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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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.