Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sling!

Time slows as the spinning top rips out and into the epic coliseum. On its fine tip it laps the arena spiraling inwards, the purple plastic gleaming in the stadium lights atop the metallic torso of the object. There it parades in glory in the very center, alone to relish in the praise of the adoring fans. 

"‘Awesome Possum’ has entered the field!" the grand announcer narrates. "Our rad crowned princess is takin’ the STAAAAAGE!!"

The crowd hollers a prolonged cheer.

Sling!

But from the opposite side, a challenger approaches. Sky blue reflections of the bright purple top in its sights come off its surface, locked and fierce on the competitor. The slender black hexagon pinned in the center supported its refined, well-balanced structure, spinning tough and powerful as it speeds steadily down the dome.

"Ooooo, and it’s today’s challengeeer!" comes the announcer. "It’s strong, it’s a mighty fortress, it’s… ‘ShowstoppEEEEER’!!"

Making it halfway to Awesome Possum at the lowest point of the bowl, Showstopper begins circling the enemy, the competitor being smaller in stature yet oh so big in willpower. Showstopper traces along the orange ring to enclose it with a neon blue trail following behind. Still, the defensive wall created around Awesome Possum insisted on staying back from any significant effort. Mixed reactions come from that same crowd, on the edge of seats waiting for the riveting action to begin.

The announcer continues stimulating the audience. "Prepare yourselves for the PB cracker clash of a LIFETIME!"

Commanding Awesome Possum is Heather, mountainous beside the arena. "A.P., show ‘em what you’ve got!" A mauve aura flames bright from her body and absorbs her in her own inner energy once she shoots an arm forward. "ELECTRIC CHOOORD!"

Energized sparks release from the tip of Awesome Possum before launching itself out the gap of the ring left behind by Showstopper’s path to break free from its grasp. With both tops free-roaming past each other’s circuits, A.P. makes the bold first move.

"And now, the battle has truly begun!" the announcer confirms in zest. "Winner takes ALL the peanut butter crackers they can eat!!"

There was the call. The great, glorious gong of peanut butter crackers had officially been sounded. With the boost of adrenaline and determination comes Heather's stiffly crossed arms, face alighted. The flame from her body flares stronger. "Like, hit it now, A.P.!"

From the vibrant fanfare generated by an electric guitar, crackling bolts of lightning spray out in all directions from its metal shell and zip around as they please. Some stray dangerously close to the conductive figure of Showstopper, still refusing to leave its patrol despite the oncoming offense. Stemming from the circumference of A.P. comes 4 long Y-guitars pierced right through the electric core protected by the shiny, intricate framework. All strings on every guitar power up as the top follows an arc inward to enter the danger zone without hesitation.

Reaching the trajectory of attack, strings vibrate to prepare launch towards the impenetrable pillar that was Showstopper’s tall form. And launch it does, darting in quicker than a bolt of lightning such as those flying about. The smooth, circular rim of Showstopper comes into contact in an instant, immediately generating an immense electric force accentuated by the dramatic string of a guitar chord. The guitars circling A.P. all strike at the enemy in turn, each hit making a metallic clanking from every attempt to penetrate its superior stubbornness. The strings in full ready mode, one menacing disc of electric power manifests itself atop A.P. and shoots itself at Showstopper to throw it back across half the stadium.

Stamina remains firm, to Ozzie's grand expectations. Yet how could he not be in awe at the first hit as he gazes over from the opposite side? "Grrreat peanut butter crackers!" he exclaims. "Showstopper…" An identical aura of light blue bursts straight from his soul. "PHANTOM OPERA!"

Showstopper vanishes in a twinkling, purple puff of smoke just like that. Residue of the glitter following the mysterious poof floats to the floor.

"WWWWWHAT?!" the announcer roars, rolling the 'W' like the obnoxious buzz of a motor. "Can you bEliEvE this?! Showstopper has vanished!"

Heather’s aura disappears in her sudden bewilderment. It doesn’t take long for Showstopper to reveal itself, now holding down the dead center of the field and claiming superiority in the apex of the blinding lights beaming into the dome.

Ozzie's aura vastly overpowered Heather's. Following the reveal comes Ozzie's smug rejoicement: "It appears as though I have… STOLEN THE SPOTLIGHT!"

The spirit radiating off Ozzie transfers some of its energy to the top, a faint blue inferno surrounding Showstopper as it builds up defense. Silver rim emitting a lusty golden glow, it now solidifies its position in the bright spotlight now coming from above, A.P. cruising the arena to search for an opening.

Of course, the announcer is more baffled than anyone. "What’s this?! The spotlight is giving Showstopper some HUUUGE power!!"

Heather gasps in shock, torso bent forward to urgently spectate Showstopper’s rising might. The spotlight only feeds it the attention of the audience, fortifying the barrier created from Ozzie’s own strength to shield it inside an unbreakable column of light shooting its beacon up into the abyss of the faceless gray sky. The rowdy stadium encompassed all thoughts, all emotions shared across the transmission between conflicting minds. Only the open roof revealed all the meaningless ideas shrouded by one intense battle bidding away all other matters of attention. The crowd keeps cheering on, heating up the fierce competition going on inside the restraint of a single sphere surrounded by the swallowed realities taken over by the void.

Aura returning stronger than ever on Heather’s being, she throws an arm back forward once again. "ELECTRIC CHORD!" she repeats. 

Those same strings vibrate explosively before slinging A.P. straight at the intimidating wall protecting the low ground, one immense burst of lightning energizing A.P.’s rapid spinning motion. The pink guitars become a blur, golden gleam of the thin strings illuminating the top turning it into a rockstar cyclone.

Like a spinning blade it clashes into Showstopper’s durable barrier as a foolish little attempt to change its defensive ways. Sparks from the constant pressure fly at high velocities off each guitar, the ear-splitting ugliness of grinding guitar strings cringing Heather’s face and sending a sharp sting pounding down the tubes of her ears.

Ozzie growls between clenched jaws, forehead throbbing at every pulse of energy sent from the depths of his pupils to fuel the spotlight maintaining his dominance over the one in his control. All his focus is put into Showstopper, the remarkable resistance produced by his very will now hideously snapping the strings off A.P.’s guitars in a painful 1-by-1 process.

And just then, the head of a guitar snaps clean off. Heather watches the aggressive glow die down to a dim flicker, velocity cut down by half and permanently imbalancing the spin of her top. A quake from the barrier shoves A.P. back to wobble on the ground nearby. Snapped right off! And the tip of A.P. rattles on the surface. Ready to stumble down. Ready to back off. 

One could probably guess who commented next in the dismay, and they'd certainly guess right at that. "Awesome Possum has taken a HUUUGE hit!"

By contrast, Heather's tall stance threatens a new level of intensity in her approach, determined to break through the barrier. Now or never, ain’t it? "TAIL TORNADO!"

"STAGE STRRRIKE!" Ozzie yells back. 

Each attack of A.P. slams itself again and again into the shield as it orbits the dome, every counterattack of Showstopper killing all momentum in the assault.

"FISH SANDWICH LLLEAP!"

"ALAS, I’VE RUN OUT OF NAAAMES!"

Showstopper refuses to leave its post, looking to sustain its inherent authority rather than desire more. A.P., on the other hand, keeps pushing for the end of its uphill battle (or rather, downhill in this case), striving for a change of the tides without the strength of a moving fortress needed to set the moon off course. That same moving fortress standing deftly before it doesn’t flinch itself, stamina indefinite. But mutual invigoration flows in the jousting, even through the harshest duels for peanut butter crackers.

Making the rumbling fanfare of a final hurrah, the entire stadium is filled to the brim by Heather's cinematic voice. "ROCK THE SHOOOOOWWW!!"

Heather’s entire aura transfers right over to A.P., slamming tops together with enough power to knock Showstopper off its place. Both forces push hard against the other, never giving in.

"AAAAAAAAAA-!" Ozzie screams. 

"AAAAAAAAAAAA-!" Heather screams. 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!!" they both… scream. 

Two sagging masses of gray have themselves seated on opposite ends of the miniature plastic ‘arena’, if it could even be recognized as such. The thin base was filled with tiny cracks from prolonged use, a side depressed even slightly enough to offset the low center by a crawl. Bodies slumped in to spectate the tops listlessly, Heather’s yawn only briefly resumes activity, lifting her head off the support of the hand propping it up.

Heather’s top sluggishly and senselessly meanders its way down the slope of the bowl to Ozzie’s, firm and balanced in guard of the center. One itty clink of rim against rim peaks their interest, tightening expressions and raising eyebrows. ‘Oh?’ the eyes say. Stuttering away, Heather’s top trips and tumbles back following the collision, slowing to an awkward, lopsided contact with the floor. A final touch puts the purple top in the grave, freeing the two from the incredible tension certainly displayed in half-woken faces.

Ozzie bounces to the comets when he gets onto his feet, arms thrusting the surrounding air away in the explosion of a triumphant, long-fought victory! “WOO-HOO! Ah- hah!! Shower me with roses as I bow before the crowd!”

While Ozzie is busy enjoying the standing ovation in the foreground just a tad too much, the palm of one hand curtly pushes up a cheek of Heather’s, the other pinching a wrapper of plastic riddled with orange cracker crumbs. “Shower me with peanut butter crackers…” Her voice stops the embracement illustrated by his great, glorious bows. “Dad, I get you're havin' fun 'n all, but like… when’re we gettin’ somethin’ new, y’know?”

“Hmm?” Ozzie settles down, having snagged his own pack of crackers from the tan drawstring bag.

“Like, while we were havin’ the time of our LIVES sittin’ here, I was thinkin, like…” An airy laugh enters. “We’ve been here a LOOONG time, right?”

The tick-tick between Ozzie’s teeth make up for the watch just now found to be absent on his arm. “Mmmmm, only half an hour…”

She continues without a care to acknowledge his misinterpretation. “Like, with RJ here, it’s like we’ve gone everywhere, without goin’ anywhere.” There was a point there - their butts were already complying to the latter half of that sentence. Nothing in the scenery changes, every colorful object gathered being familiarly newfound. The end comes with one passionate question: “Am I the only one who thinks that’s weird?”

Very smooth and relaxed in tone, the pacific coast of Ozzie’s sea blows a wind as he gets up to pace past her. “Well, we don’t quite travel like we used to, do we? How ever...-”

Deep and raspy in his monotone voice through a speaker, Open Wound completes what Ozzie had started. “WE have heeeld this hideout for years. It’s OUR haven in hell.”

Bits of lemonade splash out the white plastic cups once they bump lightly against each other with a thonk, refreshing ice cubes wobbling within. The purple throne at the TV set was entirely vacant, however, leaving the radiance of the screen to reflect onto a dull material. No, it took a look to the left to find the liveliness. Stella and Tiger have their weight sunk into a large, luxurious red cushion just offset from the center, resting in front of the large cooler still dormant behind. While the box of Cheese Squares from the last outing had been tipped over and spilled onto the ground, the two remained lavish in the enclosure of the golden lining of the cushion’s edge, treated refreshingly to some beverages… and each other.

Tiger, relaxed on his side, had his head raised up on level with the screen. Focused on Stella, he pulls his cup of lemonade back to his face, sleek movements falling between the path from grin to grin. “Tell me, Stella: What do you call a paradise?”

On her side just the same, one leg laxly over the other followed the curve of her body up to Stella’s propped-up head finishing a sip like sharing a good wine. She finds time to outline the steps: “Take some ol’ place, crank up da TV, ‘n find some folks tuh pass out da snacks!”

Angry ramblings of Open Wound carry on from the TV, Tiger’s ears blocking out the heated distraction merging with his pleasant speech. “It’s a paradise in itself! I’ve never been so at home with your feral friends.”

“Home’s just a place, ain’t it?” Stella suggests the contrary. “We’re talkin’ wut, not who.”

“Hmph. I suppose you’re right.” He flicks a paw at the cramped space between them on the cushion. “But what do I call this? What do I call you?”

The bushy fur of Stella’s tail brushes against his leg. “Y’know wut yuh call me. Us got us. Don’t need no home for dat, do we Tig’uh?”

One stray gunshot lights up the TV for a split second, beaming onto her face. And Tiger looks at her, nothing of the home distracting his working senses away from the jewel presented before him. Captivation grows mightier, softer. Both get drawn further in, attention unwavering from the sight they had treated themselves to. Stella takes occupation on the straw coming out of her cup. And Tiger finds himself sipping right back.

Frantically, the nature of Verne’s tone is ironic in its lack of calming effect. “Now, Spike, just sit still-!”

Quills lodged in the shaded side of the Log so far that his back presses against the bark, he whines, “They’re meeeeeeaaaaan!”

Suppressed snorts escape out of Bucky and Quillo, heads jiggling in the near bursts of laughter both were emitting. They’re silenced once Penny approaches from behind them and puts a hand on the top of both their heads, ending the twitching movements. Quillo slaps Bucky’s arm, the latter being late to the memo.

Lou and Verne each take one of Spike’s arms as his lips quiver away. “Now, steady there,” Lou advises. Both half-commit to tugs in preparation to get themselves in sync. “One… twooo…”

A yank tears Spike right out of the Log - at least, most of it. The tension in Verne’s shut eyes makes a full 180 and bursts them wide open at the splintering cracks heard in an abrupt tear of the wood. A board of bark, still impaled by Spike’s spiky quills, pulls a gasp right from his throat. Head jolting to the left, the first sight to make presence lacks substance at all… a hideous hole left permanent in the side of the Log, scraps from the messy interior of the bark scattered like shards of shattered glass. While Lou is left alone to pluck Spike out, Verne’s first concern is the new damage inflicted on the child of his own.

He runs a hand along the perimeter of the gap, feeling the texture of the aged bark unable to ever be restored to its former glory. The latest scar wasn’t the first the Log had endured - other scrapes and bruises aplenty defined its elder state. It was honestly a miracle the thing hadn’t ever caved in on itself long ago… a sneeze could probably take it down. Verne stares at it, just slowly shaking his head to accentuate the new pain in his frown. One day closer...

“WEE-WOO WEE-WOO!!” screams the siren from far down the Hedge, activating a signal inside everyone’s heads to put an end to the sunset bustle.

Consider Verne alerted. “Who-?”

A transmission from the static radio down the tubes of Heather’s ears perk up near Ozzie. Tribal communication methods relay the message back to sender: “Wee woo wee woo?!”

Ozzie’s head pops out not far from the area. “Wee woo wee who?”

“Dad, there’s a wee woo wee woo.”

Hammy’s extreme lack of breath doesn’t falter his ability to be the battery for the national emergency alert system. “WEE-WOO WEE-WOO, BIG TRUCKS! BIG TRUCKS!!” A frantic birdie in a wildfire powers the waving arms stemming from his body.

Stella’s entire face twitches, the smash on the power button darkening her rigid lips ready to explode out some not-so-T-rated things.

“Pack it up! Gather ‘round!” Muscles tense, an offset step of RJ’s leg puts his back into view opposite the group. Grabby toes clench onto the earth and drag back on the uneasy skin of the dirt. “Verne…”

Everything stops.

“We have a problem.”

“And an overused reference!” Heather mentions.

“But mostly a problem.” RJ’s announcement expresses low solemnity - so much so as to spark startlement from such a decision. 5 words, routine in individual connotations, force more progressive effort out of him than a heisting act itself. “Hold off on the heist.”

“Oh daaang,” Stella whispers to Tiger alone, reactions up and ready at the body’s rise. The blood flows warm and unsteady from head to toe. “Now the ‘coon’s serious.”

Episode 1: Man vs. Nature

RJ pushes past the others to slam the new map right in the center of the bulletin board and hammer it in with a pin, atop the other papers documenting every journey into the world now threatening to consume their own. 

Irony let’s it be that Verne is the first to tromp his way into the scene. Just a brief, brisk jog has him needing to catch his breath in front of RJ’s new find, pinned high as could be for all to see. “RJ, what’s going on?”

The others catch up, gathering close in concern just as instructed. The Hedge provided a natural guard from the heat of the air - a damp panel reflecting a shaded wall of green off the intersection at the bottom corner. All inside, under the stiff shoulders of the Hedgies, remains dormant in its warm, cool presence.

“Good news: Cave’s empty,” RJ says.

Against the tips of the jagged leaves topping the stronghold and the sharp edges of the triangular rooftops kept within, a force remained creeping over. Its radiance threatened with the gaze of a fierce chroma - orange, yellow, red. The clouds took the softest blows of the consuming tint, leaving a craving for more. The heads clump into the next easy target, soaking up the remnants of the flaming orb’s wrath. No one manages to clear up the uncertainty RJ was presenting.

“Bad news: Our schedule is not.”

Flurried movements of a neanderthal express the refusal to enter the doors of RJ’s cinematic funhouse. “Look, we just lost a wagon-load of food,” Verne rants. “And YOU’RE Twinkie dump isn’t getting any smaller. WHAT is it now-?!”

A vague shape invalidates the minute exaggerations once granting Verne the ability of speech - more than a deathly gasp, that is. Behind the funhouse stands just the ramparts of a hellish black structure, undefined by the eye. Though the top houses an unmissable pad of soul-lurching yellow. A warning. The crane in the bottom left of the map projected its path towards one landmark - not needed to be named. Here to expand for progression and vitality; here to sacrifice and destroy. 

“Gee…” Stella breathes at a look for herself. “We got a big stooorm comin’...”

The kids cower behind the parents, despairful looks passing between one another. Penny pats Lou’s shoulder, the pair left without meaningful words to speak that they never had in the first place. “I-I’ll go calm the kids,” she hesitates.

“I’ll go calm myself,” Lou joins.

“Why, are you certain?!” Tiger asks RJ. More fiery in reaction than Stella, his tightened eyebrows paint a whole new visage on his face.

“Look, the thing manifested itself at my feet,” RJ explains deeply. “That means it’s fate. And if it’s faaate, we ain’t got long to change it.”

“Uh…” Ozzie’s voice undergoes an entire arc from distress to disbelief in a second. “May I cash in my victory prize now?”

Another pack of peanut butter crackers tosses up from Heather to Ozzie, immediately comforting his stress-eating impulsion. A hurried chomp rips right through the wrapper to the goods.

“Woah…” Heather leans in towards an equally wide-eyed Hammy. Though, hers simmers down into indifference. Convenient in position, a house over the Hedge had the two obscured by the incinerator - bringer of life, lament, and a burning rage that fueled all motives of a capable, foolish man. “We gotta get out.”

“Does that mean we get a new forest?” Hammy begs to know, a hair on an ear peeking over the shadow’s rim to maintain only a loose connection to that which ensnared Verne’s entire head.

“A new forest would be kinda sick, actually.”

It roars. It rumbles. The bumps in the massive rubber tires disintegrate the spine of a feeble twig relaxed in the grass, snapping the victim in two. Though the engine overtakes all noise. The snap, the shrieks of the twig remain unheard as the unfathomable machine terrorizes all posing minor inconveniences to its plans. Rusted scraps off the slanted black and yellow lines painting the bottom edge suggested the war-torn condition of the thing. A twig would never be the first, nor the last.

“Now, my supreme raccoon senses are tellin’ me…” RJ’s club snaps itself onto the calendar to the right of the board. “We got THREE WEEKS to get our butts outta here.”

“Wut makes yuh say that?” asks Stella.

“My supreme raccoon senses. Just said that.”

Daggers inside the stump of a tree unsheathe at the splintering force tearing the trunk apart. The deadly wheel, its wielder yet to be known, stops for nothing. It tears, and it tears, and with every crack of the tree it still tears some more, until one more irreversible gap is left in the skyline of the highest branches. Those daggers don’t even pierce into the hollow rubber - they don’t damage - and it is free to plow through the rich green and charming, rustic brown.

The final cracker makes it down Ozzie’s throat. “Right after Heather’s birthday…”

Heather snarks at the mention. “How’d you ever knooow it’s my birthday?”

“My exceptional dad senses.”

The wrecking ball drops hard onto the Log, tossing up storm clouds of dust and dirt to fill the air with the devastation of a lost relic. The fallen tree, skin left intact against the harshest of seasons and nature’s own recycling squad, had left a hollow space to inhabit. The tunnel of protection and nurturing, circled by the most mystical fireflies right to falling snow all in a single year, made into a single second. Through hell’s fire and freeze, now to be taken out just like that? Unthinkable. Un questionable… was the need for a hard decision. 

“Woah woah woah.”

The foreign voice interjects on the conversation, Verne’s sudden introduction unanticipated in every ear. “Now who said anything about leaving?”

“Me. Just said that,” RJ repeats, a slight sag underneath the sockets of his eyes. “Our butts need to be got. Gotten. Outta here, that is.”

Verne snags onto RJ’s arm, yanking it tight in its place. “Show me this baloney, RJ,” he demands. Though the final slimmer of the sun had bid farewell underneath the Hedge, little slips between the leaves of the high branches drew cracked veins throughout the forest floor.

Out of RJ’s own will he agrees at the faces awaiting his compliance, pulling out the binoculars that had provided him the unsought knowledge just prior. Verne tapping an urgent foot, RJ flips it around to face the eyepieces towards the turtle.

And coming out the lenses is the image dreadful to endure. They watch in a row on the edge of the cliff yet another matured, elder tree plucked right out the rough soil across the main road.

Pesky muttering, speaking acquiescence, pokes at Verne’s shell in overwhelming acceptance of the situation. The murder witnessed puts a grudge in Verne’s cheek. A hunk of dirt is scooped by one mechanical arm tearing apart the earth. Roots of the final remaining plant life, namely grasses and smaller shrubs, fling about in a desperate ditch effort to cling back into the homely underground that had hugged them farewell one last time. In the puncture’s place, a segment of a spotless metal pipe infects the very bloodstream of the land. Peep peep. Another poke.

“Look at this!” Verne lashes back in defense at the discouragement, binoculars dropped to the ground. “We can’t just pick up and leave!”

The railroad between their minds remains functional as it always had. Stella sets sights on his old, dull shell. The unacknowledged imperfections in its shape spoke a history no lessons could tell. A story only remains authentic when spoken by the wiser - its genuinity deteriorates with every inexperienced reciter. But Stella’s chin raises up. Not to a storyteller, but to a fellow. It all runs through her head, bouncing off the walls like stray molecules ready to fuse.

“Y’know wut?” she booms. “Yeah! That turtle’s got a point, raccoon. This here’s our turf!”

Tiger stares, bottom lip lingering in the waters of grave concern. That aura his love radiated shows itself to his senses - anosmia distributed its lost power to the greatest form of perception available: the brain. “Ar- Are you quite sure, Stella? We’re the lowly ones in their world! A world that I had lived in… far too long.”

“Am- Am I stutterin’? With dat mind, THIS home’s good as gone. Our home!” Out of nowhere behind her back, a large red button, attached to a flat, circular base in the form of a saucer reveals in her hand. “Now, which one of yuh softies up for sum hard, bare FIGHTin’?!” A thumb smashes down, producing the low buzz of her verdict.

Buuuzzz.

Flung close to the ground, the button whizzes into the care of Tiger’s front paw, halting it with light contact. “I see what must be done. I am up!” The joint in his elbow removes flexibility, the pad of his paw pressing valiantly on the plastic, rounded top.

Buuuzzz.

Rallied war cries come from the porcupine kids. In a chant, they alternate jumps on the button. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Buuu-

Buuu-

Buuuzzz.

Stella passes the spotlight. “Ain't dat right, Verne?”

It stumbles awkwardly in his hands at its transfer into his cautious hands. “Uh- uh yes. Yes! That’s right!” Clearing his throat, firmness rings the bell. “We FIGHT!”

Verne twiddles his fingers and remains silent among the others during their "huzzah"s. He hesitantly and carefully taps the button, the buzz quieter in his delivery.

What the hell does he think he’s gettin’ into? RJ intrigues, knuckles in one hand straying further into visibility.

Hushed topics are relayed between Heather and Hammy criss-crossed facing each other in the back. Set of UNO cards readied in control of both casual players, RJ listens in from in front while attention is slowly shifted between the distinct groups.

There were no nut cards. That much was certain. Hammy chooses carefully from his hand, though no wrong move would pop the bubble surrounding him and Heather. “Can we build a treehouse?” he suggests, tamely enthusiastic.

7.

Over the thin white borders of her cards, she glances back. The imagery of such a treehouse, cut and crafted precisely from all the little Arnie’s boxes they could collect, sparkles in the cloud above her dome. “Duhhh, dude. We’re so gonna build a treehouse with RJ in that forest.”

Reverse.

Among the racket thrown about by every face around him, Ozzie picks up one quiet yet energetic voice. It plays and jests his left ear, pulling it away from the crescendo building at the cliff’s edge. He keeps his distance, taking an extra step back at the backwards slope of the hill to confine himself from the rest, tunnel-vision leaving not his center the focus, but the left corner. It was perfectly correlated - construction on his right, circling the harshness between the rallied, rowdy animals. His own sprouting seed on the left, significantly warmer in approachability, lacks the raging heat melting the rocks apart. He chooses the left to observe.

It was 2 friendly figures snuck behind RJ’s back that turned the gears in his head, wiggling his fingers. “Let’s make an entrance.”

RJ’s brisk wind brushes the fur on Heather’s back as he runs back to pounce onto the trunk of the nearest tree, one limb after another working his way up. Heather pokes a card at Hammy, grinning larger. “Yo, this oughta be good.”

Verne breaks free from his circle at the ruffling above releasing a scatter of leaves to float to the surface. One lands against the back of his neck, compelling him to flick it away and turn around to confront the disruptor. RJ. He rests on the thinnest, twistiest branch of the bunch, stretching far from the back of the hill to survey the globe below its perch. It wobbles at any and every movement, threatening to snap off even more so with RJ’s self in responsibility.

RJ!...” Verne huffs. “I feel like you’ve got your RJ noggin in the clouds right now.”

“Do I? Hah!” he laughs, waving high into the sky away from the intense situation. “Sorry, I just think I’m feelin’ at home with the birds on this one.”

The golf bag nearly crashes onto Verne like a boulder, bringing a fearful yelp in reaction. The same who was ready to fight, and ready to lose. RJ leaps off the wobbly end of the branch, bouncing off like a diving board. Up to the map to the right of the bag he runs, still pinned onto the bulletin board they must’ve dragged all the way out here.

“You see that, folks?” he directs, a finger swaying from the arrow headed their way down to the crane, faint at the back corner of the Hedge. “That’s a red arrow of DEATH. Which we could avoid if we just did the LOGICAL thing-”

Verne snatches the map from his shrugged arm. “Which we could PREVENT if we worked together…”

That’s when Stella makes no subtlety coming up to finger-stab RJ’s chest 23 times. “So, Mist'uh 'Smart Guy', you SCARED of these fellas?”

“Do I sound scared to- Ah, shoot.” Rummaging through the bag brings out the big guns - a white megaphone, its handle almost ungraspable by a raccoon’s hands. Quick adjustments to the volume go underway before its ringing blast is directed right at Stella, jetting her hair back far enough to uncover her eyes. “Do I sound scared to you, Stella?”

After the screech of his voice into her ears ends, Stella scrambles her hair into its former place, thrown about the top of her head and over her eyes. “Ain’t no proof.” Stomping forward in objection with hips routinely taken by her fists, the foot wishes it could crush RJ’s own. A couple strands of grass keep toes from touching, raccoon-foot pancakes being reserved for another day. “Ain’t no nothin’!”

Tiger’s countenance expresses the unattainable urge to prevent her from travelling any farther down the scorching descent into the flames. “Stella…”

“Ya want proof?” RJ blurts, megaphone finally held down to speak on earth with her. “I got proof. I’m fuuull o’ proof.”

Verne doesn’t get the chance to snag RJ away from his path to the edge of the cliff, setting a beacon above the perch to all who could see below. RJ arches his back in a stout posture, fist on a hip. No reservation exiting through the megaphone, that leaves only RJ’s announcement: 

“Attention! Fat man in the overalls!”

All humans below look his way. That beast of a man, brown jungle of a beard tinted with the orange glow of the sunset, drops his large black phone to squint at the megaphone-wielding raccoon ruling atop the cliff.

“Yeah YOU!” A finger thrusts forward at that very beard (if it could even be identified as one). “Ever deal with your own forest ya got there?! ‘Cause I’ve seen WILDFIRES dealt with cleaner than you-!”

Snatch. Nervous hand gestures follow Verne’s seizure of the megaphone, shoving RJ away in the process. “Uhh-h, he didn't say that!! Go back to your, uh… do-dee-dooo's! Heh.”

“Now what we’re they sayin’-” a crew member only briefly starts.

“JUST some raccoon with a MEGAphone, Jerry!” the big man in charge returns. The screeching clanks of a jackhammer on rocky terrain impair the comprehensibility of his stentorian voice by 0 degrees. A megaphone of his own forces Jerry to plug his ears in a desperate effort to reduce the inevitable medical bill resulting from such an injury. “BACK TO WORK!! We gotta clear 5 more acres by MONDAY! Step it up! I wanna see that timber QUIVER!”

“Am I the only one usin’ my BRAIN here?!” RJ continues.

“Nope, you’re the only one using it wrong,” Verne retorts with his group of Stella, Tiger, and the porcupines. Ozzie merely lingers somewhere in the middle-ground.

RJ naturally slouches back to Heather and Hammy sourly, removing them from the crowd busying themselves in Verne’s leadership, conversing with some obscured ranting toned out by RJ’s ears. 

“What now, Uncle RJ?” Hammy mumbles, upper body left to comply with gravity's will in the absence of certainty.

Hopeless frowns only spring RJ’s spirits back into action, both loyal members swung tight in the grasp of corresponding arms. The cheeks on their faces squish up against his sides. “Not get the gist? We’re packin’ our bags, folks!”

Grins spread like the happiest disease ever to be known.

The bulb of the lamp above the purple armor around its stand illuminates the darkness overtaking the grassy floor. The nearby trunk of a tree faces the same exposure, leaving that white glow to create a dome of brightness, distinct and solitary from any business encompassing the area. The space leaves room for all objects of color, plastic surfaces and other artificial materials alike. But some associates to these gadgets and ornaments organize themselves in a circle around a sheet of vibrant charting… and danger: 3 furry figures, one color coat unlike the others. Their shapes and statures immediately identify them among any others.

Heather stares very intently at the old raccoon plush off a little ways. Black tail silently crawling around its bum in the cover of the grass shrouded by the night, she slowly drifts it over against her hip.

RJ drops a king, queen, and knight onto their newfound map.

“RJ.” An explosive sneeze of a split-second whisper is uttered from the tiny space between Heather’s lips. Rest assured - if it could be written in tiny text, it would.

RJ tilts his head down and raises an eyebrow on his squinted face. The stuffed doppelganger, small legs bent inward to replicate Heather’s criss-crossed posture, swaps his view back and forth between them. Heather remains just as motionless as the toy, teeny hands locked in her lap. A finger of RJ’s comes back to the board with another knight.

Suddenly, from Heather’s other side, Hammy decides to make a presence. Issue being the blaring volume. “Which knight am I?!”

At least Heather’s had at least been considerate of the time of day. Bursting in comes his voice, startling RJ and locking him in place, further stretching the corners of his mouth. Before placing down the 2nd knight, it slogs off to have its spotlight stolen by a fresh bishop. Sending fingers gracefully flying away leaves the 4 pieces tumbling onto the map.

He clears his throat, throwing an energetic finger. “Hammy! Atmosphere.”

The white, oval sound machine off to the side rocks and rattles at the slap of Hammy’s hand. A smooth drum roll leads into a casual bongo melody.

RJ points at the pieces piled onto the target, jumbled and unpredictable. “We… are here.” He then proceeds to slam a rook onto the crane symbol at the bottom. “This… is the Hell Hand.” Finally, a swarm of pawns crowd the rook. “And these… are alllll the burger-munching binguses munchin’ our burger.”

“I’m not a burger bingus...” Hammy murmurs.

“But!” Making a circle with his finger on the far north of the map, RJ elaborates: “We keep this burger to ourselves.” He slaps down a sticker of a logo onto the forest above them: a red square with a yellow M in the center, underlined and having outlines of yellow triangles within each crevice of the letter. “Our glorious horde of Mac’n’D’s Grand Macs! All hidden within our new hideout.”

Heather mumbles aimlessly, “Could’ve been Arnies’...”

“By the time we get outta this stinkhole, the BMBs won’t be findin’ ANY burgers to munch on. So, we gonna let ‘em munch our burger?”

In quick succession, the 2 listeners answer the rally, Heather’s burger train of thought full steam ahead past Hammy’s attentiveness. 

“Yyyes!”

“No!”

“Noooo,” Heather immediately doubles back.

It’s a subconscious effort that raises RJ’s eyebrow at her.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Kinda a dum-dum when I’m hungry.”

RJ table-flips the flimsy map, launching the chess pieces away. As he folds it back up while approaching her, he states, “You’re always hungry.” A little tap of the end of the map the top of Heather's head for a direct hit right between her pointed ears. 

Thwack thwack thwack.

“Got a problem?” she smirks. 

THWACK.

RJ just stares as he returns, Heather's face scrunched while she consoles her assaulted noggin. A whole empty moment passes before he finally slaps his open journal down on a set of 2 equally empty pages. Completely untouched, and completely unutilized. Housing for the imagination. “Our forest is hittin’ the dust. But we’re not done-!”

Without warning, the bongos jerk to a stop in the middle of the freeway, leaving RJ’s expression to rear-end.

Hammy slaps his hand onto the button again. Drum roll. Casual bongos.

“But we’re not done yet!” RJ finishes. “Because we… have this.”

Unsure faces are wiped clean once 2 colored crayons land in Heather and Hammy’s grasps, now blank as the lined paper RJ was hovering over with an arm. The blue and red markings, once enforcing the gridded structure, only give the white landscape a striped overlay - that extra dash of color could never be more appreciated. A striped canvas having its own drawing prompt, bouncing up and down at a bright mind who could build an impossible hotel to occupy a simplistic foundation. 

“Heather, you're the artist here,” RJ directs. “Make us look guuud.”

Of course, the definition of ‘artist’ could never be set in stone. Yet, Heather was more than ready before he had even asked. “Dude, I'm like the hormonal 'possum cousin of Bob Ross. Like, check it.”

A triangle of 3 smiley faces in blue, purple, and orange sketch themselves onto the center of the immersive page, uniquely disproportionate in one disorganized characteristic across one to another. For the time being, all existence takes the form of the irregular lines and shapes in the 2D environment, being compensated for by all shapes and colors now capable of morphing together to represent any object, any idea imaginable. 

“So!” RJ declares. “We start small.”

In an instant, the outlines of lush trees with thick trunks encase the three in an empty forest occupied only by themselves. A barren circle spanning around them creates a large circumference available for habitation. A brand new touch of life was needed to transform the space of emptiness into a space of opportunity. A trio of distinct, coordinated colors make starting points in dispersed corners of the scene, weaving lines sharing first steps only to follow their own paths soon enough. Purple and orange work in synchronization to recreate the core characteristics formerly defining the surroundings of some old, hollow husk of bark: bulletin board, umbrella canopies, and an amazing banquet tower piled higher and higher with each doodle added on.

Blue curves shape a vague resemblance of the TV set below the top edge - empty popcorn cups, Cheese Squares, and all. “Location, location, location! What we got?”

A broad purple border takes up the entire bottom side of the paper, impassibility making up for the fatal flaw in the very thing it was there to represent. “I mean we like, GOTTA have the Hedge, right?”

‘Steve’. The letters write themselves in orange as a label above the purple Hedge. Hammy asks, “Hey, can we name it Steve again?”

“YOU can name it Steve again,” RJ goes on with him. “That’s a Hammy thing. Intellectual property.”

Hammy struggles to get the words out. “Wait what- what’s an… in-tel- intel- lectual-?”

An open spot in the top right corner is now being taken over by waving purple lines falling down the paper. Independent from whatever the boys were going at, Heather narrates her creation to the audience, really taking the Bob Ross thing to heart. “And we’ll have a biiiiig waterfall right up there.”

Orange wieners (?) hang down from an impressive willow at the pond drawn beside a lake formed at the end of a lengthy creek spanning the entire page. “Ooooo, and a hotdog tree!” Hammy adds.

The most recent addition doesn’t live long. Heather is thrown completely off track, scraping Hammy’s wieners right off. “Ok, THAT’s just stupid.”

“Nah nah, he’s onto somethin’...” RJ ponders. Identical blue hotdogs replace what Hammy had just contributed. The brainstorming process begins. “What’s a wiener willow good for?”

“Wait, squirrels like wieners,” identifies Hammy. It was a weirdly deep pitch for a squirrel on the topic of wieners himself. Those typical daydreams fell to intentivity in the dead of night, leaving black lines behind the bent crinkles of the page even with the supportive lamp compensating for the dim sky.

“Yes you do. Who’s next?”

“Oh my god,” Heather gasps. “Hammy. Hold up.” In awe even at her own genius realization, other undefined smiley faces draw closer and closer to the tree. “Like, OTHER guys are gonna want our wieners, right?” More faces pop up until an entire cheering crowd surrounds the sight. “If we just have ‘em floppin’ out, like, it’d totally bring ‘em right to us!”

“Sooooo… those who eat the wiener… fight for the wiener…” The devious grin on RJ’s unseen face was so damn obvious that it could be seen right through his speech.

A far shout interrupts the moment and demolishes the very scene in full. “Is the weenie talk ov’uh yet?! Jus’ maybe?!”

...

Broken out of the paradise inside the page, all heads swish to the side at the outer disturbance, caught off guard by Stella’s intrusion.

Verne, standing in front of the others heading off to sleep around the rest of the site on the left, just shakes his head with a sigh of stern disapproval. Back turns to the 3 as the remainder of the group disperses in all directions like the very molecules filling the conflicted air, lacking any thought of unity while they bounce off one another in an aimless jumble. He addresses Stella and Tiger with a thumb out. “Night, you two.” Porcupines. “Night, pokeys.” Turning to face Ozzie forces him back in RJ’s direction. “Night, Ozzie.”

Tall behind Heather’s seated back, Ozzie passes the ritual circle of the journal and map. Those chess pieces suggested some kind of board game had taken place, followed by a deep inner reflection of events inside the journal. “Goodnight, princess.”

Swiftly brushing him away with little movements of a hand, Heather turns back to the journal page to bring it a grin full of imaginative possibilities. “Yeah, night dad.”

Ozzie’s silhouette lingers on the base of a tree near Heather for an extra moment after his leave, the glow of the lamp taking part in its creation. All while Heather gets locked on RJ, awaiting the next course of action.

Staring. Verne comes across RJ’s curving eyebrows, head heightened above limp shoulders. He doesn’t blink. And so, Verne settles for a sigh and stomps one sturdy foot after another onto the dirt, returning to the vicinity of the Log after an act of judgement. His tail doesn’t sway, doesn’t move at any motion enacted by the remainder of his body.

Just when pulling back the flap of the cat bed for Tiger to slip into, Stella flips back to face the Log. There Verne was. Staring. Arms behind his back; posture strong and stout. But it was a clear contradiction; head lowered to the floor of the wood inside. The barrier at the hollow entrance had to be keeping him from settling in so soon - not a barrier of leaves, but one without appearance. Without comprehension. Only ‘seen’ in a space within, unable to be shared.

Stella pats on Tiger’s back with a knuckle, pausing him as the back half of his body makes its way inside. “Get comfy. I’ll… be a minute.”

They take to the high hammock. In RJ’s lap the journal lies, now lifted up to examine the creation left behind from the conference. Forest, hotdog tree, waterfall… the whole rundown of the list gradually heightens and heightens the sides of RJ’s mouth in tiny, steady increments. The last thing he does is nod.

He briefly observes the Picasso painting they had made of themselves. Heather was lying upside down against the trunk, legs and tail slumped down over her torso. And Hammy, head and arms dangling right over the edge of the branch, had legs wide in front of his rear pushed against Heather's cheek. The fuzzy tail made the perfect pillow for the top of her head to rest on. All limbs in a jumble, and all loud mouths snoring away. 

It takes only a brief moment for RJ to get situated, slinging the strap of the bag onto a sturdy stub of a branch breaking away from their own. Against the upward slope he rests, the angle providing a marvelous view of the canopy's lush roof. Just above, the trunk split away into its own diverging paths, following their unique wills and motivations, but stemming back to one united whole. 2 groups made up the whole tree: Those flourishing with leaves all about, and those left without life. Those still thriving in the elder state of the stump housing them, and those giving in to the fate placed upon them. But still they branch, following their own unique wills and motivations - stemming back to one united whole. 

With the two sound asleep against each other, a sudden commotion draws RJ’s attention back to the surface. He leans his head over the branch to investigate.

“Wut's with da old-guy look dis time, Verne?”

Seated back against the rim of the Log’s opening, the can of Spuddies atop the site’s largest pile of food in particular attracts his interest from the peak. “Is this really it?” he breathes low to Stella, disbelief gluing those 4 words tightly together.

“If yuh makin’ it it.” She trots past and kicks the ripped strip of bark left from the sunset with the back of her foot into Verne’s view.

That single chunk had left another irreversible scar in the skin of the Log. An easy tear means an even easier fall - for what the exterior lacked in foundational resistance, it more than made up for with the willpower of those residing within. But what’s a skeleton without skin? Still a skeleton… but without life nor sustenance.

Finally, a distressing message travels every telephone wire; he tosses a hand back yonder. “Are we crazy!? That’s an entire beehive over there!”

Buzz goes the fly pestering RJ’s ear, obscuring all noise from whatever bit of the conversation was taking place. A flurry of swats only creates retaliation from the winged diversion.

“And?” Stella objects, getting a roll of gorilla tape on the ground around her foot like a ring to punt it up into her grasp. “Did yesterday mean nothin’ to yuh?” She rips the end of the tape off the base, sticky texture making a growl of clicks in reaction. “Verne… times are changin’.”

That in particular brings Verne to sit up taller in anticipation as she tears off strips to start covering the new gap on the Log with a grid of durable black tape, the roll secured in her front teeth.

RJ finally manages to smack the fly away.

Passionate movements come about her. “So pick yuhself up, ‘n fight back on da change!” Fixing the final strip on the patch, she spits the roll away and stands over him from the side. A couple inches made all the difference - Verne was cowered beside her renitent form. Her outer shell of firm might, harder than Verne’s, allows sincerity to pass through the cracks. “You ‘n I… the Alliance ain’t changed one bit. Nev’uh will.”

Verne stands up. “Alright.” Stella’s assertion raises his own, tone complying to the duty as fists go up and down in the reminder. “I can’t lose this place. I just can’t.”

In all those words, RJ can’t make out a single one of logic to prevent a head shake. What’s that man thinkin’ right now… Lying down bids the day farewell.

“Stella… are we ready for this?” Verne’s new disquietude returns. “Am- am I gonna be too hard on RJ?”

“Yuh ain’t gonna be hard ‘nuff, man. Think about holdin’ back, and yuh ain’t gonna get nowhere with a guy like him.”

Breathless, even having a huff of amusement releases at his own inner quarrel. “He’s just done so much.” Stella’s arms cross. A shift swerves his resolve into the fastlane. “But it’s all so sudden. I don’t have time to try and ‘seeee’ his way!”

Stella sighs. All she had left to do was pat his shell and head off. “Man, jus’ sleep on it. How ‘bout dat?”

Just sleep on it. The telephone wires connect into one by another stare of intense consideration taken to RJ in the tree. Just sleep on it. While inactive, even RJ’s naivety starts to soak and drip down the branch to collect itself in the rain bucket of Verne’s eyes. The more is filled, the more intent replaces the still mood of the context. “Yeah… just sleep on it.”

The Log.

“I can do that.”

One straggling stretched cord plugs right into the other by Heather’s doing, stemming from an indecipherable source within the festival of the forest.

A swish of 2 dark fingers straightens up the brim of a massive sombrero miraculously balanced atop a concealed head. All above hidden, the cool grin on his face displays its teeth.

The sleek golden banner strings up with a giggle, Hammy’s lightning-fast limbs working to tie one end around an erected branch high above the scene. So in-spirit as to add some decorative liberties by leaving a good length of its ribbon swaying in the breeze below. Just some pizzazz.

The ethereal morning light nurtures the tranquil glade left to thrive inside the damp log. Leaves shake out in the open world - not from cold, but from the hint of a dormant breeze adding a comfortable coolant to the palette of the sun’s warm rays. Verne confined himself to the indoor habitat of firefly woods, ears already filled with the steady buzz of the turning earth. Moss lining the walls shrouded his surroundings in the cloak of Mother Nature’s embracement; the mushroom disciples spread her loving arms of fur, and wood, and the smoothest clay. The flowing waters running down her cheeks do not cry from sadness, but at beautiful magnificence. Those thoughts collect themselves in the pond of the willow, soaking in to gift the plant-life a thriving source of richness and fertility. Verne takes the blanket, knitted by woven bush leaves, and pulls it up over his sleepy torso.

“Ahhh.”

"WOOOOOOOOO-"

The veins in Verne's eyes, red as a throbbing surge of blood itself, nearly pop out their sockets once absorbing the prolonged screech of a raccoon just outside. Yet no effect comes to his tall smile, the racket too unanticipated to thaw it out of bitter ice. 

RJ cheers from underneath the tent of 2 adjacent blue and white umbrellas. One pile of multicolored, joyous containers and boxes, surely stuffed with a fiesta feast for all, make the vivid scene all the merrier behind him. So much so that the sombrero, though tempted to shift towards his back side from his raised chin, sticks onto the party host.

The fake flowers on the lei, far too unsuitable for Heather's neck, flutter on the string as she slides up against RJ, dangling so far down off of her that they gave her a 2nd tail coming off the front. "WOOOOOOOOO-"

"WOOOOOOOOOOO!!" Hammy’s voice vibrates like a choirboy once he teleports in on RJ's opposite side, creating a beautiful harmony among them in the center of the food-filled square. 

"WOO!!" the 3 shout, arms tossed wide open. 

RJ yanks the string of a little party popper to blast a load of colorful confetti out to rain down onto Verne’s grumpy, motionless head opposite them. One piece of the tiny paper twirling down lands right on the tip of his circular nose.

A large, round, pink balloon creaks on its elongated string, pleading just as much as Verne to be freed from the party-painted prison weighing it down. Cloth swallowing the brim of RJ's sombrero, checkered red and green, adds repulsive insult in the face of a solemn struggle. Tropical flowers on Heather's lei pain the eyes with their obnoxious tone, off on a vacation to a shark-teeth shore, spiked rocks lining the water of the hard, rocky beach. Verne examines it all in great sternful silence. The gloss of the golden banner draping between 2 sprightful branches waves its message loud and proud:

‘Happy Trails!’

Keeping the energy flowing, Heather shimmies back. Phone lying somewhere nearby, the tip of her tail smacks the play button showing from the radiant blue light. 

Spike touches the front of the double speaker skyscrapers idle at the border into the thick brush. The gasp slips right out his mouth. 

" Wicked cool-"

Boop. Without warning, without buildup, blaring guitar music cranked up to 12 shakes the ground and transforms Spike into a bullet, blasting him off and away to answer the call of his people. The base of both towers rumbling, one speaker is tripped off its bottom and crashes over, stubbornly continuing to send its jam into the depth of the earth. 

What grows and grows alongside the blast of soundwaves is none other than Open Wound's explosive violence, progressing towards a physical approach rather than verbal. "And I’ll sacrifice ANY of the men I need to keep it MINE!!"

Back at the TV set, persistent as they were, the pillow underneath Stella and Tiger gets capsized right as a forceful punching noise comes from the screen, replaced by a hollering guitar. 

The whirr of the deliciously-pure coffee streaming out the machine into Ozzie's '#1 Trash Cat' mug is fractured by the irregular motion below, shooting his sleepy face awake, now investigating. The mug falls over and spills the remaining coffee into the soil to water new coffee plants, tensing his brows in agitation. 

A glass cup shaped in rich crystals slides off a high shelf and shatters on the slick, dark wood covering the uncarpeted region of the living room, glittering shrapnel treading into the dangerous vicinity of Hoppy’s bed. The music box inside her head is unshook by the vibrating ground underneath her; unmuffled by the fluffy material layering the top of the rounded pan she slumbered in. That coating of white fully punctuated those sweet splotches of milk chocolate covering her body, blending in with the snowy fur beneath. In the presence of collapsing furniture, Hoppy yawns and turns her back away.

The entire planet, on its rotating course, jerks and jiggles to the rhythm. Mt. Everest just experienced its worst avalanche since 2014 before it even happened. Those pleasant folks who ear-blast the bass of their music as they drive down the road SO loud that people might as well be prepping for an earthquake? Yeah, like that. But now it's the entire goddamn planet. The hydrosphere no longer needed the moon to monitor its tides.

The footing of the main 4, offset by the sudden earthquake, refuses to morph countenances into a state of distress. Verne's deathly cold stare prompts RJ to jab Heather with an elbow to hold off on the rock 'n roll. Her tail hesitantly gives in to tap the button again, sparing the forest and returning tranquility to the chirping birds somewhere far off. The shaking that had made the vast prospect incomprehensible comes to an end.

The only thing breaking the still image of the group are the exhilarated acclaims by the porcupine kids, struggling to break free from the control of their parents to join in on the fun. But one thing remains more still than the others: inconvenienced stares on RJ stemming from all directions.

"I’d say you’ve got your hat on a little too tight yourself." Before stomping off, Verne makes sure to poke roughly up the brim of the ridiculous sombrero making a floppy umbrella atop RJ's dome.

"Tight?" Heather chuckles. "That Mexican hat's, like, sooo too big for you, dude." After a friendly nudge up on the brim herself, she skips away. 

His hat, timidly sliding down his forehead before tumbling off, makes his mug wish it could droop off his face along with. “You take it,” he grumps.

The response halts her feet. The lost momentum whizzes ecstasy up the rest of her body, flipping around. “Wait, real talk?”

A flip of the hat tightens it back on. 

“No.”

Heather manages to emit a groan low enough in its disappointment to startle the monster under the bridge. No distinguished destination is set by her feet once they decide to trample through the grass. Meanwhile, RJ rushes after Verne while he pouts back to the Log, head hunched forward. 

RJ weaves in from the side. “Verne Verne Verne Verne Verne-”

Jerking RJ back, the lost momentum in his halted feet brings tightness into his fists rather than the previous. “RJ… I am tired, and I am on edge…” Everything left of the party decorations lingered behind his back, lurking like sinister demons in his shadow, prone to nightmarish creations caused by his own wake. A heavy sigh makes way to the caboose of his mope: “...and I must’ve forgotten to put my dreamcatcher out. Sooo-”

“So nothing’s new,” RJ shrugs, expression now full of jest at the opening found by an instinctive muscle in his jaw.

Verne stares with lowered, unmoving eyelids before giving him the cold shoulder to bump him out of the way and continue closer to the Log.

In a panic, RJ’s mind pulls a full 180 back to its previous plea, whizzing the sombrero rim back in the swift gust. “Ok wait wait wait!” Grabbing his shell spins Verne right back ‘round, posture unchanging. “We’ve got THREE WEEKS! What’s our order of business here?!”

The mountain of Twinkies off to the side comes into Verne’s view, silencing him for a moment. A new observation shifts his priorities.

And sombreros - a stupid sombrero on RJ’s head. Believe it or not, Verne finds no seriousness in a festive waffle making up RJ’s whole mass in itself, obscuring the morning’s aura of a healthy, diligent start. “Well… I can tell you our…” A grab and a frisbee toss sends it into oblivion. “FIRST order of business!”

The frantic movement of his arms and the gasp from his throat makes up for the stiffness in RJ’s legs, one ruling sector restraining the rest.

“Heeere’s what we’re doing,” Verne starts.

“Leaving?”

A nudge comes to the messy mound of Twinkies. “The cave.”

RJ’s countenance lowers sourly.

“Al-right, chop chop-” Whizzing by all ways, the unity of the squad is encouraged by RJ’s backwards waltz. Suddenly, a rampant scream amasses from the lump his back collides with, stabbing the hairs on his tail straight up.

“AAAAAAAAA!”

Seated on a leg, Heather had her head leaning all the way back to the other end, stuck out to the side. “AAAAAAAAA!” she repeats, jaw snapping wide open and managing a jarringly obtuse angle from the corner of her mouth to the curved ends.

“What… are you doin’?” RJ hesitates.

Indifference remains in her response (despite the sacred act he had interrupted). The muzzle points up to address the man at the door, presenting low eyes to the onlooker. “Just, like, a ‘possum thing, don’t worry ‘bout it.” She leans her head right back down to send the same message to the smokestack.

“AAAAAAAA!!”

A quiet click.

The empty, enclosed landscape generates itself before RJ, flashlight aimed into the deepest depths of the cave. Like it was just yesterday. The sole of a foot plants itself onto the familiar stone, only releasing the pulse of a beacon to illustrate an immediate snapshot of his surroundings. Familiarity was only a distraction from true nature, lowering that awareness needed to assess the dark, hidden corners spread throughout as to leave no area fully explored. The same effect that revealed ‘RJ the 2nd’ leaning smug against a large rock at the doorway of the chamber.

The convincing replica of RJ’s voice is there to greet him at the door. “ Nice to meet you. ”

Well, the first water had already been broken. The voice no longer rebounds off the walls back to itself - an equal presence shows no discomfort speaking back to the copy. RJ stabs a finger out, others on the hand gripped tight against the crevices. “Don’t get used to it. I don’t wanna be here either... ME.”

“ Now who said you didn’t wanna be here? ”

That takes RJ aback right as he crosses the line, footing glued right next to the hologram. A protest coming from what was his own self, sharing his own feelings. Still, a protest. “Me?”

Pseudo-RJ shrugs. “Alriiight, just remember your choice,” he teases. “Ya got 2 minds - 1 speakin’ out, the other speakin’ in. The eye ya choooose is up to you.”

RJ waves the vision, and its sudden philosophical nonsense, away into nonexistence. “Okay me, shut up.”

RJ reenters the back room and begins unloading right away, flipping his bag over to dump an entire mound of Twinkies before kicking a foot right the other way and heading out. Nothing in his face nor posture changes during the process, if it could even be considered such. More like a trial. But, unseen by the naked eye, an entire mountain is lifted off his back.

At home base, the blue cooler they had managed to drag all the way to this remote location slogs past Verne’s crossed arms, supported only by all the pairs of little hands wobbling up the weight. No wagon - something the opossums in particular had tense countenances to blatantly convey. One slow, pounding step after another thumps the cooler with little hops graceful atop the zombies of workers dying underneath.

So what follows the slam of the packed container onto the ground, ready to be unloaded? The slam of 2 feet in the ruffled grass, even the slightest bit of mass added by an empty golf bag ready to be unloaded itself (as if it hadn’t been already). RJ’s aching back doesn’t compensate the sheer casualness he parades towards Verne, declaring that the end of business. Face cross and an arm wide in disbelief, Verne rotates himself to track RJ’s indifference waltzing right past him.

Verne wasn’t buying a single bit of it, the untouched cooler still… untouched. "You're telling me that's it."

But RJ keeps moving him along, not turning around. “The Twinkies have been delivered, and my back must be spared another day. You've officially asked for too much.”

Attentiveness restricted to the disbelieving Verne he’s passing by, an awkward puff of air is knocked right out of RJ’s stomach once he bumps into an unforeseen mass obstructing his stroll. Tipping onto the heels of his feet, he watches Hammy slide up from below with a dorky grin barely held back by the 2 oversized front teeth locking the mouth shut. The poke of a thumb towards the spotlight above the vending machine is followed by his sprightly insistent nod. 9 additional figures, once hazy in his field of view, encapture his peripheral vision using similar jackhammer-like movements of the noggin. All exhausted in appearance, but lit up by the opportunity.

The hand of a squirrel, never so ready to take up the prospect, jumps up and slaps the final quarter into the slot.

Hammy, springing up to hit his buttons of choice, leaves RJ to sit slumped like a pillar of wet clay slowly collapsing into a bent form against the machine’s corner. Thrusting over a trio of coins, each passing recipient only accelerates the unbearable road toward the end of his boredom. “Next... Your turn... Take it…”

The goodies drizzle from slots here and there, plastic thumping in steady succession at the exit of the machine. A new set of arms comes into the flap for each one retrieved. 

