"So," Xisuma started, getting the attention of all of the rule breakers who were gathered up.
"Here we go dude." Iskall mumbled, shifting from foot to foot.
"Whatever happens, we kinda deserve it." Tango whispered.
"I'm just glad 'ey're both ok." Stress mumbled.
"So." Xisuma said a little louder, getting all of the chatter to stop immediately. "Because of your expedition, you all get a special job."
Everyone seemed uneasy at the wording, but no one said anything, letting Xisuma continue agonizingly slowly to rub it in. they deserved it, but it was still a little cruel.
"You seemed so good at organizing yourselves the first time during your adventure, that I'm going to let you organize yourselves again to pack up all of the tents while we go to the lake." He announced.
Cleaning up tents wasn't too horrible, besides the fact that all of them were near falling asleep standing up, making the task way harder.
"You can leave a few tents out to sleep yourselves when you're done, or join the rest of us at the lake. I'll have the Hermits pack up their personal belongings before we leave, so it's easier for you to move everything to the bus." X finished.
"Clean up duty?" Ren groaned, slouching his shoulders.
"Would you rather get detention for the next month or get phone calls home?"
"Nah dude I'm good! I'm good!" Ren instantly back tracked, waving his hands in front of him.
"Good."
Scar gasped silently, turning behind the tent he was near so they didn't notice him. They were going to pack up all of the tents while he was with everyone else, and that meant they might find Jellie.
He was going to get in so much trouble if everyone found her, and she could get spooked by everyone freaking out and-
Scar shook his head, clearing his negative thoughts, and peeked back inside the sliver of his tent still open, seeing her peacefully curled up on his sleeping bag.
"Ok.." He whispered. "I'll just take her with me then."
"Scar?" Someone tapped his shoulder, and he whipped around, heart racing.
"Ack! You scared me G!" He chuckled out, trying to calm down and act normal.
"Sorry Scar," Grian cleared his throat. "X just told us to get everyone to gather 'round the campfire."
"Oh why thank you for telling me!" Scar said, ignoring the sweat dripping down his forehead.
"Why were you looking in your tent like...?" Grian trailed off, trying to lazily peek over Scar's shoulder. He seemed way more tired than he had when he talked to Scar earlier, and although Scar felt sorry for him, it was also relieving that he wasn't totally present.
"Oh I was just making sure I had everything for the beach day!" Scar answered a little too quickly.
"How did you know-?"
"Rumors are spreading." Scar cut him off. "Wanna walk to the fire together?"
Grian, very clearly sleep deprived, nodded his head slowly, seemingly already forgetting half of the conversation.
"Great!" Scar grinned, quickly zipping up the rest of the tent, before grabbing Grian's arm to tug him away from it. He would just have to get Jellie in his backpack before they went to the lake, and he had plenty of time for that! Keeping Grian and anyone else away from his tent until then, though, was the slight issue.
"Good morning hermits!" Xisuma said when everyone had gathered around. "Today is our final day of camp, and we're going to the lake nearby!"
Cheers and hollars yelled out and a few people were clapping briefly.
Xisuma smiled and continued, "It's a 15 minute walk away, so only bring what you can carry. After you're packed up for the lake, take out an extra pair of clothes to change into if you're swimming and anything else you might need for the day and pack up everything else. Some hermits have volunteered to stay behind for a while to pack up the tents, so we want all personal supplies to be safely packed and out of the way for them."
A few hermits who had already heard the gossip and connected the dots stiffed a giggle, still feeling a little bad for them.
"I'll keep it short so we have time for everything today, so that's it. Pack up and get ready!" Xisuma finished, waving his hands little to end the meeting and let everyone walk away.
Scar left the group rather quickly, ditching Grian in the crowd to make sure he could make it to his tent without anyone discovering Jellie before he could hide her.
"Oh phew there you are sweetie." He whispered, holding out his arms so she could walk over and he could scoop her up gently. "We have a small change of plans for today alright?"
