It starts—as many things did in the Boatem Village, in those heady days before the moon (and afterwards as well, just with slightly more apprehension)—with a bet Grian makes while lying upside-down on a shulker box, watching Mumbo agonize over fluid dynamics.
“Bet I could bench you,” he says.
“What?” Mumbo says, whirling around. He’s soaked. He’s been trying to build a waterfall for four hours. Grian thinks he’s seen him cry? His eyes are sure still red.
“Soaking clothes and all,” Grian says, idly chewing—something—honestly he’d put it in his mouth and stopped paying attention, but he’s not dead yet so it probably hasn’t poisoned him? “I’ll have you know I’m incredibly strong.”
“Yes, well, you do have to have the body strength for the wings. You’ve done it before,” Mumbo says, still sounding vaguely baffled. Despite having known the man for years, Grian is entirely uncertain if it’s the kind of baffled that’s ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ or the kind of baffled that’s more just Mumbo’s default state when confronted with anything while he’s already confused. Grian’s just going to assume the latter, because, you know, it feels obvious what he’s saying.
“Right. So I bet I can lift you without my wings, considering all the boxes of stone I also lift without those wings.”
“Why?”
Grian considers, before swallowing the thing he’d been chewing. He tries not to give away that he chokes a little. Ah. He thinks it was a rock. Right then, not telling anyone about that one. He flips off of the box a little awkwardly, barely avoiding hitting his head as he more sort of rolls off of the box than properly flips to his feet, stumbling. The blood rushes out of his head.
“Because I can! Besides, Mumbo, if I can lift you with the help of my wings, I bet I could lift everyone in Boatem.”
“At once?”
“Don’t be stupid, Mumbo.”
“Ah, right, of course. Silly me.” A pause. “I’ll give you a box of deepslate if you can, though.”
Grian considers the offer.
“Yeah, bet,” he says.
“Boatem meeting?” Mumbo says. “I mean, this seems more productive than our usual meetings.”
“Of course,” Grian says, to both of those statements, and they both nod and go to collect the others with no further thought to the matter.
Approximately four hours later—Scar had inexplicably been stuck in a hole in the swamp, a fact that Grian was somehow both not at all surprised by and boggled by—they’ve managed to gather everyone around the Boatem Hole. Grian and Mumbo have, in the process, accidentally turned it from a bet for Grian into a competition. It is, ultimately, not fully either of their faults. Impulse had been busy, so Mumbo had needed to do convincing, and then Impulse had said he wanted to show off. Scar, trapped in the hole, had waxed poetic about Grian’s ability to lift with his wings and not hurt his back, and then had declared he would lift with his arms without Grian’s input. Pearl had laughed and said she might try it, and that Mumbo had to do it, too, if Grian was.
So, they’d take turns, they decided.
“You know, are you sure we should be doing this next to the Boatem Hole?” Impulse asks. The yawning hole into the merciless void chooses that moment to feel a bit more chilly.
“I’m not going to drop you,” Scar says, extremely unconvincingly. (He is going first, because it had been generally agreed upon he would be the worst at it. Scar didn’t even bother being offended.)
“Good enough for me,” Impulse says cheerfully. “You sure you want to start with me? I’m a big guy. Isn’t Grian hollow?”
“You know, I sort of resent that,” Grian says.
“I mean,” Mumbo says.
“It’s just my bones, and not even all the way!” Grian says, puffing up somewhat. “Do you think all birds are completely hollow? Impulse, I need you to answer me slowly: do you think my parrots are hollow?”
“Sure,” Impulse says.
“What?” Grian says.
“We’ve gotten off-track,” Scar says. “We’re meant to be exploring my splendid lifting abilities on my own!”
Grian considers. On the one hand, he could shake Impulse until he explained why he thought parrots were hollow, and if he thought other animals were also somehow hollow. On the other hand, he wanted to see Scar make a fool of himself. (This isn’t, Grian thinks, normally a hard thing to see, but it is always delightful.)
“Yeah, okay,” Grian says. “Go for it.”
“Right then. Feast your eyes on aOH GEEZ YOU’RE HEAVY—” Scar says, attempting to lift Impulse without properly getting into position, clearly realizing immediately his mistake, and nearly falling backwards into the Boatem Hole as he drops Impulse again. Pearl handily stops Impulse from falling on Scar’s neck or something while Scar makes various horrified noises. It is exactly as delightful as Grian had hoped.
