Chapter Text
X rarely ever calls them in for a group meeting.
First of all, X knows that half of their group is incapable of sitting still for more than twenty minutes, and that another quarter has such distorted sleep schedules that meeting at an ungodly hour such as 2 p.m. is simply not thinkable.
Mumbo… Well, Mumbo might belong to both of these categories.
Which means that when Iskall barges into his room, not bothering with knocking (apparently manners is something Iskall forgot during their thirtieth vault exploration adventure), Mumbo is absolutely not expecting to have to be ready to move in the next five minutes.
He lets out a rather high-pitched screech and scowls at Iskall. “Sweet je- Iskall! You nearly gave me a heart attack, mate!”
Iskall giggles a little. “Morning, sunshine,” they reply. “Big boss says he wants everyone in the meeting room in five.”
“There’s no-” Mumbo shakes his head, already feeling exhausted without having even left his bed. “X is not our boss.”
“Bah! You knew who I was talking about. The information was communicated properly. C’mon, we’re going to be late.”
Mumbo groans, but he knows that trying to argue with Iskall about time is completely useless, what with them coming back from a world in which every second inside a vault counted and getting out in time was the most important rule of all.
He gets up, making a show to grumble loudly just for Iskall to know how unhappy he is about all of this. Iskall ignores him fully, putting their attention on Mumbo’s messy desk. They’re respectful enough of his work not to attempt to touch any of Mumbo’s attempts at replicating some of the inventions he came up with back in his world, but Mumbo can still see the way their bionic eye lights up, most likely photographing Mumbo’s experiments to explore them later.
Iskall has always been a curious soul.
They say that this is what caused them to find their door in the first place. A playful curiosity, a strange light that came from an employee-only door in the back of a store, and then they were gone.
Mumbo wishes he could claim the same kind of story. But well, they have all promised to be honest about how they found their doors – what with Zedaph and Doc’s determination to find a common denominator to all of their doors – and so, he had to admit to hiding in a janitor’s closet to avoid making small talk with people whose names he couldn’t remember at some boring business event (he knows that, at that exact moment, he had not been able to imagine anything more mortifying than having to pretend for ten minutes to remember their names).
And if, when he had opened the door again, he had found not the dimly lit hallway that would lead him back to the soiree he had abandoned but rather a dirt trail that would take him home, well…
He’d told Zedaph and Doc about it. And Iskall. And Iskall, snake in the grass that they are, had laughed.
He stretches, letting out a loud and jaw-popping yawn that makes Iskall scrunches their nose. “Are you ready?” they ask.
“Can a man not get his tie?” Mumbo responds, moving to his chest of drawers, rolling his eyes.
Iskall stamps their feet impatiently. “We’re going to be laaaaate!”
“You could go ahead, mate,” Mumbo replies as he dexterously knots his tie. “Nothing stopping you.”
“You’d call me a bad friend!”
Mumbo chuckles. “To be fair-”
“See!” Iskall points their fingers at him. “You’re supposed to deny it!”
Not bothering with the playful argument (and knowing full well that he would win), Mumbo puts on his black jacket, giving them an amused glance. “Happy?”
They humph and glance at their watch, reminding Mumbo a bit too much of Bdubs in that gesture. “Still going to be late,” they say unhappily.
“Mate, you could have gone without me.”
Iskall squints at him. “If I have to walk in there late, so do you.”
“Isn’t that the-” Iskall doesn’t give him a chance to finish, rushing ahead and leaving Mumbo to run after them, tucking in his shirt as he does so. “Sometimes it feels like you went to a nonsense world,” he tells them as he trots to follow up with Iskall’s skipping.
The bionic eye turns to him in a way no normal eye should be able to. Iskall smirks. “Sometimes, it feels like you went to a logic world, Mr. Penguin Suit,” they reply, their fingers drumming a tune on the railing as the both of them go down the stairs.
“You’re insufferable!” Mumbo retorts, huffing. “I'm just trying to look proper!”
“Prope’!” Iskall mimics his accent, a laugh in their voice.
“You’re the worst,” he responds, and it’s said with so much affection that Iskall turns to him, stopping in their skipping.
They smile for a few seconds, calm and quiet, as if the moment was stretching infinitely. Then, their eye lands back on their watch. “Race you there!” they offer and, without waiting for Mumbo’s confirmation, they sprint away.
Mumbo rolls his eyes, sticking his hands in his pockets and following at a leisurely pace. If X wants the entire gang there, he will wait for all of them to get there. Mumbo is certain he won’t be the last one in the living room that some of them have taken to calling their meeting room.
So there’s no need to hurry.
“Oh, hey, Mumbo, have you see Iskall?”
