Buster Moon OneShots

2

"Mr. Moon? I was wondering... we've told you a lot about us, but we don't really know anything about you. So..." Meena struggled.

Buster turned toward her, tapping the desk anxiously with a nail. "My life is... complicated to explain." he smiled sympathetically. The whole group looked at him in interest, aside from Miss Crawly, who was cleaning out her desk drawers.

The gathered round for a story. "Well, you have like lots of time to tell us!" Gunter exclaimed.

"I have work to do..."

"Come on Buster! Don't avoid the subect. We've told you our entire lives, why can't we hear some of yours?"

He nodded slowly, a pained frown on his face. "But I'm not going into certain details." they agreed quickly.

"At first, I wanted to be the first koala in space. I was five." he reminisced. "Then my mother passed away in a big accident. I was heartbroken. My dad took me to see Nana Noodleman's show Epiphany, which brought me to love the theater and everything about it. From there, not everything was easy. Not anything waas easy." he sighed.

"I went to a small school, but most of it was just bullies. I'm short and an easy target with absolutely no defense so you can probably guess how that worked out for me. Every day..." he gave a shuddering breath. "Every day they would knock me down, steal my lunch and money, hit me until they got bored, than left. I would come back every day bruise and battered up. My dad hated it, but just... jus told me I shouldn't be weak. A smile hides a thousand emotions, he told me."

He hugged himself a bit, distressed at recounting his life. "As I got older, it only got worse. I was the nerdy theater kid with big dopey ears and a fat head." he shook his head with a weak chuckle. "One time I exploded the classroom just to get back at them, despite not normally being a troublemaker. Ohh my dad kicked me hard for that one."

"He actually kicked you?" Rosita asked, aghast.

"Well, yeah. Discipline I guess. I sort of deserved it. I did something dumb and when I did something dumb I would be punished for it. It's just how it worked. If any of you have noticed the scar by my neck and the other by my shoulder, you know what they're from now."

Rosita looked like she pitied him, her hands brought to her mouth. The rest of the group looked sympathetic, which left Buster kind of confused. "What?" he asked.

"That is so not okay!" Ash declared as Rosita gave Buster an unexpected hug. Buster shrugged.

"It was just how it was. I never thought anything of it. I always assumed other kids were treated similarly." Rosita shook her head and hugged him with an extra squeeze before sitting next to him. "After that, dad started leaving to some bar often and when he came home... I had to be careful not to make him mad. Soon I went to college where I met Eddie, the only person there who wasn't a complete bully to me to be honest. Whenever anything happened, I would always go to his house for a while. I'm not going to go into details on that part. You can ask Eddie if you want but I'm not doin it."

Buster tugged at his tie and the collar of his shirt anxiously. "Then... just after college started for me... my dad died of cancer. He hadn't even told me." Buster said, voice breaking as he choked back a sob. "I'm sorry..." he told them, embarrassed as he wiped flowing tears off his face. Rosita squeezed his hand comfortingly.

"I... I was sixteen when I had to start fending for myself. I had no other family. So I lived in a desk drawer in the theater. Still do, really. I would make money however I could but my shows never sold. I couldn't make good ones for two reasons. One, I was a starving teenager with no ideas, pens, paper, or much of anything aside from a suit and a watch. Not the best situation for great ideas - let alone remembering them. And second, I had no money to fund the shows. For a while, Eddie's dad funded them for me, but then he stopped."

He laughed uncomfortably. "Thus the singing competition. I was going to have a prize of 1,000 dollars but then there was the typo that caused all that trouble. All the money I had was 935 dollars and I had to get more really fast. Then.... well you know what happened throughout the competition."

Johnny had a question that had been nagging at him a while. "At Redshore, you were having like panic attacks outta nowhere even before Crystal tried to kill you during Out of this World. Why? And why wrre your hands all bandaged up?"

Buster froze up a bit, recieving a comforting squeeze of his hand from Rosita. "It wasn't the first time he had tried to kill me. He had even directly assaulted me when you guys were around, you just didn't see it because you were busy with other things. He threatened my life and told me I had to give the lead role to Porsha or he would throw me off the roof. Later, he actually almost managed to throw me off the roof when Porsha told him I had fired her. I barely escaped. He locked me in a closet to finih me off later."

His breathing pastened, little chest heaving up and down as almost unimaginable speed for such a small koala. He was hyperventilating. Johnny hadn't met to give him a dang panic attack! Rosita tried to calm him down as he held his head in his hands, fingers arched painfully as he clawed at his fur. His voice devolved into quavering whimpers as he finished. "Suki saved me. I ran back to the hotel. You all know ehat happened after that." he said with a broken sob.

Johnny felt awful for freaking Buster out that much. "I'm sorry, Mr. Moon-" he said awkwardly truly remorseful of his actions.

After about ten minutes, Buster had calmed down, though felt sick from the lingering effects of the episode. "You asked about how my hands were bandaged too?" Johnny nodded "Clay warned us, just so you know. Ash and I grabbed on to the fence and nearly eletrocuted ourselved. Ash and I both got burned bad, but because of my size I got the worst of the effects of us two I think." he said, eyeing Ash warily.

Ash agreed. "He really did. It liked burned off the pads of his paws and everything!"

Buster nodded. "It did. I still have like no paw pad and plenty of burn marks. Paws still hurt if I apply any pressure to them. And they'll shake and I can't control that but... it is what it is." he smiled softly as if nothing at all was wrong.

With the stories, the whole group knew why Buster had never told them and they were very honored that he had finally let them hear. They hugged him, realizing that things weren't as easy for him as he made it seem. And for a minute for Buster, everything was okay.

Soon all the group had left aside from Rosita, who stayed to ask one more question. "Buster? You know I worry a lot and so I kind of want to know. How long would you normally go without food before you lost the original Moon Theater?"

That was a painful memory to whih he visibly flinched as if stung. "On average? Around 9 or 10 days at a time unless Eddie happened to be close by the theater and dropped by with sandwiches. The longest I've ever been without food was 22 days. I ended up nearly being hospitalized because I collapsed in the middle of a concrete sidewalk." he chuckled dryly.

"But that's the past."

"Yes, Rosita. That's all in the past." he said, hugging her affectionately.

(My sister wrote this one. There are a couple like this, and I'll credit her on those ones.)