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For the most part, Rudo did not sleep in the car.
The others would fall asleep all the time, especially after a long and hard fight or if Gris was driving. Rudo did not and it was just a matter of the fact. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because they didn’t have cars on the Sphere – especially not in the slums – and he wasn’t lulled to sleep by the vibrations of the engine like the others.
Or perhaps it was because Rudo was so interested by the different landscapes of the surface wherever they drove. There was always something different to see, most specifically the different sculptures or graffiti art that popped up when least expected. It was so different than what Rudo was used to from his life on the Sphere and he unconsciously stayed awake to take it all in.
That isn’t to say that he didn’t fall asleep in the car at all. It did happen, just pretty rarely. Like now, with Team Akuta loaded up with Follo and Gris added along as supporters, Rudo had his head leaning against the door he was sitting next to as he slept. The sphereite’s eyes were resolutely shut and his mouth hung open just slightly.
Enjin was at the wheel for their trip to the North Ward with Gris in the passenger seat like usual. Rudo was in the seat behind Gris and Zanka behind Enjin, Follo between them in the middle seat. Riyo had called the trunk despite it not being a real seat so she could stretch out to her heart’s content – and keep their six protected but that was something only she and Enjin needed to know about.
It was late enough in the day that the morning sun had melted away a good chunk of the snow from the road but still early enough that they didn’t have to worry about an afternoon snowstorm that would leave them stuck on the side of the road before their destination. Enjin was sitting in the driver’s seat lazily with one hand on the wheel and the other reading on the door to prop up his head. Gris was nodding off in the passenger seat while Follo was writing something down in his notebook. Zanka was boredly looking out the window and Riyo was laying down while humming along to the Too Lily song playing softly from the radio.
“Follo, how the hell did you live in a place with so much snow all your life?” Enjin asked as they continue to pass by mounds of white for long stretches. It wasn’t fully winter season yet – still too early but creeping its way in – but the snow was still there.
“If you think this is bad, you should come in actual winter then,” Follo snickered, his pencil dancing across the page. “The snow can get so high that you are stuck in your house for days or you have to climb out a window at the top of your building.”
“And that is exactly why I will never move here,” Enjin said, a finger tapping against the side of his face. “A job? Fine. A little trip? Once in a while is okay. Settling down here for good? Heeeeeeeeell no.”
“Some people like it,” Riyo giggled from the back. She sat up from the trunk’s flooring and folded her arms over the top of Follo’s head, perching her chin on them while Follo looked wholly unbothered. “There’s something magical about how the snow falls at nighttime, especially during the holiday season.”
“Say that again after a huge blizzard during the middle of spring,” Enjin scoffed, hitting the switch to have the car’s wipers brush aside a layer of snow that had collected on the windshield. Enjin looked in the rearview mirror at the passengers in the back and his eyebrows rose. “Is the brat still asleep?” Enjin asked incredulously.
“Aww, he must be tired,” Riyo cooed as she toyed with a strand of Rudo’s white hair. Her winter clothes covered her more than her usual clothes and she wore a headband that would keep her ears warm but not mess up her hair.
“When did he fall asleep?” Enjin called back.
“Shortly after we left base,” Zanka answered. Lovely Assistaff was in the back with Riyo since it didn’t fit comfortably in the backseat with all three of them and his hands clutched the sleeves of his winter uniform to keep them busy. It didn’t look much different than his usual uniform but it was thicker with gloves on his hands.
Enjin switched the hand that was on the wheel and reached behind him to smack his free hand against Rudo’s leg. “Yo, Rudo, wake up,” Enjin said.
Rudo snorted awake at the hit, blinking hard as the last dregs of his sleep clung to him. “Wha’?” Rudo asked dumbly.
“Aww, you woke him up,” Riyo pouted and sat up straight. Pouting, she putting off Follo’s hat and started to play with his hair. Again, Follo looked wholly unbothered as he, like the rest of the team, were used to Riyo playing with their hair.
