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Mumbo stares at the building. These are the dorms he's going to be staying in for the next... however long he's here.
A decent, if old, wooden building with a few floors. He can see a few balconies - and if he squints, he can see into the main living area through the bottom floor windows. It doesn't look too bad; at any rate, he's lived in worse places.
Of course, he hasn't seen the dorm rooms yet. Hopefully the floors aren't falling in.
With a sigh, Mumbo drags his luggage case behind him, the loud rattling of wheels on concrete announcing his presence to the world. The porch is a little rickety, but stable enough; although he keeps his box of stuff in one arm while he opens the front door, just in case.
It would be his luck to put it down briefly and somehow break something.
There's a man sitting at the table - it looks like the dining table, since it's set up adjacent to what's probably the kitchen area - bent over a laptop with a pile of papers next to him. When he looks up, Mumbo notes the cannula tubing that leads to a small tank sitting beside him.
"Oh hello!" the man says, sitting upright. His eyes crinkle in a friendly smile. "You're here right on time. You can call me Xisuma, I'm the RA here. Welcome to the Hermitcraft dorms!"
Mumbo blinks. "Ah, er, thanks for the welcome."
Something complicated crosses Xisuma's face, but when he speaks again, his tone is as friendly as ever. "No problem. You can go put your stuff away, but come back so we can go over some ground rules. Just basic things like where the toilet paper is and what the chore rotation looks like. Alright?"
"Of course." Mumbo starts towards the stairs, then stops. "Er, which room am I in? I'm sorry, it wasn't on any of the paperwork I was given."
"...Actually, let's go over the ground rules now, and then I can help you get settled in. How does that sound?"
"Ah. Sure," Mumbo agrees.
It's an awkward affair, finding somewhere to put down his stuff - the dining room is set up with a lot of chairs, but room itself isn't that large - so it takes a bit for Mumbo to get settled into a seat, sitting just across from Xisuma.
The man smiles at him in the tense way that RA's and dorm parents and teachers do, where they're trying to be reassuring but the weight of the stress from their job is clear as day. Mumbo hopes he won't become part of that stress. Unfortunately, his track record says otherwise.
"So," Xisuma says, handing over a paper with a map printed on it, "this is the general layout of the campus. The roads are reliable, but it's easy to get turned around in the forest and in between the buildings, so try not to stray too much."
Mumbo studies the map curiously. The campus doesn't have an overly-complicated layout, but he does have a tendency of getting lost.
He looks up to see Xisuma waiting for an answer. "Sounds reasonable," he says quickly.
Xisuma nods. "Now, I'm sure you've seen this on the applications, but one of the requirements for attending this university is that you need to have a pseudonym. Sometimes it's called a safe name, or a nickname, but either way, it's best to have a few prepared. Never use your real name; you'll be expelled immediately. Or worse." He smiles at the end of the lecture as though he's joking, but his tone is entirely too serious for that.
Mumbo shifts uncomfortably.
"...I did see that. I don't exactly mind, but is there a reason why...?" Mumbo asks. "None of the staff would say anything other than that that's just how it is."
"I'd imagine so." Xisuma's smile fades, and he looks troubled. "Well... think of it as an eccentricity of this campus. There are a lot of rules and traditions here that aren't easy to understand."
"...How does it work, getting a degree without using your real name? Is that legal?" Mumbo presses, worried.
Xisuma's eyes widen. "Oh, no, don't worry! Any documents you receive concerning certifications, degrees, etc. will use your legal name. This is just a rule for interacting with your peers and professors. It may be a bit odd, but trust me - the best way to stay safe is to just make sure you concentrate on your degree and try not to cross any lines."
It sounds even more concerning when put that way, but Mumbo decides he'd rather move on than start asking questions about this university's incomprehensible traditions. Every uni has some superstitions anyway. It's not that weird - probably.
"I'll be majoring in Engineering... Redstone, specifically," Mumbo says, changing the topic. "Would you happen to know which building my classes are in? They're all in, ah, the same one this semester... Er, this one here?" He holds out a piece of paper on which he's scribbled out the building number.
"Oh! That's nice," Xisuma says, perking up. "That's where computer sciences and chemistry, as well as a few others, take place!"
