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GeminiTay was blown up by a creeper
It was two in the morning. Gem shouldn’t be up this early.
(Of course, neither should Impulse, but he’s got a factory to complete, and the Boatem crew gets too distracting for him to complete anything during the day. And it’s cooler out at night, meaning the building process is less miserable.)
That being said, nobody responded to the message in chat, meaning most were probably asleep. If Impulse had to guess, the members nearest to Gem were either asleep or distracted with something. Given all he was doing was building…
Impulse shrugged. Why not go help a friend out ?
(And besides, little Gem was absolutely adorable, so who wouldn’t take up the chance to babysit her?)
Before taking off to the fantasy cottage-core-esc mega-base, Impulse flew out around his own factory to check on the progress. The smokestacks weren’t near finished, but he’d been making so much consistent progress as of late that a detour wasn’t too detrimental to the process.
Grabbing an emergency shulker box (the essentials for if he ever did have to help out someone post-death for a few days) and an extra stack of rockets, Impulse made his way out of Boatem.
Thankfully the flight to Gem’s didn’t take too long, only a few minutes. He hadn’t wasted too much time, and given there were no more messages, he assumed things were relatively fine. Before forgetting, he sent in a quick message to the main chat so the others could be assured Gem was in good hands, though these “good hands” could be questioned as texting while flying wasn't exactly… SMRT of him.
Despite this, Impulse made it safely to her place, which, while not infested with monsters, was not what the hermits called ‘Scar safe’. Apparently things needed to be Gem safe too, if she was going dying to creepers.
While taking a quick fly around the place, Impulse found the fallen gear and crammed them into the space that was left in the emergency shulker box. Soon he realized he’d need to place things more neatly, as there were just that many items on Gem when she’d died. Still the reorganizing was done quickly, but he’d thank himself for spending the extra time to sort things out when searching for one specific item later. Dumping out the entire contents of a shulker box wasn’t exactly fun.
With the load on his back just a little bit heavier, Impulse made his way over to the small house overlooking this entire woodland wonderland. He’d been over a couple times, always enjoying walking through and admiring the style, but it was too dark now, and he’d spent enough time getting distracted from making it to Gem. (Who knew how well she was fairing being home alone for this long.) Impulse picked up his pace, and when making it to the building, he announced his coming.
“Gem? Gem? You here?” He climbed up a ladder which led to the bedroom. The house was small, starter in nature, and Gem was more times than not respawning here instead of the castle. The majestic build was still mostly unfinished, and she’d said one time that it was a little much to respawn in such a big palace while so small.
Thankfully this remained true, as Gem was curled up on her bed, hidden entirely under the blankets.
“Gem?”
She poked her head up out of the blankets, hair falling all in her face, covering her eyes for the most part.
“Had a scare there with a creeper, huh?” Impusle sat at the edge of the bed, careful not to sit on top of her.
“Yeah,” she whispered back. “It was really really loud.” She got out from under the covers, pulling one of the blankets around her as a cape, wasting no time to snuggle up next to Impulse. He could feel Gem tremble slightly.
“You okay now?”
Gem tried to smile, to nod a little bit, but there was plenty of hesitation. “I’m scared,” she said, now climbing into his lap. Impulse brushed the hair in her face aside, gently playing with it. “I don’t like it when–when they blow up.”
Impulse pulled her up against his chest. “They like to do that, don’t they?”
“Yeah. They do it all the time.”
He messed around with her hair a little more. It was one of the small things that managed to calm Gem down pretty quickly, which stood true today as well. Gem’s tremble was a little less noticeable and her breathing was much more even than when he’d first came in.
“Are you hurt anywhere? Any creeper burns?”
Gem didn’t answer instantly, likely knowing that those would have to be treated if she said yes. “My arm hurts a little. Legs hurt too.”
“We’ll have to take a look at it, but I’ll be careful.”
Gem nodded, though stayed pressed against Impulse. It’d likely take a bit of effort to pry her off. Gem was firm when she wanted to be.
“I’ve got stickers,” Impulse offered. “And candy. Think that’s a good exchange?”
Gem sat up now and gave a small smile. “Do you have gummy bears?”
It was a little difficult to get to the shulker box, which somewhere in it had a small ziplock of candy and stickers saved for this one moment. After enough searching, Impulse pulled out a small pack of said gummy bears. “You can’t eat it until I say so. Got it?”
Gem nodded, holding onto the pack tightly.
“This’ll be easy. Promise.” Impulse stood up, still holding onto Gem. She was much heavier now that he was carrying all her weight, but they made it to the tiny bathroom in the place rather easily.
