Under The Helmet || Hermitcraft AU

Chapter 8

POV: Grian
Word Count: 1092
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Grian stood against the dirt wall massaging his slowly bruising stomach, as Xisuma broke free from the dirt cube and ran from him. After a few moments, his face contorted into an uncharacteristically ugly look as he screamed and kicked the wall at full force. Again, he recoiled, clutching his foot as it added to the pain he was already feeling.

He had spent the last two days devising and preparing this trap, and it had failed, all because he had flinched when X kicked him in the stomach. He equipped his elytra, preparing to head out when he heard two voices. He crouched in his dirt bunker and listened;

"Grian?!" called a woman's voice, unmistakeably Stress's, "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?"

Grian heard some noises that sounded like Shulker on concrete, before complete silence. Peeping out of the hole in the wall where Xisuma climbed out, he swept the white-concreted grounds with his eyes to confirm that the pair had indeed left the premises. Then he pulled out some rockets and flew back to his base.

He collapsed on to his bed. He was mad, mad at everyone, at X, Stress, Scar, Iskall, himself. Eventually, even though it was only 3:30 pm, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

He was woken less than ten minutes later by his communicator buzzing in his pockets. He wearily pulled it out and read it. He noticed that it was a /msg from Scar.

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

He thought for a moment. He wanted to express his disappointment at himself, for everything had gone to plan until it was his turn to pitch in, and his unreasonable anger at everything, but contained it to himself and wrote a short answer:

<Grian> No, he got away.

Not long after he sent the line, another public message popped up in chat;

>MumboJumbo: okay everyone, you should have completed your challenges

>MumboJumbo: let's meet back up at the Hermit Challenges meeting place in a few hours

>Stressmonster101: See ya there :P

About half a day later, Grian situated himself on top of the treetop canopy, wearing one of his infamous parrot heads over his own. He saw Iskall and Stress showing each other their "Belts" they had received from the Cyclop- I mean button game earlier. Stress laughed loudly upon realising that the large lime green... thing dangling over Iskall's diamond eye was, well, his highly celebrated green belt.

"PEsKy bIrD!" Yelled Grian at the top of his lungs, and abandoning all remaining dignity, swooped down, towards both Stress and Iskall. The pair jumped out of the way, avoiding the descending Grian, laughing exuberantly.

"Hey Grian!", said Iskall, laughing infectiously, "We were just talking about the Cyclops game!"

"Oh, do you want to see my 'Belt'?", Grian asked, forgetting all of his troubles. He extended his hand, to display his kind of wristband/glove with all of the coloured concrete he had gathered embedded into it.

"Oh my god, Grian, that looks like the Infinity Gauntlet!" Said Stress, laughing along with Iskall.

"I know, that's the point!" Replied Grian, trying to suppress a laugh.

There was an awkward silence, then everyone exploded into hysterical laughter. This continued until there was a rush of wind from above.

"HERMIT CHALLENGES!" Yelled Mumbo, plummeting down into the fireplaces. He yelped and panicked, as he fumbled around with his rockets. He flew out of the fires, and into the group of laughing maniacs, now laughing at his attire. Just underwear and his belt hanging over his bare chest. *

He blushed and said, "I'm so low on diamonds that I'm selling my hair, tux, and for a very reasonable price, my moustache to anyone who wishes to buy it to add to their skin!" 

This made the trio laugh even harder than before.

"Damn, you must be desperate," said Grian, doubling over in laughter, "to be selling your 'stache. Wow, I would buy that."

Looking miffed, Mumbo continued with his normal HeRmIT ChaLLEnGEs rant; "So the challengee must announce their Challenges, with proof of completion, then the challenger must ring the bell to say-"

"Mumbo we already know!" Iskall said, cutting him off.

"Well, my new Note Block song is in the on the Nether Roof close to the button if you want to see it", Mumbo announced, now very annoyed.

Stress fished out her Communicator, "Look, by not using the nether to go anywhere, I've bumped up my flight numbers by almost fifteen-thousand!"

Iskall pulled out the surprisingly large Dragon egg from his inventory. It glowed with a mysterious purple light. Carefully, he passed it to Grian, who shoved it hastily into his inventory.

"Hey, be careful with that!" Said Iskall, flicking Grian in the arm, "I went to a lot of effort to get that!"

Grian looked at the ground. The others looked at him curiously, expecting him to go into depth about what he did to complete his challenge.

"I am.. uh... I haven't completed my challenge," Grian mumbled nervously. He looked up to find his architect bros (and Stress of course, but less visibly) wearing looks of shock, and disappointment. 

"I understand if you are disappoint-"

"No Grian, listen," said Mumbo, unfolding his arms from his almost bare chest, "It was unfair of me to give you a challenge like that, I can let you pass on this one, for your sake."

"NO!" Grian said, looking positively shocked, "I can't give up now! A hobbit never gives up on a journey, until they reach the very end!"

Mumbo looked behind them and exchanged dubious looks with the other two. 

"You realise hobbits actually-"

"I need to complete this challenge, for my own sanity AlRigHt?" said Grian, looking determinedly up into Mumbo's face. He smiled down at the little gremlin and laughed again.

"Okay then," he said, "You have one week from now to take Egg-suma's helmet off, and describe what it looks like-,"

"Hang on, describe what it looks like?" interrupted Grian, "I thought you did this primarily as a hard challenge, not because you wanted to know what Xisuma looks like!"

Mumbo shrugged and said with an obvious urge to end this conversation, "I was curious to see what he looked like, from the very beginning anyways mate."

"See y'all later!" he said, doing a signature blast-off into the sky and out of sight.

*(If you're wondering, I'm not crazy: youtube.com/watch?v=BsM9uMSXpz4)