Chapter Text
Patterdome Daycare's playground bustled. It was 9:38am, first recess going smoothly, the kids relatively calm. Mako was playing with her chalk, as usual. Stephanie and Kennedy were playing some sort of hide-n-seek tag with the Aleksis Kaidanovsky over by the concrete tubes. Sasha and Hermann were by the swings. Tendo and Newt were...right…over there?
"Christ," Herc muttered to himself, beginning to search for the young boys in a way that wouldn't raise any of the other children's suspicions. As he made his way around the larger playset, he heard a high pitched voice whine, "No way! He did not!", to which Tendo's softer - but still child pitched - voice replied as solemnly as a first grader can, "He did".
"How could he say that about me? Everyone - everybody knows I would never back down from a dare!"
"Listen, hush. We know he's just being a snob," Herc peeked around the wall in time to see Tendo attempt to reason with the trembling scrap of energy that was Newt. He had to hold back a chuckle at the boys. Tendo was leaning up against the underside of the slide, legs crossed, an arm bent to hold the elbow of the other - the no doubt copied-from-television nonchalance in his posture was undermined by only two problems: one, Tendo was about three feet tall, and two, his free arm was gesturing around with a juice box. Little Newt, on the other hand, was looking up at the other boy with wide eyes, bright with indignation for whatever the cause of his distress was, fidgeting with his (empty) belt loops.
The drama between first graders was so amusing sometimes. Herc could appreciate that, even if he would never tell his partner. Kids were all just tiny people, after all.
Tiny people whose smallest problems were the end of the world, if Newton's volume level had anything to say about it.
"Seriously?" Newt was squeaking, "The only reason I didn't take him on is cause we were inside! Dude, I've never done anything to that...that jerk!"
"Whoah, cool it, my mate," Tendo looked around to see if any of the adults had heard his friend's 'bad word', and Herc ducked back behind the pillar. "And really? Do you remember, like, yesterday? You told him his brain 'wasn't good for anything if he couldn't use it for the right sciences'."
"Okay, yeah, but, like, everyone - everybody knows plasma is the coolest state of being, dude. Everybody!" The little kid made a frustrated noise and plowed onward. "He wasn't even arguing about the right concepts! Sublimination and desublimination aren't states of being, they're-"
"Newt! Brother, I know. I don't think he was trying to argue. Though he did have a point - it was 'interesting' to see that states can be skipped- Okay, ouch!" Herc heard a slap and what was, presumably, Tendo's back hit the slide. "Okay! Okay, sorry! You're right! Plasma is the totally coolest state of being and Hermann is nothing but a boring old grump! Sheesh..."
"I'm sorry, dude, but seriously! You're right! He's a boring old grump that wouldn't know fun if it solidified right in front of his boring old face!" Newt was working himself up; Herc decided to step in the next convenient moment and whisk the boys away for some action figures and cookies.
He listened for such a cue, but it never came. He heard what may have been whispering, and then silence.
He heard silence for much too long.
The next thing he heard was, "Hey, Hermy!" coming from the other side of the playground (how?) and above his head. As Herc quickly stalked over to the monkey bars Newt was in the process of climbing, Herc heard Sasha's harsh, yet melodic voice say, "Herm-ann, Aleksis. Little lizard must have heard story."
"Herms!" Newt was yelling, "Hermsy!"
"Would you please resist shortening my name to these atrocities, Geiszler?" A grouchy second-grader in a sweatervest glared up at Newt over his glasses from his spot next to the swings. He liked to read there, leaning up against the metal pole, while the Kaidanosvkies swung on the two swings on either side of him. (A double-glare from Sasha and Hermann would send any kid running away; or, at the very least, it would keep the other kids from coming over and bothering them.)
" 'Would you please resist being such a grump, Hermsy?' " Newton replied in a tone clearly meant to mock the older boy, but coming out as just more of a nasally, slightly deeper version of his usual voice. "Also, what is your problem, dude?"
Hermann, who had gone back to reading his book once Newt began to talk, looked up at the boy with a neutral expression. "What are you talking about, Geiszler?"
"You think," Newt started, punctuating every few words with a step up the ladder, "I can't do anything. You never think I can do anything! You are so wrong, man! So wrong!" With that, he pulled himself up to the top of the monkey bars. When this elicited nothing more than a (signature) eyebrow raise from Hermann, he threw a leg over the first bar, grabbed a hold of the support pipe, and lifted himself to a standing position between the first two bars. He looked back down at Hermann with a smug grin, which became more of a determined grimace when Hermann responded,
"If you could manage to get your overly large head one foot from where your little legs start, I certainly would be surprised," Hermann drawled. Only then did Herc realize what was going on.
"Newton!" Herc yelled, walking over more quickly, "Get down from there!" Newt took one look over his shoulder at the approaching adult and attempted to sprint across the monkey bars. Tendo was shouting what might have been encouragement, while Sasha and Aleksis 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed, and other children were yelling too. Newt felt like a superstar, center of the universe, he was going to show Hermann how wrong he was and prove how awesome he is, and somehow was managing to jump from bar to bar to bar when - CRACK! He slipped over the second to last bar and tumbled headfirst into the mulch. On the way down, Newt saw a striped skink clinging to the support pole. Then Newt hit the ground and heard, rather than felt, the second crunch - the one that came from his arm - and his world exploded. After a few moments (?) of blackness, he began to come back to himself. There was a lot of noise around him. He heard the kids all talking about him (cool), Herc calling for the ambulance (not as cool), and then his mother (definitely not as cool), and felt the pain in his arm start to become real as the blue sky came back into focus. He didn't know how his mom was going to take to him getting hurt again, or if he'd be able to come back to school on Monday. He also didn't know if his secret moldy bread experiment was going to suffer if he didn't check on it while he was in the hospital. It would be a real bummer if it did.
One thing Newt did know, however, was that this entire thing was totally, completely, and irreversibly All Hermann's Fault.