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Sportacus had absolutely no way of predicting that the upcoming day would bring such an overwhelming amount of outstanding events, both positive and negative.
The rise of a new and exciting day was hardly different from similar beginnings in the past; the morning routine followed the same familiar pattern, including such activities as a complex of simple somersaults and backflips from the moment of awakening, a humble breakfast that consisted of his favorite combination of banana and apple, and finally a quick warm-up game involving his airship's artificial intelligence.
After finishing the unimportant morning cares and warming up, Sportacus decided that it wasn't worth staying too long in the company of the airship's monotonous voice and that it would be a good idea to visit his other company in the person of his little friends. The elf rushed out to the airship's observation deck, took a telescope from behind his belt, and after tossing it from hand to hand for a brief second, held it up to his eye.
He had no difficulty locating the kids’ whereabouts near the central park almost immediately, and without a second's hesitation, he began his descent into the expanse of the town.
The kids greeted Sportacus with the usual cheerful exclamations, excited with expectation of what kind of entertainment he would present them with this time. If Sportacus were completely honest, he wouldn't say that he had any games in mind for today, although his joyful morning activity laid out a pretty good idea for some fun together.
Sportacus took out a bundle of jump ropes from his backpack, demonstrated a couple of sophisticated tricks using them, and performed some manipulations around a small gathering of trees, which resulted in a complicated net being spread between them. He suggested that the company jump through this net, to which the group of kids gave a positive response, not concealing their bright enthusiasm and amazement.
Taking regular pauses and breaks from the game, they spent their leisure hours in this way until lunchtime, at which point the kids retired to their homes to rest from their active pastime and replenish their energy. Sportacus remained in the same place and continued the improvised game, adding to it more complicated jumps and movements, until at some obscure moment he felt someone watching him.
The elf stopped the process of his game. Each of the kids was currently at home — Sportacus was fully convinced of this point, so he dismissed the possibility that some of his friends were secretly watching him.
Turning in the approximate direction of where he had felt the other's presence, Sportacus suddenly caught sight of a man he had never seen before, hidden among the branches of the nearby bushes.
The stranger, who had presumably been watching the course of his game, jumped almost comically right on the spot and let out a surprised gasp, causing the dense foliage around him to rustle loudly; his thin, pointed moustache, which looked almost identical to Sportacus's, twitched amusingly with surprise, and his long face flushed with some obscure emotion of fright — he had obviously been taken by surprise.
Sportacus was also rather surprised, because he hadn't expected to encounter an unknown person who was hiding in the depths of the bushes and spying on him for no apparent reason.
With a hasty glance at the expression on the stranger's face, Sportacus examined the man with a little more attention: his squinting eye accidentally caught in his appearance something that urged his eyebrows to rise upward in genuine surprise and his heart to freeze for a fleeting second. It was all about the person's ears...
He was definitely and unmistakably an elf.
The expression of pure surprise on Sportacus's pointed face was worth all the effort it took to think through and execute his brand-new disguise.
It's not to say that the current disguise had any specific reason for its creation: perhaps Robbie could try to get some personal information about Sportacus while hiding behind his new appearance and use it for his own selfish purposes at any time later; but for some inexplicable reason, the initiative to spoil Sportacus’s mood, let alone harm him in any way, had subsided almost instantly the moment he saw his bright reaction.
Robbie couldn't understand the motive for such a sudden change of plans, but anyway, he decided not to shift the course of the current situation and to put aside any harmful intentions, keeping in mind the naive assurance that the reason for this was most likely the necessity to feed his own ego; it turned out that his current appearance was quite convincing and his efforts were not in vain.
The 'meeting' scene took place in a peculiarly awkward atmosphere, at least in Robbie's opinion — after all, he hadn't planned to be seen before a certain moment, let alone to be caught watching Sportacus from the bushes; besides, Robbie always felt unexplainably flustered in the elf's presence, though this was obviously nothing new for him.
It was only in the course of the conversation that Robbie happened to realize one major oversight: his seemingly "brilliant" plan had turned out to be poorly thought out. The realization of this struck him right after the first basic question about his name.
