Chapter Text
Rays of sun hit Impulse’s eyelids. He covered his head with the blanket; it was so bright. He rolled over to get more comfortable, but he just seemed to slip further under the blanket covering him, a lot further.
Impulse jolted awake to catch himself from falling further into the pile of blankets. For a few seconds he looked around confused as to just why he was inside of a mountain of blankets. Then the memories of the previous night came flooding back.
Waking up fully Impulse realized that the storm was over, he climbed his way out of the blanket pile. He needed to wake Grian up.
Rubbing sleep out of his eyes Impulse called, “Grian?”
There was a muffled “five more minutes”
“Come on G, you can’t really sleep in right now” Impulse climbed up the blankets and pulled out his Avian friend from underneath them. Grian was very ruffled and looked up at Impulse, very annoyed.
“I had to wake you up!” Impulse defended himself.
Grian yawned and looked around, “Oh-” He jumped up and pulled out some feathers from his hair. “I forgot, sorry.”
The blanket pile was just below the window and was now in the direct early morning sunlight.
“Do you think Pearl left the window unlocked?” Impulse asked.
“I sure hope so.” Grian jumped and flew up to the window. Impulse waited; he didn’t have much hope that they’d have any luck. The past twelve hours had been nothing but bad luck. Grian leaned over the edge, and Impulse saw him give a thumbs-up. Smiling Impulse returned the gesture, relieved.
He heard the window crack open and the ruffled of feathers as his friend left. Sighing, Impulse sat down. The blankets were very soft, but they were an unstable surface.
A Scar emerged from under the blankets, “Morning Impulse.” He yawned, “Has Grian left already?”
“Yep, he just flew off,” Impulse answered as Scar pulled himself up to sit next to Impulse.
“That was the best night’s sleep I’ve had this season!” Scar laughed, and Impulse had to agree. “But when this whole thing is over,” Scar continued, “I’m going to appreciate my own bed even more.”
Impulse didn’t reply, he just stared at the ground.
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up for all of this,” Scar comforted him, “It was a mistake! Everything’s gonna be okay, it always is!”
“But what if it’s not? You know?” Impulse sighed leaning backwards “What if we really are stuck like this forever?”
“Hmmm…” Scar hummed, and his tail flicked “Well, then we’ll just have to make the best of it!” He shrugged “Just like we did last night, wasn’t that the most fun you’d ever had at a sleepover?”
“Yeah,” Impulse chuckled, “I guess it was pretty fun, can’t deny that.”
“It is strange, though,” Scar commented, looking around. “How different everything looks at this height. I have a new appreciation for bugs.” He laughed.
“I’m glad we haven’t run into any of those,” Impulse shuddered. He wasn’t too fond of bugs and just imagining them at this size made his skin crawl.
“What’s all this chatter then?” Pearl appeared, crawling out from inside a pillowcase.
“Just some early mornin’ conversation!” Scar tipped his hat toward her.
“I see a night of sleep didn’t change anything.” She slid down towards them, “I was kind of hoping the effects would just wear off after a while.”
“The potion was only supposed to last a couple of minutes, so I could test it.” Impulse reflected as Pearl joined him and Scar, “Clearly, I messed something up.”
“You were making it for Zed, right?” Pearl asked soothing out the blanket, and Impulse nodded.
“He said he needed it for a couple of experiments; that’s another thing. It was only supposed to shrink things down to about six inches tall.” Impulse looked around. “It worked better than intended,”
“Do you really think it's altered our code?” Pearl asked, “I mean, it could be just my head, but I do feel different…” She trailed off. And Impulse had to admit she was right, while he still felt like himself, there was just something different. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“I’m fearing the worst,” Impulse admitted, “But if anyone could fix something like that, it would be Xisuma.”
The other two agreed.
“Oh my gosh!” They heard a distressed call from Mumbo, which was muffled by blankets. He rolled down from the top of the pile and crashed into the other three Boatem members.
“Careful!” Scar cried.
“Sorry,” Mumbo sighed as he sat up, “I, uh, forgot and got scared.”
Pearl patted him on the shoulder, “Don’t worry.”
They all laughed.
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Grian’s wings beat against the wind. This flight was turning out to be harder than he’d expected. The wind was really strong, but nothing that Grian couldn’t handle. Cub’s base had to be close now, he’d been flying for five minutes, and it normally only took him one or two to make it there.
Finally, after a couple more minutes of flying Grian could see the outskirts of Cub's custom dripstone biome. It had been a long time since he’d flown this far, and his wings were getting a bit sore. So, he decided to perch on one of the dripstone spikes. He was pretty close to Cub’s base already it wouldn’t take to much longer to get there.
Then a particularly strong gust of wind blew through the pointy ravine, causing Grian to lose his balance. He lost his footing and fell towards the ground, fortunately he was able to catch himself before smacking face first into the ground. Shooting back up to the sky Grian breathed a sigh of relief.
He hadn’t expected everything to be so dangerous, everything just seemed to be out to get him!
Finally, he reached Cub’s main base. Landing down on the ground in front of the door Grian raised his fist to knock on the door, then realized there was no way he’d come even close to making enough noise to get Cub’s attention. He’d have to slip under the door, there was enough of a gap after all.
So Grian squeezed himself under the door and was able to make it inside. Standing up and dusting himself off her looked around. He hadn’t considered the fact that Cub might not even be in his base. If his wasn’t every other Hermit was so far off that they wouldn’t be able to reach them.
This worry was short-lived however because Grian heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the other room. Once again Grian was shocked at how loud they were, it was kind of terrifying. Cub entered the room reading something in a book and writing somethings down in it.
