And it's done. YAY to me for getting it done in the time frame I had set for my self!
Enjoy (Note: This story is NOT CANNON with Burning Desire.)
“King!” Duchess cried out as she chased him through the streets of Babylon Gardens once again. “Why won’t you stop running away from me!?”
“One, I have a girlfriend!” He jumped over a fence hoping that it would end up slowing the crazy female. “Two, you’re a cruel, manipulative, charming young woman!”
King looked behind him to see if the fence had slowed her down at all.
He would have no such luck. If anything, she was gaining on him.
“Curse these stubby legs.” He mumbled under his breath.
-----
The chase continued through the town. King was occasionally able to lose Duchess for a second or two, but she always managed to find him before he could reach the safety of his house.
“Someone, anyone, please help me.” King said to himself. “If I could just make it back to the wolf’s house safely, I’ll never ask for anything again. And why am I talking to myself now? Do I think it’s going to help me think or something?”
“I found you again!” Duchess cried as she jumped out from a bush.
“AH! No time to worry about it I got to go now!”
King would have never thought that he could run so fast on such stubby legs. Of course, Duchess could still run faster seeing how her legs were longer.
King knew that his only chance to get away from Duchess was to outsmart her, and that wasn’t going so well right now. Nothing he did seemed to get rid of her for more than fifteen seconds at a time. Short of hitting her with a shovel again, King wasn’t sure that he would be able to escape this time.
Then, in one of the rare moments he managed to elude her for a few seconds, he saw a door open and a paw beckon him to come in.
Without thinking twice about it, King ran the door, eager to be able to get away from Duchess. Even if he would only get away for a few minute
Once the door was closed, King finally took a moment to relax and look around. For some reason, the living room in the house had no furniture and actually seemed to be bigger than the average size of a living room in Babylon Gardens. In fact, it seemed that the room was larger than should be possible based on the size of the house outside.
It was now that King realized whose house this must be.
“It seems that you just can’t get away from her.” Tarot said.
“You!?” King shouted in surprise as he jumped backward. “I thought you said you couldn’t help me because Duchess was somehow involved in your game?”
A confused look came over Tarot’s face. “I don’t think I ever said she WAS involved.”
“But- but I was about to throw a rock at your window and you came out and said you couldn’t help because you never know who might be involved and WHY AM I EVEN ARGUING THIS RIGHT NOW!? I thought that you weren’t allowed to help me!”
Tarot brought him into what could be called her bedroom, although it had so many exotic and dangerous looking… things was the best word King could think of, he wasn’t really sure what to call it. Maybe she thought of it as her psychic room?
“I saw that you would need my help today, so I gave it. For reasons that I can’t tell you, Dragon, Pete, and the Kitsune can’t see what I’m doing right now. So, for the time being, I can help you with small, day-to-day problems that won’t ultimately affect the game and let everyone know that I broke the rules.”
King was walking around the room, looking at everything, trying to figure out what purpose it may serve. He was very careful however not to touch anything. The last thing he wanted was to accidently put a curse on himself or something. Duchess was a curse enough for now anyway.
“So I can stay here until Duchess gives up and goes home then?”
“No.” Tarot said as she pushed King out of the room and back to the front door. “In fact, we only have about twenty seconds until Pete and the Kitsune can see that I’m helping you and I get in major trouble, so you have to go now. Good luck.”
The door slammed shut in King’s face.
King pounded on the door. “Wait! I’ll take the blame! Anything is better than Duchess!”
“There you are King!” He heard an all too familiar voice yell from the street.
“Speak of the devil.” He started to run once more, looking for anything he could use to get Duchess off of his back.
-----
“Fox! Open up Fox!” King pounded on the door with all of his might.
A groggy looking Fox opened the door. “King? I was just taking a nap. Why were you pounding on the door so hard? I don’t think I’m in any danger right now.”
Not waiting for Fox to invite him, King pushed Fox into the house, then closed the door and locked it.
“Do you remember that psychotic she-dog that I did a dog show with to earn some money so I could buy a phone but then she went crazy trying to get me to like her so we could win next year and I had to end up hitting her with a shovel to stop her?”
“Uh… Sure?” Fox wasn’t sure what else he should say right now.
“Well, she’s back. And chasing me. Right now.”
“Are you sure? I mean, uh, why would she be chasing you right now?”
“Heck if know.” King said as he checked the windows for any sign of Duchess.
Fox rolled his eyes. “Alright King, that’s enough. I know you aren’t the most social dog in Babylon Gardens, but this is where I draw the line. You can’t just make up these crazy stories to avoid other dogs.”
“Crazy story!? What do you mean-” King remembered why Fox didn’t know about Duchess. In an attempt to forget that it had ever happened, he only told Bailey and the wolves what had happened. Everyone else, including Fox, he never told. He was regretting that decision right about now.
Fox continued. “I’m going to send you outside now so you can deal with whoever is “chasing” you. I won’t let you rely on me to do things like this for you.”
“Wait, you don’t understand-”
“No.” Fox said bluntly. “I will not sort your personal issues for you.” He opened the door and pushed King out. “You have to learn to solve those for yourself.”
A door was slammed in King’s face for the second time today.
He let out a sigh and counted down. “Three. Two. One.”
“You won’t get away!” He heard Duchess yell as she rounded the corner of Fox’s house.
“Why is it to the point that I can count down to when she finds me?” King complained as he started running again.
“I’m not going to stop chasing you until I get what I want!” Duchess yelled.
“I’m not interested!” King yelled back in an attempt to get her to stop. Not that it worked, but he did try running through a hedge and through several backyards full of random stuff that could hide him for a second or two should he needed to, but nothing he could stay hidden behind for an extended period of time.
