Chapter Text
The field was full of flowers. An odd sight for this time of year as the wintry sun barely warmed the frigid air and the cold, papery grass lay waiting for the first snow to fall. But then again, these were not ordinary flowers. No, the colourful array of roses, tulips, sunflowers, daisies, carnations, lilies, daffodils and more had been hand drawn by Orange and his father.
The pair were seated in the middle of their growing garden, sketching out the three-dimensional foliage as they chattered together in the Fitur’s backyard. Or at least, Orange chattered. Not a man of many words, the Animator was content to let the younger Hollow run the conversation, enjoying the boy’s excited nattering about some sort of fruit-ninja challenge while he meticulously coloured the stylised outlines provided to him.
“But then I accidentally hit the cutout and Green was being so overdramatic about it, pretending I’d mortally wounded him instead. He committed to this whole, over-the-top death scene. With props and a monologue and everything. Right up until Yellow ‘accidentally’ dropped fruit juice all over his ‘corpse’. It was so funny!” Orange grinned. Bringing his pen tool up, the boy spontaneously doodled a little flower creature before bringing it to life with a small flourish and a flicker of green sparks. As soon as the nub pulled free, the gangly, two-legged sketch burst into motion, running in joyful circles through their small flower field.
A delighted laugh pulled free from the fifteen-year-old’s chest as he watched the tiny critter move, pausing his play-by-play to instead giggle at the sight of the little creature’s head petals flopping to and fro. The Animator, meanwhile, felt his own smile lift at the carefree sight.
“You’re getting better at that,” he commented offhandedly.
“Yeah?” The smile on the round boy’s face brightened at the praise, causing the older elf’s heart to ache. It had been a long time since he’d seen such a look.
He cleared his throat, hoping the action would help him get rid of the clog of pain and shame stuck there before nodding, “Yeah. Your lines a more confident and your in-betweens are smoother. You’ve really come a long way in such a short span of time.”
“Well, I did have some help,” the ginger-haired teen admitted, his foot knocking into his parent’s in a not-so-subtle gesture of gratitude.
The holographic elf couldn’t help the soft warmth rising in his chest at the action, his cheeks heating up as he answered modestly, “Nothing you wouldn’t have picked up on your own eventually.”
It was true, the boy had a real knack for learning, able to quickly teach himself more than most could with assistance and collecting new skills with an enviable ease. Between his insightful ability to break a task down to its core components and his unfettered desire to attempt anything, the elder Hollow was getting to watch his son grow into quite the talented and self-sufficient young man.
Even if, it was a self-sufficiency born out of his failures.
The Animator felt his smile drop at the thought, his mood plummeting. Almost unbidden, the undercurrent of shame and guilt he was never quite able to shake reared its ugly head as his treacherous mind began unearthing a deluge of buried memories. His son’s voice crying for him to listen. The stiff posture of a retreating back. A derisive, final glare over the shoulder. All the flashbacks culminating in a disastrous, heart-wrenching goodbye.
The purple-clad elf couldn’t help the soft sigh that left him, closing his eyes to the painful recollection as he finally admitted the truth to himself. In trying to fix the mistakes of his past, he’d caused even more harm. In the end, he’d never learned. And he’d never listened.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
He pushed the thoughts away, locking them back within the chest where they belonged to instead focus on the present. Now was not the time to dwell on his past mistakes. His son was doing better. He was doing better. He was being better. And as long as he focused on that, the rest didn’t matter.
Refocusing on the worried teen in front of him, his gaze softened, “Sorry, I was lost in thought. You were saying?”
Orange continued to stare at him in concern, his brow scrunching as he hesitated on whether to push the topic or not. It was clear he wanted to, but something was holding him back. Until he finally dropped the subject to reluctantly continue, “Oh, I was just talking about how I was teaching my brothers to draw. It’s been fun. They-”
“Brothers! What? How?!” The purple elf shot up straight at his words, his head snapping around as an instinctual desperation flooded his veins.
His sudden movement caused the young teen to pull back, the boy’s tangerine eyes wide and wary as internally he cursed. He was usually more careful about the language he used around his dad when it came to his new siblings, not wanting the older elf to feel like he was being replaced. But with how focused he’d been on the man’s sudden sombreness it had just slipped out, leaving it hanging in the open air with no way to take back.
“You know, the others. My friends,” he carefully explained. “I thought I’d told you they’d adopted me.”
“Oh! You meant the humans… Right… I’d forgotten,” the Animator sighed.
Suspicious now as well as cautious, Orange narrowed his eyes, “Who else would I mean?”
Silence answered him before the holographic man closed his eyes, “No one in particular… I don’t know what I was thinking.”
The Animator drew in a deep breath through his nose as a sour mixture of relief and disappointment curdled in his chest. He still didn’t know how to feel about the four teenagers his son had chosen to live with over him. It wasn’t like he disliked them. They were nice enough, he supposed. Generally pleasant in their few interactions since his first botched introduction. And extremely loyal to his son, from the sounds of it.
But he still didn’t know them that well. And with his thoughts straying to the long-buried past, it had been far too easy to jump to the wrong conclusions.
He shook himself off, “How are they, by the way?”
“They’ve been good,” the fifteen-year-old murmured, his expression pinched as he eyed his father dubiously. But he continued to answer the question in an only slightly stilted voice, “Green’s been giving me music lessons. I’m still awful at singing but he says I’m picking the guitar up pretty well. And Yellow’s been really invested in enchantment magic recently. Practically everything in the house has been modified with runes now. Efficiency enchantments, protection spells, sturdiness markers, cleanliness charms, you name it. He even tried to disassemble the microwave the other day to add in some heating runes before Blue stopped him. Oh, Blue’s good too. I’ve been helping him out with the harvest. We finished clearing the fields last week, so they’re all prepped for the winter now. He and Red are super keen for it to finally snow. Actually, all my- the others are excited for it. We’re planning on having a massive snowball fight and Red’s already gotten out his sled to let me try. I’m really excited! Have- have you ever been sledding?”