Mumbo pauses at the sound of a new voice, slowly down and greeting Etho with a nod of his head. “Ran this direction,” he says, vaguely pointing down the stairs.
Etho looks down. “Hmph. D’you think I’d survive it if I leapt off the edge?”
“Do you want me, Zedaph, and Doc to have opportunities to compete for the best robotic prosthetics?”
Etho smiles with his eyes, as he always does, his lips hidden under his mask. “Not specially…”
Mumbo chuckles easily and keeps watching the man following behind him. “Iskall woke you up, too?”
“Nah,” Etho replies, a smile in his voice. “I was on the roof. Came down because of X’s text.”
“I thought X specifically said not to go on the roof? Or anywhere that would be dangerous?”
“Nah, those are Scar rules,” Etho replies easily. “Besides, aren’t rules meant to be bent?”
“Didn’t you go to a high logic world?”
Etho snorts. “Aha, I learnt to understand the existence of rules. Whether we choose to follow them is up to our discretion. Especially in this world.”
Mumbo watches him for a moment before deciding that questioning Etho seems like speaking to a wall. And sure, one of the hermits might very well tell him that speaking to the wall is actually completely feasible and sensible, but neither of the two worlds Mumbo had the pleasure of visiting considered that a normal thing.
Although-
The saying is ‘walls have ears,’ but if he properly wired a wall to a set of AIs, would walls also be capable of holding conversations? He’d just need some mics, and enough time to work on a speech detector and-
Oh, he should mention that to Doc.
Fingers tingly with the wish to go back to his notebook and start scribbling his ideas, Mumbo finally gets to the ground floor, exchanging a brief look with Etho before entering the living room.
It’s as chaotic as it always seems to be. Joe is distributing hot cocoas, the fact that the weather outside is that of a warm summer not enough to deter him. Tango is sharing some stories with a few of the hermits, probably the quietest corner in there. Ren and Keralis meanwhile seem to be rivaling to be the noisiest hermit in the mansion, both raising their voices a bit more at every sentence. Impulse and Pearl seem to be playing some card game, not really paying attention to what’s happening around them.
Bdubs is sleeping on the couch, earning some disgruntled looks from the hermits who wish they could sit down. At that sight, Etho’s gaze grows fond and he slips away before Mumbo can manage a teasing word about his roommate.
Visibly not willing to wait for Bdubs to be awakened, Cleo is bringing more chairs than Mumbo could hope to ever be capable of carrying, barely breaking a sweat. She puts the chairs down and levels her gaze to Ren. “Quiet down, Ren,” she calls. “And get off the table. Some people eat on this.”
“Witch!” Ren booms, pointing his finger at her. She raises her eyebrows, grinning up at him.
“Yeah? Like Pearl?”
Mumbo’s attention turns to the other woman who raises her head from her card game, her expression so lost and innocent that no one would think twice about the kind of world she might have come from.
Mumbo knows for a fact that some people still doubt that Pearl might have visited a wicked world.
Ren, though, definitely doesn’t. “Yes!” he retorts. “Men! Grab the witches!”
Wels twitches as if he had been able to follow through, before schooling himself at Cleo’s expression. “Me thinks this kingdom has gone long enough without a riot,” she comments, arms crossed and a smirk on her lips.
“Do you mean like, two days?” Hypno asks, nonchalant.
“Yes.” She grins.
Mumbo is absolutely certain that the living room is about to become a (playful) battlefield when X enters. “Oh, dearie me,” he frets, taking a look around. “Oh, guys, really?”
Cleo puts her arms behind her back, the perfect picture of innocence, and Mumbo wonders vaguely if this is some skill shared among women who went to wicked worlds.
And then, he looks at the fact that Pearl looks young and healthy while Cleo looks young and… well, dead, and he decides that maybe the two of them might not have that much in common besides their gender and their relative compass orientation.
Oh, and being accused of being witches.
“We were being friendly, X,” Cleo declares, readjusting her hair in front of her shoulder.
X’s expression conveys that he absolutely knows that the person who acts as his right-hand man has a definition of ‘friendly’ which he might want to argue, but he seems to choose not to try to have that discussion right now. “How are we all doing, hermits?” he asks instead.
“Good!” shoot a few voices.
“We want more pizza!” Etho calls, and it gets chuckles around the room.
“- feel like I’m back in school with mandatory assembly,” Zedaph is explaining when the hermits quiet down a bit. “Just me?”
Mumbo takes that opportunity. “Feels like a business meeting,” he comments, sitting on the arm of the couch, ignoring the way Bdubs tries to swat him away. “You know? Like X is about to present a prototype.”
