Hello all!
Yes, I am still around. Life’s been fucky. I’m sure everyone can agree, but I’ve not given up on story writing, but I have had a lot of writer’s block and a lack of drive to sit down and put something on the computer. I still have tons of story ideas, but where I want to go with this story is going to need a lot of filler and development for a valuable impact on the stories I really want to tell. So to get things going I’ll be going back to how I wrote the first bunch of installments of HaM. The chapters are going to be shorter, but hopefully more consistent and paced better. I felt like the pacing had been too slow, and was going to take me forever, so I’ll try doing shorter chapters focusing on key points to the plots for the characters. With that said, here’s chapter 9.
Enjoy.
TNG Chapter 9
Veronica watched and noted carefully what she saw as her white blood cells devastated Adler’s blood. The process was much slower, almost lazy, as the two of them found that running the tests while the samples were chilled slowed the organisms down. In every year she’s run, Adler always beats the red cells, and always loses to the white cells. She can say with confidence that biologically Adler is weaker than her. What drives her curiosity now is that she has never seen Adler sick, he says he’s been sick twice in his life, but she’s been sick plenty around him and he never caught anything she had. Once her test was completed she reviewed her notes and and turned to Adler, who was behind her as usual.
“No changes, Addy,” she announced, “how’s your test?” Adler had a test between infected blood and his blood. They were trying to figure out why he was so resilient to illness.
“I’m winning, no shocker, but when i sampled blood it doesn’t test for the illness.” She was puzzled.
“So, maybe you eat it?” He was also puzzled.
“But where would it go? I should still test positive.” Veronica scratched her head.
“Maybe the virus falls off?”
“That’s not how viruses work, babe.” Adler scoffed.
“I’ll wait for the process to finish and then I’ll test all the blood, together.” She nodded, still affixed on her bizarre idea. As soon as he collected all the blood from the tray she smeared test paper on the tray. He rolled his eyes, and groaned when the blood tested negative. Veronica took her test paper and examined it, minute color changes were present to indicate the presence of a virus. She shivered in glee. Adler was visibly frustrated.
“This doesn’t make any sense. This is bullshit.”
“Well, maybe the virus just can’t cling to your makeup? Like, we know that it’s biologically different, and has different properties than normal organics, maybe the virus literally doesn’t have the ability to infect it.”
“That doesn’t make sense, your body defenses lose to the virus, but beat my composition. Why isn’t the virus doing the same?” She pondered for a minute, looking at a magnet on his glacis plate. An idea cane to her. She grabbed the magnet and tossed it onto his chest, where it stuck. She did this repeatedly, then she slapped it on her thigh, where it slid off. She looked at Adler with her eyebrows raised.
“I don’t think it’s too far fetched to think of something like this happening.” Adler was still visibly angry. “Here, babe. Viruses are very, very good at what they do, be a pathogen and infect organisms. They aren’t very good at much else, they have evolved for a millennia to do this one thing flawlessly… and remember when you told me that element one one four had to literally be dug out of the ground? Well, the virus evolved without you, so now that the virus has come to find you, now it has no way of interacting and infecting you. In fact, some trait about your biology actually repels viruses from your body, you can’t even carry it like other organisms.” His anger began fading.
“So, like, like how some animals from the Galapagos islands can no longer breed with similar species?”
“Yes! Isolated evolution drove them apart!” They smiled and giggled together. Adler’s hands snaked across her body and tenderly glided over her long legs, her hands similarly glided over his armored glacis and just under his turret chin. He brought her close to him and held her like a baby against him, they nuzzled together like a puppy to it’s mother. “I love your body, baby.”
“And I love yours. There’s so much to learn from each other.”
“Even when we built every part of you, there’s still so much mystery and knowledge to learn.”
“I think it’s beautiful, centuries of study and we still don’t know everything.”
“And perhaps we never will.”
“The world is beautiful, just like you.” She smiled wide and twirled her index finger under his chin. Her eyes examined carefully how his chin molded and deformed the rigid cast turret face to bend like her skin, it was such an incredible sight for her. She knows how it happens, more concentration of 114 in that part of his body, but it’s still amazing. Adler combed over her body, feeling her glistening skin with his hands, her gentle heartbeat and blood pulsing through her veins, her rhythmic breathing, how exciting it was to him. He loved everything about her, from her dependence on coffee to her bad puns, from her crazy morning hair to her bad knees, and everything in between. “I’m so happy that we get along better than my parents.” She chuckled.
