The Bonding Continues

[chaseandoldlace]

Who: Chase Stein and Uther Pendragon (again, yes)
What:  The Morning After
When: Mid Morning
Where: Around the castle grounds
Rating: Chase has a bit of a potty mouth
Status: Closed/ Complete

Comments

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase rolled his eyes. On one hand, he did understand--his Fistigons were one of a kind, and with his parents dead as door nails, there was unlikely to ever be a Fistigon Mark II.

But on the other hand, the manticore slammed Old Lace into the stone wall of the stables and a shudder of pain spasmed over his entire body. He struggled to stay on his feet.

"But so is Old Lace. Gotta put this thing down before it kills her!"

Unable to simply stand by any longer, Chase sparked two orbs of crackling red energy into his palms and charged, a bellow of rage swelling his chest as he plowed forward.

The creature had Old Lace pinned, it's great jaws about to close on her wide, strong neck but something was suddenly stopping those jaws from closing. Chase had the beast by the jaws, putting every ounce of his strength into keeping them pried open. The red energy danced over the manticore's mouth, and Chase could smell the gas from the jets that allowed it to breath it's scorching breath.

"Any time you wanna help, dude, that'd be great!" He called, unable to spare even a glance in Uther's direction.

[pendraeg]

The daemon's head was loose on its neck, attached only by what counted for it as a sinew. And yet it continued to attack, just as strong and ferocious as ever. He watched for a horrified second as the creature suddenly seemed to have both Chase and Old Lace in its clutches.

But just as equally they had it in their clutches. Immobilized.

Uther strode forward, seeing his chance. He set his booted foot down hard on the manticore's shoulder, checked to be sure nobody's extremities were in the way, and hacked hard, straight down through that last connection, severing the creature's head from its body.

He saw Chase draw back from it hurriedly as the jaws, continuing their battle of strengths as though nothing had happened, finally closed. The manticore's bodiless head snapped its teeth repeatedly, spinning and pushing it over the ground.

"Will it--" Uther pointed his sword straight down at the weak spot that was the thing's eye socket.

"--just die--" He pushed down hard with the whole weight of his body.

"--already?" The sword pierced it, and it shattered like a ceramic bowl, fragments falling away from one another.

[chaseandoldlace]

For a moment, Chase was still, his weak and trembling arms finally falling limply to his sides. He staggered, adrenaline seeping out of his body as Old Lace hopped back to her feet just in time to brace him up.

"Thanks..." there was a hiss and the Fistigons fell away onto the ground. It took more than he wanted to admit to raise a hand out and grab Uther's shoulder. "I would have lost her without you."

Old Lace shifted a little so Chase could still lean on her dirty, scratched side and nudged Uther's head affectionately, making the same contented clicking purr sound with the back of her throat that she'd made in the great hall the night before.

Chase smiled.

"Well, at least now I know the 'rents really did booby trap everything they made. Blame the design on my mom by the way, she always had a...weird sense of humor. She was the type of mom who got a kick out of telling me all the monsters under my bed were totally real." He kicked the motionless mechanical head.

Very, very warily, he looked back at the bus.

"Think we should risk turning it on?"

[pendraeg]

Uther weighed the merits of learning how to drive against not awakening any more daemons. But they had beat the last one, ultimately, had they not?

Uther's shoulder ached.

"It would be a waste not to make use of the vehicle now we have vanquished the beast within," he said, pretending that this was a reasonable line of argument.

[chaseandoldlace]

'Beast, there's never just one.' Chase thought sourly, remembering when they first discovered the daemons, how they tended to come in droves.

But the Stein Bus sat silent. He took a deep breath.

"Bus?" He asked tentatively, taking only a few cautious steps closer and waiting for a response.

"Yes Master Stein?"

"Are there any more emergency security protocol active?"

"I am equipped with over 500 currently active security protocol." The bus answered evenly.

Chase whimpered. "Any more daemons?"

"There is an inter-dimensional box located behind my back bumper containing...9 daemons. Do you wish to deactive this measure?"

"Yes! De-active all of them!"

"That is inadvisable, Master Stein--

"ALL of them, bus, now!"

"As you wish. Security protocol deactived."

Chase let out a deep, revealed breath.

"I can't believe they used to drive me to t-ball in one these things..." He grumbled, picking the Fistigons up and tossing them back into the toolbox. He reached down and grabbed a few tools.

