(no subject)
Hope everyone had a lovely Easter this year! (Or a lovely Sunday. I know it was gorgeous outside for us here. Hope that was the case for you guys!)
I don't know if he'll see this, but Happy Birthday, Mike! Hope you have a great day. It is only like...fifteen minutes in, but yes. Hopefully off to a good start?
-----------
And because this fic idea came to me when I woke up Easter morning and I only just finished it (lord, me and writing, I swear to god...) I figured I'd post it. Hope you guys enjoy it! It's RvB-centric~ (And is 2283 words long, so.)
Unwelcome Surprises
It'd been quiet for the past half-hour at Blue Base. Church might have noticed this sooner if he hadn't been up in the cliffs watching the Reds. They had been doing nothing but standing around and bickering like usual, though Donut did seem like he was up to something. How he found a basket in this piece of shit canyon had been the subject of Church's puzzled thoughts right up until the moment he realized things were quiet on his own side of things.
"Oh, goddamnit," he grumbled to himself as he jogged back to base from his vantage point on the cliffs. Things were just getting interesting too, for once.
But he had only realized something else: Caboose had been missing for most of that half-hour as well--or rather, he wasn't annoying Tucker while Church was away. He could usually hear them, but not now. While the quiet suited him very, very fine--seriously, getting a bit of peace for more than five minutes was like a fucking miracle these days--he just...knew he had to go back. For some reason, he just didn't like having Caboose out of sight for this long.
Oh wait, he knew why, and if he managed to kill him again...
Nothing seemed out of the sorts otherwise; Tucker was up top watching him, and...well, that was about it. Sheila's former tank body sat where they left it after they brought it back to their side of the canyon. Or rather after Caboose and Tucker pushed it back. Church had supervised while Sister pretended to help push. He kinda admired her for that. Didn't change the fact, though, that both she and Caboose were now missing. Just fucking great, he thought.
Once he got within shouting distance, he started to yell, "Hey Tucker, where the hell are Caboose and Sister? I thought I told you to keep an eye on them!"
"Them?" Tucker just shrugged his shoulders. "Don't worry. Caboose mentioned wanting to color something so I sent Sister with him to make sure he didn't draw all over the walls again. We ran out of cleaning supplies the last time he did that."
He let out a frustrated sigh upon remembering that incident. Really, it'd be much easier all around if he could just forget the stupid and asinine things that happened around him. "I don't know. I don't like it."
"I do! Do you know how great it is to have a moment to yourself?"
By now, Church had reached the base, his attentions split between Tucker and the entrance to one of the base's levels. So far, he didn't see any signs of Caboose's crayon murals, so there was a plus. "No," he said lightly, his tone filled with sarcasm. "Why don't you tell me?"
Tucker stood there for a moment just staring back at him, then finally said, "Actually, I just remembered this is you we're talking about."
He stopped listening after that. "Thanks, Tucker. Glad we had this talk."
As he entered the base, he strained his ears for any sound of those two doing...whatever it was they wanted to color. He had no fucking clue what it could be, nor did he care. Part of him debated whether he should announce his impending arrival, but that internal debate barely got off the ground. The moment he turned the corner into the main area of the base, all he saw a big colorful mess. Large splotches of colorful liquid dye peppered the ground and walls, as did--he discovered the moment he stepped into view of the room--broken eggs and their shattered shells. He let out a noise of disgust as he picked his foot up and a bright yellow eggy tendril stuck to the bottom of it.
"What the fuck happened in here?! Caboose!" He glanced around in anger, but still, still, those two weren't there. But the moment after he yelled, he heard a very distinct crack of an egg falling and striking the floor--immediately followed by a soft, "Oops."
"Caboose." The name came out in a half-snarl, half-growl as he stomped straight through the mess to the other side of the room. He didn't care that he had a bunch of colorful shit on the bottoms of his armored feet now, nor that it made it somewhat difficult to stomp without sliding around a bit. The trail of destruction became very clear the closer he got to the other side, with drops of colored dye leading straight out of the room and around another corner. A roll of paper towels had even fallen victim to the great disaster. It lay beneath an overturned cup that used to have a bright pink dye in it if the current soaked and dripping state of the roll was anything to judge. All their luck, that'd be the last roll too.
After he rounded the next corner, he found Sister waiting for him. She didn't even try to hide the fact that she'd been involved; she just stood there holding everything used to mess the place up. Or rather, almost everything. Really, had it been anyone else, he might have been disappointed that that there wasn't an effort to hide the different cups of dye stacked haphazardly in her arms.
