Archive of Our Own ^beta

Crazy Butt Town

By LynneAgain and SpiritStarry

Two old college friends go on a road trip. Next stop, adventure!

A squirrel darted along the highway as a pair of headlights approached from behind a hill. The fuzzy, gray fellow just barely made it to safety as the sights of the lights gave way to a silver sedan lazily making its way along the dim road under a pale patch of stars. Nothing but pavement and trees lined the distance all the way to the mountains on the horizon.

Both the sedan's driver and passenger said nothing as a raucous classic rock song drowned out their thoughts. Just as the singer was once again to elaborate upon just what he planned to do to the nonspecific 'you' the song addressed, the music started mixing with static more and more, until deafening noise filled the dirty car, shaking its empty fast food drink cups that sat both in the cupholders and on the floor.

"Shit!" The passenger reached for the radio's off button before the sound could cause him any hearing damage. "You need to fix your aerial, man."

"It's on the to-do list," the driver mumbled as he stared blankly at the dark road ahead.

"Like the waxing and the oil change and the paint job…" the passenger listlessly numbered on his fingers.

"The paint job's fine," the driver sighed, gripping the steering wheel.

"Come on."

"I'm serious."

"Yeah, whatever," the passenger said, turning to stare out the window.

The darkness made the passenger feel more alone than ever in the depths of this valley. Aside from the routine lamps and the occasional oncoming car, there wasn't a whole lot going on in mountain country at eleven o'clock at night. He felt his eyelids growing heavier, but he fought the feeling by rolling his shoulders and starting another awkward conversation.

"What are we doing right now…?"

The driver faced the passenger.

"Road trip. Seeing the world, or some small corner of it. Eating some shitty food and staying in some shitty places until we get some of our shit figured out."

The passenger sighed. "No, I mean, in general. With our lives. Right now."

The driver smirked. "You want to play Socrates this late at night?"

"What else are we supposed to do? Radio's busted," The passenger shrugged, looking out at the sea of trees on his side of the car.

The driver shook his head, but played along. "Fair point. Well… I get up every weekday to go to work, and then I go home. I spend my weekends playing video games, and then when Monday rolls around, I get back to work. And you…"

"Same thing," the passenger mumbled.

"Yeah," the driver said simply.

"Are you happy with your job?" the passenger asked as he poked at his fresh buzzcut. He could feel his hair growing in again after he shaved it in a night of drunken frustration.

"Yep. It pays the bills."

"Bullshit."

The driver pressed his foot down on the gas, the silver sedan picking up speed just a hair over the limit. After a moment of watching the driver stare blankly at the road ahead, it became clear to the passenger that the driver wasn't going to say another word anytime soon.

The passenger filled in for him. "I'm not happy with my job and I've reached the highest I could basically go without a degree. So if I'm not happy with mine, then you must really hate yours. Twenty-nine, fancy-schmancy Master's, and you're taking us to some seedy motels instead of jetting to Hawaii like everyone else you graduated with. C'mon, you don't need to save face with me. Just admit it. You're miserable."

The driver sighed in defeat, though it soon turned into a yawn. "Fuck this. Next rest stop we see, I'm pulling over. It's too late for this and I don't want to get in a wreck."

Rolling his eyes, the passenger snapped back, "A wreck? We're the only wrecks around here."

"Ha. Ha. Ha," the driver said, a boiling mixture of deadpan and exhausted, "Have you tried not being miserable for, say, twenty minutes of your life? I'm doing this for us, and so far you are acting like a brat."

The passenger nodded. "Sure. I'll stop being miserable when fish can walk. Or when I get a few more zeros on my paycheck. Whichever happens first."

"So… never?"

"You got it."

The driver suppressed the urge to throw up his hands in frustration. "This is all you, man. You go around acting like you're the most awful person in a fucked up world, and rather than trying to do anything about it, you spend all day sulking and slamming your head against the window."

"Well, it wasn't always like this!"

"Oh, here we go again…"

The passenger looked back out the window. "I had hope. I thought I was gonna be someone important. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then when I was in high school, I was going to be a physicist. All those years, people told me I had what it took to change the world. And now look where I am. Minimum wage college dropout. Whoop-de-fuckin'-do."

Elbowing the passenger, the driver added, "Are we gonna end the pity party?"

Rubbing his side, the passenger said, "Just… I hate it, man."

The driver guffawed.

"Everyone hates it! Tens of thousands of dollars I'm paying off for the rest of my life, making barely above what I need to eat and live inside some walls. But you know what? I'm not sitting there, feeling sorry for myself. I'm going places, and damn it, I wanted you to come with me just so you could get out of your head too. That's what this is, right? Get away from home, get away from work, get away from ourselves. But you're stuck, and that's what's killing me right now."

For five more minutes, not a word was shared. The driver looked back at the road as the passenger stared over the dashboard, watching the stars above move along the ends of his vision.

"I wish I could just start over…" The passenger whispered.

The driver still heard him. "Start what over?"

"I don't know. Just… this!" the passenger gestured around himself, and put his head in his hands on the dashboard.

"The road trip? We could always go somewhere else."

"All of it, man. I'm just done. Not suicidal done or anything. I'm just super tired all the time. I'm stuck in a loop. We both are. You think you're going places? You're in a cage."

"Man…"

Choking on his words, the passenger added, "Am I wrong?"

At that, the driver slowed down, his attention divided as he searched for the right words.

"I just try not to think about it. Sometimes it feels good to pretend to be someone I'm not."

"Exactly," the passenger said, simply and softly.

Looking over at his friend, the driver continued, "You know what?"

"What?"

"I think we're getting delirious. I just want to sleep. Shout it out when you see some place coming up, okay?"

"Nothing to see but the tunnel there."

Ahead of the pair was a dark tunnel, out of place on the mountainous highway, but seeming to serve a purpose, as it would allow cars to pass through the hilly terrain ahead. Still, something did seem strange about it.

"The fuck? That's a dark ass tunnel," the driver added, succinctly.

The passenger turned to the driver with a quirked eyebrow. "It's a tunnel. Tunnels are supposed to be dark."

As their car made its way into the tunnel, it seemed darker on the inside than out.

"But there are no lights or anything," the driver said with wide eyes.

The passenger shrugged. "Give it a moment. We gotta let our eyes adjust."

"What the fuck happened to my headlights?!" the driver shouted as he looked ahead, now unable to see anything but the dim light of the clock on his radio.

The passenger shouted back. "Shit. I told you to get this car fixed!"

"It's a good car, okay?!"

"Yeah, it was when your grandfather drove it."

Blinding, sudden, searing light. The startled pair scrunched their eyes shut instinctively.

The driver went to slam his foot on the brakes, but he couldn't find anything. In fact, he couldn't even feel the rumbling of the car anymore. All he knew was he could feel the seat, so at least he didn't have any spinal injuries or nerve damage. Knowing that, he was content with keeping his eyes closed for now. Maybe he'd wake up in a seedy hotel room. It'd all have just been a horrible dream. He'd laugh it off and then go on to think about what kind of continental breakfasts were available.

But an unfamiliar squeal broke him out of his thoughts.

"What the what?!?" a high pitched voice shouted from inside the car.

The driver, in a daze, replied, "What? What what? What?!"

"Gosh darn it all to heck!" the voice continued, a shuffling sound going on around it.

The driver sighed. "Please, don't yell, dream voice. I'm trying to get some sleep."

"You're not gonna get any sleep tonight!" the voice added.

"Why not?!"

"It's morning!"

Opening their eyes and turning to look at the source of the voice, the driver started, "No, it's not…"

Their words got stuck in their throat.

In front of them was a busted sign.

WELCOME TO ELMORE

POPULATION: WEIRD

"How long was I out?!" the driver shouted.

"You weren't out!"

The passenger was currently in a heightened state of panic.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" the driver shouted.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" the passenger shouted back, providing a strong counterpoint.

The driver, quite indignant about this whole situation, said, "I'm Ruby, duh!"

With a start, Ruby's eyes widened, and the two shouted in unison.

"Who the heck is Ruby?!"

"I'm Ruby! No! What, no?! What? No…"

Watching Ruby flounder about, the passenger calmly added, "Well, whoever you are, I'm Kayla."

"Then why are you in Kayla's seat?!" Ruby said, feeling tongue tied.

"I am Kayla!" the passenger insisted.

"Then where is Kayla? And why is there a talking cat in my car?!" Ruby screamed, hands poised to push the cat out of the vehicle.

Kayla gasped, looking down at themself for confirmation. "I'm a cat?"

Ruby daintily pushed Kayla in their seat before saying, "Apparently! Wait. Am I a cat too?!"

"No…" Kayla said in a state of utter disorientation.

"Oh, thank goodness," Ruby said with a relieved sigh.

"You're a bird, you moron," Kayla said, pushing Ruby back.

Ruby sat there for a few moments, shaking their head. "Okay, that crash must have messed me up. Yes! I'm in a coma! I'm gonna wake up in three months. With a beard. And I'll be skinny. Finally, I'll lose that weight! And then I'll be slammed with a hospital bill the size of Texas, but that won't matter because at least I won't be a bird!"

Kayla slapped Ruby with a white-furred paw.

"Ow! Darn it!" the bird muttered as they stared back up at the sign.

"Ruby, listen to me," the cat began.

"I'll listen after I get my car started and drive myself to a rest stop like I said I was gonna," Ruby said through a clenched beak. "I'm tired, I'm seeing things, and I need a drink."

"Seriously. Stop talking," Kayla continued, breathing sharply through their small, wet nose.

Ruby shot back at Kayla. "Nothing a talking cat who replaced my friend can say to me right now is gonna make me feel any better."

"I know you're not Ruby. You're Ruby. Ugh!" Kayla shook their head and tried to ignore the feeling of their much longer black hair swishing with it. "I mean, you're my friend. Five minutes ago, a schlubby-looking dude with too much arm hair was panicking about some tunnel, and he was sitting in your seat."

Ruby gasped. "Schlubby? Says the skinny jerk with a mess of red hair and an army of freckles and OMG, I'm a bird and I'm scared and I want to go home now."

Kayla scowled at the bird. "You know when I said to stop talking? Yeah. Cool it. We… let's just move the car away from the bridge here."

"Bridge? What happened to the tunnel?" Ruby cast a glance at the rear window, and all they could see was a bright red suspension bridge going as far back as the horizon.

"Like I said, Ruby," Kayla started again. "Let's get away from the bridge, and then we can have a serious talk about whatever the heck is going on right now."

"…Okay."

Ruby went to start the car again, noticing with relief that the keys were still safely in the ignition. It was only when they tried to adjust their seat that a new problem presented itself to the bird.

Looking down at themselves, Ruby noticed that their feet, even when the seat was pushed up as far up as the steering wheel, could not reach the pedals.

"Um... " Ruby said, not quite fully explaining the situation.

Unaware, Kayla chided, "Do you have a better idea, birdbrain?"

"No," Ruby said softly. "Just. Do me a favor?"

"Yeah?" Kayla asked with a tilt of their head.

"We're very small," Ruby said simply.

"Huh?!" Kayla shot up, only after a moment realizing that they could stand up completely while inside the car.

Ruby decided not to mention the fact that Kayla's jeans, overtaken by their sweater, fell down to their feet as the bird said, "If you push the pedals, I can steer."

Fifteen minutes later, the pair found themselves on the side of the highway, a few oak trees poking out next to the sidewalk, giving the animals shade from the sun shining brightly in the clear blue sky. A handful of brick and mortar buildings lined the road, but nothing impressive. If the pair didn't know any better, they'd say they hadn't gone anywhere at all.

But location was not entirely the pair's concern right now. After taking a moment to adjust their clothing to a more manageable position, billowing button ups, all-consuming sweaters, towering jeans, and sizable sneakers were now relatively under control as the pair turned to address one another.

"Kayla," Ruby, the small, teal and purple bird with a yellow beak and legs, nodded.

Kayla, the white cat with a cascade of black hair and charcoal face markings, nodded back. "Ruby."

The cat and bird stared at each other for a solid minute, neither of them quite sure what to say.

It was only when the silence was about to reach a boiling point that Kayla chimed in, "Let's just turn on some music."

Turning the radio back on, a pair of crunchy guitars and a kit of thundering drums backed a wailing singer performing far outside of his vocal range.

I AM AN OVERPAID SINGER AND I SEEK REFUGE FROM MY INSECURITIES THROUGH MY PARASITIC FANS

The animals stared blankly at the radio.

"These lyrics are really on the nose," Kayla and Ruby said at the same time, smirking at one another in recognition.

Ruby shrugged, "Well, hey, you're the one who picked the station."

Shaking their head, hair flowing behind them, Kayla said, "Fine, I'll put on another one."

The next song was a mass of electronic beats, distorted noise seeming to approach the listener as if it was a musical tidal wave.

I DON'T WANNA BE FAMOUS ANYMORE PLEASE HELP ME I AM DYING IN A SEA OF BLOCKY RHYTHMS

Ruby turned off the radio and said, "Next road trip, we're bringing CDs."

Kayla chortled, "CDs? What year do you think this is, old man?"

Ignoring Kayla, Ruby looked at the CD drive. Except it wasn't a CD drive. The slot was much more rectangular, and shorter too.

Kayla, looking where Ruby looked, spoke up first. "Ruby, is that a tape deck?"

Behind a facepalm, Ruby said, "Sure. Why the heck not?"

Defeated, Kayla answered, "Because I want at least one thing to be the same."

Ruby stared into Kayla's eyes.

"You mean like how I'm sitting here with a talking cat who claims to be my friend in the middle of a strange place after going through some kinda time warp in the middle of the highway after we both admitted we hate our lives and ourselves?"

Kayla nodded slowly.

"Yeah, that's about right."

"And about how I'm a bird whose pants just fell off of them again?"

"Yeah. I mean, wait, what?!"

"Still short," Ruby confirmed.

"And animals," Kayla added.

"And also animals."

"And we can't say our actual names."

"And that about sums it up."

"Yep."

"And we're alone."

"And scared."

"Very scared."

"Outright terrified."

"Horrified."

"Quaking in our boots."

"Our far-too-big-for-us boots."

"So what do we do now?" Kayla and Ruby said at the same time, wrapping up their quip session.

Kayla stiffened up, their tail twitching behind them. "We call the cops."

The cat dug their hands into their jean pockets, grasping at air.

"Ruby," Kayla said, "I can't find my phone."

With a sigh, Ruby said, "Must I do everything?" The bird reached for their own pants that were now on the floor, tangled between the pedals, and rummaged through them. All they could find was their wallet.

Watching Ruby, Kayla said, "The tape deck…"

"What?"

Kayla started, "We have a tape deck now. When tape decks were a thing…"

"…People didn't have phones," Ruby finished, dropping their pants in shock.

"Did we go back in time?!" the animals said in unison.

"Were people animals in the 80s?!" Ruby asked, only half-joking.

"I don't know. I wasn't alive in the 80s!" Kayla answered.

"I don't even know if we're alive right now! Maybe we're in heck. I mean… heck. What the heck!" Ruby shouted, stamping their foot and hitting the car horn in utter frustration.

Kayla laughed at the sight. "You don't need to censor yourself right now, dude."

Ruby kept shouting. "I'm not trying to, man!"

Ruby forced their car door open, falling over themselves as they tripped over the remnants of their jeans, their button up shirt now covering them all the way to their knees, and their shoes flopping to and fro as they attempted to steady themselves.

"Where are you going?" Kayla asked the befuddled bird.

With a point of their feathers, Ruby said, "There's a convenience store right there. I'm getting a drink. Or coffee. Or both."

"Hey, don't leave me here!" Kayla shouted back as they followed closely behind Ruby, working with all their might to keep their pants on.

The pair waited patiently for the pedestrian light to turn green, choosing not to comment on how it was human-shaped, even though they themselves were not currently allowed that luxury.

The convenience store was huge, with high shelves and rows and rows of assorted junk food. They browsed for a bit, unable to find exactly what they were looking for. Just lots of off-brand sweets and salty snacks. Pleasant elevator muzak played from some hidden speakers as the pair walked towards the counter. Travel brochures and mints obscured their view of the clerk, who was floundering about underneath the counter. All either animal could see of them was a red hat bobbing up and down.

Ruby cleared their throat. "Uh, excuse me."

The figure rose up from behind the counter, revealing themselves to be a pencil-thin humanoid…  with a rock for a head. Their name tag read 'Larry.'

"Hello there!" Larry shouted, making the pair cover their ears from the sheer volume of his false enthusiasm, although Kayla had an easier time finding their ears than Ruby did.

"How can I help you today?" Larry continued, choosing to disregard how startled the animals before him had been.

Ruby pointed behind themselves, "That one aisle is all just chocolate cupcakes."

Ignoring Ruby, Kayla asked, "Do you have anything here to drink?"

"Of course we do!" Larry said, forcing his smile even wider. "Would you like some slushies? We just got lime flavoring."

Ruby sighed, indignant at the rock's suggestion. "Do I look like I want a big cup of sugar and ice right now?"

Stepping back from the angry animals, Larry said, "We also have soda!" With a twitch of his eyes, Larry added, "Please, get some soda!"

Turning around and grabbing a pair of bottles from the minifridge behind them, Kayla held the drinks up for Ruby to see, "Look! Root Beer brand root beer!"

"Wow, my favorite!" Ruby shouted in mock enthusiasm, clicking their beak in the process, making their eyes go wide.

Ignoring the suddenly startled bird before him, Larry turned to face Kayla.

"How will you be paying today?" the rock asked.

Taking the credit card from the cat, Larry only glanced at it for a second before looking back down at the pair.

"Are you serious?"

"When I need to be," Kayla said bluntly.

"Sometimes not even then," Ruby added with a nod.

With a groan, Larry said, "You're kidding…"

With those words, Larry took a pair of scissors from behind the counter and cut up Kayla's kitty cat credit card.

With a gasp, Kayla shouted, "OMG, what are you doing, man?!"

"We needed that for gas money!" Ruby shouted in turn.

Larry rolled his eyes. "Gas money?! Alright, that's it. I've had enough of you kids and your smart mouths. Trying to act like adults is one thing, but if you're gonna go around handing out counterfeit credit cards, then that's grounds for a criminal offense. Now you two either leave my store right now, or I'll call the police."

"Kids?!?" Hands on their hips, Ruby stood on their tippy toes to make their point, "I'll have you know I have a Master's in education!"

"And they're not afraid to use it!" Kayla added.

With a smirk, Larry asked, "Oh, is that counterfeit too?"

Before either animal could say another word, Larry added, "Out!"

Looking up at Larry, then at each other, then back up at Larry, the pair grumbled, "Yes, mister."

Kayla and Ruby each took just three steps out of the convenience store before they turned to look at one another.

"We're children," they said.

"Stop that," they each said again.

