Grian was speeding down the tunnel between their bases, the minecart forsaken, he had too much energy in him to sit and wait to arrive.
He hoped Mumbo was home, his closer neighbors like Scar wouldn’t understand what he’d made, wouldn’t have the context or the knowledge or interest in redstone to understand the mechanics. He scrambled up the incline and into the hobbit hole in a hobbit hole.
“Mumbo!!” The base was small but he yelled anyways. “Mumbo where are you!?”
“Yes?” Came from the ladder to the ground floor, a ladder Grian was soon climbing. “What’re you so hyped about dude? It looks like your brain is fried on sugar-“
Grian smiled and interrupted “there’s no special sugar here Mumbo, But!-“ he held forward something Mumbo couldn’t identify, there was a tiny piston on it and a store for gunpowder, the thing was cut in half for studying. Grian was rambling on and on and gave the model to Mumbo to hold while he placed down a block of wool in the small ground floor.
“Grian.. what is this even?” A twinge of worry in his voice.
“Well it’s a tiny redstone machine, kinda, and an automatic crossbow, kinda”
“Those two don’t seem to go together..?”
“I remembered what I told you Mumbo, last season. You’d ask what a cellphone was or what you could use Doritos for, every time I’d say something ‘weird’ and I couldn’t really explain it but now I can show you!”
This didn’t bode well. Grian looked so happy, manic and frantic.
“Right, well, uh, let’s see it then”
Grian held out a completed version of what Mumbo was holding and it was like his entire being had changed. Manic, still, but his eyes were colder than ice or the void. He was confident in his pose when he squeezed the trigger.
Smoke eminated from the mouth of the gun and the iron nugget bullet was stuck firmly in the black wool. Mumbos ears were ringing. Birds were fleeing the jungle. Grian was smiling.