7Once upon a time, a long, long time where galaxies are far, far away and where there were prophecies about a dark and stormy night, there was Earth, being a good little planet and all and WHAM! It was infected by humans.
But humans were already there for a couple of millenniums and Earth, being the good little planet, didn't do anything about it. A bad mistake. A mistake so bad, Earth got sick of the humans. Literally.
The good little planet deformed so greatly, other planets didn't recognize it as Earth and thought it was a neighboring planet they happened to not notice since the Big Bang. And so they called it "Drueth", later mistranslated as "Deformed Racist Under Existence's Topographical Hat". Mars and Venus, being the closest friends of Earth took the whole asteroid belt, made an exact-sized replica of Earth and sent it away to the sun, as some humans would with the ashes of their beloved one.
Earth or Drueth as it was called from now on made no comment about this, being a good little planet and all. Then a time came when the humans called themselves Druethians and a new race of humanlike creatures rose from the civilization of human like bubbles from a soapless bathtub. These were demi-humans, half human, half animal, and half the sense they inherited from Drueth. But these demi-humans grew up to be equals of Druethians and ironically, they plainly fought in wars where they used non-lethals objects, namely pillows and rubber swords that melted in summertime, because everyone got sick of killing each other.
Then a real war came and caused trouble for everyone and made presidents wallow and cry in their helplessness like a snobbish baby banging his rattle on an unconscious babysitter, which the point was to make the presidents look like babies - but let's cut to the chase. This story isn't really about Drueth. No, just about three dysfunctional demi-humans and an obsessively happy girl who lived pretty weird lives in the aftermath of said war, which probably wouldn't be mentioned again, since it's about these four and all.
*~*~*
Hyo was a leopard-human who had his internal sleeping clock mixed with a lawn mower. Every time he opened his mouth while sleeping, birds would flock from their nests, changing the migration date a day early and it would confuse birdwatchers to no end so they would report it to scientists and a fake prophet would overhear it, thinking it was an omen and suddenly exclaim "The world is ending! We're going to die!" and everyone but Hyo -since he was still sleeping - would believe the prophet and everything would be in turmoil and everyone ended up killing themselves with smiles and hugs.
But that wasn't what happened.
He snoozed sitting up, his mouth closed, which was fortunate for everyone around. But still he snored through his nose muddy as chocolate or vice versa. But a certain green raptor-human was sitting beside him. And he had a short fuse.
"Hey, wake up. It's your turn, bubblehead!" The raptor called Hyo bubblehead because bubbles started popping out of his ears.
The raptor nudged him again. "Hey, wake up, bubble-head doofus!"
Hyo merely rocked himself back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. . .
"WAKE UP! *****q****, *****q*****, *****q***, ******q**, ***q***** wake up!" The raptor was practically shaking the leopard's coins out, where demi-humans around picked them up and took it for themselves.
This time, Hyo was slight roused by shaking. Then he was shaken again before he mumbled, "No, wake me up, my alarm clock. . ."
"*****q*** you! Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!"
There was a deafening shush from the librarian-secretary which broke all the windows in the boxing gym - the manager who had been repeatedly calling Hyo with a speakerphone later found out and fired the librarian-secretary, defrock her and sent her to the orphanage prison where she would spend 50 years spanking derrieres. "QUIET! THIS IS A LIBRARY! JUST SHUT THE ******q** UP!"
The raptor's eyes burned red with anger and he screamed, grabbed a bucket of water from his back and splashed himself in the face. "***q****! I knew I shouldn't have bought those flammable contact lenses!"
"I SAID QUIET, YOU *******q**!" said the librarian-secretary.
The raptor turned upon the annoyingly stupid woman, not getting his eyes burned this time. "Okay, you old wrinkly prune, you asked for it!" Like an insensitive brute, he picked the librarian-secretary by the armpits - an experience he wished to never experience again - and flung her out the window like an annoying alarm clock. Guess she won't be going to that orphanage prison after all.
Hyo snored twice as loud, as if each nostril was snoring on its accord or maybe he used two nostrils now to snore through.
The raptor gritted his teeth and he picked up the leopard and was about to flung him out the window too before he changed his mind. "Oh, what the hec*, I'll just throw him into the manager's office cuz it's still his turn."
The manager was still shouting through his megaphone when someone broke through the door and crashed into a wall upside-down. The weretiger - who just happened to be the manager - put down his megaphone and looked at his pet goldfish.