After running for several more minutes, King finally found his salvation; an open window that he was lined up perfectly to jump through.
Not caring if Duchess saw him or not, King ran and jumped through the window…
… landing on a tile floor covered in marbles. Not having anything that he could grab in his immediate vicinity, King slid across the floor, stopping only once his head collided with the wall.
“King!” He heard Sasha squeal in joy. “You didn’t tell me that you were coming!”
He looked up in time to see Duchess run past the window. Through some miracle, she hadn’t seen him jump through it.
“Yea, I uh, decided to drop in.” King wanted to ask why the floor was covered in marbles, but there were more important things on his mind at the moment.
Before he knew it, Sasha had crushed him in a bear hug. “Well thank you for doing so!”
King wiggled his way out before his spine was broken into two. “I should be thanking you Sasha. If it wasn’t for you having an open window, I wouldn’t have been able to get away from Duchess-”
“Duchess is here!?” Sasha screamed out. “I didn’t know that!”
She ran to the window and stuck her head out. “Duchess! I didn’t know you were here! Maybe you could come hang out and I could invite Bino and King is already here!”
Before Sasha could start another sentence, Duchess was already at the window. “King is here?”
“Yea, he’s right-”
The spot where King was standing only seconds ago was now empty.
“Well, he was here.”
-----
King couldn’t believe it. He had been in the clear, but Sasha had to go and have one of her moments.
At the very least she had managed to distract Duchess long enough for him to escape out the front door. If he was lucky, maybe even enough for him to make it back to the safety of the wolf’s house.
But fate seemed to have a different plan for him. As he ran down the sidewalk, he didn’t notice Bino, who was also running, come around the corner in front of him.
Bino probably didn’t notice King either, seeing how they both collided while going at full speed.
King, being one of the smallest dogs in Babylon Gardens, received the short end of the stick in the collision, ending up on the ground. Bino on the other hand was dazed, but managed to stay on his feet.
“Watch where you’re going!” Bino yelled once he had recovered. “Just because you’re small and ‘cute’ doesn’t mean other dogs have to move out of your way when- HEY! GET BACK HERE! I’M NOT FINISHED WITH YOU YET!”
Normally King would have stayed and argued with Bino until another dog, usually Fox, came along and broke them up.
But he didn’t have time for that now. He needed to move if he was going to get to the wolf’s house before Duchess found him again.
Suddenly, he felt Bino grab his arm. “I am still talking to you!” he heard him yell.
King facepalmed with his free paw. Of all the times for Bino to chase him down and continue an argument, it had to be now; when an even more pain-in-the but dog was chasing him down.
“Fate, why do you hate me so?” King silently asked.
Bino continued his rant. “You have some nerve running away from me like that. When I speak you’re supposed to listen to me and- HEY!”
King pulled himself free and started running again. He could deal with Bino later; he was simply a harmless bag of hot air. Duchess on the other hand was a fate worse than death itself.
As King ran, he could hear Bino’s shouts becoming more distant. It was a sure sign that he wasn’t chasing him down this time.
Even if Bino wasn’t a problem now, King still felt uneasy. If Duchess had left Sasha’s house right after him, she should be right behind him by now. But she wasn’t.
Maybe she had run in the wrong direction. Or maybe Sasha held her longer than he had thought.
Either way, King still wanted to get to the wolf’s house pronto. That was the only time he could truly be safe.
-----
With every turn, when he passed every tree, whenever he looked behind himself, King couldn’t help but think that Duchess would be there. She had to be, that’s what had happened every time he had managed to get away from her today.
But she never appeared. The run to the wolf’s house, which took only two or three minutes in reality, seemed to take years to King.
Only once he made it to the driveway did he allow himself to relax. He had made it. All he had to do at this point was go inside and tell Miles to keep Duchess out. That was it.
At least, that was what he thought until he opened the front door. Duchess was standing right in the doorway, waiting for him.
Before he could react, Duchess had tackled and pinned King to the ground.
“I finally have you!”
A million questions ran through King’s head. Why was Duchess in the house? How did she beat him here? Why didn’t she just run him down in the street?
But before King was able to form a coherent sentence, Duchess was reaching in his collar.
“W-W-Wait! Wha-”
She stopped digging and pulled out King’s phone.
“Finally! I got it!”
“… What?”
Duchess pulled out a pen and notepad from her own collar and wrote down the specific model of the phone.
“Now I can finally get one!” She yelled in victory.
With her mission complete, she set King’s phone next to him and simply walked away.
King was on the front lawn, mouth wide open in shock, trying to process what had just happened.
Duchess had just chased him around Babylon Gardens all day through bushes, over fences, and into houses just to figure out what kind of phone he had.
As if it was taunting him, King’s phone rang.
He picked it up and opened it. “Hello?”
“King? This is Bailey! I just wanted to call and see how you were doing.”
“Uh, fine I guess. Do you remember that dog I had to hit with a shovel to get her to stop chasing me? Well, I don’t think you’re going to believe this…”
END
The mass guess that Copper had was:
copper wrote:Duchess isn't interested in King. She just really likes his cell phone and is jealous of king for buying such a sweet model.
So... I had this all written up and had already begun to type it when the latest comic came out. So I had written the entire thing assuming that Bailey was not living in Babylon Gardens now. In the end, I decided not to alter it because to do so to my own satisfaction would probably add another three days until I finished it. And this writing was written to try and be funny and nothing else, so changing it wouldn't make sense to begin with.
And a treat for you all.
Before I went away on the trip I wrote this during, I had been trying to finish and post an update to Burning Desire. Unfortunately, I didn't finish it before I left. But it was nearly finished. I was actually going to finish it on the trip before I wrote this, but forgot the composition book I write the story in before I type it.
That means in a few days you should have that. I promise that I won't take a week with it.