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“Are you here to break me out?” Mumbo asked quietly, his voice rough from shouting and from crying.
Tango felt terrible.
He’d built the Bedrock Service as a prank, thinking it’d be funny to mess with a few hermits, but he’d forgotten that among them, there were a few hermits who were claustrophobic, and he’d completely forgotten to warn them about the trap.
Of course the first person that would fall for it would be one of the few hermits who were claustrophobic. Of course he wouldn’t have any ender pearls or a water bucket or a way out. Of course. Because when can things go well?
Mumbo had been walking around when a new building caught his eye. Tango’s Bedrock Service. He went over to check it out, assuming that it was Tango selling his skills at breaking bedrock and knowing that it was a service he’d probably use at some point if he couldn’t rope Impulse into helping him out.
He stepped in and heard a pressure plate click, and then suddenly the floor was fulling out from underneath him. He definitely did not let out a high-pitched scream as he fell, before the breath was knocked out of him by a series of pistons triggering.
Dazed, he stumbled back into a wall, trying to catch his breath and let his brain catch up so he could figure out what happened. He turned around, and immediately was faced with a sign that read “Thank you for choosing Tango’s Bedrock Service!”
Continuing to turn around to look for an exit, he quickly realized that there wasn’t one, and that was when panic started to set in. Mumbo didn’t like small spaces. He barely had managed to train himself to deal with the small crawlspaces he had to get into in order to work with redstone, but even for that he needed to be prepared. He definitely couldn’t just deal with being dropped into a one-by-two bedrock hole with no way out.
He managed to keep calm enough to check his inventory, to see if maybe he had an ender pearl or something, but had no luck. He was stuck.
“Help! Is anyone out there?” he screamed as loud as he could, panic seeping into his voice. “Please, someone get me out of here I’m stuck!”
There was no response, and he tried calling out a few more times before he gave up. His chest felt tight and breathing was difficult, and he felt something damp on his cheeks. He reached a hand up to his face and realized that he was crying.
He spun around a few more times and made an attempt at squeezing out of the small space that he'd been pushed in through, which didn’t work. He slid down the bedrock, probably ripping the back of his shirt but he didn’t care. He curled into himself and pulled his legs up to his chest and cried.
It took him far too long to think of calling someone, but the moment he did he was scrambling for his communicator, struggling to send a message to Tango with shaking hands.
you whisper to TangoTek: hep m stck
you whisper to TangoTek: bdroccck
you whisper to TangoTek: plllss
TangoTek whispers to you: omw rn
He dropped the device the moment he received a response and tried to calm himself down with the knowledge that someone was coming, but it didn’t really work very well, and he still was terrified.
He heard the door open and the pressure plate trigger, and then someone was standing on the block of bedrock he was at eye level with, crouching down to see him.
“Mumbo.”
He looked up, and in a rough voice, managed, “Are you here to break me out?”
“I’m so sorry,” Tango said, and Mumbo knew he meant it, he could see it on his face, but that wasn’t what he cared about right then. He just wanted out.
When a hand reached out to him, though, he took it, gripping it as tightly as he could. “Get me out of here, please .”
He watched Tango rummage through his inventory and pull out an ender pearl. He slipped his hand from Mumbo’s and replaced it with the pearl, guiding him to smash it against the block he was standing on, and a second later he was standing next to Tango.
Tango immediately pulled out his pickaxe and opened up the area a bit, and Mumbo could finally breathe. He turned back over to him and held out his arms, offering a hug, and Mumbo accepted, practically falling into the other.
“I’m so sorry,” Tango said again, tightly wrapping his arms around him. “I’m so sorry I should have warned you, I completely forgot, I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.”
Mumbo nodded but didn’t say anything, just pressing his face into Tango’s neck and closing his eyes, trying to focus on his breathing.
“I’ve got you,” Tango whispered, resting his cheek on Mumbo’s hair. “I’ve got you, you aren’t stuck.”
He nodded again, tears starting to prick at his eyes again.
“I’ve got you.”