bowrll's Birthday - Bizarre Blessings
A cartoony romp for a friend's birthday. No sex at all!
Disclaimer: A huge amount of cartoon-based shenanigans are within. No smut at all! How can it be?!
Bowrll's Birthday: Bizarre Blessings by BAMethystine
Based on this journal, and the birthday itself, and all of bowrll's super awesome adorable art, etc.: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/697618/
Allison was sick and tired.
No, I don't mean she was fed up and frustrated with life, I mean she was sick: ill, under the weather, coming down with something, infected, diseased, a little green around the gills, nauseated! And as for tired -by which I mean fatigued, rundown, sleepy, exhausted, or drowsy- ..Nyquil will do that to you. And the not-so-big, less-than-average sized, 22 year old animation student had taken her fair share on Friday night.
But not enough it seemed, to keep her ailment at bay all through the night. She woke up at around six in the morning, feeling tired (and sick!), and decided to vent her discontent to that great receptacle of whining, the internet. Making a sarcastic journal post about it on FurAffinity, Allison glanced through a few of the comments she had received since she had gone to bed earlier that night, some of which were on a recently submitted picture she had drawn.
The illustration was of a character she created to represent herself online, a cute cartoon snake that reflected both her fascination with snakes, the horned desert viper and the horned desert rattlesnake in particular, but also an affection aimed at adorable animation. Artfully altered, the two serpentine species mixed to make 'bowrll', a bouncy, boundless ball of cuteness, covered in dusty yellow scales, rolled into a rotund tube shape and topped with tiny horns above two large, expressive eyes. A small snake-snout set amidst two orange-freckled cheeks contains her purple-tinted mouth and tiny, flick-able, forked tongue. Finishing off the other end of the rounded rattler is her characteristic rattle-tail, although it's made up of 3 or 4 spheres that float freely in a vague line. Another indication of the toonish nature of the creature, Allison tended to draw the tail-sections as different shapes to signify her petite persona's prevailing propensity.
For example, in the picture she was perusing, she had made them into tiny hearts to show bowrll's love for the lava she had been drawn with, gathered up in her arms and squishing her snout against it, the snake snuggled the super-heated rock. That action had been made possible by the fact that when clad in a black hoodie shirt, the normally 'armless and harmless' serpent-gal gained ethereal limbs contained within the over-long, slinky sleeves.. although no hands ever appeared from the ends of said unseen arms, forever hidden somewhere beyond the limp cuffs. As for the pillowy appearing pahoehoe lava, the artist had always imagined that the mushy-looking magma, with its tar-like surface and bulgy billows, looked quite cushy, cuddle-able and comfy. Cartoons could not be killed by something as trifling as molten rock, of course. At least not if they weren't cognizant of the deadly nature of it. It was like how they could walk off cliffs and not fall until they realized they weren't standing on anything anymore.
Allison sighed a bit, her illness feeling all the more inconvenient at that moment. She saw a comment she had made to response to one on the picture, about how bowrll was 'apparently invincible'. She wished she could have a little bit of that invulnerability.. some of that effortless and careless disregard for the laws of the universe.
"Toons don't get sick.. I wish I.." she mumbled sleepily before closing the site and flopping back into bed, worming her way under the covers once more, feeling a bit of a feverish chill. Nestling her head down in her pillows, she half imagined pahoehoe lava in place of her bed sheets and smirked at that thought before coughing and groaning a bit at the feeling of her achy body. It was suddenly feeling oddly tingly, her arms and legs on pins and needles especially before they went all but numb. She had been trying not to move, lest the prickly feelings intensify with her shifting about, and then she simply could not move, her body feeling leaden and immobile for some reason.
'I must be super exhausted..' she reasoned, rationalizing her rather rare recent rearrangement, realizing her requirement for REM sleep. So she lay there and let herself slip into slumber, satisfied with the possibility that she would probably feel better in the morning. Or the afternoon, considering it was already quite some time into the period known as 'morning'.
Upon waking, the then 23 year old female was one year older. And wiser. And about 50 pounds lighter! And scalier. And hornier (because she grew horns, jeez!). And much more yellow. But the first thing she noticed was that she was no longer sick! "Happy birthday to me!" she enthused, and rolled out of bed. It was then that she noticed how easily she rolled. Having no limbs and a mostly streamlined body will do that to a person. Realizing her rotation was due to a sudden and severe lack of limbs, she could only shout as her short shape shuffled along, shifting the sheets until she showed up at one side and fell to the floor.