Now was probably the “hardest part” of this make-shift checkup. The fact that Gem was determined to not take off her shirt and shorts, which would by extension be the only way the burns could be treated. It was only after Impulse turned around that she followed the simple instructions, yet after this “step” of the process, she was unbothered by his turning around again. (Kids were weird, yet he’d stop questioning it.)
Across one arm the skin was red, though not to an alarming degree. The other seemed perfectly fine, which was a fair relief. Before Gem could take a long enough look at the damage to her arm, Impulse rubbed a bit of cream on it. Gem flinched, taking in a heavy breath.
“You’re doing good.” Impulse looked up at Gem, squeezing her hand. “If you want, you can go ahead and eat some of the gummies.” Any part of her that was about to cry, perked up in a second as she got distracted in eating.
The perfect distraction served very useful as Impulse began inspecting her legs, which were a much bigger problem than her arms. They must’ve taken the brunt of the blow, and in some areas, they were as red as a typical sunburn.
For the sake of not scaring her further, Impulse didn’t say anything about the issue, cleaning all the dirt off of her and again applying some cream to the burns and bandaging it up. During this, Gem whimpered a few times, though subdued as her mouth was still full (given the speed of most kids eating when they had candy, Gem really savored every bite of the gummies).
“Almost done. You’re doing great.”
It hurt him to the core to hear Gem upset and hurting. Every bit of him wanted to squeeze her in a hug and let all the worries go away. But this had to be done, whether or not either of them wanted it.
Gem got silent as he continued gently washing off any wounds (and by the way she jolted her leg, it likely stung pretty badly). “You okay there, Gem?”
“Hurts,” she said softly. Gem took in a few deep breaths, trying her best to stay calm.
“I’m proud of you,” he told her, finishing up the painful part of the job. And when the final bit of bandages was wrapped around her leg, all the two could feel was relief. “Want a sticker on it?” Impulse asked, handing Gem a sheet filled with pictures of little animals and flowers. It took hardly a second before she went to town filling up the gauze with little critters and drip leaves.
While distracted with the stickers, Impulse filled the sink up with water, hoping that Gem wouldn’t push back too much at the idea of getting her hair washed. It was more the problem of pulling her away from adding an abundance of stickers.
“Come ‘mere,” he said for a second time.
“Just a second.”
“We get this done and go to bed. Tomorrow you can play with the stickers.”
Gem looked up for a second, then back down, uncaring of his words.
“Gem.” Impulse stooped down in front of her, where she was sitting on top of the toilet seat. “I’m serious.”
Gem gave a huff of breath, handing over what was left of the stickers. “Fine.”
Really, Impulse didn’t feel like taking the difficult route, so he didn’t worry about the attitude she was giving. It was late and tonight they were just trying to get everything over with.
“Just lean over the sink.”
She listened, letting her creamy-orange hair fall into the water.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t reply, likely now wearing down some. It didn’t help her sleepiness that Impulse worked through her hair gently, carefully massaging her scalp with what could be considered copious amounts of soap. Then with a small bucket, he dumped water all down her head, most of it running down her hair, while some droplets dripped down Gem’s back.
The natural wave in Gem’s hair was nearly all straightened as Impulse fingered conditioner through it. He couldn’t be too sure if he was doing it “right”, but so long as it was clean , he’d done his job. Stress could fuss over whatever he did wrong whenever he called her over to check over the work done on the burns tomorrow.
Through this time, Gem had gone silent, and stayed that way even as Impulse helped her dry her hair. Without being asked and without speaking of it, Gem ran off to pull on a nightgown before coming out to roughly brush her hair (this time saying quietly that she’d like to do it herself, uncaring of how crooked the part was. Another area Stress could chastise on if she so desired).
Given how stubborn Gem was before, she was rather used to bedtime routine. “I’ll brush my teeth while you pick out a story,” she said decidedly. “Please?”
And given she’d said please .
“You’ve got some books in your room?”
“In the chest in the corner. Lots of books,” she said while loading the toothbrush full of toothpaste.
“Ok. I’ll go find something.”
It was quite a few minutes before Gem came back, but really those three or so minutes helped in giving Impulse time to actually find any books in the chest crammed full of toys, and stuffed animals, and the likes. When she did come back, Gem announced her return with a running start, jumping straight onto the bed.
She patted on a spot next to her, pulling down the covers a bit. Impulse got the message, sliding into place with a book in hand.
He’d hardly gotten halfway before Gem was lightly snoring, head drooping down a bit. Impulse carefully leaned Gem down onto the pillow, and thankfully she was out to the point where nothing could wake her. “‘Night Gem.” He gave her a kiss on her forehead. “See you in the morning.”
He turned out the light, shutting the door softly.
His job here–-for the time being-–was done.