AN: A big thanks to my beta reader AuroraBlix, you are awesome! Also, go read her stories; they totally rock!
Disclaimer: Red vs. Blue belongs to Rooster Teeth, not me. I make no profit from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Three
Mrs. Caboose was lecturing. Sister sat in a kitchen chair and picked at her nails, trying not to "get smart" with her foster mother.
"I swear Sister, I don't know what kind of people raised you. You're only thirteen years old!"
"Almost fourteen," Sister interjected, and Mrs. Caboose glared.
"Fraternizing with boys, older boys at that, the way you do – it's shameful. And your medical records indicate you've had … an abortion?"
"Two actually," Sister said brightly, just to annoy her. "I mean, come on, can you imagine me trying to raise a kid?" Sister said flippantly. Mrs. Caboose was getting red in the face.
"No! Which is why you shouldn't be having sex so young!"
"Hey, I'm a woman, physically speaking, and sex is a perfectly natural and healthy thing," Sister shrugged. "If all parties are willing … ."
"I am your guardian, and I am not willing! You're not to leave the house unless you're going to school for the next two weeks. I'll not have you putting ideas in the little ones' heads or let you waste study time on flirting either. Am I understood?"
Sister sighed, "Yes ma'am." Only a month in and she was already grounded. She got up and headed to the fridge. It was her and Michael's turn to make dinner, which meant she had to get busy before he came in and lit something on fire. She adored the boy, really, but he really couldn't be trusted with certain tasks. She understood that up until this point the family just microwaved something on Caboose's night to cook. Even the six year old twins could successfully top and cook a pizza in the oven or a pot of mac and cheese on the stove top, but poor Caboose just couldn't manage it. "Caboose" was what everyone called Michael at school, both for his last name and the fact that he was lowest in the class, and Sister had picked it up as well. He seemed to prefer it, actually.
Funnily enough, he was actually almost decent at school, but had troubles like getting marks off for completing assignments in crayon instead of typing it, or just forgetting to turn things in. Math was his worst subject, and he hated it. Sister had taken to helping him with his homework by turning it into a game. It was a new experience for her, being the responsible one. She just couldn't help but care about Caboose's welfare though.
He was making straight A's in one class – philosophy, his elective – and Sister had to try hard not to burst out laughing every time she saw the teacher praise something odd Caboose said. He wasn't college material by any means, despite what his mother said, but if Sister made sure his homework got turned in he might graduate on time. Sister shuddered at the thought of being here, without Grif, for over two years, or worse three, until she graduated. She missed the green and the beach, but mostly she missed the freedom of how she and Grif lived. She found herself daydreaming more and more about getting a ship of their own once Grif came back, and they'd explore the galaxy until they found a planet with the most perfect beaches and the most perfect waves, and they'd surf all day and party all night. They'd call it New Hawaii and the capital city would be called Grifton.
"Hello!"
Sister shrieked and almost dropped the knife she'd been absently dicing onions with.
"Jesus, Caboose, how does someone big as you sneak up on someone?"
"Sorry," He ducked his head bashfully. "You were daydreaming again."
"Yeah … " Sister smiled wistfully. "Just thinking about what I'm gonna do when I get off this rock. What about you Caboose? What do you want to do when you grow up?"
"Sister … you're crying."
"Huh? Oh, no, it's just the onions," she laughed and added them to the pan she had already put diced spam, sausage, and chunks of pineapple in. One of the little ones ran in.
"Aloha big sister! What are you making?"
"Aloha little sister. I'm making Hawaiian style fried rice," Sister grinned. Much to Mrs. Caboose's dismay, all the little girls loved Sister, and they had attached to her immediately. They had been slowly amassing Hawaiian themed décor in their shared room over the past month and called Sister's night to cook Luau Night, and they insisted everyone watch them dance in plastic grass skirts after dinner.
Sister found it endearing, though it was ridiculous considering true Hawaiian culture had all but disappeared hundreds of years ago. Still, it made her that "good kind" of homesick, and the girls were fun. When the child had run out again, and Sister had checked her rice, she looked back at Caboose.
"Anyway, what were you gonna say?"
"Well," Caboose suddenly looked bashful, "Mom wants me to go to college, but … well, I'd really like – "
"There you are Michael." Mrs. Caboose bustled in. "Can you please move that blasted robot dog into the courtyard? That's the third time I've tripped over it this week!"
