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Chickens. Eggs. Yolks. Uh…what other words were chicken related? Wings? White? Like the white of an egg? Was that too much of a stretch? What puns could even be made using the word white?
He slaved over a book and quill, conjuring a list of words that could be peppered into a certain superhero’s speech. A certain...man in a chicken costume.
Eggcellent, Eggciting, Eggtravagant, Eggcruciating, Yolking, Eggsplosion, Chickening out, Eggilouge, Eggscalating…
Honestly, there weren’t that many puns there, which was pretty pitiful. What kind of chicken-themed superhero didn’t have chicken-themed puns? He wasn’t exactly pulling these puns out of his ass! There was actual thought put into them!
“Grian! Grian! Oh, where is that guy? Grian!” A voice floated around his base, and Grian snapped his book and quill shut, hiding it in his inventory to prevent anyone from reading it.
“Mumbo? Is that you?” Grian called out, sneaking out of The Coop and looking for Mumbo who was wandering around the base in a desperate attempt to find Grian.
“Oh! Grian! There you are, bud.” Mumbo placed a hand on Grian’s shoulder, practically using him a support as he leaned over slightly and panted in exhaustion. Egghaustion. There was another pun to add to the list.
But this wasn’t about puns.
“Mumbo, what’s wrong?” Grian questioned. Mumbo looked more exhausted than he would’ve been normally if he only just rushed over here. Something was up.
Mumbo took a moment to gather his breath before responding.
“It’s something I’ve, I’ve never seen before in Minecraft. I don’t think it was in an update-I would have heard about it if that was the case because this is, this is huge-I’ve never even seen anything like it, I don’t even know if I can describe it-none of us can even do anything about it-”
“Mumbo!” Grian interrupted. “What is it? And why didn’t you message me about such an emergency?”
“I needed time to recuperate from fighting, and I needed to make sure that you were actually able to arrive and be properly prepared. A bunch of the other hermits are currently fighting, but we need more firepower.”
“What are we up against? What is so terrible?”
“You’re gonna think I’m crazy for saying this, but I promise I’m being completely serious,” Mumbo paused for a moment. “We’re facing up against a giant worm.”
“We’re facing off against a worm?”
“I know it sounds insane, but it has a tough outer coating, and it’s digging into the ground and destroying so many things in its path. Not only is it causing a bunch of lag, but it’s also not taking any damage from our blows.”
“Nothing is working?” Grian asked desperately.
“We’ve tried swords, bows, crossbows, and we even tried other tools like axes and shovels! I hit it with a hoe! A hoe! An absolutely ludicrous diamond hoe!”
“What about other things? TNT? Sand? Redstone contraptions? Anvils? Fire? Drowning? I don’t know-fall damage? Potions?”
“We’ve done pretty much all of that, even used both potions of weakness and regeneration to see if that would hurt it, but neither have worked,” Mumbo frantically rambled. “It drills through blocks like a Haste V pickaxe used nearby a beacon, and it absolutely refuses to go into the water. It’s pretty much impossible to get it high enough in the air to get it to take fall damage, and it doesn’t stand still long enough for redstone or anvils, and I swear it has an outer shell made out of obsidian! Nothing is working!”
“Then, what can I do if no one else can do anything?” Grian inquired.
“I, I don’t know. I don’t know. Uh, I guess there wasn’t any particular reason, but I figured the more heads we have to think about how we can beat this thing, the better chance we have of actually doing damage to it. My brain is dead, and most of the hermits are too busy fighting to think of anything.”
“I...I don’t know if I could come up with anything better than what you guys have been coming up with.”
“Grian, at this point, anything would be better than what we have been coming up because what we have been coming up with has been nothing.”
Mumbo looked hopeless. Grian was trying to calculate what would be most effective against a giant, invincible worm.
Grian began pacing.
“Alright, so tools, tools- sword, pickaxe, shovel, axe, hoe, bow, crossbow, trident, I don’t know, a flint and steel? Shears? Come on, brain, what would a worm be weak against? What hasn’t been tried by the other hermits? What hasn’t been considered yet? Snowballs? Blazes take damage against those. What about it, Mumbo, have you guys tried snowballs?”
There was a moment of silence as Mumbo went through all the strategies they had used against the worm.
“I don’t think we have. But, in case that doesn’t work, we should think of another strategy.”
Mumbo messaged the other hermits to tell them to try snowballs. Because if nothing else was working, they might as well.
Grian went to his array of Shulker boxes and chests to see if there was anything in there that could help.
