And part 4, the near-climax..... there'll be one more part before the really clenchy stuff :D
Prologue: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34519072/
Part 1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35266238/
Part 2: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35277543/
Part 3: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/37098923/
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Rudy was having ball. He was with his two bestest best friends, his first bestest best friend Buddy had given him the plushie that was as big as him, his biggest bestest best friend Alex was going to propose to his mommy, and now he was on his happy way to get into Cupid’s Quarrel, a Valentine’s themed water balloon fight.
“You two gonna Bonnie and Clyde this thing, or is it every squirt for themselves?” Alex asked both Rudy and Buddy while he held on to the calf’s hand.
“Who are they?” Rudy asked, oblivious to who Alex was referring to.
“They were a criminal couple who robbed and murdered their way across the Central United States during the Great Depression.” Buddy explained bluntly. Another more glamorized, anachronistic take would’ve been describing the thieving duo as embodying *couple goals*.
“Whuh?” Rudy gasped, maybe a little offended. “I don’t want to kill people; I just want to throw water-filled balloons at them.” He pleaded, but Alex quickly squeezed the brown-haired calf’s hand to ease him.
“Relax, best friend. I was just wondering if you two going in as a team or if you were going to go solo,” Alex assured and reworded for Rudy, who got then what was being asked of him.
“By ourselves,” the calf answered. “We’ll be like that game Buddy likes about the kids with toy bombs.”
“Tall order. Boom Babies gets really intense,” Buddy highlighted, citing her favorite online arena game that had the typical match-up baggage; twenty-five-year-olds screaming like five-year-olds for their mommies and actual grade-schoolers who knew the bad words the kitten and Rudy weren’t allowed to say yet.
Alex, Rudy, and Buddy spotted the “entrance,” two knee-height wooden posts that didn’t have color-coordinated strings of red and pink tied between them, to the Cupid’s Quarrel water balloon fight area. The spot used was half of the Rookie League Football practice field, an area of around fifty-by-fifty yards, with six plastic tubs scattered like boxes of loot, equidistance apart from each other across the playful battleground. Inside each of them had to be, to guess-timate, roughly multiples of tens of red, pink, and white colored water balloons. And then, to give the kiddies a starting position, there was a length of neon-white rope that was twelve feet away from the entrance inside the perimeter of the circle.
The fight was going to be epic.
The collie, the kitten and the calf clustered into their own circle, copying what the other parents and guardians with their children were doing, and waited for the first whistle to blow to ready for the free-for-all. Alex then got down to eye-level with them and started to get them pumped. More than they had to be already.
“Okay, troops. You gonna throw them balloons?”
“Yes!” Rudy and Buddy responded.
“You gonna get wet?”
“Yes!”
“You gonna make a splash?”
“Yes!”
“You gonna hug me?” A familiar voice piped in. Buddy almost said yes, and she and Alex whipped their heads around just in time for Rudy to bowl over to his mother, the voice’s owner.
“Mommy!” Rudy jumped at her to be caught in a hug, although there was a near fumble as he was still holding onto that huge panda plush.
“Woah, hey my little calf, having fun without me?” Patty asked humorously, to which Rudy said he was having fun.
“But not because you weren’t there, nuh-uh.” The calf clarified, and it earned him a kiss on the cheek. Alex quickly joined the gathering and gave Patty a kiss of her own, along with a nosy-nuzzle, making the momma cow blush a little.
“Oh my, who’s this stu-panda-us gentleman?” Patty regarded Rudy’s gifted carnival game prize, pinching the stuffed toy’s white cheeks.
“Buddy won it and she gave him to me.” Rudy explained, as Patty finally felt him get too heavy for her to properly hold much longer and let him back down to the ground.
“Yeah. After I beat stupid Tripp Cooke at the game. Blam!” Buddy celebrated, still much proud about that victory and the look it put on that bully’s face.
“Yeah, really bamboozled the guy.” Alex shared, but then he heard a snicker from his bovine boo. He quirked a brow at her, confused, looked to Rudy who just shrugged, and then to Buddy who had her own brow cocked and giving her best look of incredulity at him. She pointed at the stuffed panda, and then it hit Alex what he just did. It made him chuckle at himself as he face-palmed in mock-shame.
