TW: mentioned injury
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"...Alright, you're all patched up now. Try not to mess with any of the wrappings, even if they itch. And remember, you're off missions for at least a month, two if it's not healing, no extrenuous activities, and absolutely no flying."

Skizz nodded slowly, shifting his wing around in its sling. Not flying for that long was going to be an absolute nightmare. "Got it."

"Do you have someone to help you with preening?" The doctor asked.

Impulse could help him— no, no he couldn't. He's been missing for nearly two months. Skizz could get someone else help him with the broken wing... he had to. "Yeah, I do," he murmured, feeling like it was a lie.

"Alright then," the doc scribbled something into a clipboard, "We'll see you in a few weeks for a progress check, have a nice day!"

...

The walk back from the Aether Clinic to his house was miserable at best. Skizz couldn't help but feel like the other angels were all staring and laughing behind his back, at him and above him and his stupid wing.

Of course he of all people had to break a wing on an overworld mission. Of course he had to be the one to make that amateur move. Of course.

He wasn't that well liked among the others, and this probably just sent his reputation into the gutter. Skizz pulled his wings closer to his back and picked up his pace, as if it would keep everyone from seeing.

When he reached his place, his hand hovered above the door knob for a second. Was he really about to just go back to sitting on his couch with a tub of ice cream, crying over Impulse again? Go back to checking for his friend's magic signature every five minutes, only to find that it was a faint as a dead man's, stuck in the overworld for no apparent reason? Go back to grief?

Yeah, yeah he was. He twisted the handle in—

"Skizzleman! Mate! Hello there!"

Skizz spun around, instantly recognizing the watcher's voice. Pearl stood behind him, starry cloak flowing behind her even though there wasn't a breeze. She adjusted her mask a little, which she'd modified to be crescent moon shape solely because she knew it wasn't allowed and would bother the other watchers.

"Yeesh, That must hurt," Pearl cringed and pointed to his broken wing, noticeably flinching her own moth wings behind her.

"It's not bad..." Skizz lied with a shrug and a wave of his hand. "What brings you to my humble abode?" He tried to emphasize the last word to be funny, but the underlying sadness that lived in his tone nowadays made the joke not really work.

"Ah yes, I have news. Very, very good news my friend!" Pearl smiled widely, wings fluttering behind her. "Can I come in?"

"Of course," Skizz led her inside, a burst of hope blooming in him. Not a moment after the door clicked shut, Pearl was talking.

"My moths found Impulse."

Skizz gasped, absolutely dumbstruck. For a second, he stood stock still, not sure what to think, what to do. The second passed and he let out a happy trill. "You found him..." he breathed out.

"You found him you found him you found him! Haha! Pearl oh my gosh I love ya!" Skizz practically threw himself at the watcher, pulling her into a tight hug and lifting her off the ground a little. "You found him..." he echoed.

"Oof, yeah!" Pearl laughed, hugging him back. "Now let go of me you big doof and I can show ya where he is."

Skizz's eyes widened and he put her down, "Oh please do!" Pearl nodded and walked over to his living room like she owned the place. Skizz followed. With a snap of her fingers, Pearl created a projection map of the overworld on top of Skizz's coffee table.

"My moths found him about a week ago, but they were little jerks and didn't tell me until now," Pearl grumbled while zooming in on the southern section of the map. "They found his magic signature in this town here, Hermit village, I think it's called."

"Hermit village? I know that place! I've helped a few hybrids from there before." Skizz leaned over Pearl's shoulder and peered at the village. Sure enough, the little, sparkly fluffy purple and golden cloud that was Impulse was floating just above one of the house symbols. There were several other magic presences in the village as well, including the black, starry signature of a voidwalker, and two gray-blue vex smoke clouds, one of which had cat ears somehow, and was right next to Impulse's signature.

"I watched him once already, just before I came over. To, well, ya know, make sure he was alive I guess." Pearl said quietly, waving her hand so that the other magic signatures went away and all they could see was Impulse's. "And, uhm, he had a cloaking spell on. That's why his signature was so weak before, and you couldn't pinpoint it."

"Had?" Skizz asked.

"Yeah, I don't think he's using it now, see? His signature's brighter, more glowy than before." Pearl poked Impulse's little cloud with a finger.

Skizz reached out, brushing a hand over the magic cloud too. That was his best friend down there. Down there and alive, but not contacting him and not caring— No, Skizz couldn't think like that. Maybe there were just, complications of some kind.

