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thetomorrowshow · 3 months ago

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Whumptober 13 - Team as Family

title: if all your friends jumped off a cliff...

fandom: hermitcraft smp

cw: blood and injury

Impulse senses it a moment before it happens.

It’s in the way his stomach swoops, feeling like an elevator dropping from his throat to his knees. It’s in the way the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, his shoulders tensing.

He slips.

His heel lands funny on some loose gravel and he slips.

Then stumbles, trying to catch himself.

Then windmills.

Then falls.

“We should go hiking.”

Impulse suggested it, thinking of his new hiking boots he had yet to break in. He loved a good day of hiking, and it sounded like a perfect group bonding activity.

“Oh, yeah, I love hiking!” Mumbo said, perking up in his seat. “That would be great.”

Grian snorted. “Would you even show up?”

“I—of course I would! Just because—”

“You haven't come to a single team bonding activity yet. Isn't the line manager the one who's always supposed to be there?”

“I—look, that isn't—”

“Hiking sounds fun,” Pearl interrupted. “Impulse, did you have somewhere in mind?”

The fall is bad.

The side of the trail is a steep cut-off without any sort of fence in place, and when Impulse slips, he feels a breath-taking moment of terror as he knows what awaits him if he falls the wrong way.

Which he does. Of course he does.

It doesn’t happen in slow-motion, like the movies. If anything, it’s sped up, a brief moment of being airborne before he crashes into the ground and starts rolling faster than he knew he could.

He tumbles down the side of the mountain, and his world becomes a blur of green and brown and pain. His ears are assaulted by a barrage of crashes and thuds, over and over as tree branches and underbrush whip and crack under him—

He keeps trying to grab onto something, to get his feet under him, but he's falling too fast for it to happen.

Until he slams into a boulder.

“Grian, did you bring snacks?”

Grian sighed. “Right, I already divided up everyone's snack bags,” he said, putting on an affect of weariness. He set down his backpack, dug through it, before pulling out several ziplocs.

“Cookies for Scar, trail mix for Impulse, pringles for Mumbo, apples and caramel dip for Pearl. And I've got a ton of beef jerky and carrot sticks in my bag.”

Scar snatched his ziploc of cookies, already tearing it open. Impulse chuckled. They hadn't even stepped onto the hike yet.

“I was looking at it online,” Mumbo said, tracing his finger along the map at the entrance. “The blue trail is easiest, but the red one has the best view.”

“I've only hiked the blue trail,” Impulse said. “It was pretty easy. But you know Skizz, from the development department? He hiked the red one last week and he said it wasn't hard at all.”

“I do love the color red,” added Grian.

Impulse blinks open his eyes, the fuzziness in his vision barely dissipating with each blink. There's static in his ears, a slight hum behind it. His mouth tastes like metal. He licks his lips, swallows drily.

His head hurts. His head—his back—every part of him—

He was just falling, right? Why isn't he falling? What happened?

“Impulse! Impulse!”

The sound of his name being shouted distantly breaks through the static, and Impulse scrunches his eyes shut, then forces them open again. Everything's still kind of blurry and black-spotted around the edges, but he looks as far up as he can, until he can kind of see the figures of his friends far above him, up the steep mountainside.

Did he really fall such a long way?

“Impulse, can you hear us?”

That's Grian.

Weakly, his body trembling, Impulse raises his right hand in a wave. Even from this far, he hears their sighs of relief.

“How are you feeling?” Grian calls down.

Impulse winces. His head and neck are up against something hard and unforgiving, pain blooming out from the base of his skull.

That might explain the issues with his vision. Concussion.

Or possible spine damage, he realizes with sudden panic.

Impulse spits out blood (his bitten tongue bleeds sluggishly against his teeth). “Uh,” he croaks, as loudly as he can manage. “I hit my neck.”

If possible, the others become even more worried. “Okay, we'll call for help,” Mumbo says resolutely. He gets out his phone, takes a step away.

“Is that rock on your leg?” Pearl says, and for the first time, Impulse looks down at himself.

