Butters sat in the back of the bus alone, with his legs drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped around his knees, trying to fight back the urge to cry. He wondered how he had gotten into this mess. Had he done something so wrong or horrible that he had to be sent to Boot Camp?
Apparently his parents thought so.
He remembered his parents telling him that he was being sent to camp just this morning at the breakfast table, with his mom drawn into his dad's arms, bawling her eyes out. He had to refrain from spitting out his cereal across the table once those words left his father's lips. Once again those words came back to haunt him. Had he done something wrong?
Of course, he knew his parents could overreact to such little, trivial things, and they had sent him to some other correctional camps over the years, but never in his wildest dreams had he imagined going to Boot Camp. Even the thought of it sent chills up and down his spine.
To make matters worse, he was going to go through this alone. When he got on the bus this morning that was made that abundantly clear. Everyone had scooted over in their seats as if to say 'you can't sit here.' Sure, he wasn't the type to relay his burdens onto others all the time, but was it too much to ask for a friend that actually cared about him for once.
Back in the present day, Butters curled further into himself and bit his lip, resisting the urge to cry.
"You can't cry, Butters," he kept saying to himself, all the while, avoiding looking out the window at the world he was leaving behind. He feared he couldn't take it.
He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into his knees, wishing he could just disappear. He was brought out of his thoughts when he suddenly felt a hand shaking him awake. He looked up, his eyes straining in the light, to see an orange parka-clad blonde staring back at him, and he blushed when blue eyes met his.
"Sorry, dude, I didn't mean to wake you, I was just wondering if that seat was taken?" Kenny asked, pointing a finger to the seat next to him.
Butters blinked in confusion. Kenny wanted to sit next to him?
When Butters didn't respond right away, he took it the wrong way and he turned to leave.
"Sorry, dude, I shouldn't have asked... I didn't know."
"No, no, sorry," Butters said, scooting over in his seat.
The blonde plopped down in the seat beside him, and cast him a thankful smile.
"Thanks, dude."
There was marshland as far as the eye could see; leading up to a large wide metal gate with specific wiring at the top that meant it was fully equipped with high voltage, just in case anyone tried getting out.
Who would try to escape that way, when there were guards surrounding the place? Butters thought innocently, raising an eyebrow.
Butters jumped at the loud beeping sound that the gate made when it started opening to let the bus in, and a few recruits that had noticed this started laughing at Butter's expense, which made Butters blush and shrivel up in his seat. The blonde sitting next to him put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and squeezed gently.
"Easy there tiger, don't give yourself a heart attack," he said with a sardonic grin.
Almost immediately after the bus came to a lurching stop, almost knocking Butters out of his seat in the process, there came a sudden tapping sound on the bus's doors. Butters turned to face a black haired guard appearing to be in his middle thirties, carrying a clipboard. As soon as the doors shriveled open, he stepped onboard and turned to face the new recruits. He then looked down at his clipboard, reading it carefully, before turning to the bus driver.
"Is this all of them?" he asked, seeming to be puzzled.
"Yeah, this is all of 'em, but Colorado is a small state, so what did you expect?" The scraggly brown haired old lady spoke dismissively. The guard just shrugged, and then turned back to face the recruits.
He started to pace the aisle between the seats, reading the paper attached to his clipboard out loud, as he spoke.
"My name is Daniel Barfield. You will not address me as anything but 'sir' or 'officer,' do you understand me?"Barfield said firmly.
He looked up at the recruits to make sure they were all listening, when they shouted a 'sir, yes sir!'
Butters' response may have been weaker than everyone else's, but this wasn't what caught the guard's attention. Instead, he caught another obese recruit, with brown hair, making a snarky remark to the person sitting next to him in his seat, and then snickering. The guard came to stop by his seat.
"Is something funny, recruit?"
"No, sir!" the brunette yelled, and snickered again.
"What is your name?"
"Eric Cartman, sir!"
"Well, since you find this situation just so humorous, you will be paying a visit to the Dean's office later in the day," he said, writing something down on his clipboard, before he began pacing the aisle again. "That's another thing, for all you newbie recruits, I am a guard here, so, if you try any funny business, the Dean of this camp will be hearing about it, and you will be punished. Now..."
He paused, coming to a stop in the front of the bus, and turned to look at the recruits again.
"Once I call your name, I want you to form a single file line off of this bus. No pushing, shoving, kicking, fighting, or talking back, do you understand?" the guard barked, narrowing his eyes at the recruits, which ended with another resonating response.
"Sir, yes sir!"
As the recruits started to clamber out of the bus unceremoniously, there came a sudden pause in the line as the fatty from before stuck out his foot and nearly tripped a kid about Butters' age wearing a green ushanka and untidy ginger locks of hair sticking out at the ends. When the ginger regained his footing, having ungraciously fallen into the seats in front of him. He shot the fatty a deathly glare.
"Try that again, fatty, and I'll-"
"You'll what, Kahl?" Eric said, standing up from his seat and stood over the ginger boy, who stood about roughly five inches shorter than him and much, much scrawnier than the burly brunette that towered over him, sizing him up. Even from where Butters sat, he was still intimidating. "Piss yourself for being such a little pussy?"
Eric smirked, and the whole bus erupted into raucous laughter. The Jewish boy sneered at the brunette, pointing another accusatory finger at the other's chest, making the boy snarl and get red in the face. Butters thought they looked like rabid animals at that moment, with both of them sneering at each other before the guard walked up to them and tore them from each other.
"All right, come on you two, Broflovski, Cartman, break it up," the guard said, breaking the two apart from each other.