“Right then, Scar’s lost,” Grian says.
“I wanted the deepslate,” Scar whimpers from the ground.
“You dropped me after saying you wouldn’t,” Impulse says, about half an inch from certain void doom.
“I really wanted the deepslate,” Scar explains. He looks terribly pathetic. Grian would almost feel bad, but he literally knows everyone here can lift him, so why Scar had insisted on Impulse is well beyond Grian’s understanding. Ah, well, the mind of Mr. Goodtimes is an enigma. Maybe he just wanted to get out early?
“Mumbo’s next, right?” Grian says.
“Oh, yes, I mean, sure,” Mumbo says. “I’m doing you first, Grian. Up you get.”
“You have to lift me.”
“You land on my shoulders on your own all the time though. I don’t have to—”
“Mumbo.”
“Oh, right, competition. Er, yes. Hold on.”
Grian yelps as Mumbo unceremoniously picks him up and plops him onto his shoulders.
“Give me a warning!” Grian says.
“It’s like lifting a sack of grapes,” Scar says quietly.
“He is hollow,” Impulse adds.
“Besides, everyone can lift me! The point was the others!” Grian says, valiantly ignoring everyone commenting on his small size. He may be easy to grab, he thinks, but he has a secret weapon. That weapon is his wings, and also the retribution he will lay down upon those who do as Mumbo just has. (Mumbo is exempt by virtue of having faced this retribution so many times that, frankly, Mumbo just moves on with his day, which isn’t particularly fun.) Grian curls his talons into Mumbo’s shoulders and thinks. “Also, isn’t the point lifting all of us at once? I probably shouldn’t be on your shoulders for that.”
“No rule against it,” Mumbo says, and he goes over to Scar. “Although, you did say bench. I really more deadlifted you. Are you ready, Scar?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m over my embarrassing defeat,” Scar says. “Take Grian off your shoulders, he can stand on me when you lift me. It won’t hurt, it’s Grian, he weighs—”
“Yes, well, we all get the point,” Grian says. “Get on with it then. I’ll stand on Scar.”
It takes a bit of maneuvering, but with Pearl and Impulse acting as spotters, Mumbo manages to lift the both of them. After putting down Scar, Mumbo sighs.
“I don’t think I can lift Impulse, and I don’t know how much Pearl weighs.”
“I mean, it would be impolite to ask,” Pearl says cheerfully. “Want to try?”
“Sure, but not with Grian’s additional weight.”
Pearl walks over. Pearl is put into Mumbo’s hands. Mumbo shakes his head. “No, Scar’s the best I can do. Definitely not getting that deepslate—Grian, lift Pearl for us, no wings, you’re next, right?”
“Of course,” Grian says. “Get over here, Pearlo.”
Grian gets into his own position. Pearl gets into his hands. Grian’s a little surprised at how heavy she is. After carrying around so many shulkers of stone—of course, shulkers do play with space and weight a lot, but still! Benching Pearl is more of a struggle than he’d expected. He puts her down with a huff after a moment, having managed a single rep and deciding that he absolutely won’t try another.
He huffs from the ground heavily. “Give me a moment before I try Scar or Mumbo.”
“What about me?” says Impulse.
“Impulse, you’re like 6’5” and huge,” Grian says. “Pearl is 5’7” and… surprisingly heavy, true, but…”
“Fine, fine,” Impulse grumbles. “It’s not my fault demons are tall.”
“I’ll do it,” Mumbo says. “That was the original point, right? Proving you could lift me without using your wings?”
“True,” Grian says, and he lies and waits for Mumbo to come over. Mumbo, Grian finds, is more awkward to lift that Pearl. He has too many sharp angles, Grian thinks, although frankly he’s… lighter than Grian remembers? Grian tries to think. Maybe it’s the potato thing? It’s been a while since Grian’s lifted Mumbo somewhere in the air, and the air is different from lying on his back on the ground, so—
“GRIAN,” Mumbo says, as Grian proceeds to lose balance in his arms thinking about this.
“Right, sorry!” Grian says, straightening out and lowering him gently. “I can probably lift Scar too. Maybe even both Scar and Mumbo.”
“Try me,” Impulse says.