The goldfish puffed itself up in anger, filling up the entire space in its fishbowl and spilling water all over the manager's newly varnished desk.
"**q*** you Phily! I just varnished that!" He punched at a nearby emergency box and took out the plunger inside. With a crazed look of a maniac, he pummeled the oversized goldfish until it was reduced back to its normal size.
The poor fish bubbled something.
"Don't get any smart ideas, Philo! You fi** should only think about your food because you have ***q**** short memory span!" snapped the weretiger with his brow so low, it looked like his forehead would have melted in a gooey puddle. Then he sprinkled fish food with a face that looked like he ate too many lemons over the bowl and the goldfish swam in random infinity symbols, forgetting to insult the manager daily.
The manager looked at Hyo and slapped his forehead. "Great. That's the third time this week someone crashed into the same wall. Looks like I have to cut up his body and bury the pieces in random scary carnivals."
The leopard's eyes popped open like popcorn, green as someone's vomited lunch. "Aagh! I'm alive! No need to cut me up!" He managed to pull himself out of the wall, landed on a sofa made of pillows, tripped over a nearby glass table and crashed into a shelf full of priceless china.
The goldfish bubbled in short, erratic spurts.
The manager glared at it. "What do you know about china, Phin? Those ***q** shop******q*** said they were priceless and that means they don't have a price, *********!" He sprinkled fish food again to make the goldfish forget again. He glanced at the half-conscious leopard. "What's your name again? Yo-yo?"
"It's Hyo, sir," he said, miraculously unscathed from the broken china as he rose, but tripped over the glass table and landed headfirst into the pillow sofa or the sofa pillow as the goldfish called it.
"You got a problem with my glass table?" growled the weretiger.
"No, sir. But it hates me. Oops!" Just as Hyo got up, he tripped over said glass table and nearly introduced his face to the manager's desk. "Whew! I thought I was gonna concuss myself."
"Well don't. If you dare dent my one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art, Caverian lumber desk, I'll *****q****, ****q******, ****q***** and *******q** you!"
Hyo blinked and gaped, then choked because a fly flew into his throat. After much coughing and dancing, he choked the salivated fly out into the fishbowl, where the goldfish swallowed it and suddenly turned itself over and floated to the surface. "What did you say, sir?"
"I said I'll fire you."
Hyo smiled, though he couldn't because he forgot how to smile and ending up looking constipated. "Oh, but I'm not hired yet."
"Oh, then give me your *q**q**q** resume so I can hire you, then fire you!"
Hyo nodded for umpteenth time and reached deep into his pants pocket. At first, he didn't get it, so he dug some more until his entire arm was buried in the pocket. Then he pulled out a billiard stick and sheepishly grinned. "Oops, that was magically bottomless pocket, though it's not bottomless anymore." He searched his other pocket, his fingers journeying through countless lands where dust mites and an evil dust bunny ruled the Pocket kingdom with the mystical Resume Envelope. After a gruesome yet not bloody battle, the evil dust bunny was vanquished and the five furry fingers retrieved the Resume Envelope, bringing peace to Hyo's pocket.
The leopard pulled out his resume and his fingers were covered in various bruises and paper cuts. "It goes to show that manicure has side effects on claws," he said.
The weretiger looked at his goldfish, who was still floating on the surface because it choked on the fly Hyo choked out. "Oh good, about time Phig shut up his **q*** mouth. Now hand me before-"
"-you fire me. Wow, we're finishing each other's sentences."
"No, we're not. You're just being-"
"-absolutely random. Yes, I know, sir," Hyo said and just as he was about to hand the resume, hands shot from under the desk like flying arm missiles - which they weren't - grabbed his ankles and pulled him under the desk.
"Whoa!" He was pulled so fast, his spots were left behind.
Suddenly the goldfish came back to life and bubbled something at the manager.
He leaned close, all of a sudden curious. "What did you say, Phiva? Lift your bowl and press the red thingy?"
The goldfish nodded. The weretiger did as he was told and found a xylophone with the colors of the rainbow, not that there was a pot of pennies at the beginning of it and a Mexican-speaking whale granted wishes to naughty ugly widows. "What a blasphemous miracle! My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great distant relative and countless generations of my fictitious royal lineage have been searching for this relic - just one of the eight clichéd Legendary Instruments - for a year or two. Now the Rainbow-!"
The goldfish bubbled.