3 remaining quarters, locked between the cracks of RJ’s fingers, are flicked in a row by the other set for Heather to retrieve. RJ himself, though delayed and visibly unsure in the motion, unravels his own fancy dollar and makes an obligatory effort to contribute to the lost cause soon to come in his crooked fate.

“RJ…” Heather starts, sniffing at the selection through the transparent screen with a grunt. “They still ain’t got Snazzy Ranch.”

“WHAT?!”

Y’know, some bad news is best left unspoken. Speaking it only means RJ has to slam his face against the glass to view the tragedy firsthand. Each row was entirely filled up and ready to smile radiant smiles down upon him, yet lacking one specific item of interest to shine above them all. The lack of said item shoved away any form of fatigue plaguing his movement, or lack thereof.

“Ugh, those uncultured… Nacho Cheese cretins!” He sighs in disappointment. “They don’t know the truly superior flavor.”

“Y’know, I just like the blue bags.”

RJ still has a fist nailed on the glass, left without hope for the future of mankind. The strips of blue on his golf bag follow as the strap slides a bit down the lowered slope of his shoulder. “Blue IS a good color, Heather,” he confirms.

Heather takes the quarters into her tail before flinging them into the high coin slot, forced to settle for some inferior Nacho Cheese in the absence of the glorious epitome of triangle-shaped edibles. Of course, not even she could’ve been saved from a phase of Nacho Cheese praise in naive assumptions.

And RJ is in turn, staring down the horizontal dollar slot staring right back at him once the bill, top corner ever so slightly bent among the pristine texture, is put in. Thus had initiated the painful process doomed for RJ to follow. A muffled, subtle “ERR” from inside the machine rejects the offering and calmly slides it back out to RJ. Instead of leaving it for RJ to fetch for himself, the thing quite insultingly flops the dollar out to spit it at RJ’s feet like a chewed piece of gum. Somehow, it exited more wrinkled than it had been before entering.

Yet to be overcome by some minor inconveniences, RJ just takes it back, smoothens it up a bit, and slips it back in with a bound. The tip of the bent corner had yet to be attended to.

ERR.

The dollar is puked back out, another attempt bringing more salt to the wound than it did medicine.

And the only sound Verne picks up over the glee of those free to gobble down in the gleaming sunlight is its pure inverse - the bang of RJ’s forehead onto the box of giving, all that contentment kept locked from him merely impelling a growl instead. The light fixture above him and Heather, the latter resorting to a shoulder pat as consolement, only paints the hint of security and openness as artificial. Bustle here, bustle there, and none of it was worth a conscious thought more than the raccoon soaking into the crevices of Verne’s brain.

And so Verne, once apathetic towards the subject, is now invested in RJ’s inevitable failure. A wider curve forms on his grin after a quick analysis of the dilemma going on behind the encircling crowd. The muscles in his face squint up, ever so slyly graded and parallel between the vertical layers of his face.

Hence the approaching turtle incites some uncertainty into Heather’s lips. But he still paces - unhesitant; unreserved. Verne swipes the wreck of a dollar from underneath RJ’s lowered head against the hard surface of that who has bested him time and time again, reacting as though a fly had been swatted right on his nose.

2 chubby fingers create a slot of their own for the length of the paper to slip past, flattening it as simply as it sounded, good as new. And now, all corners fell into place, tiny fingers straightened alongside the green, rectangular incarnation of George Washington.

Verne takes a look at RJ, whose brow had been raised and locked on him. A good look. But feeling the strong, unactionable red glow seeping off his body the restrained heat of a rival upon him, he skips over the option. Instead, he resorts to the easiest. “Hammy?”

So soon at the ready was Hammy to act upon the command of those who shared any bit of his loyalty, snatching the dollar right on cue and hopping to the slot to place it in. RJ stares up, frown overcome by anticipation yet one side loose in a sense of hopelessness. And, paining a deep spot somewhere inside to slacken his stance, the skinny black slit slurps it up like a noodle just like that. Every inch drawn in slow enough to make the moment last an eternity, a thin wire supporting the tame flow of his mind is pulled tighter and tighter to the point of snapping off from the endless increase of pressure. Following 2 more button presses above, the blur of an orange bag falling from a high shelf pins the nail in the coffin.

“There ya go, Uncle Verne!” announces Hammy, returning to his own prize.

Nudging RJ out of the way, Verne makes no scene out of grabbing his chips right for RJ to see. The quarter of change is flicked by Verne’s thumb in a perfect spinning arc into the sagging bag on RJ’s back. It makes a klink inside at its contact, sidetracking RJ from the Nacho Cheese chips Verne was making off with.

Feel that? That new air in the atmosphere around? Well Verne does, that refreshing, cool radiance of triumph over one single figure capturing his intent. It lifts him up, untroubled by the equal reactive force lowering another end down. Bag of chips being waved victoriously, Heather keeps watch of RJ’s silently growing temper behind Verne’s back. 

“See THAT?” Verne declares. “The chips have spoken.” It’s held high as a towering landmark, asserting Verne’s single seat on the double-length throne.

A magical puff of cheese powder making a small cloud out the top, Verne pops the bag open. RJ grudgingly remains in place near Heather and Hammy, the remainder of the group drawn to Verne’s victory snack like moths to a lightbulb. The two closest nearby keep mouths occupied while RJ’s finds nothing to please itself and overcome the haunting history of that otherworldly contraption.

Mostly directed to himself, he snarls, “One of these times, I’m just gonna bust that window…”

Crinkle. The walls of the bag respond loud to Hammy digging in, off on his own topic. “Oooo, windows are like those ghost walls! Except they’re not ghosts. And they’re not walls.”

Heather, chill in manner, expresses a need for elaboration. “Ghost walls?”

Crumbs escape from Hammy’s lips. “I run into them allll the time!” He shivers unnervingly. “It’s like they’re following me… watching…” Something is watching through the page, Hammy’s eyes wide and unmoving through the binoculars made out of his hands. Those deathly black pupils bleed into the words, nothing felt by the one following the lines as they are written but the intense pressure suddenly festering from the inside out. And as it festers, that same one still following the lines now confronts the darkest depths of Hammy’s soul, daring for a response while it itself stays silent just for a despicable tease.

RJ and Heather exchange glances, clearly not afraid to express how creeped out they had been from the unnecessary delivery of the previous paragraph.

Hey, I heard that, RJ thinks, a finger up to the sky. A rather arbitrary comment to whomever conscience, whomever heavenly figure he had spoken to.

“You’ll learn when you’re older,” Heather continues with Hammy.

Excitement spreads across Hammy’s countenance. “Heyyyyy, I’m older right now!”

“The squirrel’s got a point.” RJ’s judgement frowns Heather. 

A whistle comes from someone in the larger mass to save Heather from a very long explanation. The porcupines pick the heavy cooler right back up. And this time, there’s no strain in the smiles on their faces and snack bags stored in the quills on their backs. The rest of the group heads off to wander down the edge of the fathomless road in glee, Hammy laughing to bounce away and leave RJ and Heather relaxed cross-legged on the vendor.

Sneaking her bag to RJ, Heather wiggles it optimistically. “Psst. Take one.”

No further communication was necessary. In RJ's despairful chip deficit, Heather’s bag was free for him to heal the chip-less hole in his heart. One chip of compassion passed over to share with one of the not-so-chipped to whom she shared sympathy.

The bag crinkles away. Indulging in discrete amusement along with her, a handful of chips the size of RJ’s massive forehead doesn’t even flinch Heather in the slightest. Across from the thick base of a straight tree making a suitable alternative to their previous backrest, the heated discussion going on below the blazing sun at the edge of the cliff grabs the attention that any old drama show could. Difference was, RJ and Heather’s hands were encased in cheese dust. No cheese dust on the hands of the others. They couldn’t comfort themselves in such a luxury, lacking affability in the wake of the construction amplifying the perilous prospect ahead.

Mouth full, Heather drifts her upper body toward RJ for him to look down upon the top of her head. The bottom edges of her eyes are bent up, conveying a smile in itself. “So like… we got our next attack?”

1 last chip, the nacho cheese-iest of them all, sneaks out and into the snare of RJ’s teeth, crunch full of cool confidence. “I’m a man o’ smooth wooords, ‘possum pal. We’re gettin’ our forest.”

Heather brings warmth to herself once RJ kicks back with a foot to stabilize his posture off the tree and approach the others, his happy little insistence never more reassuring to the ear. He licks the cheese off every finger, ending the well-needed intervention he had disregarded for a second too long. Or a minute. Or a lot of minutes. Guilty pleasures do some wacky magic.

All backs turned and invested in the rambling, RJ grasps Hammy’s shoulders to snag off from the side and sneaks him back, making one simple signal to his instructive face and one to the golf bag face-up next to Heather. All Hammy does is nod rapidly, understanding so swiftly; acting so readily.

There reveals a new Verne in Verne, up to the physical burden required for the glory of the homeland. The rough surface, dirty underneath his feet, remains strong as his will. “If fighting is what we have to do, I'll darn do it!”

Tiger’s tone comes passionate and severe, some of Stella’s essence clearly rubbing off from her contact on his shoulder. “I am all too familiar with their unpredictability. How can we know what they’re capable of-?!”

RJ shoves through the crowd (might as well have shoved the crowd over in the process) to answer the call in a slick entrance in front of the audience, sliding on a knee past the smooth blades sticking out from the ground. “‘What are they capable of’, you say!” It was this moment that he had shown a lifetime’s worth of recital for.

“We're not HERE for another ‘RJ’ moment, RJ-!” Verne hurries out, stomping up at the interruption.

The arm RJ had lowered in his entry shoves the turtle away. At the edge of the cliff, he clears his throat. “It’s very simple, really.”

He snaps his fingers at Heather and Hammy standing on either side of the erected golf bag. With flailing limbs, they lean in and launch out a giant flipchart to land perfectly on its wooden stand behind RJ, followed by a flurry of miniature circular stools arriving at the butts of every member. All but Verne’s stands face-up to have them plop onto the seats, Verne himself analyzing the dull yet compliant responses of his people in the rigidness coming across his face at their split loyalty. No reason to lengthen his discomfort, the upside-down position of his chair tumbles his unsuspecting shell down rather than relieving it.

“Well dis don’t make sense eith’uh,” Stella comments to Tiger from the lengthier, rectangular stool prepared just for them.

The rounded legs of the stool grip tight onto Verne’s shell, pulling back at his straining effort to pick himself up and slump forward. “I think I’m done asking questions.” A bruised groan in his speech weaves between the cracks of gnashed teeth.

Zipping up out of nowhere and leaning into his valuable personal space is, of course, RJ. “Good!” 2 babyish head pats follow his words. “Hold all questions til the end, please.”

Verne frowns from his front-row seat (or, more accurately, stand) as RJ slides back to the board, catching a golf club now falling into his hand and smacking the head at the center of the paper. What grudges Verne most doesn’t happen to be his presence - rather, a hateful anticipation elastically stretched through the fabrics of his mind out into reality. It was that slick, persuasive tone in RJ’s voice that signaled an oration soon to take place, cringing Verne’s face in preparation. It comes sooner than he has the chance to brainwash himself into residing in a world of puppies and kittens. None named RJ, preferably. 

“May I have your attention?” RJ begins. All fall silent, managing to keep apathetic sights on him. Heather and Hammy get seated with gleeful spirit.

“Those humans - they’ve got a lotta’ 6-letter words crownin’ their domes.” Pacing left and right past the chart, RJ lists: “Sleepy, creepy, downright erotic, but most importantly…” A flip of the page uncovers the first panel and reveals the title: ‘RJ’s 1st Law of Stupid’. “Stupid.”

Verne glances here and there in disapproval, the younger pupils breathing obligatory “ooo”s and “aah”s.

With a smack of the club onto the center of the diagram, his unoccupied arm bends stiff behind his back in his tall form. “Law #1! Stupid starts with a source.”

Into a drawing of a TV on the page they enter, ending up peeking into a large square window at a large man glued to his recliner, staring at the football game broadcasted on the TV nearby. The seat of the poor chair would probably have scars if that guy got up. Even the armrests left sunken plots of land every time the giant lifted its arm up to adjust the volume for the hundredth time that session.

“First source is one we know allll too well,” RJ explains. “The PORTAL… into stupidity. They stare at the magic box for hooours!”

Stella and Tiger shoot each other concerning looks. 

“It may feed our marvelous brains, but it kills theirs.” The lesson at its end, he flips away from the window to rush them off. “Now, moving on! Chop chop!”

From the new post taken place behind a massive wheeled trash can in a sunny driveway, the roof of a bright yellow school bus gleams with pride as it roars down the paved street, tossing out kids at every house like delivering little newspapers of newfound 'knowledge'. The others stare timidly at the immense dispenser of human children.

“And that is the mode of transportation taking the youth to that magical place to learn how to be stupid.”

All but the eldest members (Verne) gasp at the reveal of the beast's true intentions. 

And following the bus comes a whimsical boy wobbling on his deep blue bike, lobbing real newspapers here and there in a manner largely overwhelmed by the workload. Under the heated rays of the sun, angle direct at noon, sweat runs down the dark skin of his face.

At the sidewalk, a pair of high heels clop down beside the paper, now being snagged up by a middle-aged woman. To the front patio she travels, practically tripping with every step to get there just to wave the newspaper right against the face of a man. “Did you hear about how...?”

The relay race begins. He runs up the steps and is already picking up an old phone off the wall as a silhouette behind a blue curtain through the window. No number on the phone is left unpressed, wondering how he could possibly be out of breath after flying up a staircase in one leap. “Hey Steve! Remember that knucklehead they got for a gov’ down in…?”

On another phone across town, that exact same newspaper sending a stir across town is flipped through by a short man behind the cover of a window curtain all the same. “Hey! Where's that strip 'bout those animals playin' Sudoku?”

The next window races by, one woman sharing a word with another. “Don't come on Sundays. Y'read it yesterday?”

A rumbling, lively beat is polite enough to enclose itself within the following house, yet only half committing to the act. An open upstairs window leaks out the rowdy talk going on by the partygoers inside. And, guess one may, that same window features some habitants of its own, two tipsy men conversing over the enjoyment of their fat mugs. Beefy arms made no difference in keeping them on balance, only ensuring that the drinks don’t slip out beforehand. 

One raspy voice mentions, “Yeah, said they needed women on the strip!” Both men laugh heartily away.

Lucky enough to star as guests at the party, RJ is the first to burst out of a large cardboard box thrown up to the front door, the others launching packing peanuts all about. “Word goes 'round like the Plague,” he summarizes. “And all the stupid hides in between it. The mind believe what it wanna believe.”

From the top, those packing peanuts make even clear skies experience some squishy, light pink hail.

Suburbia was expansive. Unforgiving. At least, that’s all Verne could take out of the newest setting. Gathered atop the skyline of the neighborhood, only the point met at the middle of the rooftop provided them a stable support, overlooking a whole new kind of forest - the kind that couldn’t be replanted, nor re placed. Leaves of gray, and red, and brown; bodies as fat (and obstructive) as the shades up top would be to the winged creatures. Winged creatures of white, reflecting the sunlight in their polish rather than absorbing its nutrients. It’s the same view, a new palette below the sky of blue, that now musters fiercer, visible intensity in the twitch at the edge of Verne’s mouth.

“So what’s the source here?” he asks, managing to keep bias and emotion out of the picture. He scans the view with great uncertainty, head hopping between each house to search for instruction.

Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong.

Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong.

Finger raised up, and right back down. RJ’s scripted lecture on the echoing bells stretching the whole horizon ends itself outright in the last second it had to save itself. “A humanities teacher would beat me with a stick for the uncultured things I’m ‘bout to say.”

“Laaaw #2!” he continues back at the cliff, expressively firm in his strict authority over the students now fully captivated by the session. “UNlike the Plague, stupid spreads by influence, not contact.”

“Which means what exactly?”

Though not showing the courtesy to raise his hand before speaking, Verne activates RJ’s on-toes instincts to answer without care for the minor misconduct. “Glad you asked, feeble fellow.” Flip. The page coming in succession illustrates their very site with one large box underneath, a tall gauge drawn in healthy green on the edge of the page. “This... is ouuur stupid meter. Humans on one side - 25%! Now, fancy this… You ‘n your lil’ bark-huggers KEEP that dirty log.”

Verne and Stella huff at the remark.

“What happens next?” In exaggeration of his point, a horrifying tear of the paper rips a jagged line to uncover what should be an identical image, all except for 4 boxes enclosing them on all sides, and meter topped off with a dangerous red color. “BOOM! Suburbia all around! Stupid everywhere!”

“Still think you can stick to your guns?” he throws out to Verne, jerking him back (thankfully) with the aggravation in his countenance along with. 

Sour in mood, Stella and Tiger are challenged the same. “Embrace the stupid?”

Verne’s chest scrunches over his stomach, the inflexible shell being the only restraining measure. “This is stupid…”

“Not quite as stupid as you’ll be. Observe.”

That said observation plays out inside the white frame of a plain window. The dim, warm lights on the ceiling fan hanging from the tan roof of a living room bring focus to one small, blonde-haired girl unboxing some cardboard box comparable in shape to a brown barnhouse. On the simple couch she sits, busting the flap of the lid open to reveal the unbelievable gift - a remedy for a bored mind! A pet for the masses! Resting right atop a stack of thin hay, waiting to be cherished!

A rock. 

“A rock.” The only 2 words Stella could use to capture her reaction.

“Oh, it all starts with one,” RJ informs. “Oh-ho-ho!… say hello to the stupid world of stupid business.”

Hopping down places them on the concrete spanning the house’s side. With the club, RJ pulls back the spiky bush marking the border of the narrow space to display all that lies past the driveway. Kids on the sidewalks prance every which way, parading with googly-eyed rocks all varied in shape and dull color, yet identical in the prestige it portrayed to all others - no badge, no membership in the unspoken club.

A piercing scream tops it all off, for some reason - that of another little girl. Somehow, a Hammy-shaped outline had disappeared from existence. Out of nowhere comes Hammy, zipping back into place with a pair of googly eyes in one hand. He slaps them onto the bumpy surface of a chocolate chip cookie in his other. Thus, the best thing since sliced bread could now boast itself as the best thing since googly-eyed rocks.

RJ still provides the necessary commentary on the matter. “Take it from the experts: You either got what the other’s got, or you’ve got nothin’ at all. No contact! Just influence.”

“Wow.” Already all over Hammy at his creation, a very impressed Heather praises the masterpiece of a product, leaning over. Replicating the simplistic googly-eyed stature, the whiff of mouth-watering chocolate chips entering her nostrils made it a worthy upgrade. “So didn’t think a pet rock could get any better.”

“I’m in love with my pet Jeff-ery!” Hammy sings the theme song advertising his latest and greatest invention, adding in a little dance to go along with.

Once he holds it up to see its smiling face, the googly eyes slide clean off into the grass. Well… If it works, paint right over it. Suddenly, it works even better.

“Now that’s entrepreneurship,” RJ states with pride.

The prolonged rev of a lawnmower comes from nearby.

“Aaaah, hear that?” RJ grins as he picks up just the right sound for the occasion, hand to ear. “That’s the influence callin’.”

Atop the Hedge, a scan is taken down the lane of yards spanning into the abyss of the far-off forested hills in the background. Not a single square of flat land bordering the uneven forest was occupied. A swingset creaks in the easy breeze. No activity making a bustle, Verne looks to RJ, the doubt flooding his countenance ringing true in the absence of validation on the opposing argument. RJ just clears his throat and displays one timid lawnmower now being quietly driven down a lane in the yard, chopping up the tips of grass as it goes.

What’s that? The neighbor’s mowing? That’s outrageous! Why haven’t WE mowed yet?

What’s that? The neighbor’s mowing? That’s outrageous! Why haven’t WE mowed yet?

What’s that? The neighbor’s mowing? That’s outrageous! Why haven’t WE mowed yet?

No conceivable demonstration would be necessary to describe the scenario. Just hear a raging cyclone of mowing mowers, racing to mow and match those who had mowed. That unmistakable sign of a point well ‘proven’: sneaky grin failing at being… sneaky. Verne makes no mistake recognizing it upon a face. THE face. Who else holds such an expression capable of conveying the hidden snotty attitude than RJ? 

“And that is what we call: 'INFLUENCE, not contact,’” RJ boasts.

The page flips back to wave farewell to the incoming construction one last time. “And finally, Law #3: Stupid has no end. Every living being has a liiittle bit of stupid inside ‘em, waiting to be spread from one host to the next.”

From the front row, Heather laments, “I've got like, a whooole lotta stupid inside me.”

RJ waltzes right up to her to note, “You ain’t contagious. That was just my influence.”

They jerk back at the ripping of dirt being dug out of the earth, unhooking any roots wiggling into the earth as octopus arms do.

“There’s some real stupid for ya.” On the other side of the road, a large, thorned rose bush is planted into the divot in the row, completing an entire wall of decorative shrubbery replacing that which had been grander - what had roofed the forest; what had guarded that which remained only scenery for mankind to appreciate. And then replace. Why not. “The stupid mind is NEVER satisfied!” RJ bumps Verne with a small smirk stretching the sides of his mouth. “You’ll be surrounded by rose bushes too if you ain’t careful, man…”

They stare back at the elegant roses, Verne unable to join in on the approbation of the idea. A festering spirit in the form of a frown takes the spot discouragement had been destined to take.

From one large pot of luscious roses suspended from the overhang over the patio with a flimsy chain, RJ and the others pop out. The links of the suspension rattle at their entrance, clay pot holding up the weight as if they were the blooming flowers themselves. One green, barren head must’ve been late to the party, nowhere in the bunch.

“Flowers in pots, heh…” RJ chuckles. As a tall, floral pink-shirted woman casually moves some flower pots to the patio, RJ brings primary focus to the empty yard left to scorn at the oil that had been struck by the wealth of the decorated patio. “And ya got a WHOLE yard for what, huh?”

“They’d totally be better hats,” Heather agrees.

Verne squeezes his shell through the dead center of the roses, RJ’s flawless wisdom clearly visioning what would be soon to surround him. No strain in the action occurs - only apathy. But the snap of a chain would be sure to unite the outlier with the infectious majority, spreading fearful anticipation like connect-the-dots. The pot comes crashing down.

The thump of the trunk on the moving truck leads right into the startup of the engine, and the identical preparation occurs in the cutesy little deep blue convertible in front of it in the driveway. A smug man, smiling full of teeth on his upside-down triangle of a head, waves proudly back to the dusty old house from the shotgun. Fanfare comes from the horn of the wheel played on a melody by the wife in the driver’s seat. A new age was set to begin for the couple - time for a fresh start in a fresh location to settle.

“And here,” RJ says with great enthusiasm on this instance in particular. “We find the stupids in question completing a neat little process called ‘moving in’.”

“Ach. I’ve never understood it,” scolds Tiger, animated movements of a paw demonstrating what he had been obligated to hold back from his facilitators for far too long. “Always this and there.”

Exactly the meat of RJ’s lesson! “And they don’t have a reason! But y’see how easy the humans make it?”

While RJ narrates, the shiny car (trailed by the moving van) speeds 2 houses down and slams to a stop at a house with a ‘For Sale’ sign advertised in the yard - the only thing redeeming the otherwise identical structure.

“When they move in, we gotta move out.”

“We AREN'T humans!” Articulated words shoot out of Verne’s mouth, fighting back from the inside out, and now brought to prominence at the blunt surface. “We aren’t with them! We don’t MOVE with them!”

“But they're animals... Dare I say... stupid ones.”

Verne fumes. RJ’s speech didn’t even deserve a proper recognition of address. His ears just block the tone right out, leaving only words to be spat at his feet. No substance nor expression. Only words stung the stinging cut.

But of course, the 3 kids were around the opponent at once, moths now worshipping the brightest lightbulb, housing the shiniest of ornaments. “Uncle RJ, show us more stupid!” Bucky pleads.

“Yeah, what’s the STOOOpidest stupid?” asks Spike.

“It’s GOTTA be Spike,” Quillo laughs in response.

Spike jets his threatening frown out at Quillo for him to read loud and clear. Violence now imminent.

RJ just quietly chuckles in high pitch. “Heh heh heh!” A broad, coltish step is taken outward, swapping a finger between the 3 in succession in an urge to follow along. “You’re makin’ this too easy!”

That same fat football-watcher from some time ago, now shirtless, aimlessly swings the door of the fridge open. On the motionless blades of a ceiling fan the animals observe, the human’s bulging stomach more than enough to prove the needlessness of the act.

“Stupid.”

Stiff shoulders blow the man’s double chin slouch down to the floor before slamming the attractive silver door back shut.

The poor guy, now stuffed into formal clothing, faces the encompassing, ear-ringing commotion of a bustling family paying a visit. His finger is stuck on which of the 4 options of forks to use for a meager bit of caesar salad taken from the giant salad bowl onto his plate. If only there were any way to distinguish them, all with merely a speck of variability.

“Stupid,” RJ repeats lower.

The orange glow of sunset reflects off the surface of the kitchen table, dinner scraps left unattended to. Though at his laptop in some casual attire, the (shockingly) clean and responsible work setup doesn’t pull the man into any mindset but the one enacted by the spinning wheel inside his brain. Even a rat operating the thing could’ve saved him from being too occupied with the frenzy-click of a smooth pen.

“Stu-piiid!”

All is dark. Free from the rush of the day, the man hesitantly opens the door of the fridge again to take a peek. To some dismay, a roast turkey had indeed not magically manifested itself into existence. Yet. The Hedgies, hidden in the exact same spot, found the change of ambient lighting to be the only factor suggesting any time had passed at all.

“Stiiill stupid…”

It glows right in their enthralled faces. If anything were to be the saving grace of such a display of stupidity, one thing never faltered. A new color of an unidentifiable logo, yet familiar just by a glimpse, reflects in every pair of eyes with every bounce at an edge, shifting the direction their tunnel-visioned sights travel. Red to blue. Blue to yellow. The TV through the window, keeping the man on the edge of his seat just the same, hypnotizes all who looked upon the undeniable power of the bouncing, 3-letter acronym.

Only Verne lacks the stomach-lying postures the others had taken to. He looks to RJ sternly, everyone lacking the consciousness he possessed while trapped in wonderment. 

Hushed, RJ brushes him away to maintain his pleasant staredown of the fascination on-screen. “We make exceptions…”

The fingers on Verne's hand squeeze harshly on the mass of his own forehead. 

All heads pop out one-by-one from a row of small shrubs and bushes lining the right of the back door up against the orange brick wall making the backdrop. Jefferson’s. The damage left by the monster himself in a valiant fight had left one hinge of the back door torn loose.

“New plan!” RJ declares. “We’re stealin’ the wagon back.”

Oxygen only depletes with every ridiculous, hopeless laugh Verne musters. By this point, the fatigue of nightfall could already push him to the edge of the cliff into defeat. “They wouldn’t just LEAVE it-”

There the wagon sits on the leftmost edge of the patio, illuminated faintly by attractive light overhanging the square pad. The 3 porcupine kids hop out in an instant, racing to be the first to be the hero reclaiming the prized possession.

“See that, Verne? We feed on their stupidity,” RJ makes it clear to him. “If PB n’ J are the middle-aged couple of the symbiotic world, us ‘n humans are the soulmates.”

“Now WUT kinda ‘middle-aged couple’ we talkin’ ?” Stella meanders up close, loose waist ready to rest her fists to interrogate.

“The smiling ones from the stock images.”

Too close for comfort in the same fashion is Verne, the harsh tip of a finger felt stabbing up at the bottom of RJ’s chin. “Enough with the stock images!” In an unreserved volume he speaks, loud enough to address the entire group even when not directed as such a gesture. “Now yooou listen to me, RJ.”

Stella, Tiger, and the porcupines stand beside Verne in defense, Stella crossing her arms. At the ready for one long lecture of their own.

Blurred behind them comes the image of a blonde-haired, gray-suited woman sneaking her head out from the side of the house on the left, separated from the yard by the gate of the metal fence. Even in the dark of night her shades remain glued onto her face, masking the occupant of the investigation. At the immediate sight of the animals treating themselves to the sitting duck, she rushes to whip out a shiny flip phone, encased in black, on cue. Buttons make beeps from all the urgent dialing, interest still sternly on the intruders.

She plants the phone onto her ear with energy, tapping a pointy nail urgently on the corner of the wall’s brick. The phone plays its deep ringing tone.

Riiing.

Riiing.

Riiing...

Chapter Text

A pair of kids soar down the steps after her, one reckless enough to collide head-on with the thin wall beside the living room doorway from the base platform of the staircase. Hoppy takes not a second to glance back at the ensuing crash, fleeing the blonde predators on her tail. She skates across the sleek floor to evade, whizzing past the living room’s entire length in a record time swift enough to make a squirrel cower. 

Her first target, the empty black recliner facing the large-screen TV in the direction she had emerged, becomes the first to console her over the near-death experience, taking to her hideout in the small space behind. She can’t bring herself to remove trembling arms from the recliner’s surface. Breath in… breath out. But when each breath lasts less than a second, it’s something more like: IN, out. IN, out.

She inhales one last time.

“Kiiids!” calls the voice of a woman. “Off to bed!”

Hoppy fits a second inhale into 1 breath - a welcome occurrence of relief and rejuvenation in a giant smile.

The groans of the kids follow squeaks of socks on the slippery floor back to the staircase. Hoppy peeps, ready to quench in the satisfying taste of revenge. Grumpy feet stomp, stomp, and stomp some more up the stairs. Check 1. Bare and unlit, only the yellow shine piercing from the top of the staircase in the back corner enters the chance of company ready to pursue her. Check 2.

The bases of her ears perk up just as subtle as a sneaky grin grows. The remainder of those floppy things remained sagged, rocking at any movement. “Waaaiiiit for it…”

Complaints ensue. The vigorous brushing of teeth can be heard past all halls and corridors before the lights click off... and all dies down. The darkness doesn’t deter Hoppy’s comfort and relief a bit, as the darkness ruled the court. ‘So long as I’m here, NO one shall tread these lands. Except Hoppy. She gets a pass’. Check 3.

She leaps out at once and heads straight for the front of the recliner. On the first hop, she dangles on the ledge with her back limbs kicking wildly before falling onto her back. The second hop does just the trick.

On the left armrest, a thump of a hind paw hits the button of a green flashlight before she pounces forward onto the seat. Large on her right, a rather slim Mr. Shady makes an appearance, diet clearly working out for him. He sat against the opposite armrest shielded from the torch, concerningly tall legs connected to hers.

“Ah, welcome back Mr. Shady.”

“What a fine ev-en-ing, lady Hoppy,” the imitation responds.

Slumping her back end down the seat makes an unorthodox posture for a lady built on 4s. “Remember that mystery show with the body spray-flamethrower-wielding mob boss who hypnotized kids to steal bathroom stall doors?” She clicks through the channels. “He called himself the 'Despicable Licker'. The detective found out he REALLY liked cherry popsicles.”

“Oh, he loved them.”

“I love cherry popsicles. What’re you up for, Mr. Shady?”

“My vote goes to the sports chan-nel.”

“What, football ?!” Hoppy blurts, the proposal ridiculous. Dorky limbs shimmy around for the act. “Y’know, ‘Let’s all grab a ball and tackle over it’. ‘Then we’ll kick it through a tuning fork to put it out of its misery’. That stuff?”

“Only on Sun-days.”

Clashing of clanking pans against wooden spoons responds to Hoppy’s next click on the channel button. “‘Cooking Starts with Casey K.’?” she gasps, head suspending itself from the cushion.

“Isn’t that your fav-or-ite?” Shady asks.

As a matter of fact… “Yes. It. Is. And y’know what Mr. Shady,” giddiness announces for her. “I am VETOING your vote. I am watching ‘Cooking Starts with Casey K.’, and YOU are gonna like it! Because cooking is the sporting sensation of the taste buds, and I’m not watching football until THEY start throwing cherry popsicles. Hmm?”

“It’s tough being a sha-dow,” grumbles the shadow, conveniently obligated enough to get situated more sourly than the bouncing tips of painted ears below Hoppy’s raised chin.

Ebullient front paws hug one another in her lap. “Oooo, this is gonna be great!”

Smile on her face, her head flops forward and faceplants her dead onto the cushion, snoring an avalanche. 

Behind a thin layer of glass, the ongoing commotion of yellow trucks far beyond the perpendicular road past the secure front gate, thundering the cracks of trees far off, are blurred by the vague presence of an orange jacket reflecting off the frontward window. Progress is progress - appreciated through keen glasses from the top floor, at level with the largest cranes dispatched to the site. It’s a roomy office, taking the shape of a right triangle. Thin blue carpet made the opposing yang to Dwayne’s yin. It’s the rounded, rectangular bubble of glass protruding from the room’s basic form that gave him a sight to see beyond the front of the building. The electric whir of a ceiling fan right above the expansive, dark brown desk lacks anticipated clutter from the typical workplace, instead futurizing the possibilities of the complex below.

Moonlight glazes the ‘Verm-Tech’ logo plastered on the back of his silver laptop. Frenzied taps on keys synchronize with the intense sweat pouring down his face, large fingers uncovered by the black rubber gloves thrown across his desk to dance like a spider across the 4 arrow keys. The speed at which the numbered blocks in the 4-by-4 grid on the screen crowd together and merge in rapid succession would have installed wide eyes to an onlooker if it weren’t for the mashing ensuing.

Left.

Up.

Down.

Right.

Left.

Right.

Down.

In its sleek black slot, one telephone on the right of the laptop commits an unspeakable act, sending the laptop itself soaring away by the doing of Dwayne’s thrashing arm.

Riiing.

“AGH!! SUNDAYS, people! Ever HEARD of ‘em?! You're the Devil's unclipped TOENAIL to the middle-class workforce!! WHO-”

The urgent, dull voice of a professional woman comes from the other end. “Mr. Dwayne.”

Dwayne scoots a bit forward in his remarkable spinny chair, shoves the phone up to his ear, and grins. “Verm-Tech, Verminator speaking,” he speaks low and smooth.

“Excuse me sir, but we have some things to discuss.”

Prolonged exposure to the dialer works quickly to remove comprehension in Dwayne’s ears. Upon recognizing the distinctly boorish tone, he rolls his eyes and slouches back in his swivel chair. “Well if it’s an animal problem, that’s gonna require extra bribing measures,” he informs. “Our place doesn’t run overtime on your stale dialogue, Ms. Wright.”

“This isn’t about AN animal problem. This is about the animal problem.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The tip of a black pen tap-tap-taps carelessly on the flat, gray surface of his desk, producing repeated, high-pitched clicks far more preferable than painful lullaby through a speaker. “And what seems to be the issue?”

“They took the wagon, Mr. Dwayne,” Ms. Wright explains, a peeved growl subtle as though it had slipped through gritted teeth. 

“Look lady.” Small cell phone pulled out in one hand, Dwayne manages to maintain the attentive listening skills gravely challenged by the telephone propped up against his ear by a shoulder. “I’m not in on your codewords. If they threw a monkey in the woodchipper, why don’t ya go ahead ‘n send that monkey my best wishes.”

“The WAGON!” she fumes. “At the Jeffersons’!?”

It clicks. It all clicks. ‘All’ meaning the one glorious reminder of the red wagon left out to dry. “Aaaaahhhh, the wagooon!” Though his eyes still ponder. “Coulda just said THAT.”

“So where are you?!”

“I'm on breaaak!” he snaps, arms spread like a haughty eagle. “A good Verminator knows a job well done needs sleep, a balanced breakfast of powdered toast, and a reliable therapist to wash down with. It’s how you ease the pain of havin’ your butt on a seat for hours on end!”

“Mr. Dwayne…” She raises her voice to ensure an attentive audience. “I have received 3 complaints of YOUR doing in the past 2 weeks.”

Arm propped over the back rim of the spinny chair, Dwayne’s lips were carelessly smooched out, apathetic eyes locked on a finger paddling down on a little cell phone. The boxy telephone, speakers smushed against the desk, directs her voice at an aimless target. The words lose meaning. Just as the solid surface absorbed all details out of the foundational, sharp tone, Dwayne’s ears neglect more of the collateral picked up from the escaping soundwaves. 

“At the Conners’...” she lists. “...you received a complaint about the installation of ‘questionable devices’ in their upstairs bathroom.”

Half his focus remains on the scrolling of his finger, the rest barfed out as a half-hearted response: “Now settle down ma’am, I’ve deftly reassured the Conners that the ONLY thing that Aquaface Sensor’s gonna zap to bits are vermin under 15 pounds. Their infant JUST passed the mark.”

“At the Bradleys’...” she continues without acknowledgement. “...they had reported 5 broken pieces of china, AND a substantial rip in their living room couch.”

Dwayne scratches the good spot on his back.

“And at the Jeffersons’ ... they had complained about a broom-shaped indent on their basement door… among all else.”

Dwayne sleeps, snorting from the bent-up tip of his nose on the desk alongside a snore.

“Mr. Dwayne.”

Struggling to lift himself back up, his cheek is barely kept sturdy by a fist. He speaks through the line again with a deep grudge formed: “Verminator, Verm-Tech speaking.”

“I need something explained.”

“Great,” he mutters to himself. “I’m the Sandman’s next-in-line.”

“I am not concerned with the animals,” she states. “I’m concerned with the people. So...” A beat could practically be heard from a heavy drum. “WHY have you received more complaints than RESULTS?”

Dwayne stares out the window, frown sloped below miserable eyes. “See, back in my beloved hometown of Houston, we teach a reliable real-world skill called ‘basic arithmetic’.” Using fingers, he demonstrates: “1 animal equals... gooood! My traps catch ‘em on the daily. 10 animals equals... noooot so good.” But his apathy swings around on a whim to reflect the ball of accusations kicked his way. “Ma’am, YOU said we’re here to slow ‘em dooown, not catch ‘em. You’re gettin’ your results, and I’m makin’ my living.”

A jarring level of intensity blows the cap of her head off in an explosion. “My results mean NOTHING when YOU’RE damaging more homes than THEY’D-!”

“What’d you call for again?” Dwayne now questions, unmoved by the sharp stabs into his eardrums.

She clears her throat. “Originally, it was about the wagon. Now we need to talk about the new place.”

“Ooohhh brother…” he groans. “I’m not liable for the ensuing snore-fest.” Stacking a clumped mess of papers neatly together on the dead center of his desk, he’s forced to recite:

“‘Our newest, grandest Verm-Tech HQ has been recently established/expanded from our old neighboring location just northeast of El Rancho Camelot Estaaates, now housing a hub of our operations across all towns in the Chesterton area, with specific exterminators assigned/occupied with each dispatched location.’”

From the parking lot past the main entrance doors and down the stone staircases, diverged by the exterminator figurine on a pedestal between, the bold white text on the large black title tag at the corner of Dwayne’s desk announced who was in charge. He takes 2 fingers and flips it around. ‘AMBASSADOR’. It took away the fanatic-implied obsession associated with a wall of hooked, color-coded keys close by, and intimidated a hypothetical subject of newfound knowledge.

“‘Our Verm-Tech ambassador of the Chesterton area, Dwayne LaFontant’… that’s me, heh… ‘...manages/oversees all exterminator operations. Although no exterminators can be made available at the moment, we will be assigning more exterminators to the Chesterton Verm-Tech HQ in direct response to a request addressing the planned 2007 expansion of the suburbs by Ms. Wright.’ Now…”

He flips papers. The lady remains silent. The only thing left on Dwayne’s line was hope for the presence of the other. Though the ensuing firmness in the mess of text brightens the hanging lights above, attentive to what any sane human being ought to be not.

“‘Please keep in mind, our additional dispatched exterminators are backups - backup exterminators are those generally applied as a last resort and are STILL in training... Their recruitment in the neighborhood will be their first on-site experience. The backups are scheduled to arrive IN July following the projected completion of the 2007 suburban expansion.’”

His own monologue works against him for the first documented occurrence in history - irony presses the fat of his chin down on a hand, giving him the blubber of a seal. 

“Nooowww, ‘Verm-Tech Industries is not responsible for damage and/or destruction to the customer’s residence; IN case of significant damage and/or destruction inflicted on public property, consider contacting your local authorities and /or contacting our main office to report misconduct from one of our employees. In this case, only the employee shall pay responsibility for criminal charges, not the customer employ ING their service. Our main office may be contacted via phone, mail, e-mail, your wallet, and all things in between. For more information, consider consulting our customer service website to seek guidance/assistance on our service.’” 

The words spill out faster and faster, accelerating in the momentum of its exit courtesy of the massive sigh of relief clogged underneath the dump. “Yada-yada, blar blar blar.” He flicks a hand in jest, that sigh clearing his airway to allow self-humor to revitalize his skin. “Just a buncha legal flim-flam. Y’know, we ain’t workin’ with estates here.”

“What’s the cost?” is the woman’s first instinctive query. 

“And THAT’S where things get choppy, ma’am,” he declares, the cushiony seat of the swivel chair pressured by a taller posture. “We’re upgrading.”

She remains intrigued. “Upgrading what?”

“Everything,” he relays like the exigence a computer would be transmitted by the click of a mouse. “New tech, pre-installed and post. Fatten up those pockets while you can…”

On its side is a short, black tripod stand of intricate structure, the recurring instance of a limp net sentry mounted on top like a telescope plastered white. The red light didn’t shine from the rectangular headpiece, staring deadly out the front windows, rid of function. Clusters of thin, stringy material still loaded remain hidden in the lightless interior of the shaft, compressed springs only restrained by tiny latches threatening to unleash in calmness.

“Here at Verm-Tech, it’s our guarantee that we’ll FIND a way to make you spend more money… ‘til ya won't need to spend none at all.” A golden plaque high on the left wall’s corner, adjacent to the glass, reflects a degraded tint of the gibbous moon, mixed into the metallic gleam of solidified dignity and respect. The constitution reads itself, Dwayne serving as the medium.

As a leg kicks over a knee, the loose base underneath the chair spins him ‘round back to the desk. “Now excuse me ma'am, the Verminator’s got some fans to attend to.” 

A pose for the camera on the phone in his hand adds a dash of grace to his ascent from the chair. The telephone having been glued onto his ear by this point, he waltzes about the office. A pair of thick brown shelves are attached to the diagonal back wall, every gadget lying dormant in the display. “It’s real busy havin’ thousands of followers on a social media platform.”

It was no reassurance to Ms. Wright’s solemn ears, hidden behind a blonde dome. “What about the wagon?”

The rack holds unseen devices, left in unrecognizable forms by the discrete lack of lighting separating the corner from the bulk of the room. Chaotic shapes and maniacal mechanics made the laboratory of a mad scientist, trials kept in secret to further the push for the paragon of a concoction revolutionary in its freakish capabilities. A broad tube-like tool, otherwise having an outward appearance of extreme durability, was dented by the teeth marks of an average squirrel. The succeeding design had been armored by a set of metal pads.

Dwayne takes up a confident stance at a strangely-shaped contraption in particular with 4 circular frames making up the legs of the small machine, each holding an inactive propeller. “Oh, no worries…” His fat finger plants onto the faint outline of a red button atop its body while he devilishly completes his assurance: “I reckon our darling little runts must be preppin’ for a lot more on the agenda…”

A tiny red glow comes from the center of the body, with all 4 propellers revving up to blow slight winds onto Dwayne.

A galling man. Insulting the very foundation our society had maintained since the dawn of civilization. Those animals might as well be tearing the Hedge down with the wide wagon they’re trampling through. The raccoon and turtle occupy themselves shoving the other around, to no defined objective. Her concealing sunglasses remain stubborn on her face in the darkness that ensues from flicking her head back from the scenery. Snapping the flip phone shut, she trudges back out front.

Concealed within an unlit room at a computer desk, she huffs to let her head fall into her hands. Only the blue light of a screen reveals any vague detail present on her, though the desk itself remained sufficiently visible. Crumpled papers all around could spark concern to one who also saw the bulletin board on the wall connecting a collection of surveillance photographs on a frenzied web.

“I’m getting nowhere with this…” she groans.

She reaches for the mouse and clicks a blue button on the screen.

“There has to be… more sustainable ways…”

From the spotless printer next to her laptop, the photo comes slugging out. She snatches it and slams it onto the desk, exposing surveillance of the animals working to grab the wagon on the patio, fuzzy from savage gestures hindering the camera’s performance.

“That’d even he’d listen to.”

There comes a screech of tires from outside the window on the right.

“What now ?”

She jerks down the blinds. Following the panicked honk of an oncoming car, the headlights remove a golden rabbit, jumbled tufts of fur on its body, from the danger zone. It stumbles back to the edge of the street, back deathly startled by the hard curb.

Bursts of air pump from his lungs out his nose lower than the tectonic plates of the earth could emit on their endless, rocky roads. The curb on the opposite end of the silent river, past invisible, violent rapids thrusting massive cars downstream in a boast of power, meets the ground-level of his sights. Flick left. Flick right. The white waters of the black pavement halt both parallel flows to allow him to cross in the dead of night. Breaths jerk out louder and sharper, hops thumping his head up and down to distort the perception of the environment. Closing the distance only means what was large becomes larger, telephone poles bending back in the corners of his sight as they intrude on the radial space of no entrance around his shaky self.

He wobbles on 2 feet up the closest driveway in front of the grassy, damp patch he had safely secured himself onto, a raggedy, depleted can of carrot slices in his arms. His open mouth half-heartedly takes up the job of providing life to the pumping heart shoving out at his particularly furry chest. Against the white garage door is where he tosses the can away and grips open paws onto the flat surface behind his sides.

A headlight above uncovers a scrawny form, fully enlightened with a rich golden hue awkwardly drawing attention from the neutral palette painting the closest scenery in proximity. The color lacked the feral messiness of one unacquainted to this world, though also absent from his neck was a red collar to be expected. A faint patch of white drizzled down from underneath his stout chin to the front of his stub of a tail like cream on ginger. Ears were stuck straight up, alert to any sign of life intruding on his own.

Then the patio invites him on the left.

Big hops take him up the 2 steps onto the suspended patio. He makes his way, flopping those enlarged feet of his over the dark wood, leaving thumps in his wake. The boards mark his path to the corner of the fence making the perimeter of the platform, thin poles of the same material incremented underneath the railing above the edge. Each passes by like jail bars, trapping him on the outer rim of a warm place of homeliness. Bushes and decorative, luscious plantlife lined the exterior below, lavish leaves sticking up over the height of the platform. Elevated higher up than the platform was the flowerbed of red and blue distancing the blank, lifeless bridge from the magnificent yellow walls of the bright house on the right. An awkward border was conjoined by the overhang ‘round the corner, now treating him to the floral, artistic doorway blocking the portal into a lamp-lit nook. He gasps at the beauty of the artificial flowers wrapped around the entrance. Red, yellow, purple, and all magnificence in between. 

There’s a tiny rectangular box, impertinent enough to not make itself any prominent for any visiting bunny to notice. The slim brown button waiting on the center, fit for a human finger, fits just as well for a front paw. The rabbit’s subtle eyebrows squeeze down on his full green eyes at the doorbell halfway up the rim - a million times greater in altitude for someone lousy enough to take no extra effort.

One hop strains his arm up, missing the emotionless doorbell by just a rabbit’s height.

Two hops slaps the pad of a paw right underneath, flinching the doorbell to no degree.

Three hops satisfies the thing, the pound of a fist on the button producing the pleasureful ding-dong it was begging to release.

At the ring, a peeping creek pulls the door back to have an uncertain elderly couple there to stare down on him. Their wrinkled faces only catch his eye for a brief moment, fractured images past old jeans warming up to his arrival. Such warmth is provided by the crackling fireplace behind thin glass as the visible fragment of a luxurious living room down the entrance hall, tall purple vases of felicias on both sides of the cobbled stone climbing up the wall above the fireplace. A cozy hue tints the already appealing scheme just down the hall. Just down the hall was an empty seat on a circular carpet. Just down the hall was a mushroom cottage in the deep nighttime woods.

The couple looks back at each other, then the rabbit. A polished little platform just beside the doorway held an exterior black lantern to light up welcoming faces leaning outside the bubble locking this world within. A nod and smile by the bald man follows the shaking of frizzled white hair on the other.

A checkered cloth sack tied on a whim, riddled with the fresh scent of organic blueberries, is gifted to the rabbit’s feet. Pupils morph into blueberries themselves. Enthralled gratitude gapes open his bottom jaw to fully display bucked teeth ready to dig in. Just down the hall, it was waiting for him. 

Anticipation may always be all for nought, as all will learn.

The door is slammed harshly on his flat nose just when he’s ready to tiptoe into the realm. It leaves a stinging pain on the front of his face, forcing a stumble backward onto his rear, bending his tail uncomfortably in the process. Just down the hall, the felicia fireplace remained outside his reach.

So he huffs, yanks up the blueberry sack, and carries on.

Trudging back to the sidewalk, he picks up a thick twig lying on the edge of the front yard and hooks the blueberry sack onto the pointed little branches of the twig's own. Covered with moss, the sack-on-a-stick bobs over his shoulder not in a bouncing spree, but in a lumping slog. Each minute he disappears further down the lane, disappears the golden fur into darkness on the back of his lowered head.

The doorbell choirs at an arrival. The door swings open to a golden, fidgety rabbit, one bucked tooth pinching its bottom lip. A faint sign of blueberry residue lined the edges of its mouth. A small clump of lettuce is tossed, and the door slams.

The doorbell rings at an arrival. The door swings open to a golden, unspirited rabbit, shoulders frowned lower than its frown itself. Scraps of lettuce were stuck onto the blueberry juice around its mouth. A carrot is tossed, and the door slams.

The doorbell mutters at an arrival. The door swings open to a golden, pleading rabbit, eyes filled to the brim with dreary despair. An entire salad of a beard on its face was made of carrot crumbs, lettuce scraps, and dried blueberry blood. A whole apple is tossed, and the door slams.

The doorbell groans at an arrival. The door swings open to a golden, ridiculous rabbit, an entire apple lodged between its jaws like the stuffed pig it was. The door slams, and dust is tossed into his face.

It takes a second to free the shiny, appetizing apple, the ripest in the tree, from his mouth. Indents already left on its skin, he sniffs at it before forcing out one chomp, reluctance tearing a wound in the fresh pick with the equally attractive house now behind his back. A swallow sends the bite down his throat, adding another meaningless bit of energy to the lifeless expression he held. His stomach, though full as ever, was never truly sated, as the occupied spaces within only left hollow ones right above, where it all pumped. One could neglect sustenance for days, but one drop of poison in the blood riddled the whole body of vitality. His hind paws meet the grass, but do not wave nor acknowledge. The apple, a single bite taken, is abandoned with a vengeful toss back to its giver’s own kind. He carries on.

His travels bring him to the very edge of the suburbs, where the streetlights dimmed as the Hedge prepared all wanderers for the unknown terrain approaching. A front paw volunteers to survey the barrier, each thin leaf tickling the crevices between hidden nails on the fingers. A glance to the left gives him the side of the closest house, a backyard fenced in by tall wood visible in his sights. A glance to the right gives him the end of the road, red signs barricading in front of the sidewalk connecting both rows, broadcasting tough in silence. Nothing deserves a repeated action - his eyes abandon the sights right then and there.

No birds chirp. The lit front porches compensated for the dead, hopeless places surrounding him. On the flipside, branches of towering trees and wild flowers blow in the breeze - more life than front doors coded to slam in response to any stimulant. A foot tests the waters, dipping into the leaves, where an unexpected abundance of hollow space allows for easy access between 2 hemispheres. He picks up a gulp and leans the rest of his body forward.

BARK !

The gunshot escaping a large mutt’s gullet pierces his right ear, launching him to the side from the sudden impact. Across the calmest end of the concrete river, the black beast, caged behind a silver gate on the gap between the house opposite him and the Hedge, pelts him with its shots. A cloud above blocks out the moon. Sinister darkness shrouds a menace, the rabbit only tripping farther and farther from frantic wobbles backwards. Hollars spewing out make for the only audible presence of speech in him, though unpreferred in panicked delivery. The fence rattles furiously from the dog’s rage, shoving its force into his chest to knock him over his back at the corner of the nearest driveway. 

A softer material pillows his head rather than rock. But the defined shape makes 5 bumps underneath, too firm to be a pillow itself.

The plump man standing behind him, gray pants leading up from the black sneakers resting the head of a golden, traumatized rabbit, takes him slowly into arms. Being lifted to the heavens, all muscles in his body flinch and squirm at contact, but quickly freeze into no reaction. It might as well have been plastered on his forehead: ‘If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.’ His back ignores the sweatiness of the fat fingers housing him, as any house was a house to cherish. 

At eye level, the rabbit gets a chance to look upon the rescuer. Skin comparable to the white shirt underneath a dark green jacket, the man’s untamed face puzzles at the bulky lump it held high, no real organization present in his dark brown hair. 

It was at this elevation that the rabbit discovers the capability, the new perspective that just a few feet could bring - the elevation of the doorbells he had rung, and the mountains of houses approached. This place in particular sparked a little grudge in his face with its simplicity: a standard rectangular shape, white on all exterior walls, and roofed by red-brown bricks touching the sky he was now a few feet closer to. No detail, but full of potential. It processes in his brain, making more of a positive impression on his countenance than first suggested. This house was a blank canvas.

The man still stares at the stunned, homeless thing.

It hesitates to present itself, a rabbit’s voice, in the removal of the solid brick wall sheltering from the shadowy world. An idle breath knocks every brick out of place, forcing a gawky backwards force, puny as it is, to confront the bypasser. No one expects a mute to speak. But every factor of stupefaction is undermined by the unshaved timidness heard in one’s first words to the world, that level carrying along with it a hint of enthusiasm to the enlarged hands building a new home for the rabbit.

"Uhh… g’day?"

The arms yank him up the driveway, leaving no time for more.

When all but the image of a front porch fades away, the lamp over the door plays the constant buzz fighting a horde of crickets for dominance of the ears. Neither overtakes the battlefield, at least livening the black void trapping the house on all sides, diving underneath the porch.

Bwah bwah bwah?

A lump of white and brown lay curled up on the bottom step - a mossy plank, which only hardly assured anyone of a safe carriage. Hoppy awakes as a fluffy cupcake on a broken window. The ambient conversation murmuring soullessly from above eases apart the outlines of her sockets, releasing violet tones from protection.

From between front paws her head rises on its own accord, pulled by a string. The old house it has her face doesn’t respond further than the crooked lamp bent over pitifully. Light abandoned halfway past its length and height, only showing a structure that had just half a body leaving her hopeless. Was this real ? It doesn’t take a second glance to define the obvious. Somehow, though, it projected the opposite of a fantasy. There appeared no dream, but no reality… perhaps that’s all reality was.

Her paws don’t falter in the way her mind did. They take her climbing the height of a thousand steps morphed into one, landing her at the ragged mat before the chipped surface of a red door. Just a crack of dark space answers her call between the crevice, crawling out of place to allow her entry.

At the mindless nerve of her limbs to drag her inside, the doorknob jerks violently before pressing the door into place in the wall. Shooting uncontrolled shocks into her spine, her back shoves herself into the center of a static dome not large enough to visualize any characteristics of the room keeping her contained. Familiar, fancy shoes and the clomping of high heels trample the hard floor. The more and more the tall figures exit from obscurity into her radius, the shorter she shrinks. Clomping grows louder. Static follows along. Drowned out in a short space separating her from the humans, the only thing she can hear of herself is accelerating breaths, drowning out all other inner thoughts itself.

Bwah?

Bwah bwah bwah.

Coming to surround her is a deep, derpy voice travelling from a vague locale, manifesting a constant image flickering in her mind. “Hoppy?”

Her sore throat left no words a chance to breathe, lips quivering. She frantically searches the empty place. Back at the door where she had entered, her shadow is standing motionless, a completely separate entity from herself. No source of light builds a bridge on the floor to connect them. But as she finds herself growing closer, and the static fading, her shape bleeds in black across the ground.

