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To add insult to injury, he had been captured by a better-looking version of himself. Grian glared at the bright red parrot wings of his captor. He didn't need to be reminded that he didn't have wings yet in the latest Hermitcraft world.
“This isn't my fault, you know,” the other him said irritably. “I didn't bring you here on purpose.”
“You're the admin here,“ Grian said, pointedly pushing against one of the barrier blocks surrounding him. Xisuma rarely used his admin powers and so he hadn't encountered barrier blocks since Evo, and they felt as unnatural as he remembered.
“It must have been some kind of glitch,” Parrot Grian muttered. “None of the new mods should have caused this, they aren't even as extensive as last season…”
“What kind of mods?” Grian asked. Of course a version of him that was still an admin would be playing around with different kinds of mods, that had always been one of his favorite parts of being an admin. He was curious what another him would have come up with.
All he'd seen when he arrived on this world was a landscape with a lot of snow and some of his friends around him, and almost immediately afterwards he'd heard himself curse and was then teleported to an underground cave. His inventory was empty and there were barrier blocks surrounding him on all sides.
“The only really new one is the snow. Including the nether, of course. And the naughty list.”
“Well, that's nothing to do with me. I haven't touched any snow, and I haven't been naughty.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Parrot Grian said, very rudely.
“Hey! You don't know anything about me!”
“You're me, so I really do,” Parrot Grian said.
“That's not how that works and you know it,” Grian rolled his eyes. “I've been an admin too. And I never kidnapped a different version of myself,” he added pointedly.
“Stop whining. I'll figure out how to send you back eventually,” Parrot Grian said.
“Some time soon, I hope?”
“Yeah, yeah. I have to get the game started soon, freezing time like this is giving me a headache.”
A pathetically transparent excuse. Clearly Parrot Grian just wanted to get started with the game. “I don't care about your headache! I want to go home!” Grian said in outrage. “You can't just leave me here!“
„I can, actually,“ Parrot Grian said. Grian knew that tone of voice, and he hated being on the receiving end. “But I won't,“ Parrot Grian thankfully continued, “because I'm nice.“
Grian waited for something to happen, but several ticks later, he could see no changes. “So?” he asked impatiently.
Parrot Grian rolled his eyes. “The barrier blocks are gone. We're outside the border of this game, so you can do whatever you want. I'll be able to find you,“ he added, and that was definitely meant to sound like not-quite-a-threat. “I have to go start the game now.” His parrot wings disappeared. Instead he was wearing a thick red and white sweater and a green scarf. “Wish me luck,” he said and teleported away.
“Definitely not!” Grian shouted, even though he knew Parrot Grian – he was definitely not going to call him Admin Grian, even in his head - couldn't hear him anymore. “I hope you lose immediately!”
There was, predictably, no response.
“Question,” Parrot-Grian-Without-Wings said when he abruptly appeared again. “Can people on your server read?”
“Absolutely not,” Grian said automatically. Then he remembered where he was and angrily pointed at the other him. “You!”
“I thought you would've done more with the place,” Other Him said critically, looking around the cave. “Aren't you a builder?“
„I would have, if someone had given me some tools! At least some sticks! I'm not going to spend hours breaking stone with my fists!” At least there had been a lava pool in the cave that gave off enough light so mobs didn't spawn, and enough gravel to block off the rest of the cave. Being trapped alone in a dark cave with nothing would have been even less fun. He'd briefly considered if he should risk getting himself killed in the hope that he would spawn back on Hermitcraft, but had ultimately decided against it. He didn't know what kind of glitch had even brought him here, and at least here there was another version of him that at least said he wanted to be helpful. It could be worse.
“Oops,” Other Him said. He looked sufficiently surprised that Grian was reluctantly convinced that the oversight hadn't been on purpose, but also like he didn't consider it a particularly serious problem, and a little like he thought Grian was a slacker for not mining a way out without tools. “Have some tools.” Diamond tools appeared on the ground between them.
Grian picked them up immediately. He wondered if they were unenchanted on purpose or if Other Him had simply forgotten, and he wasn't going to give Other Him the satisfaction of asking if it was the former.
