Chapter Text
Impulse sets his hands on his hips, stepping back from his build to check his progress. He eyes it critically—it’s looking good so far, but it’s pretty obviously lacking detailing. Lots of detailing. But before he can even start considering what kinds of things he should add, a cheery, somewhat annoying alarm breaks him from his thoughts.
With a sigh, he pulls out his communicator to dismiss the alarm, thoughtfully named ‘Break time for Dippledop!’ by none other than Skizz himself. He’s not actually sure when Skizz set the alarm, just that it’s supposed to be a countermeasure to Impulse’s tendency to overwork himself.
It’s a sweet gesture, despite being a little inconvenient at times, and it’s one he’s decided to try and commit himself to following. He looks to the build again, somewhat disappointed that his workflow got interrupted. But, then again, maybe a break will give him perspective on where to go next from here?
He unloads all the building supplies he’d been carrying around into a nearby shulker pile, closing a shulker box just as an arrow flies past him with an audible whistle, embedding itself into the city street.
His gaze darts up just in time to catch the fleeing figure of Scar in the distance, and he chuckles fondly. Some things never change—but he also doesn’t really want a respawn right now, so he beelines for the safety of his storage room. If Scar decides to try again, at least he won’t be able to get his kill for a while, and he doubts Scar would camp outside his base for it.
After grabbing a snack from his chests, he sits down, pulling out his communicator to, wait for it: work more. Well, part work, part play, but the effort that goes into planning non-casual ZITS meetups is a lot. Not only do they have to find a time when all four of their schedules align, but activities have to be planned and servers reached out to.
[ImpulseSV]
So… ideas?
[Tango]
I’ve been in the redstone noodles all day… my brain is fried
[Tango]
what if we just kill Skizz for an hour
[Zedaph]
Only if we can do it in a fun way!
[Skizzleman]
JERKS!
[Impulse]
Not that killing Skizz doesn’t sound fun, but does anybody have any other ideas?
[Tango]
nope
[Zedaph]
Did you see my bed of death last season? I could build a Skizz murder machine
[Skizzleman]
You guys are so MEAN!
Impulse can’t help the growing smile on his face. He can almost hear their voices through the screen, and though they’re in different places, busy with different projects, they still manage to find time to sit down and talk. Despite the relative distance, soft and affectionate feelings nestle themselves in his heart, emotions he doesn’t dare to express.
A weird feeling in his throat drags his attention away, and he wrinkles nose, hoping he isn’t sick. He clears his throat experimentally, but the feeling doesn’t go away, and he goes from feeling affection to choking on it. His hands fly up to his mouth as he coughs, trying to get whatever is stuck in his throat out.
After another painful few seconds, the coughing fit ceases, and he takes deep, greedy breaths, trying to get air back into his lungs. He moves his hands away from his face as his breathing starts to slow, only to freeze—colorful petals in pink, red, and blue sit in his palms, speckled with small droplets of blood.
Horror takes root in him as he stares, not entirely sure he believes what he’s seeing. He has a terrible, terrible feeling that something has just irrevocably changed, and the thought makes anxiety stir in his chest.
But, maybe it’s nothing, right? Maybe he just ate a flower or something by accident and didn’t realize? That sounds kind of plausible. But still, his heart feels like it’s beating a little too fast, and he has to force himself to his feet.
Almost on autopilot, he goes to wash his hands, hoping to scrub the anxiety away with the blood, but only red washes down the drain. He gazes at the petals with a heavy heart, considering throwing them away, but something tells him he shouldn’t. Just in case, it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?
Maybe the best thing to do would be to get back to work, take his mind off… whatever just happened. The second his redstone door opens, though, he’s greeted with a very unexpected Grian standing outside.
“Jeez—how long have you been standing there?”
“What doin’?” Grian effectively dodges the question.
He’s definitely procrastinating again. Impulse is sorely tempted to call him out on it, eyes narrowing in suspicion, but after a small internal debate, he decides not to. The last time he tried to help with Grian’s procrastination ended in blown-up tunnel bores, and Impulse would rather not hear about him starting another war.