*Bow-rrrlllll!*
That was the noise she heard when she landed. Or rather, that was the sound she MADE when she landed, her body actually bouncing on impact with a strangely suited sound effect, like a cartoon.. the noise itself akin to something produced by a Timpani drum! In the end, though, despite the unrealistic rubbery rebounding, she remained in a heap on the floor.
bowrll groaned and sat up, rubbing her backside--with her tail?! She peered at it for a moment, dumbstruck. "What the raspberries is going o--" She stopped talking in mid-sentence. She hadn't meant to say 'raspberries', she meant to say 'fuck'. She tried again, although for a different reason than the first time: "What the rrrfffffuuurraspberriesss! ARGH!" she hissed, angrily.
"Sssilly sssnakie, ssswearing'sss ssstrictly sssuppresssed!" said a similarly sibilant sounding voice.
Looking up, the diminutive rattler's fanged, internally purple-tinted mouth gaped open at the figure before her.. "Ameth-why-steen?! Whhaa..?" Unbeknownst to her, the rattler's floating rattles had turned into stiffly pointed exclamation points, floating in a straight line above the end of her tail.
A large brown scaled male naga stood there, in front of her room's door, his long coily body filling much of the floor space. He looked rather happy, and a bit less detailed than you might think a giant snake might.. he actually looked more like how the amazed artist on the floor might have drawn him.. an illustrated illusion in her abode!
He shook his head, "I'm pretty posssitive you pronounced that poorly, but no, I'm not quite him," he responded, hissing while he spoke, then smiling and flicking his tongue in a very Amethystinian manner, doing little to dispel bowrll's belief that he was who he looked like. "Anyway, I wasss trying to sssay: Cartoonsss can't condone colourful colloquialisssmsss... argh, can't thisss ssstupid ssserpent sssay ssstuff, sssansss sssibilance? -- And without woeful wordplay?! Blargh!"
Suddenly, apparently fed up with himself, the python-morph poofed into a different form, a stereotypical cloud of white smoke bursting in front of him to cover up the transformation. What a cop out. The smoke cleared unusually fast, although it looked like it lingered on the smoky gray scales of the snake that was left. He cleared his throat and brushed the sleeves of his coat, large expressive puffs of left-over poof-smoke being extricated from them. He then straightened his characteristic red tie.
"Exunod!" cried bowrll. She grinned, a bit less surprised to see him in this whacked out dream she must have been having. She almost expected the spy-like snake to have changed forms, TF2 style. Although, again, he appeared more like a version she had drawn of the black mamba.
"Oh, um, no.. sorry again. I just thought this formal attire look would be better. I'm not Exunod either. I was just trying to find a form you'd be comfortable with talking to, using your art. Let me try again."
With that, he began to strip, whipping off the suit-top quickly before reaching up and pulling a zipper from behind his head, unzipping himself like a cartoon suit. Impossibly, the sleek snake head had been home to a large, green scaled and haired, blue horned head. It was Blitz!..?
"Now wait jusst a minute!" bowrll shouted, stopping the lengthy viper in the midst of ditching the coils -which had clearly been a real, moving part of his body a minute ago-, for a pair of green, pants-clad legs. "Sstop taking my friend's facess!" she cried, hissing a little in frustration, her floating rattle-sections turning to frazzled zig-zaggy lines to show her anger. "Pick something that isn't also a real person, would you?"
"Ah, alright. Yeah, that's probably a good idea," the fake-Blitz said and snapped her fingers. Said snap seemed to cause a sudden supernatural stretching, the dragon-type being elongated quickly upwards and then to both sides, cartoonily creaking a bit before snapping back down to size, the sudden shifting in shape covering an instantaneous metamorphosis once more, accompanied by a loud *pop* sound. When the body of the mysterious being rebounded into proper proportions, it was a simple, small shape.. with dark brown fur on his body and arms, and lighter brown fur on his head, legs and tail, the divisions in colouration being practically clear-cut lines. It had white claw-fingers and toes, a thick but short, quickly tapering tail and a long thin snout with more dark fur on the end of it, the snout clearly containing a lengthy and whip-like tongue.
It was Otto! A little toon tamandua that bowrll had made up for a school animation project. He was as small as she was, and much less intimidating. She sighed and smirked. "Okay, 'Otto', care to tell me what's going on? Why are you here? Who are you, really?"
"I'm here about your birthday wish! And, um.. I'm the person who does that sort of thing. I don't think there's a name for it, besides the dumb 'Fairy God-something' title, which I think is really off the mark. I'm no fairy!" Otto moved around to the other side of the bed as he spoke, walking in an exaggerated manner that somehow seemed normal for him. When he reappeared, he was holing up a small black hoodie, which he brought over to the still slumped snake. "Here, put this on, you probably should be less armless for today."
Without waiting for her consent, he lifted the dark garment up and over her head and yanked it down swiftly, her head popping out of the neck, somehow already clad in her signature black knit cap, her horns sticking out of the fabric from two small rips. She didn't have any hair before, but with the cap on, some small bits of brown hair could be seen hanging out from under the woolen material's rim.
