Second Life -- Welcome to Fairplay [Stage 1]

[cityship]

It had been the usual mission briefing, not that any of them remembered it. The crew knew they were gone and had no idea when they'd be back, and likely wouldn't attempt rescue for quite some time, especially with Stacy considering the mission "ongoing."

They had no idea when they'd be back, either, namely because they never remembered being on the ship in the first place.

It was home. It had always been home.

Welcome to Fairplay, Iowa, folks, happiest little town in the Midwest.

[ooc: Read this before tagging.]

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[i-saw-myself.livejournal.com]

Good kitty.

After getting his leg all taken care of, and pulling down his pant leg, Harold turned to the head-butting cat with a small smile, and scritched his head affectionately, rubbing at the little spot behind his ear that usually drove him nuts with happiness.

"What do you think? I think it looks fine like this, don't you?"

Ah well. What mattered was his dad didn't agree.

His arms wrapped around the cat and he petted him more, brushing his bristled chin against the top of the cat's head, but eventually he let go and climbed to his feet, checking to make sure Toothless had enough food and water. The cat mostly had to stay in his room, to avoid his father's wrath, and while that meant the room reeked sometimes from the litterbox, it was a situation Harold could live with, if it meant he got to keep the affectionate feline.

The sad thing was, in a lot of ways, the damn cat was his best friend. He talked to him constantly, and somehow it almost seemed like Toothless actually listened. Harold knew that was pathetic, but see, they'd had a Moment. Harold didn't have many Moments in his life, where something important happened to him, where something went right, where someone liked him, but they'd had a Moment, in his backyard one day. That cat had been the bane of the neighborhood, howling all night and generally acting like a pest, but one afternoon, in his backyard, he'd lured him in with some food and some kindness, and they'd locked eyes, and somehow just knew that they could trust each other.

Other than the unfortunate incident where Harold accidentally closed the door on his tail (that Harold had nearly been in tears over and Toothless had fortunately forgiven him for), he had treated that cat like it was royalty, and in return, Toothless had rewarded him with what was pretty much an endless reserve of affection.

"Think dad'll let me get a mohawk, bud?" he joked to the cat.

[hasnoteefs.livejournal.com]

The bane of the neighborhood, indeed. Toothless had always been a mouthy creature, since the day he had strayed too far from his mother and his litter's closely-knit companionship nearly forever ago (which was to say, Toothless had the short-term memory of a potato, he was barely two years old now, when he had wandered from his family he'd been maybe thirteen weeks). So when he had happened across Harold's neighborhood he had seen fit to sit atop gutters and roofs in order to shout out his search that way. No one ever found him, until Harold. All the other humans were too busy swatting at him or throwing their old newspapers and shoes at him.

Harold had been the odd one out, as he seemed to be in so many aspects of his life. He had left food and water out for the cat (in some of his mother's very nice bowls, Toothless had later heard), and continually waited to make sure the cat was eating it. Naturally, Toothless had been wary and aloof like a cat was meant to be, and waited until the boy wasn't looking to eat the food.

And when it became a trend, and the weather had started to get cold, when Harold had come out with the bowls full one early winter afternoon, Toothless had waited in hiding until the boy was headed back inside and gone to follow him.

His tail had paid the price, as had the eardrums of all within a three-mile radius and the flesh on the back of Harold's good leg. So his tail hung kind of funny now, gimped and flopping uselessly to the left where one of the vertebrae had been shattered beyond repair (and with Harold's parents not liking the cat to begin with, obviously no one had been able to get him to a vet to have it fixed). Toothless liked to view it as they matched. Harold had his strange prosthetic, and Toothless had his gimped tail. They were a pair, if nothing else.

Once the scritches began, Toothless had started to purr and ooze into a sort of sated heap of feline, which Harold promptly picked up and cuddled with, and the cat halfheartedly swatted a paw (claws retracted, of course) at his face. He didn't appreciate the faint bristles poking their way out of the boy's chin, they were scratchy and Harold paid entirely too much attention to them periodically. Before he was released back onto the bed, Toothless grabbed hold of the boy's wrist and pointedly gummed at his fingertip where his front teeth were missing (thus his namesake). It was a sort of affectionate ritual Toothless had gotten into the habit of.

He rolled back onto his side and watched the teenager lazily, chirping in an oddly amused fashion to his question. Yeah, that'd be the day.