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Auron and Xigbar (And Gendo) in: |
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A GRAND DAY OUT (Part 1)
Based as loosely as ******** on the first Wallace and Gromit short.
So.
It's one of those impale-yourself-on-the-rampant-sunbeams-to-the-tune-of-every-bird-in-the-world-singing-'What's the Name of that Song?'-maaaaaaan-it's-so-nice-outside-today-can-we-please-mommy-please-go-to-the-big-park-and-play-in-the-sprinkler-no-honey-my-back-is-still-sore-from-yesterday-oh-please-mommy-the-weather-is-so-great-well-okay-for-just-a-little-while-yipee! sort of days.
You know the kind.
Despite this fact, two middle aged men sat on the wooden floors of 1943 Norris Place, pouring over the glossy pages of various travel magazines spread around them. The man in the John Lennon-wannabe glasses flipped briefly through one of the mags, then shut it with a defiant slap! and threw it onto the couch. He sat back and stared at the paper ensemble before them.
"These bank holidays are a trouble to decide..."
The other one looked up at him, incredulity in his single eye.
"Dude! We're in America. We don't call them freaking 'bank holidays'!"
He too quickly grew tired of the article he'd been scouring and pushed it aside.
"And anyhow, we don't even work, so, like, EVERY day is a holiday."
The wiser of the two regarded him strenly.
"Then by that argument, Americans don't refer to them as holidays either."
But Xigbar wasn't listening. He'd picked up another mag and was now riffling lazily through it. So Gendo pushed himself up and stretched, sparing a glance at... well, nothing. Seeing as how there were no working clocks anywhere in the house. Yet.
After the most female member of the team's move to a lovely new apartment under joint custody with the most female of her parents blah blah blah, and the fact that no one really wanted to share a sleeping space with any of the other three in the old house anyway blah blah Auron kicks, Xigbar talks in his sleep, Joiner drools blah blah NOT GAY blah blah BLAH. She eventually decided to move them into an area where there was significantly more room, and fewer parentals who would die-- I mean just die to know there were three nonexistant semi-oyajis living with their daughter.
But there were still no accurate timepieces, and that irked the commander most of all.
Auron took this menial lapse in unrelated-ranting to wlak into the room.
"Auron? You feeling okay, man? You're walking... kinda weird." Pointed out the Nobody.
"Don't you see he just wlaked in? That's quite different." corrected the commander.
Big A continually had nothing to say on the matter-- he had more pressing news. Yes, FAR more pressing:
"We're out of Kool-Aid."
"Whut?" Xigbar have him the half-lid.
"We never HAD any." Gendo plopped (well... not realy 'plopped' per se.) down on the couch. "Uagh... filthy thing." (I mean honestly! Can you even imagine him just 'plopping down' on anything?)
Auron's... eye grew slightly lareger, but he maintained his legendary composure. A composure that would baffle many a prostitute in it's time-- no woman would ever know if he liked it or not. (Then again, no woman would admit, for the next couple of months, that she had not ascended into heaven just then, but that is ENTIRELY AND I MEAN IT beside the point.)
"What do you mean we don't..."
"Exactly what I said! We never had any Kool-aid. They packed only what was neccassary--" Gendo was busily removing a snow dust bunnies from his jacket sleeves, "Which did not include powdered drink mix."
Seeing that resistance to the legions of dust particles attempting to smother him to death was futile, the commander gave up and let it wash over him in a thick, gray fuzz.
"There you go, Xigbar. We'll go someplace where there's Kool-Aid, then."
The other two gave the talking wad of house debris a 'look', if you will, and returned to whatever the heck it was they were doing. Until...
A pause.
All heads turned towards the bay window, which would have made more sense if:
A. It wasn't pure daylight outside, as was previously mentioned
B. Mars was actually visible from Earth in an area as condensed in light pollution as Louisville.
"Everyone knows Mars is made of Kool-aid..." said Xigbar, zombielike, though he had never before even heard of the very concept of mars in his life.
In appropriate response for a man of science such has 'hisself, Gendo's head snapped towards the unfortunate nobody in a way to suggest he'd been hit, very hard, with something heavy, airborne, and invisible aimed at his left cheek.
If he could OMGWTF STFU N00b, he would've.
"WHAT?! No one says that!"
It was true, though we have no way of verifying it... we'll take his word for it. No one ever put forth the hypothesis 'Oh yes! Verily! For yon planet of the war god is made up of flavored sugar liquid!'
"Some might say the moon is made of cheese, though, but no one--"
"What's a moon?" Asked Auron. And that settled it.
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"How did we get in the basement?" Asked no one in particular.
"I don't even think the authoress has been down here."
Nay, she hasn't. So it's appearance is subjective, then. Therefore I imagine it is fitted out with all manner of tools and resources necassary for the construction of a vehicle capable of space travel, particularly to the planet Mars.
******** you Bush administration. ******** you with bleeding, stinking a**l warts the size of Antarctica, which soon will cease to be. ******** you!
The they dun built a rocket ship.
