A/N: Volume I has new cover art from the Tumblr user Flannalamb. Also, after next month I will have caught up on every request for a physical copy of the ATE book. If there is still anyone else who wants one, I am leaving the offer open for the foreseeable future. Just PM me and I will see about getting you a copy.
Chapter 6: Puppies And Plots
Hunger was the thing to wake Atticus up. There was no telling when this dog had last been fed, and it was for that reason that he decided he'd go bully some poor SSC idiot into giving him an extra allotment of rations. He wanted to make sure Courage got some too, because he would probably be hungry when he woke up as well.
Speaking of Courage, Atticus had somehow managed to wriggle his way out from under him without waking him up. Quite the minor miracle. He'd rather have Courage stay sleeping while he was away because the last thing he needed was for Courage to wake up and immediately get all freaked out about him being gone. Courage was already being distressingly clingy and Atticus really did not need THAT getting any worse.
Regardless of his discomfort with Courage's newfound clingy-ness, the moment he was about to step out of the tent, he couldn't help but hesitate and look back toward Courage with considerable worry. What if Courage did wake up while he was gone? There was no doubt in his mind that it would end badly. For all of his efforts to help Courage get through this unexpected side effect of their separation, Courage waking up all alone would likely put them back at square one.
Still, Atticus felt like he was starving to death, and to combo that up with how weak this dog body was from the many injuries that it was still healing from, to put it eloquently...he felt like complete and total garbage. So, even if it meant taking a risk by leaving Courage alone for a little while, alleviating his hunger would do nothing but help. It would not have surprised him at all if it turned out that the SCC had not been caring for this dog all that much after his siblings escaped. The dog was already in poor enough shape after that stay in Charon's kennels so it was no wonder at all that Atticus felt like he was about to keel over. Well, he had elected to suffer through this, so he was in no position to complain.
Frowning, he turned away from Courage, having made up his mind. After Charon, it was much harder for him to ignore hunger pain like he could back when he had first taken control of this body and was far less thrilled with the concept of eating. Well, Courage had nothing to fear. He would be as quick as possible. Under no circumstances was he going to leave Courage to wake up alone.
Marching out of the tent, he quickly scanned the area for any SCC personnel to pester. Of course this wasn't going to be that easy, and so he had to head deeper into the camp. As he walked, he couldn't help but enjoy how nice it was to have a body of his own again, and to not simply be the co-pilot to somebody else. Sure, he did miss the closeness he had shared with Courage, albeit not to the crippling degree Courage himself was experiencing right now, but nothing beat being your own person, in your own head, and in control of your own everything. Well...he still wasn't exactly his own person, not really. The only difference was that the person he was sharing this body with was now being kept artificially comatose while he got to pretend like this was his actual form. He would get to go on treating this dog with so little care that...
He slowed to a stop and shook his head. Stupid Elizabeth! Who was she to talk when he had never been given any sort of choice in what he was to begin with! This was the only option he had, unless he wanted to go on spending his existence trapped in an immobile machine! So what if he couldn't help but see this body that he had spent so much time in like it was his own? Sure, he was depriving this dog of his own life, but that wasn't important! Those vets had been about to put him down anyway! If anything, he had saved this dog and given him a little more time!
He looked around desperately for one of the SCC, trying to stifle his thoughts on this topic that Elizabeth had so cruelly planted in his mind. He was quite ready for the cognitive dissonance to set in again, thank you very much!
His ears perked up as he heard a soft but rapid sound rushing up behind him. He started to turn but was struck before he could get very far and was sent crashing down into the grass. Certain that his spine had just been snapped in half, it was only made worse by the fact that his collapse had aggravated all of his other injuries. He felt something roll down off his back and thump into the grass beside him.
"Why'd you have to be in the way?" A familiar voice groaned.
Atticus yanked his squished snout out of the dirt and glanced around at the area around him.
...There had been more than enough room on either side of him for the puppy to have completely avoided him.