“I was taking a break from building, and I was just about to get back to it.” He finally answers, crossing his arms.
Grian has a suspiciously mischievous glint in his eye. “Impulse, you should know by now that no work ever gets done around here.”
“Maybe on your side of the mountain, but I’ve been pretty busy over here.” Impulse teases lightheartedly, getting an unimpressed look in return.
“You could be bothering Skizz and keeping him from getting any work done, but instead you’re being productive.”
Impulse swears his throat is beginning to close up again, but now is really not the time, so he tries to push past it.
“I was already just bugging him in chat—” He starts, only to abruptly cut himself off when it becomes too much to ignore.
As he doubles over, coughing harsh and loud, he instinctively brings a free hand to cover his mouth. By the time the fit tapers off, having been longer this time, he feels a little dazed. His fingers are damp, and he pulls his hand back just slightly, not entirely surprised to see petals once again.
But he’s not alone this time, and he doesn’t want Grian to know about whatever this is, so he closes his fingers around the petals and straightens up.
Grian’s brow is furrowed, a firmly concerned expression on his face. “You don’t sound well.”
Impulse shrugs as nonchalantly as he can manage. “I’ve been feeling kinda under the weather today, maybe I caught a bug or something.”
“Take the rest of the day off, then. Or I’ll tattle to Skizz, and he’ll make you rest.”
Impulse knows Grian isn’t one to make empty threats. This is his way of showing that he cares—enough to resort to drastic measures. Though, Impulse isn’t exactly fond of the idea of Skizz fussing over him right now, not when he’s dealing with whatever this is.
Impulse rolls his eyes. “Fine. There’s low-energy stuff I can do around the base, instead.”
Seemingly satisfied with his answer, Grian spreads his wings, preparing to take off. “You do that, I’m going to go bother Scar.”
And with that, he soars into the air, leaving Impulse alone.
He uncurls his fingers, looking down at the somewhat crushed petals. So much for a one time thing, huh? There’s no way this is an accident, but he has no idea what could be causing it. Some kind of magical condition or something along those lines, if he had to guess.
Maybe the logical thing to do would be to ask the other Hermits about this—but what if they don’t know either, and he just worries them for nothing? It’s probably for the best just to deal with it on his own, for now.
A quick server change later, Impulse walks into a library in a hub world, beelining straight to the sections on magical ailments and illnesses. He picks up several books that look promising and takes them to a sitting area, scouring pages with fervor until he finds it.
Hanahaki. A rare magical disease where flowers begin growing in the lungs of the afflicted individual, causing them to cough up petals, and, eventually, entire flowers. The only cure? Confessing their feelings to the person or persons they’re in love with.
There’s a subsection on a variant of it that can occur platonically, but Impulse doesn’t bother reading it. He’s not stupid, and he can put two and two together and realize it’s no coincidence the first fit happened when talking in the ZITS chat, and the second one when Skizz was brought up.
…He’s known for a while now that his feelings for Tango, Zedaph, and Skizz had, at some point, stretched beyond platonic into something different. He knew, but he kept it tucked away like a secret, something he never admitted and barely acknowledged.
Sure, sometimes the longing could be hard to ignore when one of them would make a flirty joke, causing his heart skip a beat or two. But what they already have is so special, and no matter what Impulse might feel, he never could bring himself to jeopardize that.
But if he does nothing, he’ll be sick forever. Impulse is strong, but how long can he keep going when the sickness will only progress further? His choice is effectively being torn away from him, because there’s no way he can keep this secret. Petals may be small enough to hide in his hands, but what happens when entire flowers tear themselves from his throat? When he won’t be able to spend even a minute around his best friends, let alone talk about them?
As if summoned, his throat begins to constrict and he hurriedly rejoins Hermitcraft just in time for coughs to wrack his body once more, flower petals spilling from his lips to his hands.
