Boots 9 (ver 5) (Patreon)

Getting dangerous now...

Boots 1 (ver 5)
Boots 2 (ver 5)
Boots 3 (ver 5)
Boots 4 (ver 5)
Boots 5 (ver 5)
Boots 6 (ver 5)
Boots 7 (ver 5)
Boots 8 (ver 5)

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Ykahi spent a long, restless night in the snack container without any food, water, nor access to a toilet. She tried scooping up all the cheese powder from the jar’s inner surface and rolling it into a ball, but to her disappointment, she couldn’t seem to imbue it with any power. The orange dust was apparently far more cheese flavoring than it was actual cheese.

In the morning, Boots carried the bottle out to the living room and set her down in the middle of the carpet.

“I’m a little surprised I caught you,” he admitted. “I wasn’t so sure that my ploy would work.”

She shrugged at him. “I’m a little surprised I’m still alive at this point,” she replied with a little false bravado. “Once you grabbed me, I figured you’d twist me into a knot before I took another breath.”

“Yeah, well,” Boots said with a grin, “I wouldn’t get too comfy. You don’t have all that many left.”

That left Ykahi’s stomach down at the soles of her paws. She wasn’t surprised that he planned to kill her, but hearing her deepest fears confirmed poked a hole through her heart.

Then, the bright blue krakun stepped over to the shoebox that his cleaning crew used for a barracks and tapped repeatedly on the top with a talon. “Up, up, up!” he said with a firm tone. “Everybody out. I’ve got something I want you to witness.”

The geroo began spilling out almost immediately, but Boots didn’t wait. He wandered off to the kitchen and Ykahi could hear him rummaging through drawers for several minutes. The geroo stared at her with a mix of fear and trepidation. Some clearly wanted to go to her, to reassure her with kind words, or perhaps to help her escape, but others held them back.

Soon, the krakun returned with a mostly used-up roll of strapping tape. He dug at the roll’s edge for a bit, then with a thunderous skritch, he unrolled a dozen meters of the clear plastic and stretched it out flat, holding it just above the jar’s perforated lid. The assembled geroo erupted into tears. A couple of the cubs tried to break free of the group, but the adults restrained them.

Ykahi jumped in place and waved her palms wildly, trying to get the krakun’s attention. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” she shouted. Of course, the ringel was still in Roli’s body at this point. Boots had transferred into it the night before so he could hide within the bedsheets and lay his swap-out-her-body trap. So, from the cleaning crew’s point of view, their master had trapped one of their own inside the jug. “What do you think you’re doing?” Ykahi cried.

“I’m going to tape up your air holes, so you slowly suffocate,” he announced casually, as if telling her the time of day.

The geroo wailed, and Ykahi pleaded for her life, “No! No! No! Don’t do that!”

Boots grinned, hovering above the jar with the tape for several more seconds. “I won’t … yet. I’m not stupid,” he said before rolling the tape up once more. “But I’m so glad to see that I have everyone’s attention now.”

Ykahi slumped against the clear wall, her heart racing at a million beats per minute. She drew deep breaths of the cheese powder scented air.

“You see,” Boots explained, “my plan is to swap places with my boss. He’s a fairly young guy and is doing so much better than I am. His job looks super easy. And sure, I’ll lose a couple thousand years of life by swapping with someone older than me, but I think it’ll totally be worth it. With only a second’s worth of effort, I’ll have everything he does, and he’ll be back down here where I am now.”

No one said anything. All the mammals stared up at Boots in silence. “Of course, he’ll claim that I’ve used magic to swap our bodies, but no one is going to believe him. No one believes in magic, and it’ll be my word versus his. And at that point, I’ll appear to be my boss—a respected businessman—while he’ll be … just me. If I call him a liar, no one will give what he says a second thought.”

When the silence stretched, Ykahi swallowed and pleaded, “Please don’t cover up my air holes.”

“Right, that would be stupid,” agreed the krakun. He lowered his head until all his grinning teeth filled Ykahi’s view. “What if I try to swap places with my boss, and it doesn’t work for some reason? I’m gonna feel like a complete idiot if I’ve already let you suffocate and then I need some help getting the spell to go.”

He sat back on his haunches. “Of course, once it does work … then I won’t need you anymore.”

Esho burst forward from the crowd of geroo paws restraining her. She held her paws contritely behind her back and kept her head slightly bowed. “Please, please, please, sir,” she begged, “don’t do this. That’s Roli, my mate. He’s the father of my cubs. He’s good. He’s been missing for a day, but he’s never done anything wrong. Please don’t traumatize my cubs by making them watch their father die!”

Botabriask laid down on the carpet, so his face was just in front of her. He held his chin just a meter above the carpet. “Oh, you poor thing,” he cooed. “This isn’t your mate. That’s Ykahi, the ringel from downstairs. She’s swapped bodies with Roli using her magic ointment stuff.”

“Please, my cubs don’t understand that,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “They only know him as their father. Please show us mercy.”

“Oh, bravo! That was very touching, very convincing,” Boots exclaimed. Then, he reached out with his arms and formed a little corral around the geroo. Tsking his disapproval repeatedly, he said, “But you think I’ve forgotten about you. I haven’t. I remember just how disloyal you’ve been to me.”

“Disloyal?” she gasped. “No, sir!”

The krakun slowly shook his head. “I heard what you said about helping provide ingredients for Ykahi’s body-swapping spell. I heard how you were looking forward to seeing the expression on my—quote—big dumb face—end quote—when she tried her spell out on me.”

Esho’s jaw hung open and no words came out. She fell to her knees. She blubbered, “I’m so, so sorry sir. I never meant any—”

“And that’s why you’ll be going in the jug with her,” he declared.

The insides of Esho’s ears turned white as bone. “No…”

“Honestly?” Boots sighed. “You deserve something far more brutal than this, but I suppose that making your cubs watch what appears to be both of their parents being executed simultaneously will have to suffice.”

“You bastard!” Ykahi shouted, beating her fists ineffectively on the plastic wall around her. “You can’t do this! It’s too cruel, and it’s unnecessary too!”

The krakun glared over at Ykahi. “Don’t go telling me how to discipline my slaves, ringel—”

“Look, I know plenty more spells. You’ve only ever seen one of them!” Ykahi begged, getting down on her knees. “You want to be rich? I can get you riches. I can make you far richer than you’d get by swapping places with your boss! Please, we can work out a deal in everyone’s best interest. You let us go, and I’ll get you everything you’ve ever wanted…”

Boots closed his eyes and drew a small breath, then let it slowly out as if visualizing just what she could do for him. He smiled. “That’s tempting, Ykahi. It really is. There’s nothing I’d like more than to take you up on that,” he said. “But you’re far too dangerous to play with. You could tell me you’re making one kind of potion while you’re actually brewing something else… And even if we tested everything on other people first, I know that anything you give me, you could take away the moment I released you. So no, I’m never going to do that.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O-pmRzWyOipaQVMZ9-SmO7mjXWfymnxI9O_SkdnyjDA/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?