14Kazo drove his van, stopping by a friend's house. He had fun cruising his midnight blue van round the city. It kept him sane from the dreary, sedative boredom he felt ever since he finished his daily sparring session at the gym. Maybe he'd find some entertainment around here, if the sleep- inducing monotony infecting Royikito hadn't gotten into him yet. "Yawn. . ."
No sooner than the raptor-human stepped out of his van did he hear a mind- shattering crash behind him.
"Don't tell me that wasn't what I think that was."
Reluctantly he rotated his scaly extended face, only to have his jaw dropped at the shocking sight before him.
"Not again!" He pulled on his longish black hair out of frustration. The back window was smashed into a mass of broken pieces. He went back inside and seized the object of cause: A skateboard.
"Grr, who's the wise jerk that crashed my van?" he snarled, surprised to see nobody around. "What the?"
The wind blew his thoughts, as well as his temper, away. "Nah, it couldn't be her. . .could it?" Taking the bright-hued toy with him, he knocked on the front door. "Hello, anybody home?" he bellowed. After he gave way to venting his anger on the door, he realized it was already open and made an embarrassed grin. "Eh. . ."
Leaving his wooden sandals by the entrance, he found a written note on the living room table that said:
Kazo
Just moved away a while ago. Find someone else to hook up with.
Buddy
"Shoot, lost another girlfriend. . ." He crumpled the note with milky claws and casually threw it over his shoulders to a trash bin.
Just when he was about to leave the room, a tremor quaked from outside. He took a glance towards the glass doors and felt it was coming from that direction. Without a trace of hesitation, he decided to walk into the backyard and investigate the commotion.
* * *
Hana rose from a thorn bush, miraculously unscathed from the fall, and coughed from the white, chalky smoke surrounding her. "Ghost? Where are you, Ghost?" She felt with her bottom something feathery and warm. She rubbed it a few more times, stood up and was horror-stuck at what she sat on. An unconscious brown-plumaged hawk-human laid where she sat, his eyes spiraling. "Ah, are you all right?" she asked, pulling the comatose hawk by his chocolate vest. She tried shaking him awake but failed. She even slapped his face for good measure, each slap followed by "Wake up!".
After a few slaps, the hawk finally came around and found himself smacked in the face by a girl.
"I'm awake now. Don't slap me anymore."
SLAP! "Wake up!"
"Ow! I said I'm awake now!"
SLAP! "Wake up!"
"OW! I said I'm - "
SLAP! "Wake up!"
"I SAID I'M AWAKE, YOU STUPID GIRL!" he screamed in her face.
The girl stopped and stared at him, smiling. "Oh, you're awake then."
He face-faulted. "Geez, you don't have to hit me so hard, ow." His cheeks were still red-sore from all the slapping.
"Hey, have you seen a ghost around here?" she asked out of the blue.
A huge artery vein popped out from his forehead. "Grr, I'm not a ghost! I was just covered in flour and baking soda! Get it?!" He thrust his right wing-like hand, still powdered white like the rest of his body was.
She looked at his wing, then at his face, then his wing again. She smacked her fist on her open palm. "Oh, so you were the ghost, then?"
"Argh!" He pulled on his hair the same way Kazo did and slunk down on the ground, crossing his arms and legs. "You're hopeless! If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have lost my money bag." A finger tapped on his shoulder. "What?" he said, his voice running on thin ice.
"Do you mean this bag? I found it at the supermarket a while ago."
He turned around and saw his bag hanging by the girl's fingers. "My money!" he said, retrieving his bag back in his safe wings, "I thought I lost it forever because of your insanity. Now, I can show Dad I can live independently and buy some grub!" He happily emptied the bag by hanging it upside down, but received only zilch.
The hawk's drooped lower than it normally would. "What's wrong?" Hana asked.
"Of all the rotten, dumb luck I have. . ." he said, his eyes tear-streaked as he showed her the hole at the bottom of the bag, followed by a tumultuous roar of hunger. "Oh. . ."
