Breaking the Mold

[The Future Warrior]

It was shaping up to be an peaceful evening, ol' pappy bon bon thought to himself, as he sat on the porch of his humble old abode. The sun had yet go go down completely, but had long since started doing that thing where it turned all different colors just before it slipped behind the horizon. It was juuuuust still bright enough to cast everything in a big ol' rainbow of colors, especially with it sparkling off the waters of the lake that marked the edge of his property.

The little youngins, his ever-adorable and incessantly noisy and exhausting to handle grandchildren, were running amok out in the yard among the sugarbushes. One of them had climbed up a cookie tree, and much to the chagrin of her younger siblings was refusing to throw down any treats as had been promised. Kids and their antics.

From inside his old shack — he refused to call it anything else, despite that it had long since evolved and been expanded to a rather sprawling ranch house — there drifted the tantalizing, nearly unbearable aroma of slowly baking sweetbread, made with authentic sweets, picked right from his own fields. None of that ridiculous animal organ nonsense around here. Pappy bon bon might not have seen eye to eye with his children on some things, but by gum if they didn't know how to make a right proper sweetbread. That was going to be a real delight to look forward to, come dinner time.

....but far, far in the skies above dear ol' pappy bon bon, something entirely unexpected was brewing.

"Hey, grampaw!" one of the youngins called out, dashing up to him to incessantly badger the old candy with several quick tip-tap pokes to his arm. "Paw paw, paw paw!" he yammered on, adding in a few tugs on the old timer's sleeve for good measure.

With a positively beard-ruffling, wheezing sigh, ol' pappy bon bon ceased his chair from rocking and curled one bushy eyebrow up, his startlingly clear, bright gold eye peering out of its deep shadows. "Eh? Whassamatter, youngin?"

"I saw something really weird, grampaw!" the child said, at mercifully only half-shouting volume. "Up there! Look, paw, look!" And he tugged on his grandpa's arm with one hand, pointing eagerly and exitedly out toward a little rise of a hill in the yard. "You gotta come see, grampaw!"

"Hold yer dang horses, now...." pappy bon bon grumbled, reaching a gnarled and pockmarked hand out to grab his candy cane. "You know pappy ain't what he used ta be." With only a moderate chorus of crinkling and creaking of his old joints, the venerable old candy heaved himself from his rocking chair, fishing a pair of spectacles from his beard and fumbling them over his eyes. "Now what's this ya found that's so important?"

"It's something up in the sky! You gotta come see!" the child excitedly chattered on before half-skipping and half-running back into the yard, only stumbling once into a faceplant before managing to reach the hill in question.

With a noise somewhere between disgruntled grumbling at being hauled out of his late afternoon definitely-resting-and-not-napping, and chuckling in amusement at the antics of his bumbling grandkids, the old bon bon trudged down his front steps and across the yard. Though his posture was hunched and his legs shaky, his cane was mostly for balance, and his awkward shuffling pace carried him across the yard at a surprisingly brisk pace. He was only a few moments behind the full gathering of the youngins at the top of the hill, tromping up to stand amongst them. Folding one arm behind his back to help prop up his stooping posture (with only half a dozen jittering cracks and pops from his positively ancient wrapper and spine, no less!), he stood up as straight as he could manage.

Peering up at the sky where his excitedly yammering and squealing grandchildren were all focused at, pointing it out and incessantly chattering about what it might have been, his old eyes slowly went wide. The gleaming blue light reflected in his old spectacles, making his bright yellow eyes sparkle with energy that he hadn't expressed in nearly forty years. "Well by gum! Wouldja lookit that, it's a shootin' star!" And he jabbed his cane into the earth, doing a quick heel-clicking hop. "I ain't seen one'a them in 'least fifty-some years, now!"

"A shooting star?!" came the squealing, delighted chorus from the gathered youngins. "Oh, we should make a wish! Right, grampaw?!"

"Yer darn tootin', little 'un!" the old candy agreed with a guffaw. "Jus' remember, don't tell no one what ya wish for, or else it won't come true!"

The kids all lapsed into fervent whispering, hands clasping and rubbing together as they feverishly worked their little child minds for something to wish for. Ol' pappy bon bon, though, just lifted his rheumy eyes back up to stare at the so-called shooting star, raking the gnarled fingers of one hand through his beard. Now what could an old codger of a candy like him wish for, anyway...?

"Um....grampaw?" one of the youngins spoke up a moment later, tugging at the old candy's sleeve.