Additionally, her formerly featureless form had gained a humanoid shape under the hoodie, complete with shoulders and arms, hidden in the sleeves. She hissed a little and pushed Otto lightly off of herself. "Okay, get off of me.." she muttered, using her regained limbs to pull the sweater-like shirt down around her waist, feeling a bit naked about her upper half for a moment. Oddly, she didn't mind her bare lower body and tail.
"Right, now, why don't we move to somewhere more.. comfortable. And suitable," said Otto, reaching behind his back with an overly dramatic flourish, his arm hidden behind the middle of his back. It was gone much too briefly for him to have actually grabbed anything, but nevertheless, the animated, flexible claw-fingers were holding what looked like a remote control as he whipped it up over his head, as if it were an object of great importance or power. It was a simple black square shape with one big red button on the front and an antenna that was almost as long as the box part of it. The thin rod was topped with a small metal ball, of course.
'Acme' was imprinted on the back.
"I used to use a giant pencil, or paint brush.. you know, draw things in where I wanted them, but it was always too big for me, somehow. Anyway, in these technologically advanced times, a universal remote seems like the best idea," he explained, without really explaining. Instead, he demonstrated, pointing the business end of the device over the still sitting snake's skull.
There was a flash of static that surrounded the confused college student before vanishing, leaving behind a unnaturally colourful and rather familiar looking forest scene. Looking over her hoodie-formed shoulder to better examine it, she was sure she had seen it before.
"Ahem, Miss Cerastes?" The anteater was still standing there in her bedroom, pointing at something and trying to get her attention. Oddly enough, only half their surroundings had changed and half of her bedroom remained around him, like a cross-section of her abode had been placed in the middle of a forest, sliced neatly in two. She goggled at this, before she realized: It was as if the remote had only effected the area in front of it, like the field of view belonging to the person using it made a difference. Or something. She couldn't take much more of this craziness!
Opening her mouth to demand more answers, she finally took note of what he was trying to point out to her. Her glare shifted to his pointing claw-finger, which was pointing slightly down, apparently at the ground where her short thick snake-body was resting. She looked down to find that she was not actually resting on anything!
"Ack!" she cried, falling to the actual grassy ground, a foot or so below her vanished former floor, onto the earth of the colourful forest scene. *Bow-rl-ll-ll!* There was that sound again, when her coils impacted, wobbling a bit, not bouncing that time.
Chuckling, Otto hopped down from the mundane looking bedroom and turned to face it, hitting the large red button again. With an audible *Zap!*, bowrll's link back to an almost real world vanished, and was replaced with more forest. It was then that she noticed she could hear familiar music playing, like something you would hear in the background of a Looney Tune, when it was morning. Almost a classical piece, there was also birds chirping and various woodsy sounds. It was a little distracting.
"What's with all the noise?" asked bowrll, slack-sleeved arms waving about around her head.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah. That just sort of happens with a scene change," he said casually, then looked somewhat upwards and addressed what seemed to be nothing but air. "Hey, could we loose the playback please?!" With a stereotypical record-scratch sound, the music and other sounds stopped, completely. "That's better."
"Now, will you please tell me what is going on?" she asked, a little hopelessly, her floating rattles becoming question marks briefly.
"Yes, of course! 'going on' is a phrase that denotes the current happenings at the given time, and when someone asks 'What's going on?', they want to know what is happening, occurring, both presently and possibly in the immediate time before and after the question was posed!" Otto stated, smiling at her with his cute little mouth at the end of his long anteater muzzle.
bowrll just looked back at him with a blank expression.
"Oh! Right, you want to know.. uh, yeah!" he smiled, blushing fiercely, nearly his whole face turning pink with embarrassment at having fallen prey to that classic cartoon slip-up of over-literal responses. "I'm here to grant your birthday wish! You wished you could be a cartoon, so you wouldn't be sick and wouldn't get hurt, that sort of thing. I'm here to introduce you to your new life as a toon!" With that, he pointed the remote at her and hit the button.
Nothing happened, so bowrll felt comfortable about choosing that moment to speak up. "This is crazy! I don't really want to be a cartoon! I mean, I don't think I do.. what about my family, my friends?!" As she spoke, she failed to notice a small circular shadow on the back of one of her yellow-scaled coils, which was slowly growing in size. She also failed to register the quiet whistling noise that accompanied it.
"Oh, you can have a cartoon family.. and friends! You'll just get up to more hijinks than you normally would. Like dropping anvils on each other and stuff like that," replied Otto as the whistling slowly grew louder, the shadow swelling larger.
"Now why would I want to do that?" asked the rattlesnake, having to speak up over the noise, still not noticing it for whatever reason.
"Because it's fun! To demonstrate, there's a large safe on its way to you right now, in fact!"