His fall had dislodged a boulder next to the one he hit neck-on, and his leg is partially under it. It's enough that he can feel the weight (which surely means something good for his neck that he can feel it), but it isn't pressing down so hard that it's super painful. It hurts, but he's fairly certain it's not broken.

Impulse decides not to move. Not at all. He knows you shouldn't move with a potential spine injury, and he's afraid that one shift could entirely crush his leg.

“Yeah. I'm not going anywhere.”

“I don't have service. I don't—Grian—”

Grian checks his phone, too, his scared expression morphing into one of panic. “Me neither. Okay—Mumbo—”

“I—oh, dearie me, I don't—”

“Mumbo,” Pearl interrupts, placing her hand on his arm. “Walk back down the trail until you get in range. Then call emergency services, okay? We'll keep Impulse awake.”

“Impulse, don’t go anywhere,” Grian says. Impulse makes a vague effort to flip him off.

Mumbo starts scrambling back the way they came. Grian sits down, scooting as close to the edge as he dares.

“Do you think you’re good until Mumbo gets back?”

Impulse takes stock of himself. Between the pinned leg and the pounding head, he’s got a ton of bruises and scrapes. His arm feels funny, his shirt is torn all over the place. There’s a twig digging into his back, but he doesn’t have the energy to try and get rid of it.

“He should hurry,” he says, avoiding the question. He really just hopes he doesn’t pass out. Everything hurts a lot, and the black hasn’t cleared from his vision, so it’s all he can do to hang on.

He trains his focus on Grian’s face. He has to stay awake. Mumbo will be back soon, and then the paramedics will show up after that.

What if they can’t get down to him? There’s got to be too many trees to call in a helicopter. How long would it take to try and climb up to him from the bottom of the mountain? Would they even be able to?

“Hey,” Scar says, taking a careful step off the path, about ten feet away from Impulse’s clear slide marks. “This part looks way more even! I bet one of us could go down and give Impulse some water, or something!”

“Scar, absolutely not—”

Grian isn’t even able to finish his sentence before Scar’s foot slips.

Impulse sees it almost in slow-motion—the way Scar’s eyes widen, the way his arms flail out to grab Grian, who reaches forward too-slow—

With a comical scream, Scar falls.

“We all know hiking safety, right?”

“Yep!” Mumbo responded. Nobody else said anything.

Impulse sighed. “Okay. Well, first off, never go off the path. Got it?”

Pearl nodded. Grian did as well, rolling his eyes. Scar didn’t do anything, crouched down to toss one of Impulse’s peanuts to a squirrel.

“Scar?”

“Aw, look at you! Isn’t he so cute? Look, Grian, he’s so cute!”

“Scar,” Impulse said again. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, yes, now look at this squirrel! His tail is crooked, look!”

Scar’s fall, if anything, looks worse than Impulse’s had felt.

He seems to hit every part of his body with a resounding crack against the ground, and his scream cuts off near-instantly when his head hits a rock but he keeps going. He slips and rolls and barrels down past Impulse, where he finally hits a fallen tree and his body uses its last bit of momentum to roll over it.

The only part of him visible is his foot, propped up on the log, his boot half-off in a way that totally obscures whether or not his foot is bent at an impossible angle.

Impulse stares, his breath caught in his throat.

“Scar! Scar!”

Grian’s shouting does nothing.

The foot on the log doesn’t move.

“Impulse, is he okay?”

“I—I can’t see him,” Impulse manages. None of them can properly see Scar, he could be dead for all they knew, if it’s possible that Impulse broke his neck who’s to say that worse didn’t happen to Scar?

What if he needs resuscitation? Can they wait until the paramedics arrive? They’re already an hour into the hike, how long would that take?

“Scar, c’mon! Scar—be okay, please be okay—”

Impulse ignores Grian’s frantic words. Somebody needs to check on Scar, and he’s the only one already down here.

Scar isn’t close enough to reach. His foot is about ten feet to Impulse’s left, which might as well be ten miles. He scrambles briefly for something to throw, but there’s nothing at hand.

Impulse looks again at his leg. The boulder really isn’t resting too heavily on it. If he’s careful, he might be able to get out from under it. Then he could crawl to Scar, at the very least, check his pulse and start on CPR.

