Summary: Vicky and Mark have very different opinions on what to do with a dead dog.

Characters: Mark, Vicky, Doidle (deceased), Timmy, Sparky, Tootie, Chloe

Rating: K+

Prerequisites: None

Posted: July 31, 2016

44. Bones (Post Season 10)

Saturday April 7th, 2007

Year of Breath; Spring of the Thin Chipmunk

Three such exsquidsitely-dressed Earthling humans (in addition to one dappled green, tentacled alien boy and one overweight dog of the yellowish and bronze variety) had probably never set foot in the dump before, let alone sat on such beautifully-sculpted heaps of trash. The table was Mark's personal favorite, since it had taken quite a bit of molding and mashing to ensure that it stood up in a straight way without the hovering technology that he was so used to. But no matter how he tried to hint at this, Timmy Turner did not appear to be picking up on the clues that he was pining for praise. Whatev, it was cool.

The little human dude was decked out in a white suit at least two sizes too small for his fourteen-year-old form, and that unnervingly hideous Chloe Car of Michael girl was wearing the matching top hat. They had brought their floating friends too, disguised as though with Fakeifiers in the forms of a pink bowtie, a green flower, and a purple bracelet, though at age ten Timmy had made Mark promise not to let on to Vicky that they existed. Proudly to say of Mark, that he had never once ever considered breaking that trust.

Speaking of Vicky… Oh, dear Vicky…

Mark, long since dragged into full-on Yugopotamian form by Vicky's warm tears and his own soft heart, had been holding onto her small and frag-ee-ile hand for what had to be going on twenty minutes now. It was not in any way looking well for his wrist. Maybe a quarter of an Earth hour ago, the red blisters had stopped bubbling and begun to steam. Mark had gnawed through most of his tie and was considering whether his jacket or the collar of his white shirt would taste better, but he could not simply be doing the releasing of Vicky. Not so long as she remained in this sort of trance-like state. Her grip crushed his tentacle.

Chloe Car of Michael held Vicky's other small hand in her even smaller Earth girl hand, although she was clearly reluctant to touch his horrifyingly beautiful girlfriend in his presence. As for Timmy Turner, he had sprawled himself across the trash lawn chair with Sparky curled up on his stomachal region. The yellow dog had not yet barked a single word of spoken langooage, even though Mark knew from his shimmering crown and tiny wings that he had floaty blood in him and was fullifyingly capable of it. He had heard Timmy Turner mention to Chloe Car of Michael, too, that the dog known as Sparky Stealer of Souls had not eaten any of his speci-al dog food for the previous two days. So that was a thing. Tootie Little Sister perched on the arm beside him. She waved a dog biscuit, but the effort was half-hearted. Sparky Stealer of Souls did not attempt to be going for it.

If this kept up much longer, then the alien warrior prince known to Earth as Mark Chang would be short a few suction cups. The metaphorical line had to be drawn upon the ground somewhere.

Mark cleared his throat and tapped Vicky's shoulder with the end of a different tentacle. "So, uh. Sh'yeah, are we good here yet, Vick-ay?"

She did not answer to him. He stood to her left, but she gripped his tentacle with her right hand, the arm held across her body. She used that shoulder to rub wet sparks from her cheek. Mark shot a helpless glance in the way of Chloe Car of Michael. She then elected to pass that look onto Timmy Turner. He shrugged back, Hate her and do not wish to get involved here, sorry.

"I just really don't want to accept that he's gone…"

That was his Vicky's voice. Mark shifted his attention back to her. He had never, ever seen Vicky cry before, and even now she was doing a good job of pretending she was not engaged in such a curious human expression of emotion. No flushed face, no squeaking her words, and no sobbing. Just an exhausted sort of quiet. She pinched the bridge of her nose and began to massage her eyebrows.

"Stupid… twerp of a pooch. I'm really going to miss him. I know it's ridiculous, but I… I really feel like I had him for fifty years or something."

Timmy Turner coughed into the part of his shirt material that was known as a lapel. Mark lifted another tentacle. "I am sure, Vick-ay, that the Doidling dog misses you too, wherever his spirit has flown off to-o."

Chloe Car of Michael glared at him. He had selected and pronounced the wrong answer, evidently. Hey, maybe she had better be seeing how she would do if she were to have one of her favorite arms dissolving before her eyes. Mark tugged again on his limb, with little success. Okay, zero percent success.

