Chapter Text
The team had returned to the Farcade HQ: a large ship filled with apartments, an assortment of different halls and conference rooms, a cafeteria, and practically anything you could ever need to survive in outerspace. At this point, Flappers had been with them for over 6 months.
Gobbles had let Flappers use his IPad for the day. He coaxed Flappers to promise to keep it clean and grime-free, of which the dolphin saluted to. One thing that helped ensure Flappers would complete tasks is if Gobbles called them ‘quests’ and gave him rewards afterwards.
Soooo… as a reward for keeping the tablet clean, Gobbles would give him some possibly expired, swirly toffee he got from a claw machine. After he told Flappers this, Flappers eyes widened and he immediately pressed his nose against the tablet, scrolling over to the next educational video.
Gobbles decided to leave him to it, smiling a little at his enthusiasm.
Most game characters, at least of children’s games, were programmed with a set personality and directive without any other background information established about themselves: such as their educational backgrounds or past learning experiences. They didn’t understand conflict resolution or critical thinking, which is why the objective of defeating the villain would be so easily accomplished on their worlds after a particular amount of time.
Being educated to some degree on the ship was required for their level of work. The team greatly relied on direct communication, so being able to read and write was very important.
The dolphin had caught glimpses of most of the videos. He remembered some numbers and even remembered the symbols for the letters of a, b, c, d, e, f, l, and r. But his brain totally crashed once he realized that they had ‘capitalized’ counterparts. He decided to take a little break by doing literally anything else. Flappers hadn’t been as energized after… the incident… no matter how optimistic he tried to come off to other folk. But what’s with a little fooling? As long as others were happy, he was!
Floating through the hallway, Flappers found a particular stack of papers nailed to the wall.
“C- uh… ie— luh— nuh- duh- ehr.”
He took a deep breath and put the sounds together, before attempting again. “Cuhluhduhr. Cahluhduhr… Calendar? Calendar!”
“Hooray for Flappers!” He did a quick, happy loop-de-loop in the air. Flappers then quickly went flipping through the calendar, looking for any potentially exciting events coming up. He found nothing, but then he looked back on the current day— which seemed to be Feb 14. He knew that date!
Naturally, Flappers burst through the doors of the break room and clasped his fins together, his eyes turning into hearts.
“COMRADES! Love and flirtation is ABRINK!!”
“Huuuuh?” Kit squinted. She was sitting on the couch with Kaboodle.
Kaboodle was checking their work notifications on a laptop significantly larger than himself. With a furrowed brow he absentmindedly said, “Good for you, man.”
Only Gobbles seemed to actually get the memo. “Uuuuuh- OOOOOH! Guys, it’s Valentines Day.”
“It is~ VALENTINE’S DAY!!!” Flappers further established as he swam around in zany circles while suspended in air.
“I gotta be honest, I don’t know what the hell that is.” Kaboodle, the sentient boulder, stated.
“Yeah, I don’t know what that is either.” The bipedal cat murmured.
Flappers set the scene by randomly producing a puppet show stage out of thin air and playing the part of the sock puppets.
“There is an ANCIENT LEGEND where a really evil shark tyrant banned marriage and a really good dolphin called Saint Valentine wedded lovers with each other behind the tyrant’s back! Valentines Day was created to celebrate the union of lovers!”
The dinosaur considered this origin, before realizing he couldn’t recall it. “Oh. The story’s a little different on my world. There was this Triceratops called Valentine who was really good at spelling. He was put in jail by the Alphabet Pirates for freeing the letters. Through the bars, he wrote a message to his lover signed with ‘From your Valentine’. Except the ‘F’ in ‘From’ was replaced with an ‘S’ since ‘F’ was the only letter he hadn’t unlocked. So it was really ‘Srom your Valentine.’ Haha.”
Kit was genuinely curious about this and asked “So is it a love festival? Or, uh, a marriage festival?”
“Well, yeah, it’s a love festival! People from all over find a special person in their lives and spend an entire day of the year with them.” Gobbles smiled while hugging himself. “It doesn’t have to be a lover. It could also be a friend or a family member! Love comes in all different shapes and forms.”