He turned his gaze on to the pup, who was rolling back and forth through the grass in pain. "You were in a big rush and weren't looking where you were going, were you?" He chided him before getting back onto his feet and brushing himself off. The pup remained sprawled out on the ground, groaning painfully.
He raised an eyebrow. "Is something going on?"
The puppy suddenly looked around very shiftily. He was hiding something behind his back, keeping it pressed into the grass.
"...No."
"You know what? I'm not even going to ask." Atticus dismissed with a dismayed shake of his head. "I'm on a rather time sensitive mission. You wouldn't have happened to see anybody handing out rations?"
Before the pup could answer, Lily's voice cried out from behind Atticus. "There he is! He's got our rations! Get 'em!"
The pup screamed and tried to run, but it was too late. An army of puppies flew past Atticus and they all proceed to quit literally dog pile the rogue pup. It seemed like the entire puppy population of the now exiled city folk had taken part in hunting him down. Lily struggled her way out of the pile, holding at least three of those weird applesauce tubes.
"Do you know where he got those?" Atticus asked her.
She pointed him in the right direction and proceeded to yell to the tangled mess of pups. "These are mine now! Ha, ha!" And took off running faster than any of the puppies could extract themselves from the pile they had made.
"I hope they aren't starving the puppies by giving them less rations than what everyone else gets." Atticus muttered to himself. He suspected that it was far more likely that those greedy little creatures were eating through them much faster than was necessary and were resorting to stealing from each other when they inevitably got hungry an hour or two later.
Stepping past the frantically untangling puppy pile, he continued onward. Soon enough he found an SCC person handing out food and managed to bully his way into getting a couple of nutritional bars, some bags of dried fruit, several mystery tubes lacking any labeling as to what was inside, and three bottles of water. He carried it all back to the tent while keeping an eye out for thieving puppies who just might dare to try and get the drop on him.
Courage was still asleep when he returned, much to his relief. He dumped the food into a pile on the floor, grabbed a nutritional bar for himself, and sat down to wait for Courage to wake up. He had barely opened the wrapper of the bar and brought it up to his mouth when he saw Lily carefully and quietly peak in through the flap.
"Try anything and I'll make you regret it." He threatened, grabbing a water bottle and pointing it at her. "I know where you sleep."
"And I know where you sleep too!" She screamed back, leaping at the pile without a second of hesitation.
Atticus caught her mid air. She grabbed the bar out of his paw and shoved the whole thing into her mouth in one go while he took her under his arm and proceeded to toss her back outside. Despite that, by the time he had turned back around, nothing remained of the pile of food except a single bar and two bottles of water. He caught sight of a puppy's behind just as it was escaping out from under the opposite end of the tent.
Looking on with an unamused expression, he asked, "Why do organic beings spawn again?"
The commotion had been plenty loud enough to wake Courage up. He sat up with the blanket still wrapped around him so that only his snout peaked out from within. Yawning, he asked, "What was that all about?"
"We've been robbed." Atticus groused, picking the one remaining nutritional bar up out of the grass. "I guess this is dinner..." He sighed, staring at it hungrily. With considerable reluctance, he tossed it over to Courage.
Surprisingly, he did not even try to catch it. "You can have it. I'm not hungry."
Atticus crossed his arms, somehow looking both annoyed and concerned all at the same time. "You need it more than I do, especially after how hard I pushed you while we were still-" He hesitated, realizing that it might not be the best idea to bring that up while Courage was in his current state.
Thankfully, Courage did not seem bothered by it. Instead, he reached a paw out of the blanket and grabbed the bar off the ground. He opened the wrapper and split it in half, throwing one half back over to Atticus.
"I-I guess that works!" Atticus admitted rather sheepishly.
He began to pace as he chewed, and once he was done, he said to Courage, "I've been thinking-"
"Don't hurt yourself." Courage broke in.
"Excuse me?" He demanded, slowing to a halt and turning to find Courage smirking mischievously at him from within the blanket.
"...I'm starting to think that maybe a little too much of me has rubbed off on you." He dryly commented, although he couldn't stop himself from smiling a little. "I've created a monster." He joked.