To be perfectly honest, after having his tentacle squeezed this long, Mark wanted to cry himself. And on Yugopotamia, the shedding of the tears except in the cases of certain incidents was likely to get you fed to the hideous plant monster Jer-ah-may. In fact, the only time that Mark had ever cried in his entire alien life was that long night following the day he had like, so rude-i-ly been abducted from Earth by his parents, crowned king of his home planet, been forcibly wed to the Bodacian princess Mandie, gotten backstabbed by aforementioned Mandie and locked up in the very topmost part of the appropriately-named Pinpoint Tower with Timmy Turner, raced back to Earth, nearly had the ink beaten out of him by the again and for the third time aforementioned Mandie, had finally been reunited with his beloved redheaded demon… gone in for their first kiss with the affection sparking so horribly that his Fakeifier shorted out and killed his human disguise in his hands…

And she had taken his cheeks and looked him in the eyes, the disgust curling over her face, and dropped his tentacles. Just walked away. On the night they were finally going to that fancy Chinese restaurant that she appeared to adore. Like all the other dates they had attended together as a pair of two meant nothing at all.

No. As much as she so obviously held affection towards him, she would never forgive him for his alien blood. It was the thing they fought about most often. Still, he had never given up hope. After all, she had hand-delivered him a box of chocolates for the Day of Valentine Hearts. They were chocolates that had a death threat attached to them and were death-a-ly poisonous to him and to the rest of his alien kind, but she did not know that and could be forgiven. Even when he had begged her and pleaded with her for months (it felt like years at times) to have a second chance, she had demanded answers as to how an "awkward foreign exchange twerp from the Earth location known as Europe" could possibly "fit in that tall and hunky Justin Jake Ashton" costume, or something something.

He had told her the truth. Bad move to do it before she headed off for another one of her long eve-i-nings where she engaged in the babysitting of Timmy Turner, maybe, and he still wondered sometimes how that had all gone downwards. She had seemed fairly furious.

But she loved him. That much was obvious in the way that she had come back to him after he had put forth the effort into shimmying down from her roof and knocked on her window for a couple of hours or days. She had been ever so really interested in something about how his full juvenile name was Prince Mark Fairykin Chang. Whatever it was about that name which had caused the attraction of her attention via her optical orbs in a metaphorical way, it was good enough for him.

"Well, then I bestow upon you my permission that you are welcome to take as long as you so want to mourn, Vick-ay. And whenever it is that you have completed your show of grief and weeping, the table is set and I have brought-en out the quad-pronged instruments of the silver Earth feasting. As Doidle's closest com-pan-ee-un, you will, of course, be having the honor of making the first selection of scrumptious meat upon his body. Personally, I might suggest that tender rear left leg, huh."

That finally did it. In multiple ways. His half-blackened tentacle snapped off from the rest of his body (at least it would grow back). Then Vicky dropped it to the trash and dirt with a thud and stared at him. It was the same look that she had affixed to him back when they had first met up in Timmy Turner's room of resting. Then she had given it again back when he had first returned to take her back with him to Yugopotamia. Once more back when his Justin Jake Ashton disguise had rippled and failed for the first time in her arms. And how, again, for the sake of painful and necessary reiteration, she had looked him up and down and had sniffed at him and stalked off. It was a look that not even a Yugopotamian could ever love. At least, not on the face of someone whose affections that had been trying for so long to win. Not when the angel bearing the disgusted, gaping, furified expression belonged to a culture so com-plee-ta-lee opposite his own.

Chloe Car of Michael was fully of likeness probability to run short of peeve-ed scowls at this rate. Timmy Turner had jolted up. Tootie Little Sister began to look quite sick and green in her face. Their wing-ed floating friends were conspiring in soft voices, and possibly planning to aim their wands at him. Even Sparky Stealer of Souls had lifted his head. Mark shifted his eyes between the three humans, drawing his remaining coils safely away from anyone who might wish to whimper into them next.

"Unless I am misinter-per-itting the expressions upon your squishy human faces, I take it that this is not the way you comm-un-ly dispose of bodies on your plan-et?"

