Summary: Poof and Goldie, young teenagers, bump into Foop and Anti-Marigold when filling out the paperwork for their new wands.

Characters: Poof, Goldie, Foop, Anti-Marigold, H.P., Binky, Steve

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

Posted: July 26, 2016

117. Tools of the Trade (Far future; post-series)

Third Thursday of Early Summer; Aurora 8036

Year of Fire; Summer of the Orange Dawn

Poof slammed the stack down with a thud on the faded pink bricks of the road. "I can't believe how much paperwork is involved in this. And out in this heat. How long's it been now?"

Goldie took out her bronze pocket watch. "About seven minutes."

"Urrrrggghhh…"

"But, it'll all be worth it to get yourself that fresh new wand of your dreams."

"Right. My thundersnap kitnut. Gee, you're lucky your mama started you on a training wand that actually looks the part. I grew way too attached to my rattle, and I miss it already."

"I know ya do, sweetie-bell." The will o' the wisp handed him another purple pen. "But the new one'll grow on ya. Bet it'll feel perfect in your hand the first time you pick it up."

He knelt down on the rough ground beside her, scratching at his purple ponytail. "If it doesn't, I'm returning it. I'll be the only Fairy who's ever gone all these centuries and still refused to make the switch. I can accept that. It's not a phase. It's who I am."

She barely suppressed a giggle behind her tight lips, and Poof smiled back and rearranged his wings. Oh, how badly he wanted to poof off and grab them both a snack of apples and juice to cool off. But for security reasons, the Pixies had ordered a lock-down of all loose magic on the entire block. Poof could only pray that the wands had all been tested beforehand. It wasn't that he worried the pixies would screw him over. After all, the wands had been crafted by Fairy hands- the Pixies were only here because they could smell paperwork from eighty cloudlengths away. No, Poof was praying because if he had to come back and fill all those forms out again, he was going to yank out his own teeth.

"I haven't seen Daxton today," he noted as he took up the first sheet of the second batch. "We were supposed to meet him here and then go for ice cream later, right?"

She glanced about. A couple of young Fairies dotted the square - most of them faces they both had gone to school with - but there weren't a terrible lot of them. "I think he came up yesterday with most of the crowd. How's Sparky- I haven't asked for awhile."

"Just being Sparky. He can't stop digging, even through the clouds. But hey, that's what they were bred for."

Goldie signed her name on every line without reading any of it. "I think it's real sweet that your parents let ya still keep the dog, even when he's old enough to ste…"

She trailed off. Poof soon realized why. He was getting that familiar ache between his wings- the one he always developed when all the magic in the surrounding energy field turned chilly and began to curdle. He flapped out the collar of his pale green jacket and slit his eyes.

"Would you look at what the black cat dragged in."

"Ah, dear. I was really hoping we'd be on our way by the time those two showed up."

"Does he look more vengeful than normal to you?"

"Poof, hon, he was born with more than a couple a' cactus needles shoved up his behind."

He put a hand to his temple and grimaced. "I said I was sorry. But if he had to steal something of my baby personality…"

Foop came sauntering across the square as if he'd just been informed about the shattering of a whole semi-truck carrying mirrors. With his black lab coat tails flapping behind him, he looked like he'd been dragged out here in the middle of one of those weird experiments he was always working on back at his father's castle. Eight inches of papers were stacked up in his arms. Anti-Goldie was even easier to spot with the crimson eyespots on her flared moth wings and fur so blue, it carried a purple tinge. She picked her way after him, and her arms were empty. So that explained Foop's double load. When they drew close, Poof mimed a kick at the both of them. Foop must have been anticipating this, because he stopped well out of reach and bore his fangs in a smirk.

"Hello, bath bomb and mothball. I hope you recognize that I greet you unarmed. Nonetheless, I would not go about provoking me in your place. The very fact that I have wasted so much of my day thus far here in this sickeningly pretty corner of Fairy World has left me utterly miserable, and I shall be quick to strike out against anyone who thinks they can make me feel otherwise."

"Welcome to the club."

Goldie's orange and cream wings gave a few warning flutters. "Now, boys…"

Foop had the decency to spare her a glance as he brushed at the front of his blue sweater vest. "Warm and fuzzy greetings to you too, wisp. You know, even now that the 'anti' part of your core has manifested outside of you, I am still admittedly partial to you as a person and for the capable level of intellect you demonstrate in our Da Rules class. You ought to come to my birthday party on the eighteenth. Splendid event. Don't bring your purple saucerbee captain."

"It twists my heart to say, but I must turn down your generous offer, Floop. Though I do enjoy some nice chocolate cake."

Anti-Goldie chuckled. "Oh, sheila, that ain't no secret."

Goldie's face turned pink like Mama's hair. She looked down at her shoes. A sharp ember boiled in Poof's stomach. He turned his attention back on his own counterpart.