“I’d accept an offer to replace every stair with slides,” Scar declares joyously. “That would make our lives a bit more exciting!”
“And how do you get back up the stairs, genius?” False asks.
Scar purses his lips in thoughts. “Elevator? Do we have money for an elevator?”
X chuckles and turns to Joe who shakes his head with a laugh. “Definitely not, sorry to disappoint.”
A few hermits boo, something teasing and so familiar that Mumbo feels a bit warmer, and he sits a bit more comfortably on the arm of the couch. X rolls his eyes, laughing with them.
He seems to attempt to calm the now chattering crowd a couple of times, opening and closing his mouth uselessly and, when it seems like he’s giving up, Ren is the one to raise his voice: “Dudes! Listen up!”
It’s loud, and so the hermits fall back into silence. X gives Ren a nod. “Wow, thank you, Ren.” The man makes an exaggerated bow, and Mumbo rolls his eyes.
Sure, his world, just like Ren’s, had had something of a royalty, but Mumbo had not had much trouble getting used to firm handshakes rather than elaborate bows again. You would think that Ren ascending to the throne after he saved his world would make him well… less, like that.
Maybe it made him more like that, Mumbo muses.
He doesn’t have the time to ponder too long. Taking his opportunity to speak while the hermits have gone quiet, X clears his throat. “Well, my friends, thank you all for coming here.”
“Wait, it was a choice? Can I go back to my experiment?” Doc asks, and Mumbo isn’t fully certain if the question is genuine or teasing. According to X’s compass, he and Doc should have many things in common, but that does not stop the other man from being a complete mystery to Mumbo.
Besides, he doesn’t wear white coats, so shouldn’t Doc be sorted out with Cub and Zedaph? A white-coat club?
False throws him a scowl. “No, it wasn’t. And no, you can’t. Let’s not waste time on this, okay?”
“Boo! High logic!” Bdubs comments.
Etho side-eyes him. “I’m high-logic too.”
Bdubs looks conflicted at that. “Well, but you’re- You know? You’re Etho!”
Scar pretends to throw up in the background, and Mumbo laughs.
“People! Respect the boss!” Ren demands.
Most hermits around Mumbo groan but no one protests. X sighs. “Thank you, again, Ren,” he says, and Ren grins at him. “Now, I called you in today because I have a big announcement.”
“You’re going to allow me to renovate the manor?” Keralis asks, eyes wide in excitement.
“Hey! Me first!” Bdubs protests, and Etho pushes him back into the couch with one hand, not taking his eyes off X.
Mumbo waits, shifting a little on the arm of the couch. Goodness does he detest long meetings.
“Well, what I wanted to tell you all is that we are welcoming a new hermit among us.” He ignores the snickers around the hermits who have spent a bit too long competing against each other and murdering bean-avatars. “I’m counting on you all to give him a warm welcome.”
“You should have let us know in advance!” Joe says immediately. “We could have prepared something special for dinner!”
Gem nods in agreement. “Yes, I’d want to make sure he feels welcomed.”
X smiles at that, and it might be somewhat hidden by his mask, but they can all see it. “I’m not concerned about that,” he responds. “I know you guys. You’re all good people, despite-” He glances at some of the hermits who went to wicked worlds – and those who are just fight-happy, regardless of the orientation of their world. “That’s the point. You’re all good people.” A pause, then: “Without further ado, let me introduce him.” He raises his voice a little. “Grian? Do you want to join us?”
Mumbo forgets how to breathe at the name.
A man comes into the room, probably having been waiting in the kitchen to be called in, and Mumbo cannot focus on how awkward that must have been because-
He is older, and his face is a bit more emaciated, and he carries dark bags under his eyes, and he seems maybe a bit thinner than he used to be but-
But Mumbo knows him.
“Mumbo?”
It is Iskall’s voice that makes him realize that he has taken a step forward – just one, not enough for it to be noticed by anyone. Mumbo blinks, brought back to awareness, and he would reassure Iskall, if it weren’t for the man in the centre of the room.
So instead of answering, he stares at the newcomer, not knowing if he is more shocked or disbelieving.
Mumbo feels like he is crazy. He wonders, for a moment, if he ended up in Cleo’s world, where dead people walk the streets, or if he is in a world the highest of nonsense, far past anything on X’s compass, because-
This is not possible.
“Mumbo?” Iskall prompts him again, and they’re a bit closer. “Dude, are you good?”
Mumbo looks away from the new man in the room and back at Iskall, who observes him with a worried expression. They’ve slid all the way toward him, while the hermits react to their new recruit.
X is saying… something? Mumbo doesn’t know. He hasn’t been listening.
