It was on an island far away from the Academy. A collection of islands filled with pompous houses and luxurious decorations. At least what was left of it. Years ago, the home of many goldlings has lost its former glory and resembled a ghost town. It also used to be Sprocket's home. However, she didn't leave because of the unpleasant changes, in fact she would have preferred this over the sophiscticated and entitled life she was forced into. Nevertheless, the goldling never wished for this to happen.
Sprocket was walking down the familiar road leading to her former home, one of the bigger mansions in the area. She could feel a sensation of nostalgia rushing through her, awakening both good and bad memories. She stepped onto the three small stairs leading to the front door and stopped there. The technician took a deep breath before knocking. After a few seconds, a woman opened the door, visibly annoyed. But as soon as she laid eyes on the Skylander in front of her, her frown turned into a relieved smile.
"Sprocket!" The goldling went in for a hug, which Sprocket happily returned. After the brief embrace, the woman kept on smiling as she observed Sprocket from head to toe. "It's been so long, you've grown so much!"
"Mom, please. I haven't grown an inch ever since I left." The goldling reminded her overwhelmed mother of the day she finally left her family home to become a Skylander. "I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner, and I can't stay for too long either."
The goldling's smile faded. "What's going on? Are you in trouble?"
"Not exactly." Sprocket rubbed the back of her head and tried to think of a short explanation for her situation, but ultimately failed. "I'll explain everything, but let's get inside first."
The mother's lips formed a gentle smile as she led her daughter back into her old home.
A long time ago, when the goldling town was thriving with its remarkable businesses and profits, Sprocket lived under one roof with her parents. They were a highly respected family and always made sure that their reputation and status would remain the way it was for generations, something Sprocket couldn't care less about. She has always been the black sheep of the family and preferred to get her hands dirty and tinker with tools and machines. Meanwhile her mother was determined to groom her spawn to become a formidable woman in society just like herself.
The whole family was gathered around the dinner table. Mother, father, grandparents, the aunt and her kids. All but one – typical. "Sprocket!" Grace shouted as she put the last pieces of cutlery on the table. "Not one day passes without this girl making a scene." The impatient woman walked into the kitchen, where she removed the soup from the stove. "Sprocket get down here already!"
With an annoyed sigh, the young goldling stepped out of her room and walked down the stairs into the dining room. She stopped in front of the table and moved her long red hair behind her shoulders, so it wouldn't get in the way of eating. Before she could sit down, her mother stopped her with an insulted gasp.
"What have you done to your dress!?" Her eyes were fixed on a small black oil stain on the bright blue fabric. She roughly grabbed the dress to get a closer look.
Sprocket hated dresses. She hated them so much, she once dreamt about throwing them all into a dumpster fire. Her mother knows that yet insists on her wearing them, because that's what's expected of a goldling woman.
Sprocket, surprised and irritated, pulled her dress back down. "It was an accident! It won't happen again."
"You said that the last time." Grace gave her daughter a disappointed look while she rolled her eyes. "And the time before that!"
"Maybe if you let me wear something else when I go to uncle, I wouldn't get the dress dirty!" Sprocket replied and crossed her arms protesting.
"No young lady, you won't get anything else to wear because you won't be going to your uncle anymore!" The goldling shook her head and looked over to her husband. "Can you believe it? She still wants to visit him! I told her hundreds of times that a lady doesn't belong in a dirty shack with engines and tools!"
"Darling, don't be so harsh." The father was considerably calmer and more reserved than the hysterical mother. "You know how kids are, they love to explore and-"
"But she's not a kid anymore!" Grace responded and looked at the ever so annoyed Sprocket again. "Tomorrow is her eighteenth birthday! She will be an adult, she has to learn to take responsibility!"
Sprocket couldn't hear her mother's nagging anymore. "I'm out of here." At a quick pace, the young goldling walked away from the family lunch and left the house, slamming the door on her way out.
With a deep sigh, Grace eventually decided to simply sit down and start eating. The rest of the family stared at her uncomfortably before receiving a deadly look and beginning to eat as well.