Casting his eyes down to the child in question, one of the younger girls of the gaggle of children, he peered at her out of his good eye. "Whatsit, little 'un?"

"Is it supposed to be getting closer?"

"Eh? Closer?" Pappy bon bon lifted his eyes back to the sky, squinting intently and adjusting his spectacles to try and get a good look. And sure enough...it was definitely getting closer. "Well, I'll be...it sure does look like it's gettin' closer, don't it?" he murmured. Once upon a time, ol pappy bon bon had been a proud member of the military serving in the capital. He was in charge of some pretty gnarly stuff, too, as the kids said at the time. It had given him an appreciation for, and understanding of, planning and plotting out trajectories and impacts of random falling objects in the sky. Had to know what you needed to shoot down, and what would just smash up the countryside and make a new lake or something, after all.

As he ran his fingers through his beard in agitated thought, his aging mind struggling to recall the math and perform the mental gymnastics to solve it all, his watery eyes and spectacles formed a near perfect mirror for the gleaming bright comet of blue light to shine against.

"Shouldn't need ta worry, now, youngins," he finally spoke up, with a slow nod. "It'll be coming down somewhere close by, but we ain't got not to fear. Unless yer averse to a little dirt shower." He hawed aloud at that, pointedly tapping his cane on the ground for emphasis. That drew a cascading ripple of giggles and laughs from the grandkids, the brief unease stirred by the youngest seemingly put to rest. "But why don't all'a y'all run on inside fer now, eh? Go git to washin' up and ready for dinner, ''fore you all wind up needin' a bath from when this thing hits wherever it's gonna land!"

"Okay, grampaw!" came the disappointed wail, as they all started to traipse back toward the house.

Pappy bon bon watched them go for a moment, before turning his face back toward the so-called shooting star, one eyebrow arched high to leave his eye clear, staring intently at it. In the time since he had distracted the kids and sent them off, it had rather pointedly and obviously burst into flame, trailing a brilliant streamer of red and white in its wake as it streaked through the sky.

"Gonna be somewhere near the lake...." he muttered, a frown creasing his face as his face dropped, his bushy eyebrows sinking low to shroud his eyes once more. And here he had been hoping to be able to take everyone out to the lake for a nice family outing, tomorrow.

This was ridiculous.

 

[The Future Warrior]

His battered old truck struggled to make it down the dusty old roads to the lakeshore, rattling and jouncing and coughing the whole way. Pappy bonbon had been meaning to get the darn thing looked at for an age now, but never quite seemed to get around to it. The fact that the thing still ran at all was quite frankly something of a miracle he could only chalk up to good ol' quality of construction. Yep, couldn't beat Wondertainment. You'd never think a toy company could make something that'd last you a lifetime, but that was part of their charm.

The engine spluttered and clanked with a steadily decreasing volume as the old candy turned it off, and half-slid out of the cab onto the ground. Propping himself up on his candy cane, he thunked his way down the last bit of the path toward the shoreline of the lake itself. Even from here, he could already see the site of impact.

It had been a terrific thing last night, that was for sure. The youngins had been so distracted that dinner had been long cold by the time their parents had managed to get them to stop gawkin' and squawkin' at the sight of it. It had sure been something to see, though -- that big ol plume of blue fire, and the great big geyser of sparklin' green soda and mist. It had turned the sky for at least a mile around into one giant web of stars for a good little bit, if the old candy could wax poetic about it for a minute. All the fire and smell of burnt sugar really put the kibosh on what would've otherwise been a real pleasant and pretty sight, though.

Slowly, his baggy eyebrow-shrouded gaze swept across the sight before him right then and there, taking in how half the stretch of lakeside that his property bordered had been turned into a muddy, swampy, sugary crater. Most of the lakewater was still out there where it belonged, the sheer force and heat of the impact having made a sparkling wall of crystallized sugar damming it off from flooding into the crater itself, but the sticky sucrolicious rain had still managed to turn the sloping walls of the crater into a glimmering, slick and spiky sugar-encrusted death trap all the same.

Slowly, pappy bonbon trundled his way up to the edge of the crater and peered down into it. If he was a few dozen years younger and more spry, he might have been able to go tromping his way down safely enough, if he were of a mind to. As it was now, though...it would be a darn sight foolish of him to even try. He might be able to get down, and maybe he could even do it in one piece, but it'd take him all day and he'd never get back out again. Besides, there wasn't even anything down there worth goin' to look at, anyway. Just that weird blue thing floatin' in the slurry and....