“Figured he didn’t want to miss anymore,” Enjin grinned and raised his hand, pointing a finger out the window by Rudo’s head. “Rudo, take a look.”
Rudo furrowed his brow and turned his head to look at the scene outside. It was covered in a layer of white. More of said white stuff was slowly falling from the sky in small fluffy balls that looked they would break apart if he touched it. Rudo leaned closer to the window to inspect the whiteness, having to rub away the fog his breath formed as condensation settled on the window.
“What is that?” Rudo asked, keeping his eyes outside. He rubbed at them with his glove covered hand to clear the last bits of sleep away and then looked back outside. Zanka, Riyo, Follo, and Gris all looked out the windows on Rudo’s side of the car to see what he was referring to.
Enjin hummed in question playfully as he leaned looked in the rearview mirror at Rudo. “What is what?” Enjin asked. He knew exactly what Rudo was talking about but he wanted to play along.
“That white stuff,” Rudo answered, pointing at the white mounds lining the road again. “There is so much of it.”
“The snow?” Riyo asked, sticking her head between Rudo’s and Follo’s to look outside. “Have you never seen snow?”
“What is snow?” Rudo asked, blinking at the girl.
Enjin smirked to himself. He was the only one that knew that Rudo had no clue what snow was. “Your next big surprise of the surface,” Enjin laughed and pressed his foot harder on the gas pedal. The passengers in the car yelped as it pushed sped forward and Gris yelled at Enjin to be careful of the snow and ice on the road.
During all of that, though, Rudo continued to watch all the snow pass by them in awe.
The snow crunched below Rudo’s boots after he jumped out of the car.
Raising his head, Rudo up at the town that Follo was born and raised in. It looked pretty close to how the other towns that Rudo had seen on the surface looked but had a thickness to them that the other towns didn’t. The roofs were slanted more to let snow fall of them unlike the other towns that had flat roofs.
Follo exited the car out of the same side of Rudo while Zanka and Riyo climbed out of the other side. Gris placed his hands on his lower back and stretched backwards, his back popping in two places. Enjin stretched his arms above his head before turning to crack his back.
Rudo held a glove-covered hand out to let the soft falling snowflakes land in it, watching as they stayed for a moment before melting away in the fabric. More snow fell down and a thin layer started to form. Looking up, Rudo breathed out and was surprised by the thick fog his breath came out as.
“Aren’t you cold?” Follo asked, looking Rudo up-and-down. Rudo was in a warmer version of his cleaner’s uniform but it wasn’t nearly as thick as everyone else the first time they visited the North Ward. Though, only Enjin would be aware of the thick clothes that Rudo had arrived in after falling from heaven and the subsequent information from it that meant the sphere must run cold.
“Aren’t you?” Rudo snapped back in a challenge. Follo was in an outfit not so different than his usual uniform, only now wearing a fur-lined hat that had flaps to cover his ears from the wind and a scarf wrapped around his neck.
Follo smirked down at Rudo. “I grew up here. I’m used to this level of cold. This isn’t even the worst of it.”
“Oh,” Rudo said aloud as he looked down at the snow below his feet again. He raised his boot to see the print left behind. “That makes sense.”
“What about you?” Follo asked. “You’re pretty used to the chill for someone seeing snow for the first time.”
“It’s not that much different than where I grew up during the cold season,” Rudo said as he stepped down on the ground again before bringing his foot up to see the new print made. “We just didn’t get any of this white stuff.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask: you said it doesn’t snow on the sphere,” Enjin said, stepping into their conversation now. Rudo looked up to the cleaner that had found him in ‘no man’s land’ as Enjin brushed some snow off his shoulder. Enjin wore a long-sleeved turtle neck under his jacket and a beanie to cover his head, a pair of gloves covering his hands. “Where does your rain go in the winter then?”
