Chapter 24: The Afterparty
Grape stares at Peanut, and doesn’t respond. Her mind flashes back to the pound. That day. The day she was left behind. The day this dog gave her hope, and then walked away without even looking back. He had been engraved into her mind as the dog that abandoned her. She blinks, and looks down at their hands, which are still shaking, then back up at Peanut.
“....do you not know me?” she asks slowly.
“Can’t say that I do! Have we met somewhere? Oh, were you at cousin Bob’s birthday party?”
Grape is stunned. She was the only purple cat in existence as far as she knew. Unless you counted that mute cat who was chasing a mouse she had seen yesterday. Not only that, but Peanut seemed to enjoy talking to her in the pound. She figured she would at least have some sort of memory in Peanut’s mind! This surprise slowly turns to anger, and she feels her other hand clench into a fist. Peanut has already let go of her hand however, and waves bye to her. He goes over to a couple other dogs, who give him high fours. Grape attempts to head back over to Peanut, but Marvin seems to appear out of nowhere right in front of her. He’s smiling widely.
“That was incredible Grape! Where did you learn to dance like that?”
Grape gives the orange cat a glaring look, then sighs.
“Don’t worry about it Merlin,” she says quietly, turning to leave, yet again.
Marvin of course, follows her. Grape picks up her pace, and Marvin does as well.
“Is something wrong? If you’re mad that you and Peanut tied then I’m sure you can schedule a rematch or—”
He’s cut off as Grape whirls around, grabbing him by the collar. Her teeth are bared, and she right gets up in Marvin’s face.
“I said don’t worry about it. If you keep pestering me, you’re going to find yourself knocked into next Tuesday!”
Marvin gulps, and opens his mouth to speak, but Max runs up.
“Grape! Holy carp you’re way better at dancing than I even imagined!”
He stops and looks at the two cats, noses almost touching. He smirks, and Marvin tries to signal to his friend not to say anything. Max fails to see this however. Or he did, and ignored Marvin’s warnings.
“Oh, if you two wanted a little privacy I know a good spot in the back that—”
POW
Grape winds up and wallops Max. Hard. He soars through the air and he lands at Sabrina’s feet, who jumps when Max thuds into the ground. A couple pets look at Max, who is sprawled out on the floor, and then Grape. Sabrina stares at Grape with a combination of curiosity and anger. Grape lets Marvin go, and slowly backs up. Marvin rubs his neck, looking at Grape.
“Sorry about him. Just go home, I won’t stop you this time,” he says, pointing to the door.
Grape nods curtly, and makes a beeline for the door. She steps out, finally free from the party. She sighs in relief, and looks around for a moment, before starting her walk home.
When she gets home, Pete is relaxing on the couch watching TV in his anthro griffin form, but a lot less muscular than before. He glances at her as she shuts the door behind her.
“How was the party?” he asks happily.
Grape sits on a chair and crosses her arms. “It was alright. I decided to leave fashionably early.”
Pete chuckles. “From what I heard, you knocked their socks off. Both metaphorically and literally.”
“How did you hear about that? It literally just happened.”
“Grape, I’m a magic(k)al being. I see what I want to see, when I want to see it. I gotta admit, you got some serious power behind that punch.”
Grape rolls her eyes and looks at the TV. It’s just some generic cop show. “Bad Boys”. On the screen a dog was getting scolded by a cop for peeing on a tree in a public park. She didn’t understand the thrill some people got from watching cop shows, especially ones of dogs. Now, if there was a CAT cop show, she would probably just spend the whole day watching it.
“I didn’t really want to hit him that hard, it was just a culmination of my built up anger and some adrenaline from the dance contest,” she mutters.
Pete shuts the TV off and stretches. “Either way, it was impressive. I don’t blame you though, most of those pets seem like jerks. ‘Specially that Max guy and his girlfriend.”
“Oh, yeah. Don’t even get me started. That little pomeranian is weird too. They went and locked me in a closet and did some sort of witchcraft on me! Mentioned your name too. Though you probably saw that didn’t you?”
Pete’s expression gets a little less cheerful. “No, I didn’t...there was a short period where you vanished from my sight. You said they used magic(k)?”
“Well the green swirling energy definitely wasn’t from the lights. They were asking me questions and kept me tied up. They let me go once they realized I didn’t have any magic(k) in me I guess?”
“I see. I suggest you stay away from those two. There are a lot of people out there who want to use magic(k) for evil. When they find out beings like me are trying to help out normal pets, they see those being helped as a threat. A direct line to a celestial can be a powerful thing, and in the right hands it can be used to change the world for the better. They don’t really care about that. The mentality is “if we can’t have it, neither should you”. It’s a nasty little attitude.”
Grape pulls her legs up to her chest. “I definitely won’t be coming near them...but they did warn me about something else.”
“And what would that be?”
“You.”
Pete’s face goes from concern, to amusement. He chuckles and heads for his bedroom. As he gets to the door, he turns. Grape couldn’t tell if it was just the light, but his eyes seemed to be glowing yellow again.
“Grape, if I was a threat to you, I feel like you would’ve figured it out by now. You’re a really smart cat.”
He flicks the lights off and goes into his room. Grape curls up in the chair she was sitting in, her mind replaying the events of tonight over and over in her head on loop until she falls asleep.
(I seem to end a lot of these with sleeping. Maybe I should do something about that xD)
(ALSO sorry for 3 months of nothing. School really picked up and I was trying to keep everything in order. We're at the end of the year so I got some free time, figured I should write instead of just watching youtube
)