"Skizz, you alright mate?" Pearl placed a hand on his shoulder having caught on to his worry. He didn't answer, giving her a shrug instead. "You know, Grian taught me a spell that can let you see him too, instead of just me. I haven't tried it before, so it might be a little..." Pearl trailed off, waving her hand in a so-so motion.

Skizz shot his head up. "How— how would that work? Can you do it?"

"Basically it just shows you what I'm seeing, in a projection of sorts. Like a TV, but magic! It requires a little more force than usual, so Impulse might feel it. If he does though it'll only be like, a tingling sensation. And yeah, I can do it."

"Pearl, I need to see him... I know you haven't done it before so this is asking a lot, but please, please do that spell."

"Skizz, hey, don't worry, no need to ask twice. I was already gonna do it for you anyway. Plus, I'm already honed in on his signature anyways so it'll be easy as pie." Pearl chuckled lightly, and clapped her hands together. "I'll go ahead and start it now, yeah?"

Skizz took a deep breath and nodded. Pearl waved a hand through the air, creating a mini projection screen that was filled with static, and just as she said, it looked a lot like a floating TV screen, backlit by a dark blue glow. She mumbled a few words under her breath that Skizz didn't catch, and for a split second, the walls were covered top to bottom in eyes. It was so short he could've blinked and missed it.

Pearl let out a little whoop of success. "Alright, I've connected to the closest moth! The sound'll come through first—"

"—ϟᒣ╎|:|:ᖋᕊ⚍┤ᖋリ↸╎ϟᒣ╎|:|:↸ᒍリᒣ|:╎·ǀ·ᒷ╎ᒣ."

A garbled noise cut her off, the volume of it tearing at Skizz's ears. It wasn't Impulse's voice, or that of anyone he knew, or even in a language he understood.

"Yes! It works!" Pearl split a grin despite the eeriness of the whole thing. She reminded Skizz of a strange child, looking at some dead insect in sick fascination.

"Why's that guy's voice so weird?" Skizz finally asked, his voice quieter than normal.

"Multidimensional corruption," Pearl said matter-of-factly, "It turns every spoken word back to the base language, standard galactic, which I am supposed to know as a watcher but I've forgotten half of it don't tell Gri'. I think he said something about bugs." (Of course it was like Pearl to forget her duolingo lessons)

"Oh, makes sense I guess." In fairness, Skizz had just decided at this point to never overly question any weird things that Pearl or Grian did. It was better to accept them than to have existential crises every five minutes.

A few more galactic sounds came through, but they didn't phase Pearl as she was back to complete concentration, making her own nonsensical mumblings and hand symbols. Skizz felt himself growing impatient, or rather, the suspense was killing him. He was just about to ask Pearl if she was done yet when the world around him flashed in bright white light.

Skizz yelped in surprise and jumped back, blinking rapidly to get the light to dissipate. The room came back into focus, and so did Pearl's staticky magic TV. Except it wasn't staticky at all anymore, it displayed an extremely blurry image of a room, decorated with soft green wallpaper and plush furniture. The strange angle of Pearl's eye, or rather, moth, showed the side of a figure that was unmistakably Impulse.

"You did it!" Skizz cheered, though Pearl didn't seem as excited, still holding her same air of concentration. Her mouth was pulled into a thin line, and her hands stayed tense. "Pearl?"

"Yeah, but his signature's weak—hard to hold steady..." Pearl grumbled in annoyance, "wait wait, got it!"

At her words, the image snapped into clarity. Well, it was still fuzzy around the edges, but it was a lot better than it was before. Pearl's moth looked to be sitting squarely in the palm of Impulse's hand, giving them a good view of Impulse, and a person next to him. The person next to Impulse had a hand on his shoulder, and they wore a vaguely familiar green coat. But Skizz paid no mind, he didn't have eyes for anything else in the scene but Impulse.

"It's... It's him, it's really him... oh Impy..." Skizz murmured under his breath, stepping closer to the projection. He remembered fondly how out of all the nicknames he gave Impulse, the guy had always disliked that one.

"Hmm, It's a bit blurry, but it's him, yeah," Pearl smiled softly.

In the projection, Impulse's expression suddenly stiffened. His features scrunched up and he stared at Pearl's eye. It was almost like he could see through the moth and he was staring right at the two of them.

