Grian internally cursed when he realised he didn't know how contact Xeno. It had been about a week, and Grian wondered how he had managed to let that slip for so long, eventually deciding it was because he had a goldfish memory.

He decided the simplest solution would be just to drop by his cabin to see if he was ready, and so Grian decided he would fly over there, ignoring the fact that it would be past midday by the time he arrived. He could also get a parrot after, considering that he'd forgotten about it the previous time.

After a while of flying, Grian landed softly on the sand outside his cabin, knocking the door and hearing a gruff

"Come in."

He pulled the door open, walking into Xeno's living room, seeing him turn around, surprisingly without his helmet. His hair was a rough brown colour, and his skin a pale white. His eyes were slightly discoloured, his pupil a dark red, almost mistakable for red, and his irises a pale purple similar to Grian's.

"Sorry, I realised a few hours after we left that we didn't have any way to get in contact, at which point you were long gone and I had no idea where your base is," Xeno apologised, and Grian noticed his voice wasn't as deep or distorted as it was before, sounding more like Xisuma, but still slightly distorted.

"It's fine, don't worry about it - you remembered before I did," Grian said, laughing slightly.

"Anyway, I got the ingredients a couple days ago and have them stored in an Ender Chest so they don't go off, anyway, we can start whenever you like."

"We could do it today," Grian suggested, and Xeno shrugged.

"Why not. Let me just get the ingredients quickly, then we can start," Xeno said, opening his ender chest and pulling out some cocoa, milk and wheat and putting it on the side, preparing to start baking.

***

About an hour later, Grian slotted the tray into the oven, setting a timer and leaning against the surface. 

After a couple of minutes, Xeno started to speak.

"You mentioned some Watchers last week - what exactly are they?" he asked, and Grian froze, hesitating and rubbing his arm nervously.

"If it helps I can tell you about my past," Xeno offered, and Grian nodded slowly.

"Well, it's kinda complicated, as in... Technically I'm Xisuma's clone, and he summoned me before Hermitcraft through some sort of accident - I'm not entirely sure how, he never really explained it to me, and after about a year or so he was invited to help create a server with a friend of his called GenerikB, but obviously I wasn't invited as he didn't know I existed. I managed to sneak in with him as I'm a pretty good hacker and coder.

At the start of Season 2, Xisuma took over as admin and asked me if I could help him with some plugins and stuff, asking if I wanted to be invited, and I accepted. Problem is, once he found out I'd hacked my way onto the server and hadn't told him, he got angry, as he really doesn't like hackers or magics he considers unnatural, which is basically anything other than admin.

He banned me from the Season 2 world. There's no way to hack your way out of a ban, trust me, I tried. None of the Hermits ever knew I existed. It's easy enough to hack your way into a whitelist, but hacking out of a ban is pretty much impossible. I ended up getting into the Season 3 world and messed with Xisuma a bit, but all the damage I did was on a copy. It was worse though in Season 4, and by Season 5 he just flat out banned me immediately. I hadn't even done anything yet...

It was rough. Anyway, I don't think he realised I followed him here... Anyway, that's my 'tragic backstory'. What about you?" (Yes I did a ton of exposition shut up here comes more)

"I-" Grian cleared his throat. "When I was a kid, I went to high school - I can skip to the bit with the watchers if you like?" Xeno shrugged.

"Whatever you'd prefer."

"Once I was done with high school, I created a server called Evolution that started in Minecraft Beta. There were these people called Watchers who would leave clues to help us update to the next version - hence the name evolution. They would punish us if we were bad and reward us if we were good. For the first couple of months, they were fair and nice enough. Then they got harsher. They craved worship and praise, so when they didn't get it they grew crueller. Someone tried to leave, which they should've been able to do, as I set the world so anyone could leave, but somehow the watchers messed with that. He was punished.

After a year or so, the watchers told us to defeat the Ender Dragon, and we couldn't exactly say no. They took a player, they called him Xelqua. The evolutionists for some reason didn't reappear in the world, and they blamed Xelqua, torturing and punishing him for the slightest mistake. They left so many scars, and after a few months of that, he fled. He was completely broken, and when he saw the ruins of Evo, the marks, the destruction, how... Glitched the world was, it destroyed him. He was destroyed mentally, and barely managed to survive, but after a month he started to get over it. Over the loss of his friends and the server he held so dear to him, he started to deal with it and learnt to ignore the pain.

Then I found my way here. Then I met an incredible person, and here I am now," Grian finished, a soft smile on his face.

"I'm sorry," Xeno whispered, picking up on how Grian referred to himself in third person, but he got that it was easier to think about Watcher him - Xelqua - as someone else.

Grian jumped when he heard a timer go off, Xeno walking to the oven and pulling the cookies out, poking them and putting them on the side. He ignored the heat, handing one to Grian who happily took it.

God Xeno was a good cook.