"Call off your dog, Foop. We're all miserable in this heat as it is, so instead of pouring salt in the wound and then sending bad luck after it, let's all sit down, shut up, and work hard so we can all get out of here before dinner. Why do they even hand wands out to Anti-Fairies?"

The claw at the tip of Foop's left wing gave a slight twitch. "Oh, grow up, Mr. Popular. There are more people in the world than just you. Your species isn't the only one cursed to suffer from magical backup, and we have our unalienable rights too."

"I've never understood why the Fairy Council allowed that law to pass. There could stand to be a few less Anti-Fairies sucking up all the magic."

"Says the member a' the most frivolous species known ta the Seelie Court," Anti-Goldie grunted.

Foop nodded. "Exactly. What she said. And it's 'fewer', actually."

The fairy stuck his round nose in the air. "Well, at least I can stay awake through a lullaby."

"At least I can fall asleep without a nightlight brighter than Dante's inferno."

Poof's eyelids flew open. Giggles and snorts whizzed around him from those who had joined them in the relative shade, but his old classmates smothered themselves as he locked eyes with Foop for the first time. The anti-fairy was in another of those real cocky moods (When wasn't he?) and displayed this… this typical 'alpha drake' factor. Even Cosmo couldn't have missed the challenge there. Poof pulled his favorite blaster from his pocket.

"Wait," Goldie said, "you brought a laser gun?"

Foop mirrored him with the match of the set from one of the folds of his coat.

"You wily wallabies both brought laser guns?" Anti-Goldie asked, no less surprised.

"What do you expect?" Poof grunted back, taking aim. "No magic allowed." Then he had to duck as Foop's gun loaded first and fired a flaming streak of blue inches from Poof's right ear. It buried itself into the bricks beside Steve the leprechaun (or one of the identical O'Terrae brood, anyway), setting his papers alight. One of his three lookalikes and a half-elf girl that Poof didn't recognize stamped it out with a wooden shoe.

"Yes, that's not magic," Goldie noted dryly. She returned to her paperwork while her counterpart hovered over her shoulder, tugging on her ears or pouring out dark ink over the printed words. After five or six minutes, the two drakes had exhausted either themselves, or their blasters.

"Renew the truce?" Poof asked, tossing his aside.

"Renew the truce." Then Foop turned around, and his face pinched. "Kelsia, you blithering moron- look at what dastardly fate you've brought upon my paperwork! What did it ever do to you?"

She offered him an origami kangaroo. "You know I craft when I'm bored, mate."

Poof poked his counterpart with his elbow, still adjusting his blue headband with his free fingers. "Looks like between the two of us, I have the better girlfriend."

"Don't give me that!" Foop's tone rose to a sudden shriek. "You're the reason I'm scoffed at for dating outside my own species in the first place! An anti-will o' the wisp, of all races. My father has already threatened to disinherit me over it."

"Your parents have threatened to disinherit you? I haven't even told my Mama. She'll go off the lip."

Foop's scowl switched position. "Is that so? Well, perhaps Kelsia and I will just have to pay a visit up to Faeheim."

Wings thrumming, Poof brought his forehead close enough that his curl risked tangling with Foop's. "Don't you dare."

"My, my- forgive me, your majesty, but no one told me to take off my crown in the presence of the comeback king."

"You've got a lot of nerve for someone who still looks like a talking lunchbox."

"Ooh, them's fighting words, Mr. Popular."

"Cute- You learn your vocabulary from your mother?"

Foop's pupils shrank to the size of bacteria. He shoved his counterpart backwards and flared his wings behind him in a great swoop. "I do not have to stand here and take this from a brownie-blood who still sculpts with Play-Doh and sleeps with a glowing teddy bear."

"Then don't get up. Easy."

Amid the round of "Oooohh!"s, Foop snapped one of Anti-Goldie's origami hermit crabs to Steve's throat. "The leprechaun will pay dearly for this! Don't test me!"

Someone cleared his throat in monotone. "Might I beg your boys' pardon?"

"What?" they snarled.

The pixie folded his arms and seemed to look them up and down behind his shades. "I thought you might like to know that your first batch of paperwork has been green-lighted, and once you finish with the second half and if everything should continue to be in order, your wands will be waiting to be picked up at the front table at your convenience."

"All right. Fine. This is fine. We're all fine. We'll settle this outside of the lock-down zone later." Tugging on the collar of his lab coat, Foop cast a sideways look his captive's way. "By the way, don't you have to give me forty-nine pieces of your gold if I agree to let you go?"

Steve jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the nubby wings he had but that Poof always forgot about. "Not if I am only half a leprechaun. Why did you think I was all the way in the eastern skies filing for a wand?"