"Before you get Majesty's first driving lesson, I'm finding that box thingy. Gimme a hand. OL, it's a bit chilly, why don't you go rest up some and...we'll bring breakfast in in a bit. My treat." He said to Uther, "Figure it's the least I can do for you saving my dinosaur."

[pendraeg]

Uther was looking his sword over, checking it for damage--surprisingly, it was fine--before sheathing it. He sidled over to the van, more wary than he would like to admit.

"What would you like me to do?" he asked. Breakfast sounded good. He had left Merlin feeding the twins, but he had not eaten yet.

[chaseandoldlace]

"Just drag the toolbox over in case I need anything more sophisticated than a wrench. Something tells me 'inter-dimensional box' will have handle with care written all over it."

Chase grabbed a bite-lite from the box and pulled himself under the back bumper. A moment later he held an open hand out.

"There's a thing that looks like pointy dull scissors, yellow handles. Hand 'em over and I'll have this puppy out faster than you can say International House of Pancakes."

[pendraeg]

The tool box was full of things Uther did not recognise and could not entirely divine the use of. A few of them looked like they might be useful around the castle, however. Eventually he spotted the flash of yellow and retrieved a tool. Did they look like pointy dull scissors? He had no idea.

[chaseandoldlace]

"Awesome." The wire cutters vanished beneath the bumper again, and a moment later, very, very carefully, Chase handed up a thin, rectangular box with strange markings all over it--some were recognizable runes, others, what looked to be advanced mathematical equations. "Be really careful with that bro, or else we'll have a platoon of fuzzy and unfriendlies on our ass again. Just stick it in the back for now."

Wiggling out from his place, the blonde put the wire cutters back and dusted himself off.

"Bus, bring up that alternate fuel injection matrix again from the holo records."

"Yes, Master Stein."

The bus's headlight hummed to life, and the image of a series of delicate interconnected parts covered in front of the windshield. "We get this sorted out and then we're ready to rock." Moving to the front of the bus, Chase inspected the image for a long moment before propping the hood open.

"Okay, gotta move this over here and that over...there! Man am I glad my 'rents believed in redundant systems. Bus, how much has the auto repair taken care of?"

"Auto repair was a one of my security protocol, it completed 39% of scheduled repairs before being deactived."

"Oh, well, reactive auto repair. Think we can take his Majesty out for his first spin?"

"Drive function is still enabled."

Chase beamed. "No time like the present. Disarm and hop in. We'll do a breakfast run for the Castle."

This was going to be interesting.

[pendraeg]

Uther unbuckled his sword belt and slid into the passenger seat, carefully tucking the scabbard and weapon at his feet, the hilt in his hands.

As Chase took his own seat and turned the key, Uther braced himself for further ominous warnings, but nothing happened except the return of the engine's vibrations.

He breathed out.

In many ways, he would have preferred a horse, or at most a cart. He felt closed in and claustrophobic in the van, as he always had in carriages, and liked to be able to see and to control where he was going. Although the Stein Van seemed to have much more personality than most vehicles, it had, perhaps, a bit too much.

He had been in one of these moving vehicles before, but never with such a direct view, and never with the prospect of truly coming to grips with it. His eyes moved regularly from window to driver, trying to watch how it was done and where they were going at the same time, jolted and jarred as they shifted almost immediately into the unfamiliar motion, bumping away from the castle.

[chaseandoldlace]

Chase grinned as he took note of how Uther was trying to watch him and the road at the same time.

"Okay, I'm gonna try to keep this simple-stupid for you at first. You got your steering wheel--" He squeezed the wheel. "Gas pedal makes it go," Chase rocked his left leg, "Brakes make you stop," he rocked his other leg, "and the clutch."

"Parking brake is here, shift box--but this can be an automatic too, which is gonna be easier for you to learn, so don't pay too much attention to this." Fingers resting on the shift stick waggled. They pulled up to the edge of the park and Chase nudged two bars sticking out of either side of the wheel.

"Signal lights, really, really really important. Any time you turn, you move these guys. I know it seems like a lot to take in, but you'll get a hang of it. And since the Stein Bus practically drives itself we can start you off easy."

'Someday I'm going to be teaching Molly how to do this.'

Suddenly, Chase was more grateful than he could put into words that he had a chance to practice.

"Got that so far?"

[pendraeg]

Most of Chase's words meant nothing to Uther, but he could follow the motions, as he had done to learn countless things in the past. He knew that what he understood would mean little until he put it to the test, at any rate.