He leans over the table and taps the map. "That would be this building here. Lucky you, it's actually not that long of a walk - most of the time. If you take the path you took from the front office, but take a left here, you should reach the right place pretty quickly."
Mumbo studies the map. "Oh, I see. Thank -"
"One more thing," Xisuma interrupts quickly. "While on this campus, you should know that thanking people, making promises, or asking for favors is... dangerous."
Mumbo meets his gaze. Xisuma's expression is completely serious.
"I know this can be hard to believe, but keep this in mind," Xisuma continues after a moment. "Even I still slip up sometimes - being polite kind of makes it difficult to cut out words like 'please' and 'thank you' from everyday speech - but it's best to try and be conscious of those kinds of things."
Mumbo frowns. "Why is it - not that I'm doubting you, it's just difficult to believe - but why would it be dangerous?"
Xisuma shrugs. "Would you believe me if I said it's because of faeries?"
Before Mumbo can reply to that - and how he'd be expected to reply, he has no idea - Xisuma hands over a small booklet of stapled-together printer paper. "Try not to lose this. Inside, there should be some tips and tricks, as well as any other rules I might've forgotten. And... hm... I feel like I did forget something important..."
"I'll read this tonight," Mumbo says, flipping through the booklet. It's arranged almost like a travel guide; one of the sections, called Keeping Track of the Moon Cycles, has a cartoon crescent moon drawn next to the title.
The sound of a door opening and closing can be heard from above. Mumbo has just enough time to see Xisuma's face go from serious to faintly exasperated before another man pops out from the stairway.
Interestingly, the man's skin is littered in scars. The cane he's leaning on looks well-made; it gleams like metal, with decorative leaves carved around the handle. A red feather dangles from one ear, tipped in yellow and blue like a parrot's. His eyes twinkle with untold mischief; he seems like the friendly sort.
Mumbo is certain he's never met this man before, and yet... he seems vaguely familiar.
It's an odd feeling, but some people are just like that. They look so friendly that they feel like an old friend before they've even spoken.
"Well hello there!" the man says cheerfully. "Are you our new Hermit?"
Mumbo stammers a bit, caught off-guard, but Xisuma quickly explains, "We tend to call ourselves Hermits, on account of the dorm name. Plus, there are those of us who choose to keep to themselves - although it's by no means a necessity."
"Oh..." Mumbo says, surprised. He feels rather welcomed, which is a nice sensation.
The man covered in scars nods agreeably. "I'm your neighbor, by the way! Your room is right next to mine - and lucky you, I don't think you have any roommates this semester!"
"I don't mind either way," Mumbo says cheerfully. "Um, shall I go put my stuff away? I don't want to clutter up the kitchen for too long -"
"Of course, go ahead," Xisuma says. "Remember, you're always welcome to come to me with any problems or concerns."
Mumbo smiles. "Than - erm. I... I'll remember that?"
Xisuma laughs. "Nice catch. Do your best."
The trip up the stairs is difficult - Mumbo's luggage is heavy, and the stairs are steep - but the man leads the way easily, his footsteps interspersed with the clack of his cane that comes down on every other step. They reach the third floor with little trouble.
Mumbo hopes that he never slips down the stairs; it seems like it would a long and painful fall.
"And this is us!" the man says with a flourish, gesturing to two rooms at the end of the hall. "I'm in this one, and you're at the very end. The last person in that room ended up switching floors last year - he's a floor up now - so it's all yours!"
Mumbo raises an eyebrow. "Switched floors? Did something happen?"
The man snickers. "I don't think he liked the Boatem Hole very much."
"The - what?"
"Oh! Right, I never introduced myself," the man says. He grins. "You can call me Scar!"
Bemused by the non-sequitur, Mumbo smiles. "Well, I'm Mumbo Jumbo. You can call me Mumbo."
"Mumbo Jumbo, eh?" Scar says, looking amused. "I bet you'll fit right in."
"Well... I hope so," Mumbo says, laughing a little. He shifts his luggage, trying to take the pressure off his aching arm. "I'm, uh, going to put my stuff away, so -"
"Right! Feel free to knock if you need anything; Xisuma's usually in the kitchen or common room, but his dorm room is the first one on the second floor - if he's asleep, which is rare."
Scar waves and heads elsewhere, leaving Mumbo to sort out his stuff.
