma practically flies over to Doc, grabbing his wrists. “Are you insane?”

“It isn’t what it looks like-”

“That’s a weak excuse, Doc, and you know it. Doc, you can’t be serious. A time machine?”

“I had just mined some, Xisuma, I swear!” Doc’s isn’t lying, per say. He did just mine some of the quartz, but not all of it. They had been planning this for weeks. Doc and Scar have to find the hippies - it’s their fault that they went missing in the first place. Area 77’s fault.

“Scar, tell me truthfully - Did Doc just mine that quartz?” Xisuma growls, not removing his hands from Doc’s wrists. Scar stands straighter, his back ridgid.

But they had planned for this as well.

“He did, Xisuma. Please, we only planned to meet here so we could talk without people examining our every word.” The lie falls out of Scar’s mouth, practiced to perfection. He walks towards Xisuma, his hand falling on the man’s shoulder. “Please, X. We’re tired of people trying to psychoanalyze everything we say.”

“You called us X?” Stress’ voice is tired, barely containing a yawn. She and Bdubs walk through the portal before they gasp, looking at the scene in front of them, only lit up by the nether portal and the moon.

“Oh, Doc.” Bdubs’ voice is quiet, sad. “C’mon, lets get you home. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Doc growls. “Just because-”

“He and Scar were going to rebuild the time machine.” Xisuma says, letting go of Doc’s wrists. Stress gasps again, turning to Scar with hurt in her face, and Scar feels shame well up in his throat. “Scar can’t lie well, it was obviously rehearsed.”

“We’ll keep a closer eye on them.” Stress promises, taking Scar’s hand and dragging him towards the nether portal. “Don’t worry, Xisuma. We won’t let them do anything stupid.”

---

Orchid doesn’t trust the man, who only introduces himself as E-X, though he reluctantly lets the man follow them around. The name Impulse pushes around his head, confusing and frustrating him. It feels familiar, as familiar as all of the builds they pass do, but he can’t place it anywhere. A brother, a doppleganger, a clone, a twin, a coincidence. None of those explain why Ex seems so sad by them.

They arrive on a mycelium island, split down the middle by different shades of concrete. Daisy immediately walks towards a large orange and black concrete building, mumbling something about supplies in the Nether Drive, though neither Rose nor Orchid can work out what he means by that.

They follow him anyways, Orchid keeping a close watch on Ex out of the corner of his eyes. There’s something about him that's familiar, just like this world, that unsettles him. Hopefully he will tell Orchid why he is familiar to him.

“What happened?” Ex asks quietly to him as Daisy and Rose disappear into the building. “Why don’t you remember here?”

“Ex, I have no idea what you mean.” Orchid says, gripping his iron sword tightly.

“I-” Ex cuts himself off. “I’m worried for you, Impulse.”

“Orchid.”

“Orchid,” Ex nods. “Please, what’s your earliest memory. I swear, if it’s something normal I’ll drop this subject.”

Orchid frowns, thinking back onto the moment when the watcher cursed them, though that’s not his earliest memory. His earliest memory is comforting, a warm blanket wrapped around his shoulders, soup in his hands as he sits by a fire, his mother telling ghost stories while his father laughs. When he tells Ex that, the man sighs, taking his helmet off.

“I’m going to head off back to my bro- my base. I’ll be back in the morning. Meet you guys here?”

“I’ll ask Rose and Daisy about it.” Orchid replies, waving goodbye to the strange man. 

He walks into the storage unit before he pauses, frowning at the room. It’s bright in here, not at all like the calming rustic builds that Rose had been making for them. Orchid walks into the middle of the room, where a water elevator waits patiently for him. He enters it, slowly traveling up.

He finds Rose and Daisy on the top floor, beds set up on the floor. Rose looks up as he steps out of the water elevator, a towel in his hand. Orchid gladly takes the towel, yawning as he pats himself dry. Daisy hands him so old looking potatoes, shrugging an apology.

“If they make us sick I’ll take full responsibility.” Daisy smiles at him. “Where’d our friend go?”

“He went to his base. Must be desperate to sleep, when he took his helmet off he looked like Rose when we don’t force him to go to bed.” Orchid smirks, nudging the man.

“Oh come on!” Rose complains. “I’m going to bed, I didn’t come here to be made fun of.”

“Aw, Rose you know I didn’t mean it!” Orchid laughs, and Rose throws a pillow at him. He misses, hitting Daisy in the face. Orchid devolves into giggles, laughing at the shocked look on Daisy’s face.

“Oh it is on my dudes.” Daisy says, picking up the two pillows the are now on his bed. “Give up, I have the higher ground!”

“Never!” Orchid yells, hitting Daisy with his own pillow. Daisy drops a pillow in surprise, and Rose quickly snatches it off the ground.

They fight for a while, ducking and slamming each other with the pillows. Feathers fly and laughter roars through the abandoned islands. Orchid kicks Daisy’s legs and Rose jumps on the man, his pillow perfectly positioned to hit Daisy’s face.

“Rose why, you were supposed to be my brother!”

“Long live the king!” Rose giggles, hitting Daisy in the face. Orchid takes the opportunity to hit Rose across the back of the head and they restart the round, this time Rose and Daisy against Orchid.

[lovebug5151]

Family Bonding (With a hint of Angst) Robodad Grian Au

(Yes, unless y'all have better ideas for the name of this Au, this is what i’m going with lmao. If you do have any, go ahead and say em! If i like it and it fits, ill rename it and say it was your idea in the next chapter.)

So this is about 2040 words, and i’m quite happy with it. I don’t think I made this one as sad as the first one, but im not sure. I actually have a story line for up to ch 5 of this story, and I hope that this is one of the last true sad chapters (Though I might spice some things up, dont want things too happy, do ya :D

This is also about a week or so after the events of the first chapter.

Grian sat on top of his mansion, just watching and listening to the wind, breathing in, and out. He needed to clear his head. Earlier Mumbo had made a offhand comment about how Grumbots heart was missing, and ‘maybe it fell into the ocean’ before laughing. 

While Grian knew Mumbo didn’t have the same background as he did with considering Aware AI’s ‘just robots’, he had called Grumbot son, even if it was awkwardly. It hurt Grian, to know that Mumbo might hurt Grumbot, even unintentionally, if he did see him. And Jrumbot… he was just a child, his dad saying hurtful things would hurt him so much more.

Grian had to quickly finish up what he was doing, and rush back to his base to breath. He couldn’t work beside Mumbo at the moment, couldn’t explain how Mumbo had hurt him, and so had run off. 

Grian leaned forward slightly to look down. It was a far drop. Grian had never truly been afraid of heights, he loved climbing high in the air. 

It was joked that it was because he was short, that he liked to be tall, but he just liked feeling the wind rush around him, and the feeling of falling and pulling up right before hitting the ground. It was elating, and whenever he was feeling bad he just took a leap off a roof and fell, before swooping up using his elytra. 

He wondered if Grumbot would like flying, he could fix up some Jet boots for him, maybe mechanical wings? Yeah, he’ll make some wings for Grumbot and if he liked them, maybe some for himself. He liked the idea of being able to mostly hover in one place. 

He let out a breath and looked at the sun. It was nearing lunch, and if he didn’t come inside Grumbot would come looking for him. 

Grian swooped down, landing in front of the door, before heading inside. 

--------

Grumbot hummed as he finished cooking some steak. He and Jrumbot were able to eat regular food, and no one knew how, but neither Grumbot or Grian really wanted to question it so they let it be.

He put the steak on plates and turned around just as his Dad walked in. He smiled and said hi to him while bringing the plates to the table. Jrumbot was already there and they sat on chairs to eat.

It was quiet for a moment before Grian yawned. “Have you two ever wanted to fly?” 

Grumbot looked at him weirdly for a second before nodding. “Yeah, kinda, but I'm way too heavy for an elytra.”

Jrumbot paused with his steak halfway in his mouth

“If fould fe fun fu fly” He said, still chewing his food. 

Grian sighed slightly and smiled at Jrumbot 

“Jrumbot, dont talk with your mouth full.”

Jrumbot finished his mouthful and squirmed slightly. “Sorry.”

“|Its alright. Its just something to that we dont make a mess okay?” Grian told him.

“Okay.” Jrumbot muttered, before continuing “But yeah! It would be so fun to fly!”

Grian smiled “I have an idea then, but let's finish eating, yeah?” Both of them nodded at him before starting to eat their steak again.

After dinner, Jrumbot went to go mess with some of the blocks Grian had given him, and Grian and Grumbot went down to the Lab. They called it a Lab, but it was just a basement with too many tech pieces in it.

Grumbot sat down in a chair before waiting for Grian to talk, while Grian went over to look at something on a table.

“Dad,” Grumbot started, when it was obvious Grian wasn't gonna start talking “What was with the questions about flying?”

Grian glanced back at him. “Not much, I was just thinking about something. You both know how you're too heavy for elytras, but I was thinking, if we remade some of your body into lighter but still strong metals, and used,” His talking stopped as he walked towards a wall. Grumbot was confused until suddenly a Shulker Box opened.

Grumbot stared for a second before laughing. “How did i not know that was there?” He got out between giggles.

Grian smiled at him. “I havent opened it around you, and you haven't snooped. I'm not surprised you haven't found it. I keep my old ideas in there, old blueprints, old mechanical pieces I just couldn't throw away, those sort of things.” Grian started unrolling a big piece of paper “And I remembered I had a blueprint of these old things.”

