"Vel, wait up!" The child tripped.
She hadn't noticed, and kept on running.
"Vel," he cried. He got up and sat down, a small bit of blood coming from the scrape on his knee. "Velvet!" He began crying.
"Need help?" Cobblestone held out his hand.
The kid looked up at him. His skin was a beautiful white, his green hair styled into a bowl cut. His blue eyes held a stream of tears. He was trying to not cry at this new Mount Rageon who offered his hand to help.
"H-hello...?"
"Are you okay? That looked like it hurt. Is the other one your sister?"
The child nodded. "I'm Veneer. Who are you? Why are you wearing that mask?"
"I'm Cobblestone." He grabbed a green band-aid and carefully slapped it onto Veneer's knee. "Isn't that better?"
Velvet came back, clearly upset. "Veneer! Why didn't you say something? I would've come back!" Her gaze went to Cobblestone. "Who are you?"
"Cobbie!" Veneer tried. "He helped my knee! See? It's all better now!"
"Why are you wearing that mask? Are you ugly?"
"Velvet! That's really mean!"
"People only wear masks when they're ugly."
Cobblestone fiddled with his hair. "Yeah, I am. I gotta leave now, but I'll see you later, V-Ven...Venni."
"It's Veneer," Velvet said, crossing her arms.
Veneer waved. "Bye bye!"
Veneer ended up coming back to that place every day to talk to Cobblestone. Eventually, he got Cobblestone to open up and finally reveal his face to him.
"But, don't freak out, okay? People usually freak out, so I just started hiding it."
"Just take the mask off already!"
Cobblestone hesitantly slid it off his face, but left it covering his mouth.
"And your mouth," Veneer said. "Otherwise it doesn't count and you'd have to do it in front of Velvet too."
He sighed. "Fine, fine." He revealed the rest of his face.
Veneer's first instinct was to try to rub off the spots on his mouth. "They don't come off? Huh. Were you born with them or something?"
Cobblestone nodded.
"Your eyes are cool!"
"Huh? Are you joshing me right now?"
"Nope! You look cool! People freak out, but only because they are jealous!"
Cobblestone's face turned a little red.
"Huh? You good?"
"Nobody's...nobody's called me cool bef-before..."
"Then that's their problem."
He quickly put his mask back on as his blush became more obvious. "Stop it, Venni! You're embarrassing me!"
"Then that's your problem!"
"Stop it," he laughed.
"No!" He laughed as well. "You're too easy to fluster!"
Two years later, Cobblestone invited them to his birthday. His parents were out of town, so he could get away with anything he wanted. He wanted to pull off the best birthday ever, to show off for Veneer. His parents would be coming back around dinner, so he had to pull it off, and fast.
He'd bought fireworks and candles, made his own cake, and even decorated the house. He wore his favorite outfit, a gold-colored crop top with SYNTH printed on the front, baggy jeans, his blue sneakers, and a pair of thin black suspenders. He finished the look with a low ponytail and waited for them at the door.
Veneer had brought a gift, and seemed really happy to be there. "Your parents did a good job with the house! Very circus-like!"
"Ha! Yeah. They did, didn't they?" He motioned a thumb towards the inside of the house. "Gifts go on the kitchen table."
Veneer entered, and slowed to a stop when he got to the table. "There's nothing else here."
"You're just early," Cobblestone lied. "You know how we are. Always fashionably late!" He punctuated his statement with jazz hands.
"True. Come on in, Velvet!"
"Do I have to? This place is creeping me out. How can this guy like clowns so much?" She turned a clown doll's head backwards, so it was no longer looking at her direction.
"They're funny!" Cobblestone said cheerily. "And they have incredible talent! I love circuses! I want to be in one someday!"
"You already dress like a clown."
"Hey, I saved this outfit just for today!"
After a bit, Velvet suddenly stormed off. Veneer stopped talking to Cobblestone.
"Sorry, but I should see what's up. She's been going through some stuff lately."
"Okay! Don't take too long! I gotta cut the cake!"
Veneer walked through the curtains into the kitchen. Cobblestone exhaled sharply. He had been keeping up a ruse that his parents were in their bedroom, asleep after the trip around the world to the continents on the other side. He told them the decorating really took it out of them. He started cutting out a slice for Veneer when he smelt smoke.
"Did I leave the stove on? Wait, did I even have anything on the stove?"
He got off the couch to find there was fire everywhere. He hurried to the kitchen and saw Velvet and Veneer weren't in there. They took the back door out, but it had been blocked off by a piece of the roof.
In order to exit through the front door, he'd have to go through the living room. But first, he had to grab something. He hurried to his room and grabbed a framed picture of him, Veneer, and Velvet.
He smiled at it, forgetting about the fires for a moment.
"Wait, I need to leave!" He rushed to the living room, but the door wouldn't open. "Don't tell me that's blocked off too!" He coughed. "Crud, crud, crud."
He went back to his bedroom and tried the window. It wouldn't budge.
"Come on! Something in this hose has to have a way out! I don't want to die!"
His last resort was going upstairs and leaving through his parent's bedroom window. He was able to make it up the stairs, but not far into the room before the doorframe snapped and the sword his father had on display fell with it. The door frame had already trapped one of his ankles.
"No, no!"
He tried to crawl to the window instead, now that the weapon had taken out his ability to walk.
"I need...to get out of here..." He coughed again as the smoke begun to close in. "Please, I can't die...I don't want to die..." He looked at the picture one more time, knowing he wasn't going to make it to the window.
The frame had cracked and a small ember had slid its way in. The image began to burn before Cobblestone waved it out.
"No, I need to say goodbye to Veneer. I'm coming, Venni!" He grabbed the sword and used it to pull himself along faster.