“Bambooooozled, huh?” Patty made fun at Alex’s unintended, subconscious panda pun. The two of them were getting closer and closer to being of the same wave-length day-by-day. Afterward, Alex had asked Patty how she got away from the booth. She said that parents and kids managed to quit showing up. It was due to the water-balloon fight as well as the musical presentation that was getting prepped half-an-hour after the soaked melee was complete. So, Principal Barron decided to be cool for once and told Patty, after she helped pack away the still yet-given-away prizes, that she could rejoin her family. Her boy and that nice collie, he said.
“Oh poo-poo, they’re on to us. If they ask where our rings are, say that a big fish ate them when we used them as bait.” Alex joked toward Patty, and it made her get pinker in the cheeks along with a glad, shy giggle.
“She’ll actually get one to make that joke real, soon,” Buddy whispered to Rudy out the corner of her mouth, and the calf bounced in place in contained excitement. Buddy suddenly gurgle-burped, and gave a hard swallow of whatever bad air came back up, and Rudy noticed.
“Those weren’t corn nuggets, were they?” The calf correctly asked, and Buddy blew off the affirmative question with a whatever and a flick of her wrist.
“Five minutes! Quarrel begins in five minutes!” Principal Barron announced through his cupped hands.
“I think that’s your guys’s cue.” Alex told Rudy and Buddy, while putting his arm around Patty’s shoulder.
“Okay,” the calf and the kitten said in sync. Rudy then handed his stuffed panda for his mom and his biggest best friend to hold onto. “I’ll be back, Izzie,” Rudy promised his plush.
“Izzie? After Ms. Topbottom’s daughter?” Patty asked her son wryly.
“He got a fat butt,” Rudy said about his plush, and this made the collie and the momma cow have a fit of church giggles as the calf and Buddy walked away to get to the starting line. Izzie Topbottom, daughter of the panda music professor that lived in the same neighborhood as Patty and Alex, was well-known for her definitive junk trunk. And that born show-girl had no qualms about anyone talking about it.
However, a nefarious, evil force was at work, under the notice and knowledge of one calf and his bestest best friend kitten. Well… not nefarious or necessarily *evil*, and it wasn’t force, or an it. *He* was just a brat who needed better role models and more lessons in humility for that epiphany to be a nice person to finally happen.
“Bro, don’t do it.” Mayson Cooke pleaded to his older sibling, knowing exactly what he was planning from just Tripp’s face and the scheming grin upon it.
Tripp Cooke was planning to have fun by taking petty, quote-unquote, vengeance for his not-so-humiliation earlier. He and his family had arrived precisely thirteen minutes before Alex and the kids got there, and Tripp managed to spot Buddy like a military radar picking up a bogey in a restricted airspace.
He still knew, as his father Blake taught him, that he couldn’t hit a girl. With his fist anyway. And that meant he wasn’t prevented from hitting a girl with a water balloon. And if he just so happened to be standing too close and tried to lob a balloon as hard as he could and strike a particular kitten girl accidentally, he’d just have to fake being sorry and he’d get away with his revenge no problem, muwhahahaha.
What a little, conniving shit.
“What?” Tripp faked sincere confusion at his little brother. “I’m just going to hock water balloons, like everyone else.” Tripp would’ve giggled evilly if he were any more of a villain.
“One minute!” Principal Barron called out.
“Okay, Tripp, show them how a champion throws ‘em,” Blake encouraged his oldest, still wincing and as he held an ice bag to his black eye.
“Don’t do it too hard, I don’t want either of you to be too tired for the musical performance later,” Caroline pushed, seeming still aiming to do the show even with Blake’s badly hurt face.
“Yes, mom,” Mayson agreed without fuss, or enthusiasm either.
“Yeah, got it,” Tripp said more annoyed, as he’d heard the reminder a dozen times about, in his opinion, stupid singing she was forcing him to take a part in. But now that he had his chance for what he saw as his payback, he’d be in a better mood and might try to do more than phone it in.
All the children were at the starting mark, all in their ready positions, some looking like they were about to take off like the top sprinter at the Olympics and others more standard, as Principal Barron counted down. “… Three. Two. GO!!”
All the kids took off like horses at a derby racetrack, bolting for the closest tub of water balloons or the next nearest to be the first one to chuck. Hopefully one of them would get the pigpen kiddo, finally get the dumpster on legs to wash off and quit smelling like a month of armpit stank.
