December 15, 2021

Grian shuffled back to his base after a long, sleepless (obviously) night. He hadn't slept in half a month now, and the bags on his eyes had grown more pronounced. 

Still!

The moon had grown by ANOTHER block when he saw it in the observatory tonight, and he thought something was definitely going to happen sooner or later (Mumbo thought the end was nigh). Dawn was breaking, and he slumped onto a fluffy mat. He had resorted to sleeping in the day, on a thick wool carpet made from the wool of a very fluffy- and dead- goat (part of one of Doc's pranks). Trying to drift off, he was then interrupted by a noise.

"Grian!"

He couldn't mistake that voice anywhere. Docm was at his base, Grian thought, why was he at his base? Undoubtedly, he had pulled a few pranks on him and Ren, but there wasn't any reason to come and get him if they wanted to prank him, was there? He had wormed his way out of enough traps and ambushes to know that they would know better than to lead him into a hole or something, no matter how much lag and obscure Minecraft mechanics were involved.

"Grian I want to show you something I made!"

Hmm, a redstone thing? He would probably break it, but the hermit slithered out of the fluffy goat mat and out of his house, wondering if he could see what magical (Grian had given up calling it 'technical' or 'scientific' long ago) machine Doc had made again.

He followed the scientist to the Octagon, where a peculiar thing stood on the powered-rail covered floor (Grian still didn't know what that was for). The machine- because that was obviously what Doc wanted to show him- looked like the Infinity Portal- five blocks tall, three blocks wide- but the frame was made out of normal smooth stone, the thing was hooked up to a contraption that looked very complicated, and the portal was a shimmering, iridescent color.

"This is a cloning machine!" Doc exclaimed. "Using the power of the extremely close moon, I was able to sample some magic moon rock and harvest its power to make this. It will pull one of your, er, alter-egos, sort of, from a different dimension!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaand?"

"I need to check something with Ren. After that, I'll test it on you. DON'T touch it."

Doc flew away.

.

..

...

Grian pushed a button.

ker-CLINK-KLANG-kachakachakacha-pffffftnnnNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnbbzzzZZZZZ-putputput-kkkkkkrrrrk-beepbeepbeepbeep-bLURRRP-sssssssssssssssss-BOOM went the machine. Then...

ding

Two things happened.

1. Doc came back.

2. Someone came out of the portal.

The someone looked exactly like Grian, except for the fact that he had a BLUE sweater instead.

"Hello!" said Blue Sweater Grian (Grian decided to call him Blurian, pronounced bleh-reean.)

Doc did an exasperated sort of sigh. "Oh come on. You do you, as of now I need to take some Grian-induced stress pills...:"

Grian was left alone in the lab with Blurian (on second thought that wasn't a great name). The machine started whirring again and Grian decided that was his cue to leave.

"Hey, uh, me, come on, let's go to my house. Hopefully Doc can give us an explanation after he's stopped screaming... I also need to do some building later. Hey, maybe you can help!"

"Actually I'm more of a redstone guy, but explanations sound good!"

Grian fainted.

Ha ha ha.