Author's Note: Sorry it took a while. I tried to make this chapter long to make up for the short ones.
Argh, I forgot the disclaimer again. Whoops.
Disclaimer: I don't own Meet the Robinsons, etc, etc.
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"Laszlo! You stop painting my hat or I'm telling Ma!"
"Aww, lighten up, Sis!" Laszlo Robinson buzzed around the room, squirting splashes of paint onto blank canvases hanging on the wall as a pretty girl in a navy blue dress with a matching hat in the shape of a skyscraper hollered at him. The girl's clothes were perfect and immaculate, except for the single streak of bright orange paint scarring the hat.
"Lasz, I mean it!" Tallulah Robinson yelled angrily at her younger brother, silently mourning her ruined headgear.
"Children, please," implored a quiet voice from a nearby doorway. "Your mother is trying to take a nap!"
"What is all the yelling out here!?" someone screeched. A puppet emerged from the door, a wooden hand puppet with flaming red hair and a green dress. Fritz and Petunia glared angrily at their arguing children.
"She started it!" Laszlo pointed accusingly at Tallulah.
"He started it!" Tallulah's angry protest came in unison.
"I don't want to hear anymore!" Petunia shrieked.
"Now, sweetie …"
There was a loud slap. "Don't you 'sweetie' me!"
They could have gone on forever.
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Sibling rivalry had always been an issue for Laszlo and Tallulah. In fact, it was still an issue. They couldn't go ten minutes without finding some miniscule detail to fight over. It wasn't as bad as it was when they were younger. Slowly, painfully slowly, but surely, they were growing out of it. At that rate, they would be completely rid of it in about thirty five years.
Still, there was progress. They were no longer the same havoc-wreakers as they used to be; back then, they fought to the breaking point of both their parents and themselves.
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It was before Petunia's cranky, "I want a sloppy joe!" days. Back then, she had been perfectly normal – or, as normal as a puppet mother (who was a Robinson, on top of it all) could be. But that changed after The Incident.
Laszlo had fondly dubbed The Incident as "Judgment Day." After that, Laszlo's nose was never the same, and neither was Tallulah's wardrobe. It all started with Fritz's fatal announcement:
"Children, your mother and I are going out for the day."
Tallulah had been fourteen at the time, and behind her parent's backs, incredibly immature. Laszlo was ten, shrewd, knew perfectly well about his sister's naivety, and was by no account willing to tell his parents anything that would make them hire – it made Laszlo shudder to even think about it – another babysitter.
The last few had been awful enough; the last one had dropped them off at a neighbor's house after only two hours and gone home, screaming about insanity. The neighbor was left to stare, wide-eyed, at the angelic children sitting on his couch and innocently swinging their legs. Now that Tallulah was legally old enough to watch her younger brother, her parents weren't going to miss out on their first opportunity to get out of the house away from their bickering children, without having to pay a sitter.
Thirty minutes later, Fritz and Petunia were on their way out. Fritz waited good-naturedly as Petunia anxiously threw last-minute, obvious reminders at her children.
"And remember, Tallulah, don't touch the stove."
"I know, Mom."
"Don't play with matches, Laszlo!"
"Yes, Mom."
"Lock the door, don't leave the house, and –"
"We know, Mom!" Tallulah and Laszlo chorused together impatiently. Petunia sighed and the two of them left, the door shutting ominously behind them.
Laszlo whooped loudly, grinning at his sister. Tallulah just scoffed and went back to her room. Laszlo stared after her, watching as she slammed the door. It wasn't enough to block out the loud music that suddenly blasted out.
"Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend …" Laszlo shuddered at the irritating (or at least he thought it was irritating) sound of Avril Lavigne's newest album.
I may as well be home alone, Laszlo thought. Perfect.
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Tallulah stalked into her room, closing the door with a resounding crash.
I am so sick of my stupid kid brother, she thought, turning her iPod speakers to max volume and pressing play. Avril Lavigne's voice belted out of the speakers, the slightly metallic tone ringing deaf in Tallulah's ears. She stood, gazing critically at herself through her full length mirror. She threw her closet open, along with her drawers. She pulled out armfuls of makeup and dumped them out onto her bed and desk.
She was about to prove that every girl likes to play dress-up.
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Meanwhile, Laszlo was having the time of his life in his own room. He had specially requested to have white walls in his room for exactly this purpose; getting out his paintbrushes and spray paint cans and decorating his own bedroom to his liking. Laszlo climbed onto his bed with a canister of orange spray paint in one hand, a paintbrush loaded with green in the other. He began jumping up and down, howling madly as he waved his arms around, splattering green and orange all over, including on himself.
"Yeahh!" he bellowed. Laszlo was normally rather a quiet, sensitive kid; but he was milking his freedom for all it was worth. He had the chance to go crazy, so why shouldn't he take it?