"Not all of us are complete monsters, you sick trash compactor." Vicky shoved him with both hands. Mark moved maybe a quarter of an inch in response, his squishy body enveloping her fingertips. His skin rippled like swamp water encased in overcooked jello. Normally he loved it when she did that before they broke into one of their frequent cross-culture fights. This time it hurt. He reached out to Vicky, intending to soothe her in a hug the way the Earthlings seemed to be fond of, but she slapped his tentacle away. Sparky Stealer of Souls was passed off to Tootie Little Sister. Timmy Turner jumped up and touched a hand to one of Mark's lower coils, but the squid thrust him back with a second one. Was not his business.

"Well, he is dead, Vick-ay. And he is here in the dump. What would you expect me, who is a Yugopotamian, to be doing with him?"

"Uh, you could just leave him." Vicky spat the last words between her teeth. "You could leave him right there. He's. Happily. Buried."

He could not manage to stay upset with her when she got that way. As Vicky turned around to take her frustration out on the well-placed Timmy Turner, he kneaded his coils into the dirt and allowed her to have her moment. He would remain quiet, and dwell amidst only his thoughts.

"You can't have Sparky," he heard the human boy shout. "He's mine! Just- just go get a new dog from some evil puppy mill or something. That suits you."

"Gee, Timmy," Sparky Stealer of Souls said, "I don't know about this anymore. When do we get the funeral potatoes and head back home? I gotta use the Dinkleberg's lawn."

Vicky ignored his speech, as she tended to. Instead, she rounded on Chloe Car of Michael. "And you, blondie-"

Mark snorted to himself, folding several pairs of tentacles across his chest. Gazing down into the uncovered hole that he had so graciously used his ship's resources to power the weapons to blast in the ground, he said, "What a horr-ific waste of beautiful furry skin. For years and years upon end, I have long been watching him and thinking that he looked so delicious, too."

Vicky tossed Chloe Car of Michael back on the trash couch beside Tootie Little Sister with a thump. Grabbing Mark's narrow shoulder, she wrenched him around. "You are not going to eat Doidle!" The spittle flew in his face. It did not burn his skin in the way her rare and beloved kisses did, at least, so that was a plus.

"So it is better that he rots there? Why should the worms be welcome to partake in this delicious feasting, while I am left to simply drool and crave?" He knotted three of his tentacles together in pleading fists as he threw back his head so hard, he nearly bashed open his glass dome on an ancient Earth TV set partially buried in rubble and sticky brown sludge. "I cannot stand for this for very much longer, Vick-ay! I cannot go on living this way!"

Chloe Car of Michael's face had gone absolutely purple. Her freckles burned with a scarlet flare. She stuck a finger in the air, opening her mouth, but Timmy Turner threw his arm up to block her and she snapped it shut again.

"Mark," Timmy said as the Yugopotamian oozed away among the trash, "Doidle died of rabies. You really shouldn't be eating him anyway."

"Oh, I was wondering what happened to the head," Chloe Car of Michael mumbled into her bundle of deadly pink and purple flowers.

"She is like, so sentimental," he growled, plucking up a discarded tin can. He bit into the serrated lid. It did not taste nearly as good as he had been hoping for it to, and he chose to throw it aside in search of something else. Still chewing metal, he tossed back, "If there will not be any feast or ceremony to be taking part in, then I am like, out of here now. Later."

Vicky's hair bristled. "Hey! I'd rather be sentimental than a cannibal, Justin. Big gross alien or not, how you even live with yourself, I will never comprehend!"

"Cannibal? Oh, no." He gave his head a shake as he dragged a piece of chandelier from under a makeshift cardboard tent. As he did so, he took the opportunity to do as the Earthlings had taught him and he sort of twisted with another shrug. "We like, never eat our fellow Yugopotamians. We eat those guys who die on all the other planets. They even do sacrifices on my parents' birthdays, sh'yeah."

"I'm not hearing this, not hearing this," murmured Chloe Car of Michael, her ears plugged with the tips of her fat fingers.

Timmy Turner scrubbed behind his neck; Vicky crossed her arms. "So it's fine, as long as it isn't your people. Great. That's even more revolting to hear. And just when I thought you couldn't get any more disgusting than you already were. Maybe we really should break up again."

