#Someday I would not mind having a smaller lawn and a larger bit of land where I could just dump leaves | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rocksandrobots · 5 years

Text

Of Rocks and Robots Ch. 2 - The First Night

Varian landed ungracefully on the ground. He looked up to see if any of the knights had seen him fly off the slide, but none were around. He picked himself up and inspected his surroundings. He stood in an alleyway between two tall towers; the crystal slide he had just slid down attached to the side of one of them.

A few moments passed and he nervously began to shift his weight from foot to foot as he waited for someone to appear. Just when he had started to think that the people he had met had abandoned him, he saw the green knight, Wasabi, exit out the front of the building. He turned to find Varian and upon seeing him he smiled and waved. Varian returned the smile and jogged over to where he stood.

“Have fun?” The tall man queried. Varian nodded a reply, out of breath from both the ride down and from running. The man just smiled back at him and then motioned for Varian to follow. He led them to another alley a short ways away. In it was parked a strange metal vehicle on wheels. It looked similar to the ones the men in blue had rode in, only smaller, with no flashing lights on top, and was painted green.

“Wow!” Varian exclaimed as he ran to inspect the new machine. “What is it?”

“Uh…A car.” Wasabi replied as if it was the most obvious answer in the world, but Varian was too excited to notice that he was coming across as weird to the stranger.

“How does it work?” He eagerly asked.

“Umm... Well it runs on a combustion engine. Do..do you not have cars in your world?”

“No.” Varian replied glibly. “Everyone just either walks or rides a horse.”

“Oh, wow, uh..no one’s ridden a horse around here for over a hundred years.” He said with an awkward laugh. He then cleared his throat and asked Varian if he wanted to go for a ride in the fantastic invention.

“Would I ever!?” Varian gleefully exclaimed and with that grabbed the handle of the door, flung it open, and hopped inside. Varian looked in wonder at the dashboard, at all the knobs and dials, and tried to mentally guess what each may do. Wasabi entered from the other side and sat in front of a wheel that Varian guessed was for steering.

“Now the first thing one must always remember to do when riding in a car,” Wasabi instructed with a serious air, "is to strap in one’s seat belt.” With that he grabbed the aforementioned “seat belt” and pulled it over his shoulder buckling it into the metal buckle on the opposite side. Varian dutifully mimicked his action and once completed looked up at the larger man and shyly smiled; looking for acknowledgment that he did it right. The knight smiled back at him approvingly. He then took a small key from his side pocket, placed it in a keyhole next to the wheel, and gave the key a turn. The car roared to life and Varian couldn’t help but giggle in excitement.

----------------------

Ruddiger hid himself inside an alleyway, tucked up under the open lid of a large box. He peered out at the strange people dressed in blue, wondering what they might do, praying they would just leave already. He didn’t know where he was, but it was loud and unnaturally bright. Worse, his boy, who he had arrived with, had been carried away by a strange creature and five other oddly dressed people. He had to get back to him. But how? Where would he even begin to look?

Finally the people in blue piled back into their noisy carts and rode away. He waited for several minutes to see if they would return. When they did not, Ruddiger ventured to poke his head out of the alley and look around. He was rewarded with the sight of Varian walking around the corner into another alleyway. He excitedly took off after his owner. Upon reaching the other alley though, he was greeted with the sight of Varian entering a green cart with another human also dressed in green. Ruddiger recognized the human as one of the ones who had dragged his boy away to start with.

The cart began to move, backing out of the alley, and Ruddiger had to scramble out of the way. It then stopped and turned to face the direction of the street. As it began to speed away, Ruddiger ran after it, made a flying leap, and landed on the back bumper. He then held on as it sped down the road.

----------------------

Varian pressed his face to the window of the car. His nose smooshed up against the glass as he tried to get a better look at the tall buildings as they passed by. Wasabi was off to the side steering while also explaining the various rules and regulations about driving the vehicle. Varian only half way listened. Not because he didn’t care, he did. He found the machine fascinating and wanted to know more, but he also found everything else fascinating too.

