Chapter Text
Mumbo has always believed in aliens.
He has devoted many years of his life to the subject, to the barely-concealed disappointment of everyone in his family. He makes a living designing space rockets and rovers, and spends most of his free time sketching up designs for spaceships (or at least their engines and circuits: he’s not much of an artist) and researching UFO sightings. He watched a documentary once about what life might look like on planets with different atmospheres and biomes, and after that he’d started designing his spaceships around all the different possible anatomies he could think of. What would a cockpit look like for a creature with antennae, or tentacles, or too many eyes? Questions like these keep him up at night.
Anyway, despite all the time he spends thinking about aliens, Mumbo had never expected to be… y’know. Abducted. Like he is now.
And he has to say, it’s fascinating! He’s always been sceptical about the idea of tractor beams- seriously, a beam of light with the ability to levitate animals, as well as restrict them enough to prevent them from escaping? It sounds like something from a cartoon! But, evidently they are possible, since Mumbo is presently being levitated up from his deserted street by a beam of purple light, and, upon experimentation, is unable to move. Brilliant! He wonders if the aliens will let him look at their tech.
He does wish he could turn his head, though, because this is taking rather long isn’t it? Is there really no way to speed it- oh, no, he’s entering the ship now. These doors are rather loud.
The doors shut behind (under?) him and he finds himself in a dim room that quickly fills with jets of steam. Mumbo holds his breath instinctively, already used to the disinfecting process from his job. He rocks back and forth on his heels, waiting impatiently for the doors of the airlock to open so he can further inspect this wonder of engineering- and possibly meet its owner! Although, they probably won’t be able to speak English… and now that he thinks about it, it’s not a guarantee that they’ll be friendly to begin with…
His pondering is interrupted by a mechanical whirr, followed a few seconds later by the screech of unoiled machinery as the doors begin to slide open haltingly… and then grind to a stop halfway there. This is followed by the screech of a frustrated alien from the other side.
Mumbo fails to stifle a giggle as a feathered head and arms force their way through, chirping angrily all the while. Eventually, the alien remembers they have three dimensions and turns sideways, pulling their wings close and finally squeezing through after nearly a minute of struggling. Mumbo is doubled over by now, hand pressed to his mouth in a futile attempt to hold back laughter. Once he’s finally composed, he straightens to see the alien glaring at him with the force of a thousand suns, which would be more intimidating if they weren’t about a foot shorter than him.
The top of their head is covered with long, tawny feathers, which spread over their shoulders and the back of their neck, and presumably down their back as well, beginning to fade to a dark red at the nape of their neck. Their back slopes down into a tail, which is covered in feathers of the same colour speckled with green and blue, and flares out and flattens towards the end. Their forearms and face are covered in tiny, white scales, like butterfly wings. Most interestingly, two pairs of wings are folded behind them. The larger pair, which grows from between the alien’s shoulders to below their mid-back, is covered in feathers that fade from red to green to blue, like a parrot’s, whilst the smaller pair is green and blue and situated at the base of their tail.
Mumbo’s examination is cut short when he blinks and finds their eyes- of which there are two pairs, in three shades of purple- inches away from his. He steps back in surprise- which he thinks is understandable given the circumstances. The alien tilts their head, and small wings on either side of their face that Mumbo hadn’t noticed before twitch curiously. Mumbo immediately forgets his trepidation and leans forwards to get a closer look, tugging at them gently to see their shape.
This is met with what he can only describe as indignant chitters from the alien, which Mumbo takes no notice of, until he feels a sharp pain in his upper lip. He yelps and pulls back to see the alien glaring at him, one clawed hand gripping his perfectly-groomed moustache. They give it another hard yank when they see they have his attention.
“Ow, ow OW— alright! I get the point!” He says, lifting his hands in a gesture of peace.
The alien chirrups and grins almost smugly, then grabs one of Mumbo’s hands and turns, pulling the man along with him as they make their way back through the troublesome doors (Mumbo smacking his forehead against the low doorway, to which the other lets out a raucous cackle).
The scientist really wants to take a proper look around the ship, but the alien is quite insistent in dragging him along with them through these dimly-lit, winding corridors, and seems quite averse to the idea of letting him go to explore. He hopes that they’ll let him take a look at their technology when they’re done with… whatever they need him for.
One thing he does notice, though, is the fact that, although the ship is huge and has a ridiculous amount of closed doors, there don’t seem to be any other people onboard. He starts to ask his guide about this before remembering that they don’t actually speak the same language.
This trip might end up being less informative than he’d hoped.
They come to a stop in a large room that… hold on! This is a lab! Oh, this is perfect! Mumbo can take a look at their equipment and see what kinds of discoveries they’ve made, and… hmm. Should he be worried that an alien has abducted him and taken him to a laboratory? That does actually seem like it might become a concern, now that he thinks about it.
Well! Nothing he can do about it now!
The alien drags him over to two objects that might be chairs, next to a table on which is sat something like a computer. Thankfully, there are no needles or anal probes in sight.
The alien seems to be getting increasingly excited- doing nothing to allay Mumbo’s worry- as they usher him into one of the seats, before sitting on the other and pressing some buttons on the computer, causing the screen to light up. They clap their hands and let out more high-pitched chirps, then grab a small device connected to the computer by a wire.