"Oh fine, the 'Iridescent' Xylophone," which he said sarcastically, "is now in my dainty claws and once I find the legendary 'Xylo-Stick', I can dominate smelly gym socks and rule the washing machines."
The goldfish narrowed its fishy eyes.
"All right, press red thingy now, underwear abomination later." As soon as he pressed the tongue-colored key, the ceiling opened up like cool, secret launching pads and down came a spotless leopard and a pink-haired girl with a golden dress that never seemed to get any tears or scratches anywhere. "I was wondering what happened to that eject button you installed, Phime."
The girl had landed on the leopard, her chest on his chest, her arms on his arms, her toes on his- "Daddy!" she suddenly exclaimed, pinching his nipples.
"Ow!" Hyo rose up and got to his feet, realizing the girl now hung on his neck like a giant necklace, swinging sideways.
Suddenly the raptor who threw Hyo like a stuffed pillow barged in, snarling, snorting and sneezing. "Achoo! I smell a brat and she smells like air conditioner! Argh!" Apparently he burned his eyes again and groped for a water source, walking towards the manager, where he took the fishbowl, splashed all the water on the face and returned it to its place.
The goldfish frantically flopped around like a jumping bean, its eyes unusually wide because it could see his master and everything else very clearly, though the other reason may have been the lack of water. Being the boy scout he was several years ago, the weretiger pulled out a pitcher of water from his own nearly bottomless pocket and refilled the bowl. "Kazo, I didn't call you yet! And you know what that means!" he growled as nicely as he could.
Hyo answered, "You'll leave him in a ten-story tower and cut off his long, black hair so his princess wouldn't rescue him?"
"You'll make him sleep on a ten-story bed and pretend the pea is underneath mattress when it's actually his red bandana?" said the girl.
The vest-wearing raptor turned pale at the weretiger's threat and his face leapt for the manager's dirty toes. "No, you can't fire me! I'm too famous to get fired!" he pleaded.
"But I haven't hired you yet," muttered the weretiger, adding, "Hyo just told me that."
The raptor got up and started spitting into the fishbowl, having kissed the manager's toes for mercy. "Hyo?" He turned to the leopard with the girl still hanging by his neck. He snarled while spitting at Hyo's face, blowing with closed lips and snorting his phlegm out. "Ack!" He wiped his nostrils with his forearm and shooed it off into the fishbowl. "How can you consider hiring a stick like him when you can hire a real Fighter like me?" he proudly proclaimed, beating his chest and wincing when he just stabbed himself with his thumb claw. "Owie. . ." He sucked his claw like a baby and he winced again with a twitching eye when his shins hurt like hec*.
"Daddy is not a stick!" the pink-haired girl shouted, having gone down from Hyo's neck and kicked Kazo's shins for no reason. "His muscles are like, um, hard tissues, maybe even harder than yours!" An idea suddenly popped into her meager brain and she raised his fist, accidentally punching Hyo's chin.
"Ow! Sorry my chin got in your hand's way, um," he rubbed his chin as he looked down at the girl's orange boots, "what's your name?"
The girl doubled over and looked straight with her golden starry eyes through her legs. "My name is. . ." Her eyes twinkled again and she stood up once more, accidentally punching the leopard's chin again. "Wait! I remembered this idea I just thought!"
"Ow! Sorry my chin got in your hand's way, um- OW!"
The raptor had whacked him upside the head. "You *****q***** idiot who *******q**! You said that already!" he shouted, grinding his serrated, see-saw-like teeth while his eyes rolled in and out. Suddenly stinging white foam was blasted into his face and he gurgled like he had lemons for breakfast, which he did. "Argh, you q******** **q******* manager! What did you do that for?!" he yelled, ironically impervious to the were tiger's "If-you-don't-shut-up-I'll-fire-you-for-real" glare.
"Didn't you read the sign on the door?" the manager said, pointing with a ten-foot pole at the door that randomly appeared on the far end of the room bearing the said sign. "NO FLAMMABLE CONTACT LENSES ALLOWED!" it screamed, not read, because the sign shouted literally, blowing the fallen brown spots of Hyo back to their improper places; most of them plastered all over his face.
"Aah! There's something on my face!" The leopard shouted, which was a good thing because the librarian-secretary wasn't there to stop anyone from decreasing everybody else's hearing by a good percentage.
POCK!