“Me go BOOM BOOM!” Rudy and Buddy shouted together as they reached the same bucket, cradling as many balloons as their child arms could hold, and immediately set out to pelt and be pelted.
For Tripp Cooke, though, he was set on getting as close to Buddy as he could to enact his revenge. He didn’t throw his one balloon right away, first he needed to carefully stealth his way toward Buddy to be within throwing-only-to-accidentally-smack-somebody range.
It wasn’t so much stealth, as in actually being acutely aware of his surroundings to be able to time when he’d be out of an enemy’s line of sight and approach his target unseen. It was more like stomp-running in a straight line at Buddy, growling in some odd idea that it’d somehow throw off the cool kitten’s coolness as she managed to snipe child after fellow child with her armful of balloons.
Just as Tripp believed he was in range, he got sidelined when a water balloon smacked him and exploded on the left-side of his face. His concentration broken, Buddy was able to get out of his crosshairs and resume unawares of target status. Tripp shook it off, for now, and refocused again on his mission.
This time he was sure he’d get his shot in, and it’d be a better one than his first attempt. Mainly because Buddy had his back to him, so if he could *accidentally* land an *accidental* blow to the back of her head, it’d hurt even more. Tripp reeled his arm back, this time with more proper running start than last time, and he was ready to let his water-balloon filled fist come upon the back of Buddy’s head. Once again, though, the shittiest Cooke kid was stopped when a soaring water-balloon got him from up high, rolling in the air in an arc that splashed the human kid on the forehead. With his line of sight broken, Tripp went off target and when he still tried to swing his arm, he wound up putting all his weight into it and falling on his face.
Okay, Tripp thought to himself. Now he didn’t care if it looked like an accident or not, Buddy Cymric was getting a lump somewhere and it was going to hurt.
This hadn’t gone unnoticed by Alex and Patty, and neither by Kathy, of course, who’d just rejoined the collie and heifer moments after the starting call sounded off. They’d been keeping eyes on Buddy and Rudy, and they had caught on that Tripp Cooke was following close behind the kitten.
“I don’t care if Caroline tries to sic the cops or the national guard on me, if that boy tries anything, I’m gonna tug his ear so hard he’ll look like a lopsided Christmas elf.” Kathy said under her breath, to which Patty and Alex reminded her to please not to and that he was still a kid. A little turd, yes, but a kid who needed better role models.
Truth was, though, Buddy was completely aware of Tripp and what he was trying to do. And she was trolling him all the way. She’d remain planted to one spot, waiting for when he’d try to smack her, by *accident*, in the effort of faking his endeavor to splat her with a water balloon, and then get out of the way at the last second. That was original plan, but she found that fate was sharing in her humor as some kid always managed to splosh Tripp in his face at the exact moment he thought he was in range. Now she wanted to see if it was going to be three for three as she did her thing, standing in place for a third time and her body positioned in the right way to keep a peripheral on Tripp while not giving away that she could very well see him approaching.
Fate it seems decided to go off Buddy’s script that subconsciously believed it was following to the line. Those cheese curds that she’d snack-snuck earlier were now starting to make an upset in her belly. The kitten clutched her stomach as it loudly gurgled in her ears, and a nasty bubble of something burped out her throat and left an aftertaste in the back of her mouth. Now she really was distracted and exposed as Tripp had gone from his killer instinct speed-walk and into a galloping bolt toward Buddy, ready to leave a mark with a smackdown of his tight-fisted water-balloon hand.
“Buddy, watch out!” A tiny, concerned voice called to the mix-breed kitten as yet another balloon zipped through the air and nailed Tripp, exploding right on his nose, blinding and making him pratfall once again, backward as he slid over a wet patch.
While true friend of a calf was checking on Buddy in, who was still a bit queasy looking as she rubbed her stomach to nurse the increasing burbling gurgling within, Tripp had gotten over his trip. He stood back up, wiping the wetness from his eyes to see who the hell just got in the way of his vengeance *again*. He saw that it was Rudy Earls, who was the annoying tattletale, as he thought angrily then, who ratted him out as the one who messed up Buddy’s Rory Waters, Undersea Adventure Girl book.