"Whaa??" bowrll finally saw the shadow, which by then had grown to cover most of her coils and the ground around them. "Shhhhiitttake mushroomsss!" she shouted, still unable to swear, but not really caring at that point. Her rattles once again turning to alarmed exclamation points, she took off, slithering away from where she was. Looking back as she went, the shadow remained on her back! She continued to slither in circles rapidly, going faster and faster, her sleeved arms beginning to windmill next to her sides to pick up speed, turning into round blurs as her circular path on the ground began to produce dust clouds.. before long, the panicking serpent had disappeared into a speedy blur, the shadow constantly covering her coils. Otto laughed as he watched, smirking at his victim's plight.
Finally, as the whistling got overwhelmingly loud and the impact seemed imminent, she gave up, resting in the middle of the dust oval of her attempts to escape. She sat and panted on the grass, while the circle where she was running had become a deeply worn groove in the ground. She gave up and covered her head with her arms, coiling up into a tight ball as the shadow expanded to cover the entire plateau of green ground she had created in her bid to avoid the falling safe.
It was then, while she wasn't looking and Otto looked on smugly, eyes closed in triumph, that the shadow whipped across the ground to settle on him, a half-second before the large safe crashed down on top of him, indenting the ground slightly as it's back end sunk into the dirt. 'Acme' was the logo affixed to the front.
Looking up, bowrll what had happened and laughed a little before frowning. "I hope he's okay.. I guess."
As she slithered over, the safe's combination dial seemed to twirl on it's own, back and forth, before the heavy door swung open and half fell off of its hinges. Otto was standing there with spinning stars encircling his head, his eyes appearing as spirals, clearly dazed. He shook his head, his long muzzle and tongue flapping about a bit as he cleared his mind. Stopping, he groaned and lifted a clawed paw to his noggin as a thick, pink furless knob rose out of his skull, denoting his injury. "Ooowwwww..."
"Servess you right, you meanie!" bowrll said, grinning in at him. Then she noticed the remote control, undamaged, in his other hand. She snatched it up with a grin and an: "Aha!"
Otto shoved the knob back down and came back to his senses, hopping out of the hole that had been ripped in the metal casing of the safe. "Hey, give that back! You don't even know how to use it!" He cried, grabbing at it.
bowrll laughed and lifted herself up on her coils a little so the short mammal couldn't reach the highly held device. "Then why don't you tell me how to usse it, then?"
The anteater stopped trying to jump and get the remote back, standing in front of her with a suddenly calm look on his face as he nodded, as if her idea solved his problem. "Oh, okay. You just point it, think about what you want to have happen and hit the button."
Slipping backwards, bowrll smiled and pointed the antenna squarely at Otto, "Like this?" she asked, pressing the button. Immediately, the whistling sound returned, with an already large shadow zeroing in on Otto's location. The whistling was also joined by some musical notes, running downwards in succession, as if someone was swiping their finger down a piano. It was no surprise, then, that a grand piano came crashing down on Otto's head with a loud and deep musical chord.
When the dust cleared, Otto's head was sticking up out of the large black polished wood surface, right in the middle of the back of the instrument. Funnily enough, he had a properly arranged set of piano keys sticking out of his mouth. He spat them out. "Yes, like that," he said, blithely, as a second tall lump grew up from his skull.
Giggling a little, bowrll slipped over to peer more closely at the wreckage of the stringed instrument. "Hmm, I could get used to this.. you're okay, right?"
Otto wriggled a bit, caught up in the various wiry guts of the large grand piano, nodded to her, saying: "Oh yeah, just peachy. As long as you don't drop a drum of The Dip on me, I'll be fine." Before bowrll could think too much about that statement, Otto sprang from the splintered mess of the piano and nabbed the remote back!
"Hey! Gimme that!" cried bowrll, lunging after him. Otto doubled back, worming his whole body through the too-tight hole his head had made in the wood, his brown butt being stuck for a moment before *pop*ing through the hole. As bowrll gave chase, she was struck as the entire back of the piano opened on its hinges and Otto hopped out of the other side!
The snake's snout was squished against the black varnished wood. She put her cuff-covered hands against it and peeled herself off, revealing the whole front half of her head to be completely flat. "Ouch." She grabbed the pancaked sides of her snout with her sleeve-hidden hands and tugged, lifting it free from the rest of her sandwiched face, stretching it out way past the point where it would have been its normal size.. until her whole head popped back into shape, when she let go of her stretched snout, letting it bounce back to normal as well. Ignoring her miraculous self-administered 'reconstructive surgery', she yelled at Otto: "Get back here, you!!"
"No way, toots!" Otto called back, running across the clearing to a line of trees, holding the remote above his head as he waddled back and forth comically on his hind legs, his fat tail swinging to and fro. bowrll gave chase, but before she could get there, the tamandua turned around to see the vengeful viper (ad)vancing on him. He lifted his head and swallowed in fear, his adam's apple bobbing noticeably. "Gulp! Wait, I have to show you more stuff about this world!"
