Under The Helmet || Hermitcraft AU

Chapter 7

POV: Various
Word Count: 801
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Stationed next to the bed, back in X's base, he saw Xisuma picking up some shulker boxes, pulling out some rockets and taking off in the direction of the swampy Witch Farm. Grian pulled out his communicator and hastily messaged both Scar and Stress.

<Grian> He's coming guys

Grian made a small box out of dirt, to make sure Xisuma can't escape when he respawns, and to make a hasty escape for himself if anything bad happens. He stood positioned, leaning over the pillow and waited for X to arrive.

Back over at the Witch farm, Stress opened her inventory and took off her armour. She found an Invisibility potion and chugged it. She stood, invisible with a pickaxe in hand, waiting for the sound of fireworks and wings. 

Instead of flying into the AFK farm though, Xisuma entered by climbing up the scaffolding, as he was working on the exterior design anyway. This took Stress by surprise, as she saw a helmet slowly peep up from the edge. She squeaked and tripped over her own feet. Xisumavoid heard the noise and turned around, staring at a spot somewhat 3 blocks to the left of her. Then he shrugged and turned back to the giant contraption. 

Stress held her breath. This is it, she thought, he's going to flick the lever and activate the trap!

With an anticlimatic Redstone *click* noise, four dispensers were pushed into view above him. He didn't notice the dispensers until he heard the bubbling of lava above him. He looked up, but it was too late, the second set of dispensers had fired, encasing him in brittle, but hard obsidian. Is this some sort of prank? Xisuma thought, amused. Well, amused until the final dispenser let loose the water. Pulling out his pickaxe he hacked pointlessly at the obsidian cage encasing him. He let out a choked scream, but it was no use. As water filled his helmet, all he could do was hold his breath for as long as he can.

Scar and Stress could hear his muffled yells from their positions. Feeling both guilty and pitiful, they sat down and buried their heads in their hands.

After almost a minute of flailing underwater, he finally drowned, poofing into a bubble of items and experience. Everyone's communicators buzzed;

<Xisumavoid drowned>

>Cubfan135: o/

>Iskall85: All g?

>Docm77: Seriously how did he manage that?

>ZombieCleo: O_O

>Docm77: I mean, he has respiration on his helmet doesn't he?

>MumboJumbo: You'll never guess 

Full of guilt, Stress and Scar ran out of their hiding spots and started to remove the obsidian tube from the giant Witch Farm machine. Now visible again, having drunk a pail of milk, Stress turned to face Scar and asked, "You hope Grian manages to find him don't you?"

"You'll never know with Grian," Scar sighed, absentmindedly stroking his long, grey beard. "But the fact that he is pretty much a professional prankster would make you think that he would carefully plan this whole thing through."

They both took the remainder of Xisuma's inventory out of the water and dumped it in a Shulker box. Together, they flew to Xisuma's industrial tower base thingy in the jungle (without using the Nether, remember the challenge!), to return his items.

Grian saw Xisuma silently materialise on his bed. Xisuma sat up, breathing heavily. Looking around, he saw the dirt cube Grian had made. "Wha-?" He muttered, before feeling a pair of hands, yanking at his helmet. He spun around, and upon seeing him, yelled and kicked Grian painfully hard in the guts. Grian yelled and recoiled, wincing. 

Xisuma broke free of the dirt cube and ran to hide behind his base, breathing slowly and heavily. He listened carefully for a few moments, before hearing Grian yell in frustration and kick the wall behind him. About a minute later, he heard a few new voices. 

"Grian?!" Yelled Stress, "Where are you?"

"He's probably already flown back to his base", replied Scar, "Let's just leave X's items here in this Shulker box shall we?"

"Yeah okay."

They gathered all of the items and multicoloured Shulker boxes that Xisuma left at the farm. Scar silently stacked up the boxes on the main walkway, and Stress carefully wrote out a few signs saying,

Hey X, here are the items that you dropped left at the trap. We hope you are well! :P

She decided to leave it anonymous, so she didn't get herself or anyone else into trouble. The two departed back to their bases from there, both feeling exceptionally bad for Xisuma. Scar messaged Grian on his communicator to ask,

<GoodTimeWithScar> So, did you manage to take the helmet off?

He collapsed onto his bed in the shell of Larry the snail and waited a couple of minutes for a short response.

<Grian> No, he got away.