That was the noise of Kazo whacking Hyo upside the head again. "Oh just shut up, you inanely forgetful leopard!" he yelled, not saying any long censored words for once. "It's just your stupid spots." He realized he just knocked all the spots off Hyo's face.
The leopard made his constipated look and bent down to pick up one spot and placed it inside his right armpit. Then he bent down, picked up another one and placed it in his other armpit. The third one he placed on his scalp, but for the third time Kazo whacked him upside the head, knocking off all three spots he just put back.
"How the ****q******* and *****q***** did you know which spot goes here?" he asked with polished teeth.
"It's a leopard's instincts to know. And it won't stick if it's in the wrong place. That's why a leopard can't change his spots," Hyo explained so naturally the girl might have mistaken him for a father who was also a mad scientist, but she was too busy raising her fist in slow motion. Then he bent down again to return his spots one by one in an agonizingly slow pace that would have put the turtle's speed to shame.
The raptor was green with righteous anger, though his scales were already green from his parent's genes and there was nothing righteous about his anger, and he picked all the fallen spots, ran to where the door with the screaming sign was, and threw all of them like pizza topping darts at the leopard in a skipping fit.
Though the leopard was scared stiff of the pizza topping darts, he was brave enough to be petrified which was the same thing. And by a miracle, all the spots returned to their proper places and they purred like lawn motors which was actually excruciating to any average person's ears. Then again, nobody inside the room was an average person, so nobody minded Hyo's spots purring.
At the same time, Kazo did his little victory dance, which consisted of mostly wiggling his tail, and was utterly sandwiched by the door behind him. A blue-dragon human wearing in equally blue armor - the girl later confused him as a robot because she tried pinching his gauntlets and greaves - came running in, bounded for the nearest sofa and stuffed gargantuan pillows in his fin-like ears on the sides of his head. "The song! The song, it has come to hunt my pitiful self!" he whimpered.
Hyo raised his fours finger, excluding the middle one because he didn't feel like raising it. "Don't you mean 'haunt my pitiful self'?"
The dragon turned to the leopard. "Don't patronize me. I'm already 29 years old and I don't need my sentences to be corrected by an inanely forgetful leopard," he muttered before whimpering again.
Hyo frowned, which was a good thing because he didn't end up looking constipated again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. . .what did I just say?" He scratched his head and took his log book from his nearly bottomless pocket. "Let's see. . .'No, wake me up, my alarm clock. . .','Aagh! I'm alive! No need to cut me up', 'No, sir. But it hates me. Oops!'. . ."
By his time, the pink-haired girl stopped raising her fist in slow motion and approached the dragon by pinching his tail. It just so happened that like every human had a scientific weak point, so did every demi-human, which was the tip of their tail, no one knew of that until now.
Never having been pinched in the tail, the dragon's first reaction was to jump into the ceiling and get his torso stuck there, which actually happened. Then the door with the screaming sign closed by itself to reveal Kazo depressed into the wall with rolling eyes and a sagging tongue in which were rude manners when one was unconscious. And when Hyo looked up from his log book to find the two scaly demi-humans stuck in some part of the manager's room, for no absolute reason he walked, tripped on the glass table that hated him and crashed in the same wall in the exact same way, except now he was reading a log book upside-down.
The weretiger shook his head while covering his face in the Shameless Shame. He glanced at the goldfish. "Well, aren't you going to criticize how stupid everyone is acting like you always do, Phiju?"
For once, the goldfish shrugged, which was impossible because it had no shoulders to shrug with. But the manager knew well enough to know it was shrugging.
"Got nothing to say, Phick? Well, there's a first time for everything, then there's the second time for everything, and the third time and the fourth. . ." He continued to mumble endlessly until the girl started applauding all of a sudden. "Why the ******q******q*** are you applauding, little girl?"
"I'm not little," she retorted in a nice, harmless and naïve way, "I'm four feet and seven inches tall, my actual weight is a secret and my blood type is O, which is the universal donor. Oh, and I'm applauding because the flashy sign above your head told me to."
The weretiger looked up and realized there was indeed a neon-lighted sign above him used to make audiences in talk host show clap when it's lighted. "Phijero, I told you the fifty-seventh time, we don't need an audience-clapping sign above my head!" He pounded his fist on his desk and it hurt him so much, his knuckles turned pink. "Argh, I can't stand all of this **q*******q**! Just give me your **q*q*** resumes or forever hold your ***q******** peace!"
