Scar was standing next to Cub, 'assisting in the interrogation, though Cub was asking all the questions. Cub was about to ask his fourth question, 'Who are the listeners?' when Grian launched himself off the platform with no warning. He flew over the heads of the hermits, his wings wide open. Grian glid over to where an unknown figure in a watcher's uniform was standing and crashed right into him. Bu then, everyone had their full attention on Grian and the mystery person, so Cub and Scar activated their elytras and glid to the front of the crowd. As he landed, Scar heard Grian say, "Is this why you vanished from Evo? You got made a watcher? And you decided not to tell me after I got made one?" Grian looked down at the four stripes on the mystery person's arm. Scar looked at Grian's uniform and saw that he had three, and Xisuma had more than Scar could count in a brief glance. Grian muttered something else, though Scar wasn't able to hear it.

Grian then stood up, helping the unknown watcher up and announced, "This is Taurtis, my non-biological brother!" The statement was immediately met with an outburst of confusion. Scar, too, was confused, though he didn't express it loudly. All he could think about was that Taurtis's face matched the player head next to Grian and Xisuma's on the watcher symbol.

"Grian, what do you mean by non-biological brother?" Doc asked, effectively shutting everyone up as everyone wanted to hear the answer.

"Well, I met Taurtis in... High school... Though it might have been a little earlier than that. I can't remember exactly, it was a long time ago." Scar couldn't help but notice a hesitant pause when grian said high school. Doc had seemingly heard it too, as he looked at Grian sympathetically. "High school wasn't great. Afterward, we hung out a lot and played a lot of this game called build swap that I invented." Grian had a nostalgic smile on his face, "We were basically given something to build, and after each round, the judges would pick the winner, then we would switch sides. So if I built, say, a living candy cane and Taurtis built a sentient rock, we would switch sides and we would make them do something. Such as I would work on the sentient rock and I would have to build it wearing a tutu, and then Taurtis would work on the candy cane and make it singing or something. It was all so wacky."

"Grian, I am almost 100 percent certain that the judges used a random sentence generator to choose what we built." Taurtis interrupted.

"Probably. Anyways, we played a lot of that, and then I started Evo, properly called Minecraft Evolution. It was a world where we started in one of the earliest versions of Minecraft and jumped to the next version when the watchers felt we were ready, them sometimes giving us riddles to solve in order to do so. At first, Taurtis wasn't on the server, but as I built up my empire, I became lonely and needed my close friend. So I built a summoning platform to summon Taurtis and I added a flower every day, each time hoping that it would be the one to summon him. Eventually, I summoned him, though apparently he had been living beneath it the entire time. I don't know how he survived-"

"I ate bugs. It was gross, but anything to survive."

"I invited him to join the Grian empire, but he declined and formed the republic. I had a lot of fun pranking him, and him retaliating, but then one day he just disappeared. Now I know that he was made a watcher, but, like still! I freaked out, and we fell out of contact because he had to, and we just reunited!"

"Wait, so then you're the emperor!" Cleo spoke up, pointing at Grian, referring to the riddle, "And you're the republic!" she pointed to Taurtis, "Then, Xisuma, you're the hidden one?"

Xisuma signed, "yeah, I've been a watcher my whole life, when I was given my own server to watch, I was thrilled. I decided on watching in a different way though, I would become a player and hide my watcher abilities. I've hidden it since season one."

Scar noticed that the sun was setting, "Hey guys, does anyone what to go somewhere more well lit? It's getting dark out and also, I don't want phantoms spawning. Has anyone not slept recently?" Scar received a chorus of 'yeah, let's go somewhere else' and 'no, I've slept recently'.

"We can go to my base, it's pretty well lit as long as you avoid the towers." Grian volunteered. "Oh, and I'll do a discount. If you want to take Mumbo's mustache away, I'll cut it down to half price, one and a half stacks of diamonds. If five or more people want to, then ten diamonds per person" Grian smirked, "You also don't have to give his mustache ack if you find it, at least not right away, give him a week without his mustache, then give it back."

"Grian! Why would you say that?" Mumbo complained as everyone flew as a group over to Grian's base. Scar smirked, he was totally going to pay to have Mumbo's mustache taken away, especially if a bunch of other hermits wants to do it.

When the group got to Grian's base, they temporarily dropped the discussion about the watchers as everyone just wanted to hang out a bit. It had been a while since the last server-wide gathering. Everyone broke off into little friend groups and Scar turned to Cub. "Want to find three other hermits that want to take Mumbo's mustache away?"

Cub rolled his eyes, "Duh." Together, the Convex walked over to where TFC and Joe were talking. Cub immediately jumped into their conversation, "Hey, do either of you want to contribute to taking Mumbo's mustache away?"

"I guess I could," TFC said slowly, "I don't recall ever seeing Mumbo without his mustache, due to my voluntary life of solitude."

"I believe that contributing to this would be extremely interesting."

"Great! Now we just need one more hermit!" Scar exclaimed happily

"Do you think Grian would count himself as the fifth person? Cub questioned

"Possibly, we should ask." Scar walked over to Grian, Cub following close behind. "Hey, Grian! So we found four people, including us, who want to take Mumbo's mustache away." Scar ignored Mumbo's protests "We know that you want to do it, so do you want to be our fifth person?" Scar totally did not beg.

"I guess I could. The only thing is, can I pay myself?" Grian thought for a moment, "Oh yeah I can! Get your diamonds, boys! Time to take this mustache away!" Grian walked into one of the towers we were told to avoid, and Scar could hear him rummaging around seeming to look for something. Scar, Cub, Joe, and TFC got their diamonds out of their ender chest when they heard Grian call down from the second floor, "Hey! If anyone wants to see my machine in action, feel free to come up and watch! Free of charge unless you are one of the ones paying for it! Yes, Mumbo, you need to be there!"

That immediately got everyone's attention, and everyone made a mad dash to the second floor, apart from Mumbo who went up much more slowly, grumbling under his breath. "Here are the diamonds Grian!" Scar said holding them out.

"Great! I've collected them from the other three already, now time to collect from myself! NPC Grian! Come on out buddy!" Grian called. Scar wasn't sure who NPC Grian was, but Taurtis tensed.

"Are you sure that's a good idea Grian?" He asked nervously

"Nope! But I'm doing it anyway!" Grian continued to work on coaxing NPC Grian out.

Scar leaned over to Taurtis, "Who's NPC Grian?"

"You'll see"

Suddenly, a voice rang out from behind the machine, sounding oddly mechanical. "No. There are no rustic houses"

Grian signed. "Fine, I'll make you a rustic house next to Robo Grian's cave, but only if you come help."

Immediately after Grian had finished speaking, a clone of Grian came out from behind the machine, floating slightly above the ground and tipped backward. "NPC Grian need rustic house. NPC Grian will help!"

Word Count: 1405

Total Word Count: 9719

Two uploads in one day! I had a lot of time while at a craft fair so I had brought my chromebook and my handwritten copy and just started typing everything up!

I have so many ideas for this and I can't wait to get to them

Thanks for Reading!

~Niza