Just before bowrll reached him, the fearful fellow aimed the remote downward and hit the button. During the flash of static, bowrll froze in mid-air, her lunging leap stopped in its tracks as she looked down to see what he had done. When the static cleared, the ground was gone! They both looked at it (or the lack thereof), then back up at one another. Then their gazes snapped quickly downwards once more, completing their double-take.
Otto's eyes bulged out enormously, popping out of his head to hover right in front of his face as he screamed, realizing what he had done. At the same time, bowrll's serpentine maw gaped open to a gargantuan size, the purple/pink flesh inside surrounding a small black hole in the back, complete with the (anatomically incorrect) dangling uvula, shaking about as she screamed. Once they both stopped and looked back at each other, their faces back to their normal proportions.. THEN they began to fall. Both bowrll's coils and Otto's body dropped straight away, their necks stretching to leave their heads, snake glaring at the recalcitrant anteater. Also, Otto's arm had stretched out with his head, as it was the arm Otto was using to hold the remote up above his head.
After another moment, they fell completely out of the forest scene, leaving the remote and bowrll's hairy woolen cap spinning in their wake.
Of course, another moment later, both sets of arms were seen reaching back up to reclaim the items their owners had left behind.
"AAAAAaaaaahhhhhhh!!! We're gonna diieeee!" yelled bowrll, shaking Otto by his shoulders, her hoodie falling in the winds as they plummeted, her tail rattles having turned to little skulls and cross-bones.
"Calm down, I meant to put us here.. just on the ground," he said, sounding unsure, peering down at the rocky and sandy desert landscape below. "Anyway, this is just a good opportunity for you to learn a very useful trick. Pulling something out of your pocket!" He looked down at his unclothed form. "Uhhh.. or.. uh.. or from behind your back!" He reached behind himself and grabbed something, tugging it out. It was some kind of backpack, which he immediately struggled to put on in the rushing air. "You try it!"
"But there's nothing in here!" bowrll wailed as she poked at her hoodie's large front pouch, glancing down at the rapidly approaching earth. "Jusst usse the remote or sssomething!"
Otto yelled over the sound of their rapid descent: "No! You have to learn! And if you don't.. well, you'll be okay! Trust me!" And with that, he pulled the cord attached to the pack on his back. "See you on the ground!"
After pulling the cord, all that came out of the pouch was two large leather loafers. They floated in the air above his head, allowing him to grab them and goggle at them for a moment before he realized the mix-up. "Oh no! I wanted a parachute, notta pair of shoes!" he wailed and tossed them away, holding his face in his hands.
Similarly, bowrll gave up as she began to be able to see individual lines on the weathered roadway below. She grabbed her upward flapping hood with both hands and tugged it down over her face, so she wouldn't have to look. Just then, she felt a strong tug on her torso and heard a loud *FWOOMP* noise, like the sound of a parachute opening. She looked up to find her hood inflated to many times its own size, acting to slow her descent. She laughed and looked around for Otto. Then she heard the thud. Looking down, she could see a small anteater-shaped hole in the ground next to the road.
"Aww, poor guy," she remarked as she drifted safely down to the ground. Upon landing with a quiet *bwrl* noise as her coils hit the ground, she slithered over and peered down into the perfectly outlined shape of Otto's body. "Uhh, Otto, you okay?" She couldn't really see, so she flicked her tongue a bit into the darkness.
Suddenly, a grunt sounded from down in the pit and a clawed hand grabbed her tongue. She erked and stood back up, her tongue extending out of her snout. "Wet hoo, oohttoo!" she cried, trying to say 'Let go, Otto!' He did, and her thin forked appendage retracted like a window blind, rolling up in her mouth and flapping end over end a few times.
Shaking her head to clear it and 'fix' her tongue, bowrll then leaned down again, reaching into the hole and pulling up the surprisingly light Otto. He was completely flat, like a sheet, and floated up and out with her strong tug, gently wafting back down to earth, face up. His eyes were 'X's. "Heeellppp meeee..." he wheezed, pitifully.
"What do I do?" asked bowrll, frowning. Otto did not reply, appearing to be completely out of it. bowrll then spotted the remote control, still clutched in Otto's hand, seemingly none the worse for wear. She grabbed it, holding it in her sleeved palms, pondering what exactly to use it for, how to think up the proper thing to fix the flattened fellow. Before she could do anything, though, the remote control's plastic casing suddenly cracked-- and continued to crack until it was covered in a vertable lattice work of spidery crack-lines. After a short moment, it crumbled to pieces, which were then blown away by a stray, well placed breeze.