At the very least, he considered this an improvement over Courage sinking back into sadness. Never had he thought that he might one day be glad to have Courage throwing some of his own snarky nonsense back into his face.
"Sorry!" Courage finally relented, laughing. "I couldn't help it! You gave me the perfect opportunity!"
Atticus sniffed with exaggerated offense. "Is this the thanks I get for helping you?"
All of the mirth left Courage's face with a shocking suddenness. "O-oh, yeah. S-sorry about before. I didn't mean to get so...so messed up. I'm feeling better now though, I think." He waited a second and then added much quieter, "I hope..."
Atticus gave a start. "I didn't actually mean that, for goodness sake! I was only joking, Courage!" He shook his head. "I thought you knew me better than this by now!"
"Sorry..." Courage repeated, looking wistfully down at the ground.
Much to Atticus's dismay, it seemed that Courage was not entirely back to normal yet after all. Hoping to cheer him up, he said, "It wasn't a problem before, and it still isn't. I'm happy to help!"
"Sorry," Courage repeated yet again and seemed to melt into the blanket.
Atticus sat down on the cot beside the shivering lump of blanket and placed a paw on top of it. "You will feel better soon enough, I'm sure of it." He assured before getting back to the matter at hand. "What I was going to say before is that I've been thinking about what we should do now that we're separated. We've got what we came here for, and the SCC clearly does not have a plan to deal with my siblings, so I say we should get the heck out of here before Elizabeth can get any sort of unpleasant ideas that inevitably involve doing something horrible to me."
Courage shuffled around under the blanket until he managed to free his top half from the tangle. Though his eyes were filled with tears, and he did sound sad, he was clearly trying to focus on what was important beyond the distressing side effects he was suffering through. "Y-you've got a point there. Should we go now? Or-"
"I was thinking we should leave very late tonight. We'll sneak out with the puppies while there are fewer guards around. That way nobody will see us go. By the time Elizabeth figures out that we're gone, we'll be far enough away that we could easily hide out somewhere for a day or two and any search party she might send would never find us. So much of the surrounding area has been evacuated that we could hide in any abandoned home and have plenty of food to live off of for any amount of time that we might need." He looked down at his paws. "This glow will be a problem, of course. Any guard would be able to see it from a distance and we need to keep them from alerting Elizabeth for as long as possible." He turned back to Courage and sucked in a breath. "As much as I hate to consider it," He stomped his foot down into the grass. "We'll dig up some mud, maybe even get the puppies to do it because they'd love something like that, and cover me in it. Then, we can use our blanket and theirs to cover me up and the extra layers should mask the glow...I hope." He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, suppressing a shudder at the thought of how unpleasant this was going to be. "You all will have to guide me until we're far enough away, because I doubt I'll be able to see much like that, but once we're in the clear, my glow shouldn't be as much of an issue."
He felt bad for the bathtub of whichever house they were going to break in to. After Charon's cage, he was not willing to remain dirty for any longer than needed.
Opening his eyes again, he looked upwards, deep in thought. "Is there any variable I haven't taken into account with this plan?" He asked Courage.
"Hmm," Courage placed a paw to his chin. "Sneaking around and being quiet does not seem like something you're going to get out of those puppies."
"You'd be surprised." Atticus replied, unconcerned. "They lived under constant fear of Charon. They know when to be quiet and when to sneak off to hide. They'll do fine."
"I'll take your word for it."
They were both silent for a moment longer as they considered other ways their plan could go wrong. Security was so lax around here though that there wasn't much they really needed to worry about. People came and went all of the time and their group wouldn't look all that different from the rest, as long as they could hide Atticus's glow.
"Well then," Atticus chimed in when neither of them could think of anything else to discuss about their plan. "Make sure to rest up because we're going to be on the move again. With any luck though, you won't have to push yourself too terribly hard once we've put enough distance between us and this camp."
Both of them were ignoring the very big elephant in the room...his siblings. Eventually the amalgamation would catch up with them and then they were going to have to confront it again. Even if they made it to the mountain unscathed, that wall of mechanical destruction would reach it at some point in the future all the same. Nowhere and the farm was not safe either. Even if it took a long time for the amalgamation to reach it, that day would inevitably come.
