Chapter 4 - First impressions
Professor Jaxson Took five slow steps down and flipped a switch on the wall. The room was entirely illuminated. It only took him an instant to realize the damage. The rip was caused by his head running into a painting, which was now around his neck. The bookcase contents were entirely emptied onto the ground, and the stone was a marble bust of some sort. The wax, was as he thought, a candle, which had hit a telescope that now had a two inch dent in the frame of it. The room itself was pretty fancy for being located under the launch pad. It consisted of a hardwood floor, Wall paneling and red rug, that ran up from the entrance up to his Oak wood desk.
"You are, who again?" Jaxson walked up to him.
"Ahem. I'm Sonrey Kerman, your new student. We haven't met before, so I thought I would come down here to surprise you." Sonrey's face was red, and he knew it. Jaxson looked around slowly, and said,
"Surprise me, indeed." He held his hand out to shake Sonrey's, and Sonrey Held his out. At least, he would have had there not been a painting around his neck.
"Oh! Do you want this back?" He slipped out of the painting, and handed it back to Jaxson, putting it on his extended arm.
"And here I was thinking that a stranger dressed as a ninja who was trying to steal my car in a dine-and-dash, was the craziest thing I've ever seen." He took the painting off his arm, and walked over to where it was before. He looked at a large crack in the wall, and asked,
"Was that you too?" Sonrey looked over and sheepishly nodded, his heart was racing. Jaxson hung the painting on the nail that it must have originally been on. He hadn't noticed what was on the painting before, but it depicted a Rocket ship flying away from Kerbin, but there was a hole right where Kerbin should have been.
"Ah, good as new! Don't you agree?" He turned his head over toward Sonrey,
"Well, aside from the hole in the middle." Jaxson walked over to observe the rest of the room, and sat on his chair.
"Think nothing of it." He replied, putting his feet on the desk. Sonrey's heart almost skipped a beat.
"I beg your pardon?" Jaxson leaned over in his chair to pick up his wax candle.
"Well, yes. I don't think anyone is capable to doing something like this on purpose, right?" he motioned his arms in the way of the massive mess.
"I- I- I don't believe this. I thought I was a goner. I figured you would be furious." Jaxson leaned over and picked up the loose papers surrounding his desk, and turned the fan off.
"Well surprised, I was. But mad? No. I've seen crazier." He arranged the papers back into their respective folders, and continued "A fellow once threw a toaster at me because I wouldn't accept a fake twenty dollar bill written on cardboard."
"What was he trying to buy?" Sonrey started to help picking up the various pens that now littered the ground.
"Pickled Sausages." Jaxson took a small hammer out of his lab coat, and straightened out the telescope.
"That's disgusting. Why did he think you would sell him pickled sausages?" Sonrey picked up the shards of glass from a broken vase.
"Because I was running an ice cream van." Sonrey looked over at him in confusion.
"An Ice cream van? That doesn't exactly explain why he threw a toaster at you." Jaxson picked up the books and organized them accordingly.
"Some things are meant to be left a mystery. Perhaps that was just one of them." Sonrey chuckled at the scenario, and put the glass shards into the proper bin.
"So, professor, tell me, why is your office located underneath the launch pad?" Sonrey picked up the broken bust, and set it upright. Jaxson looked over at him, and a dark gaze came over his eyes.
"Kiddo, let me tell you, that I'm only here because someone important thought I was a lost cause, but I persuaded them that I could be fixed, like all other problems. That's how I live. I never accept that something is unfixable." Sonrey straightened the rug, and asked,
"What do you mean?" He finished up with the rug and looked up.
"look around you, kiddo." He did, and realized that the previous catastrophe, was now a sparkling clean room. Sonrey was surprised at the transformation.
"I can see what you mean."
"You should take cover." Sonrey would have asked why, but was interrupted by a massive rumble. The whole room shook, and Sonrey immediately seeked cover. Jaxson however, Just kicked his feet back on the desk. The bust of Jaxson fell over and landed right in front of sonrey, again, sending shards of broken stone into Sonrey's face. The Telescope also had fallen, hitting Sonrey's already injured Knee.
"AGH!" A piece slashed his forehead, and hand. He grasped his hand in pain, and looked at something beyond the telescope that caught his eye.
"A Radio?" Blood ran down his face. He thought back to the radio earlier, and compared it. Coincidence? Jaxson looked back at him, his eyes widened.
"Sonrey, your head is blee-" He fainted. Apparently he didn't have any tolerance for blood.
He exited the room, but not without some trouble. The palm of his already injured hand was scraped with a stray screw. That, and he had a smashed knee, hand, forehead, and there were bruises all over. He hobbled to the Medical rooms, and began to feel dizzy.
"Whoa, Sonrey what happened?" He looked up to find Fletcher, kneeling above him. Sonrey reached for him, but he passed out on the ground.
The whales were on a rollercoaster, the cart pulling them along the winding track. Nobody really seemed to care about them, they were just having a grand old time. Sonrey took a bite out of his cotton candy, and kept walking along the pathway. He noticed an attraction he hadn't seen before at this park. It was a maze of mirrors, and the line was empty, so he entered. Walking, the mirrors distorted his sense of direction, and he rounded the corner, an paused. But the reflections kept moving. A figure that definitely wasn't Kerbal. It moved quickly, and the room filled with a green billowing smoke.
"Hello. Sonrey."