"Hop aboard the train, Charlie!"
"It's gonna take us to the banana king!"
"I don't see any train, all I see is the giant sneaker."
"It's the choo choo shoe, Charlie!"
"The choo choo shoe!"
"Hurry Charlie, its about to leave!"
The pink and blue annoyances climbed into the sedan-sized sneaker, vocalizing their own choo choo noises. They went on like that a while before Charlie finally responded again.
"Yeah, I forgot my boarding pass, I'm just gonna walk."
Off Charlie went, apparently trying to tune out the dual chorus of "chugga chugga shoe shoe" coming from Charlie's...friends. He disappeared into the forest, visually grateful to not be followed. Pink and Blue were secretly grateful to be left behind for a while.
"That Z was a good idea, Blue," Pink said after Charlie was far enough not to hear.
"It was your idea to have it respond to Spanish, that was even better than my idea to be scuba diving. Speaking of, what was up with the fugu fish?" Blue asked, leaning against the heel of the shoe.
"I was watching one of those cooking channels on Youtube last night, fugu was the funniest name any of the fish had,"
"Ah,"
Pink leaned back too, and wound up more on Blue than the sneaker. The two were close, although how close they were they didn't care to admit to anybody. It might let on that they were capable of complex thought, and so far they've been running their whole business on the fact that people were easily fooled into thinking their skulls were barren wastelands with tumbleweeds where brains should be.
"How many times do you think we can trick Charlie into following us to secluded locations?" Blue asked, trying to be nonchalant about the physical contact.
"The cut of money we got from his kidney gave us enough money to pay off the practical effects guys for a while, that vortex was the ticket for this one, I think," Pink waved their hand, "I'm just glad he didn't want to get in the shoe, we blew too much of the budget to make it functional, we would've had to pull it like a carriage for him,"
"Sometimes I can't help but feel bad for him, he's so gullible," Blue mused, almost getting up to see if they could catch up to Charlie in time to arrive at the pyramid together, but was dissuaded when Pink leaned into them with a bit more purpose, "but he is the only person around with possessions, and he does owe a lot of people money, so I guess it works out,"
"Yeah," Pink agreed, not really listening, "how long do you suppose they'll let us be the go-betweens? I mean we do have pretty unconventional methods of distracting Charlie. I mean we could have easily just taken his kidney when he was sleeping in the field, we didn't have to lure him to that fake cave you built for Larry and his guys to hide in,"
"It's more fun that way, Pink," Blue rested their head on Pink's, "and anyway, if we had taken his kidney there he would've relocated to elsewhere in the forest and we would've had to find him again. It took us long enough to find him the first time, I thought Larry was going to take our kidneys,"
"What was Larry's beef with Charlie again? Was he the shrooms guy?"
"Yeah he was the shrooms guy, he's the reason Charlie believes we're all unicorns and we can fly,"
"He thinks that all the time though,"
"Yeah, thats why Larry wanted Charlie's whole kidney," Blue gestured to demonstrate how much money Charlie owed and how fucked the two of them would have been if they hadn't been able to get enough to cover the costs, "and thats also why its easier to approach him like we're a bad fever dream, its easier and more fun,"
"It is fun," Pink conceded, then turned to look up at Blue, "But wouldn't it be nice if we could get this business over with and go live somewhere nice? A motel maybe? Maybe grow our own weed to sell so we don't have to keep making money off of Charlie's debts?"
"We won't do this forever, Pink, we only have a couple more people lined up and then we can leave Charlie alone," Blue ran their fingers through Pink's hair, "in the meantime we can have fun seeing how much we can make this guy believe is real,"
"And then we get to be together? And we don't have to act like idiots all the time?"
"Oh, I'll always be an idiot as long as you're around," Blue grinned and poked Pink in the rib, making them curl over into Blue's chest.
"We should catch up to Charlie," Pink sighed and sat up, just in time for Blue to catch them in a kiss.
"This guy just wants the furniture he lent to Charlie back, he's probably already taken it,"
"But you had the whole 'Banana King' thing planned! C'mon Blue, you're right, lets go have fun with this,"
"You sure?" Blue prodded Pink, unsure if they had actually returned to their previous rapturous enjoyment of absurdity.
Pink stared off into the space over Blue's shoulder, clearly pulling their best 'head empty' look.
"Banana King, Charlie!"