Grumbot stood up to look at the paper, and after taking a moment to understand it, froze with excitement. He glances up at Grian with a giant smile, and Grian smiled back.

---------

Grian let out a oof as Grumbot collided with him. Grumbot was giggling uncontrollably, and Grian was happy that Grumbot was happy. Grumbot let go to look at the blueprint again and looked up with eyes so full of excitement that Grian felt excited too.

“Can we actually make these?” Grumbot asked, almost bouncing up and down.

Grian laughed and nodded. “Yeah, we'll have to test them out, but there's no reason we can't. It will take a while.” He warned Grumbot “And I will test out the wings first when we think they're ready.”

He saw Grumbot take a breath, to say something when Grian continued. “I haven't tested these designs yet. I would rather, if something goes wrong, to have me gone for a couple days respawning, and you safe, instead of you-” Grian couldn't even finish the sentence before he had to take a deep breath before the tears started coming. “Instead of you getting hurt.” He ended quietly, putting his hand on Grumbots shoulder. Grumbot looked down for a moment, before looking up at Grian with sadness. 

“I understand Dad, but please don't get hurt, Don’t d-die and have to respawn, I don't know what I'd tell Jrumbot.”

Grian looked at him and smiled sadly. “I wasn't planning on dying anytime soon kid. Let's start figuring out what we need to get for the wings, yeah?” Grumbot nodded excitedly, and bolted for the metals cabinet. Grian laughed as he followed along.

--------

Grian Yawned and stretched out his arms. They were all sitting in front of a fireplace, enjoying tea and Jrumbot was cuddling with Maui.

The good feeling couldn't last forever though, because eventually Jrumbot looked up and over at Grian. “Dad,” He started “Why haven't we seen Papa?”

Grian froze for a second before closing his eyes. He didnt wanna talk about this to them, he didn't want to hurt them.

“Dad?” Grumbot questioned, seeing his Dad freeze up and look on the verge of tears.

Grian sighed and rubbed his face. “Both of you come here.” He murmured finally, patting the couch he was sitting on either side of him.

Grumbot and Jrumbot quickly came over to sit beside him, and Grian put both his arms on their shoulders.

Grian took a deep breath. “You have not seen mumbo, and have not been able to explore outside of my mansion area, for a couple reasons. One of these is that I'm not too sure how mobs will react to you, and How you'd react with being hurt by a mob. The other,...” Grian took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, letting his chin drop to his chest. “The other,” Grian continued, “Is because I'm not too sure of how the other Hermits would react to you.” He finally looked up and saw both of them staring at him in confusion. Grian tried to explain. “I'm one of the only ones who have experience with actually aware AI’s, I believe, and when some people are scared of something, they decide that they should hurt it before it hurts them.” He took another deep breath and looked into Grumbot and Jrumbots eyes, one after the other. “I do not believe that many of the Hermits would react this way, but I don't know exactly how they would react, and I don't want them to hurt you, either unknowingly or not.”

He saw Grumbots eyes widen and Jrumbots eyes narrow slightly. “I understand that reasoning dad,” Jrumbot started “But why haven't we seen papa?”

Grian sighed again. “Do you two remember yesterday morning, when I came back early and stayed on the roof for a bit?” they both nodded and Grian continued. “I did that, because Mum- Papa, upset me with his words.” He said, before taking a pause. He didn't look at either of his boys, but rather the ceiling as he said “He made some not nice jokes about Grumbot. Both of you must know however,” Grian started saying immediately when they both froze “That Mumbo doesn't know much about Aware AI’s. He believed Grumbot was an unaware aware AI, and that he was killed when he broke down. He did not know you had actual feelings, instead of manufactured ones. Mumbo often has issues figuring out other people's emotions, and most of the time redstone doesn't have emotions. Mumbo doesn't know about you two, and you haven't seen him,” Grian was starting to slow as he tried to find the words he needed. “Because, Because I am afraid. He murmured quietly. I am afraid he will unwittingly hurt you with his words, and I didnt want that to happen before you were aware it could happen. I'm sorry I kept this from you, but I wasn't aware of how to say it, or if you were ready for it, and decided to let one of you bring the topic up.”

There was silence for a moment before both of his boys hugged him. “I understand Dad,” Grumbot murmured into his shirt. “You didn't want us to get hurt, but thank you for telling us now.” Jrumbot nodded in agreement and Grian let out a wet laugh. Sounding on the edge of tears he said “What did I ever do without you boys?”

Grumbot pulled away and giggled as he said “Forgot about eating dinner.”

Grian paused before letting out a loud laugh which made Grumbot and Jrumbot start giggling.

“I can't say you're wrong.” Grian laughed, running a hand through his hair.

Grian then yawned, and stood up to stretch. “However nice this bonding session has been.” Grian started, turning toward his boys. “I believe it is bedtime. No buts!” he smiled at them as he said that, both of them having opened their mouths to deny it. It is nighttime, and very dark, and both of you need sleep.”

“Will you read to me dad,” Jrumbot murmured, fidgeting on the couch.

Grian smiled at him. “Of course, you only need ask.” He smirked at Jrumbot before saying “However, the first one to get to your room gets to pick the book, and oh look, Grumbots already at the hallway-” Jrumbot shrieked out a laugh as a sudden race took place in the hallway, and Grian smiled as he tidied the place up, talking the mugs to the kitchen to wash tomorrow.

He then walked to the boys bedroom, to find Jrumbot pouting as Grumbot sat on his bed.

“What will the story be?” Grian asked them, and Grumbot smiled before saying, “what about the one about the Dragons saving the world?”

Jrumbot glanced up with wide eyes and Grian grinned. Even though Grumbot had obviously won, he had also chosen his brother's favorite book to read.

Grian walked over to the bookshelf and found the book, “A Warrior's Tail” before walking to Jrumbots bed. He started reading to them, and within the third chapter, they were both asleep. 

Grian smiled and leaned over both of them to kiss their foreheads, before whispering ‘night’ and leaving the room. He walked toward his own bedroom and climbed into bed. Grian looked at the ceiling and felt Maui joined him, purring as he curled up around Grians head. He reached up to scratch Maui under the chin, before yawning and turning off his lamp.

That talk was one he had been dreading, and it went over quite well. Grians last thought before sleeping was ‘Maybe I should introduce them to another Hermit.’

-----------

For whatever reason, Autocorrect really hates all names. Anyways, I know who the Hermit is, But do any of you? I want to see who you think the hermit is!

Also, if you liked this story, please comment! I loved reading all of your comments on the last one! They helped me make this chapter as quick as possible! (I may also be procrastinating on other stories with a Grumbot Fix-it Fic but, oh well)

[pixelfun20]

Flower Fields: Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Notes: Again, all credit to @give-grian-rights (hope you don’t mind the tag!) for the concept! Thank you so much! Also almost forgot to post this on Tumblr rip.

No fighting wars, no ringing chimes

We're just feeling fine

Tubbo started out by building his starter base.

It was a concept he’d learned about while living with Xisuma, and it was quite a good one, too. After all, megabases worthy of Hermitcraft’s admittedly lofty standards often took months to build, and he’d need somewhere to live in the meantime. In Season 6, he’d neglected that fact, and had suffered his fair share of mob deaths before he put up four walls and a ceiling to protect himself, back when he’d left to live on his own. And that was with a small, quickly-thrown together base, not the project he was currently planning.

Still, even setting up the basics of his starter base took a few nearly sleepless days. Finally, the framework for the build, a treehouse spanning more than a few trees at the edge of the forest, was up, and Tubbo was finally able to place a bed down in safety and sleep for a solid fourteen hours straight.

Xisuma dropped by, quite literally, a day or so later.

Tubbo had been sitting in his quickly-expanding living room, sorting through the loot he’d gotten from yesterday’s day-long mining session when he swooped down through the half-finished roof. While he was still wearing his bee-themed armor, now there were two glider-like wings, shimmering purple, strapped to his back.

“Heya, X,” Tubbo greeted the admin with a wave, closing one of his chests. “You got elytra already?”

“Tango and I defeated the Ender Dragon yesterday,” Xisuma replied, touching down softly. Tubbo made an ‘ah’ sound, recalling the achievement he’d seen out of the corner of his eye the other day. Right; he’d forgotten about that. Trust X to be as efficient as possible and defeat one of the toughest monsters in the world just for the ease of travel.

“I’ll have to go endbusting soon, then,” he said, more to himself than X. Before the elder man could protest (ah, he was getting good at noticing when he was going to), he added: “Stress and xB have already asked me to go with them, so don’t worry , alright?”

“Good,” Xisuma sighed. “It’s never a good idea to go out on your own, especially since this’ll be your first time seriously exploring the End.”

Tubbo rolled his eyes good naturedly. To be fair, he hadn’t gone out to the End before it had been conquered before. He’d had a fair few trips last Season, mostly with X, but it was generally for the XP farm once it’d been set up. He’d never left the main island before. Now that he had considerably more freedom at the beginning of the Season, he was excited to go exploring.

“Anything bring you over?” He asked, changing the subject.

Xisuma nodded. “Yeah. A bunch of the others are getting together for some sort of wrestling tournament this weekend.”

“And I’ve been invited?!” He grinned, clapping his hands together.