He doesn't really have a lot - it's just one luggage case, a box of computer parts, and some redstone supplies - so he just shoves the case next to the dresser and leaves the box on the bed. It's not a bad room, with two beds on the opposite ends and two desks separated by a little space. There's a window, too, with thin bars that seem to have some kind of engravings decorating the sides.
Mumbo peeks out the window, admiring the view. It overlooks part of the track field, the campus buildings, and - if he leans a little to the right - the edge of the forest.
It's a bigger campus than he'd thought, honestly. For a moment, he swears he can see the sea in the distance, but when he looks again it's just a trick of light against the hills. Then again, this is supposed to be an area with unpredictable weather; he's sure it'll take some time to adjust.
The first thing he sets up is his computer. Some of his classes have online aspects, and he wants to make sure he can connect to the campus wi-fi without any issues.
...It turns out to be a difficult task. For some reason, the password is case-sensitive, despite him not being told anything of the sort. It takes him a few tries to get the right combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, having only received the password verbally. Even then, the internet is rather slow; he's a little worried about how this semester will go.
After some fiddling with the computer, he decides that that's a problem for the future. In any case, there's nothing to be done about it now, except to worry. Which he's rather good at, unfortunately.
[]
Mumbo stares at the spectacle in front of him, at a loss for words.
Upon further reflection, in this moment, he could have done a great many things. Walk away from this disaster, for example. Or call for someone with more sense. Even quietly observing would have been better than what he did next.
Mumbo steps closer and ventures, "Hello. I'm curious as to what you're doing?"
The man kneeling in the dirt looks up. There's a bit of grass in his hair, and plenty more stuck to his sweater. More concerning is the shovel in his hands, the hole in the ground, and the large pile of suspiciously-dynamite-shaped objects on the ground. They even have fuses at the ends.
Scratch that. That's definitely dynamite.
"Oh! Hi! Haven't seen you before," the man says, scrambling to his feet. He seems a bit out of breath, but no less energetic as he sticks out his hand and says, "Call me Grian! You? And which dorm are you from, anyway?"
Mumbo returns the handshake a bit uncertainly. "Call me Mumbo. And, ah, I'm staying in the Hermitcraft dorms currently."
"Oh!" Grian's grip tightens and he leans in closer, head titled curiously. "You must be the new neighbor!" He releases Mumbo and grins. "I room with Scar, you see. He wouldn't stop talking about the new floormate. Settled in already?"
"As well as I can, I suppose." Mumbo glances at the hole and the dynamite again. "Er... What is all this?"
Grian turns, then makes a face. "A bit of redstone... if you can believe it. It's a mess, really, I don't know why I bother sometimes. I've done it maybe once correctly out of - oh boy, every other time, I suppose. And even that hadn't quite worked as intended, though it did achieve the intended effect in the end..."
Mumbo loves redstone. Curiously piqued, he takes a step closer until he's beside Grian and peers into the hole.
It truly is a mess.
Lines of redstone - wires and careful trails alike - twist over themselves in ways that should almost work but very obviously don't. If he squints, he can see several connectors and repeaters sitting side-by-side, completely disrupting... whatever is going on. And - oh, dear, there's a lone redstone torch just standing a distance away, set up to function but not touching anything.
Mumbo kneels down. "Shall I help?" he offers without a second thought, studying the materials intently. He'll have to redo most of it - a generous thought - but it would be worth it. What a waste of redstone otherwise.
"What? Really?"
"Sure." Mumbo scoots forward and slides into the hole. It's larger than he'd thought, but it's easy enough to begin ripping up the wires and collecting the dust into a pile. "Whatever you're trying to do - well, this certainly won't cut it. I'm rather good at redstone, if I do say so myself. It would be no trouble."
He looks up after a moment of silence, suddenly worried that he'd overstepped - but Grian is practically beaming. The glee on his face is familiar; it's so infectious that Mumbo reflexively smiles in return.
"I would love help from a redstoner!" Grian says eagerly. "The others, they're usually too busy or have got a bit of a grudge against me - undeserved, I must say, I've never done anything wrong - so this is perfect!" He slides down in the hole, holding his shovel to the side. "Do you know how to set off a reaction that only occurs under a certain amount of weight? And then wire it to these uhh very nondescript items I have here? I was trying to do that but I got a bit confused you see."