"It was funny at first, but now it's getting really annoying."

"And… creepy."

"And…"

"Really…"

The cat and bird had a staring contest for a few seconds. It was a tie.

"Xylophone rats!"

"Goats on a yacht!"

"A pair of umbrellas locking eyes from across a crowded room and immediately falling in love!"

"Hey, ladies!"

Turning away from each other, only now realizing that they were standing nose to beak on the cracked pavement below, the animals went to face the source of the strange, new voice.

It was a boy. Some kind of fluffy rainbow-ball, wearing a sweatband, sneakers, and a disturbing grin on what they assumed was his face.

"Anything old Tobias can help you with this morning?" the rainbow-ball said with a wink.

"Whatever, kid. I think your sweatband's on too tight." Ruby said, sticking their tongue out at the boy.

"C'mon, don't play hard-to-get…" Tobias continued, stepping far too close to the pair for comfort.

"How old even are you, you little dweeb?" Ruby snapped at the boy.

Tobias scratched his head. "Can't be much older than you, right?"

Kayla winced at the reminder.

Noticing Kayla mourning their lost years, Ruby began shouting at the rainbow. "Hey, man, you mess with my BFF, you gotta deal with me. Alright?"

"Ooh, tough girl! Me likey," Tobias smirked as he wiggled his fingers.

It was then that things finally clicked. Time stopped. Birds stopped flying. Fish stopped swimming. People stopped peopling. In this time warp, Ruby took a moment to stare at Kayla. Her long, flowing hair. Her fluttery eyelashes. Kayla saw Ruby's pastel colors that graced her delicate feathers. They didn't really think of it until now. Their names. Their voices. Their… increasingly noticeable word choices. This creep that was standing a foot away from them.

This was a matter of discussion.

Until then, however…

Ruby shot her head back around toward Tobias, the fire in her eyes sending the rainbow-ball back with a start, "OMG, if you don't get away from us right now, we are going to…"

Kayla continued, "Pull your legs back behind your head."

"And then tie your sweatband around them so you'll have to…"

"…Roll all the way home."

Crouching, cowering down on the concrete, Tobias whimpered, "A 'no' would have been fine."

Smirking at one another, the girls shouted, "Buzz off, weirdo!"

Tobias, now fully rejected and dejected, got down on his stomach and inched away like a worm out of Ruby and Kayla's sight.

Fully satisfied, the girls turned to look at each other.

Then they started screaming in sheer terror.

Half an hour later, Kayla and Ruby found themselves back in their respective seats in the bird's car, the early morning sun still shining overhead as the pair stared blankly at the empty road ahead of them. While Ruby stole occasional sideline glances at herself in the overhead mirror, Kayla was looking at a map she got from the convenience store after the pair's intense screaming session.

"So… we're on an island? An island that doesn't look like anything that has ever existed."

"Ever?" Ruby asked dimly.

"Ever."

"Yeesh."

"Wait, hang on," Kayla said, peering at the text at the bottom. "This says Elmore, CA."

"So we're in California."

"Or Canada."

"Or somewhere else entirely. Knowing what we've seen of this place so far, it might as well stand for Crazy Butt Town. I mean...  never mind."

"I wanna cuss too," Kayla pouted.

Ruby slapped the steering wheel. "They take away the one thing that would make us feel better."

"Who's they?" Kayla asked.

"I dunno. Whoever did this?" Ruby gestured around herself.

"You think someone did this?"

"Sure. This might still be a dream. Maybe we've been put under. Experiment? Government? Aliens? You saw that light."

"You don't believe in aliens," Kayla said.

"I didn't believe in talking rocks either!" Ruby snapped back.

"Well, I think this is a magic thing."

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Magic? Cool, I'm sci-fi, you're fantasy."

Kayla stuck out her tongue. "No, I mean it. We talked about our dumb lives, and now we're completely different people. You think that's just a coincidence?"

"I refuse to think anything until more information is brought to light. Also, I'm a bird. And I'm a girl. I'm a bird girl. I'm a tiny, tiny bird girl."

"Chirp chirp?" Kayla offered.

Ruby raised a trembling fist. "I'll shove your tail up your nose."

"C'mon, you think I'm happy about this?!" Kayla asked, waving her paws around.

"You sure as heck don't seem as surprised as I am," Ruby pointed out.

Kayla rubbed her temples. "I'm just trying to figure things out."

"Figure what out?! This has to be bigger than us, right? You don't solve the mystery of why we're walking, talking animal girls just by looking at a map!"

"Well, I'm trying to learn some things here. Unlike you, who's just sitting there." Kayla growled.

"I'm thinking!" Ruby shouted.

"About what?!"

Ruby paused.

"…Why us?"

Putting down her map, Kayla turned to face Ruby, trembling beak and wide eyes staring upwards at the empty sky.

The bird's voice was getting shaky. "We were just people. Just people trying to sort out our lives."

Ruby couldn't hold back the tears.

"I just wanted to figure it out. Not get it… taken away from me."

Kayla reached over and put her paw on Ruby's wing. "We'll figure this out. I promise."

"You can't promise that."

"I know. I just want you to feel better."

"I haven't cried in eight years..." Ruby said through a choked sob.

"I wish I could say your name."

"Me too, Kayla. Me too."

Ruby rested her wing on Kayla's shoulder. The two girls sat there like that for a moment, nothing left to say, nothing they could say.

Ruby's stomach grumbled.

"We need to eat."

"I am hungry," Kayla agreed.

"I guess we can't just sit here forever."

"But I'd like to," they said at the same time.

Kayla blinked. "What is that?"

"I dunno," Ruby shrugged. "Twin powers?"

"We are definitely not twins," Kayla said, pointing out the obvious.

Ruby tapped her forehead. "I'm telling you. Experiment. Mental link. Connected."

"You play too much garbage."

"Who doesn't?"

"Also, we have no money. None of the right money, anyway," Kayla sighed.

Sifting through the remains of her wallet, Kayla noticed something rather disconcerting.

"My ID is gone!"

"Say wha?"

Kayla held up her wallet for Ruby, showing the bird the empty clear plastic sleeve where a state ID once proudly lay. In a fit of abject fear, Ruby proceeded to reach for her own wallet, soon realizing that she too had no identification of her own.

Looking glumly into Ruby's tearing eyes, Kayla said, "We are so messed up."

"Hecked."

"In the garbage pile."

Unable to release their negative energy in some small way, the girls elected to lie back in their seats and sigh, neither one looking at the other as they stared up at the top of the car.

As the cat and bird laid there, however, another cat and a fish observed from a distance that would still render them noticeable if one were not having an existential crisis.

Poking their heads out from behind a tree, the blue cat and the orange fish watched the girls fuddle about in an old silver sedan.

"They're gonna steal it, bro. I'm telling you," the blue cat whispered to the orange fish.

"We can't just stand here and watch them!" the fish said to the cat, waving his fins around in newly-found panic.

"I kinda wanna, though. Look, Darwin, I bet the one in the driver's seat can't even reach the pedals," the cat pointed out with a smirk.

For his part, Darwin stamped his fishy foot. "That's not the point, Gumball!! It's the thought behind it that counts."

"What? Like what cheap people say about presents?" Gumball pondered.

Darwin shrieked, "No! Agh. Never mind. Watch me!"

Gumball watched as Darwin stomped his way over to the silver sedan, his show of strength weakened by the fact that he tripped over a raised part of the sidewalk, but still!

He tapped on the passenger side window.

It took Kayla a moment to notice that a fish wanted to talk to her, but the fish made his presence known rather quickly. It's not often that the fish is the one who taps on the glass, so he had definitely gotten the cat's attention. The feline turned her head to notice him making mumbled shouts behind the glass. Reaching for the button to roll the window down, Kayla turned the crank instead, mentally swearing to herself in the process.

Pickle truck, she thought.

"You were totally about to steal that car!" Darwin proclaimed with crossed arms. "You're busted by the Wattersons!"

"No, this is my car!" Kayla shouted back.

"What? No," Ruby, pulled out of her stupor, held her wings up in protest. "This is my car."

Gumball, having casually strolled and tripped on his way over to the fish, quirked an eyebrow. "Prove it."

Ruby raised a finger as if to speak, but then double-checked her wallet. Her feathers drooped and, wordlessly, she swung around and began headbutting the horn, fevered honks echoing along the highway.

After a few moments, Kayla leaned over towards the bird. "Are you done?"

"Gimme three more honks…" Ruby mumbled against the steering wheel.

As those honks were had, Kayla slid the car keys out of the ignition, and showed them to the boys.

"See? Who would just leave their car keys in their car like that?" Kayla asked, a proud smirk on her face.

"Our Dad," Gumball said simply, Darwin nodding in agreement.

Kayla clenched her tiny paw around the keys and shook with anger. The keys jingled violently in her grip and made a soothing tinkling sound that did nothing to help portray how livid she was right now.

Ruby, having mostly gotten over herself, proceeded to take the keys back from the cat and put them in her shirt pocket. She then proceeded to get out of the car, slamming the door behind her as she walked around the front to speak to the boys on the other side.

"You know what? Fine! Not like we can even drive it, anyway. C'mon, Kayla, let's get away from these idiots before they start to infect us with their stupid."

"With pleasure!" Kayla said, stepping out of the car and looking back at the boys with an incensed feline glare, which Gumball was only happy to match.

But Darwin, for his part, began to notice a few other things about the girls that he hadn't before. Their ill-fitting clothes, their rumbling tummies, their desperate need for companionship!

"Oh no! They're poor!" Darwin yelled, running after the pair in anguish, Gumball slowly following behind him with a defeated sigh.

Having heard the fish's cry, Ruby and Kayla turned around with flat expressions on their face.

"Yeah, sure," Ruby said, deadpan as can be.

"Got any money?" Kayla asked.

"Nope. We're poor too," Gumball answered, pulling out the insides of his pockets in one fluid motion, a moth gracefully flying out of one, high into the sky.

After watching the breathtaking flight, the girls said, in unison, "Okay, see ya."

"No!" Darwin screeched, more than startling the girls, making Kayla jump up with a feral mrowl and Ruby squawk, further startling them.

"What do you want?!" Kayla and Ruby said at once at the orange fish who wouldn't leave them alone.

"I want to help you!" Darwin pleaded, on his knees.

"Give him five minutes. He might get distracted and leave," Gumball muttered as he put his pockets back in place.

"What can you do for us, kid?" Ruby asked, with a teensy hint of hope in her voice.

"Um…." Darwin pondered.

"Very promising," Kayla nodded in mockery.

"No! Clothes! We can get you better clothes. Ones that fit. Yeah!" Darwin said as he shot up in excitement, grabbing the girls by the wrists and leading them along, Gumball lazily following behind.

"Where are you taking us?!" Kayla and Ruby asked.

"The sewers!" Darwin chirped.

Ruby put her foot down. "No! What good would that do? Are you two gonna prank us when we get there? Leave us stranded in a sea of waste? Huh?"

Darwin barreled through the negativity like a ray of sunshine. "That's where Mr. Dad got Gumball's sweater from!"

"Thanks for the reminder, buddy," Gumball said, picking at his sweater.

"Your Dad… did that?" Kayla asked, her small, pink nose wrinkling in disgust. "Gross!"

"Darwin's right, though," Gumball pointed out. "If you wanna get stuff for free, you gotta be prepared to do whatever it takes. And right now, that's gonna lead us to the sewer."

Both girls thought for a moment.

"Well…" Kayla started.

Ruby cut her off. "You're not seriously considering going with them, right?"

Kayla scoffed. "What other choice do we have? Walking around looking like five-year-olds playing dress-up until the witch's curse wears off?"

"Witch's curse?!?" Gumball and Darwin said in unison. "Whoa!"

Ruby wanted the ground to swallow her up then and there. "Let's go…"

With that, the girls let the strangers lead the way.

Across the street, Larry stepped out of a thrift store holding a bundle of clothes. He was wearing a black cap now and had a bushy moustache. He threw the clothes down onto a folding table in front of the store window and sat on the step with his head in his hands.

"We've got so many clothes that we can't keep them here. I guess we're going to have to just give them away!"

The four walked on, completely oblivious to the rock's emotional monologue.

A few minutes later, Darwin skipped, while the other three walked, past a pair of Moms holding up dresses to each other and shaking their heads.

"I bought these for my kids, but they're a few sizes too small! Whatever are we going to do?"

The kids' minds were too focused on getting to the sewer to notice this heartfelt exchange.

They were also too focused to notice a news broadcast playing on the TV behind the window of an electronics store. The newscaster, a man in a nice suit, carrying his own microphone head, screamed in front of an impending natural disaster. "The Clothes Volcano erupts but once a century. Quickly, we must flee from this wave of hot autumn fashions!"

A truck came trundling past at that exact moment, blocking out the noise of the TV.

"Are we there yet?" Ruby and Kayla asked simultaneously.

They braved harsh winds, torrential rain, boiling hot temperatures, and a blizzard, but eventually, they came to a stop at an unassuming grate.

"Uh… ladies first?" Gumball asked.

"No chance," Ruby snapped, and the boys climbed down into the depths of the sewers.

"Well, this is it," Kayla said, heading down after them. "See you on the other side."

Ruby stopped to reconsider her life choices before rolling up her far-too-long sleeves and making the descent herself.

The sewers were almost as dark as the tunnel they had got to Elmore in, and the smell! Ruby went to pinch her nose, but quickly realized that as her nose was part of her beak, pinching it would be impossible and thus she was just going to have to suffer. She surveyed her surroundings, and eventually noticed the other three kids crowded around some pipe.

"Hey, Ruby!" Kayla called, her high-pitched voice echoing.

"What?!" Ruby called back with an equally high-pitched squeal, making her way over to them.

"You're not gonna believe this."

"Kayla, in all honesty, given everything we've been through today, I don't think anything is gonna surprise me ever again."

"Well…" Kayla scooted to one side, revealing...

"You're kidding me," Ruby said, unable to look away.

Right there, in the sewer drain, lay two neatly-folded sets of clothes.

"See?" Darwin said, "I told you so!"

"Sure. Why not?" Ruby mumbled.

After a few minutes of fumbling around with their new garments, the girls found themselves in their new outfits. Ruby wore a simple orange t-shirt with a white circle in the middle, along with a pair of blue jeans that were considerably tighter than what she was used to. Kayla wore a black top with a white mass of what appeared to be tree limbs on it, along with black leggings and a purple skirt.

A purple skirt.

A skirt.

"You are wearing a skirt," Ruby helpfully pointed out.

"Indeed," Kayla said with a nod.

The bird and cat stared at each other for a moment before Gumball and Darwin poked their heads around the corner, assuming the changing had concluded.

"Yay!" Darwin shouted, running circles around the girls, his fins in the air as he made them dizzy.

"No shoes?" Gumball asked the two.

While Ruby stared down at her birdy feet, Kayla stared at hers, and then at Gumball's.

"I guess we don't need them?" Kayla half answered, half asked.

"I don't make the rules," Gumball answered anyway with a shrug.

Meanwhile, Darwin was still running around in the sewers, splashing gross water everywhere, getting Ruby and Kayla's old clothes completely soaked in the process.

"Well, I guess we're not getting those back," Kayla said of her old trappings.

"Nor would we want to," Ruby nodded in agreement.

"So what were you guys doing wearing those old, baggy clothes, anyway?" Gumball asked. "Do you go to a school for giants and the dress code says you just have to deal with what they give you?"

At the mention of the word 'school,' Kayla and Ruby shared a sideline glance at one another.

"We just happened to…" Ruby started.

"…Roll into town…" Kayla continued.

"…This way." Ruby finished.

Gumball stared at the two girls as they finished each other's sentences, just now noticing how confused they seemed to look, wide eyes and vacant stares punctuated by balled fists.

"Wait, you guys came to Elmore?!" Gumball asked, bewildered.

Darwin stopped running next to Gumball, freezing in place with one leg in the air.

The fish gasped. "Tourists!"

"Yeah, sure," they said together, glaring at each other.

Gumball guffawed. "Where from?"

Kayla gave a big sigh before she said, "Well, it's a long story, but if you can believe it, we're from–"

Ruby stomped on Kayla's foot, her birdy talons doing more damage than anticipated.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA," Kayla screamed and scrambled with wide eyes.

"Oh! AAAAAAAAAAtlanta," Gumball nodded.

"Atlanta?" Ruby asked while Kayla collected herself, the cat rubbing her damaged foot against the opposite ankle.

"Yeah! Georgia! Fun place. So, why are you in Elmore?" Gumball continued interrogating, stepping closer to the girls as sewer water splashed around his feet.

The girls gave no answers.

"No, seriously," Gumball continued. "One does not simply come to Elmore in weird clothes looking for a car to steal."

The girls continued to stare blankly at the blue cat until Darwin stepped in between the trio.

"Oh my gosh! You guys ran away from an evil orphanage, living entirely off a diet of gruel and stewed prunes as you lived out your days being tortured by caretakers and spending nights reading comics and plotting out quirky escape plans."

"Sounds good," the girls said.

"Then one night," Darwin continued, "There was an explosion in the shed behind the orphanage. Not only had you tunneled your way through the second floor bedroom to the backyard, but you blew up the shed, that way you could make your escape and use the wood from the shed to make a campfire in the dark forest before you continued your escape west."

"That's incredible…" Gumball whispered to himself, though the girls did overhear.

Darwin went on. "Now you two are lost and alone, desperate to find someplace to call home."

"Yes," Ruby said.

"Well, we know a place you can stay!" Darwin beamed.

Gumball, realising what was going on, stepped in between them. "No. No, no no. No no no no. No."

Then, he grabbed Darwin and pulled him to one side. "Darwin!" he hurriedly whispered. "What are you doing?"

"I'm helping!" Darwin chirped.

"If you invite them over, you know what's gonna happen?"

"What, they'll be warm and safe with a loving support network?"

"... Yeah, but more importantly, they're girls! Which means the second they walk through the door, bam, we lose our male dominance. Four girls, three boys. Picture it. Sewing circles. Tea parties. Enough stuffed animals to fill the Grand Canyon. And worst of all…"

Darwin shook in anticipation.

"They'll have control over the television!" Gumball shouted.

Across town, in a bright blue house, a fat pink rabbit jolted awake from his couch-nap and wailed.

Back in the sewer, Ruby and Kayla had walked over and invaded Gumball and Darwin's private conversation.

"We could hear from all the way over there, you know," Kayla whispered.

Gumball fell over, looking up at the girls in abject terror.

"But none of that is necessarily a bad thing," Gumball's voice wavered as he tried to save face.

"You know what, bro?" Darwin said as he stood over his cowering brother. "I don't care. We have to do something for these poor, helpless orphans, and if that means less TV time, I can live with it."

Gumball stared at Darwin, then looked over at the girls.

"I don't really watch a whole lot of TV, anyway," Ruby shrugged.