If Mark had a spine, it would have stiffened. Vicky played that card on him a lot, but only when she was serious about it. Or at least, he thought she might be serious- it was difficult to interpret such things from the high strain of human voices. He had a very difficult problem inter-per-itting sarcasm, even now after all the years or months that Timmy Turner had pulled him aside for what he liked to call 'blending-in lessons'. Mark lay the cardboard tent back down where he had first identified and located it and slurped his way back to her side. Being a Yugopotamian, he weaved through the garbage easily, never sticking deeply into it the way the other humans did with their greasy shoes. His tentacles outstretched, he cooed, "Aw, come on there, Vick-ay babe."

"Hmph."

"Vick- ow!" Shaking a black-tipped coil singed by his longing for her cruel attention, he wrapped one of the others around her left leg and another up by her neck. She refused to glance down at him, her eyes focused upwards in space in the opposite direction, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Vick-ay," he wheedled a third and final time, "you do not need to be this way with me. You know that when you are playing hard to get in this way you are doing, it is only for resulting in making me more and more likely to be shorting out my Fakeifier. I only ask that you like, try to understand how difficult it is to be me, who is attempting to slot myself into your human Earthling culture."

"Lose the slimy alien look, Chang. Then we'll talk."

"Right." Withdrawing, he groped for the dial on his Fakeifier and clicked it through his alligator, fountain pen, brass park statue, piggy bank, graduation hat, pixie, sandal, and rocking chair forms before he landed upon the tall, thin, scruffy blond moody teen dream human Earth boy that she so very much enjoyed to admire him in, much more than his true alien shape that she always threw the nastiest and most affectionate words at. Evidently, he and she had both cooled off enough affection-wise to allow him to hold the form, even though when he popped into it, he had to spread his arms and position his feet in just the precise way in order to keep his balance and not plop face-forward into the masses of trash. Mark took an awkward step before he remembered how it was exactly that humans were capable of manipulating their ungainly top-heavy bodies for the purposes of movement.

"I was saying only, Vick-ay," he continued, picking up her rough hands in his squishy ones - no helping the squish, no matter what his shape or how advanced his race's technology - "that corpses are a rare delicacy on my plan-et, and it is considered most shameful to let one such as this go to waste. My people do not leave, like, corpses themselves, so from the time that we are chicks, we are all taught that we must be taking the most supreme advantage of their delicious nutrients when they fall upon our laps and stuff, huh."

"I'm leaving," announced Chloe Car of Michael. She bounced away between mountains of brown trash and dinged-up cars. Sparky Stealer of Souls paused one last time by Doidle's unfilled grave before trotting after her, his tail beating back and forth like a flag.

"That's not real," Vicky said.

Mark brought one of his free tentacles to his tie and gave it a slight pull. "Okay, so. Eh. Vick-ay, do you remember that day at the grossissary store when you were making the buying of the chocolate bars and I was telling you about the nature of the week of F.L.A.R.G. that is celebrated by my people?"

She skimmed her eyes over him, still leaning slightly away as she sized up his human disguise for chinks. He had taken the opportunity to improve the design in slight ways around the stomachal midsection region since last they had visited the alley behind his favorite fast food location in Dimmsdale and conversed, and she clear-i-ly liked what she was finding there now. "Yeah?"

"Then you are recalling how it is our appendixes will burst like firework rockets under the hot tongue of a flamey-thrower if we are not capable of reaching peak elation within that framing of time?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Well, since you were asking for the explanation, I must inform you that when we Yugopotamians like, die or whatever, we explode."

Vicky thought about this.

She thought about this for a long time. Then she said a sharp word under her breath.

"You know what I think, Justin? I really think we'd better cancel our skydiving trip to Australia, juuust in case. Saves the fuel in your spaceship anyway. Now, here." She tossed him one shovel. Timmy Turner got the second and Tootie Little Sister the third before she jabbed a crooked claw-like finger at the hole where they had placed the headless black and white dog. "You and the twerp, start filling! And if I hear any complaints out of either of you, then I can promise there is going to be some serious trouble. I don't need fancy European-whatsit technology to kick your lazy butts into doing the work I brought you out here for. Hey, blondie twerpette!"

Mark leaned on his shovel as she flounced off in search of Chloe Car of Michael. He sighed in a wistful way. Then, blinking himself from his trance, he dipped the point of his spade in the dirt.

"But do you really think she would notice if I like, snuck a nibble out of that drool-worthy haunch, Turner? What if it was a really tiny little nibble? You do not think she would, right? Huh."