Mumbo nods along, studying the materials as he cleans them up. Goodness. Somehow, it's not as bad as he'd thought at first glance, but it was also somehow worse. The hole is dug out fairly well, though. His words had been true; it really will be no trouble to set everything up correctly.
A man who can dig a well-rounded hole but can't redstone for the life of him. It's a little funny.
Mumbo begins the tedious task of sifting the redstone dust, setting trails where the wires will go. Grian watches carefully, chiming in with commentary or suggestions but otherwise being careful not to touch anything. Mumbo saves the pressure plates for last; they're in his hands when he finishes, turning to Grian with a triumphant smile.
"All done!" he declares. "These'll go up top, although you'll have to cover this all up first. Did you need any help with that?"
Grian brandishes his shovel. "Not to worry, I've got that covered," he says. Mumbo climbs out of the hole and watches as Grian quickly shovels the dirt back in - wait, is that the dynamite nestled at the end of the contraption?
Oh. Oh, right... Mumbo had completely forgotten to ask what this was all for. After a moment's thought, he decides not to ask. He's gotten this far, and what he doesn't know won't hurt him. In theory, anyway.
"That was fast," he says instead. The pile of dirt had vanished in moments, covering all of his work.
Grian nods. "So, pressure plates?" he prompts.
"Ah, yes." Mumbo carefully eyes the freshly placed dirt, then estimates where to place the plates. Once the plates are pressed into the ground, he turns to find Grian holding a... blanket? Or a rug?
Grian meets his eyes and giggles. "Don't mind me," he says, throwing the rug over the plates and freshly turned dirt. It settles in and blends into the grass almost instantly. "Just a little something to make sure the fun isn't spoiled too early is all."
Mumbo's eyebrows raise as he stares at the rug. It's well-made, and clearly planned for this exact moment. "It won't get blown away?" he asks curiously.
Grian holds up a couple of wooden spikes. "These should hold them down for long enough," he explains, getting to work. Within moments, everything looks perfectly normal, as though nothing had ever happened to this particular patch of grass.
School property grass.
Hm. He may have just inadvertently become an accomplice in a crime.
Ignorance is plausible deniability, or something along those lines. With that in mind, Mumbo dusts off his hands and reaffirms his decision to not ask further questions. Instead, he continues the conversation in a slightly different vein, hoping to learn more about his apparently-next-door-neighbor. "Do you do this often?" he asks. "Attempting redstone, I mean?" Not the other thing, with the dynamite.
Grian screws up his face. "Not often, not anymore," he admits. "I'm more into architecture, see. Redstone, or any kind of engineering beyond the very basics, are rather... difficult to work with. I've got to deal with it a bit, seeing as how Architecture as a major has some engineering involved, but luckily I've scraped by so far. Bit of a miracle, if you ask me."
Privately, Mumbo agrees. Still, he's polite enough to know when to move on. "That sounds interesting. Is it the theoretical kind, or...?"
"Hm... Hard to say. This semester I'm focusing on classes that teach design and stuff." Grian's eyes brighten. "Hey, wanna help me out with that sometime? I just know the professor's gonna assign something using redstone, she's the type to go on and on about its uses in building planning."
Mumbo hesitates. "Maybe," he says vaguely, unsure of whether he'd be of much help. "I tend to work on contraptions and technology - engineering stuff in a building is something I haven't quite learned yet."
"We should do something together anyway," Grian says, eyeing the grass beside them. "This is probably my best work yet, and I hardly did any of it."
Mumbo relents. "One day, maybe. A collaboration sounds like fun. I can build, but I'm no architect, that's for sure."
Grian grins. "Shall we, then? Is it a promise?"
Mumbo narrows his eyes. "Maybe," he stresses, remembering Xisuma's advice.
Grian snickers. "Alright, alright," he says, brushing his hands free of dirt. His red sweater is smudged with enough of it to make his efforts rather pointless. "Then one day, maybe."
[]
Meeting Jellie is an unexpected event, not the least of which because it's the first time Mumbo's met her.
Scar's shown him a few pictures of the feline, but she's often out and about doing her own thing, meaning Mumbo hasn't quite seen her in person before. Scar would explain fondly that she can handle herself just fine, and Mumbo understands. Outdoor cats tend to keep to themselves, after all.