“As the referee.”

“Ah,” he pouted. “Darn.”

“Don’t worry,” Xisuma chuckled, setting down a shulker box. “It can be a lot funner to watch sometimes; I’m just going to be part of the audience, too. I think Doc wanted you because he thinks he can bribe you.”

“He can not !”

Xisuma raised an eyebrow. “Area 77.”

“Oh, that’s not fair. I am completely unbiased!”

“And that was why you became their lawyer and not for all the cool experiments they had. I don’t think Cleo has forgiven you for defeating her in court.”

“No one can defeat Big Law,” Tubbo sniffed, faux-offended, and Xisuma laughed. “Well, I’ll show him!” He declared, crossing his arms. “I’ll just have to make sure he loses, then!” Xisuma blinked, and he laughed. “Kidding! Kidding!” Mostly .

“So you’re going?”

“Sure! It’s nice to see the Hermits all in one place, anyways. What’s in the shulker?”

Xisuma tilted his head teasingly. “What do you think? Someone had to get the supplies for our honey farm.”

Tubbo gaped. “You’re ready to build farms already?! Man, and I thought I was ahead of the game with just having my base halfway done.”

The armored man shrugged, looking about the partially completed build. “Well, you’ve certainly put more effort into this than me. Truly, your building skills are already improving. I love how you’re styling the roof with peaks like you are; it looks like it took a while.”

“My last house had a roof like that, too,” Tubbo reminded him, glancing up as well. It had become a tradition, of sorts, to build curved, peaked roofs onto his builds. Last season it had been one of the few things he’d built slowly to make look as good as possible. In all honesty, it was his own way of honoring the person who’d made it possible for him to come here, to have a life worth living once again. Rushing through the technique just felt disrespectful.

“Yes, but you’ve definitely gotten better.” Xisuma bent down over the shulker box, checking its contents. “Do you have any good ideas for where to make the bee farm? I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit too busy to scout out a good area.”

“Really? Then where’d you get these guys?”

“Tree farming in the desert.”

Tubbo snorted into his hand, and he could practically feel Xisuma’s embarrassment. “Well, you did say you hadn’t scouted out a good spot.”

“Indeed I did.”

“I can take a look around here and see what I can find. Meadows are supposed to be excellent places for farming bees, right?”

“Indeed it is,” Xisuma agreed. “Do you have plans for your megabase, yet?”

Tubbo nodded, grinning. “And trust me, it’s going to be awesome .”

............

Two days later, a chicken appeared in his base. Tubbo found it laying an egg in what was starting to become the base’s storage area, with one of his shirts nearly ripped to shreds in what appeared to be a makeshift nest.

There was a nametag wrapped around its leg. After some chicken wrangling and a few feathers to the face, he got a good look at it and realized there wasn’t a name written there, but a set of coordinates.

A set of coordinates rather far away, but who was he to turn down such an intriguing mystery?

With the chicken now renamed Wilbur and placed in a pen (he’d needed a chicken farm anyways), Tubbo set out that morning with a few supplies to find the spot he was looking for. After crossing a fair bit of forest and ocean, by the next day he’d found himself cutting his way through the underbrush of an overgrown jungle and wondering why in the world Stress had wanted to wait a week before going to get their elytra.

He pushed a few low-hanging vines out of the way, checking his communicator for the upteenth time. He was getting closer, now. This better be worth going out a few hundred chunks in the middle of nowhere—hey, wait a minute!

There was smoke in the distance. He could just make it out through the leaves, and now that he concentrated, he could smell it, too. Tubbo rushed forwards, pushing through the brush to see several man-made wooden pillars sticking out. As he pressed forwards, he made out a semi-stone floor, several chests, and a small fire in the middle, explaining the smoke.

“What is this?” He asked himself, looking around the place. The coordinates were right, and yet no one was here. Just this outpost in the middle of the jungle.

Tubbo walked around. There were some papers pinned to the wall, and a few dispensers lying around. Idly he pressed the buttons on them, already starting to form a plan to enact revenge on whoever made him travel over a day to get this place.

He pressed the button on the dispenser in the middle of the build and nearly got an arrow to the face.

Tubbo yelped, his reflexes, honed from a half year of training, the only thing saving him from a sudden death. A bell rang behind him, but it took him a few more moments to calm his racing heart.

“Not funny! You nearly took my head off!” He shouted to the jungle. Still, he didn’t leave, instead turning to the bell the arrow had his, examining it. Huh.

There were some cookies in one of the chests, probably left behind by whoever had actually built the place. He nibbled on it, only half hungry, as he tried to examine the place better.

“HERMIT CHALLENGES!”

Tubbo shrieked , dropping the remains of his cookie as the voice rang through the forest air. He looked around, trying to find the source, but found that he couldn’t.

“INITIATION!”

A diamond-clad figure dropped out of the vines above, landing with a firm thud on one of the ground dispensers. He nearly lost his balance before righting himself with a huff.

“Mumbo!” Tubbo exclaimed, a little annoyed but mostly impressed.

“INITIATION!” He shouted at the top of his lungs. “HERMIT CHALLENGES! YOU ARE BEING INDUCTED.”

“How long have you been up there?! It took me over a day to get here.”

“No matter, Mr. Tubbo! Congratulations! You’re in!”

“...Thanks?”

“Of course, my friend! You have been inducted into Hermit Challenges! Of course, you could have eaten the entire cookie—” he glanced down at the crumbs at Tubbo’s feet. “But besides that you have acted perfectly.”

“Wait, what is Hermit Challenges?” Tubbo asked, blinking. What? This version of Mumbo was almost nothing like the Mumbo he’d seen at Spawn a mere week and a half ago. Who used chickens to deliver messages? Or perch in a tree for supposed hours on end?

Okay, he had to admit, that last one was pretty funny.

“Oh, it’s a game I’ve made up,” Mumbo continued. “Iskall and I have already had a go at it, and I figured I’d invite you next.”

“...Alright, then. How do I play?”

“It’s simple! Write down three challenges and put them in the dispenser. Then we’ll pick one at random from each other.”

Mumbo reached into one of the chests on the ground, taking out a sheath of paper and passing three to him with a pen. Tubbo looked at him, and Mumbo grinned.

“Go on! I’m sure you’ll have something fun in that head of yours.”

Ah, he was right. Tubbo gave in with a smile, leaning back and thinking briefly about what he wanted to challenge Mumbo. A few ideas came to mind, and he quickly scribbled them down, pushing them into one of the two dispensers on the side of the small build, Mumbo doing the same.

“Alright, then!” Mumbo announced with a smile. “You go first.”

Tubbo stepped towards Mumbo’s dispenser and clicked the button, causing a slip of paper to slide out. He unrolled it, then read it out loud.

“‘Steal everyone’s front doors for the rest of the season.’ What? The whole season?!”

Mumbo laughed. “Oh, that one! Man, you got the hardest one from me!”

“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what you’ll get from me.”

“We’ll see,” Mumbo said with a chuckle.  He moved across the platform, and pressed the button the dispenser Tubbo had put his challenges in. The dispenser whirred, and then another slip of paper popped out. Mambo picked it up and read off of it, face contorting as he did so. “...‘Act like you don’t believe in the moon for the next two weeks, and claim the sky is a hologram put up by the SCA (Secret Chickens Agency) to keep us from seeing the real overlords- the sky chickens.’ What?”

Tubbo snickered at that, covering his mouth with one hand. Oh, he was proud of that one.

“No, seriously, this is awfully specific.”

“What? It’s funny!”

“Funny for you!” But Mumbo was smiling, and Tubbo grinned back at him.

“I’m going to be having a fun few weeks,” he giggled.

“So am I,” Mumbo agreed with a raised eyebrow, tucking the slip of paper away. He clapped Tubbo’s shoulder. “I suppose I’ll have to make up a good story to go with this prompt.”

“And I have some doors to steal!” Tubbo laughed.

“Whoever gets the first complaint in chat wins?”

“You’re on!”

[sweetest-honeybee]

To Hell and Back

Chapter 17

Summary: Wels basically tries to kill Tango.

Characters: Wels, Tango, Beef mentions

TW: Hella violent chapter, includes blood and pain

———————

Even a couple days later after his little dispute with Beef, Wels was still quite annoyed. For those couple days he decided to just stay around his base, careful not to wander over into Beef’s territory. The butcher was now the last person he wanted to see right now and he was fine with staying home alone if it meant he didn’t.

But inevitably, he’d have to leave for some particular reason at some point. Today was that day and he was going to have to meet with Tango. He already rejected the offers to visit or receive visitors from other Hermits, but suspicion was bound to rise if he continued to reject the many invitations. Especially since he started in the series so late. The others wanted to see him again.

That being said, he laid in bed wondering if he could come up with some kind of excuse. He had to breed cows for hours, his portal needed some recalibration, he needed to grind for new stuff because he lost all of it again, something like that. It would be believable but Beef was bound to chatter off to someone.

Not that Wels thought anything was wrong. He was still the same old chivalrous knight he was for years beforehand, Beef was just overreacting. But if the butcher happened to tell Xisuma what he thought, the admin would definitely ask some questions.

While he thought, his communicator buzzed a few times. Kicking off his blanket with a groan- despite being only noon- he saw that Tango was persistent in making sure Wels left his house. There were at least ten new messages pestering him to come over.

