Welcome to my Chex Mix bowl; take a handful

“Dude, you said it yourself.” There’s the chassis of a decommissioned robot drone lying in the road, broken and gutted for parts, and Skizz steers wide around it before falling back into step beside Impulse. “The Panel was always meant to be temporary. We needed something permanent. And Cubby’s the best Director you could ask for.”

“I agree! It’s just—” Impulse sighs. “I dunno. I don’t know why my brain does this.”

“Are you worried about Industrial too?”

Impulse’s shoulders rise like he’s trying to hide his face. “Maybe.”

Skizz shoots him a Look. “Dude.”

“I know.”

“It’s Tango.”

“I know!”

“You trust Tango.”

“I do!”

“Then trust him, dude.”

“I—yeah.” Impulse rakes his hand back through his hair with a sigh. “You’re right, I know you’re right, I just—I gotta get over myself.”

Skizz shrugs and looks down to pick his way over some loose concrete. “I mean, I think it’s fine to worry about it, because that means you still care, but…”

“But there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

“But there’s nothing you can do about it right now!” He waves his arms widely at the city street around them, and the highrises on every side bounce his voice back to him. “They’re all the way back home! We’re here.”

Impulse is quiet beside him. “Yeah.”

“And you wanted to be here. For so long. I dunno why,” Skizz grumbles, kicking a dirty can, “this place gives me the creeps, but—”

He’s rewarded with a thin chuckle from Impulse.

“But you wanted this,” Skizz continues, “and they made it possible.”

“Yeah.”

“So let’s…I dunno. Let’s be here.” He stops and turns to look at Impulse, trying to push as much sincerity and earnestness as he possibly can into these words. “Don’t leave your head back home, dude.”

Impulse gives him a tiny smile. It’s not altogether certain, but it’s sincere; almost like he appreciates the comfort, and he knows Skizz is right, even if he can’t accept it just yet.

But then the smile turns into an ornery smirk, and Impulse mutters under his breath, “I wouldn’t be the only one who leaves my head places.”

“You shut up,” Skizz retorts, immediately and breezily.

Impulse snickers.

Skizz turns back around with a sniff and scans the street. The sun set a little while ago, and the light is starting to die, but it’s not so far gone yet that he can’t make out the square, depressing shapes of apartments in the distance. The cracked and blistering pavement stretches on into infinity, guarded on all sides by skyscrapers like sentinels, broken only by the occasional abandoned vehicle or market cart or graffitied alleyway that’s belching garbage into the road. 

There’s one thing he can’t see here, though, no matter how hard he squints into the dim concrete wilderness. 

And that’s people.

“Now if we could just find somebody to make this worth it, that would be cool,” he complains loudly at nothing in particular, and drags his feet forward again, gripping the shoulder straps on his pack. “I’m startin’ to think nobody’s in this stupid city.”

Impulse sighs and follows him. “I guess they’re just not living this close to the wall. If there are any survivors here, where do you think they’d—?”

There’s a strange, rasping noise.

Impulse’s head whips around. Skizz follows where he’s looking and finds himself peering down a filthy alleyway, choked with overflowing dumpsters. 

What was that noise? At first he thought it sounded like a machine, like the creak of a rusty hinge, but—there it is again! It sounds more like a voice. A weird voice, though. Some kind of animal, maybe?

“What the—what kinda weird cat is that?” he asks incredulously.

“That’s not a cat,” Impulse breathes. The eye covered by the burn scar is droopy as always, but his good eye is open wide, and he scrambles over the trash bags at the mouth of the alleyway as fast as his stocky legs and arms can carry him. Clouds of flies emerge, disturbed by the motion, and his foot suddenly slips and sinks into the garbage with a wet squish. 

A sickly rotten smell is rising. Skizz just about wants to gag. “Dude, that’s gross, what are you—?”

“Hang on!” Impulse hisses at him. “Shh!”

They pause and listen. There’s that sound again. Impulse turns his head, following it, and locks onto a faded blue dumpster.

“What is that?” Skizz asks again.

