Chapter Text
He worked hard on this. He wrote his own signs. He read them over and over again to make sure the wording was right. If you asked Ringtail, he’d tell you this was getting out of proportion.
“Beep beep! My name is Roadie,” said the first sign. This had taken him the longest to write, because he wasn’t sure how formally he should introduce himself. He wanted to write “Salutations” because, despite never saying a word to each other, he thought this coyote was too sophisticated for a simple“Hello”, but his friend said it was too much. “Hiii” was too flirty. “What 's up, Doc?” was already taken.
“Now that you know my name, tell me yours, since we’ve been playing for years and you haven’t told me,” said the second sign. That one came out faster.
“I also wanted to let you know that now I can read and write,” said the third one. The ink was still fresh when he shoved the three signs inside his hammerspace, leaving the ringtail’s burrow to meet with his… whatever they were.
He watched the coyote from afar. He watched him leave his cave, holding some fancy new contraption. Surely, a gift for Roadie. How thoughtful! He must have wanted them to get together and watch it explode; he loved explosions. The coyote put the contraption next to a burrow that wasn’t there yesterday, and unfolded it like an accordion. It was a door. Intriguing. He knocked three times.
Roadie chuckled to himself (this oughta be good), and prepared to beep beep:
“Over here, silly!”
But then… two impossibilities happened. One impossibility is alright, expected even, but two? One after the other?!
The first one: the coyote wasn’t chasing him. His attention was focused on some sly gray rabbit munching carrots with a deadpan expression. That wasn’t fair! Roadie was always interested in anything the coyote did or made explode; he was never deadpan. But he didn’t have time to process his scorn, for the second impossibility was about to begin:
The mute coyote was talking.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wile E. Coyote, genius. Now, I'm not selling anything, nor am I working my way through college, so let's get down to cases: you are a rabbit, and I am going to eat you for supper.” And Roadie’s ears started ringing, so he stopped listening.
He was fuming! Furious! Betrayed! He ran across the desert twenty times without a break, hoping his anger would stick to the highway like tar, but instead it kept messing up his insides. How dare that stupid coyote replace him just like that! Without a warning?! Who was that rabbit and what was his deal?! Whenever he tried to approach them and warn that rabbit to stay in his lane, some gorillas in suits would multiply and block the way, telling him Bugs would only sign autographs after filming. What the beep?! None of those words made any sense.
Roadie ran to the top of a boulder to spy on them without the gorillas pestering him, only to find the rabbit kissing his coyote, over and over and over again.
Disgusting! Who'd ever wanna kiss a coyote?! He felt like plucking his feathers, a nasty habit he hadn't thought about doing in years; he was that stressed. Whatever! He didn’t care about being replaced as prey or courted -- the coyote still hadn’t been clear in his intentions. He didn’t care at all! So what if the coyote liked being kissed? What if he liked talking to the gray rabbit? As a matter of fact, why was he talking now, when he hadn’t said a peep in years? And how dare he speak with such a smooth, sultry voice? Roadie wasn’t sure his voice would be that smooth or sultry, ever. He could only beep beep. And beep beep he did, bitterly, in the moonlight, contemplating his options, each worse than the last:
- The coyote -scratch that- Wile E. Coyote had just learnt to speak, like Roadie had just learned to write. He could’ve asked Roadie for help instead of that obnoxious grey rabbit, but y’know, whatever.
- Wile E. thought he was too stupid to understand words, so he never bothered, or…
- He had been replaced as prey… by a stupid grey rabbit who liked to kiss coyotes.
Roadie huffed, running in circles, grinding his beak, feathers puffed. He could be as smart as that rabbit! He learned to read! He had never gotten caught! He controlled his own gravity at will! He could kiss coyotes if needed. Maybe he wasn’t a genius, like Wile E., but…
But he had to be better than a stupid rabbit, right? Maybe the rabbit was smarter, and snarkier, and abysmally more famous, but… Rabbits don’t have that much meat in their bones. In contrast, he was a big, meaty bird. He was juicier, probably. He was probably tastier, too. Hell, if he were a carnivore, he’d probably eat his kind. It was kinda sad that he felt all he had to offer was his own flesh, but… it had to be worth something.
Worth something more than a stupid rabbit.
Right?
He didn’t have it in him to be malicious per se, but he stopped being nice. No more asking if Wile E. was okay after his various misadventures, just beep beeps and mockery. So, that coyote didn’t deem him intelligent enough to be spoken to? Was he just an object? The boulder Sisyphus pushes every day? A force of nature to reckon with? Then so be it.
Years went by.
He stopped pretending not to care, to actually not care at all. Turns out it’s easier than one thinks. All these years watching the suffering of others (or other, singular) had made him callous. Just as the coyote only thought of him as his -improbable- next dinner, he thought of the coyote as a poor, slow sap, the Creature that fed him and kept him entertained with its constant failures. He outran him each time, always one step ahead, and his only indicator of the passage of time was watching the coyote get hurt in increasingly more bizarre and technological ways. And he smiled, mocked him (beep, beep), and ran even faster, just to gloat. Even if he ever got caught, he wasn’t scared. He’d read the script; he knew how it went. He was the fastest creature in the desert, maybe in the entire world; what was there to care about?
It was a moonless night.
The chase had gone far longer than usual. Most of the time he tired the coyote down before sunset, but he was having too much fun watching that determined sap get hurt. He was supposed to meet with Ringtail for a juicy beetle dinner, but lost track of time. He’d better hurry; Ringtail was always prissy about being late, but Roadie felt confident; he had never been late to anything, ever. He just had to run a little faster. His talons gripped the concrete highway, ready to break the sound barrier, when something stopped him dead in his tracks. A small animal was lying a few feet ahead. He approached, more out of curiosity than concern, and then his soul left his body.
It must have been a truck; there were skid marks all over the body. He beeped softly, turning the small ringtail around, but it wasn’t moving. He poked him harder. Nothing. He couldn’t understand it; Wile E. went through worse things on a daily basis, and Ringtail was also a toon.
The thing about toon physics is that it works as a muscle; you gotta train it. Toons like Ringtail, who lived the same quiet life as any non-toon ringtail, had little chance to use their physics. As such, something as banal as a truck could kill them. Even so, only someone like Roadie could outrun a moving vehicle.
Most animals in the desert died like this. Toons or otherwise.
He swallowed hard, frustration tears prickling his eyes --why couldn’t he run just a little faster?-- and decided to at least put his friend’s body out of harm’s way, away from the road, hidden between a rock and a cactus. He was unsure what to do next...
That's when he heard it. A heart-wrenching howl, low and painful, as if the creature making it was in deep suffering, echoing his own feelings. A howl, then some sad little whimpers.
The whining came from inside a cave, and for a moment he wondered if this was some sort of trap… But Wile E. rarely attacked after dark. And he could outrun anything anyway. So he entered the cave without making a sound.
The creature continued howling in pain, and Roadie came closer, his eyes getting used to the dark. He saw its silhouette huddled against a rock, shivering; its claws grasped its growling stomach, the sound echoing in the empty cave. The creature groaned, sobbing, and realized… it wasn’t alone.