Chapter Text
Two months. Two entire months of going through the motions of gathering the climate data had gone by. It was very often that the thoughts of going back out on the ice intruded on Tundra Man’s thoughts. He knew that the more he thought about it, the more he’d want to go out and skate, but that would mean missing out on data and making Dr. Cossack disappointed. He had already been given a second chance, he didn’t know if he’d be afforded a third.
As Tundra sat at the terminal, entering the oh so special and important data (the temperature never fluctuated too much and the sea was only rising by a few micrometers per week, how important was this data really?), he caught himself thinking about skating again. He couldn’t afford to think about figure skating and skating routines and moves and flashy outfits and… ah, again, even while trying to push it away, skating wouldn’t leave his mind.
“Rrrrrrrraaaahhhh! Get out of my head!!”
Tundra slams his fist down on the keyboard and is broken out of his brief moment of rage. Looking down at what he’d done, he grimaces a bit. Many of the keys were broken or so pressed in that they wouldn’t stop inputting numbers and letters on the screen. Tundra quickly unplugs the keyboard from the terminal before any more letters and numbers could appear. Great, he would need a new keyboard.
Standing up from his chair, Tundra takes the broken keyboard and goes downstairs. A lot of back up equipment was also kept in Tundra’s personal quarters, since it was originally just a basement. He sets the keyboard to the side and looks for an undamaged one. After checking through some boxes and rummaging through shelves, he bends down to check under the couch. His hand brushes up against something cold, metallic, and…sharp. Tundra couldn’t bring himself to pull out the blades and he does his best to keep reaching around for a spare keyboard without touching the blades again. Once he finds the spare keyboard, he quickly goes back upstairs to fix his mistakes.
Tundra spends the next few hours collecting and logging climate data, routinely updating Dr. Cossack on his progress. As per usual, his thoughts drifted back to skating. He controls himself this time, not breaking another keyboard. Maybe… Maybe a little self indulgence wouldn’t hurt. If anything, maybe it would ease the stress of it all. Tundra pulls a blank sheet of paper out from the nearby printer and grabs a pen. He wouldn’t actually skate, but maybe he could draw himself as though he were built for skating.
First, Tundra draws himself as a base for the design.
“I might already be perfect, but there’s room to improve, I suppose.”
The smaller details of his armor catch his eyes first. The ice crystals carefully placed at his wrists and helmet would be the first to be improved upon.
“They have to be flashy, eye catching, and elegant!”
He makes the one on his helmet bigger and adds several longer ice spikes jutting out from one side. He also adds a long ice braid to the back of the helmet, to give himself that extra flow. For the ones on his wrists, he draws them as his cuffs. The ones he actually had were way too bulky and inelegant. He moves on to his chest next. What he had now was too plain, adding some extra flare would help his design tremendously. He flares out the armor to look like a coat, adding more ice crystals and what looked to be something shirt like underneath.
“And now, for the most important part, the skates!”
Tundra spends a great deal of time thinking about how the skates should look.
“They’d be my most defining feature, what’ll bring the entire design together.”
Tundra finally decides on a design and puts it to paper. He makes the two ice crystals on his knees longer, shaping them to be blade-like. The skates themselves were large, the perfect size to support a robot like himself, and looked like the blades on a snow sled. Realizing that all he had was a pen and no coloring supplies, Tundra writes what color everything would be next to each part of himself. Vibrant purples, cold blues, tinges of orange, and marking down the skating blades as gold. He sits back and admires his work as a whole.
“My new look would be so cool!! God, I wish I actually looked like that…”
The reality that he, in fact, did not look the way he wanted too now was setting in. He’d never actually be this version of Tundra Man, the world famous figure skater. He’d just be Tundra Man, the robot who sits in the lab all day and does boring climate stuff. He looks down at the drawing, seriously pondering just throwing it out, as it made him feel bad about himself. Instead of that, however, Tundra opens up a compartment on his arm and stuffs the drawing inside.
Tundra looks back up at the computer screen, new climate data had been gathering over the past hour. The level of disinterest he had for his prime directive probably wasn’t good, but how could anyone be expected to sit here and plug in numbers all day without going completely mad. He inputs the numbers anyway, no use in letting the work back up, but after that, he turns the monitor off. The light from the screen dies out and the room is filled with the cool glow of the arctic sun outside. Drawing hadn’t helped him get rid of his desire to skate, so maybe actually doing it, indulging a little in the fantasy, would finally snuff it all out.