He tossed the paintbrush down onto the carpeted floor, leaving streaks of green behind. He picked up another brush, soaked it in purple paint, brought it behind his head, and swung it forward with all the strength of a baseball player at bat, all bases loaded. Paint flung itself onto everything: on the walls, on the bookshelves, the bedding, his closet, and into the open cans of paint that lay on the floor beside a squeaky easel.
Laszlo didn't need music to rock out. All he needed was paint. Not even paper – to an artist, Laszlo decided, everything is a blank canvas.
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The music in Tallulah's room, playing at an earsplitting volume, made her oblivious to her younger brother's ideas of entertainment. Even if she had been able to hear him, though, she probably wouldn't have cared. She sat, preening herself in front of the mirror. Endless supplies of hair elastics, hair bands, bobby pins, hair gel, accessories, and makeup were spread in front of her as she admired her fancy hairdo and extremely overdone makeup. Huge earrings dangled from her ears, crested with (fake) gems. She wore a short dress of bright turquoise that was too small for her, with tight sleeves that ended somewhere on her forearm, cutting off circulation between her elbow and her wrist.
A loud knocking at the door interrupted her grooming. She hastily changed into her normal clothes, clattered down the stairs and peeked out the window. One of the neighbors, Tallulah couldn't remember the old man's name, was standing outside the door, looking murderous. Tallulah cringed and gingerly opened the door.
"May I help you?" she asked sweetly, before noticing what the neighbor was holding. "Wha-!"
"This," the neighbor bellowed, gripping Laszlo's shirt, "was on my lawn, painting my house!" He shook the boy roughly. Tallulah glanced at the house next to theirs; it was no longer the immaculate beige it used to be, but beige stained with purple, orange, green, red, blue, and every other imaginable colour. She turned her gaze back to the neighbor.
"Thank you, uh … sir." Tallulah mumbled.
"I'll expect you to pay for the house to get repainted!" The elderly man dropped Laszlo forcefully on his butt down on the veranda and hobbled away, leaning on his cane and wheezing angrily. Muttered words could be heard: mainly things like "insanity" and "darn kids." Laszlo got up and dashed into the house. Tallulah tried to grab at him, but Laszlo dodged her nimbly and escaped to his room.
"Don't expect me to tell Mom and Dad!" she hollered back at him. There was no reply, except an extremely loud raspberry. She huffed loudly and stomped up the stairs. "Laszlo!" she shrieked. Suddenly, something came up behind her and kicked her in the behind. She let out a small scream and turned just in time to see Laszlo run downstairs. "You little – argh!" Tallulah scrambled up off the floor and sprinted after him. There was no sign of him.
"Over here, stupid," Laszlo taunted. Somehow, he had managed to get up the stairs again and was now laughing wildly, staring down at his sister from the upper floor balcony. Tallulah watched lividly as her brother climbed on top of the banister and stood, balancing precariously. "Come and get me," he yelled. "Bet you ca–"
Tallulah let out a gasp as Laszlo's cocky expression quickly melted into horror as his foot slipped off the rail and he fell with a shout and a loud thump. He lay on the floor on his back, gasping for breath as the wind was knocked out of him. His arm was twisted at an odd angle, resting limply on the ground.
"Tallulah?" Laszlo mumbled weakly. His face had turned a pasty gray, a huge contrast to his normally rosy cheeks.
Oh, great, Tallulah groaned silently. Now what? She grabbed a pillow off of the couch and pushed it under Laszlo's head. "Just wait a second," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I'll be right back." Laszlo muttered an unintelligible reply and Tallulah dashed to the phone and dialed 911.
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Two and a half hours later, Tallulah was sitting beside a hospital bed, flipping through a magazine in an uninterested fashion. Laszlo lay in the bed, examining the cast that now encased his broken arm and looking extremely bored. She looked up mildly as the thin curtain that covered the entrance flew open and Fritz rushed in. Petunia bombarded questions at Laszlo about his arm.
"How did it happen? Does it hurt? Are you okay?"
Laszlo tried his best to answer them all, lying slightly about how his arm was broken.
"I … uh … fell down the stairs," he muttered. Tallulah scoffed, but managed to turn it into a cough when Fritz and Petunia looked at her.
"Uh, yeah, that's right," she said quickly. "The stairs. Yeah." She coughed slightly. "Oh, and you might be getting a bill from the neighbor." She explained what had happened.
"The doctor said I can go now," Laszlo added, before his incredulous (and angry) parents could say anything. "Just as soon as you got here." They checked out hurriedly and left. During the car ride home, Petunia and Fritz were both thinking the same thing:
"Those two are never staying home alone again."
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Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed it! If you have any ideas for future chapters, or if I've forgotten someone in my dimwitted-ness, feel free to suggest things. The next chapters are Gaston, Art, Fritz/Petunia, Joe/Billie, Carl, Lefty, and Spike/Dimitri.
Review please!