Impulse doesn’t answer, but waves him over. “Come here.” There’s urgency in his voice. “Give me a boost.”

Skizz is…confused. And a little grossed out. But Impulse seems to know something that he doesn’t, so…sure. He’ll bite.

He climbs over the stinking garbage, scrambles down to his buddy’s side, and takes a knee next to the dumpster so that Impulse can use his thigh as a step to see over the edge. Skizz himself can’t see jack squat from down here; all he can do is hold the back of Impulse’s leg so that he doesn’t fall off. 

Impulse is holding the lid open with one hand and rummaging through the trash with the other. He pushes one bag over the edge and lets it splat onto the alleyway pavement.

Squelch. 

Skizz wrinkles his nose and valiantly swallows down the bile that rises in his throat.

The voice comes again—it’s faint, but it sounds almost human—and suddenly Impulse drops everything and dives in up to his waist. The dumpster lid slams down on his back.

“Dude!” exclaims Skizz.

After a moment that really wasn’t all that long but felt like an eternity, Impulse shimmies back out, and Skizz carefully helps him step down onto the pavement. Impulse isn’t using his arms. They’re taken up by a little bundle of dirty cloth that he’s clutching to his chest. 

The noise is louder this time. It’s coming out of the cloth.

Feeble, croaking, human cries.

“Oh my gosh,” whispers Impulse. “Okay. Okay. Go away!” he hisses at the flies, shooing them away. He tucks the tiny little body in close to his chest as it squalls at him. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Yeah, I hear ya. I hear ya. It’s okay.”

“What the…?” Skizz can’t believe what he’s seeing.

Five tiny fingers clutch at Impulse’s collar for dear life, and the croaking cries continue; not strong, but ghostly and clogged with congestion, and Impulse’s face is screwing up like he’ll cry. “Yeah, I know.” The gentle murmurs continue. “They left you. I’m sorry. It’s okay. We’re here now. It’s okay.”

Skizz slowly stands up, not even bothering to dust off the boot print on his thigh. This is it: their first survivor.

This is…definitely not the way he thought this would go.

Impulse stares helplessly down at the bundle in his arms for a moment. The flies are still swirling around his head. “Skizz, we gotta…”

He doesn’t even have to finish it. “Yeah.”

Together, they pick their way over the piles of garbage and slide down the mountain of plastic bags and back out into the main road. Skizz takes a gulp of air the moment they’re free. It feels like he can breathe again.

Impulse doesn’t even pause. He’s on a mission. He rounds the corner, sits down on a nearby crate, slings the pack off his shoulder, and begins to rummage through it. 

He’s leaving his back vulnerable. Of course he is. Despite the short time he worked in the Underground, he never did truly adopt the mindset of a street rat. But that’s fine. Skizz can be paranoid enough for both of them. He slides up next to Impulse, hand on his gun, and checks up and down the street. 

All clear. Not a soul to be seen. 

The gears in his brain are turning as he listens to the sounds behind him. Impulse’s movements. The rustle of cloth and burlap. Tiny, feeble wails. The water canteen sloshes, and the metal clasp on the strap clinks against the bottle, and the twist cap pops and rasps as it’s spun open.

Skizz doesn’t turn his head. The gravity of this situation is slowly settling on him, and he’s starting to get angry. 

A baby in a dumpster. A baby in a dumpster.

He’s half asking Impulse, half asking the ether, as he mumbles, “Who the hell would throw away a baby?”

Impulse sighs. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “Someone who couldn’t take care of her.”

Skizz blinks. “Her?”

He turns and looks over his buddy’s shoulder. Yep, sure enough. Impulse has the dirty cloth unwrapped and spread open on his lap, and the little naked pink thing in it is indeed a girl.

Impulse seems to be giving her a sponge bath, as best he can. He pours a little water on his handkerchief, wrings it out, rubs some soap from his pack on the corner, and begins to wipe the grime and urine and old feces off her tiny body. 

Judging by the squirming and croaking whimpers that follow, she does not seem to appreciate this.

Something is wrong. Skizz can’t quite put his finger on it until he realizes that she’s skinny. 

