Impulse was drinking his coffee on his front porch. The snow had let up a little, and he was enjoying the view. For all that he knew that the snow was laid on thickly enough that it could kill someone at any moment, there was something about a snow-covered server that filled him with distant nostalgia for childhood winter festivals. Honestly, if Tango wasn’t being so un-Tango and evil and stuff, Impulse would’ve approved of the change.
As things were, Impulse just had to accept that the scenery was beautiful in the same way a lily of the valley was beautiful — it looked wondrous, but disguised a terrible danger.
Impulse was just finishing off his beverage and about to head inside when he spotted a familiar pair of figures walking down the path. He stood, and went to greet them, maybe invite them in for a chat or something. Maybe he could even talk some sense into them, he thought, since they were his best friends and all!
“Hey Tango! Zedaph!” he greeted, his ever-present smile beaming like a beacon. “Wanna—wanna come in for some… uh…” he trailed off as Tango glared at him. His grin faltered slightly.
“No,” Tango said simply, the ice in his voice piercing through Impulse’s hopes.
“O—Okay!” Impulse stammered out, “Maybe some other time?”
“No.”
“Right.” Impulse swallowed nervously. “Bye!” he called, as Tango and Zedaph had already turned and left.
He didn’t know why he felt so gutted. His friends had turned him down before, when busy with a project, or just not feeling up to social interaction, or whatever, and it had been fine! They’d been perfectly within their rights to do so, and he’d been fine with it. Maybe it was everything else. The way they’d barely regarded him as being worth even the few seconds of their time he’d taken. The way Zed hadn’t even looked at him. The way they’d left him behind without a word.
Shaking, he went back into his home. It was too cold for him out here, anyway.
———
It was a few hours later when the seething rage hit, crashing through his numb heartbreak like too much pressure behind a dam. He’d been enchanting a spare sword, when a sudden, burning fury had coursed through him, drawing a yell from his mouth and causing him to cast the sword aside in anger.
What in the nether was he doing? There was something wrong, deeply wrong, with Tango and Zedaph, and he was just sitting here, doing nothing, while something, someone, some magic, puppeteered them around into destroying his home! He needed to do something! To stop them! To save them! And what was he doing instead? Enchanting a sword! Ridiculous!
He needed to calm down. Breaths heaving, he grabbed his own wrist, feeling for his pulse, and began to breathe deeply, feeling his heartbeat return to a more normal rate. The emotions still broiled under the surface, but he couldn’t let them control him. He needed to be thinking rationally if he was going to do something to save his friends from themselves, after all.
What he really needed, above all else, was allies. He needed people who would help him come up with, and carry out, a plan; he needed people with the skill to take down a threat of Tango’s level; he needed people who were level-headed enough to be a source of grounding for the team when, inevitably, his emotions would drag him under.
So, he sent messages out to a handful of hermits. Stress was the obvious choice—Doc was scared of her for a reason—and, following that up, Doc himself. Etho would probably be good for the team as long as he had a stable supply of his allergy medication (otherwise the story magic would likely be a bit much for him) and False’s martial prowess was going to be a must-have. He called on Gem and Bdubs, as people he trusted as brilliant tacticians, and Mumbo to bring his redstone capabilities to the table.
In the end, he got solid ‘yes’ responses from everyone except Mumbo and Bdubs, from whom he got nothing but radio silence. That was concerning, to say the least, but Impulse had somewhat larger fish to fry. Hopefully saving Tango would help them, too.
———
The next morning, all six of them had gathered around Impulse’s dining room table.
“Am I right in suggesting that this,” Impulse gestured at the bitter sleet that was currently pelting down outside, “Has gone on for far too long?”
“Oh, definitely. My allergies are out of control.” Etho nodded, rubbing at his eye, which looked slightly irritated.
“Our crops are dying, the farms are collapsing, and Tango only did something about it when he realised he’d have no subjects if he let us starve,” Gem agreed.
“Not to mention how Mumbo just… went missing… after he went to talk to Tango about eternal-winter-stable food farms,” Doc continued.
“And this winter is insanity!” Stress added. “Like, I know I was the Ice Queen, but I’d never do any of this nonsense, jeez!”
“We need to do something about this,” False concluded. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to say something else, but the memory of whatever-it-was was… absent.
“But… What can we do?” Gem asked. “If we try to resist, Tango will just freeze us like he did to Ren and Bdubs.”
“Well, we need to worry about the root cause,” Impulse began.
“That’s—” Etho’s response was cut off by a violent sneeze. He gave the others a pointed look in lieu of continuing.
“That much we can agree on,” Stress nodded, “But the question is more… how is it affecting ‘im?”
“What do you mean?” Doc asked.
“Like, has it replaced ‘im, or, I dunno, is it controlling ‘im or manipulating ‘im, or what?”
“I think…” False frowned, trying to drag a distant memory up, “Something is manipulating him, twisting him, making him feel things he doesn’t feel and know things he doesn’t know.”
Everyone turned to stare at False. If she could’ve turned to stare at herself, she would’ve.
“How do you…”
“Empires?”
“Right.” Gem nodded knowingly. “Makes sense.”
A comfortable silence settled over the table.
“So what do we do about it?” Doc asked.
“Right.” Impulse nodded, more to himself than anyone else. “Plans.”
“Could we have some tea, maybe?” Stress suggested. “Get the ol’ brain in gear?”
“Sure!” Impulse brightened. Anything to distract himself would be good right now, really. He turned to the cupboard, hand reaching on instinct to where he knew the tea stash he kept around for when Zed visited was. On autopilot, he pulled out that weird off-brand blend that Zed loved, and then what he was doing struck him. The tea stash was for Zed. Zed, who wouldn’t even look him in the eye anymore. Tears burned at the corners of his eyes, and he gasped, curling his hands into fists. He couldn’t be losing it over tea, of all things.
“You alright, Impulse?” Etho asked.
“Fine!” Impulse yelped, his voice cracking. He took a deep breath. “Fine,” he repeated, and put the kettle on.
A few minutes later, everyone had a cup of tea, and a massive sheet of paper had been spread across the table for people to make plans on.
“What we need is a set of goals,” Doc suggested, “And then we can work from there.”
“I second that.” False nodded, writing ‘GOALS’ in large, friendly letters at the top of the page.
“So…”
“Save Tango,” False suggested.
“Help Zedaph,” added Impulse.
“Heal the server?” Etho offered.
“And, if it’s not covered in those steps, save Bdubs, Ren, and Mumbo,” Gem agreed. False wrote down these four goals, and then underlined them, like headings.
“Okay. We have some goals. What order do we tackle them?” Etho asked.
“Save Zedaph first,” Doc suggested.
“Why?”
“Because he can be our man on the inside!” Impulse realised. “I think Tango genuinely thinks he’s doing right by Zed, somewhere in there, and so if we can bring back the real Zedaph, then we have a straight path to Tango!”
“The only issue is how,” False agreed.
“And,” Gem pulled out a pen and began sketching a diagram, “I think I might just have a solution to that problem…”