Other Him was wearing full iron armor, but in a way that didn't obscure his outfit. He also had a diamond sword in his hand. So the game was most likely some kind of survival and or PVP game, if Grian had to guess. Something similar to Demise, maybe. His name tag had changed to yellow, which was probably part of it. Grian couldn't even look up who was on the server: part of the glitch, maybe, or possibly deliberate admin action.
“Right, I need to get back,” Other Him said. “Got to fix some things before the next session, but it's fine. I've got it handled.”
“How about sending me back?” Grian demanded, though he had a bad feeling about what the answer would be.
Predictably, Other Him said: “I didn't have time to look into it yet.” He didn't even bother coming up with an excuse. „I just wanted to check if you're still alive.”
„I am, no thanks to you.”
Other Grian nodded and then disappeared without even saying goodbye. Rude.
He'd forgotten to ask for food. Before Other Grian's previous visit Grian hadn't done much except sit there and make plans for his greenhouse base, so he hadn't been very hungry, but now he had the tools to do things. But the only food he could get in these caves was rotten zombie flesh, and he wasn't yet desperate enough for that.
He seriously contemplated just sitting down and continuing to do nothing. What good would it do him to mine his way out of here or build something? All he could do was wait until either Other Him found a way to send him back, or his Xisuma found a way to get him back. Xisuma would definitely see it as a higher priority task than Other Him did, but it might be harder to locate him. Grian hadn't dealt much with inter-server, much less multiverse stuff when he'd been an admin, and he didn't know how much experience Xisuma had in that area. Although – was that where Evil Xisuma came from? Maybe he should start calling Other Him Evil Grian.
Eventually he did get bored of just sitting around. How long did one session of the game even last? Longer than it took him to slowly mine his way to the surface, at least. When he finally reached the top, he first had to climb up through several layers of snow.
Snow was everywhere. Grian looked around and stared. “Okay, that looks cool.”
“Glad you think so,” Evil Grian said from behind him.
Grian shouted in surprise, turned and jumped one block back, and immediately started to sink into powdered snow.
Evil Grian equipped leather boots for him. The watery, nauseating feeling an admin directly accessing his inventory made Grian shudder. Just handing them to him would have been enough.
Definitely-evil Grian still looked proud about the praise. “It took a while to set it up, but the snow is going to get even higher,” he said.
“Congrats,” Grian said flatly. He did wonder how high it would go, and how much fun it would be to tunnel through it, and under other circumstances he would probably enjoy asking Other Him about his game. But after mining his way up from a really quite needlessly deep cave for far too long, he didn't feel particularly charitable toward the person who'd left him there. And the snow would make looking for food more difficult. “Have you figured out how to send me back yet?”
“I'm busy,“ Evil Grian said irritably. “I'll take a look after the game is done. One more session, I reckon.” He grinned, and Grian was sure that he had something special planned for that last session. Something violent, probably. Evil Grian's sword was visibly hanging by his side, which said a lot about his outlook.
“I was busy too! I was in the middle of a project! And then you pulled me here!” It wasn't technically a lie. Grian had been in the middle of a project. Granted, that project had been breeding bunnies to drop on unsuspecting fellow Hermits to launch them into the sky, but it was an important project! Prime shenanigan material! If he waited too long, then everyone would already have experienced it and it wouldn't be as funny anymore, and that would be tragic.
It was bad luck that the other version of himself he'd encountered was so busy and unreasonable. He lived in a completely different world, but it was still a version of himself: Grian would have enjoyed working together to use his admin powers for some fun tests, in the name of science and pranks. Instead he had to deal with this guy.
Grian glared at him some more. Clearly he'd made the right decision to live as a normal player, if he turned out like this as an admin.
“Look, I already said I'm sorry…”
“You didn't! You didn't even say you're sorrey!”
“Well, I still don't think it was my fault,” Evil Grian said. “But I've spent a long time setting this up, we've all been looking forward to it, and you'll just have to be patient a little longer.” He frowned and tilted his head: he was probably getting a message. “I'll come find you afterwards and send you home as soon as I can.” And with that, he was gone again.
