Chapter Text
Impulse walks towards his shops and marvels at the beautiful, chaotic mess that makes up the shopping district. Both Tango and Zedaph are busy today so Impulse is in the shopping district where there are lots of people coming and going so if something were to happen it wouldn’t be too bad. It’s fairly common for those who are currently being affected to stay in the commonly trafficked areas.
He calmly watches as Keralis, Xisuma, Beef, and Etho connect the main road they have been working on to the shopping district. It’s a clever way to avoid the nether for those whose instincts don’t like it and it makes it easier to access main areas for the people who can’t fly.
As they get closer Impulse shoves the diamonds he’s been holding back into his ender chest and heads over to talk to them.
Xisuma walks over and immediately notices something, looking deep into his eyes, “Are your eyes ok?”
“What do you mean?” Impulse asks confusion, lacing his voice. He hasn’t noticed anything wrong with his eyesight or felt any new bedrock patches around his eyes. So he carefully reaches up and feels around the corners of his eyes.
“They look like the void,” Xisuma explains as he gently wags his tail and pulls his hands away from his face, “Is it too bright?”
“Wait what? Void, I haven’t really noticed anything,” He mutters as he looks at his reflection on his communicator. His eyes had turned pitch black with little flecks of color that look like stars.
“That’s really pretty,” Keralis buzzes as he comes up behind them. Beef nods in agreement and flicks his tail gently. Etho had run over to one of his shops and was messing with some redstone.
“Thanks?”
Xisuma looks at him for a moment before making a decision, “Alright, come on let’s get you home.”
As he helps Impulse up the pair start walking towards the newly constructed bridge, the other three look at each other and head off in the general direction of their bases Etho walking alongside Beef and Keralis on his back catching a ride. Naturally, Beef was a bit nervous and confused at what Keralis was doing bit after the first few times he got used to it.
As Xisuma walks along with Impulse they start talking and are able to figure out some things like his eyes have changed color but his pupils remain the same size as usual. So not much has changed with how he sees.
As they near his base the sand Impulse is standing on gives way. Thankfully he doesn’t fall far and only ends up with a small scrape on his arm. He clambers out of the pit and dusts his clothes off before inspecting the scrape. It’s not too bad, just a bit of skin taken off.
As expected blood is slowly dripping from the cut. Unexpectedly the blood looks like the void. As he arrives home Impulse washes the scrape out then returns to the main room to talk with Xisuma.
“How’s your arm?”
“Other than the scrape, it's all good,” Impulse explains twisting his arm to show him the band-aid.
Xisuma nods, “That’s good. Does anything feel different from the last time we talked?”
“Um… not really, I think my eyes are a little more sensitive?” Impulse muses as he looks around his base.
“That would make sense, in that case, I would get some sunglasses just in case things get too bright.”
Impulse nods, “I’ll do that.”
“So, were you previously aware that your blood looks like the void?”
“No. I didn’t think anything had happened after three days ago, when these showed up,” He answers, referring to the little patches of bedrock splattered around his skin.
”That’s understandable.”
As the conversation continues it grows dark and Xisuma bids farewell and returns home to his base.
……….
”Come on,” Zedaph bleats, pulling Impulse into his base to show off some new contraption.
“Give me a moment,” He mutters as he tries to avoid tripping over the rocks that are scattered around the outside of his base.
“Ok, ok,” Zedaph says his hands up in mock surrender, “Don’t get all prickly on me. You don’t have to be stone cold.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
He sticks out his tongue and grins mockingly at him, “Well, we’re here now.”
He drags Impulse inside the cave and drags him over to his storage area. As he shows the odd way of reaching things off Impulse scrunches up his nose.
“Are you ok?” He asks suddenly concerned for his friend.
“Yeah, I'm ok. I just feel really weird all of a sudden.”
Zedaph hums thoughtfully then heads up the ladder, “We are going to sit down and figure out what just happened before we continue.”
“We really don’t need to do this,” He protests as Zedaph pushes him into a chair.
“Yes, we do. Anyways, what happened?”
Relenting to the questioning Impulse responds with, “It kinda started yesterday, my eyes changed and it was like I had a night vision potion. It wasn’t bad or anything just kinda weird. When I was heading down in your Storage I felt drawn down.”
“There’s some exposed bedrock down there if that’s what was happening?”
“That might be it,” Impulse muses as he runs his hand over a smooth patch of bedrock on his other hand.
The pair continue to talk for a while longer before going back to the contraptions. After Zedaph had explained what the contraption was used for Impulse spends a while experimenting and messing around with the ideas.
