I have peaked writing this. I dreamt it (or the general idea at least), woke up and wrote it. 2334 words.
Grian had missed the Hermitcraft monthly meeting, and while that wasn't a rare occurrence, Xisuma had asked Mumbo to check up on him at some point. Mumbo, inspired by Scar, was going to do that in the form of inviting him to a game of Buttercup Team Building Hide and Seek in Scarland.
He knocked on the door of the main building through which he could see Grian's name tag using his communicator. He furrowed his eyebrows as he waited; he could have sworn that he could hear people inside, but all of the hermits had just been at the meeting. A couple of minutes passed and he resolved to knock again, trying not to wonder how Grian hadn't heard him; he must, by definition, have been alone (Mumbo was probably just hearing things). Unless he was asleep. He didn't have enough time to extend that train of thought any further, though, because the door opened and Grian stood in the gap.
"Hi, you missed the..." Mumbo trailed off as he properly looked at Grian; he looked younger. Like, five to ten years younger.
"Oh," Grian replied, and something else was very different about him. "I slept in, sorry.
"Oh, okay then. Just tell Xisuma, he'll he fine with it." Mumbo replied cautiously, trying to work out what was wrong with him and just what was going on in general. Why did he look so much younger? It must have just been a trick of the light but... it was weird.
"Yes, of course." Grian said, and hesitated. "I'll just tell Xisuma." He seemed very cautious. Very very cautious. He was talking slowly, as if he were treading on egg shells.
Mumbo realised how he had pronounced the admin's name; the same way he had said it. Not exaggeratively wrong or with a nickname like 'X' or 'suma', but wrong in the same way Mumbo said it wrong (he knew he said it wrong but wasn't quite sure what way was right, so he stuck with his way since it seemed to work). He didn't have time to bring it up, however, because Grian glanced back inside, his eyes widened slightly, and then he stepped outside fully and closed the door behind him just in time before there was a loud bang against the door and then, from the inside;
"You wanna go?!" It was Grian's voice.
"Yeah I wanna go!" It was also Grian's voice.
"Uhum," the Grian in front of him chuckled nervously.
"What the fuck?!" Mumbo asked.
"It's nothing, don't worry." Grian said, staying put in front of the doors. "It's just... a recording! We- I'm working on some acting skills, you see, um."
Mumbo stared at him. "I don't think I believe you."
"O-oh, um, well..." he trailed off.
"What's going on?"
"It's a bit... um..."
"Should I get Xisuma? Something weird is clearly happening."
"Is it? No it's not. Everything is very normal." Grian reassured him, or tried to.
"I'm sure he wouldn't mind helping out."
"No! Don't get anyone. We don't need any help. We're just... I mean of course I'm just, like, living my life you know. On... on..." he glanced down at his communicator. "Hermitcraft!"
"Oh, right." Mumbo relaxed. "So you were just Hermitcrafting? As all of us Hermitcrafters do?" Grian smiled.
"Yes, as a Hermitcrafter."
"Not as a Hermit, then?"
Grian hesitated. "No?"
"Right." Mumbo nodded.
"Right." Grian smiled, nodding back.
"Right." Mumbo said before pushing past him and going inside.
"No!" Grian went after him. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Early Evo Grian! Taurtis Grian! Stop that!" He shouted, before running over to stop the fight between a Grian wearing green and a Grian wearing blue (and blood and a few bruises and quite a lot of scars which he decided not to think about too much).
"Close the door, close the door!" Said another Grian, rushing behind him to do what he had said. "Late Evo Grian, why did you let someone inside?!"
"I didn't mean to!" Said the first Grian he had seen, returning to him. "Why did you send me out there?! I didn't know what to do!"
"You're the most sane!"
"I'm not going to be for much longer." The first Grian muttered.
The Grian who had closed the door rolled his eyes and walked away.
It was usually when he was brushing his teeth in the morning that Mumbo thought about what he'd like to spend the day doing. That morning it had been the usual stuff, go to the meeting and then gather some resources for his build. The proposed game of hide and seek had been welcomed with open arms. This however, well, he wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Standing in a room full of Grians had, surprisingly, not made it onto his morningly expectations of the day.
