Note: This is the finale in the triad of 3 chapters I'm forever calling 'THE GAUNTLET'. What I mean is that this is the last super long chapter in a row. If you've made it through this, you can make it through anything this fanfic might offer. I assure you that the rest of this episode won't be like this, mostly. In Food Freak Fortress the long word count was a story tactic to emphasize how wasteful the family conflicts were. In Paper Beats Rock it was meant to cover a week's worth of time. But this chapter takes place in the span of one hour. In ONE house. So why's it so long then?

Well, because it's my favorite chapter so far. That's about it.

I mean, this whole chapter is more of a side plot than anything. Like a TV episode. It doesn't HAVE to be here, but it's more fun if it is. I treat this fanfic as like a time capsule for myself. So this'll be an interesting phase of my storytelling vision to look back on.

XXX

I wrote a specific scene around "Run" by OneRepublic. It's from 2021 and not y'know, 2007, but I don't care and neither should you. The actual song choice for the scene is up to you if you want though. Power to the reader, I say.

(Chapter contains 3 illustrations only able to be included on Deviantart and AO3, not FFnet)


Chapter 5: Heist Buddies (~26k words)

"Let me tell you a story of two faces. On one rests a bond - a bound bond - between a party of 2, grown throughout the week by every CD they have collected. It has now reached its climax. But on the other rests the family, the strength of a bear. By Heather's own doing, these fine fellows now look to them for the same. Perhaps time together… is just never quite enough. Yes, that is a reference! Hoot hoot!"


ACT I: Off the Rails


He… was once homeless… Nothing more than about 2 weeks prior.

This house had no detail. But it was full of potential.

A nighttime scene… A large man who carried him in…

Some wretched racket protrudes just the same as solid light through the open bedroom window. Far beyond it resonates, that commotion. That endless string of words that travels from the pit to tower, high and lone, where it spouts itself into the only room. Housed by the painted walls, any goer would paint a new coat like wrapping paper over this box to fill the space with some charm of their own, to escape from the lampshade of an early light. Even past the grip of the windowsill brightness scatters over the mushed cloths on the blue bed. Despite that, there is comfort still in their homely softness, and character in the sports posters all over the walls. Whether filled full or barren empty, a home's a home, anyone would suppose.

One clumsy clumped ball comes to have the sunlight injected as a glow into the outline of his fur. The golden rabbit - once homeless a couple weeks prior, if he may recall - tumbles out a cardboard box on the corner of the floor, impressively remote in a confined space. He sprays some flimsy tan straw from the bed made of it, puffing the remainder out from the jittery cracks always left between his lips and teeth.

Some remains in his coat. It's like he carries the only rustic item in the room on his own rustic, raggedy self, standing apart from the paint and plastic while standing up to view. Only out the window, where words rumble on beyond any ounce of context, do the leaves of oaks sway in the wind. The wind does a good job blocking out the tone of those conversing, or arguing perhaps, but the fact that anyone was speaking at all could only be a spawn of his imagination.

Imagination, huh? On the floor one foot gets cooled by sleek wood boards while the other scratches over the rough texture of an old carpet. Abstractly symbolic, maybe, but his thoughts take no part in speculation that strays past the walls of reality, or the walls of this room. And again, he shares none of the artificiality of the room as a walking hay bale inside of it. Caves are made of rock, but that rock is organic. If this were a cave, surely the echoing of the archaic cuts in the earth's skin would come flooding through his raised ears. The image of a cave at all leaves him. This is a room. Not a cave. His eyes follow what he sees.

"I've returned to my… fabricated domain." His inner voice lacks the substance and life of an extrovert. It also lacks the freedom of an introvert trapped in the black dome of the mind. It's neither timid nor dormant, but existing as just an entity. Just an entity.

Such a claustrophobic yet free space jumbles his emotions like knotted rainbow yarn.

He turns to the wall.

Before him he's left by his own mind to view a golden rabbit encased in black, colorless lining. Comparable to a lake's water surface rid of its wrinkles. In a tall frame from floor to roof, this image carries itself as a beam between heaven and hell reflecting the earth lying in between. Even the bed and old gym shoes contain, make up, belong to the earth. He's there, through that screen, staring back at himself, and while the optimistic fitness-graphic poster crammed next to this thing encourages him to expel some weight from his stomach, his stomach in turn must've combusted entirely and left the hideous humps of his ribs to show under his chest. Underweight certainly.

The green of the puke anyone suspected would've brought his stomach this low into impoverished depths must've gone to his eyes… the only part of him that took a bit of nature wherever he went. Still, no one expects the hungry in the aisle of the full. Having incentive to lose weight at all had to be a blessing instead of a burden, he assumed.

Nothing in the room speaks to him the same way the song of the wind does in an open plain. Full of color yet, and so it distracts him from the otherwise flat, boxed layout of the room, as his cardboard shelter was. But no green forested vines to lift him from the pits. No dandelions to keep his seeds of thought tucked back so he can blow them all away and soak up the yellow into his soul. Only he, himself, and the creature (for what he may well be known) moving to replicate him in a time-freeze.

"My mind is empty, but my eyes are full."

He turns back from it, and nothing changes. Bickering, as the tone suggested, does come louder and louder from the window, but the incongruous and sudden crash and rattling of leaves against each other storms these sounds away as something of the imagination. It was far too unnatural, for the crack of a branch meant a bird must be there, but no bird sang. It must be a placeholder for him, that sound, to fill some crack this bedroom split apart.

"And there's no life anywhere…"

The door into the room creaks harshly open, and a man clomps in his slippers. Gray pants leaning a bit unevenly on one side. Stomach slightly bulged from a sweaty white shirt. Fortunately the armpits see the concealment the rabbit sought by a thin green jacket over both his arms.

The rabbit scurries back into his cardboard box, back into the straw.

"...except for this hairy eater of cheese whiz."

He watches the man parade the room, then approach him.

A bowl of soft yellow gets thrown down onto the floor next to him.

He sniffs at its base carefully.

"What is this object before me? Maybe it symbolizes the divot in my soul, just as the divot here is filled with empty- FOOD?!"

"Eat up, lil' fella," the giant rumbles from overhead. "I'll be in the basement if ya need me."

How could it be… that someone could track a meal down for weeks, but then be fed to by some humble and terrifying stranger a meal that tracks its own hunter down daily? An omlet of spaghetti, tomatoes picked fresh from leftover pizza, and canned carrots to top it off. Why he… couldn't think. Could he ever? As it hunted its hunter, the meal ate away his brain to replace it with only the vision of food down the stomach and flesh in the ribs; The noodles would coil around his bones to strengthen them; The wrinkled tomatoes would ripen up his blood; The carrots would coat his eyes in screens and screens of youthfulness and vitality! But young as he is, and hungry… he cannot think, again.

"My eyes are deceiving me yet again, day after day. But I'll eat the food anyway because I am very hungry, and it looks very soft and delicious. Let's begin."

Somehow though, when he begins to eat and sends his taste buds into frenzy, his mind shares none of it. He eats. That's all he does. By the time he munches it all down and fills his face full on the inside and out and lifts his head up, the man is gone.

A paper airplane comes through the open window and lands on the floor. He picks it up to unfold it. It's a note, which he reads aloud. The words that then exit his lips speak from a different, much more awkward fellow, completely apart and divided from the tone inside: "'Hello. We are about to launch an all-out attack on your house. Sincerely, R.P.S.'..."

He searches the room for the sender.

"Uehh… who? HUH? WHERE?!"

A raccoon and opossum come flying from the window, rolling through the air, carrying the power of the sun on their backs!

Wait. Stop… How did the story get here?

XXX

Aaaalllllright, put the party bus in reverse for a few steps please, there's some missing plot points here. Everyone's probably wondering how RJ and Heather ended up in this situation.

There is a certain middleground between funny and serious. And that middleground is… awesome. Such perfectly describes not only the intent of this whole fanfic, but the birth of the hedges we know and love today.

It was just like any other day. The Bronze Age. 3026 BC. A happy married couple - let's call them 'Happy' and 'Married' (they have a third wheel named 'Couple') - leave a hedgerow in place after clearing land for a farm.

Back then, hedges were a mark of human synergy with nature. Raccoons and opossums would flock in and out of these things to listen to the farmers playing tracks from Aerosmith's ancient-ancient-predecessor: Arrowsmith. They were a little-known band, appreciated mostly by niche hedge-wielding farmers like Happy and Married. Oh yeah, the farmers also harvested some stuff from these hedges. Like nuts.

Here comes that random timeskip that changes everything significantly. Now we're in the 21st century, bros.

First off, we have no clue how RJ came to be. He kinda just… happened. But he is a soldier under the banner of George Washington.

Meanwhile, Heather grew up (details withheld for lore purposes) into a little furry noodle the internet will regard with all due respect (said no one ever), and her and her dad joined up with Verne. Now some time later Heather saw new big guy on campus, and everyone knows Heather likes new big guy on campus. Big-guy RJ (he's more like average size - so average-guy RJ)... Average-guy RJ does average-sized things, and everyone already knows how the movie goes so who heckin' cares.

RJ wasn't actually too quick to open up to Heather. It took about… only a week and a half. Okay point is, they've come a long way since dancing out their younger nights underneath the stars.

Like, some stuff happened over the year, y'know, like how Heather became friends with Bambi from a convention for animated animals. And then we get to Heather's whole musical number last chapter, yada-yada-yada, now here's a redundant flashback to remind everyone of what they might've just read about. That's right, INITIATE FLASHBACK SEQUENCE:

...

The others finish the number. "We will… bring the… beat… to… Hea-ther!"

"Oh, and, by the way," Heather cuts the end of her track to say. "We're goin' on a family outing today."

"Wanted to put my vocal cords to use, right? Now guess what? The family's back together AND I'd bet they totally love you now. You're welcome."

"What? These guys are all looking to me? Awesome sauce."

The family can't keep their eyes off her now, that kid.

...

Well this 'family outing' started with RJ… as Heather's nominated taxi driver. That's right, on their red-hot RC Lamborghini, RJ drives a mound of animals miles farther down the Hedge until it does, in fact, show an end. On the corner, in the most secluded edge of suburbia, RJ's neurons party over the house there, sporting a completely open window.

A standard, white rectangular box from top to bottom. Two floors. Pointed as a toolkit by the red-brown bricked roof sloped up. No detail, but full of potential. On the side, a small open window proves the kit full for his desires. Well-concealed in the shade shrouding that face, and himself blinded better by the sun than an insomniac, he spotted it immediately yet.

Its untold riches lift him from his seat in the car, though not the edible kind of loot this time. Couches, knick-knacks and television - he practically sees it all through the solid walls. He'd packed an x-ray sense just for this. No one else sees anything but a wall and a window when they follow him around the bend of the Hedge. Here's what they don't know: It's his window of opportunity.

RJ glances once at a certain little opossum.

Verne objects to his side quest, 'to fill up the last empty bit of the cave', he lies. From a misunderstanding by the rest of the family, Verne smacks a shopping list of magazine cutouts into his face and offers a deal: If he manages to get this bulky meal for the family in the next thirty minutes he promised to be gone, Verne will finally hear his case. Pluck the marshmallows from his ears. If he had any.

RJ snags Heather like a stuffed toy but of course Ozzie objects then. Then Stella objects to Ozzie's objecting and pulls him to the side. Okay. Dunno what's up with that.

Finally, for herself, Heather patters up close enough to block RJ's path. "What happened to the whole family outing thing, y'know?"

RJ tugs Heather closer by her skinny shoulders.

"Are we seriously gonna leave 'em hangin'?" She sounds so disheartened by just the idea.

He speaks as smooth and low as he can to send the message. He needs to in order to let her know, clue her in on some unwritten story up the mountain, through that window. A new page of the journal never before seen. "See the shopping list?" He waves it out.

She nods like a dumbo.

"Screw the shopping list. The cave's full. This ain't for the food, no, not at all. Sweetheart, listen, we're gonna have an adventure, you 'n me. There's no 'next time' for this one-time offer, riiight?"

Their fur starts to merge side-by-side, perhaps for the first time that hectic morning. Heather's heart rumbles, hungry enough for all the fish in the sea. RJ hoists up the netting, and there is her bounty all the way across the dock, a thousand steps that shrink to one. In song, she told him to show her. Here's her chance. By the gateway of a high window, bubbling high with her wildest spouts of imagination into the greatest life with him.

It's time for some food for the heart, an eager nudge of their hips together agrees. Some guilt that resides in her hidden grin, pretty blush and slight tail flick flush away at RJ's resulting ecstasy to one simple "sure" she gives in.

Believe it that just a "sure" will HARDLY suffice what's in store for the next thirty minutes.

Heather's a bit reluctant to follow, but lets him take control. They approach the Hedge, humble and prepared.

"Besides, we'll be out lickity-split…" RJ faces the house and says it very cinematically, nearly as if he's being sarcastic: "WHAT could go wrong?"

"Ooooooo, I like the sound'a that." Hammy taps his foot rapidly in place before speeding over to RJ and Heather to join them, leaving just Verne, Tiger, and the porcupines to carry out the original plan. "Can I join? Can I?" he pleads.

The complete team RPS sets off on the valiant journey, wild and free.

"You have thirty minutes, RJ!" Verne reminds him. "A second later and your toes are done for!!"

From this distance RJ's ears don't flinch an inch before the three of them hug the tree closest to the Hedge and climb it. His brashness prolongs Verne's steam-filled huff.

RJ forgets about the list entirely right after that.

Team RPS overlooks the house from the branch they take post on. The longest of these pine branches slants inward towards humanity's own, poetically. Only the Hedge separates them from the house and the captivating lure of its open window. As always, this intimidating structure was merely a landmarker rather than an obstacle. Just a way to remind them that this was no forest they were stumbling into. The world of 'civilization', as those creatures called it. Only for the sophisticated. But the Hedgies… they saw things a bit simpler. What did the humans truly possess that made that species feel so inclined to parade as they pleased, making executive judgements on what was this and what was that?

It was puzzling, certainly. There was no way they would ever make sense of it.

And who cares, they don't NEED to make sense of it. Let's blast this baby's crib right open!

"There it is, gang…" calls RJ. "'The Impregnable Fortress'..." After an incredible second of awe and awesomeness and 'wow RJ you're so cool' and stuff, he completes a tiny diagram on his arm in marker and shifts the team into action swiftly. "Team RPS, group up-"

"Wait, RJ." Very closely, Heather whispers, "Why don't we just… y'know… Let's leave Hammy somewhere this time? Or something?"

RJ draws an eyebrow down. "Hey, no, we're a team; That's not part of MY drill-"

"I know your drill, but there's no next time, you said… right?"

Hammy eats a booger from his nose at the time RJ assesses.

"Wanna have a good time? Leave him out, pleeease. You wanted this."

He did want it. Which is why RJ reworks his plan accordingly, bobbing his head around. "Alright, Ham-squad, scout us from the yard. You are officially… la sentinelle." He passes a yellow walkie-talkie into his lap, then winks at Heather, "'Possum Pal, you 'n me. Let's MOVE out!"


ACT II: Big World


In the bedroom, the golden rabbit still cannot make sense of that message, from 'Team RPS' or whatever.

"Being butt-naked is awesome by the way," comes some teen girl's idle chatter muffled outside the open window.

Alertness shoots its way up the golden rabbit and makes him stiff.

The window pane above the sill shudders slightly, tamer than him. It chooses to freeze when the hook of a fishing rod clinks onto the edge of the windowsill. That hook stabs into his vision and jolts the one sad sagging ear straight upward. The humble atmosphere, the tranquil nature outside does not justly portray the scars of murderous intent clawing their way up his raw skin under the aging, cracking roof overhead.

The rabbit shivers and raps his foot for too long and too silently at that.

Some feral man of the jungle trumpets, "MAKE WAY FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE!"

Two feral bodies come flying through the open window and crash dead onto the bed. Just like universal healthcare.