Robbie had completely forgotten to come up with a proper name for himself and, by extension, the backstory of the character he was playing, so he had to improvise as the dialogue went on. This was quite a challenge considering how nervous he was feeling, and all the lies sounded less convincing with the constant stuttering of his speech and overactive gesturing of his hands.
But, as far as could be seen, Sportacus didn't pay much attention to his constant stuttering and accepted his lies as true statements. Most likely, he didn't doubt the truthfulness of his answers because of his sparkling joy; the elf was so happy to meet someone who shared such an astonishing number of similarities with him that he might possibly have missed the false undertones in Robbie’s replies.
However, despite all the falsehoods he presented about his personality, Robbie wouldn't lie about one obvious and somewhat embarrassing detail: the elf's joy was catching and even somewhat endearing.
Almost the very first nuances that Sportacus emphasized were Robbie's unusual racial identity and the lack of a headdress to hide the signs of it from others’ gazes. Robbie provided him with shallow and rather crumpled answers, mostly to silence Sportacus's unrestrained interest and to finally accomplish his current goal: he should make the elf confirm his own belonging to an extraordinary race.
And, of course, Robbie knew the easiest way to do it.
"Fine, whatever! Why are you even happy that I'm an elf?!" he demanded, his voice rising a tone higher with growing impatience.
"Because I'm an elf too!"
Robbie didn't manage to express a single sign of rejoicing — at last his longstanding assumptions were officially determined to be true, and he could shamelessly pat himself on the back for his exceptional intelligence — because in the same second, Sportacus reached for his hat and, as if it were no big deal for him, pulled it off in one easy motion, openly displaying what he'd been hiding from literally everyone in town for such a long time.
For some prolonged moment, Robbie completely forgot how to use his verbal skills. This sudden, temporary shock wasn't due to the elf’s pointy ears, although, needless to say, they also made an enchanting impression on him; it was something about what was slightly covering them.
To Robbie’s unimaginable surprise, Sportacus's hair was a delightful shade of blonde, and its delicate gleam in the rays of the sun, shining beneath the very dome of the sky, might have suggested that each lock had been tenderly woven of golden thread. They curled around his dark temples and flowed downward in a measured cascade, where a golden shadow carefully concealed something that marked his unusual race; the elf’s ears were tipped with a vague tint of red — perhaps he was a little embarrassed by his somewhat impulsive action — and were twitching slightly with the weightless sway of the wind.
All of this newfound sight was spectacularly complemented by the lovely details on Sportacus’s face; the coy smile and shining eyes were a perfect illustration of his happiness. He looked much more youthful without that ridiculous hat.
The unexpected sound of Sportacus's soft laughter and the following remark jolted Robbie from his brief moment of staring:
“I experienced the same shock as you are now!”
Robbie gathered all his strength and tried to parry with a clever or at least coherent phrase, but instead of a clear answer, he could only utter a stream of unintelligible sounds.
Perhaps some quiet, soft side of Robbie’s personality had awakened in the depths of his callous soul, or, what seemed more believable to his consideration, his brilliant mind had suffered an unforeseen technical malfunction, but either way he’d suddenly managed to identify a new reason for this disguise, and it implied absolutely no malicious intent.
Sportacus couldn't remember the last time he had felt such a joyful, carefree feeling in his life. The unexpected meeting with a creature like himself was probably one of the happiest moments in such a great amount of time, because in his presence Sportacus didn't have to hide the peculiarities of his appearance and behavior, and he finally could share some details of his life position before acquiring the regalia of a "hero."
Robbicus seemed to be a little confused by this plentiful amount of new information, because according to his words, he was an elf of a slightly different nature and had spent most of his life among other folk. Sportacus treated this fact with understanding and, in the process of generous narration about himself, tried to explain some details of the elven essence to him, hoping that this would help shed some light on the other elf’s partial lack of knowledge.
Sportacus couldn't help but be delighted by the fact that Robbicus was a very careful listener; he didn't interrupt him even once and wasn't distracted by the environment around them, concentrating his attention only on the hero’s stories and, apparently, his face. Such sensitive attention really flattered Sportacus, but at the same time, he wouldn't lie that such an intense gaze from his new companion made him feel a small grain of embarrassment in his chest.
