Stress Relief

Deep inhale. Gentle and slow exhale. My hands ball into tight fists and my eyes lock to the metal bars of the wall. Why do I put myself through this? My mind was full of questions, refreshing images of the farms and of my bosses. The looks on their faces when last week I had nothing to report. I shudder and grab at my hair with the fists. Why did I sign up for this? I could have just worked on my own projects, but they approached me one night. Another deep breath and I release my hair from my fingers' grip, wiping the remainder of the red dust from my palms onto my shorts. Today is Wednesday. Same as last week, I have to sneak my way across the border without sounding the alarm and waking up all of Falsewell. It was pretty late at night.I slipped through the gap in the bars of the wall, being a bit wider than Grian, it was a little bit of a tighter fit, but it wasn't impossible. In front of me were the same faces as last week and the one before that. "What's with the countdown, Impulse?" The heavily accented voice was not only a bit hard to understand, but was also more gravely than normal. Doc was pretty quiet, but was just loud enough to be intimidating.When my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the other side, I saw Scar nodding in agreement. "Well, good evening to you two as well." My voice has a laugh, but it turns into silence, looking behind me toward the large timer. On the screen was a brightly growing number two. The duo didn't seem to be very amused by pushing away from the topic at hand. "Okay okay.." I pulled the rolled blueprints from the satchel at my side, and opened it up on the ground. The messy scribbles made from the white pen were a bit all over the page. Doc was the only one who understood what was scrawled on the surface."Can one of you two explain this?" With a yawn evident at the end of his words, Scar looked between Doc and I with a tired and quiet tone. I guess he was called 'Captain Angry Eyes' in this place. He had let his eyebrows grow out and they looked pretty angry. No matter what he wanted to be called, I never got the right, sorry to use the Hippie's words, vibes from him. I looked behind them at the gentle game that Doc's foxes were playing and nodded at the duo. "Yeah, of course," my words were pretty quiet, unlike my normally loud self, and I rolled the blueprint back up.After the redstone talk, explaining what exactly the machine was, had started, the other American lost interest and pressed down grass with his boot. Conversely, Doc understood every word that rolled off my tongue. But after enlightening about the device itself I needed to explain why, and that's when I started to give details about the plan of attack. On the more impressive words, such as "ambush", Scar's head raised to look in my direction, but his interest remained on the red fur of the fox below him. He leaned over to rub the small head. Looking closer, my mind wondered if the one with the scarred hand gently rubbing his ear was Hanz or Franz. Though there were differences, it was reasonable that I couldn't tell which one was which without checking their name tags.The pair turned and looked at one another and then nodded, confirming their own plans. Only two days and they had to secure their own safety and make sure everything in their vaults was under control. "Oh, that reminds me," I looked down at the list of things I needed to share, which had been scribbled on my palm, "they are digging a hole and it isn't far from your bunker by now." Scar looked up in a panic, attention suddenly grasped tightly."Hey, wait a second! He heard about that already and found nothing in there. Just a few dirty statues of Grian and Ren playing a board game." Scar seemed a bit upset about being wrong and grew overly defensive. Maybe I was imagining it, from my own overworked state or maybe he was tired and just overreacting a bit.After a moment of unplanned silence, Doc laughed, setting both Scar and I to look over and see what amused the taller man. "Well, clearly it was just a rouse. That's actually kind of hilarious. And they were really good, too, they must have hired Cleo for it." He lifted his head and smiled wide, looking into the almost full moon. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he sat down on the grass and pulled one of the foxes into his lap. Scar watched him move and wore a little smile, kneeling onto the grass next to the fox friend he had and scratched the ears again softly.I looked at them, a little confused, but I was eager to join them on the gentle, dewey night grass. There was the song of the crickets, singing in time with the croaks of the frogs across the wall. It was just loud enough to play a tune. It was unbelievably calming. This was outrageously stressful to watch this big battle between the government and these awful tree huggers. We all needed to take a break and just sit here in the grass for a few hours. My back pressed up against the chilly grass, head toward the bordering wall and on the slope of a slight hill, with my head on the bottom. "Hey," I wasn't totally sure what I was saying or why, but the words came out quickly, "guys?""Yeah?""What's up, Impulse?""Thank you."