Unrecognizable

~Chapter Eighteen~

3 months earlier

Xisuma's POV-

Atop of a spike, the admin sat alone in the middle of an ice spike biome, fiddling with his communicator. He had been thinking up a new experiment that he had hoped would work. Well, he hoped that all of his experiments would work, naturally. But this one, in particular, was important to him.

If this didn't work, then he had bigger problems than a disappointing experiment failure.

Xisuma quickly typed out a command into his communicator and clicked send. He waited a moment, two moments before heavy rain began pouring down. The bee-suited Hermit let out a long sigh of relief.

HermitCraft had recently not been doing so well, and X couldn't figure out why. He was doing everything right-- as far as he knew at least-- in the upkeeping of it, but it was still beginning to crash and burn. Ever since he began recruiting more Hermits last season, things had begun to go wrong. He was beginning to lose control of HermitCraft. He was lagging behind. It was a race he couldn't catch up to. A task he couldn't complete.

A game he couldn't win.

Quite literally, in his case. 

And it was beginning to drive him mad. Xisuma looked up at the sky to see the rain seemingly flicker a few times, then stop altogether. The admin's brow furrowed in frustration. Really? He couldn't just have this one thing? He sighed. Deciding that he'd figure that out later, Xisuma decided to check on the Hermits. Scrolling through the list of Hermits and their coordinates, he landed on Mumbo, whose had stayed relatively the same for the past few weeks.

Hm. Maybe he should check up on the redstoner; come to think of it, he hadn't seen his friend in a good bit. And a nice elytra trip might help to clear his mind and allow him to brainstorm what to do about the crumbling server. 

Or it seemed that he wouldn't be having a nice elytra trip, as his elytra was broken. Apparently, he'd be doing this the old-fashioned way.

Not a minute later, the Hermit was propping himself up against a wall of Mumbo's base, extremely disorientated. He had forgotten how awful of an experience teleporting was. Shifting places suddenly was extremely bad for one's sense of direction and balance. Pulling up his wrist, Xisuma quickly reached out to Mumbo on the communicator.

You whisper to MumboJumbo: Hey Mumbo, haven't seen you in a bit. Wanted to check in
You whisper to MumboJumbo: I'm at your base

As he waited for his friend to respond, X looked around Mumbo's base. It was getting a bit dusty with neglect. When was the last time Mumbo had been up here to tend to it? Sure, his base was designed to look ruined, but did he really have to let it actually do so? As he walked around, a stone button on a shelf caught his eye. It was linked up to a line of redstone. He wondered what that could be. 

Before he could think about it too hard, though, the ground opened up beside him to reveal a long, spiral staircase. Woah. Xisuma walked up to it, peering down when he heard a loud, repetitive thumping and a form came running up. X jumped back as Mumbo stumbled out of the staircase just as the floor closed again. 

"Oh- hi, X, didn't see you there." Mumbo chuckled as he blinked the sunlight out of his eyes. As he regained his breath from running up the stairs, X peered behind him at where the staircase had been. Had that been what the button was for? And why was he working down in there anyway? What did he have to hide that was so important that he couldn't just say something himself?

 "Did you just- What are you doing, Mumbo?" Xisuma was thoroughly confused. Mumbo chuckled and walked over to the button X was inspecting before. So that did have something to do with this.