"Me neither," Kayla added.

"Oh, alright," Gumball said as he shot up, dusting himself off. "Let's go."

As the four kids left the sewer one way, through the other entrance a pair of blocky construction workers popped their way through, coming across Kayla and Ruby's old clothes.

"Look!" one construction worker said, "Musty old sewer clothes!"

"Much more time-tested than our work uniforms," the other worker nodded in agreement.

In a split second, the kids were standing on the porch of a bright blue house in the middle of the suburbs.

"Here we are!" Darwin said.

"But," Kayla began.

"We were just," Ruby continued.

"In the sewers."

"Huh?" Kayla and Ruby said in unison.

The boys didn't think anything of it, and eased the white door open to reveal the interior. Yellow walls, blue carpet. A staircase immediately in front of them leading up to another set of rooms, and to their left, a spacious living room. It was mainly empty save for a brown sofa that appeared to be snoring, and, as Ruby and Kayla were used to at this point, a cathode-ray television with a VCR next to it. They tentatively stepped inside, behind the boys, treating the carpet like it was freshly fallen snow, or hot bath water.

"Mrs. Mom! Mr. Dad!" Darwin yelled, "We found orphans!"

Kayla blinked, shaking her paws. "No, wait!"

Two things happened simultaneously. A great rumbling as a tall, round rabbit rose from the other side of the sofa and bounded towards the door, and a sudden rush of air as a light blue blur rushed downstairs towards the kids. Neither made the girls feel particularly good about the situation.

When Ruby and Kayla opened their eyes, eyes they didn't intend to close, more animals were standing in front of them. A large rabbit, and a female blue cat in a work uniform.

"Are these… your parents?" Ruby asked.

"Hey! I'm here too, y'know!"

The girls looked down towards the source of the mysterious voice, only to find a second pink rabbit. This one was much smaller, even smaller than Ruby and Kayla. She had her little hands on her hips as she pouted. Having acknowledged her, their gazes trailed back up the presumed adults, and Ruby and Kayla suddenly felt very vulnerable. They were in a stranger's house surrounded by people they'd never met, some of whom were actual adults.

"Darwin, dear," the presumed Mrs. Mom said, "What did I say about inviting poor, unfortunate people into our home?"

"Do it constantly!" Darwin answered with a confident nod.

"No! I!" Mrs. Mom groaned as she turned to address the girls, who stared up at the lighter blue cat in a newly remembered form of fear.

"Hello, you two!" Mrs. Mom said in a suddenly chipper voice. "What are your names?"

"That's currently a point of contention," Kayla wanted to say, instead saying, "Kayla."

"I want to bury my head in the sand until a band of pirates dig me up," Ruby wanted to say, instead answering with her own name.

"Well, aren't you two just the most polite little girls I've ever met. Now, tell me…" Mrs. Mom went on, "Are you two actually orphans, or did Darwin come up with another funny story that you two blindly went along with in the hopes of having something to gain?"

Mrs. Mom's sparkling smile did little to hide the searing rage behind her words. Still, Kayla and Ruby kept their composure. Mostly.

"Of course not!" Ruby and Kayla yelled with awkward laughs.

"We ran away from the orphanage," Ruby said.

"It was awful there!" Kayla added.

"So much bad food!"

"Rulers on wrists."

"Moral lessons learned every weekday."

"At seven in the morning."

"Six thirty central."

Mrs. Mom stared down at the two girls, the three of them engaging in a staring contest for all ages. Motivations measured. A deadly game of cat and cat and bird.

"May I say, I love your shirt!" The older rabbit interrupted, jabbing a sausage-like finger towards Kayla, who immediately broke eye contact with Mrs. Mom.

"Uh… thanks?" Kayla said, still not entirely enjoying how her height was currently being rubbed in her face. How tall was this guy? Six foot? Seven foot? Her sense of size was completely out of whack.

"What's your favourite album by them?"

"My what?"

"My favourite is 'Bloodshed by Black Night'!"

"Oh, is…" Kayla grabbed her shirt and pulled at it to get a better look.

Mr. Dad gasped. "No, no, no! You'll stretch the fabric. That's priceless memorabilia! Come with me, let's get it cleaned. It smells like a sewer."

"Can I get my clothes cleaned too?!" Ruby shouted at the pair.

Mr. Dad looked to Kayla for confirmation. Mrs. Mom and the smaller pink rabbit fumed in the background.

"Yeah…. Yeah, duh!" Kayla said as the girls followed Mr. Dad into the other room.

As Mrs. Mom and the little rabbit stood there, Gumball and Darwin gave each other a high five.

"Well, I'm happy it all worked out in the end. Come on, Darwin!" Gumball chirped, skipping towards the sofa with the fish in perfect sync.

The small rabbit was left to fester with the tall, light blue cat.

"Mom?" The pink rabbit asked.

"Yes, Anais, dear?" Mrs. Mom responded.

Anais stared around the room. "What just happened?"

On the other side of the room, Mr. Dad devilishly drummed his fingers against each other.

"Yes!" the big, pink rabbit said as he led the girls downstairs in what looked to be a basement. Cobweb-ridden exercise equipment and various toys and sporting gear littered the floor. "It is clear to me now, with your Blaühaüsen shirt, that I have come across a pair of true connoisseurs. As such, the time has come…"

Mr. Dad proceeded to fiddle around with a knob perched on the far basement wall. Entering the combination, six-six-six, the wall opened to reveal another, darker, basement, containing countless posters, vinyl records, a record player, and a boombox. In one corner of the room was a series of action figures, sat in mint condition in their boxes, each a musical note-looking creature with big hair and a snarling face.

"I thought we were getting our clothes cleaned?" Kayla and Ruby asked Mr. Dad.

"A ruse!" Mr. Dad proclaimed. "We can't let the nonbelievers know my secret! Also, this whole thing is built under the neighbor's house, and I don't wanna get in trouble…"

Before the girls could say another word, Mr. Dad picked up the remote to a massive stereo system that until now was hidden in darkness, and hit play.

The speakers burst to life with all the force of a sonic boom, deafening guitar riffs and unintelligible guttural screaming flooding the room. They were drowning in heavy metal.

Kayla's fur flew back behind her from the force of the music, stretching her skin and making it pool behind her head. Ruby wasn't faring much better, as her feathers were getting violently plucked out and whirled around the room like sadistic confetti.

They screamed.

Mr. Dad's grin grew wider, and he threw up the horns. "Yeah! You're really getting into it now!"

Ruby and Kayla yelled at him to turn the music down, but the rabbit was too preoccupied with a radical headbanging session to notice.

The girls were considering making a break for it, but just in the nick of time, another boom sounded behind them as the door flew off of its hinges. However, instead of going into the other room like they expected, it fell into the metal den. A long blue leg was held up behind it, frozen in a karate pose with unnervingly perfect form.

"Richard, turn that off this instant! I can't believe you'd do this to these orphans!"

Before Kayla and Ruby could shout anything else, the music was off, the room was clean, except for the door still being on the floor, and their fur and feathers were back to normal.

The pink rabbit was on his knees in front of his wife, bawling his eyes out.

"I'm so sorry, Nicole! They just seemed so ready to be taken in the presence of the dark lord of rock and roll!"

"No, we weren't. We just wanted to not smell like a sewer." Ruby and Kayla said.

"I don't even know who Bloohoosen is!" Kayla admitted.

Richard whirled around, dark bags under his fiery eyes. The room seemed to get a few degrees hotter. Everything went dark, save for a flashlight-like beam under his chin.

"You...." The rabbit spoke with the fury of a thousand demons. "Poser!"

Kayla suddenly felt as though she had been shot with a cannonball in her chest. She staggered back with her paws gripping her heart. She didn't have the time to ponder exactly what was happening. Before she knew it, she was sitting on the floor.

"You tried to deceive me with that false idol you call merchandise! Well, I shall not be fooled this day! I see right through your ruse! Admit it! Admit to your shame!"

"I found this shirt in a sewer." Kayla said, shrugging.

"Out! Out of this house!" Richard commanded, pointing towards the stairs leading back up to the living room.

"No." Nicole's icy tone cooled the room again, and the pink rabbit was back to being a snivelling wreck on the floor.

"Um, can we go lie down?" Kayla asked, standing back up.

"We've had a really busy morning," Ruby added, sidling herself toward the stairs.

Nicole grinned manically. "Oh, of course! Feel free to get comfortable in the guest room, second room on the right upstairs, while I have a nice, quiet talk with my husband." Her tone became more and more forced with every word, and by the end she was speaking through gritted teeth.

"Okay!" Kayla yelled back as she sprinted up the stairs with Ruby, her tail wagging behind her on their way up.

Kayla followed Ruby upstairs to the living room, where she spotted Gumball and Darwin drooling at the sight of a video game that involved a little sword boy and some clay pots. Disregarding that for now, the white cat followed the teal and purple bird into the guest room, which was basically beige and barren, except for a wooden dresser, a mirror above it, and a pair of twin-sized beds on either side of a large wardrobe. Ruby elected to sit down on the bed closer to the window, while Kayla lay down on the bed to the left of Ruby.

The girls laid there for roughly five minutes before Kayla spoke up, at a whisper.

"Busy, busy day…"

After not hearing a reply from Ruby for a minute, the cat turned to see the bird with her back to her, curled up and breathing roughly. Slowly getting up and walking around the bed to face Ruby, Kayla was met with a ghostly pale, literally white face and a chattering beak.

"Oh, no." Kayla cried, "Ruby, are you okay?"

"Did we do something wrong?" Ruby whimpered, her tail feathers curling behind her.

"What?" Kayla asked, taken aback. "What do you mean? Ruby…"

Ruby sat up to address her friend.

"This is insane! We're in a crazy house in a completely different world and we're girls and animals and we're surrounded by, like, wild physics and constantly changing emotions and I'm tired and I'm scared and I'm trying to stay cool, but I can't anymore. I can't. I can't! I…"

All at once, Kayla pulled Ruby into a tight, tight hug. The cat held Ruby close, which, for the bird, was comforting at first, but got increasingly awkward as it went on.

"Kayla…" Ruby chirped.

"Sup?" Kayla asked, still holding the bird.

"Why are you hugging me?" Ruby asked, looking out the window at the neighborhood behind the cat. In the distance, a banana fell off a skateboard and splattered all over a stop sign.

"Um…" Kayla pondered, "I felt like I should. Do you want me to stop?"

"No, no!" Ruby said, a little startled, "Just, maybe, I'm wondering…"

"When we're supposed to stop?" Kayla finished.

"Yeah," Ruby muttered.

After another minute, the girls let go of each other, dusting themselves off and getting comfy in their beds. They stared at each other before Kayla spoke up.

"Do you feel better?"

"Definitely," Ruby answered.

"Good."

"I guess," Ruby started, "We're not gonna find anything out anytime soon, right?"

"No," Kayla said with a sigh.

"So, like, what do we know right now?" Ruby asked.

"We know where we are. Elmore," Kayla pondered. "That's one thing out of the way. We know we're talking animals."

"We could have been rocks, so that's good, I guess."

"Yeah. Thinking positive. Gotta think positive," Kayla encouraged.

"I'm positive that we're in a crazy place where we can't say our names and where crazy things happen, and no one cares but us."

Kayla played with her hair. "We have each other. I'd be doing so much worse if I was stuck here on my own, and I bet that you wouldn't be faring much better."

Ruby went wide-eyed. "No. I… no, you're right. Man! Are we…?"

"Are we what?" Kayla said.

"Are we stuck here forever?" Ruby asked with a shiver.

Kayla bit her lip. "That's something I don't know. What I do know is we have to look on the bright side of all this. Otherwise, we'll be stuck in this room forever."

Ruby scoffed. "Bright side? What bright side?! We're children! We have no ID. We barely exist. You're wearing a skirt, for crying out loud!"

Kayla ignored the skirt comment. "I meant what I said. We're children, sure, but that means no adult responsibilities. No ID? So what? That just means we can do whatever we want. Be whoever we want!"

"Darn it… I left my car keys in my old shirt," Ruby mumbled, looking down at herself.

Kayla smirked. "Kids aren't supposed to drive anyway."

"Kids wish they could."

"Point made. But I'm serious. As much as I kind of don't want to admit, we did need a break. Maybe not something like… this," Kayla said as she swung her stockings-clad legs over the side of the bed, "But a break is a break. This'll be over soon. Either we'll wake up in a hospital, or whatever entity banished us here will eventually decide we've suffered enough and will take us back home."

Ruby sat up and faced Kayla, "So… this is a vacation?" The bird smiled wide. "A getaway from our lives!"

"There's the positivity!"

"We can actually do whatever we want!" Ruby realized, standing up herself.

"Yeah! And we don't have any reputations to ruin!"

"We can live off burgers, gummy worms, and orange soda!" Ruby squealed.

Kayla shot her arms up. "We can stay up all night watching old movies about detectives and girls with legs the length of giraffe necks!"

"We can go to a video game store and take whatever we want, and if we get caught, we have no parents to yell at us!" Ruby whooped and hollered.

"Scary adults downstairs notwithstanding."

"Forget them! We're grown-ups," Ruby said, jabbing a wing over her shoulder. "We can outsmart them."

"Heck yeah!"

The pair ran for each other. When they threw themselves into another hug, a pleasant leitmotif played from some invisible orchestra, and fireworks exploded around them.

When everything returned to normal, the girls fell to the floor, horrified. Without making a sound except for short, sharp breaths, they scooted backwards towards opposite ends of the room. They only stopped when they hit their respective walls, at which point they collapsed in heaps.

"Maybe we'll get used to that," they said.

After a few moments of watching each other catch their breath, Ruby asked Kayla, "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah. Really hungry," Kayla answered.

"Think the scary adults could help us out with food?"

"It's worth a shot."

"I guess we can't ask for rabbit stew," Ruby said.

"Or fish." Kayla said, before her eyes suddenly lit up. "Oh, man!"

"I want a hot dog!" Ruby exclaimed for all the world to know.

"I want a burger with a bunch of pickles and, and a bucket of fries!" Kayla stamped her little feet in delight.

Ruby babbled after her, "Onion rings!"

"Chicken strips!!!" Kayla screeched.

Ruby decided not to remind her friend of her avian nature. Instead, the girls rushed out of their room to see if they could find an adult to help them.

While dashing down the hallway, the girls had to stop themselves as they saw a roadblock in the way, skidding to a halt just in front of the tiny, pink rabbit from earlier.

"Good afternoon," the rabbit said, simply, her arms occupied with a stuffed pink donkey.

"Uh," Kayla started.

"Hi," Ruby finished.

"My name is Anais Watterson, and I know you're up to something," the rabbit chirped as she gave her doll a hug.

"Um," Ruby started.

"Cool," Kayla finished.

The three of them stared awkwardly at each other for a moment, none of them blinking.

"We're hungry," said Kayla and Ruby.

"Fine. Fine," Anais said, hands behind her back, "But just know that your time here will be short. No one comes into this household without looking for something to gain, and I just know that you two will show your cards sooner or later. So, please. Have a nice meal. But just know that I'll be here. Watching. Waiting. Waiting for the both of you to mess up and find yourselves in the seedy jail cell where you belong!"

"Okay," Ruby said.

"Do you know where we could get a good meal?" Kayla asked.

Anais didn't miss a beat as she brought the dolls face up to hers, giving the donkey a shake as she whispered, "Joyful Burger."

"Thanks! See you later!" Kayla said, and the pair flew downstairs.

The first thing they encountered upon reaching the living room was Richard. After his talk with Nicole, he had soulless, unblinking eyes, and wrinkles and moles all over his body. When he talked, the girls could hardly hear him, he sounded so hoarse.

"Oh. Hello, children," Richard said. He smiled, revealing rotting teeth.

"Guh!" the girls shot back in terror.

"Whatever may I help you with on this fine, sunny, west coast morning?"

"Uh, hi," Ruby said. "We can't remember the last time we ate."

"Yes, the children. I must be nice to the children. I shall give the children money to be nice to the children. Children. Money. Nice."

Richard proceeded to take all of the money out of his wallet and give it to the girls in a giant wad of cash.

"Thank you, sir," Kayla mumbled as she stared at the money Ruby held in both wings.

"You are very muchly welcome, Kayla and Ruby."

Upon saying the last syllable, Richard crumbled to dust. The girls, to their credit, did not scream as much as they had in previous situations. However, Ruby did drop the wad of money at her feet.

When their screaming session ended, they noticed that Gumball and Darwin were eyeing the money. Their eyeballs literally ran up and down the wad of cash.

"Can we help you?" Kayla and Ruby asked the boys.

Gumball shot up. "It's time to strike a deal! You two clearly don't need all this money to buy a couple Joyful Meals."

"But I'm hungry," Kayla pouted.

"We can get back to that!" Gumball proclaimed, the blue cat strolling around the girls as he broached the subject of cold, hard economics. "However, let us consider… the arcade."

"There is no good food at the arcade," Darwin said.

"Indeed!" Gumball continued, his finger extended upward. "But we must not discount the fact that I, Gumball Tristopher Watterson, am the firstborn son of Mr. Richard Buckley Watterson. Therefore, I am the first in line to receive any inheritance passed down from him."

"And yet," Kayla said.

Ruby finished, "This is ours," as she held up the cash for the blue cat to see.

"A terrible predicament we find ourselves in, Mr. Watterson," Darwin opined, a fin poised upon his chin.

"That is correct, Other Mr. Watterson," Gumball agreed. "Perhaps, then, a compromise shall be made."

"What do you want?" Ruby asked.

"Twenty bucks," Gumball answered quickly.

Kayla and Ruby looked at each other, and then the former watched the latter thumb through the entire amount again.

"Sure," Ruby said, handing Gumball a twenty dollar bill and pocketing the other two hundred and eighty.

Gumball gasped, and the two boys hollered, "We're rich! Rich!"

Gumball and Darwin hot-footed it out of the house with a cheery, mid-air heel-click.

"Were we ever like that as kids?" Kayla wondered aloud as she watched the boys rush out the door.

"Never. Never, ever," Ruby concluded.

"Glad I'm not a kid anymore," Kayla said with a relieved sigh.

Ruby nodded. "Yep… anyway."

"Burger time!!!" the girls sang together, a brief snippet of a backing track playing in the background before they stopped themselves and looked around for the source of the music.

After a moment, Kayla asked, "But how do we get there?"

"Straight down the road to your left. Can't miss it," Richard said, poking his head into the living room from the kitchen.

"Thank you, sir," Ruby said before screaming with Kayla again at the sight of the rebuilt Richard.

As soon as the girls got out of the house, they took the time to split the money between them, clearing their throats in the process.

"We need to stop screaming," Ruby said with a hoarse voice.

"I'll stop when you stop," Kayla said, equally throaty.

