Christmas Special Request: Bonding with Repede
Rhino600's request!
Another one that happens during chapter 25, just after Letha finishes working but before she returns to the inn.
I'm glad you liked the last one, Angelic. Heheh, maybe the case of blackmail you suspect to be inevitable from Letha should be a future omake.
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FTaBV Omake: Good Deed
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"Woof!"
"Don't ask me, you're the one with a superior sense of smell."
I'd been searching the streets of Dahngrest with Repede for the last hour. There was a bit of a story behind this, but not a long one.
When I'd gotten out of work, I decided to do some shopping and make sure I was prepared for the resumption of plot whenever it got around to happening. Then sitting on the doorstep of the first shop I wanted to stop by was a little kid in patched up overalls, bawling his eyes out. Repede was nosing at him, whining a little when his attempts at comfort actually made the boy cry even harder.
"Woah, what's up here?" I sat down in the dirt next to Repede to put myself on eye level with the kid.
Repede whined at me a bit and his tail thumped on the ground, perhaps meaning something along the lines of, "Oh thank God someone who speaks human's here."
While he didn't entirely stop crying, the boy at least restrained himself to just sniffle and hiccup a bit as he told me, "Skip's run away!"
"Skip?"
"My-my doggie!" the boy sobbed. "They don't let pets inside, so I left 'im out here, an' now 'e's gone!" He broke out in a fresh wave of tears. Oh, beautiful. I don't know what to do with crying children.
Repede, though, gave a short bark and nosed the boy's hands.
"Hmm, I betcha Repede's telling you to cheer up, and that everything is going to be alright."
The tears died down to sniffles again, "It-it will?"
"Yeah, Repede and I will find Skip for you, right Repede?"
"Woof!" The canine barked as if to say, "Of course, what else did you think I meant?" Just checking.
"Thank you!"
So we got a description of Skip, a small brown puppy with a red handkerchief around his neck, and a piece of rope he liked to chew on. Repede took a good sniff of the chew toy and was off tracking the scent trail. I lingered long enough to buy the kid a piece of candy (it seemed similar to a jaw breaker) to occupy himself with while he waited for us.
Repede waited impatiently for me in the middle of the street, then resumed tracking the wayward puppy. Which brought us to our predicament in the middle of an alleyway, where he'd apparently lost the trail.
We looked around the alleyway for any sign of Skip, and I wondered what could have shaken off Repede. Other than some cans stuffed with garbage, rags, some burlap bags of...something that smelled unpleasant (I couldn't tell without opening them, and I wasn't about to go through trash in the streets), and a stack of boards that looked like they'd been knocked over, there wasn't anything around.
"Well, I guess I'll have to ask around to see if anyone's seen Skip, and you keep trying to find the scent trail again..."
"Woof..." Repede acknowledged me as he put his nose back to work.
I knocked on the doors of the houses around the alleyway. No one answered at one, and the people in the others hadn't noticed a brown puppy at all. When I was about to leave the last house, a tug on my green coat made me look down. There was a little girl in a puffy white dress, clutching a doll with a baby bonnet in one arm while pulling on my coat with the other.
"Miss, I know where the doggie is!"
Kneeling down again (aagh, my knees already hurt from standing around a store all day!), "You've seen him?"
She shook her head, blonde pigtails swinging. "Nuh uh. But I've been hearing a doggie crying from outside my window!" Oh dear.
With permission from her mother, the little girl took me up to her room and showed me the window in question. Swinging the shutters open, I looked out and down. "Yo, Repede!" The dog warrior looked up and barked at me from the alley. "Still no luck?" Another bark.
I looked around. "So where's Skip the puppy gotten off too..." Listening for it, I could hear a faint whimpering. I leaned out the window, and finally spotted what could best be described as Vesperia's version of a chocolate lab puppy huddled on a ledge that ran around the building about two feet below the window. Or it would go around the building if age and weathering hadn't made part of it crumble away, just behind where the puppy was sitting. "What the heck? How'd you get up there?" We're on the second floor!
Apparently realizing someone had finally noticed his plight, Skip looked up at me with giant brown eyes and whined piteously. He was not within easy reach of the window, instead about ten feet away. ...Great, now I have to play fireman. The ledge was maybe half a foot wide (at most), so if I went slow it should work out okay... I dropped my bag to the floor by the window.
"Ah! What are you doing?" At the little girl's cry the mother came into the room. She found me with one leg in and one already out of the window.
"That's dangerous!"