"Hey! What's wrong with your feet?"
His foot slipped a little as he stopped in front of her. "Nothing." He glanced around her, and nope, Caboose was definitely not in sight. "Look Sister, you need to listen carefully. I won't...be mad at you," though he knew that was a blatant lie since he was pretty angry already, "but I need you to tell me where Caboose went and what the fuck he's doing with all this dye."
"Oh him? Yeah, he said he had to go do something?" she shrugged, the cups threatening to tip over thanks to that motion. "He and that other guy over at the other base were going to do something, I can't remember. But like, Caboose wanted to dye all these eggs gray for some reason. It's not like they're aren't gray when you cook them anyway, so what's the point?"
Suddenly, that basket of Donut's seemed to make more sense now. Sort of. As...much as anything with those two ever made sense, Church guessed. But he had a feeling Sister could go on and on about gray eggs without breaking a sweat, so he started to skirt around her until he was safely on the other side. Admittedly, he was very tempted to 'accidentally' knock those cups of dye out of her hands with his sniper rifle for a brief and spiteful moment.
"Uh, yeah. I have to go. Why don't you take those things outside or into the kitchen and dump them somewhere. I don't care where; just don't do it in here." Thankfully, he'd already started walking away the moment she started to reply, and even more thankfully, he easily tuned out whatever it was that she said. "Yeah, yeah, that's great."
When he finally did find Caboose, after a minute or two of looking around the rest of the base, the blue-armored idiot was creeping around in the grass and whispering to himself. That alone told Church that he should stop right there and just leave him alone for a while, but that would be the logical thing to do. Instead, he marched right over, and just as he started to speak, he heard a crunch right beneath his foot.
"Oh no, Church--!" Caboose exclaimed, immediately crawling over to him.
"...That better not be what I think it is."
"--You squished the baby rabbit!"
A sigh escaped him. "And there it is." He took a couple steps back in case Caboose got it into his head to try to lift his foot up. "Caboose man, what the hell are you doing? And what's this you're cooking up with Donut?"
"Don't say 'cooking'! You'll scare the baby rabbits."
Many thoughts were already running through his head, most of them wondering just how many eggs had been wasted in this ridiculous...he had no idea what to call it. A stunt? An endeavor? Both seemed far too intelligent and weren't even close to describing what was going on before him. So he mentally settled on 'thing'. "I really don't care to know about this whole thing of yours, but what does that have to do with--"
"They'll be afraid to hatch out of their eggs and find their mother," Caboose paused, and Church wished he wouldn't say what he thought he was going to say. "The Easter Bunny."
He sighed again, putting a gloved hand to his head. Of course...it was that time of year again. "All right," he began slowly, trying very hard to keep his voice in an even tone. "I thought we went over this last year, and the year before that, but someone keeps fucking that up." He didn't want to think of who that was, though he had a couple ideas. "Okay, I'm going to say this again and maybe...maybe this time, it'll stick. Caboose, there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny. It's no more real than unicorns and people who floss daily." Seeing as Caboose didn't exactly protest his earth-shattering revelation, he had a feeling that part hadn't quite sunk in. "And rabbits don't hatch out of eggs, man. That's lizards."
"No, the Easter bunny lays special eggs! That is why they are made out of chocolate."
"That doesn't make any sense!" he cried. A split-second later, he was immediately glad they didn't have a rabbit living anywhere in the canyon.
"Church, don't be silly," Caboose said calmly and walked over to a pile of haphazardly dyed eggs that must have been there the whole time. He, however, had just noticed them. "You can only hatch rabbits out of these! The colors tell the egg to make a rabbit, but you can only do it once a year! That's why the Easter Bunny comes and gives us special chocolate eggs! It's--"
He held up a hand. "Let me guess."
But before he could say what it was, he was interrupted by a voice behind him. "Oh come on, it's so obvious!" A voice that was very, very near him and he now wondered how he didn't notice that either.
He whirled around and frowned inwardly. "Tucker! When the hell did you get here?"
"Oh, I've been here from the beginning. I saw Caboose walking around out here with those eggs and knew you wouldn't be too far behind. And for the record, you get chocolate as a finder's fee. Why do you think we do it every year?"
A light bulb went off in his head and promptly shorted out. "Do what 'every year'?" he asked suspiciously.