Flappers jumped up from behind the couch and scared Kit and Kaboodle, Kaboodle muttering a ‘goddamn’ under his breath. “They give them chocolates! And presents! A-and kelp cakes! AND EVEN LETTERS!! When you ask someone out, you ask them to be YOUR VALENTINE!”
Kit considered this then turned over to her self-alleged backpack.
“Hey, Kaboodle, do you wanna be my valentine?” Kit suggested while looking at her tiny robot friend reminiscent of a rock with limbs.
Kaboodle stuttered, before asking, “WHAT? Why, even-???”
“As my best bud, dummy!” Kit elbowed him then tucked her forearm around his shoulders. “I care about you alot, y’know… And I feel like this would be good for team morale?”
Yeah, for team morale.
“We could go to… Laser Station or something.” She suggested.
Kaboodle groaned and said “Fine. But I’m not doing any of the sappy stuff.”
“No sappy stuff intended. I have a girlfriend.” Kit dismissed, stretching her arm out into the distance— and cringing at the thought of being with Kaboodle romantically.
After this, Kaboodle connected the pieces together and very clearly understood the situation. His eye narrowed. “This was an excuse to go to Laser Station, wasn’t it?”
Kit grinned widely. Kaboodle sighed with the corner of his mouth perking up at the gesture of being chosen specifically to be included in some activity despite his temperaments. Laser Station was pretty fun, he’d admit, especially with Kit.
Kit would have went with Lulu— but there was little to no internet reception and she was attending to some really important business over 1,000 parsecs away. Her heart ached, but she knew that the human would be back soon. She’ll arrange something nice for her until then. Anyways, Kit REALLY wanted to go to Laser Station and buy that cool T-shirt Lulu always wanted!
“Boy, I don’t even know who I’d ask!” The dolphin stuck his tongue out and pressed his flipper onto his chin in deep thought.
“Me neither. I don’t really know any other dinosaurs.” Gobbles scratched the back of his bald head.
Flappers also scratched his bare scalp with a single fin. “And I don’t know any girl dolphins or other female aquatic creatures for that matter.”
Kaboodle asked “Would you be fine with any— uh—terrestrials?”
“I’ve never met a terrestrial, before! Unless a bird counts as a terrestrial?” Flappers said dumbly.
“…It kind of does. Also, we’re all terrestrials, Flappers.” Kit mentioned, the hands in her lap gesturing to the rest of the crew.
Before the dolphin could respond, Kaboodle pitched in with some important information. “I’m not! I came from a region where everyone floats in nucleoplasm for the first few years of their life.”
“Oh, right!” Kit nodded furiously, almost embarrassed that she forgot that factoid.
“Soooo you’re aquatic?” Flappers questioned hopefully, since nucleoplasm sounded like a valid substitute for water.
“Semi-aquatic.” Kaboodle firmly proclaimed.
“Oh, man. Well, I’m glad that I’m HALF not alone in being aquatic!” The dolphin exclaimed, sticking his tongue out at the end. But his expression immediately solemned in favor of more deep thought.
“Wait…”
After he gathered his thoughts together, he restarted his statement. “Technically, since there are three of you… three times two…”
He muttered some math to himself before shouting, “I am ONE SIXTH not alone!”
Gobbles nearly jumped out his seat and congratulated his friend, clapping. “That was really impressive, Flappers! I don’t even know how to multiply yet.”
“I watched a video all about that! I never actually saw any math, though.“ The whale relative squinted.
“ANYWAYS, we’re going! Buh-bye!” Kit waved them off and left to the hangar with Kaboodle.
Flappers frowned, realizing just how much he wanted someone to go with too. But he didn’t want a friend; he wanted a special someone. His blubbery body extravagantly collapsed on the headrest of the couch. The dolphin’s lip wiggled and his eyes went all blurry with tears. “I’m gonna be so lonely.”
The dinosaur felt genuinely sad for his finned friend. He was fine with spending Valentines Day alone, but he felt the need to call for action—at least for someone else. He leaned his head in his crossed arms on the couch, looking up at where the dolphin lay.
