Chapter Text
There have been no customers at the gas station for as long as Grian can remember, but Grian has the second worst memory of them (second only to Scar, who cannot stop hitting his head), so that factoid may be wrong. In any case, it's a Tuesday, and contrary to popular belief, everything bad happens on Tuesdays.
First, the vending machine breaks down. Again. They don’t even use it, it just collapses when it feels like it and they have to hunt down Mumbo to fix it. Second, some sand got in and no one wanted to sweep it up. “I have to man the register,” he had argued. “I can’t be cleaning while someone is making a purchase.”
“Grian, no one comes here. We only sell stringy beef jerky.” Gem, their acting manager said. She and Scar had argued over about everything in the world, and this was just one more thing in the books. Scar was technically a cleaner, making sure everything looked nice and pretty, but Scar was more likely to get seriously injured than actually clean things.
“I like the beef jerky!” Scar said. “The stringiness is how beef jerky is supposed to be, Gem, you just don’t understand the flavor. Another reason why you should clean it up.” Gem, honestly done with everything, takes their well worn broom from a corner and starts sweeping, getting all the sand outside in a very timely manner.
And thus, everything was back to normal. He leaned back in the chair Mumbo had given him, because he wasn’t going to stand at the register all day, as Scar went back to his corner where they stored their extra stock, and where Scar kept his cat. Jellie was a stray, appearing in the distance and getting all the way into the store and immediately jumped up on Scars lap. She did bite Mumbo, for he was visiting at that time, but who doesn’t bite Mumbo?
She had been well taken care of since then, eating more beef jerky than Scar did, on average, as well as actual cat food they all saved up to buy. Jellie only deserved the best, and the best was luxury, so she would be getting luxury. Gem put the broom back in its corner and settled on her own chair which she had built herself in a day (somehow), reading a magazine from their rack.
They had like a million magazines, and Gem was slowly but surely making her way through them. Mumbo had been there the longest, followed by Scar, and he wondered how the two had ever run this place before he had gotten there. The short answer was that they didn’t, encouraging the cobwebs to grow as a race.
But Gem had gotten there far after him, and still somehow was a manager, which ultimately meant nothing because she was only the acting manager and whenever she wanted them to do mechanics or fix the lights or get something from the vending machine they’d throw that in her face.
In any case, since they got magazines on a monthly rate, Gem had a lot to work through. He had read the magazines that interested him as they came in, and it was around the start of the month, even though the vending machine had already broken down, so he’d be waiting for a while.
“Oh yeah!” He said, remembering he was the only one who knew the vending machine was broken. “Vending machines out again. We’re going to have to use your water tank Gem, remember how amazing that tasted?” Scar groaned from his room.
“It is not my fault the plastics are awful,” Gem said. “And didn’t Mumbo just fix it? Is it finally truly broken down?” He snorted, turning to squint into the ‘employee lounge’, which housed the aforementioned vending machine. It looked alright, it just didn’t work at all. He didn't even have to insert money, he just kind of tapped it. Maybe that was what made it break down.
“You act like that’s going to be a holiday,” he said. “When the vending machine finally crashes. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Anyways, I found a new rock yesterday by that small creek in my outside break.” The break was originally labeled ‘touch grass’, but since there was no grass in sight they had to make do with small creeks and more sand.
He and Gem shared a rock collection, which they kept on the only table the gas station had, filled with a lot of plain rocks, some of Gem's prismarine, and a couple other funky ones. Gem approached the register as he dug around in his pockets, before pulling out a milky white stone, jagged and dirty.
“More quartz!” Gem said, snatching the stone out of his hands. “I'll wait to clean this one until we have a better source of water,” she said, looking at the stone more carefully. “This does look like it was chipped off a bigger piece, see the bulge here? So I’m sure there are more like it.” And before even waiting to hear his response she rushed off to the rock table.
There was still a bit of dirt in his pockets. The vending machine had started to make a noise, and while Gem was still in the lounge, even Scar came out of his room to go look at it. “It’s humming again,” Scar said cheerily. “But it only hummed after you fixed it in the middle of last month, so I'd like you to come over here, Grian.” Grian sighed, leaving his beloved register. No one had actually entered the store in around a year, probably because he honestly didn’t think it existed, but he still got paid, even if he… had no home nor family. Was it very weird? Sure. But no weirder than any other years, so he couldn’t complain.
“I didn’t break it,” he said, walking over to where Scar, with Jellie in his lap, was sitting by the vending machine. “I tried to fix it. And it worked. No complaints from our real manager, anyways,” he said, giving a look to Gem. Scar shrugged, before going off, and he hoped the thing would survive just another 28 days so they could find out if it needed more repairs.