Too skinny. 

He hasn’t seen many infants up close, but he knows they’re not supposed to look like that. They’re supposed to have plump cheeks and round bellies and pudgy fingers, not clear cheekbones and visible ribs and limbs like sticks. Her skin is bruised in places and mottled with rashes and bug bites. It’s pretty clear she’s not in good shape. If they hadn’t found her when they did…

God. He doesn’t even want to think about that. 

He lets a huff out through his nose and turns away before he tries to punch someone whose face isn’t here to be punched.

As soon as she’s relatively clean, Impulse wraps the baby in his own spare shirt. “There,” he says softly, in a high and gentle voice that Skizz has never heard him use before, bouncing her and cuddling her close. “There ya go. See, that’s better, right? All clean?”

Her little face screws up, and the whimpering continues.

“Okay, yeah, I guess not.” He sets her down again, grabs the soap bar, and hesitates. “Skizz, can you…?”

He turns. “What’s up?”

“I can’t—my hands are—I don’t wanna touch my canteen, it’s—”

“Oh, okay, yeah, I gotcha.”

A quick splash from Skizz’s canteen later, and Impulse starts to lather up the soap in his hands. The baby keeps crying.

Skizz kneels nearby, eyebrows furrowed as he peers at her. “Whaddya think is wrong?”

Impulse sounds sad and helpless. “She’s probably hungry.”

Skizz can feel his eyebrows going sky-high. He knows what’s involved in that, and…

“Well, I dunno how to tell you this, dude, but we’re not exactly equipped for that.”

“I know, Skizz!” Impulse snaps at him.

Skizz retreats, hands up. “Whoa, hey.”

Impulse backpedals immediately. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just—” He cuts himself off with a harsh sigh. His voice is still high and strained. “I’m stressed out right now, dude.”

“No, that’s okay. I get it.”

Skizz can’t help but feel a little bit bad as he pours a steady stream of water over Impulse’s hands. Boy, he does not seem to be in the mood for getting cheered up right now. He’s taking this really hard.

Okay. It’s okay. That’s fine. What bothers his best friend bothers him too. They can work through this together. 

Impulse is still flicking droplets off his hands as he rummages in his pack again. Skizz is racking his brain now. “Maybe we could find someone to take care of her?”

“I don’t know if we can count on that,” Impulse replies dejectedly. “We haven’t seen anyone all day.”

“Well, what other choice do we have?”

Impulse flips open his food tin, stares at the contents, and then looks at the baby again.

“You can’t be serious.” There’s nothing in there but beef jerky and hard cheese. 

“I don’t know,” Impulse says slowly.

“Dude, she doesn’t even have teeth.”

“I think…she might be old enough?” Impulse seems to just be talking to himself now. “She’s not a newborn, but I can’t quite tell…she’s so tiny.” He draws in a shaky breath and hesitates. And then, as Skizz watches, his face screws up with determination and he plunges his hand into the food tin. “Screw it. I’m just gonna go for it.”

“Go for what?”

Impulse doesn’t seem to hear him. He pulls out a carrot, takes a bite, and chews it, staring intensely at the baby’s little red face as if it’s the only thing in the universe.

“What are you—?”

He gets his answer when, after an excessive amount of chewing, Impulse lifts her off his lap and up to his face, and her crying suddenly stops when he puts his mouth on her tiny lips.

“Dude!” Skizz cries, shocked.

Impulse glares at him, and Skizz snaps his mouth shut. He has a million objections to this—not the least of them being that that kid was in a dumpster, she’s probably got like ten million diseases, anyone who touches her spit is gonna get so sick and he’s gonna regret this—but clearly Impulse is not hearing it right now.

He pulls away. There’s a bit of orange paste on the side of her mouth that he gently nudges back in with the back of his finger. She smacks on it, little pink tongue working, clearly unsure about whatever this is, but eventually swallows and whimpers again.

Impulse seems to take this as a request for more food. Another little mouthful of carrot. Another pause to see if she swallowed it. This time, there’s no noise; she just opens her mouth, and she is fed again.

