#meanwhile gilbert is like *demonic noises*

[scummy-writes]

Oh.........buddy.....

[fontonascreen]

Basically posting this just to show off my headcanon that Crow rides a Big Wheel. Under the cut because it’s ramble-y.

Tom and Crow were waiting at the top of the basement stairs. Their creator had been down in what was affectionately referred to as his lab all afternoon working on a project for ConGypsCo. Some mid-80s college rock blared from his stereo as soldering fumes wafted up to them.

“Hey, Joel!” Crow yelled.

The music suddenly got quieter and Joel yelled back, “What?”

“Can we go outside?” Tom asked.

“Uh, yeah. Just stay in the yard!”

“Sweet!” Crow cheered.

Joel heard Crow scamper outside, rolled his eyes, and went back to his soldering.

Crow drug his big wheel out of the garage and mounted it.  He scooted down the driveway at a painfully slow speed, his long legs making pedal based travel difficult.

Tom, having no legs, was unable to ride any pedal based vehicle and ended up hovering behind him making generic motor noises.

The game went on for a while until Tom finally started whining. “I don’t want to play Warrior of the Lost World anymore.”

“We weren’t playing Warrior of the Lost World,” Crow replied. He swiveled his head around to face his brother quizzically. “Is that why you kept calling yourself Megaweapon and trying to run me over? Huh, sort of makes sense now…”

Tom sounded confused. “What were you playing?”

“I was about to ask you if it was time to accidentally murder somebody because I was jealous that my best friend got a singing contract.”

“Let’s regroup here…”

“Should I be shooting up heroine?” Crow asked.

“We could start a seemingly meaningless bar fight and utterly get our own asses kicked.”

“Only if I can be a down on my luck stock car racer who is secretly working for the county police.”

Suddenly, Tom blurted out, “Car!” and smashed into the back of Crow’s bike making it skid a few inches.

“Servo! We’re not playing Warrior of the Lost World anymore!” he whined. Joel’s station wagon pulled past them into the driveway. “Oh. It’s just Mike.”

“Hi guys, whatcha up to?” Mike asked once he had gotten out and grabbed a bag of groceries from the back seat.

“Playing generic biker movie,” Tom replied like it was obvious.

Mike only smiled and nodded. “Ah. Well, I’m going to get dinner started. Stay off the road.“

“We will,” Tom and Crow both replied. They sounded bored.

They waited until their other dad was inside before resuming their game.

“Ah ha! Come get me, copper!” Crow cackled and started to pedal away… slowly. He got about three feet before his front wheel rolled off the pavement into the yard and he got stuck. Grunting from the effort, he rocked back and forth trying to free himself. It wasn’t very successful. “Aw, damn… Hey, Servo! A little help?”

Tom was in the middle of hovering circles around him and singing “Bad to the Bone”. Suddenly, he stopped mid-verse and froze, his gaze fixed on their next-door neighbor who had apparently been giving them the stink-eye for the past 5 minutes. “Uh, Crow?”

“What?” Crow spat, irritated.

“Remember that neighbor Joel and Mike told us to ignore?”

“Yeah. What about her?”

“I think she’s coming over here.”

Crow turned so he was looking in the same direction as Tom. Sure enough, their tiny, tight-faced neighbor looked even more tight-faced as she strode toward them.

The first time they had met the woman was the day they moved in. She had spent a good forty-five minutes sneaking around the house, trying to peek in their windows. After catching Mike and Joel in a rather chaste “welcome home” kiss, she decided that she needed to spend every chance she could get evangelizing them. The fact that this apparent couple had, what she called, homosexual robotic demon spawn, didn’t help their case either.

Crow and Tom stared at her, their beaks agape, vaguely realizing that it was too late to run. As a last resort, Tom hid behind Crow.

Their neighbor briskly made her way across the driveway, her modest flats making faint clopping sounds as she did so, and stopped in front of the two cowering bots. “Hello,” she greeted, her voice falsely sweet

Crow tentatively looked up at her face. She looked like a cat taunting its food.