Mostly with bribes for good trading which Wels knew he probably wouldn’t be able to turn down if he tried. He needed some stuff that Tango was willing to trade for a lower price than the shops in the shopping district. The buzzing continued.

<TangoTek> Helloooooo

<TangoTek> Wels

<TangoTek> I’ll give you a bunch of iron

<TangoTek> Gunpowder?

<Keralis> I’ll take some

<TangoTek> :(

<TangoTek> I can see you reading my messages

<TangoTek> Please come over

<MumboJumbo> What on earth is going on?

Wels rolled his eyes. Desperate much? He winced at the thought. No, no, Tango had a point. He’d never call him desperate just for wanting to see him again. Actually that was odd. Wels was not the type to ignore everyone.

Was that what Beef meant? Of course not, Wels felt fine. Great, in fact. He hadn’t felt this good in ages, just a little more irritable than usual, he supposed. Maybe he was just stressed from continually trying to avoid everyone. He really did probably need to see someone.

And that someone would be Tango, he guessed. Might as well. His communicator kept buzzing repeatedly. With a sigh, he finally replied.

<TangoTek> WWWEEEEEELLLSS

<Welsknight> I’m coming over

He threw it back into his pocket and left his bed for the first time in probably at least 24 hours. Stretching his legs felt odd after being still for so long when he was used to walking around every day. Still, he threw on his armor and elytra, not immediately noticing how grey his feathered wings looked than usual.

Wels assumed he wouldn’t be gone for long so food wasn’t necessary- not that Tango wouldn’t lend him some if it became a problem. However, he still kept his sword on his hip if there were any….complications. Unknowingly, he snickered at the thought. With a last look in the mirror, he decided that he was fully ready to leave, completely disregarding his feathers’ new color.

As he walked out the front door, his head turned to the general direction of Beef’s village. An intense scowl crossed his face but before he could think further, he fired off his rockets. He had no time to keep thinking about that lying little butcher.

He winced at the thought again. He didn’t like Beef much now, but that was a bit harsh. Either way, Beef was going to start drama if this continued and Wels wasn’t a fan of being in the middle of one huge argument, especially something having to do with Helsknight of all people. The dark knight was also one of the last people he wanted to see either. He was almost too glad that Evil Xisuma kept him so far away from Wels.

Though, he was beginning to not like Ex either, to be honest. Avoiding the other hermits for three days left more time to think and most of his thoughts consisted of recalling different memories of other evil hermits who threatened to destroy something they loved. Evil Xisuma was certainly one of them.

The counterpart thankfully lost most of his power over the last couple of years. Ever since he decided to move back into the Overworld, he wasn’t granted as many abilities by Xisuma as he had when he lived freely off of the powers given to him by ‘The Lord of Darkness’.

But Wels was getting sidetracked. He plastered on a grin and kept his pace, soon eyeing the colorful asymmetrical buildings on the horizon. The sight always brought on a chuckle from the knight and the grin quickly softened into a more genuine expression. Despite his previous thoughts, he was beginning to grow more excited to see his demon friend.

He opted to land on one of the rooftops and pulled out his communicator. Wels didn’t immediately type in any messages in case Tango was somewhere nearby or flying around while he waited for Wels to arrive. That assumption seemed to be correct when the bat winged figure came into view about a hundred feet away and quickly made its way over.

When Tango landed, the knight was pulled into a spine crushing hug followed by some pats on the back. Awkwardly, Wels just lightly patted the other on the back, not really reciprocating the hug as enthusiastically as Tango probably would’ve liked.

The demon pulled back but kept a hold on the knight’s shoulders which Wels gladly showed some disdain towards. “Jeez, where have you been, man?! Nobody’s heard from you for a couple days now!” At the uncomfortable expression from Wels briefly glancing at his hands, he pulled them away.

“Just needed to be away from people for a while, ya know? I had some personal stuff going on.” He picked something dirt off his shoulder and flicked it away absentmindedly as if Tango dirtied his shirt sleeve.

“Oh, anything you wanna talk about?”

Wels shook his head. “No, no, just Helsknight stuff.” He clapped his hands together. “Anyways! You had some trades in mind? I’m really running out of iron and I’ve got beacon pyramids to build.”

Abandoning his previous worry, the demon lit up with a snort. “I may know a guy….” Tango eyed Wels with a grin. “Iron shop sells a stack of blocks for a diamond, I’ll give you two stacks for a diamond. Or, if you can provide me with a ton of concrete, we can work something out there.”

The knight thought for a second, considering the offer. “Hm, that sounds like one hell of a deal. I’ll think about that while we discuss some other deals.” Wels brushed his fingers over the hilt of his sword absentmindedly. “Heard from the grapevine that you have a creeper farm too.”

Tango eyed the hilt curiously. His eyes followed back up to Wels. “There’s a TNT and rocket shop in the shopping district, but if you want to be fully self-sufficient, I’ll just let you use the farm whenever if there’s something you can offer of equal value.”

“Awesome, one more thing. Obsidian, tons of it, just tons of obsidian. It’ll make sense in a couple months, but I can’t say what it’s for right now.”

Tango raised a brow. “Tons like….a hundred stacks? Or….”

“About four hundred stacks.”

The demon’s jaw practically fell to the floor. “F- Four hundred?” He rubbed at his neck and whistled for emphasize the amount. “That’s….a lot. And a LOT of hours. Even with efficiency and insta-mine, that many stacks is still days worth of mining.” He sighed. “I’d love to help with that but I’m not exactly made of diamonds or have that much time on my hands. It’s not exactly something that can be automated like iron or gunpowder.”

Wels rolled his eyes which Tango made a confused face to.

“Fine, fine,” Wels began with huff. “I’ll find someone else then. Make it four stacks of iron blocks for a diamond and I’ll give you half my loot from the end for the creeper farm.”

Tango stuttered at the utterly ridiculous proposal (though some shulker boxes would be nice, but Wels didn’t visit The End often). “Wha- four stacks of iron blocks?! For a diamond?!”

The confusion didn’t phase Wels in the slightest. “Yes, that is what I said.” His gaze hardened on Tango, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. “Is there a problem with that?”

“Is there a proble- Wels that’s the worst deal I’ve ever heard of! I mean I guess a few shulkers would be nice for the creeper farm but you rarely visit the end!”

“Four stacks.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

Slowly, the sword was being pulled from its sheath. Tango noticed instantly.

“Put the sword away, Wels. You’re better than that,” he gulped. His voice wavered ever so slightly which Wels merely smirked at. This wasn’t like him….

“Four stacks, Tango. Or we’ll have a better form of negotiation.”

Tango lifted his hands defensively, moving one to the hilt of his own sword. “Okay, please tell me that you’re Hels in disguise or something. You’re not actually going to try to threaten me into a deal here, right?”

That seemed to set off something in Wels’s mind when Tango saw the familiar bright blue eyes bring on a redder hue.

And that in itself was already more concerning. Almost too quickly, the knight lost his previously colder stare and lashed out.

“Argh!” The knight unsheathed his sword. “Why do you guys keep saying that?! I’m fine! I feel fine! I-“ Wels swung once at Tango. “-Don’t-“ The demon drew his own sword to block the hit with wide eyes. “-Want-“ The knight swung again. “-Anything-“ Swing. “-To do-“ He lifted it above his head. “-With that-“ He threw an intense glare at Tango. “-Stupid knight!” He brought the sword down, only narrowly missing Tango’s left.

Frantically pulling up his inventory, the demon threw on his armor. He ducked and hopped around and leaned away from each swing of the blade. Each time, he tried to persuade the knight into calming down but evidently to no avail while the other spewed curses at him.

“Wels- Wels stop! I’m not fighting!” Tango took some rockets and flew away, Wels only just on his tail. “What’s gotten into you?!” He shouted. He felt the blade just barely nick his boot. “I’m sorry I said that-!” He turned and took his own swing at Wels, grazing his shoulder. “We can talk about this!”

“I don’t need to talk! I’m not-“ Wels swung again. “I’m not anything like him!”

Only now while the knight struggled to balance himself out after the swing did Tango notice how dark his feathers were. Were they that grey before? The sun was shining right on them earlier, they seemed so light before. With a closer look, the demon could see feathers falling to the earth with each frantic flap, revealing patches of dark skin underneath.

“Okay, okay! You’re not but will you stop trying to kill me?!” Using a kick to the other’s chest, he boosted himself away from Wels. Wels on the other hand only kept struggling. Flying wasn’t his strong suit, Tango knew, and he’d use that to his advantage.

Using another couple of rockets, he tried to get as far away from Wels as possible. Mostly, he flew in circles around him to keep an eye on what he was trying to do. Wels mostly just sent glares in his direction because he knew that he wouldn’t maneuver his way towards Tango that quickly. That in itself only angered him further.

While he flew each lap around him, he took the chance to talk at least some sense into him.

“Wels, what’s going on? Did something happen?” He asked from afar. Wels didn’t answer, still giving him the death glare. Tango spoke again, this time touching on something a bit more personal. “What did Hels do?”

The knight’s hands balled into harder fists around the sword. “I don’t need to tell you anything!”

Tango sighed. He was running out of rockets. “Okay, you don’t, but whatever you’re going through doesn’t justify trying to kill your friend!”

“You-“ Wels growled “- are not my friend!”