Grian sighed. “Back to fishing it is,” he muttered.
It took him a while to kill a spider for string to make a fishing rod. Then he found a nice spot along the river, built himself a little fishing hut, added a campfire to make it cozy, and started fishing. And since he was actually looking for fish this time instead of books, he even had quite a good rate of success.
There were no sheep nearby to get wool for a bed, so he fished through the night. Night didn't last a full cycle, but it didn't pass immediately either, so presumably there was some kind of threshold of how many players needed to sleep – that's how Grian would have done it, at least. He thought he distantly heard music from the direction the border was in – he'd seen it earlier while climbing on a tree – but he might have been imagining it.
If Scar or Gem could see him fishing again, they'd certainly stage another intervention. How long had he been stuck here? Surely they must have noticed him missing by now. He thought both of them had been among the players that had arrived here to start the game, but he'd only gotten a quick glimpse and wasn't sure. Scar in particular would certainly be disappointed that Grian couldn't tell him more details about another version of him. He wouldn't want to believe him that it was mostly very boring.
Another day, and the game still wasn't over. By chance Grian was looking up instead of at the river when with loud thunder, the sky turned red.
“Whoa!” Grian jumped up. “What happened?” Was that another stage of the game? It did admittedly look very cool, especially over the white snow. Very dramatic. Very appropriate for a final showdown. Surely this was the final showdown and the game would be over soon.
“Grian?”
Grian jumped again. “X!”
He'd rarely been this happy to see Xisuma before. His admin stood next to him, looking around with the distinct sense that he would have been frowning under his helmet if his body wasn't currently a copper golem. “Have you been fishing?”
“There's nothing else to do here!” Grian complained. “Can we go home now?” And if he sounded slightly whiny, surely nobody could blame him for that. It had been many very boring days.
“Yes, of course,” X said immediately, and then instead he continued to look around. “Where is this place?”
“That's not important,” Grian said quickly. “Let's just…”
“Who are you?”
Of course Evil Grian had to show up. He was in almost full diamond armor, sword in hand, and scowling at X. “And why do you look like that,” he added, slightly puzzled and very impolitely.
“I'm a copper golem this season,” Xisuma said helpfully. “You're Grian, I assume?”
“What's a copper golem?” Evil Grian asked.
“Do you not have those?” Xisuma asked. “Huh. That's strange. Oh, this is a very modded world, isn't it? Fascinating. And you're the admin? I have to say, I do like the red sky with the snow.”
“Thank you,” Evil Grian said, standing taller at the compliment.
“Oh, I forgot to introduce myself! I'm Xisuma. I'm the admin of Hermitcraft. Grian is one of my players.” There was a very clear note of warning in his voice.
“You can have him back,” Evil Grian said immediately. “I didn't even want him. He just showed up here and I didn't have the time yet to figure out how to make him go away.”
“Hey,” Grian protested. Evil Grian didn't have to be so rude about it.
“We'll be very happy to have him back,” X said. “I'm sorry it took me so long to find you.”
“That's okay,” Grian said. It was a lot easier to be generous now that he knew he could go home. He took another look at the snowy landscape. He was a little curious about the changes to the nether Parrot Grian had mentioned – but not enough to stay any longer than he had to. For all he knew, the game could go on for a long time yet and then Other Grian would be too busy with the next one to do anything about sending him home.
“Well, we'll be off then,” X said, putting a hand on Grian's shoulder. “It was nice to meet you,” he said politely to Evil Grian.
“You too,” Evil Grian said automatically, and then his face twitched like he wasn't sure if he'd rather not have said it.
It was still strange to look at his own face, and to see himself but different. It hadn't been a very pleasant experience, overall. But if he was honest with himself, Grian did think that Other Grian wasn't malicious, just somewhat overwhelmed with an unexpected variable during a stressful time. Now that he was leaving, Grian could afford to be nice. “Good luck with your game,” he said. “I hope it's going well.” And this was still, after all, another version of himself. “I hope you win.”
“Thanks,” Other Grian said, grinning, and then the world disappeared as Grian finally went home.