“Hi, Mrs. Soderstrom,” they mumbled.

She didn’t waste any time. “Do you know where you’re going to go after you die?”

Crow stared at her, clearly not amused by the question. His ping-pong ball eyes were more blank than usual.

Tom continued to cower behind his brother. “Our dads told us not to talk to you!” he blurted.

Mrs. Soderstrom’s smile became pained for a second, but she quickly changed her question. “Do you know where your… dads are going to go when they die?”

“Joel said he assumes he’s just going to stop existing,” Crow admitted. “He wants a boring funeral if you ask me.”

“Are you aware that your dads are going to go to Hell? Do you know what Hell is?”

Crow and Tom glanced at each other.

“Uh, The Beatles?” Tom guessed.

“Mike always said he thought that all our time spent having to watch bad movies was Hell,” Crow answered. “Well, at the very least, purgatory…”

Mrs. Soderstrom’s smile turned into more of a self-satisfied smirk. “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, described Hell as a place of outer darkness where there will be weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. A place of regret, torment in fire and no water.”

“That sort of sounds like our first apartment actually,” Crow replied.

Tom started whimpering.

“You will be thrown into a fiery lake of burning sulfur where the smoke of those tormented there goes up forever and they find no rest…”

“So, basically a giant hot tub… of fire?” Crow asked.

“That doesn’t sound very nice at all,” Tom said through some sniffles.

“Do you want to know how to save your dads from Hell?”

Tom nodded.

Crow looked skeptical. “Just so we’re clear, why are Joel and Mike going to Hell exactly?”

Mrs. Soderstrom gave them their first genuine smile. “Well, the Bible condemns homosexuality as an immoral and unnatural sin. Leviticus 18:22 states: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Crow’s skepticism turned to confusion. “But… our dads never lie to each other.”

“Yeah. They’re both pretty honest fellas,” Tom added, his voice wavering.

“Look!” Mrs. Soderstrom snapped, her patience ending for a second before going back to her fake tone. “Do you know about the creation account in Genesis?”

Tom looked up at her. “You mean the ‘let there be light’ one?”

“The one with the snake who sort of sounds like Gilbert Godfrey?” Crow added.

The woman closed her eyes briefly and sighed through her nose, trying to keep from yelling at them. Her forced smile returned and the sight made Tom slip behind Crow again. “Genesis 1:1 teaches that “in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” On the sixth day, God created Adam. When God created a partner for Adam He created Eve—not another Adam.” She bent down so she was about eye level with Crow. “You see boys, God wants your daddies to have mommies. Wouldn’t you rather have a mommy?”

“We don’t need a mom!” Tom protested, but then he unsurely glanced at Crow. “Do we?”

Crow shrugged.

“Don’t you need someone to clean and do the laundry?”

“Well, actually, Joel does that…” Crow said.

“Then, who cooks?”

“Mike,” Tom replied.

Mrs. Soderstrom began to get flustered again. “Who pays the bills? Does the taxes?”

Crow started staring blankly at her again, unsure of where this line of questioning was going. “Servo.” He looked around. “Can we leave, now?”

Tom’s voice lowered into a comedic whisper. “Crow! Crow, let’s go!” He made a few pathetic whining noises and started hovering to the door.

He looked after Tom, not sure of what he was supposed to do. Turning to face the neighbor, there was a beat before he blurted, “Uh… Bye!” Crow awkwardly crawled off his bike, tripping and falling on his face before hurrying off so he could open the door for Tom. His claws slipped on the handle until he managed to push it open. He heard her trying to pray after them as he made it inside.

Mike was in the middle of slicing up vegetables for a stir-fry when Tom flew by him. “Hey Servo, how’d generic biker movie go?”

Tom replied with a whine, and continued down into the basement.

Crow trudged in after him.

“What’s up with Servo?” Mike asked.

Crow sighed and joined him at the counter. “I dunno.” He watched Mike cut peppers as the neighbor lady’s words swam around his head. Did he really need a mom? Suddenly, he had an epiphany. “Mike?”

