Chapter Text
The larger intricacies of such a profoundly alien machine were truly a challenge to get a grasp on.
Or whatever Chert would say.
Turns out the ‘hound is actually a bus… Which is like a big car… Which is like a spaceship, but for the ground. Gabbro usually dozed off during Slate’s lectures on turbopump or "transonic transition nozzle" repairs. If something looked broken, Gabbro just fixed it. And there sure was a lot that looked broken
They had a wrench and was told to tighten a couple bolts. That was fine. That was cool. There was a reason Gabbro was on statue-duty. Takes a lotta oomph to heft a giant stone artpiece, thank you very much.
The only thing that was a little not cool was the person who had given them the wrench: Cooper. The alien dude that Gabbro saw whenever they slept or meditated.
Dream-buddy.
Now, Gabbro had always been good at keeping their mind active while they shuffled all their thoughts under the bed. It was the great paradox of meditation after all, but… This was just weeeeeeird.
They were no Laz. No great detective. They missed that geyser when they gave up on getting their ship back (Slate would have been sooooo mad if they didn’t all get incinerated), but they had to get to the bottom of this.
Maybe it was an out-of-body-thing? Memory-buddy sure threw any doubts about that out the window…
“Hey, how’s it going with these brake lines? They don’t look to be leaking anymore.”
Can’t he tell Gabbro’s thinking here?
“Eeeyup. Got ‘em all snugged down.”
“Cool, cool. Slate and I got some electricity hooked up and the thing didn’t burn down… So the wires are probably good.”
Aaaand spring the question! Blindside him!
“... Do you play any instruments?”
Nice. Suuuublte.
“... Why don’t you take a guess?”
Darn, he’s just as good out here as he was in there.
“How should I know?”
“Yeah, how could you know? Y’know, from what I heard, you’re not particularly the ‘up and at ‘em’ type… So, why are you helping us?”
Oh-ho! Excellent question! But, they were prepared for this one.
“This seems pretty important to get done, but everybody else is busy and I didn’t have much on my plate.”
Oh, he looks thoroughly unimpressed.
“Hey, Cooper? We may have an issue with the engine. Also, did you get that pump out yet?”
Phew! Saved by the Slate! Thanks, Slate.
“... Yeah, I got it right here. What’s wrong?”
“Might be a bit of a crack. Not sure how bad it is.”
Oooh a crack. Those are usually bad. Cracks usually meant losing all your oxygen in space or sinking to the bottom of the water.
They all walked over to the engine and, sure enough, surrounded by cleaned off metal, was a thin, but gnarly crack. On the scale of things Gabbro would see and fix, this would be… Like a 7. It ran from the bolts on the bottom, to the bolts on the top.
Must have hurt.
“Hooo, yeah. That’s a really bad one. Water must have gotten in and froze.”
Slate was getting tired. Gabbro could tell that they were tired too. Which was a pretty unfamiliar experience for them, since they were usually on top of the whole relaxing thing. Aside from the whole tiredness situation, Slate seemed very wound up. For once in their life, they weren’t being reckless.
Come on, it can’t be that bad; It’s just a tiny crack.
“So, it’s broken.”
“Yeah.”
Oh… Broken. That’s bad. That’s really bad. That makes this a 10.
Slate remained in their tired state, looking somewhat more unmotivated, “So, everything we did was for nothing?”
That was an even worse thought. They need this bus to move, it’s their way out of here. Gabbro didn’t much like the whole “laws of physics being turned off” thing; The laws of physics are cool!
“Not… Really. Look, Slate, why don’t you run this pump over to the Beating Hear- The uh… glowing tree and see if it can’t fix it?”
“But- … Sure.”
Gabbro watched Slate hurry over to the tree with a worried look. Gabbro could feel that same shape pushing its way to their face as well. Those past two weeks of pure, distilled not -worrying didn’t do much to help right now either.
“Gabbro? Come with me.”
“Got a plan?”
“Yeah.”
Oh, good. They’re gonna be okay. He’s walking them over to the car, Nite, where he probably has some cool problem-fixer device. He had a lot of those. Also very convenient for them, was that they were alone with Cooper. They can figure out this mystery at their own pace.
“... This is about the dreams, right?”
…
Huh.
“Wow. Uh, yeah. I thought I was going crazy there for a minute.”
“Ha! Weird stuff, right?”
He knew. Which means the dream stuff was real.
That’s… relieving. They felt great! Probably better than they had before they met memory-buddy. But, that was before they fully got used to the cyclones so… probably not a very fair comparison.
Wait… Doesn’t that mean… “So you know about what happened, right?”
“... Yeah, but you won’t hear a peep out of me. That’s you guys’ thing. Talking to a group of people about how they… Yeah, probably not easy.”