Tripp then recalled the other times he got struck by a balloon to the face. He deduced, in his mind, that it had to be Rudy who did that to him. It just had to be. Tripp’s vengeful spite was no longer focused on Buddy. It had a new target. And it had ruddy brown hair and had reddish-rusty colored blotch spots on white fur.
“You know you can’t have cheese, your mom told you. Told you one hundred times.” Rudy insisted worriedly at Buddy, he just tried to grin through her grimace and shrug it off, but her belly kept reminding her that she had miscalculated her constitution against lactose again. And then Rudy got smacked by a water balloon to the cheek. Along with a slap by Tripp’s open hand.
The calf’s face stung on the right side, and Rudy turned just in time to see Tripp starting to knuckle up his hands to begin wailing on the little calf. Rudy began to weakly yelp and tell Tripp to please stop, that it hurt, and to stop it now. But Tripp was both uncaring about the little, sharp cries of pain and too engrossed in giving what he believed to be an ass-kicking that Rudy had coming.
“What’s going… Oh my God, hey! You! Stop that!” Patty cried in a motherly rage.
“Stop! Get away from my kid!” Alex shouted at the top of his lungs.
He, Patty, and Kathy, with the two women’s maternal instincts and the collie’s own parental senses flipping on like the nitro on a modified racecar, jumped the thin rope barricade and made a b-line for the petty beating that was happening. Before they were halfway there to rescue the whimpering, ducking calf, the unexpected happened.
Rudy’s elbow cocked backward like the hammer on a pistol and his torso turned with it for a windup, and then as if Rudy was a boxer going for the champion title belt, his fist flew forward like a pinball ball launched by a spring coil. His little knuckles connected with Tripp’s nose, making the bully’s head snap backward and flatten him.
Tripp yowled in agony as he clutched at his face, and meanwhile the trio gathered around a whimpering, almost crying Rudy. Patty especially was fussing over her little calf.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” She asked as she looked around for any signs of a bruise.
“I’m okay.” Rudy sniffled, rubbing the starting tears out from his eyes and trying not to keep his lip from wibbling. Alex patted his little bud on his back, along with a rub as Patty kept on making efforts to comfort the distressed boy. The collie then looked over at Tripp, and he decided that the kid, while being the one who got mean with Rudy, shouldn’t be left to just curse and cry on the ground. He walked over and aided the boy to his feet, brushing the damp grass stuck to his back. Alex got the still whimpering human boy to take his hands away from his face, and to his relief Tripp’s nose looked like it was still intact.
“You!” Before Alex could check up on Tripp for better diagnosis on his bloody nose, the shrill, mood-ruining tone of Caroline Cooke the constantly indignant called his attention, and her vulture-like claw yanked her oldest son away from crouching Alex. “What did your brat do to my baby!?” She demanded.
“What did he do!? What about what your *baby* was trying to do to my kitten and what he did do to Patty’s calf, hm?” Kathy interjected, seething at the woman.
“Oh, my Sweet Lord, lookit what they did to you.” Caroline fretted, squeezing Tripp’s face between her palms as she believed that Rudy had broken her oldest baby’s honker.
“What is going on, over here?” Principal Barron called out, flying his paper-y thin self over onto the field to gauge the direness of the grouping.
“I’ll tell you what happened! That cow’s brat broke my baby’s nose!” Caroline squawked at the balding educator as he herded the gathering toward the outside of the ring, and Caroline lugging her oldest born son with her hands under his right armpit and holding aloft his left arm by the crook.
“Hold on, his nose isn’t broken! I picked your son up off the ground and I checked! And besides, your son was beating up my kid, first!” Alex interjected, turning the accusation around onto Caroline.
“So, you admit that brat hit my son!” Caroline fought back verbally.
“Everyone!” Barron shouted at the top of his voice, silencing the growing tension. The man already lost all his hair to stress, and he was not willing to lose anything else, namely his sanity. After a breath, he began his moderating. “Mrs. Cooke, what happened?”
“This out-of-control, impudent child just punched my Tripp for no reason!” The human mother accused, spearing her finger right at Rudy as she said.
“I didn’t mean to!” Rudy fought back, starting to get upset again and more troubled that he’d hurt somebody.
“And your Tripp, was hurting Rudy, and he tried to hit me!” Buddy held for her friend, straining through the tightening knot in her cheese-disturbed insides.