....weird blue thing?

Pappy bonbon crept closer, planting his candy cane in the earth and leaning out precariously over the edge of the crater. One of his bushy eyebrows quivered and arced up, clearing the watery yellow eye beneath it to peer intently down at the bottom of the crater.

"Well I'll be....izzat a person?!" he hollered, his opposite eyebrow shooting up to match its partner. He blinked in stark surprise, at the diminutive figure at the bottom of the crater, against all odds. A crash like that would've vaporized darn near anything, he was pretty sure. Or at least left 'em in a lot worse shape than the little'un down there looked to be in. Should've been all charred and crispy-like, at the very least! More broken up 'n shattered than a sack of old bones on pantry clearin' night.

Pappy bonbon grumbled to himself, muttering and swearing under his breath as he stepped back from the crater's edge. Weren't no telling where that thing had come from, whatever it was. Or whether it was even still alive, or even if it was friendly if it still was. But by gum, pappy bonbon was too good of a person for his own sake sometimes. He couldn't abide just leaving someone to percolate down in a pit until the next rains came by and flooded 'em in. If they were still alive, they sure as sweetness wouldn't by after a rainstorm!

He slowly shuffled and thunked his way back up the path to his truck. An old candy like him was in no fit shape for a rescue operation. He'd need to go fetch the less brittle members of the family. The parents of the youngins. Maybe that dern fool Jerry could finally do something useful aside from eat enough food for six folks all on his own!

 

[The Future Warrior]

".....ya sure yer sure about this one, paw?" came a slow, drawling voice. It came easy, but every word was stretched and drawn out almost like its owner was trying to speak in slow motion.

"Don't go givin' me no guff now, Jerry." The answering voiced was gruff, brittle and creaking, but still surprisingly firm and strong. "You jus' get her on inside and into a spare bed somewhere, 'fore she catches cold or somethin', now. Whatever she is, wherever she came from, poor thing's gonna need some rest."

"Awright, paw. You know better'n me." And a pair of strong arms scooped up the little bundle of blue wrapped in a blanket, as she feebly stirred.

One of the little blue alien dropoff's eyes cracked open ever so slightly, just enough to let in light. All she could see was the dim orange glow of soft, homey lighting and the blurred outline of whoever had picked her up. None of this looked familiar in the slightest, and the way these guys were talking...also didn't sound familiar. It sounded like they mean well enough, though. That was enough for her. What little adrenaline-fueled energy she had left deserted her with the realization of her seeming safety. Being hauled out of her landing site and dragged over who knows where like she had been was enough to trigger that pesky little instinct in the back of her head, to make her wake up even if only halfway, and at least keep track of what was going on.

But that was it. That was all she had. She was exhausted. Regenerating after her planetary entrance like that...it took just about everything she had. Surviving the heat of atmospheric entry was bad enough, but something about the air here...it had really done a number on her. It was so weirdly dense, with flecks of what she had thought were bizarrely sweet and salty ice melting and splashing against her, pricking and pocking and cutting and shredding at her clothes and skin, forcing her to cover her eyes and spiral into an uncontrolled landing....face-first into the ground.

She never really had been good at landings, she mused to herself, as her thoughts drifted into nothing again, for a long, mercifully quiet nap.

 

[The Future Warrior]

What had actually managed to finally pull her out of her sleep was hard to tell.

On the one hand, it could have been the absolutely god-awful noise emanating from her midsection, somewhere around where the stomach would be if she had one. A noise not entirely dissimilar to an untied balloon deflating as its neck was pinched and pulled wide by a sugar-addled child, squealing and whining with a pitch normally reserved for a tenor who had been struck below the belt mid high-note, and mingled with the underlying gurgling growl of a disgruntled cat huffing its displeasure to the world to see, if said cat was the size of an elephant.

In a word: she was hungry.

On the other hand, though, it could also very well have been that utterly salivatory-worthy smell permeating her general state of existence. She was no real chef or overly familiar with what things smelled like what, exactly, but this... It was sweet, hanging heavy without being cloying, and only the smallest, shyest and most imperceptible of shuffle-steps away from a tantalizing steam cloud seductively pulling her bodily along toward its source. In a more sensate, awake state she might have recognized it as some kind of baked good or other. The fact it was just the most powerful aroma, accompanied by no small profusion of other more savory and equally exquisite scents, was the literal icing on the cake in this instance.