Everywhere he looked there was something new to gain his attention. It was honestly a little overwhelming because he couldn’t focus on just one thing. As soon as something grabbed his interest it would slide out of view and another thing would come along and catch his eye. He just sat in silent awe, his head swerving every which way, unable to verbally formulate the millions of questions tumbling through his mind.

Eventually as they went along the buildings got shorter and shorter and further and further apart. After a time Wasabi turned the car into a smaller side street next to a large building with multiple windows and off in the distance Varian could see other shorter but nevertheless still quite impressive buildings with well manicured lawns. Wasabi then pulled the car to a stop alongside several other similar vehicles.

“Well here we are! The San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, also known as SFIT.” Wasabi proudly proclaimed.

“This is a university?” Varian asked in wonderment. Schools of higher learning were rare and expensive places. One had to go outside of Corona to the larger cities and kingdoms to find them and only the richest of nobles and royals got admitted. Varian always knew that attending such bastions of knowledge was a mere dream for a poor farm boy, though he had always hoped to at least see one someday. And here he was about to spend the night at one! “Can I look around?”

“Well maybe tomorrow, or the day after, but the school is closed for spring break so not much is going on right now. But in the meantime it’s getting late, so let’s get cleaned up and get some sleep.” With that he stepped out of the car and Varian followed after him.

They walked into the closest building; the tall one with all the windows. Once inside they then walked up a couple of flights of stairs which lead to a long hallway with doors on either side. Wasabi stopped at the third door on the right which had the number 303 painted on the top. He pulled out another key and unlocked the door and walked inside. Once inside he took off his helmet and flipped a switch next to the door. The room flooded with light revealing a type of living quarters.

“Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourself at ho–” Wasabi stopped mid sentence as the light above him began to flicker off and on. He turned to see Varian switching the light switch up and down with a look of intense interest on his face.

“Fascinating.” Varian said with awe. “The switch appears to be connected to the light above. What connects them and what powers the light?”

“Uhh…..wires and electricity?” Wasabi said completely caught off guard by this new line of questioning.

“Electricity? Like from lightning? How do you harvest lightning?”

“From a power plant” Wasabi said slowly trying to find the words to explain what was, to him, a part of everyday life.

“A plant that generates electricity!? Oh, what kind of plant is it? Like a flower? Or a vine? Or-”

“No, not a living plant.” Wasabi interrupted. “A power plant, like a factory. They use turbines to generate electricity and use copper wires to carry the current to various places. Let me guess, you don’t use electricity in your world either?”

Varian shook his head, suddenly aware that he was completely out of place in this new world and beginning to feel more than a little awkward. He tried to curb his questions and act nonchalant in order to avoid any more embarrassment; placing his hands behind his back and taking a look around at his new surroundings.

Wasabi’s dormitory was comprised of two rooms. The first was simultaneously a sleeping quarters and living space. There was a bed and a dresser in one corner of the room and across from it a small table with kitchen supplies. Next to that was a work desk and then next to it, across from the door, a small yellow sofa, at the foot of which there laid a small green rug. There was a window above the small kitchen area with curtains to match. There wasn’t much room, but it was kept clean and neat and was obviously enough for a single occupant or two. The second room was even smaller and covered in white tiles. Upon inspection Varian deduced it was a type of washroom, but the various bits of furniture within were unlike any he had seen before and his curiosity was piqued once more.

“You can take a shower first if you want.” Wasabi offered.

The shower that he pointed to was a small tiled basin with a drain and a curtain around it, on the side of the wall was a knob and a metal bit of pipe that hung down. Varian turned the knob experimentally and water began to pour from the pipe into the basin.

“Woah” Varian breathlessly laughed as he began to turn the knob in different directions to see what different results it would produce. He was met with different increases in the water pressure and flow from the pipe.

“You gotta turn the faucet all the way to the right for the hot water” Wasabi instructed as Varian fiddled with the shower. Varian promptly followed this advice and the water coming from the pipe started to admit steam indicating that the water was indeed getting hot.