“That girl is a liar! I saw Tripp running toward her to throw a balloon and then her punk friend charged up and sucker punched him!” Caroline stood fast, trying to make Rudy look like an out-of-control hellion who just hits other kids on first impulse. “I saw everything!”
“Mom, you were hash-tagging on your phone. You didn’t look until—” Mayson began to blurt.
“Shush!” Caroline quickly cut in on her youngest, determined to get Rudy into trouble. She was still mad that Patty had *cheated* her out of the Skylar Stratosphere toy, which was going to be for her son, of course, and wanted *compensation*.
“Missy,” Patty interjected, speaking to Caroline like she was a little girl. “Rudy is not a puncher, or a fighter. He apologized to a garden snake when he thought he scared it away when he was three, and last week he tried to save a tarantula in the bathroom from Alex.”
“I’d like to add I screamed in a high-pitch, not like a girl,” Alex added in, hoping some humor might help. Principal Barron’s crabbed expression afterward toward the collie marked that he was looking for resolutions, not jokes, so Alex took the silent proposal to shut up for right then.
“We, also, saw Tripp attacking Rudy.” Patty concluded.
“And sorry, but not really, to burst your bubble, Cooke,” Kathy inserted, “But your Tripp has gotten into more fights and caused more trouble for the other kids. Isn’t that right, Mister Principal?” The cat mom asked of Principal Barron, who had at first made a face like he was going to agree, and she hoped would side, with her. But the human moray eel known as Caroline Cooke stuck her head out of the hole to bite once more.
“Principal Barron. Gilbert.” Caroline invoked the man’s first name, and taking on a kindlier, and no less manipulative, tone in order to get him on her side. “Really think, really. Who do you think here, is more trustworthy? This, heifer, who hosts a male under her roof, who is clearly years her junior, and is not her husband, and has an emotionally unstable and spatially invasive child and her… feline friend who must have influenced her child into being the little… sabotage-er she is.” Caroline pricked at nearly all parties, Patty’s mouth dropping in a hurt ugh and her hands flying to her hips, plus Alex gurring at her as his eyebrow’s knitted, and Kathy doing one more than the collie as her upper lip curled up to show her fangs.
“Or, the woman who made sure you got that Employer for Education Excellence award and successfully campaigned to get LaVoir Clontz recognized as a Blue-Ribbon school.” Caroline cajoled Barron so much that all the butter in a Southern gam-gam’s fridge got replaced with margarine.
“Principal Barron, please, we’re telling the truth,” Patty said to the man in appeal, wanting so much that he’d see past Caroline Cooke’s emotional bribery. “I’m sorry that Tripp was hit, but he was trying to attack Buddy and then he went and then stormed on Rudy, that’s really what happened.”
“Well, unless we can get an impartial third party to verify that, you can’t claim anything,” Caroline hot-shot, striking out like a grass snake once again, using the skills her lawsuit crusader father passed on to her before his passing into a retirement community.
“How about this one?” A new challenger appeared, and all of the grouping’s eyes fixated toward them like spotlights on a main-stage’s surprise star, and *she* was presented to them in an attire of white and black that could’ve won the best-dressed title in a weekly almanac for gospel temple attendees. It was Madonna Fangwood, the neighborhood’s truly favorite church lioness and all-around cat’s meow, and she was accompanied by the impartial witness that Caroline Cooke had unwittingly called for; Madonna’s youngest cub, Hubert.
“Hello, everyone. And Mrs. Cooke.” Madonna greeted, with Hubert offering a mumphy hullo in accord.
“Mrs. Fangwood, this isn’t your concern, please stay—” Caroline Cooke attempted to oust the lioness from the fray of the conflict, but Madonna simply kept stride and cut back in.
“But you said you needed an impartial third party, right? And Hubert actually saw what had happened.” She gently urged her slumping cub forward, and he quickly corrected his posture to be upright for the adults looking at him.
“I saw Tripp trying to sneak up on Buddy and then he started to slap Rudy like he owed him money.” Hubert told evenly with his head bobbing side to side, as if he was trying to pronounce the sound of every letter in each word and keep a metronomic tempo. This was because he had stutter, so he had to talk carefully or he’d be skipping whole words and phrases like a scratched record. The head-bobbing was, truly, so he could keep a tempo.
“Ugh, you tattle-tale!” Tripp shouted, and that shout outed him as the bully he was in the scenario.