Regardless of which one it was, it was enough to make her go from groggy and mostly asleep to wide awake in the span of about two seconds. She sat bolt upright so quick her gooey, rubbery body flipped forward and her forehead impacted her shins, bouncing back up like a coiled spring to leave her sitting upright. Blinking several times, she craned her head around slowly in a full, panoramic circle, trying to get a good look at her surroundings and remember how she'd ended up there.

It was a small, pleasant enough room. Wood paneling for walls, floor and ceiling. Rustic and homey, the kind of thing she could just tell was built entirely by hand, and probably only by a single pair of hands, or no more than a small family's worth. She didn't know a thing about construction or architecture or any other words that meant 'something to do with building stuff' that she didn't know right offhand, but she could just tell. This was a nice place. The room she occupied was rather barren, sporting only the bed she was in, a small table beside it with an unlit lamp, a bookshelf barren of books, a dresser hanging ajar with a set of clothes set on one of the shelves, and a closet. There was a small window, curtains drawn over it and letting sunlight in past its bottom edges, glimmering soft gold and orange to signal either early morning or late afternoon. Time was nebulous and abstract when you couldn't actually see the sky.

Her survey of the room had scarcely been completed, her questing gaze and rotating head completing just over two full revolutions to make sure she didn't miss anything, when there was a soft creaking from the door of the room as it slowly opened less than halfway. "Aw, wow. Yer finally awake?" a voice spoke up a moment later, in a lazy, drawn out drawl before the door creaked open the rest of the way. Standing framed in the doorway was...

The bedridden majin's eyes blinked dumbly, the sheer confusion of the sight before her making her completely lose the plot for a second. Her twisted around head jolted back the other way with a blurred, comical spin to snap back to its normal amount of 'rotated bizarrely around its nonexistent bones' (which, by the way, was 'none'). Her eyes rattled and bounced around for a moment, trying to focus on what she was seeing and make sure she wasn't still dreaming.

.....no, she was seeing it, alright. That was a giant cherry. A giant cherry-man. A giant cherry-man wearing a straw hat and overalls, with an absurdly long cherry stem in his teeth like a piece of straw. A giant cherry-man wearing a straw hat and overalls, with an absurdly long cherry stem in his teeth like a piece of straw that was built like someone had seen a guy who wrestles bulls and went "let's make this guy even muscle-ier than that guy".

Graowr lifted her hands and rubbed blearily at her eyes.

"Y'alright there, blueberry?" the strange cherry-man drawled, pushing his straw hat up. "Ya been asleep fer 'bout three days now. Paw was startin' to get mighty worried about ya. Didn't think you was ever gonna wake up, after we pulled ya outta that hole next to th' lake."

"Whu...?" The little majin blinked, bringing her hands up and pressing the index finger of each hand into either side of her temple, rubbing and massing as she squinted deeply, trying to remember. "....right....I think I crashed, or something...." she finally mumbled. "I was just trying to come see what kind of planet this was, and...I lost control...."

"Oh, yer from off-world, huh?" the cherry-man drawled, with a hint of wonder creeping into his voice. "I bet that'd set paw's worryin' to rest. He's been right beside hisself tryin' to figure out what you was, an' where you come from."

Graowr slowly looked up, blinking again, without taking her hands from her forehead. She staaaaared at the cherry-man, without blinking, for several tense silent seconds. Slowly, a bead of drool formed at the corner of her mouth, dripping down her chin. "So...you're like...a guy, right? Like a people? A person with brains and smarts and stuff?"

"Well, last time I checked I suppose I am," he drawled in response, leaning against the doorframe. "Why ya ask?"

"Because I'm really hungry, and you look really tasty right now," she admitted bluntly. "But if you're like...a people, I don't wanna eat you. That would be, like...rude."

The cherry-man blanched at that, in a manner that she was pretty sure wasn't supposed to be possible. Like the way a human-type people's face could go pale when you reminded them they were technically made of meat. "W-Well...it's mighty kind of ya to have that consideration," he finally managed. "How's about we, uh....well. How's about you get dressed, an' I'll go let paw know you're awake and we can get ya some vittles before ya get hungry than sensible?"

"Okay!" She smiled, dropping one arm to wipe the steadily-increasing river of drool now running from both sides of her mouth. "You're really nice, mister!"

"Aw, shucks..." The cherry-man adjusted his hat. "Don't think nothin' of it, darlin'. You can thank us by not, uh...eatin' anybody, alright?"