Kazo pulled himself out of the wall, shaking bits of white cement out of his black, slender and beautiful hair which the girl mistook them for flying invading lice from the planet of another universe. That explained why Kazo was sprayed in the face with the manager's fire extinguisher for the second time. But this time, he didn't get angry. Though he admitted he loved to get angry, doing the same thing over and over was really annoying. So he grinned and pinched the girl's cheek - he didn't pinch hard, though, just a soft gentle pinch though he did it in mocking manner so it would annoy the girl. The girl didn't mind being pinched, though.
"No more salt for you, you half-witted brat," sneered the raptor. "I'm off to my glory and fame." Reaching into the depths of his short pants, he rummaged and felt a paper that had its clam lickings done. When he pulled it out, though, he found the envelope to be a secret letter from his secret ex-cousin-in-law whose name was I'm-a-secret-guy-who-married-your-two-great-grandfathers-in-law-which-is-why-the-institution-thinks-I'm-a-sick-guy-thing. "Hey, where the heck did this come from? And where's my resume that will lead me to my fame and glory?"
The blue dragon who had been screaming about his haunted song managed to pull himself from the ceiling, half of his knightly armor bizarrely colored with rainbow polka dots of a peacock. Landing on the pillow sofa, he temporarily forgot about the song and coolly answered Kazo's questions with a voice so raspy you might think his voice box was replaced with sandpaper during surgery. "First of all, who cares? And second, try searching your other pocket, it might make you smarter."
"Hey, thanks. . ." He tried searching the other pocket when he realized what the dragon implied. "Hey, did you just insult me, you hotshot?" Further scavenging in his other pocket only gave him a chain of more random letters from you-know-who. "And where's my resume?" he snarled to everyone in the room.
Then the dragon's narrow blue eyes shot wide open, his maw gaping with a cry. "Ah! The song, it haunted me once more!" He whimpered with a teary face leaked a thousand miniscule oceans while pulling desperately on his fin-like ears.
The girl took pity on the polka-dotted dragon robot look-alike and pinched the nostrils at the end of his snout. "Pinch, pinch. There, you feel better?" she said.
The dragon looked up to her naïve face. "Your face is naïve. . .you can't help the likes of me." Then he proceeded to push the pillows further in his head.
"No, don't do that! You might break the drumsticks for your eardrums!" the girl said, pulling both pillows out of his ears and out came an envelope.
"My resume!" Kazo shouted, filching it before he frowned. "**q********* this is Daddy's, I mean, Hyo's. Argh! Why do you keep calling that inanely forgetful leopard your Daddy anyway?" he yelled at the girl.
"Just because. Actually, I'm not supposed to tell you," she said.
"And why not? Because you're a half-witted brat?"
"Did somebody call my name?" Hyo said, still upside down in a wall while reading his log book about his dialogue.
Kazo stared. "Yeah, like your name is 'Half-Witted Brat', which it isn't. I just said your name two lines ago and here's your stupid resume." He thrust the envelope so accidentally hard, it slipped out of his claws and went halfway into Hyo's mouth.
The blue dragon opened his eyes, blinking in fascination of the silence. "The song-! It's gone!" He narrowed his eyes to the girl, still clinging on his fins. "Thank you," he murmured.
The girl leaned towards the blue dragon-human. "What did you say, Mr. Robot?"
"I said thank you and it's Giezhen, not Robot."
She saluted. "Okay, I shall call you Mr. Green Shins!"
". . .You're hopeless."
"Thank you. Would you like to record your message after the beep or would you like to press 1 now?"
Hyo spat out his envelope and hit the weretiger who swore loudly and randomly on the forehead. "Sorry, sir. But I found an envelope in my log book."
"My resume!" Kazo squealed with joy as he snatched the envelope, then frowned again. "**q*******q* Who the heck is Granar?"
The blue dragon stood up and towered the green raptor by two inches. "That would be me." His narrow eyes suddenly darkened, giving his face an intimidating look. But it wasn't so intimidating when he found out it was Hyo's tail napping on his long muzzle. He pulled on the spotted tail with a ring or two and the leopard fell promptly from the wall he was depressed into with a prolonged splat.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Gizzard," Hyo said.
"It's Giezhen," Granar stated, turning back to Kazo who was compulsively snickering at the dragon's mock stature.
"You think you can scare me with a face as blue as cheese?" sneered the green raptor, wielding the envelope like a knife. "I have every nerve and right to shove your resume up your-!"