This is RJ and Heather. So now they're back at point A. Honestly, these are hardly 'heists' anymore - They're kinda just busting into houses. 'Heist Buddies' rolls off the tongue a lot better than 'home invasion buddies' though.

RJ and Heather drop to the floor. Several personal ornaments, um, 'decorate' the otherwise dull room. Jungled piles of sweaty clothing - y'know, piles of 'personality' - smother the unswept floorboards abundantly enough to mean a lousy parent is responsible for the lack of laundry. No, whoever's living here must be single. Several posters occupy the walls depicting those Indiana 'sports teams' they've heard about. And this place has that hotel room smell… Or at least, a used hotel room. A… very… used hotel room. Yeah nevermind, it smells like a basement cave. Yep, whoever's living here must be single.

"P.U.," describes RJ precisely. "So what is this, that wrong stop we made on the way to our animated animal convention?"

Just then they find a golden rabbit, a scraggy twerp of sorts, peeking from blue sports shorts. He's not even symmetrical - one shoulder lowered sadly more than the other, and a sagged ear on that same side. A pathetic kind of kid who trips out of his corner in a panic against them.

"Oh! Phew!" lets out RJ. "I was expecting a 30-year-old man in an oddly suggestive Easter bunny costume but this'll work juuuust fine." He cracks his knuckles and marches ahead.

Not a step in, and already this hangout's becoming an unwelcome group call. Heather grouses over it.

"Ver- VERMIN!" The tall rabbit stumbles over his uneven feet.

RJ takes light steps towards the sack of a guy. He presses his voice between his lips, and out he sends slickly: "Awwwww, you look like somebody peed on the clump of wet hair clogging the sink, now guess what? I have a deal to make." He comes up and grabs the golden rabbit's cheeks. "I craaave. I crave caaandy. Milk Duds. Milk Duds are my soul. You ever had Milk Dud soul?"

"Nnn-no?"

"Listen hobo, I've got blisters on both sides of my mouth but my will is infeasible. Unimaginable. Satisfy me with those scrumptious balls of caramel and choco-lata and you will be spared from 10 years of bad luck (rabies). Unle-eeess you'd like my sweaty vermin foot down your THROAT!" he ends on a stomp.

Spirit frail, the golden rabbit slips backwards and gets stanced up in place, or at least attempts to do so. "I- I'm not into what you're into…" He throws some nervous fists. "But put 'em up! I'm a… I'm a loaded gun, y'got that mates? I'll whoop ya!"

RJ and Heather shoot one unamused glance.

A sick 3-pointer later (it was so sick), away the golden rabbit goes into a mock-up basketball hoop, down into a wire trash bin full of crumpled paper balls. RJ and Heather slam the doors of this closet shut and secure it with a backpack suffering from morbid obesity. It's not long before wimpy objections come from the other side.

"Now that clear's clear…" RJ gets out a yellow walkie-talkie and yells "HAMMY!" into it.

Hammy's end of the line jumps frantically in his hands from his post taken on the backyard patio. He smashes the thing onto the side of his head. He observes the inside of the house through the screen of a big sliding glass door into a dining room. There's a staircase coming down from the second floor to the back of a laser-infested living room, seen through the dining area's faint green doorway.

They get rang up with the all-clear promptly.

"No humans?" assesses RJ to Hammy. "Got it. We don't want any 'surprises', capiche?"

"Surprises? Uhhhhm, I can work with that," he reckons.

"Great. No surprises. Agents Rock 'n Paper are movin' in." He tells Heather, "Thirty minutes on the clock. Ready to roll?"

"Yeah, we're gonna have some fun with this!"

Weakly from the closet the golden rabbit comes: "Can you guys let 'Agent me' out now-?"

The bedroom door smashes shut in response.

"Okay, that's… fine," he quivers.

XXX

RJ's shadow runs the wall of the dim hallway outside the bedroom, and Heather's scampers briskly behind, repeating his exact movements in order like student to teacher. They sneak through the vacant upstairs region of the silent fortress.

In the tan living room, the string of a yo-yo falls from a ceiling lamp shaped like an upside-down bowl. It works as a rope for RJ to slide down onto a nice coffee table. Wavy blue carpet covers the floor like the empty sea surface. He stands on the only island in sight, apart from the couch behind him, and the large flat-screen TV on its table in front, freestanding in the middle of the room. Messy cords snake from the TV over the waves of the carpet waters. Like the ocean its life and treasure only lie beneath, for the house as a whole appears to be suspiciously empty. Not even the carpet, not even the ocean itself rustles. Its life and treasure only lie beneath.

On the surface however, the entire room is covered from wall-to-wall by red lasers stretching in random directions, some not far from the longest hair on RJ's fur. Warm sunlight from a window near the staircase on the wall of the room turns some tripwires pink. Those in the darkness? Sinister red. The coffee table becomes his hideout in the middle of the web. It's so quiet he only hears the buzz of these lasers.

"Heather…" RJ breathes. "I've got a bad feeling-"

Interrupting his adventurous lil bit, Heather's tail flops into his face; butt plops on his head down the yo-yo string.

"Oops." She joins him.

"Heather…" RJ tries again. "I've got a bad feeling about this. Let's sneak around 'n find out how to disable these booby traps."

"C'mon RJ!"

She disappears from his side, diving deep into the sea. The bubbles of her livelihood and youth swirl around her as plays carelessly in the lasers on the floor, daring him to join.

"Woaaaah horseeey what're you doing?! Don't mess around with those!" RJ shouts.

She shows those lasers who's the dancing queen. "'Don't mess around'?" She even gets a pelvic thrust or two in there. "Then like why'd you bring me here, y'know? YA WANTED IT, BOZO!"

A little MP3 player - she snagged it from a drawer on the TV stand - comes flying against RJ's foot, rumbling some peppy chase music. Vibrations come up RJ's leg. They bake his blood but stir his anxiety.

All Heather's dancing sets off the security system and bids the 'booby traps' away. A hideous, blaring ring fills the room when RJ flings a yo-yo at her. She throws her hip to the side to dodge it, shimmying her stubby legs farther into the room with a giggle.

She goes "whatever" as a taunt.

"TeenagEEERS…" RJ growls intensely. "They talk weird and their palms are far too sweaty."

The endless sea of carpet welcomes him into the great blue world of her own, the playful dolphin.

He goes flailing his yo-yo at her, marking every inch of the room with his footprints. For every miss his failures throb progressively louder at an identical rate to the blood in his head. In the very back, illuminated on the black rim of a billiards table, she throws another "whatever" at his swiftest, most aggressive shot.

Storming up a racket over shelves and seats, his efforts remain futile. He's outclassed. The yo-yo mummifies his body as the snake of his anger strangles his torso.

RJ gets himself enraged trying to catch her - him the hunter and her the rabbit. "NRRRRGH, you're so small, 'n frail, 'n fragile!"

So in contrast to his bitterness, RJ little expects her to ask "Do I look vulnerable to you?" gentler than a cloud after shaking her tail at him from the open exposure of the coffee table. Every reason to believe she's fresh meat teases him.

Something clicks in RJ from the humor in her grin and the bounciness in her tail waving his way in jest. His eyebrows loosen, just to tense up again from a thirst for fun instead of frustration. Now he is friend, catching friend.

A new pep bouncing his step, RJ sends the yo-yo at her one more time - more of a tickle at her kiddy sense of supremacy than a snatch. As expected, she escapes to the optimistic-orange couch behind the table.

"Whatever."

RJ doesn't mind it this time. "Don't think you've won, buddy! The only thing that'll stop this raccoon's schemes is lo-bo-to-my, bay-BEE!"

Though the chase music from the MP3 player stops all of a sudden. RJ does too. With a grand, heavenly, ear-piercing entrance, Verne appears as a ghost swirling his head, hands clasped in prayer.

"Woah woah woah, Verne, you're DEAD?!" RJ thinks in shock.

"First off, gotta say, you are handsome as hell, RJ. Absolutely beautiful. The humans better put you on the front cover of 'What's MANLY Today'."

RJ clues himself in. "Ah, so you must be one of my 'figments'. The real Verne's too baby to admit that."

"Now, I've been summoned by our great lord in heaven to kick you into shape, RJ. He says the chicks up here like raccoons with a hardworking personality and a tail length of approximately 11 and a half inches. Also, God said stop having fun."

"Why's that?"

"Oh don't tell me you ALREADY forgot it, RJ!"

"Forgot what?"

"Your ignorance, it's KILLED ME! I gave you ONE job. Are you THAT unreliable? Untrustworthy?"

He slaps that little list, that little grocery list onto his nose. It has the deadline written in fat letters at the top: 8:30. The clock in the kitchen, visible through the doorway from this spot, already reads 5 past 8.

For all the house has done already, he quells it. That reminder flips his bed into the water, his slumber from responsibility abruptly awoken. "Check the list… Check the time… Work work work." he anxiously thinks.

"See what she's done?" Verne highlights.

'She' refers to a happy lazy Heather on the couch, slurping on a soda cup from Arnie's and hammering the TV remote.

Verne's angel folds his arms. "You don't plan on getting the job done alone, do you RJ?"

Not particularly, though when he inspects her, his heart fights against his mind. Up there with earbuds in now, singing a song without any sort of embarrassment or hesitation her countenance would've had yesterday, her 'happy tail' going off the rails. But of course RJ of all geniuses can recognize the immense use in her even in her leisure. She's always been one of the lightest and most agile.

Still, RJ has the instinct to express, "Look, I'll take candy from a baby but I'm not taking the Heather outta Heather. That cuteness is… infectious."

"You know you can't afford another slip with me RJ… if you want me to give in…"

Watching the clock in the kitchen tick, both his ears face struggle and pain between a singer and a supervisor.

"…And you want the others to think you have a good record, don't you RJ? After how Heather brought the family together you wouldn't wanna be the one to… tear it apart."

He - reluctantly - looks at the list again. Every name comes up on the paper as another mouth waiting to be filled. His enthusiasm falters at the responsibility. So what does he do? He grunts deeper than a chasm and puts the paper in his teeth. As close as he gets to chomping it apart, it stays clenched there instead, so he can dig a multitude of the typical food-stealing artillery from his golf bag. He makes quick work.

And Heather makes a quick notice. "Errrm, dude, like… what're you doing?"

He gets up there and throws a lampshade over her head.

"Hey don't kidnap me," Heather throws out. "I'm not worth much."

As he organizes the toolkit of his bag in front of her, he hurries his repining words: "Quit being self-depreciative for a sec' 'n help me work, okay? Once we get in the swing of things it'll only take a minute!"

A shot in the mirror sweeps his mood down. He put the thing over her head to save himself from her frown, but her arms try desperately to get it off with the same disheartenment. Then when it comes - when she cries "Wait, work?!" - RJ finds he's done no more pain to her as to himself, toes clinging nervously to the couch cushion. "You mean like… y'know? Work work?!" Her fun-loving spirit shatters beyond a broken state, cracked in her tone, overkilled beyond recognizability. "Like Verne's work?"

"Only a minute!" RJ reiterates, just as distressed as her in response to a heartbroken reaction. He calms himself just for show. "One. Minute…"

"But what if it's not?" Tension vanishes from her upright body to be softened with a melancholy display of sad knees and brushing hands.

"Then we'll have to do the TV thing next-"

Time… ticks down the longer they contest one another. He can't see her face. Nothing above her chest, which itself is now unkempt from the fidgeting of her claws. RJ's lower lip drips away from his mouth, his ears sag, and his eyes shrink to hide underneath the eyelids that come to repent for a time that may never have its next chance. As deja vu the suburbs can appear, the foreign setting they've drowned themselves in proves there's a mark on their eyes yet to be left.

RJ grasps his hands around the lampshade. He promises, "We… will HAVE time… for a good time, Heather - all your 'rad gigs' 'n 'good feels that hit like the bomb' - if we pull out all the stops… right now."

Pops the lampshade off her head, and now he sees her face over her body where it always has been, countenance not ignored nor obstructed any longer, expressing more distress than the alarms from the room's laser system which have since fallen silent.

Heather tilts her head down-hearted. "But I thought we came here to like, just chill-"

"Uh, nuh-uh, we came here to just chill under a… CONDITIONNN." Surprisingly he takes the time to show her the shopping list, for he is real eager to leave the couch. "Which is why we should get the work done preemptivelyyy so we've got time before the half-hour!" He reflects her argument by executively declaring: "…To the kitchen!"

"Hey, no, wait!"

She follows him hustling to the right of the coffee table, leaving them at the foot of the doorway into a kitchen luminescent with visions of edible wealth. All for a price, and a very fatiguing one. "What's up with this, dude?"

"Priorities. Gotta set 'em." RJ checks over the list. "Now let's get this heist started, Verne…"

Verne himself requested a smoothie cup somewhere there. It shines to them through the doorway, in perfect availability on a big oval table. Either RJ or Heather latches sight onto it first, who's to say, for no matter what both pairs of eyes remain there. Wheels begin to turn, one clockwise and the other a counter rotation.

The latter comes upon Heather, switching a sulky frown to a sly focus on RJ's little object of attraction. "My point!" She sprints ahead to challenge him.

RJ lets her games reel him in again. They leave the blue carpet and therefore abandon the welcoming waters of the sea, but with music again, Heather claims dominance at the foot of the doorway. Her tail flicks at a cassette boombox to start up 'Duel of the Fates' when they race across the planks of the floor to the kitchen table on the right side of the broad area - the dining room.

Up there, they fence with a pair of silver forks over the smoothie, clashing endlessly. Until then the prongs interlock. Their fork heads caught on one another. Prongs stuck between one another.

So uh… Metaphor?

Intertwined, foot-by-foot and eye-to-eye, Heather smiles at him after such a demonstration of hers. "See, this is all like… fun."

And the MOMENT she says that, that small frail fragile crook to his operation, RJ's amusement dries from his body, ashamed at himself and in mental strife. His fork tears loose and he throws it to the hardwood, jittering loudly when it lands.

"RJ?!" Heather lets out. "What the hell?"

RJ goes straight for the smoothie cup, declaring himself the winner of that bout in the name of progress and promise. "Pri-or-ities. I'm not dealing with an angry Verne today. I'd rather deal with-"

And the MOMENT he picks up the cup, the table cloth under his toes begins to wrinkle in confusion. The lid removed, the purple smoothie's been drunk to the bottom already… by a tiny red ant girl staring back at him.

"Hello!" she waves.

RJ squints longer.

The existence of more residents in this lifeless villa dooms RJ's shoulders to a permanent state of stiff concern.

"RJ…?" Someone taps his shoulder nervously - Heather. "It smells like-... Oh god…"

She directs his attention to the left half of the room, the other half of the room. Walled and fortified by dark wooden cabinets with white tops, fractured patterns of red scattered over them, a full fridge and all other appliances - clearly the bounty of the house… infested by thousands upon thousands of ants. They spill from all cabinets, high and low, many collecting themselves at the larger of the two counters. L-shaped, the stub side lined up ahead of RJ and Heather, just a short canyon between it and the dining table. Every ant stares at the two of them, yet not one speaks or crawls.

Something lifts them by their seats up from the table. Two baseball mitts made of ants - literally, MADE of ants, to their squirming displeasure. Heather literally squirms too, and hugs herself. Clumped together and morphed to mimic the objects, they have the power to defy all physics, carrying them through the air to the tiled floor of the counter area, some ants climbing over the undersides of their legs, making their consciences squeal.

They're taken over the surface of a stainless steel tabletop in the center of the area. In the midst of the ant civilization they drop near cabinets at the back face of the room.

"RJ, I…" Heather grabs RJ's arm and puts it over her. "I hate bugs."

"What? You 'possums eat bugs; You eat anything!"

"Ewwww, not me." She hyperventilates. "They crawl like, all through your fur, y'know, they whisper creepy things in my ear just to be JERKS, and some of them are… ARE-!"