"You sound like you smoked a pack of cigarettes… all at the same time," Ruby said with a smirk.

"Well, you sound like you're about to sell me life insurance," Kayla quipped back.

"Yeah?! You sound like a non-specific bounty hunter's brown, fuzzy best friend with a clarinet stuck in their throat!"

"You mean… a non-specific bounty hunter's brown, fuzzy best friend?"

"No! I mean a non…"

"Chew…"

"Bah…"

The girls proceeded to hack for exactly fifteen seconds. Kayla coughed up a hairball.

"Ah, forget it," they said.

They sauntered next to each other along the sidewalk. Ruby had her wings stuffed in her jean pockets, while Kayla was still getting used to wearing a skirt. Although she wouldn't admit it to her BFF, she was enjoying it, at least a little bit.

However, neither of them were enjoying the severe absence of pockets that came with women's clothing. Ruby had stuffed her half of the money hoard into her shallow pockets as best she could, but the bills were all balled up and made it look like she had two knees on each leg. Meanwhile, Kayla had managed to make an origami tiara with her share without really thinking about it.

"Hey, kitty?" Ruby asked her partner in junk food hunting.

"Yeah?"

"Have you noticed the sun has a face?"

Kayla had a start. "I don't usually look directly at the sun, no."

"Well, look at it!" Ruby insisted.

Kayla hesitantly craned her neck towards the sky.

A few tense moments passed, before Kayla eventually spoke. "…Baloney fudge and mustard."

"At least it's happy," Ruby concluded.

When Kayla looked away again, her eyes felt kind of itchy.

Ruby gasped.

Kayla's eyes were replaced with a pair of crackling fried eggs.

"Kayla…"

"Yeah, sup?"

"We promised to stop screaming."

"Okay… and?"

"I think you stared at the sun too long."

"Hm…" Kayla pondered, a paw upon her chin as the eggs hit the sidewalk, her normal eyes now back in place.

Ruby looked down with a nod.

"Well, alright," the bird said, deadpan.

"Sure, sure," Kayla added.

"I really wanna run away screaming right now, kitty."

"That does sound tempting, chirpy, but we did make a promise," Kayla reminded her.

"If we keep walking, we can just forget about it?" Ruby asked.

"This will haunt my dreams for years to come, but I'll follow your lead."

"Let's go, then."

Ten minutes later, the two girls were sitting either side of a huge tray of fast food. Two hot dogs, two burgers, twin peaks of onion rings and french fries, and one strawberry-caramel swirl ice cream sundae each. And diet soda. The smell of the fryers was thick in the air and stuck to the red and white checkered walls. The red booth they were in was sticky with the countless spilled drinks and dips, and they blocked out thoughts of what it must be doing to their fur and feathers, respectively.

Every few moments, Kayla's ears would perk up from the sound of the cash register opening and closing, and people walking past juggling similarly humongous portions of greasy, greasy goodness.

For her part, Ruby was paying more attention to the people than the place. Elmore seemed to have a rather diverse population, its citizens ranging from a flurry of talking inanimate objects, from pencils to notepads, from wrenches to screws, while also sporting at least one giant dinosaur, which gave Ruby pause for thought before Kayla noticed her concern and shoved a french fry in Ruby's face.

"We are to remain calm," Kayla said.

"That is a dinosaur. That is an actual dinosaur… drinking a milkshake," Ruby muttered in a half-daze.

"You said we had to order in to get used to all this," Kayla reminded her friend. "You're not gonna back out on me now."

"The rock man behind the counter is staring at us. He didn't say anything when I asked if he had a brother… with the same name," Ruby poked her head over at Larry on the other side of the restaurant.

"Maybe he just works two jobs?" Kayla offered.

"Gosh," Ruby realized, "I couldn't imagine that kind of schedule."

As the girls continued to gorge themselves on junk food to drown out their thoughts, a quavering entity spied on them from the top of the Joyful Burger sign outside. Between the top bun and the meat patty, the entity stared at the pair though his heat seeking binoculars.

He was nearly as tall as the two girls stacked on top of each other (sans trench coat), as thin as Larry, and covered in TV static. His one pink hand held the binoculars while his other gray hand was busy scribbling in the notebook on his lap. The cyclops's hair, half-disconnected from his body entirely, flipped sides momentarily in an erratic motion before switching back to normal just as fast. His singular brow was deeply furrowed above his singular eye.

To be clear, he was not happy.

"You thought you could just waltz right in, huh?" the cyclops mumbled, jotting down notes on his notepad. "Forcefully quirky, obviously fourth wall-breaking. Lame animal-based gags. I'm not falling for it for a second. And the fact that they're animals at all! A complete lack of creativity," the cyclops put away his binoculars as he kept on writing.

"I'm gonna make sure your story ends before it even starts."

Just as the cyclops said that, a voice bellowed from below.

"Hey, whaddya doin' up there?!" a blocky construction worker getting lunch yelled up at the cyclops.

Startled at the sound of the voice, the cyclops struggled to keep his footing on the sign. Unfortunately, said sign, built quickly by the lowest bidder, gave way under him, sending the cyclops flat on the ground, having him become a second patty in the neon burger.

"Ow," the cyclops said as he poked his head out from under the J in Joyful.

Meanwhile, after the girls had finished their meal, they gracefully made their way through the wreckage as they walked back to the Watterson home.

When they got there, poking their heads through the living room window, seeing as the front door was locked, they both noticed that no one was there to greet them.

Kayla, in her infinite wisdom, immediately turned toward the video game console under the TV. The Watterson boys sure were under its spell…

Ruby, turning to look where Kayla was looking, immediately knew what Kayla was thinking.

"Video games?" Ruby asked.

"Hecking video games, man," Kayla answered.

The girls shared a blistering high five, and before either of them knew it, they were rifling through the box of games.

"Huh," Ruby said.

"What?" Kayla asked.

"They're… all cartridges." Ruby picked one up, reading 'The Legend of Zelmore' on its worn label.

"Bootleg?" Kayla asked as she stared at the cartridge Ruby held daintily in her wing.

"You'd think someone who lived in a place like this could afford a game people have heard of," Ruby answered.

"And I have a feeling Gumball wouldn't settle for bootlegs, or knockoffs," Kayla added.

"How hard is it to get an old copy of Zelmore anyway?"

Kayla tilted her head. "Wait, you said Zelmore."

"No, I clearly said Zelmore," Ruby clarified in frustration.

"Zelmore?"

"Zelmore!"

Kayla took a deep breath and began to spell it out. "Z."

"E," Ruby continued.

"L."

"..."

"..."

The tension was unbearable.

"M!" the girls shouted simultaneously.

"Oh, c'mon!"

"This is ridiculous!"

"Quick!" Ruby said, grabbing a pen and paper from goodness knows where. "Write it down."

"Write Zelmore?" Kayla asked, shaking in frustration.

"Yeah, okay," Ruby muttered.

Kayla snatched the pen and paper from Ruby's wings, quickly scribbling something down, pausing, and then scribbling something else. Pausing. Scribbling. Pausing. Scribbling.

Pausing.

"Kitty?"

"I hate everything."

"Oh, please," Ruby said, taking the pad from Kayla. "You can't really…"

Sure enough, all the paper contained was a series of increasingly illegible ZELMs, the last one ending with a tiny drawing of Kayla screaming.

"Root Beer brand root beer," Kayla said as Ruby put away the pen and paper.

"He wouldn't take your credit card," Ruby added.

"And that terrible music was fake!" Kayla realized.

"It's real here," Ruby noted.

Kayla rolled her eyes. "And it bites."

"Maybe some of it is good?" Ruby offered.

Kayla sneered at Ruby, her nose twitching as she did, which made Ruby work to stifle a giggle.

"Maybe this game is good?" Ruby said as she held the cartridge up.

"It better be!" Kayla yelled, taking the cartridge and slamming it into the console.

The girls, wanting no more than to seek refuge in mindless entertainment, spent the next three hours pouring themselves into the delights of sword and shield-based combat, quickly navigating a series of increasingly challenging battles and puzzles, the cat and bird trading the controller now and then as they worked their way through almost the entire game.

"I have never been more invested in a video game in my entire life," Kayla mumbled, a drop of drool dripping from her open mouth.

Ruby, who was having her turn with the controller, was in the middle of a boss fight with a gigantic pair of legs, the limbs kicking at the little sword boy in the middle of the screen as he tried desperately to knock his sword against the legs' toes.

"Big toe, I'm gonna clip you to the quick!" Ruby yelled, her tongue firmly stuck out from her beak.

"Aim for the shins."

"I already destroyed the shin armor!"

"Sweep the leg!" Kayla shouted.

"Which one?!" Ruby yelled as she shook her rectangular controller.

"Either!!!"

As the girls whittled away at the boss's health, they were far too invested to notice the rest of the Watterson family cram themselves through the front door of their house, broken and battered, their clothes tattered, Gumball's heart shattered.

"But Mom!" Gumball begged the lighter blue cat, "I was so close. I was so, so close!"

For Nicole's part, she kept her composure better than usual. "Go to your room now, or I shall serve you to the junkyard hounds," she screamed in a demonic voice.

With a groan, Gumball casually made his way upstairs.

"I was just trying to help…" Darwin pouted, dragging a fishy foot along the carpet below.

"Darwin, you tried to put out an electrical fire with water," Anais corrected, the little rabbit pinching the bridge of her nose as she spoke.

"And it looked so cool…" Richard remembered fondly.

"Go to your room!" Nicole yelled at Richard.

"But I didn't do anything!"

"Exactly! You ate nachos while I fixed everything."

"I don't know what's gonna be worse, the cost of the damage or the food bill," Anais pondered, semi-sarcastically.

"Food is always worth it," Richard nodded as Nicole flung him upstairs with a thud.

"I'm okay!" Richard shouted from upstairs.

"Now, you two!" Nicole yelled.

Kayla and Ruby, startled by the thought of anyone referring to them in such a tone, turned around in fear, only to be relieved when they saw Nicole was addressing Darwin and Anais.

"Why are you yelling at me, Mom?" Anais questioned, trying to maintain some level of dominance in the conversation, in spite of the sheer rage her mother was emitting at the moment.

"Because all you and Darwin could do was argue while I tried to pull Gumball away from his stupid video game! Now go sit at the dinner table. We're having vegetable loaf!"

"Ewww!" Darwin convulsed, sticking his tongue out.

"No!!!" Richard yelled from upstairs.

"It's what you all deserve!" Nicole summed up.

As Nicole stomped into the kitchen, with Darwin and Anais making their way to the dining table, all Kayla and Ruby could do was stare where the Watterson family stood mere moments ago.

So caught up in the scene were they, that they failed to notice the Game Over screen behind them, the little sword boy now a little ghost sword boy.

"What the what was that?" Kayla asked her BFF.

"I feel like I just watched a sitcom," Ruby answered, scratching her flat, feathery head.

A sitcom…

A sitcom?!

Kayla gulped. "Maybe… Maybe we're in a sitcom."

"No. That's just silly," Ruby countered. "Sometimes, things like that just happen."

"Their conversations, though. Everyone said," Kayla began.

"Exactly the right thing," Ruby continued.

"At exactly the right time."

"Just like us!" They exclaimed together.

"Do eyes turn into eggs in sitcoms?!" Ruby panicked, shaking Kayla by the shoulders.

"Not unless they're…"

"What? Not unless they're what?!" Ruby's shaking got more frantic and Kayla was like a maraca at this point. She was certainly making maraca noises.

"A cartoon."

Before the girls had a chance to process this realization, Nicole stood over the back of the couch and stared down at them.

"There you are! Sorry you had to see that. Sometimes our family just happens to get into some wacky situations!" Nicole said with forced laughter.

Kayla and Ruby shared in the enforced mirth, trying their best to look composed, although Ruby was still gripping onto Kayla's shoulders… rather harshly.

"Anyway!" Nicole continued, "Don't tell anyone, but if you two young ladies make your way up to the guest room, I'll be sure to bring you something a little more appetizing than a slice of soggy old vegetable loaf."

"Thank you, ma'am," the girls said.

"No problem! Now run along. Video games can wait."

At those words, the girls looked at each other in subdued shock.

"Actually, we were wondering…" Ruby started.

Kayla continued, "…does Gumball have any handheld games?"

The smile on Nicole's face soon spread to one of pointed teeth and horn-like cat ears, giving the girls a start as the light blue cat said, "Of course he does…" in her most devilish tone.

A moment after Nicole barged up the stairs, she came stomping back down with a pair of handheld consoles, a wire stuck between them, as she brought them down to the girls. Gumball, who was now gripping onto his mother's leg, let loose a stream of living room-flooding tears as he begged and pleaded with his mother not to take his games away.

"Here you are, girls. Now run along! Dinner will be ready soon."

Kayla and Ruby didn't need to be told twice.

While eating their frozen pizza and playing Socket Dragons, Kayla and Ruby tried desperately not to acknowledge any thoughts other than whether to use an ice beam or thunderblast against their opponent. Of course, this proved difficult as flashes of terror fell upon their young minds.

"I just iced your dragon," Ruby proclaimed in victory.

"Beginner's luck," Kayla scoffed.

"Neither of us have ever played this game before," Ruby pointed out.

"Exactly!" Kayla exclaimed. "One of us has to have it."

"If you're so confident, wanna give it another go?"

"Eh… I don't feel like it." Kayla admitted, rubbing her arm.

Ruby stiffened her feathers. "How come?"

"This overwhelming existential dread is proving to be quite the distraction."

"I thought we weren't going to talk about it."

"Alright, fine. We won't talk about it…"

Kayla felt a burst of energy rush through her, and she had an overwhelming compulsion to stare at a specific spot on the wall. The lighting in the room dimmed as a soft, blurry filter took over the girls' vision.

"I'm feeling rough, and that's a fact, I can't think of a way to get back…" Kayla sang as she got out of bed.

"The heck are you doing?" Ruby stared at the same spot on the wall Kayla was stuck on.

"Needed a break, but at what cost? I'm pretty scared and… totally lost!" Kayla kicked an empty soda can.

"How are you hitting those notes?" asked Ruby as she sat up in her bed, confused by the scene before her.

Kayla turned to face her BFF. "Here I am. I gave my life away."

"Hey, c'mon. It's just been one day," Ruby gulped as the unintentional rhyme gave her the urge to go along with Kayla, the bird standing up next to the cat as they walked to a more spacious part of the room.

"Pretty scared of being a kid for all time…" the cat started up again.

"Pretty scared that I can't help but rhyme," Ruby sang, harmonizing with Kayla as a smile came upon her face.

The girls held hands as they traded lines.

"It's a frightening mix," Kayla sang.

"Like getting hit with a truck full of bricks," Ruby added.

"A terrifying parade."

"A horror show cavalcade!"

"Changing species and gender."

"If anyone's listening, return to sender," Ruby looked up at the ceiling momentarily.

"But maybe we're alone."

"I couldn't do this on my own!" Ruby gasped, breathing to calm herself down a bit.

"Pretty scared of not having any proper ID…" Kayla sighed.

"Pretty scared of rainbow people hitting on me," Ruby finished, sticking out her tongue at the thought.

Then they sang in unison.

"There's no time to relax with this weight on our backs, we wanna go home, but we've lost our tracks! Oh, we're pretty scared!"

The girls took a moment to catch their breath.

"But we have to go on!" Kayla finished.

"Yeah, we have to go on!" Ruby echoed.

"We have to go on…"

"Let's go on…"

The room returned to normal as the girls realized they were holding hands, quickly letting each other go and wiping their paws and wings on their smelly, greasy shirts.

"What was that?" Kayla asked.

"Who cares?" Ruby half-answered. "I told you there had to be some decent music around here."

As the girls got back into their pizza and video games, from the thinnest branch on the tallest tree, a pair of binoculars kept their gaze steady as a cyclops went on taking notes.

"I'm too late! Not only have they infiltrated the Watterson household, they've added another terrible song to the canon. Still, there has to be something I can do…"

"Hey, Rob!" shouted a voice from the other end of the house.

"Gah!" the cyclops, Rob, shouted as he worked to steady himself on the bending branch, shifting his gaze to the blue cat boy who greeted him.

"What are you doing spying on me?!" Rob shouted at Gumball.

"I dunno. You're spying on me, right? Figured it'd be fun to try it out myself," Gumball said, nonchalant.

"I'm not spying on you, you moron!" Rob yelled with a flail of his arms, dropping his binoculars in the process. "Darn it, Watterson! Better not have broken those!"

"Maybe you should buy a telescope next time… or a monocle," Gumball said, closing one of his eyes and pointing at the other.

"That's the kind of ableist humor that will be your downfall, Gumball!" Rob shouted. "But for your information, I am attempting to ascertain details on the two females that have entered your domicile."

"...Kayla and Ruby?" Gumball summarized.

Rob smirked. "Those are their names?! Perfect!"

Rob continued writing on his notepad as Gumball watched on.

"Dude, gotta say, this is kinda creepy," Gumball muttered as the look in Rob's bloodshot eye got increasingly intense.

"Nonsense! What else do you know about them?!" Rob screamed as he used a clenched fist to hold his pen.

Gumball shrugged. "I dunno. I just met them today. I did my own thing when they got here. Hey, BTW, beat your score on Juicy Joust! Pineapple strats!" Gumball said with finger guns.

Rob stopped writing and his jaw dropped. "Wait, so you don't know anything about them?"

Gumball shrugged again, his arms squeaking like rusty hinges. "They finish each other's sentences sometimes. I dunno. They definitely don't sing as good as I do," Gumball said before he cleared his throat, with the intent to show off the full extent of his vocal range.

"There's no time to lose. Fare thee well, nemesis!" Rob shouted into the night sky as he went to make his way down the tree, before the branch finally snapped and Rob fell down onto another branch just below that one.

Catching his breath, Rob said, "A-haaaaaaaaaaa," as that branch also snapped.

"Goodnight, Rob!" Gumball smiled and waved down at the glitched cyclops as he closed his curtains.

The next morning, as the smiling sun shined its light through Kayla and Ruby's window, the cat and bird were curled up on their respective beds, a gentle string section harmonizing with birdsong.

As Kayla drooled on her pillow and Ruby brought her blanket over her head, the guest room door came flying open.

"Rise and shine, ladies!" Nicole chirped, sending the girls shooting from their beds.

"Gah!" the girls blanched at the sight of Nicole in her morning face mask, a pair of cucumber slices in place of her eyes.

"It happened to you too!" Ruby pointed in terror at Nicole's eyes.

"It was the vegetable loaf!" Kayla curled up again in utter shock.

Nicole, used to children overreacting when it was time to get up, simply took the cucumbers off her eyes and gave the girls a second chance at a morning greeting.

"Time to get out of bed! Wouldn't want you two to miss the bus."

"Five more minutes…" Kayla automatically replied, before gulping as a gear turned in her brain.