“How’s about this: I help you find a date!” Gobbles pitched.
“THAT’S A FIN-TASTIC IDEA!” Without delay, Flappers grabbed Gobbles and floated with him into the hangar of the ship.
They entered the aforementioned hangar, but instead of checking in with the front desk Flappers dove straight through security and into a pod with Gobbles.
"Woah, woah, wait, FLAPPERS!"
The cetacean buckled his and his friend’s seatbelt, placed his flippers on the yoke, miraculously had obtained the keys from the front and then placed them into the ignition. With the startup of the engine and Gobbles’ pleas, they zoomed off into space.
After realizing they weren’t going to die, the dinosaur’s heart slowed and he said ‘oh’.
"I don't think we were allowed to do that,” Gobbles tapped his fingers together
"Also, I don't think I've ever seen you pilot a ship before!”
The dolphin was focused on the road…
…or- uh- space…
…But snapped out of it to reply to Gobbles’ comment.
"Oh, I did it aaaaall the time on… my old planet." Flappers frowned, fins calming on the yoke. There certainly seemed to be some truth to that, as they hadn't bumped into anything on the way out of the hangar or in space, proving a sense of spatial awareness he didn’t seem to have with his own body.
Gobbles responded warmly. "Well, you're really good at it! B-Besides the initial shock I had there, heh."
"Thank you!” Flappers quickly beamed, wagging his tail fin. It was odd how easily he switched between being incredibly hopeless and incredibly excited.
This won’t be so bad, Gobbles thought with a smile.
…
After a while of wading through nebulas and debating on where to go, the super dolphin finally brought up the elephant in the room.
"I'm sorry for hurrying outta the bay like that, the security guys are INSUFFERABLE." He rolled his eyes.
"They ask me if I have clearance, a license, a criminal record, or if I have a detachable dorsal fin, a detachable flipper, or a detachable fluke!" He wiggled his tail.
"All of which I do." He whispered over to Gobbles, despite the fact no one else was there to hear them.
"But it's just... so... AGHHHHH!-“ The dolphin bellowed before taking a break from steering to lay his head down on the panel.
“It was so much more fun on my world.”
Flapper’s flipper traced the headboard of the vehicle with a distant look in his eye.
The learnosaur listened intently, fiddling with his tie. His brow furrowed. He understood that all too well as anyone in Farcade would, until a particular memory came up from his last day on his own game world.
—
He just stood still as his friend tried desperately to keep himself together, literally, after a giant letter ‘Y’ had cut him straight down the middle. Red. The small squeak in his voice as he teared up, trying to understand what was happening. He tried pushing the pieces of his body back together, but after the struggle stopped he fell into two halves upon the ground. And it all turned red.
—
With that aside, Gobbles was so f___ing glad Flappers didn’t have to witness that firsthand.
Unfortunately, the dinosaur only retained half of what his bud was saying and swiftly tuned in.
"Playing the educational games on the tablet is SO EXHAUSTING! It's a lot more fun when you're teaching me! You make things actually make sense!" Flappers ranted.
“Oh, heheh, thank you.” Gobbles felt really bashful at the kind words.
He really didn’t deserve his dolphin companion and he interpreted his fluttering stomach as an expression of mild guilt.
“You teach me a lot too, Flappers! How to stand up for myself, how to do Kung-Fu, and- and so much more I don’t have the proper memory to recall at this moment!” He said, not helping the stars in his eyes.
“Golly…” The super dolphin’s grin went wiggly and he curled his lip, trying not to seem too happy for whatever reason. “But really- you shouldn’t be saying that to me! I mean, you’re teaching me how to get a girlfriend!”
Gobbles nibbled at his own lip and played with his hands, remembering the main quest.
“Yeah… I don’t know a thing or two about dating, but I sure hope this works!”
The dolphin contemplated. “Hmmmm, what game world should we venture off to?”
“Maybe one that practices the moral of companionship?” The dinosaur proposed.
“Or a really exciting one with high stakes where one of us has to save the other!” Flappers squealed.
“Or a dating sim?” Gobbles squeaked.
“Thats…
…perfect!”