The hermits woke up bright and early the next morning-more or less-, and now, it was the day of the hike everyone had been waiting for.

First off though, actually getting ready for the day.....

Scar woke up with Jellie laying on his chest peacefully, her paw on his face. He pushed the paw to the side so he could get a better look at her adorable face and started to pet her to carefully wake her up.

"Come on Jellie, I gotta get up-" He mumbled and tried to shoo her off. He reluctantly got up, but in a slight bit of retaliation she stretched while she was on his stomach, extending her claws on his chest.

"Ow!"

"Wha- what's going on?" Cub asked, quicking sitting up himself and trying to shake the sleep off of him.

Jellie, satisfied with her work, jumped off of Scar and went over to the bed he had laid out the night before, comfortably sitting on that instead.

Scar grumbled, "Everything's fine, Jellie's just being a meanie."

Cub rolled his eyes and yawned, "Welp dude, we better get up. I heard people moving around outside already and we have that hike today."

Scar rolled back his shoulders and stretched after he stood up. "Yeah, you're right."

"Come on Bubbles get up! We gotta get ready for the hike!"

"Just 5 more hours...." Bdubs mumbled drowsily, snuggling deeper into his pillow to block out the light.

"If you don't get up yourself, I'm telling Etho and Grian to get you out." Keralis said with an evil smile on his face.

"nO NOPE I'M UP!" Bdubs shot up as quickly as he could. He did not want to be soaked this early in the morning, or dragged out by his ankles, or something equally terrible that the two would come up with to get him up.

Keralis giggled while Bdubs shot him a glare. Kerlais was still in his pjs, but his hair was combed and his signature hat was on. Bdubs marveled at how awake he already looked before breakfast or any sort of caffeine. Magic seemed like a viable answer, so he just went with that.

"EVERYONE UP! WE'RE EATING BREAKFAST AND THEN GOING ON THE BIG HIKE!" A very loud Xisuma screamed at the drowsy hermits.

Who- who the frick gave Xisumavoid a megaphone? Why- why did anyone think that was a good idea?!

"You're going to wake the whole forest with that thing dude!" Ren called out, stepping out of his tent with messy hair and an annoyed look on his face.

XB emerged from the tent after him, looking a little less upset with the interruption and a little more awake, and it was clear who had woken up first out of the two.

"Oh my god it's too early for this." False groaned as she emerged from her tent.

"I don't know what you're talking about, False! It's so nice out!" Gem beamed. It looked like she had been up for probably an hour already, with her hair already braided again and her eyes bright. False wasn't sure she would be able to keep up with her energy today.

Cleo came out next, with her wild orange hair tangled and draping over her face. She looked just about as tired as False felt.

"Let's start the hike to the bathroom," Cleo groaned. "I'm not getting my hair under control without a full scale mirror.

Stress giggled next to her. "I told ya you should'f tied it up for the night! The pillows we brought weren't going to help wif that."

"Yeah yeah I get it now," Cleo said. She grabbed a change of clothes, and a very much needed comb from her bag and flipped her hair around so she could at least see.

"I'll help ya with it luv," Stress said.

"Thank you."

False chuckled and grabbed her stuff too, and the three of them set off to the bathrooms to get ready.

"I'm glad you got me up earlier than this," Pearl told Gem as everyone rushed around them. "I would not've wanted to be a part of this chaos this early in the morning." She chuckled.

"Plus we got to see those gorgeous flowers glow before the sun came up!" Gem smiled.

"Yeah, those were really pretty. I'm surprised they look so normal during the day actually." Pearl commented. Looking towards the edge of the forest where they had found them earlier that morning. "I probably couldn't tell them apart from the normal flora anymore."

"DOC GET BACK HERE WITH MY HEADBAND THIS SECOND OR I'M GONNA-"

Bdubs was running and screaming, and stopped when he saw the two hermits watching him.

"Oh hey, Pearl and Gem!" Bdubs tone changed completely. "Hey- you're fast, right? Do you think you could chase down Doc and get my headband back? Etho took it as a prank, and Beef told him to give it to Ren, who gave it to Doc, and here we are."

Bdubs was still in his pjs, with speckled star pants and a simple black tee-shirt with "NHO" written on it in white letters. Pearl assumed it was probably a band or something he liked.

Without his headband holding up his hair, it flopped onto his face and was messy, and seemed like it would be annoying to deal with. They understood why he wanted it back.

"Why don't you just ask for it back?" Pearl asked the obvious.