Exiting the front door, Sprocket turned left and took a few steps until she was in front of a small wooden shack right next to her mansion. Due to their tireless bickering, Sprocket's mother and uncle concluded that the inventor should have his own home where he could tend to his work. With an excited smile on her face, Sprocket opened the small door. Her eyes sparkled as she saw hundreds of tools and mechanical parts scattered everywhere. Even though her house was six times as big, she always felt like the shack was far more spacious. "Hey uncle!" The teenager interrupted the professional engineer during his job.
Oscar turned his chair and moved his welding mask on top of his head, revealing a friendly smile surrounded by a scruffy red beard. "Sprocket! You're back!" The hefty man stood up and approached his niece. "Did your table manners upset your mother again?"
Sprocket rolled her eyes once more. "She saw the oil stain on my dress and lectured me about my role in society again." The goldling quickly got distracted by one of her uncle's shimmering inventions on top of his working desk and forgot her mother's nagging for a moment.
Oscar sighed. "I was hoping she'd loosen up someday, but at this point even the Ancients couldn't change her mind." The feeling of disappointment got washed away after seeing his niece grab the first tools she saw and turning around to continue working on her own little project. "Is it done yet?"
"Almost." The aspiring engineer wore the same goggles that she would end up wearing as a Skylander as she was adding the finishing touches. "I just need to get all the gears into place and… done!"
Sprocket grabbed the object and revealed that it was an elegant music box. She proudly presented it to her uncle who was gleaming with pride. "It looks lovely, but does it sound the way it looks?"
Sprocket, without any doubts, winded the key on the back of the box. The lid opened up and a small porcelain ballerina was spinning to the sound of a gentle melody. "Maybe this will finally show mother that engineering isn't just all about engines and dirty work."
"Maybe…" The uncle truly hoped that the gift Sprocket made would open his sister's eyes and that she would finally see how much this truly meant to her daughter.
Later that afternoon, when Grace said her goodbyes to the family, the woman decided to visit her brother in his small workshop. As soon as she opened the door, her face twisted unpleasantly upon the stinging smell of steam and gasoline. Oscar was working with an electric saw and didn't hear his sister step in and repeatedly call his name.
"Oscar!" The goldling shouted which finally made her brother stop and look at her.
"Grace, what a surprise." A not so welcoming greeting.
The two siblings were always polar opposites. Grace following society and fitting into its system, while Oscar always had more of a mind of his own and didn't care about what others thought of him, much like Sprocket.
With a disgusted expression, Grace pulled out a tissue to clean a chair from all the debris before sitting on it. "I'm assuming Sprocket visited you again, didn't she?"
"If I said yes, you would go off and lecture her about her place in life. If I said no, you would do the same." Uncle never liked the way his sister raised and treated Sprocket, but she was her daughter, so he didn't have much of a say in it.
Grace sighed. She looked around herself to see all the machines and structures her brother built over the years, many of which were also in her own home. She never cared much for technology but seeing how much work he puts into it, it did fascinate a part of her. "Oscar, you know why I'm doing this."
"To create a carbon copy of yourself." The engineer didn't even bother to give his older sister a look and just continued with his work.
"No! No, of course not." Grace was very much aware of what her educational method looked like, and frankly she didn't like it either. "You know just as well as I do, that she can't just do whatever she wants."
Oscar was silent this time. Even though he was focused on his work, he was listening.
"Do you think I want her to grow up like this? I'm trying to prepare her for her best possible future." There was a hint of tenderness, almost sadness in the mother's eyes. "I can't change the way things are here."
Oscar put his tools down and stopped working. He stared at the machine in front of him for a few more moments before finally looking his sister in the eyes. "You can't change this place, but you can't change Sprocket either."
The goldling mother sighed once more. "She just has to learn that there are rules here. Presenting herself as expected is one of them." Grace caught herself fiddling her dress and quickly stopped, hoping her brother didn't notice. "A woman working with machines and tools, you know where she would end up."