"What bus?" Ruby asked, that same gear having just now clicked.

Nicole beamed. "The school bus, silly!"

A sinister echo filled the room, the girls' eyes going wide.

School bus, silly.

School bus.

School.

The girls' jaws dropped to the floor, literally. Their mouths stretched to meet the fake wood below their feet.

And so, Ruby and Kayla, in perfect harmony, performed for Nicole.

"No."

"No!"

"No!!!"

"No…"

"No no no no no no no."

"Yes," Nicole said, slamming the guest room door shut.

The girls, now without an audience, looked at each other.

"Don't panic!" they yelled at one another.

"I'm not panicking; you're panicking!" they said.

"Shut up!"

"You shut up!"

"Stop that!"

"Ugh…"

Rather than argue with each other, the girls elected to engage in a morning routine that they had not experienced in over a decade, but that unfortunately came naturally to them. They braved the showers, teeth brushing, and breakfast, as well as the backpacks Nicole strapped them with, complete with lunch inside. When they thought to ask Nicole where these backpacks came from, she mumbled something about always needing five of everything in the Watterson household, in case of destruction.

Before they could utter another word of protest, Kayla and Ruby were on the school bus, sharing a reddish-brown seat.

"This bites," Kayla whispered.

"It also stinks," Ruby mumbled back. "I miss my car."

"We were supposed to play video games today," Kayla said, a little louder.

"And eat more pizza," Ruby added, even louder.

"Yeah, we should be able to do whatever we want!" Kayla proclaimed.

"We don't need to go to school!" Ruby shouted in glee.

At these words, the bus went silent.

The banana was the first to stand up, on his seat, not the floor, as he was indeed the size of a banana, to scale. "I don't need to go to school either! I already know everything I need to know! And I have the internet!"

A murmuring began to make its way among the students, with the occasional "Yeah, he's right!" sending chills down the two girls' spines.

"I think you misunderstand us," Ruby began.

"You see, we've already been to school," Kayla finished.

"Exactly!" Tobias stood up, "We've already tolerated seven grades of torture, and I'm not taking any more of it!"

More whooping and cheering echoed throughout the yellow interior of the bus.

"Ruby, is that who I think it is?" Kayla asked as she shuddered in her fur and whiskers.

Ruby had already hidden behind the seat in front.

"This is it, comrades! This is our day!" Gumball yelled, standing on the very back seat, his paw in the air, fashionable warpaint around his eyes.

Darwin proudly stood next to his brother, sporting a tattered red headband and convincing five o' clock shadow, even though it was poked on in pen.

"Gather the troops!!!" Darwin screeched.

"Roll call!" Gumball began, pulling out a scroll to read off of.

"Gumball," Darwin whispered, "What are 'comrades'?"

"I'll tell you after the revolution, bro," Gumball whispered back as he prepared the megaphone.

"Alan!" Gumball ordered through the feedback.

"I'll have you know I'm a conscientious objector," Alan, a floating teal balloon, replied in an impossibly high-pitched voice.

"Fine, then you can cook the meals!" Gumball yelled.

"Understood, commander!" Alan saluted with his string.

"Banana Joe!"

The banana in the seat behind the girls was hopping about, practicing his fisticuffs. "Lemme at 'em!"

"Bobert!"

"Confirmed. Initiating School Immolation Sequence…" The small robot held up his hands, which turned into a pair of flamethrowers.

Darwin shook his fins. "No, no, no!"

Gumball rubbed the back of his head. "Maybe later."

"Understood." Bobert said as he reversed the sequence.

"Carrie!"

"Keep it down, I'm trying to summon backup!" The ghost girl called, poring through cursed tomes that gnashed at her with bared teeth.

"Darwin!"

"Yeah?" The fish asked innocently, eyes sparkling above his five o' clock shadow.

"Close enough. Eggheads!"

"We have names, you know!" One of the sentient eggs replied, fixing his glasses.

"And we're all very proud of you. Leslie!"

"Justice!" A pink flower raised a rainbow flag with one of his leaves.

"Penny!"

"Quick, it's dragon time," A yellow fairy glanced between the aisles. "Somebody make me angry!"

"Sarah!"

"I'm already writing about you in the history books," Sarah, the talking ice cream cone, chirped as she penned her historical account of this day.

"Tobias!"

"Hut! Hut! Hut!" the rainbow-ball cheered, now wearing a full football uniform.

"Alright, that's everyone!" Gumball said as he threw his scroll down the aisle of the bus. "Together, no one can stop us!"

"We're here," a sleepy voice chimed in as the bus pulled up to Elmore Junior High, its stairs already littered with a number of other colorful students.

"Aw, man," the kids said, trudging their way out of the bus in their revolution gear.

Kayla and Ruby followed far behind, the bird stealing a frightful glance at the bus driver, an orange puppet man with no puppeteer.

"Is this really happening?" Ruby asked as she turned to face Kayla.

"No!" the white cat declared, flinging her long, black hair.

Ruby clicked her beak. "What are you talking about?"

Kayla stopped, making Ruby run into her, sending Kayla falling to the ground with a dust cloud.

As Ruby helped Kayla back up, the cat said, "I have an idea!"

Twenty minutes later, the girls found themselves in a dimly lit office with green walls and wooden furniture strewn about, the occasional painting and sketchy-looking framed document gracing the walls. As the cat and bird sat in their chairs, across from them, behind a spartan desk, sat a brown, bespeckled, slug-like fuzzpile who had listened to what the girls were willing to tell of their story.

"So let me get this straight," the slug said in a deep voice, bringing his hands out to accentuate his tone. "Not only have you no documents, no actual last names, no known prior existence. In a matter of moments, on your first day of school, before you even arrived at the building, you nearly started an uprising among the student body."

"We're trouble, I tells ya!" Ruby said, putting on a bit of an old timey gangster accent.

"And no one knows who we even are!" Kayla proclaimed, a finger extended to help make her point.

"Well, then…" the fuzzpile, who sat behind a nameplate reading 'Principal Nigel Brown,' sat there in silence for a few moments as the girls watched on in suspense, the principal's eyes glaring at the cat and bird from behind his glasses.

"I see no problems here!" the man concluded as he stood up from behind his desk and proceeded to open his office door.

"But we don't even know what classes we're taking!" Ruby argued.

Kayla added another point. "Or what grade we're in!"

"You'll figure it out," Principal Brown said with a shrug.

They didn't figure it out.

After an hour of wandering the school's halls, their feet clicking against the beige tiles as they braved the flickering of fluorescent lights, Kayla and Ruby had learned only one thing.

"Backpacks are definitely heavier than they used to be," Ruby groaned as they trudged by the bold red lockers.

Kayla stopped.

"Yeah, wait!" the cat said, incensed. "What are even in these things?!"

After sharing this realization with Kayla, Ruby swung her backpack in front of her, throwing it onto the floor with a thud.

"Nicole only mentioned the lunches," the bird noted.

Ruby sat on the floor and unzipped the bag. Kayla sat down opposite her, and the two girls peered inside. On first glance, it appeared to be any other backpack with the bare minimum necessary for the average school day. A bright purple lunch box with a picture of a grinning pink donkey on it, the same donkey Anais was cradling yesterday. A pencil case shaped like a soda can. Some empty binders, and a pot of glue.

"Huh," Kayla said. "Doesn't look like much."

"Then why the heck is it so heavy?" Ruby asked, trying to pack the backpack back up and get the pack back onto her back.

Kayla shrugged. "No idea. But all that rebelling from earlier has got me real hungry. Do you have any snacks in there?"

"How would I know?" Ruby asked with a click of her beak.

The cat leaned in closer toward the backpack, and closer, and closer… and disappeared inside with a shrill scream.

"OMG, Kayla! Where'd you go?!" Ruby's voice echoed for much longer than it should have inside the bag. In fact, it shouldn't have echoed at all.

As Ruby stared into the chasm of school supplies, Kayla's voice, distant and anxious, echoed upward.

"Help! There's homework in here!"

With a gasp, Ruby shouted back, "Stay put, I'm coming to get you!"

"Say what?"

Before Kayla could say another word, Ruby took a deep breath and plunged inside after her, the canvas void only widening as she fell further and further inside.

Then the hall fell silent, empty if not for an unassuming white backpack that wiggled in place within the yellow walls.

Five seconds later, an intense rumbling rattled the lockers and made every inch of the drywall crack. The backpack shook violently, and suddenly a torrent of objects spewed from between the zippers. Out came pens and pencils that buried themselves into the walls and ceiling like knives. This was followed by endless rolls of tape, and an entire book sale's worth of lunch boxes, glue sticks, ink erasers, military rations, a neverending link of sausages, a deckchair, and a cello that screeched as it was flung into the air, released from its fabric cage.

Still, the sound of the cello was nothing compared to the screaming of the girls as they were caught on a wave of stationery, the two of them sitting together on a binder as the paper transported them through the halls.

The girls summed up their situation thusly: "AHHHHHHHHHH."

"Hang on a second," Kayla said, screaming no longer, the wave of papers stopping on a dime, the rest of time going with it. "We're in a cartoon, right?"

Ruby blinked, looking around at the anomalous stationery. "Maybe."

"So we can make this work!" Kayla exclaimed.

"I… don't follow, kitty," Ruby admitted, poking at the stationary stationery with her feet.

"Why are we always scared of this stuff?" Kayla questioned, tapping her forehead.

"Because I don't know what else to be? This stuff wouldn't happen back home," Ruby proposed.

"Exactly, chirpy," Kayla beamed. "So instead of acting like we're home, let's act like we would here. Let's roll with this."

Ruby gasped, a fresh smile on her face. "Okay!"

And the wave roared back into motion, the girls riding on the binder as they surfed through the school, the cat and bird shouting in glee.

"This is incredible!" They said together.

"Awesome!"

"Fantastic!"

"Unbelievable!"

"Amazing!"

Before either of them could pull out another synonym, the wave hurtled towards a classroom. Neither animal had time to duck, and with a resounding thwack, they got clotheslined by the top of the doorframe. The wave carried their semi-unconscious, bruised bodies to the desks and dissipated as quickly as it came.

They were left in a room with murky green walls and linoleum flooring. Posters of diagrams and sums and mnemonics were plastered all over. Ancient desks lined the floor leading up to the teacher's own desk below the blackboard. Despite it being a relatively warm autumn day, the classroom was near freezing, and it wasn't because of the air conditioning.

Kayla then heard a strange clicking sound dance between her ears. She figured another song was about to start. "Not now, universe," She groaned, drooling, "Kitty need nap…"

The feeling of her table getting hit by something jolted her right awake, eyes flying wide open.

Standing at the foot of Kayla's desk was a fuming ape-like creature with a gnarled hand gripping the wood. The creature's other hand was inches away from Kayla's nose, rhythmically snapping its fingers. This was creating a snowfall of dead skin that was piling up on the desk, and on top of Ruby, who was fast asleep on the imitation wood surface.

"Well?" The ape put her hands on her hips.

"Well what?" Kayla asked.

"What do you two have to say for yourselves?" the ape said, raising her voice. "You show up to my classroom an hour late and immediately take a nap!"

At the crackle of the ape's vocal cords, Ruby woke up to find herself under half an inch of dead skin. The bird began yelling, shaking it off of her as if it was an army of ants.

"Miss Simian," a familiar voice chimed in, "Go easy on them. It's their first day."

"I will do no such thing, Gumball Watterson!" Miss Simian, the screeching ape, shouted. "All these two have shown me is that they're as much troublemakers as anyone else in this miserable school."

"Excuse me, but my permanent record is spotless," one of the Eggheads decreed.

Miss Simian ignored him.

"Now…" Miss Simian whispered, bringing her face creepily close to Kayla and Ruby, the cat and bird able to see everything from the ape's yellowed teeth, to her pulsating gums, to every wrinkle on every conceivable contour of her face. "Sit down and pay attention!"

"Yes, ma'am!" the girls shouted, quickly adjusting themselves in their seats, sitting straight up with perfect posture.

"Wait, you girls listened to me?! Huh…" Miss Simian looked over the two new students, making sure they weren't about to pull a fast one on her.

Satisfied, the ape continued, "Anyway, the Elmore Civil War was a short-lived conflict between two rivaling hot dog stands…"

Ruby and Kayla were utterly astounded by Elmorian history lessons. From robot uprisings to witch spell wars, to the fact that ghosts just hung out and did politics, it seemed anything that could happen in Elmore had already happened at least twice. Still, the girls knew better than to ask questions, and made to take as many notes as they could.

Then Miss Simian switched to math.

The students found themselves in varying states of panic and confusion. In front of them lay their death warrants. A test. Ruby chewed the end of her pencil absentmindedly, skimming between the pages. Given she hadn't pulled her feathers out or let out a squawk of distress, it seemed the only people in the class that were having an easier time than her were the Eggheads. The eggs had finished their test in under a minute and were currently discussing the works of some Greek philosopher Ruby had never heard of.

Kayla hadn't moved a muscle since the test started.

"Hey, Kayla!" Ruby whispered, nudging the cat next to her.

"What?!" Kayla harshly whispered back, sweating.

Ruby smirked. "Can you believe how easy this is? The advantages of being grown-ups, huh?"

Kayla forced a laugh. "Yeah, I know, right?"

The cat not-so-subtly pushed her test further away from Ruby and concealed it under her shaking paws.

Ruby clicked her beak. "Number six was a bit of doozy, though. I'm so glad algebra is second nature to me at this point."

"A cakewalk for me too," Kayla said without thinking, though her true feelings betrayed her words.

"Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Don't wanna get caught talking in class, or Miss Simian will do to us what she did to… him," Ruby nodded towards a Tobias-shaped hole in the window and got stuck back into her test.

Kayla tentatively reopened her test and gulped. "C'mon. It's not that hard. You know what x equals, so you must know what y is!"

A few moments later, Kayla had another thought. "No. No, I don't."

When Miss Simian came back around to collect the tests, the bird already had hers held high in the air.

"Eager, are we?" Miss Simian asked her, snatching the test from Ruby and checking it for hidden stink bombs or hand buzzers.

"I've been studying," Ruby told her with a grin.

The ape stepped back in shock. "A member of my class? Studying?!"

The whole room let out a collective gasp.

"Isn't that what students do?" Ruby asked.

"For all the millennia I've been teaching," Miss Simian whispered, doing her best approximation of a movie trailer narrator, "Not one kid I've taught has ever done so much as wipe their nose on a textbook, let alone study for a test!"

"Except us, of course!" The Eggheads called out.

Miss Simian ignored them.

Ruby, having fully realized the severity of the situation, looked around at the other students in class. The Watterson boys stared at her with wide eyes and dropped jaws and Leslie closed his petals when she tried to make eye contact with him.

"Well, clearly I…" Ruby cleared her throat.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bobert perform a lifeform scan on her, while Kayla continued to make small, stealthy scribbles on her test.

"I was joking! Duh!" Ruby finished, making sure she was as loud as she could be, that way the whole class could hear.

Every child present, except for the Eggheads and Kayla, broke out in laughter at Ruby's perceived sike. Of course, Miss Simian was not so amused.

"Then I suppose I'll have to run a fine-toothed comb through your work then, Miss…"

Miss Simian stopped and looked around.

"What's her name?" she asked the rest of the class, pointing at the bird in front of her..

The students answered in unison, "The right hand of the revolution!"

"That's not going to fit on her permanent record," Miss Simian growled.

"Party to the left hand, of course!" Gumball spoke up, standing on his desk and motioning at Kayla as she continued to scrawl on her test.

"Huh? Wha?!" Kayla raised her head just to notice everyone was looking at her.

"You guys have really gotten the wrong idea about us," Ruby attempted to clarify.

"How can one letter be so many different numbers?" Kayla mumbled.

"What?" Ruby asked her BFF.

"The left hand has spoken!" Gumball bellowed, fists on his hips. "Apart, we are only numbers, but together, we are one!"

"Hurrah!" the students cheered, the roar of the crowd carrying the classroom to a higher plane of existence.

Gumball continued his rally. "And now! Now nothing can stop us!"

The bell rang.

"Lunch time!" Darwin squeed.

Everyone except for Kayla, Ruby, and Miss Simian immediately stampeded toward the cafeteria. Meanwhile, the cat, bird, and ape were left to consider one another. The girls dared not say anything as Miss Simian stared daggers into their young hearts.

"Can we…" Ruby tentatively started.

"…Go?" Kayla finished with wide eyes.

"I don't know who you two are," Miss Simian spat.

"Well, my name is…" Kayla said before she was interrupted by more of Miss Simian's spitting.

"But if both of you don't change your act soon, you're going on the hit list," the ape said, slowly licking her yellowed teeth.

"Eww," the girls squirmed.

"Now go!" Miss Simian screeched, Ruby and Kayla running out of the classroom as fast as they could.

"And no running!" Miss Simian hollered after them, making the girls walk very slowly, step by step, the rest of the way to the cafeteria.

After a rather disappointing meal of french fries and fish sticks, the two girls were seated opposite each other on a bench in the playground just outside the cafeteria. They were surrounded by all manner of play equipment between the trees, bushes, and fences, the cool autumn breeze sending wind through fur and feathers alike. The other kids were tearing past them as they played tag, climbed on all manner of colorful obstacles, and threw dodgeballs at each other on the blacktop.

Kayla, ducking as one of said dodgeballs just missed decapitating her, told the bird, "I just don't get it."

"Get what?" Ruby asked, lifting her legs as another dodgeball narrowly avoided shattering her knees.

"The food," Kayla pondered, "Nicole gave us fish sticks."

"And?" Ruby asked.

"Well, what would Darwin think about that?"

Ruby gasped. "OMG, you're right! That's…"

"So messed up!" Kayla continued, "Does that mean–"

"Cat burgers are gonna be–"

"In our lunch boxes tomorrow?" Kayla shuddered.

"Turkey?"

"Duck?"

"Chicken?"

"Turkducken?" The girls asked together, biting their claws and wingtips, respectively.

"What type of bird are you, anyway?" Kayla asked her BFF, gripping a carton of orange juice.

"I think I'm a sparrow," Ruby answered.

"Do purple sparrows exist?" Kayla smirked.

"Here they do, I guess." The bird pointed at Kayla. "What kind of cat are you?"

"A ragdoll cat. I saw a picture of a kitten with the same face markings on Elmorpedia once."

Ruby quirked a brow. "Elmorpedia?"

"No, Elmorped– Gosh darn it!" Kayla squeezed the carton even tighter, causing a jet of juice to spurt out and catch a running Banana Joe in the eye. The banana yelled out in pain and sprinted into the side of the building, splattering out of his peel on impact.

"I didn't do it!" Kayla and Ruby yelled.

The girls looked at each other again.

"I'm getting really sick of that," they said.

"I'm my own person!"

"So am I!"