That young ant girl from the smoothie reads off a slice of cheese just at that moment: "Brothers and sisters and fathers and else: Now introducing: The one who steps on us more than all of humanity, our aunt ant, the big momma… our queeeeeeen!"

The aforementioned silvertop now in front of them is well-maintained enough to work as the throne for some ant with an, uh, intriguingly-large abdomen that probably a thousand ants alone could fit within.

That… thing is the first to show, but the rest of the tyrannic ant queen comes out above them, wearing a blossoming crown of lettuce. And a scepter as tall as the room in one of her legs, created out of her own subjects. "Ohhhhh? Are these two thieves here to interrupt our family feast?"

RJ has his gut kick itself to reply. "Not our problem missy. You're hostin' a noob show here, c'mon look, it's all subop-ti-mal!" He points fingers at the ants targeting the fridge before the cabinets. "You can't get the perishables first - they'll ROT, stupid! BAD money! BAD money!"

"Disrespectful!" the queen gasps a bit sneeringly. "Complete heresy to my royal line; Who do you think you are?" She snickers.

"RJ," Heather warns him sharply in fear, "Seriously. Totally. Do. Not-"

RJ pushes her aside to throw "Who do YOU think we are?" at the queen. "Your antennae are probably so stuffy you can't even tell our gen-der."

"Let's see…" The young ant girl zips onto RJ and then Heather's upper eyelids, feeling whether they have eyelashes or not to make an easy call. "Male… Fe-male…" Beside RJ, she gasps annoyingly. "Are you two DATING-?!"

A handheld vacuum comes from behind his back like a loaded pistol and sucks the ant from the floor without a glance from RJ.

The other, like, 999,999 ants scream.

"That was my daughter!"

"That was my niece!"

"That was my daughter AND niece!"

Get ready for a wallop of an event, and its prelude - RJ blows on the open end of the vacuum before muttering to Heather, "Inbreds… Charles Darwin's ol' nemesis."

"Ye-ah… mine too." Heather forces her tail and back end to ready themselves for the circumstances just as they've been forced upon her.

Ask the narrator, and he'll say the rabbit was the real prelude of today.


Recall a blur of black and white at the start of this? The two 'adults' of the room? Yeah, after removing him completely from Heather's life outside the Hedge, Stella pins Ozzie into a big oak tree by his chest. He puts up no fight for their little 'chat'.

"Now what in the hell wuz that, Oz'?!" storms out of her after such a simple and brief objection he made to Heather's plans earlier.

Nowhere in the know-how but shaking for his life, Ozzie ignores the strange existence of her burning attitude that still portrays itself as being quite uncalled for. He just pleads, "Wait wait wait, I-I'm only in my 40s! I've only been intoxicated once and it was RJ's fault, I tell you! RJ's! My heart is pure! I still have young, blossoming roses on my bush. I have so much left to live for, pleeeeease!"

Stella blows the hair off one of her eyes and stares him down.

Ozzie screams. He squeals "Why are you looking at meeeeeeeeee?" as high as a mouse, whole body against the tree - now without Stella's input.

She lets her hand off his chest, and he stumbles forward (theatrically).

"This is downright pathetic Oz', yuh gotta put up some kinda fight!"

Ozzie sniffles like a whimpering toddler. "O-okay…" Cupcake claws poke at her body a whole foot short.

Stella is not intimidated.

"I fight with words," she corrects.

Seriously, he sounds just like a baby when he asks: "Then- Then why did you shove me into a tree?"

She pins him again.

"Got a machochism?"

"...I'm gonna say no."

"Then shut it." When she lets him loose, his immaturity doesn't respond. Stella shows him the house as bright as day. "Well go on, I don't got all mornin'! Make your case!"

He takes control over himself and finally begins to sound like an adult. "But you just told me to shut it-" Another scarring look from Stella drives him off that route. "I- I just don't understand what you're saying, Stella."

"Quit stickin' your nose where it doesn't belong; I'm sayin' that lil' flower of yours knows wut she's doin'!"

"How can she know what she's doing when she doesn't know…" Flash a hand to the mysterious house. "...WHAT SHE IS DOING?"

Stella scratches her chin. "Well, yuh got me there."

Checkmate. Thus begins the next round of verbal chess.

At last, Ozzie's regained passion for the topic. For the longer he stares at the immense walls of that house, the more saturated Heather's image paints itself over it, x-rayed from the inside. "This is not something to take lightly, Stella! And especially not without-"

Her hips sway. "Without wut? Without you?!"

"Yes, without me! And without a plan! They're going in bliiind; They don't know what's in there! WE don't know what's in there! Walls as high as heaven; doors as locked as Verne's deepest, darkest secrets. What if the Sniffer appears? Alas, you suppose just the three of them-?"

"O-kay look. Is she clingy to the raccoon? Sure. But she's got quite enough maturity to make her OWN choices, live her OWN life, 'n take her OWN risks!"

"This is her safety on the matter, not her maturity. I think that should be made clear."

Stella doesn't buy it.

He goes on. "Why, she… weighs less than a spec, she's thinner than a twig, and so long as she is a child, I have the PARENTAL responsibility to keep watch over her. She's-" He straightens himself and stomps not an inch from her foot. "No… she is vulnerable."

The fire's been ignited. It heats up in Stella's face, hidden under the hair. Luckily, now that Ozzie IS putting up a fight, with words, she doesn't have to hold back. A bit innocuous she's tried to remain, and look how far that's taken her. He looks as rooted to the ground in the feet as in the head.

"Ohhhhh nowww, Mist'uh Big Man… sheeeee's vulnerable?" Stella tests in a sassy demeanor.

"Yes."

"Sheeee's vulnerable."

"That's what I just said."

"The girl comin' of age next week? Got a plan for dat? Huh?"

Ozzie, in fact, cannot help but concur. Just at the moment he goes to speak, he has no card in his hand to pick from, so his chest sinks low.

Stella's breaths become larger and fiercer as she eyes down Ozzie with the one fully exposed from her hair, fully-seeing. Every word coming out of his mouth, even those he doesn't speak, fuels the flame. And his form lacks flesh, for even if his shell is tough now, it is hollow within… The eye's the gateway. Always the eyes.

"I'll show yuh who's vulnerable." …Barely aloud. Something grows fierce in Stella's eye, the gateway again to the soul. She has something threatening. Very much aloud… "I'll SHOW yuh who's vulnerable!" She rips the white patch over her other eye away.

Waltzed right into a wall-less, door-less box of Stella's inner chaos, Ozzie can hardly find security even on an open plane, in sight, in mind. That flame explodes into a wildfire. He has officially reached the point - THE point - of no return. A mistake he cannot comprehend until a moment too late. All his motive and confidence falls as does his face.

"All that stage play stuff is gettin' to yo head, dude!" Stella shouts. "You're not treatin' her like a child, you're treatin' her like a… a human's pet! 'N I know, oh, I KNOW!"

Ozzie slowly backs away towards the Hedge, as he consistently finds no opportunity to inject his objections. Woozy in the head, fingers numb, thankfully Stella's relentless verbal outburst gives him no chance to pass out now.

Stella briefly notices the distortion in Ozzie's eyes, but does not halt. The longer he cowers his neck down, the height he loses becomes hers to dominate.

"You don't need to hold her hand and give her the say-so on everything she does!"

His breaths are sharp and weak. "I…" Her finger comes immediately against his large nose.

Not a bit of the momentum in Stella's fire extinguishes, shown in her one green eye exposed from her hair, consumed by the rage of the sun. Meanwhile, Ozzie's momentum makes him nearly tumble backward over his tail.

"Stop with all this babysittin' nonsense, and let that girl… no, that woman make her own decisions for once!" she booms as one final remark.

Leaves scratch at Ozzie's back. He still can't figure out quite where her attitude came from. He holds his surrendering forearms upward when he makes contact with the Hedge. Stella's breath treads over his whiskers. Her short snout comes poking right against his. At twice the size of her head, she makes his shrink to nothing. His brain depletes with it, and then his heart stabs at him. The feet go first - Stella presses the claws into the dirt. Legs lose consciousness next, and before long, Stella's image fades to black, even over her white, even over her one ardent green eye.

Stella jumps back from his feet when he collapses to the ground, effacing his fear.

"Vulnerable." Her satisfied grin stays briefly. "Alright, show's ov'uh, Oz'. Quit bein' so 'possum."

But it settles in when she kicks at his stomach. Yanks on his tail. Neither bring any response. If this's still an act, he must be fully committed to the bit. Foam collects in bits at his mouth. This isn't an act anymore.

It never has been. Something stomps on her flame. She mutters, stumbling in guilt and awe, "I knocked him cold…" There has to be help somewhere. None. Alone, but suburban bustle sounding near, she covers back her eyes at the carcass.

XXX

"This wire can't be growing thin. No no no. I won't let it."

Click.

"I promised… I promised Her…"

Click.

"What is that mysterious clicking noise?"

Recall that basement? That jungled dungeon? No one is to blame for not. That felt like ages ago; That story was written in stone ages ago.

"I can remember this moment. I remember that house. We were locked in. I was the key. I could've picked the lock, but my dreaded 'possum instincts… I… failed… her. And I hear those clicks here too, like there's something dangerous about this but I… don't know what. Sometimes, it just be."

EXT. - LIMBO

An intense odor of gasoline floods the stage. A few cars beep in the distance.

(Enter Ozzie.)

His limp body is clung to the side of tarmac. His eyes slowly open as he gains consciousness over himself. The scenery builds in sprinkles. As though he is glued to the wall, a bottomless pit of sky lies below him, until he lifts his head up, and the planet is no longer lopsided.

His tongue returns to his mouth. His arms shake when he places them on the ground. Metal wheels race past his whiskers. Distress is not expressed. He hardly shows any sign of self-awareness when he finally lifts himself from his back to his seat.

He trips over himself as if he is peg-legged once he stands afoot.

Cracks in the pavement part like the seas and expand into fissures. Boulders and fragments of rock rise from the earth. Cars crash into them, but the sediment does not crumble. Ozzie's feet stagger left and right, but he does not fall.

The plates of this suburban abstraction show their lines and break apart. Ozzie does not know what to make of the oncoming transformation, but his wide eyes wander everywhere. Walls from the nearest houses rotate and transform statically, crunching over the rigid terrain to enclose him on both sides.

Bricks shoot like concrete bullets, colliding one-by-one into the wall behind him in the formation of a staircase. Ozzie sweeps his head around with his hand gripping his heart for one farewell to the solid ground. He follows the path upward into heaven, struggling to lift his leg for each step, panting, faint-hearted.

INT. - THRONE ROOM

(Enter Ozzie across a red carpet spanning the middle of the massive, pillared interior.)

A faceless king (apart from a coyote-like jaw) sits on the throne - black hair; devilish arms, 6 of them; decked in rich antiquities and a crown topped with gray roses that have lost their color. Under his collar he has a living, twitching eye embedded on his studded vest, but none on his head where they belong. He has ears, pointed ones like a cunning fox, though there are no other clues as to his being, aside from the fact that he is bipedal. Nevertheless, he is distinctly non-human in shape, legs half the length, closer in kin to Ozzie's own. He sits like a party host.

KING: So you have collected my invitation. You are already well on your way towards completing the ritual, Ozbat…

OZZIE: Oz-...-bat?

Wings hideously sprout from the top of his back at arm level, ripping through his skin.

The king has a slithering voice that weaves silk over his tongue.

KING: Yeeeesssss… you are the one. The one who carries the black veins on your back, but you are flightless. And weakkk. Child… You are my child…

Ozzie gasps and moans in pain on the cold floor, bat wings pulsing violently.

OZZIE: What… in the dickens are you talking about?

KING: You carry your own burdens on your back - dark wings that never let you flyyyy. You… belong to me.

Ozzie goes crawling over the blood-red carpet back the way he came, collapsing at every other movement.

He coughs repeatedly and dramatically.

OZZIE: All my life I've sworn to protect her. Keep her from harm. Even before the BLESSING of BIRTH spouted from the little bird bath fountain I swore I would cradle SOMEONE in my lonely arms. I would be a father. Now what am I? I may as well be eating cotoneaster if I cannot eat… the RICHES OF ADULTHOOD!... I have to get back to my daughter.

He manages to arise.

OZZIE: I have to…

KING: Insistent on leaving, are you? Then return to the mortal realm, if that is what you desire. I'll be busy playing poker with the ladiessss. Please do return quickly, and join us, perhaps!

Ozzie clutches his fist towards the throne, about to die in a limp state on the carpet again. His nails claw into it.

OZZIE: I am not coming back, deeee-ceitful devil. This place unwinds the very fabric of my brain! Huff… HUFF… MY MOMMY'S NAME WAS MARTHA… Blehhhh…

His tongue comes out on the deathbed he makes of the floor.

KING: So I reckon we will not speak again for quite a long time. Unfortunate. But know this, Ozbat…

He leans his head forward, and his neck stretches twenty feet to talk and slobber in his face.

KING: When you return, because you WILL return, not a second will have passed. You will still be the same mannnnn…

He blips.

XXX

"Wussup, dead stuff?"

That voice rings, and for a while he presumes to be dead. Frankly, in one way he was. Stella stands- or, lies in front of his eyes in that smirky, hand-on-hip kinda pose. He feels as though he is glued to the side of the earth again, but he's the fool for thinking the world's waiting on him. What's even the use? He's dead, this time with some raspy foam squirming inside his cheek.

"How long was that?" Miraculously, this comes out. Everything's fuzzy, limp against the planet.

"'Bout a minute. Y'know, yuh smell worse than me when you're out like dat. 'N I had to clean up after your… 'possum substances."

She'd left a pile of leaves next to his head, covered as napkins in his dried mouth foam. Everything past his teeth feels oddly sanitized. Ozzie sits up. "Oh."

Stella stands up like a grouch, huffs, and trudges along the outline of the Hedge away from him.

"Where are you going?" Ozzie asks, suddenly distressed.

She turns around and holds an arm out to the Hedge. "Honestly, if you are so worried man, why don't you come keep an eye on her?"

Ozzie regains consciousness and tranquility. He lets out a deep, soft breath and looks to his feet.

"No… you're right, Stella."

His head falls into his hands. A lump forms in his throat as his voice grows shakier.

"But there's something that almost kills me knowing that if she dies out in that world… It'll be without me…"

Stella's fire extinguished the second he passed out about a minute ago, but now any lingering sparks fizzle completely out. Her face cools as she releases a large, quiet sigh at the opossum's behavior - a hot mess, the manliest man being the weepiest and wooziest.

So she ambles back to Ozzie and places herself against him, gripping an arm over his back. He doesn't flinch.

"C'mon, big guy. There's nothin' to worry 'bout…"

Though he has everything to worry about. When he takes his face from his hands, the water in his eyes smears the setting like watercolor. Oh, what it paints - What does it paint? Twisted trees, pinecone bombs raining among them, striking at his fur. Not to speak of the gravest resting place behind him. The execution room. Ironically, he thinks for one second about hugging Stella close like a friendly teddy bear, for she is the most passive entity nearby.

"Y'know, you're a strong man, Oz'." Stella kicks one leg over the other. "Raisin' a girl like that by yourself… heh, I know the parent stuff takes sum work."

"Thank you, Stella. I need a good while to think about all this…"

"It's aaaaaallll we can do."

The two continue to sit there alone and relax as a slight breeze blows over them. In this moment it becomes clear how drastically the environment changes by crossing merely a few feet of leaves. While they sit in silence outside the Hedge with the occasional disruption of the wind, a bustling realm of possibility and uncertainty honks and hollers behind them.


They're at the pointed pincers of a million, or maybe even a billion. He lost count quickly. Point is, every ant flees far from the monstrous vacuum RJ holds. He shifts the ocean itself into the tightest corner of the planet.