However, none of that matters because Mumbo runs into her in the woods, which is an unfortunate occurrence all on its own. It's unfortunate because the woods are a place for hikers and secretive folks and Mumbo is neither.
He is lost.
He's also not entirely sure that it was his fault. He'd taken the usual path, but it was longer this time - or so it'd felt - and he'd taken a turn that wasn't normally there. However, it was a path with no branch-offs, and it had dropped him right into the woods, so Mumbo is inclined to say that it's the path's fault, even if that sounds a little ridiculous.
Jellie approaches while he's looking around, his bag in hand and his phone useless thanks to the horrible connection on campus grounds. No chance of a GPS there.
Jellie meows, plaintive and high. The silver charm on her collar jingles as she rubs against Mumbo's pant leg.
"Oh, hello!" Mumbo says, surprised. He crouches down to rub a hand through her fur, accidentally leaving streaks of redstone down her back. Whoops; he'd forgotten about that.
"Sorry," he apologizes, and Jellie simply purrs in response.
Hm. He's not supposed to apologize, either.
Mumbo thinks that, since it's just Jellie, it must be okay. Hopefully. If anything, she's Scar's cat, and Scar's proven to be a mostly-kind fellow so far, so surely he hasn't made too much of a mistake.
Mumbo lets the cat clamber onto his shoulders, her paws pressing into his shirt as she does so. She seems content to curl up around his neck, hardly swaying even when he straightens back up. She reminds him of Scar, somehow; that man tends to be comfortable in the strangest places.
With a sigh, he continues trying to become not-lost. With every step he takes, Mumbo suspects that he's only becoming more lost, although there's no indication of it either way.
The woods look the same in every direction, an expanse of trees and undergrowth and a darkening sky that does not bold well for his future.
When he finds the ribbon wound about a tree, and sees another fluttering in the distance, he thinks he's found a hiking trail. Those are marked with ribbons, aren't they? They're bright green, clearly made to be seen and followed.
Mumbo takes a step towards the green ribbons. Jellie immediately hisses, her claws digging in and forcing him to stop moving.
After a moment, in which Mumbo considers how Jellie seems to be very good at staying alive, he decides to not follow the ribbons. They don't seem to lead out of the forest anyway, simply deeper in. Mumbo turns and tries going the opposite way, if only for something to do.
He passes a lake in the process, a rather shiny location that he might have stopped to look at were he - well. Not lost.
There's a circle of red mushrooms spotted with white to his left. And his right. Several of those circles appear, actually, as he walks, and Mumbo takes care to steer clear of each one. Grian has been very vocal about mushroom rings lately, and frankly Mumbo wants nothing to do with whatever his floormate is up to.
The last thing he'd witnessed Grian doing had ended with explosions, after all. Mumbo doesn't fancy himself getting caught in one of those.
He reaches out to push a branch out of his way and startles when it practically flies from his hands. "Uh," he says dumbly, staring at the now-empty space, redstone-streaked hand still outstretched.
Jellie headbutts him. Mumbo keeps walking.
Eventually she seems to tire of him being lost and jumps down before him, meowing obnoxiously loudly before pointedly setting off in a direction. Jellie stops a few feet away and turns to look at him. She meows again.
Mumbo follows her. She seems pretty confident, after all. Plus, it's getting worryingly dark, to the point that he's having some trouble seeing where he's stepping.
In the silence, Mumbo starts to realize that Jellie's silver charm - dangling from her collar - is making a soft ringing noise as they walk. Each step she takes sounds like the chime of a bell. It's cute.
Mumbo has half a mind to ask Scar where he got the cat collar, but he doesn't even have a cat to put it on in the first place.
Lost in thought about what kind of cat he might have had, Mumbo is rather startled when he sees Xisuma approaching.
Xisuma, on the other hand, looks vastly relieved. "Here," he says quickly, reaching out a hand. "Freely given."
Bemused, Mumbo accepts the gift. It's an iron key, the sort one might use to open a particularly old dungeon - or perhaps a door in a theme park. "What's this for?" he asks curiously, turning it over. It smells of iron, heavy and real, and he wonders if it actually unlocks something.
Xisuma looks sheepish. "To check something." He looks down as Jellie rubs against him, the cat purring with her whole body. "You were missing for a... while, so I came to look for you. Were you just lost?"