"So..." Said the Grian. "Would you like a tour?"
"Um..." Mumbo had no words.
"We're all named after approximately when we're from in True Grian's life. I'm Late Evo Grian, that was Build Swap Grian. That's Early Evo Grian, the green one, and Taurtis Grian, the one wearing blue." Grian pointed as he spoke. "That's Kingdom of Valour Grian, be nice to him, and early YHS Grian," Mumbo noticed that that one was an avian with two large brown wings, "and those are the, um, well, yeah, moving on!" The Grian moved away from two other Grians dressed in black and purple robes. One had two wings and the other had six. The six winged one seemed to be teaching the two winged one something. "There's a child Grian around somewhere, oh that's Third Life Grian, who, thinking about it, probably should have been the one to go out and speak to you, and, last and the very opposite of least, we have, True Grian, our Lord and Saviour."
It was the real Grian, the Grian Mumbo knew. He was lying on the floor unconscious, and his hands were on fire! Mumbo quickly moved to put out the flames with his jacket, but they just moved through the fabric. They were also purple.
"No, it doesn't work like that." Said his tour guide Grian.
"Why is he unconscious?" Mumbo asked, putting his undamaged jacket back on.
"Well... he-"
"What even happened here? Why are there multiple Grians?" He said, looking around.
Late Evo Grian shrugged.
"We don't really know." Early Evo Grian, who had wandered over, said. "But you should ask them, they probably know." The Grian nodded over to the robed Grians.
"Why do you think they'd know?" Mumbo asked.
"They're Watchers. Watchers know pretty much everything." He said, before receiving an elbow from Late Evo Grian. "What?" He asked, annoyed. "He didn't recognise Watcher magic so why would he know what Watchers are. He's also clearly not an admin."
Late Evo Grian rolled his eyes as if to say 'it's not that simple'.
"Still not sure how we manage to become a Watcher." Early Evo Grian said thoughtfully.
"I know right." Late Evo Grian agreed, turning to Early Evo Grian. "They really don't like us that much so why would they make us one of them?"
"Why don't they like you?" Mumbo asked.
"We don't like doing what they tell us." Early Evo Grian said. Mumbo chuckled.
"You know, that might be the most Grian thing I've heard today." He commented. The two Grians chuckled.
"Well, I'm glad we don't lose our disobedient charm, then." Early Evo Grian said.
"Yes, it is very charming, isn't it, Grian?" Late Evo Grian.
"Yes, I agree. How insightful and smart you are, Grian." Said the other.
"And how handsome you are." The other continued. Mumbo decided that this was the moment to subtly exit the conversation.
He found himself in front of the Watcher (whatever those were) Grians.
"Well," the six winged one said after he had asked the question of what happened?. "Last night he got drunk and decided to try some sort of conscious memory experiment which resulted in this." He gestured around the room, and Mumbo spotted the child version of Grian, who Late Evo Grian had mentioned in the tour, for the first time. He was tying Taurtis Grian's laces together, his small brown wings prepared to fly away immediately if he got caught. Turning back to the Watcher, Mumbo decided to come back to the thought of how adorable he looked later on.
"So... he's stuck in his own consciousness or memories or something?" Mumbo questioned, quite scared.
"What? No. He's just drunk as." The six winged one clarified. "Didn't undo whatever exactly he did before passing out."
"Oh." Thank God, that sounded a lot less serious.
"Try and wake him up if you want." The two winged one shrugged.
"Why haven't you tried to?" Mumbo asked.
They both shrugged.
"We just kind of left him to his own thing really." The six winged one said. "Besides, we were trying to teach the other Grians how to play eight-way chess at that time so when True Grian passed out we just replaced him with Early YHS Grian."
"Eight way chess? Is that a Watcher thing?" Mumbo asked.
"No. We just made it up last night." The two-winged one explained as if it were an explanation.