"Scar!" A familiar voice called outside of the tent and Scar froze, until he recognized it as Cub's and relaxed a little, much to the comfort of Jellie who he had accidentally squeezed.
"Yes Cub?"
"You heard the thing about packing up all your stuff right?" He asked as he stepped inside, zipping it up quickly behind him with a glance outside.
"Yeah."
"Well what are you gonna do about Jellie?"
"Well uh-" Scar chuckled nervously, looking down at Jellie before continuing. "I was gonna bring her with us?"
"Are you crazy?" Cub whisper yelled.
"It's not like I have another choice." Scar frowned. "It's not like she'll be jumping into the water anyways."
"But how are you gonna carry her there?"
"Same way I brought her!" Scar smiled, dragging his backpack over to his side.
"Are you serious?"
"Do you have a better plan?"
Cub breathed in to answer and paused, frowning.
"That's what I thought." Scar finished.
Cub then lit up with an idea, getting a curious look from Scar.
"Ok this might not help much, but how about you bring an umbrella to hide her better if she needs to pop her head out?" Cub pulled out his umbrella as he said it, showing it to Scar.
"Why did you bring that?"
"Always prepared."
Scar hummed with an impressed nod, and put it to the side of his bag. "Good idea, thanks."
He put a towel on the bottom which would most likely be for sitting on if there was sand and then got all of his clothes more or less stuffed into his larger bag. Last but very much not least, he carefully picked up Jellie, kissing her on head before lowering her into his backpack.
"Ready?" Cub asked a little nervously, lifting his head up after his own stuff had been stuffed into various bags.
"As I'll ever be~" Scar sang out, matching the tune of the song.
"Ok, I should've seen that coming." Cub chuckled.
"So how are we gonna divide this up guys?" Beef asked, eyes wandering between his various sleep deprived friends. It wasn't like he was much off himself, but he still felt bad that some of them had to work when it wasn't their idea.
"We all get started on a tent and if we finish it, find another?" Zed suggested.
"Let's count how many we want to save first." Grian said, slightly yawning. "For people who want to sleep instead of going to the lake."
"Then we won't have to clean as much either." Impulse mentioned, vaguely optimistically.
"Alright, how many of us want to take a nap?" Cleo offered, doing her best to keep her eyes open.
The enteriety of team ZIT were the first to shoot up their hands, followed by a drowsy Cleo, yawning False, slightly swaying Grian, and a mildly confused Mumbo. Etho and Beef hesitated before they both realized how tired they were standing still, and raised their hands too.
"Ok doing the math that's uh-" Grian paused, "... a number of tents."
"Wow how helpful G." Iskall scoffed.
"C'mon guys you know I can't do math; Why'd you think it was different without any energy and even less brain power than normal?"
Iskall rolled their eyes and started pointing to people, counting under their breath. "1, 2, 3... 4,5,6,7 people. Divide by two and subtract 1.... So 4 tents if you 3," They pointed to team ZIT. "-stay in your tent, and everyone else doubles up."
"That's math I can live with." False said.
"We can just keep the tents with our stuff already in it." Zed said. "I'm not moving my experiments until morning."
"It is morning." Tango chuckled lightly.
Zed blinked slowly at him. "Not until I sleep then."
"Ok," Doc said, stopping the side conversations. "Let's get to it."
Depressed, sarcastic cheers swept through them, along with sighs and silent acceptance. Woo.
They started to fan out to take down other tents, and Grian paused. Scar had been acting really weird before they left and kept trying to hide whatever was in his tent. Call it invasion of privacy or whatever you want, but Grian was curious, and as sleep deprived as he was, no seconds thoughts had a chance to stop him.
"I call Scar's tent!" He yelled out, speed walking to said tent because any form of running would probably make him pass out.
"Why are you so excited about Scar's tent?" Iskall asked skeptically.