Perhaps he should have subtly pointed out that it was not proper manners to stare at people with such scrutiny.
Since the kids hadn't returned from lunch hour yet, they decided to walk around the perimeter of the park. Although Robbicus insisted on not doing anything active and just sitting down on a nearby bench, Sportacus managed to persuade him to take a short stroll around the park and discuss something interesting. Sportacus asked the other elf to give a little more detail about himself, and the man, amusingly stammering over his own words, gave him a brief description of his personality.
As it turned out, Robbicus didn't present himself as a fan of any kind of active pastime at all and had a rather unhealthy lifestyle, but nevertheless, Sportacus didn't really mind all of the mentioned facts, mainly because after such an unbearably long period of time, Sportacus had finally found a friend to match himself, so he didn't care about those, as it seemed to him, unfavorable qualities of the elf’s character.
Perhaps he should have expressed his joy and spoken this thought aloud.
“You know, Robbicus, I haven't felt this happy in a very long time," he said, walking arm in arm with his new friend. “I can't even remember the last time I was in the company of another elf. I don't even care that we're so different...”
The elf turned his attention to the person walking to his right and stared at him with an unreadable look; his eyes were comically rounded, and Sportacus recognized a strange emotion on his long face, which tightly bordered on confusion and slight surprise. In unison with this, Robbicus brought his free hand to his head and wiggled his finger in his ear, an amusing gesture that contrasted sharply with the mixture of emotions that lingered on his face.
The extraordinary sight caused a pang of confusion in Sportacus's chest: what could have provoked such a reaction?
“I'm... happy, too," Robbicus looked away, a deep wrinkle forming between his curved eyebrows, indicating his thoughtfulness. He seemed to be suddenly burdened by some thought, but he still confirmed his feeling of joy in a more upbeat voice: “Yeah, I'm happy!”
Sportacus felt concerned about such a quick change in his friend’s attitude, and he questioned if he was feeling unwell, since now Robbicus looked a little disheartened. The other elf brushed off Sportacus’s fretting and displayed a wide, crooked smile, saying that he had merely remembered something insignificant.
It was enough to ease the hero’s worries, if only for a fraction.
The current day was indeed different from every previous day of this month, at least for the reason that Robbie was feeling rather unusual.
Sportacus's unexpected statement had undoubtedly had some effect on him, and a rather controversial one, it seemed. A fleeting thought had crept into Robbie’s brilliant mind that even if he might have referred to the malfunction of his brain in order to somehow justify his behavior some time ago, now, after their recent conversation, that speculation no longer seemed valid to him.
It appeared that Sportacus's sincere confession had actually touched the soft side of Robbie’s nature that lurked beneath the layers of malice and guile, and this could well be marked as the truth, for the villain was no longer able to interpret the metamorphosis in his behavior in any other way.
Sportacus was happy with his company. His words sounded so genuine that their sincerity tingled some new, indescribable feeling in Robbie’s small heart. And, truth be told, he had initially even doubted his hearing ability and whether he had heard his declaration correctly, but upon seeing the naively joyful expression on Sportacus’s almost gleaming face, the villain was convinced otherwise, and any doubts left him in a single moment.
It was at that moment that a sudden realization struck Robbie, however strange and uncharacteristic it might have sounded: he had absolutely no interest in doing anything vicious towards Sportacus, at least not today and certainly not at the present time. Not after what he had said.
Perhaps he should have silenced any remaining evil motives and spent his time — which, it should be noted, on another ordinary day Robbie would have preferred to spend in the company of his favorite fluffy recliner and a slice of cake — alongside the local hero; now the possibility of it no longer seemed so terrifying to him.
As long as he remained hidden beneath the mask of a foreign identity, things should pass without any overly problematic situations.
Much to Robbie's great disappointment, some time after their long and exhausting walk, the missing brats encountered them nearby the central park, inspecting his figure literally from head to toe, and Robbie wouldn't say that their faces displayed much interest, at least not until they caught a glimpse of the elven attributes of his appearance.