Oscar was silent again. As a man, he never had many problems following his path as an inventor and engineer, but in the goldling society there were strict rules regarding the sexes and what they should and shouldn't do. "Then let her go somewhere else."
"Somewhere else-" She had to catch her breath after hearing that sentence. Grace got up from the chair and turned around. The thought of her daughter leaving and possibly never being able to see her again brought tears to her eyes, which she wiped off immediately before heading for the door. "Clearly you don't have the best intentions for my daughter in mind. It was foolish of me to think you'd understand. Goodbye, Oscar."
Oscar was about to say something, but before he could his sister left the shack and slammed the door shut. Even though they didn't always get along, the siblings did love each other, even if Grace had a strange way of showing it. Uncle knew that, and he learned to be patient. However, that patience often came with a lot of hurting as well.
The sun was slowly setting, and the sky was painted in orange hues. Grace walked up the stairs to get to the first floor of the enormous mansion. At Sprocket's door, before she opened it, she could hear strange noises from inside. She moved her head closer to hear it more clearly, until it suddenly stopped. With a confused look, she finally knocked on her daughter's door.
Upon opening it, she could see Sprocket on her bed, without a book or any tool. She was simply sitting there, staring at the light blue striped wallpaper on the walls of her room. "Sprocket, I…" The mother wasn't sure how to continue when Sprocket turned her sight to her. She forgot what she wanted to say.
"You what?" Sprocket answered without her annoyed undertone for once.
Seeing her there with that expectant look, it made Grace feel so uncertain. She remembered now, she wanted to talk about her daughter's future. She wanted to hear it from Sprocket herself, what she truly wanted to do. But perhaps they should discuss that at the family table. "I wanted to tell you that dinner is almost ready."
Before the goldling could leave and close the door, Sprocket sat up and let her feet hang from the bed. "Mom, wait!"
Mom – that was a word she hasn't heard in a while. Sprocket has been addressing her with 'you' for years now. Hearing that child-like word again made her feel somewhat warm. "Yes, darling?"
Sprocket looked to her right and opened the small drawer next to her bed. Slowly, she pulled out a beautifully decorated music box. It shimmered in turquoise and golden colors, something you'd only see on the shelves of a nobility family.
"What's that?" Grace took her hand off the door handle and walked towards Sprocket, investigating the object in her hands.
"I… made it for you." Sprocket quickly got up to stand in front of her mother who gave her a shocked look before she wound the box up. When she was done, the lid opened, and a small pearl colored ballerina started to spin to a sweet lullaby.
Grace took the box into her own hands and looked at it strangely while it was playing. She looked back up at Sprocket with disbelief and then back at the box.
"I know you don't like engines and tools and all that mechanical stuff, so I wanted to give you something more… delicate." Sprocket was quite nervous, rubbing her hands and curving her lips into cramped smiles. Mother strictly forbid her to build such things, but she was hoping that this could finally change her mind. "Maybe now you will-"
Before Sprocket could finish, Grace closed the box, stopping the spinning figure and the melody. The teenager's face faded into a sad gaze as the mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "You know what I told you about this."
This was exactly what Sprocket was afraid of. "I know but-"
"No buts Sprocket!" Suddenly, all the warmth and compassion the goldling felt moments ago was gone, and all she could see was her daughter's future on the streets, rejected by society. That was the picture she formed in her mind over all the years when Sprocket would misbehave and go her own ruthless way. "I won't say it again, you are not to go to your uncle, and you are not to work with mechanics like these!"
The woman looked across the room until she finally found a trash bin standing in a corner. Without hesitation, she walked up to it and threw the carefully crafted box inside.
"No!" Sprocket rushed to the bin and fell onto her knees to take the music box out, which was now in two pieces and had several gears falling out.
"Don't be dramatic, it's just some gears and metal." Without a hint of sympathy, Grace walked back to the door and was about to leave again. "Get down in five minutes."