The shadow duplicates her movement without the emotion her face displayed: a front paw leaves its post, lifted to extend out, reaching for the other being. And the arms merge at first contact, and blank space leaves only air to be felt as she continues farther, and the shadow repeats, and they come close to the body with the shadow’s face staring lifeless back at her, and just then there’s a wall of solid fur that jolts a bullet backwards through her arm. A paw presses firm against her own chest. Her lungs shrivel. She blacks out.

…

A lump of brown and white lay pleasantly rested in a new landscape - thin hairs of a bright green field could nest everyone as comfortably as it nurtured her. No clouds filled clear skies, and no darkness consumed the endless brightness over the horizon.

From between front paws, Hoppy’s eyes are tickled by the sun’s rays. Rolling across the earth tenderly, she comes onto her back to lift her sleepy body up and restore joyous energy to fatigued limbs. A blank world greets her. The breeze blows across the hairs atop her head. While the sun gives every blade of grass a shadowy friend to accompany them, she receives none; damp mud patches left in lonesome the imperfections present in herself, soaked in reality.

“Where-?” Her lips snap shut, unnervingly muted by a gush of consciousness filling her brain with the life of a lightbulb. A gasp makes up for the startlement. “I’ve been bestowed with speech!”

A wiggle of the tail. A flop of the ears. Her experimental queries all return positive, responding to the impulses all in her control.

“Wait, is this a lucid dream?” she questions the existence before her, the sound of her voice in an obscure medium funny as it was. “Am I lucid dreaming?” The reality of fantasy brings her to laugh. “Because I've NEVER had a lucid dream-”

“They say LIFE is a lucid dream, fair lady Hoppy!” is what would seem to be a grand showman manning a megaphone, resonating distinctly independent from her discovered capabilities.

She whips around to face the faceless face of one sharing identical form and size, entirely encased in shadow. “That's an astounding reference, Mr. Shady!” Now, her silhouette twin has her pondering. “Wait, you look just like me. Except you're not. Well, kinda. But not really.”

He stops her. While the perception of fur on his extended arm remained, it lacked all texture. From all angles, she could only make him out as a flat image in a world with infinite dimensions. No depth. But from all angles, his shape fit the scene flawlessly. Like an optical illusion of folded origami. Unquestioning of what she found no coherent answer to, Shady raises his arms in a broad formation. “I am only a figment of your... IMAGINAAATIONNN!!”

-TIONNN!!

-TIONNN!

-TIONNN

Her eyes insist on being mesmerized by the endless landscape making them the city square in the middle of nowhere. “Soooo, do we have a ride around this place? Like a car,” she lists. “Or a boat, or a traaain, or a unicycllle, or a-”

“WE have something better!” He throws his front paws down at the longer hind paws barely distinguishable from a colorless body. “FEET!”

“There’s FEET in lucid dreams too ?!” she gasps. This place’s the best!”

“Right you are!” That’s when cloudy golden boots wrap perfectly around Shady’s hind paws, weaving back on his legs and sprouting a rainbow in the abyss. The same comes to Hoppy’s, forming nice and snug in a pillow of shining cotton, like establishing common ground between one with their shadow. Shady wiggles the little puffball of a tail to her. “So shake that tail, and hop the trail!”

As he speeds on, twinkling sparks of gold fall in a yellow breadcrumb path for Hoppy to follow along to the wonderful land awaiting their arrival. 

To her surprise, no sense of traction comes to her feet with a hop. But they were nowhere near numb. In fact, they were alive as they ever were. It made the only thing felt inside not the pumping of blood through veins, nor the fatiguing of muscles - it's the absorption of soul into mind; the rejuvenation of a jelly donut’s filling.

She's here. 

Her open smile widens bit by bit. The next hop takes her a farther distance. Then farther. Farther! Soon, she reaches a pace that gets her closer to Shady, still guided by the stardust breadcrumbs. Her feet land over and over on cotton candy, the dirt expected underneath the grass not expressing any physical disturbance to her possibilities in this limitless realm.

Racing up to hop beside him, she bobs up and down, spirit full as mind. “Say, where’s our stop, Mr. Shady?”

Just then, their path leads them atop a fractured road of sapphire bricks, blue as the surface of the sea; reflections make corners as carefree as the noon sky. “All golden roots lead to the Thonking Stem!” he explains.

“The 'Thonking Stem'?”

“When you think you thunk a thought, plant the seed and grow a forest!”

“'Plant the seed'. 'Plant the seed',” she repeats, tense muscles concentrating energy into the steps. “Ohhhhh, plant the seed! Of course!” Eyelids glued shut, the clinking of the crystal surface stops along with her. “I'm think-thonkiiin '... III'm think-thonkiiin '...”

From her boots, a seed bursts into golden roots stretching far up the road. More vivid surroundings form, completing what had admittedly been a dull environment - so many dreams of thriving ideas that all potential scenery could be left up to the interpretation of one’s own imagination. Colorful visions made a kingdom. Plots of land left awaiting similar treatment were few. Arching rainbows line the skyline. The sun itself remained speechless to what one thought had created; many more left waiting to be freed.

Shady’s paw scales the world. “Take a look, Hoppy.”

Every vague image flying around her brain, pounding at the walls for escape, takes formation right in its place at an eye’s peeking pleasure. But once they open, they don’t stop - Hoppy’s countenance goes wide in astonishment, taken aback by a grand paradise she could only see without sight. The roots pump vibrant colors out to floating islands of layered cakes, rainbow waterfalls pouring from the stratosphere, urban skyscrapers roofed by flowering red balloons… anything, really! A tumbling crash comes from afar. Off in the distance, a cold, snowy peak had risen prideful among temperate lands. Massive, clumped snowballs of strawberries, even distinguishable from a hundred miles, bounce and roll from a mountain piercing into the heavens. They come down in droves, animated in opposition to the black-and-white cartoon the restriction of her mind could process at most. 

“Is that a… strawberry avalanche?” her breathless speech utters.

“What else?” Shady chuckles.

Taking the longest gasp in the world, she whispers, “I love that song!…”

“And that's just the tip of the iceberg! Follow meeeee!”

Shady continues the brick road. What’s stopping her? She just laughs and hops right along.

The sapphires still gleam strongly under their boots. At last, Hoppy’s immersion in her creations are no longer restricted to the eyes - getting up to scale beside flowing chocolate rivers running nonsensically down towering, tasty hills absorbs her mesmerized ears in sound her mind couldn’t hear alone. Shady guides her through her imagination, traversing an irresistible forest roofed by diamond clouds.

However, as the mountains around get steeper and the sky darker, their golden glowing boots still prevail. They reach the darkest end. A deep canyon separates them from another mountain range with ordinary peaks stabbing into ordinary clouds. It made a hideously dull piece poisoning an enchanting whole, a drop of dye clouding the clarity of the water. The roots created from her feet, branching out to embrace every sight prior, crawled into the abyss. They never came out.

Nothing but silence ensues once she dares to tip her head over the edge, wobbling back at a dizzy realization.

Shady expresses none of her immediate concern in his posture, rubbing front paws together. Bending low and using the telekinetic force of tense hands, he lifts the mountains right off of their bases, shaking the earth to reveal the sunny field returning on the other side, so bright that whatever lies beyond remains obscured. They stay put in the air, granting free access past what anyone would see as a clear obstacle. The imagination declined.

Despite his impressive display, the dead gap remains. Hoppy doesn’t budge.

Nonetheless, he leaves the fissure to her company. “Put trust in your imagination. It will show you what you cannot see, and leave you waiting to see more. So see it!”

She stands. Stares. The deepest pit in the world, and a hind paw hesitates to step without intending to land. But trust she puts. So trust is what she receives from the boot over hind paw, splashing into an unseen puddle floating above as delicately as a flower touching the water. As her weight sinks further in, the toes spread wider on a solid bridge of thought invisible to the eyes, but very much present beyond restricting expectations. Her other back leg boasts the same result, claiming the threatening pit for team Hoppy.

“Ah!” In every glance down, she’s soaring in the atmosphere. Lingering above death itself. She’s a still image in the event of disaster, rounded knees trembling and tail pointed up as a frizzled bush. She feels her jaws lock up by a hinge, bottom one drug down by the gravity sparing the rest of her free body. “Ah-ha-ha! I’m alive!” Feet skip one after another, rippling the pond she rushes across to the end of the canyon. “A-haaaa! I. AM. InVINCIBLLLE-!!”

Oh, if only it were so easy. The mountains just so happen to make their anticipated return back to the earth as she participates in a 100 meter sprint underneath, crashing down to flatten her. Shady doesn’t react with his nonexistent eyes, but just walks across himself, producing dreamy puddles in the same fashion.

“Mountains!” he commands at the base of the stone. “Part.”

Rumble.

“Don’t talk back to me!” he warns.

Rumble rumble.

Finally, the huff of judgement arrives. “Hoppy, remove these mountains from our sight please.”

“Thonk-a-donk!”

A large gap in the range crumbles to pieces on top of her, disappearing in a massive cloud of dust to unveil the sunny destination once again. Squished into the ground, Shady walks up and grabs her ears, flopped out far to the sides, and stretches her up into solid form at last.

Everywhere she pats all over herself, cool pads meet unscathed fur. Astonishment overcomes her soul. “I am invincible!”

The sapphire path resumes into a field seemingly returning to home base - tall patches of light grass, though now absent were any mud puddles. Heavenly radiance blinds Hoppy’s sight ahead… and a glistening of blue peeks into the corner of her eye. Converging roads join their own spanning the land ahead. Many roads. The golden roots grown between them, and around, and behind all possible lanes grow thicker from sources spanning into the far horizon.

That’s when the light makes way. 

The grand chocolate fountains on both sides of the base's walls, heads carved into majestic whales, pour cocoa waterfalls down into sweet, savory pools. An entire city squeezed itself into the formation of a house in the sky, carrot-shaped towers varying in dimensions and color built up inside the perimeter like building block rooms connected by thin exterior corridors. They float higher and higher into the atmosphere as towering branches of one mother tree, crystallized salad rooftops absorbing the love of the sun atop the wide ends of the carrots. That’s right, no physical limitations hold this homely home back - the base itself stayed suspended from the ground, uneven platforms meeting at the front entrance level with the earth, blocked by 2 massive stroopwafel discs making a vault out of a trip to the flipside. All the while, 2 circular red pillows, lined by gold, floated around the exterior on either side of the door. What’s a marvelous feat of an engineering miracle is just another day’s work in the imagination.

“Wo-ah!” The magnificence felt twinkling in the center of her pupils trips her back over herself. “Why, why... this surely can't be your house, Mr. Shady!” Somehow she almost hesitates, squeezing out a quirky crumb of excitement. “Is it?”

“Why, YEEEEEESSS!” announces Shady.

Something once overshadowed by all else justifies that status to her: a sad, overseeing stem stretching far over the center of the house’s main square, twisted and dull green, almost unhydrated. Atop was a white flower… devoid of any petals plucked from its sagging self. The Thonking Stem. A dead, dead Thonking Stem.

“Oh my!” she blurts, a jet of breath yanked out of her. That depressing image of a flower with no color prints itself as a tattoo on her eyes. “But-! There's no petals!”

Glowing essence flows through golden roots strung in a web of wires. “How about you grow some?”

They lead from underneath up into the floating base of the flower, the organic stem pulsing and transforming into gold at every thought flowing out of her mind. Its hope powers her, waves to her, and asks her for more. That link grows intensely through the support of the passionate roots expanding out of her boots to join in on the effort.

“I’ll think-thonk harder than I’ve ever thonk a thunk,” she whispers, full of intent.

She just keeps watching, absorbed in the show. Every pulse now reaches the petalless flower, thumping into its heart more and more vitality. And more roots sprout and disperse from her boots as freed fireflies do, returning home to join the others. Suddenly, something erupts from the top of the barren flower: just a glittering, sapphire tip poking its way out the flower’s center to rise as the highest peak over the land. But as it fully nurtures, the rigid crevices and teardrop shape come to life. Plump at the bottom, it makes no grand entrance nor presentation. A seed. A sapphire seed. Peculiar.

Her mind sees no deformity that her eyes may, body leaning up tall and proud in a wholehearted grin at her newest bloom.

Shady nods to her in applause, approaching the front door. She finds herself copying his footsteps. On either side they take post below the floating pillow pedestals. Their golden boots give them the leaping power to bounce like springs onto assigned plates, an invisible mirror perfectly dividing their synchronized motions down the middle.

As the pillows slowly descend to the ground, the pair of stroopwafels diverge from the center, uncovering the grand entrance inside. Hoppy is left in awe as she wanders to the center of the doorway. Together they introduce themselves to the elegant entrance hall, stretching miles across a patterned carpet. And the wonders get more wonderful as the hall expands. Floating paintings orbiting the area perform a show for Hoppy to enjoy, the images themselves portraying a feast for her mind.

“It’s… it’s…!”

She spots the magnificent purple fur pillow resting on a jumbo couch.

“Oh goodie glee!” She’s definitely hit her gasping quota now, in case she hadn’t one gasp ago. “When’d you ever get such a wonderful fur pillow, Mr. Shady?”

Presented beside it is another of blue. “When I needed 2 fur pillows, of course! Like a try?”

“DO I!”

A leap sends her soaring through the limitless air to hug both fur pillows in the snug grasp of her arms. 

VROOM VROOM, VROOOOOM!

SCREEEEEE- CRASH!

A startling shatter of headlights breaks apart all that was built, and all that was free from the roaring engines of monstrous cars on the TV across her. They flip and fly over mud, colliding and crashing together to comply with reality's rules. They don’t soar; they don’t break from only what the world told them to do. They listened.

Hoppy jolts awake on the recliner, chin squished on fur pillows barely wrapped between short arms. Her side crushed the remote ages ago. The flashlight had died off, leaving Mr. Shady’s presence uncertain.

“Hmph, they’ve always got the demolition derby after the cooking shows.”

She scolds away the unavoidable disturbance, at least capable of drowning it away into darkness by the click of a button.

“It really demolishes…” A yawn heaves out her gaping mouth. “...a good night's sleep…”

As her mind fades away back into slumber, the remote slips off the curved edge of the cushion and onto the carpet below.

Chapter Text

The sun rises back over the Hedge, and paints the woodland site over with a gloss of orange. In such a warm morning, a casual demeanor overtakes the open surface, while insecurity and disorder runs rampant in the hidden shadows behind the trees. The air sings its song over only the brush the sunlight meets. The darkness in the cracks of a fractured forest faces silence.

Yet another sound to be heard is the clicking of remote buttons once again, only now free in this feral environment. From the purple throne of the TV lounge, Heather’s spiritless eyes tint themselves with a lighter shade of blue, and her ears indulge in none of it.

Some radical teen babbles straight at her empty face from the TV. “NEWWW Mega-Heated Headbands ! Remote-controlled and sure to warm up a cold forehead! Sing it, happy customers!” 

The happy customers perfectly perform a completely improvised jingle on the spot: “It’s a fire on your head! It’s a fire on your head!”

“The warm ‘n cozy kind that thaws numb fingers ‘n bakes Grandma’s cookies! WOOOW!!”

" Ohhh we're boutta get into summer weatheeer , that's terrible marketiing …" Heather yawns. 

On the next channel, the Sniffer’s voice only cringes her. “I present to you - the Depelter Turbo 1 point 9!”

His words don’t amuse her. They don’t stop the endless pendulum of her limbs off the edge, her front lying over the armrest of the chair. “They’re never gonna get that extra tenth.” RJ’s icky snoring in his nap beside her on the seat added something at least.

“But don’t fret, Sally! We'll get that extra tenth!”

“No you won't,” she yells back, happening to have RJ awoken as collateral.

“We will!” The Sniffer insists on keeping a wide smile, from cheek to cheek, plastered over his face.

The TV guy of the advert parades through all the disclaiming whatnot and serves its plates to Death’s table over the atmospheric happy music: “Product only available for legal purchase in select states (we’re looking at you, Texas). Misuse of this product may lead to serious injury, substantial property and/or satellite damage, nationwide power outages, a deep sense of regret in your financial history, intense stinging sensations, traumatic events, nightmares of said traumatic events, cuts, burns, obscure medical conditions, and potential dea-”

“Pshhh.” RJ cut off the TV. Sticking itself to the power button, his finger doesn’t move. “Just beatin’ a dead horse with that thing.”

Verne’s silhouette engulfs him, and removes the feign light from the sun he so hoped to fake pure blithe underneath. Unfortunately, shadows never die, and their resentment remains within those borders.

RJ leans his head into his hand. “Oh, hey Verne.” The only bit of energy he’s able to jut out from his vocal cords tumbles over itself. “What's up. What's shakin'. Remember your dreamcatcher this time?”

He speaks nothing.

RJ rises from the chair. “Right. No dreamcatcher.”

Verne keeps his back erected tall in RJ’s presence. “Do you see what this is?” He bends his shell to the side and points out an obscure location RJ would’ve been too lazy to elucidate for himself. On the side, marked in the center, there's a miniscule crack in the hard surface. It’s not even noticeable without proper direction such as this.

“Oh that's a nice birthmar-”

Verne's flat foot demolishes RJ's stubbiest toe.

RJ’s eyes explode from their sockets. “-aaaAAAARK!!”

His bones mold into jelly, tripping right back into the seat beside Heather, jerking the whole thing and crashing against her. At that very second he thrusts the throbbing toe into his mouth from his raised leg.

Verne speaks nothing.

RJ glances up to him. He doesn’t respond for a whole second. Like he’s waiting for someone else to acknowledge his own suffering first. Whatever. What he could manage would have to do. “ MMMMMMM !!”

“Are you gonna be a big boy for this talk, RJ?” Verne asks with a caustic grin.

The muffled objections he blabbers out, without substance, points Verne to the toe in his mouth, obstructing his ability to speak like a plug in the faucet of his inconsiderate line of reasoning. Frankly, Verne appreciates the blessing graciously, if only for a second or two.

Irked by RJ’s trouble, Heather only has so many ways to assist in a not-as-awkward way. “ Here …” She plucks the toe out of his mouth, freezing his expression, and drags it down underneath her leg to apply constant pressure.

Like a dog, RJ whimpers, “Thank you…” and releases the tension in his muscles to slump back with a strained sigh. “...so much…”

“I’m an ol’ rock, chipped away by battle scars, RJ,” Verne remarks, presenting such ‘battle scar’ again. “Y’know why ?”

“Me?”

“No. Calling what you’ve done ‘scars’ would be generous.” Thus marks the beginning of his pacing. “What you might not know -”

“Can I just turn the TV back on?”

“-is that this place used to be so much lonelier. It started simple as ever back then. Just survive . Trust the tail . That’s what I told myself. I never knew that, someday, I’d have a family to look after. But that’s just how the river flows ! Stella ‘n I, we had a nice system going, but when Hammy came … something was… different . It WAS a family. Well it took me many, MANY years to figure that OUT obviously, when everyone else came along, but you get the idea. Anyway, I know the Log inside and out . Literally . The more cracks I found in the bark, the more I discovered about these people too . Now, who do you think’s more qualified to speak for the good of the home here? Do you think it’s-?”

RJ dozes off. And he dozes a bit too far from the material world. The emptiness clogging his ears hums a missing note through both ends of his head. But the ladder Verne’s voice suddenly climbs in his speech awakens him, still not curing the sluggish void enclosing within, highly discursive. RJ tends to his boredom by scouting out all the jumbled deposits of food they have spread around the site. Each and every one. The bases of these hills devour the floor they walk on, creating some narrow trails where they do not need to be. They starve the grass underneath, creating mudded patches in their wake. They’re chunks of land taken from the meadows of their vault, sinking their farms into valleys. Clear action must be dealt.

“-And that’s why I am ASSERTING to you , RJ, that without this home, we are NOT the same family. All the care we’ve given each other… it was all founded here. Everything we’ve learned about each other… here. Is this something we can AFFORD to lose? A TRUE home ? Everything we’ve got… it started here. One log .”

So then it hits him: With that old cave as a bank, their moving labors will be slashed in half. Why ? Rather than moving everything out at once, storing for the long-run benefits the outcome he sees. He sees it so clearly out of Verne’s little dome he’s bouncing his voice through. That new location they’d surely uncover, flourishing with goods, and a whole cave-chamber of leftovers to spare.

“What we have right now ? Okay. Hammy doing who KNOWS what in the lake?! Okay. Spending my whole life … living in some mossy log that’s rotting away, year after year? It’s all okay, because at the end of it… we’re home .”

Heather’s left to stick around for the show. But she’s a goat in the stands, wimpishly out of place without grass to chew on. “Okay yeah, good for you ‘n stuff, but this all feels pretty personal , like... I don’t think I should be-”

Verne stops in place to face them. “And that’s okay too, Heather! But here’s what’s not okay … You , RJ, thinking you can move us to some ‘better place’ with ‘better’ things that we’d be ‘better’ off with! If you can’t recognize that this IS the best and ONLY BEST place for us, how do you think you’ll find something better ? There’s no other place like this. None . We’re not inconveniencing ourselves like what’d happen if we WENT searching for some nEw HoMe. We have to treat this like a sacred duty , bestowed upon us by ANYTHING THAT MAKES SENSSSE !! This is something we have to protect at all costs , and I am fully willing AND capable to do so. Thank you. Applaud away .”

Some moments pass before either respond.

Finally RJ yawns, “Bravo. Brilliant speech. Oop, hold on, think I feel a tear comin’...” Heather’s personal space becomes meaningless to him once he’s inclined to stretch across the entire seat and relieve himself from all the condensed lumps forming in his freedom from the lecture. Suddenly, a toaster dings with impeccable timing. “Oop, hold the tears. STRUDEL’S DONE!!”

Heather takes hold of the TV remote and chucks it at a toaster off to the side, angled towards them by the base of a tree. After hitting a lever, the 2 toasted pastries launch in a perfect arc into RJ and Heather’s arms.

Heather’s first strike erupts magma filling onto her tongue. “ OOOOOH , it’s hot ! Oh GOD that’s so hot.”

“HAMMY!” RJ claps.

Hammy runs up between RJ and Verne, saluting his loyalty to the former.

If Verne can’t be dealt the attention of his opponents, the least he can do is question himself rhetorically: “Did- did ANYTHING I just say matter?”

RJ props open Hammy’s mouth and pulls out 2 cold packs of icing from both his stuffed cheeks, miraculously (and unbelievably) spotless. “Y’know Verne…” Clearly his drowsiness hadn’t dwindled a bit judging by the distinctive swing in his dead voice. “You were right when you said it, I dunno, some time ago … We are runnin’ outta room here. After all, we had to resort to using Hammy’s mouth as our icing storage unit.”

Hammy adds, “In fact, these cheeks have a cooler installed too-!”

“ Sooooo I think we’ve got a caaave to fill. Yeeeaaahhh …”

Verne’s shocked passion stings his countenance. “Oh, so now you’re DYING to get back there, you ‘n your pack of… STRUDEL wolves?!”

Fresh-baked scraps and slathered icing coolant cover his face with the bite of the strudel. “‘Tis merely the food who calls, good sir!” He points aimlessly into the air. “‘Tis merely the food .”

XXX

A drumroll sounds. 

RJ stands later at the mouth of Vincent’s cave with determination. Its jagged teeth threaten to swallow him whole, but when Heather snakes up to his side, he grins, and feels no reservation towards the darkness. Hammy zips up the staircase on the right and swerves along into the cave after they proceed.

“Rolecall for Team RPS !” RJ yanks back the curtain to the backroom, pushing them along as they fly in. “Go! Go! Go!”

“‘Possum for paper!”

“Squirrel for scissors!”

RJ himself readies to race inside. “And raccoons are always rock-hard. Er, always in the brain . It’s the brain. Yeah.”

Inside, RJ slams the bag down, and they all 3 dump it out. RJ fills the hyper silence while they unpack: “Just think - the more junk we stow away, the more junk we’ve got to bring in !”

“Or we could just eat it,” says Heather.

“Hey, can you pass that Nutty Buddy?” Hammy asks her. “I get hungry when I think of food.”

XXX

A drumroll sounds. 

With his group inside the concealment and nurturing of the Log, Verne approaches the empty box of cookies being used as a podium. “Bring forth … the forehead belt .”

Tiger steadies his knees and bends at Verne’s feet with a yellow bandana. Verne takes it and goes to wrap it around his head with pride, only for it to blind his eyes. He removes it and retries, only for it to fit tight over the top of his face, over his pestered eyebrows. Unfortunately, none of that minimal space over his eyes necessarily qualified as a ‘forehead’. So instead he just puts it as a weird lump on top of his head. They’d get the idea.

“Team Oak , FAAAAALLL IN!” he commands.

Stella, Tiger, and the porcupines, one-by-one flop yellow bandanas onto their heads in unison.

“Was ‘Oak’ really the best you could do ?” Stella remarks.

“I figured we’d stick to the 3-letter theme.” Verne commences the opening of his overruling oration: “First of all, I’d like to, uh- thank you all for being here… today. It really means a lot to me, and uh-”

“CAN WE FIGHT YET!?” Spike shouts from the back.

“ Hush !” goes Penny.

In case he had much to begin with, the remainder of Verne’s confidence splats flat on its face. One inch removed, and his train derailed. Stella, closest to his side, clears a demon from her throat and tilts her glaring head forward at him. She sends her spirit - her flame - over for him to fan.

“Okay… Okay .” Verne straps on the cape of a sovereign, dictating tone: “ Listen up ! I WANT YOU ALL to-!”

That look Stella shoots him again… this time, it’s barely readable underneath the white hairs sprawling over her face. From all he can comprehend, it’s either the attitude or execution he’s got an imbalance in. His mouth speaks these thoughts for him: “Whadda I need, more attitude or execution ?”

Stella slaps her head, then blows up the hairs off of her face from the vent of her lips. She pounds a thumb onto the middle of her chest, into her heart. Combined with the gesture, Verne manages to read the deep emerald wholeheartedness of her green, uncovered eyes, and figures out the rest.

“From the heart… Show it in the eyes …”

Verne looks at the podium in front of him, and frowns. He pushes it aside and steps through the Log to speak to the new team directly. Like he knew to do, he lets his eyes speak of his true emotions, both of deep concern and gratitude.

The outcome is a bit of a smile. “Everyone… this is our one chance . We know what we’re fighting for.”

Fortunately, Penny is able to smother one of the kids’ mouths with a fat hand before he bursts out with something irrelevant, at Verne’s brief mention of a certain f-word that ain’t short enough to be that one.

Verne examines the tunnel. “We’re standing in our own home right now.” He chuckles, “Think about it. We stored everything in here. Even ourselves. But sometimes I wonder just if it’d feel the same without a true family .”

Everyone glows their grins for his heart to absorb, and collect into a penny jar.

As a grand rally, Verne declares, “By the time winter comes this year, we’ll be resting easier here than we ever have! You heard it from me, folks.”

“We’re stickin’ with the Log no matter what ,” Stella ensures. “Rememb’uh that.”

And Tiger bows all too solemnly. “For all my nine lives , I’d lay down one just for this.”

“Alright, death is where I draw the line though.”

“Just… thank you all for this,” Verne laughs before addressing the skunk specifically. “Stella, I know it wasn’t always-”

She stops him quickly. “Don’t … bring that stuff up again. Right now, we’re livin’ in the NOW now.”

“ NOW now. Right. Now now. Wait!... We’re still missing something .”

“What’re we missing there, Verne-o?” comes Lou.

“Yo, what we’re missing is the fighting!” Bucky scoffs.

“I can help with that,” Quillo says.

Verne returns to himself a fidgety nature until Stella steps forward to his side. Suddenly, he’s reminded of some thought. A thought once thought before. He brings out the attitude again - from the heart, and through the eyes. His heart beats faster, and stronger. It straightens his back and sends the beam of determination out his eyes like a jet plane. Each word propels its jets and conquers the mountains, for both its wings are not alone. So, he’s ready. And true. 

“What we’re missing is a plan . And a good one! Huddle.”

What Verne says perks up the radar ears of RJ overhearing from his casual pace past the Log: “What are we?!”

“FORAGERS!!”

RJ says it quietly to himself: “ Well Verne, you’ve just challenged a raccoon to a heisting match . Don’t even pray you won’t regret it. You will .”

The starting pistol blows a round that day, for the disastrous race that’s about to ensue - a week-long dash down a molten hill.

“Status report!” comes RJ’s order from the front patio of the next target house. Both teams prepare themselves at the start, itching to catch the signal.

Hammy rises alert on the rooftop. His sight darts around the fantastic scene from above, every lane of houses across the suburbs presenting new sights, colors, and personality. All into the horizon these settlements stretch - an endless sea of artificiality. The orange sea monster was found nowhere lurking in these waters, no sign of danger around. After their last encounter with him, scouting for the Sniffer became priority 1. Hammy runs back to the edge of the roof to confirm. A single “Nope!” is hollered down.

No track’s never issued a race or two. By the time Hammy of all people is able to panic and tag along, the athletes are already inside. The first narrow entrance hall, ridden by a web of lasers, makes for a field day all over again. They leap and twist and trample between the wires of the misshapen grid and leave no room for error. Their movements clash and confuse the eye like the boulders tumbling off a mountaintop, swept up by the fluid winds of one dynamic highway. In the tracks left on the sheet of fine dust another’s foot follows, but never intersects. They might as well apply for their own acting routine given the orderly chaos somehow unachievable through strict rehearsal. When chaos occurs in chaos, it thrives .

Ozzie trails behind, holding comparative gaiety in the smoothness of his steps. They contribute none to the volume of the fray. He meets his tenacious team at the doormat of one sudden megaplex; variably so, the high-roofed living room startles the firmness in his toes. What jarring complexity it would be to examine, if only the group threw thoughtful glances more than a second instead of the frantic scattering of their faces, including one new trio of members to Ozzie’s organized heist group: the porcupine kids.

No such… really intense , fiery enthusiasm , to put it… is contained in Ozzie’s static stance. He still yet holds the mug of routine quenching, having not boiled out the bottom. “And so , our order of business consists of -” 

Down he scales the list, while their heads are lost to the heights, fighting to unravel the same wings that could diverge the earth and its touchless clouds now sought to be obtained. Hidden by the back of a sleek couch facing the dead case of a fireplace, a small stair divot leads down into the lax pit of the room. Verne can’t help but find a raccoon’s tail to be slipping out of sight past the frame against the wall where rug meets tile. Clanking immediately ensues from the kitchen. Down the pit, on the left.

“C’mon! Let’s go!” Verne proclaims to personify the proactive actions of the others.

“-Alllllllrighty then, don’t mind I !” Ozzie performs his obligatory awkward-moment-no-one-cares-for jig. Heist groups became void. There were only ‘heists’ and ‘groups’ in a time like this.

They take to their ‘business’.

XXX

The blank photo square on a ‘Read All About Me!’ poster is taken by a pencil diagram of Heather. Along the bottom edge, symbols of only her greatest interests stamp the 3 ‘super cool fact’ squares fit for… super cool facts. Food. Music. Food again. “Heather,” RJ narrates. He creates her profile so earnestly like any student of the week would, if they took the role of an interviewer. “‘Possum. Nickname: ‘Possum pal’. Role: Maximum swagger (as proclaimed by the subject).” Inside the star on the center of the paper, her tail comes to life on the page. “Star trait: A sentient… butt-hand.”

RJ documents her prowess on the clipboard as she goes, securing their first scores of food from the highest cabinet in the room. She swings each can, cup, and jar ‘round way to drop them off from her butt-hand on every beat exactly.

“ Truly a marvel at work! ”

A leftover Arnie’s sandwich box must’ve hid from her nose in the corner, as it now comes down for RJ.

“ Favorite food: Arnie’s , ” he scribbles as an extra note.

On lined paper, considerably more readable and organized, Verne documents the same profiles. “ Stella . Fierce, but defensive. Ready to aim, but rare to fire . ”

One human proceeds to exit from the bathroom so lackadaisically that Team Oak seems to be the ones in a rush as they just so happen to parade by from the top of a staircase, coming up with a whole party-size box of assorted chip bags. In the confrontation, a toilet plunger enters the woman’s grasp. Stella jumps in front of her fellows and points that back end back. Just like that, the woman flails into the bathroom and locks herself inside without hesitation. Stella snaps fingers for the others to take their leave.

Verne’s tone loosens. “ Her biggest loyalty is to herself . But she knows her place with us. ”

The team applauds her back in the lobby of the living room. Jokingly, she nudges her fist rough onto Verne's shoulder before linking her arm around one of, who else, but Tiger's front limbs.

“Tiger iiiis about as loyal as a guy can get. If I've won Stella, I've won him. He's a royal thinker. Royal attitude, royal courage, royal… appetite… Buuuut- he's uh, he's working on it.”

Shortly following the previous event, Tiger snaps his head around from the chilly fridge of the kitchen after picking up a call from Stella. His diet speaks a different story than his typical demeanor - he’s forced by the worry in his stomach to spit out the plumpness of the fish jammed in his jaw. Indeed, he only bears insult to himself by allowing the need to devour devour his own mind . Luckily, he’s still just as fit. Thus, he pounces across the floor in the direction of his beloved.

Stella grabs onto Tiger’s shoulder and has him leap her up a giant couch in the living room. A simple display, but highly representative of a symbiotic bond.

“ Where one faults, the other follows . ”

Verne sits and smiles to himself in regards to his own display of writing prowess. “Oh yeah , that- that’s deep,” he thinks aloud.

For RJ’s next poster, he seems to have acquired a vandalized page, colored crayon splashed all over. A piece of the paper was chewed off in the corner.

“Hammy,” he only briefly starts. “W-wait Hammy? HAMMY!? You WROTE ON THIS!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE MY MOMENT-?!” He resorts to an (attempted) pleasant on-demand reading of Hammy’s colorful work: 

“‘Hammy… Squir-rel. My friends make me happy, like Cousin Heather whenever she scratches that extra tender spot on my back.’... Aw, that’s nice,” he commends, before reading again. “‘I am hungry.’”

Twirling corkscrews take Hammy on his own smooth coaster between backyards in the lane. At each chain fence he leaps through the gaps, passing a yard’s length by the second. His apparent hunger drives his car more than the flat level of the track ever could. “WEEE! WEEE! WWWEEE!”

" ‘I am a star becaaauuuse… I am very fast.’... So true, so true. "

The crisply-tattooed hotdog Hammy steals from a steaming grill transfers its scolding heat to his hands. It flaps like a jumping jelly bean around in his possession while he attempts to extinguish the smoking energy exploding off the skin. Those stings don’t end when he goes backwards through the fences again.

"WEEE! Ow. WEEE! Ow! WWWEEE!"

“Oh heyyy ,” RJ delights from the other side of the Hedge. “Here’s a lil’ doodle of a flaming hotdog!”

Glowing to perfection, the steaming hotdog missile arcs like a dolphin over the leaves and rains down right along RJ’s trajectory. The glare from the high sun combusts it into a deadly javelin of fire.

“ Hammy . Hammy is… ” Verne fails to recognize the circumstances bypassing the gates of his history. “ ... not … on our team, actually. ”

It’s almost poignant to have split the old road. Stella the supervisor stares up alongside Verne from the clipboard at Hammy in his speedy prime, making laps around a backyard picnic. 2 pairs of brown and gray arms secure the goods from behind a large bush at the corner of the yard. RJ and Heather fling the boxes through the Hedge as they come. Stella huffs and shakes her head.

But without their kid, she can’t settle for talk alone. She grabs the clipboard and yanks it to the ground. No words.

XXX

The trio of RJ, Heather, and Hammy make a proud enough performance from their found food at the base of the cliff below the new official storage cave made from Vincent’s old. And without the entrance of Verne and the others, it was set to remain that way. But they slog through with their massive bundle, including an entire box of chip bags far beyond RJ’s expectations of his performance in even just their first rivalry heist.

So the 3 end up stabbing themselves with the short end of the stick… or the long end from Verne’s point of view. He knew they were now up there in that cave. He knew they could only be angrily storing the sum of both teams in the back room. And he grins. He grins from the base of the cliff and pokes at his own amusement. He spies out their reactions through the rocks. They were just that obvious . 

His hubris only lasts a moment. One car honks to another behind them, from the broad, endless road, and his x-ray sight fades. The rusty, dented car in front broke down - its front hood popped open, and the driver ejected. The glossy sports car behind, the ‘viCtiM’ of course, scolds the audacity for such an inconvenience to take place. Who bears the burden of both ? Possibly it’s a double-burden on one side . The community of oaks and pines in the whole wide forest reveals itself to Verne again. The forest is an inconvenience to these creatures. It’s something to chop down. It’s vulnerable . But it gets in the way. Logs will fall. Verne only gets a headache trying to count the days he’s known a fallen log himself. THE Log. What a manic comparison. If a log falls over a street, can it really be considered the criminal? Will the hollow innards of his heartly home be crushed twice as fast under the pressure?

His worries return him to the home site. His shell contains the shivers overtaking his torso as he scans the calendar. The last square of the month he jabs with a weak finger… is the 25th.

“That means there’s only… 18 days left . Give or take.”

“Verne, quit countin’ days ‘n start countin’ pays!” Stella’s incoming rush gives him sudden dismay. He flinches his neck forward and takes a breath.

But her words drive some interest in his countenance. From RJ’s arms across the site, boxes of snacks and treats leave his ownership to be distributed to Heather and Hammy. They take their pays with great gusto at a day’s hard work, then chase after the raccoon right back into the suburbs just before the sun sets. A paycheck. That idea somehow causes Verne to squint an eye at HIS followers, scattered about.

Stella stares at the speechless Verne. "If yuh gonna keep these folks on our side I think yuh’d bett’uh raise the check," she relays in a whisper. "Oz-man's still lookin' miiighty free…"

Ozzie is indeed not doing much, just enjoying what he has (AKA a nice creamy cup of late-night coffee) in the dedicated pillow lounge underneath one of the open umbrellas.

Verne stomps forward. The sweltering heat of competition now furrows his brow as if the sweat from his non-existent forehead crushed it down over his eyes. And underneath the peacefully setting sun, Ozzie remains benign. Verne enrichens the lush flame in the horizon. “Alright , RJ. We can play this game.”

XXX

‘Team RPS’ seated themselves on the side of a single-story house. This is the last house on the block. Shrouded in secrecy . The walls painted a solid white, and the roof simple brick, this place only has one thing to hide: A beautiful development in the circle of life. Thankfully, a multitude of lawn chairs stacked up over each other gives them the elevation they need to discover a channel of live natural phenomenons through the open window of a dim bedroom. RJ and Heather observe the human mates in their den with a taut level of fascination. 

Hammy makes sure to document the event from the cupholder on the armrest, where his legs are stuffed and bent into. Every time he clicks the camera, it only flashes another blast right into his face. Nonetheless, he continues snapping great shots of himself with the camera facing backwards.

“Wow,” Heather comments to RJ with a spiffy new safari hat of her own. “This’s just like that wildlife show.”

She flips the camera around for Hammy. He wouldn’t wanna miss the thrilling ritual .

RJ rattles the cup to his side while grumbling: "The popcorn’s stale again, Heather."

Verne approaches. “Could you stop with this garbage!? Why are you so OKAY with this? With them ?!”

“See I call this lil’ spectacle 'Monday Night Football'. They do stupid things, we watch. Simple.”

“I’m just with RJ,” Heather points. “Simple.”

Verne spanks his head hard and groans.

The moon flows peacefully by, and the sun follows through.

XXX

Hammy’s putting some real work into that second trash can, beside the one RJ monitors from the corner of a new brick house. Heather rummages through that one, and the three chill under the shadow of the roof hanging over the nearest edge of the backyard. At high noon, the sun rains its rays onto the land, washing over some energy and action for them to escape from, and cool their skin.

Heather stops rummaging and explains to RJ, “So liiike , we already did the whole stereotype thing, but we still gotta spice it up with some comedic interpretation .”

She dives into the crinkly pool and splashes her head out at the surface, a rotting banana peel on top. “So better knock it out sooner than later.” Thus, she performs the act, and messes the ground: “Oh, look at me! I’m eating all the trAsh ! ‘Cause I’m a trAAAsh-eater ‘n stuff! I’m a stinky-smelly-bitey-hissy- trAsh-drooler or whatever I am!”

They chuckle. Spying from the backyard, Verne motions to his team at the optimal opportunity. “Quick, they're having fun ! Now’s our chance!”

They take positions. Among the clutter, Ozzie - newly the target for them to shoot - wanders the front yard aimlessly. Sniffing flowers from bushes, picking a rose to twirl in his hand, sizing himself up with a garden gnome… in all this space, he’s still a lone man. 

“Make it subtle, everyone!” Verne reminds them.

Well, it’s what could very well be an entire fiesta they settle upon. Prodigal to the task, it certainly hooks in Ozzie’s attention to the house wall on the side, to the right, around a hexagonal, windowed protrusion of a corner. 5 giant golden balloons spelling out ‘OZNIE’ float in place for him to read. Verne and his team burst upon him in a spectacle of party sparklers, filling his pupils with stars. A festival made for him.

But yeah, they clearly only had 1 ‘Z’. Oznie (Ozzie), the front of his lips bulging out in speechlessness, frowns his eyes and moves right along to the flipside, to the backyard. The shade cannot save Verne once his smile melts down to his shoulders as a response.

Meanwhile, Heather jumps out of her can to RJ, the banana peel remaining clung on her head. She holds her arms up wide to the crowd of one. “Ta-daAaAaAa.” She leans in close and whispers, "But really though, I so don’t mind diggin' in this stuff."

RJ points at the peel. “What's the deal with the uh… lil’ parasite ya got there ? Taking it to dinner?”

"I'll keep it as a hat."

“Oh please don't.”

Ozzie passes them by in such an unusually mundane way that Heather feels obligated to address him. But the three of them watch for a moment as he trails past the patio to lose himself in the maze of shrubbery and ornaments that made up the yard.

“Yo dad, where’re you going ?” she asks.

As a homeless man he continues to wander past. “Nowhere particular, to be honest. Away from THEM, at least.”

They now lean around the corner of the house. Verne’s entire, sad failure of an operation becomes apparent to them. It also justified the random explosions of balloons they were hearing, as the porcupine kids stabbed themselves into them. They weren’t having fun doing it either. It looks like they’d just been grounded for a week… assuming Verne, Stella, Tiger, Lou, and Penny somehow grounded themselves too, considering their identical attitudes.

Honestly, if those giant balloons didn’t speak it loud enough, at least Hammy could save the other two the trouble: “Are they … trying to win Ozzie ?”

Ozzie’s off into the maze. But now, RJ takes some interest in Verne’s gameplan. Luckily for him, he has a natural advantage in swaying Ozzie. And she’s always at his side, banana-peel-hat or not.

“Heather!” he shouts. “Go say something to him!”

“Say what ? What am I supposed to say ?!”

“You can tell ‘em enough , at least! Tell ‘em about our wiener willow , tell ‘em how smelly Verne’s shell is on Wednesday mornings, WHO CAAARES ! JUST GET YOUR DAAAD … ON OUR SIIIIIDE . Before we’re 3-to-8- plus-one extra daddy ! Believe me, an extra daddy is a plus-one we DON’T need against us!”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute. WAAAAAIT a MINUUUUTE !” Hammy pulls out a slightly -aged chocolate chip cookie from behind his back. “Let’s go back to that pet Jeffery idea from earlier.”

“Aha, thinkin’ like an entrepreneur again, I see.”

Heather swipes Jeffery and takes careful effort to analyze what she’s working with. “I’ll make some Jeffery merch.”

“Oh please do.”

They return to the site, where Ozzie roams. He passes Hammy at some sort of stand, who’s like a mascot for their new brand, wearing an entire Jeffery costume over his torso. The cookie suit is stitched professionally, not a homemade product, with a convincing level of ingenuity to exemplify the bustling nature of a market. However, that doesn’t mean his arms have much space to move, as the room for his elbows are obstructed by the costume, his arms out the sides stiffly, unable to bend.

In a hyper Boston accent (for some reason), he offers Ozzie a share in an open box of chocolate chip cookies they’ve stolen. “Freeeee samples! Getcha samples 'ere!”

“Ah!” Ozzie just takes a cookie and moves on without thought, and without a glance to initiate their exchange further. “You’re too kind, Hammy.”

"Aw c’mon maaan !"

Before he can take a bite, Heather thrusts herself into his face with all the Jeffery merchandise her arms could carry. '#Jeffery4Life' is plastered on the front of the little cap she wears with a brown brim, stitched in the design of a cookie. “Dad look, we custom-tailored this sick merch for only $5.99 on some sketchy website. We’ve got a buy-none-get-one-free operation goin’ on here.” She attempts to get an extra hat atop his head. “Oh look, you got one for free! Wanna try?”

"That is very nice, sweetheart. But I’ll pass."

“‘THAT’S NICE ’!?!” When he pays no attention, and carries on without a care, Heather has to overcome her speechlessness to yell out: “Dad, I made these… FREeEeEe … things with all the love $5.99 on some sketchy website can BUY! WITH… LOVE!”

Stella and Tiger are next on the marketing assembly belt Ozzie treads across. One leg kicked back behind her, Stella poses as a waiter along his path with a steaming cup in her hand. “‘Oh howdy sir, would you like some coffee?’”

Before he can react (by hurrying away), Tiger hooks him by the shoulder off the shores of personal indulgence he pursues alone. Just to his certain pleasure, he makes sure to speak with the dialect of a philosophical salesperson: “Ahhh Ozzie, my fellow intellectual, our life , our spirit , our reason … I don’t suppoooose you have just a minute ?”

" Noooot at the moment, no." Ozzie blocks him out, and picks up the pace.

Over at the TV set, he creaks open the lid of the blue cooler. He rubs a hand on his stomach before climbing inside for a snack. Arranged by the chilled drinks and perishables, a cat waited there. Tiger makes this moment his advent. Once every joint within Ozzie ceases to move, Tiger continues, romping as a rat in the fridge:

“BUT I think it would, eh… CONFORM to your sophisticated tastes to promenade a bit on the matter of our place in this world together, you and I. See, our common-ground lies in these words we speak, and I THINK it only stands to all sense of rationality that we work together, the two of us-”

Ozzie jumps out… blocks him out, and picks up the pace.

Stella still wobbles in her position at the main site, and abandons her act entirely when he intrudes. “Oz’. I’ve been standin’ like this for 10 minutes. Drink it so I can FEEL sumthin’.”

Alas , he decides to meditate, completing the ritual intensely on a tree branch in the air, cross-legged and hooked by the tail. Tiger rambles on philosophical speech again from beside him:

“What I’m saying is this… Mmmmm let me find the words … Life … Life is a symphony of choices . We choose every note we want to play. So let me inform you of the right key to play on - our key. At our side, you could sing the bright chorus of-”

Inside the fruit of his inner core, Ozzie screams as he tumbles down this endless pit of meaningless persuasion. His ears burn from the inside and out. Putting up with this no longer, he snaps his fingers, and the world flips. While he’d been hanging upside down by his tail the whole time, Tiger couldn’t be less fortunate. Gravity handles the rest.

Ozzie drops down to the ground as well and sprints away.

“Agh ,” Tiger yelps. “Ozzie, COME BAAAAACK!”

Stella’s stability begins to crumble like the shattering of a ceramic vase, her whole body shaking. “DRIN-K … THE DAAAAMN COFFEE, OZ’.”

He's off into the Hedge guarding any hope strongly against his beating heart to escape them. Through the suburbs, he runs right past a driveway where the Sniffer’s truck’s parked, the man himself advertising his newest brochure to a blonde-haired resident he’s seen before, Janise, on the walkway up to the door. A second later, a full tsunami of fur comes in a blur after Ozzie. 

Dwayne gets sidetracked, but acts too late, as the group of animals is already well gone down the sidewalk. “OH they insult me.”

Hoppy, brightly awake for the day, swings calmly on a large wooden seat hanging by glittering chains down from the roof of her elevated entrance balcony. Unfortunately, due to the ceiling overhead, Mr. Shady cannot join her on this midday excursion to the outside world. But y’know what, this is the life. The fences around the platform separate her from the vast scenery, and she enjoys the servings of the silver plate beside her in peace. Empty peace. In the shade, her white fur stands out. The brown settles in. 

But just then, some particularly wild activity gives her a source of entertainment to snack over, with her plate of grainy home-baked cookies. One gray creature leads the pack of those who chase after. The paws of the animals shower over the yard.

Right before this single bunny sticks a whole cookie in her mouth, Hammy steals it. “ Freeeee samples!” he advertises in his Boston accent. “Free samples…”

“ Hey !” Hoppy gasps in burning austerity. “ My oatmeal raisin-!”

The squirrel backpedals the whole distance and barfs the mess of a cookie back up onto the edge of her plate “ Oatmeal raisin ?! Maaaaaan…” He repels himself from the monster hosting the plague.

Harmless Hoppy stares at the saliva dripping off the cookie. Nervously, heartlessly laughing, she slowly and cautiously tips the plate just enough over the rim of the swing to splat the contaminated cookie onto the floor. A bird could hopefully take it off her hands, perhaps.

Ozzie scales the bricks of a full house wall and absolutely BARRELS himself down an open chimney up top. He bypasses an entire living room of humans, unable to fear the feeling of fear itself, and shoots into the bathroom upstairs. He jumps into the white tub at the end of the room and flicks the red curtains shut. To feign his activity, he switches the water on, but a jet of cold rain is what washes over his head. Sub-zero bullets penetrate his skin. At the edge of his sanity, his head twitches violently with the dreadfully cold water pounding onto his fur. 

The entrance of his daughter interrupts him.

Heather busts the bathroom door wide open and wanders over the fuzzy mat at the entrance. “Dad ! Dad where are you-?” RJ and Hammy follow behind her. She trips past them once smelling the muck of a wet opossum just behind the red shower curtain, and flinching back accordingly without a single glance in that direction. “ Oooooooooh god he’s in the shower isn’t he?”

“Why yes,” Ozzie informs them through an echoing tone so jocund. “That is me , bathing myself in some… some…” Of course, he has to try really hard to describe the freezing water in a way that doesn’t speak of the devil. “...REFRESHING STREAMS! Don’t come in if you’d rather not scar yourselves with my natural, nude form .”

“Can I-?” Hammy offers.

“Not yet …” rejects RJ, parading up to the curtain in bold strides over the cold tiles. “Wikipedia is my tome . In approximately 8.2 minutes, Grandpa here will HAVE to unveil his soaken bod to us, and when he does, we will all gaze upon the glorious artwork of nature as nature intended for us ! And of course if it takes longer, we’ll volunteer Heather to peek first.”

“I’m leaving …” she grunts.

RJ whips out a watch and counts the passing minutes. One. Then two. Three. Heather stands in the same place she started in.

“Leaving, were you?” RJ nudges. 

“ Well-ll … I think my nervous sweat glued me to the floor.”

“Hmm, turns out nature intends more for some than others .”

“Do you guys think I can count dad as a dependent?”

“I could be your dependent…” suggests Hammy. “ Spiritually …”

Four. Five. Counting is boring. Let’s just cut to the chase. The water keeps running. Ozzie keeps whistling away. RJ keeps losing patience.

A “Hey !” shoots through the curtain into Ozzie’s ear. He keeps his teeth gritted while the frozen water pelts his face, forcing a suffocative sensation onto him that needs manual breathing to remedy. As he searches for options, RJ goes on: “Grandpa! Las Vegas is out here drinkin’ its own PEE , and you can’t even take a shower in 8.2 MINUTES !? Some interest groups are gonna have a couple choice words for YOU!”

Light pours in over him. There’s a translucent window high on the back wall, and a small lock to go with it.

“Heather, are you okay-?” Hammy only gets to start.

“If you wanna come lick me dry, be my guest.” As if she’d been in the shower herself, and souring her face like an egg, Heather currently drips nervous sweat all across her body. She’s yet to move.

“I dunno if you’re kidding or not but I’d do anything for a friend-”

Their ears perk up at an unusual noise - one slippery swoosh from inside the shower. RJ and Hammy bop Heather forward against her will to volunteer her to peek inside. Scarring family images stay in the family. She draws back the edge of the curtain with incredible caution, but there's no one inside. At that, she rips it open, flabbergasted. Only running water, and the light coming through a rectangular frame high on the back wall. The outside world is completely audible to them.

A patch of grass in the backyard gets drenched by the time Ozzie and his soaken bod get down the wall. He lands as the kind of wet hairball that’d be clogged in the shower drain. Hands on his knees, he rests, even if only briefly.

In the midst of this jailbreak, the spotlight of Stella’s hollar rats him out: “Hey y'all, Oz’s back!”

He's back to the Hedge in a jiffy. Back past the Sniffer and his brochure again on the way. He leaves behind wet tire marks on the way, drizzling off his fur.

“Oop, back goooes the ‘possum!” Dwayne calls before he’s, yet again, left in the dust. Or the trail of watered ‘possum footprints, for that matter.

XXX

By the time another minute passed, Ozzie built himself a sturdy newspaper tent in the brush behind the site. There he shelters his cold, fragile self from the crowd, nowhere in sight. In this dark place, he crouches to the ground, utterly mortified, and wipes sweat (and chilling dampness) from his head. His breaths spare him no beat. Unfinished Sudoku puzzles surround him, gridded and numbers scattered, containing him within this archaic matrix. He’s completely relieved for one moment of silence. Hidden , but free.

Then a serial killer known as Hammy busts his head through the paper. “SUDOKU!!”

Ozzie dies instantaneously. Everyone from both groups stalks his tent right outside, and react to the wailing fall.

“ III forgot who this was …” Hammy’s back half speaks.

“All I WANT…” Ozzie grumbles from inside the tent. “...is a feast … of silen-”

RJ and Verne already stance up into a position able to sprint up the Himalayas at a moment’s notice. “Quick, he wants a FEAST-!”

“NO no no. Just silence…” At last, he desperately plays a card for lonesome: “Why don’t you… such a… FFFIIIINE family you are… busy yourselves with keeping to fill up the cave, with luscious delights? MMM! I can imagine it already! Something for the good of everyone.”

“Quick, we gotta impress him with our CAVE-FILLING SKILLS!”

They’re gone.

“I- At least it’s something productive .”

XXX

The sun and moon have to push against the sky to force the other through the cycle again.

XXX

Early morning comes again to announce their heated struggle in a fanfare. Tiger’s taken post at the dead end of a nameless street in front of the Hedge. Encompassing the extent of his keen focus, a single car rolls away from him, back turned as it rides up the road. Then a handful of movements flash through the black trunk window, no matter how vague they are. His sharp pupils train themselves to be a deadeye, and track the textures of the moving parts. The flickering of furry tails ? 

The trunk door begins to haul itself open, and there they are. The enemies, RJ and his accomplices, prepare to escape with armfuls of groceries they’ve removed from plastic bags, while the oblivious driver must’ve never batted an eye.

“ALERT, they are in a trunk !” he gasps into a walkie-talkie, biting nails. “PILLAGING it’s cargo for the cave ! And, and… why, they’ve uncovered enough coffee creamer for Ozzie to DIE over!”

Stella stays on the line with him in the corner of an open garage while Verne and the porcupine couple busy themselves with the task. They run wild around the dusty place, picking out sports drinks and more from a dirty white shelf. Too busy to assist, she says, “Hurry man, you gotta take those suckas out !”

“But howww ?” he ponders.

The porcupine kids bounce through the Hedge to meet him. “Maybe we can help!”

In a mere second, a two-lane track was assembled. Tiger’s paws use the seats of toy cars as rollerskates, and the play track aims him right down the yellow dashes marking the middle of the road. The kids ride atop his curving back.

“Ready to disobey the speed limit , Uncle-in-law Tiger?” asks Spike.

“LAUNCH me!”

The remote Spike’s holding gets left behind as soon as he presses its button. The orange speed pads of the track motorize the toy cars and shoot them down the street at the SUV. Speeding up to the rear of the car, the kids bounce off his back and into the trunk as their momentum starts to fade.

Every glance from Team RPS around the plentiful trunk gives them the feeling that their bounty’s getting a little less plentiful . RJ identifies a bag one second, and a fresh empty space the next. No specs of dust fill these holes that appear, while their loot disappears. And before they know it, the WHOLE trunk is stolen off their hands, and the 3 kids are back in the Hedge with the gold.

The others have finished too, so the entirety of Team Oak assembles for a progress check.