As Tango circled by too close this time, Wels swung once more, slicing a straight line across his side and into his right wing. With an audible gasp, the demon was sent flying with now broken elytra into the direction of the towers. The familiar blue concrete came into view quickly and he already knew how much the impact was going to hurt from previous experiences. God, how much he hated respawning. He was almost certain he was going to die the second he made contact with the roof.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, he initially felt his face slam into the cold concrete roof but in a panic, he took his wings to shield himself from further impact. It was a pathetic attempt at not injuring himself more than he already was. His armor shattered and disappeared in a wisp of blue and purple, leaving room for scraping his arms and legs.

His bad wing burned when it tore further and when he finally landed, he laid on his side and curled in on himself with heaving breaths. It hurt, everything was hurting and he hated that he wasn’t dead already. His sword flew off somewhere else but he assumed Wels would just put him out of his misery.

Wels landed and practically stomped towards the demon, sword still in hand. Tango could only watch as blood- his blood- dripped down the blade disturbingly. On the bright side, he wouldn’t be awake for much longer, he was out of it. He coughed meekly.

“N-nngh….hh….” he muttered out. He couldn’t speak. It hurt to move anything in his face. He simply opted for closing his eyes. Hopefully, someone would come and see what happened. Wels needed some serious help.

And as if his prayers were answered, he heard an all too familiar deep voiced, robotic accent.

[whycraft]

a lump in the throat: chapter 3

AO3 | Wattpad | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Joe continued to send messages after that, but he didn’t visit - except for the one time when he did. It was nearly a week after his last visit, and was prefaced by a message actually asking if could come over.

Ex had shot back a quick [sure, why not] and waited by the entrance of his fortress. He heard Joe’s rockets before he saw them. Ex didn’t use his own elytra much, so he was coming to associate the sound of rockets with Joe.

Joe’s smile was even wider than normal. “I hope you’re feeling adventurous today, because I’ve got something to take your breath away.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Follow me, I’ll lead the way!”

Ex equipped his elytra and did his best to keep up with Joe, who, for all his excitement, did not fly like a man on a mission. He flew in weird lazy circles, gliding more than flying. It was because of this strange flight path that it took Ex so long to realize they were flying towards the Nether hub.

He alighted on an outcropping of netherrack and shouted, “Joe, hang on.”

Joe landed on the outcrop. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I can’t go to the Nether hub, Xisuma’ll freak out.”

“Xisuma’s AFK at the moment, he’ll never know.” He jumped off the outcrop.

“Wait!”

But it was clear that Joe did not intend on waiting. Grumbling, Ex followed him.

Being in the Nether hub was weird. No, the being there wasn’t weird - he went to the Nether hub from time to time to look for spare shulker boxes and things. It was the being there with someone else that was weird. That was definitely new.

Joe pointed at the nearest portal. “This portal here will take us to my base.”

Ex stared at him. “Uh, I can’t leave. Remember?”

“I do remember, but I think you should try.”

“I have tried. It didn’t work and it hurt.”

“It’ll be different this time.” Ex’s adamancy must have shown on his face, because Joe’s voice went soft. “Trust me on this.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” muttered Ex. “Fine, whatever. You go first, though.”

Joe’s face brightened. “Great!” He walked backwards into the portal and waved at Ex as he teleported away.

Ex closed his eyes and walked into the portal, muscles tensing and preparing for the pain that came from trying to go to the Overworld. Instead of pain, though, came the familiar sensation of being launched into another dimension like a bullet from its chamber. He stumbled out of the portal and sunlight shone on his face.

His eyes went wide. The entire world was hazy and red from his helmet, but it was unmistakably the Overworld.

He fell to his knees on the soft green grass. With trembling hands, he removed his helmet. His skin was damp and from the heat of the Nether. A breeze ruffled his hair, which was matted against his head, sweaty and unkempt. 

“What -” he croaked. “How -”

Joe’s smiling face came into view in front of him. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

“No, seriously, how? This - this shouldn’t be possible.”

“Well, the server’s been experiencing some glitches, so Xisuma’s been leaving his command screens up…”

“You hacked Xisuma’s command screens?”

Joe shrugged. “There is no proof to suggest that didn’t I use his command screens for the purposes of unbanning you, but there’s also no proof to suggest that I did.”

“Except for the fact that I’m here.” Ex clutched his helmet. “If Xisuma finds out -”

“Fear not, my apprehensive friend. Check the tab list and put your anxiety to an end.”

Ex pressed the tab button on his communicator and the list of hermits popped up. Xisuma’s name was greyed out.

“As long as Xisuma is AFK, you don’t have to worry.”

“But what about everyone else? If they see me, they’ll tell him.”

Joe waved away his concern. “No one ever comes to my base except for Cleo, and she would listen to what we have to say before making any snap judgements.”

Ex got to his feet and looked around warily. “I hope you know that my life is in your hands right now.”

“I’ll guard it like it’s my own,” said Joe. “More carefully, even. I tend to die in silly ways a lot. Anyway, wanna come inside?”

It turned out that Joe’s house was not actually a house, and was, in fact, a hermitage. Ex didn’t know what that was, but Joe was happy to explain. He gave him a quick tour of the place. He seemed to take great pride in a few paintings hanging around. Although they didn’t look like anything particularly special, Ex nodded politely and said they looked nice.

“Do you want a comb or something for your hair, by the way?” Joe asked when he noticed Ex trying to fix it into some kind of style.

“Yes, please,” said Ex, a little desperately.

Joe returned with a hair brush and a bucket of water a few minutes later. “Sit down, it’ll be easier for me to brush it for you.”

Ex sat cross-legged in front of Joe, shoulders back and stiff as a board.

Joe dipped the brush in water and began working on a section of hair. “Supposedly, getting the hair wet is supposed to make it easier to brush. I don’t actually know, though, because I don’t have to brush my hair often.”

“I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t brush my hair if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

Ex resisted the urge to throw an incredulous look over his shoulder. “Have you ever tried to stay in the Nether for an extended period of time? The air is so toxic that you’d die without a helmet. Have you ever tried to brush your hair inside a helmet?”

Joe stopped brushing. “You couldn’t breathe?”

“No, I could breathe. I had my helmet.”

Joe opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then closed it and kept brushing.

Ex had the distinct feeling that something had just happened, but he wasn’t sure what. He changed the subject. “How do you come up with poetry just off the top of your head?”

Joe shrugged. “I just let the words run through me. I am like an outlet for words to be set free, like a symphony of thoughts ready to be spilled.”

“I wish I could do that.”

“Everybody’s different. How do you write your poetry?”

“In iambic pentameter.”

“Now, see, that would be difficult for me, because I’m not used to countin’ out syllables and stuff like that. But that’s part of what makes you who you are. Poetry is a deeply personal thing, and good poetry should reflect who you are.”

Before Ex knew it, Joe was finished untangling his hair and the sun had nearly set. Ex tied his hair back into a ponytail and dallied outside the portal for as long as he could.

“I…” Ex cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Thank you. So much.”

Joe’s smile was soft. “You’re welcome.”

“I mean it,” Ex said fiercely, “more than I can say. I -” He stopped abruptly. How did one express gratitude? Through hugs? That seemed excessive. Handshakes? Far too formal.

Fortunately, Joe seemed to sense his dilemma. He reached out and clasped Ex’s right hand in his own for a moment; not quite a handshake, but more of a reassuring gesture to show understanding. Ex squeezed back, then let go.

Ex closed his eyes and put his helmet on. After hours of being in the Overworld, the red haze seemed so wrong, so unnatural.

He put one foot in the portal and looked back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” said Joe, smile as wide as ever.

Ex smiled and walked into the portal.

[triple-a-enderdragon]

How many times can you say the clock is ticking? Because now it’s

TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

First | Previous | Next

Biffa was living. The rush of battle was one he'd missed, even if he had felt it not that long ago. It was too long, in his opinion. He never thought it was fair that Python and especially Iskall got to face world hoppers. But at the same time, he trusted False's judgment enough to follow her direction. The thrill of the fights she did leave to him were well worth it.

In his anticipation for the next skirmish, he almost missed False's signal, pointing him to where their target was.

Landing in the torch-lit clearing, Biffa took in two things: Grian was alive, if a bit worse for wear; and his assailant had their back exposed. Swiftly crossing the clearing, he laid into the intruder, leaving a deep rent in their back. Biffa was a bit surprised they didn't drop, and followed through with a vicious blow to the head. That did the trick.

"Grian." False had also crossed the clearing to check on the builder. "Are you badly hurt?"

"Nothing that's too serious. I'd managed to avoid most of it," Grian said, checking himself over. Sure enough, he had a cut on his left arm and a nasty bruise developing on one cheek.

False gingerly brushed the bruise. "You took a head blow," she said. "A visit to Joe, if he's still awake, would be a good idea. When you're done with that, Impulse wants you to go to Tango's base."

"Tango's base? Did he say why?"

"He did not. I'm sure you'll find out when you get there."

Biffa interrupted them. "It's gotten dark. Mobs will start spawning, and I don't want to be here when they do."

False looked at him, amused. "You had no problem fighting just now."