He was just so… tall. Grian froze in fear for a second, it was like looking up at a skyscraper.
Grian shook his head and tried to get rid of the almost instinctual fear, and he yelled as loud as he could, “CUB!”
The scientist looked up from his book and looked around searching for the sound of the noise. “Hello? Is someone there?”
“DOWN HERE!”
Grian saw Cub’s eyes move down, then widen at the sight of him.
“Grian? Is-is that you?”
The avian gave an awkward little wave. Cub put away what ever book he was looking at into his inventory and kelt down to get closer to Grian, who took a step back. Was it normal for his heart to be going this fast? Cub was his friend he knew that, then way was his heart going a million miles a minute.
“Hi…” Grian greeted him raising his voice a little louder than his usual speaking voice,” So- yeah there may have been an incident with a shrinking potion last night at the monthly Boatem sleep over”
“I can see that” Cub observed keeping his voice rather quiet. Grian was thankful, he didn’t feel like having his ear drums burst at the minute.
“We need to contact X!” Grian exclaimed, “It was an unstable potion and it’s been quiet a while since it happened.”
An immediate look of concern came over Cub’s face, “Oh, yeah that’s- that’s not good” He pulled out his communicator and quickly started typing.
“We where all stuck at Pearl’s base last night because of the storm and we couldn’t use our comunicators” Grian informed Cub as he put his communicator back in his pocket. “I was the only one who could make into another hermits base in a reasonable amount of time “
Cub nodded, “I’ve sent him a message, it’ll take him a while to make it over though since I think he’s on the other side of the server.”
“Thanks, a thousand times,” Grian sighed, “I just really hope it’s not to late”
“You all sound like you could use some help, do you want me to come back with you?” Cub asked.
Grian nodded, “I hate to say it but we’re all kind of helpless right now, it would really help”
“Here,” Cub held out his hand for Grian to step on to, “It’ll be quicker if I carry you”
Cub was right Grian knew he was, it made sense. Cub to make it to Pearl’s base three times faster than Grian could right now. Then why was Grian so, scared of stepping onto Cub’s hand? He knew that Cub would never hurt him intentionally, but he was just so- big.
Swallowing his fear Grian stepped up on to the scientist’s hand.
“Whoa” Cub gasped, as he moved his hand up. His dark green eyes wouldn’t look away from Grian.
“It’s rude to stare you know” Grian huffed crossing his arms.
“You’re just so, small”
“Yes, we’ve established this,” Grian rolled his eyes “can we go now?”
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Since Grian had left the rest of Boatem hadn’t done much other than talk. Impulse thought that while being small had be kind of exciting at first, he was very ready to be normal again. He hated how helpless he felt, and how dangerous everything seemed.
Mumbo twirled his mustache, “Do you think he should be back by now? I mean it’s really not that far to Cub’s base”
“He’s small, remember Mumbo?” Pearl sighed, as she lay backwards.
“Oh, sorry it’s- I don’t know how I keep forgetting” Mumbo crossed his legs.
“Man, I had so many plans today.” Scar pouted, “I needed to finish up the repairs on the Swagon’s wheels. Guess that’s not happening now!”
“Haven’t you been saying that for months?” Mumbo asked,
“Well-“ Scar held up his hands, “I’ve been busy!”
There was a strong gust of wind that came through the open window above them, with it came a couple leaves that had fallen off of the nearby tree.
“He could have at least shut the window!” Pearl complained “Now there’s going to be leaves all over my living room!”
A leaf fluttered down and fell right on top of impulse’s head; his face was smothered by green and the smell of plant. Laugher erupted from his friends. It ended up being heavier than Impulse though it would be and it actually took a bit of struggle to push it off.
“I can’t believe I actually almost got killed by a leaf!” He joked pushing it off the pile of blankets.
There laugher stoped when they herd approaching footsteps, the door swung open and there was Cub with Grian in hand. Impulse breathed a sigh of relief, and Scar jumped up and down waving at Cub, who noticed them and started approaching.
“Hey there” He greeted them as he let Grian down on to the pile.
“Oh, we are so glad to see you Cub” Scar exclaimed with relief.
“Grian filled me in on what happened” Cub nodded, “I messaged X, but I came over to see if you needed any help.”
“I think we’re all okay” Pearl stood up, “Just a bit shaken up.” She looked Cub in the eyes and Impulse saw her take a step back. In fact, all of Boatem took a step or two back, seeing someone so big was admittedly terrifying. Cub didn’t comment but he sat up straight instead of leaning over all of the small players.
Impulse was grateful.
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After another five minutes Xisuma showed up. All of the Boatem members could feel the ground shake from his footsteps. Impulse clutched tightly to the blanket; it felt like an earthquake. Immediate concern could be seen on his face, even with his mask on.
“Oh goodness!” He exclaimed, when he saw the entirely of Boatem sitting on a pile of blankets.
While Cub filled him in on everything, they’d told him all of Boatem clustered together. Impulse noticed a nervous energy in the air.
“Hey!” X called to them as he carefully stepped closer and got down to there level. ” I’m going to run a check on all of your codes, okay?”
They all nodded, and X pulled out his admin panel and started typing. The look of concern on his face only grew. After another minute he closed the panel, but didn’t say anything.
“Well, what did you find out?” Grian asked crossing his arms. Impulse felt anxiety build up in his chest.
X was didn’t answer right away then with a sigh he admitted, “Nothing good, I’m not going to be able to fix your code.”
Mumbo looked up, “So-so you’re saying- “
X sighed, “You’re stuck like this, forever”