The first thing Tango noticed was the smell of acrid smoke. It was this bitter, burning smell that left a faint stinging in his nose that woke him up in the first place. Lazily, he opened his eyes. Wherever he was, it was dark - wait, no, there was some light, but it was filtering in from what looked like miles away. That didn't seem right.

It was quiet, too quiet. Usually when Tango woke up he'd hear Keralis or Bdubs flying around, or the animals outside making noises, or at the very least the faint clicking of redstone. All he heard, however, was the vague sound of emptiness. He wrinkled his nose. Something was wrong. Maybe if he got up things would make sense.

He went to do just that, and his wrist exploded in pain. He fell back to the ground, gasping. The pain had, however, shocked him awake enough that the memories came slamming back into him full tilt. He'd made it to the moon, and he'd set off the explosion, somehow surviving unscathed through it all - but clearly, the trip back wasn't quite so fortunate.

That said, Tango had no idea whether he'd actually succeeded or not. The light filtering down into wherever-he-was was too diffuse to tell whether it was the sun or the moon or something else entirely. For all he knew, he'd done something wrong and made the situation worse and now everyone was going to die.

Still, those weren't the major issue at hand. That was, in fact, his hand, the fact that it was throbbing dully, and the fact that he was decidedly not at HASA HQ. He decided to try and get up again, this time putting all his weight on his other hand. That seemed to work, and he stood up, legs trembling.

Looking around where he was laying, he seemed to be in a massive cave of some sort. Far above him, it looked like there was an opening to the surface, likely how he'd ended up here. He was standing in the wreckage of his rocket, destroyed beyond repair. He wouldn't be able to get out that way.

He began to assess how bleak his chances looked. His inventory was empty - not a good start - and his wrist was injured, he already knew. He tried to pull out his communicator, to find that only half of it was in his pocket. Looking around again, the other half lay on the ground near him, sparking. That wasn't good, although it did explain the smell. That meant no contacting the Hermits, no commands, Xisuma wouldn't be able to teleport him to safety, and his chances of respawn were low.

Well. This was a situation he'd gotten himself into, and now he needed to get himself out. The first order of business was his wrist. Thankfully, the guards he always wore on his arms already provided some wrist support, so when he ripped off part of his sleeve to form a makeshift wrist brace, it held fast, and he could almost ignore the pain.

The second order of business was how to get out of here. He carefully extracted himself from the wreckage, pretending he didn't see Adequate's unmoving body - he didn't need more demoralising - and looked around the edge of the cave for possible ways up and out. After a minute or so of searching he found something promising, a tunnel that seemed to be heading up. It was dark, but Tango had no torches, so it would have to do.

Steeling himself for what would probably be a long journey, Tango stepped into the tunnel.

———

Zedaph: Hey Tango

Zedaph: You okay?

Zedaph: That was pretty scary, ha.

Message failed to send. Player 'Tango' not found.

———

Zed stared at his communicator in disbelief. The red letters burned into his vision, leaving a bad taste in his mouth. Tango was missing, and in unusual circumstances like these - it's not every day that the moon falls out of orbit and crashes into the world - it wasn't infeasible that he'd stay that way. His communicator being unresponsive was just another nail in the metaphorical (or possibly literal, but he couldn't think like that) coffin.

He got up off his bed, and began to pace, searching his mind for answers to the situation. Maybe Tango was fine! Maybe the gravity or the moon or whatever had just broken his comm. Maybe he'd been away from the continent when everything went down, and the geography had shifted, and maybe he was on one of those mountains lost and scared and alone and-

Zed cut off that train of thought right there. Tango was fine. He had to be. Because Zed couldn't imagine a world where he wasn't. For all that he and Tango had somewhat just done their own thing this season, Zed couldn't imagine life without Tango being at least somewhat there. Zed paused in his pacing, gasping softly as the realisation hit him that he could lose Tango forever.

He sat back down, mind racing, every attempt to calm himself down just bouncing back to make even more noise. Hands shaking, he shot off a message to Impulse, relaxing by some minuscule amount when Impulse replied (he was okay, thank the void) that he'd be on his way. When Impulse got there, Zed showed him the failed messages.

The two fell into a hug, both fighting and eventually losing to tears. They'd start searching tomorrow, but right now, they just needed a little comfort in the face of the screaming train of grief.