"Uh- I just want a smaller one so it's easier." Grian defended quickly. "I'm not taking a big one down myself is all." He pointed to Mumbo, eyes surprisingly awake-looking instead of droopy looking like everyone else. He was struggling to take down Wels, Hypno, and Jevin's tent, even as tall as he was and had to stand on his tippy toes to reach the top.
"Ok then." Iskall let it go, figuring it wasn't worth it to argue with a sleep deprived grian. Or even a normal Grian for that matter, but sleep deprived Grian was probably worse to argue with, no matter how bad a liar he was.
Grian waited until Iskall left to help Mumbo before he zipped open the tent. He expected to see something interesting, something worthy of being a secret to hide, but nothing was there.
"Seriously?" Grian whispered to himself, "Why does Scar gotta act so sus and get me all curious?"
He sighed, and walked in anyways to see if he could unclip the poles more easily from the inside like Mumbo was trying. Maybe the spoon found the secret after all.
There was some sand in the tent, which was really weird because wasn't the lake day today? How did Scar manage to get sand in here already?
Grian chuckled to himself. "Maybe he really is a wizard."
"So you're not tired then, Stress?" Cleo chirped, walking past their tent to start on Xisuma's and Joe. She figured if Joe left anything or forgot a pen, she could return it more easily than letting it get lost in the chaos. Plus taking down a smaller tent was easier, and she was lazy. Maybe that was the main reason actually.
"Somehow?" She chuckled. "I was really tired on the walk back but after that it sorta jus' stopped."
Cleo started on the outside, grabbing a pole to try to unhook it from far away.
"Oh you hit your 4 am limit." False said, catching up to them, and Stress looked at her quizzically. "It means when you stay up past 4am usually, your brian just stops telling you you're tired for the day."
"Oh, well then why do you luvs not feel awake?" Stress asked. She walked closer to the tent and bent down to help unsecure the pole from below. Cleo whispered a thank you as the pole was free and it was easier to unhook it from the top.
"I climbed a tree. My limps want me to faceplant into the grass and pass out." False explained.
"And I ran through the forest between the trails." Cleo added. "I still have twigs in my hair." She grumbled, picking one out to prove a point with her free hand.
"Well I'm glad I chose not to run that last trek." Stress said, jumping up from her spot. "Feelin' fresh as daisy."
"Not for long." Cleo smirked, throwing the first pole into the grass, then turned to False. "Wanna bet she'll pass out at the beach or on the bus?"
"Hmm not sure, I think I gotta go with bus though." False tapped her chin overdramatically,
"Hey! Don't you two geaseres go betting on me!"
"Fine, if you last the whole day and don't fall asleep until you're home, then you win." Cleo offered.
"Wait, what are we betting here?" False asked. "I'm not selling my soul away on some melatonin."
"How about a free IOU, applicable for dares, pranks, truths, or homework copying."
False thought for a moment. "Ok, that seems fair."
"I'm in! You two outta be real confident to have no say in this. It's me sleep schedule, not yours."
"Oh I do. Sleep is unavoidable, even for the undead in my case." Cleo chimed. "And how about if you sleep at the beach or on the bus, each of us get an IOU, but if you make it home awake, you have to give each of us one?" She clarified. She didn't really want to be stuck as a loser no matter what, if Stress didn't fall asleep at the lake, which was more unlikely.
Stress, feeling over confident as the two both looked ready to sleep any second, stuck her hand out.
"Deal."
"You think they're ok?" Xisuma asked nervously, sitting down on his towel.
"I think they're fine, X." Joe said. "You need to stop worrying so much."
"The last time I didn't worry enough Keralis and Bdubs got lost, and Bdubs got injured."
"And that was not your fault, nore in your control." Joe replied. "It's taking down tents. They can't screw it up more than they could putting them up."
"I guess you're right." Xisuma sighed.
------
(2282 words above the line!)
heeeeyyyyy been a while huh? sorry about the month long break without any warning! life is getting a bit hectic and my motivation had a huge crash somewhere in the middle of it. can't promise posts will get more consistent just yet sorry! have a good day or night everyone!