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Katy steps out of the shimmering portal, finding herself not in the nether, but in a strange new land. Directly in front of her is a stage with colored seats, one clearly labeled “Katherine’s VIP Seat”. Well, good for Katherine, whoever that is.
To Katy’s left, a massive bridge covered in extravagant colorful towers. The most noticeable off the bat is a gigantic parrot made of what she can only assume is hundreds of concrete blocks. Off to the right is a path that leads to what looks like a festival or faire of some sort. Pass all of this is an immense tower made of various buildings that somehow manage to form a fairly cohesive build style. Though, the sleeping robotic face coming out of the side is quite creepy.
This is not the Pearl SMP, of that Katy is sure.
Just when Katy steps into the sun onto the front of the stage, the signature whoosh of a rocket flings a figure through the clear daylight. A woman lands in front of Katy. A golden crown made of sunflower rests atop long brown hair, splayed out in the wind. She wears a green dress that twinkles in the bright sun, decorated beautifully with sunflowers. She looks like a goddess.
“Who… who are you?” Katy stammers, surprised both by the sudden arrival and the godly appearance of the person standing before her.
“Oh, I’m Pearl! Who are you? How did you get here?” the woman, Pearl, questions curiously.
“I’m Katy. I came through a strange portal which appeared on my ship. I stepped through it and suddenly I was here,” Katy answers, pointing behind her at the portal etched into a stone wall.
Pearl hums, rubbing her chin between her thumb and forefinger. “Interesting… We’ve been trying to get the rift to open for weeks and you just step through…”
She walks past Katy. When Katy turns to follow the strange woman, she expects to see a normal portal with shimmering purple coating the center, but instead, she finds a black and lifeless carved out section of stone.
“What?” Katy murmurs. “It wasn’t like that when I went through…”
“I don’t doubt that,” Pearl responds, poking the portal a few times. “It was creepy when we went through it, but it had the coloring of any other portal. After we arrived here, it closed and trapped us.” She whirls around to face Katy again. “Where did you say you were from again? You don’t look like a hermit.”
“Uh, I didn’t,” Katy hesitates. “I’m from the Pearl SMP. Sorry, what are hermits?”
The only thing Katy can think of is that perhaps someone is experimenting with lore and hermits is what they decided to call it. She knows of several people already adding lore to their areas. Ivan has their nether thing and “saplings”, and Hawke is a salmon for whatever reason. Though Katy has a feeling this is different than one of her community members testing lore.
“Ooh, ‘Pearl SMP’? That sounds like my kind of place!” Pearl exclaims with a laugh. “Well, hermits. You know? Hermitcraft? The hermits? No?” Pearl continues after seeing the confused look on Katy’s face.
“Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Katy admits.
Pearl wraps an arm around Katy’s shoulders and begins leading her away from the portal. “Let me explain then. So, me and some of the other hermits went through a strange rift underneath Grian’s base - he’s another hermit. We had no idea where it would take us, but we figured why not.
“We arrived here and were teleported to random areas in this world: Empires. We met old friends and made new ones. At first, it was like a vacation and we - the hermits - decided to build our own base with the thing hermits are best at: farms and large builds.” Pearl gestures upwards at the large tower with a creepy, sleeping face on the side that Katy had noticed before.
“After a few weeks, we were starting to become homesick, so Impulse, Grian, and I began construction on Grumbot!” Pearl points to the sleeping face. “He’s going to open up the rift and get us all home. Except… we can’t find something that we need to get him up and running. Long story short, we came from another world and we’re trying to get home.”
Katy’s head is reeling. This is so much to take in. One second, she was safe at home in the Pearl SMP and now she’s trapped in another world! This is insane!
“Are you okay?” Pearl asks. “You don’t look so good.”
Katy sucks in a deep breath. “I’m okay. Just… this is a lot.”
“Drink this.” Pearl pushes a bottle filled with green liquid into Katy’s hands.
“What is it?” Katy questions, swirling the bottle around a few times. Bubbles dance inside the glass like when a carbonated drink is shaken.
Pearl grins. “Just drink it. You’ll feel better.”
That is very suspicious. But Katy pops open the cork and down the liquid. It tastes like fizzy apples.
Nothing happens at first and Katy wonders if it is simply a sweet tasting drink until Pearl says, “Jump.”
Ohh. Katy knows what the drink is now. She sets the bottle down and crouches down, launching herself into the sky with a whoop. The wind whips past her ears, her long brown hair and red ribbon flying in the air behind her. For the first time since she arrived, a large grin and light feeling in her stomach take hold. Katy laughs as she lands on the bridge in front of Pearl.
“Fun, right?” Pearl asks with a happy smile. She pulls out another potion of leaping and downs it herself before jumping into the air again, wild laughter filling the air. “Follow me, Katy!”