"It's alright, I'll be right back." With that I had both feet on the ledge, and gripped the sill tightly while I found my balance. Cautiously, I shuffled my feet along the ledge and slowly made my way over (back pressed flat to the wall) to the shivering puppy. Ohhh, thank God these boots have good traction...!
I'd gotten more than halfway so it would be pointless to give up and turn back. Of course, that's when if finally occurred to me that I should have borrowed some mattresses or something else soft to put in the alley in case I fell. Great idea if only I'd had it five minutes earlier.
"Come on, Skip! Good boy..." Only a few feet away, I carefully bent my knees and lowered myself (keeping my back straaaaight!) and reached out a tentative hand to the puppy. He sniffed carefully at my fingers, then licked them with a pink tongue. I sighed in relief, since that was a good sign he wouldn't try to run away if I got closer.
Slooowly, so I wouldn't lose my balance or frighten the puppy, I stood up again. Slooowly inched across the last bit of distance between us. Leaned down again, and scooped up the puppy around the stomach, quickly drawing him back to cradle against my chest with one arm. "Whoo, thank goodness you're lighter than my cats. I don't know what I would do if you were as heavy as Monk the glutton."
But then Skip started to squirm a little bit. While trying not to drop him I lost balance for a moment and one foot slipped off the edge. "Shi-!" I barely managed to keep myself from falling off completely, pressing myself against the wall and gasping at the sudden rush of adrenaline bursting through me.
I could hear the clattering of something hitting the alley street below and Repede barking. Swallowing, I looked down and saw that about a yard's worth of the ledge I'd just come across had broken off and fallen. "Ahh, that's kinda scary..." It wasn't likely that falling from the second story could kill me, but a bad landing would probably break something.
Lucky or not, I was stranded on the side of a building.
"Uhh, Repede? Anything you can do?"
"Woof! Woof!" I looked down, and saw him dragging the burlap bags of...something over from the other side of the alley. Once he'd moved them all just under my position, he stepped back and looked back up at me. "Woof!"
"Yeah...thanks." Holding the puppy close, and fortunately he wasn't fighting my grip at all anymore, I turned around so that I was facing the wall. I grabbed the ledge with my free hand and climbed down over the side so that I was hanging of the edge, feet braced against the wall. "Alley oop~!" I let go.
Crunch
No, that was not my bones breaking. It was the sound the burlap bags made when I landed on them. I landed feet first, bending my knees to absorb the shock, and then falling back onto my rear. The bags crackled with each movement. One hadn't been tied shut properly and some of its contents spilled out. They were filled with crumpled up papers and oil paint stained clothes. Well that explains the smell. Must be turpentine or something.
Once the mother brought my bag back out we returned to the shop where the boy was waiting. About halfway back, the puppy got over his scare and wriggled out of my hands again. While I chased the mini labrador futilely down a side street, Repede headed him off easily in a few bounds. I caught up to them and Skip was dangling by the scruff of his neck from the larger dog's mouth. Repede snorted at me and led the way again, holding onto the puppy himself.
"Well sorry, but it's like they melt out of your hands at that age!" Another snort, and this time Repede's tail wagged too. "Yeah yeah, I'm just a clumsy human... I would have liked to see you try and crawl out on that ledge he was hiding on!" His ears laid back against his head and he whined a bit around his mouthful of squirming puppy.
Repede dropped the puppy back onto the ground when we were within sight of the boy, still sitting on the shop step hugging his knees close. Seeing him, Skip started yapping his head off and ran to the boy, stumbling over his own paws in his hurry. The boy looked up and squealed in delight, and both obviously forgot about Repede and me, the boy laughing while the puppy licked his face.
"Well, we're no longer needed."
Repede gave a quiet "woof" and started walking off in the direction of the inn. When I didn't follow he stopped and looked over his shoulder at me questioningly.
"No, I still have some stuff to do. You go back first." Not one to mince words (...barks...you know what I mean!), Repede easily accepted that and left. "Now then, let's finally actually go in the store and buy some gels." Hopefully there won't be another kid inside crying about a kitten that's stuck up a tree somewhere.
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So, yeah. How's this? Several people noted how in chapter 26 there was a brief friendly moment between Repede and Letha. That was a nod to this omake, which I was trying to plan.
I was wavering between it being the second floor and the third. If it were the third I'd explain her not being harmed by the drop as a result of having a bhodi blastia, but she'd probably have actually thought through the whole climbing out the window thing a bit more carefully. So I'll put it up this way, and each to his own!