Chapter Text
It was a lovely day on Hermitcraft. The sun had just broken over the mountains, and lances of golden light danced across the sides of steep white walls and glinting copper. A light breeze rustled through the long grasses and through the feathers of a certain avian who didn’t particularly feel like working on his builds. No, today was a day to do something a little more interesting. But what?
Maybe he had a little time to visit a few friends…
— — —
Scar, predictably, jumped in surprise and uttered an indescribably amusing noise when Grian dropped out of the sky almost directly onto his head. To his credit, he recovered quickly, taking a breath to steady himself. “Why hello there Grian, What brings you to my beautiful corner of this server of ours this fine, fine day?” Scar asked innocently, but with a hint of that classic salesman charm that let Grian know he was at risk of a sudden swindling.
Not wanting Scar to start rambling, Grian went straight to the point. “I heard you got some stuff imported from off-server. I wanna see.” He’d been hearing rumors for days about a new thing Scar had gotten his hands on. Reports indicated that it was explosive, colorful, and exactly the sort of thing Grian would be able to appreciate to its full potential.
“Indeed I did!” Scar exclaimed brightly. “I’m certain I have enough to offer a trade for, a bargain even. I think you’ll like what I’ve got. Right this way!”
Turning, he led Grian off of the highly detailed, finished area of the path and onto the blank mossy expanse just beyond, then into a worryingly massive sprawl of shulker boxes and chests. He hummed a jaunty sort of tune as he wove between storage units, coming to a stop in front of a small stack of crates. He rummaged around inside, still humming softly.
Feeling curious, Grian peeked in a random one of the assorted shulker boxes and found it completely full of moss. He checked another, which seemed to have no rhyme or reason applied to the contents, just random junk, but this was Scar’s chest monster, and a little chaos was to be expected.
Before he could rifle through a third box, Scar tapped him on the shoulder. “What’re you doing in there?” he asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “Behold! The latest in parties and pranking: party poppers!” he declared, brandishing a smallish cylinder in Grian’s direction with a good deal more than the necessary amount of flourish.
“Oooh,” Grian whispered as Scar handed him the popper. He fingered it curiously, turning it over and over with a contemplative expression. An idea was stirring in his head. “How many of these do you think I could reasonably have at, say, a birthday party?”
“Oho! That’s a good question,” Scar replied. “And the answer is yes. Yes party poppers at a party.”
Grian nodded, “How many of these do you think you could get on short notice?”
“Well, there should be about fifty in here and I have three crates, but I can get more easy! Just let me send the request to Xisuma, he’ll handle the order for me. After that I just wait 3-5 business days, and bam! Package.”
“There’s… probably more to it than that”
Scar shrugged, “Eh, probably”
“Hmmm” Grian muttered. “Unfortunately, I don’t have 3-5 business days available, but I can make this work. Would you be willing to lend a hand with a project?"
“Why of course! What sort of project?”
“It’s Etho’s birthday of course! We hafta throw him a party!” Grian exclaimed, spreading his wings to punctuate the statement.
Scar hesitated. “Again?”
Ignoring the question, Grian gestured towards the boxes one-handed, tucking the popper Scar had given him into his inventory with the other. “Grab one of those and bring it to Gem’s base, I think we need one more person to pull this off.” Without another word, Grian turned and rocketed up into the sky. Scar would follow. Probably.
Grian took a slightly more scenic route to Gem’s than he normally would have, going in a wide loop that took him around instead of over the bulk of the developed areas, arrowing towards the outskirts like a little feathered missile. It didn’t take his sharp eyes long to spot a suitable location, a small field rimmed by simple trees. Without stopping, the avian marked the rough coordinates on his communicator before turning towards his true destination.
The light wind swept smoothly through his feathers as he rode the morning breeze towards Gem's base, alternating between a gentle glide and boosting forward with a rocket. He wasn’t in a hurry, no, but he did want to arrive before Scar.
From his bird’s eye view, Gem was easy to spot. She appeared to be in the process of hauling stored goods from her small tavern by the path to the huge castle-like structure that she was building. He swooped easily down in front of her, calling a quick, “Heeey Gem!” by way of a greeting.
“What do you want, Grian?” Gem asked, hefting a crate of supplies onto her shoulder and starting down the path. Grian walked beside her, a slight spring in his step.
“What makes you think I want something?” Grian wondered in a tone of voice that may or may not have been bordering on incredibly suspicious. He grinned at the look on Gem’s face as she mentally ran through a list of possible chaos Grian might have caused.
“I didn’t do anything, not yet,” he reassured her. “But I will and you’re going to help me do it,”
Gem set down the box, “G, what are you up to? I wasn’t aware that I agreed to do something, should I be worried?”
“Of course not,” Grian said in a deliberately suspicious tone of voice. (Hey, messing with people was good fun, and Gem was practically asking for it.) “Look! Here comes our other helper now!”
Gem’s gaze was momentarily drawn away from the excitable avian by the whistle of wind beneath wings: Scar swooped in lopsidedly for a landing, a huge box clutched awkwardly between his arms.
“I brought the goods, Grian!” he exclaimed, pitching forward on landing due to the weight of the box in his arms, narrowly avoiding faceplanting in the field
A grin split Grian’s face as he clapped his hands together, "Excellent! This should do nicely”
Scar dusted himself off, nodding, “Well of course! Anything for Etho’s birthday.”
“We’re doing Etho’s birthday!” Gem realized, bouncing up and down in excitement. “How’re we gonna make it special this time?”
Grian reached out, accessing his inventory with an easy twitch of his fingers to pull out the party popper Scar had given him earlier. Holding it aloft like some sort of mighty staff, he cried, “With these of course!” Then, with a smooth motion, he brought the popper around to point at Gem and triggered it with an impressively loud BANG!
Gem froze in the face of the resulting confetti storm, transfixed by the whirling paper particles and flying streamers. Slowly, a wide smile split her face, “I’m in!”
Scar and Grian cheered enthusiastically, Scar setting off another popper in celebration. As flecks of colored paper drifted into his hair, Grian snatched the empty canister out of Scar’s hands and bopped him on the head with it. “Not yet! I have big plans for these…”
Maybe the server would be finding scraps of confetti until the day the Universe ended, but that wasn’t going to stop Grian from having a good time.