Skizz heard Pearl whisper something under her breath as Impulse's face seemed to grow more and more upset. The moth moved to a different perch in a flurry of wings, the room shaking around it as it settled down. Pearl's eye was on someone's shoulder now, a separate person from the one next to Impulse, and provided a better view.

Impulse looked completely spaced out, frozen and unmoving except for his strange, heaving breaths. The green coat person was shaking his shoulder, trying and failing to get him to snap out of it. Both of the strangers in the room were stammering out concerns that came through in galactic, until eventually the moth perch person barked a quick command at green coat.

Green coat ran out of view and the camera/moth shook a little, and got closer to Impulse just as he curled in on himself with a cry of pain. The sound seemed to permeate down to Skizz's very soul, and he snapped out of whatever trance he'd been in watching the scene.

"Pearl—Pearl stop! You're hurting him!" he shouted, feeling his heartbeat speed up in his chest.

"What? Come on," Pearl's voice sounded calm, but Skizz wondered if, under that mask she was just as concerned as he was. "Grian does this all the time it's fine—"

"Pearl!" Skizz cut her off, voice frantic, "it's fine I've seen enough just stop!"

Pearl flicked her hand, and with a distorted click, the feed shut off, and the projection disappeared. "Stopping, stopping! Sorry..." she reached ended her mask and rubbed at her eyes. "I really thought I could do that spell without hurting anyone."

Skizz let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "It's fine, I'm sorry... I shouldn't have yelled. But hey, it worked for a little bit, didn't it?"

Pearl bit her lip, her wings fidgeting behind her. "Yeah but Grian told me that I really shouldn't try it yet even though I knew how and I screwed it up—"

"Hey- hey, you didn't mean to. Impulse, he's fine now, right?"

"Yes?" Pearl pursed her lips together, stepping back to the map that was still on Skizz's coffee table. She reached out and held her hand inside Impulse's cloud for a few seconds, watching him briefly. "Yes. Yes he's fine now."

Both breathed out a sigh of relief, and Skizz stepped back towards Pearl. The panic of hurting Impulse aside, he wasn't quite sure what to think. Skizz had assumed that when they found Impulse, he'd be stuck somewhere, captured or heck, maybe even dead. But instead they'd found him just... hanging out? With some new friends?

Did he just hate Skizz that much?

"You know, Grian asked me if I'd seen him lately," Pearl broke the silence, but didn't turn to Skizz. "I- I told him I hadn't... I'm not sure why. I guess maybe, If I'd said to him that Impulse was missing it would make it more real... And then, well, I found him."

"Pearl? Do you think he left us on purpose?" Skizz was so quiet he could barely hear his own voice. "He's not in danger down there, he's happy and safe. He left."

Pearl shuffled closer to him and leaned into his side. "He was having problems down in the nether. Maybe, ya know, he found an escape that just came with some other parameters. I'm- I'm sure there's a reason why he hasn't given us a sign."

"It, it hurts, not knowing why." Skizz turned to look at Pearl, and noticed she was silently crying, tears rolling down her cheeks from underneath her mask.

Impulse was his best friend, he wouldn't have done any of this on purpose, right? If Skizz knew Impulse at all, he knew that he wouldn't ghost his friends for no reason. It would... it would turn out fine, he reassured himself, but he had a hard time believing it.

"You know what? When that wing of yours heals up, we'll go down there ourselves and find out what's going on." Pearl sounded almost angry, but she was likely just trying her best not to be utterly dismal.

Skizz nodded, and gave her a quiet "yeah." The thought of confronting Impulse didn't sound amazing though.

"On that note though, how in the overworld did you break your wing that badly?" Pearl changed the topic and tried to laugh to stop crying, motioning towards his bad wing.

Skizz grumbled, and rolled his eyes, but took the bait and switched the topic.

"Homophobes."

"...Come on, I'll tell you the whole story over some ice cream," Skizz cracked a weak smile and pulled Pearl into a side hug.

After all, even if Impulse really had left them, they could be still there for each other.

~ end chapter 17 ~

A/N: ka-BAM Skizzleman chapter <3 For those of you who thought Fuzzy had something to do with Pearl or Skizz, aPpLauSe to you!!!! Clarification on a bit: Impulse has only been in Hermit village for a month at this point, but it's been two since Skizz has last seen him (aka when they saved Bdubs)

Here have an extra thingy <3