“You know, I once tried to build a hot water system like this for my village a couple of years ago using steam” Varian began to brag but his pomposity quickly deflated when he had to recount how he was unsuccessful in this attempt, “Sadly it didn’t really work out.”

“You don’t have running water, either?” Wasabi asked with a look of concern on his face.

“Well, we had a well and the river,” Varian offhandedly explained, trying to shrug off the larger man’s worry. That’s when the strange seat on the other end of the small room caught his eye.

“Oh, what’s this?” He exclaimed as he pushed down a small lever on its side. He heard a flushing noise and he looked down to see water draining out of the seat portion of the odd chair. He looked back up and immediately knew he had done something wrong when he noted the look of horror on Wasabi’s face.

----------------------

Wasabi scurried about the dorm, dusting and cleaning where he went. The stranger was in the other room taking a shower and Wasabi took this time to organize both his home and his thoughts. Cleaning and organizing was something he enjoyed. It helped him to unclutter his mind and de-stress from the day’s events, and boy what a day this one had turned out to be!

The arrival of the stranger from another world was already weird enough, but the constant new revelations about said world were starting to unnerve Wasabi. Teaching a grown teenage boy what a toilet was not something he had ever considered he would have to do in his life. What kind of hellish nightmare world didn’t have indoor plumbing anyways? He shuddered at the thought.

Soon Wasabi ran out of things to clean. He kept his room so meticulous at all times that there really wasn’t much left to do. He sighed and then decided to turn his attention to the laundry. He changed out of his armor, which was covered in dust and dirt from the explosion, and into some pajamas. He couldn’t just throw said armor into a washing machine, but he could polish it off while the other clothes were washing, so he placed it into the laundry basket anyways. He then picked up the stranger’s clothes that he had left outside of the bathroom door. They were also covered in grime and dirt from the explosion from earlier and so Wasabi had agreed to wash them as well. However he remembered that without running water or electricity there undoubtedly weren’t any washing machines in the stranger’s world either. There was no telling how long he had worn these clothes without cleaning them. Wasabi grimaced and gingerly held the articles of clothing between his forefinger and thumb as he placed them into the basket with the rest of the laundry.

Before he could head down to the dormitory’s laundry room though he needed to find something else for the boy to wear for the night. So Wasabi went scrounging around his chest of drawers to see if he could find anything that might fit. He eventually pulled out a pair of old jogging shorts. He hoped that the drawstring on them could be tied and tightened enough so they wouldn’t slip off the other boy’s small waist. In addition to this he pulled out one of his old hand knitted sweaters. He had made it back in high school and it was getting to be a little too tight for him but it still would be baggy on the kid. Wasabi shrugged. Oh well, it was just to sleep in anyways, the boy’s real clothes would be clean and dry by morning.

Wasabi looked up from what he was doing when he began to hear singing coming from the other room. The kid was taking a while, but Wasabi supposed if it was his first ever shower he would take forever too. That’s when his stomach began to growl. It’d been hours since he’d last eaten and there’s no telling how long it’d been since the stranger had eaten as well. He looked at the clock on his nightstand. Two in the morning; not much left still open except the local pizzeria. Being right next to a college they were open twenty four seven.

“Hey! I’m going to order us a pizza, do you like black olives?” Wasabi yelled through the door.

“Love them!” the boy yelled from the other side.

With that Wasabi folded the clean clothes and laid them on the sofa and then went to call in the order. He had just finished placing the call, with the man on the other end promising to deliver in five to ten minutes, when he turned around and was greeted by the sight of a raccoon clawing at his window.

Wasabi screamed. The wild creature had begun to lift up the bottom panel of the window in order to get in and was squirming his way through. Wasabi rushed over to the window to stop it, tossing his phone on his bed in passing.

“Oh no you don’t!” Wasabi barked while trying to shove the raccoon back outside. That’s when the stranger came out of the bathroom.

He stood there dripping for a few moments, towel wrapped around his waist, trying to process what he was seeing. Suddenly recognition swept across his face and his mouth split into a big grin.

