Chapter Text
High up in the sky, were six cats in a hot air balloon.
High up in the sky, were six cats. Most of them hadn’t known each other for very long; They were new friends. They were all invited to go on a hot air balloon with Alex.
Alex was, simply put, a cat who liked to have fun. All six of them were, in fact. That’s why they were up here.
“It’d be a real shame if my hat fell off...” Shinji mused.
“I’m so high up right now...” Amy kept her eyes on the ground far, far below, as if she was looking for something.
“We are.” Brutus nodded. He sat by the edge of the gondola, resting his head on his forelegs. “Feels so nice.”
“It’s great up here!” Olli’s cape was blowing in the wind.
“I like your cape.” Shinji complimented him, trying to start a conversation.
Olli turned around. “Cape?”
Shinji nodded. “Yeah.”
“It’s not a cape. It’s a cloak!”
“What- How is that a cloak?” He asked.
“It’s mine!” Olli responded.
Kuro had his eyes on something in the distance.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Alex hopped up beside him.
“What’re they doing.” He asked.
“What?” Alex urged.
“Look, what are they doing?” He pointed down, towards the cliff. It was pretty far away.
Alex squinted. What was he looking at? “What am I looking at?”
“The monkeys, there’s like twenty of ‘em!”
Alex kept looking around. “I don’t see any monkeys...”
“What do you mean you don’t see any monkeys, they’re right there!” Kuro shouted.
“Monkeys?” Amy asked, walking over.
“You can see ‘em, right, uh, Amy?” Kuro asked. He had only met her earlier that day, so her name was still fresh to him.
Amy looked down to where Kuro gestured. “I don’t like monkeys.“
“Me neither.” Shinji added.
“Yeah, I can see them.” Amy said.
“Why can you see them?” Alex asked. “I don’t see anything.”
Amy leaned up on the edge, and pointed down. “Down there, where the water meets the trees and the rocks!”
Alex followed her paw, and looked closer. “Oh, I see them.”
“So, what are they doing?” Kuro asked again.
“I don’t know.” If Kuro couldn’t tell, how could he?
Brutus giggled at that.
They all stopped talking soon after. Amy went off elsewhere to stare down at the clouds and the ground. Olli tightened his cape (cloak?) down, because the sound of it flapping in the wind was irritating him. Alex stared up at the expansive empty blue above them.
Brutus almost fell asleep. For a while, everything was perfect. None of them had ever been this high before, as isolated as they were. They’ve never been as peaceful. The feeling of the wind blowing through their fur. The sounds of the sky. None of them had ever felt as they were. For a while, everything was perfect.
...Kuro spoke up. “Guys, the monkeys got a cannon.”
Quickly afterward, they all gathered around Kuro.
“What? Let me see!” Olli demanded.
“Why do they have a cannon?” Amy asked.
Alex looked down at the monkeys. He could’ve sworn that one looked up right at him, but there’s no way he could make out that much detail.
The monkeys put a cannonball in, and fired it out into the ocean, with a resounding boom.
“Ah!” Amy covered her ears.
“Woah!” Shinji exclaimed. “I’ve never seen a cannon fire before!”
“Wooo! Yeah, Go!” Olli rooted.
Alex felt a little disturbed.
“Are they going to fire it again?” Olli asked. “Where will they shoot it?”
“They’re moving it.” Kuro told him.
“What? How can you tell?” He asked. “They’re smaller than ants from up here!”
“Yes, and they’re moving.”
“How can you see that...?” Shinji wondered out loud.
It’d be weird if Alex told them how he felt, right? It’s only an unusual feeling. He still felt weird, though. He decided that he was going to look somewhere else.
Just as he turned to do so, Kuro took a step back. “It’s pointing at us!”
“What? No, it’s not.” Amy told him off.
Olli bonked Kuro’s helmet. “Dude, don’t do that.”
At that moment, Alex might’ve been the only one to believe Kuro. Soon enough...
When they heard the cannon go off again, they all went to look, and saw several dozen pounds of iron coming their way.
“Look out!” Somebody shouted, as everybody scrambled to do something, anything to avoid the inevitable. Could they have raised the hot air balloon?
There was no time. The cannonball tore through the gondola, and everything went wrong. The cats all fell out of the sky.