Atticus reached down and grabbed one of the bottles of water. "Now if you excuse me," He began, putting on an evil smirk. "I have some puppies that I need to put the fear of Me in to." He brandished the bottle of water like a weapon. "Oh, and I suppose once I get dinner back, if those gluttons haven't devoured all of it by now, I'll let them know about our plan for tonight and see who wants to do some digging." He shrugged. "If you dogs weren't already obsessed with digging I would have made them do it as punishment, so a surprise water dousing for those gluttons will have to suffice instead."
Courage chuckled at that. "Go get dinner back before I waste away." He joked, only to take it back when he saw the expression on Atticus's face. "D-don't take it so seriously! I'm not actually about to starve to death!"
Atticus considered him carefully, as though searching for any secret signs of starvation. What he said next, however, betrayed what he was really thinking. "Will you be okay on your own for a little while?"
"H-hey, I meant it when I said I was feeling better!"
Atticus squinted. "You don't seem much like it. The last thing I want is to come back to you wrapped up in that blanket looking all dramatic again."
"I'll be fine, and I'm sure it won't take you that long to rescue our dinner from the puppies."
"I suppose you're right about that. Well, as much fun as I would have tormenting those thieves, I'll make this rescue mission quick...for your sake."
Courage smiled warmly at him for saying that and laughed when Atticus put on that very Deer In Headlights look, no doubt having been caught off guard.
Clearing his throat very loudly, as though that would act as a distraction, Atticus quickly blurted out, "Going now!" and practically stumbled his way through the tent flap.
"Compu-" Courage began, quickly stopping himself when he realized his error.
Atticus poked his head back in, leering at him.
"A-Atticus! Atticus!" He chuckled sheepishly in correction.
"Well, what's the hold up then?" Atticus urged, somewhat impatiently.
Courage rubbed the back of his head, looking everywhere but at Atticus. "A-actually, it can wait until you get back. M-maybe after we've had something to eat."
Atticus considered him again with a suspicious expression. "I swear, Courage! I had better not come back to find you playing out another soap opera after you assured me you'd be okay alone for a little while! I'm getting much too old to have to keep worrying about you like this!"
Courage gasped sarcastically and said while laughing, "You worry about me? I didn't know you actually cared!" He put on that mischievous smirk again. "And who here exactly has been causing the most amount of soap opera episodes on this journey of ours, hmm?"
"I really have created a monster, haven't I?" Atticus groaned, rolling his eyes. "I suppose I don't have any right to complain. Glass houses and all that."
He ducked out of the tent again before Courage could try to annoy him further and proceeded to move through the camp as stealthily as glowing, blue dog possibly could. If he could not find the pups out and about, he'd stage a surprise attack on their tent instead.
As he carefully checked around the corner of a tent, he caught a glimpse of a puppy on the move with one of those tubes in his paws. No doubt the gluttons were running rampant and stealing food from other people as well.
He smirked at that. "Time to teach these pups a lesson."
Tailing the pup from a safe distance, he was hopeful that the puppy would either lead him to the rest of the gaggle, or they would come to him, if that pup had stolen something from the rest of them.
It was not to be, however. Lily suddenly burst out of a tent, snarling in a way that was supposed to sound vicious but was simply too cute to be threatening. She tackled the thieving pup and took his food. In that exact moment, she looked up and caught sight of Atticus. Knowing perfectly well why he was there, she screamed playfully and took off running.
He followed after her but kept his distance. What he really needed was to get all of these puppies together in one place. If he could somehow convince them all to go back to their tent...
"You!" An unpleasantly familiar voice called out to him. "Come here! We need to talk!"
He slowed to a stop and turned with a roll of his eyes. Elizabeth was there, moving toward him at a brisk pace.
Wanting absolutely nothing to do with her, he turned back around. He had lost sight of Lily, but he'd worry about that after he had ditched the crotchety old woman. Turning down a different row of tents, he went into an unoccupied one and ducked out the back of it, hoping to lose her.