It probably did. It always did. There was not a day when it didn’t do something awful. Not. A. Day. He walked back over to the register, sitting in his chair, and got out his sketchbook. Mostly what they all did to fill the time was to draw, sketch out elaborate builds of coves and farms, and in Scar’s case, his theme park. Scar had been working on his theme park for as long as he had been there, and had sketched out every exterior, interior, merchandise, tower, materials, costs, if he had like, the funds, he would give the people responsible for building a sheet and they would have all the information. Scar had always wanted to be a theme park designer (and who… who didn’t? Who didn’t?), but truly this was not the starting ground for one, because they were not very much paid in paper money or checks. That just wasn’t how Mumbo Jumbo rolled. How he hopped and skipped and jumped around.
But all three of them, when bored in afternoons, or bored in mornings, or bored in every single minute of the day (because, let's face it, the most exciting days were the firsts of every month. No contest.), and by now, over the years, they had all developed so much stuff, and had gotten so much better, it was honestly really cool to flip back through old stuff.
They found this hoard of paper in a closet that no one knew how it had gotten there, so Gem got some cardboard and made some sketchbooks for them, and got a bunch of pencils that they could use, and that was that. He was still working on his Rocks this year, and while Gem was continuing to sketch out her Rocks. Their beautiful rock collection had started this year, with Gem deciding to learn how to draw rock faces with her prized colored pencils from CRayola, and so she continued to do that, as Scar narrated another story to Jellie.
Jellie was basically their collective child, but Jellie only heard stories from Scar, because if he or Gem, or gods forbid Mumbo tried to tell a story to her she would go running to Scar, traumatized from their awful storytelling ability, which he personally felt insulted by, but cats were better than humans so they ultimately got to decide in the end.
He wasn’t going to draw a side profile of all of his rocks. He wasn’t. He knew they looked as flat as flat could be but he wasn’t going to put that onto paper because maybe, if he forgot in a couple years, he wouldn't have to look back and laugh at himself, like he did with other concepts. Some things truly deserved to never see the light of day.
And then someone stormed through the door.
Why, what a wonderful Tuesday. He didn’t get the time to look up and actually view whoever this was before they were already shouting at him, slamming a red-orange beanie on the countertop he always forgot to polish in what obviously was anger. “I’m looking for a job.” He stated as Grian finally looked up. “I just got back here and I want my job back.”
Back? There was no back. There was only the age of Mumbo, which meant what he was saying was Jumbo. Just the way the world worked. The fact was that this guy probably had a claim, Mumbo didn’t build this place from the ground up, he took over an abandoned wreck… that maybe this guy worked at. Or, y’know he was lying. Or playing a prank.
“What’s your name?” he said. “I’ll direct you to the manager.” He looked over to Gem, who was staring at him, and shook her head, indicating that she in this case was no more than a marketing person and they had to go straight to their head honcho. Maybe the vending machine would get fixed earlier.
“Wilbur Soot,” the guy said, brown hair with a white streak through it, yellow shirt with a brown jacket over it. He was certainly not wearing clothes appropriate for Utah in this heat, but neither were any of them, so he actually couldn’t say anything. He stood up though, because he could do that.
“I’ll get you to the manager,” he said calmly, while inside he was desperately panicking. This didn’t constitute an emergency, so should he really contact Mumbo? But this was very urgent, so he probably should, and in the end he did go into the corner of the employee lounge and picked up the landline phone. He knew he looked absolutely stupid doing it, but that was the only thing they had, and their only point of contact.
Mumbo, as always, picked up. “Hello Grian,” he said. “The world in flames?” Grian took one look at Wilbur again before shrugging, and then decided to speak his mind.
“You're probably going to have to come over here again, I’m sorry.” He said. “There’s a guy here, Wilbur, who says he worked here ‘before’ and wants his job back. He doesn’t look like someone who would like you.” Mumbo had interesting ideas about how a business worked, and this Wilbur guy looked like he would follow none of them. Definitely not a fan of mycelium.
“I’ll be on my way, I think,” Mumbo said. Can’t generally tell which way the wind is going right now, but it’ll take some time– far off right now, as usual.” They had no idea what Mumbo did, but he just appeared every first of the months and did things. And paid them and stuff. Manager things, all in general.