“Zinc and steel get along better than your parents. How did they even get together in the first place? I mean, Germany and Russia hated each other. ” Adler looked away and nodded slowly. He didn’t like bringing up that part of his past. He didn’t like talking about his parents much, either, especially their relationship.
“Just know that I love you for you, for how beautiful you are. You amaze me every day.” He took her hand and kissed it.
“I love you, too, you big metal softie! C’mere.” He picked her up and held her tight, she wrapped her arms around his turret neck as best she could. In this moment he thought back to being a kid, just wanting his parents to love each other like they loved him.
1956
Adler sulked into his room to hide from his parents and their ferocious fighting. All he wanted to do was spend the weekend at Geoff’s house but his parents disagreed on the decision. Just like every time they disagree they start fighting, which turns into undermining accusations and insults towards one another. He went over to his toy figures of superheroes and began playing with them, tears silently rolling down his turret cheeks. His little stories and scenarios his action figure storylines would play out were always filled with happy and loving parents, or stories where the parents come together after a life threatening situation. His favorite superhero character was an alien adopted by loving parents who treated him like he was their own son. Individually his parents loved him, whenever dad isn’t around mom likes to hold him, kiss him on his cupola, was kind and quiet around. When mom wasn’t around dad was hearty and caring, stern, of course, he held Adler to high standards of manners, but treated him very nicely and would teach him some cool tricks or talents, or told him a lot of jokes. The problem was when they were together, the atmosphere was always tense, mom was always angry and short tempered, dad was always on edge and anxious. Adler hated it. He envied the other kids and their parents.
The two of them loved Adler very much but they had very different opinions on how he should be raised, Devastator was a bit more free-willed with Adler, while Vitaliya was more controlling, a helicopter parent as it would later be called. Dev was confident in Adler’s own abilities to act on his own, make his own decisions. He saw Adler as a smart kid- saying that he gave Adler some brains from the gene pool- while Vitaliya swears that he’s going to get himself terribly hurt and make the wrong decisions. This is usually the gist of their points of view, Vitaliya says he’s not ready for something while Dev says he should try it.
Adler had never been fully told by his parents that their first encounter was less than ideal, he’d heard enough nods and references in their arguments to figure out that they had fought in combat and his father won the fight and then did bad things to his mother, which is how he ended up in the world. Adler swears that if they didn’t produce him like that, then his parents would probably be able to see ends meet and not let their differing opinions tear the family apart, but that’s the world Adler dreams of, not the world he lives in. So here he is now, playing with his action figures, silently weeping.
The shouting abruptly ended and a knock rang through Adler’s room from the sliding door. Before Adler could say anything it began to open, it was his father. He entered the room and closed the sliding door behind him, releasing a deep and drawn out sigh as he did so. He looked at Adler, he saw the tears in his eyes and the devoid look of sadness in his eyes. Even with an inflexible body Devastator could sense the body language was of anxiety, stress, and desperation. Slowly he inched over to Adler’s side, there’s not much room for them side by side and in a year or two Devastator doesn’t expect to fit into the room like this anymore. They’re snug against each other, with Dev’s gun hovering over his son, he sees the toys in Adler’s hands, he rests a hand on Adler’s engine deck and sighs again, quietly.
“Whatcha got there, son?” Adler swallows to clear his throat.
“My action figures.” There’s still a lump in his throat and he sounds pathetic. It pains Dev to see Adler like this.
“Well son, your mother won’t let you stay at Geoff’s house this weekend, I think we could ask his parents if he could stay over at our house instead, how’s that sound?”
“Okay, I guess.” Adler was still choked up and sniffling.
“Does Geoff have action figures, too?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. He has toy trains instead.” Dev chuckled.
“Trains? Like, like choo-choo trains?”
“Yeah.” Dev laughed to himself.
“Well I think he should come here, and I think you should show him how cool your action figures are, then he’ll play with action figures instead.” Adler smiled a little, so did Dev. “So, what are your action figures doing, son? Are they, are they fighting?”
“Not right now, no.” Adler explained his characters and their stories, it really pulled at Dev’s heartpistons, he patted Adler on the deck, running his fingers through some of the filter grates as his son explained it all. Dev, too, wished he was living in those storylines. When Adler finished Dev got really serious with him for a life lesson.