"Yes," Mumbo replies, embarrassed. "I had Jellie with me, though."
"She's a very good cat." Xisuma smiles at him. "Time to head back though. It's dangerous out at night."
[]
Scar presses a small book in his hands, bound in leather with a small iron lock on its pages, and winks. "Freely given," he says cheerily.
Mumbo stares at it. "What's this for, mate?"
"Secrets," Scar replies, and refuses to elaborate further. Strangely enough, the key that Xisuma gave him fits the lock. If it's a set-up, it's an oddly cryptic and elaborate one, but Mumbo doesn't really mind. It's just par for the course at this point.
There's not much to do with a leather-bound, iron-locked journal. Mumbo ends up using it for class notes, smearing ink and redstone across the pages and probably ruining the paper in the process. But hey, now he's got a place to write down equations and deadline dates and some random thoughts, and that's good enough for him.
Funny thing is, even though the paper is technically still pretty good - despite his redstone-stained fingerprints all over the edges - there're some people who seem almost disgusted by it. A classmate once almost sat by him before spotting the book, and she'd wrinkled her nose before leaving the table altogether.
Even some of his dorm mates act weird about it. Sometimes Keralis or Etho or Tango will ask for something to be written down, and when Mumbo hands over the notes, they all stare at it for a moment before accepting the paper.
It's not that gross. Still, Mumbo's starting to get a bit self-conscious about the whole thing. Maybe he should take better care of his stuff?
No one had seemed to care much about his constant habit of stringing things with redstone before. Sure, some people went to lengths to avoid him when he had redstone all over his clothes, but... He could hardly fault them, since redstone stains easily. But maybe getting fingerprints all over a nice, leather journal is just a little too much.
The one day he tries to leave it in his room, though, he approaches his classroom to find Scar standing by the doorway, a familiar book in his hands.
Scar perks up when Mumbo approaches. "Mumbo Jumbo! Hello there, so very good to see you!" he says cheerfully, straightening and presenting the book with all the flourish of a salesman. "You forgot this back at the dorms!"
"Oh, erm, I'm carrying a bit extra, so... I didn't have room for it," Mumbo says. He's lying, but he doesn't really know how to say I'm embarrassed by how dirty it looks now because apparently I can't keep the stains off of anything without making the whole situation awkward. "But, uh... That was nice."
"Oh, of course," Scar says, grinning. "But doesn't this have your notes? Can't leave home - heh - without those!" He shoves the book into Mumbo's arms before he can so much as sputter a protest.
Mumbo holds the book with a sort of startled air. "Scar - what?"
Scar winks. "Take it along with you! No harm, no foul." He whistles and walks away, leaving Mumbo behind without so much as an explanation. It's... almost a kind gesture, if it weren't for Scar's pushy behavior.
Mumbo sighs and tucks the book under his arm. He should probably just get over himself - his notes are kind of important, after all.
[]
"You're rather odd," Grian says one day, upside-down on the common room couch with his arms crossed behind his head. "Do you even carry salt? Sugar?"
Mumbo blinks at him in confusion. "...No? Did you need some?" he asks.
Grian lets out a long sigh and doesn't deign to answer. Instead he says, to apparently no one even though Mumbo is standing right in the next room, "This man doesn't even have sugar. It's a miracle he's still alive."
Mumbo is tempted to ignore him. Grian is, as he's learned, rather prone to theatrics. And dramatics. Not always, and not the obnoxiously so, but occasionally it becomes more distraction than entertainment.
However, the coffee is busy brewing and he doesn't have much else to do.
Mumbo looks at Grian. "What would I do with sugar, anyway?" he asks, partially out of idle boredom and partially out of genuine curiosity.
Grian scrunches his face up. "Use it as a bribe, what else? Not particularly useful with humans, though."
Somehow, Mumbo gets the sense that Grian isn't talking about feeding the local wildlife.
"What would I do with salt?"
At this, Grian sighs. "Very little, in practice."
Before Mumbo can question him further, Grian suddenly flips himself right side up, perched on the back of the couch without upending the whole thing. "Your coffee's done," he says.
Mumbo turns to find his mug full. Thank goodness for coffeemakers. He takes a sip and very nearly spits it out.