He shouldn’t move until he can get his neck scanned, but he can’t leave Scar like that.

His right leg isn’t too badly injured, so Impulse places his right foot on the boulder, takes a slow breath.

He’ll push with his right as he pulls his left leg out. Quick and easy. No problem at all.

“Impulse, don’t—”

He pushes.

He pulls.

“Have you ever had an emergency while hiking?” Mumbo asked, glancing around nervously. “Like, what if one of us passes out?”

“I resent that!”

“I—Scar, I wasn’t talking about you. Just—just generally, you know?”

Impulse chuckled. “Nope. I mean, once Tango tripped and scraped up his knees real bad. We ended up heading back early, carrying him on our shoulders.”

“I knew someone who went missing while hiking,” Pearl interjected. “They found her remains last year.”

“That won’t happen,” Impulse said firmly, as Mumbo’s eyes widened. “As long as we pay attention and stay on the trail, we’ll be fine.”

He doesn’t get out.

The boulder rocks back, and he has a moment of freedom—

But it comes crashing down before Impulse can move, utterly crushing his leg with an audible snapping noise.

Impulse gasps, his vision sparking red.

Then black.

He drifts for a moment in painful blackness, feeling utterly incapable of even breathing. The agony steals through every part of his body, through his lungs and stomach and brain, his head pulsing angrily in time.

He’s dying. He’s sure of it. He’s dying, it’s so terrible, he isn’t going to make it—

It isn’t Grian’s voice that rouses him this time. It’s Pearl’s, but she isn’t talking to him.

“—can’t just leave them! Scar could be—”

“There’s no way possible you can get down there, both of them tried—”

“I know how to go down steep hills, I learned this technique once!”

“Pearl, I can’t let you.”

“Mumbo hasn’t gotten back, it could be hours before someone’s here to help them. We don’t even know if Scar’s alive—the window for bringing him back is shrinking! I—I have to try.”

It takes more effort than Impulse has, but he opens his eyes.

Through a red haze and double the black dots, he sees Pearl, adjusting her backpack. She waves when she notices him looking.

“Heya, Impulse! On my way down!”

Impulse groans.

“Do you think someone could climb down the side?”

Impulse glanced off the path, shuddered. “Doubt it. See how steep the drop-off is?”

“Right, but it’s only a sheer drop for about ten feet,” Pearl replied. “After that, it becomes more of something climb-able.”

“I mean . . . maybe if they had poles,” Impulse said dubiously. “I wouldn’t try it. It’s really not worth the risk.”

Pearl’s method of coming down the hill involves sliding the first ten feet of the steep drop on her backside, then stopping herself before she gained serious momentum by grabbing the grass. After a moment of dusting herself off, she stands. What follows is a strange hopping-jog, her gait short and staccato, jumping down the hill like a hare. It’s kind of working, but it’s clear about halfway down that she’s losing control of it—Pearl tries to stop but it’s too late—

She stumbles, falls, somersaults—tries to get back on her feet, but pulls another somersault, tries again—

Impulse doesn’t notice until her body jerks to a stop, a small shriek tearing from her throat, but Pearl’s foot gets caught and won’t come free.

She’d clearly tried to stand, putting all her weight down into a rotting tree stump. Her right foot had sunk in to the ankle, and the abrupt stop of her descent hadn’t been enough to pull her free.

“Ow, okay, ow,” she gasps, pushing herself up onto scraped forearms.

“Pearl! What did I say—”

“I’m all right,” she calls over her shoulder. “I just—I did something to my ankle, sprained or broken or something. But I’m fine!”

“I—a broken leg is not fine!”

Impulse closes his eyes, swallows. His mouth still tastes like blood. His teeth hurt from gritting them so hard.

He feels a little floaty, actually. Less pained than before. Maybe that means he’s about to pass out.

“Pearl,” he manages, wrenching open his eyes. “Scar. Can you see him?”

Pearl pushes herself up farther, then more, making small sounds of pain as she manages to bring herself up to standing. “Um . . . yeah! Yeah, I can see Scar!”

Impulse waits.

Grian, still going on about injuries, falls silent.

