Oneshots! (Mostly Hermitcraft)

At the Curtain's Call

Summary:
Ah, Twitter. It's such a mess. However, maybe Grian should have paid more attention to trending news and let the rest of his team know. Thank goodness monkey paws exist, right?
Also, Impulse learns how to cook ramen.

TW: referenced child abuse, major character death

Impulse spun the basketball on his finger, micro-adjusting his hand so it stayed balanced on the tip. Next to him, Grian did the same with a volleyball. Impulse watched out of the corner of his eye as he lifted it up and balanced it on his nose, blowing at it in an attempt to keep it there. It worked for a second, then gravity took effect and the ball tumbled to the ground.

"Nice one, G," Impulse complimented, catching the basketball and tossing it into the bin. He glanced at the clock over the kitchen table, asking, "When did Skizz say they'd be home again?"

"Six," Grian replied, tossing his volleyball after Impulse's into the bin and pulling out his phone. "It's five thirty now."

"Cool. What're you looking at?" Impulse asked curiously, watching Grian scroll past walls of text and images on his phone.

"Twitter. It's full of nonsense and people arguing, but sometimes a ghost will pop up in a post, usually from someone asking for someone to investigate or remove it. It's a wild card, but fun most of the time."

"D'you see anything interesting? Can I look over your shoulder?"

"Nothing yet..." Grian said slowly, moving so Impulse could see, too. "There's someone saying their neighbours are acting weird, another guy chain-posting about how cute his kid is, and – oh – someone ranting about how their kid stole a family heirloom and ran away with it."

Impulse frowned at the sight of the solid wall of capital letters and awful syntax and shook his head, scanning through it quickly. "They aren't saying any details about what was stolen, except for some pictures. They might just want attention."

Grian sighed, turning off his phone and putting it back into his pocket. "That's what ninety percent of these posts are about, anyway. They don't have anything better to do."

"Hang on a moment. Can you pull the post back up?"

"Sure." Grian swiped open his phone and returned to the post, tapping on it to enlarge it. He tilted it toward Impulse so he could closer and swipe through the few photos of the heirloom and the kid, a pale boy with electric blue hair. He wore a white sweatshirt in each photo, covered in stains and clearly well-loved (read: very worn).

Impulse pointed at one of the photos, his eyes glowing gold. "See that design on the edge? They did a pretty good job at photoshopping it out, but I'd recognise it anywhere."

"What do you mean?"

"Their family 'heirloom' is a Ouija board," Impulse explained, taking deep breaths to dim his softly glowing eyes and shorten his claws. "They were probably trying to disguise it so their kid looks even more like a criminal, but I doubt that for some reason."

"Do you think it'll be connected to one of our future jobs?" Grian asked, turning off the screen and putting it away again.

"Probably. The kid might be trying to keep it away from them, though. They tend to be rash and impulsive, no pun intended."

"I think it'd depend on if there are other kids around," Grian mused. "We can't do anything right now, though. Don't even know who or where this kid is."

"True."

The Brit shook out his wings, causing a few feathers to fall to the ground. Mumbling about the changing seasons, he sat down at the kitchen table, running his fingers through his feathers, taking out the loose feathers, and straightening the others. Impulse went and rummaged through the pantry, grabbing a bag of granola and sitting down beside the avian, picking out the almonds and popping them into his mouth.