The queen's abnormally-large abdomen buzzes furiously as her abnormally-expansive family trembles past her. "NO! Stow your fear. Join me, my children and 700000 husbands. WE ARE AAAAANTS!"

"WE ARE MIGHTY! WE ARE ANTS!" the army chants. "WE HAVE QUE-STION-ABLE MORALS!"

The ants join her. And then… what they create, what structure they create of themselves bloats the eyes of RJ, let alone Heather, twice as traumatized. RJ's mask squiggles off his face. Heather's eyes grow so large her natural eyeliner shatters. All for a dark red stadium shifting into place over the entirety of the kitchen, each joint and polygon defined by every individual ant crawling over the room like grains of sand. Many turn their backs to show themselves painted by juices and sauces for a moldable display of lights and colors all over the place.

The vacuum falls from RJ's sweaty hand. "The animation team went to TOWN on THIS one."

"Don't you see?" the queen narrates from the silvertop as a boxing ring of ants enclose RJ and Heather, and millions of servants join in the stands on the kitchen counters to holler and cheer. "Don't you see what the bees are missing? I, I have created one BIG, HAPPY FAMILY! They can become ANYTHING I DESIRE!" Unlike RJ and Heather, the ants mold and mingle as one unit, while they scooch apart from one another in the ring, sour to have their fur touch. "I have millions of loyal, brainless children to serve me. LOOK what I've birthed here before you. You are in MY WORLD! This is MY WORLD. We'll make it tighter than Alabama in this place!"

She turns her ant-scepter into an electric guitar to orchestrate the oncoming fight.

The boxing bell rings, breaking apart the mental argument going on between RJ and Heather right now. A very pronounced, militaristic ant climbs out wearing an army hat from a cherry tomato, and crumb medals over its abdomen - A general.

A general who, in fact, sounds exactly like a raspy neanderthal, or… a drunk washing machine, or something. "Oh yewww dun did it now, rodents! I'm going teh SPANK YEH, MAGGOTS!" The general blows a whistle with her (this is a woman) antennae.

The ants morph into one big human hand. Well, she (yes) wasn't lying, for it spanks RJ into the ground repeatedly like a fresh steak, leaving him limp.

"OOOOOO, now that's gonna sting more than ant poison in a few hours," some ant-announcer announces.

When Heather screams and stumbles into the ropes, every ant there bites into her skin and bounds her back with a slip of a yip. The general commands another league into a giant bunny slipper that boots her into the cabinet doors. Fortunately, she's used to getting kicked into walls.

RJ picks himself up and throws a whole container of pepper over the ants to repel them, and grabs Heather into his arm. He pants and searches for any means of escape, but the ropes of the ring stack taller, and taller.

Heather shakes her head back into the game. She cowers over his brown coat, a seed yet to have sprouted. "Did you really have to do this to us?" Bruised and bent, the two of them are at the mercy of the ants swarming in crowds at them inside the ring.

"We NEED the food!" he 'reminds' her, even though he can see her ears flapped shut. "We'll have PLENTY of time later, I promise!"

The insides of Heather's stomach twist. "You had so, so better let me eat extra for this."

Cradled in his right armpit, RJ flips her around and grabs her ankles. He cocks her back end and wields her backwards body as a firearm in his grasp.

"Tail flurry!" he screams irreplaceably war-like, "HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!"

He gets them through a sea of ants whipping the prehensile tail flurry wildly ahead.

"Now for the Furry Fist! HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-!"

Then flips her around to stick a boxing glove over her head when the ropes of the ring form an impenetrable wall blocking their escape. After being thrusted at it, Heather feels like an object. Stiff as a board, held tight as a bus handrail, holding his weight, but having her identity stripped away as her head goes into the wall, nothing but an expendable battering ram now in his arm. RJ shoves ahead, and cheers shortly afterward, which must only mean he's reached the living room doorway in the midst of the bustling ant crowd, while she's blind to it all.

The queen smashes her ant-guitar into the silvertop. "SEIZE them!"

An ant-rope comes, hooking onto Heather's tail and spinning them around, nearly jerking her out of RJ's hold. Heather's body is stretched beyond its limits from both ends as RJ resists, choking her out until by mercy the ant-rope flings her from RJ to slam her some ways away.

Two more ropes cut a yell from RJ short, taking complete unhuman hold of his neck and waist. It's luckier to come to him than Heather, for she'd likely suffer a heart attack.

The countertops burn redder. Every low cabinet door turns loose to vomit crawling walls and morphing piles of ants that drive the room towards the edge of its sanity. It's a plague. Utterly. However, what plague constructs the elegant buildings that come up now? The dainties presented before them from the ant-table set in between their new seats on opposite ant-chairs? Such rich dainties as a lavish mound of bite-size lettuce pieces, prepared with cracker-crumb seasoning.

What?

A couple mustached ants get two of the world's smallest violins and begin to play some lovely French diddles for them, just absolutely splendid.

Every window of the house obstructed entirely by ants, Heather says "Paris" at the moonlit scene of gaiety and romanticized adornment. "Pretty cool. Needs less inbreeding."

On these firm chairs, ants squirm uncomfortably against RJ's thighs. "What the vanilla pudding is this about?"

The little girl ant (Wasn't she sucked up by the vacuum?) crawls onto the tip of RJ's nose. "It's your date night meal! Congratulations!"

It's a good thing there's a heap of lettuce scraps in the way, parting RJ and Heather and their stern disinterest.

"So are you siblings? Cousins?"

RJ busts from his chair. "WE ARE NOT DATING!"

Heather squeals her way out too. "AND WE SO AREN'T RELATED!"

"But guess what?" RJ hooks Heather's neck proudly into the pit of his elbow and shows them the end of his golf club. "We're our OWN kinda family, NNNERRRDS! A family of we!"

"Yeah N-N-NERRRDS! 'Family of we', 'n stuff."

The cheeks of the queen flare, and her abdomen starts to twitch up. Soon every ant brandishes its pincers. The two violin-players smash their toothpick instruments into the floor.

"Uh oh," breathes RJ.

The queen orders, "…Seize them AGAIN!"

Again with the ant-ropes, corkscrewing in multiple layers up their torsos, paired together, fur tightly pressed. Despite that, they resist the predicament, and almost repel themselves from each other in response to this close contact. RJ bites and rips the ants apart to free himself from this cuff; Heather's little body lets her squeeze loose.

At that inconvenient moment where RJ lies dead on the floor, angel-Verne's ear-piercing entrance makes a second visit. Don't miss this chance. At the corner of the silvertop surface, the freshest red apple RJ has ever seen twinkles at him. If he gets the job done quick he'll have plenty of time for Heather. And after all this, he needs to be her hero.

Quite the hero he is, abandoning Heather to optimize his workload for Heather's sake. He swings out a cabinet door as far as it goes, decreasing the distance between the side of the room and the silvertop. He climbs onto the end of it and stretches for the apple.

"Forget the food, dude!" Clung high to the wall over the countertop on the other side, several vermilion specks begin to collect on Heather's fur. Beneath that, her skin turns pale now too. "They-they're after our 'awesome' while you're being… 'whatever'!"

"If they could just… sneak… ONE… TO DADDY…" RJ strains in rebellion as he reaches.

A paint roller of ants comes up and down the wall in Heather's direction. She abandons the counter entirely to flee to RJ on the other side.

This becomes a terror for RJ when by all good reason she slams into a hug against the cabinet door from below him. Her face begs for cover. Just before RJ's anxious fingers scathe the apple, Heather's force snaps the door shut and removes his progress. She tries her best to keep her terrified tail away from snapping ant-piranhas as RJ gasps "NO" and leaps in a desperate maneuver. The apple comes into his giddy arms. Landing on the ground, he adds it to his bag and marks it off.

A spine-chilling, girlish scream.

Head snapped in her direction, RJ finds her being engulfed by the ants. Her final scream gets cut halfway through once the very tip of her muzzle drowns in her greatest fear.

RJ cries "'Possum Pal!" horrifically.

He lunges his yo-yo for her empty hand as if he weren't far too late to set priorities! Just like the living room, he cannot catch her, not now. A fishing line of ants hooks him into the air by the foot, slipping the golf bag off his head and spilling the apple out to be consumed by a few ants on the ground. Wasted.

Down there, in the darkest realms of the kitchen, Heather's hand is consumed like an apple too.

RJ can hardly peek one glance through his fingers. "What have I done?"

The ants compile over where she once was, and for something of a humble moment nothing stirs but the unsettling legs of ants. Soon RJ's hands fall from his face. He breathes and wades fully underneath that image which draws near, even though the rope raises him higher. He acquires perspicacity for the future, and for the friend it's cost, he weeps.

Another ant-line fishes Heather from the pile to hoist her up to RJ, alive and well. It's never enough time - They only get one scarred glance at each other before Heather's line pins her against the opposite wall and ties her up with ants.

The queen raises herself to an ant-pedestal before Heather. "Now you will watch your boy toy here face his… consequences."

Heather abhors the sight of RJ being escorted to the opposite side of the kitchen, leaving her lonely and afraid. "No-o-o! I need you RJ-…" Another strand of ants gags her mouth.

"Awww, ants got your tongue?" The queen cackles devilishly… whispered in her ear, just to be a jerk. Heather squirms for her life, eyeballs wetting themselves. The queen has a set of fifty teeth, no, more than that, larger and sharper than any 'possum's could be. Each one lets out another scream, stream of blood in the veins of her eyes.

Despite shouts and objections and all kinds of fake deal-making, the queen carries RJ to the large, shiny sink. The rope holds him above the drain in the center, gleaming brighter in sunlight than a pit of flames. From the window it reflects from the bottom surface into his eyes, burning him alive at the sight.

"Plunge this pour soul into… THE HOLE!" It seems lightning cracks out the window once the queen gives the word.

The army of ants goes wild around the pit. With this tribal display, he's left to believe that the bottomless black tube of the drain is a pit of flames.

Heather's trying so desperately to free her limbs from her cuffs, including her tail - RJ feels it, sees it. Nailed like a skin on the wall. Eyeballs crystalizing.

In that same line of sight RJ catches the distinct red hue of the apple on the ground as well. He growls, but quickly finds it hopeless to become a badger. "Ohhhhh I screwed up. Too close to the sun, too close to the sun, too close to the sun-"

One smug leg at her lip, the queen breaks it: "Spoiler: Icarus dies in the end."

"No way Jo-se! I-I thought he just flew too close to the sun! Did he really die? No!"

The rope above him loosens instantly, and drops. Got no wings for that, in the harshest sunlight of the room.

"AAAAAAAAAA-!"

So once his butt hits the bottom of the sink… Wait, it hits it. Only two feet down, centered right on the little drain. He's no fit for it, unsurprisingly now.

"Queen, what's wrong with The Hole?" one ant asks.

"I've thrown so many pathetic, defective drones like Jim from accounting down The Hole; Why? WHY can't he be sacrificed?!"

Laughter festers and festers inside RJ until he becomes the true anime villain of the scene. Fear gone, all Heather's limbs returned to circulation, and RJ's butt nowhere near small enough to be an ant down a sink drain.

Here's a 'yare yare' from the ants, for RJ channels his inner might and rolls it like thunder to bellow, "YOU FOOL. I AM FORGED BY THE INTERNET. MY BUTT IS THE SIZE OF GOD!"

He busts himself free from their ant-forged chains with his fists. Even the general (who is a woman) hesitates to advance on him. RJ heads off the counter to the handheld vacuum left somewhere on the floor. The army of ants staggers and flees in terror.

Step one. He snatches the vacuum. Step two. The apple. Funny. He snatches the altruism to punt it into oblivion for now. Priorities. Gotta set 'em. For the queen standing on the countertop of Heather's wall, between him and her, he stabs the end of his little friend heroically in her direction. "Ants off my 'Possum Pal, Aunt Fanny. Looks like YOU'RE on a date with… the sucklord."

RJ and Heather play catch with a wink.

He lets the ants take in the constant sound of that whirring monster. The queen shouts for aid.

"Hurh," RJ begins to growl. "HurrrrrYYYYYYAAAAAAAAA-!"

Not a single ant comes. For the next minute RJ fulfills his responsibility. The one he should've set long ago.

Together with Heather free as a bird, they dispose of the ants upstairs, kicking open a set of doors that take them onto the platform of a second-story balcony over the back of the house. They dump the bag over the balcony, and RJ unties all wind in his body at once. One gratifying groan rids the house of this misdeed forever, he hopes.

Even though the entire ant colony lands on Hammy in the yard, removed from their sights ages ago.

"So now that clear's clear…" RJ tries again.

That's that. They find their way back to the mess of a kitchen those ants left for them to raid. Alone, at least. Finally, at last.

A moment down there and RJ's eyes already go full-on monkey-mode over the plain clock in the room, ticking urgently at just about 8:15 - halfway to the deadline having no food nor fun in their hands or hearts.

Routine, routine. Now Heather understands it. She consoles his manic heist-aholic itch with a happy hand to lend, or three. Perhaps though, it's just that she's far too relieved to let his stressful visage sour her any longer. He needs her help, and he admits it. With Verne in the way of whatever he's after, he should've just said it from the start. She would've helped without conflict. In her own words, "Duh, that's what families do."

It all lines up. Heather, RJ, and the ghostly Verne within his head, appearing to kill his ears once again.

"So whadda we need?" Heather asks.

RJ looks at the list. "Whatever we need, Heather. Whatever we need."

XXX

In other words, the entire dang kitchen.

They go for Verne's apple first, and shake an ant or two off of it. Siblings and spouses, probably. Apple - Verne.

Then BREEEEEE! goes RJ's whistle.

A Bust It! nut bar - Hammy.

Coffee creamer - Ozzie.

A brunch box of Fritz's - Stella.

Sardines - Tiger.

Who cares - the porcupines.

Together, they hold a box of PASTA™ brand pasta… only for themselves, actually. They go ahead and add their names on the list while they're at it, and a lip-smack too.

Arms full, an extra tail loaded, they drop everything they can find in that kitchen onto a tablecloth on the floor, removed slick as a magic trick. They bundle their load into a pack and complete the heist with one final fish burger left unattended on the dining room table.

A ceiling fan between the L-counter and the table facilitates a rope out of RJ's yo-yo. Blades idle, it allows him to get the yo-yo flung up there, and makes for an easy cross once Heather swings across the gap.

Aaaaaand there comes the fish burger. Heather comes collapsing to the floor, but she smiles beyond belief. Work complete lickidy-split, RJ promises the good life… and she lets her tail take his hand.

Together they prance towards the living room. On the inside, RJ whispers to angel-Verne, "Has God got some chicks for me now or what?"

Angel-Verne checks in on heaven. And even though in the entry line, God is shoving every kinda animal but humans down a trash chute into the same free-for-all petting zoo without care or judgment, Verne comes back and tells RJ, "Have you seen The Emperor's New Groove?"


Her and RJ leap abound on their own fun adventure inside the house. Hammy's shoulders sag low. She's having a rowdy rodeo at RJ's side in the living room, and it's a tornado in there, the goofy stuff they freely fling around. Compared to the empty space next to him on the chilly concrete, it saddens him. Now what could fill it? It's a lazy barren field of a yard behind him - nothing but grass, and only a grill on this here patio. La sentinelle, he is. What a job. What if he had another squirrel next to him, just a silhouette in identical form to him, maybe a relative, or just SOMETHING- Oh wait, it's just his shadow.

No matter how many times he throws his face at it, the invisible wall forbids him from joining the rest of the team.

Melancholy, left without meaning, he runs his hand down the glass. "I could've been your heist buddy, Heather. You used to spend time for me… not just with me." He turns his back. His back tries to turn back. "No no. I'm going to find a new best friend. Goodbye."

He takes himself to the side of the yard, eyes closed.

Long story short, he finds a garden of wind chimes and butterflies, befriends a wood tick named Fred, and commits garden gnome genocide to rescue an attractively vivacious female squirrel… statue. Made of stone, its kind heart 'n all. We're just gonna censor everything because of the gnome genocide part. It'll offend somebody, probably.