Tears blur his eyes and he blinks them away, focusing instead on the petals. Vaguely, he recalls the book mentioning something about the type of flowers having meaning, so he looks at them more closely.
Pink, red, and blue—all they’re missing is their yellow. It’s so obvious that it almost loops back around to being funny, but not quite.
As for what kind of flowers they are? Impulse has no clue. The only difference is that the blue petals are way smaller than the pink and red, but none of them look particularly familiar to him. If he wants to know what they are, he’s gonna have to ask someone else for help.
The flower petals are kinda gross though, considering they’re covered in spit and flecked with blood, so he carefully carries them to the nearest water source to rinse them off.
Petals stick to his fingers, glimmering with moisture, and he admires them briefly. It’s a shame that something so beautiful is hurting him, isn’t it? Under better circumstances, he probably wouldn’t be looking at them with a pang of resentment. They look so innocuous, but all they are is a symbol of a sickness that’s going to change everything, and that sucks.
Knowing the meanings behind the flowers won’t change anything, not really. It won’t make the disease slow or go away, and it won’t solve this problem any faster. But still… having one less unknown sounds nice, right about now. At least this, he can control.
Securely putting the delicate petals in a zippered pocket of his jacket, Impulse takes off, heading straight to Gem’s seaside village. He pulls up a little mid-flight, slowing himself so he can survey the area. Spotting a familiar figure near one of the buildings, he leans into a descent, catching a little more speed than he intended. He almost flies into one of her builds, clumsily redirecting midair to avoid it and make a not-so graceful landing.
“Nice flying.” Gem comments teasingly, and Impulse just sighs, brushing himself off.
“Of course you saw that.”
“It was pretty hard to miss.” She giggles at his expense, setting down a shulker box. “Is there a reason you came over, or were you just showing off your very… impressive flying skills?”
Gem’s sarcasm takes some of the edge off of the anxiety coiling in Impulse’s chest, and he manages a little smile.
“Actually, I was wanting to get your professional expertise on something, if you have some time to spare.”
Gem looks back at her build contemplatively, before shrugging. “Sure, I could use a break from this anyways.”
Hesitantly, Impulse unzips his jacket pocket and pulls out the handful of petals. It feels… weird, sharing them with someone else, especially when Gem doesn’t know the context behind them, but he offers them to her anyway.
“I found these and was wondering if you know what flowers they’re from?”
She takes them from him, gently picking up each individual color to study closely.
“Well,” she speaks up after a long minute. “The pink ones are definitely rose petals, and I’m pretty sure the blue is from a hyacinth, but I have no clue what the red petals are.”
“That’s okay! I’m impressed you were able to figure any of them out with so little to go off of.” He smiles at her, pleasantly surprised.
He’d known Gem’s plant knowledge is pretty extensive, but still, identifying flowers based off petals alone is pretty cool. Impulse has a hard enough time identifying full flowers!
“Rose petals are easy to spot, and I grew a lot of hyacinths for a build a while back—those petals get everywhere because they’re so small.” She says nonchalantly, grimacing at the memory.
“Anyway, can I have some of the red ones? I bet I can figure out what they’re from with a little time, and maybe some help from Pearl.”
“Yeah, of course! Just let me know if you find anything.” Impulse gratefully takes the petals from her as she hands most of them back.
She pauses, giving him a curious look. “What do you even need these for, by the way?”
Impulse falters while putting the petals away, almost dropping them on the ground. “Uh—I thought they’d be good for something ZITS related, and I already have yellow flowers, so…”
That was a bad excuse, and he knows it, but he hopes Gem won’t call him out on it.
“Okay… well, I’ll get working on this, and I’ll let you know when I’m done.” Gem gives him a weird look, brow furrowed, and Impulse’s urge to leave increases tenfold.
“I’m probably late to something with Bdubs, so I’d better get going, see you later!” Impulse rushes out a little too quickly, looking for an easy escape from the conversation.
Gem’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Uh-huh. Bye, Impulse.”