No One gets Left Behind (Adopted from ZecoriTheWeirdOne)

Chapter 14

Grian was nervous about the update to 1.14. The watchers were normally the ones who were in charge of updating the worlds, and while he knew it was just a rogue batch who were responsible for Evo, he was still nervous, not least because they might find him and find out that he was one of them.

He was probably worrying over nothing. It probably wasn't as bad as he was making it out to be, but it was just his history with them that made him worry that something would go wrong.

***

Joe was looking forward to 1.14. He was excited for all the new features and blocks, and for the upgrades to villages. As far as he knew, Xisuma was in charge of updating it, and he would surely extend the world border for the new chunks.

Joe was in a mesa, mining sand for glass, which he was planning on selling to Mumbo for his base. He was along the border of a jungle, so focused on mining the red sand that he didn't notice the obsidian until it was right next to him, at which he frowned as he looked into the red depths. It looked different to the portal Xisuma would make, more permanent, with the obsidian melded into the ground, as if it was going to stay there.

That was odd, because as far as he knew portals could only stay open for a maximum of 24 hours, and he had no idea why it was there. They weren't going to a new world until 1.15 at least, Xisuma had told him, so Xisuma hadn't summoned it, nor did it look like it was the work of an admin in general. Suddenly he saw a figure, so he hastily climbed into a tree and hid, seeing the a  girl step out, at least he assumed she was a girl as she was a koala or something, look around as she dug up a piece of sand and stepped back through, as Joe crept further along the branch, watching as she came back through after a minute or so, followed by 8 other people, all wearing a mix of enchanted iron and diamond armour, but none of them had elytra or anything you'd expect.

Joe frowned, managing to hear the majority of their conversation despite their hushed tones.

"Are you sure this is it Netty?"

"Fairly certain, I can feel him somewhere in this world, though only faintly. He radiates enough power for an admin to be able to tell, and because we know his trace it's easy enough. He's here I'm pretty sure. Besides, they told us he was here."

"Where in this world are we?"

"I dunno, a few thousand blocks from spawn. It seems fairly abandoned, though someone's been grinding for sand here," one of them said, pointing at the exposed terracotta.

"At least I assume, I've not played in this version before, it was about 2 years ago when I played in a version higher than 1.9."

"This looks like 1.13, that's probably why it feels so different."

"If we split up, we should be able to find him in a few hours. This world seems inhabited, so if we find some population they probably know where he is."

Where who is? Joe wondered, creeping forward then stopping as he heard a snap as the branch below him broke. He caught hold of the one above him, using it so he could swing down and land on the ground fairly unharmed. Damnit.

He internally groaned as the 9 of them surrounded him, despite him being far more armed than they were, he wasn't that great at PvP, and he was heavily outnumbered, nor did he have a desire to hurt them. He did have an elytra, but it didn't have a ton of durability on it and they wouldn't give him the time to grab one out of his ender chest.

"What are you doing here?!" One of them shouted, their hand twitching towards their sword, as Joe quickly switched his totem of undying into his left hand, reaching for his trident, ready to attack if needed.

The girl frowned when she saw the totem of undying, seemingly confused by it, but not asking him.

"Hang on, what do you mean?! This is our server - what are you doing here?" he asked, flipping the question back to them.

They seemed to ignore him, continuing to bombard him with questions, making him feel overwhelmed and tempted to risk his elytra, deciding against it as he reached for his communicator, typing a quick message into the chat with his co-ordinates, only to be met with question marks.

"Netty this isn't helping us get Grian back from the watchers," one of them said, rolling their eyes, as the original girl who'd come through let out a resigned nod.

"Wait, Grian? What do you mean by Grian? What do you want with him? And what the hell are watchers?!" 

"Hang on, you know Grian?" the koala girl asked who Joe deducted to be called Netty.

"Of course I know Grian - this is our server. How do you know Grian?"

"Where are we?" Netty asked, seeming to be the person in charge.

"This server's called Hermitcraft, and yes it's in 1.14, and this server's run by Xisuma," Joe explained, clearly not going to get any answers until he answered them first.

"How did you find Grian?"

"I-, it's kinda complicated. So we were moving worlds for this season, season 6, but somehow we ended up in this, sorta broken world. It was really weird. We found Grian there, but he didn't explain how he got there or why he was there. After a couple months we asked if he'd like to come here with us, as that world didn't seem that great. He seemed pretty adamant his friends weren't coming back," Joe said, trailing off as Netty glanced at one of the others.

"I guess we should explain who the watchers are," Netty said, trailing off as she began to explain.