The duo leap through the remnants of a faire toward the impressive bridge and tower. Halfway there, Katy realizes that normal potions of leaping should not allow the user to bounce this high into the sky for this long. It is much more fun this way! Once she gets back home, Katy must learn how to make potions like this.
Finally, Katy lands next to Pearl at the base of the enormous tower. Seriously! How did they manage to make something so large in just a few weeks? Pearl leads Katy into a spacious room with halls that lead into various other spaces. Down one of them is a long villager trading hall.
“Wow,” Katy mutters under her breath. “You made all of this?”
“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” Pearl admits, chuckling softly at Katy’s wonder. “There’s about fifteen of us who added little sections onto it.”
“Fifteen? Fifteen of you went through that portal?” Katy asks. “And none of you had any idea where it led to?”
Pearl shrugs. “Grian is very persuasive. Anyway.”
She sweeps Katy away to another room with beds lined across both sides of the room. Each bed has its own section with an end-table and chest on either side. It’s very clearly lived in. Some beds have paintings hanging above, chests open and showing their contents. One end-table is adorned with a pirate hat. Another has a small pot holding a mangrove propagule.
“Not all of us stay here completely. I have a place in Chromia and I stay in Sanctuary a lot. I think Cleo and X have a ship in Joey’s empire, but I’m not sure how much they actually live there. Everyone kind of spread out at the beginning, but we all have a bed here.” Pearl begins rummaging through chests and beds. “I’m sure we can find a place for you. Ah-ha!”
She holds a bed high in the air and carries it across the room, plopping it down next to a bed covered in sunflowers. “You can stay next to me! Just for now, until Grumbot wakes up and opens the rift again.”
Katy follows Pearl and perches on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the setting sun. “Thanks.”
----
The next two weeks went by in a blur. Katy traveled the land of Empires, visiting everyone she possibly could. Sausage always seemed to have the maximum amount of energy and pep a person could have. Tango and Jimmy were kind and seemed to have a close friendship. Jimmy got bullied a lot by the other emperors, but Tango stuck up for him every time. After laughing for a few minutes first, of course.
fWhip gifted Katy with a chest full of rocks. Xisuma and Impulse helped her trade for a full set of armor and tools. Grian almost tricked Katy into becoming a short hermit like all of the hermits except Pearl seemed to be, but she saw through him immediately. Several of the Pearl SMP members enjoyed pranking, so she is quite good at seeing through tricks.
Honestly, the only person Katy doesn’t like is the pirate, Joey. He’s just not her cup of tea, so she decides quite quickly after meeting him that she will stay far away. It doesn’t help that he immediately tried to kill her after she told him about her own ship.
However, after two weeks away from her own base and friends, she is becoming quite homesick. Grumbot is still sleeping and the rift is definitely closed.
Pearl seems to have noticed Katy’s problem because one night after most of the hermits have gone to sleep, she approaches Katy, “Grumbot’s almost done,” she starts casually. “There’s just one thing we’re missing.”
“Really?” Katy asks, turning to face her friend. “What is it?”
Pearl sighs. “It’s something quite hard to get… It’s a mustache.”
Katy blinks. “I’m sorry, what? Doesn’t he already have a mustache?”
“Well, Grumbot is like Grian and Mumbo’s love child. Mumbo isn’t here, so Grian got myself and Impulse to help build it. He has a mustache on the outside, but he doesn’t have one on the inside.” Pearl presses her hand to her chest, a serious expression on her face despite the hilarity of this conversation.
“Okay…” Katy says hesitantly. “So, how do we get his heart a mustache?” This is insane. How is this a real conversation that she is having right now?
Pearl shrugs. “We’re not really sure. Like I said, this is Grian and Mumbo’s love child. He’s never been made without Mumbo before. We need a mustache that doesn’t exist in this world.”
Katy takes a moment to think. They need to make a mustache for a robot’s heart who will then open the portal home. What is happening? Okay, Katy, think.
“How did Mumbo make his own mustache?” Katy asks. “Like, I’m sure he didn’t want to give his actual mustache the first time Grumbot was created. So, how did he make it?”
Pearl snaps her fingers. “Yes! That is the question! Come on! Let’s go ask Grian.”
Pearl’s hand latches around Katy’s wrist as she drags the poor sailor out of bed and up the tower toward the large, sleeping robot.
“Grian!” Pearl exclaims.
The waffle-headed man jumps and turns to face them. “Pearl! You can’t just shout like that! You scared me!”
“Sorry.” Pearl snorts. “Well, I’m not, but anyway… Katy had an idea.” She grabs Katy by the shoulders and pushes her forward.
“Well, Pearl explained the problem with waking up Grumbot and I was wondering what Mumbo used as the mustache the first time. I doubt he put his actual mustache in the robot, so what did he use?” Katy explains.
