Chapter Text
“This is what you all have been doing for the past two days?” Capochin exclaimed.
A chorus of shushes met his remark from the recently disbanded bizzyboys. It’d scarcely been two days since everything happened with the Godpoke and the Rift. Last he recalled they all were going their separate ways. Or at least there were plans to do that. Despite being “da boss” for a while now, he’d kind of lost track of things over the past few days. He hated that he couldn’t really blame anyone for it, it was nearly the end of the world.
So it was jarring to see them all huddled here, in the scrub of the Grove, heads surprisingly together in focus. Hiding behind a big bush, like they were trying to ambush something like a rabbit or a ground owl.
“It’s our last mission” Bananathaniel quietly replied.
“Look,” he said, pointing off to the distance.
Capochin squinted. It was just the Godpoke.
Looked like Godpoke had hiked all the way out to this patch of wilderness as well. Perhaps they were admiring it, perhaps taking a break from a longer trek, he couldn’t tell (or at least he couldn’t tell from this distance). They were looking over one of the many flower patches that tended to dot the grove outside of the settlements.
The Godpoke turned to look at them, and everyone ducked behind the bush.
Capochin mentally chided himself about doing that, they weren’t still stalling for time. There wasn’t a grand plan where they all had to be sneaking about.
“… Really? You’re still keeping tabs on the Godpoke?” Capochin asked, this time much quieter.
“Yeah!” Patty answered, only semi-quietly.
At that, the rest of the present bizzyboys all pulled out sheets of paper. Vibiano, Alexei, and Patty had gotten what looked like writing pads, while Ban (the full name felt like a mental mouthful for Capochin) and Grujaja pulled out scrap paper on clipboards. They all also had pencils. Somehow.
The amount of coordination on display without the participation of Hector or himself to keep them wrangled was impressive.
Squinting a bit at what was scrawled on the pieces of paper, it looked like a hodge-podge of random notes and scrawls.
“Well, thing is, is that Patty wanted to make the Godpoke a card, and then she realized that we don’t know their name” Alexei started.
“None of us really know anything about them despite watchin’ them for a while,” Vibiano remarked. “It’s kind of weird actually if ya think about it”
“So?” Capochin shot back.
“So we’re all solvin’ the mystery of who the Godpoke is! Aaand maybe doing bets on what’s real or not with them” Patty said, glancing down at her notepad.
“Gruja’s wagered like 60 that Godpoke’s a catfolk” Bananathaniel muttered.
“It’s not even been two days and you all have turned to gambling?” Capochin hissed, near incredulously.
He was thankful that so far, Hector hadn’t caught up to them yet. It’d been something some of the others had brought up, that the Bizzyboys had been acting “weirder than normal”. Nobody had said anything to Hector, they were all giving him a bit of space after all of that. Which meant that any suspicious bizzyboy activity was being brought to him instead. Frankly they all had better things to be doing, like helping clean up after the whole mess that was made as a result of the near-apocalypse.
“Gimme those!” He growled, grabbing all of the pads and papers to review what exactly they’d all worked out.
Which was, surprisingly enough, not much.
Patty had noted that they seemed to like being in nature and hiking. It was odd that He kind of knew that already, but also did not??
He was beginning to see rather quickly why the group had fallen down this rabbit hole. If it hadn’t been pointed out to him, he really wouldn’t given it a second thought that none of them actually knew anything about Godpoke.
Or at least, nothing significant. Small things, like how they seemed to be really eager to go on hikes, or how they at least were seemingly a very kind person. Or baring that, hadn’t turned down the whole idea of being godpoke despite ostensibly only being here on vacation and it perhaps literally dropping on their head.
Godpoke was a surprisingly open book in terms of how expressive they were for a fellow who flat out didn’t talk. On the other hand, nobody knew their name. Or really anything that wasn’t surface level.
Vibiano had noticed that they had a rather limited wardrobe, probably fishing for an excuse to start making clothing for people.
Grujaja had apparently seen them just straight up grab a snake and throw it away from themselves at some point in all of this. Also noted that apparently the godpoke was hard to hide from, and on top of that was good at getting people off of their (proverbial) tail. Or at least good enough at it to keep Grujaja off of their trail.
“How’s them throwing a snake make them one of those cat people?” Capochin asked, turning to Grujaja.
“Did it too easily, reflexes were fast” he responded. He was getting a bit better about not wearing the cone as much. Granted he was still wearing the cone today, though only partially, enough to show his mouth such that he could be understood. He knew what Grujaja had said back on the spire about not wearing that cone more, but some part of him figured it'd be a slow process for the habit to completely disappear.
“But then where’s their tail?” Patty asked.
“Could just be tucking it down the pant legs, but that’d not be comfortable in the long run” Vibiano remarked.
“If they were any of the kinds of people who’d even have a tail they probably wouldn’t be hiding it. At least not for that long” Capochin added, glancing back over to the godpoke.
They were seemingly just looking at all the plants and birds that were in the area. Hadn’t moved an inch. Honestly surprising given the fact that the group was having a whole conversation and they hadn't turned to notice them all, hustled behind a very large bush.
They had all seen Godpoke. There wasn’t really a sign of a tail there. Granted he was also just straight staring at them now, squinting to try to see if there was anything that he hadn’t spotted about the godpoke that Grujaja had somehow spotted.
"Explain how a person without a tail is somehow a cat person" Capochin challenged to the group. Most catfolk usually had tails.
“Bobtail cat person” Grujaja simply stated. An interesting defense of the catfolk hypothesis but it didn’t have much to stand on.
“Wait a minute, has anyone asked them directly?” Capochin said, interrupting what sounded like an ongoing debate the whole group was having about Grujaja's bold claim.
They all turned to look at him.
“… ah, right. Yeah, they’re tight-lipped.”
Nobody’s heard them talk for themselves during all of this. Capochin hated to throw his own hat into this dumb little ring the rest of the bizzyboys had made, but there wasn’t solid proof about whether or not they were just unwilling to talk for some reason, or if they were actually mute mute.
That being said, the fact that it'd occurred to him to actually just ask the Godpoke rather than follow them around and gossip a bit was why he was "the Boss" after Hector ascended. Capochin had half a mind to just go over right now and just ask them to put the whole thing to rest.
A twig snapped and they all ducked behind the bush a second time.
Capochin swore to himself before poking his head back out from behind the bush he’d found the whole gang hiding behind.
“…. Fuck” he stated simply. It'd been a while since he broke out the swears, but this warranted that.
The Godpoke had completely gone. Grujaja wasn’t kidding about the Godpoke’s uncanny ability to simply just vanish at the drop of a hat.
Hector had the Godpoke running around at first about “solving the mystery of King’s rotten letters”, mostly shocked that the turnaround time for godpokes in this one instance had been near-instant. Usually when a godpoke retired it took a bit to get a new one worked out, partially due to how particular Megapon was with it on top of the other things a good godpoke needed to be. The turnaround time between King and her predecessor alone had apparently been quite a while before King came along (or at least he remembered reading that somewhere).
This was an actual gods-damned mystery on their hands. Not one quite like King’s disappearance, but definitely a head-scratcher of a puzzle. Who even was this person???
Granted he supposed they didn’t need to learn that much about the Godpoke. Any crumb about them would do.
Call it childish, but Capochin’s curiosity had been piqued.
Though perhaps his wasn’t the only curiosity. It was something to think about, whether or not to bring anyone else who wasn’t a bizzyboy into the fold of this little plan, trying to figure out literally anything substantial about the Godpoke. That and the fact that Patty had a good idea for once, that they all really ought to make them a thank you card for stopping the apocalypse.