Unrecognizable

~Chapter Thirteen~

Present Day

Iskall's POV-

Something was up with Mumbo. An idiot could tell that. And even if Iskall had any doubts, a recent interaction involving TNT and an extra three hours of work solidified his claim. Mumbo had been acting funny ever since he first returned from the depths of his base. Perhaps he couldn't see it before, but he did now. He just had to figure out what it was.

But it was one thing to know something was up; it was another entirely to prove it. Now, that would be a very difficult task to do-- be it that there was no good way to document events at all. Iskall was in a bit of a tight spot on that account. Or, rather, he would be in a bit of a tight spot, had he not spent hours messing around with his precious communicator. And over those hours, he discovered a little feature of which he had never been aware, nor been told. 

And this feature would help him in his mission. 

That is, when he figured out what exactly his "mission" was.

Because, at the moment, Iskall had no clue. 

All he knew was that he had to get some kind of proof that Mumbo wasn't normal. What he would do next, he didn't know. How he would go about actually getting said proof, he didn't know. What he would even count as proof... he didn't know. Iskall didn't know a lot of things about his "mission", he was finding. He mainly just wanted to do something about Mumbo.

Because this Mumbo, this wasn't Mumbo. This wasn't his friend. He wanted his friend back. 

And he was certain that other people had been noticing as well. The other day, the swede had caught a certain two Hermits hanging about a new detective shop. And he could swear that X had been acting funny around Mumbo the other day when the redstoner magically came back.  So this wasn't a baseless accusation; Iskall could totally back up his claim. He just needed solid evidence.

But first, he needed to check in on his dear friend, Scar. The Hermit had recently placed an order for an abnormally large amount of slime that Iskall hadn't had in his shop, and he intended to deliver it. He also made a mental note to ask why, exactly, he needed eighteen stacks of slimeballs. After grabbing the shulkerbox filled with goodies, the Hermit took off into the sky on his elytra, shulkerbox in hand, on his way to Scar's drill.

As the cyborg navigated over the server, however, he immediately got distracted by a certain death trap-appearing thing being built by none other than the moustached suspect himself. And this wasn't at his industrial district-- it couldn't be some kind of mob farm or another. It was very curious indeed. Iskall hesitated for just a moment... before putting the shulkerbox into his inventorial pouch and diving down to the shopping district, right outside Grian's barge, where the redstoner was buried in his work.

But as he was diving down, Iskall felt a sickening crack from right behind him. Oh no. Within a moment, he was plummeting the rest of the way down to the ground. Thankfully, it was not far, and Iskall survived the fall. Unfortunately, while he survived, he didn't exactly land stably on his feet, and the swede stumbled forward, tripping over a line of string stretching from two tripwire hooks. Throwing out his arms to break his fall, Iskall fell forward.

But not on the ground.

Grasping at air, Iskall, tumbled down the hole, his eye wide. But his foot snagged on a stray root on the ground, preventing him from plummeting down into the seemingly endless abyss. Gritting his teeth from the jarring pain in his ankle, and legs, and pretty much his entire body, Iskall twisted back up, grasping the root with his hands while he wriggled his foot out. Once he was free, the swede pulled himself back out of the bottomless pit and stood shakily to his feet, staring Mumbo, who had been standing a few steps back the entire time with a mildly amused expression, right in the eyes.