As the company rumbled enthusiastically in an expression of vivid amazement, Robbie felt a pang of irritation, and his face twisted into a grimace of feigned disgust; he could tolerate the company of the sports elf, but certainly not a bunch of rowdy kids. And it was the purest truth.
Sportacus, on the other hand, was more than happy to introduce him to his dear company, although at first glance he seemed a little worried that Robbie's fake elongated ears were on display among his human friends. Robbie wasn't bothered by that in any way, because he obviously wasn't a real elf, unlike his companion.
Noticing the uncertain expression on the hero's face, Robbie allowed himself the thought that perhaps Sportacus felt worried about the possibility of a negative reaction from the kids, which would indirectly indicate that he should hide his secret much more carefully than before.
Despite Robbie's prejudices, the annoying brats accepted him quite warmly, especially the Candy Boy, whose correct name he once again could not remember. Each of the motley group surrounded him with all sorts of questions, but Sportacus promptly suppressed their abundant interrogation with a suggestion of a game, for which Robbie was partly grateful and at the same time frustrated.
The game mentioned by Sportacus involved jumping over segments of a net set up between trees, which, as it seemed to him, was made of a number of thin ropes or something of that sort — the same pastime that the elf had engaged in just seconds before their "first meeting." This time Robbie was unfortunately unable to remain absent from the overactive game, for the kids were urging him to join in their fun.
Robbie could have dismissed their pitiful pleas, but as if against his inner wishes, the reinforcement of the elf's pleading look and his reassuring half-smile compelled him to agree.
If he had only been aware of the consequences his agreement would bring, he wouldn't have allowed himself to even think about the possibility of joining the game.
Robbie had to summon up all his self-confidence to attempt his first leap over the rope; he wouldn't admit the following out loud, but the encouraging cheering of Sportacus and the kids made a very positive effect on his determination. The movements of his new company seemed considerably more energetic and deliberate than his own, but that didn't prevent him from beginning to feel content with his small achievements as the game went on, and the fact that Sportacus seemed much happier henceforth was a rather pleasant bonus.
Robbie didn't proclaim himself to be fond of any kind of active entertainment, especially in the company of noisy kids and the sports elf, but he should admit that the current game really appealed to him, mainly because he kept hearing a lot of nice comments directed towards him. It made Robbie experience some special kind of joy, and he would never have thought that being active would be able to evoke in him such delightful feelings.
And everything was quite fine until that crucial moment when one of the brats called out to him.
Robbie responded by turning over his shoulder right at the moment of jumping over a particularly high rope. In some unexplained circumstance — most likely his own carelessness played some part in it — his foot got caught in the net, and a sudden impulse sent him over the rope and straight to the ground.
The fall didn't cause any significant damage, though the unexpected blunder still partially shook Robbie both physically and mentally; at first, he even failed to hear the kids' frightened voices shouting out his name and someone from the company running up to his sprawled flat against the grass body.
“I'm all right! Ugh,” he announced with a burst of thunderous laughter, awkwardly rolling onto his back and waving his hand. “I was planning on doing that.”
Complete silence served as the only response he received. In utter confusion, Robbie hastily took a sitting position on the ground and cast a quick glance around the young faces distorted with genuine shock; all eyes were focused right on him, and in the same second, the quiet was displaced by a collective gasp of exasperation.
“Robbie Rotten!” a loud chorus of kids rang out, the unexpected harshness of their voices giving those words a vivid tone of indignation and outrage.
That was the moment when his heart sank.
In speechless fright, Robbie's hand flicked up to his face and traced the line above his upper lip. He didn't recognize the absence of the thin moustache that accompanied his elven disguise until now; it must have gotten detached the moment his face made contact with the surface of the ground.
Robbie emitted a series of garbled sounds, completely clueless as to how to defend his vulnerable position.
“So you're not a real elf, huh?..” the Candy Boy muttered, the boy's voice sounding quiet and rather saddened. What did he mean by that? Had his fake ear tips fallen off along with his moustache at the instant of falling to the ground?
