milliways_bar | (no subject)

Wilford sighs, and starts eating his lunch. There's no hope for this kid.

"I'm just trying to help you have some fun."

If he doesn't want to have fun, that's his problem.

"I'm open to fun. I just don't want it to involve a call to my social worker."

"Social worker? You got a record?"

Did Fry just accidentally become a smidge more interesting?

Fry nods.

"I used to hit my head on stuff as a baby." he says. "And the hospital thought my parents were beating me up. But they were cleared because my nursery had video of me hitting my head on stuff. That was before I got diagnosed. They cleared my parents but they keep me on file because of my Asperger's."

"You have a social worker because you hit your head?"

Wilford repeats that in his head a few times, just to try to figure it out.

... No, it still doesn't make any sense.

"I wasn't very old. It was before I could talk."

That's even worse. Wilford lit his teacher's desk on fire once, and got lost in the system about six months later. How tedious must things be where Fry's from to be able to keep track of a kid who hit his head eight years ago?

Wilford sighs and gets up to go to the bar. A few moments later, he returns with a handful of his own little beans and a cheap ballpoint clicker pen and a roll of tape. He takes the pen apart, and then uses the knife to cut the casing in half, to have two long pieces.

After some fiddling and careful application of tape, he has the ink cartridge set up so when he pulls the nib back and lets go, the spring shoots it forward along the length of the pen. He takes one of his beans, cuts it in half, and sticks it in the casing, and pulls back on the cartridge. When he lets go, the cartridge hits the bean, and sends it flying into the napkin rack on Fry's table.

It was a perfectly good idea. If Fry wasn't going to use it, Wilford wasn't going to let it go to waste. And now he has something to use to annoy other people at the station.

Fry watches this, and when the bean starts flying, suddenly bursts out laughing.

Wilford takes the second half of the bean he cut in half and aims a bit more ambitiously at someone across the room, holding his new weapon as close to the table as possible, with the practise of someone who spent many hours in school fucking around like this.

The bean does not go in any logical direction, but it still goes, and bounces off someone else's table.

He's still not cutting his beans yet, but he does watch in amusement.

More fiddling is in order to improve the aim. Which in this case, means another strip of tape to stabilise the ink cartridge. The pen is terribly cheap, and the beans are an odd shape, which makes them go in strange directions.

He cuts up another bean and tries again. It still goes in a strange direction.

"What's it called?" Fry asks.

Every teacher's worst nightmare?

"I think it's like a ballista," Wilford says.

He isn't totally sure, though. He's not entirely up to date on his miniature siege weapons.

Fry gets a stick and some elastic from the bar and starts trying to make a slingshot. Watching his lack of motor skills is probably painful.

Yeah, it kind of is. So painful, in fact, Wilford feels compelled to show him an easier way. He heads to the bar and comes back with a small pile of random bits and bobs one might find in an office or class room. The first thing he grabs is a rubber band, which he twists around his thumb and index finger separately, so it can be used to fling another bean at Fry's table.

If you're going to make weapons, you should at least make them easy to hide.

"Thanks." Fry says, writing down.

'4. Flick them at things.'

It's more than just flicking them at things, Fry. You're using them as parts of a larger machine.

Whatever. Wilford goes back to his original contraption and fiddles with it some more. He's got way more than the ten beans Fry was given, but he's not being graded. He's just trying to annoy people.

This time, the bean goes off in an entirely different direction. Somewhere, it bounces off a hard surface with a little skitter.

One of Wilford's beans lands in Vyvyan's hair. Before realising who flicked it, he's turned around and lobbed it back.

Okay, it wasn't a reaction he wanted, but he'll take it. By the time Vyvyan lobs the bean across the room, Wilford has his little device hidden behind his plate, and is casually picking through the rice to find something to eat that isn't green.

Vyvyan looks between the kid and Wilford.

"Knock it off, snotface." he says. It's not clear who that's aimed at.

"It wasn't me." Fry says, without snitching on Wilf.

Wilford looks up, utterly bewildered. Then he looks at Fry at the next table.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Who is this orange-haired man? Wilford's never seen him before. Nope. Never.

Vyvyan stomps over. He's not as unclean as last time Wilford saw him.

"Knock it off, knobface." he says to Wilford.

By the time Vyvyan gets close, Wilford's little device and his pile of beans have both been carefully slipped into his inventory. All that remains on the table - besides his lunch - is his switch blade, and the assortment of random junk.

"Have we met?" he asks, wide-eyed and totally innocent.

Vyvyan looks at him.

"Yeah, you shot me in the head, like a cowardly rat bastard. I've never done anything to you, though."