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“Dude, Creepers keep following you,” Jevin laughs as he nervously inches back further away from the entrances to the Stand-Off Arena.
“I know they’ve been doing it for a few weeks now, and I can’t figure it out,” Impulse groans as he knocks one of Jevin’s armor stands out.
“It’s probably a bug, you should probably mention it to Xisuma some time,” as he says this he grins.
Impulse clicks his tongue, “I will, I’ll see if they keep showing up first though.”
Jevin nods, “That makes sense… also, that’s one more of your stands down.”
As the two continue playing a couple more creepers show up. Thankfully they are dealt with without any major consequences. It still leaves the question just why are creepers following him around.
By the end of the first round of the Stand-Off competition, Jevin had won but Impulse wasn't too torn up about losing.
The pair hang around and talk for a while longer. Jevin jokingly suggests the bright yellow creeper on his shirt is the reason for all the creepers showing up.
Impulse laughs it off, saying they’re just lucky he’s not wearing a green shirt, but something nags in the back of his head.
……..
Impulse rushes into his base. There’s another creeper following him. This one was in the nether for some reason. Probably had fallen in a portal after chasing after some poor hermit. By this point impulse is getting fed up, there had been about ten creepers following him over the course of two days.
Turning around he swiftly pulls his Sword out and deals with the creeper. Rolling his eyes he gathers the supplies he needs to gather leaves and sets out to find a faraway forest.
He finds it no problem, but he didn’t account for the number of creepers showing up, at this point, he notices something odd. When the creepers start walking after him they aren’t acting aggressively at all just passively following him around.
Now his confusion grows into mild concern. He’s seen creepers acting similarly around Doc. Who is a Creeper.
“I’m calling Xisuma,” He decides, muttering to himself. As he calls he starts to pace, “Hey, Xisuma.”
“Impulse, what can I do for you?” The admin replies happily.
“I think there may be a bug, creepers keep following me around. It’s weird though, they aren’t acting aggressive or anything.”
Xisuma hums, “That is odd, I’ll look through your code and see if anything is wrong.”
“Thanks, you're a lifesaver.”
………..
He complains about this to Tango and Zedaph.
It turns out that there’s nothing wrong with Impulse’s code and after checking the creepers code Xisuma decides it’s completely normal.
Impulse is getting increasingly frustrated with all of the creepers. They haven’t broken anything or tried to attack him so he’s started leaving them alone and just flying away whenever they get too close.
As he works on replacing his floor with glass yet another creeper shows up and starts following him around watching quietly as he works. Impulse hurries to finish.
Looking over the pristine glass floor Impulse grins only to be reminded of the creepers present with a starling nonaggressive hiss. Startled Impulse jumps up and flies off towards Tango’s base.
He stumbles through the window and tries to find Tango and Zedaph. It takes him a minute but the pair are in the kitchen attempting to make brown dye from cocoa pods.
“Impulse!” Zedaph exclaims, happy to see the third member of team Zit.
“Hey, Imp,” Tango greats as he haphazardly waves with the knife he’s used for to split pods open.
“Careful, with that,” Impulse laughs, “Do you want some help.”
Zedaph grins and stage whispers, “Yes please, he’s not very good at this.”
Opening his mouth in mock offense Tango shoots back, “Well, you can’t do it either.”
As Team Zit works on creating powdered dyes to sell in Color Complete they start talking. Inevitably Impulse’s creeper problem is brought up.
“Ug, don’t remind me. It's really annoying, they really don’t do anything but watch me and follow behind me.”
“What? I’ve never heard of anything like that, creepers will almost always attack,” Tango murmurs as he tries to puzzle out what it meant.
“I know it’s so weird.”
“Maybe they like you,” Zedaph suggests.
“Maybe,” Impulse murmurs, thoroughly unconvinced.
“It’ll work out,” Tango decides, “They aren't attacking you so they might eventually lose interest.”
“Or they could suddenly decide to attack me.”
………
The Creeper Problem, as Zedaph had dubbed it, was still happening weeks later. Naturally, Impulse is getting really stressed out and a little bit paranoid.