“Tripp, baby! This a conspiracy! All of you are out to get my kids! You especially, Madonna! You and your, unprincipled, insolent husband and that-that-that—" Caroline uselessly tried to get the ball back into her court, but it was too late for her. And one look toward Barron, weakly trusting that she could salvage a scrap of sympathy from the man, dashed her wishes of control.
“Ms. Earls. Ms. Cymric. Ms. Fangwood. Blake and Caroline. I want you all in my office Monday morning. We’ll discuss what’ll happen. Until then,” Principal Barron focused his attention on the boiling, but steadily wilting Tripp. “You’re banned from any further activities at the fair.”
“Fine! I didn’t want to do anything else at this stupid fair anymore, anyway.” Tripp pothered, reaching for any words and actions of rebellion to shield him of the emotional consequences.
“Gilbert, wait! We were supposed to do the revue as a family, we practiced for weeks, you can’t—” Caroline was stopped from her pleading by Barron’s raised palm. All he said in return was that it could wait until Monday, tomorrow. Once the balding principal had departed, Madonna broke the silence while Kathy managed to sneak a victorious sideways glance at the defeated Caroline.
“Thank you very much, ladies and gentle-canine. And budding gentleman. And Caroline.” Madonna said, bidding adieu and giving Alex and Mayson the regards that were theirs, and the little regard that Caroline Cooke barely deserved. “You can find me making kissy faces with my husband if you need me again. Ciao.” She strutted away with Hubert, and then it was Patty’s turn to usher herself and her party away. Or try to, it seemed.
“Come on, I know two little bits that need a frozen treat,” The momma cow announced, giving Rudy and Buddy soft pats on the back. Buddy, however, then burped in a bubbling purl, as her stomach started to feel as fresh as a swamp mire belching an execrable sludge.
“Buddy?” Her mother asked, looking down at her stomach clutching kitten. Buddy looked up at Kathy with a frown and one eye squinted shut as she summarized what was happening to her, and what she needed to do.
“I did a bad… Going to—”
“This is your fault!” Caroline accused with a spearing index finger, toward Buddy specifically.
“Woah, watch it, Caroline, that thing could be loaded,” Kathy said in defense of her kitten as she nudged Buddy out of the line of pointing, which caused the girl to let out a sickening burp as her stomach got jostled.
“Please don’t shake me,” Buddy warned, but it was too quiet to make Kathy notice, and she was too fiercely locked in a combative stare contest and verbal sparring with Caroline Cooke.
“My son just wanted to hit someone with a balloon! Why couldn’t she just let him hit her with a balloon!? And that calf, that brat, he shouldn’t just hit people!” The human woman slammed, not just jumping mental hurdles but kicking them over to still make Buddy or Rudy out to be the villains.
“I don’t know, why can’t you teach your son not to emulate Blake?” Kathy hissed back.
“Mom.” Buddy tried to get her mom’s attention so they could escort themselves to a more private spot where she could politely evacuate the contents of her tumultuous tummy.
“You were all planning this from the very beginning! You’re all just against a woman who’s working her ass off to be a good mother and a good role model and you do this to me because you wish that you could do that!” Caroline accused, clearly gambling with a victim complex as she seemed to be talking in a loud enough voice for all to hear. Maybe she’d fish-hook a sympathizer.
“Mom!” Buddy called out again, the kitten’s ability to hold back to surge of sick growing weaker.
“Ms. Cymric.” Rudy tried to join in to redirect Kathy’s concerns, but the cat-mom was so done with Caroline Cooke’s attitude she needed to get the last word in.
“No one is against you, Caroline,” The feline spoke in false empathy. “They can barely stand to get near you to hold anything against you,” Kathy finished vindicatively.
“Muh-oooh-urg—” Buddy was losing it, and if she spoke a word, twitched a muscle, or so much as thought of something relating to spewing, she would.
“Oh, that’s how you want it, then here you all go; you two shouldn’t be dating, your brat should be with other special kids, you are a reject from speed dating night!
“And you!” Caroline this time had the nerve to get in close so she could jab a finger into Buddy’s shoulder to single her out.” “You should go back to the science lab with the other rats!” Her last comment really lost her more sympathy as Mrs. Fields, the science teacher, and a rodent, heard her and angrily squeaked at her for the hurtful speciesism.
