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Molly’s - Chapter 6 [Tankiverse Fanfic]


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Molly’s - Chapter 6

Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii


 
“Would you like a ride today, sweetie?”
 
I froze, peanut butter spread halfway on the sandwich I was making.
 
“Molly called and invited us out, and we’d like to meet this Olaf and your other new friends.”
 
Jiminy Christmas. This couldn’t be good.
 
“Um, sure, ok thanks,” was all I managed to say, but my mind was moving at a zillion miles per hour. What was going on? Were they going to pull the plug on this? Molly called? Like, she actually knew my number and called my parents? What did I do wrong?
 
Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. My parents could hardly have failed to notice the changes in me since I’d started going to Molly’s regularly, and certainly not in the weeks since Olaf’s crew had arrived. I’m sure my dinnertime conversation was much different than it had been when school was the biggest part of my life. It was inevitable they’d want to Be Involved.
 
Dread is an amazing thing. It slows time and accelerates your brain. In the half hour between that brief conversation and us getting in the car, I must have come up with a thousand possible doomsday scenarios. During the drive to Molly’s, I came up with a thousand more. Suddenly, as we were pulling up to Olaf’s camp outside the garage, time sped up. Only a few heartbeats passed before Molly, Olaf, Mom, and Dad were closing the door to Molly’s office, leaving me outside.
 
Shock came to find me. “Come on, Tad! We’re about to pull the treads off a Juggernaut. It uses seventeen different pieces in each link group. Seventeen! It’s really amazing to see!” Numb, I followed him to bay three where Elsie and her team were just getting to work.
 
Amazingly, focusing on work allowed me to forget whatever dire machinations were going on without me. Shock was right, the tread of the Juggernaut was amazingly intricate. For such a huge machine, you’d expect a brute-force approach to the mechanics, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The treads, the rollers, the bearings, everything about the system was complex and intricate. Not delicate, never that, but the ingenious ways that the engineers had devised to work around the colossal weight of the beast was breathtaking. Did you know that the road wheels utilize compound bearing packs with four different sizes of ball bearings to maximize points of contact and distribute wear? It’s like a Chinese puzzle box of titanium marbles!
 
I was so engrossed that lunchtime came before I knew it. As I sat down on one of the few grassy spots to enjoy my pb&j while watching the rush, I saw Olaf striding towards me. He reached down (way down) to tussle my hair; I usually enjoyed that, but seeing him just brought back all my worries.
 
“So when do I have to go?” I asked miserably.
 
He looked puzzled, and folding his gangly legs beneath him, sat down beside me. “Go?”
 
“Isn’t that why Molly called my folks? To get me out of here?”
 
Olaf looked up at the sky and scratched the stubble on his chin. “Tadpole, the world has plenty of problems waiting around for you to find. There’s no need to spend time inventing new ones.” He unfolded himself and headed back to whatever task he’d interrupted to come and deliver that cryptic message.
 
The sun came out. I mean, it literally did; the day was overcast, and just then the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. I chewed over his words as I chewed my lunch. Whatever he was trying to tell me was a little too deep for my adolescent brain, but I definitely got the sense that I wasn’t being let go. Finishing my sandwich, I went in search of something to make myself useful.

 

Mahalo (thank you) for reading; I hope you enjoyed! This story is part of a series. Information on the series, and links to the other stories, can be found here.

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Nice.

 

Amazingly, focusing on work allowed me to forget whatever dire machinations were going on without me.

I think 'within' me would have suited more. Probably 'without' has been written because he was not being involved in his parent's conversation with Molly. Edited by P.4.R.K.O.U.R

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Nice.

 

I think 'within' me would have suited more. Probably 'without' has been written because he was not being involved in his parent's conversation with Molly.

I debated using "behind closed doors" and "in my absence" but those didn't fit with the adolescent simplicity of Tad's thought processes. The machinations are not internal to Tad; they are external forces beyond Tad's control.

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