Friend or Foe
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Location; ???

POV; Grian

The portal spits me out on the ground in an oak forest. I land on my back. The air is knocked out of me and I gasp for breath.

Slowly, I sit up and look down to notice that my clothes have changed back to a red jumper and grey jeans with black converse.

Unfortunately, only my clothes changed though, because my shoulder still hurts like crazy from Aiden's attack.

The blood that drips is red though, and not purple.

'I must have subconsciously used some glamor magic.'

I hold my wounded arm close with my other arm and stand up to take a look around the forest.

It appears that the woods is small. I can see the ocean from where I am. To the other direction, all I can see is trees.

There is a small puddle nearby that is only a few paces away from the portal.

I walk over to the small puddle of water and peer at my reflection. My eyes are back to their normal baby blue.

My clothes looked like they could have been new, if it weren't for the obvious blood and dirt covering them.

I step away from the water and sigh. I don't know where I am, but I should probably find out.

I turn around to walk back to the portal but stop when I hear the sound of rockets and the sound of footsteps.

I spin on my heels and turn to face the source of the sound.

I'm met with the sound of a sword being unsheathed and the feeling of a sword tip on my neck.

I try to summon a small amount of magic to my hands to use in defense but my magic is still drained from the fight earlier.

A small trickle of blood seeps down into my jumper from a small scratch made from the blade.

I look up slowly at the owner of the sword to be met with a helmeted figure in green and grey armor.

Behind the figure is two others, one of them is a female with blonde hair and goggles.

She had a red and white stripped shirt and a green denim jacket. She had brown shorts on with brown boots and brown gloves.

The other figure was a half creeper half robot mix.

He had on a torn lab coat and dark grey pants. His eye that was robot was a bright red.

All three of them had iron swords out, ready to attack if something happened.

"I'd answer Xisuma's questions if I were you, especially before you no longer can." The one with the lab coat says sternly.

I turn my attention back to the one with the helmet and a sword pointed at my neck.

"Who are you? And how did you get here?" The one supposedly called Xisuma asks me.

His voice is threatening, although it sounds more protective than offensive.

"My name is Xe-Grian, I don't know how I got here." I'm thankful that I caught myself there before I accidentally said my Watcher name.

There is a moment of silence as the one infront of me thinks about what to do while continuing to hold his sword to my neck.

The blonde girl interrupts him before he gets to long to think though.

"Can you take him to the Hub and have the Admins there take care of him?" The blonde asks Xisuma.

"I wish I could False, but the portals are down for maintenance for the next few days." Xisuma says to her.

"I say we lock him up till then. To protect the others of course." The robot-creeper mix says.

False nods and looks to Xisuma for confirmation. Instead, he just continues to stare me down, looking deep into the depths of my soul.

"Until we have a better information, that might be our only option." Xisuma says.

Doc smiles and puts his sword away in his inventory.

Xisuma lowers his sword and Doc walks up behind me and brings my hands behind my back.

False walks up to Doc and hands him a piece of rope to tie my hands together.

Doc uses the rope and unfortunately bumps my injured shoulder as he walks back over to Xisuma.

I bite my lip to stop from yelping but I must have made a noise anyhow because Xisuma's head snaps to me in a heart beat.

"You're injured?" He asks me while studying my face. Xisuma takes notice of the blood on my arm sleeve from the sword wound Aiden gave me.

I say nothing and look away.

Xisuma presses a button on the side of his helmet and looks over me once again.

My head starts to hurt as words long forgotten appear across my vision. 'Admin scan? What could that mean?' My face twists into confusion.

I squint my eyes as I try to focus on the quickly fading memory. 'What's an Admin scan?' The feeling of fear floods through my body and I shiver.

I don't know all the details, but something about what Xisuma just did, that Admin scan or whatever, is bad.

Xisuma sighs and whispers something to Doc who growls then flies off with his elytra.

Xisuma then says something to False and she nods her head then too, leaves the forest by flying off with an elytra.

Xisuma walks over to me and I look up at him with worry filled eyes. He places a hand on my good shoulder and a glowing circle surrounds us.

The circle glows brighter and suddenly we're teleported to a clearing where a group of other, players I'm guessing, are.

As soon as the teleportation circle fades, I collapse to my knees on the ground from exhaustion. This time I do yelp when my shoulder gets jurked from the movement.

Xisuma helps me stand back up and helps my walk over to where a small bed had been made.

There was a new girl over by the bed. She had short brown hair with a white shirt and pink cardigan.

Xisuma sets me down on the bed then calls Doc over, who was already here getting some potions ready.

Doc comes over and cuts my hands free. The girl lifts my sleeve up, I hiss from the pain but she ignores me.

After she finished rolling my sleeve up, Doc grabs a health potion and pours some of its contents onto a cloth.

Doc dabs the potion soaked cloth on my wound and I flinch in pain.

Then Doc grabs a bandage and wraps my wound with it.

When he's done, the girl rolls my sleeve back down over the bandage.

She hands me a health potion and gestures for me to drink it.

I drink the potion and savor it's sweet taste.

"Thank you Stress. You can leave now." Doc says to her with a smile.

"Bye Doc and Xisuma." Stress smiles back at him, then waves at Xisuma and flies off with her elytra.

"You say that you don't know how you got here, but you must remember how you got that injury. That's a sword wound, it's to clean to be anything else."  Xisuma says to me while crossing his arms.

I think for a moment to come up with a good lie but my brain fails me.

"I was caught in a fight." I say while looking down.

"With who?" Doc asks me.

I rub the back of my neck with my hand.

"A-a Watcher." I mutter.

Both Xisuma and Doc glance at each other with wide eyes before turning back to me.

"A Watcher!?" Doc exclaims.