Mike replied with a hum.

“I don’t want to alarm you with this news, but it appears that I’m a Disney princess.”

He chuckled. “What?”

“Think about it! I don’t have a mom, my dad’s a crazy inventor who fell in love with a beast…”

“Crow, it was the princess who fell in love with the… Hey!”

Crow ignored him. “… I’m beautiful, of course. I have a magical connection to most woodland creatures. I tend to sing a lot. I can paint with all the colors of the wind. I always seem to be missing a shoe. I’m overly trusting. I sometimes struggle to remember the proper names for common household objects…”

Mike snorted. “Well, Crow, it seems like the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of you being a Disney princess. Congratulations.”

“I’m glad that’s settled.” Crow was silent for a couple of seconds. “Do you think some day my prince will come?”

Mike threw his hands up, exasperated. “I don’t know!”

“Yeah, he’s totally going to come…”

Meanwhile, Tom was confronting Joel down in the basement. He hovered over to his father and set himself down on his workbench.

Joel glanced at him, but continued studying his blueprints. “Hey, Buddy. What’s up?”

Tom looked over the plans for a few seconds. These particular ones were scribbled over a few spare napkins and the back of an old grocery list. He looked up and sighed. “Joel?”

He smiled at him. “What?”

“Joel? Are we going to go to Hell because we don’t have a mom?”

Joel’s face dropped. Straightening up, he cleared his throat and put a comforting hand on Tom’s shoulder. “That’s an oddly specific question, honey.”

“The neighbor lady, the one who lives next door, y’know? Said because you and Mike lie to each other, God made Adam and Eve. And since we don’t have a mommy, God was going to throw you and Mike into a giant hot tub that sounds like our first apartment!” Tom cried. He ended with over dramatic sobbing

Joel’s brow furrowed, not quite following Tom’s rambling. The little robot buried his face into his side and Joel wrapped his arms around him. “Calm down, Tom. What were you saying about our neighbor?”

“She said you and Mike were going to go to Hell. But it sounded scary and not fun at all and I don’t want you to go there,” he explained through sobs.

“Well, it’s sweet that you’re worried about us, but remember what I said about our neighbor?”

Tom sniffed. “That she’s one weird…”

“Mama jama,” Joel finished.  He leaned his forehead on Tom’s dome so he was eyelevel with him. “That’s right and you shouldn’t listen to her. No one’s going to Hell.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Don’t worry your little head about it. Okay?”

“Okay, Joel,” Tom said before shifting positions and wiggling his head so it looked like he was wiping his nose on Joel’s shirt.

Joel patted him on the back, as Tom moved away from him. “Are you going to be alright?”

“I think so.” He went back to looking at Joel’s blueprints. “What are you making anyway?”

Joel picked up a metal cylinder and examined it. “Well, it’s supposed to be a self-sustaining, self-cleaning, exhaust filter, but it’s not exactly turning out like I’d hoped.” He held it up to his ear and shook it. It made a hissing sound.

Tom glanced at Joel uncertainly. “Is it supposed to do that?”

Joel put it down and slowly got in between the cylinder and Tom. “I don’t think so.” He tensed and turned away from it slightly and grimaced, waiting for something to happen.

The cylinder finally made a muffled pop and emitted a puff of smoke. There was an electrical surge before it finally started to vibrate and give off a subtle green glow.

“What the Sam Scratch did you put in that thing?” Tom demanded.

Joel stared at it dumbly. “Baking soda. A lot of baking soda.”

“Wow! You pulled a Mike. Good one, Joel!”

“You get the salad tongs. I’ll get the old refrigerator open…”

“Honey? You okay?” Mike called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, the lights did the thing!” Crow added, scurrying to the top of the basement stairs. He was met by Tom coming up the other way.

“Joel made a nuclear reactor out of baking soda,” Tom informed him. Begrudgingly, he hovered to get a pair of tongs from Mike.

“Cool! Can I see?”

“Stay upstairs, honey. You’ve absorbed more than enough radiation for one lifetime.”