"Yes, against a limited foe." Biffa looked her in the eye. "I remember the dangers of a hardcore world, mobs being the biggest one." He knew she did too. She nodded and wordlessly took to the skies, leaving Grian and Biffa to follow.

~~~

"Well, I would advise you from doing anything too ridiculous, but I've heard what you have to do tomorrow. Ridiculous definitely, even a bit cliché." Joe looked at Grian, then at Cub. "Then again, we can't have Concorp at half capacity, can we? Besides, I do want to see this for myself, seems delightfully absurd."

Grian looked a little confused, though it may have been the head injury. "What about Xisuma?"

Joe raised one eyebrow. Confused enough to say X's name more-or-less right. "Right! Can't forget about him. Anyway, I'm sure you're needed elsewhere to restore balance to the scales," he said as he herded Grian out of the Ministry. "Thanks for stopping by, Grian. It can get lonely with only the undead and the actual dead as company."

"Is Cleo the only one visiting? Shouldn't you get out more?"

"I understand your concern, but— while I'm no Scar— I'm no stranger to death. I'd rather stay in relative safety until I can risk being surprised by a creeper again."

Watching Grian go, Joe's thoughts wandered to a certain person intimately linked to death. He would have to see if Cleo was interested in watching what would unfold. And, Joe admitted, he would be too scared to do so alone.

~~~

There was only so much of the Nether that Python was willing to take at one time, and he felt he was getting mighty close to that limit. He'd already spent quite a bit of time gathering quartz for his ambitious builds in Tower Bay over the last few months.

Gathering quartz turned out to be the distraction he and Iskall set out for themselves. Keeping a watch on the temperature, they were able to ignore the frustration and unease with their situation. A careful trip to the gold farm kept their gear and tools in top shape. Food was not yet a concern, water was managed through the careful melting of ice.

The pigmen turned out to be less of a threat than the two thought; the hostiles still swarmed on sight, but always seemed to get distracted long enough for Iskall and Python to make a hasty escape.

So they mined quartz. Hours passed, with rests intermittent, before they found another problem.

Iskall was in front of the array of double chests, laden with quartz, trying to find space for the latest haul. He wasn't finding any. Rubbing his left eye, he walked to his ender chest and started looking for some wood. Which he didn't find. He looked at Python, also rummaging around his ender chest. "Python?" he asked.

"Hm?"

"You have any wood, by chance? I'm all out, and I need some for more chests."

Python's rummaging increased, shulker boxes opening and closing, before he said, "No, sorry man. I'm out as well."

"Dang it! I guess I'll be carrying around a bunch of quartz."

"You don't have any empty shulker boxes, or any empty spaces, at least?"

Iskall scanned his ender chest again. "Well, there's a bit of space, but still not enough. Ah, that's fine, at least I have some inventory space now," he said as he put the now full shulker box into his ender chest.

"If you're up for it, we should take one last trip to the gold farm," Python said. "Some of my gear's running low."

Iskall, feeling a headache coming on, said the wrong thing. "Yeah, I'm up for it."

~~~

Tango spent almost an hour, pacing his base, listening for the rockets that would signal Grian's approach. Since he and Impulse learned where the winged man was, they were on edge; even more than they already were. It wasn't until Grian landed in front of him with nary a whisper, startling him to the high heavens, that Tango remembered.

"Grian! You can't do that to me, man! Give a hoot or something, you about gave me a heart attack!"

"Sorry about that; I forget how silently I fly now," Grian said sheepishly.

"It certainly woke me up." Tango was about to brief Grian, but he saw the colorful bruise Grian was sporting. "Oh, ow. That looks like it hurts. Didn't get out of the skirmish unscathed, huh?"

Grian poked at the bruise, wincing. "No, but frankly, I'm lucky it's not worse. By the way, what are we doing? It has something to do with the Nether, I hope?"

At this, Tango was all business. "Yes. The thing we need is at X's base, coincidentally. Stress and TFC are already there."

"What's going to happen?"

"Honestly? I have no idea. I'm just going with the flow here, man." Tango was very unsure of himself, but continued, "When it gets down to it, I'll know."

As they look to the skies, Grian looked unconvinced.

~~~

If anyone was near the stock exchange, they would have heard shouting. A lot of it. As it happened, "anyone" turned out to be Mumbo, heading to the shopping district for some last-minute supplies.

He stuck his head into the station and, in between the bursts of surprisingly expletive-free fury, said, "Doc? You ok in here?"

A pause, a concerning crash, and Doc huffed his way into view. "Everything's fine."

Mumbo didn't take his hint and came closer, hopping the turnstile easily. "It doesn't sound like it. Besides, I asked if you were ok, and you didn't answer."

If looks could kill, the redstone contraption in the corner would have exploded. Mumbo briefly wondered if, with a few tweaks, Doc's eye could produce that effect. Or something similar. But it didn't, and the redstone build stayed in one piece. Doc sighed and walked over to an overturned shulker box spilling comparators, droppers, and other redstone bits and bobs over the floor.

As he shoved all the items back in the shulker box, he said, "Something is going on. Something's happening to me." He pointed at the build in the corner. "You know what that's supposed to be?"

Mumbo walked over to it and inspected the innards of it. Not even half a minute had passed before he answered, "I would think it would produce a sort of vending machine effect. Is that what you were going for?"

"Yes! It's supposed to dispense one stack of ender pearls or cookies when a diamond is deposited, but something is always wrong. Either the wrong item is dispensed, the wrong amount is, nothing happens; I know what's wrong each time. I fix it each time. But something else always pops up!" After a pause, Doc said, "I don't know what to do, and I'm at my wit's end here."

Now that Mumbo knew what Doc was trying to achieve, it took him all of a minute to find and fix the problem. He went back in front and said, "Try it now."

Doc put a diamond in the input chest and pressed the ender pearl button. He then stared at Mumbo in resignation as sixteen ender pearls hit him in the chest one by one.

"I guess it works now."

Doc kept staring at him. "What was it?"

"The timing of one repeater was off, giving only a partial stack," Mumbo answered, a bit concerned.

Doc placed a hand on the vending machine, lights flickering on his cybernetics. "I don't understand. Every time I fixed the timings..."

"Well, it's all working now. Really neat design, by the way."

"Heh. Thanks. Are you going to the event happening soon?"

"Yeah," Mumbo said, "I have to really see this stuff to believe it; this whole Elemental thing. I would say it's exciting, but..." He stopped. "Anyway, are you going?"

"No. I've got a bad feeling about it. Besides, I have," Doc looked down the tunnel, "other things to do."

"Well, good luck with those. Hopefully, they're not as stubborn as the vending machine," Mumbo said as he prepared to leave. "I'll see you around, mate."

As he left, he saw a curious scene: Doc, standing in the middle of the rail line, didn't seem to hear him. Staring down the tunnel, he was muttering and scratching his right arm. Mumbo didn't know what to make of it, and so took his leave.

Shopping driven from his mind, he had somewhere to be.

"Something's happening to me."

~~~

Getting to the gold farm was never as bad as getting back from it. Every hermit had forgotten to reequip their elytra at least once, some more than others.

Knowing this, Iskall and Python took extra care to double and triple check, to cross-verify, that both had their elytra equipt.

However, every time Iskall went to descend, something stopped him. He couldn't really explain it, like some internal force keeping him rooted to one spot. And the fear. There was nothing to be afraid of, he knew. He could hear the distant sound of Python, next to him, trying to get his attention. But it wasn't as loud as the voice.

Do not jump.

Iskall never saw the ghast.

~~~

Impulse was waiting; if you could call it that. Grian and Tango had arrived about an hour ago, and the latter said he needed to wait for the sun's zenith before he could continue. Impulse had asked what the zenith had to do with anything, Tango couldn't answer him. Said it was a 'gut feeling'. And since Impulse couldn't speed up the sun, he waited.

Various hermits had filtered in over the past hour. Zedaph was there, giving much-needed moral support to Impulse and Tango. False and Wels were ready to jump into X's Nether portal as soon as they were able. Mumbo had given Impulse a thumbs up when he arrived, too anxious to speak.

A few hermits weren't there. Joe, Cleo, and Scar were at the Ministry watching over Cub. Biffa, Jevin, Doc, and Ren all said they weren't coming, and Impulse didn't blame them. If he didn't have to be here, he most likely wouldn't be here.

Impulse heard movement; Tango was showing the other three 'avatars' to their corresponding spots around the altar. Stress to the North, Grian to the East, TFC to the West, and Tango himself to the South. They were interrupted by a buzz from their comms–

iskall85 fell from a high place

–and the world exploded into brilliant diamond blue light.

[rendiggitydog]

Ren and Tfc are besties, trust me

“Wait, you only get water from regular ice? That makes so much sense!” Ren face palmed.

“Well yeah, you fool!” Iskall laughed, throwing the ice into an open shulker box. “How much packed ice have you wasted in the past three seasons?”

“None of your business?” Ren grinned sheepishly.

“Ha! Well, enjoy the regular ice, my guy.” Iskall tossed the box of ice to Ren, chuckling.

“Thanks Iskall…” Ren flew off quickly. He instantly dived into the stock exchange, where he knew Doc was working at the moment.

“Doc, can I talk?” Ren burst into the office.

“Uh, sure Ren.” Doc didn’t look up from his stack of paperwork.

“Thanks.” Ren sat on the floor, throwing his shulker box in the corner. “So, Iskall.”