Skizz watches in almost morbid fascination for a little longer. It’s desperate and disgusting, but strangely tender, and he doesn’t know what exactly to do with it.

He wordlessly reaches into his own pack, pulls out whatever veggies and dried fruits he had, and slips them into Impulse’s food tin. If he’s feeding the kid like this, he’s gonna need them more.

This process continues long enough for Skizz to get bored of it, but not quite enough for him to stop thinking it’s weird, until the baby is starting to blink slowly and sleepily in Impulse’s arms. 

He raises her to his shoulder. She curls into the crook of his neck, her little head tucking under his chin, like it’s always belonged there, and goes quiet and still.

After a long moment, Impulse turns and meets Skizz’s eye, pointing to the little one with a question on his face.

Skizz checks. Her eyes are closed, and her breath is purring into Impulse’s neck.

“She’s asleep,” he whispers. He doesn’t know much about kids, but he knows enough to be quiet.

Impulse nods, looking relieved, and swallows whatever he had left in the pocket of his cheek.

Skizz wordlessly begins to pack up. The light is fading. The dull grey blanket of clouds that’s been threatening to rain all day has finally begun to sprinkle. Night is almost here, but the street lights have not come on; they loom overhead, dark and dead, like mourners with bent heads in procession along the street.

Impulse still sits there, rubbing the baby’s back and looking lost in thought.

Skizz breaks the silence with a quiet question. “Do you think it’s gonna work?”

Impulse is quiet too. “I don’t know. I just…I had to try.”

Skizz pauses. Maybe it’s safe to finally venture this. “You’re gonna get sick.”

Impulse sets his jaw. “Then I’ll get sick.”

That stubbornness is back. The stubbornness that Skizz both loves and finds oh so very annoying. He sighs. He knows he can’t argue with Impulse when he’s like this.

“Okay,” he relents.

Deep down he’s proud of him, though.

He stands up with a grunt—ow, ow, old knees—and offers a hand to Impulse. “Come on, buddy,” he says softly. “Let’s get a move on. Storm’s comin’.”

------

They’re sitting in the corner of a graffitied, trashed parking garage as the rain pours down. Skizz is boiling some rainwater to refill their canteens, gnawing on a stick of beef jerky from his pack as he watches the fire. Impulse is rubbing salve on his burn scars. The baby is in his lap, mercifully asleep.

The city is black as tar. There’s not a single light in any window. The little fire under the travel pot isn’t very strong, but it’s the only reason this garage isn’t completely dark; it casts a faint, timid red glow on the underside of their faces, and illuminates the ceiling, and sends long black shadows flickering across the dirty concrete floor.

They called this area Uptown, once. It used to be a blazing glow of technicolor neon lights and holograms, so dazzling and brilliant that the nighttime was almost brighter than the day. Now it’s dark, and still, and silent, and a little fire can outshine it all.

Somehow, out of all the uncanny things about coming back to the City, that’s the weirdest part.

In the darkness, a flash of blue-white light slices the air, and thunder purrs and grumbles overhead. 

Skizz pauses mid-chew and looks up. He can’t help his jaw going a little slack in awe.

When was the last time he heard a good storm like this? It’s been a while. Storms happen every monsoon season back home, of course, but the sounds of the surface are pretty muted down in the Silo. The last time he was up here in the rain must have been…

Damn, almost a decade ago.

It feels like a lifetime.

Impulse’s face, lit by firelight, is wide-eyed and staring out at the sky as well. It’s dark and featureless out there, but occasional flashes of lightning in the distance reveal the billowing stacks of voluminous clouds.

“Wow,” he says softly.

“Yeah,” Skizz whispers back. He takes a deep breath. The air smells different in the rain; rich and clear and clean. 

It’s beautiful up here. Dangerous, of course. Terrifying. But beautiful too.

After a long moment to watch the rain, Impulse puts the salve away in his pack and pulls out a little dropper bottle of saline. Skizz, content that the fire will survive, starts to prepare their bed pallet; he unclips the cloak on his shoulder and spreads it out flat in the corner.