“Woah,” Lou breathes once the kids place it all down back in the forest. What RJ intended to steal fell upon their hands, and the size of the bundle surely said some things about his superior tactics. “ That’s a lot.”

Verne pumps a fist. “Another score for Team Oak .”

“Boy will Oz’ be impressed ,” Stella agrees.

RJ stances himself and places his foot down on the edge of the trunk back in the suburbs. “Oh-ho, they think THAT’S gonna impress ‘Oz?”

“Huh, what’s his favorite coffee creamer?” further puzzles Hammy.

“Watch us top it,” Heather asserts.

Team RPS take their leave from the SUV and resort to more creative methods in the closest vicinity. Hammy headbutts himself into a house’s doorbell. A human answers, and spends the next good minute locating the greeter. When it’s a squirrel on the welcome rug, the man starts ‘awww’-ing away while Hammy itches at his neck with a foot. RJ and Heather anticipate this response and slip inside the house, clung to the wall. They exit the same way, only now carrying another pack of loot to compensate for their losses.

Through this tactic alone, they make a whole pinball game out of the street. At the cave, they slam down boxes over and over that put Verne to shame. Team Oak just watches with gaping mouths, while Heather holds her phone high and lets it blast music out to keep up their rhythm, and energize their action.

So for once, Verne's group now lift the stones of this burden onto their shoulders, storing the collective accumulation of food in the cave. Had they let it be, and tamed the heisting beast within RJ, they could’ve lowered the load by a fortune . Instead, they’re aching head-to-toe. Nearly triple the numbers, and at last losing once .

Ms. Wright bears her own burden to scrub off her working space as the street gets swept clean by the repeated attacks instituted by that same basket of animals, stealing a WEEK’S worth of their typical claims under one hour . The phone on the corner of her desk inside her room rattles off its rocker with the complaints of the town. Eventually, it slips over the edge, only the cable keeping it from crashing onto the spotless floor. Her fingers, stabbing at the keys of her laptop, enter a fury. Her lips, and whole countenance, does not. 

RJ and Heather waltz their way out a front door, away from the screeching bat-like ambiance coming from inside a singular house in particular. The resounding drill of hard metal from that dark, loud, rowdy place makes the outside air a welcoming adjustment to Heather.  

“Jeez, that place was givin’ me a bad case of the spooks .” It’s only now she notices the whole pound of edgy makeup and dozen silver necklaces she’s got on. “Woah woah, how’d this happen?!”

“Expectations.”

“GUYS! GUYS! GALS! GALS!” Hammy sprints up to them.

Heather shimmies off her expectations.

“ Ozzie’s awake .”

They’re gone. RJ tackles both of them into his armpits like footballs and travels at the speed of light to go for a touchdown through the Hedge, blazing tracks of footprints along the way. Still, he carries enough standards as well to make sure he plays a round of hopscotch 2 kids draw on the sidewalk. He treads into a net trap set up down the lane, tied from the gallow of a nearby tree by the Sniffer to demonstrate to the woman while STILL attempting to persuade her, night and day. RJ busts through the net’s strings without effort.

Dwayne shrugs his sagging shoulders. “Do I even have to say anything, or am I just embarrassing myself?”

“Yeah, I’m not buying,” Janise, at last, after a whole day, decides.

Of course, Team Oak already set up signs, balloons, and everything greeting Ozzie’s late rise, stiffly crowded to smile obnoxiously as he yawns and trudges around the lake from the willow. As he figures out how to maneuver the bright setting, they wait. Something comparable to a Thanksgiving feast stacked up behind Verne and his group awaits the guy.

They prep their voices for a choir: “ GOOOOOOOOOOD MOR-NING-!”

RJ, burning alive in his own motive, plows through Ozzie and steals him to be seated aggressively at the cushion lounge. The 3 of them - RJ, Heather, and Hammy - go in a flurry to offer him luxuries from the site.

“YOU HUNGRY?!”

“WANT YOUR OLD DUDE COFFEE, DAD?!”

“ARE YOUR TOOTSIES COLD?!”

Team Oak seizes him by his arm away from the trio. Team RPS gasps and grabs his other. Suddenly, the flame of division crackles underneath him, ready to roast. This pack of maniacal monkeys jerks him back and forth while he claws at the dirt with his toes to remain grounded in this treacherous predicament. The apes never cease.

“WE’VE GOT ALL THE COFFEE CREAM’UH…” Stella strains. “...YOU’LL EVER NEED.”

“JUST… PICK A SIDE ALREADY!” Verne booms. “This is so TIRING! EGH!!”

They’ve objectified him as some kind of dog toy. How disgraceful. They can’t seem to tell when they’ve tugged him past his brink. He sees it in their eyes, and growling teeth. If neither could paint him in the background of the canvas, behind this treachery, he’d remove himself from the scene altogether.

His feet cling into the earth, but the space between them worsens. Stretched to the brink, he glances down behind his gaping legs. He gets his tail to thwap Verne's hand off his right and digs his (relatively) harmless claws into the raccoon's hand, currently melting it into putty, and forces it away from the left.

There’s quiet, for a single blip of time.

Ozzie quickly runs off past the lake and conceals himself inside a quieter room of vegetation. 

Heather glances at the others, all eyeing her, and goes after him.

Nothing comes back around the bush in front of them for minutes. RJ’s so in shock he forgets to check his watch.

Until Heather does return again, and pitter-patters with a letter in her hands. “Hey. Ya girl’s back.” 

They acknowledge her existence through awkward silence. It’s not often she comes as such a lone figure among the rest.

“So lemme just open this letter real quick, uh…” Yes, she’s a lone gray figure showing herself to the awaiting crowd, just as lone in the delivery of her message. “’K, alright, drum roll please! Dad says he iiiiis …” She reads straight from the slip of paper inside the envelope: “' Unaffiliated. It is babyish and creates too much stress for an issue that needs a rational solution. I've never felt so un-dramatic in my LLLLIFE. Sorry, that was a bit dramatic. Written with feigned love and dwindling hope, Ozzie.'”

Everyone leans past the bush Heather had emerged beside and makes out Ozzie through the leaves. Though he's found nowhere on ground level . He slouched his stomach over a branch up in a high tree overlooking the back end of the TV set. He flicks through channels, drowsy and eyes red (what’s left open, at least), in hopes of drowning his brain in the vague colors and shapes on the box he could barely identify.

The gate to this city locked shut. No one could capture it or its people.

“So Ozzie's off the table isn't he?” Verne puffs.

“He was right about the 'stress' part…” RJ admits. Then he adopts a springy attitude to digress this stressful tension flicked with his back to the group. “Welp! We're getting chips to ease ourselves!”

"Yeah," nods Verne. "Us too."

Everyone but Ozzie follows RJ along.

"No."

"Yes."

"No!"

"Yes!"

"My solution's rational!"

"MY solution's more rational!"

SOMEHOW, though, when the time comes, RJ hoists with both hands a dollar bill up to the glass of the vending machine, and can’t quite keep his eyebrows straight. But he just stares at it. Heather watches him tilt it at all angles underneath the crooked light in the ceiling. The treeline from the densest, most uncertain forest depths staggers low shadows over them, stripes and spots tangled up in a wire. The reflection of the bill off the shiny window screen just can’t seem to line up into a rectangle. RJ snaps to Heather, and she brings out the untouched paint roller peeking out of the golf bag on the floor. He flicks his head toward her in such simple gratitude as he gently applies pressure from the roller against the crinkled surface of the dollar. 

What amicable approach he gave didn’t foretell the rubbing up and ripping down of his actual practice. He flattens that dough so vigorously. He flattens it with such arduous vehemence involved, smoke flees from the edges of the paper. That’s what it takes to have every wrinkle come smooth. Every corner. RJ peels the bill like a poster from the wall, leaving a dead, burnt imprint on the glass. Hurrah! There’s a solid 90 degrees on every angle. 

“The perfect dollar…” Heather gasps.

RJ plants a tender kiss on the center of the paper. “This one's for you, Mr. Washington…”

The big man on the dollar holds his signature Washington Smile - that is, no different from his signature Washington Straight Face. “Make our nation proud , son.”

“I’ve got a patty for these buns, your patriot-ness.” He stretches both corners out as precisely as possible to slip it in.

The machine inserts the bill into itself.

It develops such a deep, personal connection to the thing, and gets to really know its ins and outs.

If vending machines do have noses, this one wasn’t gonna stop until it sniffed down the whole thing. Y’know, REALLY enjoying itself with that particular dollar.

Already, RJ can’t bear the wait. He stabs his teeth into his lip. His hands shake and plead so slightly as a beggar. He stares down the single bag of Snazzy Ranch chips - the only snack left in the display. Already, RJ’s mouth wets itself over the thought.

ERR.

The vending machine spits the dollar out. 

RJ’s bones crumble from the inside, his knees shattering from such a deficit. “Oh no no no…” He demands divine guidance: “Is THIS what capitalism FEELS LIKE!? Having SO many opportunities but no means of USING THEM!?”

Verne doesn’t care to deposit his leftovers anywhere but where’s most convenient behind him, even if it means RJ’s head. Little Nacho Cheese gremlins take to their ritual dance at the cheesy-toed foot of Verne’s crinkly, half-air-filled pile of material taste-bud satisfaction. He and his team crunch all the worries of life and of Ozzie away, and absolutely smother their faces with orange powder that tints their skin. They were sliding through the stuff. Turning the desolate overhang into something of a feudal establishment, though it’s pretty clear anyone would say there’s a clear imbalance in the noble:peasant ratio.

“Well this is just stupid.” RJ rips the empty bag off his head.

Heather is quick to provide him solace; crouching to meet his dismantled posture, she zips up and pats his back gently, the other hand resting around him with the care of a mother. “There there , RJ. Like, sometimes in life, you’re just gonna meet guys who wanna spit in your face ‘n snort nacho cheese dust. But I’m always here, RJ.”

He doesn’t address her. Instead, he smashes his forehead on the glass. 

Soon he opens his eyes again, and off the reflection of the surface he makes out a vague shape: a bear’s studded cave.

XXX

RJ’s immediate action call took Heather a chip-bag’s worth of energy just to process in a mindless flail after him on his unbreakable trajectory. Running into the tunnel of the cave, Heather does her best to keep up with him as he blazes through the mouth of deepening strife. “RJ, are you sure this is a good idea -?!”

“Mmmmm, aw MAN, y’know, I’m feelin’ miiiighty stressed right about now! How ‘bout we make a lil’ deposit from the bank ‘n JUST MAYBE show that shell-hog who’s boss. Y’know what I’m sayin’?!”

They enter the dark back tunnel. “ Why ?” she asks.

“All this food is what WE rightfully stole!” RJ spits back. “Er, half of it. So let's just get ourselves a lil' loan here ‘n there 'n show that guy WHAT we're made of! Turns out we DON’T need your extra daddy to win! We just NEED MORE FUNDS!”

" Fiiine , maybe ONE bit ."

Turns out, half of what they find had been depleted already. Sorta . They yank back the curtain into the backroom, and to them, a hairy culprit exposes himself in a crime they didn’t even know could be committed. It’s true, what he did is unspeakable, and it’d sure take a lot more than the fifth amendment to justify the massive lumps in Hammy’s cheeks. By the box and by the box, RJ holds his breath to the point of fainting at the Milk Dud hoarding going on during their attempted leisure.

He slaps his hands onto the sides of his dome. “MY MILK DUDS!!”

“Oh ssssssnickerdoodle,” Heather exclaims, “SPIT THOSE OUT HAMMY!”

Spitting them out, gushing those caramel-filled pebbles, onto the faces of RJ and Heather takes a good minute.

“Aw yeah,” he grunts through his cheeks. “Almost finished.”

Yes, he finishes.

“ Ahhhhh …”

XXX

At the home site, RJ drops a single box of Milk Duds, taped back shut, into the faintly-tinted grass just off of the rich, fertile soil of the pond. This locale makes a fine point to construct a profitable future, doesn’t it? The waters of a promising background seep through the dirt and moisten all the claimable land and capital below their paws.

“And so, beneath the suaaave and STUNNING lead of myself, along with this mere profit , we build the foundation of a THRRRIVING capital!”

A hundred other ‘mere profits’ spill out into a bank of gold bars at their base.

“I dunno dude,” Heather admits at their, admittedly, questionable jumpstart funding. “This still doesn't feel right to do… ”

"Do you think Verne'll notice?" Hammy whispers. 

But when they see Verne and his team doing the exact same thing at the Log with all the Nacho Cheese they’d won from the vending machine, doubt bids farewell. Oh, Verne noticed. And RJ did as well. There’s no way the turtle must’ve ever thought of storing those bags away. With Ozzie uninvolved, who was left to be the point of competition but each other? Both RJ and Verne go blank, matching their views as they’ve matched their new investments, mouths hanging open, silent.

Stella starts to tell Verne, “Well THIS is, uh… REALLY SOMETHIN’.”

Both Heather and Hammy can't help but mutter, "Y'know, this suddenly feels way more right."

Entire stolen mailboxes get staked into the ground at the base of their new respective piles - blue and red. Their neighboring addresses scream their swears across the site, where a vacant lounge rests between.

RJ pitches a megaphone again - seemingly his go-to when addressing his opposers. “ Behold , croutons, this is now Romeo and Juliet without Romeo and without Juliet . In other words, no tragic lovers with possible gnome-sonas . Instead, we are JUST angry. GRRRRR .”

Hammy presents a small vial to him. “I've got the hemlock ready just in case you wanna roleplay.”

"Hammy, that’s apple juice."

“I know! Poison that tastes great is EVEN BETTER !” He pours its diabolical contents into his mouth.

Among the dead silence lingering between in the impassable moat of the site, RJ’s voice travels to Verne’s end. “ALRIGHT LADIES! Who's up to kiss the apple juice off his lips?!”

“ Nooo ,” everyone groans.

Hammy himself jumps at the offer, though. “ME !! Wait, I’m me.”

Stella yells out, “You can kiss some apple juice OFF MY STRIPED , STINKIN’-”

“Dad drooling over Shakespeare was tragic enough ,” Heather snarks. “Do you guys really have to?”

The ring of a doorbell, from deep in the core of the suburbs, resounds over the entire earth. It strays the tips of the grass towards the source, and alightens the whole town. Stella’s ears alight just the same. "Pizza delivery!" she calls. 

“What?” Verne blurts back.

“There’s a pizza delivery, 4 blocks away!”

“Well RUN !! GO !!” Competition ensues again. Team Oak clutters together at his command. He throws one last comment at RJ in particular: “Let’s hope it’s still warm and has only a PROPER sauce-to-cheese ratio!”

“Man oh man, he will never stop dissing my slightly-cheese-favored preference,” RJ sighs. He joins Heather in position to hunt Verne down in hot pursuit. “Hammy, you’re holding down the fort while we’re gone-!”

"Done."

Every single box of Milk Duds already takes the formation of fortress wall foundations framing their perimeter. He’s stacked them all around, complete with an arched doorway on one side. He hugs its surface, though his small wingspan only takes him so far down a wall length. RJ and Heather let the winds respond to this immediate action while they stand there in the dead center of the area.

“That’s not what I-” RJ brushes these doubts away. “Y’know what, you’ve got the spirit. CHEESE HO-OOO!”

The two jump over the walls and follow into the Hedge, and Hammy squeezes the fort down to the best of his ability.

XXX

The whole day passes in quite a comparable manner. It’s as forecasted as a weather report… assuming the inconsistent weatherman gibberish gets filtered out of the actual reality of the skies. RJ and Verne keep returning with their own scores of food to seclude themselves in their own piles of processed goods. As the sun trails through the sky, it deposits the remnants of frivolities into two mounds of their minor leisures, climbing to space in compilations of dreaded conflict.

Hammy’s literal sense of comprehension later inspired the evolution of these junk-yards into compactly-built fortresses for both leaders to claim dominion. They’re constructed with great sturdiness and color, flashing the reds of soup cans and yellows of bargained boxes. In each piece of cardboard and metal, there’s kept inside a single serving of angered tenacity, but also a few grams of trepidation, waiting for the opposing team to just make one score that raises their fort to the heavens. Both forts host a flat roof for utility as a battlement, and four pillars hold the corners together like castle walls. Boxes become buildings, and buildings become cities, founded by the investments compounded from the labors of the workers at their command. More boxes. The food tucked inside sees less use than the containers themselves . If anything, they add more weight, and more mass, to reduce the permeability of the buildings, especially of the outer walls surrounding both territories. 

Such metropolis could’ve been used to fill Vincent’s cave ten times over, but instead went to the construction of these bestial things.

XXX

When it comes time to take leave for the night, the sun stubbornly insists on being the only celestial object over the land. The moon has to thrust it out of the way to commence. 

Even at these dim hours, it goes on. And this clashing of paw-to-scale takes to the suburbs in between each addition to the height of the fortresses. The animals ravage two creaky neighboring houses, both claiming the single bush RJ and Verne fight in from the front yard, and leave in a dying slog.

Two old men - with suits of red and blue respectively - exit after discovering what hideous acts were underway. They badger their words and strangle them tightly around the other’s throat immediately and without a second thought. RJ and Verne put on a similar performance, jabbing their hands into faces and rustling the leaves of the spiny bush, while their workers drag themselves away.

"Damn you, Mr. Blutarch!” the red-suited man swears. “Why must I stare at that hideous shack you call a house every time I step out the DOOR!?"

"You’re a filthy wretch , Mr. Redmond! And you’ve certainly rubbed that filth off on your garbage dump of a household YOURSELF!"

XXX

Just as the moon came in, the sun thrusts it out right back.

Now, the next morning, RJ feels his own temptations tempted long enough. On top of that, he shares one mind with the preexisting food stash packed together at the group’s site, left in unclaimed land between the forts of both teams. He senses its insecurity there. So he lifts a leg up, and begins to climb. He scales the reds of soup cans and yellows of bargained boxes. He scales all of Mt. Feeds-a-Lot, and reaches the heights of twisted trees. Metals crinkle and clank under his feet. Then, he removes the Spuddies can, which acted as a flag on the very top.

It's like he took the jem off the pedestal. Right when he whistles himself away, Verne comes to scavenge his own share from the bottom of the mountain, coughing and ensuring the secrecy of his shifty act. The smell of a raccoon’s fur remains clouding the stash, and soon, a turtle’s scales join it.

“This is your 3rd loan today,” Heather frowns at RJ in the backroom of the bank cave. She sits behind a cardboard desk composed of disassembled snack boxes, guarding the stash of consumable wealth locked up from their efforts on the previous days.

Vincent’s cave sure did make the perfect place for double-dipping on a commitment. Stocking it chock-full of goodies now behind Heather and her desk, in that vault, only to withdraw the fruit basket of these efforts at a moment’s notice. RJ takes one stick after another out of the tower, and more falls into his hands. Right now, they’re empty. But they long for more.

“I know ,” RJ reiterates. “But between you 'n me, I'm kinda in a tough spot here, y'know, a 'pickle', if you please…”

That’s not to say he doesn’t already have a big stack of stuff at the curtain entrance.

"... psychologically speaking," he finishes. 

"I’ll say."

Outside of RJ’s knowledge, the porcupine kids are busy vacuuming up the rest of the food on Mt. Feeds-a-Lot beside the Log, under Verne’s supervision. As the mountain gets smaller, their bags only grow larger.

“They're 965 steps away.” Verne keeps watch over the competitors from afar, aided by binoculars. By the time they arrived, it’d be far too late to conceal their act. Luckily, the whole length of the Hedge remains between them. RJ and his two associates march down on a promenade, and have their images fester stronger still in the lenses. “964 steps. 963. 962-”

“They ain't hosey-mosey-ing down here,” Stella snorts. “C'mon, they step faster than that .”

"Mammoth steps, Stella."

"How do you know how big mammoth steps are-?"

"SHH. I’m old."

The vacuum hoses of the kids suck up the pile of food layer by layer. Eventually, the giant bags in the back explode open and pour the food out into a mound not too much different from what they started with. In fact, it only produced more of a mess. The boxes, cans, and bottles now made themselves into some rainbow godzilla vomit instead of a rainbow mountain (still just as colorful, but far less appealing to look at).

Tiger is the first to panic. He unwinds the rabid doll having a spasm inside his head, and calmly paces up to Stella. Then, he very limpidly taps her on the shoulder to usher her attention.

So Stella turns around and, at the disaster, blasts her palm out as a reflex and thrusts it into the side of Tiger's head, knocking him to the ground.

“OW!”

Verne turns around and, before he can barf the same reaction onto Stella, she feels it very fitting to clobber him in the face as well.

" Ow… "

Stella hurries over to assist the porcupines while the other two are crippled on the floor. “How many steps, Verne?”

"9…50. 949. 948…"

“Let’s clean it up before that fat mammoth gets here!” she calls.

Verne sits up and watches them all bend their backs and straighten their arms to pick up each item one-by-one and transfer them to the mass of their fort. With what RJ was compiling, he likely wouldn’t even notice this long-kept bundle disappear from his greedy eyes. Verne grips his fingers tightly. “Keep up the wooork …”

When once again departing on a new mission, RJ reads over the profiles he wrote of his team on the posters, scribbling additional notes. “Gotta max out business…”

The supply of the food in the backroom of the cave starts to go dry that day, leaving it exactly how RJ found it at the start of the month - full of dusty junk and reeking of bear grease.

Verne checks his profiles in the same way. “ More efficiency…”

What remains of Mt. Feeds-a-Lot comes down too.

“And more results!” they proclaim simultaneously.

One inch. RJ adds it. Verne adds two to his fort. Every two Verne adds, RJ raises his by three. While much of the site goes lax, their labors never do. The state of this place returns to more of a degraded version of their primitive lifestyle. Outside the fortress walls secluding their motivations, trees only crowd the forest floor, and mud moistens under the shade. It’s like reverting a whole year’s worth of progress and transmuting it into one day - condensing smoke into brick, weighing down the earth at only two distinct locations of value, leaving the rest to be dead and unfertilized.

Team Oak prances the long road up to the entrance of Vincent’s cave, through a long, wet cavern and then the exterior staircase leading to the platform of the cliff. "I'm a turtle !” Verne hustles his marching deadbeats. “You're better than this ! High knees, high knees!”

Spike collapses on the stone-carved stairs right then. “We… HAAAAVE none .”

"Our legs are shaped like marshmallows , Uncle Verne," Bucky tells him.

"But brown and filled with toothpicks," groans Quillo. 

They extract their share from the cave and group at the bottom. The porcupines have their backs loaded with heavy goods like a ball and chain, and can barely walk. Unlike most cats, and under most circumstances, Tiger can’t even land on his feet , making his back suffice when falling onto the ground behind them. One big bruise is left on his cheek, courtesy of Stella punching him to the ground earlier.

Millions more idle complaints scrunch the ridges of Verne’s face. They orchestrate their talks of boredom, and great strain, behind his back. His neck tingles more than his tail. “Hey, I’d bet you RJ’s off in his little scheming corner , scheming up ways to burn you out . Who knows! He could’ve poisoned you all with those jelly donuts you ate this morning. I always say: If it’s too much sugar, it’s too sweet to be true.”

“Ah,” Tiger intervenes while currently upside-down. “I am gracious that you have provided me with an EXCUSE for feeling like a jelly donut.”

Behind the masks of their exhaustion, the paper burnt out and away, Verne scans the loyalty and intent kept held in their eyes. He tenses his lips, and flashes the Log back through his mind. Seemingly, they know their place well - his team. They’re at his side, and the Log’s, and deep within their hearts, there’s one label they share. “ Come on , guys… we’ve got foraging to do.” He reiterates this in a plea: “ We . Are . Foragers .”

Inside an empty kitchen, RJ has Heather gather pantries full of cans from the shelf of a tall cabinet spanning from floor to roof. “C'mon! Work that tail, work that tail!” he pounds at her.

By the end of it, when she hops all the way down, her tail goes completely limp in her arms like its muscles were removed entirely, becoming just a wet noodle behind her. Her shoulders are only so broad to carry a load like this. Absolutely drained throughout her whole body, she sighs, and goes to consult a pen pal by sitting back against a pale vase on the floor and pulling out a letter and pen. There she writes:

‘Dear pen pal,

Remind me to slap RJ later. Y'know, once I can actually move my tail again.'

She tosses the written letter behind her and over the wilting plant of the pot. Hammy receives it on the other side. He gets his own letter and writes only the following:

‘Dear pen pal,

I think I need a nap.’

He throws it back over to his pen pal. Heather receives it, and the snoring she hears immediately afterward prompts an eyebrow raise. HAMMY of all people is the one to collapse from exhaustion on the other side of the vase. Heather goes to pick him up and carry him out of the house herself.

Out there - out under the blinding, burning sun - RJ’s watch scolds him. Their efficiency has proven worthless, for what they’ve compiled pales in comparison to the full lap the minute hand made. “They chugged the VERY last sports drink in the cooler!” he grunts, only intended for himself. “They should be more needlessly hyped up than Nascar fans . What am I still MISSING?!”

“Honestly…” Heather’s spine fails her, breaking the rhythm of her body, throwing every step off-beat with Hammy napping in her arms. She nearly crumbles behind RJ, in the sandstorm sweeping her away from his concern. “Gotta say… I think a nice, unstressful break would help.”

Her comment clogs up his brain with its own dune, and aches him immensely. “AGH ! If we so much as tiptoe our teeny, cutesy paws back a bit-”

“-he’s gonna pull a mach 5 like it’s the Indy 500!” Verne tells his group at the foot of the cliff.

"But!..." RJ admits it: "You’ve tempted me."

Verne fiddles with his fingers. "I guess, maybe just, ehHhH hhh …-"

"-One day?"

"-...wouldn’t hurt ?"

Heather flings Hammy out of her arms and throws them up to the sky. Tiger suddenly returns to his feet, flipping rightside up. With the opportunity, the stars realign again. They inhabit their forest site together, at once, as a family .

Despite their pause, each day of this week continues to glare hotter against their skin like a combusting furnace. Relaxing is what both teams do, or at least attempt to do so, but insist to remain on their own land. The food forts stand strong, and pillar the site. They remain within the outer boundaries - walls, stacked around the premises of the bases, that block the sun from their view. They refuse to let its rays scald them in even a glimpse of peacetime. Some clink glass cups together. Others wade into kiddie pools, inflated and bursting with pink. This leisure comes under one umbrella, which also happens to separate them from each other: resting behind walls, and away from the so-called enemy.

However, RJ secretly assigns Hammy to a “super special quest” making use of these stale hours. He points him out the entrance gate and at Verne’s fort - completely identical in size at this moment in time, but shaped more rigidly and compactly. Inside, the Log is concealed, kept only for Verne himself to hold control of this relic. RJ’s borders the lake, and the willow tree, keeping a keen eye over the rest of this space, and the gateway to the TV set beyond.

RJ enters back into the central tower of his food fort. He sighs, and bends his knees down at something hanging high on the back wall, which is composed completely of cardboard snack boxes. He prays to a chocolate chip cookie, aging but forever young, preserved and glued onto a blank frame at this altar. “Oh gracious Jeffery, I ask you for your strength… Shower upon my handsome face the riches of corporate fortune.”

Hammy joins on his knees. “I will pray with you.”

"You’re supposed to be spying on Verne."

"God comes first ."

"No. Shut up. Go."

The porcupine kids laze about on the flat roof and fling their independent yo-yo’s around. As the watchmen of Verne’s fort, they can’t escape the hot, midday air putting a burning gleam over even the dullest of cereal box surfaces. Bucky, of the 3, notices a certain squirrel sneaking through the perimeter of the land.

" Heyyy ! They’re spying on us!" Bucky tattles.

"WHAT?"

They zip to the edge of the short, castle-like wall and track Hammy, maneuvering himself around, leaning way too far into the whole tip-toeing bit. He whispers each step he takes with a toe. It doesn’t do much to drape the cover of the leaves further over him, but at least he’s got the spirit.

“Alright, ready to roll!” Quillo drags over Hercules’ own hero-sized banana cream pie, with Bucky’s help.

Spike looks ready to slap them both. “We’re not supposed to attack THEM , STOOPID! Uncle Verne said it ! ‘We’re ONLY fighting for the Log . RJ not included, as much as I wanna clobber him in the face.’ He SAID it!”

“Yeah-uh, but who said we’re aTtAcKiNg ? Sounds more like a prank to me,” Bucky snarks.

“Sorry girls, but the ‘troll-train’ has entered the station . Leave it to the men here,” Quillo insists.

Hammy gives a smile and 2 thumbs up aside Verne’s fort, safe and sound. A barrage of banana cream pies bombs him from above. The kids laugh and snort like crows at their posts.

He gives their war crimes no chance to slip his mind. Hammy returns to RJ’s fort, absolutely submerged in fluffy white, and flaps out a sheet of blank paper in front of him. Eye twitching, Hammy unloads a giant cream pie - an eye for an eye - and chucks it down into the paper, wiped from existence. It disappears into the letter, contained as a special package for a special someone . Vindictive, he folds it up into an airplane in a second and propels it forth over the fort walls.

The plane loops through the air before dive-bombing into the mailbox of Verne’s fort. The pointed tip stabs Verne in the back of the head inside the walls, on the receiving end of the hollow box. He takes it.

" Oh brother…"

Indifferently to the delivery, he unfolds it crease by crease until the paper is stretched flat in front of his face. In a second, a giant cream pie flies out of the blank letter onto him, not budging him an inch.

So already this day of ‘rest’ appears to be short-lived. Hammy’s pie strike on Verne prompted some new alertness in his agenda. He carefully observes every inch of the food city they’ve built, and calculates its size relative to RJ’s. Stella and Tiger follow his lead regardless of their break time - the latter only for the sake of the former. Verne has them continue to reinforce the structure of the main fortress, transferring some smaller structures over to amass an impregnable tower RJ could only scheme of. It gains warmongering capabilities.

RJ had barrels of Ultra Mega Cheese Balls delivered by a truck to his mailbox in droves for him to stack up into an unbeatable tower on the roof of his fortress, much higher than Verne’s. It irked the turtle.

Any opposition to the next fated meeting crumbled underneath the height of the single-stacked, swaying towers constructed atop the forts, breaking out of the treeline and into the atmosphere. From their peak, any jump would be deadly . If they collapsed, it’d certainly mean catastrophic damage to the food towns below. They stand tall instead. A can of Spuddies, once marking the top of Mt. Feeds-a-Lot, a relic of the past, flags the top of RJ’s tower, as if he’d stolen the whole mountain and its glory itself. Verne’s fort boxed off the Log, controlling the centerpiece of their entire civilization. Verne’s concern over this fight was flawed - refusing to fight , on the rowdy side of the coin. RJ’s logic was flawed on the other - fighting for peace and abstinence from conflict.

But in the end, the brewing tides of war were inevitable.

On the top platform of the fort, Stella watches Verne burn his eyes out while he stares forward painfully. “Well? Somethin' good catch yuh eye?”

“Shh, it's a staring contest, Stella. My entire day's worth of ego is on the line.”

On the other fort, RJ lets his eyes pop out of his head before he dares to blink, but stalls his thoughts in the tension.

“So you’re done backin’ outta this?” Stella confirms to Verne. “We’re gonna have tuh fight some fat sandwich-snobbin’ truck drivers in the end anyway. Why be so scared to fight now ? I’ll admit, some silly staring contest is a bit soft , dontcha think? What’s it gonna solve ?”

“Just… keep… patience,” Verne slips out his teeth. “Once THEY strike first, we can take their fort out, act all repentant later, and pin all the blame on them in the end.”

“Y’know, I coulda sworn we had the day off ,” Lou thinks aloud.

Hammy shunts RJ out of the way and stares down Verne without effort, unmoving and relaxed as a couch pillow. The dumb grin he wears sends the veins in Verne's eyes bulging with red. And he never blinks.

But Verne finally does.

“Aw c'mon that's cheating !” he shouts. “He can blink so fast we can't even tell WHEN he does it. Can we get a coach on this? ANYONE?”

RJ flattens his dull speech to a monotone: “I pick fantasy football teams better than you. Get over it.”

Verne feels his eye twitch, and they remain at a standstill for a while.

The good ol’ megaphone comes out in RJ’s hand again. “Hey Veeeerne ,” he drawls, listless and sour. “How many days left ‘til winteeeerrrr ?”

“RJ, I will POKE your eyeballs out-!” But then again, the mention forces him to compute the math, only to satisfy his own urges. “Wait now that you say it , that would beeee two hundred twenty-”

A stream of water squirts over his face from a water gun, sniping him from the distance between the forts. Heather and Hammy crack up quite literally, restraining the yolk of their laughter from spilling.

“YOU COUNT SLOOOOW!” RJ sends over. “Here's an easy one: How many days ya got 'til I kick your big BE-hind?”

“Uhh, zero ?”

“Great job, Verne! YOU get a Jolly Rancher.”

He passes one over. Verne stares at it in his hands and grins like a kid. “Oh, thanks-” Another squirt comes upon him again.

“GUL-LIBILITYYYY !! When'd that shell get so SOFT, huh?”

Verne takes these incessant shenanigans no longer, and finally heaves out the order: “ FIRRRREEEE !!”

RJ turns to Heather. “See what'd I say, ‘Miss Pacifist’ over here? We’re not fighting if THEY strike first. Now we can take their WHOLE FORT down, AAAND every dictionary I’VE got calls it self-defense . How’s that sound?”

“Oh yeah? What's step 2?”

“SELF-DEFEND!!” blares Hammy. The rain pounds hard over their heads. That is, rain of plump cakes , puddings , and frozen microwavable pizzas. He pounds a buzzer alarm, now blaring away, and follows RJ down the fort to a balcony not far down from the roof battlements. Heather leaves the boys, traveling the rest of the platforms to ground level.

In the midst of the battlefield, against a tree trunk, Ozzie’s busy flipping through some random book with one leg over the other. Whatever’s going on in front of him drowns itself out from his carefree, isolated mind. He’d learned his lesson from last time . Though, even last time he didn’t quite have a say in the matter. His existence itself was problematic, so he sought to remove it as much as possible.

To his left, Heather stumbles in. “Dad, you might wanna move.”

“Why's that?”

“Because it’s totally about to rain... cream pies.”

A cream pie splats an inch away.

“Oh my.”

“And jello cakes.”

A fat cake of jello splats the other side.

“What a waste of gelatin delish.”

Heather now pleads for her next order: “ And fish sandwiches?”

Only a familiar banana peel flops on her head in response. She pops off regardless, having another hat instead. “ Yooo-ooo , gimme that dub too!”

They must flee once the whole barrage comes down. With the obnoxious alarm still blaring, even on the roof of RJ’s fort, Heather joins them, panting, and starts chucking food over at Verne alongside them.

The porcupine kids hold no worries against the oncoming attack. “We got this, Uncle Verne,” Spike reassures him at their fort, bringing out a little remote control for the 3 of them to manage together.

The bendy-straw gate of the outer wall on ground level raises and allows a small, robotic action figure, with big muscles and yellow hair, to exit. “ Tiiime to consume an excessive sugar intaaake,” it growls in a voice ridden with masculinity. “AAAND beat somebody uuup .”

The figurine tramples over to the foot of RJ’s fort in a stance ready to punch any perfect face silly. At least RJ gets some humor watching the tiny thing speed across the field. Grunting, its knee joint bends its calf back to kick its plastic shoe into a random box in the foundation of the outer wall. Instead of inflicting any damage, the little robot trips backward and outright dies. RJ chuckles a bit, but largely restrains the amusement slipping past the muscles of his face.

“Was that supposed to happen ?” Verne asks the kids.

“Nah. But we can make it work,” Bucky tells him.

“Bring in Gamma-Red Nine!” Quillo shouts.

The next remote control the kids heave out is larger than a keyboard. 

The gate at their entrance lifts up again, and a dinky red car, with a blinking battery light on the front hood, rolls out. RJ watches it again make its way over. It clinks against the wall, making not a dent in the box of Cheese Squares it comes against. The ensuing laughter escapes like air in a whoopee cushion: “PFFFFFFFFFFFF-”

Suddenly, the car transforms. That little hood flings out and becomes the radical head of a red robot, with pointed, deadly eyes. The car doors expand panel-by-panel into a robust set of arms, and legs to stand on. When it does, RJ’s eyes only continue to drift upward to adjust to the shape of the immense robot figure, armored with the titanium of the blood moon. RJ shoves his laughter back down his throat, and it vibrates and dies in his stomach.

It clenches metallic fingers into a rigid palm and punches straight at RJ’s handsome face. However, it stops just an inch short of his nose. He releases a huff onto it, muddled by the action, and peers over the robot’s padded shoulder.

Turns out Verne stopped the kids from their toying by trying to rip the advanced remote away from them for himself. Once he does, he takes control of the robot in their place, and snickers at RJ. “Watch out RJ, I’m too old to wait for a second chance!… So let’s have some fun with this.”

He gets a jarring level of enjoyment out of it - slashing through towers with a shapeshifting mechanized arm poised as a deadly blade , and scattering the wealth RJ wrongfully stole from his hands. It is pretty entertaining, frankly. Like any child’s dream , nearly. He destroys his kingdom before his very eyes, making sure to save the fortress for last to prolong the calamity. Tower by tower, they come down. Mt. Feeds-a-Lot itself basically reincarnates and births itself again from all the food collecting on the floor of RJ’s land. RJ’s land. Crumbling to ashes, filling Verne’s soul with borderline- murderous glee. For everything stolen from him - Hammy, a chance at Ozzie, their food, their trust - he enforces proper payback.

“Good time for a counterattack,” RJ says. “Got this, Heather?”

“Gotcha covered!” She leaps all the way from the battlement to the ground, and maneuvers the rummage already created by their fight. She leaps over crushed boxes. She leaps over exploded pastries. Over the outer wall, then to the middle of the site, back by the Hedge and far from the action, away from the sylvan rooftop.

This is where she gets a full view of the ridiculousness any tourist would pick up on. Verne's robot terrorizes another town of processed food. RJ and Hammy chuck things at it from the roof, to minimal effect. Of course, none of these actions mean anything. Heather discovers it herself - charged attacks expending their energy, trying to zap the other, only to electrocute themselves in the crossfire. The cost must be far greater than the results. These folks, split in 2, hurl perfectly-delicious donuts for no perfectly-good reason, and suddenly, in the ambiance, Heather begins to wish she had something to snack on.

“Huh. I kinda don’t think this’s what a family’s about …”

Another voice enters her head - a shockingly-precise imitation of her own. “And like, what’re you gonna DO about it, bucko?” Replaying it again, the sender in her head appears to be slightly off-beat, but consumes her state of mind. This being reads the book it finds inside, and copies the thoughts she thought not to speak. “You’re just a kiiiid.”

“Yo, who said that?”

“It’s me, your mental narrative coach!” Her attention’s brought back to the fight. “C’mon, y’know how much RJ totally wants to win this! You can't change this. So just do your part. ‘Play your cards’, or whatever he’d say. I dunno.”

“Welp, can’t NOT trust a mental narrative coach ,” she shrugs. “Let’s do this thing!”

Dwayne, even… He too gets a spectator’s view, popping out of a bush in the neighboring brush wearing a big bunny onesie to disguise himself. He doesn’t think to take action. But he intends to spy as a coyote would (in a big bunny onesie), watching the animals host a whole civil war against each other.

“Well I’ll be gosh-darned . The lady forwards me all the resident notices, and y’know what?” He leans farther through the leaves for a better view. “The only problem I see is how great of a SHOW this is! Wow-wie!”

Heather kicks a foot forward into the dirt to slide underneath a stray bagel whizzing right down from above like a saucer. The fort of Team Oak encroaches on her quickly. She treads far into the desolate field of enemy territory, where shattered stacks of pale crackers lie dead on the ground, and another is crushed into smaller bits under her foot. Over the outer walls, she easily sneaks into the mainland.

Stiff at the back of the main fort, she stays hidden. With the dizzying scale of this monster, the options for contribution seem to be slim. The makeshift materials of the building are packed tightly enough with boxes and cans to injure herself more than any brute force would do. The surface of the walls, smooth and impenetrable, take stealth out of the equation. A can of soda is embedded in the foundation, however. At the very bottom, right beside her head, where one blast would devastate the entire base. Destruction sweeps her hesitation away, and the hype idea bounces from beat to beat.

She yanks the can out and shakes it vigorously to the point of explosion. She sticks it back in the wall, and the result is an entire chunk of food blasted out the side of the fort, covered in foamy soda.

Everyone on top loses their footing from the impact, except for Verne, who pays it no attention while he sits and furiously mans the robot.

“What. Is. HAPPENING?!” Tiger’s ears and eyes practically combust over the quakes beneath their feet, and splatters of desserts, and steaming taquitos spearing into the fort walls.

Stella leans over the edge and finds Heather to be packing the food blasted out of their wall into her 3 arms (yes, the tail is an arm). The presence of her has no place for sympathy in Stella’s mind. Enemies are enemies, and Heather was no exception. “That girl has NO clue why it takes a stinkin’ WEEK to charge this bad boy up, does she? C’mon! I want ALL hands on deck, NOW!!”

As they organize themselves, Stella speeds towards the central staircase of the fort, just waiting for her to run down. As she goes, she mutters to herself, “ Sheeee’ll learn the names of da hills, alright… Burnt on that head like rubber.”

The porcupine kids station themselves at a trio of slingshots attached onto microwave carousels, load up jello, and spin the platforms to aim at Heather.

“There she is!” Quillo exposes her making an escape with their food down below, scurrying over the outer wall of their kingdom.

“C’mon, get her!”

“Free points!"

She’s bombarded across the field with her arms and tail struggling to keep the food from slipping away.

At the gate of Verne’s fort, Stella locks herself onto it, straight ahead - the flutter of little clawed feet across the site, hoping to gain cover inside the walls of Team RPS. The base of Heather’s tail bobs to the sides during her run, waving to Stella for her to track the movement of this figure, and solidify her intent into action.

Taking one toe to home base, Heather gets downed by a clump of jello splashing the back of her head, dropping the food. By the time she can squirm to get it back, her tail already putting in half the effort, someone seizes one of the raisin boxes she goes to salvage. Her lips go dry once she glances up. Stella resists.

Verne adjusts his approach to RJ’s new tactic - using Hammy as a mounted gun, shooting a rapid stream of mixed nuts out of his cheeks. When he runs out, RJ pops open another can and pours them in Hammy's mouth. The stream is endless . For now. Verne squints at RJ’s supply, and with only a few cans remaining, he could certainly stall out the attack. Fortunately too, the nuts don’t have much of an impact on the robot’s shiny armor anyway. Verne even gets it to pose, just from one temptation.

On ground level, it's only a mess of black and white fighting for just a simple box of raisins. RJ installs a new blast of energy into his method, pouring can after can to shotgun the nuts from Hammy’s mouth in bursts. The robot, being pelted, stomps back into the dirt. Verne amplifies the robot’s defenses rapidly, pushing buttons all around, not really knowing what any of them do, but feeling open to risk, as shocking as that is for his character. Everywhere , chaos falls like meteors over the site, and miraculously, the Log faces none of its catastrophic effects.

Heather loses grip of the box. Stella, at last, works up the intensity to point herself back at the girl.

Heather trips backward into the dirt, abandoning her sweet loot. “AaAaAah!”

“Think you’re gettin’ out with yuh hands full ?! Lemme take those off of ya.” Nothing could explain the fiery passion demonstrated in Stella’s visage, the utter madness of it. “Well I am miiighty sorry it had to BE like this!!” She clenches her fists, stressing the veins, a finger on the trigger, damn ready to let loose on the oafish, unfeeling crook.

Her face goes blank when, out of the corner of her eye, the tiny image of Heather cowers back in the grass. Her legs tremble. The thumping Stella feels inside dulls, taking time to assess the situation before her. Where she was in this. Where was she? Taller Heather may be, she’s below her eye-level, and radiating the fear Stella typically thrives on. Something about her face, her open mouth, and the area of her eyes open to trauma, all the white that’s there, freezes her hair, and blows it away to reveal all to her.

“ Heath-uh …” Stella exhales from the depths of her heart, silently. She finds her knees lowering themselves. No stranger, but she surely regarded her as such. A stranger . What overcame her, and how-?

But just then, Tiger appears in front of Stella between them, bearing his fierce, pointed pupils. Him and Stella gather the food and leave after she mounts herself on his back. But before they ride off, Stella takes one last look back at Heather before frowning her eyebrows underneath her hair and brushing her insecurity away, putting on a tough attitude again.

Heather rests in her place, and scans her surroundings, panting. One thing they forgot to grab is a bowl of blueberries, just by her hip.

Up on the roof, RJ depletes the last can of mixed nuts, and their ammunition goes dry. Hammy’s left with nothing to spit.

“That’s it. We need weaponry,” RJ demands. “Whadda we got in the reserve ?”

Hammy pulls his chin down to his chest and unsheaths an entire mythical sword from his mouth. The winds come under his control when it’s put in his grip. Among the tornado now surrounding the fort, just blowing more food away than it’s worth, they’re a zephyr in the middle. The sword attracts these gusts, absorbs them, and shoots them out to attack all around it. A new sense of exposure floods over, somehow… like it was impossible to tell a lie .

Hammy has to yell louder than his typical yelling voice to beat out the winds pounding into their eardrums. “Will this one do? I found it by this weird rock in Ire-land. It’s shaped kinda like a really big fin-ger.”

“ Ehhhh … Can we get something more cartoony and comical ?”

Well well, RJ’s request definitely prompted a delivery. Heather zooms into their faces with a bowl of blueberries and a paintball gun, and knocks the sword out of Hammy’s hand. She passes the latter to RJ.

“Blue-BERRIIIEEEES !” he beams. “ HERE we go!”

He cocks it over the wall of the battlement, and intrigues Verne with this crafty plan… whatever it is. Heather springs up behind RJ and dumps a whole load of blueberries into the open chamber on top. The berries come squirting out of the gun at a rapid rate of fire.

The arm of the robot extends out metal plates that link into a circular, gray shield to protect from the blueberry assault. It’s painted the hue of a deep toxic purple.

Hammy takes his cue to pounce off the fort onto the robot’s newly-exposed elbow. He spins up to the small head of the robot and hugs tight on its neck. Despite Verne’s retaliation, the arms can't bend far enough to reach Hammy, and he pops the entire head off, exposing the wires inside. He rips them to shreds, and the robot collapses onto its knees, to the ground, limp.

“No… no NO!” Verne hammers literally EVERY button furiously enough to smash them into the controller and knock some sense into the dead guardian. A pause the newest spectators take to, his own team watching his robot fall, making idle use of themselves, forces him to lash out. “DON’T LET UP! We can't give RJ enough time to get cocky or else he'll be unstoppable! You know how he is!”

“But we're running out of cream pies,” Quillo sighs.

Bucky adds, “And jello cakes!”

Turning left and right, Spike sees no ammunition around the blank platform. “Whadda we have left ?”

“There's all those worthless fresh veggies there,” Penny points. Indeed, a giant pile of worthless fresh veggies slowly rot and dismember their freshness in the back corner of the battlement, quarantined as far from the frontlines as possible. That sightly stench grows like moss on the shaded cardboard walls.

“Ooo. Ah. They aren't gonna wanna touch that stuff,” Lou says.

The group, united, as a team, nods and heads for the towers.

Plump tomatoes hail down against the front wall of RJ's fort and explode into heavy droplets of red liquid. Him and Heather duck while unloading the endless clip of blueberries from the paintball gun.

Stella preps a head of lettuce onto a catapult made from a large wooden spoon. The first massive boulder she launches slams into the base of RJ's grand cheese-ball tower on the center of the roof. RJ and Heather have to throw themselves to the side to dodge the heavy debris of the falling tower - every barrel of the cheese balls, crushing the living remnants of the kingdom. It’s not all a loss. RJ still catches the can of Spuddies that was resting on the top, and becomes jubilant at that.

Another head of lettuce impacts the side of the fortress and takes a large chunk of processed foods out of the wall, destabilizing them. The cardboard platform of the rooftop battlement tips towards the broken side, bending in the creases and tripping their feet. They fight to stop themselves from sliding off the open edge. The hook of Jeffery’s frame inside the fort breaks loose.

One last lettuce head. Its trajectory differs from its predecessors. Over the site it flies, somehow higher than the rest, but lower at the fall. It comes down over the crumbling roof. Whose head does it clobber… but Heather’s, hitting her off the back of the high fort. She’s too taken aback to let out a peep. Down the total height, every foot, every layer, she falls to the ground.

Pushed it. The inner mechanisms, the gears in Stella’s head, grind together, and bust apart. What automated switch, programming her every move in this senseless battle, flips off, deactivating her voice. “Oooohwww, dat-... I didn’t do dat.” Her arms are so stiff. Even though the string over her head ripped off, she felt attached, but to a new feeling. She slowly backs away from the rest of ‘Team Oak’ as the assault continues, and they continue serving a desire for dominance that they themselves hold no share in. Verne had it all. Her calves are so tight.

From the top, she spins and spins. She bolts back down the inner staircase of the spiral tower, where the grass floor grows closer.

She opens the mailbox on the outer border and peeks through into the world beyond. Heather lies in the rubble of the demolished wall, and besides the large sore she looks to be rubbing off on her skull, she’s fine and well as any Heather she knew was . 

Hammy runs over to help her up. “Are you okay?”

“ Yeah … I hated those brain cells anyway. Too much thinking and stuff, y’know. Usually I’m smarter when I try to be dumb anyway.”

“Oh good, we can give them to Uncle RJ. His head’s like a gumball machine of those little rascals.”

Stella’s sigh of relief pumps her heart again, after going still in that one revealing moment.

Verne yanks her away. “Stella ! We gotta rebuild, come on !!”

RJ flings his teammates right back onto their unsteady feet. “Up , let's go! Stack, STACK, STAAAAACK!!”

XXX

The moon swerves up and punches the sun around the edge of the earth. The sun returns to do the same.

Dwayne plops down in his office with a plate, a tall spray can reading ‘Powdered Toast’, and a steaming cup of coffee. He shakes up the can and sprays sparkling brown powder around on his plate, magically forming into a slice of toast. Licking his lips, he picks it up with both hands.

In a large and petty stamped envelope, a little gift , wrapped in a caustic red bow and signed by Ms. Wright, waits for him on his desk. He stuffs the whole slice of toast into his mouth and yanks up the letter to rip it open. Inside, he finds a multitude of blueprints.

The first is a replica of a hidden cage trap in a patch of grass. Though it’s modified to exclude the torching devices on the bottom that activate when something gets caught.

"No flames ?" he scoffs. "Are we gonna tickle 'em to death? Like we’re running some kinda clown operation now? Eh come to think of it, I’d take the raise."

He looks up, and suddenly, that very trap is sitting on his desk, in mint condition. So he moves on.

The next is a diagram of a bear trap, its teeth described to be strong enough to snare any animal, but too tame to harm any human leg. 

Just like the other, it’s on the desk when he glances up. From this angle, it appears even more harmless than in its drawing.

He chucks the page away. "No. Nu-uh."

Then there’s a diagram of a harmless vermin repellent, posing no threat to any average citizen. 

The can is on the desk. He smacks it off and rolls his eyes. It’s like his mother was packing him safety supplies for camp. They were the handicaps none of the other kids seemed to need. Yet, this woman wanted him to stuff these kiddy gadgets in his pack, just to take up space, providing such minimal and dull usage that bare hands themselves could accomplish. Yeah, why not just punch the animals at that point? Knock them senseless? Anything with a brain could avoid these ‘traps’ unscathed, and considering the animals seemed to steal the brain cells of the townsfolk along WITH their food, it certainly wasn’t a desired approach.

But the last diagram suddenly interests him. Pointless games were over. Something about it distincts itself to him, looking like a cattle prod and a net gun had a destined child. Even sounding out its title at the top of the page brings him great enjoyment: “The ‘TazePro'... '(Beta)'.”

This one DOESN'T appear on the desk right away, muddling him.

Perhaps it needed another glance. Some kind of codeword? He continues on with the fine print included. “'Contains enough voltage to paralyze and/or electrocute small animals… with no harm to the public residents'.” At that he laughs. “We-ell no harm to the public residents, of course!” He comes to a mutter: “But if I ever pass those jerks from jury duty again-”

A single flicker of electricity comes from the end of the desk. It appeared.

At the circular loop marking the end of a road, and the top of a hill, teams RPS and Oak hide on opposite sides of the street. A lemonade stand waits, parallel to the road. A happy little girl is there, sitting patiently behind the desk, waiting to sell a cup to any lucky soul for a whopping 51 cents . The climate opted for it. High at noon, the sun melts all on her face but a grin away. She stocked her load to the max - several giant, transparent plastic drums filled with lemonade keep their chill from the ice cubes packed inside. A crowd of these things are kept ready behind her seat, taller than the stand itself. Under this weather, it couldn’t be long before some thirsty customers came her way, assuming they were daring enough to place a foot outside at all. And of course, with some critters to boot as well.

Awful heat sends thermal shockwaves through the air. This particularly sweltering day holds no mercy for that which brewed it. In one rusted cauldron, the poor Hedgies must’ve mixed every ingredient from every day over the past week to boil the poison up to this point. The frenzy. The fights. The forts. They mixed them all, and out exploded a searing cloud, fuming and melting with red, that set the day aflame under the harrowing sun.

Some bushes on the right side of the circle make for the hood of the cloak Verne and his team wear. They shroud themselves not for mischievous stealth or a dark air of mystery… but to literally umbrella themselves from the molten rain hailing over them. Inside, the large leaves at least provide some cover from hell’s rays.

A primitive instinct kicks in through Verne’s voice, thirsting over the set of barrels. “That… is a lot of lemonade.”

“Yeah, let’s hope it’s lemonade,” spits Spike.

"We’re not TTTHAT thirstyyy," Quillo agrees. 

Bucky rips over the leaves of the bush to scrape off the drooping sweat down his cheeks. “But it’s soooo hot out todaaay .”

The piercing gleam of ice cubes comes from the top of a full cup ready on the desk, and into Tiger’s eyes. “My… if only just a glass …” He begs for it with an eager paw.

Verne scans the area further. That glass of lemonade Tiger’s looking at does seem appealing.

Then he goes solemn.

He discovers RJ, Heather, and Hammy in an opposite bush on the other side of the circle, unknown to him. The raccoon, recently pronouncing himself as a loathsome figure to Team Oak, spies through binoculars at the stand, with additional binoculars held up by the other 2 in front of the lenses of his for extreme magnification. Verne shifts his head to the left, north-westward-bound. Behind the Hedge, the towers of their forts hold a level of erection completely neck and neck . The steaming air dying in the sky rattles the image, and he makes one of an obtainable future to climb for - one lemonade cup , missing from their peaks, that would make or break the entire competition. One cup spelt victory, for him.

The heat goes numb in the furnace of his shell. It doesn’t escape through breathing space, but sifts out the burning into his skin, where it can run wild and pep up his toes. Like a thermometer it pulses to the peak of his top. “Get the cup.” Pushing Tiger along, he panics, “Get the CUP ! Quick, HURRY !”

Tiger lingers in place for a moment, but conforms to the command for purely selfish reason, wandering his way out of the bush. The heat pummels his coated skin without hesitation. Somehow, the human child at the stand is restless . Moisture expels from her body tenfold, but she doesn’t blink. The street is desolate without customers, but she searches, and smiles. 

From the sidewalk, Tiger takes a concentrated breath. He outlines his path. The dashed lines he imagines, that stretch before him, travel the crust of the curb at the perimeter of the circle, swerving to the front of the lemonade stand. He presumes a stance of indomitable focus. Blood cools around his bones, to allow him to assess his trail in full. Following under the curb, he receives sufficient cover from the owl-eyed girl.

Something new enters RJ’s triple-binocular sight: a cat. Tiger crawls quickly behind the curb, avoiding the hyperactive gaze of the child, and jumps up to shade himself beside the sign glued on the front of the stand. Not certain his eyes aren’t deceiving him, RJ fidgets out a signal to have Hammy and Heather lower the 3 pairs of binoculars. His bare eyes paint the thievery of his destined prize.

“Aw great ,” he mocks. “'The cavalry’s here!' Pffft.”