Naturally, he cuts a hideous hole in the backyard fence with a chainsaw to push the squirrel statue through.

Maybe Hammy's too dizzy from the gnome fight to tell, but the voice of the brown bug on his shoulder is as high as a hot air balloon - "FRIEND power!" Fred celebrates. "Yeay-uhhhh!"

Hammy then assembles a whole doll tea party set for him and the stone squirrel back in the right yard, behind the glass door, for he does not care anymore. He brings some more friends, such as Jeffery of course, sitting the cookie in a pink chair next to him. Finally, he sets the mood by hooking up some classical music on the radio - …What is actually, in fact, a heavy-metal remix of classical music on the radio.

"Ah." Smelling the sweet aroma inside his doll-sized teacup brings a smooth spiced pie into Hammy's nostrils. With a collection of rediscovered nuts to spare, "Today, Fred the Wood Tick, we live the good life."

"A-greed!" Fred goes back to sucking off of Hammy's shoulder for a 'tea' party of his own.

A wink, maybe. From the stone squirrel across the white table. One passed back from him. "Wassup, sweet-cheeks? The name's Hammy. Rhymes with Sammy. I've got some scars. Psychological, that is. Heard chics dig that stuff." He flicks his tail at her. "Wanna help me find my nuts?"

It says nothing. But she has such a way with words.

"Wanna be my heist buddy?"

Nothing.

"Wanna see how long I can go without blinking?" Hammy puts his eyeballs on the line for it, but somehow (don't know how) he cannot best her at a staring contest. But for one second, everything is perfect without Heather, without RJ, and a new gang of insect friends to join him.

All goes swell until a few little legs tap on his toes.

"IS THE BOOGEYMAN HERE?"

No. Some juvenile ants, standing afoot, rub their thoraxes in front of his legs. Behind them, a massive crowd. A massive family.

"Mr. Squirrel, could you help us?"

"We're reeeally hungry, Mr. Squirrel."

Conveniently, a giant pile of food stacked up on the floor through the glass door makes itself known inside the kitchen. Hammy glances there. And even, it's wrapped neatly in a nice tablecloth for anyone to treat themselves to. "Oh heyyyyyyyy, there's a bunch of food in there! I'm sure it belongs to absolutely no one, especially not my closest friends or something. Over here! Lemme show ya this super secret hobby of mine."

This is like pre-k level foreshadowing by the way.

So he helps them dig a big tunnel from the outside of the house into the kitchen through the floor. The ants go marching single-file.

"My super secret hobby is digging holes," Hammy says.

"Thank you, Mr. Squirrel!" comes all the ant kids at once.

"Now I am really hungry for a hotdog…"

The queen of the ants puts her front legs together and chuckles mischievously.

Hammy does in fact steal a weiner from some hotdog stand down the street, and his speed leaves a great impression on the humans.

"Was that a squirrel?" a kid gasps.

"In quite the hurry, the little guy," the hotdog man says.

"Oh, probably just off to find some nuts. They're simple-minded creatures," one woman assures them sternly. "What else would wild animals be up to? We can't go around letting our kids know they have feelings. Imagine what would happen to the farming industry! A vegan revolution? Come on, they have NOTHING to live for. Nothing."

XXX

"WOw, I have so much to live for right now," RJ cheers.

"I know, it's crazy," Heather giggles, "I have never been feeling more, like, in my life."

Holding the end of her tail, RJ escorts Heather to the TV area, both dancing against each other like there's nothing to lose, even humming to the tune of 'It's a Beautiful Day' by Michael Buble. RJ throws his bag down in front of the TV. The two face its gleaming corners and polished perfection on the black screen, joining a grip on RJ's club to boldly admire the diamond of the room, atop its wooden pedestal on the setup. From the window behind and kitchen to the right, a stream of golden silk swims around the living room and over the carpet. By their backs to the twinkling wonder of life streaming in from the outdoors, they claim the richest island of the fuzzy sea.

One foot atop the golf-bag-boat, RJ exclaims, "Alright boys and girls, feast your eyes on the GATE-WAY TO THE GOOD LIIIIIFE! WOOP WOOOOOOP! Now available in an eye-ball incinerating fashion for just $298.00 a piece."

"C'mon, say that thing," Heather softly urges.

"'BUT WAIT, I'M NOT STOPPIN' THERE'! Call right now 'n we'll double your order for NO extra-!" They both break into an immediate spring of laughter, continuing to mock the human lifestyle further.

"Dad would never let me live like this." Heather hugs the club to reel to his attention the reclusive smile squished up by the head of it on her cheek. "I shoulda known you wouldn't break your… y'know, promise." RJ witnesses her gaze somewhat longingly at him. Whether it's true he can't decide, but her irises might've just quite alighted since the crumbling horror of their pleasure he brought upon them during the tussle with the ants. Promise he shall.

"Promise you this too: When you're with a raccoon you ain't ever livin' today twice. Now go spread your sweaty vermin butt marks ALL OVER that couch."

"Alright, the Heather-spreader is comin' out." After a cameo from her dorky tooth, Heather heads for the couch behind the coffee table right away.

Meanwhile, RJ goes searching the movie cases. "For the record, she got her nickname game from me," he happily thinks.

"Whoop!" Heather throws her back onto the best seat in the house and feels the soft fabric nurture the doughy structure of her pillow-like body. The couch holds her in the squishiest form of heaven, after a long, long few minutes of work.

After scooting the back of the Heather-spreader all over the area ahead, she makes some whalish kind of exhausted moan that disrupts RJ's ear from behind.

"Hey I changed my mind," says RJ. "Get up n' help me pick a movie."

"Chill off my grill, dude." She flips on her 'possum-mode switch for this one: "Like aaaaaaAAAAAAAaAaAaaa…"

He shovels a bunch of cases at her face and wears a derpy himbo voice. "OoOoOo, I'm hypnotizing you with moOoOovies so you'll piIiIick one!" Then comes a deep, droning, alienish hypnosis: "'My name is Hea-ther. I am go-ing to like, keep my big ba-hooty on the couch, and pick out a mo-vie, and be a pro-duc-tive mem-ber of so-ci-e-ty. Or what-ever.'"

"Heyyy!..." She ends up shrugging browsing his selection. "My bahooty isn't THAT big."

"Alright sugarplum, I call the seat the humans left warm."

"Jeez. Got your order, weirdo."

RJ divebombs beside her and offers her the remote. "Your call."

"Thanks RJ."

Her arm fur seeps to the surface of his skin, scratching at him with a new itch… Something else itches him too. Leisure is too easy to come by, as clueless as his grin is now, but how abruptly will it fade? On the right, over just the top half of Heather - her lower brainwashed by the cushion - through the doorway, into the kitchen, and on the wall, the clock ticks onto 8:45. More than 15 minutes past the allotted time; Less than 15 milliseconds it takes for RJ to gasp and spear his arms down his sides.

"Uhh-h-hhhh on second thought, we'd better not." Heartlessly chuckling as he talks, he's not too thrilled to imagine her reaction already beginning to swelter down from the tops of her eyelids. "I me- I me-an, we're already late, and boy I'm sure the family's gettin' hungry, so how 'bout we call it quits now, alright-?"

The rest of her… response never forms. Her countenance takes a U-turn. Suddenly she snickers, uncharacteristically mischievous. Anyone would figure it to be a raccoon, and RJ'd at least figure it not to be her, and she says, "I totally figured you'd say that."

"…What's that supposed to mean…?"

He finds his answer gravely, without any uplifting reassurance. For he cannot lift his rear at all from that seat, patched down by a pink, gooey substance that claws him down at any attempt to rise. This is all some game to her, and he, he is the prey suffering the real blow. The clock ticks again. He doesn't forget it.

And now, he finally says it: "You bubble-gummed my big bahooty to the seat."

"Oops." She wiggles the box of Sticky Stuff all in his face.

RJ stares at her incredibly sternly, so long without blinking that it puts Hammy's staring contest with that statue to shame.

She sighs, stands up and paces around his exact perimeter on the couch. "Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated, RJ? It's like, so simple… You got the food, now I get the fun."

RJ keeps his eyebrows lowered for a still moment. His eyes wander everywhere, multiple times over, nowhere on her - they trace a silhouette of her body. Finally, he lowers his chin to his chest and chuckles.

No objections, nothing like "we need to get out of here" or anything about Verne like the 15 timelines Heather's envisioned for herself to tighten her bones against. His head doesn't turn loose, or his soup bowl spill. She looks mindlessly, shoulders loose, the sheen of her slick facial presentation left without direction.

At the very least, she tries "Oh woooooow, chill guy, okay dude, gonna try and bribe me with your… good looks or whatever?"

Instead, RJ gets into his bag. Out comes the biggest bag of popcorn Heather's ever seen - larger than herself, which would suit her insatiable appetite - and perhaps greed - for instant gratification.

"Alright, TV time is now OFFICIALLY in session." His unreasonable enthusiasm wanders distinctly out of place in the silent house, and even in the demeanor that was just starting to heat and pop on this very couch.

"You're… not… mad?"

"Nope." He basically just cut her off.

"Not in ANY way… worried, or whatever?"

"Nope."

"Not even-?"

"Nope." - It boosts her uneasy heart rate each time his lips smack and slobber together from that word.

"…We're… gonna be late. Verne's gonna be all like y'know-..."

"Nope. I've seen Verne hit on a clock a few times. Trust me, he won't mind."

"Er- Wow… okayyyy…" Her fingers aren't quick to grip the remote. Neither do they wave the case more timidly than string. "I, uhh, picked the most meta film of all: '[REDACTED FOR COPYRIGHT PURPOSES]'."

From here she throws the disc into the receiving part of the TV. Static impresses upon Heather nothing different than the numbness her brain feels.

She leans her head humbly onto RJ's shoulder to try and relax, and links him under her wing in leisure. A bump from his head knocks her unsightly nest away. She drags out enough space between them for the whole couch to look empty. Her spirits spoil, and her face drops even in victory, throat pained.

"This DVD is enhanced with FastPlay." Just on time. There's the screen to distract her from his callous glare. "Your movie and a selection of bonus features will begin automatically. To bypass FastPlay, select the main menu button at any time. FastPlay will begin in a mo-m-m-mo-momen-momennnntttt…"

After glitching out, the screen cuts straight to black and blue placeholders, frozen with the message '[REDACTED FOR COPYRIGHT PURPOSES]' burning into Heather's eyes.

"PFF-Hhhha-ha-ha-hAAAAAAAA!"

A manic kangaroo releases from inside him. Taller and larger, larger and taller - RJ's head blows up into a cherry that halfens her distance from him. That's how a hallucination reminds her, of the blood-hued, family-breeding, sinister shark-toothed ant gnawing at her chance at the sweet nectar of life-fulfillment. Again, in no kitchen left to pull RJ away from her any longer. Maybe what comes is due, she dreads to accept: laughing, taunting, torturing. Addicting blue light sucks the moisture from her eyes also. The wide web before her screeches out her name in love just to break the back of her very own character. Her knees crumble on the couch. Why can't she just shut the phone and focus on what's right? The thing is, she's already put it on lock.

RJ wipes a hysterical tear. "Ohhhhhh I get why they say 'time flies when you're having fun'. By god, I am having more fun right now than a-anything you've put me through the past thirty minutes!"

The kitchen clock ticks second-by-second even louder than before. By every one, the profuse sweat forming on Heather's face multiplies exponentially. She tries to get herself to have in on his joke, but her expression transforms the redder the light besieges the room from all windows. A hiss takes that chuckle's place without a hint from her posture. But inside, she knows the creases coming over her muzzle have bubbled long enough.

"So are you having fun yet, Heather?" Treating her as some human's pet, RJ would be turning her cheeks into squash if he could reach.

"[REDACTED FOR MATURE CONTENT]!"

He gets a ball pit of laughter from that cutesy anger of hers too. "Ooo, oh, now don't get feisty. There are children watching, oh man. Like you." He gets her an Arnie's soda cup from nearby. "Wanna… wash down that attitude? Hmm?"

Silent, her frown grows immensely.

RJ teases, "Aww, is someone giving me a frowny-frown?"

"I never needed you in my life. I never needed the human-anything. This whole… y'know… was like one stupid… y'know! UGH. Damn, I can't like- like-!"

Just as always, she struggles and trips more on her words when they shove at her heart most. In the end it spawns more, and she stumbles more, and the feedback loop continues. She gets up and runs for the staircase on the left, phone to her chest.

Any words of RJ's she forgets from then on. Up the steps she goes, sitting at the square platform waiting for her at the top of the flight. The furniture is gone, RJ is gone, and all she can see of the living room from this spot is the vast carpet sea. Waving, in motion, and quiet.

Confining herself to these heights, her frown faded a little bit, yet chains the entire mood put out by the bend in her spine. Earbuds in, she turns to her music to enjoy herself, kept to herself.

"We make a good team, me and you, we do."

That won't help. She needs him. She needs the human-everything. Doubtful that she truly knows it, let alone accepts it. For in the back of the kitchen, an old white door creaks open. One figure obstructs the basement past there, in fact, the entire entrance, from view. A young, heavy voice speaks beyond the ears of any little vermin around:

"Moooom, I said was gonna have my new stray bunny come clean them up laterrr- Uh- Update: The ants are all gone. Love you mom."

Even though the whole house shakes every second now, RJ dismisses it as his own heart pounding. Slowww and longgg, and dreadful. He watches her tail drooping down a few steps, limp, and his humor removes itself from his mask. He puts his hands to his forehead, either in annoyance or grief. Ghost-Verne nearly appears again and splits his ears open, probably to tell him not to feel bad or something, but RJ calls the Sniffer into his mind to taze him before he comes from the rug.

The bubble gum keeps his butt lodged in the underworld.

"Heather…" The umbrage and anxiety he's quelled apart from her sick 'game' takes cracks at his dam. "Do you plan on getting me outta this? Verne must be draggin' his shell here right now! Heather? Heather! If I say it louder that means you're more likely to listen to me! HEATHER!" Now he growls more intensely than her.

A massive shadow creeps over the kitchen light gleaming on the side of his head. What else clomps into view but a clueless, hairless ape with a whole pig packed in his stomach underneath that green jacket and greasy white shirt. He carries far more fat than RJ's got nerve, though neither blink or let a single noise out.

One thing separates the raccoon from the human: By the man's mass, his bear-ish presence in that dark brown, hideous hair, an extra layer of trauma covers RJ's muzzle. "He-he… 'POSSUM PAAAAAL!"

What she thinks to be her signature nickname being shouted pops Heather's eyes wide open.

A hideous crash down the steps shatters Heather's spirit. Great lonely distress comes over her as she goes grinding down the handrail back to the room and gasps at the human standing frozen in the doorway on the other side, so fat and broad he takes up the entire space. A can of Triple C lies on the kitchen floor next to his foot, rolling away.

She gets to the couch as quickly as she can to safely crouch behind RJ's arm. He instead places her as a shield in front of him.

"Did I ever mention I've developed a chronic fear of large, fat men?" RJ's voice gradually rises to the pitch of a bumblebee. "That are, uh… kinda shaped like bears in a way, y'know what I mean?"

Thunder cracks when the man removes his belt, and his enormous stomach falls loose. On comical cue, they scream and dart up from their spots. Only Heather can get up though, for the bubble gum glues RJ down.

"Heather, you TRAGICALLY quirky idiot, my bahooty's STUCK to the SEAT!" he cries for his life.

She clutches her head. "Oh no, noooo!"

"No, my mama's couch!" The man comes running at them, swinging the metal head of the belt as a whip.

She gets back up there and hugs onto his head with both her arms and tail. She can't undo what she's done. So the last thing either of them see is a painful silver buckle cracking the top of their skulls. Two small fish in the big world, facing a blackout of their own troubles. That means the TV disappears too. All thoughts of leisure fizzle out. All thoughts at all.