"YOW!"
Kazo turned to the weretiger who now had two envelopes wedged on his forehead. "Oops. Sorry, Mr. Warren. It must have slipped out of my claws."
"It's about time somebody said my name. I'm really tired of being called 'the weretiger' or 'the manager'. And you best hope your claws are not made of butter, Mr. Kinoru, or I will slice them up, smear them on rock-hard muffins, dunk them in ketchup and you know they don't taste good in ketchup, especially when I throw them in your mouth, break your tonsils and gag you until you say 'aunt'," he threatened with a twitching eye.
The raptor shrugged. "Whatever you say, Chief." He turned back to Granar. "Like I was saying, I have every nerve and right to shove your resume up your-!"
"Pie?" Hyo concluded.
Kazo stared again. "Oh sure, like I'm gonna shove the hotshot's resume up his pie," he said sarcastically.
"I have a piece of pie with my name on it," the girl said, presenting a triangular piece of pie on a silver platter which had a card atop it.
"Where's your name?" Hyo asked after reading the seemingly blank card.
"There, on the small printed line at the bottom."
"Okay, I see it. . .it's in Chinese."
She smiled. "It's Japanese, silly Daddy! And it says 'Hana'."
Hyo blinked. "Hana?"
The girl blinked too. "Hana?"
"You said Hana."
"I said Hana?"
"You said it first."
"I said it first?"
"Yes. . .what did you say?"
"I don't know, Daddy. What did I say?"
"I don't remember either. I'm inanely forgetful, remember?"
"No, I didn't, Daddy."
"Me neither!"
"For crying out loud!" Kazo screamed in extreme irritation and stole the pie from the platter with an angry smirk. "I am GONNA shove this PIE up YOUR-!"
SPLAT!
"You asked for it," said Granar with a straightforwardly stern face, having slammed a whole pie on the raptor's face.
The baking pan fell off his snout on a forgotten silver-toned cymbal - one of the said Legendary Instruments that no one bothered to notice - and his face was smeared with blood-colored filling. Hyo fingered some of the filling off Kazo's cheek and tasted it. "Hmm, cherry," the leopard said.
By now, Kazo was ready to explode when something blasphemously miraculous caught his eyes. An envelope with his name on it was attached to the butt of the girl's envelope. "My resume!" he proclaimed, extending his claws for it. But the girl saw this in advance and moved away to hide behind Granar. Kazo narrowed his eyes and dashed for her and the two of them ended up chasing around the dragon in green and pink blurs. "Daddy, help me! He's gonna pull my dress and I don't like having my dress pulled!"
"Stop with your incessant chasing! You're making dizzy like a merry-go-round and - ARGH! The song, it came back again!" the dragon moaned, covering his fins with his clawed hands and emitting a sonorous moan that bested even the greatest composers.
"Don't worry, Hana - if that is even your real name - I'll save you, that is, if I can tell which blur you're in." Eyeing for the pink blur, Hyo waited until the opportune moment, shot his hand inside the strawberry haze and easily plucked something out. But it wasn't the resume. "A silver-toned cymbal? And look, there's another one on the floor. Wonder why nobody bothered to notice it like I did miraculously?" He held both of them with a constipated face. "Why can't I remember what to do with these? Maybe if I hit them together really hard, I'll remember."
And he did. More windows shattered, innocent window cleaners leapt to their deaths from the one-story gym and tone-deaf bystanders scratched their balding heads wondering if they could re-grow their nose hair.
Hyo vibrated so much, he was like in slow motion, leaving after-images of himself, then his involuntary shuddering gradually ceased up to the point of his elf ears, which made a sound of a shoehorn. Kazo held his head in pain, Hana held hers because she thought it was a game and Granar still held his head in pain, except instead of moaning about his haunted song, he complained of "the unbearable blasphemous racket the inanely forgetful leopard has created". Warren and his pet goldfish were unaffected for no reason.
The gray weretiger swiped Kazo's resume from Hana's dress and was about to swore more long, censored obscene words when the envelope slipped out his claws and wedged at his forehead, making his brow bushier and perhaps more evil-and-eccentric-looking in a disturbing way.
The goldfish bubbled perkily.