RJ gets a remote control and a large helicopter model, flipping it on and releasing it above their bush like a butterfly. Carefully, he flies it freely high in the sky, out of sight, and lowers it not above the stand but behind, where the stash of lemonade barrels reside. He thrusts the palm of his hand against a green button on the control. Out a hatch on the bottom of the chopper, a hook lowers from a thick string. It links onto a ring atop the backmost barrel’s lid.

"He-heeeeeeh ," RJ snickers. "Go on ‘n take the cup , Verne. We’ve got the barrels handled, don’t mind us ! Oh, no sir-ee !"

Hammy and Heather murmur something unclear to each other, incredulous in their faces. RJ gives the helicopter lift and leans it forward, but the drum doesn’t budge. To great difficulty, it starts to tip backward on its rim, the bottom face coming off the ground, giving micro pebbles underneath the chance to breathe. Then, the hook of the helicopter snaps off.

Heather decides to check in on a very stunned RJ. “Uhhhh RJ ? Ya good?”

"Listen, don’t put this on my resume, okay?"

The tank rebalances itself on the base when it comes down, but the extra momentum rocks it the other way - towards the stand and the fellow tanks, filled fully to the brim with cold lemonade, ready to blow . One top half of a drum dongs into another, and soon enough they prepare to collapse over the human girl. She sees a shadow stretching over her back and makes the grave mistake of turning around. Shortly she screams a bloodcurdling scream and abandons her chair in response.

"TIG'UH!" Stella hollers.

The barrels of lemonade nearly crash over him and smash the cardboard stand into mush. He gasps and flings the cup straight upward before fleeing the area. The tops of the drums land horrifically on the sidewalk and burst open, flooding the whole circle with gushing lemonade in seconds. A golden tsunami unleashed.

Whatever dam this little girl’s stand could be called, RJ’s failed gambit has it collapsed. The length of the street floods into a violent river , sweeping over the concrete and storming down like a landslide, miles a minute. One human providing a tour to another on the sidewalk both stop to watch the rage of lemonade come down the street. On the clean neighborhood map one holds, the gray drawing of this particular street runs down the gauge in yellow. Once the first wave of lemonade slams past the intersection at the end of the slow hill - the finish line - the street signs bust loose and spin around until they latch back in place to appropriately rename it ‘Lemonade Lane’ .

The cup - that one, singular cup of lemonade - lands back down into the new river and bobs up and down as it begins to migrate down the gentle slope of the hill, though a tiny sliver of its contents spill off the rim and into the greater reservoir of the beverage. RJ and Verne now lash at it with their eyes, hyper focused as much as the other, knowing well enough it was time for a stand.

Trailing behind the cup, two ships remain afloat: the broad poster board once advertised on the front of the stand, and the thin sign labeling what was once the stand’s name, with its marker writing washed away. 

With this thirst, and desperation, and the flames of the scathing air powering their engines, both teams fail to live without picturing the cup as theirs. Nothing else fuels them, but again a primitive urge, organized by the leaders they’ve affiliated themselves with. Verne and RJ get them to go after the former and latter signs, shotgunning themselves out of the bushes.

They go aboard, and without hesitation. On the thin strip, RJ figures out what to do with his 2 crew members immediately, no time to dwell with the cup flowing further from their grasp. “Our new target be that cup o’ GOLD , mateys! HOIST THE SAILS!!”

"WE DON’T HAVE SAILS!" exclaims Hammy. 

"If we don’t have a ship then BEEE the ship! We need more knots ! Man the rudd’ar!"

“Aye-aye, sir!!” they answer.

The great agent of lemonade retrieval, in a raccoon’s form, pushes them to the back of the boat, for only one thing powers their engines. They convert this energy, this motive, to kinetic, with Hammy spinning his tail into the water behind them as a propeller, accelerating them dramatically. Heather applies her own as a rudder, pushing the flow against either side of the boat to steer them underneath the dark side of a parked car. Once they reemerge, Team Oak is already on the same plane as them, rowing furiously atop the broad poster board with colored straws as full as their frantic faces.

Rather than contributing to the effort, the kids badger the waters for a drink off the raw concrete. The turbulent, vicious motion of the current doesn’t donate much. Not more than a drip or two makes it through their straw oars. 

“Don’t DRINK that pavement juice, ROW, ROW, ROW!” Verne scolds them.

They meet at the cup in the middle.

Verne thrusts his arm over the stream, at the styrofoam rim of the cup. It slips just a micrometer from his grasp, and sways closer to RJ’s dirty hand attempting to acquire the same. Oh how he wished to wash that dark brown right off and expose the wicked man underneath. The river offers no support but continues to rock the cup unpredictably between them. Verne’s arm strains and quivers, stretching his rough skin like ripping a cooked steak apart. The tip of his finger brushes over the cup. Nearly, he throws himself overboard just to get an inch closer. But then a black, snake-like tail swipes the cup away from him, and swallows his hopes whole.

The way the porcupine kids so threateningly fume at Heather once she secures the cup for herself only cools her with the fan of vengeance for those desserts launched at her earlier. The tops of their heads boil with the smoke of the relentless sun. That, metaphorically and literally. 

The belittling little dance she adds to her bragging notion really doesn’t help. “Totally didn’t see that move comin’!”

“RAM ‘em!” Stella shouts. “This cup’s OURS , boys, or it ain’t no one’s!”

Verne’s entire boat leans back and thrust themselves to the side to ram into RJ’s. The cup jerks away from Heather and lands behind them at the edge of the street… and approaching the gutter of the curb. It sits on the gridded drain, pushed by small bits of lemonade to the very edge, where it is carried into the dark pit.

"NO!" cries RJ. 

He quickly swerves them over, and Heather leaps head-first to grab the cup before it falls into the sewers. Hammy makes a rope from her tail. RJ grabs Hammy’s. He tries to keep their balance on the boat, but slips immediately, lunging them all into the pit themselves.

Before they have time to utter a shriek, before being banished away for good, something jerks back on RJ’s tail. The black abyss lies below, to which they're suspended above. RJ's tail holds him like the chain of a collar, stressing the curve up the center of his back, refraining from subjecting his spine to gravity's claim. Lemonade trickles into the sewers and splashes his stomach from the edge of the gutter. Hammy forms the glue between him and Heather, who bears the weight of the cup in her arms at the end of the furry rope. Half its contents spilled in the process. It held enough inside to pressure her grip still, but diminished in value.

Between the hairs and tan rings, a pair of black hands tugs strongly on RJ’s tail. A clawed foot embeds itself in the concrete of the curb. Its nails run the rough of the rock without a sound. Only the waves of flowing lemonade remain there to drown out no one else but Ozzie’s grunts as his entire body shakes in balance. He leaned as deep as he could into the drain, fearful of further extension, as his footing required a strong anchor from ship to dock to keep the crew from slipping in the current. 

He tugs. He musters the strength to pull them up. Heather manages to glance back at him, and he only responds with the effort of his arms, taking the place of the promising words he couldn’t expel between breaths. The tips of the right foot grind against the block and back on the current. Boat held by the hook of the left. The slight turbulent waves misshapen and bend the bottom face of the board below him. It keeps thrusting forward aggressively. The festering red in his face, and his loss of consciousness, stalls as a result of a hideous crack that darts up his back.

After Ozzie gets them up, he releases his traction, and the ride resumes. He topples over at the rear of the board. The others pick themselves up, and the first thing Heather comes across is her dad’s exhausted body right in front of her, from knees up to the underside of his snout sticking up from his chest. A greater incline on the boat came from the extra weight his limp self added to the back.

Judging by her uncertainty over the matter, it’s clear the responses she planned for this graceous instance were limited. “Wow, thanks… dad.”

Ozzie aches, shoving hard on his spine as he rigidly bends himself upright. “I've just cracked my back one too many tiiiiimes to-day so could we please hurry this UP? And…” With a grin of worthy defeat, he falls flat forward onto the board to relax himself. “You're welcome, Heather.”

RJ gasps when Lou and Penny steal the cup away from Heather with a mechanical grabber. The final surge of lemonade at the back of the stream, the last of the spill, steals their breath and accelerates them, bumping them back into action immediately. Verne’s boat, with the couple holding the handle together in a perfect balance to keep more lemonade from spilling, starts to drift ahead.

Act fast! RJ holds no resentment toward time’s demands. “Spin that tail like there’s NO TOMORROW, Hammy!”

Hammy whirls past Ozzie to the very back and resets himself into position. His tail sprays the water out the back again; the excitement of the water makes an airboat of their cardboard plank. Like a viking on conquest he blows through his horn as glorious as the treasures ahead. “FOOOOOOR TOMORROW-LAAAAND!!”

“‘N YOU two,” RJ points to the opossums. “You’d better work out who’s gonna be my personal harpoon here before I executively nominate Heather!”

“Why are you looking at me ?” Of course, to combat the inevitable, Ozzie’s weak shield against the immediate, anticipating eyeballing he gets from RJ is crafted from pure, flimsy innocence. “I-I’m completely unbiased here!”

Heather, having rolled her eyes as he said that, even more innocently locks her fingers together against her stomach and fiddles with them awkwardly in the silence. The other boys still stare at him.

After a second he admits, “A smidge biased.”

Verne takes his spirits to the high seas once Lou and Penny begin to reel in the loot from the solid, metal length of the grabber. “Steady there,” Penny warns as the relentless waves bully the hull of the board and shake the cup while they hold it carefully over the side.

Something grabs onto the cup and nearly hauls the porcupines right over. Ozzie’s extended arms drop the plank between the ships, the rest of his body being held stiffly horizontal over the river between both boats now jarringly closer than they were before. For a second, they looked like one united group again , and surely they would from just a bird’s eye view. Those hopes were sullen anyway.

“Ozzie?!” Penny blares.

Lou stares him down. "Looks like it’s grown-up... to grown-up."

"I did NOT ASK FOR THIS!!" Ozzie squeals at his face. 

RJ yanks back on Ozzie’s legs from his ship, keeping the ‘personal harpoon’ part a sure promise. A little spills out the cup. The porcupine couple resists. All hands on deck become all hands up over each other once everyone involves themselves in this tug-of-war. They jerk back and forth on their representatives, their pawns of the matter, until solid rubber crashes against Verne on the bow. A car tire blocks their path, killing all momentum for Team Oak. The ship of Team RPS continues stubbornly onward with the flow of the river, ripping the cup out of both the grabber and Ozzie’s grasps, spilling half its contents and plopping into the waters. Ozzie’s left with no one to cling to, and falls in .

The cup slowly veers up to RJ from the side of the board, and he catches it with fidgety hands. “WOOO-O-OO! Nice work ! C’mon, let’s speed it up you two!!”

Heather goes back with Hammy, but finds Ozzie to be caught up in his own wave behind them. She doesn’t speak, but watches. Thinks .

The setback from the tire crippled Verne to a point dreadfully far behind the squirrel-propelled opponent. His team shares the same disheartening feeling.

Lou panics. “I- We’re-... We’re slowing dooown!”

“WORSE, Lou, much worse …” Penny gulps. “THEY’RE SPEEDING UP!!”

Tiger doesn’t hesitate to act. He flips back off the board into the lemonade behind them. Stella finds it difficult to understand his aim at first until, standing strong enough in the river to stay on foot, he charges his head like a bull into the back of the ship and launches it forward. He jumps back on just in time, now soaked underneath the stomach in the very lemonade-antidote they cannot seem to secure.

That effort gets them closer , but their valiant acceleration quickly fades. Meanwhile, RJ drifts beyond them at a steady pace, farther down the hill.

“We’re still too heavy!” Verne says.

He looks at his own team, all hopeless and fatigued, and eyeballs the porcupines particularly. The mass of Lou and Penny alone nearly took up half the board, upon inspection. There was a cap on Verne’s progress. Simply, he couldn’t afford to save more assets in desperate times. If a one-many army was what he needed, then this board’s for him to steer.

Verne sighs just as heavily as he described. “Lou…” 

The sight of his countenance injects a smidge of remorse into his blood. As the surface of the lemonade spill glistens in the sun, Verne’s only brought back to Lou, blinded by the environment.

“Penny…”

Her reaction works the same against him. It tries to shower him in gloom. And in a sense, the waters smear his skin, as the waves of the river trickle against his legs. Though like the river, he travels forth, so the sag in her cheeks, and tilt of her nose, fail to subdue him.

“We’re at our last options , I... Take the kids back to shore. We need you to. We’ll meet back up later. Promise.”

“No need for promises Vern-o,” Lou huffs. “We understand.”

The porcupine family gets dropped off at the sidewalk, with the last of the lemonade passing by. The road becomes just a road again. A damp, steaming aisle of pavement. The tips of their quills drip endlessly in the stuff, the liquid gold, and not a single morsel enters their mouths.

They can’t see his expression from behind his shell, but Stella and Tiger share the absent winds he blocks from them to feel. But with the breeze away, their eyes are allowed to open wider. They’re wider when they watch the porcupines fade away from sight. They’re wider side-by-side, mind-to-mind. A boulder blocks the path. The two come to a consensus , and nod.

“‘ We ’?” Stella clarifies with Verne.

Verne doesn’t glance back. He retains the sulky, focused stare locked onto RJ’s back as their distance gradually shortens. “We. As in, for us ?”

“Now who is this ‘ us ’?” Tiger interrogates, slowly to his ears. “My eyes speak better than my nose … and I only see you . We … are still a family . We were a team.”

Verne now shoots around to meet the couple. The sternness held in his frown gets lost in their opposition, and the opposition shatters the glass of reality over his head. Sternness goes to insecurity. The cuts he feels terrorize his whole body. His support fleets.

“We were foragers ,” Tiger claims. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Team RPS races on. An ice cream man stands at the final stretch of the street on the left, who simply displays awe at the lemonade surging in the street where the wheels of his cart sit. Those said wheels unlock from a large wave of lemonade that comes forth, and the man doesn’t have enough time to catch the cart before it makes its own detour down the steepest slide of the hill. It tips and crashes over, the lid on top breaking open and exploding with an iceberg of strawberry ice cream in front of RJ’s boat.

With no time to react, he tries to swerve the front of the boat to the right and out of the way. But that only leaves the back half to get stuck in the ice cream - Heather and Hammy’s half. The board quickly snaps in two, entirely from the waters still shoving it through, and RJ departs to continue flowing while his team is left abandoned . But he still has the cup, and therefore doesn’t falter on the event much, staring ahead.

Heather and Hammy just stare ahead at the back of his stone-hearted head. Their ears droop low. What emotions they muster in the moment don’t spring their enthusiasm. They sink down, and the ice cream melts against them, like their attachment as a family, a team… foragers , sizzles under the heat. Their chins sink the same.

“Bro, he… he really just left us,” Heather says. “No words , just… He so coulda made it interesting , at least . Buuut he didn’t . Nope. Nuh-uh. Gone-o-rama.”

“I’m starting to think we’re not getting any lemonade today.”

Ozzie keeps his nose in a good book as the lemonade carries him and the lounge he’s found in its rhythmic flow. The unfracturable will of nature (or whatever) drifts him into the pile of ice cream with them, chilling his fur.

“Just between us sweetheart,” he whispers to Heather. “I’m all for moving homes, frankly. But if I spoke it, I’m sure I’d only be fueling the flames they've ignited. The heat is un bearable today! So I’d just really, REALLY rather not get caught up in…” He motions to the sheer ridiculousness of the river. “... this !”

"Yeah yeah, I think I get whatcha mean now."

Verne sails alone on his boat now, paddling like a scrawny cat around the ice cream obstacle. To his fright, RJ’s made a dock out of the intersection at the end of the path, running down the perpendicular sidewalk of the adjacent road. Once Verne gets there, not soon after, he hops off and storms after him, festering as much speed as a turtle could.

The abandoned, and abandoning members all line up from afar. They watch the lemonade run out of sight, a thousand gallons away from their mouths, some draining into sewers, and wasted on just one cup in the mix - a measure of wealth more than a drink. Their throats are dryer than they were when they started. The ice cream already starts to melt away. Their shoulders slouch down. The kids collapse on the pavement outright, too thirsty to move. Ironic that they were all soaked head to toe in lemonade.

Stella picks out Ozzie first to direct the gnawing teeth of her diatribe. “Well I see you’re just goin’ ‘n PICKIN’ SIIIIDES , AREN’T yuh Oz’!? You’re bein’ that DIRTY MAN’S personal harpoon now or somethin’?!”

“About that-”

“Well yuh AIN’T HIIIDIN’ NOTHIN’!! THAT raccoon’s gone gettin’ away, ‘n OUR man’s lost it too. Verne’d dump us overboard for 50 cents worth of that ‘liquid gold’! 50 cents, Oz’!”

“It was… actually 51 on the sign-”

“We’re all worth 50 CENTS to those two!! We’re disposable as NAPKINS to them! Dude, you’ve got NO RHYME, ‘n NO REASON, to keep goin’ actin’ like you’re OOOOOOH so ‘unaffiliated’ here-!”

“STOP my love!” Tiger throws himself between her and Ozzie before someone (the latter) gets assaulted in more ways than one. “Ozzie, explain yourself!”

“It saved me from doing it-” Heather intervenes.

Ozzie presents her with a twirling hand to agree: “It saved Heather from doing it.”

“-Which is, check check , kinda like his thing to hold me back, so …”

“I digress . It seems to be that I am just… here , among you. Is this what you're fighting for? Is this your fight at all? Is THIS what you WANT yourselves to BE ?! Chasing day after day , fighting over CRUMBS you can’t even eat, when you could be gathering a FEAST for yourselves, together as one ! This very instance is NOT a retribution! NONE of you are at fault. A feast … just a feast . Tell me.”

Again, head-to-toe in lemonade. It drips off their fur, staining them all from the waist down in the very best case, but Ozzie remains as the only one to be turned completely yellow. With the least involvement, he’d somehow been hit the worst by the spill. He shows a firm posture nonetheless, amazingly appearing unmoved by the ordeal, while the others quiver and jeer the afternoon in their low heads.

Stella comes back to glancing at Heather, and is reminded of some painfully-recent regrets. Her skin goes soft for one second underneath those black hairs, then ready themselves immediately again, when her thirst is the first to end.

“The guy’s right …” She now infuses her temper. “The guy’s RIGHT! What is all dis for?! We fightin’ for our HOME, fellas?!” As a little correctory note, she points to Heather and Hammy. “Not you 2.”

Heather and Hammy back down a bit, with some insult dealt.

“Or are we alllll gonna stand here ‘n act like we’d kill ourselves for a stupid glass o’ LEMONADE?!”

“ Ohhhhh I dunno, I'd die for some lemonade …” Hammy humbly objects.

Heather baps him on the head softly. “I’m staging a rebellion,” she then says.

“Honestly girl,” Stella starts. “You’re cool ‘n all, but you still gotta finish rebelling against your dad before you step it up to the big world.”

This jolts a bit more vocality in her, as she sweats in the heat just as much as the others. “Well OKAY then, I’ll just back my butt up into this angsty little ice cream dump over here, cya later…”

Stella tries to take command over them, just like their leaders did. “Fellas, I am staging a REBELLION! We have been OVERWORKED, and pinned ourselves against each other long enough ! Part of it’s probably MY fault! I pushed Verne towards it! Fellas-!”

Sudden commotion runs off the rails.

Ozzie clenches his nails against his ears and screeches his say into the mix: “Hush! Hush ! HUSH, for the LLLIFE of you!”

He shoves his words into their jaws to silence them. Stella stops shouting overhead the podium she’s made of Tiger. Heather stops backing her angsty self up into the angsty little strawberry ice cream pile. Hammy stops trying to lick the dampness of the lemonade off his tail and puts his tongue back into his mouth. Only now he chokes up his entire soul on a bit of fur he picked up along the way.

At this point, Ozzie’s just trying his best to conserve his battery. “I want nothing to do with this ! Truly. And so long as my daughter is sound in my sight, and I have the quiet to HEAR my own thoughts …” He puffs a stale breath. “...it’ll stay that way. Please… be a family again , if it’s not too much to ask for once this week while we’re standing here DRENCHED in lemonade, with somehow not one drop to drink in what 90 degree weather we’re having?”

“IIIII am still kinda thirsty,” concedes Lou.

Penny disregards all sense of proper grammar. “Same here, there.”

“Ozzie’s right,” Tiger narrates. “They are, at present, scorching themselves in their own rays. We've tackled over a single beverage those two 'RULERS' never intended for us, or themselves, to drink!”

Stella chuckles. “Yea-uh, I’d prefer if we tackled in a nice, cold swimming pool instead-”

Tiger thrusts a paw in her direction, the tension so high that any stray comment ruins his moment. “WE ARE NOT WHO WE USED TO BE! And we will not continue this foul path! So that cup is something we must now remove from our sights . NO MATTER who’s leading us. Once that is done, their intentions WILL become true. Let us END this kerfuffle, my friends, for TODAY, we hold PEACE FIRM in our GRRRASP-!”

Heather violently performs the heimlich on Hammy while his choking continues. It’s magically cured when they go to give the others the big thumbs-up.

Stella digresses from the situation. “What my man’s tryin’ to say is ‘LET’S GO ’!”

The hairs on the back of Ozzie’s head start to rustle. He confronts the force of something new he feels brush over him from the horizon behind them. “ At last we feel the breeze .” It carries their legs forth, together.

XXX

Verne carries himself along the sidewalk, tripping over nearly every stray pebble, witnessing his nemesis disappear further than his legs can manage. But he fights hard .

Even when RJ presumes he’s in the clear, out of nowhere, a newspaper flies over his nose and slaps his face, turning the world into a colorless string of huge boxes and numbers wherever he looks.

“OooOOOoo,” Hammy utters ghoulishly. “It is I, the ghost of SudokuuuUUuu! Fiiiinish me RJ, FIIIIIINISH MEEEEE!”

RJ roughly flings him and the paper off his face and straight to the solid ground. “AGH! What is with you?!”

He finds his hands empty of the prize. Verne leaves the sidewalk ahead of him with the cup to run through the shaded side of the nearest house towards the backyard, and the brim of the Hedge visible at the end. RJ growls.

Heather and Stella are one step ahead of Verne, with cans of Wacky Whip prepared.

“ Aaaaaand done.” Heather completes her drawing on the ground while Stella leans back and watches against the orange bricks of the house. She backpedals to Stella’s flank. A puddle of whipped cream in the shape of a quadruped turtle in the grass smiles at them.

“Hmm. We’re pretty good, girl,” Stella nods.

“Bob Ross, take a look at me nowww.”

They clink the caps of their bottles together. Heather proceeds to stuff the cave of her mouth with whipped cream while Verne, prowling carelessly with the cup, slips forward on the puddle and faceplants into it, flinging the cup forward.

When he lifts his face out, he shakes off the smiley face of cream obscuring his view. The cup anchors his eyes near the back corner of the house. None of the yard behind it is yet visible. That edge the cup sits on curves over and down, with the sun pressing it in, suggesting a considerable slope right past the cup’s place.

He takes himself as fast as he can to chase down the cup. RJ rams into him at just the same time, and both amass their hands on it. They fight over it like the last cookie in the jar, RJ and Verne.

“I NEED it!”

“It’s MMMINE!”

Ozzie releases himself from a tree branch leaning above the side of the house and holds a palm out in front of RJ and Verne as they hurry to the edge, every hair tinted with the yellow of their doing. Out comes a powerful shout: “HALT! I command it!”

Instead of halting, they run their arms right into him, throwing all 3 over the mud on the top of the grassy hill into the backyard. Ozzie’s left on the ground, with RJ and Verne caught like a net together, sliding down the hill with more lemonade spilling out, their limbs and tails picking up hidden metal bear-traps in the grass along the way that bite at them and pierce their skin.

A large rock knocks them up onto the center of a trampoline at the bottom of the yard. They sink in, stretching their skin further, increasing the tension of the fabric beyond undoing, pulled deeper into the inescapable depths of the dome, prompting them to gulp once the motion finally stops.

They fly up, and the cup leaves their united hands just as quickly as it swapped hands prior. It heads into the stratosphere as RJ and Verne bounce lower and lower, fighting in the high air, before landing limp on the base of the trampoline. They lie against each other in the aftermath, adding purely ugly , uncouth colors onto the center of the black fabric.

“Just for fair warning…” Verne huffs. “I could tackle you.”

“Not if I do it first .”

The last sprinkle , the FINAL one, of lemonade comes spilling back onto their faces, washing their need for authority off. The cup lands in their laps afterward. They both reach to look inside. There’s absolutely nothing left. Not one drop.

Their ‘teammates’ crowd around the trampoline and re-enter their brains in a swarm. Before RJ and Verne were harmed a scratch, the fur of the others already felt the lemonade drench over. Not a single one of them fuses their feelings with the juvenile joy of the sun, laughing mischievously over them.

What’d any of it do ? Every leaf burnt half its bones away. The porcupines stand an extra step of distance from Verne, forced into shadows before they’d think to go lost. Out of all the visages seen here, now, a glimpse of loyalty remained on their lips, but it was shoved back into their clenching teeth. Stella and Tiger force themselves further in contrast, one step closer in the grass, and search now to follow up on their vigilant action - to stomp the ruler further into their responsibility. Heather and Hammy carry extra flakes of melting ice cream to boot, pink and an eyesore over their bodies, coming from an unattended risk in their duties.

Ozzie, still a benign figure, saw his worthfulness squeezed like a lemon into the river itself, then flung away. He’s upfront, ahead of the pack, taking with him the neutral authority to confront RJ and Verne over their misconduct, and their neglect to what was once a ‘family’ in practice, not just name.

With the metal traps from the yard latched onto them, RJ and Verne suffered more ultimate pain than the victims. They’re kept from the audience, but not on a stage, more like a backlot disaster quite crass. Verne states it as clear as a fish bowl of glass: “Were… we gonna stack an empty cup on those forts?”

"We're freaks."

" Food freaks."

In the dead of night that day, Dwayne invigorates the languid air by switching on the radio in his mobile commanding base - the officially-assigned Verm-Tech truck. Funky music puts the boogie in his tapping boot. He flicks open a spotless silver case on the dashboard. In it, he picks out a pair of black glasses by the arm, having lenses tinted a voltage blue.

Once he plants them onto his face over his regular glasses, nothing in his line of sight can be hidden by the darkness. The suburban landscape alights like a retro screen. Leaves of bushes wave his way, fully rendered in this night-vision view. 

He juts a black rod out the open truck window. Attached onto the forked muzzle, a form of electric generator is supported underneath the end of the barrel, wires wrapped around a thin metal arm holding it. Once flicked on, the generator produces neon blue sparks at the barrel’s exit. It emits a high, ringing noise whose pitch slips up the accelerating slope of a slide.

The gun picks its target, being a stone statue of a decorative cat on a marble pedestal at the entrance of a front yard. It unleashes a blast of blue electricity onto the figure from the truck. The jolt explodes on the object, and sparks surge around its surface, lingering before fading away.

Down the whole street the truck makes its trip, while the electric door gunner continues its fire on anything resembling something of its desire - from an inflatable giraffe, to clay frogs on tiny pond shores… to a plastic flamingo. They leave no dents or damage , stinging instead from the inside . What true power lies in each shot is yet to be discovered. They could precisely pierce the skin like needles and infiltrate in an instant.

The radio beats along to the shots Dwayne takes, and he follows the lead of the lyrics in turn: “Life is goooood … Feelin’ greeeaaat … Put a big steak hoagie right on my plaaaate -”

He kills the radio and slams the brakes on a whim. He weaves to the side of the street in this moment as well. He knew he saw it. That speck trailing to the upper rim of the tinted lenses over his eyes. Movement from the scrawny figure stuck out over the skyline, apart from the chimneys. It pinpointed itself to him, and now it wouldn’t escape. He immediately shuts off his headlights to hide the position of the truck.

“Squirrel?”

Once he pops his head out the open window, he finds just what he’s looking for. Through the aid of his night-vision, Dwayne uncovers this rooftop scoundrel far down yonder, on a particular house separated from him by another row of residences on the neighboring street, parallel to this one. It would take a whole detour to confront it directly. Instead, he opts to assess the playing field by alighting at the squirrel’s presence and hurrying into action, tuning the truck devices stationed nearby.

“ Infrareeeed …” Dwayne carries out this process after further scouting the squirrel from his obscure position, flicking switches left and right, and pulling down a panel embedded on the roof.

The circular screen on the face of the panel displays a grid lined by green, this radar tracking the life around the nearby vicinity. Everything appears normal with the large, public-resident-hopefully-NOT-the-jury-duty-guys-sized dots scattered inside where the closest houses would be, but then a smaller dot appears. And another. And another. They form and flutter every tick like a swarm of gnats inside the house the squirrel is atop. His grin grows.

In fact, he’s nearly giddy. “Oh look at ‘em squirm.” He tap tap taps on the radar, teasing a fish in the bowl. “If they were tusslin’ over lemonade , they must REALLY be snaggin’ each others’ tails in there, oh-ho- ho! How’s the squirrel?”

He spies on the roof with binoculars, tracking the squirrel toying with some kind of circular, bumpy object, too far to make out. But the patterns of his stagnant finicking attract him more.

“Wait, watch him move . Ah! There … You see his tail’s flapping , not flicking . His foot’s like melted butter on that roof. Wait a minute… yeeeah, his blinking’s twice as slow . Tired. He’s tired ! YYYYYES!”

There’s a sticky note on his dashboard, the reminder written in too fancy of a font to be of his doing: ' Minimize direct force ’. Still yet, he plugs in a dozen cords to hook up a monitor in the back area of the truck. Once it turns on, he gets camera feedback from a drone sitting on the passenger seat up front. 

A tiny red glow comes from the center of the white body, with all 4 propellers revving up to blow slight winds onto the chair. A large orange stripe runs down the middle, over the front of its face, where the small circular camera lens adjusts to the environment. Its red indicator on top continues to glow brighter as it gains lift inside the truck. Mechanical legs jut out from the bottom like stingers of a hornet. 

Cross-legged at the monitor, Dwayne steers it out the window. " Adios . Make papa proud."

It soars into the air just below the rooftops, keeping cover from the squirrel as it whirs down the street.

“This is the chief tuning in to Drone-inator Zero,” Dwayne commands as leniently as a tortoise. “If you could take out that watchtower we'll be havin' a rodeo tonight, and all will be fine 'n dandy.”

He weaves it stealthily through house shadows and lifts it up to the squirrel's roof, stalking from the very edge of the gutter down the slope. Manning it with a joystick through the camera feed of the large screen just like any kid in the 80s would, he deviously whispers, “He-he-he… Like I'm workin' a toy shop gone rogue .”

A friendly robot with a deathly stare buzzes at Hammy from the bottom of the roof. He ambles his head over to greet it, grabbing a look of its boxish, huggable body and little needle legs as adornment. To him, it's a fluttering image to give hospitality. One star gleams above it. The once-ashen surface pales to pure white. It twinkles over the robot and catches Hammy’s attention further, while it hovers up the slope, and then timidly backs down a bit once he begins to speak through his yawning:

"Oh, hello. Here to join our playdate? We’re playing go fish."

Jeffery’s in front of him with a hand of cards in his invisible, baked hands.

The drone hovers closer - an encroaching hunter. Even without Dwayne’s input, it seems to draw itself closer to the squirrel on its own accord . Such a prototype was prone to minor abnormalities, but it created no real alarm.

The lifeless tube aimed at Hammy from the front of the drone possesses its own heart for him to suck free. He pats the nearest brick as the drone eases near. “There ya goo oo , take a seat! We have extra cards. Wanna be friends? I laced Jeffery with pepper spray so I wouldn’t eat him. I won’t eat you! Don’t worry, robot buddy!”

One word. It reverberates into the lens of the camera - “ Buddy… ”

Just a couple feet away, and dying to unleash the attack, Dwayne snags at the prime time. “AHA!!”

He smashes a finger into the net button on top of the joystick. Nothing happens. Nothing comes out of the dispenser aimed forward from the drone.

“Huh?”

The red light on top of the drone fazes out and emerges as green before it goes up to Hammy, arms open wide for a hug.

“Gone- rogue!” Dwayne twists the orange stick every which way, to no response. “GONE- ROGUE!!”

The squirrel grabs onto it and squeezes the thing tightly, rupturing its signal. Before long, connection to the drone fades out entirely. The screen scares a sudden smokescreen of static into Dwayne’s face. An air of dangerous mystery and heart-pounding reality - a lifeline cut under the empty, terrifying ocean - mixes with his feelings of unkempt anger. “OH for crying’ out LOUD !!”

He leaps back over into the front seat, slams a fist on the dashboard, grinds that solicitous sticky note off with his nails, and floors the gas pedal.

“Get the drone. Get the drone. GET THE DRONE.”

XXX

So long as RJ and Verne are out of the equation, it appears to be a reasonable assumption that the whole group is just sleepwalking in an undead horde behind the two. They all emerge from the front of the house and trip over each other to at least reach the sidewalk if unable to manage anything else.

Unseen, Hammy lands from the roof behind the crowd, still hugging his new drone buddy. However, the weight of the machinery proves quite bearing. He struggles to heave it along across the barren street. The others are too busy muttering grumpy, undead things to each other to pick out Hammy’s straining grunts as anything of value. All but Hammy round the side of a house at the very end of the road, the Hedge just beside it, with RJ and Verne conversing in the front of the pack as they gather.

“We need… a unifying force,” Verne conveys to him. “That kinda thing we once had , didn’t we? Us… alllll together … We GOTTA put us back under one lock.”

They turn around and stop. 

Right away they find their ‘teams’ to be gripping onto the very edge. Not a single back stands straight. It is impossible to tell whether they’re more drained or peeved from their efforts, but nonetheless, this insidious strain creeped up their bodies all week. In Heather’s eyes, rubbing such stinging into RJ’s, the story performs itself. Verne sees it too - the fruits of labor are excavated from the buried rubble deep within, and even now, ancient statues crumble still. The statues hold traces of those who assisted in the artistry, only for a living, and not recreation in any form able to be brushed away from the dust.

RJ and Verne face each other as they continue to pace slowly.

“I would say my tail’s tingling but that’d be a bit of a cliche.” Soft Verne speaks of his genuine worry over the matter. “We’re about to start a civil war over this, when we’re already out to get dirt on our hands. We’re fighting so we can fight . SOMEONE’S gonna get hurt.” He shakes his head. “Does ANY of this make sense to you, ‘Intellect Supreme’?”

“Then join US , and we won’t have to fight at all ! Picture it Verne, we could be livin’ the good life… sitting under willow trees …” He anchors Verne by his shell up to his side underneath the cover of his arm. “…picking fresh wieners from the branches … we could have an ‘ol nook together, TWICE as large! With that automatic egg-cracker from those TV ads!” His feet stop the both of them. “Whaddya say?”

Verne tears loose. "I- I can’t."

"Why not?" RJ investigates more tensely. 

Verne’s eyes draw themselves back to Stella’s out of the crowd, but can’t resist the sovereign glow of RJ. In both, he senses the past and future hours of the clock, and bends the arm by trying to break from the glass cover. And so, he loses his ability to finish a single sentence. “You wouldn’t understand what-! Because I-! It’s my-!”

A net gets shot.

Everyone jumps like insects, having flinched at the sound. An orange suit sounds the alert. From his black rubber boots up to the voltage-blue lens over his glasses, the Sniffer stands wide-legged behind them. To that, they left no words aside. Suddenly awakening their motive, there’s a coinciding set of strings, tied at their ends by one master, who erases the past from their minds. What happened the past few days became obsolete. Trapped underneath the crushing weight of his gaze, the Hedgies shiver all at once… but shiver together.

His elbow jutted out, Dwayne carries a new sack over his shoulder as a merry man, trapping just a squirrel and its drone - a traitor to him. Those bugs flail their legs within, to no concern meeting his grin. He backpedals to the street without fear more than dominance. Any attempted movements by the vermin who follow must confront the deadly force of an exterminator’s aim. He points the net gun between each animal that tiptoes further as he stakes his step in the middle of the street.

 “Look at you. Pelts. Scaaales . You folks think I get paid overtime , don’t ya?” With a crowd of animals up and ready to enclose on his boots, the situation contents to the techniques he found most riveting to perform before them: up close and personal. “ No , see… I’m a beast . Your stolen car keys only make me craaave . Rawr! RAWR!!”

His demonstration of a rabid monster knocks them back a foot and has them tripping over themselves. He takes up the chance to stomp ahead and push them back along the path they pushed him.

“When you feeeed me I get hungrieeerrrr …” he growls like the devil. “He-he-he-ha-ha-HAAAAAA!”

Right before the Sniffer feels prompted to choose a first target in the stalemate, and all before him cowering down, a street light from the side of the road bends over Ozzie in the center of their stage. The net gun lowers immediately. There comes an engaging performance to distract the wicked from the pure.

“‘Soft you’…” recites Ozzie. “...’a word or two before you go. I have done the state some service, and they know't.’”

“ Laaaame . Why’s the channel button broke?” Bucky keeps clicking the remote on him rigorously.

The parents hurry them off.

"’THEN MUST YOU SPEAK ’…" he cries. "...‘of one that loved NOT WISELY but too WELL’-!!"

“At least he’s conscious this time , honestly …” Heather snags onto RJ’s shoulder and plows him along with her. The popcorn cup he served himself nice and fresh drops out of his hands.

Dwayne ponders at the symphony of squeaks and squeals. His boots find themselves sticking to the pavement out of confusion. The opossum precisely paints a poignant performance of a lone death on a lone night. The street light’s glow diminishes in a woozy fall, as too does the dip between the corners of Dwayne’s lips.

Ozzie stabs himself with an invisible dagger right to the gut, spewing just-as-invisible blood. If no one knew better, he must ACTUALLY be dying at the moment.

“‘I KISS'D THEE… ERE I KILL'D THEE!! NO way but this!… My own life I take, to DDDIE… upon… a kiss.’ And so, the guilty Othello falls on the bed…” He collapses onto his side. The guilty Othello coughs and chokes horrifically, muscles in a state of seizure. “...and… dies.”

Ozzie is dead. No one else is there to watch, hidden away. At least Hammy claps from the bag.

“Hey-OOOOOOOOOO !” echoes the amplified voice of a teen back at the start of the street. “You ready for a SHOW TONIGHT!?”

“-NIGHT !?”

“-NIGHT!?”

A whistle blows from a set of fingers to accompany the announcement. With the vision of a hawk through his glasses, Dwayne detects a cluster of movement back down the length of the road, and finds the raccoon, opossum, and the triplet of porcupines, once again back in complete kahoots . Unanticipated, to say the least. They shared their slices of provoked pie now, rather than tossing them. They’re all pointed at his face. The winds shift abruptly, and blow the thin hairs on his head up in alert. He quickly slaps them back down into their place. They stick to his skull there only out of wariness and anticipation.

A level of upbeat rhythm comes into play. In a small strip of grass left between suburbia and the Hedge, Heather flicks her mic away and pulls far back on a large slingshot they had lodged into the ground behind the dead-end signs of the road’s end. The kids prepare to launch into action, packed onto the slingshot’s strap.

As Heather lets them fly, RJ twirls a bandana high. “WOOOOOO-HAA!!”

The kids are flung at once at Dwayne in the street, forcing his limbs into shaping himself as every letter of the alphabet simultaneously to dodge them. Once they’re away into the distance past him, they disappear from his focus.

“ABORT!” he cautions himself. “The PB’s slapped the J again. Take the squirrel!”

He turns around and starts to stomp back towards his truck further down the street. Those kids are nowhere to be seen.

Promptly, the Hedgies scatter out of the shadows of their hiding spots and pursue the Sniffer, possibly even jumping the gun as to their approach. RJ’s swift footing allows him to weave through the scrambled formation of the infantry. The trail he runs guides the pack into a more organized approach spanning the width of the road, like a charging herd of bulls setting sights on one red cape. 

Away from the trampling of the crowd, RJ takes an assessment on the Sniffer’s artillery - the net gun, the standard fare, is secured in his armpit, but there’s something… else . Some unidentified gun, black , and strapped onto the back of his orange suit, wobbles in an earthquake of hurried motion. The two silver prongs at the end make it look like some kind of cattle prod (or a marshmallow stick, as another option). RJ doesn’t care to analyze it, for he just keeps running, coming up beside Verne far in front of the others, ironically enough.

“This doesn’t change anything , in case you were betting on it ,” RJ specifically clarifies.

“It’ll change something if we don’t get Hammy back!”

"Truuueee that!"

Dwayne rummages through a pocket on the front of his jacket and collects a handful of tiny square chips, black as the night, and with a dark gray grid inside the center. "What a shocking performance."

He sprinkles two chip breadcrumbs behind him. They bounce with little clinks in front of RJ and Verne, and upon making contact with the pavement, they quickly expand into large squares of electricity blocking their path. RJ kicks the soles of his feet into the ground, scraping the skin, to save himself from an untimely electrocution. Verne does the same, and manages to prevent the heavy mass of his shell from tripping him forward. The sparks illuminating the floor surge in front of their faces, and make plasma orbs from their eyes. Two leaders, rendered paralyzed just as much as they would’ve been had they stepped in. They stare, hyper-focused on the other’s movements, or lack thereof, seemingly preventing the other from acting first in a new mental standoff.

The chess they play with their knees makes a stalemate out of every turn. When one lifts, the other stops them. Both lower right back to their starting positions, before the same occurs again, only applying different joints shifting at different angles. Nonetheless, the fields never dare to paint themselves with the blood they once did. The death trap in front of them becomes obsolete - they clearly weren’t making progress either way . 

Luckily, RJ and Verne also weren’t the only two capable of leading an army.

“Onward , friends!” Tiger’s pupils hiss in predator form. But they also roar in command, herding up the grazers of the land. “Go FORTH!! And have two take the flanks ! LET OUR CAUSE BE JUST!”

Stella jumps onto his back to ride through. “Forgettin’ someone?”

The opossums run side-by-side. “You can count on us to create the ambiance ,” Ozzie ensures,” From the… farthest distance possible .”

All the followers unite to pick up the slack, teaming up for a new field-day race around the remaining traps Dwayne tosses out as he nears the truck. Just as they expressed, Ozzie and Heather divert to either sidewalk around the action.

Dwayne flings open the door of the truck and barfs the net onto the passenger seat. He himself can’t take his leave just yet. Both couples - cat and skunk; porcupine and porcupine - encroach into the vicinity of the massive vehicle. Danger draws its radius. This metal prison before them held no dents, and not a single loose bolt. The truck proves to be a fortress far beyond the playgrounds they built.

His hunger grows. With the 4 animals cautiously circling him, Dwayne snaps the TazePro (Beta) from the sheath on his back to his grip and flicks it on with a finger. Finally, the whole enchilada’s served hot on the plate: Futuristic in style, it indeed holds the structure of a bulkier cattle prod, adapted into projectile form. From the barrel down to the trigger, it takes the appearance of a modified speargun, embedded with a loaded slot on the side for a short magazine already occupying the space. The double-A batteries inside supply all the juice the electric generator needs. Now, Dwayne dual-wields both elemental guns in his possession - net and lightning; catch and sting.

It’s clear to him they weren’t anticipating such a charged defense. That zapping energy supplied at the end of the TazePro (Beta), underneath the forked muzzle, captures their shaking gaze. “Oh this ? I’ll just say it’s like those things doctors use to numb the paaaain ,” he describes for them. “Minus the healthcare costs. And the numbing. But a lot more paaaain-”

Rattle .

His focus diverts by the rattling of mailboxes. From one street to another, 3 rows of mailboxes grid the perimeter of his truck, surrounding the left and right sides. No figures emerge from their dark entrances. But life hides in the narrow walls.

It’s clear he’s entered a defensive bout. He squints closer between them. Rattle , goes the left top box behind his truck. Rattle , goes the right bottom box ahead. The whiff of the closest animals strengthens by one fearful step. Quickly, he shoots 2 electric blasts at the road floor to fend the 4 off. But he keeps his net-loaded arm extended between the sidewalks. His eyes and ears work the mailboxes while his nose senses when the critters draw near. On both sides, the meddling middle boxes rattle, and the rest of the world deathly still. Left bottom , and right top. The feral scent fades away. And then, the mailbox pattern exposes its secrets. The rattles run up and down the road like an elevator. Every other tick, the ends meet on the middle floor - his truck’s own. So, he flicks the net gun between both middle boxes and launches nets to cling over them before they can rattle once more.

Ozzie and Heather ram their befuddled heads into the netted exits in their respective mailboxes, locked within.

“You’ve just been verminated ,” he whispers so boldly, like he’d waited 15 years for the opportunity.

Dwayne, standing there, his nose justified, finds no more animals in the outside air, apart from a squirrel’s scent within the truck. Based on the faded yet prominent state of the others, he suspects those 4 on foot fled the scene to cower at distances farther than his concern for the moment. Must’ve been a sensible reaction to his own intimidation.

Yet those same 4 nod to each other behind the cover of the Sniffer’s truck, bathing (and suffocating) themselves in car exhaust to keep their cover too smelly to breach.

Stella leans herself around the rigid corner to peek at the open passenger door. From this angle, a fraction of Hammy appears as an orange tuft of hair in a hardware store. While inside the net, he does attempt an escape, but the hunking drone keeps the net glued onto the seat, and doesn’t budge. The pattern of the wires is so tightly-knit that he can’t even find a fitting point to squeeze himself free either.

“We’re comin’, kid,” Stella sighs.

In their irises, the blue sparks of electricity leave RJ and Verne’s peripheral vision. The traps disabled themselves. RJ bolts up the street at the chance, leaving Verne to follow slowly in nothing more timely than an urgent trudge . RJ also takes the mistaken chance to glance back at the turtle, and divert himself from the traffic. Before he knows it, another tazing bolt from the Sniffer stabs into his ringed tail, just barely evading the fur of his hip. It spreads up his body and paralyzes him, far too tame for total electrocution. It only has enough voltage to distract his limbs from their functions temporarily.

Verne pulls ahead. Only a second gave him the room to do so. Another bolt zips for him, and he immediately ducks into his shell as a shield. The electricity circles him and pinches at his bare body from the inside out.

“Help.”

Dwayne inspects the empty area. The agitated opossums still attempt to get their puny little claws and puny little teeth to rip through the nets trapping them in the mailboxes, to no avail. He grins. He’s in his truck in a flash - in enough of a hurry to leave the shotgun door wide open. If only he hadn’t cracked his back when lunging to the driver’s seat.

In the man’s unexpected hindrance, Hammy notices some movement in front of his seat, underneath the boxy dashboard. Those white stripes do it for him.

“ Stellaaaaaa …”

Stella hushes him harshly.

“ STELLAAAAAA … DO YOU WANNA MEET MY ROBOT FRIEEEND ?”

His robot friend beeps mirthfully.

Just before Dwayne is able to recover from his inconvenient back issues, the front mirror vibrates and giggles. The smell plaguing the van becomes clear to his nose. Not just the squirrel. Or the car exhaust. He peers close at the bushy pricks sticking out of the mirror’s edge. 3 spiky kids flip it around to reveal themselves, pounding their fists together. Dwayne slowly draws up his night-vision glasses. Alas, the image is the same.

Zapping surges circulating RJ’s hairs come to a calm. His upper body teeters forward like melting clay, and he smacks the palm of one hand against the ground to keep himself up, though his limbs still jerk and shake violently and abruptly for a moment. His entire coat remains puffed out from the shock.

“RJJJ !” calls Heather.

On the left side of the street, Heather remains inside the mailbox. RJ races forward and pumps a pair of wire cutters from his bag to pass up to her on his way to the truck. Heather’s tail makes a meaty catch on the hefty tool and snaps a single wire of the net clean off. Her thin body didn’t need much space to slip out, clean as soap.

Make-believe thunder cracks. Ozzie summons forth a tempest that condenses the clouds of his might, sealed into a full-focused mind. From the crooked joints in his hands, he pulls in the strength of the outside winds to rattle the net covered over his own mailbox, in an attempt to combust it. His brow shoves his eyelids tightly against one another. He commands the thrusts of his arms, booming powerful force at the net, jerking violently in his concentration. A gust sweeps over the cone of his face. He thrusts them back forward again, and the volume of an inner fanfare grows, as does his power.

Tiger pounces onto the mailbox and claws the whole net off. Ozzie allows his eyes to re-immerse in the outcome of his psychic endeavor. Brushing the power off his palms, he nods in satisfaction at his performance. “Mmmmm-hmm.”

With the kids all giving him little, harmless punches to his neck and skull, Dwayne picks out the one on the top of his head and chucks it out the open door, irritated. A skunk appears on the dashboard, cocked to fire right onto his face.

“ Maaaan Heath'uh I’m so glad I saved this one,” Stella notes.

She unloads. Every inch of the interior fills by the first second. The blast packs so much punch it knocks the driver’s door open as well, making a clear end-to-end path for Tiger to leap through the front row of the truck through both doors, retrieving Hammy’s net in his teeth during his valiant act. The stench never fazed him. Landing stoutly on the pavement, he tears back on the framing in his jaw to free Hammy (and his robot friend).

“I am so jealous you can’t smell,” Hammy admits. “It sounds wonderful. Smells wonderful.”

"Gah. I'm sure you’ll get used to it someday. I’m quite sure."

Hammy sure does try his best to tolerate the dancing trash heaps in his nostrils with gritted teeth. “I REALLY… don’t think I WILL …”

Verne maintains a safe distance to be awestruck in. Despite such minimal communication, they seemed to have everything figured out. His open mouth, breathing deep and empty, absorbs the air that the animation of their actions brush onto him. He absorbs the proof through his eyes. Over an open field, all these winds make independent airways curving and twisting over the land, but never intersecting. Then again, the streams work as one unite at the coast of their objective - to keep their waters clear. And they fight to get there, flawlessly at that, while each member of the family performs their duties more flawlessly than the last, at least in comparison. They’re fighting for a friend now, but imagine what they’d do for the good of everyone …

Finally, RJ announces, "Clock’s struck Hedge hour! MOVE! GO!"

So it comes time to make like a tree and leave. Lou and Penny snag their kids (and plug their noses from the aftermath of what Stella smeared over them). Hammy darts right back to the Hedge, not giving a care for his companion no longer. The drone reactivates on its own and begins to float into the air beside the truck. RJ gives the opossums their moment to open fire on the machine with toy guns. Of course, a blue dart from Ozzie’s jams 1 of the 4 propellers before Heather’s red darts even have the time to experience the adrenaline of a close miss .

“So this is gonna be one of those ' THINGS ', isn't it?” Heather frowns.

The drone loses control among the stars it sought to reach and crashes onto the roof of the truck, propeller caught on an ear of the squishy white rabbit smiling underneath the giant hammer. There it struggles.

After coughing away the cloud, and the blue glasses blown off his face, Dwayne spots only the silhouette of the animals escaping down the street and slams on the gas… or, what should’ve been the gas. The WHOLE pedal had been detached and stolen by those freaks. His frown festers immensely.

RJ and Verne are nearly there by the time the others all make it past the dead end signs and into the Hedge, constantly glancing over. They look back before hearing the thump of a boot behind them.

“You vermin have a TRUE way of life, I’ll give ya that . Us middle-aged exterminators, y’know, we over complicate things! So how ‘bout we settle for something a little more…” The Sniffer now unveils the classical weaponry - the melee cattle prod - buzzing with electricity, and springs his aggression up to the moon. “... OLD SCHOOL!?!”

Without turning, RJ latches his hands onto Verne and flings him backward into the Hedge, backflipping himself to flee. 

Dwayne throws himself forward, submerging his head inside the Hedge. " Class dismissed ," he groans.

XXX

As things always do, their operations take the Hedgies back to the good old Log. All despite the indescribable, skanky odor surrounding them, the porcupine kids pay no mind while they surf aboard the salvaged gas pedal dug into the dirt. As it turns out, Lou and Penny endure the entirety of the price. Stella’s ready to outline the recovery process as follows: “Might wann’uh wash that out with soap . And tomato juice . And soap again . Have ‘em eat the soap bar after dat. Cleans ‘em from the inside while it goes. Gorge it down with sum tomato juice while you’re at it.”

RJ pants and pants, aimlessly trodding over the land, earthier than the lawns and laid over with the slick screen of night’s chilling air. His foot rams into the bulk of one hairy, flimsy mass. Hammy rests sound asleep in the grass already. It just so happens that everyone gathers around the two. Verne further treads into the scene.

So that’s how an ‘operation’ flows? It certainly lost its glory the moment they returned from the Hedge. A life was on the line. For one moment, all minds were correlated. Now, they express no harmony with another. Glances and frowns pass like a hot potato. No one holds blame, and yet they still manage to shift it anyway through the looks they throw. Among this, Verne makes it a moment to present himself before RJ as a fitting tribute to the shallow wake of midnight.

It’s not lugubrious like it’d unearthed the soil of sorrow or shame. Now boasting his chest out to RJ, Verne finds solid footing as the eagle over the battlefield. He refuses to display feigned celebration, considering the ordeal, and yet stands strong and sure in the face of the raccoon, and himself. “We shouldn’t have made our family fight…”

He glances around. Everyone nods back to him. In this resolution’s new slumber, at last earning a place to rest, Verne shares the drowsiness they all do at this hour. Fighting couldn’t be anywhere in their heads any longer. They simply lacked effort, lacked motive, and lacked the naivety and immaturity to accept such a conflict any longer. It’s hard to spot a single pair of eyes wide awake, as they need not strain for meaningless notions, any longer.

None of this pain meant anything. Did it?

“…and it was wrong . This whole week we’ve fought over NOTHING. That’s a whole week WASTED ! DOWN the drain! OFF the check!... Not coming back . You said 3 weeks, well now we’re down to 2 . That’s 2 weeks you’ve got left to figure out just what we’re here for. I guess we’re back right where we started this thing, just last week. We’ve ‘returned to our roots ’, you could say. We didn’t get anything outta this. None of us did. And don’t take my word for it - I’m just your tentative turtle … But I’m telling you, right back there … I’m sure our family just told you that they know how to fight these creatures now, RJ. Big thanks on that one. Because of you … they know how to fight for their home too . Whatcha give is whatcha get. Got that?”

Everyone remains silent. They stare.

XXX

Back in the suburbs, Dwayne returns to the truck and slams the door to debrief, the scent of skunk still lingering. Air isn’t punchable enough, unfortunately. In fact, not much of the truck’s interior technology could ever be punchable. So he almost punches himself to inject some thundering noise into the reticence that surrounded the area. 

Then, something else takes the brunt of the job. He hears the drone atop the roof, still stuck on the rabbit and desperately attempting to free itself. He sighs and rams a finger onto the hammer button near the wheel. The massive hammer of his figurine smashes onto the failed prototype drone once, rendering it immobile. Another smash cracks away its layer of protection. Out of his view, Dwayne’s grudging countenance flinches at a final, hideous smash, sending hail of plastic and hardware down outside the windows.

For the rest of the night all shifts by without belligerence. The sun awakes to take the moon’s place; not an inch overlaps, nor creates contest.

The giant scooper digs into the feral ground and unearths a hefty chunk of dirt at dawn. Verne slouches over the edge of the cliff, only watching the trees get torn from their roots right below him as the construction rounds the corner of the Hedge and onto their side. A train is something Verne can’t stop. A train exhausted the wastes of dilapidation that rose to his lower eyelids and made their form lost. Against his face, they drug its entirety down. Earth keeps ripping apart, grainy and fleshy if that’s what the average man saw, but the loss of such a foundation digs out a piece of his soul. 

The sounds of chainsaws drew him here. They’re revving through his brain. Oak trees and berry bushes. Who’s to say that scythe won’t slice the heads off more ? Pine trees. Shrub villages. Every flower, sparse in the place, torn out of the forest’s heart. Their teeth chew past any protestors. Its high growl deterred any who thought to join.

None of that matters , he tries to make himself believe. It works. Heartless it may be, but it works . His sights only draw the path from that dreaded red arrow to its destination. The Log is his patient, and him the doctor. A chronic diagnosis can’t ever hold him back. The tips of his fingers drizzle down his sides, exhausted from a futile dance with hope, undeniably mundane in its efforts. Intrinsic odors surpass the fashion on the face of a vase, and gray its shine. Just now those dull spots show. Verne enters an overseeing viewpoint of destruction, and compiles the air of the rubble in his lungs. Whatever level of personal and civil obligation they thought to be achieving with their actions, it simply couldn’t be possible that the span of dead land, and arid house frames, could ever- There he goes again. He shakes his head. What good did it do, when it didn’t matter ? He only made himself believe one thing did, and started from there.