"There, there." She patted him on the back. "If you're that hungry, I can share the watermelon with you."
He looked back at her. "You really mean that?"
She nodded, only to earn a grateful hug from the hawk.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! But you gotta tell no one about this, got that?"
"Sure."
He stretched out his winged hand. "I'm Hawkler, but you can call me Tack."
She shook his hand. "Okay, Tack. I'm Hana, but you can call me Hana."
"Uh, right Hana. Well then, I suppose we gotta look for that watermelon. But where do you think it could be?"
Hana pondered on that thought. "I remember it fell somewhere around here." She turned her head to the brown fence beside them. "Maybe over that fence?"
"It's worth a try." The two peered over the fence and saw a backyard lush with fresh green vegetation and strangely a dozen or so pink artificial flamingos were standing on their heads instead of their feet while spinning in place like a merry-go-around. Whoever lived here must either have been an excellent gardener, someone with a perverted sense of exterior design or maybe both.
Then, out of randomness, Hana clapped three times. As soon as she did, weirdness ensued.
The flamingo stood on their feet and began doing a jig, swaying their hips, squatting their stick-thin legs and flapping out of fun. Then the twelve gathered around in a circle, moving counter-clockwise while wiggling their tail feathers or what seemed to be like tail feathers.
"What the heck are they doing?" Tack asked.
A giggle slithered out of her smiling lips. "I knew it! I saw something like this once on TV and it had animals in it."
"A musical? Don't you mean 'Cats'?"
"No, it was on the news, something about every animal that escaped from the zoo except those pink funny birds. They were moving like this and they called it 'Flamingos'. Doesn't it sound funny?"
". . .Were you raised in a barn?"
But before she could answer that, the jig caught their attention once more and this time, they stopped wiggling, though still in a circle. Facing outwards, their back to the center, the flamingos bent low as they lifted their tail feathers high. For a moment, the feathers wiggled, then suddenly they were protruding, more like sprouting buds in the rain shower.
"Oh! Look at them grow, Tack!"
". . ." He settled for not giving in to mental images, making a queasy grimace and shuddering.
The feathers kept growing until they were the size of the pom-poms and started bashing against each other until the air became so powdery it re- enacted the battle of the make-up. Soon, the pink smoky dust dwindled down, revealing the flamingos in their original position, standing on their heads while spinning in place. All but one. It was holding a sign pointing at the roof of the house behind them. They looked around and saw the watermelon stuck on the roof. If you added fur, four legs and two beady eyes, the fruit would be passed as a lounging cat instead of a fruit. Then again, Hana had better time to think about something else entirely.
Tack took notice of her daydreaming again and yelled out, "Hey, come on Hana! We don't have time for spacing out!" They jumped down and headed for the opposite fence. Their heads barely over there the edge, they saw that the watermelon was good twelve meters away from them and five meters high. "Oh man! How are we gonna get it now?"
"Let's use a ladder!" She was climbing over the fence when Tack stopped her.
"Wait! We can't go in like that!"
"Why not?"
"See those?" He pointed at the security cameras, each planted in every high corner of the backyard. "Those things are motion-sensors."
"Motion-sensors?" she repeated.
"That means if we get in, they'll lock on to us faster than you can think, no offense to you, and we'll be caught on tape. I rather not risk that."
The two dropped down to the ground. "Well, what do we do?" Hana asked.
"Hmm, if we only had some rope. . ."
"Rope? I have a jumping rope." She pulled out a ten-foot serpentine rope with titanium handles on both ends.
Tack gave a hopeless look at her rope. "Hana, it's not long enough. Nice try though."
"Not long enough? I can make it long enough," she said, trying to be helpful.
An irresistible, mocking grin grew on his beaky lips. "You? Make that rope long enough? Don't kid me, we need at least thirteen meters to reach over there and you can't possibly do that with that shrimp - "
"Thirteen meters it is!" she interrupted, ordering her toy, "Jump rope, extend to thirteen meters, please."