Tucker just shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Tell Caboose about the Easter Bunny, except it's more fun this way. It's kinda like Linus and the Great Pumpkin, but with less piano jazz music and more crickets and rotten eggs."
"...You lied to me."
"You said 'we'," he interjected before Caboose or Tucker could go further and tried to get back on topic. "Who is 'we'? It can't be Sister since she just got here not too long ago." Though from what he saw a few minutes ago, it wouldn't be that hard to talk her into going along with it.
"Hah, oh, you thought I meant 'we' as in someone I work with. See, you're almost correct, except this guy likes to think he's in charge and has a huge fucking ego. Maybe you know him."
If he had real eyes, he'd definitely be rolling them right now. "Very funny."
"He also likes to tell Caboose that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist every year. It's this well-oiled machine we're all stuck in. I tell Caboose something, Caboose gets the wrong idea, and you work yourself into a ghostly conniption fit and try to put everything straight. I'm honestly surprised you haven't had a ghost aneurysm yet. Can ghosts even get aneurysms?"
"Forget all that--and...no, I don't...think ghosts can," he added as an afterthought. "If you're working alone, how does Donut factor into...?" The words died on his tongue as he spoke. As did a part of his brain. That wasn't going to be an image he'd get rid of any time soon.
"Donut? What the fuck does he have to do with anything?"
Church just...shook his head, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "You know what? I don't really care anymore. I'm going to go and...try to forget the past five minutes of my life ever occurred. It's better that way." He started to walk away, but then stopped and turned back to add, "Oh, and Tucker? You might want to check your bunk. I saw an egg trail leading to your room."
"What?!" And that was his cue to slip away, which he gladly did while Tucker continued to yell. "Oh goddamnit, Caboose, not again! What'd I tell you about doing that?!"
"You said I couldn't use mustard! You never said anything about bunny eggs."
"They're regular eggs! And you're supposed to hard-boil them, not use them straight out of the carton!"
The last thing Church heard before he was blissfully out of earshot was a gasp from Caboose. He suspected it had to do with the thought of boiling the eggs, but his mind had already moved on to thinking of ways he could use to con Sister and the others into cleaning the base while he did important leader things. That...just so happened to be very far away from. Yeah, that sounded good.
I don't know if he'll see this, but Happy Birthday, Mike! Hope you have a great day. It is only like...fifteen minutes in, but yes. Hopefully off to a good start?
-----------
And because this fic idea came to me when I woke up Easter morning and I only just finished it (lord, me and writing, I swear to god...) I figured I'd post it. Hope you guys enjoy it! It's RvB-centric~ (And is 2283 words long, so.)
Unwelcome Surprises
It'd been quiet for the past half-hour at Blue Base. Church might have noticed this sooner if he hadn't been up in the cliffs watching the Reds. They had been doing nothing but standing around and bickering like usual, though Donut did seem like he was up to something. How he found a basket in this piece of shit canyon had been the subject of Church's puzzled thoughts right up until the moment he realized things were quiet on his own side of things.
"Oh, goddamnit," he grumbled to himself as he jogged back to base from his vantage point on the cliffs. Things were just getting interesting too, for once.
But he had only realized something else: Caboose had been missing for most of that half-hour as well--or rather, he wasn't annoying Tucker while Church was away. He could usually hear them, but not now. While the quiet suited him very, very fine--seriously, getting a bit of peace for more than five minutes was like a fucking miracle these days--he just...knew he had to go back. For some reason, he just didn't like having Caboose out of sight for this long.
Oh wait, he knew why, and if he managed to kill him again...
Nothing seemed out of the sorts otherwise; Tucker was up top watching him, and...well, that was about it. Sheila's former tank body sat where they left it after they brought it back to their side of the canyon. Or rather after Caboose and Tucker pushed it back. Church had supervised while Sister pretended to help push. He kinda admired her for that. Didn't change the fact, though, that both she and Caboose were now missing. Just fucking great, he thought.
Once he got within shouting distance, he started to yell, "Hey Tucker, where the hell are Caboose and Sister? I thought I told you to keep an eye on them!"
"Them?" Tucker just shrugged his shoulders. "Don't worry. Caboose mentioned wanting to color something so I sent Sister with him to make sure he didn't draw all over the walls again. We ran out of cleaning supplies the last time he did that."