So then there’s RJ parading from his hideout of bushes behind him, ruining the whole mood as he did oft. “Enjoying the view?” If he’s a patronizing hunter out for the last traces of Verne’s tolerant stability, consider him fed for the winter. It’s like he’d been stalking from the slope of the hill for hours, considering the (painfully) timely entrance.

Verne doesn’t flinch. “Shut up. Go away.”

RJ steps with both feet forward.

“Well you got the first part.”

“ Clear skiiies …” RJ details in admiration of this pristine day.

“Nope, you just lost it.”

“…the kinda breeze that makes your hairs all tingly …” He holds the demeanor of amendment; in his voice, there’s a jolly institution, gleaming from the face more than the soul, but absolute in intent. He tries to ameliorate the situation. “It’s a pretty fine day all things considered!”

“F-FINE ?!” chuckles the maniac. The bones in his neck crack when he snaps his head rigidly to him. That toothy, paranoid grin stretched far beyond his jawline. “Oh this's fiiine , this's great ! They're turning our bit of forest into a PARKING LOT so they've got more space to decide where to build MORE parking lots ! What's gonna happen if we back up !? They'll keep pushing us BACK and BACK and BACK AGAIN !! What would be the POINT!?!”

Continuing to approach, RJ scrunches every drop of desperate resolution into one pool on his face. His arms and hands stick wide out, and the top half of his body bends forward like the scrawny, impatient beast arising at the time being. “AHEM … hairy, tingly BREEZES ?…”

“I don’t have hair, I would be BUTT-NAKED without this shell, and my tail’s tingling more than any hair WOULD be!” RJ’s figure stands just a foot away. He stabs out at him. “And YOU sir are waltzing daaaangerously close into toe-stomping territory . Wanna relive some memories?”

Those thumb tacks now glued on RJ’s toes thirst from the threat. He wiggles those knives far sharper than Verne’s assertive finger. “Sadly for you, I’ve now entered counterattack mode!”

Verne backs down without a sound.

Having the authority to sneak up to his side, RJ cools his drift and speaks in comfort: “If it makes ya feel better… I’m always butt-naked.”

Verne quivers in his censor shell, contrasting from the blatant nudeness right beside him while he sits. “Somehow, you’re making me feel insecure.”

“Let’s go back to the Log,” RJ insists.

“You don’t govern me.”

“And you don’t govern me.”

Verne rises. “I didn’t say I governed you.”

“But you said you governed me so I said that YOU don’t govern ME!”

“But all I was saying was YOU DON’T GOVERN ME!”

“Which is why I MADE MY POINT!”

“Well NOW you gotta tell us who DOES GOVERN YOU!”

On this very fine day, RJ screams, “NO MAN GOVERNS ME BUT THE METEOROLOGIST!!”

Thanks to some random acorn that fell down to the edge of the cliff just a second ago, RJ has a football to punt into the horizon.

The first thing the acorn passes is the rusty hook of a crane. It flies farther, avoiding that obstacle, propelled as straight as a bullet, and hurdling over the curvature of the land. And down below, past the roofs of large portalets, it flies farther, and through the open doors of a bulldozer. It doesn’t grace the path or react to its moving pieces, and becomes one in itself, shining the low sun off its shell. Instead it skids past like a meteor, or a bullet train, until it closes in on that large man , a recurring figure, leading the construction. Under his boxy shoulders, under the bulk, ham, and hair of his arms, the sharp tip of the acorn bites onto the center of his pinkie finger.

“ OWIEEEEE !!” he wails. Contrary to the big guy's bigness, what the acorn bit of his pinkie frightened the whole hive of childish ineptitude cowering on the inside. “I’VE BEEN BIT ! MOMMY I’VE BEEN BIT!! I’VE BEEN-”

His tantrum takes him and his massive beard to spin around to the cliff, and he freezes. Up the face of the rocks, and dirt, and the grass carpet on top, something so dull brown and green drags him in. There’s nothing but a turtle. A turtle . Look at that hard, hollow shell, saving it from the revenge he now sought to deliver. The veins in his eyes grow red thorns. Look at its flat feet, stabilizing it against the ground he now thirsted to remove underneath. He restricts the muscles in his arms. Look at its crooked jaw…

He clenches two fat fingers tight around the circumference of that pinkie finger, the small hole dark reddish-pink, saturation lost in the drained presence of what memories lie before him:

~~~

In an empty room, too vague to make out, a toddler boy prances to seek some entertainment from the open top of a plastic bucket.

Toddler him waves his hand over the rim of the habitat, resting on top. “It’s an am-phibian.”

The tiny box turtle inside the pen slowly eases itself over and takes a chomp of his equally-tiny pinkie. Its mouth snags a hold of the tip, and doesn’t let go.

CHOMP.

“ AAAAAAA-!! ”

~~~

“Uhhh, Jack ? Mr. Jack Sawood, sir?” someone calls.

That trauma relived itself. Screaming carries on in his head. The screaming of a boy turned him into a man . He grew out of those tragedies the same way anyone grows out of their own beloved pants. His waist only grew, and with it, his anticipation for what old figure nature would put forth for his viewing.

“I KNEW I recognized you…” His bottom lip only quivers at the memory. On the high cliff, with the turtle high above him, Jack gazes up at the high rise of the armored demon. He tumbles over his thoughts. Chainsaws shred them to pieces. 

“Oh Velma , how you've grown … I've hated you as long as I can remember …”

Jack shakes his head out of it.

“Those critters wanna throw acorns at us and DOO doo in our portalets !” To Jerry, his closest, trustiest supervisor, the megaphone he shoves up blares no reservation nor restraint. “YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT?! I wanna CRUSH ‘em! CHOP ‘em down!! Snag their ears 'n RIP their heads RIGHT off their shoulders!! Quick, throw me some ideas!”

“Well, I- uh… I think-”

“Your ideas STINK !” Jack screeches. “Yer lucky I’ve smelled ideas worse than my dad’s cologne . One day, my parents left me alone in the toy section at the mall. Then , I got kidnapped ... by some hoser wearing a mouse suit. Unfortunately for him , he had to learn the burden of line passes ‘n dining reservations.”

“Well that’s-”

“Yeah, it was my uncle . He took me to DISNEY WORLD!! CALL ‘er in , Jerry.”

Mentioning HER existence stops the world from turning. Jerry, shaking like sticks in the wind, teeters his glasses to balance them over his eyes, shields his jittery face behind his clipboard, and pokes the brim of Jack’s megaphone away. “Y-y-you don’t mean… ‘ her ’, right?”

Jack adjusts his megaphone aim. That alone issues a quick phoning on Jerry’s part.

“ VELMA ,” Jack huffs to the cliff. “I hope yer sleeves are rolled up for a Goddamn Issue …”

RJ and Verne take no care to the ruckus down under.

“Do these people govern you?” Verne prompts further.

RJ pops a balloon of calm breath in his chest. “Only the meteorologist.”

“But THEY aren't meteorologists.” Circumstances so raw and unprocessed, unformed, start to squeeze out the soulless laughter a true lunatic strives for. “Am- Am I going BONKERS !?! Am I the ONLY ONE who sees the FLAW HERE!? If you run from them, you are LETTING them govern you!”

RJ steps back in the conversation for what he anticipated to be just a moment. “Alright, let’s call that an instinctive, comedic oversight-”

"A STUPIDLY instinctive comedic oversight, YES!!"

A hideous snap interrupts them from across the main road. Resorting to some primitive tactics to be sure, one worker slices their axe again into the stocky trunk of a pine - the tallest pine. Its true comparative height opened up to some debate, however, as what brothers it held close were no longer in sight. It’s the only kind left in its radius. And it’s the only kind to be tipping all the way over the flat concrete canyon in their direction on the cliff.

“AY !!” Jack shouts to the flipside. “Watch where ya let 'er FALL !”

Idle words don’t stop a timbering tree. The wooden tower collapses over the street and at the edge of their cliff, and at Verne all the same.. It’s the first time Verne ever truly lived on the edge. He stood his ground all morning… Weak courage doesn’t stop a timbering tree. He gasps as a snail in the face of its massive structure revealed at point-blank. Stray branches crumple and snap apart against the hill, flinging out sticks to smack RJ across the cheek. The trunk crashes onto the corner of the dirt in front of Verne’s stunned feet and knocks him over the edge before making a deathbed of the ground below and demolishing an unfortunate portalet in the process, all while cueing the irascible honk of a car blocked from passing the giant log, lying on the street.

RJ lunges out to grab Verne’s hand before the turtle himself timbers into the pit of construction. RJ holds tight while bent over the cliff, his single, unsupported arm shaking. Verne dangles, and dangles more.

In his eyes, RJ sees the story of the misguided. Misguided in his thinking. Misguided in his priorities. These thoughts don’t opaque themselves in what a heart-pounding moment it was, but the notion is there. There’s no way this couldn’t make sense to him. A warrior runs around Verne’s irises. A naked warrior, stripped of all weaponry and motive. Never it showed itself, and now it makes its awkward presence a million times more bewildering to consider.

RJ’s fingers become sore, and begin to slip. He doesn’t let them act just yet.

In his eyes, Verne sees the story of the mistaken. Mistaken in his values. Mistaken in his philosophies. The tree leaves that sway and chatter more skeptically over the cliff in the itching breezes provided more cover than the lifeless blue void staring into him. Does he know who he is? He gives a charity, betrays a charity, accepts a charity, and is now willing to throw the funding of their family away. The little scrunch of his nose seemed like it could throw him away too.

Verne clenches his teeth harder on the accord of RJ’s own pressure - the lifevest keeping him afloat for the very first time all week. 

“You are not like Verne,” RJ frowns.

“You are not like RJ,” Verne frowns.

Another, newly emerging chainsaw reminds Verne of his purpose in this place, and his head shoots down to the corpse of the pine tree miles below him. His open mouth ventilates all the spare air it can get to replenish the withering of his hope. Though it serves to very grudgingly reassure him that the straining moisture forming against the hand locked around his still hangs on. 

The fate of Verne’s morning rests with RJ . The construction site acts as merely a portrait in their verbal conflict - like the painted land beyond an impassable river, out of reach but animated and full. They’d argue over a painting. So what would it be like to be in the painting? RJ looks at the hum, whir, and buzz of the heavy machinery taking action nearby. He looks at Verne. He scrunches his face back hard after finding the bridge over the river - the drop.

What pained tone RJ manages to generate for himself inexplicably defines its intent to Verne, the droop in his countenance mixed in the pot, and suctions out the deepest lumped clutches accumulating in the cavern lying down his throat. Genuine . Nothing else could be done. Pictures look but don’t feel . Words listen . Reality swoops in to pinch at all the senses, tying the strings of logic in an unbreakable, harrowing loop, separate from the perception of the mind, down to a raw ore .

That reality weighs down RJ’s efforts to begin a final judgement: “Verne… I think the best way to meet minds here…”

Verne can feel RJ’s fingers begin to loosen. His heart stops.

“...is to let ya think about it.” 

The sharp shot puts him down. RJ releases his hand without aggression but regret, more comparable to the surrendering of an old toy.

Verne watches him leave down the tunnel of his sight, to never return. He clings onto the dirt and rock of the cliff face and slides down (a bit more) safely. He lands on top of the fallen pine, on the side of the construction activity. Unfortunately, being confined to the collateral coast can’t hide him from the waves at sea.

His tail starts tingling immediately. Not just that, it rattles underneath him. The diffident attendance to the danger glows and rings through his nerves. Like the noise of a dead space it pulls out the sounds only ever meant to fill an auditory absence, puked into the crowd of hollers and busywork storming the area. It hums. It whirs. It buzzes. The loud clouds surround him as he grips the cliff helplessly with all the traction he has on the back of his arms. Whenever they start to slip, he throws them back harder against it. Harder . His tail tells him that another step means death . But he’s alive , and doomed to be so. RJ dropped him far enough away from the actual operations, he knew, but it's as if lightning anywhere in the field meant danger for every inch .

He squeezes tight on his tail. It just doesn’t stop.

Sawdust enters Verne's throat, forcing him to cough. Unbearable enough, he stuffs his head into his shell and sits blind to the danger. His own breaths replace the ringing when tucked inside a brown brick pillow - a solid comforter of the situation. It’s only a shell , then again. Hollow. Unprotected itself , protecting those within .

An inclining rumble through the sky causes his tail to surpass even the boundary he placed against it. The memories tingle.

A young voice pleads to him, “ ‘Can- can we go in the Log now, Verne? That earthquake’s scar-wy.’ ”

Earthquake ? Verne’s conscience answers the call and scouts the land outside his shell. The first thing it sees for itself is an airplane in the sky, generating such familiar rumbling.

“That- that was an airplane ,” he gasps low at the long-unresolved realization, unimpressed. “Wait. Are you kidding me? That was an AIRPLANE THAT DAY !? DECADES ago?! They’ve ALWAYS BEEN HERE ! We’ve never been FREE !”

“‘We’ve allll already put our berries in there for you, Verne!” the same being sings. “Just like you asked! They’ll be saaafe!’”

"We’re never gonna be safe anymore…"

He feels as though the bulldozers already ran him over. A wrecking ball could smash him into the cliff, but he’d already be dead by then. Let’s see, how many ways could he die here, living on the edge again, somehow? Wrecking ball, bulldozer, explosive bowel movements combusting a portalet on top of him-

Certainly not an acorn . All the way from the top of the cliff, another random acorn from the trees falls onto his head, maybe from the vibrations of truck engines larger than Earth. He catches it in his palm after it bounces off. Not even safe from an acorn . His eyes grow wide, and new intent fills his pumping heart. He’s not safe here. Never will be. Even from the tiny impacts of what he fears. Perhaps the best way to face fears is to not face them at all. To accept them, and respect them. That’s what RJ would say, apparently, he believes.

“So,” Jack proclaims around the site. “We gonna REMOVE this feller or NOT?!”

Verne picks himself up off the feller and flees in a hurry.

RJ spies lifelessly from the forest hill like a watchdog taking post all night. Once he spots Verne, back safe and nearly traumatized along the Hedge, he escapes without a trace, at the paint he just smeared over the guy’s head. He’d waited to see that paint return to him, complete.

XXX

Verne takes himself as fast as he can to the calendar, at the forgotten bulletin board of the site, and checks it. All his movements are still just as panicked as when he escaped, and the tension just as high. He scans the calendar, then coming to notice that there’s not much left on the bulletin board entirely OTHER than this utter timebomb of a reminder. And the map. That dreadful map. It desires no attention from Verne’s mind, yet another force does.

“ ‘ Think about it ’… ” RJ’s voice echoes.

“No no no, shut up figment RJ!”

“ ‘That’s a red arrow of DEATH . Which we could avoid if we just did the LOGICAL thing…’ ”

“I HAVE to fight this fight! I don’t wanna! But I-I-”

The raccoon shows himself. Just like a happy cartoon, he bounces out of the 25th square, marked ‘Heather’s B-day’ with an ‘18’ written in a balloon, and introduces this alternate mental plane consuming all of Verne’s consciousness.

“Hey hey hey!” little RJ waves.

Verne’s aching stalls. Just a figment of his face taunts him, but terrifies him likewise. His shape outlined itself as a glaring threat to him now. The spikes hairs from the raccoon’s fur cringe him back from the hallucination, but don’t let his eyes go, no matter how far he tilts his neck.

" Biiiiiig part-ayyy comin’ up! That’s French for ‘party’. This boat’s party sails point towards happy trails-!"

Verne shoves a hand onto the page to mute him. Once he removes it, he’s gone.

“ Oooooh boy…” When his troubles are too great, and eyebrows too tense, the only thing left to do is pretend he’s completely okay. “Aha! That’s what I need, RRRIGHT Verne? Let’s get some- yeah, let’s just get some alone time.”

Alone time it is. Only issue being, RJ’s fortress still looms over the comforting lake, and soft, light willow on the other side. He looks both ways before tiptoeing out of his fort and through the scene. The entire site remains deathly silent. If anyone were here, to which he showed no interest at the time, they weren’t making their presence known. Before he can consult the nurturing arms of the willow tree, he also happened to enter the view of what lay past the boundaries of RJ’s fort. Around the corner of the pile, and the cooler RJ must’ve claimed for himself, through the bushes and hidden behind it all, is a vacant TV set . Completely vacant, abandoned for once as a dead landscape of anarchy. The TV drowned itself in static, reflecting its dull mess onto the purple throne facing it. Two rear-formed sunken indents are left on the seat, raccoon and possum-shaped. Empty . Like a ghost town. He can imagine them there, just a few days ago. But that’s all he can do now. Imagine. The heart of the family isn’t beating, is it?

“We NEED to be under one lock again,” he repeats.

Verne releases a pained breath, and comes back to peering up the height of RJ’s fort over the pond, and the single can of Spuddies on top. Something hits him: Mt. Feeds-a-lot is gone as he knows it. The wealth of that community stash transferred onto their secluded forts. An overwhelming rush of disbelief and illness forces him back around and wipes his agenda clear from his mind. He hurries his feet through the grass back to the Log. He shakes his head vigorously on the way, brushing burning emotions off his aching head.

Time passes, and he’s now tame once again.

“I know I couldn’t have saved all of them,” Verne acknowledges to the Log. “But I saved you .”

He puts his hand on it gently so as to not damage it further. The earthy texture cracked through his fingers brings comfort to his posture. His shoulders lower.

"I am gonna protect this home," he smiles. "Mark… my… shell …"

Violent rustling comes from the Hedge. Team RPS parades out, carrying along the uninterested remains of Verne’s own group, short of one leader for the morning. What RJ’s carrying with him isn’t food, or anything for that matter, but Heather and Hammy pass through wheeling that flipchart… that flipchart … with its compelling stupidity diagrams. He returned to the roots of his argument, and out of Verne’s control, that might’ve just tempered him more over the issue.

Yes. Back to their roots.

“I am gonna kill that raccoon,” he breathes.

Chapter Text

“Let me tell you a story about the calm after the storm. Last week the Hedgies spent their quarter of the month flinging jello cakes at one another, and for what? Oh would you look at that… nothing! Now their time to quell the argument has reduced to a smidgeon. Team RPS looks to the forest. But as time goes TICK-TICK-TICK… Heather finds the family may just be the key to the lock, on the contrary! Hoot hoot!”

Word Count: ~30k

ACT I: Yep, There Are Acts Now

“Hey RJ, I gotta ask, like, what's it gonna be like when winter comes? Are you gonna… hibernate with us or something? That sounds so... not right.”

“Be real, Verne’s the only one who actually hibernates, right? Why sleep with him when we've got 3 months to make some plays, huh?! And best part, we don't have to tell 'em a thing in the spring. Got it?”

“Wait, you don't mean- If he finds out- Without him, wouldn't that be a little, y'know…?”

“Aw c'mon kid, ya got me now! What more do ya neeeed?”

