Chapter Text
“Soooo…. What now?” Grian asked, looking around at the others. They looked about as confused as he did as they al floated in what could only be a place even below the Void. Bits of green and blue floated around slowly, somewhere off in the distance, while closer by, purple particles swirled around them.
“Where even are we?” Impulse asked at about the same time.
“We’re floating. We just float,” Mumbo said, trying to stroke his moustache through the grey glass of his helmet and failing wildly. Meanwhile, Scar was grinning wildly.
“Gotta tell you, the Swaggon was a great success, wasn’t it?”
Pearl just started laughing at that.
“I think you got us stuck down here.”
Scar glared at her, but she didn’t stop giggling. Whether it was fear or not was hard to tell, because the adrenaline hadn’t stopped pumping through any of their bodies. After all, they had just narrowly escaped death, what with the moon coming crashing down.
“I think… I think we just wait?” Grian was turning around in his place, trying to look all around him in the hopes to see something that could help them get out of there.
“Yeah…”
“Yeah.”
It was silent for a short moment.
“Would you guys mind filling in a comment card about how well your experience was on the Swaggon rocket?” Scar then asked, looking around at each of them in turn.
Again, there was a single moment of silence before the rest of the Boatem crew all started talking at once.
“It was awful!”
“This isn’t heaven! We can confirm this definitely isn’t heaven.”
“I missed the on-board service?”
“When does the ride end?”
The landscaper just shook his head in disappointment.
“Wow… Well, change of subject. Are the little blue things like worlds or seasons we’ll travel to? What do we need to do if we need to use the restroom?”
It certainly distracted everyone from complaining as they just stared at Scar, unsure whether he actually meant what he was saying.
“That’s not built into these space suits?” Impulse asked, and Scar looked kind of painful at that.
“No, I just… I cut costs, if I’m being honest with you.”
“You cut costs?! How did you cut costs?” Mumbo sounded quite as though he couldn’t quite believe it, and his eyes were just about as wide as Pearl’s.
“Why did you cut costs, if you got all our diamonds?” she asked, doing some math on her fingers.
“Oh, these were dummy suits I used a while back.” At the very least Scar sounded proud of himself, because the rest of Boatem certainly didn’t look that way. They were just looking at him with a mixture of confusion and disbelief on their faces.
“Oh my goodness…” Mumbo just muttered, while Pearl looked straight into the landscaper’s eyes.
“Then where did all our diamonds go? What did we pay for?” Pearl crossed her arms as Scar smiled again.
“Oh, the colour-coordinated helmets!”
“Oh…” Pearl looked as though she was trying to figure out what to think, and Impulse just shrugged.
“Well I think it’s worth it.”
Things fell silent again, and Grian for once didn’t quite know what to say.
“I guess I’ll see you all later, then.” He waved at them, before turning around.
“Wait, where are you going?” Pearl called after him, and he spun around again.
“Nowhere! We’re stuck here, we’re just waiting!” He let his head hang, knowing full well that this was going to be boring, despite being with friends.
In the background, Scar was already starting to talk to Mumbo about how to properly lead a cult, which at the very least brought some life to their floating party, but sooner or later, the topics were going to run out.
“Hey, it’ll be fine. We’ll get out in no time, how hard can it be?” Pearl asked. Much as she was still coming over the shock of plunging into the Void and somehow not dying, she was starting to unwind a little, finding a comfortable posture to float in. She had a lot of faith in the Boatem crew, however long or short she had known some of them.
“Thanks, Pearl…” Grian muttered back, just resorting to turning around and around in place, spinning slowly along different axes. There wasn’t any gravity they had to deal with, after all.
Then, all of a sudden, Pearl was sure she heard something. A voice, coming from somewhere else than from their little group.
“Hey, hey, guys, shush, do you hear that?”
Mumbo looked at her weirdly, but shut his mouth anyway, tilting his head to the side to listen better, and the rest followed suit.
It was silent as they floated, so absolutely silent that she was starting to think her mind had made up the sound. Just when she was about to say something, though, the voice came again, a little clearer this time. It was… A woman? Not Gem, though, not Stress, not False, and not Cleo either. Then who…?
“Who… Who is that?” Impulse asked, moving around to float a little bit closer to Pearl.
“I don’t know. Not one of ours, I don’t think.”
“-bloody Duncan… No, sure, I’ll make this work fine on my own, thank you very much…”
The voice became louder and louder until they could finally make out words, and the moment they did, they could feel a certain pull. The purple particles around them danced closer and closer until they stuck to their suits and helmets, covering them in the stuff.
“Let’s see… Necromantic stone, scarecrow, brew of revealing, attuned stone, spectral dust, a boline… and that’s it!”
The Boatem crew looked at each other with wide eyes, moving closer together and grabbing on to each other. Whatever was happening, they weren’t in control of it, and they knew it.
“Then all that’s left to do is activating the ritual. Boop!”
All of a sudden, the pull became stronger, and they simply knew they were moving, moving closer and closer and closer to one of the blue specks in the distance, aggregating more and more of the purple particles on themselves.
Mumbo yelled in panic, while Pearl just held on for dear life, and down her arm, she felt Grian’s hand clutched tightly in hers, even though she could no longer see out of her helmet.
“Alright, got to eat a golden apple, and I’m ready to go. Any moment now…”
The pull just went on and on and on until it suddenly no longer wasn’t there, and there was once again solid ground under her feet. Immediately, she heard something screaming an inhuman scream, so high-pitched it hurt her ears. Pearl couldn’t plug them, though, not with the helmet still on. She stumbled around, trying to get out of the tangle of limbs she had found herself inside, only to hear something made of metal clank shut just beside her leg, tugging a hole in her suit.
“Ha! Beartrap! That’ll- Wait. You aren’t Death… Who the hell are you?! How did you- Why are you all in my ritual circle? And why are you covered in Flux? Oh gods, why are you covered in Flux?”