"But he's broken! I've been trying to fix him!"
"Well, do it outside," she said sternly.
"Yes ma'am," Caboose pouted and left the kitchen.
"My, Sister, that does smell delicious," said her foster mother.
"Well, I've got to earn my keep somehow," Sister replied cheerfully. There was silence for a moment and Sister heard her foster mother sigh and sink heavily into a chair behind her.
"Kaikaina … I'm sorry if I've made you feel that way – like we won't keep you if you don't earn it. I know it's going to take a while for you to adjust to being a part of our family, but I do want you to feel that you are. A part of our family, I mean. Family is the most important thing to me. I lost my parents and brother early in the war. But I can't imagine what its been like for you – "
Sister turned around, hands on her hips, and said exasperatedly, "See, that's your problem right there. You think that because my parents weren't around they were bad people or something. Well, I'm not an orphan, war or otherwise. I have a family, a great one! Just because we're different from yours doesn't mean we're wrong! My family values freedom – and following your dreams no matter what! We respect each others life choices."
"I have dreams for my children – "
"Yes, but do you know what their dreams are? Have you even asked Caboose what he wants to do with his life?"
Sister and Mrs. Caboose glared at one another across the kitchen table for a moment, until Sister turned around with a with a loud huff. She dumped the cooked rice into the pan with the other ingredients and stirred.
"Look, I like you all. I really do. And it's like you said – it's going to take time to adjust to this new life. But we Grifs are raised with a heck of a lot of independence and attitude, and we look after ourselves. I'm probably more grown up than any of your other almost fourteen year olds have been before. You can't expect me to change who I am. I'll try to follow your rules, so long as you admit I'm not really yours to raise."
Sister turned back around and found every last one of the little girls and Caboose standing just outside the kitchen doorway, eyes wide as saucers. No one had ever back-talked Mama before. It simply wasn't done.
"What are you all looking at?" Sister asked loudly. "Go wash for dinner!" The ten kids scattered like bugs from under a lifted rock. Mrs. Caboose chuckled and began setting the table.
"You're right Sister. You're a lot different than any of my other girls; we're gonna have to take this one day at a time. But you'll respect my rules under my roof. You're not a grown woman yet." Sister nodded in assent, and Mrs. Caboose chuckled again.
"I shudder to think how that brother of yours is handling basic training if he's anything like you."
%
Depending on your viewpoint, Grif was handling basic training … horribly. But then again, that was all part of his master plan: if his performance was bad enough, surely they would just kick him out and he could go home. He'd never been one for much physical activity, so he easily came dead last in all physical challenges. Other tests were harder – he'd actually had to start studying for tests so he could mark answers wrong like he had done in high school to avoid being an overachiever and getting noticed – because he'd been getting too high of scores just by guessing. Insubordination was tricky too. He had to backtalk and disobey orders enough to get kicked out, but not enough to induce a fiery rage into his drill sergeant that ended with Grif being beaten to death.
The whole thing was actually proving much harder than he had expected, and he thought he knew why. Some of the recruits had been separated off from the rest – he assumed it was all the slackers like himself – for an hour everyday and made to watch movies explaining how awesome their jobs were and how glamorous the well-oiled machine of the the military was when orders were followed without question. Despite the act Grif had put on for so long, he wasn't stupid. This was indoctrination – conditioning. They even got to sit in comfy chairs and eat snacks while they watched the videos in air conditioned rooms. They called it positive reinforcement for a reason.
Grif tried to sleep through the movies, but wondered if they worked even then. He cursed himself whenever he realized it had been longer than he promised since the last time he messaged Sister, and he tried to ignore the recurring thoughts of, 'Always follow orders!' 'For glory and honor!' 'Death to the enemy!' and 'Command is never wrong!' It was getting harder. He found himself following orders more and more readily, and not being as bad at things as he could have. It was especially hard since the other recruits were okay guys, and they had a good time together. It was hard not to be a part of the team – they were all miserably tired and hated their drill sergeant together, after all. And he wanted to screw himself, not everyone else, which was much harder to do if the sarge decided to make everyone do pushups every time Grif was late. So it was that Grif was left wondering what he could do to get himself specifically into enough trouble to get sent home, when an opportunity presented itself, or so it seemed.