“Stop calling me 'kid'. You hardly look older than Hammy, jeez. Trust me, we gotta be like, 4 years tops, I think.”

~~~

In some remote location in the forest, RJ plants his golf club into the ground. “Exhibit A: Location.”

Heather and Hammy topple over when they roll up with the big flipchart of RJ’s stupidity diagram. Only now overwritten by a simple mapping of the forest, flooded by the X’s of their previous failures.

Down the forested hill they stand at the peak of, the grass rolls like water by a downward gust. Smeared over a lighter green at their approach. Down the bare hill and past the valley at the bottom of the slide, another slope lies parallel from the view, this one as tree-studded with pine as the flat peak they stand on now.

RJ quotes this imaginary Scottish lad in a raspy accent: “'All this land before yee be nothin' but still life for ye eyeballs'. My grandpa said that once.”

“Really?” Hammy asks jocosely.

“No.” RJ sheaths his club into his bag and takes a knee to scout over the hillside. “I just enjoy having a headcanon for my dead family. It eases the pain,” he breathes.

In contrast to his solemn demeanor, Heather leans like a dream against the leg of the chart and blurts, “My mom must’ve been HOTTER than a microwave burrito.”

Hmph. May as well give the place a chance. Compared to their dream forest - which she finds they drew in a page of RJ’s journal at the beginning of this ordeal - it’s nowhere close, not even having a willow tree or a pond or anything worth colonizing. Nowhere to hang wieners from, most importantly. At least the scenery’s nice.

“Nope, noooot even close,” she sighs.

Hammy brought a baggie of hotdogs with him and everything, only to be met with a pickle relish display. “How’re we supposed to have a weiner willow when there’s no WEINERS?! Or wait… WILLOWS?!”

“Hammy, ya wanna just head home ‘n write headcanons of my mom?”

“Oh she sounds like she was a very nice lady.”

“Yeah. Hot, too.”

RJ flips to them. “Well, we gotta get ‘em in on this somehow! Where’s he at?” he claps.

Their first subject had already admitted to Heather as being fine with a new home. Heather and Hammy bump a blindfolded Ozzie into the scene and guide him, a sleep mask left over his eyes.

By the soles of his feet he’s pushed through the dirt, arms stuck at his sides. At some close point they shove his body forward off its balance, pick him up and remove his mask. They present him to the view over the impressive hill.

His eyes warm to the beauty immediately; Love at first sight.

The high sun dawns over the picturesque landscape. Specs of dust settle over his lens, giving the far-off trees the wonderful illusion of motion. Light doesn’t linger on the same leaves each second, but it never leaves the community of the branch. Millions of reflections work over there to spark inspiration deep inside, in a picture worth millions of dollars. Wonderful. He finds himself drawing a blank at its fairytale charm, its authentic look, its flat screen dabbed with soft color.

Wow. It is still life for his eyeballs. Nearly brings a… tear, even. “Why… it's beautiful. Treasure for the eyes. Mushroom soup for the SOUL!”

RJ, Heather and Hammy insistently attempt to make a 3-way high-five work but mostly keep mashing their hands together in awkward ways, so in the end they're kinda just slapping at each other's wrists repeatedly until they're red. Point being, they’ve done it… really done it. One member of the family enticed - the first win!

Ozzie gets up into a tree cavity for a better view of the beautiful hillside. “That's it! Is this what life is? A living painting? Is this what life means?! Sweet jello cakes I will LIVE! I… WILL… LLLIIIIIVE!!”

Following that smashing success, they delve into inevitable downfall, and end up smashing their heads into fragile windows of sanity. Don’t tell them yet- or, wait, it already happened.

But the following trials are far too embarrassing and uncool to be told, as they would warn themselves for eternity. But here they are anyway, in a (hopefully) less embarrassing fashion for everyone, which begins with one single word:

HELP.

Hardly past that moment of victory they’re already trodding over the train tracks of failure. So pretend to sympathize while this sad violin plays in the background:

Sniff. Sniff. On that same hilltop they offered Lou and Penny a new hollow log as replacement. Sniffle. It took an hour to pry them out when their quills got stuck in the bark, from what skinny wood the team had to make do with. They were out on the notion as quick as that. ‘They’re further out of their minds than the kids with caffeine’.

It won’t fit. Screw that. They’ll make it fit. But the parents easily denied them a second chance, with a log infested by ash borers.

They pack their bags and pursue their agenda elsewhere. Then what? Sacrifice their mental health for clout? They may as well stay stubborn on their plan even if the clout doesn’t come and they’re numbing their brains into the shape of animal crackers.

Tiger got poison ivy. Tripped into a patch of it. Landed on his feet (ha). Goddammit, cats aren’t even supposed to get poison ivy! But Tiger did, somehow, submerged up his legs and only climbing higher.

Don’t even ask what became of Stella. Boy, won’t she love it when flaming wood chips hurl down on her head when, oh oopsies, a himbo dragonfly becomes a himbo firefly when it speeds through a cozy lil’ campfire they made to warm her up to the place, then proceeding to tuck duck ‘n roll on the nearest tree and ending up setting the WHOLE FOREST ABLAZE by spreading the flames like the PLAGUE! Dang California, what a state, right? If only they WERE in California to MAKE that kind of excuse.

They try location after location. They’re never gonna get past Exhibit A, and who’s to say they even know of an Exhibit B? They bribe everyone back into this nonsense, one by one, with Hammy’s giant bulgy cute-face eyes and about three pounds of sugar total in the pastries they use. It’s impossible to realize. Even if, say, some big-name animation studio offered to pick up this project and make a dream reality.

There’s a reason their struggles fumble over themselves to be put into words.

Because among the extensive ‘showing’ of the characters and their repeated interactions with one another (for the effect of immersiveness), there’s plenty of room for simplistic - and underrated - ‘telling’. This new style of narration may or may not come off as bleak, but sometimes the word count must be respected. Really the entire chapter could be told through the storytelling of a picture book (at least that's the goal), yet it's quite stale if not happening in real time. That's why present tense is preferable over past tense in this situation - to imply the events are coming as they are written, as opposed to some wrinkly grandpa telling it back to the next generation of the progressive raccoon society secretly following along this railway into insanity. No one wants to hear fanfiction told from a wrinkly grandpa though. They want to BE the fanfiction, embrace themselves in it, develop unbreakable fictional bonds to very much breakable fictional characters. The irony comes into play when one realizes fanfiction is just creating fictional from the fictional. In other words, spiraling down as an aspiring author into an inescapable vortex of fictionality that quells any motivation they may ever have to ever create anything 'original'. But what's NOT original? Repeating the same words in a different tone - THAT'S original. Repeating the same words in a different tone - 'VERY original sirs and ma'ams, believe me'. Taking the same characters and placing them in new scenarios - original. Drawing out this expansive paragraph to create a paradox over the notion and intention of reducing the word count - original as original can be, right? All narrators should describe exactly the literary devices being employed at any given moment. It saves people the trouble of thinking, as no one with thoughts wants to do, and writers the trouble of trying to get the average, theoretical audience they have in mind TO think.

To top everything off, Verne enters a small clearing some time later. He must be begging to be abused by Mother Nature as well, if he’s coming here, though he speaks of a different motive: “Just talk some sense into him- Okay wheeeere is he?”

By god, they’ve left the place a warzone. Trenches dug in loose dirt, soggy tree limbs cobbled into barbed wire, and stray eagle feathers roaming about. What kind of home is this? Verne’s eyes abhor the idea of meandering past the entryway of the brush’s edge. They are nowhere. Aside from their marks, no trace is left of them but the flipchart, hidden by trees and placed far from the epicenter.

“Huh!” comes RJ’s voice, which alone sparks a twitching instinct in Verne’s tail. “Didn't expect you to actually come be our test subject, Verne.”

His nefarious location remains unknown to Verne. “Test subject?! What in the world are you DOING to our family, RJ?”

“Proceed to the center of the secured area, please.”

Verne rolls his eyes and does just that. He must’ve waded too far into RJ’s game to pull the plug.

The three give Verne a thumbs up from behind a janky, uncertain mess of a bush, in the safety of plastic-baggie hazmat suits.

“All clear!” says RJ.

Well if RJ wants a juvenile game, that’s what he’s gonna get. “Okay, here I goooo! Heh-heh.” All Verne has to do is win it. Participating at all douses him in a frown when he turns his head forward, shaking it grudgingly.

Verne stands in the middle of the clearing surveying the place left and right. The sky is clear over him, but the torchlight of the sun’s rays hint that the winds grow stronger by the second. The three in the back glance at a clipboard in unison.

“No eagle strikes, check,” signals RJ.

Hammy marks it off.

Another carefree step puts Verne in a patch of damp dirt at the toes of a large, twisted tree with creeping roots. Nope, it was feigned hope. Nope, it was naivety. Large white mushrooms emerge under his feet, sharply bounce him away, then try to croon him in apology over the unfortunate series of disasters to come.

Verne yells out.

Oh no, not an ordinary yell - his dreaded ‘holler of the hijinks’. As prolonged as it is, RJ tosses his casual attitude into a chain reaction of panic-inducing realizations. Verne’s trapped on a hijink highway again. AGAIN. By the time RJ can react, he only processes one possible decision, being to hammer Hammy’s clipboard. “Where's mushrooms on the list? WHERE IS MUSHROOMS ON THE LIST?!”

“It's not here!” he gasps.

Verne rolls by his shell to a pond, nearly identical to their one at home. It is far more threatening in the undertone that’s been dug up.

“Daddy Washington, have mercy…” RJ grunts in anticipation.

Dizzy, Verne slowly rises by his knees and leans his head over the shoreline to peer into the water, which ripples faster and faster from one point he stares at. Then… a fat fish jumps up and bites onto his equally-fat nose.

“Aaaaaaaa!”

Complete terror stuns Team RPS during the sequence. Verne stumbles and trips and tumbles and shakes the biting fish off his nose and flings it back into the water. One of his hurried feet slams onto the sharp point of an acorn lying in the open grass. So he’s steered backward by his aching sole, and trips the same way into a feral, messy patch of tall garlic mustard plants, with their tiny white flowers blooming dangerously in the direct sunlight and ready to crawl red rashes from the plant’s sap up Verne’s limbs and neck. He’s eaten alive by his skin, in too much dismay to cry for help, only repeating his hijink yell as often and as primal as a screeching mating call.

The wind leads to heavy clouds that run over the sky and dim it to gray. Luckily this time, RJ, Heather, and Hammy break into the world of this horror film quick enough, to tackle Verne away from a flimsy tree snapped at the base by a storm of rain and wind rolled in, and abandon their safety to act as his bodyguards, as the moment called for it.

The wind leads now to sharp gusts that surround the circling protection the three bring onto Verne. Hammy unsheathes a magical silver sword, not quite cartoony and comical enough, but more of a last resort. The Fragarach tames the deadly tempest, jerking tree branches and pointing every blade of grass in towards the sword, and the group of animals huddled by it.

Through the coming night, they defend Verne from every ruthless force of nature, with Hammy’s Fragarach on hand. That must be what’s going on below, at least, while the moon calmly floats in a smooth curve over the clouds, over the earth’s fiery dominion on them.

“AAAAAH!” screams RJ.

The moon strikes 10.

“AAAAAH!” screams Verne.

11.

“AAAAAAAAAAAA!!” screeches Hammy the mountain goat.

The moon strikes midnight, and all calendars in this time zone rip a page away.

“Do you guys wanna practice screaming at our butts?” Heather suggests. “It's a 'possum thing.”

The moon strikes 1.

RJ says, “…No.”

2.

“I do!” beams Hammy.

3.

“Hammy, please don't,” un-beams Verne.

4.

Hammy tries his best to go at it, but his voice hits an awkward joint. “My… my vOcAl cOrDs.”

5.

“I'm on the way, Hammy!” Heather comes to the rescue. “AAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAA-!!”

6.

“AAAAAH!” screams RJ.

7.

“AAAAAH!” screams Verne.

8.

“AAAAAAAAAAAA!!” screeches Hammy the mountain goat.

Verne’s watch reads 9 by the time the chaos ends.

All is calmer now, but not calm enough. At the crack of dawn, a splotch of bird poop rains onto the top of Verne’s head. It sizzles like a fried egg on his bare skin under the sun found past the storm. The team, servants for the occasion, sweep the mess off Verne and prepare an umbrella over him, but the monster of wind collected around Hammy’s Fragarach slaps it over the treetops.

Next? A full, uncracked bird egg bombs onto Verne’s head in response. It doesn’t break. Over his furious mug, it sits.

When the air is calm, the group regather their senses, but now face a new storm found in the regions above Verne’s shoulders..

The prior storm left no rainbow. It leaves silence.

“RJ,” Verne starts at a crawling speed, lugubrious. “I am only gonna say it once-”

RJ looks both ways and raises an eyebrow without consideration for the turtle. “How many times are you gonna berate me like this?”

“As long as I’m waiting on you, RJ, to help us. There is nowhere out here, in this empty forest, that you’ll find something better than our Log. Nowhere. Don’t try forcing change on our family again.” Verne drops his tone in disappointment.

Shudders fill Verne when he foretells it as RJ did with his ‘raccoon senses’ at the beginning of this whole ordeal: “They’ll be coming here by Heather’s birthday. That’s what, 11 days from now? The 25th? We’ll be fighting man itself, RJ. Are you going to stand up for our home?”

RJ squints. Surrounding hills thump a heavy ambient drum for him, foreshadowing his move. He lowers one knee to the ground and bends down. He’s halfway there. Then the other knee. He slides his feet out and seats himself. He made himself shorter than Verne, somehow radiating more power and aggression snickering and hidden, breathing onto his neck from underneath. He had sat down.

Verne tilts his head up and frowns his testy eyes at RJ with vigilance. What a path the raccoon had chosen, the bold and clumsy revolutionary. The fighting line between them stretches far enough to never wobble again.

Hammy squints his eyes away. “Ooooo this’s making my cheeks tense, I don’t like it…”

Heather swerves in front of the squirrel, beside RJ, and repeats his exact movements… to sit down. She’s as opposed within her face as him.

Verne pulls himself into shape, stiffens up his shell, and marches up to RJ. He snatches the head of the golf club right out of RJ's bag with a foul grunt.

The force he puts in jerks on RJ's shoulder, and enrages every noisy thing he’s got above that point. “HEY, RJ JR. did not consent to your flubbery fingers!” He stands right up.

It took RJ until it affected him to do so. Verne takes the blue bird egg off his head and sets it on the ground beside the end of the club. Pity for RJ.

“I'm no golf champ like Tiger Woods…”

Verne taps at the ground with the club before swinging back and striking the egg into the tallest tree bordering the clearing, into a sad little nest where a lonely robin sits. The blue egg hatches open at once, and the mama robin is ecstatic to have her newborn returned to her. The ecosystem has been restored.

“But I can drive a birdie home.”

He heads up to RJ and stabs the padded base of the club dangerously close to his toes, almost reliving his toe-stomping tendency, ticked on the heels to sting himself in RJ’s face. From disappointment to anger, his shift is uncontrollable.

“And keeping order is MY RESPONSIBILITY. I have SEEN what it's like when there's no one willing to take proper responsibility; I've LIVED IT! You are breaking order, RJ, you are BREAKING IT! I am trying to keep this family under one lock and YOU are breaking it. You are BREAKING IT! I am going back to MY home, where you will not break what makes MY Log special to ME!”

The fuse of a cherry bomb begins to tick up RJ’s pointed muzzle.

“Now RJ, I want you to go home and take the next few days to THINK about your mistakes. I’ll check back at the end of the week, okaaay? Okaaay. How’re we gonna keep this family under one lock… without SOMEONE to be the key?”

RJ thinks, but not for long.

Lou and Penny are just coming into the area as Verne leaves. They’re worried sick, as to be expected.

“Where’ve you been, Verne-o?!” Lou blasts in fear and relief.

“We’ve been lookin’ all night!” Penny says. “And the kids’ll be up any minute!”

Ozzie wanders in from all directions with a beehive over his head, without any clue where he’s walking. Even he’s in a cranky mood, clear to tell past the hollowed obstruction of his voice. “Is there a BEEHIVE on my head or have I finally gone blind from this UNJUST WORLD-?! OW! Quit pinching me mother, I’m awake…”

No one pinched him.

When he enters, Tiger’s showing so many bright red bumps popping through his fur he’s in whimpering discomfort. “Please, this itching has kept me up for hours-!”

Stella smacks his arm. “Calm do-own. Verne, don’t tell me yuh took the ‘apologetic lemonade’ bribe too.”

Verne gives a “Morning everyone” as a routine deal?! “Let’s just say it’s been a rough night for all of us. We’ll sort things out at home. Our home.”

Team RPS is left to the elements. Homeless, the three of them, in now the most run-down neighborhood in the entire forest - the warzone they left it as. Nothing about it could hardly be livable. Forage-able. Soon it will be rotten, with worms tunneling through the fallen trees and uprooted shrubs that leave the surviving vegetation scattered and scarce. They aren’t too pleased to have their names written on these graves.

“Well that was totally a dumpster fire,” Heather restates redundantly to RJ, though it works as an outlet for her own irritation.

RJ twitches in the corner of Hammy’s eye. “RJ, are you okay-?”

RJ kicks the golf club right out of the dirt. Really he stubs his toe more than anything. Actually, Verne stomping on his toe wouldn’t have been worse. Maybe more than they wish to dish to others, anger brings harm to the angry themself.

A wheel of the team’s flipchart veers playfully toward water. It tips the tippy tip of the diving board it's pushed across by two hustling individuals. The top rim tips a bit out. Heather and Hammy hold the bottom steady over this random resident's pool in the suburbs, ready to end it all, the former whispering, "Okay Hammy, on the count of three-"

“Can I say three? Can I say three!?”

"Get ready…" Her counting excites a juvenile nerve in him. "One… twoooo…"

Right before they dump the chart into the water, RJ bolts at them faster than a tsunami. “WHAT’RE YOU DOING?!”

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" screeches Hammy the mountain goat- Er, just Hammy.

They drag the chart back onto the marble pad, and Heather rolls her eyes at him. Even Hammy lets out a grouchy sigh, tracking RJ, who paces as much as he is disgruntled after the Verne incident.

Ugh, just look at him, with that babyish flush. Of course out of instinct a hiss seeps through Heather’s speech. “If you think you’re angry, RJ, we are too. Chill out.”

Accompanied by a little wimpy noise from Heather, a rubber duck, wet from the pool’s edge, comes flying at his hip. RJ stops his pacing when it squeaks against him. “'Chill out'?!” His face comes at them like a bullet. “Does that man… have… a DEATH WISH?! He wants that dumb log when we’ve got a whole FOREST to steal from! Even IF we keep the place safe, the humans are gonna surround us anyway! He's puttin' everything we have on the line, puttin’ stock in a fight… that doesn't even matter! Wha-!”

The sagged curve of her upper eyelid retains itself. “Look, I get your whole argument, but you’re being the biggest ‘whatever’ I’ve ever seen. I mean like, you don’t have to take your anger out on us, is all I’m sayin’.”

“Yup. Yup. Gotta agree,” Hammy adds before slapping a hand onto a blank page of the flipchart. “Could you come up with a new part of the plan? Something involving nuts, or… LE-MO-NADE?”

Lemonade sounds nice, after last week.

Heather tugs the flipchart back towards its watery grave - the pool. “Yeah jeez, this’s really like NOT working RJ, like totally, those guys ALREADY wanna kill you after what happened last week.” A history stained in spilt lemonade. “We would too-”

“-But we need you for the Fudge Sludge in your back pocket.” Behind his leg Hammy pokes and nudges at the bottom face of RJ’s golf bag eagerly.

RJ shrugs it away, and yanks the flipchart from Heather. “Okay c’mon, c’MONNN, did last week really give me such a bad name?”

“It was like, literally a GLASS of LE-MO-NADE!” Heather yells before heaving the thing towards the water again.

And he heaves back, again. "It was 95 damn degrees! We were all thirsty!"

Her signature sulky stare.

Hammy speaks for her expression. “Umm, she's about to say something like ‘you so weren’t gonna let us drink that cup anyway’-”

“You so weren’t gonna let us drink that cup anyway.”

RJ sighs, apologetic and frustrated. “You’re right, you so weren’t gonna drink it anyway.”

"And then HAMMY almost got killed… NOT because of the lemonade thing-"

Hammy follows through by stomping onto RJ’s toes, carrying unexpected anger. “My robot buddy is IN THE JUNKYARD now, Uncle RJ!” He hisses “The junkyard…” as a reminder.

RJ denies the notion with scrunched eyes. “That night wasn’t my fault.”

Up to confront him, Heather puts her knuckles against her hips. “Oop, errrrm kinda was, honestly.”

"How was it my fault?"

Hammy zips his head between them as they spit words back and forth instantaneously like parents. A breeze brushes over him, and yet RJ and Heather should better get in the pool to cool off steam.

“He came down with a freaking ROBOT thing and you didn’t notice,” Heather says.

"Oop. ERRRM. Was I the only one who could’ve noticed? Am I your babysitter?"

She develops her own headache for herself, facing away to keep the pain of him from bouncing between her eyes. “YOU made us tired as helllll. Jeez. Can we just get over this?” She snags Hammy’s hand and dares to divorce. “C’mon Hammy. You’re my new best friend again.”

Hammy too expresses his departure by blowing a raspberry at RJ.

“Woah woah woah hey, I’m not finished with you!” RJ stings into Heather’s ear.

“Well I am.”

“Quit excluding yourself!”

The sudden halt leaves the rattling of the pool water to fill the silence for several seconds. Instead of diving in she stands on the edge of her exit with her front put away from him. Thanks to the sun hiding itself over the rooftops, the heat of their words came from their emissions, opposed to the shaded marble putting a chill under their patted feet.

Now, she repeats it: "Excluding myself?"

“Look, I get it,” RJ very blatantly pretends to sympathize. “You’re almost 18. You’re insecure. So how ‘bout we go through ‘RJ’s step-by-step guide to guaranteed narcissism’, yeah?” Of course before she can actually spend her thoughts at his shop, he’s already written the check. “Step 1 - you are important. Say it.”

She hesitates, but complies. "I am important."

“Great! Step 2 - consult your faithful, equal colleagues. Get ‘em to remind you that you are more important than they are.”

"Okay, easy enough." She does just that. "Hammy, am I important?"

Hammy, currently dipping his big toes in the pool, shoots back very casually at her, “More important than me.”

And without a hint of the smirky manner one cheek snuck out to him, she confirms with RJ the same thing. “Am I important, RJ?”

RJ, currently having his brain cells play ping-pong in his head, expresses very casually to her, “More important than me.”

"Awesome,” she smiles. “Glad we all agree I’m in charge here. Here’s the plan."

“Grea-!” There’s not a second of pause for RJ to take before he enters a panic. “Wait shoot on second thought I just remembered why ‘RJ’s step-by-step guide to guaranteed narcissism’ has R-J in the NAME-!”

“Shut up. I’m more important than you.” To spit on his efforts, she finally bumps the flipchart into the pool for good. “So, Mr. Whatever-pants, there’s ONE part of your plan that needs some Heather-ifying…”

RJ goes fishing in a hurry to rescue the flipchart from the water. That is until Heather snaps his line with one prick of a claw.

“We don’t need to ‘get them to like us’ or ‘get them on our side’,” Heather outlines. “We just need to remind them that there weren’t ‘sides’ to begin with! Ladies and gentlemen, what we’re missing is…” She swings RJ tightly to her side, before he can go diving into the pool after the chart. “...family.”

Hammy scurries up to RJ’s other side, and has got enough time to slurp up a bowl of ramen and burp directly in RJ’s face before he can unglue himself from her.

“This is very uncomfortable. And stupid,” RJ argues. “Those guys hate my guts now!”

“No no, Heather’s onto something,” admits Hammy. “Maybe we can cheer ‘em up with… oh, let’s make it like Legoland!”

An entire rollercoaster comes up in the yard ahead - a colorful playground dismantled to transform it. Hammy makes stilts from stands, and slopes from slides. At the very peak, atop a bell tower, he plants a small red flag there, and rings over the field.

“Ta-daaaaaaa. Think they’ll go nuts for this? ‘Cuz I do!”

RJ flaps out a one-dollar bill. “Whadda you think about this, Mr. Washington?”

"There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy," he offers boldly as a face on paper.

Washington tempts him with those words. He’s nearly drawn in. His lips go dull. Until he looks at Heather looking at him. “No.” He grunts at the dollar, refusing to surrender. “No, I’m NOT going with this! This’s stupid. I’m going with my plan. My plan good.”

“Your plan doesn’t work, RJ,” Heather scoffs. “That’s- That’s like why we’re talking about this.”

In response, he thrusts a pointed finger into the horizon behind him and valiantly calls: “Anything can work as long as people accept I am stubborn enough to KEEP trying it!”

He doesn’t move from this position. He looks like a major in the fool department.

Like a commander, Heather places her arms behind her back. “Hammy? Initiate Code Cookie.”

He ain’t ready for Code Cookie, seen in RJ’s startled look. Hammy’s on the ball, dashing at the Hedge. RJ can’t figure out exactly why his heart jumps at that. Take the scene back home, to the food fortress of team RPS, where RJ witnesses it outside the central tower, helpless to what only Satan himself would dare do: Heather and Hammy break Jeffery (the chocolate chip cookie) from his designated picture frame on the food-built wall. Prepared to be devoured alive.

So RJ screams, louder than the devil, loud enough to muster the attention of Team Oak on the other side of home: “NO! No no, okay! NOT Code Cookie! Anyone but Jeffery! ANYONE but Jeffery-yyy!”

He bolts in there and shoves himself between Heather and Hammy to stop the nefarious act. Hammy snaps his nails onto the cookie and wiggles it to his open mouth.

“Hammy, YOU wouldn’t eat Jeffery!” RJ pleads.

He certainly would not without just cause. Hammy presses the top of the cookie to his ear and listens a moment. Afterward, he states, “Jeffery says he is willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.”

Half of Jeffery goes right in his mouth. RJ yanks it out, hugging Jeffery from their clutches, terrified as a kid to losing a toy. “NO! This young, frivolous lad is the heart of our team!”

“So can you start thinking for the team?” Heather rolls her eyes.

“Oh GODDAMMIT! You furry noodles have NO sense of humanity-!”

“We’re animals,” Hammy points out.

…RJ fixes Jeffery onto his rightful place in the frame and finally sighs at Heather, taking in a much more civilized breath. “You’re building castles in Spain here. But golly me, here’s the wheel. So what’s your first verdict, ‘CHIEF’?”

"The first thing YOU’RE gonna do is say you’re sorry."

"Yeees dear…" he groans.

Heather waits.

"Sorry dear…"

She steps onto his feet and folds her arms crossly. “And then, YOU are so gonna make it up to us.”

"Yeees dear…"

“And lucky for you dude, I know JUST how to clear our heads.”

Cut to a suburban street now, the three of them cramped in the gaps of a tire’s metal wheel frame, of a revving car parked along the curb. The sports car blazes off without warning. One jet-quick rotation after another, before Hammy can be terrified enough to realize she was SO not kidding about the ‘head-clearing’ part, everyone has their brains turned to mush. Literally, it’s a ferris wheel spinning its way down the euthanasia coaster. By the end of the street they are corpses, flung at top speeds back over the Hedge straight into the wall of the fortress.

They smash through into the bottom floor of the main tower (literally right where they just were), leaving a massive hole in the wall that allows a nice touch of natural lighting through. Though now the ground is messy with dented food boxes, and pretzel sticks scattered everywhere from a giant plastic bucket busted open somewhere.

“How was that, guys?” Heather asks.

“Yep-yep, head… cleared. Ow,” grunts RJ. “Curly Fries, you never actually explained what this whole quote-unquote ‘plannnn’ is. We’re walking into a shoe store without socks.”

“Uh, well, the plan is called… ‘Being awesome’.”

“That’s not a PLAN!”

“Is to!” Her confidence falls. “Okay, uh, I actually-... I have NO clue what I’m doing...”

She discourages her legs to fail and take her falling into a hopeless seat. The bit of sad fat she has sinks down her body and sags out of her sides, as her flesh loses as much form as her life force.

Not even their own leader knows what she’s doing. She’s killed RJ’s momentum and sent him collapsing into a criss-crossed squat too. “Great.” He claps louder than a laughing seal and it’s outright insulting. “Genius, Heather, GENIUS!! 'I thought we'd be screwed by step two so this is going GREAT'! Nice work, pal.”

“Would anyone like a pretzel?” Hammy offers.

Neither respond. Why would either of them want a pretzel now?

Anyway, Hammy spouts out a whole complete plan of his own, even though no attention is paid to him as they’re pouting: “Y’know, the whole family was working together when I almost got kidnapped. I don’t mind if you put me on the verge of death again.”

He’s nearly eager. “It was pretty fun. It felt like I was a princess in a fairytale, like,”

Imitating gracefully, he hops and skips and bounces around the two sitting idiots. “‘Oh Hammy, oh Hammy, let down your HAAAAA-’!!”

He stops immediately to gasp, “Ohhhhh, OHHHHHHH! I know, I know! Let’s take them ALL to the forest! Hey, hey RJ, Uncle RJ, let’s take them ALL to the forest! Y’know, a family outing!”

RJ escapes his inner quarrel, tugged by the dying flicker of a firefly over his head.

“Hey Uncle RJ, why don’t we-”

RJ squeezes his lips shut with two fingers and stands the heck up, pondering some deep thought. “Wait, I got it… A family outing…” He sighs. “Eh, that sounds riveting ‘n all, but… how would we get them to go? They want my name on the Sniffer’s hitlist, which it already is. They HATE me.”

“Ooo, bummer. Maybe you could find someone they don’t hate.”

Instinctively the two face Heather, a puddle of dreaded hair remaining sat on the ground, having not seen the light coming from the hole in the wall far above her head. It soaks RJ and Hammy instead.

Something’s hidden inside her, beyond her grumpiness, taken apart by the shadows. RJ erects his back just a slick bit further looking at her. A flower in a thunderstorm, approachable in nature beyond unfortunate circumstances, a front portrayed by her since whenever it happened, whenever she drew him in for the first time over a year ago, and then… She…?

They don’t hate her.

“WaaaAAAIIIT a minute, wait a minute! ‘Possum pal, stand up!”

From his spot RJ throws a rubber duck at her pouty-pout-face. Then a bouncy ball. Then a banana peel, clinging over her head and sucking her happiness away. She blows its icky flap away from her eyes in aggravation. Finally, RJ runs up and blasts an airhorn down her ear.

“Jeez-us Christ, WHAT?!” she screams.

He laughs at his ingenuity. At once, he gets some pretzel sticks and organizes them to illustrate - a few stuck in the ground as trees, others snapped in half to represent each family member, moving as a crowd into the salty forest.

“I’ve got a plan: some kinda family forest outing. Remember the night we saved Hammy? Everyone got all POOFED up when we were all workin’ in cahoots. So we're bringing EVERYONE to the forest. At once. We'll spend all day looking for a place to settle this if we have to!”

“Didn’t I say something like this?” Hammy wonders.

“Yep. Uh-huh,” Heather pips sarcastically at RJ. A leader who’s dried all motive from their own plan is a sad sight, and Heather fits that part. “Dude, y’know they’re totally not followin’, right? Wasn’t the beehive on dad’s head enough to LOSE ‘em?”

Outside the fort, Stella and Tiger assist Ozzie in his dilemma. Head covered in painful stings and not-so-painful honey.

RJ ponders deeply over Heather’s imaginable distraught. Nah. He shakes his head, then grabs both her hands.

…

She feels him lift her to her feet before her thoughts can flutter at the contact, at a natural remedy softening her tense arms and parting just for him.

“Oh no, see… they won’t buy me.” He flocks in her lone space, filling the ring of hopelessness around her. “The way I see it… RJ stocks are down… and Heather stocks are up. Ya feel me?”

On the brighter half of her moon where it lies waiting for the turn of the clock, this actually motivates it to flip suddenly, and defy time's healing and hurt. Heather… THE Heather… returns. Life and laughter come brought up her throat when she giggles like herself again and rants on her own page:

"Oh that reminds me, funny story, turns out I'm a fish sandwich sales-possum now because when I went to buy stock in Arnie's I think I accidentally bought out one of their locations in Canada. Whatever. I was so destined for Canada-"

Thanks to Hammy, a wimpy pretzel stick comes flying at her hip (yeah they’re throwing a lot of things her way). Somehow, he of all people specializes in knowing exactly what constitutes too much talking.

Hands behind his back, RJ turns and walks. “The corporate world is all sin and no spirit. But this takes heart. Passion! Heather stock is a lil’ somethin’ I call ‘emotional appeal’,” he illustrates. “Scholars would call it somethin' stupid like…”

Before he finishes, he very smugly flicks the dirty banana peel off her head and spruces up her hair for her. “...'pathos'” is what he describes it as. “Get you got where I’m goin’?”

Something’s hidden inside her, beyond her eyes: potential. The eyes themselves - the sky blue irises glisten when entering the light, channeling every drop of sunlight into her. He’s got where he gets he’s goin’.

Heather only squints her face back. “Are you calling me cute? Yay? Nay?”

He knew she’d get the picture. It hypes him up better than a Mach 6. “In a completely over-the-top, vague, non-flirty, objective sorta way YES!! With cuteness comes practicality. YOU are the perfect spokesperson candidate with that innocent, youthful energy they wanna HEAR! I'm just an asshole, and Hammy, well he's just Hammy-”

"I trimmed my biggest toenail today with a spoon," he chimes in perfectly, being Hammy.

“-but they KNOW they can't turn down our cards…” So he meets face-to-face and firmly down-to-earth, peaking her interest with his gaze. “…when you're on the top of the deck.”

A second of thought puts her conscience in a deep, reverbing trance. RJ’s voice circles as she considers, nudging her interest at every angle, looping his image around her brain:

“We need your voice. You will deliver a speech to them. Get your voice out there… and get this family together. This was all your plan. Whaddya say, chief?”

Needless to say, she’s tempted. Pictures of fame and fortune have nothing on family. She could be carving the turkey at the feast. Her plan? That’s right, she’s taken RJ’s narcissistic lessons to heart, and pumped them as personal dominance through her veins. Dominance over insecurity and strain, struggle. She feels it surround her - the need to conjure, prove, secure a place at his side.

“Say yeeeeesss…” RJ urges almost silently.

Hammy does so in her opposite ear. “I think you should say yes toooooo. A speech sounds excitiiing.”

“Alright,” she simply decides.

“I’ll give ya ‘til the end of the week to write up a literary masterpiece.” RJ pats her shoulder proudly before they disperse. “Mark it on Friday and be ready, champ! We got 4 days before this plan gets GOLDEN!”

“We’ll be RICH!” Hammy exclaims. “Rubber duckies for everyone!”

When they leave her sitting in the fort, blank at reality, she notices the state of Jeffery’s broken frame on the floor, waiting to be tended to since the food fight last week. That… just happened, just as this new honor granted to her does now. Act one - she completes the job, and creates a great sense of awesomeness gluing the frame back together and hanging it up on the wall. It takes some tippy-toeing to reach these heights, but she gets it situated just as high as RJ first did, as the jemstone of the team. She’s in his seat now.

Again, she agreed to this? Not exactly a surprise to her, but now more weight presses down on her shoulders, though they rise in retaliation. Taken aback all the same. “Wo-ow. Guess I got somethin' to prove now. To RJ.”

Soon, that cookie on the wall may become the jemstone of a greater team.

“Guess I gotta REALLY put this family back together!”

ACT II: Food for the Heart

From her glory there comes mysterious darkness. Until the picking of her claw in a lock cleanses the lightless dungeon. A click. From the backyard, RJ taps a creaky wooden door open into a basement room, and Heather dismounts from her place on the doorknob. Light from the outer, living world purges the boxy cavern.

“So you wanted to come here for… ‘inspiration’?” RJ starts.

“Nah, I’m actually having a KILLER case of the ‘snackies’ right now.”

“I figured,” he smirks while tying a baby bib around his neck. “You still better get that speech done, otherwise, Friday’s not gonna be pretty.”

“No worries, dude. It’s so at the top of my list.” Beauty picks up and twinkles in her nose, putting in the work inspecting the obscure place before her eyes can adjust. “Do ya smell it, RJ?” she whispers.

"I smell a faint scent of fry grease," he answers identically. "And my bottle of Fudge Sludge."

"Sorry. I had to chug it all before Hammy did."

They're stocked in aisles, the assorted collection of 'junk' food shelves comprising the entirety of the dungeon. But as the world knows, one man's mass-produced schluck is all of America's cultural diet. American foragers included. Magically, when the two of them journey into the foreign land, they discover the gilded boon of RJ's raccoon tingle. Just like a supermarket every ceiling light emits a golden glow over the awaiting market with its untouched resources laid out over the land for them. Now comes the time to manifest their destiny, and rid the place and its crops of their missing harvesters… by eating all of it. None to spare. Destiny is not a dessert, not even a full-course meal, but the entire dang eatery.

RJ whispers it in awe: “Say goodbye to Ash Wednesday…”

“'Cuz we're about to be feastin' from this place,” his companion finishes.

Heather’s speech is the last of their worries now.

O-oh man, they raid as they please. Turn those shelves inside out and slobber all over them. They chug liters of only the most renowned soda brands, such as Conk and Bepis. Optimization comes afterward. Their tactics evolve to involve the drinker lying limp on the ground as the partner thrusts themselves up and down atop a bottle positioned upright in the drinker’s mouth.

It’s a lot to swallow, but imagining these two knuckleheads gorging their hearts out in such a confined period of time wouldn’t be possible without the mounds of caffeine that go down their hatches. This whole feast becomes deja vu. It’s only an elaborate trash can raid, after all. Heather climbs and runs along the shelves as a jet-propelled spider, sweeping can after can of whipped cream for RJ to drown his face in. Puffed in the stomach, the fluff makes him seem to be a porcupine with no quills.

Food is tossed around the basement like buckets of paint. The most delicious racket imaginable ensues from their mess. Their fur tackles away the dust of the room just as their mouths vacuum everything from the shelves. They go so far as to dip their feet in cheese sauce and suck it off their toes, as part of a tasty finale.

Their explosion of energy vomits itself up just minutes later.

RJ can’t help but burp from the aftermath of their wild feast. His cheeks are covered in grape jelly and crumbs of Spuddies. “So uhhh…” Between the two of them, RJ’s the fattest pig in the barn to a sack of meatless bones. In fact, Heather has gained literally no weight, compared to the mushy hill of a stomach RJ has, lying on the floor. “Your stomach capacity… It's impressive.”

“Wow,” Heather exhales in a laugh, not at all having her airway obstructed or stomach bloated from the event. “Somehow that's your weirdest compliment yet. Nice one, dude.”

Instead of responding as a civilized being, RJ unleashes and prolongs a pained noise that sounds, very simply, as exactly as he let it out: “Ahhhhhh!”

“What?” Her face is dumbed down by his off-putting reaction. “Your weirdest compliment? Put THAT in the record book.”

RJ’s brain melts in his head by that same stale tone her mouth emits. “AHHHHHH!! YOUR complimenting sounds like sarcasmmm! Don’t DO thaaat!”

“So your secret weakness is getting compliments from me?”

He’s still hurt. “Look, taking compliments from women is hard, okay? I blame society.”

The dusty cold floor doesn’t stop Heather from lying back across it to treat it as lavishly as hotel rooms in the French Quarter. “Really though,” she suggests, “Let’s just laze around ‘n enjoy this nice friendly gig we got goin’ on here.”

RJ’s walkie talkie plays a ringtone inside his bag.

“Oh!” comes the surprise from his lips. “Speaking of societal burdens… there's Verne. We’ve got this new lil’ agreement he called ‘filling up the ol’ cave again’,” he explains. “Of course he's gotta keep me in check about it every 15 minutes. Pretty nifty though, might I say.”

Foolishly, Heather’s so lackadaisical about his talk at first. “Okay, that’s… what we should’ve been doing all last week.” Then why bring it up now?

She finds her answer when RJ drops the nice friendly gig, spanks his bag in a hurry, and flips the phone up to his ear like a busy businessman. “Hey hey, start packing the rest of it!” he orders her, nothing like the affable moment they’ve just enjoyed. “We’re gonna fill this cave like a man patches drywall!”

‘The rest of it’ means the junk they’ve yet to eat.

“What?” Heather challenges. “All that stuff we found that WE could eat?”

“I canNOT stay on the wrong side of the turtle’s shell, okay?” he whispers sharply away from the phone. “With this plan, I reckon we’ll pret-ty busy from now on.”

Pretty busy? PRET-TY BU-SY? Was she hearing that right? Verne says they’re busy all the time, but when RJ does, that has to mean something bad. Real bad. Heather pins these points together. He never calls it ‘being busy’. He calls it a ‘heist’ or ‘adventure’ or ‘side quest’ or something less boring or lame. ‘Busy’? How busy do they have to be for HIM to say it? The Log’s full. The entire SITE’S full, even, especially after last week. But the cave’s empty. They drained it in whatever nonsense they were doing last week. RJ sounds like he’s doing this for Verne. Verne LOVES filling things apparently. He’s not gonna stop for a second of fun until that cave’s full. That BIG BEEFY room in the cave. Normally going after that food would be a clap and a half for her fun receptor, but with VERNE at the wheel, there’ll be no mercy to get that work done. ‘WORK’. ‘Work’? Is this it? Is her life over?

Then, her fuse ticks off, until her security blows to pieces alongside the fruits of recreation. The walls come down on her leisure, and she goes: “Wait wait wait, no no no, HOW busy-?”

XXX

Heather finds herself in the midst of trepidation without warning or fanfare.

“Next time,” RJ tells her before leaving her speechless to herself.

Not surprisingly, but not any more merciful to her disheartened soul, this little roadblock extends far past that basement. Far past. Leaving that sight of tragedy for good, being home sweet home in the forest doesn’t stop RJ from turning down her plans and leaving for his own. Her brain’s been moved from one bin to another. From work to play. Putting the responsibility of that speech on herself was the first mistake, and who knows if she’s even written a word. Now RJ’s got quite the bundle himself from Verne - play to work - and Heather quells her spirits into darkness, her front slouched down.

“Oh for Pete’s sake...” Already she knows what pain’s been showered over her, and she just wants to dry.

Hammy appears in a homemade costume of a young rosy-cheeked boy stitched together and draped over him. “Hello feral, hormonal youthling! I’m Pete!” Pete’s toothy demeanor leaves cherries of cheer for her to pick, if she accepts them.

Instead she breaks it to him quite sourly: "Hammy, that’s not helping. RJ can’t make time for our regular doorbell prank session cuz he’s too busy trying to like, not make Verne mad, I guess."

“Oh sweet. Today’s not a good mad Verne day.” Unfortunately, Hammy completely misses the ballpark of her frustration, and she feels it.

She waits for RJ to return through the Hedge. Even with cheese puffs to snack on this takes hours upon hours or, in reality, a couple minutes.

"Now can we go doorbell pushing?!" Heather nearly begs.

“Later.” Yawning, RJ repels himself with his swanky sack of food for the cave, nearly begging to, it seems to her.

The afternoon passes, and after supper they’re back at it with the heists. RJ has to grab her arm so tight it cuts her circulation, just to get her inside the front door of a house when Ozzie picks it open. But a bed of flowers outside, she stains over her mind. The whiff of many colors, a poppy pansy and petunia - 3 great ‘possum names, by the way - turned gray by the dim entrance hall of the residence.

When they’re at the mouth of Vincent’s cave after the fact, Verne oversees a marked list in a very satisfactory manner. None of that pleasure is marked on Heather. RJ sated Verne’s demands, now to pile them in the backroom. Heather doesn’t help to unpack the bottomless stock. RJ works too tirelessly in Verne’s metal clutches to notice her idleness, let alone her. Not a single glance comes her way. The cold stone wall makes for a better friend. It warms to her back the more she lets it have hers, when she’s otherwise alone with a mindless worker ant.

‘Next time’.

Why is she the only one particularly bothered by this? Why is she… the only one to see it at all? None of the others seem to even be. Be… at all. Over a day’s time, she remembers talking to RJ and not one other soul. ‘Talk’ generously describes it. She’s thrown dirty banana peels off her head and at his feet, when she’s a mole in a garbage can. She’s gotten so trashed by trash without ever cracking a smile.

‘Next time’.

She’s gone ‘head-clearing’ on the busiest roads, spinning herself violently in the frame of a car’s moving tire as they did together earlier, losing consciousness by the second. She thought she’d forget. RJ and possibly a few other heads make sure she never does. They’re unpacking a delivery truck. Not helping the humans of course, but helping themselves, and helping her assume his voice to be a hallucination.

“Next time.”

She’s gone metal-detecting in backyards, with RJ graciously pointing out he ain’t got time for dat. So she uncovers Hammy underground, with a vintage 1800s metal can of 'Lincoln's Premium Nut Jar'. And at the same time, he’s out of the roots of her head, and into sight once again.

Hammy happens to be here for her, even though she never finds the motive to address it. She works alongside him, maybe… After all she hasn’t counted one box, fruit or pastry of her worth to these heists. She’s counted time. Nothing but time. Time is a very boring thing to count. The higher it goes, the slower it grows.

And when their work the next day appears just about done, Heather waits for RJ to join her in the living room. That’s ambitious thinking. She waits, nothing else.

Flat, fat, and lazy across that couch cushion, she calls, “Keepin’ the fort warm for ya, dude! Thank me later.”

A while passes. “Damn, ya want those cheeks toasted or what?!”

Another while. “...RJ?”

She swings her head over the curving armrest, and creases her ears down her face. In a doorway some ways behind the couch, at the back of the room, Ozzie and the porcupine couple converse, while the rest of the house bustles with subtle movement and critter-y chatter.

“Where is Heather?” Ozzie asks the couple.

“Eh, she’s kinda lazin’ about back there, y’know.” Lou rats her out with a finger pointed to the living room.

Heather tilts her head away when every eye advances into her lonesome.

“Lou, let the kid have her fun, dear,” Penny insists. “It’s what she’s here to do.”

“I’m just glad she’s not in harm’s way,” Ozzie tells them. “Not… that there’s any harm here, at the moment.”

They have a human man pounding on glass somewhere in a bathroom down the hall, locked inside a shower chamber. The trickling of icy water pelts the tiled floor.

Ozzie concludes on this note: “If she’s having fun, leave her be.”

Heather throws her head against the couch. They talk like they own her sometimes. “Maybe that’s just what I am. A kid.” An attraction of sorts, or some kind of burden. RJ even kept the golf bag on the couch too, for her, as a promise to return. What a burden she must be to condition a busy guy like that.

RJ… He runs through the room and leaps onto the couch like a hero for her at that moment, to her radiant delight. “Sorry I’m late-”

“RJ!” Verne calls before he’s at ease for even a second. “We need your help!”

Heather’s already placed herself upside-down against the back cushion with her neck bent crookedly by the mushy seat, hopes crushed, a grumpy gus.

RJ still has the inhumanity to sigh, “Next-”

“Next time…” Her tail strangles his muzzle and bends his bones out of place. “You’re gonna be tied to me. Tail… to… TAIL!” She goes ahead and has her tail jerk RJ and his busy butt off the couch, sending him on whatever busy-ness he MUST attend to. She leaves too, by that moment.

Enter her into a brighter nook of the house, as she’s preparing to enter some white, polished pool. Water settles at the top when a faucet stops pouring. “I guess if he won’t enjoy me… I’ll just enjoy me.” She wades her legs in.

She settles into that bathroom sink, submerging up to her chest, breathing a big hum of relief when the warm water measures up her fur and protrudes the coat. Numbness it brings for the first second - a loss of reality and stress and responsibility, underneath the softly-lit bulbs above. Her eyes go up as if her pink skin had a sensation normally akin to taste buds. The drain is clicked in at the bottom to keep this warmth from leaving - perfect to allow her to swim and waddle through the small, circular pool like a bathtub.

“I’m so bored I might as well get a bath while I’m here. SUPER unlike me, but…”

From a bottle leaning over the sink, she squirts soap over her head and down her back. It runs into the water, dispersing at her waist. She fuzzes her foamy fur with a flat hand and brushes it with the claws. Her tail relaxes in the water. She even improvises a little ditty to amuse herself as her natural odor disintegrates, without any remorse or regret in her captivating singing voice:

“OOOOOOOOHHHHHH…. If I could head to Ar-niiie’s, what sandwich would it be? They’ve got beef ‘n turkey, chicken, ‘n even fish fiLLEEEEEET! OH, but imma gonna build-my-own awesome fish bur-ger, and it goes: Buuuun and a fish pat-ty, then lots ‘n lots of cheese, ‘n I want ketchup, mayoooo, ‘n even lettuce please, but no pick-llles, I hate pick-llles, pickles are laaame, they can DIE-”

The bathroom door busts open, scaring her half to death. Whew, she nearly had a dad moment. Now THAT would’ve been embarrassing.

RJ  (a grave mistake for him to enter) spots her dripping with soap in the sink immediately. “Heather, where’ve you BEEN?! Chop-chop you gotta work; Your folks think I’m letting you live like some privileged white girl-! Wait… were you just singing? About Arnie’s?”

She stomps herself out of the sink and fumes at him over the edge of the countertop, seeping a hiss out the corner of her mouth, drawn back to show a tooth or two. How sharp she does it flinches RJ’s countenance into a frightened state. He scans her soap-covered balloon body for a way to sway topic. Suds and water plop in thick groups off her fur.

“Ooooo, you’re wet. I could dry you off,” he offers. “Raccoon fur is super absorbent. That’s why the humans are so jealous they wear our skin like it’s a million dollars.”

Her dripping temper is a bit overdue to startle him. What she needs is consolement, though for what?

“Aaaaand… Oh! Our hugs are pretty great too! We’re uh… known for our hugs. Yep.”

But everything he says sounds sarcastic, even an objective phrase. Heather’s heat rises up her legs and to her heart.

“So THIS is what you have TIME for!?!” It explodes from her lips before her thoughts respond. She lets it loose. Now her heat, her embarrassment - her pink skin turned red - has reached her face and been exposed, turned vulnerable, and the only thing she can do now is jump off the sink counter, slip over her wet and soapy feet a few times on the cold floor, have her warmth removed (all but her seething face), and stampede for the door.

RJ watches her pass. “Oh good, you’re coming to help?”

“I am so never singing again. Never. Nuh-uh.”

She stomps out the doorway. Water trickles in a sweeter trail behind the grumpy lump.

“Dunno what’s her problem,” RJ lets out. “She’s got a million-dollar voice. It’ll be perfect for her speech…”

All wet and practically submerged in soap, she gets back to working with Hammy packing up the wagon outside, food relayed by a ramp of plastic wrap. She sniffs. “I hate smelling good.”

“I think you’re being clingy,” Hammy puts bluntly, continuing to work.

“Am I?” she wonders, not continuing to work. Whether her situation with RJ is plain obvious, or just something Hammy is particularly attentive to, she doesn’t question.

"Yup."

“That was rhetorical, thank you Hammy.”

"Oh."

RHETORICALLY, she laments to him: “See, all this ‘doin’ stuff’ is kinda makin’ me thinkin’, like, it’s been a while since we’ve actually DONE STUFF together.”

“Whaddya mean? He always spends time with us.” Heather doesn’t even notice him eating up half the family’s food they load on the wagon - the nut-related products - as he talks.

“RJ’s spending time WITH us but not FOR us. Goin’ on these heists ‘n stuff, but not really… hanging out. I mean like, we used to dip our feet in cheese sauce and suck it off our toes.”

“Sounds awesome.”

“It was totally awesome,” she whimpers. “Where'd the fun times go, Hammy?”

“I dunno.” His basic responses make it sound like she’s puking her words at a brick wall.

“Whatever, and-... and everyone thinks it’s just for fun, but…” Her, a bouncy soap balloon, trails away and never finishes that sentence.

“Oh.” Hammy takes a second to process. “Oh! Okay! Bye-bye, Heather!... Have fun today!”

XXX

The suburbs call to her. She overlooks them on top of the Hedge, the sun’s love shredded over rooftops. Inflatable yard decorations and shouting kids, some bounce so high and shout so loud on trampolines she can hear them drag her heart from here. Her heart… is hungry. SHE’S hungry. She’s two KINDS of hungry, however that’s possible.

“I just gotta see more of it…” she thinks. “Like, who knows when all this could just get, I dunno, TAKEN AWAY like we almost did. There’s NO WAY dad’d let me go alone… Barely doable as is…” Her thoughts accelerate and heat like gas. “'Next time'. 'Next time'.” The massive behemoth food fortresses the family has built since last week don’t help her find justification. “LOOK at these dumb hunks! We’ve got enough food to last ME three weeks! Which is impressive.”

RJ works somewhere back there, swaying between his bag and the ground to unload food like machinery. One by one, there’s Wacky Whip (that’s hers), some weird obscure off-brand snack food (that’s… hers), and a big fat bunch of bananas (there’s some kind of trend here). Each one is familiar to her, and each one pieces some puzzle together, some puzzle of curiosity and tightened confidence she is relieved to loosen.

“Hey, mental narrative coach.”

“Yo what’s up?” her coach answers.

"If I’m ‘just a kid’… how come I scored more of that food than anyone last heist? If I’m just here for fun, how come I’m the best player here?"

"Well you eat more than anyone too, so like, it kinda balances out."

"Honestly, I don’t even remember pickin’ that stuff up. I just know I did."

“Yeahhh, it felt like you were focused on waiting for RJ the whole time, didn’t it?”

“Still-! Wait wait, hold on.” Deep concentration is necessary for her to breathe in deeply through her nose and recite RJ’s steps to guaranteed narcissism: “I am important. More important than you.”

"Wut?"

“I’m tired of clinging around! Y’know what, yeah, I’m gonna DO something about this! MY-self.”

RJ works like machinery. And like machinery, she notices the repetition of RJ’s work. Some kind of… beat to it. Like music. Behind the willow tree… her and RJ have a collection of electronics. She can see it from here, just a glance from RJ further up in the foreground. Her fuzzy eyes make out the sunlit gleam of a CD in the grass, back there. By the time she’s looked back at RJ, he’s packing excess food into the red wagon, ready for transport to the cave.

“So let’s have some freakin’ fun, RJ,” she grins and vents very lightly as a snicker.

She jumps into action. Her new plan shines true, sure to open the cage locking her awesomeness in.

When life gets fun, the brain will take it and run. Be it a piece of warning or wisdom. Time will tell, as the week ticks down.

Her plan delivers itself as easy as could be - a delivery truck delivers a scraggy skinny surfer-lookin'-guy (with blonde wet spaghetti for hair, a dope chain necklace and slumped-out pelvis), who delivers a small envelope into the mailbox staked in front of their team’s fort. The weirdo delivery guy slips the envelope over her stomach - Heather there to receive it, lying in the red box with her legs and tail sticking out the front.

“There ya go, my furry freak!” the guy crashes as a wave from his lips, rocking out beneath his green beanie. “Hang ten with ya later, duuuude!”

“Thanks Surfer-Lookin'-Guy!” Heather calls from deep inside.

Surfer-Lookin'-Guy drives through the Hedge, leaving no mark in it. His radical music fades away, lingering as pumped-up vibes in Heather’s soul. She rips the paper to pieces inside the box and unravels a used CD, dull on one side and drawn over with a label of black sharpie:

‘Our Town’. The track hardly mattered. So long as RJ doesn’t recognize it.

“Hey Verne!”

RJ’s voice snatches her attention. Shoots her curious head out the rim of the mailbox, so excited it knocks into the roof. RJ prepares to depart in the direction of Vincent’s cave with another red wagon-load of food strapped on top, and the golf bag on his back.

“Is this a bit overkill for the quota?! I've got enough in JUST the bag to last Heather three days! Which is impressive!”

“So long as that cave's full, you could go out 'n be as dumb as you want!” From the safe, not-dumb protection of the Log inside his fort, Verne backs out on that notion immediately. “Wait, forget I said that, you'd kill us all.”

Before RJ leaves, Heather flails out. She must secure her chance, the one and only. He may not notice her now, clinging onto the food wagon as he pulls the cargo along without a care, but he will. O-oh, he will. Until then, she sneaks her new CD behind her back.

The cave is no different. Steady as a queen in the backroom, the worker ant in RJ takes no account for Heather leaning against the opposite wall, while he works tirelessly to unpack and organize a cornucopia of food filling all available space. It’d put the outdated ‘Do not feed the bear’ sign - always having nudged tourists to do the opposite - to shame.

She holds the CD, ready. She examines it again, then RJ, crouched with her back to her, shoveling boxes of cookies out of his bag in her direction. Nah. He ain’t a worker. This worker has no queen, motive, conscience.

One item flings high above the rest. A much hairier fella, straight into her arms. Why it’s Hammy, out of RJ’s bag, now a baby in her arms. That’s all of Team RPS collected in one location - it seems like it’s been forever already. But what did she sacrifice to carry another? The CD slips from her hand, and before her tail can catch it… it rattles on the hard floor. Heather covers Hammy’s mouth before he can ruin her cover. RJ’s head perks up straight… but patiently holding her breath, Heather releases one once he simmers down.

Only now, pressure comes down on her like the roof of the cave closes in. And the walls. And the mounds of food here, colorful boxes, but demons inside. At least to her, patronizing her for the loss they’ve brought, the time RJ’s wasted away from her, and for crying out loud she can’t take it anymore! Beside her foot, she kicks the CD to slide across the uneven floor on its dull side to the dead center of the room, underneath a bright bulb shouting ‘I am here! Remember what’s special in me?’. Quit foraging for food and start foraging for fun.

Her teeth clench. She carries the sweet child, and herself, out of the room for good.

RJ empties every last piece from his bag, and glances around. The entire room is nearly full. He wipes off a sweat and stands up, beaming with pride.

Just when he’s ready to leave the room, a rainbow glare pierces his eye from where his feet walk in the center. A CD. He nearly stepped on it. It has no friends nearby among the food peaking to the roof of the room. Though maybe it is friendless entirely, lost for years.

He picks it up. The dull side is a solid navy blue, a piece of faint yellow scotch tape spread across in mediocre condition, reading in black sharpie:

‘Our Town’.

XXX

RJ sits behind the willow tree at home, marking down the new, unexpected CD in the back pages of his journal, where his and Heather’s electronic findings are listed. Their stash of board game boxes and other organizational items hold those gathered prior - memories perhaps, but this one from the cave draws a blank to him. No story behind it, no reason to exist at all. But it’s here, so he marks it.

Heather bounces herself into his composition. She alters his whole key when stuffing earbuds into his ears from behind like she’s about to mug him. That could hardly be the case. She hops back and deals him a good listen to what’s blasting through the wire, from a small green CD player she’s got in one hand.

Seeing him go blank has her grinning preemptively. His marker-held hand slouches off his journal. The ‘Our Town’ CD - merely a prop for her heist to his heart - falls out of his grip. His head collapses backward into the cradle of her cutesy feet. Snatched the frisky little raccoon for good, a fresh piece of his attention, his preoccupation, lying underneath her legs in a wide-eyed trance. Completely tranced. So expressionless by what fire’s being spat into his ears that his posture and ability to speak has burnt to a crispy marshmallow. Rough on the outside with a soft and fluffy inside she bites into with no concern for a burnt tongue.

Heather ejects the mini-CD - ‘Love in an Elevator’ by Aerosmith, duh - and leans down onto him to pluck the earbuds from his ears. Two pairs of blue eyes meet. Heather appears upside-down to him, and RJ to her. Even then they feel right-side-up, joined by the beat in spring.

And even listening as equals, Heather’s shadow spreads its playful wings over him as one perky mentor to student. “Paper beats rock…” Team RPS. Raccoon for rock. Possum for paper. He has much to learn to decipher the meaning, the TRUE meaning, of the metaphor, which will definitely never ever come into broad light again.

The tip of her tail wiggles a bit.

Lured by the music, snared by the DJ and staying for her smile, RJ submits. He can’t evade her rock ‘n roll awesomeness forever. “Well… played” puts it simply. Well played.

“What’re you waiting for? Let's stock this rack UP!”

Welp, RJ’s dropped his day harder than the beat. That does it - turtles turned to tracks and food turned to fun. His railroad shifts lanes and for once in ever, he jumps up in her name with an empty inner plate. She’s the chef.

So he helps her throw it together in a jiffy: a toilet paper holder nailed into a tree, where they slip their greatest CD tracks onto the roll. A large sheet of poster paper down the body of the tree, and Heather climbs up to slather her writing over it in red marker:

‘Heather’s Banger Roll’

Heather joins RJ in observing it. A sub-message waving from a flagpole stuck out from behind the tree reads:

‘Don’t forget to wipe…

WITH BANGERZ!’

RJ turns his head, volume low in intrigue. “...So how much of this ‘fun-fest’ have you planned?”

Heather’s ecstatic to be tugging his arm, so much so she just about sweeps him off his feet. “C’mon dude, we’re gonna be late!”

“Oka-ay, okay!”

Under her lead, he blazes a trail of vibrant aesthetic straight to the Hedge, straight out of words. She jogs each pace on beat, and he follows her notes. The world dims a bit, or maybe it’s just her face lighting up, but he sure can’t tell. She’s so prepped for this moment that RJ has just a second or two to repeat the path she lights for him before his commitment to her pleasure will die one killer concert short. He can’t miss it - miss her. When his legs throw him off, order him to stop, poke at him with hesitance, he laughs and tunes them out.

The Hedgies gather at the wheels of a parked car on the street, and make an amphitheater view around Verne leading them. RJ and Heather arrive last after some brief… shenanigans… to put a little worry in Verne’s face, witnessing the mischievous nature they carry when moseying in.

Something about a whole ‘receptacle raid’ they’re about to do on the suburbs this evening after the humans have just finished supper. Blah blah blah, RJ and Heather smirk at each other for about five whole minutes, poking at each other behind their backs and behind the family. They’ve put just an extra foot of distance between the rest of the pack.

Nudge-nudge from elbows to ribs - it’s all fun and games until Heather accidentally stabs RJ with her elbow so hard it knocks him to the ground in pain. But then it’s fun and games again when they have to justify it to Verne. ‘Evening rib pains. Typical for raccoons’.

‘Explosive nostril tremors’ - RJ jabs two fingers up Heather’s nose to counterattack. Now this is sounding like an RPG game.

Verne goes on for a while, saying something about filling the cave “all the way to the top” before the group splits up for the mission.

Well screw this.

RJ and Heather steer themselves off the family’s path to pursue their own, now riding in style on their signature red-hot open-top RC-Lamborghini. They drive far from the scene at MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, with a trash can they spilled some ways back successfully distracting the family from their absence. Though a grim passover looms above, the clouds seem to completely clear for the two of them.

“Woo-ho-HOO!” RJ cheers.

Cool fingers shoot left and right. Every human they point their swagger at feels so lame they just have to move out of the way for RJ and Heather. Even at this time of day, the streets are bustling with those terrified, drowsy adults returning from work.

A whole sea of them disperse screaming at the true aristocrats of the suburbs, and RJ kicks back in his tiny seat. “Y’know, I’m something of a Moses myself.”

Heather taps him rapidly, pointing down the side of the nearest house. “Wait wait I smell it!”

“Well I trust your nose.”

So RJ at the remote swings them abruptly from the sidewalk to the alley, throwing out half of Heather. She asked for it. They leave the car and follow the neat grass to the backyard, where a plethora of upbeat tunes dances in their ears, mixed with the livelihood of a full family.

The backyard, as crowded as they imagined with pink creatures, runs down a far hill. As a child gains momentum down a colorful slip-’n-slide tube in the dead middle, the mania of the festivities collects wetness too. Sprinklers covering the lawn, kids drowning each other with water guns and hoses, and the whole place has a scent of fertilizer and chlorine. With the state of the warm setting sky the suburban setting would be very picturesque if it weren’t for it. Straight chaos with a musical beat to regulate it.

Yellow and white flower bushes line the hill, flashing the path down the yard like an airplane runway, all to acquire the human dad’s CD about to enter a radio at the very back, positioned just past the exit of the slip ‘n slide.

The sly spirit in RJ’s eyes gets broader. Heather catches his look. “Got a plan?” she presumes.

"Glad you asked," he winks.

Her arm is yoinked and she’s bombing head-first down the slip-’n-slide tube before she can space herself an inch from him. Swirling, glowing colors flash over her until another spout of water blasts into the tube over their coats, and she’s blinded briefly again, and laughing. Life’s cooler than lemonade down the squeaky surface, and when a small ramp at the end bumps their chins and they enter open air, water truly encapsulates her.

It’s never been so free.

They fly at the perfect angle to tackle the CD from the dad’s hand. Underneath the massive shade of an overhanging tree, everything blinds in a blur. Still the surface of the CD shines as a rainbow glare when Heather’s arms latch onto it.

It’s never been so facile to feel.

Over the back fence the opposite backyard beyond the border lands them inside a hula hoop. Gravity straps them to this wheel as the fantastic ride bounces them across the yard and onto a trampoline. Laughing or screaming, they fling as high as treetops and rain their wetness from their hair over the world below.

It’s never been so fun.

They can’t dangle in the air forever. RJ slings his yo-yo of neon orange and blue at the lightning rod of the nearest rooftop. Heather snaps a pic - she’s wetter than laundry - before hugging tightly onto RJ’s golf bag - the only thing keeping her jovial gratitude off RJ himself. And when the yo-yo hurls them planting onto the back face of the orange roof, they can rest, side-by-side, sitting against the curved bricks covering the top edge.

By that point, on that point, they’re home. As far from home they are, nothing quite matches the limpid sensation that laxes Heather’s arms when she puts the new CD in her tail through the finger hole and shoves it away into the top of RJ’s bag. One meets the mat at the door after trailing through the rain, and in the same way and without any strength left in her quivering body, she collapses as a hairy wet bean bag onto his arm. Her matted cheek squishes against the point of his shoulder, hardened by confidence but going welcomingly soft as a seat for her, while she also grips the spiked soft and soggy fur her right hand finds between his back and bag.

Every time she pants, another drip goes out onto him. His soaked fur drains out in trickles onto the roof, so together they work from their play to pour the moisture out of themselves. He cradles her against him to keep that kind of personality close - that kind of character she always spilled all over him - as genuinely and affably as the exhausting moment allowed. RJ just laughs.

As lusty and enraptured as she’s ever been, her mouth dangles open in hopes of absorbing the tree-fed air into her and fixing her lungs. He must be the craziest guy she’s ever met. Meanwhile his countenance fixes hers, as she nearly snorts or suffocates from her lack of breath, but manages a smile the whole way through. Combatant as these forces may be, they come across her independently, as though her heart sought to tear free from the lungs walling it. Heather laughs alongside him.

From this point she could’ve died right on him. He could’ve died as well frankly, in that orange sunset, like their souls are spilling free as water out of their fur, merging into one puddle drying in the cracks of the brick, to fade into the air.

RJ nudges her. “We’re in…?”

“We’re out,” Heather giggles.

“Never without.” RJ throws her a fist to bump.

Instead of a bump, her fingers extend and wrap the hand as a sheet of paper over his rocky fist. Paper beats rock. Even RJ forces himself to applaud her clever move through a grin and a sly little nod.

Time passes. The other Hedgies run from a gruff gray-suited woman hunting them down with a newspaper (dunno how that happened). RJ and Heather? They run through the Hedge.

Behind the willow tree at home, a new CD added to their brand-spankin’-new Banger Roll gets introduced by RJ’s hand into his journal, doodled to perfection.

“There it isss…” RJ gongs over the complete portrayal.

“There it isss…” Heather repeats at his side, so close she’s brushing his fur with hers.

“Do ya get me now? When you work hard, you’ll find lots of time to play down the road. But you are so focused on the play thing, you’re kinda…” He dizzies her with a finger. “...loo-loo- losin’ track, y’know what I mean?”

She backs off an inch. “Was I too big of a lazy-bum?”

“Okay, you… maAaAay have been an overachiever on the lazy-bumming,” he confirms in all non-insulting technicality, “But I think I get you now. What WE just did… This IS ‘work’ to you.”

Having no clue how he’d figured, she realizes this happens to be quite the perfect description to cling to. Work doesn’t have to mean breaking a sweat, but she is sweating. Her work wore her out as much as anyone else’s. Does a lazy-bum look like that? A map of the suburbs she has by memory. It’s beginning to show here, one CD at a time.

“It’s why you want the family back together more than anything, ain’t it?” RJ explains for herself to piece together. “You want everyone to live the good life, the fun life…”

She shines from everything he sends into her eyes.

“Spuddiesss, Sludge Fudge, CDsss, even the luxurious novelty of family, it’s all food at the end of the day, some of it’s just…” Not much of a way to explain it, is there? He ends up shaking his head and putting a finger to the center of her chest. “...food for the heart!”

Certainly doubtful he’d ever truly know how much heart-food she ingests that warm evening. “You’re the best, dude.” His gesture put some fidget in her fingers. “Like really, I mean um… This’s more than just ‘fun’ to me.” Her two dorky teeth stick widely out.

Then she lets herself sink too deep into intimacy. Her tail, subconsciously, sways over to RJ’s and nearly hugs itself around it. It skids on his fur underneath. Heather breaks it loose with a jerk that reverberates up her spine. RJ jolts his back up straighter in surprise - a warning to her. Heather leaves to load up the CD onto the toilet roll. Her face shrouded ahead of him, she clutches the disc and puts as much space between him and her back as possible to keep her heart from accelerating to a pace twice as fast.

It doesn’t work. RJ chuckles, and they head to bed.

XXX

One narrator plays through static on the TV: “Now the peculiar shape of this fruit has sparked controversy among the religious community as of recent times - Why would God create bananas? With a take from Chesterton’s Pastor Honey, me and Mr. Mono may have found our answer…”

“Uh, well, it’s interesting, because uh, Jesus is believed to have been a big fan of bananas. And some say bananas look a bit like boomerangs- Well, uh, Jesus is like a boomerang, y’know, he always came back-”

RJ clicks the TV off. “This documentary stinks. I’m starting a banana church!”

On the purple throne of the TV set, hidden behind the fort of Team RPS, Heather lies resting on him. They’re alone. Only minor traces of any others’ watching and snacking can be found in the area. But life was slowly starting to return to be sure, after the neglectance of this sweet sound place last week. RJ’s leaning his back over the armrest, and his body’s in a mess of noodles with Heather, very innocently curled up over him with her head rubbed on his chest. Together though, it’s far beyond a snug fit on the width of that chair. It’s straight up squished. The longer RJ is awake, the number his back gets.

Heather has a banana peel on her head again. Goofball. With amusements like this RJ forgets the numbness anyway.

“At mass, every human has to feed Heather a banana. Then guess what? I’ll never have to keep her stomach full again!”

He picks the slimy peel from between her ears and flings it onto a pile full of bananas eaten off one bunch. Even then her stomach rumbles in grievance and greed.

Perhaps more than her stomach craves more. In this nightly silence, where crickets chirp, he somehow can hear the music playing on and on, just by turning his head and looking at the CD on Heather’s own rack. Through leafy vegetation and the green of the forest, he sees it somewhere back there, past the pond. The artificial colors of game boxes and of course, the CD rack, all for the purpose of storing their electronics and media. When the morning comes, Heather will open her bright eyes to match the tint of the sky, and they’d be off again. He’d make sure of it, just to experience the kid in this kid like that again.

“Oh don’t start, I didn’t ask you!” Who’s he talking to? “I don’t get her. I dunno why the kid’s like this, but… this’s clearly something special to her. She wants me to be a part of it, for some reason.” All this talk is something that would make anyone else suspect RJ of dementia. “I mean yeah, the food’s up there on the list. But we’ve got pleeenty, right?”

He visits two glaring pieces of evidence: the two forts, tall as the treetops, and the bandaged Mt. Feeds-a-Lot not too far away, now rising in comparative stature thanks to their efforts.

“And I for one think we’ve got PLEEENTY to show the girl. ‘Heart foragers’, the two of us. Whaddya think?”

His old raccoon plush, tattered and ripped, can’t find a complaint for that, over there lifeless in the pitch-black grass.

"Any more objections?"

No objections found in its dead face.

"Good! Good. Night-night, you typical 'possum." RJ remembers those words from some time back. But it feels ironic, somewhat, with the cuddly aspect seemingly being the only thing typical about her… “Tomorrow, I’ve got a plan…"

Forget the whole cave thing - like, it’s 95% full anyway. They're gonna fill that roll up by the end of the week. Start the timer; Start the music; Let’s see where they can take this.

One final empty page left in RJ’s journal, up to the challenge. The first CD he draws up becomes the exact same for Heather to catch the next morning, taking her turn spinning frivolously to score it on the banger roll. RJ nibbles excitedly on his pen for every CD she gets loaded, one-by-one. They all see their place in the journal. Every song, every memory, every one.

Somewhere not too far away, a coffee machine completes its dual-brew under the pink rising sun. Ozzie’s barely awake in time to collect it with Stella before those alleged ‘heart foragers’ set out on their own suburban antics with no fair warning nor knowledge lent to him.

“Now where do you think she’s off to, Stella?” Heather’s tail disappears into the Hedge by the end of that sentence.

Stella sweeps up her coffee. “Feelin’ a bit like Oz’ today?”

“Is it too much like me? If I am going to die out there I’m going to die a worthy parent.” Just a sniff has his paranoid claws gripping the air. “Heaven speaks, her donut breath?”

“Yea-uh?” From his entertaining overreaction, she snorts. “Donut breath?”

“Have you seen the kids when they eat that much sugar in the morning?” Then he slurps his caffeine-ridden coffee. “She has to know she’s doing it; Those donuts… are never a good sign!...”

Stella keeps chuckling, watching him go. “Wut? Think the girl’s up to… trouble?”

“That’s it, I’m not going to let my daughter’s sugar rush go unsupervised.” Thus, he smacks his knees. “Legs; fatherly instincts, let's get to work!” He runs after them, managing his old breaths as well as he can.

“Hmph. Have fun.”

All feels right, justified… until he arrives in the dead center of the suburbs, and car radios enclose his senses only on sound. Hideous, hideous sound that blocks his daughter’s morning-donut-breath from his detection, and thus her safety along with it.

“I won’t die… I won’t die without her…”

XXX

Alright, cue the killer soundtrack composed by exactly one millennial dude in his basement. Or however it goes, and goes. They're gonna need it.

The Hedge? That thing's THEIR Hedge now. When they’re through, they become new kinds of ‘animals’. Between leaves, between yards, RJ and Heather surf the shade on their heisting mixtape. Hand-picked by Heather herself, every previous operation for literal food with the family has been replaced by the metaphorical food hoarded by only her and RJ. Two names, don’t forget it. That big hunk of leaves becomes their worldly transit, for they experience nearly all cultures on their trip around the perimeter of the suburbs, from the most American of Americans (oh god) to lovely walks in Paris gardens.

It’s heads and tails for them.

So, CD after CD. Scattered everywhere; Practically a game of hide-and-seek with what random locations they dig up. Behind houses. Under the feet of garden gnomes. Under some tall guy’s tophat (who wears a tophat in the 2000s?). Around every nook and cranny, inside and out. RJ's packed the golf club to go. Now they're serious. They brought the whole dang wagon for their outing too. Halfway through the day they must’ve realized just how many CDs they could find by disregarding the food (not a painful struggle for RJ anymore, to be honest) and looking for these shiny circles.

And of course together as a team they trail the wagon behind them, hands on handle, side-by-side. And of course what that actually means is that RJ drags the thing while Heather lies back in the cart to ‘organize’ their stock. Every track she inspects gets placed into their respective ‘cool’ and ‘not cool’ piles, identified by smiley and frowny faces drawn on the discs.

And of course between every joust Heather needs a snack break. Let it be known, having fun is a very demanding occupation. Letting Heather HAVE fun is a very demanding occupation in itself, for RJ. How come it takes work to play?

But every time, they’re back to Heather’s ‘work’ not soon after. When she’s having fun, it’s not too hard for RJ to give in as well.

In that case, crank it up. Oh baby crank it up.

(To be a disclaimer, the following song names are fake; Any matching titles is purely coincidental.)

Men love trimming their own hedges. More importantly, they love listening to music when they do. ‘My Dad Ate an Onion Ring’ - BANGER track. Just like that, another score for the gang. The crew. The buddies. The, uh, what did RJ say? ‘Heart foragers’? Yeah whatever. That sounds clunky. They’re buddies. Heads ‘n tails; Rock ‘n Paper.

Another CD lying in a flower patch. ‘Spare my Stomach’. Do these guys just leave these things sitting around outside? Easter's over, idiots. Come to think of it, why would a rabbit lay eggs anyway?

Why would a bird poop? Why would a bird… poop soap? The closest the Sniffer ever gets to grabbing their grabby parts is in some dusty attic where he unveils to them his lovecraftian horror, his LATEST INVENTION - robot surveillance birds (heard that one before) that poop soap on animals like them. Soapy bird poo. Let’s not talk about it further, please no. Anyway, there’s a CD somewhere in that attic too. ‘Vending Machine Blues’.

As proud and omnipotent over the suburbs as their grip is now, RJ and Heather’s shenanigans map themselves like a grid between houses and roads, up invisible hills and down their slopes.

Last but not least… they find time of course, to dunk their feet in cheese sauce and suck it off their toes. Each others’? Who knows. Who cares. And it’s an ingenious deal they’ve got going on, and reassuring too, that Heather could never get rabies from him. That’s just how super awesome and chill possums be. It’s like they were made to be friends with peppy lunatics.

This rock n’ roll ride of a lifetime, this niche ‘foraging’ event, whatever it may be, lines up and livens their spirits together, and dares Heather to be free.

But for every ‘free’ man or opossum, another feels in chains. So then there’s Ozzie, taking the pain behind the scenes, and dying about a million deaths in the span of one day. A human adolescent throws a stick at his head. A beartrap clenches its jaws on his tail. Cars run right by without reservation, and for once he has to question how he ever managed to be hit by one in any place other than the wheels. For the family his path is clear. For Heather his vision shakes.

It cuts on its own just as often as he pulls the plug himself, instinct versus action. Witnessing her vulnerability running wild may be worse than watching it grow with her age. More daring, more dangerous, more lusting for the suburb’s deliciously musical treasures which will one day swallow her whole like a wicked carnivorous chest.

Flailing herself at humanity. Busting into party after party, making herself an honorary attendee (thief), with less respect for her well-being around those humans than a suicide bomber. She’s the soundtrack stealer with no rhythm to her mayhem. RJ’s only promoting it!

So, between every move busted at parties and car lock picked from the lot… where’s the Sniffer in all this? Behind the mischievous duo, he’s chasing Ozzie, the tail end of it, and the exterminator assumes to be chasing the front.

The technology of the beast is only advancing. Faster drones. Smarter drones. They can identify and display to Ozzie a list of his characteristics so extensive it could straight up be used to dox: species, gender, height, weight, everything the Sniffer could detect with a smell already, plus Ozzie’s last meal and an extensive scent trail marking his latest locations better than any smartphone or government can.

He’s suffered it all so the two troublemakers can live privileged and free.

Not by his own will of course, for he assumes the dangers he faces could transfer to his daughter as simply as possible, and by all accounts he assumes he cannot be wrong. She avoids each peril a second before it arrives on him. Following the sprinkling, sparkling trail of their success, he picks up each crumb by the foot, from diamonds to disasters.

The backside of the willow tree, where they’ve set up their CD shop on a mere toilet roll turned into a mountain, RJ scribbles and scribbles for every CD Heather pulls from her tail like rings. When his journal’s full he just throws it away. Just when this anxious fiesta may be over, they simply drape down a large roll of paper from the neighboring tree, and mark their recent finds there from the bottom up, and so it continues! They play a test run of just about every single CD on ‘Heather’s Banger Roll’, almost half of them at once, in every single CD player they’ve got available. Beyond what they’re playing out loud, they listen to select tracks by the headphones linking their heads together, ‘just like old times’, one might be saying.

Well if these are old times Ozzie HAS to be the young one! Every genre, every song echoes louder, crosses paths between his ears and through his hands when he so desperately tries to shut them. The music. THE MUSIC! It clogs his brain! The dancing and jamming and the drowning pleasure of it all, where he can’t hear his daughter’s voice or his own for that measure, nor the next!

All for what? Leisure? He faces liability! He catches her not once out there, but lingers close behind, close enough to see her escape the hell of humanity scot-free, not once feeling a prick with RJ while Ozzie is stabbed by pavement and plastic wonders again and again. A bird who cannot hatch the egg. He can only give it the warmth he cannot feel; hold its life full while his spills empty.

She will never know.

That’s why now he’s home, his head is throbbing, and still he hears it taunting from behind the willow tree.

Among the rest, Heather uncovers a CD smelling more foul than her fur after a garbage hunt. ‘Best of Beethoven’, it reads. That old guy’s face on the cover looks nearly punchable. Underneath the dust and slop so fresh this thing could’ve been found in the garbage. “Yuck.” She flings it away. “I don’t even eat trash THIS bad.”

She meant to land it in the pond, but it overshoots and touches down at Ozzie’s feet on the other side. Interested, he takes it to save for himself. But once he picks it up, the music stops. A blessing? No. A warning. The two are absent from their places at the CD mountain, to be expected with this curse. Nothing’s left but a CD player and those headphones.

He will now proceed to choose between this classical masterpiece and his daughter.

“YOU CAN WAIT, Beethoven!” He refuses to fall to any backtalk from the disc, as a true heroic father would. “I will NOT be left in the dust of MY DAUGHTER’s life! But we'll talk again…”

He retreats from his brief cozy silence to go back after them… again. Through night and day.

XXX

And so, after a whole day and a half of dad-mode-ing…

He remembers a fiery patch of orange-red flowers near the place he uncovers her.

It takes him until one day’s supper to pin Heather down beyond the Hedge, the suburbs, the crossroads that mark the rushing river between the old world of humanity and the new, in construction.

Amidst jackhammers and clomping humans he searches for her in the dusty place. Only a couple weeks in and already houses are gridded in rows, but nothing between them is complete - His feet only cross over soil shaken so loose it may be pure sand. Of course, everything is barren of vegetation. Everything that was once grass stripped away, along with everything resembling the sort. It’s an unusual place to find her daughter, an alleyway up the sides of houses without purpose - lifeless walls.

He sees her tail first, flicking innocently about. Gray fur, then, lost in the confusion of white, orange and tainted brown, in what should be glowing over green.

Free at last from his ethereal chains of regret and lost promise, free at last! The very sight of her makes him gasp with joy. Joy, the wondrous emotion, sweetly emphatic for pleasure, the light in the tunnel.

It dies. It happens when he removes the mountain of that tunnel. A bulldozer storms up the alley in their direction, endangering her before him, collecting rubble and other scraps of unused material. The frontal blade spans the width of the lane, slaughtering any chance of escape. Except for the slim intersections up and down the row, which Heather appears too naive, too innocent, to take into account. In fact, she hardly notices the dozer at all, staring up the tan wall of a new house, listening and attentive to someone or something, but not speaking a word.

Two opossums reside in this alley. It will not shrink to one!

Ozzie runs.

“I won’t die…”

Heather gets it in the corner of her eye as an image enlarging to a harrowing scale. “Oh.” She squirms squealishly to face it.

“I won’t die!”

Ozzie’s huffs pick up enough to clog his throat.

The corner of the bulldozer’s blade tramples across a slick window pane leaning against one of the new houses, waiting to be installed. It doesn’t stop at all to get jammed - It shatters the glass to sharp bits, good-as-new to good-as-dead.

Heather fidgets. “Eee…”

“I won’t die without her!”

Ozzie refuses to let his breaths stay uneven, so he grits and molds them together into one, before his oxygen cuts.

The distance shrinks to a few feet, between his daughter and the claws of frightening reality slashing any settlement into a realm fit for the jungle.

Heather turns to the wall for help. She calls for a savior from the name of another sounding nothing like him. “RJ!”

“Grab on, I got your back!” A fishing line and toy hook come down from the roof for her to latch her tail onto.

At the same time Ozzie lunges his caring arms forth to save her, her tail is hoisted into the sky. She disappears as he most feared she would, unexpected though in manner.

“Nnnno!” he cries before stumbling forth and bashing his head into the center of the blade as an arrow to a shield. It thumps with a rusty metallic ring that swirls and drowns in his ears. What does he do? He dies, out of instinctive trauma or conscious fear, likely the latter, for he feels his forehead throb throughout his brain.

At the same time Ozzie’s limp body gets dozed away, RJ and Heather laugh on top of that roof. Cutting it close really gets the blood pumpin’. It does not get them to notice his existence any more than a fly on the wall.

A bump over raw dirt lifts Ozzie off his back. In the blade of the bulldozer he’s cradled, then cradled by himself. Glass and wood and metal - his new friends - irk him too much, so he rolls out at the next chance he finds.

RJ and Heather laugh. Their humor floats in the air before zipping at Ozzie’s face one at a time to prolong the torture, and embarassement, and shame. The belittling punch they pack targets his dirty sack self of a dad so quick it’s nearly convincing enough to assume they laugh at him. They do not. Certainly Heather hasn’t even acknowledged her father yet. He pounds at the ground, sticks his full muzzle into it, and groans at the aching throughout his muscles and now on his head. His body and brain face the failure of himself. Heather’s still alive, however, so Ozzie scales the outside of a gutter on his way to her.

RJ and Heather sunbathe together on the sizzling roof, with pairs of black shades and sun reflectors at the ready.

Suffering a giant bruise, Ozzie barely manages himself onto the roof. “Hea- Heaven speaks, oh, my LEGS have given in!! My FATHERLY INSTINCTS gone dry!! I AM…” He crashes. “...elderly.”

To check who arrived, as bored of a sight Ozzie comes to him, RJ lifts his head up only for a second. “Mmmeh.”

Heather does it too. "Mmmeh."

“Oh, oh lord-y…” Ozzie wheezes. They ignore his asthmatic, dying condition, motionless. “What are you two doing out so far?”

They don't flinch, but continue to feel the glorious rays of the sun bless their fur. Even on his deathbed they wouldn’t care to pull down their blinds to watch him go. Simply, he will. Ozzie clears his throat very mildly. Nothing happens. So he goes and peaceably tips down Heather's sun reflector.

Because of his intrusion, she’s forced to move her shades down at least one generous inch, but unmoved beyond that. “Wwwhat?”

"I talked to the family this morning. The others are worried about you two, going out like this repeatedly without warning!”

“…How come I haven’t heard about any of this?” Why hasn’t she heard about any of this? It’s been nearly two days and no one’s spoken to her, no one’s broken the mold, ruined her beat, except for him. No breaks, no interruptions - somehow her memory draws a complete blank on whatever he’s talking about, and she shows it in her befuddled glance.

“We’ve tried to get you to hear! Each time you return we’ve tried to stop you, but you’re already off with him again. They find it troubling with the Sniffer out and about, and whatever other dangers lie out here. And if I may speak for myself, I do too."

“Yeah, like we don’t totally PLAN these things. Right, RJ?”

So the rewind hits in Ozzie's brain back to the dead center of the suburbs. He's able to picture exactly everything Heather now mentions as if he lived it himself, and well, he did, as a spectator confined to rosebuds and spiky bushes.

~~~

To his terror, RJ and Heather cross the street without caution, somehow having collected enough luminous CDs already to turn Heather’s tail into a glorified hat rack.

“Hey, did you know somethin’ like 8.3 MILLION ‘possums become roadkill each year?” Heather casually chats with him.

“Good luck faking THAT death.”

An obnoxious engine rattles like an earthquake in Ozzie’s ears. Trapped behind glass, Ozzie watches in horror as a rich red car comes storming up the street at them.

In the presence of RJ and Heather however, it screeches to a halt as they stand and watch, erected in place. The front license plate is just inches from Heather’s nose. Heather starts to brew up a sneeze from the polluted dust blown into her nostrils, but the car already backpedals up the street into oblivion at the speed of a jet engine before her itty sneeze can even propel it.

“Luckily you are SO repulsive they won’t even try,” RJ claims.

“Wait, am I cute or repulsive? Like, you’re the kinda guy whose shallow insults sound like flirting for some reason.”