“He says he’ll be here soon to look over some records,” Grian said helpfully. “Uh, you can sit down.” There weren’t any chairs, but Wilbur nodded and sat down on the floor like it was second nature. Okayyy. Grian sat down in his chair and picked a magazine up, as Wilbur sat, facing the door, for what actually had to be half an hour. He didn’t talk to Gem, who looked at him curiously throughout the period of time, nor Scar, who had stayed in his room not doing anything (except tripping that one time, they could hear it), and honestly Wilbur seemed… Off. The bad type of off, though, the one none of them liked.
The door swung open silently, as usual, and there was Mumbo, dressed to the nines, and what he knew were moth-like wings kept carefully under his suit coat. His mustache covered his mouth, for the most part, and as Scar was the only one to ever see his teeth, Scar had confirmed that he did, in fact, brush them. “What seems to be the matter here?” He asked, and Wilbur turned around. “Has there been a mistake, perhaps?” Wilbur quickly stood up, turning to him.
They never really questioned Mumbo to his face, but in thought they questioned absolutely everything about him, simply because they knew around nothing. Net-zero. But one thing he did know was that Mumbo was doing his own thing, and didn’t particularly like to be bothered. Like all of them.
“I want my job back,” Wilbur claimed again. “I used to work here and I want my job back.” Mumbo smiled, eyes squinting, before leading Wilbur into his office. They had never been in his office. It was his office, man. But they could overhear everything because of the, uh, Door Incident a couple years back.
“I think I’m sorry to say we’re under new management,” Mumbo said cheerily. “But I'd be glad to send you on your way.” He could hear the Wilbur guy sigh, and he started to pack a care package, which meant he got some crayola pencils, two packs of beef jerky (cause he was pretty sure the guy wouldn’t accept just one), and one piece of paper. He then got a ribbon and tied it all together, placing it on the counter harder than he really meant to, before going back to his rocks, tuning out whatever Mumbo was doing.
He simply had other things to truly think about. He had wanted to have somewhat industrial level farms inside his rocks, to fill the space, and have them function somewhat like a home, but he wasn’t quite sure how to,,, he wasn’t sure what farms he wanted, how to build a farm, or how to even draw it. He spent too long making the rocks look pretty; they didn’t register as 3d to him anymore.
Gem had started juggling four rocks of somewhat varying size, and it was one of her prides and joys that she could juggle not two, not three, not five, but four things. The only thing he knew how to do well was start riots and wars, but those were mostly on holidays or paid vacations.
Then… Things usually happened. Wars, riots, kings, revolts, any free time they had was spent in his friend of a friend of a something or others pal Xisuma's old vacation home, of which he seemed to have an ever growing number of, because it seemed every time they were in different places. But that was during Christmas and other days, usually, as it was not Christmas or other days.
It was a Tuesday in Utah, in the gas station he knew as Sahara, though what he knew as a Sahara actually had trees, though they were pretty orange. But speaking of sticks in the mud, he looked back over to the door, or the lack of one, to see WIlbur on his feet against Mumbo, who had his stacked against each other on the table, scattering bright red powder down from them. Redstone, it looked like, though it seemed slightly orange tinged for whatever reason. Why Mumbo had his favorite snack on his boots he didn’t know, but Gem counted it as a shiny rock, and sometimes it worked to power things (with a reddish hue), so they just kept it in little dust bags when they could.
“Well, I’m not going to run off into the wilderness again, can I? Can’t come back to life twice, that’s what I say.” Wilbur turned around, leaving Mumbo to start to stand up as the man walked in and took a seat in one of the chairs that faced out the window, before turning it aggressively to the office.
“You actually can live twice,” Scar said. “10 times, truly, though I”ve only done 6. Or would it be five? Jellie, wouldn’t it be five because I’m here right now?” Jellie licked his ear, and Wilbur only raised an eyebrow as Mumbo slowly walked out.
“Is that gunpowder I smell?” he said. Wilbur shrugged. His jacket was tattered, in any case, and the faint dust it scattered probably was just itself, shedding somewhat. Mumbo continued- “In any case, I don’t believe it matters much. You make a good point–” He put one hand vertical to the side of his mouth and turned to look over at him “he does make a good point, doesn’t he?” he then returned to his original stance. “There is nowhere for you to go outside of here, in fact, I really would wonder how you got here in the first place, if you would so tell me.”
“By boat,” WIlbur said, standing up, and Scar looked like he really didn’t want to clean the gray powder on the chair, while Gem took one look at it and went back to her magazines. She then squinted, and then looked up at the room.