ACT III: The Pop Song Tie-In


Pressure. There's pressure. Pressure to be awesome, pressure to never live today twice, and pressure to… be responsible for the misplays of the rash and selfish, and pleasurable desires… Heather eases awake from a belt clenched on her stomach. She flinches at the feel of warm fur rubbing over her entire back when she squiggles her captured arms. The belt ties them in a tight loop around their waists, chaining their backs together while they sit upright on the coffee table. Butt-to-butted. Or more like, tail-to-tail, just as she once hoped and predicted they'd be. Foretold - in the most unintended of senses - by herself on a couch this week, when every time was left for 'next time' by RJ. It nearly happened again thanks to that dastardly clock and RJ's irking list of to-do's. She finally stopped it. Completely stopped it. And by such inconsideracy of her own they're doomed because of it. Now she can't even reach the half-dranken cup of Arnie's soda at the corner, nor anything else in the dark dungeon this living room becomes.

Her jaw cringes, teeth clenched and tense. "Godfupitell, godfupitell… He told me that if I never knew what swear word to say… I could say- like, that." She flails desperately, to no avail. "R-RJ! Like, what's going on? What would the humans call this?!"

Her constrained movements slump RJ's head farther to the side. She can't make out anything of his face from this angle. It could be terribly scarred because of her, bled to death. Still, the belt gets uncomfortably tense now and then - he's breathing. But doesn't react. By instinct alone she has to sail her tail around his hip and - hopefully - slap RJ over where his muzzle should be. He jerks up. She feels it.

And to answer her question, the humans call it 'getting screwed'.

"Ohhhhhhh…" RJ's vision bubbles in a haze. The faded screen over his eyesight sluggishly diminishes, and he flinches at the feel of a soft bushy coat shivering over his back. Legs under the belt in front, he works out the terrible context. "Tail-t-tail, I take it?"

Heather refuses to speak of it.

"Grea-t." Lashing out at her happens as the next thing on his list, ranting like a sullen mother: "We could've watched TV at home. We do it every night. We could've gotten out on tiiime with food out the WAZOO. Did you really have to do this to us, Heather? What am I gonna say to Verne? To the family?"

"You… promised." Something grounds her voice, constructs an odd defensive front, taken to the walls of the room and boxing in on RJ. It forms solid in truth.

"Well guess what? Uh ohhhh, bing-bong, promise over, poof. Verne's gonna take away everything you 'n I've worked for this week!" he whimpers, stuck as a mouse in a trap. "Everyone'll think he's more trustworthy than me. That's baloney! And then what's in it for you, huh? What are you gaining from screwing us over?"

"Look dude, this's more than just 'fun'."

"Yeah, uh-huh, you keep saying that, but, knock knock… I dunno what it means."

"I- Well, dad-" Who tells her to not speak a word on it? Her brain, and every hair shivering out of her coat. "C'mon RJ, I wanted to have some fun with you for once, y'know-?"

"Hold on, could ya bring it a bit closer? I didn't quite catch that." So she does naively, and the moment she opens her mouth RJ booms right into her ear: "FOR WHAT?" It comes so sharp he intends to stab her heart.

"Uh-"

"Food for thought: How many CDs have I helped you steal this week?"

Her head goes down. "RJ-"

"'RJ' isn't an answer, sweetie. How many?" he demands.

Her chin reaches her chest. "262…" But then her skull busts. "RJ… I'm sorry!"

"YES, we- Wait… you say wuh?"

Something… cracks in her, fractures, her brain splits open, suppressed passion as fiery as Stella exploded from her face. Her blood boils so hot she (might) be able to get rabies now. "We like so should've left on time! It's my fault we're… y'know!? But- but like, some awesome sauce dude told me that this's like- this's food for the heart! Not like Ar-Arnie's and y'know, whatever - That it's all food at the end of the day, like… y'know? And- And like, wasn't, like, the reason YOU wanted to come here with me all for a y'know? 'Adventure', like, fun?! WHAT FUN IS THIS?"

"It's been NOTHING but you today, hasn't it? 'Oh no, WAHHH, I wanna watch the same movie on TV for the too-many-th time-' NOTHING but you. YOU are getting in the way!"

It becomes a fight between two 1900s cartoon characters inside that belt. But their hands cannot move apart. Neither can really reach half the distance they need to weaponize any other part of them.

"I'm in charge and I am always in charge," RJ asserts. "Quit trying to be the boss of me!"

"Stop being all lame 'n just spend MORE TIME with me," Heather blabbers inversely. "C'mon, me me me!"

"Your tail's got better brains than you!"

"Oh wellllll, look who's the sMaRtEsT in the room then, it's my frickin' BUTT-HAND!"

He bites the end of her tail as she shakes it over his head and between his eyes. That's as much pain as either of them manage to inflict on each other in any of this nonsense.

"STOP THE FUNKY MUSIIIIIIC!" RJ roars at last.

They stop the funky music. It's all meaningless. Lopsided they end up. Protagonist arguments are over-cliched anyways. Heather's chest expands twice as far with each breath - RJ can feel the pressure on the belt at his stomach - as his does return to her, at which point their bones and flesh prepare to bust. RJ tries nudging himself even an inch. Together they remain. And together they lift their bodies upright through great trial, however united.

Heather must be startled by her own fury if she redundantly reminds him: "I said I'm sorry." Then she just about breaks down. "Ohhhh my god, I said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"

"Quit it…" Something silent and oddly un-meta of the room, the dull tone in the tan walls, puzzles his head. "If this's meant to be a third act breakup then why can't we… break up?"

"You think the narrator's tellin' us somethin'?"

In very subtle, symbolic ways… perhaps.

"Hey hey hey… We had to have used our 1 4th wall break for this chapter by now, right?"

That doesn't matter anymore.

"Weird. I can't even like… hear him."

That's how things should be. They don't need to. Just give 'em a minute or two. Let HEADS and TAILS be bound to their coin, back-to-back, and don't toil at carving over their faces. If they are to rust on the street, and fail to stop one face from landing down while the other stays up, then let them rust… together.

RJ and Heather… bound together. When a paragraph like this begins to rhyme, that means shit's going down. And so it shall. Here and now. The memories. The MEMORIES. They steam down the railway, every CD a wheel. He heard her sing. Then sing again on her own note. If they were not alone, at home, he would never suspect she truly sang for him. Then again again, and beyond that he could've known her since the dawn of time for all he can tell - or at least the dawn of hedges back in the prime year of 3026 BC. Not just one sense justifies this. Her tail tickles his arm, and he's forced to lean his head back, and when he does, Heather grins 100% au naturale, even if he can only make out the first 50. If only he were an owl, with the whole head-turning-schtick, just to uncover more of her innocence. Their eyes an inch apart, locked, and the sides of their mouths are too, breathing patiently. Heather raises the corner of her mouth, showing that one dorky tooth that ripens RJ's nerves with nostalgia for a very recent time.

Half their faces are obscured to one another, back-to-back. That makes half a friendship. Half an understanding. So here, now, the only thing left to do… is talk.

"You know you're my favorite of the family." His voice mellows her lungs just as she goes to bend her neck down.

RJ hears her breath stutter, then slow. "No, really really," he assures. "When I think of MY 'family', I think of you… before any of the other guys."

"Right." She blushes. "Um, y'know, ever since - what was it - our second dance last spring you've been… kinda cute- Er… yeah."

Cute? RJ tries to straighten and stiff up in response, just to soften back down as her fur plays with his heart.

"Objectively and… y'know, the other one." Thinking about 'family' any more has Heather's guilt swelter. "Jeez…" Half to herself, half to him, less than half her face ready for him to see, ears down low, "Did I seriously forget about them again? I wanted to make it you n' me. For real, just… us."

"Still can't think for yourself? We're never gonna be alone. The list, the rabbit twerp, the ants, THIS fatso- Even if we ran away from the family, started living in our own lil' snack-filled dreamboat, we're part of a world bigger than you 'n me."

Underneath the coffee table waits an entire cloudy ocean for them to swim in, yet they're two animals anchored back-to-back by a belt. RJ scoots a toe out towards the coast of the table until the weight starts to press upon his leg. If they set out on a brilliant venture in this state, they'd have stones molded onto their feet, and down they'd go. There ain't always time for a second chance.

Regardless, Heather stares longingly at the giant TV, so dead on the screen that all the dust and human fingerprints come to light.

"'Possum Pal, here's the thing…" RJ articulates. "The list doesn't just mean something to Verne, it means something to the whole family. I know his game - He wants to throw on extra responsibility because if he gets them to think we can't hold their trust…"

"Then they're out on us?"

"That's the cherry of it. Above you 'n I, we've got a big, bigger family to run. We don't have our whole lives for ourselves. In case you were dead as your dad when it happened, I found that out via a little detour last season."

Heather lets out a "Hmp".

"We do not have our whole lives for ourselves… Yeah… So we gotta make the most of the time we… do do have!" RJ scrunches his eyebrows tight and stretches his face inward far enough for it to hurt thinking about it, before he jerks up in place. Doing so, he slams his back against Heather's, shoving an unexpected breath out of her. "'Possum Pal! We can't be kissing each others' feet all day over this! We're getting ourselves outta this Spuddies can and THIS time we'll do it right. Together."

"...Together," she agrees for the second time that day.

RJ and Heather say nothing more, but think the same thing: getting their hands free from their sides and working to stand up. They both try taking the lead at once in opposite directions, and so they both trip off the table onto the sides of their faces having no synergy whatsoever.

"Yep," Heather grumbles in response. "I so need to get back to selling fish burgers in Canada."

RJ spills his bag over the floor to search for anything useful. The family's shopping list comes crashing out first.

From the corner of her eye Heather can outline his peeved, stuck-down head completely. She asks him truthfully, "Do you still want the food, RJ?"

"…Nah. Next time," she hears.

She can't accept such a thing so nonchalantly. She refuses. "I'm a total jerk for this…"

Then RJ's pinkies lock timidly and forcefully into hers, for some reason.

RJ has his muzzle sag off of his head, eyes as wide as baseballs, his whole attitude flopped to the floor. "So anyway… YOU have an escape plan, right?" By staring through the doorway he floods himself with trauma. For every rupture another footstep from the bear-human creates, the man comes across knives in shelves. A mixer bloodied by egg juice. A blender with teeth of stainless steel. It's not often for him to feel it through his veins, but vulnerable to humanity, his ego's down when his bullet's hit the wall. And he sweats profusely.

"Hey RJ." Her cheek nudges considerately against the back of his quivering head. "I gotta make up for this."

What is she talking about?

"'N y'know we can't work together without a beat!" she beams.

Out comes one old, green mini-CD player.

A pair of earbuds too.

Both chock-full of the playful intent honed in on the cheerfulness of her mood. "So let's totally bring iiiiit."

"You're nothing without music, are you?" His shoulders belittle hers.

"Ehhhh…"

RJ's well flutters up into a fountain. "'N I'm nothing without you, so let's give 'US' another shot! It's our time to make a sound in this world. And solve all life's problems through HUMAN MUSIC!"

Heather springs up her ears at the opportunity.

"IN!" and "OUT!" they say.

From the nearest set of shelves in the room, they stick their pinkies in the ring of a mini-CD among some memorabilia.

"Never without."


The man in the kitchen settles on a can of air freshener as his pick. "Ha-hah, there's torture on the grill now!" The living room empty, coffee table left just a few stray strands of shed fur, he lets out: "Huh?"

Let the track begin. Render its rails. Maybe it's 'Run' by OneRepublic, or another song only perceivable by the imagineer. And no, unfortunately, 'Love in an Elevator' by Aerosmith doesn't quite fit the bill for this particular scene.

That tempo follows the hopping of alternate feet. Two-for-one, RJ and Heather share a pair of earbuds around the corner of the doorway.

Pep up the pace and swing up a symphony. These colors - all colors - swim around Heather's ear linked to his. It seems she drinks them all up for herself, and channels her energy deeply into the music, sucks up every motive of a life worth living to prepare to burst into the hues of the loudest storms and sunshines. Heather's putting an explosion of energy into it, as the belt jumps higher behind RJ than in front. All the loose fluff covering her noodle-y body flies every which way up RJ's back. Her 'happy tail' is unchained. Half-hearted in his step, his attempts to sync with her passion simmer down. A glance at the brutish man in the kitchen deters him more. "Woah, uh I-I don't think I got the moves for this, 'Possum Pal!"

Says the guy who helped her steal 262 CDs this week.

"Just feel the beat!" she says. "That's what 'fun' is - You're never gonna live today twice, y'know that?"

RJ listens to the words of the song, and the constant, catchy beat, and starts to bob his head and hips. Just like any other day or night on a secluded log in the forest, he enters from the heavens to take the childishness put into her step, now into his. The only difference there ever will be are the circumstances.

"Yeah… Yeah, I do know that," he finally states, proudly. "We're gonna have some FUN WITH THIS!"

"Woo!"

At the same time, and on beat, they strike a pose in the doorway, confronting the man. They dance into the kitchen under its startled legs, tied back-to-back, and head for the protruding side of the L-counter.

"Prepare for a sweet taste of our pop rock, chump!" RJ yells. He handles the weight when climbing up to the counter.

The human comes slipping across the floor, crashing into furniture and adding more pizazz to an already chaotic scene. "That was my mom's counter!" He gets to their part of the counter and rises over them head-on with his immense sack of blubber.

To that, RJ presents his stubby golf club. "Aha!"

The man-baby presents a fat knife from the opposite counter behind him. "A-ha!"

The sharp edge of the chef's knife gleams a dull fate into RJ's eyes. "A-ha-hoooh no…" Run.

At the first stab directly towards their faces, RJ and his dancing opossum friend split their legs and drop underneath. Right here, the roof could fall. From the teeth of a blade they could lose it all. But Heather's music graces them. It ties every chance at death to every beat, punch after punch. The knife only succeeds at killing the air they leave behind as they dance dangerously around the frantic man's shaky blows. When one stomach thrusts in, the other thrusts out to compliment - mind-blowing synchronization for two tied to the stake.

Humans have no beat, ha! The wild life is routine, though not ever full of breath. RJ and Heather navigate his stressed-out aim, managing their livelihood in the face of death.

RJ smacks her shoulder, yelling "Apples!"

"On it!" She sounds like she's having the time of her life, but that life is in jeopardy, isn't it? Joints, face - neither express any desire of playing dead, imitating the knife coming to pierce her fragile skin. From a fruit basket, her tail chucks three apples pop pop pop at the knife, skewered up the blade. By the time the man bites each off, the two chained animals gallop to the edge of the counter towards the dining area.

Together they leap over the edge. They grab the yo-yo string dangling from the ceiling fan, left from its last usage. They take the full round trip, building up a high level of spin for the second swing back at the counter.

The man stands ready in their path, but a disco ball attack proves oh so effective against the human face, striking the man repeatedly with club and tail, spinning so fast they've become blades on a helicopter.

RJ releases the string to fly over the man. During their slide over the slick surface they pass a tall plastic cup - a wooden spoon inside for Heather. Paired with RJ's club, they're decked as knights.

Claws trample frantically over dirty metal. Inside the vent system of the house - the 'burrows', as they deem it, Ozzie and Stella reach a barred opening embedded high on the wall at the back of the kitchen, the former ramming face-first into the screen. Through the thinly-spaced flaps he's able to make out the scene, the large and ferocious human picking his lofty weight from the floor. The knife the creature brushes up in its hand has Heather's blood foretold all up the footlong blade. The vent doesn't budge. He's stuck as the audience for Heather's final number.

"Oh, Heather, you've ended up in harm's way!" he cries. "I told you Stella: This was a death trap from the beginning and I failed to keep her in line-"

"RJ! HEATH'UH!" Stella acts for him instead of weeping over it.

The open ears of the two flinch, but the music enraptures their senses better in the others.