Grian hums and turns to face the inside of Grumbot. “That’s actually a good point. I believe at some point in the construction that he used wool, but there was something else… We have to Mumbo-fy it before it’ll work.”
“Do you have something from Mumbo?” Katy asks. “That might work to add that special part.”
“I have this.” Grian pulls a full-on bike out of his inventory.
Katy’s eyes widen. “You brought a bike with you from your world? Why?”
“Because I miss Mumbo, okay!” Grian exclaims, hugging the bike against his chest. “Go find the wool and we’ll combine it with the bike and it’ll be fine.”
Before Grian can start crying about how much he misses his friend, Pearl ushers Katy out of the room and they head to the wool farm. It doesn’t take long to gather the necessary wool and weave it together into a Mumbo-worthy mustache. Or, at least, that’s what Pearl says. Katy has no idea what Mumbo looks like.
By the time they meet up with Grian again, he has calmed down significantly, though he doesn’t want to let go of the bike he’s still cradling in his arms.
“You have to put it in the crafting table,” Pearl says calmly, attempting to pull the bike from Grian’s arms.
“I will! Just give me a minute,” Grian insists.
“Oh, my gosh,” Pearl mutters, letting go for the time being. “I can’t deal with this.”
Katy steps up and begins taking the bike from Grian’s grip. “Grain, if you don’t combine the bike with the mustache, you’ll never get to see Mumbo again.”
“Did you just call me ‘Grain’?” Grian questions. For a split second, his grip loosens on the bike, giving Katy the perfect time to yank it away. “Hey!”
“Thank you.” Katy smiles and sets the mustache and bike side by side.
Just as she suspected, it will combine into something called “Mumbo’s mustache”. Perfect. Katy picks it up and holds it up for the others to see. Now all they have to do is set it within Grumbot’s inner workings and suddenly, the entire tower is shaking with life. Grumbot’s eyes snap open and arms reach out from the sides of the tower.
“It worked!” Katy exclaims in shock.
“You did it!” Pearl picks Katy up in a tight hug, swinging her around.
“My boy!” Grian runs across one of Grumbot’s arms to look at his face. “You’re alive! My Grumbot!”
Once she is released from Pearl’s surprisingly strong grip, Katy follows after Grian. The robot face was kind of cute when he was sleeping, but with his eyes wide open, he looks terrifying. Grian seems happy, but Katy is quite wary of this new creature.
“Can we ask him things?” Pearl asks, her eyes directed at the rift. When Katy’s eyes follow hers, she finds that something has been built in front of it. A fort of some kind.
“Yeah. Just put it in the chest and he’ll answer,” Grian responds.
Pearl grabs a piece of paper and writes something out, stuffing it neatly into the chest. Noteblocks play and Grumbot’s mustache wiggles, and a piece of paper flies into Pearl’s hands.
“What did you ask?” Katy asks when Pearl smiles.
“The rift is open to your world, Katy. You should go now before things get crazy,” Pearl answers.
“What? What do you mean ‘crazy’?” Katy questions.
Grian shrugs and points to the fort. “The empires have been building that for the last few days. I’m assuming it isn’t harmless. It might be better if you head home now. Plus, it may not be open to your world forever. If you leave at the same time as us, you’ll be heading to Hermitcraft, not the Pearl SMP.”
Pearl takes Katy’s shoulders. “It was so nice being your friend, Katy, but you have people over in your world who care about you and surely must be missing you. I’ll fly over there with you, but it would be best to hurry.”
Katy knows they’re right. She wants to go home so badly, but it’s difficult leaving her new friends behind. Especially if they’ll be dealing with some backlash from the emperors not wanting them to leave. But she nods and pulls Grian into a hug.
“It’s been so nice meeting all of you. Say goodbye to the others for me, please.” When Grian nods, she follows Pearl off of Grumbot’s hand and toward the fort.
Katy expected at least one of the emperors to be manning the fort, but no one is around when she and Pearl land inside. They must be slacking today. Pearl breaks open the thin wall of stone and reveals the rift to be purple once again.
Pearl turns to Katy and hugs her. “I’ll see you on the other side. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.”
Katy nods. “I know. Good luck with the emperors.”
Pearl smiles and nods, watching sadly as Katy steps through the stone and into the portal. The last thing Katy sees is her friend waving and purple consuming her vision. She appears on her ship, the portal she had stepped through initially completely gone. Everything is the same, well except for the dozens of armor stands that now decorate the inside of her base.
“Thanks, Eli,” she mumbles, choosing to ignore them for the time being.
When Katy steps out onto the deck of her ship to find a chest with a sign reading:
“From Hawke
Happy Holidays”
It’s good to be home.