"Hmph, it's not my fault either that a freak accident - and I mean a freak, not an accident - made me get surgery with a magnetic plate now implanted inside my forehead, Phider," Warren muttered before sprinkling worthless fish food to make the goldfish amnesiac. "Anyway, it's not up to me to decide if you guys get hired. It's up to the Council, which is an inane name I might unnecessarily add."
"If it's unnecessary, sir, why did you add it?" Hyo asked unnecessarily.
"Because I want to," Warren said in a smart-aleck-way so well, Hana raised a scoreboard that said "Warren = 9.99". "By the way, you're taking care of the girl."
"What, sir?!" Hyo's eyes bulged out like a bullfrog's before returning to their normal size. "I just forgot what I was surprised about."
"He said you're taking care of the girl, you bubblehead doofus!" Kazo stated, stretching Hyo's pointy ear before letting go like a rubber band in fireworks or a slingshot in a clockwork.
"Yeah, Daddy! Come on, let's go find some lunch for missing breakfast! And dinner!" said the girl, dragging the helplessly helpless and inanely inane leopard out the door where the screaming sign wasn't.
With hands pressed against his head, Granar bowed and muttered, "I must go too. Must. . .find. . .aspirin." It was all he said, before dashing back out the screaming door just before it randomly disappeared. And reappeared again.
Kazo glanced at Warren, then everything went black. He snarled as he put back his bandana up before it fell on his eyes again. "**q***********! It's all their fault my bandana can't hold still! Mr. Warren, you're really much better off without that bubblehead doofus and that hotshot!"
Warren raised a curious brow, giving a cute yet feral yet adorable yet ferocious yet unexplainable kind of look. "Hotshot?"
"You know! Besides, I'm perfect for this job! You don't need someone who keeps forgetting something every twenty second or complains about his haunted song that he probably made up or-!"
"-someone who can't shut up and loves getting angry and cusses as much as I do," the weretiger added.
Kazo leered. "Like that matters! We've cussed so much, yet nobody minds it. And I'm only angry when I'm standing up for what I believe in-!"
"-which involves beating others to a pulp, calling names, constantly annoying and girlish screaming," he counted off his claws which he polished like manicure, only it wasn't, because it was called "finger therapy" back then, "the list goes on."
"Hey! My screaming is not girlish!" the green raptor roared, before combing his bangs with a suave whip of his hands, which he accidentally slapped himself in the cheek. "YOW*****q********! Like I was saying, I have a mostly calm and cool demeanor most of the time-" Suddenly a bee came in through one of the broken windows in the boxing gym, flew al the way to the manager's office and stung the raptor's snout. "*q***** and ******q*******, I'll-!" He flailed his arms like windmills in reverse and back andand his throat strangely gargled with all the white foam suddenly rushing in. "Argh! That's the ******q***** third time I've been extinguished! Er, foamed!"
"Wouldn't have you screaming about your flammable contact lenses again. Now scram, I've got other applicants to embarrass," the weretiger said, threatening the raptor with said armed fire extinguisher.
"Okay, okay. But remember, I'm the best - Ow!" He rubbed the end of his snout, facing an empty wall where the other door that magically appeared just before Granar first appeared used to be. "What the-?" The open doorway suddenly reappeared as soon as he moved back. But when he rushed to get out, he ended up slamming himself in the wall. Dazed with flying guitar key chains around his head, he staggered back, dimly aware that the door came back again. Cautiously he took one step forward and the door vanished. He stepped back and the door came back. Continuously he stepped back and forth and watched as the doorway flashed in and out like a half-baked reception. At the last time it appeared, there was that screaming sign again and screamed so he would be thrown off.
Obviously miffed about mufflers, Kazo yelled in frustration and simply crashed through the wall.
Warren sighed and heard what the goldfish bubbled. "What? You bet your whole lifetime supply of fish food that the inanely forgetful leopard will adopt the girl and then a dark ominous future will hang over him while a dragon and a raptor will settle their score and many other stuff will be soon certain in the future? Geez, I told you, you don't have a crystal ball for a brain!" He got a booklet-sized bag of fish food and poured all the contents inside. "Here, you win the bet in advance, Phiyiyi."
The goldfish gobbled all the fish food there was and didn't say anything for the next six months.
"Sigh, I wonder if I'll ever get old enough to retire?" He plucked the three resumes out of his forehead and grimaced with a pregnant woman's face. "**q******* papercuts. Next!"
TRIVIA NOTE: Did you know Warren mispronounced his goldfish's name 11 times in this chapter?