"Argh, fffffruitcakesss!!" yelled bowrll. She wiped her sleeves off of the remaining remote remnants and began to ruminate, putting a hand to her horned head and 'hmmm'ing.. then she suddenly had an idea! A brightly lit light bulb appeared over her head as she reached into her coils and rummaged around, the sound of many objects clanked and knocking together rising from her body, as if filled with junk. As she searched, her tail-sections had turned into what looked like little capital letter 'I's, for some reason. After a second, she exclaimed 'Aha!' and pulled a bicycle pump up and out, which you might realize, looks like a long bodied capital letter 'I'!
Immediately sticking the thin nozzle into the anteater's appropriately thin muzzle, bowrll set to pumping with the slightly tall-for-her stand-up bicycle pump. Her tail was curled around the two small spaces for a person's feet and she had to stretch upwards somewhat to lift the long stemmed handles to their full extension, thanks to her being only as tall as the cylindrical red metal pump at it's most compact. As she began to re-inflate her odd friend, she saw his long snout filling back up, then his cheeks.. followed by his ears *pop*ing back into shape.
It was working, but taking forever! So bowrll closed her eyes and started working the pump as hard as she could for a while, her limbs becoming a blur of up and down motion before the entire area was engulfed in a cloud of desert dust. when she finally took a break, there was a tap on her shoulder. She looked around as the dust settled, not really seeing anyone.. then she noticed the air tube from her pump was dangling UPwards, so she looked up.. and found Otto, dark brown body expanded into a nearly spherical shape, floating on the end of the air tube like a balloon! It was he who had tapped her shoulder from above, with a comically bloated arm.
bowrll gaped at him for a moment, her purplish mouth hanging open. "Ack! Sorry, ssorry!" she stammered, reaching for the tube with a black sleeve, not noticing the tamandua's flailing arms trying to warn her away from what she was about to do. She tugged on the tube, dislodging the nozzle from Otto's mouth.
Instantly, the balloony boy was blasted off in a sudden out-burst of air, his lips and long tongue billowing in the wind that rushed from him, propelling his rapidly deflating self around, looping and twisting in the air. Eventually, he flopped back down to earth, nearly as flattened and deflated as he had been when bowrll pulled him out of the hole he had made at impact.
Landing right next to the rattler, he gave her a thumbs up and wheezed "Good job, bowrll," before lowering said claw-thumb to his mouth, sticking it in and blowing. As he blew on his thumb, he began to re-inflate, although in a much more regulated fashion, easily fixing himself and standing up, brushing himself off.
"Hey, why didn't you jusst do that in the first place?" demanded the slightly miffed snake, her sleeves placed on her sides.
"Well, then you wouldn't have learned to produce an object from nowhere on demand. Nice job, using your tail instead of behind your back," commented Otto with a small smirk on his miniature mouth.
"Yeah, yeah.. it's not that great," drawled bowrll, rolling her large orange eyes.
Otto crossed his arms and nodded a little, "Oh? Then what about the fact that you can pull out.." he trailed off as he began to reach behind his back once more, whipping out something new and exclaiming, "..this?! Whenever you want?" He asked, presenting the serpentine girl with a steamy hot, ready-made bowl of matzoh ball soup on a tray.
bowrll's eyes bulged a bit and her rattles turned to hearts at the sight of the succulent soup, having not eaten all day, the snake grabbed the tray and up-ended it over her widely stretched mouth, the bowl falling into her maw for her to swallow whole, a perfect outline of the bowl appearing in her neck before it was gulped down fully, into her belly, under the black top she wore. She mmmed loudly and rubbed her belly happily. "Okay, that's pretty convenient."
"It was also to share! See?!" cried Otto, holding up a spoon and a straw, the spoon intended for the snake, and the straw for the small-mouthed tamandua. "I can't believe this! You inconsiderate snake! I'm just trying to show you the ropes and you go and eat all of my food without even asking! Oh, it makes me so mad!" As he ranted and raved, Otto began to turn red.. and not just flush, but actually darkening to a violent shade of rage-ful red, his eyes narrowing in anger while steam came from his cute little upstanding ears. Even the small tufts of fur atop his head suddenly burst into flame with his powerful hatred.
bowrll 'eep'ed quietly and backed away slowly, muttering an excuse about being hungry and having not had anything to eat since _he_ had done all the toony things to her.. but finally just took off with a quiet *zoom*, leaving a spinning cloud of dust in her wake.
Shouting and swinging his clawed fists in the air, Otto gave chase. And even though the legged animal should probably have quickly caught the coily creature, the two settled into a pace where bowrll was only slightly ahead of her pursuer.. her short serpent body in a rolling blur of motion, vaguely appearing as a figure eight shape, while Otto's legs spun into a circle-shaped blur.