"Woa, dude! that was SO much work building that rocket just now. Wow man. Killer." Exclaimed Xigbar, as he wiped a little bit of sweat off that wide expanse he calls a forehead. Gendo nodded.
"Yes, well, I'm sure the experience was documented in a lengthy, detailed manner by our dear authoress."
He thought about tacking on a 'rest her soul' or making the sign of the cross, but he had no idea why. And it scared him, just a little.
"One... question." If by order of age everyone here speaks, it only makes sense that who made this statement should be...
"Why did we paint it orange?"
The guardian took special care not to make the pronunciation of the color sound like his own name, though that IS how you say it.
The three men stood back to admire their work. Yes-- it was very orange. But it couldn't be helped! They climbed into the hull.
"Cozy." Said Xigbar
"Quite." Said Gendo
"Are we always going to speak in order like this?!" Screamed the first.
"Xigbar, if you don't stop breaking the fourth wall I'm going to break your nose."
"Sixty seconds to blast off." Gendo sidled down (that's more like it!) into the green hida-chair. "Not much of an improvement." He glowered. Even though a glower is a facial expression... you get it. He's not happy to be seated on yet another crappy... seating device.
"Cool!" Xigbar picked up the radio headphones and stuck them on his head-- for no particular reason. He just did it. They were there and so was he. It was totally natural-- like magic, almost. But it was Xigabar... and a pair of headphones.
THEN things started to happen all at once.
Gendo shouted, "Light the fuse!" And Auron ran down and lit the fuse. But as he was coming back up the ladder, the pyrefly in charge of his part-term memory bonked itself against his brain cavity and Auron realized something very, very grave. Seems he's always doing that sort of thing nowadays. Oh well.
"Auron! We're you going?!" yelled Xigbar.
"The glasses! We forgot the damn glasses!" Auron rushed down the ladder and made a breakneck sprint across the floor of the garage. The tiny flame at the end of the fuse was travelling oh-so-innocently along it's bit of rope. Gendo peeked through the window. "Somebody get down there and snuff that thing out!"
"What do you want me to do?! I've got... yyyy-y'know! This! This stuff!" And Xigbar indicated to the confusing, post-Appollo 13 trip array of blinking lights and buzzers and bells 'n whatnot. It looked awfully complicated, and no matter how little Xigbar actually understood the mechanics of it, he still had to do it... whatever it was.
And poor Gendo... well, he has a serious medical condition. You see... ever since the impact... well, it's complicated. I could explain it to you but-- oh, I suppose you're grown up enough by now to know the sad truth. For you see, the fact of the matter is... Gendo? He can't... he just can't be arsed. He just can't. No one knows how it happenned. One day he could do something, whether it was important or not, and the next minute... nothing. He just could. not. be. arsed.
And that was that.
Back to Auron, who was hastily tearing through the cabinets-- for no reason I can undertsand, for the cups and other utensils are located in the big case along the opposite wall. But he soon figured this out and scooped out a good supply of drinking... devices, MORE than enough to suit the needs of the three adventureers, and then, as quickly as he had come, he ran back to the basement (wherever it was).
And just like any good bridge rescue in an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, he was just in time. The hull door shut decisively behind him as he crawled in, breathless, plastic Skyline Chili cups spilling out of his arms.
And then there was... well, there was another pause. The three fellows glanced at one another, unsure of what to do next. The fuse must have SURELY made it by now.
There was a general consensus on perhaps sweat dropping and calling it a day, but just then, Gendo's OWN nonexistant pyrefly knocked against his OWN cranial cavity and he get his OWN revelation, aren't you proud of him?
"Release the break!" He commanded.
Xigbar, who up until now had NO idea what ANYTHING on this ship does, was happy to oblige. The break was released, that strange hatch opened that wan't mentioned in our warranty, and the rocket gave a rumbling start.
The basement crickets cheered as they blasted off into space. Never had they witnessed such a spectacle in their short lives. And twenty seconds later, they were still astonished, even though they had completely forgotten whatever it was they were astonished about. It was just that awesome.
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I could take this time now to talk about the 'final frontier' or 'digging to heaven', but I shant. Not to be confused with shat, which I still do (hopefully), but I'm not in the mind to tell any of you about it.
So.
Xigbar, tired of his overwhelming position as whatever-operator-guy, and decided to build a card house, which he was quite good at, despite it's infinite ironies.
Gendo, who had no interest in such things, and thus lead a rather boring life, twiddled his thumbs (much to the chagrin of the tiny embryo within-- hey! that rhymed!)
Auron was making toast. 'Kay.
"Look Auron--there's the moon."
"What?" The guardian peered out the window, seeing as how no one had really bothered to explain to him what a moon actually WAS. The way things were going, he half-suspected it was yet another kind of sexuality, but it wasn't.
He ghasped.
"It's a Sin egg!"
One again, Gendo put on his WTF? face and tried to explain. Xigbar overtook him:
"The moon is like, this big rock out in space that kinda, like, fell of the earth like a BILLION years ago or something."