The girls stood up at the same time, facing one another with prepubescent rage in their eyes.

"Hey!" a voice called out.

Pulled from their conflict, Kayla and Ruby turned to see Penny and Carrie standing there, a jump rope in Penny's hands.

"Do you wanna play with us?" Penny asked, a smile on her face as she lifted the jump rope.

"It's no fun when you can float," Carrie deadpanned.

Ruby and Kayla looked at each other like someone had just asked them to dismantle a bomb.

"Gumball told me you two are orphans, right?" Penny questioned.

"I bet you guys are more interesting than most people here," Carrie said with a smirk, whipping her translucent hair away from her translucent eyes.

"Our boyfriends say one thing about you, but we've heard otherwise," Penny noted.

"Hey! Who's talking about us?" Ruby challenged, wings on her hips.

Kayla was surprised by her BFF's sudden display of childlike bravado, but she slowly worked up the energy to match it.

"Actually, I think you should know," Carrie went on. "Leslie's been spreading rumors about you two."

"The flower boy?" Ruby guffawed. "What about?"

Carrie rolled her eyes, speaking as if it bothered her to relay this information. "Leslie said you two were hideous jail escapees trying to hide amongst the public while you plotted your next big heist. He said Kayla is the dumb muscle and Ruby's the bird brains of the operation."

"What muscles?" Kayla replied, poking at her skinny little arm.

"What?!" Ruby squawked. "Just because I'm a bird..."

Penny nodded. "He actually has an extensive list of bird-based insults that he gave to us ten minutes ago."

"Most of them were pretty good. No offense," Carrie said with a sly smile.

"What about me?!" Kayla asked, her investment in this conversation rising at an alarming rate.

"Oh, he's just recycling the ones he made for Gumball," Penny answered.

Kayla scoffed. "What, I'm not different enough to have my own insults?"

Carrie shook her head. "He said you were basically Diet Gumball. Gumball Zero. Gumball with Chicken."

"Chicken?!" Ruby squawked again.

"Chicken and a side of fraidy-cat-fries…" Penny said, staring down at the ground.

"Yeah?!" Ruby retorted. "Well, you can tell Leslie that he's a big doo-doo head!"

Everyone turned to look at Ruby.

Kayla quirked her brow. "Doo-doo head?"

"Forget I just said that!" Ruby said quickly. "Let's play jump rope."

"But we don't know how!" Kayla whispered harshly, her paws gripping her BFF's wing.

"Please help me forget that I'm a grown man who just said doo-doo head and skip rope with me," Ruby whispered back.

"I'll doo-doo my best," Kayla said with a giggle.

Ruby let out a dramatic sigh.

The cat and bird now stood between the fairy and ghost, their footing tenuous at best. Their only real experience with jump rope in their past lives was bullies whipping them with jump ropes in gym class. They assumed it would be at least somewhat like that.

The rope came down, and they both cleared it.

"One," they thought in unison.

The rope came down again, and they skipped over it with their other foot.

"Two!"

"Three!"

"Four!"

"Oh, you girls want to go faster?" Penny grinned. "Carrie, let's go!"

"On it!" The ghost girl complied, quickening her end of the rope with a levitation spell.

"Five!"

"Ten!"

"Twenty!"

"Thirty-seven!"

"Eighty-nine!"

Penny's baton-twirling experience came in handy, as the rope created a gust of wind blowing out in all directions. The rope was almost invisible at this point. Still, the girls jumped like it was nothing. Hopping on either foot. Both feet. Backwards. On their hands. All at the same time.

Only after they had instinctively launched into a simultaneous backflip did the gravity of the situation finally catch up with them, and they crumpled to the ground, tangled in the rope.

"Ouch!" They cried.

Ruby and Kayla had attracted quite a crowd during their escapades. Every single student was stuck gawking at them, not making a sound. Soon enough, though, whispers began to circulate.

"Did you see that? I've written actual Mary Sues with less skills," Sarah said, the ice cream cone, literally melting in fear.

"See that?" Leslie echoed, "That's the technique they used to bust out of juvie!"

"Never seen 'em before in my life," Gumball mumbled to those closest to him.

"Hey!" Kayla and Ruby said, holding up their hands.

"We were just…"

The girls looked at each other.

"Playing."

"I think you just beat my high score," Alan, the balloon, said in awe.

"Excuse me, but does anyone know how to reset Bobert?" One of the Eggheads called out, "His system crashed while trying to construct an algorithm competent enough to keep up with their graceful movements."

"Oh, gosh, sorry!" the girls said again, together as always.

"We could…" they started, looking at each other.

"We're gonna…"

The crowd shared a collective blink.

"Go."

The girls ran into the school building, working quickly to find a place to hide, settling for a dark broom closet next to a dusty drinking fountain. Hiding themselves between a broom and a bucket, under a flickering light and a leaky roof, the girls eyed each other, their fists shaking.

Kayla started, "Okay, seriously. Why won't you-"

"Quit it already? You've been-" Ruby continued.

"Doing this all day and I'm-"

"So angry I could grab your-"

"Tail and throw you into-"

"A basketball hoop!"

Ruby and Kayla looked at each other, exhaustion and fear in their eyes.

"What's… what's wrong with us?" They hugged each other tightly, in sync, and sobbed into each other's shoulders.

While they shared this moment, a figure hiding inside the bucket arose, wet and dripping.

"I have a few ideas," the figure whispered from the shadows.

"Ahhh!" the girls yelled, looking up to see Rob with a mop stuck to his head.

"Finally, I have found you two at your weakest–"

Rob moved the mop bristles out of his eye.

"Found you two at your weakest point!"

"Who are you?!" the girls screamed.

"Name's Rob! I mean… your worst nightmare!"

The girls shared a look at one another as the glitchy cyclops fought the mop and threw it onto the floor with a smack.

"Alright, look," Rob said, "I'll make this simple. You guys get out of here, leave everyone in Elmore alone, it'll all be taken care of."

"What are you talking about?" Ruby asked.

"We just got here!" Kayla added.

Rob stepped closer to the pair. "You guys don't belong here, and the sooner you leave, the easier it's gonna be for all of us."

"You just said the same thing, like, twice," Kayla pointed out.

"Also, what were you even doing in this closet?" Ruby wondered.

"I should have known you guys would be the worst," Rob rolled his eye while his hair glitched out behind him, giving the girls a start. "Look, I get it. A show gets stale, you try to add some new characters to keep things fresh. But it never works. And seriously! Weird mindmeld powers? Where are you even going with that?"

"Huh?" Kayla asked.

"What?" Ruby scratched her head.

Rob growled, though it was not as scary-sounding as he would have liked. "You can be as clueless as much as you want, but I know why you two are here."

"Wait, really?!" The girls said in unison.

"Okay, stop that," Rob deadpanned.

"Sorry. We're trying," The girls said in unison.

Rob sighed. "Anyway! Elmore is going to get swallowed up by The Void even faster if you two don't get out of here. It's only getting worse. So much has been taken away already. If you guys leave now, we can pass you off as a one-off gag, but I'm not letting either of you be supporting characters, and I'm especially not letting you stay in the Watterson house! You gotta lotta nerve getting involved with the main characters in your first appearance."

"Wait!" Ruby said.

Kayla's eyes widened. "You know this is a show too?"

"You guys do?!" Rob exclaimed. "It's worse than I thought! You aren't just the start of the decline."

Rob paused for dramatic effect before pointing an accusing finger at the girls. "You're the cause of it! The Void is gonna swallow this whole place up, and you don't even care!"

"What even is The Void?" Kayla and Ruby asked together.

"Well, whatever you call it, I call it the death of Elmore! No, not just Elmore, this whole world!" Rob bellowed. "And I'm gonna have to be the one to stop you."

"No!" the girls screamed.

Rob raced towards the closet door, flinging the mop at the girls as he made his escape. A loud grunting sound followed by a tremendous squeak pierced the air. Rob had pushed a set of lockers in front of the broom closet.

"You two are staying right here until I figure out what to do with you!" Rob said as the girls heard the cyclops run off.

Kayla turned to Ruby, shook the bird by the shoulders, and wailed, "We're trapped in here!"

Ruby clapped her wings together. "No. Sooner or later, we're gonna get out of this closet."

"I want to go home!" Kayla whined.

"Yeah, I bet Nicole has more of those awesome frozen pizzas," Ruby grinned. "This time, with pepperoni!"

"What? No!" Kayla scoffed. "I mean on our Earth! Duh!"

"Wait, what?" Ruby asked, shocked. "Why would you wanna go back there?"

"People don't get thrown into broom closets by B-list supervillains where we come from!"

"Exactly! This is awesome!" Ruby exclaimed, shooting her fists in the air.

Kayla gasped. "OMG! Are you even hearing yourself right now?"

"Yes, I am, kitty! Think about it! Free housing. Easy schooling. Adventure! Why would you ever wanna pass that up?"

"Well, not everyone is good at algebra, Ruby!" Kayla hissed, raising her hackles.

Ruby ruffled her feathers and clicked her beak. "Well, then I guess that means certain cats get another chance to learn, huh? Isn't this what you wanted? To start over? To get away from ourselves? Well, here it is. Permanent vacation!"

Kayla paused, retracting the claws she didn't even know she'd unsheathed. "I… no. There's gotta be a way back," she whispered.

"I don't even know, Kayla! Even Mr. Genius there thought we were just more characters. And The Void? That's some good sci-fi if I ever heard it!"

"Someone's gonna come and magic us home. They gotta," Kayla's voice was barely audible now, tears in her eyes.

"…Kitty?"

Kayla fell to her knees, sobbing. "I… I…"

Yanked off her high horse, Ruby kneeled down, eye level with Kayla, "OMG, what's wrong?!"

"I don't know what I want anymore," Kayla admitted, her voice small.

"What do you mean?" The bird asked. "You're scaring me."

"I don't wanna stay here, but I don't wanna go home either. I don't know!" Kayla said, sniffling.

Ruby's voice wavered as she said, "I mean, I wanna stay cuz I don't wanna go back. You know? I just… I thought you'd…"

"Understand." Kayla finished. "I do understand. Who wouldn't want to not have to worry about paying bills, or dealing with doo-doo head co-workers and bosses, or having to be alone?"

Ruby sat down across from Kayla now, too scared to make eye contact with her BFF. "But I don't wanna be alone here."

"But am I supposed to just give up my old life for this? I don't even know what this is…" Kayla asked.

It took a few moments for Ruby to figure out what to say. She clicked her beak while Kayla stared up at the leaky closet ceiling. Still, the bird tried her best to make things better.

"Do you remember sophomore year?" Ruby asked, breaking the silence.

Kayla attempted to dry her eyes with her tail. "Wh… huh?"

"Undergrad. Some lame party neither of us wanted to be at. I just bombed an essay that I put two months of my life into. I thought being around people would make me feel better, but it only made me feel worse. I was hunched in a corner, staring at my drink while I picked salt off a couple pretzels. But you came up to me. You asked me how I was doing. And, against my better judgement, I told you."

Kayla nodded along slowly. "Yeah. You did… but why are you–?"

"You were there when I was at my lowest," Ruby said, "You told me one mistake was just that. A mistake. And you said that I was good enough to make it, and to make something of myself. You kept me up when I was down."

"I just told you the truth," Kayla whispered.

"Still. I promised myself, right then and there, that I'd never let you hit rock bottom. And I meant it," Ruby assured her.

"Really?"

"When you dropped out, I gave you my number," the bird reminded her. "I told you to message me whenever."

"That was really nice," Kayla recalled fondly. "I appreciated it. Everything about it."

Ruby paused.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?" Kayla asked.

Ruby's tail feathers drooped. "I'm sorry I didn't reply more often."

"It's okay. I mean, it kinda stunk sometimes when I was lonely, but life's busy. We did our own thing, and then we got back in touch."

"When you told me how you felt a couple weeks ago, I realized I was feeling the same way. I knew I wanted to do something that'd help us both feel better. I figured… a road trip was better than nothing," Ruby said, looking Kayla deep in the cat's eyes.

"Thanks," Kayla whispered. "I mean it."

"I'm sorry I dragged us into this."

"You know, I doubt this is what you had in mind," Kayla smirked behind her tears.

Ruby clicked her beak again. She knew what she wanted to say, but not exactly how to say it.

She went for the direct route.

"You like being a girl, don't you?"

"What?! Are you kidding?!" Kayla guffawed.

Ruby nudged her BFF playfully. "C'mon, you've had a hundred chances to wear something other than a skirt."

"Well, look who's talking!" Kayla countered. "You're the one who wants to play jump rope and who keeps calling me 'kitty' every chance you get."

Ruby paused again, but not for long.

"I never said that I was against it."

Kayla's jaw hit the floor. "Say wha?"

Ruby blushed. "Truth is, I kinda like it. I feel more confident. Vibrant. Ready to take on the world."

"Dude…" Kayla looked down at her skirt and stockings.

"I feel more like myself," Ruby concluded.

Kayla stayed quiet for a long time. She felt so, so warm inside. Since they arrived in Elmore, she'd been feeling calmer, happier. Which made no sense given the ridiculous situations they had found themselves in. Something had been eating away at her all day, and whatever it was, it was bubbling under her tongue and was positively begging to burst out!

"…Me too."

"Really?!" Ruby squeed.

The bird shot up and grabbed the cat into a tight hug. Kayla reciprocated. In spite of how long they sat there, neither one wanted to let the other go.

"Really," Kayla said decisively. "It's not like I was forced to say 'OMG' or 'like' all the time, or whatever, but once I started saying it, I didn't wanna stop. It felt so good! And dressing like this, and getting to hang out with other girls. Instead of what I thought I was supposed to do…"

"The stuff you thought guys had to do to be guys?" Ruby asked.

"Yeppers!" Kayla answered succinctly.

"Liberation," Ruby concluded.

"Liberation," Kayla confirmed.

"Hey… kitty," Ruby said with a wink.

"Yeah, chirpy?" Kayla asked, beaming.

"You really are my BFF."

Kayla smiled even wider, showing her kitty fangs in the process. "Pinkie promise?"

"Pinkie promise!" Ruby giggled.

Kayla gasped. "Next thing you know, we're gonna end up, like, making friendship bracelets or something."

"Whoa!" Ruby exclaimed. "Do you want to?"

Kayla considered this proposition for all but three seconds. "…Yes."

"Heck yeah!" The girls high-fived each other.

"Bracelets with beads."

"With letters on them."

"So we can spell out our names!"

"And glitter."

"So much glitter…"

"Glitter everywhere!"

"Yeah!!!"

A synth riff built up around them, layers upon layers of notes being held. Then a bassline. Then the lights in the closet dimmed. But instead of scaring the girls, they squealed in delight and excitedly shimmied into their positions like they'd been doing this all their lives.

Kayla was suddenly donning a mass of product in her hair that made it all poofed out, heavy mascara, and hoop earrings. Ruby was wearing a sweatband and neon pink leggings, and she grabbed the discarded mop off of the floor.

"I'm Miss Ruby, you know, the avian brat. Been a bird a couple days, try imagining that," Ruby strummed the mop like a guitar as she hopped in a line on one leg. "I'm finally the person that I want to be. I know I'd fit right in with you, but is there room for me?"

"Yeah!" a disembodied crowd answered.

Ruby flipped the mop around, singing into the head end, and Kayla leaned over to join her with the chorus.

"Loud and obnoxious! Sweet, cute, and precocious! But I wouldn't have it any other way!" They harmonized perfectly. "I'm so glad you're my friend! Yeah, I'm so glad you're my friend!"

Ruby wielded a fire extinguisher, providing smoke for Kayla's verse. The cat was sitting on a wet floor sign at a drum kit made from buckets and empty paint jars. Kayla twirled a pair of tape measures around her fingers like drumsticks before she began to sing.

"Kayla's the name, a feminine feline pain. I'm a poser and I know that I've got nothing to gain," Kayla rapped, her big hair flying every which way. "I'm in it for the fun, that's apparent to see. This world's pretty full now, but is there room for me?"

"Yeah!" the crowd yelled again, louder than before, as the girls sang the chorus.

"Loud and obnoxious! Sweet, cute, and precocious! But I wouldn't have it any other way!" Ruby and Kayla wrapped their arms around each others' shoulders, their heads touching. "I'm so glad you're my friend! Yeah, I'm so glad you're my friend!"

The synths switched to a minor key, the room now completely dark save for blue spotlights under the girls' chins.

"It's hard to be nice when your head's full of fear," Ruby warbled.

"Got anxieties and worry coming out of our ears," Kayla tugged at hers as she sang.

"Worried we're a burden, holding you back," They said in unison, harmonizing together for the rest of the song. "It took me a while to finally see that you were there with room for me!"

"Loud and obnoxious!

Sweet, cute, and precocious!

But I wouldn't have it any other way!

I'm so glad you're my friend!

Yeah, I'm so glad you're my friend!"

Ruby broke into a killer guitar solo as the pair repeated the chorus one last time.

"Loud and obnoxious!

Sweet, cute, and precocious!

But I wouldn't have it any other way

I'm so glad you're my friend!

Yeah, I'm so glad you're my friend!"

"Best friends forever!" They jumped up high and stayed frozen in mid-air for a few moments with ecstatic grins on their faces. While they were frozen, the makeshift drum kit fell apart and the mop broke in two.

Then, the universe hit play and they landed gracefully.

"Yay!" the girls celebrated, pulling each other into another hug, their closest one yet.

"We're still trapped in here," Kayla noted.

"Yeah, but I'm kinda enjoying this," Ruby said.

It was then that a crash sounded just outside the closet door, startling the girls as they forced themselves against the wall.

"He's back!" Ruby whispered.

"Then we'll just have to kick his butt," Kayla said, bringing out her claws again.

The knob on the broom closet door jiggled, as if whomever was trying to open it was struggling. Sharing a nod, the girls slowly made their way toward the door, Kayla with her claws and Ruby with the mop-halves that she was not afraid to use as deadly weapons.

Pulling the door open with whomever was pushing it, they got it open.

And then they pounced on the intruder from the other side!

Holding their weapons high, Ruby got off of the intruder only to reveal…

"No! Wait! No, no! Wait!" the fish squealed, holding the back of his head as he kept himself down.

"Darwin?!" the girls gasped.

"Uh… hi!" Darwin waved, dusting himself off as he got up. "Are you okay?"

"Heck yeah!" Ruby exclaimed.

"Better than ever!" Kayla added.

"Wow, cool!" Darwin said… a little confused. "Anyways, after you guys went off, Gumball and I had an awesome time. I gave the whole crowd a speech on understanding the differences of people, and then my bro and I went racing after you, but then we saw Rob, and then Gumball fought him, and Rob made up some stuff about The Void that made no sense before a garbage truck picked him up. I mean if he already got out of there, why would he wanna mess with it? And then I came here to save you!" The fish finished his story with a smile.