“Scar, stop pretending you’re asleep and get up,” Grian said, nudging Scar with his foot. “Come on, we said five minutes and it’s already been eight. We need to get a move on if we want to finish this hike any time soon.”

Scar continued to fake-snore.

“Come on, Scar,” Impulse laughed.

“Scar, we all have your fake-snore memorized. We know you’re awake,” said Pearl.

Mumbo glanced at them. “What? Does Scar pretend to be asleep a lot?”

Pearl nodded. “He pretended to sleep through bowling last month.”

“And paintball the month before that.”

“And at the Taylor Swift concert before that.”

“I—sorry, you all went to Taylor Swift?” Mumbo demanded. Grian just shrugged.

“Yeah. The company paid for it, it was a team-building exercise.”

Mumbo sputtered incoherently. Scar fake-sleep-mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like the chorus of Shake It Off.

“He’s breathing,” Pearl confirms after several harrowing moments. Impulse lets out a sigh of relief.

Scar’s alive.

It isn’t pressing danger, not anymore. Well, Scar definitely needs emergency help, and so does Impulse, but everyone’s alive.

“Hey, Grian,” Pearl calls up the mountainside, easing herself back down to the ground. “Looking a little lonely up there, all by yourself.”

“I am not joining you,” groans Grian, burying his face in his hands. “I—no!”

“Come on,” Pearl wheedles. “It’s fun!”

“Absolutely not. You know what—here.”

There’s a bit of rustling from above. Impulse looks up as Grian pulls a bag of carrots from his backpack and tosses them down to them, aiming for Pearl.

It soars, down, down, past Pearl—

Scar’s foot jerks as it lands. Pearl bursts into laughter.

“Square in the back!”

“I hope Mumbo gets back soon,” Grian says. “I cannot be the responsible one right now.”

“Just come join us!”

“If all your friends jumped off a cliff!” Grian says, chucking a bag of beef jerky. That one misses as well, landing well out of anyone’s range. “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, and they said it’s fun and cool and called up to you from the deadly cliff, would you jump? Would you jump too!?”

“Don’t be such a party pooper!”

“I’m gonna pass out,” Impulse mumbles, swallowing. His vision is getting darker by the second.

“No, Impulse, hold on—”

“Impulse, can you reach your water bottle?”

He can’t. His backpack is under him, and possibly what created such an awkward angle for his neck to hit the rock, anyways.

Impulse blinks. Then again. Then again.

They’re speaking to him, but the buzz in his ears has gotten so loud as to drown them out entirely.

It drowns everything out.

The pain drowns him out, too.

“New announcement from corporate,” Mumbo says, sitting down at the table. “All team-bonding must be in a safe and controlled environment. Specifically, hiking, paintball, and ziplining have been banned.”

“Come on, that was next on the roster,” complains Pearl.

“And it has been suggested to me in particular that we maybe play getting-to-know-you games for our next team-bonding,” adds Mumbo. “The rest of the teams are kind of mad at us for the ban, honestly.”

“What? How did they know it was us?” Grian demands.

Impulse looks between them all—his own neck brace, shoulder brace, and broken leg; Scar’s double-casted arms and knee brace; Pearl’s crutches.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

“At least we had fun,” he tries.

Mumbo raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “You—Impulse, you have to relearn how to walk.”

Silence.

Pearl’s the one who starts laughing first. Grian cracks soon after, then Scar (with repeated, “Ow, ow, my ribs”), then Impulse, and finally, Mumbo joins in.

“Right,” Mumbo says once the laughter dwindles out, wiping a tear from his eye. “Does anyone know any getting-to-know-you games?”

“Truth or dare,” Scar suggests immediately.

“No. Instant veto. Absolutely not.”

#whumptober2024 #no.13 #team as family #hermitcraft smp #fic #blood and injury #hermitcraft #hermitcraft season 8 #boatem #impulsesv #hermitcraft fanfic #mas writes #doing this so speedy quick bc i have a rehearsal #man i love this one it's so silly #it wasn't until after i wrote it that i was like wait.... boatem hole #i just unrelated thought it would be good whump to fall down a mountain #lmk what you think #love you guys

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