“ Repulsively cute.”

~~~

“Y’know why that car didn’t hit me, unlike you? Because I am totally awesome, dad,” Heather proudly points. “That’s my plan.”

“…That’s… a plan?” Ozzie tests.

“Yep. Like, my sheer awesomeness aura will overcome ALL evil. Just like mom said.”

“You weren’t even old enough to remember her-”

“It’s a headcanon, DAAAD,” comes her snarky, impeccable sitcom-esque delivery. Imagine a laugh track just happened because it ain’t happening otherwise. “I bet she was super hot too, you're just embarrassed to admit it-”

“I’ve warned you befooore, you should NOT be speaking of your BEAUTIFUL, loving and WHOLESOME mother like that-”

“Anyway, can you like…” Her head nudges towards RJ, cool as a raccoon popsicle in a freezer. Hopefully he’d get the gist. “…leave us alone, dad?”

“You’ve been alone for a day and a half!” Every shiver and chatter intensifies his urge to wrap his arms around her just to console himself. The inability… the inability… has him squeal, “Oh I say it’s a blessing I was even able to keep up with you two well enough to KNOW you weren’t dead on the streets or something awful.”

Heather’s brow furrows abruptly. As well as he’s ‘kept up with her’ allegedly, he poorly fairs cutting the distance she repels herself from him in a provoked reaction. “Eww, dad, you were STALKING us for a day and a half?!”

“No no, stalking is malicious intent. This is parental supervision-”

RJ breaks in, at last. “Oooooo-kayyy, are you two in the Issues household gonna be at this for a while? I’m sunbathing in peace, thank you.”

Heather’s face cringes up behind the silver screen, but makes guilty contact with Ozzie’s distress. RJ cracked into the conversation like lightning. Suddenly she undergoes an intense headache forcing her to part with the rain to address the thunder. Her tail returns a look she gives it.

“Why don’t you come back to the Log with me?” Ozzie proposes out of colossal exhaustion, “With us? So we all can stop worrying?”

“Why, dad? Why can’t I just have fun, y'know?”

“Because I need you to think of me!” he argues louder then. “And the family!”

She’s not taking any of it. She’s thinking of RJ, and filling her cheeks with an outburst of air filtered through him. “Dad, WHY DON'T YOU, like- Oh jeez… Dad, can I have like, 5 more minutes?” She forces herself to spew it out tamely: “Pppplease?”

“This place is dangerous and it’ll only get worse, Heather. I believe the whole Hammy situation proved just that. And I care too much about you.” Clearly so. “Without cover we are more prone to attack-”

Heather terrorizes Ozzie’s paranoid ears when she whistles, “DROOOONE!!”

"No problemo!" goes RJ. He shoots the Sniffer’s drone down with a toilet plunger loaded in a wooden crossbow.

"SOAPY BIRD POO!!"

"Say no more." A heavy-duty shield works just fine.

“See? See, dad? Just chiiiill. Me ‘n RJ, we got a plan for anything,” Heather assures him.

No one has time to plan a reaction. A wrecking ball veers in and crushes Heather past the brick roof into the attic kept behind it, demolishing everything in the way. The ball tears a crooked line through the entire slant of the roof. Bricks fly everywhere like shrapnel. Miraculously none of it hits RJ or Ozzie. Heather’s been clobbered out of existence by a wrecking ball. Struck several feet from Ozzie, but he dies from the blow anyway.

“OH MY GOD that house’s STILL an inch off, Jerry!” Jack Sawood, the head of construction, shouts unreservedly between the picture-perfect street and this house’s dizzy position. “HOW MANY INCHES DO YOU NEED TO SCREW UP-?!”

A woman very sternly reminds him, "Sir, you haven’t taken your antidepressants today-"

"I KNOW-!" He breathes in deep and sends dead butterflies out his nostrils. "Whatever. Take ‘em down. Or… whatever."

“Oh no no no!” Beside the rubble left of the roof, his only daughter’s sure grave, Ozzie collapses to his knees. “The show doesn’t end here! Not like THIS!” He sends his voice at the wrecking ball and beyond into the heavens: “GREAT BLACK BALL of calamity, why do you CURSE MEEEEEEE-!?”

When the ball flops itself out, Heather's only planted into a Heather-sized hole pressed in soft, pink insulation in the back of the empty attic, where she’s suffered no broken bones - Maybe her muzzle bended a little, for a second.

“I get kicked into walls (so) all the time, getting pounded isn’t much worse.”

“Oh,” goes Ozzie. He bows. “I thank the humans for stuffing their walls with pink cotton candy.”

The two stare at him.

“Dad?” Heather starts.

“Yes Heather?”

“Stop being all weird.”

Ozzie sighs, ends his act, and says to RJ, “So… what are you two doing out so far?”

Of course, as his dad senses guessed, RJ shows him the boombox somewhere on a table, with a CD track audible.

“Now we’re just waiting for the pinnacle of opportunity this blessed world gifts us,” RJ declares. “Trust us Oz-man, we got a plannn.”

He puts it simply. "RJ, this is too far."

"C’mon ‘Oznie’, how often ‘doth one get clobbered by a second wrecking ball in thou day’?"

A second ol’ clobber of the wrecking ball makes a near miss in the attic’s beams next to Heather. The whole world quakes and teeters in response.

“Heather-”

"Nope." She gets back to chilling with RJ. The sun reflector flaps up even higher over her face to block Ozzie from her page for good.

Ozzie carries his parental authority soft, and gentle against her, rather so, for “Please LISTEN to me, Heather-!” sounds more like-

‘Please LiStEn to me, Heather’- Pfft. She holds her phone out for dad to see and plays the lowest-quality homemade audio footage of Ozzie’s titanic snores anyone will ever hear.

Finally, Ozzie prepares a vigilant approach - rips the sun reflector right away from her. “Heather!”

Heather points into the distance and lets out an absolutely horrific scream. “Dad, Heather’s gonna die!!”

Ozzie grasps his chest and flips around. Some birds in the horizon chirp beautifully at him. He shoots his head back. RJ and Heather are notably absent from their sunglasses.

“CHA-HOOOOOO!!” There’s RJ, somewhere close enough to hurt Ozzie’s ear.

Ozzie’s head shoots back, again. RJ and Heather jump straight off the edge of the roof. They both land on a white styrofoam plane placed on top of a large slide set up in the incomplete backyard. As large as it is, they take to either wing. A bump to the toy plane rides it down the slide before hitting the ramp at the bottom and launching them into the sky to take flight.

“Later, dad!” Heather hollers wildly. They’re off into the stratosphere. “We’re stealin’ ARNIE’S!”

Another wrecking ball swing comes right at him. In panic, Ozzie too spins and leaps off the roof into the yard, and takes note of their trajectory, going over the crossroads and over the span of the established suburbs in the complete opposite direction from their home. Watching them abruptly leave into the horizon as if they’d anticipated him and set up this escape route, why, he clings his hands to his head and screams more girlishly than Heather just did.

He runs as fast as he can back to the Log. Hammy as well watches the big white plane go over the suburbs in awe, which is the only thing stopping him from sneaking a drink of soda.

Ozzie saves the can, or steals it, as he goes by and chugs it down to pep up every muscle in his body. He’s ready to chase the plane through the Hedge and into the suburbs until he takes out Stella like a bull towards a red cape. The coffee cup in her hand flies away and pours into the dirt, wasted. They both flail their limbs over each other on the ground.

“Oz’, WATCH IT!!” Home sweet home; Stella lashes out at the mat. “If you spilled my coffee I’ll spill your blood! I’LL SPILL YOUR BLOOD, MAN-!”

Ozzie, as a robot, picks her up and sticks her feet on the ground, facing the styrofoam plane so she can catch a glimpse for herself.

“Is that-?”

Ozzie, a major lump of worry in his throat, ends her thought with a frantic nod.

Hammy comes up to them casually, just to scratch his head. “Hmm, well that's weird, Heather said she was gonna go doorbell pushing with me after I bothered her enough about it.”

“We also promised tonight would be our game night,” Ozzie explains. “Um… I think I’m gonna have to call that off.”

“Wo-ow! How forgetful…”

Hammy doesn’t give it a second thought, picking up his ‘Innuendo DS’ console to amuse himself. But Stella follows Ozzie as he hurdles to the willow tree around the pond.

Ozzie tears the leaves out. On the ground… there’s a large sheet of poster paper with doodles covering it. He goes over and leans down to follow along with their ‘plan’ for this event. An airplane to the sky - that part’s complete. They travel miles over the suburbs - one fall means death - underneath commercial airliners and bird flocks clogging the route. Destination? Arnie’s. Infested with hungry, angry humans.

Once Stella catches up, that poster paper has Stella bumping her hip at him. “What’s the fuss? Ev-i-dently they have a plan.”

If that were meant to console him, it only thrusted the opposite feeling. Ev-i-dently they knew what destruction they were getting into. He falls onto his knees and puts his hands over his eyes.

“I am going to die…”

The pure white plane busts through the clouds, but dives swiftly into the troposphere again as a dolphin. A dolphin. This doesn’t quite express the maniacal panic seemingly shared by RJ and Heather as they have shared a single pair of earbuds across the thin body of the plane. They contain their own panic to either individual wing, but share it over the line between their ears, sourced from a phone gripped tightly in Heather’s hand.

“SHINEDOWN!” RJ urges in a list. “BACKSTREET BOYS! Gimme Ben FOLDS! Anything, ‘possum pal, ANYTHING?”

Heather’s finger mushes harder and harder on the screen of the phone, scrolling faster. “Uhhh…”

‘Aerosmith’. ‘Aerosmith’. ‘Aerosmith’. Under every song in the playlist, and identical in thumbnail.

“UHHH…” Heather scrolls faster than she can comprehend each song title. That album thumbnail flashes fanatically, over and over.

RJ leans crookedly over the edge of the plane into the far, far horizon. “UGH. We've still got 10 miles.” He massages his temples. “Just start up that auto-generated playlist. It’s A.I. It’s gotta know what we’re into.”

“But that's got that angsty guy whose jacket smells like old toothpaste!”

He jerks his head to her and bares his teeth. “AND HOLY MOLEY WE’RE INTO IT!!”

Now she has to press it, by the hesitant tap of a button. Nothing but the wind accompanies their silence then. The randomized song begins, acoustic and nostalgic in tune. RJ draws a blank. Heather seems to recognize it immediately.

It bubbles them in, like a blue sheet wraps the sky, and the sea. Free from trouble, a literal skyscraper’s worth of height departs them from worry, from Ozzie, from anyone to sour their vibe. By ‘their’ it mostly implies Heather, abrupted more by the change and fading chains than RJ, who is merely an audience at the moment. He’s left reality too, but sits on the wing, while Heather fully arises and bathes in vast sunlight.

“Wait, I know this song!” she says.

“Is it the kinda edgy song I’d have to call your dad over? The kind the humans would call - I’m just taking shots here - questionable?”

Edgy? With the strum of an acoustic guitar like that? “Nah, this was during his reforming phase…” Right. “Oh sick, I could totally sing this!”

Her feet ease towards the ledge, excited by itty wonder. The grass never looked greener from up here, even though by now she’d seen it all, thanks to RJ. The sun watches with her, omnipresent, preparing a fine shine through any sparse, grumpy clouds and over the land.

RJ scales her up and down. “Call it bluff, she is actually gonna totally sing this. Wasn’t expecting that.”

Their freeway’s clouded below by a magnificent forest of kites flown by younglings into the sky.

Heather’s singing voice actually… engages RJ now that he hears it unsheathed. It draws him in; It skims him over the tip of the water, just to pull him under. That’s the magic of Heather’s singing voice. Every word, pitch, and dynamic is enlivening and rich with energy, but precise and articulated. She’s wild to her own control, never backing down an inch, singing only out of her heart and soul instead of the mouth. And even on a smooth string like this, her voice sends upbeat fanfares to the clouds, for it sounds oh so free. So she sings. Freely.

(Heather)

I've never been looking quite down be-fore,

I bet it's a curse to be livin' on the floor,

Like, who ever said to show the sun your back,

When the sky don’t hold no enemies that will attack?

Believe it or not, she's replicating the song exactly. RJ can tell, and finds immense fascination in her. But she’d never recited this. At least he never heard it. Her immersiveness with the song grows with his of her, spinning and bobbing and bouncing and working every limb and muscle to express her whole body, and get that tail shakin’. Her hands fidget with themselves too. On the white of this plane, pure as the heavens, she glows brighter than its surface.

Well I'm up, I'm down, most days I’m rockin’ in betwee-ee-een !

Have I found the sun's chance to make a star of me…?

She glances over, winks, and wiggles her tail at RJ before continuing to the chorus:

Show the world what’s at your back, sun baby!

Show the world what’s at your back, sun baby.

Show the world some shade ‘n nighttime, baby,

I’m already alive!

What was once forest transforms before her eyes into the suburbs there now, as she sings. Such a boring, repetitive palette of trees remove themselves and shape into a palette of rooftops. Still repetitive, sure, but anyone’s a fool for judging outer appearances. Within each house there’s a new adventure, and new food for her insatiable hunger. Her stomach nearly rumbles. Her heart too. No matter what Verne or whoever could say, the suburbs were no home, but it surely was the world, full of mysteries and surprises.

Show the world what’s at your back, sun baby!

Show the world what’s at your back, sun baby.

Show the world I’ve got your back, sun baby,

I’ve been glowin’ so bri-i-i-ight!

She ends up leaving the young man to carry on. The high winds take place in her left ear. These gusts enrichen her fur, that which RJ humbly abides to commit his entire plane of thought. They must also be treating her avid gusto to the song of the silent, for the oddly soft-spoken breath of a child - a tender child - comes through her, rather than that vibrant, singing predecessor: “The toothpaste guy came up with it in a dream. Sick, right?”

“That’s the kinda stuff you’re into?” RJ intrigues loudly after he finds his own words again, being in company that strung them more vibrantly than he ever could.

“Dude, music’s like a buffet to me. Some’s sweet, some’s sour, some’s like, SUSPICIOUSLY meaty for some reason, but in the end, I’m eating all of it.” She stretches her mouth back and squints a bit in abhorrence. “Except that one weird plate they’ve got that no one actually touches but always seems to run out anyway.”

“You are pretty soft in the heart…” he mutters. “Okay sure, also, I know I’ve already heard it (I’m sorry), but um… You’ve got a good voice. Seriously, go DO something with those vocal cords, girl!”

“Eh thanks, but I don’t really sing, like, in FRONT of people, y’know?”

“Why not?”

“Look, I… just sing sometimes, okay? No crowd, no pressure…”

“Then what’s even the point?”

“The-... Huh. That’s crazy, I dunno WHY I do it. Whatever, just PLE-ASE don’t catch me singing about something embarrassing again…” That’s where she draws the end of her interest, sticks her toes over the edge of the wing and hums to her wholesome rhythm.

Well if she wanted to sing about Arnie’s again, he’d let her go right ahead. They’re halfway to the restaurant.

Her tail continues wagging back and forth, swaying close to RJ every other beat. For some reason it energizes his eyebrows, lifts them slightly up. The wind comes over too, which her tail fans to him to share. RJ glances at the owner as she perches over the scenery, taking to every garden and yard and bouncy house to satisfy herself with the world RJ swung her high above.

The air is so fresh today, as though she could fly away. They almost feel dominant, even, at this height, where they feel more god than mortal, as if they built this world rather than resided within its dome.

But all that, all that curiosity she shows distracts him. Her metronome tickles at him every other beat.

“P.S., your tail’s still doing the uh, the thing-” Heather hears him point out.

“Song’s still going in my head, dude.” She ruffles her skull vigorously. “If I don’t have a beat to follow, my BRAIN, my RAISIN BRAIN just gets all messed up. Meanwhile the tail kinda does whatever it wants, all finicky ‘n stuff. I call it the ‘happy tail’.”

But in addition to that, her happy tail wasn’t the only thing being finicky. RJ watches her toes rap against the wing and her head subtly bob around. Her body and mind seem to house and prolong the music they just heard, and invest themselves entirely in it. Every time the rhythm latches onto her, it becomes her strength. There’s something so juvenile about it, but oddly mature as well, to be able to contain such a ‘finicky’ beat as consistently as she is now. Every movement gets replicated exactly, over and over without end. And while it goes on, she’s keenly observant to the world below, her senses regulated by an endless playlist inside her head. Her sights are attracted to every distinct color, as RJ sees it, fancifully keeping track of their gradients and patterns.

Her tail treads closer to RJ’s side and taps against his arm repeatedly. He snatches the tip of it loosely, just to tease it for a response. It rips free and slaps him hard across the cheek.

XXX

Ozzie crunches his legs in when bombing his seat onto a black pillow in the lounge. He may be under the trees, but their shade only replaces the heat with dim, cold spirits instead of comfort. He puts his whole weight on that pillow, and rocks back and forth by his shaky knees. Stella just stares at him cradling himself like a baby.

“What if she…” Ozzie takes his hand from his lips to start. “No, what if… OH I can't bear to imagine, Stella! What if the wind tore through their plane wings, and she’s now plummeting at a HUNDRED meters a second towards the earth? Before her itty bitty body hits the ground dead, and-... AND-... and I have no means against it, oh, why!?”

Meanwhile, RJ and Heather are busy reenacting (THE) part from Titanic on the front of the plane, unknown to him.

“Look, you need sum pills or somethin' man,” Stella tells Ozzie. “But it don’t sound like there’d be no pill for YOUR… problem.”

"I'm sor-ry, I just-" He must be haunted, the way he jerks his head as painfully as he does.. "UGHHH, I cannot STAND it!! When are they getting back?"

“They'll get back when they get back! Don't die on it, man.” Out somewhere else, she yells, “TIG’UH! How many minutes we got left on that soppy slop show, huh?”

She’s gone.

Ozzie sits there.

And he sits, and watches.

The wind blows. One crooked branch creaks over him as the blue umbrella over the lounge does fwoop. A yellow dandelion, that he could reach to pet if he wanted to, takes some psychological blow that cripples its stem and saddens its shape. That’s interesting. Then a black bird flies somewhere far over the Hedge, and crashes VIOLENTLY into a second-story window, as a plane to a mountain peak, so Ozzie’s legs are alerted, the instinct kicks in, and he runs.

That soda can Hammy’s about to collect off the ground again becomes Ozzie’s to steal, and he’s bolting towards the Hedge. “Thanks Ham-MYYYYYYY!”

“You’re WELCOME! Have a GOOD VACATION!” Hammy calls. “Maybe Ozzie’ll bring back a souvenir from Paris.”

Not a second after that moment, RJ and Heather’s screams imitate the sounds of a combusting engine. The big white plane crashes above Hammy’s head, tearing through branches and making unsubtle cracks through the treeline. They’re already back with takeout to boot.

Ozzie isn’t too thrilled to be crawling, crippled, on his way back through the Hedge.

“So, did you meet any lovely ladies on your trip, nudge-nudge?” Hammy asks.

He almost goes dead. As painful of a sight the styrofoam plane in front of him already is, of course the blaring white hue of the monstrosity has to sting a blinding absorption of sunlight straight into his eyes and burn them from the inside out. Ozzie’s knees may be crippled, but his head becomes more involved in the show than ever. It’s still a show, right? His thoughts rubble to defy it. They grow and throb his brain. Rattling teeth and nails like a sonic boom.

An entire glass dome of sanity blows to pieces in his head.

“No,” Ozzie almost sobs. “But my KNEES are about to… meet their grave.”

RJ and Heather help each other up from the fall.

“Where've they been?” Tiger comments to Verne, both bystanders even further settled in the background.

Verne shakes his head. “Who knows.”

“I don’t believe they know quite where their home is. What is a home for one who never visits? And not family either, for they’re stuck to themselves, like two plump… delicious fish in a salted sandwich-”

“You said you were on your diet, Tiger.”

“I am. I apologize.”

In that mess RJ and Heather retrieve their three-course meal of Arnie’s, complete with awesome fish burgers (that Heather could sing about) and a 9-piece-premium-deluxe-limited-edition-barbeque-barn-blast-dino-sponsored box of chicken nuggets. They're headed to the willow - what's become their headquarters essentially - right away.

And Ozzie doesn’t even try to stop her by this point. He’s tossed an iced latte from Arnie’s anyway, just to rub salt in the wound.

In a rush, Heather says, “Hi dad. Bye dad. Bye dad.”

“What was the 2nd one for?” RJ interrogates. “And why are you bribing him with lattes?”

“I’m not talking to him...”

Hammy watches Heather rush past him as well. He holds a stolen, old and degraded doorbell, scratched and tattered by its neglectance of attention. “Remember doorbells, Heather?” He hammers the button over and over. It makes a lifeless noise. “DOORBELLS?! They’re loud and obnoxious, y’know, kinda like me!... Heather!” When she refuses to acknowledge it, he throws it away.

Heather’s feet stop. Climbing up her totally stressed arm, she turns to find Hammy.

“Now can we go doorbell pushing?” he asks as a charming kid would.

His innocence purged from her mind, it takes no effort to reject the idea at this time, when a billion cars are jammed on her highway of polluted stress from one look at her dad. “Hammy… Just gimme a minute, please…”

She tosses him to his waiting bench. In response, his bottom lip bulges a mile out. Denial, loneliness - they grow his saddened eyes to the size of moons.

For some reason, with his latte, Ozzie can’t find any words to speak, but sits on the empty floor. Something about her softens his soul as she departs, back turned, and the lost bond tugging by the broken end of a string.

He ponders curiously as one does hand-to-chin: “I’m her father! Why do I feel like I have no authority against this!?” He sips at the latte to job his mind on the matter.

Stella’s out here laughing when she trots over his feet, ruffling the hair on his head. “Imagine what'd happen if they went in blind.”

Blind, she says, but he presumes they never will be. The way they celebrate over the pond, adding a glittering CD to their wealthy stash, one they must’ve picked up at Arnie’s - it speaks awareness to him. ‘Heather’s Banger Roll’ is filled and there’s enough they’ve hoarded to fill a million more. When they go in without a plan, they will know. Just like Heather’s donut breath. As fresh of a spirit as the family does over every heist they complete together, they compliment each other as one. Just these two though, over such a baby step of a victory, they make it look more intimate. They can’t tell praise apart from sarcasm, even though it has to be all the former. They know what they’re doing. He can tell by a righteous ring in the voices. And that makes his ears fear they’ll know they won’t know what they’re doing. There’s a hint of danger in this party they have, their lives held by a thread, waiting for one degree hotter of a threatening flame to burn it off.

“It will be disastrous. I’ll see before I doubt just this.”

When it becomes calm behind the willow, and their ever-growing electronic collection has skewed to be 50% audial, RJ and Heather briefly gaze upon the claimed mountain with pride. Until RJ catches a look from Ozzie somewhere nearby, close to their team’s food fortress - an impressive feat of its own staked in the pair’s history.

“Wowie, really dodged that bullet back there, didn't ya?” RJ points out while digging through a bag of fast food.

Spoiling her mood, she pouts her arms together and taps her foot with a red flush of tension over her. “I already know what dad's gonna say. Why bother?”

"I'm sure he has a point with these things…" he feels the need to shrug and acknowledge. "Just… not a great one. Eh, why do I care, it's your daddy issue, not mine."

A pond’s length of distance between them, behind Ozzie’s back, literally, she munches vigorously on her giant custom-made (custom-stolen) fish sandwich and gossips: “Has he always been this… defensive? And my tummy’s been too full o’ Wacky Whip to SEE it?”

Ozzie acts the same, though he does not spread his dissatisfaction to any other. He sits alone on the other side, slurping vigorously on the bribing latte, and asking himself, “Has she always been quite so… negligent of this danger? And I’ve been too full of myself to FEEL it?”

Ozzie gracefully flings his empty cup over the pond, landing at Heather’s side.

Heather hurls her empty sandwich box up and away, landing at Ozzie’s side.

They both take one vicious bite of each container. They feed off tough plastic and rough cardboard to add crunch to their troubles.

“Anyway, wanna go start a GoFundMe or somethin’?” Heather throws at RJ.

“Might as well, ‘cause we didn’t have enough dollars lying around to buy that rubber duck army from a while back, did we?

They’re up to amuse themselves. “Oh, yeah that too. I just meant getting people’s pity money sounds like a good way to de-stress.”

"De-stress from what? YOU DIDN’T EVEN TALK TO HIM, HEATHER!"

Ozzie heads to the bulletin board next to Verne’s fort and anxiously counts down the days to Heather’s birthday on the calendar.

Conveniently enough, Verne comes along to keep track too. The map of the construction pinned right beside it, routed through their home, which Verne takes greater, sadder interest in. RJ’s taken not a single glance at the issue since the start of the week. If Ozzie’s here, that must mean Heather hasn’t taken any glance at their own.

So Verne wanders near. Ozzie stands out among the world of the wild. Opossums do. A mixture of light and dark clouds in the middle of murk and mud. Ambivalent by nature they wear a kind of mask more subtle than the raccoon’s. One that can be greatly appreciated when seen through, as Verne sees through his. There’s something more to him - the pink under his fur. Verne slightly tucks up his shell to conceal more of his own self when he introduces himself to this jack-in-the-box of a character.

"Can I join you?" Verne solemnly asks.

"Please, please do. Worrying alone is quite uncomfortable."

"You carry truth, Ozzie. Truth… and really manly whiskers."

“Thank- thank you, I got that a lot in my twenties.”

“Go on.”

It seems together they’d be counting the whole night long.

ACT III: Heather’s BIG Moment

Verne’s dragged into the suburbs far before sunrise the next morning. Street lights remain lit to brighten his entrance, but not a single living soul more. An absent breeze would help to stir more in this mannequin place. Maybe a touch or two over his eyebrows hinting at life, only to never provide. Bushes are dark in the ominous morning - even the Hedge he wanders from stretches darkness over him, before a few steps enter him into the open, flat roadway.

Sounds flutter by here and there. Cars of families leave home for the day at the crack of dawn. Humans abandon their own homes, and animals like RJ take the chance to move in, whom Verne is after. “Um, RJ?” he whispers as he skitters houses, holding a sticky note. “R-JJJJJ… I'm not sure what 'Be ready for a duck maelstrom' is supposed to MEAN, RJJJJ… Are the ducks a metaphor?!”

Rather than anything climatic, Verne finds RJ hammering away on a laptop between two rose bushes against the front of a house.

The guy finishes typing and sighs hugely. “Verne, my good man… I have considered this notion deeply… and now, I have a confession to make.”

“So you actually listened to me?” he gasps out of shock prior to any other reaction. “Back- Back in the forest?! The start of the week!? Wow… RJ’s listening to me…” He smiles and crumples the note. It falls to the floor before he chooses to let it loose from his palm. It just does. Across days and nights, Verne built a collection of scraps - lost hopes of RJ’s actions. That bucket pours out, opening his heart again. “RJ, I just have to say… I still don't know what the duck maelstrom implies… but I am proud you’re finally changing your ways. We’ll need your leadership to keep the Log safe-”

“Me 'n Heather bought rubber ducks with all our GoFundMe money.” Shut eyes and squared shoulders. RJ breaks in quickly like he really is confessing a truth.

“W-What?” Not even a bucket would slurp up its vomit, so it leaves its stomach empty and confused.

“Verne… I know you were expecting better of me. Why rob some poor saps of their pity money for rubber ducks?”

“RJ this isn’t what I was talking about-”

He admits this too: “We didn’t make enough from the GoFundMe. So now we’re about to go campaigning too.”

Verne blinks rapidly. After a grave misunderstanding on his part, sour to his throat, he can’t move his eyes anywhere off RJ. “Cam-... Campaigning.”

“That’s right, Verne!” RJ announces. “CAM-PAIGNIIIIiiing- Ohhh hold on, Heather's eating a donut.”

Heather comes spiraling down the nearest street lamp by one hand and foot, carrying a big pink donut in her tail through the ring. “Hi, I'm eating a donut.”

‘Eating a donut’ pounds the entire thing into her open jaw, swallowed whole, leaving a wall of icing where her lips once were. She jumps off next to RJ.

“CAMPAIGNING!!” they announce together.

Two critter-sized shirts plummet over their heads, and the signs they bring out as well ring their new ulterior ‘save the environment’ incentive for their rubber duck purchasing. By all definitions the two of them are a part of nature, to be fair; These things are never more than partly a lie.

But from passing cars they’re only slobbered on by stale chips and half-eaten taquitos. RJ chucks his wooden sign to leave a dent in the side of the next poor passerby, hurting more in the end than his campaign would help.

“Darn road rats! We’re not ANIMALS! We’re POLITICIANS! Take us SERIOUSLY!” RJ rumbles. “The future of our planet WILL have rubber ducks in it! Now GIVE me power!”

The humans throw a whole uneaten banana at Heather’s forehead, too. Heather faces the same anger, kicking it into the street. But then, catastrophe. A speeding car runs that living soul over, exploding it through the peel, spilling its guts, transforming the banana into a gory mess of sad yellow roadkill.

Both gasp. RJ and Heather place themselves in the road to salute the fallen warrior. RJ gets out a depressed trumpet to blow. Heather brings out her solemn tail, holds it to her heart and droops her ears. They will never allow another prosperous youngling to have their life full of potential claimed by these streets again.

Verne’s ready to kick himself out there too. “Okay, I think you two have had a liiiittle too much fun for today.”

They return to him. “Whaddya sayin’?” RJ spouts.

“Just quit wasting time!”

“Oh yeah? What have you got done?”

On top of a roof, RJ and Heather are able to stare at Verne’s fort - a REAL fortress at this point, not even a title - at least triple the height of the brick beast they stand on, across the suburbs and over the Hedge. Visibly, it’s been upgraded with a militaristic set of food defenses and extended balconies and rooftop battlements.

“Hi Uncle RJ!” the three porcupine kids holler from the top of that… thing.

“Hi Cousin Heather!” Bucky calls. “We stole your phone!”

“We’ve been taking vids of your snoring dad!” Spike tells her. A post like that makes the optimal camera spot.

“Woah, look, I think he’s even drooling right now!” Quillo announces, on top of the world.

“Ew,” Heather says.

RJ flicks a hand atop the house, unimpressed. “Oh please, I could build a Lego set twice that size in an hour or two. Nope. Rookie build.”

Verne’s sheer presence basically yanks them back to ground level. “RJ, we don’t have time to worry about rubber ducks, or… those little green sheets of paper those humans print. What’re they even worth? It’s paper.”

"Well, ya got one thing right," RJ says. "I find half our money behind public toilets; They can't be worth that much."

“I’m pretty sure one time RJ said it hypnotizes their brains,” Heather explains. What’s that paper even worth? Paper… she gets an idea. “Wait, RJ, we’re stupid.”

“And?”

“I'm sayin’ like, y’know, why don’t we just print our own money?”

“I… don’t think that’s how it works,” Verne utters.

But anyway, RJ takes a dollar from a friendly printer hooked up in the nearest yard (that just happens to be handy). “Works for me.” He pops open a dollar slot in the Grim Retina (the laptop) as a cash register would and slips the printed money inside. “It's gonna RAIN ducks in 2 days, man, it is gonna RAIN!”

“Just dump them all on my head while you're at it.” Verne throws in the towel and very politely gives himself the boot outta there. “Drown me.” On his way to the Hedge he repeats it in a grunt: “Drown me…”

He bumps into Ozzie near the bulletin board at home.

Ozzie immediately goes, “How many days until my daughter inevitably tries to ditch me?”

“You SHOULD be asking if we’re ready to die yet…”

Verne smashes a marker onto the calendar and drags the date across:

DATE: 5/18/07

“...Because there’s ONE WEEK! There’s one week and RJ’s out there trying to hoard rubber ducks for himself! He still thinks we’re just gonna… leave home. Phooey.”

“Now, uh, it’s not MY problem to get involved in, but… well, perhaps you should just forget about him, Verne. Start focusing on what matters.” Like living in the trees - what’s on the floor is no business to him. The trick’s always worked - he’s found no interest in any figure but Heather in the instances he’s had. He’s put his sights on the bullseye.

“Forget about him?! He’s trying to get THEM to forget me! My tail can’t take it with this guy; It’s JUST like last year! Now I’M gonna go dunk my head in the pond. Maybe I’ll wake up from this… NIGHTMARE I’m having!”

“But Verne, you’re not an amphibian! You may DROWN yourself!”

“Good riddance.”

XXX

In the suburbs still, and they’re now lazing about, facing each other near a lamppost, RJ and Heather. The money keeps printing away.

“What day is it?” Heather yawns. “Friday?”

Why is Friday familiar?

“Friday…” RJ nods. It clicks some switch in him though - a faint thought. No effect for a second. “Yeah, Friday…” Just then his back jerks itself up along with his feet, and he screams, “Wait, FRIDAY! THE END OF THE WEEK! You’re supposed to be giving your SPEECH this morning!!”

Crap.

Heather slaps her head as hard as she can. “Nooooo, the SPEECH! I haven’t written any of it…”

It’s like the world becomes real to them, resulting from the shattered remains of an aesthetic plane. Their spirits don’t part. They conjoin in different emotions: guilt, pain, heart-stopping realization.

“Oh nooooo… C’mon Heather, you’ve put us off-beat for REALSIES this time! We had so much time to prepare, and what did we do with it? Play ‘Love in an Elevator’ by Aerosmith?! You had a plan, you GAVE us a plan, ‘n then you blew it! POOF.”

“RJ, stop! There’s gotta be a way we can fix this!” Heather greatly resists the guilt her impulses try to deal to her by plugging her ears to silence his foul tune. It overtakes her anyway the longer RJ goes on about the truth of the matter.

“This is why we should’ve stuck to MY plan! ‘GET ‘em to like us’! ‘GET ‘em on our side’! I HAD a plan! And so help me, if I don’t HAVE a Twinkie to stress-eat on right now, I’LL-!” He almost lifts himself from his seat, darting his momentum in her direction. Heather almost falls back from hers. Heather herself doesn’t wreck his train - her tail is the one to act, yanking a Twinkie from the golf bag and shoving it into RJ’s mouth. Thank you, tail.

Because, Heather herself can’t explain what she’s feeling now, in the company of him when he wants NOTHING of her. After everything this week, now he wants nothing.

The soul-sucking defeat takes RJ’s seat down just after being jolted up from it. “And even worse,” he continues while targeting his anger onto the Twinkie instead of her, “Verne must have some kinda funky voodoo doll or somethin’ because I am being stabbed like Caesar right now…”

The sky gets brighter and more red from the devil of the rising sun. “It’s my fault.” Heather’s breathing gets dangerously forceful, and her voice loses rhythm. “Like I- I shouldn’t of gotten you to do all these things with me, like-”

RJ refuses, and throws the Twinkie down. “No, I’m sorry, that was rash, okay? Heather, I loved EVERY single thing we did this week! ESPECIALLY sucking cheese sauce off our toes, that was AWESOME!”

“...But what does it matter now?” she whines. “I blew it.”

“No hard feelings; You’re the kid here, you are NOT taking blame-!”

“I’m just a kid to you TOO?!”

“NO, but-” He’s flinching every second on different joints and muscles. It cracks his head to the sky and clenches his grip onto his forehead. “OOOOOOHHH Verne is now proceeding to stab me in UNFATHOMABLE places! Repeatedly in WEIRDER ones!”

“This is so totally stressfullll!”

“We’re not DOING anything!”

“THAT’S the stressful part!!”

“O-KAY-!!!” The hammer of his fist comes down. One house’s window slams shut at the same time. There’s commotion. Not theirs anymore. Until he shoots his arms like harpoons to hook onto Heather’s shoulders, and calmly asserts, “Heather, we are gonna write this speech like we do everything else…”

He slams a blank sheet of white paper between their pairs of squashed legs.

“…In ‘n out, never without.”

Heather takes a deep breath. “You’re right. Together.”

They get pencils and burn their hearts out on it, grumbling each time they scribble from the top or bottom. Marks from a giant eraser here and there (‘For REALLY Big Mistakes’), and a cloud of grinded lead causing them to cough. Each mistake proves costly to their own lungs, and to each other. They burn their hearts and lungs out on the mission anyway.

But in the end, instead of a masterful piece of literature, all they’ve done is drawn crude depictions of Verne and Ozzie as some vicious monsters with claws, both being beaten on the head by one baseball bat.

Heather brushes her chin. “I think your Verne needs a bigger nose-”

“OH, we are HOPE-LESS!!” RJ grits, slamming himself in a limb frenzy.

He yanks the paper and rips it to shreds, stuffs the scraps in his mouth, aims up and spits an eruption of paper snow over himself. He drags his butt next to her against the lamppost and tugs the Grim Retina in front of his lap.

“I’ve got no choice. I will now give fate to the lord above. I’m gonna steal an idea from our narrator and you are GONNA have to make it work!”

Well he asked, and he shall receive. He scrunches forward to type up the script furiously. Heather scoots close, closer. Then locks her timid hands and sneaks her muzzle over his shoulder only to peek, glancing constantly between the screen and his engaged expression of red. Her eyes are sad, and blue.

“I’m nervous,” she weakly strums.

Putting his frown in the freezer, RJ goes serene: “That’s not like you, ‘possum pal.”

The typed page prints at a hit of the enter key. He feels the fresh sheet from the nearby printer be encased by his hand, and he gifts that warmth to her. She glosses it over. Her brain refuses to comprehend any of the words. Black lines on a page, they appear to wall in her mind and confidence, put them behind barbed wire. They have no key nor tempo.

At a firm skimming over the letters, without reading a single word, her eyes play half-hearted notes. “Now that I look at it, a speech doesn’t feel… ME, y’know? I’d feel better if it were like, somethin’ with a beat, I guess…”

“You’re gonna get everyone on board this family outing, even VERNE, I’d bet,” he reassures her. “Now let’s MOVE IT MOVE IT!”

He bulldozes her all the way back into the forest. He pushes her to the location of a cardboard stage platform set up in front of their fort’s gate, with a cracker-box podium. He quickly throws a little black suit on her with a red tie, fit for a child’s doll.

“Alright, very brief and very NOT PANICKED pep talk, okay? We’re allll countin’ on you, ‘possum pal! And by ‘all’, I mean me. You know these folks inside ‘n out. Thankfully, I only know ‘em outside. No pressure. Just really get IN those guys for me, will ya? And, uh, again… no pressure. I hope you’re not feeling pressure by me saying ‘pressure’ right now.”

She takes a step forward with her paper. RJ watches from behind.

“Get your voice out there…” she goes softly to herself. “Get the family together. Gotta impress him.”

Heather appears before the podium, calm as a leaf on a dirt road, and smacks the bottom edge of her foreign paper against the cardboard twice.

“Attention! All… log-goers, I guess.”

She forces a halt in their wheels, working as sentries around the site. Robotically, nearly a dozen sets of eyes lock onto her little being. She finds no character in them, but intimidation instead, as nearly a dozen mannequins without hue. They only have eyes. No other features.

“If you all could um…” She twirls a finger. “...y’know, gather ‘round or something, that’d be great, thanks.”

Stiff movements crowd them in front of the stage.

“Awesome, awesome. Scooch in! C’mon!”

RJ wanders over and joins Hammy in the back of the audience, his arms nervous behind his back. Hammy leaves for just a second to assemble a bunch of rubber ducks, dressed in varying apparel, into a larger crowd spaced between the foragers and beyond.

Hammy then shoots a good ol’ thumbs up to Heather, and she groans softly at the addition to the pressure. Now she has something to prove to a bunch of rubber ducks as well. Awesome sauce. And then he brings out Jeffery to stare her down too, with those menacing chocolate chips of his.

“Anyway…” Heather clears two crinkly toads from her throat, then reads straight from the paper. To start at first, but to become a locked state of psychological insecurity, her eyes veer from the audience to the paper without ever looking up. Just the first words soak the emotion out of her voice: “‘Four score-’”

A little beeping game console interrupts her. RJ marches up to the porcupine kids and tears the Innuendo DS away to snap it in half.

She continues. “…‘Four score and seven years ago… and two moooore… the war to end all wars ended.’” The writing of the omnipotent, currently-present narrator befuddles her. “Okayyy. ‘World War I ended with about 40 million human deaths.’ Wild. That’s like 5 years of ‘possum roadkill on normal years. ‘This war was pointless…’”

“Good show, good show!” A hushed approval at base, RJ secretly grinds his teeth through the lips and twitches his feet under the roof of the grass.

Hammy taps his foot furiously without end. “I’m bOOOOOred,” he yawns next to RJ. “I’d rather be watching Uncle Verne’s favorite racing channel. At least they pan in on the audience eating roasted nuts sometimes.”

Heather drones on. “‘...just like our wars were pointless last week. We had losses too, but then that night, when we saved Hammy from the weirdo human jaws of the Sniffer, we were united as a family, aaanddd-’” After she trails off, she never returns. She can’t find the will to read more. Because at last, she looked up.

What a mistake, to be peering her sights into a field of inner ghouls. The apathetic crowd stares her down. United in the action, but so empty somehow, and unmoving. The pressure she feels then. As hollow as the rubber ducks Hammy set up, but unlike them, they contain souls. They contain character. They may squeak from fear or excitement, with pure emotion behind it. She’s squealing from both.

Practically, the animals act as cardboard cutouts of flesh and bone. Through her lens, her filter, they look much different from each other, but the hive doesn’t buzz. Nothing is intertwined between them minus the disinterest tying her ears shut, plugging her nose, and numbing her fingers.

“Oh jeez the narrator’s analogy is stupid.” A stupid opinion. She thinks, “Crap, I need someone.”

That ‘mental narrative coach’ comes to her answer in some illusion of a whisper - almost as if the voice of hers sourced from somewhere in the physical plane, not just her head: “No you don’t! You just need inspiration, homie! Make it ‘you’.”

“You mean improvise? I’m so screwed.”

Some muttering comes upon the group while she’s in a pause, preferring their own topics over her silence. It blisters into madness.

“What’s going on?” Ozzie shouts. “I haven’t made my coffee yet, Heather!”

Dad…

“I haven’t beaten Oz’ TO the coffee yet, Heath’uh!”

Stella.

“This is a mess to my STRICTLY-SCHEDULED DIET!”

Tiger?

“What’s the big idea here?”

“I have to feed the kids!”

Lou and Penny.

“We want muffins!”

“O-ey O’s!”

“Morning GAME time!”

The porcupines… those little poop nuggets who stole her phone…

All Hammy does is stare down Heather, ringing his sad little doorbell with his lips shriveled dryer than a raisin.

Why can’t she just run away from this and call it quits? She escapes so many other stress factors as they come to her feet. Now they cage her head. She can hardly breathe in here, with breaths hastening and hastening before soon enough the dome will blow to pieces and her head combust itself! The glasses she feels she wears, though they’re not there, begin to shatter and snap.

“Oh my god… This’s my fault I’m even in this.”

Then her filter glasses come sweeping off, which once skewed her view only to latch onto one raccoon. Now there’s a crowd, but not just a crowd, a family, interacting with one another and herself as the greatest hive of character she has ever seen. They're no longer transparent, or lifeless. No attack is - they’re targeted by sole emotional motive. Pathos, in a different kind of response to her likability, or as she now finds it, gullibility to her use. The intertwining complaints and gestures targeted right at her mug, and the mingling between them. How did she ignore this? Words between species, between identities, between kinds, and personalities. Something can bring them together as her crappy speech can. Something like her, maybe. Verne speaks to everyone. He has grit and confidence. She has neither. Okay maybe the grit part isn’t necessary. But every family needs some awesomeness, right? Right now all claws are pointed at her. She can retract them; She can flip their frowns upside down. She can!

And it has to be interactive, just as the family is-

“That’s it, I’m comin’ on the stage, Heath’uh!” Stella attempts to get up there herself before Heather can decide on her course of action. RJ bodyguards the stage and shoves her back.

Someone large and green, with a neatly-shined back, comes to get a piece of the action. When he moves, the rest of the family follows soon. “What’s the meaning of this, RJ? I know you condoned it! She’s wasting the family’s time!”

There’s Verne, attacking the web she’s clung herself to.

“The family?...” Is Heather trying to remind herself? It appears to be. “I’ve got like a family too, don’t I? Not just RJ.”

RJ jerks his head around and urges her scathingly to continue as the crowd is lost from her speech. That same crowd overwhelms him quickly.

“Maybe dad was right earlier. I- I need to think about the family. What brings a family together? Okay like, wait wait… Well what gets me ‘n RJ together?”

“Listen, stinky-pants,” her coach intervenes. “Do you remember like, anything that happened this week?”

She does look for such inspiration in the forest around them, up to the high treeline where she’s naturally drawn to as an escape. Gravity seems to tug her eyes down as a motive. Weight flooding over her lower lids steer the ship to some grounded constellations instead, as the glint of the sun peeking past the overcast reflects off a shiny treasure. Past the corner of the fortress wall her head turns, where beyond the fort, over the pond and through the willow, one CD leaning against a stack paints rainbows over her iris. From this mental prism, she can nearly see through the disc to the black sharpie writing on the dull side. Her Banger Roll is there as well.

Her beat forms itself nearly subconsciously. One of her toes begins to tap. This is it. She can feel it. It’s growing. Her happy tail starts to swing. The music’s getting louder, bouncing and jittering around her skull, which plays the strings of her muscles and puts her body in that concentrated level of awesomeness she sought. She rides a crystal-clear view back to the crowd conversing and gossiping angrily on their own. RJ, sat down since a second’s passing, delves into his own matters, sorting through some album cases he’s got.

“Ooo, hoot hoot, you two are music guys,” Heather’s coach chimes in.

“Did you like just figure this out?” Heather snorts backwards to her brain.

She stares back down at her paper, then back at the CD collection. The music’s still going. From 8 to 9. It can’t quite max out - not without her. A speech doesn’t have a peppy beat to it. It’s just… words. Dull, dull words.

“Music!” she proclaims within. “That’s it! I’ve gotta make this ‘work’ MY work! Coach, you’re right, I’ve gotta make it ME!” Though her tail goes from a happy rattle to a mousy one. “But dammit, I never sing in FRONT of people…”

“So suck your thumb ‘n DO it!” the coach snarks. “Be a kid. Be yourself. Get your voice out there.” With Heather currently sucking her thumb, one final nudge should end her switcheroo stumbling. “And RJ’ll like iiiit…”

That’s the last bolt of her cage loose.

“Alright… SCREW this!”

She kicks the podium down, tears her page in half, and buries the scraps into the stage. In front of the public, she rips her suit and tie from her chest and unveils to them her bare, hairy, awesome, Heather self. No one makes a peep then.

On second thought, RJ does, trying to peep of anything without cussing her out: “Heather, what are you DOING-?!”

But Hammy’s ecstatic of her change in attitude, plugging RJ’s mouth and whispering, “Shhh, she's working, SHE'S WORKINGGG!”

“Uh no, she's NAKED! And CRAZY!” Verne chuckles loudly in response. “Who on Earth is gonna listen to this teenager-?”

Everyone but RJ and Verne attentively step one pace forward. Boulders shifting at once.

RJ tucks Verne close and quietly pats his head.

Heather’s voice sweeps over the scene like mist, overtaking from an unknown location, for she disappeared suddenly from the stage, to a gasp from all. “Now presenting… so totally the ONLY marsupial found in North Americaaaaa…” A star falls from the sky, hidden by emerging daylight. Heather pops down from leafy curtains, hanging upside-down by her tail from a high tree’s thin branch. Not too far from RJ’s entrance over a year prior. “Me.”

Ozzie coughs.

Heather points double fingers between their totally different stomachs. “No pouch. Don’t count.” She flips herself down to the stage, in front of the toppled, forgotten podium, to meet them again. “RJ, pass me that freakin’ GOOD stuff.”

He finds himself flicking her a random CD on command.

“I don't wanna break into song,” she starts with a grin. “Buuut…”

She puts it into an old green CD player she's got on deck, and goes smug.

“We’ve totally got the leg room to make this like… well… interactive.”

RJ scratches his chin from a bit of intrigue at her approach. “Interactive?”

“Interactive!?” go the kids, plus Hammy.

“Interactive?” Verne drops. “Oh no-”

Just the beat she needs comes to her aid. A karaoke track. Or more like a simple, moving beat her words can rhythmically clap: “Look, this ain't a Disney movie. But c'mon, follow me!”

She swings the player onto her shoulder like it's a boombox and leads them, singing full of the lusty energy she wields perfectly in check with herself and her proud, loud volume:

(Heather)

I got the questions, you got the answers, right? What's it you want from a fa-mily?

(Others)

What?

(Heather)

What's it you want from a fa-mily?

I'm talkin' places to be seein', meetin' fresh new faces, or just lyin' back in pillow hea-ven, ba-by!

The group picks up on the gist of her 'interactive' number and follow her closely down the Hedge, away from home.

(Heather)

So take a listen to the radio!

(Others)

-O!

(Heather)

Don't stop for breath, y'know I won't talk slow!

(Others)

-No!

(Heather)

I think this family'd grow if we found a place to let it… steal… the show!

Without any pause, a microphone suddenly falls from the sky into her raised hand, and her voice amplifies tenfold.

(Heather)

So bring the beat! Bring the beat!

Brought the gang all here ‘n now we’re on a roll!

Bring the beat! Bring the beat!

Get in the mix of it and take your chance to sing it, now!

(Others)

So bring the beat! Bring the beat!

(Heather)

Join the fa-mi-ly, together we'll bring the beat!

'N if you're feelin' he-si-tant we'll free yaaaaaaaa…

She throws the mic to Hammy.

(Heather)

We will… bring the… beat… to… you!

There comes no pause between his words, just slow enough to be at the very least comprehensible:

(Hammy)

Uh, hey my name is Hammy, if it helps it rhymes with Sammy, I've got hugs as soft as jelly, and they're MADE- WITH- LOVE, but I'm quick to pull the trigger on the stuff I choose for dinner, cuz today I ate a worm and no it's not the gummy kind, but I was really hungry and it tasted really squishy, I thought it was a candy but then it wriggled on my tooth in the back, that's my story, oh and HEY did you get any o’ that?

Heather bumps the mic away from him.

(Heather)

Well thanks Ham’, we still got some work to do

It goes to RJ.

(Heather)

So, next up we will bring the beat… to… you!

RJ is unsure of what to say, having to complete his whole verse in one breath after all. Even though his face slowly deteriorates and suffocates itself, and his voice grows steadily higher, he builds up a catchy rhythm halfway through that Heather can get behind:

(RJ)

Well okay my name is RJ - that's one 'J' please - and I think you shouldn't toss it to a guy who isn't ready, like I get it's interactive but my brain is losing traction, like the oxygen I'm breathin's getting thin and gettin' heated, so guess what? I gotta bid- adieu, and I gotta bring the beat back- to- you! PHEW!!

RJ collapses face-first.

“Guys, singing super fast isn’t like a requirement, y’know,” Heather mentions out of song.

RJ only barely manages to pick himself up and inflate his lungs like a balloon. “Hammy set a precedent…”

“Whatever…”

She returns to the beat.

(Heather)

What's it you want from a fa-mily?

(Others)

Huh?

(Heather)

I'll show ya what it takes to be a fa-mily!

(Others)

Yeah!

Down the Hedge, the mob brainlessly follows her. Except Verne. “They're being herded like animals… wait.”

(Heather)

From my heart I've pulled this me-lody, and you've got-ta see, some u-nity will set us free.

And now I know you're thinkin'-

Verne tries his hardest to break in from the back of the marching crowd. “Uh?”

(Heather)

You think you've been mistaken-

“Hello?”

(Heather)

To be trailing along some stupid soooong-!

(Others)

No!

(Heather)

No? Alright, like keep it flow-in'-

She glances at RJ, who comes up loyally at her side, and directs her next words right at him:

(Heather)

-our music could take you 'n me anywheeere!

(RJ)

So bring the beat!

(Heather)

Oh!

(RJ)

Bring the beat!

(Heather)

Woo!

(RJ)

You brought the gang all here ‘n now we’re on a ro-OLL!

(Heather)

Bring the beat!

(RJ)

Yeah, bring the beat!

(Both)

Get in the mix of it and take your chance to sing it, now!

(Others)

So bring the beat! Bring the beat!

(Heather)

Join the fa-mi-ly, together we'll bring the beat!

'N if you're feelin' he-si-tant we'll free yaaaaaaaa…

The mic goes to Stella.

(Heather)

We will… bring the… beat… to… Stel-la!

“Stel-la?!” Verne bursts from his lips in simple betrayal. It’s a ladder structure of cracking wood within, breaking platform-by-platform the more she contributes to his downfall:

(Stella)

Well- I'm not much for song, but well- I'm still- just singin' along. I've been hooked up on the TV, taking life a bit too easy, now I'm on my stinkin’ FEET, ready to blow for fa-mil-y

Now Verne-

He puts his full attention into the card reader now.

(Stella)

-You just sit back 'n let the girl work, or else you'll get your tail hurt, tryin' to mess up her skirt!

His face drops from anger to neglect, as simple as that.

Heather bounces back from the front of the line and quickly steals the mic from her to try and get Verne on board, instead of hissed at.

(Heather)

Just have some fun, take part like everyone

She spins away in a hurry.

(Heather)

I'll check back in just a sec' okay, this cab still needs a driver, now Tig-er-!

She holds the mic stoutly at his face beside him while his four limbs are occupied during the march. Tiger puts on a valiant show with the militaristic beat that follows his exact footsteps.

(Tiger)

To BE a prince you must be fit, not to binge on fishes and dishes your owner stuffs you with. Now I'm out of home, but not alone; My belly would agree, living with you all my spirit's never felt so free! So I've sworn my every life to this thing called fa-mi-ly, now it's time to bring to beat to… Oz-zie!

The mic’s thrown to him by Heather. “Daaad!”

“Oh.” Ozzie grips the mic carefully in front of him, unprepared for his conclusion under her musical regime, even a showman, he is. “Um, okay, well, here it goes…”

A slower, more orchestrated melody locks his feet in place. A complete overhaul of Heather’s fast-paced style. His words fall down like raindrops on a lilypad:

(Ozzie)

I've been spending life from making life…

With starry nights poured at the seams of my mem-ories…

Aaaaand instant regret. Ozzie’s already been more effective than Verne at halting Heather’s progress with getting the family down the Hedge. They stand still to watch him perform, and it peeves Heather. “Oh c'mon.”

(Ozzie)

To think you'd leave me torn at the sight of your risky hand…

It spoils my cards, so please, hear meeee…

The pace picks up, and they both sing quickly in their distinct styles. Heather fights to get the mic back from him. He spins away each time she lunges her arms at him.

(Heather)

Dad, you really need to go, you're messing up the show-

(Ozzie)

I- need- you- to- re-turn- to- meeeee…

(Heather)

No really, hit the road, this junk has gotta go-

(Ozzie)

I- need- you- to- start- see-ing- clear-lyyyyy!

(Heather)

This bridge's lame as hi-stor-y-

(Ozzie)

You don't understand me-

Heather finally manages the mic from his hand.

(Heather)

Yeah, like whatever- We will… bring the… beat… to… Verne!

The mic bonks Verne in the head. He doesn’t pick it up. Heather’s baffled, to say the least.

(RJ)

Just leave 'em be, we gotta run the show, let's go go GO!

Segments of parts of every other make a perfect harmony in the background of Heather’s voice above everyone else's.

(Heather)

What's it you want from a fa-mily? I'll show ya what it takes to be a fa-mily-!

(Hammy, in an overlapping opera)

I ate a wooorm to-DAAAAAAYYY!

(Heather)

[-DAAAAAAYYY!] From my heart I've pulled this me-lody, and you've got-ta see, some u-nity will set us free.

(Hammy, overlapping again)

I ate a worm to-daaaaayyy…

(Heather)

[-daaaaayyy] And now I know you're thinkin' as we string this thing we’re makin’

Yeah I know that now you’re thinkin’-

(Everyone)

-we’re not mi-stakeeennn-!

The melody dies, coming to just the simple beat of a wood block. Hushed, the rhythm’s directed specifically at RJ next to her as she whispers in a more timid nature.

(Heather)

Please keep showing me the good life-

(Others)

Oooh!

(Heather, subtly pointing at Ozzie)

I can’t go alone with this price (dad)-

(Others)

O-o-oh-!

Heather directs herself loudly back to the whole group.

(Heather)

This family’s about ‘we’ not ‘me’ you’ll see-!

(Others)

We will… bring the… beat… to… Hea-ther!

“Oh, and, by the way,” Heather cuts the end of the track to say. “We're goin' on a family outing today.”

Everyone realizes how far they've already walked a bit too late to object. The Log is nowhere in sight anymore. Nothing of home is. Beyond that, across identical woods, it seems they’ve moved nowhere else. But they sense it - not just a fair distance down the Hedge, but an irretrievable distance.

Not a pair of feet move. Not even one. Not a single clue where they are, or how they got here. They did, is all that matters. Heather’s music guides this family into the future.

“Super duper there, Heather!”

“Jeepers, Heather had us in a boogey!”

“That was so better than game time, Cousin Heather!”

“Yeah Cousin Heather, we want an encore! En-core! En-core!”

“Are we there yet, Cousin Heather?”

“I knew you’d make it fun, Heather. I knew you would! I told you so, RJ! It was awesome.”

“Verne, take it from Heath’uh, SHE knows how to be a family.”

“I’ve never paid any attention to Heather but… I can’t even argue with that.”

“I suppose that’s our day covered. As a prince I say, lead the way, fair Heather!”

The name’s a complete blur to her. It flutters around her like a fairy shouting to her over and over, though she hears it as a broad praise. Why she’d done it, hadn’t she? Cussing her once, singing with her the next, and now, they unite under her name. Just like the Hammy situation. Just like she’d known it would work. Just like she planned. The interactiveness Heather brought upon them as a family have them follow her parade. They have no problem now, all of them, trailing to Heather’s beat - from the so-called kid of the group - for the morning.

RJ indulges himself a bit too far in victory in the back of the pack, spinning all around and bouncing by the soles of his feet. “YOU said it!” he reminds Verne, that speechless onlooker. “Under ONE lock! Feelin’ giddy or what?”

“This is NOT what I meant, RJ! They’re following her for no reason. They don’t know WHAT they’re doing!”

"Too late, ya got that ‘unifying force’, that ‘key’ ya wanted, man! Look at her go!"

Verne watches him spin off with a huff, and everyone wanders behind Heather's lead through the tame morning fog. Each step cuts a clear path to them, but Heather becomes the first to trek forward. The fog is only light, but that implies a light bit of uncertainty which Heather brushes away by lighting through. Verne halts his feet, but forces them to resume after a moment, as any ounce of hesitation draws him further from the mindless pack. Her performance left an impression on his startled face nonetheless.

RJ dances his way up to Heather and scares her with his energy. “I thought you were free-ballin' it for a sec' but that was GREAT!” he laughs breathlessly. “You recited that?”

Flattered in her cheeks, she inches her muzzle back from his praise. “Uh, no.”

Her one word snaps his arms down to his sides. “Oh so you WERE free-balling it. I respect the audacity.”

"That was for you, y’know."

"For me?"

“Yeah.” She’s real slick about it too. “Wanted to put my vocal cords to use, right? Now guess what? The family’s back together AND I'd bet they totally love you now. You’re welcome.”

Out of appreciation for her sudden sly nature he nods continually and replies, “Well consider that a 'thank you' from me…”

His open hand rises to the level of her head. An offering of celebration. She nods the same and offers her own. They reach back and slap their hands together like velcrow.

Immediately when their palms collide… frozen. The family must’ve stopped just behind them, for any sounds of shuffling stop. Their hands stick glued together for a second, all sprawled out and jumbled between fingers. They stare blankly from one pair of eyes into the other. Nothing from their blue-to-blue lets them process. Heather might’ve glanced up at their hands once, but forgets that instantly, in the pause.

Then… RJ gives in and takes his silent cue to slowly morph his hand into a tight rock fist. She crumples her paper all over it and grins cutely.

This is still just for fun, right? Is it? Not anymore. Not from the way he reacted, full of lively might and invigoration. A dance and song for her own ears and eyes it feels, like her heart thumps faster to match his tempo. The amusement in his countenance only further dribbles the aura of significance and worth she’s compelled to feel around herself. Just as it’d been proven to her, it’d been proven to him. She is the lock that needs no key.

“I’m not a kid to you, am I? I’m me. Awesomely me.”

As far as the rock and paper thing? Yes this metaphor has been made 3 times. The point's across.

RJ, bouncing in spirit, breaks his hand free. “Heather, you were right the whole time - You are important. So why don’t you try it out?”

“Try out what?”

“Your new place in the family. Take a look.”

He shows her the family behind them, awaiting the two to continue leading down the Hedge. They’re all looking at Heather, and she’s, simply put, in awe at it. Except Verne. He’s got his arms crossed instead, and pointed away. But who cares.

Heather utters, “What? These guys are all looking to me? Awesome sauce.”

“All these giddy faces are waiting for someone to do the thinking for them,” explains RJ from his typical experience in the role. He makes a popping sound when he takes two fingers and picks an imaginary object off his forehead and presents his little ball of air to her. “Heather, I will GRACIOUSLY allow you to borrow my ego just this once- er, leadership! Leadership…”