Individually seething, fairy and anti-fairy returned to their work and raced one another to the end. Foop was evidently at least a bit reluctant to scrawl his name on a Pixie contract (even an origami one) without first scanning what exactly he was getting into, but Poof had glanced over the paper and thought it looked standard enough, and so it was easily he who came out victorious in the end. Goldie had patiently waited for him, and the pair walked together to the opposite corner of the square.

Upon stepping into the shade of the cloth pavilion, Poof regarded the Head Pixie with unease. Along with Foop's dad, this man had kidnapped him not even an hour after he'd been born and tried to extract his uninfluenced magic. Poof had no memories of that day, but he'd heard the stories from his parents and that pink-hatted godkid who had wished him into existence. The Head Pixie raised one eyebrow at Poof's approach like he recognized him, but didn't take his hands off the table. At least he had Binky and Nova sitting with him, so it wasn't like he'd been left unsupervised.

H.P. and one of the other pixies skimmed through all the signed papers while Poof drummed his nails against the table. "Which wand is which?" Foop asked, puffing his cheeks at the stack of white boxes as he and Anti-Goldie at last came scrambling up with crumpled papers in hand.

"Fairy." H.P. tapped the first box. "Will o' the wisp. Anti-fairy. Anti-will o' the wisp. They're yours, if you just sign here."

Unlike the stacks explaining the insurance policy and clarifying chinks and details and dangers, this paper was simply a confirmation that Poof had received the proper wand on the correct date, and under what conditions he was allowed to return it if it did not meet his satisfaction. Binky offered an encouraging nod, so he took up the pen and signed. Once he had, H.P. shuffled the paper beneath the second one in the pile.

"And here. And… one last time right here. That's it. You're free to go." He got a finger flutter and a crisp, "Have a splendid day." Then the pixie picked up an origami shark and tilted down his glasses. "What exactly is this?"

Foop made a swinging motion across his chest with a bent arm and smiled an enormous fake smile. "Well, it's obviously a testament to the vicious yet misunderstood nature of the Pixie race and not a hunk of paper that got licked by an anti-will o' the wisp and is now completely impossible to unfold."

"I'm not saying 'Sorry'."

Poof pulled back as H.P. turned his attention on the Anti-Fairies. All Fairy wands were tipped with a star of hollow topaz and filled with rosewater for prime magic channeling, but the rest of it had been custom-made. The body was a husk of kitnut wood. It fit snugly in his palm. Smooth, but not slippery. Supposedly, the center of balance had been modeled like a gyroscope, so it would never roll off a table or tip over if he stood it upright. He'd requested a padded grip. An expensive piece, but his parents hadn't guilted him about it once. "It's your first one and it should be exactly what you want, sweetie," Mama had pointed out, and Dad had chimed in with a cheerful, "It's not like we haven't replaced ours a couple dozen times in the last few centuries, either."

The fairy found a place to stand in the shade-that-wasn't-the-dark-kind-of-shade. "So shiny," he murmured, rubbing his thumb over and over against the topmost point.

"So heavy," Foop said as he (finally) wandered over, weighing his own in his hand. "But regardless, it will all be worth it in the end. Really, this isn't at all shabby, but pure obsidian does that."

"Is that the Anti-Fairy version of kitnut wood?"

"Your zinflax, if I am not mistaken. I did do my research, unlike a certain purple twit who bailed on me during our chemistry project in Twenty-Fourth Year. I don't have to be the polar opposite of you in every little respect."

"Consider it payback for all those times you made me cover for us in history."

Foop dropped one fist into his cupped palm. "Learning about history that doesn't relate to war or the weaknesses of your world bores me."

Poof shrugged. "Same. And come to think of it, I never did thank you for the tutoring in biology."

"I do happen to like biology," he admitted with the tap of a claw on his temple.

"And now here we are, halfway through our schooling years, with these things freshly tuned with all five bars. What's your analysis, Professor Foop? Think they could use a trial run?"

Foop spun the black wand between his fingers- a trick he had never been capable of performing with his bottle. "Oh, you know it, puffball. Let's say we hit up Colorado. The magic field there has been too smooth and quiet for too long. It could use a few patches and tangles, don't you think so? We could make the whole of Leadville our fair playground."

"And we take turns slamming each other with all we've got until one of us admits defeat?"

"That," Foop agreed, "or passes out."

"I like the way you think."

"It's you. You'll be the one passing out."

"You know, I learned a new lullaby the other day and it's been stuck in my head ever since."

"Lovely! I learned how to summon enough clouds and wild winds to darken an entire saucerbee stadium."

"Boys," Goldie sighed from her place at the table. She'd let her counterpart cut ahead of her, because that was the sort of good soul she had.

Foop only chuckled. "First to collapse or break for lunch owes the winner a month of tickets to the bouncy castle in Cherishville?"

"Better bring your game face, Rubik's cube."