They hold it out to Mumbo expectantly, to which he can only respond with a shrug and a comically exaggerated expression of confusion, in the hopes that they can understand human expressions. Thankfully, they seem to understand, and they hold the device up to their own mouth and chatter into it. After a few seconds, a word in a dialect that Mumbo doesn’t recognise appears on the screen. They turn back to him and hold out the device.
“Um… hello?” Mumbo begins, feeling quite silly. “I’m not, um… I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to say? Into this thing?”
Apparently he did something right, since the alien pulls the mic back and an ellipsis appears on the screen. After about ten seconds, to Mumbo’s surprise, the words “English (British dialect)” appear on the screen.
The alien whirls around to face him and tilts their head, eyes wide. Mumbo grins and gives them a thumbs-up, to which they chirp delightedly and flutter their wings. They push off of the table with their feet (talons?) and roll across the room to another counter, overbalancing slightly and flapping their wings to stay upright in what looks to be a very practiced reaction.
They start rifling through the drawers underneath the counter, then pick a handful of small vials out and wheel back to Mumbo. They squint at the labels, looking back and forth between the writing on the vials and the words on the screen. Mumbo looks over their shoulder to see what the labels say, and he catches the words “English (American dialect)”, “English (Canadian dialect)” and “English (Australian dialect)”, before the alien squawks triumphantly and holds up one that reads “English (British dialect)”.
They dump the other vials onto the counter, then pull a massive syringe and a small phial of blueish liquid out of… somewhere, and before Mumbo can even react to that, they stick the syringe into their neck, jam the pump down and down the phial like a shot.
“Jesus CHRIST—“
The alien screeches and slams their fist into the table, all three sets of wings flailing wildly. The screech turns into a coughing fit, and they double over, clutching at their head and seemingly trying to hack up their own lungs. Mumbo- well, he’s not a biologist, alright? He studies spaceships! He has no idea what to do when someone’s having a coughing fit, least of all an alien!
He’s just reaching out to awkwardly pat them on the back, when the alien’s coughs finally peter out and they’re left gasping in ragged breaths.
“Um… are you… are you alright?” Mumbo stutters, hands still held up in case they start coughing again.
The alien’s head snaps up and they beam, showing off many, many terrifyingly sharp teeth.
Then, astoundingly, they say, “Oh I am doing WONDERFUL, thank you for asking!”
Mumbo blinks.
“Might need to design a better painkiller, though, because that w— oh, my mouth is not at ALL designed for this language!” The alien laughs. “Ooh, this feels so weird! Anyway my name is Grian, pleased to meet you.” He thrusts out a hand enthusiastically.
Mumbo takes his hand and shakes it, still speechless. Grian seems delighted, clasping his hand and shaking it vigorously.
“Uh- my name is Mumbo,” the man says, still being shaken violently up and down.
The alien twitters excitedly and claps his hands again. “It is an absolute pleasure, Mumbo. I have. SO many questions!!”
Mumbo grins, relieved to know that he and the alien share a motive. It’s finally time for questioning!
“Can you fly?” He blurts. The alien only raises his eyebrows in response. “Right. Yeah. Could’ve thought of a better question. Um… do—“
“Too late! My turn!” Grian cuts him off. “Is it true that in emergencies humans can walk on broken bones?”
Mumbo laughs. “Oh buddy, I went two weeks with a fractured rib before I even noticed! But if you mean like… properly damaged, then yeah, I’m pretty sure there’ve been people who’ve dragged themselves miles with their legs horrifically broken!”
Grian gawks. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not!” Mumbo cackles.
Grian’s wings puff up ever so slightly. “You are… a terrifying species.”
He shifts nervously.
“So… speaking of terrifying things,” Grian begins, apparently attempting to seem casual. “You know how to do, like, mechanics and that, right?”
Mumbo’s face lights up. At last, they’re onto his favourite topic: electronics!
“I do, in fact, know quite a bit about mechanics and that!” He says, trying to hold back his excitement with little success. The man is all but vibrating.
“So, if I were to show you, for example, an incredibly broken bit of machinery, you’d be able to fix it?”
The human hums. “Maybe? I suppose it’d depend on the machinery. Don’t you have crew members to take care of your ship though? I mean, I’m not gonna turn down an opportunity to look at your tech, but… I feel like there are people more qualified to fix it?”
Grian frowns. “Well first off I never said I needed anything fixing, so that was very rude of you to assume. Secondly, in this purely hypothetical situation in which I asked you to fix something, it would be because there is only one other crew member on this ship and we are both biologists who have no idea how circuits work.”
Mumbo clasps his hands together and smiles, something like excitement glinting in his eyes. “Well, in that theoretical situation, I would be glad to help out with your tech!“
Grian leaps to his feet, clapping his hands together. “Great!” He exclaims, dropping all pretences. “Because this ship is falling apart.”
Mumbo laughs slightly nervously as he stands to follow him, not sure how much the alien was exaggerating and worried to ask. “So, uh, where’s your other crew member? Because I haven’t seen anyone else on this ship, and I would love to meet them!”
Grian waves his hand vaguely. “Off conducting field research. He’ll be back soon.”
“Uh huh. And does he know you brought a human on board?”
The alien stops walking.
“…Grian?”
“Um. Maybe… maybe just stay below deck for a bit, until I bring him down. I’ll just.. warn him, when he arrives.”
“Mhm. Very professional.”
“…just shut up and fix my ship. Please.”