"I made it for you." Sprocket kept staring at the destroyed gift through her red strands of hair with sadness, which soon turned into anger. "And you just threw it away!" She turned around and got back up, looking at her mother with more spite and rage than ever before. "You destroyed it, that's what you always do!"
"You will not raise your voice at me young lady!" Grace had zero tolerance for Sprocket's reaction and wanted the argument to be over with. "If you had bought it instead, I may have kept it."
"But the point was that I made it!" Sprocket screamed at the top of her lungs, which made her mother flinch before giving her an angered look as well.
"Forget this already! Grow up Sprocket, you have to realize that life doesn't work the way you want it to!" Grace gave her daughter another glaring look before turning around to finally leave the room.
Moments before the door closed, Sprocket said something in a calm tone. "I hate you." With tears running down her golden face, she clenched her broken music box and stared at her mother's back.
Grace held in and took a deep breath. She wanted to say something but decided to leave it be and go down. This was the point of no return.
The evening went on. Sprocket stayed in her room, sobbing and shouting her lungs out. Grace ignored it casually and kept her husband from leaving the table while he worried about the teenager.
Once she finally calmed down, Sprocket was sitting in her bed, trying her best to fix the music box. Not for her mother, but for herself. She has decided that she hates her mother. Pure genuine hate. She used to think it wasn't possible to hate your own parents, but now she had no reason to believe that you had to love them. All of a sudden, she heard a crash downstairs. A scream followed by more crashing sounds. Then she heard someone shouting, a voice she never heard before.
Forgetting all the hate and sorrow, Sprocket carefully got out of her bed, trying not to make a noise. She opened her door and peeked through it to hear a male voice shout something about money and threatening to kill someone. Her heart was beating at the speed of a car engine. Sprocket has never felt this many emotions at once in her life.
The goldling steadily walked along the hallway of the first floor until she reached the stairs. She quietly took one step after the other while hearing more loud crashing noises and voices yelling. She walked down the stairs until she could finally see through the kitchen door. The goldling saw a masked figure pointing a gun at her parents, who were shaking of fear while getting yelled at. Bang! Sprocket blinked and in the next moment her mother was screaming as her father sank to the floor and a red stain appeared on his white shirt.
Sprocket couldn't breathe. For a second it felt like she was in a dream before realizing what was going on. The goldling couldn't do anything but stand there until she instinctively moved back up the stairs. The next few seconds passed her like a flash. Sprocket kept staring at the light on the carpet floor coming from the kitchen as sirens could be heard outside of the building. The intruders grabbed the first valuable objects they found and stuffed it inside their bags before running away.
Sprocket finished her walk down the stairs, her eyes glued to her father. A puddle of blood was spreading on the floor underneath him and his glassy eyes reflected the bright light of the kitchen lamp. She kneeled next to her desperately sobbing mother. Sprocket couldn't hold back and started crying as well. The two women were coughing and sobbing as they looked at the lifeless body of their husband and father, bleeding out on the floor. Their tears fell onto their dresses and they embraced each other unlike ever before. Despite everything that's happened and everything they said, in that moment all they wanted was to hold each other.
After the grieving women calmed down, Sprocket hurried to see if her uncle was alright. Yet another shock awaited her, he has been kidnapped. The halved family soon found out that there was a brutal ambush on the entire town. Countless goldlings got killed and hurt and their homes robbed. Some, like Oscar, were kidnapped by the intruders. No one knew where they came from, but it was safe to assume that it was Kaos' doing.
While her father's body was being removed, and an officer explained what would happen next to her mother, all Sprocket could think of was that one moment. Bang! The shot that took her father echoed through her mind again and again. Hours passed, the rising sun announced a new day – Sprocket's birthday. Neither her nor her mother could sleep. It was supposed to be a day of joy, a day without any fights and where the family would come together to celebrate, but that was impossible now.