The ginger cast the brunette one last glare, before walking off the bus. On the last step, however, the brunette murmured a 'pussy' just loud enough for the other boy to hear, and the other boy stopped in his tracks. But, another boy with jet-black hair, wearing a blue and red puffball hat, came up to him and slung an arm around his shoulders, and murmured something that seemed to calm him down.
Once everyone was off the bus, they headed to a small building with 'Induction Room' plastered in large blocky lettering across the front door. There, they were each ushered into their own little private privacy rooms, and were given strip searching, which made Butters nervous just thinking about it. Along the way, however, the chubby brunette kid snickered and fell in line with Kenny.
Oh no, what is he-... Before he could say anything, however, Cartman started talking in that shrill voice of his.
"Excuse me, Mr. Baxter; I thought it was against the camp's protocol to wear something that obstructs the face?" Cartman asks in that mock-innocent act that he usually pulls on adults.
The DI looked from Cartman and then to Kenny, and then walked over to Kenny. "Sorry, kid, but he's right, it is against protocol. Hand it over." Kenny took off his orange hoodie and handed it over to the guard, revealing his shaggy blonde hair and white t-shirt he wore underneath, glaring menacingly at Cartman.
When the guard walked away, Cartman looked at Kenny innocently.
"Sorry, Kinney, but you heard the man, it's against the rules," he said, a smug expression forming on his face.
The blonde threw a punch at the fat one suddenly, striking him upside the head, and sneered at the brunette; silencing the whole group and earning a few gasps here and there from the other recruits, as they suddenly stopped in line to watch the events that had just occurred in front of them unfold.
Anything to get that smug look off his face, Kenny thought spitefully.
When Cartman came to, his face scrunched up as he began to wail rather loudly, and hot tears started falling from his eyes, and blood started spilling from his nose. Gee, Kenny must've gotten him pretty badly, Butters thought in amazement at someone who appeared to be the scrawniest kid at the camp hitting the, who appeared to be, the camp's chubbiest kid so hard that it made him bleed. Maybe Cartman wasn't as strong as he wanted everyone else to believe.
"Kinney hit me!" Cartman wailed. The guard walked up to him just then and put his hands on either side of his shoulders, a stern look upon his face.
"Chin up, soldier! Good soldiers don't cry!" he snapped, causing everyone to instinctively take a step back, just in case. Cartman hiccupped as his tears stopped, fear clearly written in his eyes as he saluted the DI.
"Aye, aye sir!" Cartman squeaked.
"Good," the DI said, giving him a good pat on the shoulder, before walking away. "That's what I like to hear."
He then turned briskly to Kenny.
"And you, recruit," he said hotly to Kenny, "I wouldn't go around throwing punches around here if I were you."
"But-" Butters tried to defend, but was cut off shortly by Kenny saluting the DI and saying, "Aye, aye sir!"
But, he didn't do anything...
He couldn't do it. He couldn't just sit there and watch the barber in the mirror cutting his hair, feeling like he was losing the last of his life before, watching the last bits of his blonde hair fall to the floor to join the pile of the countless other children's who had been here before him. He could feel the tears stinging his eyes. He took a seat in front of a man with graying hair, with a name-tag on his shoulder that read Mr. Garrison, who kept rambling off about the latest celebrity gossip, which Butters wasn't interested in. He was grateful that they were allowed to their rooms afterwards, because he didn't think that he would be able to take it.
Once Butters finally made it to the bunker rooms, he couldn't contain his tears anymore. He slid his back against the door, and let the steady stream of emotions he felt within the last few hours out. When he raised his head, however, from staring at the ground, he noticed that he wasn't alone and noticed Kenny staring back at him with an expression that was indistinguishable, whether it was concern or irritation, it was hard to tell with that hoodie on.
"O-Oh, sorry, Kenny, I didn't know you were here," Butters said, drying his tears quickly as if to hide they were there in the first place, as he got up from his heap on the floor.
Kenny didn't say anything, but instead just pointed over to the bunk beds, asking him which bunk he wanted. Just by the looks of it, they looked uncomfortable. The beds were all lumpy and small, looking more like a futon than a bed, and the navy blue blankets were all woolly and cold which made shivers run down Butters' spine just thinking about sleeping with the itchy thing. Butters bit his lip and rubbed his knuckles together nervously.
"O-Oh, um, I was thinking about getting the bottom half, be-because I get all sweaty and toss and turn a lot during the night, and I have to get up real early in the morning for my medicine that I have for my-" Butters trailed off, realizing that he almost spilled a very sensitive secret of his. "Never mind," he said quickly.
Kenny looked at him incredulously with a raised eyebrow. This made Butters blush and feel nervous all over again, rubbing his knuckles together. "T-Too much information, huh?" he asked, sheepishly.
Without a word, Kenny turned around and started climbing up the short ladder to the second bunk, before collapsing into bed with his head propped up on his arms. Butters plopped down on the hard mattress with a thud, and bit his lip again. As if it wasn't uncomfortable enough, the mattress did little to stop the hard wood under the mattress from grinding into their backs, but this wasn't what concerned Butters. Kenny hadn't said a word to him since they got off the bus; he hoped he hadn't said anything to upset him.
He curled up into bed, his thoughts doing little to ease his nerves. What if he had done something wrong? And what if Kenny just didn't want to talk to him anymore? Oh gosh, I hope not, Butters thought; Kenny is a really good friend of mine. I hope I didn't say anything to offend him.
Butters fell asleep with extreme difficulty that night.
A/N: Thank you so much to FanFictionFan9876 for editing this for me.