Enjin had been listening from the side – like the rest of the team that had gone along – but had been drawn in by a tid bit of information the sphere. So far, all they knew so far about the world above was from what Rudo would tell them. Anytime something new to the cleaners was mentioned, Gris or Tomme would instantly write it down in their records.
It wasn’t often – actually never – that the ground heard firsthand knowledge of the Sphere from someone who had grown up there before Rudo arrived.
Rudo narrowed his eyes in confusion and tilted his head to the side, the snow that had gathered and hid in his white hair now falling out. “What’s rain?”
Enjin’s mouth dropped open in shock. “You know – when water falls from the sky and that shit. While it is mostly polluted from all the smog in the air, even the ground gets rain.”
Rudo’s eyes grew wide with wonder around the edges. “Water can fall from the sky?”
“…we are so coming back to that later,” Enjin finally said with a finger pointing at Rudo. The sphereite, annoyed by that, snapped his teeth at the finger. Enjin pulled his hand back and pushed Rudo away by his head. “No! Bad! Bad sphereite!” he scolded Rudo like he would a dog.
Rudo growled and pulled his head out of Enjin’s grasp. “Turdface,” he spat.
“Brat,” Enjin spat back and placed his hands on his hips. Rudo sneered at him and Enjin shook his heads. “Out of all the sphereites I could have found in the trash, why did it have to be the most aggressive of them all?”
“Bite me,” Rudo hissed and turned around to stomp away. The area he was walking towards was seemingly clear of snow and was reflective.
“Rudo, wait—” Follo called out in warning, a hand held out.
Follo’s warning was too late as Rudo’s foot stepped on the reflective surface and slipped out from underneath of him. Rudo went falling backwards onto his butt and then onto his back. The back of his head was pillowed by a mound of snow at the edge that saved him from braining himself.
Follo’s hand curled and then slowly fell to his side as he sighed. “…that’s ice,” Follo finished.
“That’s probably from the ice storm the North Ward got yesterday,” Zanka noted absently. He poked the end of Lovely Assistaff against the edge of the ice patch.
Rudo groaned as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. Snow fell out of his hair to fall back into the hole that his head had created. “What the hell is an ice storm?” Rudo asked, aggravation but this new word he was hearing.
“How much natural weather phenomenons does the Sphere not have?” Gris murmured to himself and wrote a note in his book.
Riyo giggled as she skipped over and helped Rudo off the ground. She made sure to help back onto the snow to avoid slipping on the ice again. Riyo brushed snow off the back of Rudo’s jacket and out of his hair. “It sounds like we have to give you a whole crash course of weather patterns down here,” Riyo said with a smile.
“That and more,” Rudo grumbled. There were so many differences between the Sphere and the surface that he wasn’t prepared for. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t even realized that the pit all the trash had been thrown in during his life on the sphere actually had a world below with people.
Something was placed on Rudo’s head and the sphereite looked up. Enjin had winked at him and grew his hand back from the snowcap that was similar to Follo’s he had placed on Rudo’s head. “Don’t worry,” Enjin chuckled. “We’ve got plenty of time for you to learn all about the ground.”
There was a rumbling from their side and the group looked over at the barrier around the town. Multiple pair of eyes shone from the darkness of the woods. Loud thumps like hooves banging against the ground rumbled out.
From the forest beyond the barrier, wildebeest trash beasts stomped out. Cold, foggy air expelled from their nostrils. The trash beasts thrashed their heads and pawed at the ground, before rushing forward to crash against the barrier. The barrier did its job protecting the town but the cleaners were called in to rid the trash beasts before the barrier could fail.
Riyo grinned slyly and pulled the Ripper from her side pouch. With a glow of her eyes and a spin of the scissors around her finger, the Ripper grew to its full size and its sharp tip impaled into the ground. Zanka was much simpler as his eyes glowed blue and his Lovely Assistaff in his hand transformed.
Follo and Gris hung towards the back, ready to provide support where needed without being in the way of the givers. Gris punched a fist into his open hand and cracked his neck to each side deliberately. Follo pulled his hammer that he was working towards becoming a vital weapon out and tightened his grip on it.