"That sounds…" Kayla stopped.

"Like an amazing adventure," Ruby finished.

"But how'd you get us out?" the girls asked.

"I flooded the school!" Darwin beamed.

"Wha?!" the girls gasped.

Looking behind Darwin, they noticed that the hallways had indeed been half-full (or half-empty, depending on one's point of view) with water from the ever-flowing drinking fountain next to the broom closet.

A gondola floated past, containing a reclining Miss Simian, grapes poised over her mouth. Principal Brown swam behind it, his mass of fur weighing him down. He had both his arms on the back of the boat, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Keep kicking, Nigel!" Miss Simian screeched.

"Yes, Lucy, dearest…" Principal Brown shuddered.

Taking their eyes off the scene, the girls looked back down at the fish, a wide smile on his little, orange face.

"Thanks, Darwin!" the girls squealed, pulling the fishy into a tight group hug.

"Wow," Darwin mumbled, his whole head and mouth squished by the older girls, "For being in the closet for so long, you guys sure are in a good mood."

At those words, Kayla and Ruby shared a knowing look, and burst out laughing, shaking Darwin up in the process.

Darwin did his best to laugh along.

He didn't get it.

With school over early, Kayla and Ruby joined Darwin on his walk home. The three kids trudged through piles of leaves that had fallen during the serene autumn day. It was cooler now, and Kayla and Ruby instinctively huddled closer together as they walked on cracked concrete past multicolored house after multicolored house.

"So Rob just trapped you in there?" Darwin pondered, scratching the top of his head with a fin.

"Yeah!" the girls said.

"What a doo-doo head!" the fish declared.

"That's what we say!" the girls finished as they hopped together over a leaf pile.

"Why would Rob even do that, anyway?" Darwin asked. "He's got no right picking on a couple of orphans."

The girls stopped in their tracks, giving each other a concerned look before looking back at the fish.

"Darwin…" Kayla started.

Ruby finished, "What did Rob tell you?"

Darwin turned around, curious by the concerned look on the girls' faces.

"Oh, some stories about how we're 'living a lie' and how 'this whole world is a lie' and how 'we're not real,' and then Gumball said, 'I keep it real,' and I couldn't stop giggling, so I stopped listening after that and went to find you guys after the garbage truck got Rob."

"Rob didn't say anything about us, then?" Kayla asked the fish, biting her bottom lip.

"He said he had you locked away somewhere. He usually hides things in the closet," Darwin said with a nod.

"Fishy," Ruby started.

"Buddy…" Kayla finished.

The girls said, "There's something we need to tell you."

It took a tense walk home, quite a few orange sodas, and half a fruit platter, but after Kayla and Ruby spent an hour and a half in Gumball and Darwin's room (fifteen of those minutes spent putting Gumball's dirty laundry in a corner), they had almost explained their origin to Darwin in a way that the ten year old could understand.

"But this is Earth," the fish said, pointing down at the floor with a fin.

"No," Ruby started, putting an underline on the dry erase board they took from Anais' room. "We're from a different Earth."

Darwin scratched his head with the fin that wasn't pointed at the floor. "…Huh?"

The girls sighed before they noticed a whole apple on the platter that had so far gone uneaten.

"So…" Ruby paused, "Like, imagine an apple."

Darwin closed his eyes and took an imaginary bite, a realistic crunching sound accompanying the motion.

"Yummy!"

"Open your eyes, please," Ruby said.

Darwin did as he was asked, and the girls continued.

Kayla held up the apple and said, "This is one apple."

Ruby showed Darwin a crude drawing of an apple. "But then there's another apple."

"So there are two apples," Kayla said.

"They look similar," Ruby added.

"They're the same in a lot of ways, yet they're both completely different apples," the girls said together, sharing a smile at the innocent little fish.

"Oh!" Darwin exclaimed, holding a fin up as a sign of acknowledgement.

"Yeah? Yeah!" the girls said in anticipation.

Darwin beamed. "Jonny has five apples!"

The girls facepalmed together. The apple in Kayla's hand exploded, getting fruit bits and juices all over her fur as Ruby stood there with marker on every inch of her face.

"I think we have to break out the documentaries," Ruby concluded.

At that moment, the bedroom door burst off of its hinges and crashed through the window opposite. Gumball marched into the room with a look of pure anger on his face, a look that reminded the girls of another, older blue cat. He made a beeline for his fishy brother.

"Oh! Hi, Gumball!" Darwin greeted his brother with a wave.

"Darwin, get away from them!" Gumball yelled. "They're brainwashing you!"

Darwin frowned. "Huh? I already had a shower this morning."

"No, darn it! You don't understand! We're in big trouble here. For once in my life, I actually listened to Anais!" Gumball shouted, the cat's tail stiff behind him.

"And I listened to Gumball…" Anais murmured as she walked into the room, pawing at her tongue.

"You don't listen to each other?" Kayla asked, tilting her head.

"Silence, villain! That's not important!" Gumball said. "You're in cahoots with Rob!"

"What the what?" Kayla and Ruby said in unison.

"What the– Hey! That's my thing!" Gumball stomped his little, blue foot. "You're stealing my identity!"

"No, we just–" Ruby started.

"Picked it up–" Kayla said.

"Before we even met you!"

"But I saved them, Gumball." Darwin pleaded, cleaning up the bits of apple that had fallen on the floor.

"It was a trap!" Gumball argued. "You're lucky we were here to save you!"

"Do you really think that if we wanted to kidnap Darwin…" Kayla said.

"…We'd take him to his own bedroom?" Ruby finished with her wings on her hips.

"That's just the kind of mind games we're talking about here!" Gumball yelled, two fingers placed like probes on either side of his head. "Tell them, Anais."

"With pleasure," Anais started, pacing the floor as she spoke. "You see, Darwin, when I first met these two, I knew something was up. Initially, I figured it was either your typical long con robbery or identity theft, but more and more pieces kept coming together. Their sudden appearance, their penchant for finishing one another's sentences, their ludicrous jump roping ability."

"Beginner's luck?" the girls offered.

"Worse!" Anais continued. "Originally, I had written a seven hundred eighty page research paper on the criminality potential of Kayla and Ruby."

"I can't believe you'd spend that much time on something no one would read," Gumball murmured.

"Anyway!" Anais said, stepping on Gumball's foot, doing no damage. "When Gumball shared with me that Rob himself knew something was up with them, this blew the whole thing wide open!" Anais concluded, spreading her arms for emphasis. "So that's why I had to rush to write a ninety page report on what we know so far, fully proofread with an extensive bibliography! I never thought I'd have to cite Gumball as a source, but here we are."

Anais proceeded to heft a triple-stapled stack of papers from the hallway, throwing it at Ruby and Kayla's feet.

"Do you... expect us to read all of this?" Kayla and Ruby said together.

"Yes! Yes I do!" Anais said with a harumph.

"Can you give us the short version?" the girls asked, sheepish.

Anais scoffed. "Fine! Turn to section five on page forty-eight. There's an article on–"

"Layman's terms?" the girls interrupted.

"Rob bad. You bad," Gumball simplified.

Kayla and Ruby looked at each other, and then at the Watterson children, each of them a mix of angry, frustrated, and scared.

After giving her BFF a quick hug, Ruby said, "Rob's wrong,"

"Like, way off," Kayla confirmed.

Together, the girls took a deep breath, the Wattersons looking on in confusion.

"We were grown-ups and we were driving on the highway at night on a different Earth where the sun doesn't have a face and fish don't walk and you can't do whatever you want all the time or be whoever you want to be and then there was this super dark tunnel and then it was morning and we were kids and we had to leave the car behind cuz we were too short to reach the pedals!" The pair bawled.

The room was silent for a total of ten minutes. After two minutes, everyone had found a place to sit down. Kayla and Ruby on the bottom bunk of Gumball's bed, Gumball on the floor, Darwin in the computer chair, and Anais in front of the now-repaired bedroom door. Everyone took turns looking at each other, but no one said anything as a clock ticked in the room, and Gumball shushed a bird singing outside the window.

Finally, the silence was broken when Darwin gasped.

"Why didn't you say that in the first place?!" the fish yelled as he turned to Kayla and Ruby.

"We drew pictures!" the girls yelled back.

"Wait, Darwin, they explained this to you and you said nothing?!" Anais added to the yelling.

"I didn't get it!!!" Darwin screamed at the top of his lungs, his eyes shut tight in frustration.

"Everyone stop yelling!" Gumball yelled, shutting everyone up. "So that's it, then?" Gumball asked, turning to Kayla and Ruby, the girls looking toward the blue cat in trembling anxiety. "You guys just ended up here on accident, and now Rob wants you gone?"

"Yeah…" Kayla said.

"But he has a good reason for it," Ruby added.

"At least he thinks he does," the girls said as one.

"What the what…" Gumball whispered.

"There's one thing we didn't mention," Ruby said.

"Rob didn't get everything entirely wrong," Kayla noted.

"Just mostly," Ruby added.

Silence fell over the room again.

"Well, out with it!" Anais asked of the pair.

"Do you guys promise not to freak out?" Ruby begged.

"Since when would we ever freak out?" Gumball said with a nervous laugh as Anais and Darwin glared at him.

"Okay," the girls said.

"Rob thinks this place is a show," Kayla winced.

"A cartoon," Ruby blushed.

"A really long story," they said.

Gumball laughed. "And that's crazy!"

Silence.

"…Right?" Anais asked.

More silence.

"Guys?" Darwin asked, shaking.

The girls looked at each other, then at the Wattersons.

Gumball spoke slowly. "We go on adventures every day…"

"And no matter how bad things get…" Anais said.

"Everything always goes back to normal real fast," Darwin finished.

"Our voices get deeper and then go really high again every once in a while," Gumball and Darwin said together.

"Hey, that's our thing," Kayla and Ruby joked humbly.

"Oh, then I guess we're even," Gumball whispered.

Anais gasped.

"And my voice has just been sounding more and more mature, but I never get any older," Anais said.

All three of them turned to look at each other and mumbled in unison, "We never get any older…"

Hearing those words, Kayla and Ruby turned to look at each other, and then back at the Wattersons, who were looking at them looking at them. And then everyone looked at each other.

"Dinner's ready!" Nicole called from downstairs.

"I'm not hungry," everyone said.

After the first quiet dinner at the Watterson table in recorded history, all five children slowly trudged up the stairs to brush their teeth. Getting into their pajamas, pairs of which Nicole had apparently gotten for Ruby and Kayla, the kids once again gathered, this time in the guest bedroom, to go over a few things.

The kids told Nicole they were having a slumber party.

Unfortunately, no discussion had been had in half an hour, as the kids had each selected a place to collect their thoughts. Ruby got out of her bed to give Anais a place to lie down, meaning she was sitting against the foot of Kayla's bed and Darwin lay on the floor and Gumball sat on the windowsill.

As Anais poured over a book she wouldn't let anyone else see, holding her doll tight, Darwin looked for patterns on the ceiling as Gumball looked up at the stars.

Kayla and Ruby, then, just looked at the Wattersons.

And no one spoke until Gumball sighed.

"The stars aren't real?" he asked.

Everyone turned to look at Gumball as he turned to look at everyone else.

"I look up at the stars every night. They're there for me, and I can see them, but now I have to just live knowing… they're not there?"

Anais said nothing, instead choosing to lick her finger and flip the page.

Kayla caught sight of the heading 'Traditional Animation' as the page settled, and her heart sank.

Therefore, Ruby had to speak for her. "They're not real… but they are there. They're real to you, right?"

Gumball nodded. "Yeah."

"Then, in a way, that makes them real. Real in this world, anyway," Ruby said.

Kayla eventually found her voice. "A better way to describe Elmore would be like, a world within a world. Anais."

The pink rabbit looked up from the 'Cels' page and met Kayla's gaze. "Yes?"

"Your doll."

"What about her?" Anais asked protectively.

"What's her name?" Kayla asked.

"…Daisy. Daisy the Donkey."

"Right. Thank you. When you pick Daisy up and play with her, you're making your own little world for her," Kayla explained. "As far as Daisy knows, her world is real, because you're telling her it's real. But in reality, you're only playing pretend."

"I make Daisy's world, and someone makes mine," Anais said softly, shutting her book and setting it aside.

Kayla and Ruby nodded solemnly.

"But this world's gonna go away…" Darwin mumbled.

The rest of the kids looked to the fish.

"What are you talking about, bro?" Gumball asked.

"If Rob is right about this place being fake, then how come he can't be right about how it's all gonna go away?" Darwin asked, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.

Gumball and Anais looked to Ruby and Kayla for an explanation.

They had none.

"No way," Gumball huffed, standing up, "I'm not letting Rob of all people tell me what's gonna happen and what I'm supposed to think about it."

"Gumball," Anais said, "If this whole world is gonna go away, then it's a lot bigger than Rob."

"Rob was just trying to find a way to stop it," Ruby realized.

"Or just slow it down," Kayla added.

"So if Rob is the one trying to fix this…" Gumball pondered, unable to finish his thought.

"We need to fix this!" Darwin said, standing up proudly.

Anais shook her head; the little rabbit feeling a migraine coming along. "But how do we do that?!"

"There's five of us here!" Gumball declared. "Apart, we are numbers, but together, we are one!"

"Is this actually happening?" Darwin squeed, clapping his fins. "Are we gonna save the day?!"

"Save the day?!" Kayla laughed.

"We're saving the whole world!!!" Ruby shouted.

"You can do that after you get to bed," Nicole yelled from the other side of the door.

"The revolution can't start any earlier than ten and any later than nine," Richard noted.

"Okay, Mom!" the kids said, Darwin making sure to add a 'Mrs.'

And Kayla and Ruby joined in as well.

Nicole opened the guest room door.

"Did you two just call me Mom?" Nicole asked the pair.

"Sorry," Kayla said.

"We weren't trying to be weird," Ruby added.

"Promise!" The girls said together.

"No…" Nicole paused. "I… you all sleep tight, okay? Have a nice slumber party!"

"Okay!" the kids said.

After Nicole closed the door, she followed Richard to the master bedroom.

"You know, they're not bad children," Nicole pondered. "A little precocious, maybe."

Richard beamed. "It runs in the family!"

"Yeah…" Nicole said. "The family."

As the grown-ups went to bed, the kids looked to Gumball for confirmation.

"Work begins tomorrow," Gumball whispered as he turned out the lights.

"Research," Anais said.

"World-saving trap building!" Darwin screeched with a wide smile, making the others shush him as the fish settled down into his bowl.

"We'll think of something," Kayla and Ruby said.

"Good, it is settled," Gumball declared. "Now… we rest."

The kids got comfy, and one by one, sleep came upon them.

Ruby stretched against the foot of Kayla's bed, looking up at the stars just out the window, a small smile spreading across her beak.

Kayla yawned, getting under the covers and lying down on her side. Looking over at the end table by her bed, she saw it.

The origami money tiara. She had just left it there last night. She carefully gripped it and brought it in front of her twitching nose. The cat thought to herself. Tomorrow, I'm putting you on and never taking you off.

After a hearty breakfast of caramel-coated bacon courtesy of Richard, the five kids held identical grins as they headed out the front door, backpacks on and loaded. They'd told Nicole that they were going to walk to school today, so they needed to leave earlier. As a result, their smiles were accompanied by wrinkles, dark rings under their eyes, and messy fur and feathers. Nicole stood in the doorway, waving after them.

"Have a great day at school!" Nicole called.

"I've never been more prepared to study in my entire life," Gumball said with a wink.

The second the front door closed, the kids tossed away their cheery charades like pennies into a fountain.

"Ready?" Gumball asked the others.

"Ready!" they nodded back at him.

"So," Gumball began, pulling a scroll out of his backpack. "Roll call. State your name and your role in the operation, and nothing else. We don't have time for dilly-dallying!"

"Says the person who took a forty-five minute long shower…" Anais mumbled.

"I was waiting for the water to heat up!" Gumball shouted back, before clearing his throat.

"Gumball Tristopher Watterson. Natural-born leader. Trap technician."

The fish next to him saluted. "Darwin Raglan Caspian Ahab Poseidon Nicodemius Watterson III! Natural-born follower! Junior trap technician."

Anais sighed. "Anais. I'm going to the library." With that, she headed off towards town and her research work, leaving the others behind.

That left the girls. "Ruby and Kayla! Rob bait!" They said simultaneously.

"…Rob bait." They repeated, quieter and more nervously this time, the two of them sharing a look of apprehension, now that the time approacheth.

"Good. Now, onwards!" Gumball yelled, pointing in front of him as he marched down the

sidewalk with Darwin. A couple moments later, Ruby and Kayla were walking behind them.

Meanwhile, having shut the front door behind her, Nicole shook her head as she watched the children through the window.

"If you know they're up to something, Nicole, why are you letting them go?" Richard asked his wife, a heaping plate of caramel-coated bacon in his hands, the rabbit's face marinating in caramel.

"Now, dear," Nicole said, picking up a piece of the bacon for herself. "Sometimes it's less about the catch, and more about the chase," she answered, shuddering as she swallowed the fat-ridden breakfast food.

The kids stared up at the entryway between two sides of high barbed wire fences. Countless piles of discarded appliances, vehicles, and scrap metal littered the other side of the fence. In the middle of the wasteland, an imposing-looking garage sat, bigger than any other garage Ruby and Kayla had ever seen.

"Rob's trash. This is as good a place to start as any," Gumball said with a nod.

"The junkyard," Darwin clarified.

"It looks dangerous in there," Kayla said.

"Sharp objects," Ruby continued.

"Puddles of oil. Did we get our tetanus shots?" The girls said together.

"Wait," Darwin wondered, "If you just got those bodies a couples days ago, doesn't that mean you don't have any of your shots?'"

"Pfft, they'll be fine," Gumball waved their anxiety away. "All we really have to do is worry about is the family of carnivorous dinosaurs that eat trespassers."

"The what?!"  Ruby and Kayla shuddered.

"Tina and her Dad!" Darwin helpfully explained. "Tina's in our class, and her Dad just spends all his time in that building. I think he grew too big for it and now he can't get out."

"I think I've seen Tina!" Ruby said. "She likes milkshakes."

Gumball beamed. "Great! So we can skip the introductions. We gotta cut corners where we can."

"So, where do you think Rob is?" Kayla asked.

"It's not where he is," Gumball said, "It's where he's gonna be."

The girls took a second to process that carefully-worded statement.

Gumball spread his arms out in glee. "It's time to do what you rehearsed!"

Ruby and Kayla made their way into the junkyard. Stepping over broken glass and rusty tin cans, they made their way to a clearing between two trash piles.

The girls sighed, and cleared their throats before shouting together, "Golly gee, we sure do love talking at the same time! Let's go find other characters to talk to and invade their story arcs! We're so quirky, everyone will love us!"