"Screaming won't cut it! She's DROWNED me from her ears!" Ozzie thrusts his hands onto his eyes, digs at his skin, wailing "OH, she's going to die, she's going to die-"

"PULL those hands down! Think 'NEW plan', man!"

"You're right… SCREAM LOUDER!" he begs.

They scream louder. Until as Stella watches further, she comes to bewildered silence. The music gets louder.

After sliding back in retreat, RJ and Heather bob the soles of their feet to the beat. Striking out to defend in a sword-fight against the man's knife as they're inched farther and farther back on the counter.

Radiating dangerously and fearlessly in passion, they shoot their souls in spikes against the human, a burst of energy behind every beautiful crash of sticks together. The strings shake, never break, striking electric guitars powered by lively blood, making them pulse. Nearly, they bust the walls, splatter the scene.

"Let's go RJJJJJ!" Heather cheers.

No touch of death mirrors in one eye of RJ's. He dance-fights now expecting to never live today again. Placed in tension when his club locks with the knife for a second, he just brushes his hair back. His fears depart, parallel to Heather's.

They bump into the dish rack beside the sink. It takes a glance; They both reach for the handle of a serving plate, stuck right in the middle, and hold a firm, unified grasp on it, gripping the other's hand without any dust of regret.

Nodding - to the beat. They alternate sides and hoist the shield out front. Just at the same time the man stabs straight for them, the plate comes up instinctively and instantly to block. Movements stay bound to the rhythm, wheels on its tracks, unrestricted ironically, and unparalleled. The tip of the knife dulls on the ceramic and sends it right back.

As RJ and Heather slowly lower the plate from their faces, they grin deviously at the feeble human.

"Goddamn I ain't young anymore…" Stella does not blink for a minute from the stands.

A clank of weapons head-to-head, a bump of butts, they drop it all and stomp into the track itself at the next booming beat.

"Moon's full!" RJ erupts. "HIT IT!"

The hour has come to this! Heather's springly little tiger of a tail bounces them up onto it and holds their seats off the ground, where they never belonged for one bit of a fleeting hood of youth. This mounted defense equips itself with full 360 degree rotary ability for the final chorus in blinding daylight.

But in the span of a few seconds Heather loses her wooden spoon to the thrashing of the knife.

Their shield falls to another blow.

The music continues to pump anyway, even when a crumbling posture takes hold, and they stutter off the pogo of Heather's tail. The strings that tightened their muscles snap off successively in shy squeaks.

It stops and shudders an inch in front of RJ's eye - the fatal knife. Heather's tail fights with the man's hand for the handle, until the human retreats. RJ and Heather rebound. They hop back and back closer to the sink as the assault hits its climax. RJ works his club to its best, but at the last hard-hitting beat it goes flying from his hand into the sink.

The music goes still, or they might have deafened in those ears. The tunnel between them empties into nonexistence, imagination sealed shut. Defenselessness is awkward. Even if they're animals. Who ought to wield nothing the humans privilege themselves with at all. Music, similarly. Speaking of which, "Heather, y'know, I've been meaning to ask…" RJ inhales when leaning in. "Where've we been listening from?"

With all hands on deck and no possible way for a CD player to be on them at any moment in the past couple minutes… Heather's eyes widen blankly.

The man swings the knife down at their heads. God bless, they flinch, and the knife cuts the belt clean off. Both pop out the earbuds and disperse. They are plugged into nothing.

Heather's light fur easily draws the man to the dining table. RJ takes post behind the cover of the L-counter, patching that sensitive conjecture of Heather's danger on his back. Over there, underneath the table, Heather has permanently clung herself to one of the legs, the man patrolling the perimeter above, a shark in the pool. The distress in her eyes reaches deep into his.

At the proper time, RJ hurries her to safety and steals her cold hand away for his heated presence to warm.

"I- I lost my beat, I dunno how-!" she starts to explain.

"I'll take it from here. Just stick close 'n…" What shall be his victim? The oven. "…start thinkin' like a raccoon."

They heave a frozen pizza into the oven and smash the door shut. While Stella forcefully smothers Ozzie over his mouth and neck to keep him from reacting, an opaque wall of smoke envelopes them. RJ and Heather crank up the heat to ungodly, impossible temperatures with each loop of the temperature knob. The human builds a phobia over all the sudden noises and calls for his mommy.

As Stella nearly suffocates from the smoke, Ozzie breaks free and bends the bars apart with sheer buff dad instincts (pretend he has like a six-pack while he does it and everything).

Ozzie strains. "(ENTER - DAD)," he says in parentheses. He flies at Mach 17 out of the vent before Stella can grab him, a missile locked onto Heather.

A high-boiled sound pierces louder and louder. The walls of the oven extend and bend to the point of busting like a popcorn bag, shaking on its legs vigorously, pounding the floor. Just before Ozzie gets his loving hands on her-!

The oven dings.

Hammy sips up the last bit of his tea outside. Behind him, the kitchen literally explodes, just as abruptly. No, seriously, it flat-out explodes. Absolutely demolished. Pieces of the exterior skimming over his head landing as spears in the dirt. That entire side of the house crumbles to the earth before him. The gust thrashes flames his way. When he turns around to be appalled by the devastation, his sights only salvage what the black smoke and choking fire leave alive.

And guess what? That frozen, now-incinerated not-so-frozen pizza rockets into space on a full round-trip of the planet.

When it ends, Hammy's tea party setup has fallen to ruin, and the stone statue of a squirrel shattered by an incoming toaster. He cries softly, "No… my love…"

The big human carries himself from the wreckage first. His eyes widen in horror when the smug silhouettes of a raccoon and opossum approach from the terrible cloud left behind, with huge heads and sets of fifty teeth each.

"We're in!"

First emerges RJ from the smoky remains of the kitchen. Heather speeds right along at his hip, past the human as racing friends instead of vicious beasts. A flash of gold leads to a world of blue, fleshed out as the humps of the living room carpet by clouds illuminated brightly. Just like their eyes, one pair deep blue and the other its shallow neighbor, both pearly from the sun's sprightliness.

"We're out!" Heather spins back to face the house in the air after leaping all her limbs up and out. "Woo-HOOOOO!" rings throughout the neighborhood.

The two run in a row.

"So NOW that clear's clear-!" RJ nearly thinks it's final this time.

Heather scans the flaming outlands. "Wait, so what ever happened to-"

"Our FOOOOOOOD!" RJ sees the enormous pile staked out by shards of the house's wall, being sifted to crumbs in a river of a million ants. Definitely not final.

Hiding behind the toaster grave of his future stone wife, Hammy hears that, and plummets his ears low enough to touch Fred on his shoulder. "…I think I done-goofed."

"Ham-my!"

"Uh, la-la-laaaa, bad communicationnnn, helloooooo? Not my fault." The longer he watches them in panic and pain, the less he can sympathize. "Hmph. Not my fault," he shrugs like an edgy teen. "Let's go see what's good in that house, or whatever."

The ants watch the squirrel take his wood tick into the burning wreck of the kitchen. They bicker amongst themselves over its loyalty, and the insanity caving in. No matter to the queen… She shifts the army's attention to those with their pictures pinned on her wall. "Ready everything."

"Ev-er-uh-thing, mah queen?" the general asks.

"Ohhh, what do you think?" Her cheeks flame up more violently than the devil, stomping and kicking through piles of her live 'children' underneath the massive ant-throne. "I want them KILLED! I want them SLAUGHTERED! I want them SMOTHERED under my abdomen or else my, MY superior reign over you WORTHLESS mating drones and working slaves has been undermined by two buffooning TONGUE-KISSERS! Exterrrrminate them, I say. And OFF… WITH THEIR HEADS!"

Tidal waves of ants cut short the panic of RJ and Heather just to replace it with one of new. These coastal tribesmen hurtle in starting from both sides of the yard down its whole length, reducing the width of their only path towards escape down the middle, closing the door to the tall wood fence at the end slowly but alarmingly so.

"Okay we're not getting out with the food we are getting out with our LIVES," RJ presses quickly into place. He grabs her arm before she can seek the former, and when she tries to resist he yanks her closer on the leash. "C'mon! It's now or NEVER!" RJ has them sprinting an Olympic event down the war-like field, riddled with burnt remains of the house.

"We can't ditch the food!" Heather expresses.

RJ stuffs her words back into her piehole. "We have to ditch the food."

"We can't!"

"We HAVE to."

"What about the family?"

"Who CARES? We've got enough food at home to last you-"

"3 months 2 weeks 'n 1 day - Yeah I know my tummy, but like, we need it!"

"We DON'T!"

Ants collect around their feet, and the waves appear to grow ten feet taller until a tunnel wraps around them.

"YES!"

"NO!"

"YES!"

"YES!"

"NO!... Oh screw off dude."

They crash into the fence, leaping out of the ant ocean just to claw as instinctively as the animals they ought to be.

RJ thumps his foot on the ground anxiously at the wall. "Oh MANNNNN…" He feels his own fur behind him, instead of his golf bag. "…I seem to have misplaced a salient object."

Hammy curiously enters the burning kitchen with Fred there to support. The glass door has been shattered away, the barrier gone. Thus they locate the living room, much more kept.

It's the first time Hammy strolls into open water. The carpet takes him gladly into care, bubbling with memories under the roof of the soft waves. Somehow the festival looks untouched, unloved, yet some other animals have left their junky fun everywhere. Even if, he captures his own wonder in a net, experiencing it firsthand.

"Ohhhhhh-HO-HO-HOOOOOO-! What first, Fred? We could jump on couches 'til we pass out, binge TV so hard we need to wee-wee every 10 minutes-"

"Hammy Hammy HAMMY! Don't get distracted! Your team needs you! Right now… YOU COULD BE THEIR HERO!"

"I don't know if I wanna be part of the team anymore!… They locked. Me. OUT."

His ears go low until he sees a lump of black floating in the waters of the blue carpet - a certain golf bag. He gasps.

"I think Uncle RJ lost this." After a second of thought he yips in panic and runs straight back to the remnants of the kitchen, taking the trouble of the bag with him. Hammy comes out of the room with his spirit regained, and energy at peak. So just before he scampers over the floor, a charred can of Triple C - Cool Carb Cola - catches his eye, bleeding the fizz of caffeine a bit out the lid.

"You cannot flee from me, troublesome brats." Back outside, the queen surfs up the ways of RJ and Heather. Borderline insanity, too. "You two are NOTHING but a mouthy ring-tailed FREAK and his… pet white RAT! What do you have? You have NOTHING! You own NOTHING!"

With dozens upon dozens of ant-made claws she grabs up pitchforks and chainsaws and everything she can get her ants on from the neighborhood. "I have an army! I have a family! I have mindless children and nieces and nephews and cousins kissing at my abdomen! You mam-mals live out your days licking each others' crot-ches while I have constructed a pure-bred, superior race! You two are seriously- You two are one step below me for every hair on your filthy, freakish, trash-ridden rabies-infested bodies!"

Before Heather goes off about how she can't get rabies, that very inhale of hers gets them pinned to the fence, choked out by the pincers of a giant ant figure her children form for her to mount. "You had better bathe in antiperspirant later, now listen here, and look what I can do, little ones…"

The giant ant roars horrifically in their faces over all the suburbs, just as the ants chant "WE. ARE. MIGHTY! WE. ARE. ANTS!"

A storm of ants flood past their toes. Some… in between. Streams of them spill into the mouth of the giant ant to harvest its life from the inside out. They mold out of its eyes popped as far as theirs. RJ and Heather quake from top to bottom, sunken to their seats instantly in distress. And the ants completely overtake the mothership.

What the ants manifest out of its corpse is startling - faceless replicas of RJ and Heather just as they were in the kitchen, bound to the same coin. There must've been a devilish spy slipping by. How else would what is built before them be built, horrifically-accurate? Backs tied together, they carry a club and spoon, a large ant-plate presented as a shield over their side. The ant-pair smacks the heads of their weapons onto the plate to shock intimidation into them, and prepares to dance. RJ and Heather glance once at each other, with no words to describe what incongruence they're feeling right now against a pair so united in motive.

The queen performs an evil cackle as she waves from the sidelines. "Bye-bye, lovebirds…"

"We aren't DATING!" Heather insists like a flame.

"You're brainwashing yourselves with your own headcanons, people!" RJ carries on as the smoke.

RJ and Heather climb over each other as their loathsome copies advance inward in a boogey.

Heather tugs gently on his arm. "About the food, RJ, I- I like already messed this up a lot, y'know, like a lot a lot, 'n you said the family-"

"Look, I didn't COME here for the food. Verne? No. Family?... Not even them, 'Possum Pal." He covers his frosting fur in sprinkles of sweet, solemn softness. "...I came here for you. Because I wanted you. Your you smile. The smile that… has you in it. So much you. Y'know, I said you were cute objectively last chapter but it miiiight also be nice to acknowledge that I think you're, uhhh-"

Just as her energy deflates, her curious dreams take flight. RJ tries, but slips and stutters over his words like she's mopped up the floor and left it only for time to dry. The orange sky turned to blue. He offers her no food, no novelties - only offers he. To that, her coat - every hair - softens into something heartwarming. Hands clung by her heart, she draws her nose closer. "Keep talking… I'm not secretly recording on my phone." And she smiles too.

Ant-RJ raises his club overhead, ready to execute on command. Not an inch comes down before it thunders through the air, leaving the ants in a silent mess:

"Ooooooooooh my name is Ham-myyyyyyyy… I've got hugs as soft as jell-yyyyyyyyy… and they're mmmmaaaaade with love…"

No one finds anyone singing.

"Raccoon for rock. 'Possum for paper. And squirrel for… SCISSORRRRSSSS!"

20 feet in the sky, wearing a black and blue golf bag more than twice the size of himself, Hammy bombs right into the ants with nothing but a wood tick on his shoulder… and a sharp pair of garden shears. He strikes and slices, leaps and bounds between mounds to chop up the army into measly peasants that choose to flee, leaving the queen's control dismantled. He commits to them the same he did to those Verm-Tech gnomes in the garden (STILL TOO BRUTAL TO SPEAK OF).

When it's done, RJ's passed his bag. He catches it with just one overhead hand. As he slowly erects himself, he rises carrying the empowerment of Thor. He shows Hammy and Fred an honorable nod.

From Heather's gasp comes a smile next. "Hammy?"

"The ONE and only, he-heee!"

"Sooooo sorry I ditched you by the way."

"WUh?"

"Oh, I mean uh… Whaaaaat? Nope. Didn't wanna ditch you. Totally didn't ditch you… Okay I kinda ditched you."

"Oh yeahhhhh…" Hammy cranks his mood to the next degree and throws himself sobbing over Heather. "WHYYYYYYY? I thought we were a team, Heather. I've been talking to a wood tick. A WOOD TICK."

Heather screams across the suburbs at the sight of Fred on Hammy's shoulder, right underneath her nose. Maybe it's deserved. Yeah, it's probably deserved.

Meanwhile the fat Mama's Boy, his clothes burnt halfway off, carries himself across the remains of the kitchen and gets the phone off the wall, perfectly intact. "9-1-1. I need a fire department. I need an exterminator! I NEED MY MA-MA!"

Meanwhile meanwhile, Team RPS unites against the remainder of the army.

"STAWP THESE HAIRY LOOSAHS, YOU LOOSAHS!" the ant general yells out.

RJ unsheathes his club. "Alright… Team RPS is back in the biz-biz!" He stances up with it as a heavy sword, a blue knot tied beneath the head blowing back in the wind.

"Wow, they look all the same, almost like they're inbreds or something," Hammy now notices.

"Mmm-hmm. Kinda funny." Fred sucks off of Hammy's shoulder in the meantime.

"So whadda we do?" Heather asks.

A convenient firefly goes over RJ's head. "I'll let you eat extra," he briskly winks.

Heather jumps into one of his arms, this time elated to do so.

Then a wink to Hammy. "You too."