A pause.
"There's a rabbit in it."
"No way! Serious-- oh. No. That's the man in the moon."
Auron's... eyebrow shot up. "So it IS an egg."
"What? No man. It's just like... craters 'n stuff." He waved him away. "You're just seein' things."
Another pause.
"Then what's that pronged object sticking out of it?"
"Huh?"
Xigbar wlaked over to the window and stared out of it.
"What're you talking about, man?"
Auron indicated to the red, spearlike object sticking out of the moon's surface. Xigbar scratched his head cliche... ly.
"I dunno-- wow, that's pretty weird. Hey Gendo! You gotta get a look at this thing Aruon found, man, it's--"
Gendo pressed a button on some random panel I just now invented, and all the windows on the ship sealed themslves, blocking any further sightseeing attempts.
"I think that is enough stargazing for one trip." He yelled at no one in particular: "Engage Hyper Drive!"
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After the use of a standard space opera convention, the little group came upon a small red planet much like earth. Let's call it Howard, shall we? To his face? No no, not to his face, no. I'll do it! I'll call him that, shall I? Shall I? Well go on then.
Err.... no, wait. It was Mars. Yes, that's right. They had arrived at the planet Mars.
"Look! Mars!"
Gendo cracked Xigbar over the head with a conveniently placed glass bottle, and there was no more said on the subject... or anything else, really, by the Nobody.
Indeed, they were on Mars. As it turned out, Mars was pretty damn solid for a ball of Kool-Aid, much to the dissapointment of the overly excited guardian who stepped out onto it, though he tried to keep these emotions in check.
"We'll there you are. Mars. You've seen it now-- happy? Good, we can go home. Come on--"
"Wait a minute." The legendary guard halted the commander's ubesque rant (have NO idea what that word means).
He scooped up a little bit of the alien soil and tipped it into his mouth.
"EW MAN! You don't know where that stuff has been!" Cringed Xigbar. Gendo just decided he didn't care enough about anyone to warn them that the soil was made up mostly of silica-rich basalt and iron oxide.
Another pause. Damn, I love those things.
"Hmmmm... it's like no Kool-Aid I've ever tasted." He offerred a handful to Xigbar, who outright rejected him on the spot. "Tell me what you think."
Xigbar sniffed the martian rock, which is really weird, seeing as how there's no... air in... space...
Er, um, ah, anyway...
"Mandarina Tangerine?"
Xigbar shook his head no.
"Slammin' Strawberry Kiwi?"
Xigbar shook his head no again.
"Oh-Yeah Orange-Pineapple!
Xigbar shook his head a third time and Auron put his hands on his hips. "Well I don't know then."
He started to walk off.
"Come on, let's try another spot."
And off they went. Gendo followed at a distance, always keeping an eye on the rocket just in case he might be able to make it back and flee before the other two noticed he was missing.
But on the way, as his fellow space travelers drifted inot the distance, he noticed something peculiar. Among the martian rocks and remnents of the school of Panzer Kunst and the galaxie's tallest mountain and deepest canyon and what have you, he noticed a rather odd vending machine.
"Gochapon?" He wondered. "Perhaps I could get a petite Eva JA-ko. I've always wanted one of those."
But no, it was not to be.
"Buble gum then..."
And neither was that.
"Soda? Individually packaged chips? STICKERS, FOR ******** SAKE?!"
Nope.
"********."
And besides-- the damned thing didn't even accept ten yen coins.
Then he remembered the loose change he'd earned in a previous venture (which you'll just have to go back and read if you want to know anything about it.)
He whipped it out, thought it highly unchracteristic to kiss it good luck, and threw it into the odd contraption.
A pause-- during which we can reflect on that small amount of time I spent talking about being a man of science and all that, and here we are putting coins into vending machines on previously unexplored planets.... but then again, we are talking about a completely fictional character created by a deranged, depressed man on the brink of suicide back in like, what, the nineties? Heck, I dunno. Was a long time ago. But here he is, standing on the face of mars, getting gyp'd by a crappy article of vending equipment that dosn't even sell UFO dolls.
The commander kicked the offending machine, and when it still refused to comply he stalked off, angrily, mumbling something about 'daylight roberry' and 'never liked those things anyway'
Last pause I SWEAR: A mysterious ticking noise-- and not the kind that causes puppet versions of J.K. Rowling characters to burst into song, but rather the kind that forbodes a nasty sort of work is about to unfold: the kind of ominous ticking that alerts the reader to danger and suspense, usually at the expense of the characters in question.
The kind of mysterious ticking that heralds a grand cliffhanger ending which leaves you wondering what the heck's going to happen next... except that, if you indeed DID get this far, you most likely don't give and ******** and just want to go back to your newspaper/child/world takeover plans/home planet and I've wasted your time terribly.
That said, the odd machine sprung to life, with an indicated ticker of five minutes to wreak all the havoc it could on the Red Planet.
 Hexametaphosphate · Sun Oct 14, 2007 @ 07:01pm · 1 Comments |
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