“Ruddiger!” he yelled with joy and then ran up to the window and scooped the raccoon into his arms, bringing him inside and nuzzling his face in the creature’s fur as if it was a pet cat or dog.

Wasabi looked on in silent horror and confusion. Out of all the odd things the kid had done or said today this was the most baffling and disturbing to Wasabi.

“Nope! Unh-uh! No way! We don’t allow wild animals inside dormitories around here!”

“Rudggier’s not wild. He’s tame.” The boy replied with a laugh, still cooing over the masked critter.

“Rudggier? It has a name?” Wasabi asked in disbelief. “Well does it also have it’s shots?”

“Shots?” The boy echoed in confusion.

“Yes. Shots. As in Vaccines.” The boy just stared back at him blankly so Wasabi continued, “You know medicine that’s supposed to prevent you from getting sick?”

“You have medicine that stops people from ever getting sick?” Varian responded in amazement.

This sent Wasabi into a fresh new wave of panic. The kid had no concept of modern technology, hygiene, nor medicine, and here he was snuggling with a diseased ridden vermin claiming it as his pet. Wasabi bit his fist and took deep breaths to try and keep himself from hyperventilating. Once he thought he was calm enough to speak again he continued with his argument.

“Look, pets or any other kind of animal isn’t allowed on school campus so he’s just going to have to go back outside.”

“No.” The younger boy backed away and clutched the raccoon tightly to his chest in a defensive manner. “If Ruddgier goes then I go too.”

“Go where!? We’ve already been through this. You can’t sleep outside.” Wasabi was quickly losing what little patience he had left. He couldn’t understand why the kid was being so obstinate.

Varian was also losing his patience. “I do it all the time. It’s no big deal.�� He said with an eye roll.

“Why!? Does everyone in your world live like cavemen!?” The boy looked really offended at that comment but Wasabi didn’t give him a chance to retort back. “Look this isn’t up for discussion. Raccoons aren’t pets and they don’t belong inside. End of story. I don’t even know why you’d ever want that thing around anyways?”

“Because he’s all that I have left!” The boy yelled back ferociously.

Wasabi was taken aback. Not just by the intensity of the boy’s voice but also by the complete change in demeanor. All of the previous wonderment in his eyes was replaced with anger and pain and upon his face was a scowl fiercer than any wild animal. He looked feral and cornered, like he could attack you and/or bolt from the room at a moment’s notice. Then the actual words the boy had said began to sink in; “all that I have left.”

“Oh man.” Wasabi whispered to himself and hung his head in shame. This poor kid was lost. Nothing in this world was familiar to him and his family was a world away, and what had Wasabi done to actually help? Tell him to send away his pet; the one thing that reminded him of home. He sighed and swept a hand across his face, as if the action would wipe away his anxiety and embarrassment. “Look, I’m sorry.”

“What?” The boy responded in disbelief. Whatever he had been expecting the older guy to say, an apology wasn’t it.

Wasabi sighed again and calmly repeated his apology. “I’m sorry. All this time I was thinking about myself and what I was comfortable with, and I didn’t take into consideration your feelings. That was selfish of me and I apologize.”

The teen just continued to look at him with a mixture of confusion and distrust, so Wasabi pressed forward. “Look, perhaps we can come to a compromise.” He slowly suggested, trying to mentally figure out what that compromise might be. However, before he could continue on, there was a knock at the door.

----------------------

Varian watched as Wasabi talked with the man at the door, only paying half attention to their conversation. His brain was still reeling from the fight that had just occurred. Varian wasn’t used to hearing apologies, not sincere ones anyways. There wasn’t a single person in his life who hadn’t let him down before. They would feign interest in his well being only to abandon him later or go back on their word. Therefore, Varian didn’t know what to make of Wasabi. He sounded honest but so had they. Yet, none of them had taken him into their home and offered him help when he needed it either.

Wasabi finished giving the man at the door some green slips of paper, took from him a flat brown box, and wished the man goodnight. The box must have contained some sort of food as Varian could smell roasted garlic and other spices emitting from it.