The girls waited.

And waited.

"There's no way this is gonna work," Ruby mumbled.

"It's still early. Maybe he just slept in," Kayla shrugged.

"Aha!" Rob jumped out from behind a disused vending machine. "A villain never sleeps!"

"Maybe you should, Rob. You might not fall over something for twenty whole minutes," Gumball commented with a smug grin.

"Oh, snap!" Darwin said, and the brothers bumped fists.

Kayla and Ruby rolled their eyes. "Boys."

"Hey, pay attention to me. I am a threat!" Rob shouted at the others, somewhat bringing everyone's attention to the cyclops.

"Sure," Gumball said. "Actually, we were gonna go ahead and capture you with this beautifully-made device."

Darwin, dressed as a game show host's assistant, clad in a sparkling silver sequined party dress, grinned while holding a cardboard box with 'Calla' and 'Roobi' scrawled on the side in crayon.

"But seeing as you're just standing there," Gumball continued, "We might as well ask you some questions now."

"There's no time!" Rob yelled, pointing at the girls. "I have to destroy those two before it's too late!"

"I'd like to see you try," Ruby sneered, wings on her hips.

"Yeah!" Kayla chimed in, "You couldn't destroy a glass nail with a sledgehammer!"

"Fair enough," Rob said, walking behind a pile of TVs.

"Hey, where are you going?!" Gumball called after him. "We didn't get to exchange quips!"

"Be right there!" Rob wailed in fury as a familiar silver sedan screamed around the corner and barreled towards the four kids.

"Is that our car?" Ruby asked.

"With spikes on the wheels," Kayla continued.

"Flames coming out of the exhaust."

"And a skull painted on the hood?"

"What the what?!" The girls said in unison.

"You see?!" Rob yelled over the roaring engine, "Same catchphrase. Lazy writing. It's all circling the drain, Watterson!"

"I really don't mind that much!" Gumball yelled back, ears perked on his head.

"Y'know, guys," Darwin began, kicking the dust up off the floor with his hands behind his back. "Maybe we should get out of the way…"

"Good idea, buddy," Gumball agreed.

The four kids screamed in terror and dove off in two different directions. Ruby and Gumball jumped into a pile of broken musical instruments to the left of the road. Meanwhile, to the right, Kayla and Darwin rolled effortlessly into a stack of pillows and mattresses.

The car hurtled out of the junkyard at one hundred twenty miles an hour, and peeled off down the street.

Ruby poked her head out of a shattered cello. "What do we do now?"

"I give it ten seconds before he turns back around and goes for another shot," Kayla added, curled up in some dirty bed sheets.

Gumball squeezed out of a tuba, a honk following him on the way out. "We gotta find another car. Then it'll hurt less if he hits us!"

Darwin was napping on a nice, soft mattress.

"Right!" The girls agreed, scrambling over the trash piles in search of a functional (and affordable) vehicle.

"Darwin!" Gumball shouted. "We don't have time for this!"

"Muh…" Darwin said from bed. "Gimme another apple, Jonny…"

While Gumball and Darwin argued over sleep schedules, Ruby and Kayla split up, in search of a ride in two separate piles of dilapidated vehicles and car parts.

"Now, if I were a cool car," Ruby began, batting flies away with her wings.

"Where would I be?" Kayla finished, completely out of earshot of Ruby, vaulting over a spare tire.

"There!" The girls said, both emerging from different piles to meet in a clearing where a huge red truck, seemingly devoid of all dirt, rust, and observable damage shone under the smiling sun. Sharing a devilish grin, the cat and bird gave each other a high five as they scaled the movable beast.

Forcing the doors open, the girls found themselves in a black leather interior with all manner of buttons and cup holders. While Ruby got in the driver's seat, Kayla sat shotgun.

They nodded together.

"Steering?" Kayla asked, pointing a clawed finger at her BFF.

Ruby nodded and pointed back at her BFF. "Pedals."

After getting the truck hotwired and rolling, the girls caught up with the Watterson boys, all four children more than capable of fitting inside the giant truck's massive leather seats up front.

"MY CAR!!!" a thundering voice called out from the junkyard as the kids cleared the entrance.

"Sorry, Mr. Tina's Dad," Darwin winced.

"Whatever you do," Gumball turned to the girls with wide eyes, "Do not get a scratch on this thing."

"No promises!" Kayla and Ruby said.

As they raced down the bumpy road, something seemed amiss.

"Where's Rob?" Kayla wondered aloud.

Ruby shrugged. "Maybe he got lost."

"Aha!" Rob shouted, appearing from behind a building, the modified sedan hurtling towards them. "A villain always knows where they're going!"

"Yeah, going to Failtown. Population: You!" Gumball countered.

"Oh, snap!" Darwin exclaimed, and the two bumped fists.

Rob looked up at the imposing vehicle hurtling towards him and gulped. "Of course they took that one."

Fearing for his life, Rob turned around and drove down the street ahead of them.

As the chase began, a small rabbit was currently nestled into a thick tome, humming to herself as she studied.

The person sitting next to her sneered. "Shhh!"

"Anais!" Gumball yelled as the truck neared the library, its humongous engine screaming.

Anais, interrupted from her poring over stack after stack of books, peered out of the window, seeing a red truck peeling down the street and a determined Ruby at the wheel.

"You've got to be kidding me," Anais muttered, facepalming.

She grabbed as much material as her little pink paws could carry and scuttled out of the building.

"This should cover the fines!" Anais yelled as she threw spare change at the librarian sitting at the front desk.

"Shhh!" everyone else in the library said.

The truck stopped on a dime right outside, and Gumball kicked the passenger-side door open. "What are you waiting for? There's no time to lose!"

Anais hopped into the vehicle, the others making room for her up front, and put her papers down on the dashboard.

"You guys have no idea what I've been through," Anais muttered as she got comfy. "The Void has so many different texts based on it, each of them with varying degrees of reputability. I had to fact check the fact checks of another book's fact checks."

"We almost got run over!" Darwin squeed.

"You guys seem to be doing better now," Anais noted as she watched Ruby and Kayla operate the vehicle that hurtled its way toward Rob's now seemingly-miniscule repurposed sedan.

"We definitely stole this truck," the girls said in unison.

"That's not important right now!" Gumball exclaimed, getting Anais' attention. "Did you actually learn anything about The Void?"

"Just one detail that seemed interesting," Anais said with a nod.

"What's that?" Darwin asked.

"Well, it seems The Void is more of a balancer than a consumer," Anais lectured. "It doesn't take just to take; it takes when it wants something."

"So…?" Everyone asked the rabbit.

"Guys," Anais said, "The Void doesn't want everything. It wants someone."

The Wattersons turned to look at the girls. The girls looked at each other, and gulped.

"Wait a minute!" Ruby said. "If The Void wants us…"

"And Rob wants to stop The Void…" Kayla continued.

"Uh, hold onto finishing that thought," Anais wavered as she stared up over the dashboard.

There was a gigantic rip in the bright blue sky, endless static beyond the tear. Gusts of intense wind blew through the streets and sent mailboxes, streetlights and the occasional Elmorian citizen careening every which way. The presence of a dark cloud surrounding the rip, thunder and lightning sounding and sparking every few seconds, was enough to make the sun frown.

"Huh," Gumball said, humbled. "I guess Rob is trying to do something right."

"Oh, snap!" Darwin yelled, but his attempt at a fist bump from Gumball was ignored.

"Are we supposed to go in The Void?" Kayla asked, shaking against the pedals.

Ruby gulped. "But… I like it here."

"Me too," Kayla agreed.

"I get to do whatever I want."

"And be whoever I want to be."

"I don't want to leave!" They cried.

Anais snapped her fingers, catching the girls' attention. "Maybe you don't have to."

"Huh? But you sai–" The girls began, but they were cut off by the rabbit.

"I said that The Void wanted someone. Not you two specifically," Anais pointed out.

"But who's the least important person in Elmore?" Gumball asked.

"Someone no one needs," Anais answered.

"Or talks to," Darwin clarified.

"Or even thinks to engage in any sort of friendly basis?" Ruby and Kayla said.

Gumball's mouth pulled up into a demonic grin as he peered over the dashboard towards the swerving sedan ahead of them. "I can think of someone…"

"Miss Simian?" Darwin asked innocently.

"What? No! Him!" Gumball pointed at the car in front. "Rob!"

"Oh, Rob!" Darwin said, smacking himself in the forehead. "I forgot about him."

"Well…" Ruby started, gripping the steering wheel.

"Here goes nothing!" Kayla finished, slamming the gas with her paw.

Just as the truck picked up speed, police sirens sounded in the distance, the highway becoming more of a vehicle conga line as the effects of The Void got more and more apparent, a heavy rain pouring down as wind roared outside the truck.

"OMG, it's the police!" Kayla and Ruby yelled over the sirens.

"No," Gumball muttered, looking behind them. "Worse!"

"Faster! Faster!!!" Nicole screamed from shotgun at the donut-shaped policeman. The pink frosting-coated officer drove the cop car as Richard took up the entire backseat.

"I'm going as fast as I can," The cop said, speaking as quickly as he was driving, hammering the gas for emphasis.

"Do more than you can!" Nicole retorted.

"I'm not qualified for any of this," the donut babbled, his hands shaking. "I'm just a traffic cop. A traffic cop!"

"Then get out!" Nicole growled, kicking the donut cop out of the car and watching him roll back along the highway, blowing his whistle as he controlled the traffic behind her.

Watching the scene behind him, Gumball said through gritted teeth, "Either we're dead, or we're grounded."

"Let's worry about that later!" Anais yelled as the truck rolled over a spare tire, sending the children upward, each of them bumping their head into the roof of the truck.

They landed back in the seats in a completely different arrangement. Anais was at the wheel, Darwin at the pedals, and Gumball, Kayla, and Ruby upside-down on the passenger side.

"Be careful, Anais!" The girls yelled.

"Oh, relax, you two," Anais said, petting the steering wheel. "You think Mom's the only one that gets groceries?"

As the kids maneuvered the road, Rob was breathing heavily, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Rather, between getting run over and crushed and the influence of the infinite nothingness of The Void. He slowly eased his foot off of the gas. Not enough to stop, but enough to give him more time to think before he hit the red suspension bridge leading out of Elmore, where the center of The Void's influence currently made itself known.

"I'm not about to lose to these second-rate nobodies." Rob told himself, "They're getting written out!"

Back in the massive truck, it was dawning on the Watterson kids that they were gaining on their nemesis at an alarming rate.

"Yeah! We're catching up!" Gumball whooped, pumping his fist.

Ruby, Kayla and Anais, however, weren't so hyped.

"Darwin, hit the brakes!" They shouted.

"I can't! There's no time!!!" Darwin's voice cracked.

In an instant, the kids' truck hit Rob's, which was hit again when the cop car hit the kids' car that had hit Rob's. Basically, everyone was hurt.

A mass of metal and rubber had pooled at the edge of the suspension bridge. As the rain fell heavier than ever before, a single light blue fist pierced through the remains of the cop car.

"Hahahahaha!" Nicole laughed maniacally, knowing she had finally caught up to the children and their misdeeds. Their punishment would be severe.

Unfortunately, things were severe enough already.

"Nicole, look!" Richard pointed at the scene in front of them.

The parents turned to see their children surrounding Rob.

Rob had his back to them. Battered and bruised, he was now getting caught up in screaming at The Void.

"Take them… take them!" Rob demanded.

The Void said nothing.

"Come on, they're right there!" Rob whirled around to jab a gray finger at the girls. "They're the ones you want!"

Kayla and Ruby pulled each other into a hug, preparing themselves for what would happen next.

The wind got stronger and stronger, but they realized it wasn't drawing them closer to The Void.

It was pushing them away.

"Huh?" Rob gasped.

Then the cyclops fell to his knees. "You can't do this! You can't just bring these two in and then take me away. I don't deserve it. I didn't do anything wrong."

Anais used her tiny paw to shut Gumball's mouth before he could make any quips.

Rob was now shuddering, weeping at The Void. "Why can't you fix this yourself? I just wanted to save Elmore. I wanted to save the world!"

This time, The Void spoke. In its own way.

Rob felt a gust of air press up against his back.

"No. No, no, no!" He cried, desperately looking around for something, anything he could hold onto.

He found nothing.

Rob turned to the girls, "Please! Please go! Sure, maybe I don't know how you showed up here, but I do know you don't belong. You can't!"

The girls only stared at the cyclops with matching glares.

Rob continued. "Is this what you want? To live forever in some dreamland where nothing matters?"

The girls stood their ground. "No matter what this is, we're in it together, and that's what matters most of all."

"You're crazy, all of you," Rob brought his head up to the rest of the crowd, debris flying about, no one quite able to stand up straight with the force of The Void surrounding them. "You're all insane!"

The girls spoke again, their voices drowning out the wind, rain, and thunder when they spoke as one. "You can't control the world. You can't fix it by yourself. But we can work together to make it a better place, one that will live forever in spite of time. As one, we build this world together, and we make sure it lives on in the hearts of those who are there for it. Those who treasure it. Those who are a part of it. Those who love it."

"You two are so creepy when you do that!" Rob shouted so quickly.

"It's our thing and it's awesome!" The twins shouted back as the wind picked up again.

"I just wanted to be a part of this," Rob whimpered as he was taken off his feet toward The Void.

"Trust me, Rob," Gumball yelled over the heavy weather at his nemesis. "We could never forget you."

"Don't you ever… forget me," Rob yelled back as he and the twins' sedan were taken into The Void, a blast of air emitting from its opening, sending a shockwave throughout all of Elmore, taking away with it the sheer force of The Void's power as it dissipated over the bridge.

The wind stopped, the rain stopped, and a number of random objects fell around The Wattersons as everything was brought back into a semi-normal state.

As normal as things could get in Elmore, anyway.

Watching the whole scene unfold before her, Nicole's mental list of punishments for the children only got shorter and shorter, until she was out of ideas. Instead, she ran up to the children, pulling as many of them into a hug as she could.

Thankfully, Richard was there to pick everyone up at once.

"Why did Rob get taken?" Darwin asked, his speech hindered as his father crushed him.

"The Void wanted him," Anais concluded, her voice equally strained.

"He got out, and The Void took him back," Gumball squeezed the words through his crushed vocal cords.

Finally, Richard put his family down, the rest of The Wattersons collapsing in a dazed heap, flashes of light accentuating their dizziness.

"Wait…" Ruby began, rubbing her aching head.

"Does that mean…" Kayla continued.

"We can stay here?" the twins asked.

After everyone got up, wobbling to stand straight, it was Gumball who decided to answer the twins' question with another question.

"Do you want to?"

Kayla and Ruby looked to each other, wide smiles on their faces.

The next morning came, and the kids were awoken by the sound of a towel-wielding Nicole sparring with a half-naked Richard for first dibs on showering. The mother cat flicked the towel with the force of a whip, and Richard yelped and ran back into his bedroom. The resulting door-slam removed all of the kids' grogginess and like clockwork, Gumball, Darwin, and Anais walked out of their rooms to get ready for school.

Meanwhile, the twins were still in their beds, knowing they'd have to get up soon too.

"You know, I'm not feeling too bad," Kayla admitted.

Ruby sniffed the air and sighed happily. "Cuz you can smell Mom's pancakes?"

"Yup," Kayla said, before pausing. "How do you feel about that?"

"Feel about what?"

"Calling Nicole 'Mom'," the cat elaborated.

"It feels nice," Ruby began.

"Same here," Kayla continued, putting her tiara on. "If she had a problem with it–"

"She would have told us already," they said together.

With that, they jumped out of bed in perfect sync and headed downstairs, ready for the day.

The girls, now official Wattersons, came to enjoy their new lives in Elmore. They soon realised that they were official sisters now, too. Something that made them squee in delight when their names were called out after Darwin and Gumball during attendance.

When it came time to enter their birthdays onto the school system, Ruby and Kayla opted for the day after their arrival in Elmore. When asked why they chose that day over any other, the girls shared a knowing smirk, visions of a broom closet and a song in their heads.

Eighth grade math did prove to be a challenge for Kayla, and she begrudgingly had to ask Anais for help with her homework. As an apology for her suspicions of evil and criminal activity, Anais gave Kayla a peace offering in the form of a doll of her choosing. Kayla chose the fluffiest, roundest cat plush she could find in the toy box.

Ruby, against all odds, beat Gumball and Darwin in Juicy Joust on her first try. She went against convention and declined to use the coveted Pineapple Strats that the boys favored. However, even her scores couldn't come close to the top two on the high score table: Gumball's one-off magical session, a pure fluke the likes of which would never happen again, and below his score, Rob's. As such, these standings would ensure they would never forget the glitchy cyclops.

The first thing the Wattersons did after taking some time to recover from the chaotic event was decorating Ruby and Kayla's room, formerly the guest room. The drab beige walls had been replaced with vibrant pinks and purples, and the beds remade to match. As a housewarming present, the girls were gifted with a television and a console with the latest Legend of Zelmore, something which the boys had yet to get a hold of. They were also given house keys, although the twins often entered the house by climbing through their bedroom window instead.

Ruby and Kayla became accustomed to Richard's… exuberant taste in music, and Nicole made it very clear to them that in order to support the family, they would have to get part-time jobs. Considering the dead ends they were at in their past lives, afternoons spent mowing lawns and babysitting didn't seem so bad.

As things settled into a reliable routine, the twins became closer than ever. Their quirks developed, and Anais could swear they finished each other's sentences more often, even in their sleep. It didn't help that they had developed a secret handshake that would take a supercomputer to decode, their matching glittery friendship bracelets rattling along with the lightspeed hand movements.

And so, days spent in school and in varying degrees of slice-of-life colors and absurdist adventures began to mix and meld, a painting of life hung for all to see.

It wasn't too bad to take in.

Of course, not everyone could see it.

"And I'm telling you, you won't believe what she said about her, and what I said about what she said about what he said about me talking about her."

Molly, the charcoal dinosaur, made sure to greet Rob with open arms the moment he fell into The Void. Rob, who was initially happy just to have someone to talk to, had grown increasingly disenchanted with the arrangement.

As the two sat inside Rob's modified silver sedan, still totaled from the final conflict, Molly was more than happy to keep relaying to Rob the Victorian novel's worth of rumors and boring stories she had gathered before she found herself back in The Void.

"And I was there, Rob! I was there when she said what I had already known all along about what he refused to tell me about what I told her. And then I went ahead and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while I listened to her, and it was pretty good. Now, I know what you're thinking! Since when do I eat any form of fruit preserves? Well, let me tell you…"

Rob, fed up with this one-sided conversation/assault, proceeded to slam his head against the horn of his car, sending echoes throughout The Void.

"Oh, Rob," Molly said, "I'm sorry if my story is too long. Hopefully you still got something out of it."