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Scar narrows his eyes at Mumbo.
“My friend, are you sure this is a solution to my current Grian-related problems?”
“He’s not talking to you, right? So you asked me to trap him so he’d talk to you, right?”
“I had asked, but…”
It has been one week, five hours, thirteen minutes, and some unknown number of seconds since Grian jumped off a cliff to his own demise, not that Scar is counting. In that time, Scar has managed to see a lot of Grian without any time to talk to him at all. He had given up. He’d gone to the server’s foremost Grian-expert. He’d expected something spectacular. He knows from experience now that Grian is hard to catch.
He, uh, hadn’t expected…
There is an incredibly obvious box with a trap on it sitting in front of Grian’s mansion. It says: “inescapable box :)” on a sign in front of it.
“…this is. Uh.”
He looks at the redstone trap. He looks back at Mumbo. Mumbo is smiling expectantly.
“Mumbo, I wouldn’t fall for this,” Scar says.
“I know!” says Mumbo, delighted. “It’s the single most obvious trap I’ve ever built! It’ll catch him for sure!”
Scar blinks. He thinks of how wily he’s seen Grian could be by now. How he’s seen how slippery the man is as a rival, an enemy. How he’s seen how slippery the man is as a neighbor. How he’s seen how slippery the man is as the one person in the world he could trust, and the one person in the world he could afford to trust least. How he’s seen every side of Grian, and every one of them is sneaky, and defiant, and—strong.
(Right up until Scar, a ghost, had watched Grian stand on the edge of a cliff, and realized it a second before it happened.)
He thinks of all of this, and he looks back at the world’s most obvious trap. He turns to Mumbo. “I’m sure that. Uh. You’re one of Grian’s oldest friends. And I trust your ability to force him to talk to me!” (So Scar can apologize. So Scar can assure Grian that there’s no need. So that they can at least… say something. So Scar can get mangled feathers out of his head. Put something else there. So that…)
“You doubt my trapping ability!” Mumbo says, offended.
“It basically just says ‘trap’ on it,” Scar says.
“That’s the point,” Mumbo says, and then he says, “Go, hide! He’s coming over!”
Scar douses himself in the invisibility potion and hides. He watches Mumbo lean against the trap. He watches Grian land. His heart aches. He knows if he’s visible again, Grian will make excuses to leave, but he wants to. He wants to say something, in this brief moment that Grian’s actually here, here, nearby him, here—
They’re talking. “You don’t really think I’ll fall for this, right?” Grian says.
“I mean, no, I guess not,” Mumbo says. “It is a really obvious inescapable box. You wouldn’t fall for it because you couldn’t get out.”
“Excuse you! I could absolutely get out, and I’ll prove it,” Grian says, immediately stepping into the most obvious trap Scar’s ever seen built. It goes off. Grian becomes immediately trapped. Scar stares.
“You can take off your invis, now,” Mumbo says. Scar drinks some milk and watches Grian’s face drop, the winged man stop struggling. He offers him a crooked smile and holds up his empty hands—hey, look, no weapons, as though either of them actually think that means anything. He steps towards Grian, feeling a little bad for resorting to this, but…
“Thanks,” he says.
“No problem. Grian’s never been able to resist an obvious challenge, or an obvious trap,” Mumbo says. “Now, stop looking at each other like you’re looking at dead men, okay?”
Mumbo lights a rocket and takes off. Scar stares at Grian and tries to figure out why those words felt like a needle to the throat, takes a deep breath, and speaks.