“Now as I was saying,” Wasabi turned to him, “maybe we can work out a compromise. We really can’t just let a raccoon roam free around the apartment complex, but if you don’t want him to sleep outside, then I can make him up a bed in the bathroom and he has to stay there for the night.”

Varian mulled over the proposal. It seemed fair. Ruddiger would be safe and he wouldn’t need much for the night; just a blanket and some food. Varian began to nod his agreement but Wasabi was already continuing on before he could say anything.

“He can stay, that is, only on three conditions. One, I call the vet in the morning and schedule him a check up and they’ll undoubtedly give him the shots he needs.”

“What’s a vet?”

”An animal doctor. Two, also in the morning we swing by the pet store and buy him a leash, a carrier, and a cage for him to sleep in.”

“A cage!?” Varian was less agreeable to that last condition.

“Yes, a cage. He can’t be wandering around the halls and he can’t be outside unsupervised. You saw all those cars on the road on the way over here, right?” Varian nodded. “Well there’s even more of them going about during the day and you don’t want him to get run over do you, or get lost in the big city because he snuck out during the night?”

Varian looked forlornly down at his pet as he held him. No he didn’t want either of those things to happen, and this was a whole new world, no telling what other dangers existed for a raccoon. But he just knew Ruddiger would hate being stuck in a cage. He sure did. Varian nuzzled his face into the raccoon’s fur, unsure what to do.

“Don’t worry.” Wasabi tried to encourage him ”You can let him out whenever you’re here and can take him outside as long as he has the leash on.”

“Ok.” Varian said softly, his face still buried in his pet as he hugged him.

“Aright, last condition, we can not let any of the Residential Advisers know that we’re keeping a wild animal in the dorms. I can’t afford being kicked out of student housing. So we have to keep him hidden from the higher ups.” Wasabi pointed right at Ruddiger as he said this to emphasize his point. “Got it?”

Varian was surprised. He didn’t realize that Ruddiger could be such a risk to Wasabi. He also wasn’t expecting anyone to go to such trouble just for him and the realization that this man was willing to risk his home just to keep Varian happy was humbling to say the least.

“Got it” he repeated back, vowing to himself not to let that happen.

“Great! Now that that’s settled, here’s the pizza if you’re hungry.’ Wasabi sat the box down on the table. “I’ve also laid out some clean clothes for you to sleep in, they’re on the couch, and I’m going to go downstairs and throw the laundry in the washing machine.” With that he picked up a basket full of clothes and walked towards the door.

“You also have a machine that washes clothes!? Can I see it?” Varian asked, his curiosity piqued once again.

“Sure, we can go down together when it’s time to put them in the dryer. That gives you some time to eat and change clothes.” Wasabi struggled a bit to open the door as his hands were full, but no sooner did he get it open, was he then stopped by Varian’s voice.

“Hey, Wasabi.”

“Hmm?” Wasabi turned around and stood in the doorway to look at him.

Varian was shuffling his feet and looking downwards trying to form the right words.

“Thanks. For everything, for helping me, I mean. Not a whole lot of people would go out their way to do that and you didn’t have to, so, ..thank you.” Varian looked up at those last two words, emphasizing how much he truly appreciated all that was being done for him.

“Naw, don’t mention it. After all, what are friends for?”

Varian didn’t know the answer to that question. He had never had friends before; not real ones. Not ones that would go through any pains to help you out because helping was just the right thing to do. But apparently this was a rhetorical question, as Wasabi only stood around long enough to give Varian a smile and then turned to leave, closing the door behind him.

Varian stood still for a few moments, looking at the space where the older teen had stood, mulling over what had just happened. But soon enough Ruddiger was getting tired of being held and was struggling to escape his arms, distracting him from his thoughts. He put the raccoon down and then went to change into the clothes Wasabi had given him.