“No, I haven’t.” The Animator took the peace offering for what it was, tilting his head skywards as he pushed himself to speak further, “The Kernel Realm doesn’t have seasons like they do here. The weather just remains static from region to region and I’ve lived in the Sunflower Plains my whole life. The only time I’ve seen snow was when I visited the winter biomes and I was much too old for sledding by then.”
“I guess I’ll have to tell you what it’s like then,” Orange nudged him gently, causing the old elf to finally relax once more.
“Yeah, I guess you will,” he smiled.
The younger elf returned it with a growing grin of his own, already opening his mouth to continue when the purple-tinged hologram stiffened. His ringed eyes narrowed behind his glasses as something gleamed in the pale-blue sky. Something burning bright and speeding rapidly downwards - right towards them.
“Look out!” Immediately, the old elf acted. Springing to his feet, he keyed in the shield tool on his wrist to throw up a field before he tackled his son to the ground and covered him with his body.
Orange barely had time to register what was happening before the fast-moving projectile hit the ground. The beach-ball sized sphere impacted the dirt mere meters away from the duo, colliding with a seismic thud as a plume of dirt and rock was thrown skyward. The pair waited, holding their breath until it was clear that the worst of the collision was over.
Only then, did the Animator finally move. Rolling back on his heels, he helped the orange-clad teen upright, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” the youngster nodded, brushing himself off as he looked over at the crash site.
The dust and smoke were slowly starting to clear, revealing a sleek, red orb sitting innocuously in the centre of the small, leftover crater. The trailing flames had been put out by its collision with the dirt, leaving the hard, metal surface completely intact and the seamless shell unscratched despite its sudden, forceful stop.
Orange eyed it with a wary curiosity, his feet automatically drawing him closer before his father stuck his arm out.
“Don’t touch it,” the Animator warned him, his own expression leery.
The younger Hollow blinked, pulling his eyes away from the strange object to scan the older man’s haggard face, “Do you know what it is?”
“No,” he admitted, his lip twitching in a brief show of irritation. Then he pushed his glasses up his nose before readying his tools, the holographic elf’s voice dropping ominously as he cautiously approached it, “But I intend to find out.”
Orange followed a step behind, coming to stop right by the taller elf’s side to watch him bring up his scanner. The wide beam hit the unknown object head on before steadily travelling up the length of the sphere until it reached the top. Then the light shut off as a myriad of displays popped up along the purple man’s raised arm - all of them displaying some sort of error signal.
The Animator’s frown deepened but he simply dismissed the screens to instead select the blood-red orb with a different tool. The ball followed his motion, levitating about a foot off the ground before the selection flickered, dropping it back into the dirt with another dull thud.
Several beeps and rapid clicks sounded from the elf’s control panels, the Hollow’s hands a flurry of movement as he continued to try and interact with the orb. But no matter what he did, it remained unchanged where it was. With a sigh, the older man had to admit defeat, “Odd. None of my tools seem to have an effect on this thing.”
“Then we do this the old-fashioned way.” Ignoring the unease growing in his gut, Orange too a step back, rolling up his sleeves as he drew himself a massive hammer. Maybe it was overkill, but after the last time an unfamiliar object had shown up at their home, this time he wasn’t taking any chances.
Drawing in a deep breath, he raised the weapon high before swinging with all of his might directly for the glossy orb. The hammer struck it dead on, crashing into the metal with a resounding crack that clearly warped the surface beneath the flat of his weapon’s head. At the sight, a savage satisfaction bubbled up in Orange’s chest and he pulled his hammer back to deliver several more heavy hits. The crimson metal continued to dent and deform under the unrelenting barrage, until finally, it cracked, realising a hiss of steam as the shell fell away.
Instinctively, the Hollow elf stepped back, one arm coming up to shield his face. Meanwhile, inside the sphere, something moved. A compact body, made from the same shiny, red metal as the surface, twitched before it pulled free from its enclosure, its long, spindly legs unfolding to support itself as its spiky head spun once about its axis.
Orange glanced over at his father’s pinched face, waiting to see what he would do now. But the older man remained frozen, his wide eyes locked onto the stylised spider etched into the base of the body as the blood drained from his face.
Well, looked like he was going to have to take point on this one.
The fifteen-year-old hefted the hammer up again, pulling the weapon all the way back before sending the head hurtling straight towards the strange robot.
In response, the spindly bot’s head swivelled, locking in on the incoming threat as it raised a pincer to intercept the heavy hit. The drawn weapon collided with the thin leg head on. But rather than the crunch of steel and fizz of smashed electronics he’d been expecting, the razor tip pierced the papery material, bringing it to a sudden, surprising stop well before it could do any real damage to the bot.
The tangerine-clad elf blinked, tugging on the handle to try and pull his weapon free. But it was no use, the large hammer didn’t so much as budge in the robot’s grip.
Once more, the spider-bot’s head spun and it jerked its arm back, pulling the weapon free from the teenager’s tight grasp and fully into its own. Then it bit down into the large hammer. Its jaws sliced clean through the handle, cleaving the sketched weapon in two as a dark-red energy leaked from its mouth. Even as Orange watched, the corrosive liquid ate away at the broken ends, eroding the papery hammer within seconds as the grass below its dripping jaws sizzled and smoked.
The unease in the young elf’s stomach flared into full-on fear as the deadly robot turned to face him head on. Right before it leapt straight for him.