Worse, for her, as that jab was the last joggle that would be the final straw, and Buddy’s will against her urge to expel gave out.
“BLURGH!” It all came out like a geyser of sewage, straight out of a high-pressure pipeline through a burst open crack. And the trajectory of the projectile volley was a B-, as in Barf, line right at Caroline Cooke. From the neckline of her rosy-colored, rose-themed dress all the way down to its hemline.
It wasn’t just any dress, either. Caroline Cooke had specifically chosen it, along with her husband’s and her sons’ apparels, because it would be the single thread to tie together a splendidly superb coordination in costuming for the piece de resistance that would’ve been their performance in the romantic musical revue at the end of the valentine’s themed fair. A visual to go with the masterwork vocal performance. And Cooke let it be known in the only manner that she could manage to express the distress she was feeling over Buddy trashing her wardrobe with her spew.
“My. DREEEEEEEEEEEESS!!” The old eagle who’d shaken his head at Caroline’s insensitive remarks from earlier actually winced as his left ear, the bad one, truthfully wrung a little from just how glass-shattering Caroline Cooke’s scream was.
“Urp… well… no more tummy ache, heh,” Buddy said to her mother, while the cat-mom gave her kitten the gimlet eye, clearly communicating to Buddy that she knows what caused the upheaval of upchuck.
“Be glad that wasn’t the *other end*.” Kathy told Buddy, to which the kitten shrugged in agreement.
“GLAD! THIS DRESS COST ME TWO! HUNDRED!! DOLLARS!!!” Caroline Cooke continued to shriek, thinking that Kathy’s comment was actually directed at her.
“I think that’s our cue for soft-serve.” Patty whispered to Alex.
“Autobots, let’s get the heck out of here.” The collie agreed, as he and the other adults along with the two cubby buddies got out of dodge as Caroline bewailed the defacement of her beautifully garish dress.
They got ice cream, as promised, with Buddy restricted to hard caramels so as to not repeat the one-minute earlier incident. The kitten said she could handle it, but one evil eye from her mom was all it took to make Buddy think wiser.
Alex and Patty, though, did notice that Rudy wasn’t taking too many licks of his strawberry cone as the calf stood between them. And the way he held his momma’s hand, Patty could feel that her little calf was feeling like he weighed a hundred pounds.
“Hey, Rudy. We can go home if you want to.” Patty offered, sensing that what happened earlier might be what had him feeling exhausted. Physically and emotionally.
“What?” Rudy answered at first, before he processed what the offer was and then tried to abort it. “No, no, I’m okay, really, Mom.”
A look, between the momma cow and Alex, and then that shared with Rudy as he failed to make a convincing nothing wrong smile for them.
“Rude, I can see you’re not feeling like staying.” Alex added on.
“Besides, the fair’s nearly over anyway, you got Izzy the Giant Panda, I ruined Caroline Cooke’s day for good. Let’s go home.” Buddy encouraged, as she was both done for the day and wanted to help her best friend.
“But what about… the plan?” Rudy asked vaguely, side-eyeing Alex in paticular, knowing not to give away Alex’s intentions for the calf’s mom. “I don’t want to ruin the plan.”
“Hey, plans change all the time,” The collie reasoned with the little calf as knelt down to his level, not wanting the kid to feel guilty over anything. Sure, Alex did conceive a bigger idea for the proposal and leaving right then would cancel that, but the kids, both of them, took precedence.
“Besides, you’re important to me, little bud. You’re like a son to me.” Alex cooed on the last sentence to tease a smile back onto the Rudy’s face. It certainly put one on Patty’s. Rudy thought it over, so much he puffed his cheeks out and hiked his shoulders, before he at last gave in, deflated, defeated, and most of all, relieved. He nodded that he really did want to go home, and thus the group made walk off the fair grounds and toward the parking lot on the green.
Meanwhile, as Alex and Patty each shared an understanding, solidaric look between each other while Rudy, finally, really indulged in his soft-serve, Kathy and her kitten were slightly lagging behind the couple.
Buddy looked up at her mom, and then, Kathy grinned and winked at her. It communicated that the cat-mom had something on her brain. And it communicated that the feline woman was going to play cupid for her friend and her boo.

To be continued… I swear the next one is the last one… Really ‘>_<