4. My Backyard Becomes a Shuttle-Port

He started talking as we left my bedroom. I had no clue what he was saying, but he was on a roll and getting really into it, making sound-effects and excited gestures and everything. Then he paused, looking straight into my eyes. Murmuring softly, the Roman slowly shook his head and sighed, looking away.

"Gah," was his subdued cry of impatience, and after that I - I can't be positive - but I think he started cursing under his breath; the inflection was all there.

"Uh...I'm sorry," I said, unsure of how else to respond.

He looked back up at me and, after a little pause, spoke with conviction and ended the statement with, "Ah?" He nodded toward the staircase and said something else, then he was off striding down the hallway and down the stairs.

"Hey, wait a minute, where are you going!" I called as I strode after him. To this he grunted a short response. I followed the sound and, just as I made it down the stairs, spotted him walking out the back door and onto the deck. With a little grumble I jogged past the kitchen and met him there. Like a king putting his conquered lands on display, he stood there with a hand on his waist and an arm extended out towards my backyard.

I rose an eyebrow at him. "Yeah? What about it?"

He didn't move his stance, but his lips pursed slightly.

Curiously I shuffled to the edge of the deck, looked over, and...could not believe what I was seeing. My eyes probably widened and I felt my jaw drop. "Amadeus, what...what did you do to my backyard?"

The ground had a...there was a...hole. A really big hole. Like the beginnings of a pool before the cement is poured in, only bigger, deeper, and less professional-looking. There were trees leaning along the edges, threatening to fall in; some had already done so. Everything within, say, ten feet of it was caked in dirt, including the deck. And at the very center of the crater there was a sparking, human-sized metal sphere.

Gulp. "Okay. Alright. That's okay. That's...alright. Is that how you got here?" I asked, pointing at the shuttle and looking over my shoulder at him.

I figured he took a wild guess at what I was asking and nodded. Then he spoke a few words in Latin which I was too blown-away to absorb. He paced slowly to my side and peered over the damage, squinting at something amongst the ruins. His eyebrows went up.

"Meus induviae!" he cried. This said, he hurtled over the porch railing, landed with a cat's grace, and took off running around the perimeter of the crater.

"Hey - wait! Amadeus!" I called, sprinting down the stairs and off the deck as fast as I could go without tripping. I dashed after him because, you know, I couldn't really let him run wild! What if he met a car and mistook it for some sort of shiny buffalo to herd over the edge of a cliff and eat? He was going to run into some trouble out there and, for whatever reason, it mattered to me.

He just kept on going, sprinting like a freaking deer leaping over anything the average human would take the time to just climb over and zigzagging around trees like...I don't know, some other kind of large and fast animal.

"Haha, quod meus ornamentum!"  He slowed to a stop at where the woods started and began climbing a tree, lifting his arms above his head and effortlessly pulling himself up on a branch and swinging his legs up and over like a monkey. 

"What are you doing!" I yelled from beneath him, looking up. I shouldn't have done that - looked up, I mean. From this angle I could sorta tell he wasn't wearing anything beneath that lion cloth.

My gaze shot away and I shut up, minutely traumatized. I wasn't saying anything bad about him - that was something I didn't want to see for at least another five years. On any guy. Again, not saying anything against his...should-be privates.

I coughed. "Okay. I'll just...not look up for now."

There was a muffled thud; a twig's snap; a shaking of earth from behind me, and there stood the Roman, now clad in an off-white, purple-trimmed tunic. Over this he wore a woolen cloak of the same colors, and a lusterless helm upon his head. There was a sword and hilt attached to a leather belt around his waist. Oh, and he held a shield. Well, half of one anyway - as far as I knew, whole-shields didn't protect above the chest alone.

"Whoa," I said lowly. "Your dye is purple. Were you a prince?" I remember learning that purple dye was very rare way back when, and only the very wealthy people wore it.

He pointed back up at the tree and said stuff. Of course I still couldn't understand any of it, but I looked up just in case that would help. I saw shiny and, upon squinting, made out more weapons and armor, and the other half of his shield stuck in the tree branches above.

"...Oh. Wait, how did that even happen? Unless your shuttle opened before you landed..." I jogged back out of the woods and to the edge of where the wannabe pool started. From this angle I could see the open hatch at the side, jagged metal sticking out at the sides. "Looks like you opened it a bit forcefully, eh Mr. 300? Maybe a little bit before you were supposed to?"

I peered over my shoulder at him once again and found him tilting his head curiously, sighing some words rather wistfully. He shook his head slowly and grumbled some more Latin. I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or to himself.

My lips curled in an upside-down U. "And you don't even have a scratch on you. Well, as far as I can tell. You seem to be functioning alright, though. I mean, so long as you actually are an Ancient Roman, we're golden as far as mental health goes!"

He leisurely paced to my side, face dark and brooding. Then he smirked and murmured. Then his eyes darted back toward the house at the sound of a vroom pulling up the driveway.

I grimaced. "...Well. This'll be interesting."