Something began to spark. He whipped his head from the ground to find one last obstacle between him and the open window.
It was the fireworks.
He hid them in his parent's room so Velvet and Veneer wouldn't find them. The fire made one of the fuses catch fire.
Now he really knew he was going to die.
In a last-ditch effort, he attempted to close the box to lessen the blast. He got it halfway closed before it was too late.
The blast was strong enough to take down most of the burning home, along with sending Cobblestone flying. He held the image close to him. Through the rubble, he saw Veneer in the distance.
"Ve...neer...?" He reached out an arm. "Is that you...? Help me...Please...I'm still...alive...Veneer..."
Veneer rushed in the opposite direction, his blurry figure vanishing in the smoke. Cobblestone's eyes filled with tears, partly from the smoke filling the air. Veneer left him behind. He could feel the pain on his burning arms, but it wouldn't match the pain of his broken heart.
That was the day he hoped to tell Veneer he'd fallen in love with him.
He knew Veneer would never return the feeling, but he knew that saying something to him would relieve some of the pressure on his heart, weather he loved him back or not. He touched one of his birthmarks before he lost all feeling in his arms.
He didn't know how long he lied there before a Firemen saw him and finally picked him up. He could hardly hear, or see, or breathe. But there was one thing he knew, and that was that he was alive, no thanks to Veneer. He'd finally closed his eyes for the first time that day.
When he finally woken back up, he was in the Hospital, on oxygen. He began to panic when he couldn't move his arms or legs.
"Calm down, calm down! You're going to hurt yourself! Let me explain what happened." The nurse held up a cup of water. "Your house caught fire, and you were stuck in it. You lost your arms and legs, and you might feel some phantom pain in them for a while. But we have a solution, if you want to hear it."
He went to speak, but broke into a coughing fit instead. She gently helped him sit up and gave him the water.
"Okay, so looks like the smoke might've damaged your lungs too, so you should probably not talk for a while. But we can replace your arms and legs, with prosthetics. Doesn't that sound cool?"
"Where's...Veneer...?"
"Veneer? You mean the dentist's son? He's at home. Thankfully he wasn't caught in the fire. And neither was Velvet, thankfully."
"My parents...? Are they-" He coughed again.
"Slow down, your parents won't be coming."
"What? But they...they promised..."
"They died from a car crash on their way here. They were really worried for you, Cobblestone. I'm sorry. This is a pretty awful day, huh?"
Cobblestone begun to cry, the tears stinging his eyes. "But...it's my...my birthday...and they promised me they would be there...!"
The Nurse let out a gentle gasp. "It's your birthday? I'm sorry it's such an awful one!"
"The new arms and stuff...can you make them bendy? Like those cartoons?"
"The older ones? The black and white ones?"
He nodded. He could still barely speak, and even breathing stung his throat. "Uh-huh..."
She gave him a gentle smile. "We can try. Your throat was hurt pretty bad too, so we might have to fix that too." She held a hand out to her chest. "The prosthetic's will be attached to a chest and back plate, down to about here. The scars, however, we were able to help with right away."
"Am I going to die from this?"
"You don't need to worry about that, Cobblestone. We'll have a professional here, and she knows what she's doing. You have no need to worry." She gently pat his head, brushing his hair from his face. "We'll have to fix your eyes though, can you see me?"
"I can't see anything...And you're kind of quiet..."
"And your hearing..."
"Will I be okay?"
"You should be, yes. You might have to get used to the new prosthetics first, though, before you go running off with your friend, Veneer."
"He's not my friend."
"Oh, were you just worried for him?"
"No, I wanted to see if he died."
"Bitter, much? You might feel a little better when you've been fixed up. And speaking of which, here she comes now. You'll be put to sleep so you won't feel any pain, okay?"
"Okay..."
He told her how he wanted the new prosthetics to look. She listened to every demand.
"Okay, so you want them like the rubberhose cartoons, with lights on them? And do you really want the neck to be stretchy too?"
He nodded.
"Okay, but no lights on the neck, right? And you want the bottoms of the feet to light up too?"
"Yep..."
"Okay, I think I can do that."
Cobblestone looked at his hands. The lights were dim and flickering. Fold stood nearby on a small table. Ruby finished the wielding, and the lights came back to life.
"Right, there we go! Good as new, Fizz." He gave him a thumbs up. "Did you hear Veneer's out of jail?"
"Yes, I'm aware."
"Did you two used to be friends? You should pay him a visit!"
"Why?"
"You two should chat again, I bet he'd like that." He dug through his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Cobblestone. "Here. He had me fix Velvet and his car once, so he gave me his address. You need this more than me."
Cobblestone sat up and snatched the paper from him. "I know that place. That's my old street. He moved there, of all places?"
"How much is the cost, man?" Fold asked Ruby.
"Eh, don't worry about it. This one's going to be on the house. After having those arms for so long, they're starting to give up on life. You might just have to get them replaced than having me fix 'em a whole bunch. If I mess with the cords and stuff too much, they'll stop working in the middle of one of your shows. And we don't want that, do we?"
Cobblestone crushed the paper. "Coward. Poor, poor, old Veneer." He chuckled. "You've just walked yourself into a corner, Veneer. Now you've made me mad, so now you're going to pay. Fold, we're leaving. I'm going to pay Veneer a visit."
"Okay, man."
"And bring the tank."
"The tank? Why?"
"Because, Fold, I told you so! Ruby, how much gasoline do you have?"
"Gasoline? Why do you want-"
He pulled him closer to him and growled at him with his newly-sharpened fangs. "How much gasoline do you have?"
"I-I can grab it...Just let me go, please!"
He let Ruby go. "Get it, then. But go quick, because I am not the patient type."