“We’ll all spot,” Mumbo says, resigned, and Grian admits at this point that his bet about lifting every member of Boatem at once is probably bunk. He does, to his pride, manage to get Impulse into the air, next, and that counts as a lift? But he nearly drops him, and he taps out at that point, his wings and back and especially his arms hurting.
Still.
“I am winning,” Grian says.
“True,” Mumbo says. “You can lift every single one of us. I mean, you didn’t try with Scar, but—”
“He can lift me,” Scar says.
“Why do you know that?” Mumbo asks.
“It came up,” Scar says, which doesn’t answer anything, but Grian doesn’t particularly want to answer that question for Mumbo, either. It had been a perfectly normal conversation between a resistance leader and a government official, and definitely not a bet about the outcome of the Turf War that neither of them had mentioned to their own factions. Absolutely not! What on earth would give you that idea? Grian won anyway, and they both decided it wasn’t dramatic enough, and also they sort of forgot when they were tallying the—
Anyway.
“My turn then!” Impulse says cheerily, before picking up Grian and putting him on one shoulder, then picking up Mumbo and putting him on his back. Grian doesn’t even yell about it. He’s just… resigned.
“I don’t count, apparently,” Grian says.
“Oh, I know. That’s why I’m going to get Scar, too. Come on over!”
“How?” Scar asks, curiously. “You already have Mumbo and Grian in your big, beautiful grasp.”
“Hold on,” Impulse tells Grian, and then he lifts Scar in a dead man’s carry. At this point, even Impulse is trembling. Grian can feel it beneath his feet. The instinct in Grian that tells him to launch off of an unstable perch is telling him to fly away before he gets hurt, but the instinct in Grian that loves watching people crash and burn tells him to stay where he is. Impulse huffs. “Oh, oh man, I think three is my limit.”
“Really?” Pearl says.
“I mean,” Impulse says. “I mean, even if one of them is Grian, this is pretty—”
“That means it’s my turn,” Pearl says. She stretches, and she picks up Impulse, with all three of the others still on him, in one hand.
Grian gapes. He’s pretty sure everyone else does, too.
“There we go,” Pearl says. There’s exertion in her voice, but not nearly as much as Grian thinks there should be. He’s pretty sure his brain also just got put in a magnet to wipe and restart it though, so maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Impulse was right and he is hollow. Maybe all of them are hollow.
She holds them there for a bit before putting them down with a huff. Grian thinks that wait, maybe she’s shaking a bit? Or maybe he’s just imagining it to make himself feel better about the world.
“I believe there was a box of deepslate?” she says. Still gaping, Grian watches Mumbo pull it from his inventory, stumble on it falling into his arms, and put it down next to Pearl. Pearl picks it up as though it isn’t full of one of the heaviest types of stone there is before putting it in her own inventory. She makes it look, Grian thinks, like she’s picking up him. Or a sack of grapes. Either/or.
“What are you made of?” blurts Impulse, in a tone of voice that sounds concerningly like the tone of voice one uses when Zedaph has started to rub off on them. Grian puts an arm on Impulse’s shoulder, just in case.
“Uh, I mean,” Pearl says.
“Muscles, clearly,” Scar says.
“I mean, sure, most people are made of at least some muscles,” Pearl says.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Grian says.
“I guess I have,” Pearl says, walking over and grabbing Grian by the ankles. He’s slung over her shoulder in a moment. He starts frantically flapping his wings, but even his not-inconsiderable ability to produce force with those things doesn’t dislodge him. “And you—you promised to look at a build for me.”
“But I hate organics!” complains Grian.
“I have the deepslate now, you’re helping look,” Pearl says. Grian continues to flail. Scar laughs at him. Horrible.
As she walks away, Grian hears the following exchange:
“I’m going to give her a bite strength test with Tango.”
A long silence.
“You know what, sure. It’ll be funny.”
He concludes that, like most bets he makes with Mumbo, this had been an awful idea, and he never should have done it. Unfortunately, he had, and now Pearl is going to make him judge how animals she’s built look all day.
Well, he thinks, at least next time there’s something heavy to lift, he knows who to bother?
(The next day, Impulse appears in front of both Grian and Pearl’s base, saying something about density in water. Grian closes the door on him. The doorframe is unfinished, so the door closing doesn’t quite have the same effect, but it gets the point across well. All-in-all, it’s a very average day in Boatem.)