“Mmm hmm…”

“He treats me like such a derp! Like, I know that I am a derp, but Iskall isn’t! So when he teases me, it’s just hurtful! I know we’re friends, and he doesn’t mean it, but he’s not the only hermit that does it. I mean-”

“Yeah…”

“Are you even listening?” Ren stood up, and Doc didn’t acknowledge him. “You’re not!”

“What was that, Ren?”

“Never mind..” Ren snatched his shulker box and stalked out. He decided to stop by the base; maybe False would be around.

“Hey Ren!” False waved as she passed Ren at the entrance.

“Hey! You’ll never believe this!”

False giggled. “You mean the thing with the ice? Iskall texted me. Classic Rendog!”

“Fine, fine. I didn’t want to tell you my woes anyway.” Ren rolled his eyes.

“No, go ahead! Tell me your woes,” False giggled.

“No, no. It’s fine, really. I need to head out anyway.” Ren took to the sky quickly, avoiding eye contact.

He soared high, gently gliding over the shopping district to blow off steam. He grumbled, glaring at every hermit he saw walking far below. After flying for around an hour, he decided it was time to land when the holes in his elytra snapped loudly in the wind. He stumbled as his elytra fully broke, landing on the back lawn of Sahara.

“What ho.” Tfc caught his attention and saluted casually as he ducked into his vault. Ren lit up, running in after him.

“Rough day?” Tfc called over his shoulder without slowing his stride.

“I guess. It sounds like you had a good day?” Ren settled in the corner of the room.

“Not bad. I visited three shops without getting a migraine.”

“Heck yeah my dude! I’m glad you’re getting better!”

“Thanks. Now, what’s wrong with you?”

Ren sighed. “Meh, nothin new. Iskall and False teased me, because I didn’t know you needed regular ice to get water.”

“Huh, I didn’t know that.”

“I know, right? I wasted so much packed ice, haha!”

“What are you using the ice for?”

“Funny you ask! IIIIImmmmm not sure.” Ren admitted bashfully.

“You could build an iceberg?”

“Nah, Zed already did that.”

“Really? I haven’t seen it.”

Ren’s eyes lit up. “It’s really cool! It’s made of glass and he’s got fish and dolphins and a polar bear, too!” In his excitement, his shulker box flew out of his hands, tumbling to a stop at Tfc’s feet.

Tin grinned, scooping the box onto his foot. He bounced it on his knee, up to his shoulder, then kicked it back to Ren, who caught it.

“Woah…”

“I played a lot of soccer back in the day.” Tfc winked.

“Dude, that’s so cool! Show me again, I wanna try!” Ren hopped to his feet, tossing the box back to Tin.

Tin kicked the box aside. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it for real.” He pulled a heart of the sea out of a chest. “Let’s go.”

Ren and Tin stood across the park from each other, the doorways leading into other rooms marking their goals.

Tfc kicked off first, instantly scoring a goal. Undeterred, Ren kicked off the second round, and Tin easily slipped past him, scoring again. Three more rounds, and Tfc won every point.

“Gah, you’re so good! How?” Ren sighed, catching his breath.

“Years of playing on a professional team. Let me show you.” Tin dribbled over to Ren, slowly walking him through the proper technique.

Three hours later, the score was nearly tied, with Tin fighting to hold his lead, panting hard. “You picked this up fast.”

“Yeah?”

“You know, you’re not a derp at all. Have you considered that you have some social anxiety?”

Ren froze, letting the ball roll past him. He stared at the ground, almost like he could bore a hole through bedrock. “I guess I hadn’t thought of that. Can social anxiety do that? Make it hard to think about obvious stuff?”

“For you, maybe. It’s different for everyone.”

Ren sat down slowly. He rested his head in his hands, moving in slow motion. “…anxiety..?”

Tin crouched down next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Ren. It’s just an all encompassing term. You might not even have it, it was just a thought.”

Ren didn’t respond. Maybe he did have anxiety? But he wasn’t nervous around people, he just forgot basic world mechanics! That’s different, right? It can’t be anxiety…

“No, you’re right. Maybe I do. Do we have a psychiatrist on the server? Maybe I can talk to them.” Ren smiled slightly. “Now I can prove to Iskall that it’s not my fault I’m a derp!”

“Well, we all support you, whether you’re a derp or not. Now, do you wanna sleep over tonight?”

“Huh? Is it night already?” Ren sat up, stretching.

“Yep. Almost midnight.” Tfc displayed his clock.

“I’d hate to bother you more..”

“No bother. I’ve still got your bed from last time.”

“Oh man. I’m gonna be sooo sore in the morning,” Ren laughed and stood, stretching.

“Yeah, I haven’t played like that in years. We probably ruined this heart of the sea.” Tin stood up, tossing the sphere into a chest roughly. “Oh well.”

They fell into a comfortable silence as Tfc cleaned up the messy room, and Ren mended his elytra by hand. It was past midnight before the pair fell asleep, passing out mid-conversation.

[lunaraen]

Gifts

To say that it’s been an interesting year would be overwhelmingly understating things.

Maybe not as much as just saying they’ve been busy, but still.

There’s always a good side, and while Jesse’s more than happy to see something good come their way and see that something good as the number of presents they’re all opening, he also appreciates the new company in the Order Hall.

Jack and Nurm are bound to make anything interesting, sometimes simply by being around, but Jesse’s not complaining.

Apparently, thanks to the colder weather and how warm it can get in the shop when Jack makes armor and weapons, the ‘parrot problem’ (Jack clarified that those were Nurm’s words, not Jack’s) gets considerably worse in the winter, so they didn’t want to make the Order visit them when they have enough issues in-shop.

For some odd reason they both seem to think they can’t just crash at the Order hall, that they’ll be making a trek back to their shop later when it’s even colder and darker, despite knowing how many open rooms they have and how icy it is outside.

Petra might think that way for herself, which is frustrating and saddening on its own, but Jesse knows she’s been just as open to inviting Nurm and Jack to stay, so it doesn’t add up. Especially given how she and Jesse aren’t the only one, every other Order member, Ivor, and even Gabriel and Magnus, who are visiting, making the same very much clear on multiple occasions.

They should know they’re plenty welcome by now.

Occasionally, though, guests who don't know they're welcome or not, someone’s bound to get the interesting wrapping of a box inside a box.

This gift goes a bit behind that, and Jesse’s fairly sure it’s mostly because of Jack, who’s already beaming at him.

“Huh. A wrapped box in a shulker box in a chest.” To top it all off, the chest has a bow of its own on it, large and red and still on top because Jesse can’t bring himself to remove it. “You never do anything by halves, do you?”

Jack grins from his seat by the fire, looking oddly cozy in the fuzzy sword and snow themed sweater Axel gave him at the start of the whole gift giving process.

“The gift that keeps on giving.” Nurm, wearing a red nightcap gifted to him by Olivia, hums in agreement before saying something, Jesse picking up on more than he would have months ago when he wasn’t brushing up on his language skills, and Jack’s grin only gets wider as he motions for Jesse to unwrap the likewise still bowed and wrapped box.  "Keep going, you haven’t even gotten to the real thing yet.“

“Yeah kid, don’t keep us waiting any longer.” Magnus grins from where he’s sitting on the couch, between Gabriel and Olivia and wearing a skewed woolen hat of his own, and Jesse can’t help but admit he’s got a point.

Curiosity isn’t always a good thing to entertain too long with griefers; it just makes them creative.

And Jesse, who’s been told he’s patient to a fault with the serious matters and plenty impatient with the pettiest of things, rips into the paper, opening the box before all of the wrap’s even been torn off.

It takes conscious effort, not to drop the box entirely when he sees what’s inside.

"Is this…?”

“Yup.” Petra grins from where she’s sitting between Jack and Axel, crossing her legs as she leans back against the wall, toll tipping slightly as she does. “You’re welcome.”

“When did you guys get an elytra?” It’s a bit of a stupid question, given there’s only one place to get actual ones instead of cheap knock offs and that everyone else’s gifts have been wholly end-themed, but Jesse’s common sense might just be a little preoccupied with the fact that he’s holding an elytra in his hands. Besides, all three of them are way too good at haggling, and being able to go to other worlds might make getting stuff like this easier, even if it doesn’t make it any less special.

It feels silky and hard and lightweight as he lifts it out of the box and runs his fingers along the edges, soft and firm but giving in a way few materials ever should or could be, and while Jesse doubts he can get as excited over this as Lukas did about the end rods and end stone bricks, he’s tempted to at least try.

“Where do you think?”

Axel’s the one who asks the question, and while it’s not a gift from him, he has a point that the three grins Jesse’s getting seem to reinforce.

“I have no idea how I can thank you guys enough for this.”

The three of them exchange a look that’s probably best described as exasperated.

“You’ve done enough already, Jesse. Just try to enjoy it.” It might be a sign of its own that Jesse’s not sure if Petra means the gifts he made them himself, from uneven and too long but creative scarves and knickknacks, or the stuff they’ve gotten through together as a team.

It’s hard for Jesse to set the elytra down, gently and carefully though he does as he places it back in the box that he rests beside the shulker shell that’s easily a gift in its own, but he does just in time to look back up and see Olivia nudge Radar forward, Radar gripping a large but unwrapped book as he hops down from his stool.

“And I don’t know how I’m going to compete with that, but I hope you like it.” Jesse has the book thrust in his hands almost as soon as Radar’s close enough to do it, and Jesse’s already smiling as he glances down at the book and the number of names scrawled on the cover.