The sounds of frantic opening and closing chests filled the base like the chests were the instruments and the base was the theater, creating a symphony of music that sounded less like a beautiful melody and more like that part of the concert where all the instruments were trying to tune. Except, in this case, the melody never comes, and the audience is stuck with the out of tune strings of the violins.
Grian opened and closed yet another chest before freezing. He opened the chest again, staring at its contents before closing again. He opened it up again as if the items that resided inside were simply something that he dreamed up.
“What about fishing rods?”
“What?” Mumbo responded. “Say that again?”
“What about fishing rods? Have you guys used any fishing rods yet?” Grian repeated. “It’s a worm, isn’t it?”
“Oh my god. Oh my god!” Mumbo held his head in his hands. “How could’ve I been so stupid! Oh my god! How did we forget fishing rods!? Fucking fishing rods! Oh my god. I’ve...I’ve got to get a bunch of fishing rods.”
With that, Mumbo flew out of Grian’s base, as gracefully as ever, as Grian thought about ways to help.
There were many questions bouncing around Grian’s head. The most notable one was why nobody opted to notify him of this emergency until now. Did they not want him to help? Was it because he was the new guy? Or was it because they needed a person who wasn’t fighting to get resources? If they needed someone to get resources, why not inform him that they needed them?
Perhaps these questions were better left unanswered. Perhaps helping out wasn’t really a job for Grian.
He looked around the base, making sure no one was around when he went towards the center nearby the beacon and threw a trident at the ground.
He fell down and was face to face with the costume he thought he had retired. But it looked like it was time for the one and only Poultry Man to shine. After all, chickens ate worms for breakfast.
He donned the wings, then the leather pants dyed white and the yellow leather boots. Finally, he placed the chicken head over his own head and gathered up enough chicken eggs to fill up practically his entire inventory, saving room for rockets, food, and a fishing rod.
Poultry Man flew out of The Coop and gathered information about the worm was before flying over to the given coordinates as quickly as he could.
Why hide behind the mask? Was it the shame? The embarrassment? A vague attempt to grasp for glory but solely for a persona?
Poultry Man didn’t know. All he knew is that he had a job to do.
The damage was devastating. The lands were ravaged, and Poultry Man was hard pressed to find any area that was untouched.
He eventually got to the point where there was an insane amount of lag. And, there Poultry Man saw the worm.
It wasn’t quite in motion because of the lag. It was more like snapshots of a camera, clicking off randomly and without warning.
There were other hermits around, hooking fishing rods into the worm. It did seem to do some damage, but everyone knew that fishing rods did almost nothing.
So Poultry Man whipped out his eggs and began throwing them.
Even though chickens in Minecraft only ate seeds, real-life chickens did eat worms, and to Grian’s surprise, the eggs were actually doing damage to the worm.
Poultry Man, however, was filled with certainty. There was no doubt in his mind that this would work.
He just kept throwing eggs. Other hermits like Stress joined him in throwing eggs at their shared enemy.
Eventually, Poultry Man ran out of eggs.
He dropped down next to what might have been thousands of chickens, many of which were still baby chicks, but there were some that were adults.
Poultry Man watched in awe as the normally passive chickens began attacking the worm, successfully doing damage to it.
But he wasn’t dumbstruck for long, gathering more eggs from the adult chickens and shooting them out towards the worm.
Poultry Man could see why Mumbo went to Grian in person. There was hardly a moment of time when anyone could message anyone, especially given the amount of lag the worm caused. Not that he was helping much with that.
Poultry Man was probably making the lag worse, but that didn’t really matter too much because the chickens seemed to be doing some pretty substantial damage to the worm, much more than the eggs Poultry Man threw at it, and certainly more than the fishing rods people cast towards it.
Not to mention that the chickens were unaffected by the lag. Truly, they were the most powerful sources on the server.
At long last, the worm perished.
There was a silence. Only the clucking of chickens remained.
And then there was cheering.
“Thank god!” Iskall shouted. “I was so tired of fighting that thing.”
“I still can’t believe that we forgot about fishing rods.” Mumbo mentioned.
“I always knew chickens were great.” Stress said. “Thanks, Grian!”
“It’s Poultry Man!”
“Yeah, sure-Thanks for saving us, Poultry Man!”
“I’m just doing my duty as the hero of Hermitcraft,” Poultry Man emphasized his statement by throwing a few eggs obtained from the many chickens surrounding him.
After celebrating the victory, many of the hermits shouldered the responsibility of killing the chickens that were now lagging the server, who were infinitely easier to defeat than the giant worm.
Poultry Man returned to The Coop to relax. He removed his boots, then his pants, then his wings before finally removing the chicken head he wore. He returned the uniform to its rightful place.
He sat down and returned to thinking up potential chicken puns.