There was small beeping blue light on one end of the handle, indicating that it understood her. Then the rope extended exponentially and at a rate so fast, it took only a mere second to reach its required length. "There. Is it long enough now? Tack?"
The hawk's jaw looked like it was going to fall off from all the gaping. "Whoa." It must have been a shock judging by the saucer-sized eyes. "I take back what I said. Maybe you're not so bad after all, Hana," he complimented her, taking the rope into his winged hands after recovering his thoughts.
He knotted one end of the rope into a loop, standing on Hana's shoulders to get enough height to lasso the rope over the antenna on the roof. It fitted perfectly. After pulling it enough to tighten he rope's grip on the antenna, he went over to a nearby oak tree and tied the other end to its trunks.
"There," he said, tightening the knot, "That should do it. Now all I have to do is use the rope to get over to the roof, get the watermelon and bring it back here. Hana, you stay here to keep a lookout. Tug on the rope if you see anybody."
"Roger!" she said with a salute.
Tack started at the base and began climbing with pulling talons and crossed legs. The slanting rope made it difficult to progress, but with perseverance and time, he reached the roof and landed with a quiet thud. Silently he took the fruit into his feathery arms and looked up to the rope. Uh oh.
This was the hard part: bringing the watermelon back.
Holding the tropical fruit between his legs, he had to rely on his hands now to bring both him and the watermelon back to the other side. But before he can even begin his descent, the rope slipped from his talons and landed back on the roof with his bottom. The watermelon slipped from his legs like butter and rolled down towards the edge. Sweating profusely, he lunged and caught the fruit just as it passed over the brink of the gutter. This stupid watermelon is a lot heavier than I thought, he thought.
Still hanging from the roof using his retractable clawed feet, a stranger appeared directly overhead him. He swallowed the fear tangling his throat, still pouring drops of sweat from his hair. He dared not to move a muscle lest the stranger would notice. He hoped that Hana had enough common sense to not attract attention to herself.
* * *
Tack is taking an awfully long time up there, she thought.
She searched around her surroundings. There was hardly any signs of anything living, not even birds flying or chirping. It was an ear-numbing silence. She paced with a restless look in her eyes, boots scampering along her trail. Then, a thought struck her like a lightning-boiled egg.
What if something happened to Tack? What if he was held hostage by terirosts, treorists, terio - bad guys - and she didn't know about it? That was it. She couldn't wait anymore. She had to check for sure if her friend was doing fine.
She lifted herself high enough to peep over the fence. Oh, she said in her little naïve mind. He was just hanging upside down on the edge of the gutter while holding on the watermelon for dear life. Nothing wrong with that. She let out a relieved sigh. But her relief was short-lived when the glass door slid open.
She held her gasping lips as the stranger walked directly underneath Tack. Lips smiled when she recognized who the stranger was.
She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted out to the hawk, "Tack, everything's going to be all right!"
Tack's eyes bulged out, glaring in chagrin at the flower girl. "Hana! You're supposed to keep quiet!" But it was too late. The stranger looked up and saw the hawk for brief moment. Of all times, the watermelon had precisely slipped out of its imprisoning talons and dived head on the stranger's face.
* * *
Kazo stepped out of the house, looking for the noise he heard earlier. The backyard looked normal enough, a few plants and bushes here and there. What could it have been? he thought. As soon as he stood on grassy ground, trouble was calling for him.
"Tack, everything's going to be all right!" He looked ahead of himself and saw a pink-haired girl shouting over the fence.
"Hana?" Another voice erupted from above, a male punk-sounding voice to be exact.
"Hana! You're supposed to keep quiet!"
The raptor looked above and saw a hawk-human dangling above him. Unfortunately, the watermelon struck him before he got a second look at the young demi-human. Even then, all he saw were mostly stars and key chains before he passed out.
* * *