After a while Impulse bids farewell and heads off towards the shopping district to check his beacon profits. When he arrives he steps on the pressure plate as normal and almost instantly clamps his hands over his ears. Jumping off the pressure plate he digs into the redstone controlling the beacon light show. Looking around the redstone he cautiously pokes around, nothing is different so he heads back up.
Mumbo is in the district, probably getting some more redstone supply. As he wanders past Impulse he pauses for a moment, “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine, I just forgot how loud the light show is.”
Mumbo grins, “Yeah, those can get pretty loud.”
Impulse gives a smile before heading off and back towards his base.
As he walks he thinks to himself and comes to a conclusion, since he’s drawn towards bedrock, semi sensitive to light, and loud noises. It’s clearly the meteors doing and it’s probably some sort of weird instinct that popped up.
He hums as he considers what to do. In the end, he decides to leave it be and simply alter what he’s doing. If he needs to make his base darker, he’ll make his base darker. And if some of his farms are too loud he’ll move to a quieter spot to AFK.
………..
“Heads,” Tango deadpans as he throws something across the room.
In an attempt to dodge the object Impulse accidentally falls off his chair landing in a heap on the cold floors of his base.
Roaring with laughter Tango walks over his tail swishing and helps Impulse back to his feet.
Who glares mockingly at Tango.
“I warned ya.”
“Not really.”
“Fair enough,” Tango concedes as the pair start heading towards the nether portal. After a number of different tests and experiments Xisuma and Doc have agreed to let Impulse back into the nether to continue his work breaking the bedrock.
Once they make it to the roof of the nether Impulse pulls out the order book and wanders around for a bit heading to the coordinates.
When they reach the coordinates Impulse considers something for a moment and pulls out a pick, “This will probably be faster than the normal way.”
“Ok, there is no normal way,” Tango explains as he flares his wings open and flutters up a few feet in the air.
“It’s pretty easy once you figure it out.”
“It’s really not.”
The bedrock breaks to reveal Grian standing awkwardly underneath, “Umm, hi?”
“Hi,” Grian chirps nervously, “I’m stuck.”
Tango hops down into the hole and looks over at Grian, “Wings?”
“Yep,” His wings are stuck in the black stone lining the walls of the hallway.
“Ok, don’t move, I'm going to mine around them.”
Grian nods and holds as still as possible. As Tango slowly chips away at the rock surrounding him he asks what had happened.
Grian responds with, “Well I was trying to fly in this tunnel and got my wings stuck, I was actually just about to call to ask someone for help when you broke the ceiling.
Impulse hops down now that Tango has moved out of the way, “Are your wings ok?”
Grian cautiously flexes his wings, “I think they're ok they’re a little bruised.”
After checking that he doesn’t need any more help, Tango and Impulse Head off to find the other bedrock block that needs to be broken. As they walk to the coordinates Impulse looks up into the never-ending gray void.
“Isn’t it interesting how even though we’re on the completely other side of the world the fog matches up with the different biomes beneath us.”
“Impulse, what?” Tango asks almost completely lost for words.
“The sky changes with the biomes.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty neat isn’t it,” He marvels as he looks up at the endless void stretching above them.
Upon reaching the given coordinates they break the bedrock. As they finish Impulse’s communicator buzzes. As he looks at the message he nods.
“Xisuma wants to talk, he says to meet him in the end.”
Tango nods, “Alright, do you want me to come or…?”
“You can come.”
The pair head off in the direction of the stronghold. Unfortunately, the stronghold just so happens to be Cub’s and Cub has decorated his portal in a rather unique fashion. With honey, the entire room is covered with honey blocks. The goal is to slide down the walls and into the portal.
This would be fine except for the fact Impulse has patches of stone covering his body and he ends up falling a bit faster than expected and doesn’t quite make it onto the portal. Tango being Tango flys over and helps pull him onto the portal.
Once in the end they walk over to where Xisuma is waiting over by one of the towers of obsidian.
“Hi X,” Tango says as he lands near the transformed void kind.
“Hello Tango,” Xisuma says as he stretches out over the cool end stone.
“You wanted to talk with me?” Impulse asks as he lands next to Xisuma’s tail.
Xisuma stands up and shakes some end dust off of his fur, “I did, I want you to tell me, how does it feel to be surrounded by the void?”
He’s a bit taken aback by the Sudden question so he answers a bit shaken, “Oh, Um, it feels oddly peaceful? Kinda relaxing.”
Xisuma nods, “Bedrock is made partly of the void as it is the Barrier protecting worlds from being consumed by the void.”
“Oh, that’s weird,” Impulse murmurs.
“That it is,” Xisuma agrees, before motioning for them to follow him to the return Portal, “That is all, I'm sorry for dragging you out here to answer one question but there was no other way to properly ask it.”