In a vague shock, Robbie looked back at the spot where he had landed, and his tunnel vision actually caught sight of the lost piece of his disguise, or rather an oblong ear tip lying solitary on the crumpled grass. A startled sound involuntarily escaped from the villain’s chest; there was no turning back for him now.
But much to his great disappointment, the chain of unfortunate accidents was not over yet.
Robbie’s eyes widened as he realized the most overwhelming detail of the whole situation: Sportacus had witnessed the entire scene of his "reverse transformation," and all the while Robbie had been trying to process and accept everything that had just occurred, the hero had been right beside him and hadn't uttered a single word. Robbie felt a pang of fear at the mere thought of what sight he might encounter when he turned his attention in the elf's direction.
Sportacus was positioning himself at a respectful distance to Robbie’s left, dropping to one knee and resting his arm on it. It took all of Robbie's courage to turn his head and finally take in the reaction on his face, his mouth twitching in an unintentional nervous impulse.
The expression that lingered on Sportacus's face as a mask of intense, deep emotion, which Robbie couldn't quite identify yet, could have broken even the strongest and toughest heart in the whole world. All the radiant joy that had lit up the elf’s features only seconds before faded like the glimmer of a heavenly body in the morning sun, as if it had never existed in the first place; even his thin mustache seemed to drop in an expression of unhappy spirits.
No matter how hard it was for him to do, Robbie forced himself to make eye contact with Sportacus, and with a stabbing sensation in his chest, the villain caught the change in his previously friendly gaze: his bright eyes had completely faded, no longer filled with their former cheerful sparkle.
Sportacus refused to look at him in return and turned away in total silence, tilting his head slightly downward and shaking it subtly from side to side.
The real essence of the situation finally reached Robbie's understanding: the emotion that completely overshadowed the joy on Sportacus's face was nothing other than all-encompassing disappointment. After the hero had willingly entrusted Robbie with so much personal information and even found the courage to show him the elven specificity of his appearance, he obviously felt extremely deceived and betrayed.
And all of this was happening entirely through Robbie’s fault.
This time Robbie's mistake felt much grander than any other he had ever made, and for the first time in such an impressive amount of time, he felt the urgent need to say something, not in his own defense but in favor of the upset elf. He had to explain his motives, even if it sounded like a falsehood.
“I... uh... I can explain everything!” Robbie began in a desperate attempt to formulate at least one reasonable sentence, gesturing expressively with his hands in the air, but all he managed to say was a muddled, nervous speech.
The kids continued to express their indignation at the whole incident, unwilling to listen to his mumbling, but R. paid no attention to them at all; his explanations were not addressed to them in any way.
Sportacus showed almost no reaction to his words, except that he twisted his mouth and slightly curled his lower lip as if trying not to start crying in public, and Robbie's heart clenched painfully at the witnessing of this scene. Soon, Robbie could actually catch a faint glimmer in the corners of his eyes; Sportacus was indeed on the verge of tears, and only then did he manage to fully realize how much he had upset him.
Their gloomy situation was taking more and more unpleasant turns.
At some point, Sportacus finally shifted and rose from his half-sitting position on the grass. Robbie watched his every movement, which was now devoid of previous energy and enthusiasm; the slightest hope surged under his ribcage that perhaps, by some unimaginable miracle, the hero would put aside this awful situation and hold out his hand in a gesture of offering him help.
But any hopeful expectations of Robbie were shattered by a dry, deeply hurt look and a sigh of unspoken heaviness from the elf — that was the maximum of what he deserved now. Sportacus cast one last glance in his direction and, still without saying a single word, began to walk away from him and the kids’ company at a firm pace.
“Look what you've done!" the pink-haired girl said, pointing her finger in the direction of the retreating elf, her face contorted with burning indignation. “You've upset Sportacus!”
“I can see it without your prompting, girl!" he snapped back, rising hastily from his sitting position, his legs suddenly trembling uncontrollably.
Robbie needed to fix this mistake without any further delay before Sportacus would truly despise him for this kind of pretense and deception. The least he could do was to rush after the hero and prevent him from retreating, so that Robbie could at least apologize.
He could only hope that Sportacus would find at least an ounce of goodwill in his kind heart to listen to his apologetic words.