"I know you heard me!" Her voice still called out distressingly close behind him.
With a sigh, he turned back around toward her with an exaggerated motion of his head. "Look, I know that this is the part where you've decided that you need to do something horrible and downright unethical to me all in a desperate bid to stop my siblings! I have been around this block way too many times now not to be keyed in to whatever horrible thing that's attempting to happen to me next! Well, I am quite done with being the universe's punching bag, thank you very much! So just turn that wrinkly face of yours around and shove off!"
She leered down at him with that ever present expression of barely concealed contempt. "I only wish to talk with you." She assured him, although her dry monotone did nothing to actually assure him of anything.
"What? You're actually treating me like a fellow living being for once?" He sniffed indignantly. "...That's not suspicious or anything."
Elizabeth closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, looking as if whatever she was about to say was physically hurting her to speak it, "I have decided that for the sake of stopping this world ending threat, I must be pragmatic and attempt to work with the likes of you. If you want both that dog and those puppies that you are so fond of to live, you WILL come with me."
"Ha! Will I?" He fired back, giving her a smug smirk as some of her cold composure began to break in frustration.
"Do you want the world to end?" She groused before deciding to switch tactics. "Is there perhaps some sort of bargain I could make with you for your cooperation?"
Atticus did genuinely consider it for a moment. "Maybe, but I want two things out of this. First, you will find me the best, most expensive, industrial sized coffee maker on the market. Second, you will use whatever clout you have with the government to see to it that the personhood of both myself and the rest of the Constructs are fully recognized. We will be afforded the same rights as everyone else, post-humorously if that is what it comes down to for my siblings, and-" He narrowed his eyes up at her. "-the SCC will owe up to being the cause of this disaster, not my siblings. You and the rest of your organization will submit themselves to prosecution for what you did to us, as people, not your property, and you will not use any sort of loophole or clause to escape the law or any new laws they're going to have to make once this is all over."
Elizabeth's face had been slowly turning a deeper shade of red over the entirety of his declaration. All she could do was sputter furiously. "Unthinkable...you are not...I will never...such outrageous..."
Atticus dismissed her with a wave of his paw. "Didn't think so. Oh, well." He turned and started to walk away. "No deal then. Bye!"
"You blasted-" She began. "Fine! I will see what I can do! Now, come with me so that we can-"
Atticus glanced at her from over his shoulder. "Get me that coffee machine first as a show of good faith and maybe then I'll consider going with you."
He had to to keep himself from laughing at the look on Elizabeth's face. He did not expect that she would do any of the things he had demanded, and even now he was convinced that this was all just a trap. Why she was so insistent on getting him to go with her rather than just forcing him, he was not sure. Maybe she was worried about his Construct abilities? There was no chance that she being genuine though. Well, if he could just keep her off his case long enough for them to escape tonight...
"I am done with your snide, disrespectful, overly demanding conduct, you obnoxious-"
He cut her off. "Alright, alright! I will seriously consider going with you, with the assurance that my demands will be met at a later date, if you will do one other thing for me."
She looked like she wanted to strangle him. "You are pushing your luck...but, fine. Tell me what else it is that you want."
"Call me Atticus." He said, smirking hatefully up at her. "I want to hear you say it. Just once."
She ran a hand down her face as her dry and far more composed expression returned. "Atticus. There. Are you happy now?"
"Say it like you mean it!"
She slapped the same hand to her forehead. "For the love of-" Exhaling loudly, she put on a very fake conversational tone and blurted out, "Hello, Atticus! How is the weather? Can we please stop with this charade?"
"That's better." He replied, his smirk becoming a malicious grin. "Sounds like that really hurt for you to have to say, but you know what? I think I've changed my mind. Ask me again tomorrow and maybe I will have decided if I really want to work with the likes of you or not."
Elizabeth's expression remained surprisingly cool. "Ah, I see then. Well? Guess what? You've made quite the tactical error deciding on that body, because," She lunged forward and grabbed him. "You are much, much smaller than me, and so I will simply carry you back to my operations tent."