Hammy clings to the head of RJ's club.

A 'tail flurry', 'furry fist', and 'use Hammy like a golf ball move' (he didn't really have a name for that last one) strike the army down in one ePiC bAtTlE. The yard is now ruined by decayed, exhausted swarms of ants and shrapnel from the kitchen stuck as spikes everywhere. At last, in the queen's vulnerability, RJ prepares to strike her down with his club.

"WAIT!" the queen coughs.

He waits, but he won't for long.

The queen spits away the dirt she's been crushed into by a fleeing stampede of her own children in the midst of war. "How… How did you best me? Twice? I've built a kingdom. I executed my strategy perfectly. My family is-..."

"-Inbred," RJ finishes for her. "Yep. That's the true lesson of today for all you kids at home." He pats his allies. "Go try a real family, loser. Oh yeah, and your abdomen's developed quite the tumor too, might wanna take my advice and mmmm, bathe in antiperspirant or something."

"It's… not a tumor-..."

"Even worse. FOOOOOORE!" A simple driver swing bonks her head and knocks her out.

XXX

With RJ's yo-yo, Team RPS (feat. Fred the Wood Tick) fling themselves over the fence for their heroic farewell. Their feet touch down on the slightly-less-green grass through the Hedge. Grass never defined them anyways. They shine from the upkeep of their limits. Never will they shatter from experience, for if they did, the three would certainly not live to tell the tale.

Jumping and jumping over each other, celebration overtakes the empty row between Hedge and forest, stomping down some grass and sweeping the rest their way.

"Now that is what us raccoons call a successful operation! Bring it in, knuckleheads!" RJ joyously swings in Heather and Hammy to either side.

Fallen victim to the pit of his elbow, Hammy tries to remind him with "ISN'T THIS UNCOMFY FOR YOU?!"

"That's what chumps say - We're champs today, baby!" He thrusts the head of his golf club into the air. "Yeah!"

Heather halts their party. "Guys, that was fun 'n all, but like… We didn't even get the food because of me-"

"Yeah we did." That was Hammy, hand raised all of a sudden.

RJ's eyebrows drop. So does his gaiety. "…What?"

"Check your bag. I left a little surprise…"

"Hammy, I said 'no surprises'-" But he takes his bag off just to check.

His eyes go wide when he looks inside. He flips the bag over and dumps out their stolen pile of food - everything on the list - reconstructed exactly as it was in the yard (no ants included), wrapped in a tablecloth once more.

"H-How-?..." RJ stutters. "No, there's no way - How did you get this?"

"Mayyyyybe I mmmaaaaayyyy have posssssibly-"

"Hammy-"

He's really reluctant to break it: "Ok so baaaasically while you guys locked me out I found this preeeeetty place with flowers and butterflies and then I almost got assaulted by a bunch of weird little men but I KICKED ALL THEIR BUTTS and caved in their skulls with a hammer and saved the day (woo, yeah, Hammy) then I met a bunch of reeeeally nice ants-"

Heather just about vomits at that.

"-who I helped steal food from the human house but I didn't KNOW it was YOUR food in the human house so then we had this tea party and then the kitchen exploded and I lost my MATE FOR LIFE but it's okay though because I ran into the house found your bag and I needed to save all the food so in the end I-..." He plugs his big mouth right after saying, "I injected myself with multiple hundred milligrams of caffeine."

"HAMMY!" RJ instantly retaliates. "Without my strict permission? You know that's against our protocol!..." Then as he looks longer at the squirrel, that missing niche - honestly forgetting it was there at all for most of the operation - patches itself. "...But I guess that's the problem, isn't it?"

"Hammy…" An incredible smile and euphoric spout of glee given to the salvaged food, Heather feels her fault in the matter patted on the back. "You're our frickin' hero, Hammy." A hug on his head into her puffy chest, goes into a nurturing scratch behind the ears and a full kiss on top.

"Aww…" Hammy's foot raps wildly beneath his fur-smothered face. His tail throbs as a heart for her.

Fred begs for it too. Heather abhors the bug for a moment, then grins weirdly and pats the tick with a finger.

"Well, Hammy," goes RJ, "Guess we shouldn't of left you out to dry like that. You saved our tails, among other places."

"Oh, is this when we recite all the lessons we've learned today?" Heather asks.

RJ nudges her. "We're not the only characters in this big world of a story."

"Yeah yeah, I know, say to say, preach it to preach it, bro."

Fred then tells Hammy, "Mmm. Your blood tastes like hotdogs."

"You all make me blush. Come on, Fred! Wanna go doorbell-prank some humans?" When they leave, they're doing a conga into the horizon.

"Take care, Hammy," Heather waves.

"Ok! Away I go-!"

Heather laughs. RJ remains at her side, arm over her back. "So now… that clear's clear?"

"Oh yeah… RJ?" A different kind of 'surprise' awaits him. She looks as gentle as waves nudging up the shore - in both form and behavior - as her tiny toes nudge up to him.

His heart rate rises by one more grass stem of distance she closes. And another. The shadows of the trees sway over them like an umbrella in the rain, or some secrecy in moonlight. Until she sends one breath from her nose, and then…

Without warning she throws herself into a full-on embrace - twice as much snug impact against him as her little sisterly gesture to Hammy. Everything above her legs clings to the white of his fur. Lighter than a feather, softer than a pillow, she surrenders herself under oath of gratitude for a completed mission, a dance between work and play.

He's too startled to address the 'Possum Pal with his arms in return, for they hold a lock on hers over his ribs. At most, stupefied in delivery, he can manage "Uhhh…"

Though internally he knows… "I've never, ever had someone like her."

She thus hugs his soul back into his body. Hopefully it may stay. And her 'happy tail' wags for every worthwhile memory made in that hour. "Best. Day. Ever." She rubs her cheek over his chest.

And as she rubs it thoroughly, RJ has slid too deep into his head to object the fact. Eventually he thaws his arms. Takes them up… one around her neck, the other on her back. He hugs her fur closer. It's too soft to resist. On that sunny day, they glow brighter than the wealth of suburbia. Maybe… they've found a greater treasure after a full orbit of Earth.

As possibly the longest minute of his life passes, cuddled fully against the partner of his dreams, Heather swings "So what were you gonna tell me back there?" back into light.

"Oh! Um…" He stimulates his confidence by tapping his foot, brushing over her leg. "When I say 'cute', I mean it objectively and-..."

Heather arcs her chest and chin higher up. "Yeahhhhh?"

"Mmmmmmmm- Okay fine! Subjectively. Objectively and subjectively. Happy now?"

Bloop!

That little noise as she saves the video lets her hold a ransom against RJ. "HAAA-ha!" Heather leaps loose from him and shakes the phone hidden, held by her tail all up in his flushed face. "World's first Heather-and-RJ HUG cam!"

RJ runs furiously after her and tackles her into a patch of white dandelions. The seeds poof up all around them as he ends up on top of her, fighting for the phone. Though now he laughs. Laughs hard. Her tail comes over the back of his head to nuzzle him. They blow those white, fluffy dive-bombers as they hover down, now a game of volleyball between their faces. RJ ends up sneezing his temper away when one gets into his nostril, just like when his yo-yo tried so earnestly to catch her for himself in the living room. Now she's right where he needs her to be, nowhere closer. A seal stamped today with respect for the mystifying future of what trees of hers he could climb.

A playful joust cocoons their subconsciouses together, longing for a friend, or maybe a bit more. It's never been there before, not yet, appalled by the common thought of it. It's just so easy for these instincts to take over, even with who should be a stranger to them in this bond, for the bond itself is not written. Not a single wall has come up, let alone a door.

Heather throws the phone away and giggles at him. From then on, who knows what happens in the next few seconds. Unmistakably, they won't regret it. Record it like a secret video for just themself to binge. Likewise, they'll know the other possesses it. But they'll never view it again until some other day, some far away day, when they're sober enough from affection to yearn for it all, all over again. Eventually they will feel their fur touch from head to tail… again.

So really, truly, if it's the best day ever - and he believes her - did RJ meet all ends in the end: Heather, Verne, and-?

Not one. Not two. There comes in a pair of charcoal-black masses, some creatures. After a jump in his senses, RJ shrivels his lips. Demons? A cult? RJ knew the answer far sooner than to make such baseless assumptions. Ozzie comes running in from the Hedge alongside Stella, his fur painted as dark and rough as the skunk's.

They catch them in quite a deception, over top of each other in a cotton bed of dandelions. RJ flings his red hands high off Heather. He creates about the least deadpan look to ever exist (more like dead dead), and through a mask too. 10 feet should be enough for him to repel.

"Oh!" Heather jerks up to face the burnt figure she smells, even ashen in the look herself. "Dad…" A panicked instinct takes her an even farther jump from a stunned RJ as she fidgets her fingers nervously. "Wait dad I can expla-!"

Ozzie shows no care for RJ when he rushes to her aid. He grabs his daughter, then cranks her arm straight out to the side so he can run his eyes over the back of it it with worried breaths.

And now it's annoying. "Dad what're you-"

"M-m-mmm, IIIII knew it I knew it!" Ozzie jabs his claw at the very spot - a noticeable patch of fur on the back of her right arm charred down to just pink skin.

Heather snaps her arm away and stings everyone's ears with a yip. The place is lightly stained red with blood.

"What were you two thinking back there?" Ozzie detests. "Anyone could have died in that oven trick, and not as an act!"

When Heather leans back, a soft mark embedded in her pink skin makes her overwrite her concern for the injury to be replaced by interest. "Whaaaat? A birthmark in the shape of a burger?" No way. "Awesome sauce."

Ozzie goes, "Look what happened to my girl because of you, RJ-"

"Oz', your entire hind-side's toast!" Stella suddenly exclaims.

Indeed, the entire back half of his coat is shaven down to pink skin, from his neck to tail end. He squeals. "Oh, well isn't that something, uh…" Cough cough. "Look what happened to US because of you, RJ!"

"Uhh, dad…" Heather shoots her eyes to the side away from the angry company she faces, which now faces her. "The whole human thing in the kitchen was kinda like… my fault, y'know?" she shrugs.

Even Stella puts on the same reaction as Ozzie: Startled, maybe as far as appalled by the idea. They don't dare imagine it. Why, she's half the mass of the raccoon. She's twice the innocence. That look of a caught mouse though, with her heart seen beating through her chest, takes their eyes an extra step out. At least they drop RJ from their grips. Their hands come off his neck. Big bro - the obvious chaos element here after having just blown up a kitchen for crying out loud - comes off their radar.

"Uh, then…" Ozzie stutters at first. "I guess we have new things to talk about."

Heather grunts, "Stuff my pouch…" and steels herself for the punishment - potentially an hour-long endeavor even if she gets lucky.


ACT IV: A Hero


It sounds like an axe chopping into a door inside the bedroom of the house. The axehead never becomes lodged, however, for the banging coming from inside the closet repeats itself too quickly. Skull-cracking pain. The weighted backpack set by that raccoon and opossum earlier proves daunting even a whole trip later to the golden rabbit ramming his face into the door on the inside.

"I've BEEN IN HERE… for AN HOUR!"

The backpack outside starts to nudge. Only a little.

He stops to rationalize. "Aight. Stop breathin' faster than a wallaby. You'll use up your ol' O2."

Holding his breath bursts his lungs very soon, and as a result he pounds harder and faster on the door, hyperventilating faster than he would've without self-therapy.

He goes flying out of the closet and skids his puffy cheek over the bare floor when he finally breaks free. For the first time in years he can feel the daylight, smell the trees.

Feeling the light spray over makes him scream "YESSSSS!" until he sees super glue dripping from the cracks of the bedroom door as a safeguard against his escape. Then he dips into "NOOOOOO!"

He has to climb out the open window to escape. The grass below hardly breaks his fall more than it breaks his bones when he fails to slide down the wall.

The front porch is no less welcoming. He whines "Bugger. Bugger. BUGGER." over the locked doorknob, bringing no response to him as he suffers alone in the darkness.

Tears nearly form. They might as well, if they'd worsen the personal ignominy of his newly-renewed feral state. He punches at himself, his sad, deformed self. His own paws don't even hurt. Then when he looks through the nearby living room window, he expects to view a pest in the mirror. Instead, behind his brain in the reflection, the entire kitchen burns through the doorway, set ablaze and demolished, in just as pitiful of a peril as himself within.

"What?"

The Mama's Boy has said mama cradle him - the fat nugget - in the ant-infested tragedy left of the backyard. "There there, sonny. I bought you insurance."

"Thanks mom."

At the same time the fire department arrives, so does an exterminator.

"What seems to be the problem sir-? Whoa. Who's making pizza? I want a slice." In a standstill at the wreckage of the kitchen, a burning pizza comet from outer space plops onto the Verminator's bald head. He sniffs, and his nose jumps back. "Ew. Anchovies? Nevermind, you are a problem."

His ownership abandoned and hope lost, the golden rabbit hops from the miserable scene and doesn't look back. On his way, he picks up an ol' stick and napkin (the best he could find as a sack, thanks to the gore of the kitchen being spread beyond the yard). It doesn't matter. He has nothing to hold anyway.

Though… something about the open suburbs speaks to him. Not the local hotdog vendors or front-yard soccer games, but the aesthetic of the 'open' part of it… enthralls his expression. The grass under his paws, the wind brushing up his tail, he tastes right now what his mouth cannot. Every sense has 'taste buds' of its own, y'know. The pads of his feet taste the silken soil and his eyes taste flowers, decor, greenery richer and more quenched than the summer leaves of his irises. He stakes his stick in the dirt and hops free across the street, braver than he ever has been in his life when he narrowly avoids the path of a speeding car.

XXX

A rapier loyally hugs the hero's hand, and him to it. Hoppy tugs at his side, nervous not of the fall from this height, but to fall itself. Up here, her white and her texture blend considerably into the clouds, only set apart from her light brown splotches throughout. Though when the clouds turn gray they add no sorrow to her. In part by the motion of the sky she becomes a cloud-waltzing sunflower, ears uplifted for once from her cheeks. Ultimately, she is merely a speck. A happy speck.

The hero stabs into the thick clouds and plays the slice of a narwhal through them to bring forth sunlight onto the land. The legendary relic leaves a broad slash of a contrail over the entire sky. He carries her down to the earth, where her shadow can run free because of the sun's generosity.

She must now warp back and plant herself into the world of man, Hedge, and herself. It's such a pain to be rooted so deeply. In a way it's essential, isn't it? To be fed and to be flourished, even how dearly she begs to be rocketed loose. On the raised wooden patio of her backyard, Mr. Shady manifests himself in reality to her side. And stuck in reality, she has to impersonate his voice: "You were day-dream-ing again, la-dy Hop-py."

Her gaze into the clouds breaks. "I am simply trying to return to that lucid dream of yours, Mr. Shady. I thonk-a-donk 'til I cannot thonk any harder, but… every time I return back here, where I watch… and wait."

"You are sim-ply try-ing too hard."

As she softly grabs her ears and tugs them together at her heart, she yearns, "Then why, why do I feel as though I will never try enough?... I'm a bunny in a…" Left and right, there's only more human dwellings around her "...not-so-bunny world."

She stares over the railing in the world out there. Up, more precisely, over the Hedge, over treelines and over everything into the peak of the troposphere and beyond.

"Maybe…" She has to sigh. "I may not have friends but I have me. And I can be a better friend to me than any friend could be… Right?"

Ferocious dogs rat him out and sound the alarm. The golden rabbit slips into the yard from the side, crawling through tall grass and hurrying himself under the nearest crack he can find in this empty patio. He doesn't care to make an excursion or mark any detail of the place. Under there, in that darkness, he bumps his head hard into a floorboard above him.

"Ow!" He reserves it for himself, even if he has no clue whether he may be a family of one here.

An abrupt knock on the wood stuns Hoppy's feet, with nothing on the patio to explain it. The clouds wash over.

Then her shadow is gone.