"I will do my best!"

 

[The Future Warrior]

It took her an ever so slightly comical amount of time to actually disentangle herself from the bed. People had always told her she was about as far as you could get from a calm sleeper, the way she tended to roll and flop and squirm around in her sleep, and now she could see why. If she didn't know better she would have almost been inclined to think the dang blankets were alive or something, the way they had managed to end up wrapped and squeezed around her!

At least there weren't any knots or anything. Then she'd have really been stuck.

Finally kicking off the devil-cloth, she oozed out of the bed and onto the floor, righting herself with only a minor stumble. "Bweh....man I feel awful...." she grumbled, twisting this way and that and then all the way the other way in a brief stretch. "I wonder if this is how people with bones feel if they broke something?"

That thought kept her occupied for nearly a fully minute, standing there in a blank daze and staring off into space as she wondered just what it was like to actually have bones. All she really knew about them was that they could break, and it really hurt when they did, and sometimes people had to get them replaced by metal or something if they got really hurt bad. She had no idea what they were actually for, though. They just really seemed like a major inconvenience more than anything.

They did kind of make neat handles for meat, though, that she had to admit. Maybe that was what they were for? She was pretty sure everyone she'd ever met with bones was also technically made of meat, but it was kind of bad manners to eat people-meat if you know the people the meat was part of, so she'd never gotten the chance to find out.

.....what was she doing again?

She blinked a few times, looking around. Oh right, getting dressed.

She popped on over to the dresser, peering around through the slightly open doors at the pile of clothes laying within. She squinted slightly, looking at them intently. "....mmm. Normal people clothes," she finally grumbled. That was lame. She was going to look so lame. Not cool at all...

Slowly reaching in, she tentatively plucked up the shirt laying atop the bundle of things and held it up. A relatively plain, completely unremarkable white t-shirt, like she'd seen earthlings wearing all the time. For a moment, the thought of just turning down the clothes altogether rattled around in her head, but then it stopped. Most people, she had to remind herself, were kind of weird about other people not wearing clothes when out in public and stuff. She didn't really get it, honestly, but then again there were a lot of things she didn't get. Bleh.

With much trepidation and quiet grumbling, the little majin picked things out and got herself dressed. A somewhat tattered and clearly well-worn, but still perfectly intact denim jacket was probably the only thing remotely cool that had been left for her. Because it certainly wasn't the unremarkable khaki pants, or the child-sized boots. They were about as utterly forgettable and lame as you could get!

The more disappointing thing though, was how absolutely awful she looked in general, as she finally found a mirror to look at herself in on the back of the closet door, of all places. She stared flatly at her reflection, somewhere between unamused and actually disgruntled. While everything at least fit, and she couldn't fault it for that much, it didn't exactly fit...super well. A moment later she looked down slightly at herself, pursing her lips as the gears in her head started to slowly turn. She sucked in a deep breath, then brought one arm up and popped her thumb into her mouth.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she blew out her gathered breath with gusto. A moment later, with a soft bwoomp and a light rustling of stretching fabric, her borrowed clothes suddenly found themselves more appropriately fitting. She popped her thumb out from between her lips, eyes fluttering back open to get another look at herself. A good swelling of her bust, now completely filling out the formerly loose and baggy shirt. The khaki pants, struggling to stay up even with the assistance of a belt moments ago, now sat snugly around her expanded hips, and as she turned slightly and craned her neck to look, could see that her hind end was similarly filling everything out back there in a way that she was sure Master Roshi would have called 'squeezable'.

It would do! She adjusted the jacket slightly, tugging the collar out of its uncomfortably scrunched and half-folded in on itself state, and then spent a good few minutes mussing with her hair (or at least what passed for it), to make sure it didn't look absolutely atrocious. She didn't really care about appearances much, but one of the things that her instructors had drilled into her profoundly empty, hard head was that taking care of yourself and even pretending to care was important. It was an aspect of discipline, or something to that effect. If you couldn't do something as basic as keep yourself presentable, then you would be hopeless at anything more complex or difficult!

She thought that was silly, personally, but what could you do?

With one final huff at her predicament, she was reminded again of how truly dire things were by the high-pitched wailing groan of the hunger demons in her stomach. She grimaced, gently patting her belly with one hand. "Okay, okay....whining about silly stuff later. I was promised food for not eating anybody."

Her priorities were the stuff of legends, truly.