Playing Open-Handed

Chapter 1: A Shadow In The Waters

Impulse finished up the floor of his base, smiling in pride at his hard work. It certainly looked impressive up where he was standing, but he figured that he wanted another angle on it, just in case he'd built it at the wrong level or something. He walked to the edge of his base and jumped into the water, sinking under and waiting for the conduit power to kick in. It didn't.

Confused, Impulse surfaced, taking a deep breath. He dived down then, looking for his conduit. It was sitting there, right where it should be, but it wasn't running. Probably something to do with the fact that it was clogged with obsidian for some inexplicable reason. Impulse surfaced once more, downing a potion of water breathing, then dived back under the water to begin the onerous task of clearing his conduit.

He was well into breaking the first piece of obsidian when he spotted a strange, almost shark-like shadow deeper into the water. Distracted, he stopped working on the obsidian, and all of the progress he'd made instantly vanished. He stared at the obsidian in disbelief, then back at where he'd seen the shadow, then back at the obsidian. And he made a decision.

Impulse swam away from the conduit, after the shadow. It had looked like a shark, from his small glimpse of it. That was impossible. Sharks straight-up didn't exist in most worlds, Hermitcraft included. Naturally, his curiosity had been piqued. So he kept swimming, swimming after the shadow. And, eventually caught up with it.

If he could've, he would've screamed. 

The monstrosity he was looking at was a lot of things, but it certainly wasn't a shark. It had three glowing red eyes, and four tentacles that oozed slime. Shocked, Impulse began to swim away, terrified, almost in a blind panic. There was a monster in the waters of Hermitcraft, he had to tell Xisuma, he had to-

The water around him exploded into a mesmerising kaleidoscope of colours. Enthralled, Impulse stared at the dazzling images, and stopped trying to swim away. He didn't even notice the other sensation, the strange shiver that ran down his spine and throughout his nervous system. Well, not until the colours vanished, and he tried to keep swimming. His arms wouldn't obey him, and as the pit of his stomach dropped, he realised something was dreadfully wrong.

His arms moved out, turning him around in the water to face the monstrosity, no matter how hard he tried to resist. It swam around him, examining him like some kind of art piece, and he couldn't do anything to resist. Eventually, however, it stopped, and that's when the voice broke through his head, saying simply:

"Good enough."

-Ace of Spades-

Tango was, rather reasonably, starting to worry about Impulse. For the past two days, he'd been ignoring Zed and Tango, holing up in his base, and not responding to chat. What's worse, he wasn't working on any farms. Tango had seen Impulse picking up building supplies from the shopping district, but he didn't even notice when Tango tried to call him over for a round of stat poker.

Tango paced in his storage room, wringing his hands. He wanted to go check on Impulse, but what if Impulse was in too much danger for Tango to handle alone, should he ask Zed to come along, but Zed wasn't online right now, but Tango was really worried about Impulse, so he needed to go now, but he couldn't rush in-

He snapped himself out of the loop of thoughts with an angry grunt. Sighing, he figured it was probably for the best that he just go and check on Impulse on his own. It's not like anything particularly bad could be going on, right? And he didn't have time to wait for Zedaph. Before he could convince himself otherwise, he flew out of his base towards Impulse's place.

He arrived only a few minutes later, having surreptitiously switched from his elytra to his natural wings halfway there, since he could go faster with them. He touched down lightly, smoothing down his hair, which had been ruffled by the high-speed flight.