After a while, bowrll lost Otto momentarily over a hill and as she came up to a sudden curve in the strip of weathered asphalt, she skidded to a halt, looking up at the tall cliff that blocked the road from continuing forward, instead forcing the highway around the bluff in a nearly ninety degree angle turn. She was struck with an evil idea and proceeded to wring her sleeve-covered hands together, chuckling darkly, her formerly cute little horns growing out into devilish looking versions of themselves as she schemed, her rattles also shifting with her new attitude, all but the last rattle becoming streamlined and straight.. the end section turning into a spaded tip for the rest, completing her dastardly image.
"Hrmm, this'll get that darn anteater offa my tail!" muttered bowrll, not realizing just how used to the odd new world she was becoming as she reached into her hoodie's front pocket pouch to pull out a painter's pallet and paintbrush.. her appearance back to normal at that point, although her hat then turned into a stylish artist's beret. She quickly began mixing the spectrum of base colours laid out along the edge of the pallet's wooden surface, her brush becoming a blur of nearly unreadable motion, beginning to paint on the rock surface before her.
Being a consummate cartoon artist, bowrll quickly created a believable and convincingly toony tunnel with more roadway inside of it upon the cliff face, then a perfectly matching section of road leading to the wall.. or rather, to the new tunnel! She stuffed the art supplies in her coils and dashed off to duck behind a nearby rock and observe her handiwork in action, seeing her speeding pursuer quickly approaching in the distance, thanks to a pair of binoculars she just happened to whip out from behind her stone hiding spot.
Otto appeared over the crest of the hill and sped down the road, heading straight toward what looked like a clear passage through what was, in fact, quite solid stone. bowrll giggled as she watched her plan coming to fruition. Otto zipped along and then...! He ran straight through the tunnel she had just painted! Flabbergasted, she jumped out of her hiding spot in time to see the determined tamandua tracking his 'prey', right through the painted passage, to the other side, a long stream of dust covering the length of the tunnel behind him.
Hissing angrily and growling a bit, bowrll, shoved her hat a bit further forward over her forehead, looking determined to catch up with Otto (despite wanting to get rid of him, I know!), winding up a black-sleeved arm before she took off-- slamming into the cliff face at full tilt. Her yellow rattler body compacted behind her squished, hoodie-clad upper body, tail end sticking out at jagged angles behind her smooshed self.
After a moment, her tail slackened and dipped back towards the ground, brining the rest of her body with it, which was folded over and over again, like an accordion.. springing up and down and making the appropriate squeaky squeeze-box sounds, stars circling her skull. While she was still dazed, Otto reappeared from the tunnel, zipping into a stand-still right next to her before making a familiar *plub-plub-plubhtt!* noise with his agile tongue before dashing off again, a la Roadrunner.
Shaking off her momentary disorientation, bowrll scowled, "Thisss.. meansss.. war." Then she took off after her adversary.
After several more classic gags were pulled on each other, alternating the victims of the cartoon violence, the two companions sat next to each other, panting, both at a loss for inspiration and tired from all the activity. Although, that was only because it seemed like they should be tired, at that point, as the sun began to set on the desert horizon, turning the tan and brown landscape into a perfect pink and crimson immediately. They hadn't gotten tired before, but for some reason, it seemed appropriate at that point, so they were suddenly winded and gasping for air.
bowrll thought it was her turn to get Otto, but couldn't think of anything to do to him she hadn't already gotten to try. Despite the flashes of generic pain she got when smacked by a giant hammer or falling off a cliff, she always felt back to normal a moment later, the accident forgotten as she cooked up a new toony plan.. sometimes with complex blueprints she didn't realize she had!
As it got darker, the rattler, run ragged, was rejuvenated when she had a new idea, sitting up straight. Otto, who had been leaning against her back to support, slumped over, dead tired. "I know what we should do now!" bowrll exclaimed, "Let'ss go to the 'Ink & Paint Club'!" She spun around, looking excited. "We can go there, right?"
"Sure thing.. if you can think it, you can do it.. but why don't you handle the scene change?" asked the tired tamandua.
"Okay!" bowrll grinned and jumped up, using her coils like a spring to leap about 10 feet in the air and grab onto an unseen backdrop and yank it down, covering the twilight desert backdrop with the new scenery. Except, there was none. It was completely black! The new pitch dark scene plunged them both into total darkness.
Otto sat up and blinked, looking around. Only his eyes could be seen in the complete lack of light. "Uh, did you put us into a storage closet at the club or something, bowrll?" Her eyes just looked back at him. Maybe she was shrugging. Otto rolled his eyes and looked around, the pair of beady anteater orbs swinging back and forth before they bounded off to look for a light. "Hold on, I'll see what I can do.."