“Utah is very much a landlocked state, isn’t it?” She said. “Very landlocked. No water besides half dried up creeks. I’d know that.” WIlbur shrugged once more, and Mumbo only tilted his head to the side.
“This place is surrounded by fog,” Wilbur said. “And I am not leaving. Either give my job back, or, I don’t know, kill me, get another allegory for death up here, that’s fine too.” Mumbo considered his options, before reaching into one of his suit pockets. He seemed to carry an inventory of supplies there, and one of them was, of course, name tags.
So WIlbur Soot was adorned with a HELLO!!!! My name is: _____ ____ name tag, which he stuck on the left side of his jacket, before tightening the bandages wrapped around his arm with the other arm and his teeth, before strolling casually into the storage room. Scar would keep an eye on him well enough.
“Well,” Mumbo said, looking around. “This looks to be where I shall leave you once more. Unless any other ragged people come stumbling through here, and in that case, an ender crystal to the face would do them good.” He peeked his head up once more, the vending machines humming echoing through his mind once more through the silence Mumbo simply called to himself.
“The vending machine broke again,” he said. “But it might be something simple?” It was never something simple. But Mumbo shrugged, and took out a lit torch from his right pocket, a sputtering fiery red.
“Put this next to it, and I’ll fix things next month. Do not blow it out.” Unlike the rest of humanity, who would probably be tempted to, Grian was only tempted by buttons, levers, and trapdoor, and a simple torch was of no concern to him if he could get food other than beef jerky. Very simple.
He took it over to the vending machine and affixed it to one of those little magnets with some double sided tape, which he kept on him for prank purposes, mainly, but sometimes they generally came in useful. He could hear the wind echo through the building as Mumbo left, and he turned around, ready to set whatever new hire they had to work. Mostly cleaning up his own mess.
He walked back over to the general lobby, before swinging himself halfway into the storage room, where he could see Scar and WIlbur playing solitaire… together, somehow. He waved, and Scar waved back, both him and WIlbur looking up. “You need to clean up the redstone Mumbo left and the gunpowder you were littering. There’s bags in the room at the end of the large hallway, they’re all labeled.
Wilbur looked up at him. “Redstone?” He said, almost panicked. “But this is Utah!” Which sounded incredibly stupid and really incredibly was, so he just turned around. Scar started to put the cards on top of each other, Jellie a loaf in the corner, staring at a spider slowly making its way down to be her afternoon snack.
“And you are all talk-talk-talk. You wanted this job so bad, so now you’ll do your job, like a normal person.” Wilbur got up, squinted at him, before scowling, and walking out of the room by him, hands in his jacket pockets.
“Y’know,” he joked to Scar. “I’ve seen a couple people call me Dreamslayer cause I ruin their hopes and dreams. Maybe I should tell that guy.” Scar laughed, finishing stacking up the cards into a neat little stack. “Where’d you get the cards?” he asked, genuinely amazed. Of course they had made their own cards out of paper like two years ago, and then Gem carved a chess set out of boredom one day, so they switched to board games from cards, but… they looked like nice cards.
“Oh, he had them,” Scar said. “They look like tarot cards to me, except I’m pretty sure he left them in his pocket whenever he washed that cloak last. If he washed that cloak last. They do look nice from far away, though.” He crouched next to Scar, and it was true, the cards looked pretty beat up, but they still were,,, okay. Better than paper that had been chomped on by a cat a couple of times.
“YOU!” he heard from another room. “Red guy– you– ugh, what even are your names?” He smiled as Scar and him both went over to the main room, Gem standing over the counter, dismantling his care package carefully.
“I’m Gem,” Gem said. “And that’s Scar and Grian.” she said, tying the ribbon around her arm as she put the pencils and paper back behind the counter, before opening the first beef jerky bag. “And when you’re done, here’s your lunch.
“Well, I’m not done,” Wilbur said. “Because that's not even redstone. Redstone doesn’t burn through my hand like wildfire.” Scar went over to him,, and looked down at his hand, where, Grian could faintly tell, a small part of it was turning red.
“Well then, what is it?” Scar said. “I do notice you haven’t cleaned up the gunpowder yet, and maybe that would be easier than whatever this mystery substance is.” WIlbur turned around, and gestured to the three of them to follow him, before turning around again.
“Oh, why is the fog in the building,” he said. “You need a more ventilated space, these windows are not doing it, plus the lighting sucks.” Gen laughed. “Well, in any case, I know what it is, but I don’t think you would. You shouldn't, in any case.