She raised him up high enough in the air that he was left looking down at her. The two of them glared at each other for one very long moment, and then, in one quick movement, Atticus unscrewed the cap of his water bottle and dumped its contents on to her face.
Her expression remained unchanged. "I really don't like you..."
The empty bottle was flung at her head and bounced off her forehead with a DONK!
She began to grind her teeth as water continued to drip down her face, but her expression remained cool and collected. Without another word, she took Atticus under her arm and marched off toward her tent, ignoring his flailing and complaining the entire way.
…...
Courage paced back and forth in the tent. One particular thought was consuming his mind, and with Atticus gone for the time being, it was impossible for him to even try to ignore it. He was not certain what exactly had caused him to reach this point. There were many possible culprits, but he was becoming more and more convinced with every second that ticked by that he needed to do this. In fact, he'd almost managed to go through with it before when Atticus left...but chickened out at the last second.
Maybe it was only one culprit, or maybe it was all of them coming together to create a sense of urgency within him, but either way, he was certain that he needed to do this. It might have been the crushing loneliness and sense of profound emptiness that their separation had caused within him. Atticus seemed to believe that it was just an undocumented side effect that would get better with time, but Courage was not so sure about that. Maybe it was the uncertainty of their future that was making him feel this way. If they were about to be killed or permanently separated by the amalgamation, now was the time to be honest and not leave any lingering regrets. Maybe it was just because they were in different bodies again and that made the prospect of doing this so much easier to consider. Courage could think about this freely now without Atticus there to pick up on his thoughts and feelings. He could plan now without immediately being discovered.
In any case, he was done pretending. He was tired of acting willfully ignorant about what was obvious. He was not sure if it would be today, or tomorrow, or even a little later, if he needed extra time to plan, but he was going to be open and honest with Atticus about...everything. Whether his companion would accept his feelings or not, he was going to tell him all the same, and they would have to figure out where they would go from there.
Courage was, admittedly, a little nervous. He already knew exactly how Atticus would react, and that was the biggest hurdle he would need to get around if he was going to get anywhere with this. It was the reason why he needed to plan this out properly or else Atticus would inevitably be...Atticus about this.
Slowing his pacing to a stop, he gazed over at the tent flap. Since that feeling of nervousness was only growing inside of his chest, he decided that it might be best to go look for Atticus now, before his nerves could fail him. Maybe it really would be better if he just thew caution to the wind instead of carefully planning this.
Clasping his paws together, he realized that they were trembling. He couldn't help but laugh. He wasn't the one who was supposed to get all flustered like this! Maybe he really HAD picked up a few traits from his dearest friend and his...well, he would have to see about that first.
Taking a deep breath, he moved toward the tent flap, but when he heard a sound outside, his heart nearly exploded inside his chest thinking that it was Atticus. Instead, Lilly tumbled into the tent, followed by the rest of the puppies. They all landed on top of each other until they were in one big pile.
"W-what are you guys doing?" He asked, clutching at his chest like an old man about to have a heart attack.
Lilly somehow managed to squirm her way out from under the pile. "He's looking for us! I saw him!" She exclaimed.
Courage grinned at that. "You guys DID steal our dinner, you know."
Another puppy shouted from within the pile. "We were hungry!"
"Yeah!" The rest agreed.
A second pup extracted himself from the dog pile. "I told them that we should hide in the last place he'd look."
Courage laughed. "Which is here. Pretty clever." He then sighed as some of his nervousness left him along with that breath. "I was actually about to go look for him. If you promise not to steal from us again, maybe I can lead him in the wrong direction for a little while."
Lily squinted at him, sensing that something was up, given that he was not doing a very good job at hiding his nervous demeanor. "Why are you gonna go look for him instead of just waiting for him to come back?" She asked before starting to bounce up and down. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!"
Courage's single ear drooped as any composure he might have had left him. "O-oh, well..." He began, swallowing as the pups all gazed up at him with newfound interest. "Oh, boy..."
End Of Chapter