It was late and they all should have been sleeping, but some of the recruits had begun slipping out at night to drag race in the warthogs. Surely, Grif thought, he could pull some kind of stunt that would fall under the category of "reckless endangerment" or something similar. Maybe he could safely crash and get "destruction of government property"?
The problem now was, they'd been doing this for a week and hadn't been caught yet. Grif was beginning the think he'd have to anonymously tip off their superiors himself if one of the goody-two-shoes recruits didn't hurry up about it. He'd have to hide his winnings first, of course. Grif was tuning up his warthog for the evening when he heard a voice behind him.
"What the hell is this I hear about a drag racing competition?"
Grif grinned to himself. At last! It was a corporal. Surely he'd report them immediately.
"Well, you're welcome to join us, sir. If you think you're man enough to take on the undefeated champion." Grif looked down his nose at the higher ranked man. He glared back. This was it! He'd be home tomorrow.
"All right, I'm in," the corporal shrugged nonchalantly. Grif nearly choked in surprise.
"You're not going to report us?"
"How about this – if you win, I won't report you. If you lose, I will," the corporal smirked. Grif just stared. He'd never lost a race. Ever. Now he'd have to lose on purpose.
"Come on Grif! You got this!" someone called from the crowd. Others laughed.
"You're on," Grif said. He smirked with satisfaction that the others thought was confidence to win. "I'll just make sure it's close, and let of the gas at the end," Grif thought to himself. The corporal climbed into the jeep next to his.
"Ready when you are recruit," the man said.
Grif followed suit. "Let's do this."
One of the girls grabbed a UNSC flag and stood out in front of the, ready to count them down. It made Grif laugh that this particular girl ("Volleyball" they called her, for her former place on a professional team) was fulfilling the stereotypical female role, as she was actually the only one who had come close to beating him in a race so far, and could certainly beat any of them into the ground in a fight.
"3 … 2 … 1 … " She waved the flag down and Grif slammed down on the pedal, hoping his opponent wasn't distracted by Volleyball's perfect legs and that he was actually a decent racer. The adrenaline surged and what was actually a short distance seemed to stretch out for eternity for a few short moments. The corporal was neck and neck with him, and it was time to let off the pedal, and that surge of competitiveness that Grif had always tried to squash, to keep himself unnoticed, except now when he was racing, took over. Grif shifted gears, and he was over the line.
There was a loud cheer as the jeeps slowed and the others ran to them.
"You tied! One recruit shouted.
"No way!" another replied.
"Was there a camera set up?" Volleyball asked as she jogged up to the finish line.
"Yep, it was an honest tie," A recruit said as he walked over with a camera.
"You know what this means recruit," The corporal eyed Grif's uncertain face with a smirk. "Rematch." There was an excited cheer. "You lot get to bed; you've got a hard day of training tomorrow," he called to the rest and walked off into the night.
Grif sighed as the crowd cleared. Well, that hadn't gone to plan. He climbed out of the jeep and looked around.
"Hey Volleyball, wanna sneak onto a rooftop and get wasted? I'm sure we can find some liquor around somewhere."
"Sorry Dex, I've got plans," she said. "Video chat with Jensen."
"Ah yes, the mysterious Jensen. Maybe next time then." At first Grif had thought, when Volleyball had started calling him by his first name, that maybe something would develop between them, but had put those thoughts away once she had mentioned the mysterious Jensen – the only person from home she ever mentioned at all – who had ended up at a different outpost, in a different timezone.
Grif sighed as they headed back to their bunks. He was furious with himself for letting his competitive streak get away from him. He'd have to try doubly hard to lose the rematch. Every day he was away from Sister was another day he worried what trouble she'd get into.
%
"No, no, no, see you have to connect this wire here, and then this goes … here. Voila!" Sister threw her hands up with a flourish and Caboose gave a cry of joy when his robot dog came back online. It had taken Sister two weeks (the two she had been grounded), but she had successfully figured out how the little bot went together and helped Caboose repair him.
"Honestly, the original workmanship was pretty shoddy, but it's also pretty easy to fix. Do you think you can do it on your own now?" She had tried to teach Caboose how to work on the machine the same way Grif had taught her to understand machines, but was doubtful how much Caboose had actually absorbed.