He squinted at Wilbur. “The thing is,” he said. “We simply do not care, nor need to know. There’s this thing called an unlabeled bag, if the concept isn’t too preposterous, and you can write whatever it is and we’ll just ask Mumbo next month about why it was on his shoes. Okay?”
Wilbur rolled his eyes, before using his sleeves to push the powder into a pile, letting even more of his jacket/cloak/coat/brown mess get discolored and torn. “Well, it's blaze powder,” he said, before blowing out the smoke from around his sleeve. “I have experience.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Scar said. “I was over here thinking this is whatever makes you lucky, but if it's just plain old blaze powder, let me take that! Gonna need some strength tonight.” Scar then took the blaze powder, because of course it was blaze powder, MUmbo had probably been out with Xisuma and Tango and all of them in something with that weird Create book. Wilbur looked appalled that the blaze powder did not burn through Scars skin, but after Scar left he simply sighed.
“Yeah, something messed up,” he said, sitting in Mumbo’s chair, and after seeing Gem staring down at him with the eyes of a cryptic beast. He got right back up again. “Something very much messed up.”
“I agree,” he said. “Mumbo messed up hiring you. I had a whole care package for you. You know who much beef jerky costs? 2 dollars and forty nine cents. And I was giving it to you for free. You would die in the desert and it would be your own fault.”
It really doesn’t sound like you care,” WIlbur said, strolling out of the room, Grain following, shrugging,, went behind his counter to scribble around in the back matter of his sketchbook. WIlbur got to scooping up the gunpowder off of the chair and right back onto his own jacket. To be honest, he did’;t question it. He had done the same with sand last month.
Wilbur eventually had the blaze power, some small bits of redstone, and some poultry amounts of gunpowder that he didn’t keep for himself in bags, which Gem put in their storage system (really her storage system, as his and Scar’s storage system was a pile in a shelf. When Mumbo had seen her work he had given her a raise and made her acting manager. All for a storage system. He was still reeling from it.) and then turned back to Wilbur.
“Now,” she said. “No one comes here. We’re bored out of our minds all of the time except for the first of the month.” No use mentioning the fun they got up to during Christmas break, because they did not know this guy and it was very unlikely he would join them as Gem had done just a few years before. “So we have paper, we have pencils, we have magazines, a broken radio, and we have beef jerky. Have fun. You wanted this job so bad, and now you have it!”
“I remember it being a lot busier…” Wilbur said. “And- and- what’s up with that Mumbo guy? Your manager, he’s like me, do you all even know what redstone is? Or blaze powder? Do you?” He gestured out wildly, like he had found out some great discrepancy in the laws of nature, when he really simply hadn't.
“Maybe you can be an unpaid intern!” Scar said, wheeling out from the storeroom, Jellie on his lap. “We’ve learned not to question Mumbo. We’re his best friends, see?” And Scar brought out a set of four purple, diamond crusted, glistening crowns from… wherever Scar kept them, he honestly was not sure. Maybe some of Mumbo’s strangeness had rubbed off on him. Probably run off on all of them eventually.
“I will never accept a crown,” Wilbur says, with far too much conviction than was necessary, so he starts to laugh.
“Oh, you thought we were offering,” he says. “So sorry, we’re his best friends. Happened last Christmas. You haven’t gone insane by a button for hours at a time yet, so you can’t be.” And Wilbur looks at the crowns and then over to him slowly.
“What if I did? Go insane by a button? Cause I did. I died. After I pressed it I died. Do I get a crown?”
“No,” Gem says, and that’s the end of it. “You’re obviously talking about something different. And to answer your first questions: Mumbo owns this property and does monthly check-ups. He is independently wealthy. He pays us to keep this place alive. We’ve learned what blaze powder and redstone and all of that are through him as we need to follow that. Seeing as such: your new occupation is to sit by the vending machine and make sure the redstone torch doesn’t go out. Have fun.”
“I doubt this place will stay this quiet,” Wilbur says, looking around, before sighing and going over to the vending machine and sitting by it, though he took a piece of paper and a pen before he did as such.
“Hmmmm…” he said. “Do you think he actually worked here?” He asked, and Scar shrugged.
“I don’t recognize him,” he says. “But you should make the Dreamslayer joke, I have a hunch he’d find it funny, I just don’t know why.” And they laugh and go back to whatever they were doing, Jellie deciding to stroll around the place as Scar pours over his plans for a giant castle.
No, seriously. Giant. Castle.
He turned on the store radio for the first time in a while and got it set on a music station. Maybe that would help the atmosphere. Or maybe it would create an atmosphere.
Whatever it would do, it would be better than silence.
And so, it starts.