“I know him,” Mumbo whispers to Iskall, and then he looks back at him, at his long-lost best friend, at the man he believed dead, at Grian. “Iskall, mate, I know him.”
“Really?” Iskall doesn’t doubt him, and it’s yet more proof that X might have gotten things wrong when he declared that they had visited a logic-wicked world. (Except Mumbo’s ‘They’re weird!’ declarations have to go against all of the ways in which X was absolutely right that Iskall’s world was more logical than nonsensical, and he always fails to demonstrate anything). “Huh. Do you want to say hi?”
And yes, of course he does. He wants more than to say hi. He wants to hug Grian, and ask him where he has been all this time, and he wants to tell him that he mourned, and he wants to-
He swallows thickly and he feels as if his voice has deserted him.
“Mumbo?” Iskall calls again, quiet, concerned.
He shakes his head lightly and he keeps staring and he feels like he is going to be sick, because Grian had been dead.
Mumbo had come back from his world, from home, and Grian had been gone. Mumbo had found Grian’s apartment inhabited by someone else, had read the wrong name on the mailbox and thought he was going crazy.
And then the neighbours had told him that the man he was looking for had been gone for two years. And Grian’s phone had rang into the void. And Grian’s parents had said-
Grian had been gone. Grian had disappeared for so long that they had declared him dead.
And Mumbo had hated himself for being gone and not being able to say goodbye to his best friend.
And he’d thought, for a while, that maybe Grian had run away. Grian had always been someone who dreamed to see the world, to discover secrets, and see beautiful sights, and live all of the experiences that they couldn’t get from their smog-full city.
And he’d latched onto that hope until his therapist had told him that all these thoughts were nothing but symptoms of his denial. And then, she had added that his delusions regarding the magical place he claimed to have visited were most likely a result of an uncontrolled grief. And so, Mumbo had thanked her and left. And the next day, X had been on the landing in front of his apartment.
And Mumbo had followed him, and he’d left his old life behind, and he’d left the ghost of Grian behind.
Except-
Except he didn’t, because Grian is here. Alive and breathing, and quietly (uncharacteristically so) listening to X.
Mumbo tries to focus back on the conversation, on what the hermits are saying.
“They don’t look like eagles’,” False is saying, and Mumbo realizes that she is close to Grian now, and also that-
Oh sweet lord, Grian has wings.
The worlds each of the hermits visited sometimes leave… gifts. Memories. Proof that they hadn’t imagined it. Evidence that they belonged in this world more than they ever did in the world of their birth.
Mumbo doesn’t know if going back without a change is unfortunate or lucky. Sometimes, he does feel jealous and wishes he could have a memento of his world – of the place he belongs, just like Iskall has his bionic eye and Stress has flowers that grow in her hair, as healthy as if they came straight from the ground.
And then, he is reminded of Cleo, who can barely leave the house because she is too pale – pale to a point where people believes she is on her deathbed and insist to take her to the hospital, and of Gem, whose sweet smiles and cheery behaviour do little to distract from the hooves that replaced her feet, and of Doc who, like Cleo, chooses to stay in the manor rather than have to find a way to conceal the green inhuman half of his face and the robotic other half.
So maybe remaining fully human, fully banal, is not that bad.
And yet, Mumbo sometimes wishes there could be something to tell him that his world is there, waiting for him, just across a door. That he just needs to find the right door.
Grian’s world, it is clear, wanted to leave a lasting impression. And so Mumbo’s best friend, a man whose smile Mumbo knows by heart, is sporting two large brown wings, larger than Mumbo has ever seen, perhaps the size of very large eagles.
And False’s words suddenly make sense.
“Do they look like any birds you might know?” Cleo asks, and False shakes her head.
“Sorry,” she responds. “Looks unfamiliar to me. The colour and the size do look like eagles’, but the rachis and the afterfeather are just not anything I’ve ever seen.”
“Nerd!” Etho calls, cupping his hand by his mouth, as if he were shouting. A few of the hermits laugh.
“Now, now,” X tries to calm them down. “Thank you for looking, False.” He looks back at Grian. “This is what we thought, then.”
And Mumbo burns to know. He feels like his curiosity might rival Iskall’s right now. He wants to know what X and Grian had thought, and what Grian told X, and where Grian was, and if Grian remembers him, and-
“He’s not from a world like False’s, then?” Impulse asks.
False snorts. “Well, if my world gave wings, you’d know it.” And the next part is said with fond affection and yet so much longing: “I would have flown out a long time ago.”
Mumbo knows what’s going through her mind, right then. False is thinking back about her world, about the place where she belonged. A place, according to her stories, where she could ride on the back of giant eagles and learn to see the mountains just like they did.