"Yes! I can do it!" Caboose said happily. "Thanks for teaching me! How do you know all that?"
"Oh, I just hung out at my brother's job a lot. They all worked on cars and ships and stuff. I just absorbed a lot of the basic principles. Come to think of it, I did spend an awful lot of time on my back with some of those guys under machines. I've seen a lot of mechanical things go together, and I just tend to remember things like that."
"Sister," Mrs. Caboose poked her head out the door and looked sternly at Sister, tapping her ear, indicating the "little ears" that were nearby.
"Right, my bad." Sister looked over at the swing set in the courtyard where one of the neighbor kids was pushing the littlest Caboose, Olivia, on the swings. Nearby, the ten year old, Leah, was doing her homework. She was really into homework. Sister thought she'd heard her say she wanted to be a nuclear physicist. Raven, the nine year old, wanted to be a dancer or a boxer, and she was trying to braid her kinky black hair into tiny dreadlocks. Jaymie was seven, and she wanted to be a doctor or a software engineer. Violet and Blue, sisters 4 and 3 years old, were quite the puzzle. They had only been here a few months longer than Sister had. The Asian girls had been found in the escape pod of a ship destroyed by Covies, but no one had yet figured out where the girls had originally come from. They were friendly and intelligent toddlers, but generally silent to the point it creeped Sister out. Olivia, the 2 year old blonde haired, blue eyed biological sister of Caboose was just about as angelic as a kid could be, as opposed to Cayna and Tatum – the six year old "twin terrors," also Caboose's biological sisters, who were notorious pranksters, always causing someone trouble, unless of course they were fighting each other.
Caboose had five older foster sisters and three older biological sisters whom Sister hadn't met yet, ranging in age from 19 to 26, though one of them had brought a box of old clothes over on Sister's first day of school here so that she would have clothing that kept her adequately warm. The base had heating, of course, but they didn't keep it perfectly room temperature to conserve energy. Everyone here was used to it, but Sister was still adjusting from the tropics, and tended to go around in multiple layers at all times.
"Hey Caboose," Sister looked at him after her perusal of his sisters, "you never told me before what you wanted to do once you finish school." she said, staring up at the black of space through the courtyard skylight. Caboose stared up at the stars with her.
"I … want to be … a hero," he said quietly.
"A hero? What for?"
"Well, I watch the space marines on the base where dad works, and it all seems really exciting. And I would really like to help save the world from the scary aliens."
"I think we may need to save ourselves from the humans too," Sister said quietly.
"What?" Caboose was thoroughly confused.
"Nothing, sorry. Ignore me." Sister tried to turn away.
"Nooo, that sounded important, and I am your big brother so you have to tell me." Caboose looked determined.
"It's just that … well, my brother Grif was drafted, but we don't have a draft! I checked – it doesn't exist. And he told me he'd message me all the time, but – but I haven't heard from him in weeks! When I tried to contact someone about it – I mean I just figured his messages were getting lost somehow – they said they have no record of him at all! So I knew there had to be some kind of mix up, and these people assured me that surely it was just lost paperwork or a computer crash had caused an error, and they said they'd get right back to me, but that was weeks ago!" Sister said all this a little breathlessly.
Caboose's brow was furrowed in deep concentration, as he puzzled out Sister's jumbled explanation.
"Maybe … he ran away?" he asked.
"I don't think he'd do something that drastic. Besides, he'd never … " Sister paused, doubting for the first time. Surely Dexter wouldn't run away and leave her?
"Maybe there was bad traffic," Caboose said. "Or maybe he just forgot. He'll remember soon. Though I'll be sad when he comes to take you with him. You're my sister now too."
"No … " Sister said, still thinking about what Caboose had said first.
"What?"
"You're right Caboose. He'd never forget me. Family is too important to us."
"Oh yeah, like how even though I always forget my homework, I never forget to walk the girls home from school, even if I see something shiny."
"Right. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. Which means Grif is in some kind of trouble." Sister thought about what Caboose had said about running away. She looked across the courtyard at the girls playing, and her heart ached. She had always wanted sisters. She looked back at her new brother. "I have to find him, Caboose. I have to go."