He let out a frustrated sigh upon remembering that incident. Really, it'd be much easier all around if he could just forget the stupid and asinine things that happened around him. "I don't know. I don't like it."
"I do! Do you know how great it is to have a moment to yourself?"
By now, Church had reached the base, his attentions split between Tucker and the entrance to one of the base's levels. So far, he didn't see any signs of Caboose's crayon murals, so there was a plus. "No," he said lightly, his tone filled with sarcasm. "Why don't you tell me?"
Tucker stood there for a moment just staring back at him, then finally said, "Actually, I just remembered this is you we're talking about."
He stopped listening after that. "Thanks, Tucker. Glad we had this talk."
As he entered the base, he strained his ears for any sound of those two doing...whatever it was they wanted to color. He had no fucking clue what it could be, nor did he care. Part of him debated whether he should announce his impending arrival, but that internal debate barely got off the ground. The moment he turned the corner into the main area of the base, all he saw a big colorful mess. Large splotches of colorful liquid dye peppered the ground and walls, as did--he discovered the moment he stepped into view of the room--broken eggs and their shattered shells. He let out a noise of disgust as he picked his foot up and a bright yellow eggy tendril stuck to the bottom of it.
"What the fuck happened in here?! Caboose!" He glanced around in anger, but still, still, those two weren't there. But the moment after he yelled, he heard a very distinct crack of an egg falling and striking the floor--immediately followed by a soft, "Oops."
"Caboose." The name came out in a half-snarl, half-growl as he stomped straight through the mess to the other side of the room. He didn't care that he had a bunch of colorful shit on the bottoms of his armored feet now, nor that it made it somewhat difficult to stomp without sliding around a bit. The trail of destruction became very clear the closer he got to the other side, with drops of colored dye leading straight out of the room and around another corner. A roll of paper towels had even fallen victim to the great disaster. It lay beneath an overturned cup that used to have a bright pink dye in it if the current soaked and dripping state of the roll was anything to judge. All their luck, that'd be the last roll too.
After he rounded the next corner, he found Sister waiting for him. She didn't even try to hide the fact that she'd been involved; she just stood there holding everything used to mess the place up. Or rather, almost everything. Really, had it been anyone else, he might have been disappointed that that there wasn't an effort to hide the different cups of dye stacked haphazardly in her arms.
"Hey! What's wrong with your feet?"
His foot slipped a little as he stopped in front of her. "Nothing." He glanced around her, and nope, Caboose was definitely not in sight. "Look Sister, you need to listen carefully. I won't...be mad at you," though he knew that was a blatant lie since he was pretty angry already, "but I need you to tell me where Caboose went and what the fuck he's doing with all this dye."
"Oh him? Yeah, he said he had to go do something?" she shrugged, the cups threatening to tip over thanks to that motion. "He and that other guy over at the other base were going to do something, I can't remember. But like, Caboose wanted to dye all these eggs gray for some reason. It's not like they're aren't gray when you cook them anyway, so what's the point?"
Suddenly, that basket of Donut's seemed to make more sense now. Sort of. As...much as anything with those two ever made sense, Church guessed. But he had a feeling Sister could go on and on about gray eggs without breaking a sweat, so he started to skirt around her until he was safely on the other side. Admittedly, he was very tempted to 'accidentally' knock those cups of dye out of her hands with his sniper rifle for a brief and spiteful moment.
"Uh, yeah. I have to go. Why don't you take those things outside or into the kitchen and dump them somewhere. I don't care where; just don't do it in here." Thankfully, he'd already started walking away the moment she started to reply, and even more thankfully, he easily tuned out whatever it was that she said. "Yeah, yeah, that's great."
When he finally did find Caboose, after a minute or two of looking around the rest of the base, the blue-armored idiot was creeping around in the grass and whispering to himself. That alone told Church that he should stop right there and just leave him alone for a while, but that would be the logical thing to do. Instead, he marched right over, and just as he started to speak, he heard a crunch right beneath his foot.
"Oh no, Church--!" Caboose exclaimed, immediately crawling over to him.
"...That better not be what I think it is."
"--You squished the baby rabbit!"
A sigh escaped him. "And there it is." He took a couple steps back in case Caboose got it into his head to try to lift his foot up. "Caboose man, what the hell are you doing? And what's this you're cooking up with Donut?"
"Don't say 'cooking'! You'll scare the baby rabbits."