For Sprocket, it was also the day where she would finally become an adult - make her own decisions and escape her mother. And it would remain that day. The young adult was standing in the bathroom, staring at her face in the mirror. Goldling skin was normally radiant and shimmering, but today it looked pale and dull, almost like rust. She held a scissor in her hands and after another lasting look, she finally made the first cut. A strand of her long red hair fell into the sink, then the next one, and several more. After a few minutes, her hair was cut short, not going past her chin. It felt liberating.
The quiet goldling went downstairs where her mother was holding an empty cup which has been filled with coffee five times during the last night. When she walked past her single parent without giving her a look, Grace was beside herself upon seeing her daughter's new haircut. She didn't have the energy or intention to comment on it, they have both been through enough.
Sprocket went into her uncle's shack, which has also been vandalized and robbed. She took one of his old pants and some parts of his armor and changed into it. She grabbed an abnormally large wrench and attached a gas bottle and a pressure gauge to her suit, completing the look she would barely change even after joining the Skylanders. And that's where she was going. She had heard of the Skylanders, never showing much interest in joining, until now. She thought it was the best place for her to use her abilities to help those in need and maybe even find her uncle someday. The goldling told her mother about her plans, who for the first time didn't even try to stop her. She simply nodded and agreed to everything she said. They hugged one last time and told each other dry goodbyes before the aspiring engineer left her home to start a new life as a Skylander.
Now, many years later, Sprocket was sitting back at the table where her family used to dine, and where she would rebel against her mother's rules. She visited the lonely woman from time to time, reassuring each other that they were fine. The town has become quite poor and miserable due to the great robbery and many murders, but they've managed to keep a consistent lifestyle again, even though it was far less luxurious than before.
"So, you are looking for the Golden Queen, on your own, because she wasn't able to turn you into a statue?" After Sprocket explained her mission and motivations, her mother attempted to make sense of it. "Why didn't you ask someone to join you?"
"Because I need to find out the truth." Sprocket was beginning to doubt herself as well, but she had to focus on her goal. "If the others tagged along, we would get into a fight right away and I couldn't get a chance to talk."
"Darling, I don't think she will give you a chance to talk to her either." Grace sipped her tea. "That goldling is the worst of the worst."
"I know, but something tells me that I have to do this." Sprocket took a sip from her tea as well, which she's grown to enjoy over the years. "You know that nothing can stop me once I've set my mind to something."
Grace giggled. "I sure do." She looked her daughter in the eyes and felt nothing but pride. It may have been due to the fact that the town wasn't the most admirable place in Skylands anymore, or because she was afraid of losing her daughter as well if she didn't leave. The goldling was proud of the woman that Sprocket has become, despite everything else she wanted for her. She was happy that she was living her dream.
"I should get going now." Sprocket got up from her chair. As she turned around to walk to the door, something odd caught her eye. On top of the shelf above the fireplace, next to a collection of old family pictures, was the old music box Sprocket gave her mother the day before her birthday. She walked up to it and saw that it has been messily put together, clearly by someone without any experience.
Grace was behind her and recalled. She found it in Sprocket's room on the day she left and broke out in tears after remembering the terrible things she said and did, and that it was too late to fix that. But it wasn't too late to fix the box. "I tried to put it back together, but-"
Grace was interrupted by the sobbing sounds of her daughter. She approached Sprocket to see that she's started to cry while looking at the gift. "I thought you would throw it away."
The goldling immediately embraced her child in a warming hug. "I made that mistake once and I will never forgive myself for it." Tears formed in Grace's eyes and ran down her faded golden face. "I love you, Sprocket. I never told you that enough."
"I love you too, mom." Sprocket choked while continuing to sob.
The small family gave each other the long overdue forgiving embrace, and they finally felt at peace. The mother and daughter told each other goodbye, with Sprocket promising to visit Grace again on her way back to the Academy.
Outside the mansion, Sprocket could feel something vibrating in her travel bag. It was the communication device. Slightly worried, she pressed a button to hear the message that she received. "Sprocket listen to me! The others know about your plan…" It was Smolderdash's warning. Sprocket was alarmed, she had to hurry to get to the Golden Queen and confront her before it was too late.