Not a lot of hermits had experienced flying in their world, but the ones who did – False, of course, Scar, Stress, and maybe Pearl, though she doesn't share much details about her world – say that it’s unforgettable, that it is not something that can be put into words, let alone replicated by anything in the world of their birth. Mumbo doesn’t know if his flying machines could count as anything close to what they’ve experienced. It doesn’t feel that way.
“I didn’t keep my wings,” Stress comments, her tone peppy despite the loss that seems to taint it. “It’s weird that he kept his, innit?”
X shakes his head. “This world might not be as nonsensical as some of you might wish it to be -” his gaze glance over some of them. Bdubs sticks his tongue out and Wels salutes playfully. “- but there is still an amount of unpredictability. Especially when it comes to what the doors let us keep.”
“Or whether they reappear,” Cub says, and most of the hermits grimace at the reminder.
There’s a tense silence for a moment before Cleo clears her throat, most likely willing to glance over the unpleasant thoughts. “So do you think Grian is from a nonsense world?”
That gets Mumbo’s attention immediately. Did Grian visit a world like his? One where everything was possible? One where the logic of this world did not matter? One where rules were a suggestion and thinking outside of the box was encouraged?
“No,” X says, and he places a hand on Grian’s shoulder. The man – Mumbo’s best friend – jumps as if the contact had startled him before attempting to school his expression. It would work for anyone – it seems to work for X, who relaxes a little, but it doesn’t work for Mumbo. Not when he used to know Grian’s expression by heart. He knows his best friend is not relaxed, but also- Also, there is something he finds himself unable to decrypt. There’s something wild in Grian’s eyes. Something new. “We had a talk about his world. Seems pretty logic-based to me.”
“Logic?” Grian chuckles at that, and it’s the first time in years that Mumbo hears his best friend’s voice and he would give anything in the world for the opportunity to keep hearing it. “Surely you heard me when I said I grew my wings?”
X nods patiently. Mumbo has always been impressed by the man’s pedagogy. “I did,” he says. “Trust me, Grian, you’ll find out that even though we might not have visited the same world as you did, we are all pretty experienced in crazies.”
“You bet!” Impulse says, and it sounds so warm and friendly that the rest of the hermits relax, as if Impulse’s words had given them all permission to move on from the important announcement. Mumbo sees Hypno and xB whispering to each other. Doc’s eyes are back on his phone.
“How about we introduce Grian to the compass and some of the worlds we have visited a bit later?” Cleo suggests, her tone warm but firm. “I feel like you might have overwhelmed him, X.”
“He always does,” Etho drawls from where he sits on the couch. “Can’t help himself from sharing details.”
“Oi!” X protests, and the room gets loud again with fits of laughter.
Mumbo… Mumbo keeps staring at Grian, at his best friend, and he tells himself that he needs to move forward, to go talk to him, to see if Grian remembers , but he feels as if his feet were stuck to the ground. His throat doesn’t seem to want to function either, not a sound can get out of his mouth.
“Hey?” Iskall calls him again, voice low and tone concerned. “Are you good?”
Mumbo opens his mouth, tries to force an answer through – to ask Iskall to help him make sense of the nonsense that is the re-appearance of someone believed to be dead – when Iskall’s attention is called somewhere else.
“Etho, Iskall,” X calls. “Your bedroom could take another bed, couldn’t it?”
“Even if it didn’t, I’m a cuddler,” Iskall declares, which gets the laughter they must have been looking for. “Etho is not, though,” they add with a somber tone, to which the room reacts with more chuckles.
“Nah, Etho would cuddle me, wouldn’t you?” Impulse calls.
“Pass,” the man responds and, before anyone else can proposition him, he adds: “Yes, we’ve got room for another bed. But it’s gonna cost you, X.”
“You live here for free!” Cleo raises. “You can’t rent out a place X is lending you!”
“Aw, how am I going to pay for the box of honey that’s coming in a couple of days?”
“Box of honey? Why do you need that?” Joe asks.
“They had a deal!” Etho says. “Thirty percent off if you buy ten jars! You can’t pass out on that!”
Bdubs chuckles. “Sweetheart, you have a problem with shopping.”
“You know nothing,” Iskall retorts. “You don’t live with him.” They turn to X. “Actually, X, we don’t have room, Etho’s random purchases take our whole floor.”
“Too late,” Cleo says, and she looks up from her phone. “I’ve updated the system. Grian’s in your bedroom now.”
And it’s-
And that’s it. Grian is ‘in the system,’ as Cleo put it.
Grian, a man Mumbo mourned for the six months he has been back in the world of his birth, is now a hermit.