A strange feeling was starting to bubble up in Gabbro’s mind: uncertainty, worry. Things didn’t usually need worrying about; In one way or another they’d eventually end up working out, but now? After the loops? The permanence of everything was more prevalent than ever. Or Gabbro had just never realized before… Now they need guidance.
“What would you do? If you were in our situation?”
Cooper’s pace slowed, keeping the hatchlings rushing by out of earshot. He looked to the distance with a tightened brow and pursed lips.
“... I, uh… I don’t know. I’d probably just get it over with and tell everyone, but I wasn’t there; I don’t know what it was like.”
Gabbro really wasn’t there either…
“Hey, how’s it going, Nite?”
c-thuk
“-oad you travel, it stays, all uphill; Let’s work together. Come on, come on, let’s work togeth-”
chunk
“Here. Take one of these. Might need a good deal for a crack like that. Don’t get it on your skin, and definitely not on your bandages.”
He handed him a… bucket. The cool problem-fixer device was a bucket full of… putty.
Yup, Weird stuff.
“I wish you woulda told me you were here in the Well. I’d have brought the trailer.”
“Meditation isn’t a super reliable way to talk to people. I didn’t really think you were real.”
“Same here, at first.”
They started walking back towards the ‘hound. Gabbro hadn’t realized before, but it was in a sorry state. There were chunks of metal missing and places where glass should have been covered with wood or tarp… At least the wheels were round. It kinda sucked, but they had to use it to escape. So, they had a few hours to make it not suck enough to move.
Cooper suddenly turned to them with a raised eyebrow, “You’re avoiding them, aren’t you? That’s the reason you’re helping me.”
Now they’ve been blindsided!
“What? No, no that’s not it. I just don’t want to know if… they hate… me. Huh, yeah. I guess I am.”
“Dude, we talked about this, remember? They don’t… Look, they missed you. All of you. They thought you were all gone. Least you can do is talk to them. Sometimes you just gotta buckle down and get to it.”
They owe it to everybody else to at least be there…
“... ‘Up and at ‘em.’”
“Yeah, I didn’t expect you of all people to need to hear that.”
Gabbro didn’t expect that either.
“What? This place is suuuper weird.”
“Ha! You’ll get used to that quick.”
He was right. After everything they went through… What everyone went through… They had to at least talk to them.
“... Hey, Cooper?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
They made it back to the ‘hound as Slate was rushing over with the pump. They were still wearing that worried look, but Gabbro didn’t feel worried when they saw it; They felt a lot better now. They knew what they had to do.
It certainly helped that their welding mask was bouncing up and down as they ran. That was always pretty funny looking.
Cooper waved them over, “Hey, Slate! How’s the pump?”
They held their hands out and shrugged, “Well, it moves now.”
He clapped his hands together, “Good! Let’s fix this block. Once we're done here we gotta hurry to check the drivetrain.”
Slate’s got that “Mica’s doing something stupid with their rocket” look again.
“What? You got a welder or a forge in that uh… car of yours?”
Cooper spoke matter-of-factly, “No, we got putty.”
“... Putty.”
Wow, look at that. Gabbro couldn’t even make out a single emotion on Slate’s face now. It was blank. A blank Slate. Ha!
“Alright, Gabbro, you’re gonna wanna lob off a good chunk of putty with that spade and lob it at the crack.”
Now this is the kind of repair job Gabbro could get behind. Whatever it was meant to accomplish.
crshhhht
fwoop
splat
The crack in the metal slowly drew back together and stitched itself up. Eventually, it looked like it was never even there in the first place.
The problem-fixer device was a bucket full of magic putty!
Gabbro watched as the blank Slate slowly became an artpiece of slightly irritated confusion as their jaw fell nearly past their neck.
Cooper could barely hold back an amused snort… Wait, no… that was Gabbro. Gabbro was struggling not to laugh.
“What th- How d- Huh?! What the hell was that?!”
“Repair putty.”
Cooper said it like it was as common as a pot in a kitchen, and that only seemed to make Slate look more ridiculous.
“Yeah, like that helps. How does it work?!”
“I bet it’s like magic.”
They shot Gabbro another look. Ridiculousity levels are becoming dangerously high.
“It’s a mixture of microscopic robots and all the material they need to fix something.”
“... Yup, it’s magic.”
“Gabbro? Shut up. Seriously, how does it work?”
Cooper just shrugged with a little smirk on his lips, “I dunno, I just make the stuff. It’s basically magic.”
There, ridicularity has reached critical mass. Gabbro started laughing. Like, suuuuuuuuuuper hard, and that's with ten u’s. They may not make it out of here if they can’t fix this bus, but this was too much! And they haven’t had a good laugh in… In a while. They could barely hear Slate’s complaints.
“... I’m kinda wishing I was breathing fumes right now.”