Many thoughts were already running through his head, most of them wondering just how many eggs had been wasted in this ridiculous...he had no idea what to call it. A stunt? An endeavor? Both seemed far too intelligent and weren't even close to describing what was going on before him. So he mentally settled on 'thing'. "I really don't care to know about this whole thing of yours, but what does that have to do with--"
"They'll be afraid to hatch out of their eggs and find their mother," Caboose paused, and Church wished he wouldn't say what he thought he was going to say. "The Easter Bunny."
He sighed again, putting a gloved hand to his head. Of course...it was that time of year again. "All right," he began slowly, trying very hard to keep his voice in an even tone. "I thought we went over this last year, and the year before that, but someone keeps fucking that up." He didn't want to think of who that was, though he had a couple ideas. "Okay, I'm going to say this again and maybe...maybe this time, it'll stick. Caboose, there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny. It's no more real than unicorns and people who floss daily." Seeing as Caboose didn't exactly protest his earth-shattering revelation, he had a feeling that part hadn't quite sunk in. "And rabbits don't hatch out of eggs, man. That's lizards."
"No, the Easter bunny lays special eggs! That is why they are made out of chocolate."
"That doesn't make any sense!" he cried. A split-second later, he was immediately glad they didn't have a rabbit living anywhere in the canyon.
"Church, don't be silly," Caboose said calmly and walked over to a pile of haphazardly dyed eggs that must have been there the whole time. He, however, had just noticed them. "You can only hatch rabbits out of these! The colors tell the egg to make a rabbit, but you can only do it once a year! That's why the Easter Bunny comes and gives us special chocolate eggs! It's--"
He held up a hand. "Let me guess."
But before he could say what it was, he was interrupted by a voice behind him. "Oh come on, it's so obvious!" A voice that was very, very near him and he now wondered how he didn't notice that either.
He whirled around and frowned inwardly. "Tucker! When the hell did you get here?"
"Oh, I've been here from the beginning. I saw Caboose walking around out here with those eggs and knew you wouldn't be too far behind. And for the record, you get chocolate as a finder's fee. Why do you think we do it every year?"
A light bulb went off in his head and promptly shorted out. "Do what 'every year'?" he asked suspiciously.
Tucker just shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Tell Caboose about the Easter Bunny, except it's more fun this way. It's kinda like Linus and the Great Pumpkin, but with less piano jazz music and more crickets and rotten eggs."
"...You lied to me."
"You said 'we'," he interjected before Caboose or Tucker could go further and tried to get back on topic. "Who is 'we'? It can't be Sister since she just got here not too long ago." Though from what he saw a few minutes ago, it wouldn't be that hard to talk her into going along with it.
"Hah, oh, you thought I meant 'we' as in someone I work with. See, you're almost correct, except this guy likes to think he's in charge and has a huge fucking ego. Maybe you know him."
If he had real eyes, he'd definitely be rolling them right now. "Very funny."
"He also likes to tell Caboose that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist every year. It's this well-oiled machine we're all stuck in. I tell Caboose something, Caboose gets the wrong idea, and you work yourself into a ghostly conniption fit and try to put everything straight. I'm honestly surprised you haven't had a ghost aneurysm yet. Can ghosts even get aneurysms?"
"Forget all that--and...no, I don't...think ghosts can," he added as an afterthought. "If you're working alone, how does Donut factor into...?" The words died on his tongue as he spoke. As did a part of his brain. That wasn't going to be an image he'd get rid of any time soon.
"Donut? What the fuck does he have to do with anything?"
Church just...shook his head, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "You know what? I don't really care anymore. I'm going to go and...try to forget the past five minutes of my life ever occurred. It's better that way." He started to walk away, but then stopped and turned back to add, "Oh, and Tucker? You might want to check your bunk. I saw an egg trail leading to your room."
"What?!" And that was his cue to slip away, which he gladly did while Tucker continued to yell. "Oh goddamnit, Caboose, not again! What'd I tell you about doing that?!"
"You said I couldn't use mustard! You never said anything about bunny eggs."
"They're regular eggs! And you're supposed to hard-boil them, not use them straight out of the carton!"
The last thing Church heard before he was blissfully out of earshot was a gasp from Caboose. He suspected it had to do with the thought of boiling the eggs, but his mind had already moved on to thinking of ways he could use to con Sister and the others into cleaning the base while he did important leader things. That...just so happened to be very far away from. Yeah, that sounded good.