"How come there are no alcohol bottles around then?" Mumbo asked. The Watchers wandered over to the edge of the wooden planks flooring and he looked down to where it fell through all the way to the ground where Grian hadn't deemed a floor necessary. On the floor layer beneath there were a few bottles and a large, abstractly shaped black and white checkered board and a large number of chess pieces.
"Early Evo Grian and Taurtis Grian knocked them down in a fight." The two winged one commented.
"Why do they keep fighting?" Mumbo asked.
"They're angry." The six winged one explained.
"What about Kingdom of Valour Grian? He looks about the same age." Mumbo asked, glancing over at the Grian in question, who was sitting on the edge of the planks a bit further along and staring down.
"Oh, he's mostly just... sad." The two-winged one said. Mumbo thought about that for a second before looking back at True Grian.
"Okay... well I'm going to wake up Grian now." He said, before walking over to the hermit. He knelt down, and shook his arm gently. "Grian?" He asked.
Taurtis Grian and Third Life Grian watched him.
"We sleep like a brick, you'll have to be more forceful than that." Third Life Grian said. Taurtis Grian seemed to volunteer himself because he bent down on the other side of True Grian and yelled:
"GRIAN WAKE THE FUCK UP!" very suddenly.
Grian did as instructed and sat up, and Taurtis Grian stood back up and went back to where he had previously been next to Third Life Grian.
"True Grian, our Lord and Saviour." The two Grians said simultaneously.
"Yes," Grian muttered groggily, "worship me." He looked left when he heard Mumbo snickering and saw the other hermit. "Oh my Notch!" He said, putting his face in his hands to hide the embarrassment, then he winced as the combination of yelling and the sudden movement probably made his head hurt.
"Hi." Mumbo said, smirking.
"Hi." Grian replied.
"You know, I thought that one Grian was enough, and I was right." He said. Grian chuckled.
"I'll get rid of them, one moment."
Grian began to raise his hand but Mumbo pushed it back down.
"No. I have an idea for them." He said. Grian looked at him and raised his eyebrow.
"Okay then, but I will be getting rid of this hangover." He rose his hand unopposed this time. The flame flickered up a little more and then back down to their previous level again. They looked at each other.
"I didn't know you had magic." Mumbo said.
"That's because it's a secret. Do you promise not to tell a single soul?"
"Of course."
"Do you know what Watchers are?" Grian asked.
"He doesn't." Early Evo Grian said.
"Okay. I'll tell you the details another time." Grian said, standing up. "Why did you want my army of Grians?"
"For a prank." Mumbo explained.
"We're in." The entire room hummed.
***
"I swear on my life!" Scar yelled through the communicator. "I keep seeing you and then I follow you and then you disappear!"
Grian and Mumbo snickered.
"And then I turn around and see you running round a different corner, and it's really far away. There's no way you can move that fast. You promise you're not using Enderpearls?!"
"Yes!" Grian laughed at the sound of the confused and stressed Scar. "I promise!"
"I just saw you again?!" Scar suddenly yelled and they heard him fire some rockets through the device. "How are you calling and moving at the same time?! I- HOW DID YOU GET OVER THERE?! I swear to Notch! What is- how?! How are you doi- I JUST SAW TWO OF YOU!"
Grian and Mumbo burst out in laughter.
"THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE HOW ARE YOU?! How are you doing this?!"
"Oh, come on Scar there can't have possibly been two of him." Mumbo said.
"There was!"
"You're probably just seeing things." The redstoner said.
"I swear! I don't know how it's possible but I swear it's true!" Scar yelled through the communicator.
"Come on Scar, we all know I'm skilled but I can't be that skilled." Grian said seriously. "Your brain was probably just playing tricks on you." He continued to gaslight him.
"Am I being stupid or something? You're tricking me." Scar stated.
"How could we make you see two of the same person?" Grian asked.
"I don't know!" Scar replied. "OH MY GOD IT HAPPENED AGAIN! GRIAN THERE WERE TWO OF YOU. THERE WERE TWO GRIANS! THREE! THREE! THREE!"
"Oh, come on Scar. I think one's enough." Mumbo said dead seriously, visually shushing Grian as he tried desperately not to laugh.