The Chained Watcher

Story Time

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Humming lightly to himself, Grian carefully guides the sapling he'd acquired outside of Minecraft to grow into a decently sized tree. Minecraft saplings just don't respond the same way, you see, so he'd needed an actual sapling to work with if he wanted the changes he made to stick.

If there were anyone in the underground lounge area right now, they would be faced with the rather bewildering sight of full-size Grian sitting with a potted tree in his lap. An entire tree. Not an abnormally big one, but still.

To his mild disappointment though, the only one who's actually worked up the courage to visit apart from the first time when he'd shown each of them the room is Scar. It's not like he didn't expect them to prefer to avoid looking at what's a pretty blatant reminder of their time in the arena, but he's still a bit disappointed.

That's actually part of why he's working on this tree, believe it or not.

His goal with the tree is partially selfish, partially to make something that'll encourage more frequent visits. He wants to change how the fruits taste, with the end goal being something similar to the desserts he likes the most from the Occasional Indulgence, since no matter how much he'd like it to, his stash won't last forever. With some of the actual desserts on hand to compare the taste to, he might actually be able to pull it off this time!

Currently, the dessert he's trying to recreate with this tree is a blueberry crumble, and while he's got the blueberry part down, the crumble part is... Well, it's a start.

Plucking one of the fruits off the tree, he pops it in his mouth and frowns thoughtfully, comparing the flavor. Yeah, the filling is good, but trying to mix the crumble flavor in isn't meshing well. It just can't make the right texture on the inside of the fruit.

Tweaking the tree's genetics yet again, he decides to try for a slightly different approach. How about, instead of trying to have the crumble part be on the inside alongside the sweet blueberry filling, he has the crumble be the outside skin of the fruit? Not too thin though, or else it won't be like a crumble.

Tasting it, he nods slowly. That's definitely closer than before. Needs a thicker outer layer though, with a bit less cohesion.

After reaching something he's moderately satisfied with, he realizes that tweaking the flavor of the fruits like this has also left the leaves slightly changed as well. They seem to taste faintly sweet, with a vague aftertaste somewhat similar to a blueberry. He can work with this.

Let's see... Make the leaves thinner, along with more susceptible to dissolving, and filter out the blueberry flavor while cranking up the sweetness. If he does this right, he should be able to make them almost like cotton candy in how they taste and act.

Now, this isn't exactly his area of expertise. In fact, plants are almost the only thing he's ever messed with the genes of, apart from a few mishaps when he was first attempting to figure out how to heal with his magic, and even then he was never terribly interested in it. He didn't want to be completely incompetent though, so he'd practiced with trees and bushes and occasionally flowers.

That practice had actually helped him figure out which way to look when trying to heal things, learning to let the things he's healing dictate what heals in which way they heal instead of trying to heal the injuries how he would heal his own.

A lot of what he learned was just aesthetic changes and how to encourage plants to grow faster without draining their nutrients. Things that don't really change how the plant functions, even if it looks different.

His thoughts are drawn away from the tree when he senses a small group of people approaching through the tunnel, mostly leaking varying levels of wariness apart from the vibrant whimsical excitement he knows is coming from Scar. He tunes out the details, dulling that sense until he can't perceive their leaked emotions.