Rudo reached in his side pouch and pulled out an old rusty fork. With his gloved hand closed around it, he reached outwards and his red eyes began to glow brighter. A wave of energy rolled over the fork, and it transformed into a wicked looking trident with one of the prongs bent and curled downwards to stick like a halberd.
Enjin cracked his knuckles with a sly grin. His eyes started to glow yellow and Umbreaker morphed into its other form in his hand. “Alright, team, we’ve got some cleaning to do.”
The hoard of trash beasts was simple enough to beat. The only tough part was just how many there seemed to be. The cleaning would have been shorter if it wasn’t with the snow slowing down most of the team’s movements – mostly Rudo having never experienced the weather before – and how many trash beasts kept pouring out of the forest.
But, like the other cleaning Rudo had been sent out to do with Team Akuta, it had been completed. Riyo spun a detransformed The Ripper around her finger before placing it back into her side pouch. Zanka pulled the end of his sleeve up to buff out a dirt smear on Lovely Assistaff, smiling to himself when his vital instrument was now cleaning again. Enjin flicked Umbreaker’s base form open to keep the snow off himself as he lit a cigarette between his lips.
Behind Follo and Gris as they finished recording some notes for later, Rudo watched his breaths came out in clouds of fog from his mouth. He could feel the weaponized fork starting to crack beneath his fingers. Holding his hand out into the air, he opened his hand and watched the weaponized form dissolve into ash and blow away to mix with the falling snow.
“Thank you for the hard work,” Rudo said. It was starting to become somewhat of a habit to thank the trash that had allowed Rudo to draw outs its full potential to fight at the cost of its existence. He knew that there was a life to them even if many did not believe in it and he knew Regto would have his ass if Rudo didn’t use the manners his adoptive father had drilled into him.
For a moment, Rudo started to go down the mental spiral of his fallen father. He often wondered what Regto would think about this world below theirs that teamed with life amongst the trash. Perhaps it would have been nicer to them than the slums of the Sphere where they were looked down upon as if they trash.
“Yo, Rudo, think fast!” Enjin’s voice called out. Instinctively, Rudo turned towards the man that found him after he fell from heaven despite his mind being elsewhere.
And all thoughts of Regto came to a sudden and chilly stop as something struck Rudo in the face.
Whatever Enjin had thrown at Rudo had been wet and cold, making him stumble back a step from the surprise of it. He stood there in surprised silence as the chill sunk minutely deeper into his skin and it rolled down his cheeks. Some of the coldness stuck behind while the large majority dripped off his chin and onto the ground below.
“BWAHAHAHA!” Enjin cackled with a finger pointing at Rudo, the other hand on his knee as he was bent over at the waist with his cackles. His cigarette fell out of Enjin’s mouth and hit the ground, the lit end fizzling out in the wet snow. Umbreaker was placed in its spot inside Enjin’s oversized jacket to keep it protected. “Your face! That was funniest shit I’ve seen!”
Riyo was snickering along, slender fingers covering her mouth. Zanka had an amused smirk on his face as he shook some snow from Lovely Assistaff. Gris laughed and pulled a camera out to snap a picture to show the others back at base. Follo, on the other hand, stepped to the side and bent down to start scooping some snow.
Rudo, very purposely, lifted his glove-covered hands. Placing them on his face, he flicked them to the side to clear his face of snow. “You are going to regret that, turdface,” Rudo said in an evenly threatening voice but they would see the playfulness dancing in Rudo’s red eyes. Reaching down, Rudo grabbed a handful of snow and threw it at Enjin.
Enjin danced out of the way and the loose handful sprinkled on Zanka instead. “That’s not how you do it!” Enjin said as Zanka squawked indignantly having been in the line of fire. Reaching down, Enjin grabbed his own handful of snow and molded it into a ball quickly that he threw at Gris’s chest. “See? You got to make it into a ball first!”