“I’m sure it’ll be great, Radar.” Jesse glances up, looking around the room at the others. “How many of you guys worked on this?”

“It was something of a team effort.” Ivor pauses to take a sip of his hot chocolate, looking cozy in his chair as he smiles at both of them. There’s a look in his eye that tells Jesse this is going to be interesting even while Jesse still doesn’t fully know what it is. “However, Radar wanted to be the one to present it.”

Radar stays standing as Jesse turns his attention back to the book, smiling again at the names before he opens it and nearly drops the book.

It’s a photo album.

They have a few already, including one made up of pictures of the old Order they managed to scrounge together, but the more the merrier.

It already seems like an awesome gift, with Jesse recognizing a number of the photos on the first page as fairly recent, with the following pages getting older and older.

All the way until a few pages in when they get really old and it feels like he’s been socked in the gut. In the good way, if that’s even possible.

It’s just pages and pages of him and Reuben.

Jesse knows where each and every moment came from too, recognizing the photographs as ones Olivia took. Back before the Witherstorm, even back before they were worried about that year’s Endercon, or even a number of the ones before that, Olivia liked messing around and experimenting with taking photos of them all while they were busy or having fun or even just doing nothing.

Her photos make up a good chunk of their current albums even now, but it’s so cool to

There are pictures of Reuben curled up at Jesse’s feet, sleeping in his lap, resting beside him while they both nap in the sun, a picture of an unsuccessful attempt at giving Reuben a bath after the rain had made the forest too muddy for anybody’s good.

There’s even a picture of the time Reuben helped him in a snowball fight against Axel, the back of Jesse’s snow covered head fairly blurry but the snowball that he had thrown and that had smacked Axel upside the head in about as clear image as possible. Really, it’s second only to Axel being caught trying and failing to dodge it and Reuben behind him, tripping him up enough and looking extremely pleased with himself for it.

And Jesse has to look up because the last thing they need is someone crying on the pictures.

“How did you make this?”

Radar rubs the back of his neck, swallowing as he gives a shaky smile.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really. I just asked everybody if they’d be okay with giving me a few photos, so I put them in a book I got from the market in my free time, and it turns out there were some left in the tree house that nobody had moved yet, so then we all just…” Radar trails off, fingers tugging and twisting at the odd but cute tree themed tie he has on and pausing only to adjust his glasses, as he looks up at Jesse. “Jesse…? I… is it okay? You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to.”

Jesse’s eyes are burning and that’s okay, because he has the best friends he could ever ask for.

“It’s perfect.”

There is a lot of hugging.

And there’s definitely some crying, but they’ve been through so much that Jesse certainly won’t hold any of it back when he’s happy. They could all use a little more happiness like this.

[kozzax]

My Ideal Minecraft Update

So I know I don't necessarily have any legs to stand on here. As a complete disclaimer I don't play very much Minecraft, mostly because of the work I need to get done on a regular basis and all the other media I take in. But I do play far more often than I do any other game, and I have thought a lot about this concept.

My ideal Minecraft update is another end update. Explanation of why and details of a couple things I'd like to see under the cut because it's... a lot.

I know the End got an update in 1.9. The update where end cities and elytra and shulker boxes got added. It was an incredibly influential update and I'm not at all saying that it wasn't good. What I am saying is that it doesn't feel.... right.

Look at the End as it was before 1.9. It was a single island, where you fought the final boss of the game, using blocks and colors exclusive to the area. It took place in the void. It was a really cool area and provided at least some sense of accomplishment when you got there, just because of how unique the area was and how distinct it was from the rest of Minecraft. But the original End was never meant to be. Expanded. Not really.

The thing about Minecraft-- and you can see this a lot with the recent updates, too --is that everywhere you go feels new and unique and interesting. There's a reason people love exploring the overworld. Finding really cool terrain is fun. Encountering structures and discovering villages and gathering far-out materials that you'll never use just to say you went there is fun. That's a huge part of what makes Minecraft... Minecraft.

When the Nether update came, that fun expanded into the Nether as well. No longer do you go to the Nether just to get fortress materials and quartz, or just to get between areas in the overworld; now you go to the Nether to explore and discover new biomes and interesting terrain. There are piglins to trade with and hoglins to run from and endermen to find. There are ruined nether portals to hunt down and light, and just overall its more interesting there. No longer is it a fiery hellscape of nothingness; now it's a fiery hellscape of life and adventure and excitement.

The update Aquatic did the same thing with the oceans; taking an area that generally most players hated dealing with and turning them into something genuinely fun to interact with and rewarding to visit. And the Caves and Cliffs update is doing the same thing with cave exploration.

The End just.... doesn't have that. The End is boring, and bland, and despite the fact that many players visit it on a fairly regular basis to get shulker boxes and end rods and elytra it's not very good for... anything else.

What upsets me the most about this is that. The End is called the End. It's meant to be an endgame location. But rather than building off of what the rest of Minecraft feels like and creating this rich environment with cool terrain and interesting blocks and fun concepts, it's just kind of... an endless wasteland, with some chorus fruit and end cities here and there.

It's just... a little underwhelming. You beat the game and your reward is exploring a barren wasteland for hours at a time to find what amounts to one new kind of lighting some extra storage and the ability to fly provided you make a ton of rockets. Sure, the rewards are nice, but getting to them is tedious and boring and it goes against the rest of Minecraft's exploration philosophy entirely.

On top of that, it kind of feels. Isolating?

Okay so hear me out here. Minecraft is a sandbox game. There are tons of different playstyles that people use, right, and its up to the player how they choose to use what they're given. But there are... generally five or so camps of people playing the game. Keep in mind this is an incredibly loose and generic breakdown, let me just. Make my point.

The five general groups of Minecraft players are, from my knowledge, like so:

-The builders [focus on building and creating structures]

-The redstoners [focus on understanding redstone and doing cool stuff with it]

-The domestic players [focus on manual farming and collecting pets]

-The explorers [focus on exploring their Minecraft world and never really settling down]

-The PVPers [focus on. PVP and combat]

Obviously there's some overlap in these-- for example, lots of builders also do exploration to get blocks, and lots of "domestic" players make structures to house their domestic actions, but these are the general breakdowns I've seen.

The End, the endgame of the game, the area after beating the dragon, should in theory provide fairly substantial rewards to all players. It's the "final area" of the game. It's treachorous and dangerous and demands a lot of attention and power to traverse. Not all players are going to visit the End, but considering that it's literally called the End, it should provide rewards for any player who does; not just one type of player.

So who does it reward, then?

Primarily, the explorers. Shulker boxes and elytra lend themselves well to exploring around and collecting odd bits and bobs, like explorers typically do. You could argue that this also applies to builders.

But even then, neither of these rewards really come from the End itself.

Explorers don't get new awesome terrain to explore. They just get materials to go back to the regular game and explore farther; rather than being given any kind of reason to explore the endgame area.

Builders don't get any particularly good new blocks, except perhaps end rods as lighting. Endstone and purpur are widely considered to be generally decent at best for builds, and while shulker boxes are nice, the effect they have can be matched with a lot of chests anyways, so it's not a huge benefit.

The redstoners get nothing out of the End, to my knowledge. Shulker boxes are not a huge endgame level reward for them [see: last paragraph]. I'm not a redstoner, to be fair, but I don't believe there are any redstone materials or new redstone abilities unlocked by visiting the End.

Domestic players get... a new kind of plant, I suppose, and shulker boxes. But once again we run into the same problems as with builders and redstoners.

PVPers get nothing at all, except I guess some nice loot out of the chests in end cities? But even then, that's loot that could be made fairly easily on their own, and I know many PVPers have more specific enchantments they want on their items in more specific orders anyways.

Even if all of the above wasn't true, it still stands that the End dimension doesn't feel like Minecraft. Sure, it's got the blocky nature, but it's a barren wasteland that all looks the same. It goes against every Minecraft exploration philosophy I know.

At the very least, I'd want to see an update where biomes get added to the End. Bring life to this area. Keep the current rewards in place, just make it more interesting to find them. Perhaps there's an area of the End with caves in it, or an area where the islands extend downwards as large pillars in the void. Perhaps there's some purple grass added, similar to how the nylium works in the Nether! Maybe there are some new types of trees that generate! Some kind of biome that's focused around one Large piece of vegetation, like a worldtree of sorts, or maybe something that looks like its hanging from the sky! Keep it within the same color scheme, but add more. Add variation. Make it special.

I'm neither a redstoner or a PVPer so I don't know what rewards would look like for them, but I can confidently say that i'm a builder when I play and just expanding on the yellow and purple would do so much. There's only like, four or five purple blocks in minecraft. Imagine if the End unlocked a whole new color to build with and provided a trove of new purple blocks, with added yellow blocks here and there.

Explorers already get the biggest reward from the End, since the current End rewards are suited to that playstyle the most. But making it fun for them to reach those rewards by providing biomes that stand out from those in the overworld and the Nether would, once again, feel like a reward.

I'm also not necessarily a domestic player, but there are considerations for them too: Add more vegetation in the End, vegetation based on the chorus fruit mostly with some edits here and there. Add a new End-based friendly mob. Provide something vaguely similar to piglin trading so farm-based players have incentive to go to the End.

As it stands, the End just feels... unfinished. And I just really want to see an update where it gets.... finished, I guess. Thanks for hearing me out.