"You fought a Watcher and didn't die?" Xisuma asks me.

I wince at their questions and sigh.

"I barley got out alive, and I lost two friends in the fight." I tell them.

They both seem to buy this and look at me with sympathy. Xisuma looks to Doc and motions for him to follow.

They both walk over a few paces to talk and I remain seated on the bed.

'What will happen when they turn me over to the Admins? What will they do to me? Will they kill me?'

"Hey? You still there Grian?" Xisuma says while waving a hand infront of my face.

My eyes flicker to his face and I shake my head to clear my thoughts before nodding at him.

"Yeah, just got lost in thought that's all." I say to him.

"We've decided that you're going to come with us to a server meeting. There, we can all discuss what we're going to do with you." Xisuma says to me.

I'm nervous, but I stand up and nod my head anyway.

Doc says that he'll meet us there and leaves. Xisuma puts his hand on my shoulder and the circle appears and  we're teleported to a completely different place.

When we arrive there, I lose my balance and stumble forward.

Xisuma is across from me and catches me as I fall into him.

"Woah, easy there. You okay?" He asks me.

I look up at him and feel my face blush red in embarrassment. I quickly steady myself and take a few steps back.

"I'm just tired that's all." I tell him.

Xisuma nods his head and leads me towards a clearing.

"This is where we plan to make a bunch of different shops and sell items from them." Xisuma tells me while gesturing around the area.

We walk all the way to the center where a table has been set up and a group of people are.

"Oh, hey X!"

"Who's that with Xisuma?"

"Welcome to the meeting X!"

A bunch of the Players start to whisper to each other after calling out to X.

Xisuma waves to them, and continues to lead me to the meeting table set up in the middle of the field.

He sets me at his right hand side and takes a seat at the head of the table.

"Hello fellow Hermits of Hermitcraft." X says to everyone, while clasping his hands together to gain everyone's attention.

All of the remaining Hermits who hadn't sat down, then went to take their seat at the table with the rest of us.

"As you have probably noticed we have a new player with us today. Would you mind introducing yourself to them?" Xisuma says to the Hermits, well not the last part, that was directed toward me.

"Oh, um Hello everyone, my name's Xelq-Grian!" I make sure to give a friendly smile with a warm wave.

'Best to cover up that little mistake I made, that could have gone very bad.'

"Well hello luv! I'm glad you could join us for a bit!" The one with the pink cardigan said.

'Her name is Stress I believe, if my memory doesn't fail me.'

"Doc, False, and I found Grian at spawn today. He was apparently attacked and had to evacuate from the server he was in." Xisuma says.

"I'm guessing that because the maintenance team has the portals down at the MainHub, he came out in our server without being white-listed." X adds.

A series of "Oh's" was heard along with the nodding of heads from the Hermits.

"So, you're okay though? You aren't injured?" Someone with blonde hair and a brown shirts asks me.

But before I could reply, I'm interrupted by Doc. "He was injured, me and Stress were able to patch him up though before this meeting."

"Well, I'm glad that he's okay now." One of the Hermits with brown hair and green eyes says.

Xisuma nods his head and smiles at them.

"So... will Grian be joining us this season?" A Hermit with blonde hair and red eyes asks.

A humph noise comes from over where Doc was sitting at the table.

"That's actually what I've gathered you all here to discuss. The portals to the MainHub are down so I can't take him back there." Xisuma says while leaning forward and folding his hands infront of himself.

Now the Hermits turn to look at each other in thought. The sound of whispers from conversations about the topic at hand is heard throughout the entire table.

I look down at my hands which I've folded in my lap. 'This is it, if they choose to send me to the Admins I'm done for.'

"I think he should away." Someone with black hair and a mustache says.

"I agree with Mumbo." The one with green eyes and a brown hat says.

This action start a series of other votes from the other Hermits. Of course, not all agreed that I should stay.

"How can we let him stay? We barely even know him?" Doc says.

A few of the Hermits nodded their heads to what Doc had said.

Xisuma counts how many said for me to stay, and then how many said for me to leave.

"The votes are in, Grian stays." Xisuma says while standing up from where he was seated.

Relief floods through me and a smile spreads across my face.

"Welcome to Hermitcraft Grian." Xisuma says to me.

I can't see his mouth with his helmet on, but I can tell he is smiling from the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners through his visor.

Clapping and shouts of joy are heard throughout the group of players I would now be spending the entire season with.
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POV; Xisumavoid

I watch as a group of the Hermits stand up and walk over to Grian. They start to lead him off to give him a tour of the server.

"I still think that this is a bad idea." Doc says from behind me.

I turn to face him, still smiling. "I think it's a great idea. Look how happy everyone is." I say to Doc, gesturing toward where the others were.

"Well, did you at least take a scan of him?" Doc asks me.

The smile slowly fades from my face. "Yes, I took a scan." I say to Doc.

"What did you find?" He asks me.

"I haven't looked at it yet."

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

I pull up my Admins screens using some of my Admin magic. The holographic screens appear and I switch them over to the Players list of this server.

I click on Grian and it's starts to process the information from the scan.

"What does it say?" Doc asks me.

My face pales dramatically and Doc rushes over so he can read what the scan says.

"There's nothing?" Doc asks.

I re-run the scan through the system and again, nothing comes up.

"It's like he never existed." I say

"Wait, but then..." Doc trails off.

"Who is this Grian character?" I finish, looking off after where the Hermits left while giving him a tour.

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Authors Notes;

I'm so sorry this chapter is way late. My phone basically broke and I couldn't write.

So to make up, here is a long chapter, well... longer than normal anyway.

As per usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Stay safe, happy, and warm!

Word count; 1585

After editing; 1879

After rewrite; 2538

After editing the rewrite; 2550

:)