"Why is there salt in here?!" he sputters, wrenching open the coffeemaker. There's nothing unusual inside, and before he can be any more confused, he hears Grian laughing with uninhibited glee.
Mumbo stares at Grian with a rather pathetic look of betrayal.
[]
Redstone requires intent to work.
Sure, it has its fair share of 'mess around and find out' moments, but to accomplish anything with redstone, a person needs to know what they're doing and what they want for it to even have a hope of working.
It's a bit like magic, really. If magic was a thing that existed, it would probably look a lot like redstone and circuit boards, carefully crafted and capable of miracles.
Mumbo laughs softly at himself for his fanciful thoughts.
Of course, magic doesn't exist.
He hums idly, his hands moving with practiced familiarity as he puts together the last pieces of his project. A switch, a bit of the outer shell to protect the wires, and voila - a perfect redstone clock.
Easy. If only everything was so easy...
He sighs and puts down his tools. There should be something to munch on in the kitchen downstairs - he might as well grab a bite to eat before getting ready for bed.
The trek down to the kitchen isn't very long, but he's still rather over it by the time he's reached the bottom of the stairs.
Mumbo enters the kitchen and is surprised to see someone else sitting at the counter. "Oh, hey Grian."
Grian looks up, his eyes a vivid purple hue. It's a little disconcerting, but Mumbo's seen Tango walking around with crimson eyes and Etho's got heterochromia, so a bit of purple probably isn't that weird. "Hey there, Mumbo Jumbolio," the smaller man greets him, grinning. "Late night? Studying?"
"Working on a project," Mumbo says, going to the fridge to hunt down a snack. "You?"
"Asking the universe questions," Grian says vaguely, gesturing to his mug full of coffee. "Hey, do you wanna ask the universe a question? I could ask for you."
Mumbo sighs. "Gosh, what a thing to think about at... what time is it?"
"A little after one."
"In the morning? Goodness, I need to go to sleep," Mumbo mutters. "Any question? Well, I suppose I'd want to ask... hm... Ah, forget it. I'm not awake enough for this."
Grian shrugs. "Your loss."
Mumbo groans. "Well, how about this one, then. I had a friend from a long time ago... What was his name? It was an odd one, that's for sure. Shella?... Selka?... I've always wondered where he went off to."
"You can't even remember his name?" Grian asks, amused.
"No, I'm afraid not," Mumbo admits. "It was a long time ago."
Grian whistles. "Alright, then let's ask your question - free of charge, just for you." The smaller man sits up and spreads his arms theatrically. Mumbo can almost hear the echo in his voice as Grian says, "Universe, where oh where is the long-lost friend of Mumbo?"
Mumbo turns away, and closes the fridge, which is pretty unfortunate timing considering that that's the moment Grian yelps. Mumbo whips around to see Grian falling off his chair, two large wings flapping futilely as he crashes into the ground.
Before Mumbo can process what he's seeing, he finds himself flat on the ground, Grian straddling him with wide eyes.
"It's you!" Grian says excitedly. "You're - oh, hm, it's not right to say a name that hasn't been given, not here - but it's you! You're the one that lived in the house with red shingles, aren't you? We used to have art contests with clay and chalk and stuff!"
Mumbo stares up at Grian. "Oh." And then Mumbo tells Grian, "You've got, er, a few too many eyes there, mate?"
All five of Grian's eyes narrow. "You're avoiding the subject," Grian accuses - somewhat nonsensically, in Mumbo's opinion. "Come on, we're childhood friends! We should - ooh, we should celebrate!"
"Erm..." Mumbo stares at the wings that flutter on Grian's back, then at his many eyes. It's... odd, isn't it? That's not the right amount of limbs and body parts. Right? "Did, uh, did the universe really tell you all that?"
"No, just the answer to your question." Grian pulls Mumbo to his feet, wings fluffed. He's down to three eyes now. "Let's do something fun! A party! I know a great place, Impulse threw a fantastic party in Ren's secret bunker once, I bet it's still there - hm, or we could have it in the Boatem Hole?"
"The what?" Mumbo says, baffled.
Grian's eyes practically glow. "This is going to be so much fun, just you wait."
Mumbo thinks to himself - ah. So magic is a thing that exists. Silly him for assuming otherwise.