Boots 2 (ver 3) (Patreon)

Continuing with my latest pass on Boots!

Also, I clearly confused some people with this story, so let me take a moment to explain. Boots is an animated movie that Tori watches in Executioner's Gambit. It's a fantasy story written by a geroo. It has magic in it. No one is wearing an environment suit. Everyone speaks the same language. It's one of those tales because it's just a cartoon, not hard science fiction.

If something seems ridiculous in this tale, just go with it. Just like the story-in-a-story we had in Reaper's Lottery (that one was called The Slave King), this story is fiction from Tori's point-of-view.

———

Ykahi’s had flattened her ears against her head, trying to muffle some of the noise, but they perked slightly to catch what Korosovak was shouting into his strand. Technically, Korosovak was her owner, but Ykahi thought of the red krakun with the yellow horns as her roommate.

“His floor is my ceiling,” Korosovak shouted, “trust me, I can hear him dancing up there.”

1C, 2A, and 2C had all called. Three of the four other apartments calling the super back-to-back was pretty impressive, unprecedented from Ykahi’s point of view.

“Yes, yes, I will. I’ll go tell him to keep it down, now,” said the krakun before hanging up. He groaned and climbed from his sofa.

Ykahi grinned a devious little smile. “I’ll do it!” she shouted.

“What?” Korosovak asked. He’d only taken one step toward the door, but he could almost reach the knob.

“I said, ‘I’ll do it,’” she repeated. “I’ll go tell him to keep it down.”

The krakun’s brow wrinkled in surprise. “You will?”

“Yup, I’m on it,” she lied before dashing across the floor and into the rough hole in the baseboard. From there, she climbed quickly through the tunnels inside the wall before popping out into Botabriask’s living room.

Boots had his music blaring, and his golden boots looked more like they were trying to pound a hole through the super’s ceiling than any kind of dancing she knew. From the corner of the room, a couple geroo faces peeked out from the hole in their shoebox, ears low in distress.

Ykahi took the long way around the room to avoid getting squashed, then scrambled up the access ladder on the back of the kitchen table. “So, I guess there was dancing at The Silver Coin?” she shouted over the music.

“Oh yeah!” said the bright blue krakun, his face beaming when he spotted the tiny ringel. Without shutting off the music, he sucked a gulp of energy drink from a plastic bottle and flopped down at the table. “I stayed for maybe an hour after I finished eating.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “Dance with anyone pretty?”

Boots shook his head. “Nah. It was all old timers—dusty old retirees passing their last few centuries.”

“Bummer,” she said with a frown. “I guess you didn’t get to dance.”

“Actually, I did,” laughed Boots. “It was weird, but it was still pretty fun, y’know? They showed me all these wacky dances that were popular thousands of years before I even hatched. I can’t see becoming a regular there, but I still had fun.”

“Oh, well, that’s good then,” said Ykahi as she pulled up the map once more, “I guess there’s still a half dozen more—even more than that if you don’t mind driving.”

“Sir?” shouted a geroo from the cleaning crew, just peeking from the shoebox. “Our cubs are trying to sleep. Would you mind turning down the—”

Without hesitation, Boots hurled the mostly empty bottle into the corner, splattering blue liquid everywhere. “Get back in your box!” he bellowed.

Ykahi howled with laughter, rolling on the table as the wet geroo retreated back into his home.

Boots grinned. Then, he pointed at the little ringel, his long talon nearly touching her head. “I meant to ask you before, what’s up with the paint?”

“Huh?” She looked up from where she laid.

“You’ve got paint on your face that makes you look like a skeleton,” said Boots. “Why do you do that?”

Ykahi scrambled to her knees, her ears beaming a smile. “Because I’m a voodoo priestess!” she announced.

Boots scowled and moved his face a little closer to hers. “Yeah? Like doing magic and shit?”

She nodded. “Yeah! Curses and hexes and magic potions.”

The krakun made a face, but what it meant, she wasn’t sure. Unimpressed, perhaps? Dubious, more likely.

“You look a little like one of the Dead Gods gluppets they give away at Burger Meal.”

“Oh, the gluppets!” she sighed, swooning back down on the table. “I’d do anything for one of those glove-puppets. I eat a whole WhelpMeal!”

“Ha!” Boots shouted a laugh over the music. “You’re about the same size as a WhelpBurger. Finishing one would be quite the feat.” Then, he encircled her with his thumbs and index talons to show the size.

Ykahi grabbed his thumb with both of her paws and shoved angrily at it, but it didn’t move. “Well, I would if I could! But of course, I’m never going to Burger Meal.”

Boots snorted a small laugh and reached to grab his drink, but of course, it was no longer on the table. “Too big for you. I could eat one.”

“That’s right!” said the ringel, her eyes going wide. She bounced on her toes. “You could! You could get a WhelpMeal for lunch!”

Boots snorted again and punctuated it with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah right. No way would a WhelpMeal be enough to call a lunch.”

Ykahi gasped and froze in place, both her paws covering her muzzle. He stared at her and moved closer so he could hear her quiet voice exclaim, “You could … eat two WhelpMeals!”

Boots just grinned.

When Ykahi returned to her apartment, Korosovak was waiting for her, glaring at the hole she walked through. “I thought you were going to tell 2B to be quiet!” he shouted.

“I did!” she lied as she walked back to the couch. “I got him to stop dancing on our ceiling, didn’t I? But he got very rude when I told him to turn the music down.”

“Damn it!” Korosovak cursed, storming out of the apartment and leaving the door wide open. “I’ll take care of this myself!”

Ykahi chuckled quietly as she climbed back to her perch on the couch. Within a minute, the music clicked off. Within two, Korosovak returned, looking angrier than she could recall seeing him before. She shrugged at him when he looked her way. “If I lived in 2B,” she huffed, “I’d be your quietest tenant. You’d never hear a complaint about me.”

Korosovak’s face scrunched up in surprised confusion. “You?” he asked. Then, he grinned and gently patted her head. She hissed angrily at him. “I think you’re just a tad bit small to go renting a krakun-sized apartment.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ykahi said dismissively. “If I wasn’t small, if I was a krakun, I would make a great tenant.”

“Of course, sweetie,” he said as he bent over her, planting a kiss on her head. She hissed again, flattening against the couch but unable to escape his affection. He flopped back down in his usual space and sighed. “You should stop fretting so much about your size, Ykahi. You’re a good size. You don’t need to be as big as a krakun to be happy.”

Ykahi grumped and rested her chin on the backs of her paws. “Easy for you to say, Korosovak. You’re huge.”

He leaned on an elbow and considered her awhile. He touched her gently, and this time she didn’t even bother reacting. “And you seem happier than any krakun I’ve met,” he told her. “You make your little potions and cast your little spells, you run around the apartments and pester all the tenants, but you seem … happy. I wish you could see that. I think if you were big, you’d be just as miserable as the rest of us.”

“I guess we’ll never know, will we?” she asked as she curled into a fuzzy, black and white ball.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SDj1kn_eZTMEH2GLfWfFuSEKc_6nwf8-xBAsngpWqa8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?