Tundra gets up and goes down to his room, fishing the homemade skates out from under the couch, and goes back up and outside the lab. This would be it. He’d skate just one more time, and stop on his own terms. He’d do everything he’d ever wanted to do on skates and then lock them and his feelings for the sport away for the rest of his life. For one last time, once at the frozen lake, Tundra puts on his skates. They’re just as wobbly as before, if not a little more so. That was fine, he’d never need to fix them after this. With the vision of who he’d like to be in his mind and his skates on the ice, he pushes off from the bank.
Tundra Man does several easy tricks first, warming up. He’d have to hit all of the ones he’s always wanted to do because this was it. This was his one chance. He’d promised himself there would be no more skating after this day was over. He picks up speed, performing the waltz-jump, the toe loop, he even does a flip. He picks up more speed, he’d need it for the most challenging moves. He performs a perfect double axel, then he goes for the triple axel right after, getting a solid landing. He picks up more speed and decides he’s going to go for the quadruple axel, a move that humans consider near impossible. It’s now or never, he’ll never have this chance again, and he goes for it. He performs the quadruple axel and lands back on the ice, but something is very wrong. The skate snaps in two upon landing and his legs slips out from under him, and the full force of Tundra Man comes down on the ice. Having been going very fast, his velocity only adds to the impact, sending him right through the ice.
Tundra had felt something in his leg snap, and as he’s enveloped in the freezing water, he feels the limb short out entirely. Using his arms, he pulls himself back up onto the ice, and though he’s panicking, he keeps himself calm enough to not break the ice further. His right leg is completely unresponsive, so he pulls himself to the lakeside. He removes what’s left of the skate and takes off the other one. The initial shock of what’s happened eventually wears off and the consequences of his actions take the forefront of his mind. He had broken himself doing something he was told not to do. He indulged a little too much and now he’d have to explain himself to Dr. Cossack. This wasn’t just him missing out on a few hours of data, like before, this was him being explicitly disobedient and now he was broken.
It takes Tundra Man a few hours to drag himself back to the lab. He had left the broken skates back at the lake, hoping that the frozen water would swallow up his mistakes and erase his actions. He pulls himself up to the computer and switches the monitor back on. Much like before, he is greeted by a few messages from Dr. Cossack. Of course the doctor’s messages would be here to greet him, he’d been out for a much longer time. There was almost three quarters worth of the day unaccounted for in the climate data and he’d already missed his deadline by several hours.
Dr. Cossack: Please submit your report, Tundra. -5:34pm
Dr. Cossack: Tundra, it’s already overdue, submit what you have. -5:57pm
Dr. Cossack: Are you doing the thing from last time again? I had asked you to stop that. -6:02pm
Dr. Cossack: Please respond back to me when you can. -6:45pm
Tundra knew how to read between the lines. That last message was sent with an air of disappointment. It was last time all over again and now, Tundra couldn’t go on as usual. Maybe, just maybe, Dr. Cossack wouldn’t ask what he was doing if he was upfront with his condition.
Tundra: I’ve hurt myself. My leg is completely unresponsive. -11:23pm
The speed at which he gets a response surprises him. Within a couple minutes, his creator had sent him a message. Had he been waiting at his computer for Tundra this whole time?
Dr. Cossack: I’ll send a retrieval team out immediately. Just hang in there, okay? Try not damage yourself further. -11:24pm
Tundra: Okay, thank you. -11:25pm
Dr. Cossack: It’ll take an hour for the team to get there, with how far out there you are. -11:28pm
Tundra: Understood. I’ll hold down the fort. -11:29pm
His creator hadn’t asked how his leg had been damaged or what he had been doing, he hadn’t even asked for the climate report, he just wanted Tundra to know that help was on the way. The sentiment felt… well, it felt nice to know he was cared for, but this also meant that he’d have to face Dr. Cossack’s disappointment in person. Tundra couldn’t expect mercy, not after he had gone out of his way to blatantly disobey orders. The doctor was a stern man who liked it when jobs were done accurately and efficiently. Tundra’s actions were anything but either of those. Peering out of the window at the snow outside, Tundra Man mentally resigned himself to the fact that the next several hours probably wouldn’t be kind to him.