Gris looked down at the snow on his chest and then up at Enjin. Gris’ face grew a smirk and he rolled up his sleeves. “Oh? So, it’s like that, huh?” Gris said in a low voice as he bent over to scoop some snow.
Enjin snickered as he grabbed Riyo and held her in front of him like a human shield. The girl wasn’t able to move away as Gris threw his own snowball that hit her in the stomach. “Hey!” Riyo pouted as Enjin let her go and moved out of the way as both Rudo and Gris threw more snow at him.
“All is fair in love and war!” Enjin grinned brightly from ear to ear. His smile stumbled as snow hit him in the cheek. Turning towards the direction it came from, he saw Follo holding an armful of perfectly shaped snowballs and one ready to be thrown in his hand. “Follo, my dude, you’ve betrayed me?!”
“All is fair in love and war, right?” Follo mocked with a smirk and threw the snowball. Enjin dodge at the last second and it hit Zanka in the arm. “Sorry Zanka, that was for Enjin!”
Zanka growled and placed Lovely Assistaff on his back to free up his hands. Instead of saying anything, Zanka joined the fray with his own hastily created snowballs to throw at anyone in his field of vision. Rudo was the first and the sphereite threw handful of snow – more compact but still falling loose once it left his hands – at Zanka.
“Why is it not working?” Rudo growled to himself and raised an arm to protect himself from another snowball Zanka threw at him before the staff user turned his attention to Follo after the supporter threw a snowball at him.
“Nah, dude, you got to do it like this,” Enjin said, sliding up next to Rudo kneeling on the ground to get more snowy ammunition. He grabbed another handful and showed Rudo how to mold it. Nearby, the four other cleaners threw snowballs at each other with Riyo now joining the growing snowball fight.
“Oh, gotcha,” Rudo said after making a semi-perfect snowball. With a devilish smile, he pulled Enjin’s beanies off and smushed the snowball into blond Enjin’s hair.
“Ugh! You brat!” Enjin cried playfully and stood up to chase after Rudo. Snow puffed into the air off his hair and the wet strands fell into his eyes. “Get back here so I can return the favor!”
“You’ll never catch me, old man!” Rudo yelled over his shoulder, his panting breathes from exertion expelling cloudedly.
“Wha—I’m still in my 20s!” Enjin yelled and threw his snowball at the back of Rudo’s head.
“Old!” Rudo repeated before squawking as he slipped on some ice. Enjin took the opportunity to grab Rudo and wrestle him to the ground. Getting him in a hold, Enjin grabbed some snow and rubbed it into the top of Rudo’s hair after pulling the hat off he himself had placed on the sphereite’s head earlier. “Apologize and admit how young and awesome I am!”
“Never, you turdface!” Rudo yelled back and grabbed a handful of snow to blindly throw backwards into Enjin’s face.
“Then face my wrath!” Enjin cackled as he smushed more white snow into Rudo’s equally white hair. The two givers continued to wrestle as their other team members grew more wet from snowballs launched at them.
Rudo escaped at some point as Riyo pulled the back of Enjin’s shirt to drop cold snow down it. The five of them teamed up against Enjin for a bit until Rudo accidentally struck Zanka with snow and everyone broke off into teams. Somehow, Rudo ended up with Enjin despite the older starting the snowball fight with him to begin with. Zanka and Riyo were one team with Follo and Gris being the other.
They each took a section of the field as their territory and Enjin taught Rudo about the importance of a snow fort that they all took a fifteen minute break from pelting each other with snow to build. Once that time was up, so was their truce and snow flew through the air again. Enjin’s encouraging cheers every time Rudo landed a hit were the loudest amongst the teasing remarks they all threw at the other duos. A few townsfolk peeked out past the town limits gate to see the commotion and chuckled when they saw what was going on.
And for the next couple hours, Team Akuta’s playful and child-like squeals filled the air as they threw snowballs at each other.