"Cause that jerk would just make some height joke about how he couldn't hear me from his level or something, or hold it out of my reach. He's not even that tall!"

Pearl glanced at Doc who was a good distance away at this point holding the red bandana in his hand loosely. He sure looked "that tall", standing next to Etho and Ren, and Bdubs clearly wasn't as tall as those two either.

"Uh huh." She mumbled with a snicker. Gem heard her and stifled a laugh herself, while Bdubs was turned around, glaring at Doc from the other side of the camp.

"I'll get it back for you Bdubs." Gem said with a nod.

"Thank you," He sighed in relief.

"Ooh how ya going to do that Gem?" Pearl asked, curious. It wasn't like Gem could reach high enough to grab it whether she could catch him or not, and Doc wasn't probably going to give it back so fast knowing she would just give it right back to Bdubs.

"You'll see!"

The two watched Gem skip over innocently and talk to Doc. At first he didn't look all too convinced, shooting a look at them two- to which Bdubs stuck his tongue at him- and then back at Gem. Gem made a motion with her hand to get him to bend down, so she could whisper something in his ear.

Pretty quickly his eyes went wide and darted to the ground, surprising Pearl and Bdubs. It was hard to see, but Pearl saw him catching a glance at someone else near the tents. She tried to connect the dots, but it was too crowded to make out who it was, and she paid her attention back to the two. Bdubs didn't notice.

Doc lifted his head back up, asked a question with squinted eyes, earning an innocent nod from Gem. He lifted his hand out with the bandage strikingly red in his palm. She took and waved behind her, to which he said something, nodded, and turned away.

"How-... how did you do that!?" Bdubs exclaimed as she got back, jaw dropped.

"Yeah..... How did you do that, Gem?" Pearl eyed her, to which Gem avoided eye contact. A firm sign that she would tell Pearl when Bdubs had left.

Gem handed bdubs back the bandage and smiled, "A forest goddess never reveals her secrets."

"Well uh- thanks Gem. I feel like I owe you now," He chuckled a little sheepishly.

"Eh no worry, you'd do the same if someone took my things." She waved it off.

"Oh Bubbles! You look adorable with your hair down!" A new unmistakable voice skipped over, also in pjs, and waved at the three.

"Well take it in now, because once I find a mirror it's going back up" Bdubs replied smoothly.

"There are mirrors in the bathrooms. Wanna walk together?" Keralis asked.

"Of course Ker!" Bdubs replied.

"Hey Bdubs! Keralis! We're all going to the boys bathroom at once since it's a bit of a walk! You coming?" Scar yelled over a bag of his own supplies in his arms.

"Yeah guys wait up!" Bubs yelled back.

He thanked Gem quickly again and grabbed Keralis's hand, dragging him towards the group.

Pearl watched the two leave and skooched closer to Gem, lowering her voice.

"So how did you get the bandana back?" Pearl asked quietly.

"Just as you taught me." Gem answered calmly. "Blackmail."

Pearl gave her a fistbumb and a nod of approval before Gem continued. "Turns out waking up early for those flowers came in handy."

"I am so glad we woke up early and avoided the crowd," Hypno nodded. Wels and Joe were next to him and watching the others rushing back and forth, grabbing clothes and toothbrushes and hairbrushes, making sure they had everything before the 5 minute walk to the bathrooms.

"As much as I appreciated a good sleep in, I would have to say I agree with you." Joe said, adjusting his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"Too bad Jevin insisted on the extra 15 minutes of sleep. Sucks to be him!" Wels snickered. iJevin was among the crowd, dragging behind with a bag of clothes loosely hanging in his hand. They could see the annoyed expression on his face mixed with droopy eyes from the other side of camp.

"Serves him right for scaring us last night." Hypno continued. "No idea if Mumbo will ever recover from that. At least not his dignity with that shriek."

Wels stifled a laugh and glanced at the mustache man in question. His hair was all messy still with a cow lick fanning out in every direction, but his moustache was still groomed to perfection.

"I would think Cleo had the most terrifying story though. We're not letting her tell another one." Joe said.

Both Wels and Hypno agreed with that.

Finally, after what felt like forever for a few impatient hermits, the large group walked to the bathrooms together. The crisp morning air woke them up, and moving around kept it that way. Despite the annoyed tone a few hermits kept from being woken up, they could all agree the forest was beautiful in the morning. 

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I'm only doing one preparing chapter this time I promise! Thank you for reading! And if you can, go take a nice walk outside! It's healthy for you! Byeeeee!!!!