They were far too big on him. The short britches had a drawstring to tighten them with but even when pulled as tight as they would go they hung loose upon his hips. The jersey was no better. It hung down to his knees and the sleeves went several inches past his wrists, completely covering his hands. But he dealt with ill fitting clothes for most of his life. Usually just re-purposing his father’s old hand-me-downs, re-patching or hemming as needed. So Varian just rolled up the sleeves, deciding to make do; at least these clothes were well maintained and didn’t need any repairing.

He then turned his attention to the food. He had heard of pizza before, it was apparently popular in Italy according to the sailors and traveling merchants he sometimes talked to. A must have if one were to visit say Naples, not that Varian ever figured he would. He had never traveled further than Vardaros, a city outside of Corona’s walls that his dad would sometimes go to market to.

The pizza consisted of flat bread covered in olives, onions, and entirely too much cheese that overflowed in stringy pieces when he picked up one of the pre-cut slices. He took an experimental bite. Under the cheese there was a type of red sauce spiced with garlic and other herbs. It wasn’t bad, though not what he had been expecting. He curled up on the sofa, sitting cross legged, and eating the rest of the slice, pulling off pieces of the runny cheese that was falling off to give to Ruddigger. Who grabbed them from his hands and gulped them down eagerly.

After finishing a slice Varian decided he had had enough. Ruddiger apparently had not and ran up to the table to grab his own slice from the box. Varian watched the gluttonous raccoon with amusement but then soon found himself yawning. He stretched, feeling sleep catching up to him after the day’s events. This, though, seemed to be a signal to Ruddgier, who immediately dropped the piece of pizza he was eating and sprinted back to the window.

“Ruddigger?” Varian called out in both confusion and alarm. Worried that his pet would leave so soon after they had just been reunited, he got up from the couch and followed.

However Ruddiger only went as far as the window sill. He picked up something in his mouth and then turned back around and trotted back to where Varian was standing, proudly holding his head up expecting Varian to take the item from him.

“Whatcha got there buddy?” Varian asked as Ruddiger deposited a yellow bit of rock into his hand. Like a puppy dog who just fetched a stick and was entirely too proud of itself for completing such a simple task, he sat back and eagerly waited for his master’s approval.

Varian’s heart skipped a beat. It was a piece of amber, the amber. It was roughly four inches in length that tapered to a sharp point. It’s sides were uneven and craggy but it was entirely flat and smooth on one end, as if it had been cut. But the amber couldn’t be cut, unless….

Varian’s pulse began to race as his mind ran through the possibilities. It must have come through the portal with him, which meant that the portal itself must have cut the piece off when it closed. Which made sense as it wasn’t a physical force that ruptured the surface of the unbreakable rock but an absence of space itself. What this meant for his father and how he could go about implementing this knowledge was invaluable and the first real break though he had since the accident. Now if only he could get back to his lab…

Varian stopped his run away thoughts and looked around at the unfamiliar apartment. But he wasn’t at his lab, or Corona, he was here. And he didn’t even know where here actually was, or how to get back, or even if he could get back.

Varian slumped back onto the sofa, tears filling his eyes. The full enormity of what had happened to him finally sinking in without anything else to distract himself with. He would never admit it to anyone, but he was scared. Scared that he may have lost his dad for good. He couldn’t stop the tears now. Varian couldn’t tell you how many times he had cried since that fateful snowstorm but for a while he had believed he had no more tears left to shed. Apparently he was wrong, just like how he was wrong about so many other things in his life.

He wiped his eyes and laid upon the couch, turning his head away from the door and curling up in a fetal position. He didn’t want Wasabi coming through the door and seeing him awake and distressed. He no longer cared about washing machines and pizza and whatever other wonders this world may hold, he just wanted to sleep and to dream about happier times in his life. Lucky for him the sofa was cushiony and soft, far more comfortable then what he had been sleeping on for the past year or so, and it therefore lulled him to sleep soon enough and he was blessed with the sweet relief of unconsciousness.

#of rocks and robots #tangled the series #BH6 the series #varian #wasabi #ruddiger #rapunzel's tangled adventure

58 notes · View notes