Impulse walks through the shopping district he’s let his guard down since hostile mobs tend to avoid the normally mycelium covered island. He walks past Doc who looks beyond exhausted. The humanoid creeper is swaying on his feet and honestly looks a little bit sick.
“Doc? Dude, are you ok?” Impulse asks as he carefully takes a shulker from him.
“I’m fine, just busy,” he attempts to take the box back, but Impulse pulls it out of reach. Doc almost stumbles into a wall.
“Nope, you're going back to your base.”
Something unexpected happens, Doc nods sagely, “Of course.”
“Come on Doc this isn’t health- wait what?”
“Yeah, I'll go home, but I have to-” At this Doc’s eye goes dark and his arm Recalibrates itself. His eye flickers back on, “What did I do?”
“Um… you agreed to go back to your base without arguing,” Impulse murmurs, absolutely confused.
“I’m sorry about that,” Doc answers, “It happens when I get really tired, my creeper side takes a bit more control. It’s normally fixed by recalibration.”
“Oh, do you know why creepers keep following me? It’s been happening for a few weeks and I can’t figure it out.”
“It’s your shirt. Yellow creepers are like the equivalent of royalty within packs. They are incredibly rare, and instinct requires us to protect them at all costs. You bear the mark of one and to the creepers, you essentially are one.”
“Hold on for a second, you're telling me that the creepers are trying to protect me?”
“It is crazy, isn’t it? It’s also because you’re technically in a creeper pack,” Doc nods.
Impulse looks a bit taken aback by this, “What exactly do you mean I’m ‘in a creeper pack’?”
“Simple, the hermits are my pack.”
……
A few weeks have passed and Impulse has grown accustomed to the creepers. The next other hermits have been notified of this and most think it’s absolutely hilarious.
Doc is in the shopping district and is hissing angrily at some Redstone he’s trying to install in one of his shops. Deciding to take a break he grabs some carrots and settles next to the jobs board basking in the warm sunlight.
Impulse and Zedaph walk through the nether portal, they’re arguing softly about whether or not to prank Tango who’s working underground in Decked Out.
Doc looks up and tracks the pair with his eyes. Impulse notices and waves to him before disappearing underground to bother Tango.
A few minutes later Impulse runs out and he stops near the diamond tree to catch his breath. At Doc’s questioning glance he explains, “Tango has some ravagers down there and they managed to escape.”
“You just left them?”
“Na, Tango pulled Zed into the rafters and used me as bait.”
Doc smiles at this and hisses softly.
Impulse slides down and sits on the ground. He pokes at a scratch and hisses in pain. He pulls out a Health potion and slowly pours some of it over the scratch. Thankfully he was only nicked by the ravager and he didn’t get to hurt.
Doc looks over and hisses back slightly confused, “You sound like a baby creeper when it gets stuck.”
Raising an eyebrow Impulse looks at him doubtedly, “Really?”
“Yeah, humans hissing in pain sounds like Young creepers asking for help getting down.”
Impulse looks confused before laughing, “So don’t get hurt when I’m getting followed by creepers.”
“Well, that’s just a good rule in general… I wonder, try to mimic this,” With that, he gives a low hiss that has undertones of growling.
Impulse nods and attempts to imitate the hiss. As he does this Doc’s eye glazes over and unfocuses.
Doc roles to his feet and starts dragging Impulse over to the edge of the island.
“Doc? Doc, what are you doing?”
The creeper doesn’t answer and remains dragging Impulse along.
By this point Impulse is starting to panic, Doc is dragging him to who knows where and isn’t responding to him. Panicking Impulse reaches up to a panel on the back of his head, “Hope this works.”
He pushes a small plate in and twists it carefully before swiftly removing his hand. Doc’s eye flicks off and his arm recalibrates. It takes a moment but Doc returns to normal, “What happened?”
“Um, I tried to repeat what you told me too and then you started dragging me over here so I found your restart switch.”
“Sorry about that… how do you know where my switch is?”
“Oh, yeah, Tango will sometimes get himself completely fried so we have to restart him sometimes and he says most restart switches are in the same spot,” Impulse explains, rambling slightly.
Doc nods, “I think I know what you said, I told you to say something along the lines of ‘Get away.’ You probably said, ‘Get me out.”