“Son, Adler, now, there are many good things in the world, and many bad things, too. People do many good things, and many bad things, too. You must be careful, though, you must think about your actions because people don’t remember you for good things, if the bad thing you did was really bad. People will remember you for the bad thing you did. For me, well, I, my peers, the tanks my age, they don’t see me, most of them at least, they don’t see me as a good guy, they see me as a bad guy, and I’m very ashamed of it. I’m very ashamed. You, you’re young, young and full of good,” he gestured towards the action figures, “good things await you in life, but you have to be a good person. See, I’ve done a lot of great things in my day, I’ve also done some terrible things, but all it takes is one thing, one really bad thing, and that’s what everyone knows you for, forever. You can build a, a million bridges! You can build a million bridges but if you burn one, just one bridge, you’re called a bridge burner.”
Adler sat still, processing what his father said to him. He sniffled again and wiped his faceplate. He muttered a thank you to his father, who sat quietly next to him, adoring his son. Dev tells Adler to ask Geoff at school the next day to see if he could stay the weekend at Adler’s house, Adler agreed. Dev milked every moment he could with his son, refusing to leave his side unless absolutely necessary, Adler was the only joy he had in his life. Eventually he felt his welcome had worn, and Adler should get some sleep for school tomorrow, so he wished him a goodnight, told Adler he loved him, and pried himself away from him so he could move about his own room. Once he left the room Vitaliya swept in to give Adler her goodnight kisses and wishes. Dev made himself cozy in the main space, while Vitaliya strolled by and entered the master “bedroom,” she sat at the door for a moment looking at Dev, figured he wasn’t coming into the room, and shut the door behind her.
The next day Adler asked Geoff if he could stay at Adler’s instead, and the next day Geoff said his parents said no. Adler was devastated. He was greatly upset when he came home, and in his emotional fury he blamed it on his mom and dad fighting all the time. He blamed his loneliness on them fighting all the time and that nobody wanted to be around them because they fought so much. Vitaliya was awestruck, never had Adler said something so hurtful to her. Dev agreed with Adler, he told Adler to play outside for a bit. Adler agreed and stormed away. Dev shut the door behind him and confronted Vitaliya, instantly declaring that Adler is right. On this rare occasion she agreed.
Dev sensed some vulnerability here so he used it to his advantage, he pretty much turned her arm into the small of her back and forced her to come to grips with Adler’s growing maturity. He argued that she always had others around her, and that he, himself, did as well. They “grew up” around others, but her desire to control him was stripping him of friends. In her emotional instability she began blaming herself, and Dev rode that wave until she agreed Adler should stay with Geoff for the weekend. Dev was now awestruck, he just got Vitaliya to agree with him, no yelling, no shouting, no threats or insults, just a conversation. Admittedly a one sided conversation, but still a conversation. He inched closer to her, and in good faith he outstretched his arms for an embrace, and she did the same. Suddenly they found themselves holding each other closely, she wept into his side where he brought her, and he squeezed her tightly against himself. It brought him to tears, too. They savored this moment, this rare moment together. They whispered sweet nothings to each other, and made their own plans for the weekend. They decided to try something new, something fresh, something to hopefully bring them closer together forever.
Adler came back in after a while, his tears had dried and he had accepted his fate when his mother told him he could stay with Geoff for the weekend. Adler instantly exploded with energy, leaping off the ground in excitement. Dev scolded him, telling him he’s going to shatter the floor like that, but Adler was too excited to care. Vitaliya told him his room had better be clean before he can go or it will never happen again, with uncontrollable energy he flew into his room and began the chore. Vitaliya smiled, Dev also smiled, seeing the joy in Adler’s eyes sparked a feeling they had never had before, they glanced at each other and locked each other’s eyes. “It was that easy.” Dev said to her.
“I guess so.”
Present Day
Adler held Veronica tightly, she had fallen asleep on his glacis plate while watching a movie. Most of his childhood memories were painful, but some of them are good. He’s grateful that they did get better over the decades, Veronica wouldn’t believe how bad they used to be, but they would never mesh like Alder wanted, like Adler felt with Veronica. Maybe one day his parents will finally put the past away and learn to love each other for real, no façade, no forced love, genuine happiness. It will probably never come, but Adler dreams for that day. Sometimes he thinks back to when his mother said they were trying for another kid and wonders if that ever could fix their relationship. He was doubtful, and so far the attempts have been fruitless, but he hoped that one day it would happen. Then his fantasies he dreamt up wouldn’t be fantasies anymore, and his superhero world would be realized. He quietly teared up at the thought and held Veronica tighter.
Fin TNG Chapter 9
Gingy’s back long live Gingy
great! nice to see you again man