It was nice that the van was so big and consistently shaped. Somewhere between a loaf of bread and a battering ram, just a slightly rectangular metal box on wheels.

The ride was far smoother on the road than it had been on the grass, and Uther relaxed a bit, though the vehicle also picked up speed with the more compatible surface. They sped along, and between the space of two breaths they had arrived, and Chase was doing something complicated whose outcome was a neatly aligned stop in front of the diner.

[chaseandoldlace]

The bus rocked lightly on worn shocks before settling into it's space in front of the diner. Old Lace had tried to dumpster-dive them dinner outside of it their first night, but by the time they arrived, the garbage had mostly all been hauled away, and Chase handed wanted to spend what little cash he had that first night, not knowing where they'd end up sleeping.

"Was that your first time in a car?" Chase asked, shouldering the doors open for them to get inside. "You looked a little edgy back there." For once, he'd driven responsibly, not wanting to give the young, temporally displaced king a complete phobia of cars.

It would be useful once Uther knew how to drive to have designated driver for when they went bar-hopping. Or at least, someone who knew how to tell the Stein Bus to get then home.

After being lead to a booth by a pretty young waitress, Chase took a moment to breathe deep before inspecting the menu. "I missed that smell." He hadn't eaten out in a very long time. Most of their supplies had been procured by way of either the five-finger discount or incredibly frugal shopping.

[pendraeg]

"Not my very first time, no. Perhaps the second," he admitted. Cars smelled funny. Really, much of the future did. Some things smelled less. People, for one thing, though on the whole the people of Camelot were quite unusually clean already. Middens, sewers. But other things smelled more, and generally of things he had never smelled before. The material they made the road with, in the summer's heat. Electricity. Cars. It was heady stuff.

Inside the restaurant, there were smells too. Uther had never smelled these while sober. He'd come here once or twice in the dead of morning, when even pizza was no longer available, and it had been almost, almost as good as pizza dipped in ranch dressing.

It would be interesting to see how this food tasted sober. For the most part, they had been eating as much as they could as they had at home, making use of the ingredients they were able to procure from the supermarket and the occasional unfortunate deer or goose. (There were so many. They practically walked up and asked you to eat them.)

The choice, as usual, was almost overwhelming, even for a king. This, too, was something he still hadn't come to take for granted in this world. When he was so drunk he couldn't see, it didn't matter much, but looking at the menu now...and this was one restaurant in a town of many. He looked up at Chase.

"You order," he demanded.

[chaseandoldlace]

"Wow, and you've been here how long? Gotta get you with times, bro."

It was almost a shame that Chase recognized the particular way in which Uther observed his surroundings; seeing things clearly for the first time, without that vague, happy alcoholic haze. There were weeks, when things were particularly bad a home, where he'd steal a few six packs from the house and escape to The Hostel for the duration of however long his parents would fight. By the time he was fifteen, he'd timed it down to the day. He knew exactly how long to disappear for things to die down, even if it meant the beating of the century when he got back.

Even for how insane things had been since killing his parents, he could actually say he enjoyed being sober.

Most of the time, anyway.

When Uther asked him to order, he chuckled a little.

"Bacon is a necessity, mounds and mounds of bacon. Sausage. And Belgian Waffles with fruit. Tater-tots. Coffee..." He was going for a range of tastes, the same way they did when they first brought Klara to the 21st century.

"You're lucky this isn't the first time I've had to acclimate someone to the future. Few months ago we brought a little girl from 1907, about a hundred years ago, to this time. She caught on pretty quick. Do you have television at the castle?" Chase hadn't seen a cable dish, but there was nothing wrong with starting small.

[pendraeg]

"You've done this before?" Uther sat back contently; the food would come to him, all arranged by someone else. He hadn't had that luxury in a long time. Merlin did a great deal of the cooking (though Uther could, after a battlefield, campfire kind of fashion) but Uther brought home the raw ingredients most of the time. He liked supermarkets, despite the plenty. Well, he liked the little supermarket in Aternaville. It was...manageable, and strangely enjoyable.

Chase ordered, and the waitress came back with the coffee almost immediately, pouring the steaming black liquid into sturdy ceramic cups.

"No television, but we have computers." He smiled with self-satisfaction. "When I use emoticons, it turns Arthur skittish as a colt on a windy wash day."