Impulse’s head is tilted back to look at the ceiling so that he can position the dropper just right—the burns that munched half his face into mince meat also damaged the tear ducts in the nearby eye—and the position is constricting his neck and makes his voice sound funny when he speaks. “I’m trying to think of a name for her.”

Skizz smooths the wrinkles out of his cloak and pats it down. “For the baby?”

“Yeah.”

Skizz stands up and walks over to grab Impulse’s cloak—he’s already taken it off and left it in a rumpled heap by his feet—and he takes the opportunity to look over his buddy’s shoulder at the baby’s sleeping face. “Mmm…Skizzarina.”

“No.” The answer is immediate and unamused. 

“Skizzibella.”

“No.”

“Skizzabeth.”

Impulse gives up on the dropper and lifts his head to scold Skizz. “You gonna be helpful or not?”

“What are you talking about?” He heads back over to the corner, shakes Impulse’s cloak out, then flips it into the air and lets it gently drift down flat on top of his own cloak. “Those are great names.”

Impulse sighs—and it’s Skizz’s favorite sigh, the “Skizz why are you like this” sigh—but he doesn’t really sound mad, just annoyed. 

Skizz just hoot-giggles. Mission success. 

The chores continue. Impulse puts the saline in his eye. Skizz refills the canteens. He and Impulse take turns holding the baby while the other washes up with rainwater and the soap they brought.

This is Skizz’s first time holding a baby. It’s…strangely unintuitive and uncomfortable. He’s seen mothers carry their children in the crook of their arms, but he can’t seem to get the hang of it—and Impulse was very insistent that he support her head and neck—so he just settles for sitting down and putting the baby in his lap. At least this way her head is straight, and he knows she won’t fall.

She’s so delicate. Tiny, wobbly, fragile. Helpless. She’s also very warm. Like uncomfortably warm. He’s not sure how such a tiny body could be putting out that much heat.

Impulse is behind him, washing up. Skizz doesn’t look at him, to give him some privacy, but he can hear the water splashing on the concrete floor as he tosses the question over his shoulder. “Are they supposed to be this warm?”

Impulse doesn’t answer immediately, but when he does, he sounds sad. “No. She has a fever.”

“Oh.” Skizz is quiet for a moment, staring down at her little face. Makes sense. She’s definitely very sick. “Well, that means she’s fighting it, and she’s gonna be okay, right?”

Impulse sighs. “I hope so.”

They trade off after a few minutes. Skizz washes up, and then stretches out on their pallet. He’s still got his boots on. If he learned nothing else from his decades of life in the Underground, he damn well learned to never let his guard down.

A moment later, Impulse joins him. He’d put the baby back into his jacket, a tiny lump curled up against his sternum, slumbering against his chest. He shifts around a bit, trying to get comfortable without squishing her, and then finally settles on lying on his side, facing Skizz.

Skizz turns his head. “Comfy?”

Impulse pouts. “No.”  

Skizz sniffs. “Good.” He puts his arm around Impulse, spreads his jacket over the both of them like a tiny blanket, and settles in with a contented grunt. “Me neither.”

Impulse sighs. He sounds very very sorry for himself. But eventually, Skizz feels movement under his arm as Impulse scoots closer, and a head of damp hair brushes up against the underside of his chin.

Skizz pulls him close and shuts his eyes.

The little fire dies down to glowing coals and then quietly goes out.

The rain drones on, thunder rumbling in the distance.

Next [WIP] >

List of people included, roughly form left to right

- Rendog

- Geminitay

- Smajor

- Martyn ITLW

- Oli (and the snails)

- GTWScar

- ImpulseSV

- Skizzleman

- Bdubs

- Grian

- Etho

- Trivia Bot and the Question Makers ( @hopepetal , @cherrifire , @applestruda , @cocoabats , @driflew , @xmaruu11 )

- Mumbo Jumbo

- Jimmy Solidarity

- Tangotek

- BigB

- LDShadowlady

- Joel Smallishbeans

- Zombiecleo

- Pearlescentmoon

Closeups