After a few bumps and scrapes in the unfathomable inkiness, Otto's eyes plodded back over to bowrll. "I found some matches!" he announced happily, striking one of them and illuminating their surroundings. It did indeed seem to be storage of some kind, with crates and boxes piled as high as the ceiling. Peering around, Otto began to realize that they all said something similar.
Things like: "Explosive", "TNT", "DNYAMITE". He was lucky the whole place hadn't gone off yet!
He also noticed that the immobile pair of eyes he thought belonged to bowrll were actually painted on to what looked like a bowling ball. He rushed over to inspect 'her', finding that 'she' was actually a spherical, old-fashioned bomb, with a wick coming out of it. In his last moment before the catastrophic detonation, Otto looked up to see a small round hole in the wall, through which he could see bowrll happily waving at him, saying "Ain't I a sstinker?" before she reared up on her tail and shoved emphatically down on a handle that sunk into a box with wires coming out of it.
Otto only had enough time to turn the round bomb over to see the long wires sticking into the fuse-hole on the other side of it, before the electrical impulses of her plunger-trigger set it off.
One blinding, multi-coloured set of explosions later, and Otto was sitting in a small crater with a large ring of scorch marks around it.. the small shed of explosives in the middle of the desert having been blasted sky-high. The anteater's body was completely blackened and charred, made thinner and cracked around the charcoal-like edges. His neck and his nose looked like burnt up match-sticks, and both his ears were still on fire for another moment before fizzling out. He blinked, and the whole pile of tamandua-shaped ashes collapsed in on itself.
bowrll laughed and pointed, truly feeling at home in the cartoon environment. She knew 'Otto' would be fine. She wondered if the entity she had come to know as 'Otto' would stick around, or if he would leave her once her birthday was over, to fend for herself in her new world. She thought she'd rather like it there, sighing happily and crossing her arms, contented.
Although.. with the thought of her birthday coming to an end and the sky as dark as it was, she wondered.. just then, her watch started beeping. Wait, she doesn't wear a watch.. she can't! It'd be on her arm, under her sleeve. She lifted her arms and spotted the noisy time-piece, which she knew she hadn't put on, strapped to her ethereal arm _over-top_ of her hoodie's sleeve! It was chiming an electronic tone to indicate that it was midnight.. Saturday, April 11th 2009, was over! She swallowed loudly, *gulp*ing in concern. What would happen now?
She waited for a moment and then, when nothing occurred.. she shrugged it off... until she heard that tell-tale whistling sound. Since it was dark, she hadn't noticed her spot on the sand getting increasingly dim with the enlarging shadow. It was the explosives shed! It was intact and barreling down upon her!
She let out a worried 'Eep', and fling herself down to the ground.. then began to burrow under the sand like the desert rattler she was, a flash of dusty motion later and she was bunkered down, her horns and eyes still sticking up out of the desert floor, black cap half covered in sand. She whimpered and grabbed a handful of sand, flipping up and open an under-sized umbrella, made of the grainy material.
The whistling got louder and bowrll shut her eyes, wishing for it to go away. No such luck! After another second, her world exploded into fireworks of crashes, bangs and booms, every kind of shattering, breaking and splatting sound effect seeming to go off at once as numerous flashes of vibrant light filled her mind.
Then it all went dark.
The next day, Sunday, Allison woke up. Allison, not bowrll! She sat up in bed, feeling refreshed, but less than healthy once more. Looking over herself, the re-made mammal moaned and slumped back down onto her pillow. "Aww, man! Just a dream."
After a while of laying there and trying to remember all the details of the fleeting fever-dream, she grinned and shook her head, sighing a little before slowly getting up with a blanket clutched around herself in the cool air of her room. She lumbered over to her computer and plopped down in her chair there, groggily checking for messages from her friends on that journal she had left about being sick on her birthday and considering making a new one to say she had slept through the whole of 'her day'.
Instead, she saw some comments about a submission she didn't remember creating! Squinting at it and racking her brains to remember it, she clicked on the title to open it. The title was: "Well, that was fun! :D"
Of course, the website zipped her down the page to the comment on the piece, only letting her see the submission for the briefest moment.
The comment, from Cyberhorn_the_dragon, read: "whats this one about....? o..o" and had a confused, in-site emoticon next to it.
Confused herself, Allison muttered something to the same effect as the blue dragon's comment and quickly zipped back up the page, just in time to see the animation finish loading and begin to play. She was shocked, she would _definitely_ remember making a new animation!
The panel was blank for a moment before Otto bounced into the frame from the foreground and waved at the viewer, smiling.. then he just took off into the background without a word. She was flabbergasted, the work was amazing! It was Otto, at the best she could draw him, in every frame, as clear and as smooth as ever, almost too good to be just an animation, almost like a video recording of a real.. live.. cartoon..?
Clearly he was leaving, but what...? Did it have something to do with that weird dream? It WAS a dream, right?
Then she saw the description below: "See you next year!"