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The job today was pretty standard. A planet with a problem. Bee and Puppycat were sent, specifically, to a planet where slimes asked that the pair go take care of a cube that was eating the flat circle crop, which was the food source of the slimes. Perhaps over time it would develop a taste for spherical shapes, which would put the slimes in danger.
But this time Temp-Bot, while giving a cutesy outfit to Bee, let it fall into her arms instead. It was folded up neatly. It was a white, sparkly plastic-like spacesuit. It was a two-piece instead of the usual one and Bee put it over her regular clothes. Double clothes could be cool.
Something was extraordinarily out of the ordinary. Maybe it was because Temp-Bot attached a cannon to the back of Bee’s spacesuit. There was a button on the cuff of the spacesuit that would cause the cannon to shoot fireworks.
Bee tried it out as they walked. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to where the fireworks would go. Bee groaned.
“I can kick butt without this stupid backpack cannon!” she complained.
“I’m not afraid of butts,” Puppycat chimed in.
“You don’t have one!”
She tried it again. The firework shot up into the sky and exploded into a shower of red. Bee groaned again, not willing to appreciate its beauty out of pure spite.
Bee sulked as the pair combed through the fields where the circle crops were planted. They were a bright yellow, eye-catching and they smelled like oranges. Bee’s stomach grumbled. She discretely plucked a circle crop from its tall stalk and ate the entire thing. It tasted like soap, and she spat it out noisily.
“Did you eat something from the ground?” Puppycat asked.
“No! This thing should taste like pizza or cookies. Who ever heard of circle soap?”
Puppycat didn’t answer because the two of them came up stalks and circle crops that were crushed into the dirt. Bee saw some bits of the crop ground into the dirt. The damage seemed to go into a straight line, like a box was pushed across the dirt.
“Cube!” Bee called in a sing-song voice. “Where are you? We totally don’t wanna eat you – unless you’re tasty!”
Puppycat gave her a look of disgust.
“What? Maybe it tastes like jell-o, oh!”
The green colored cube slide out from a newly blemished circle crop area and screeched menacingly.
Bee’s yell was louder. It made ripples in the cube and Puppycat cover up his ears, his teeth gritted at the noise.
Bee tried to use the weapon provided but kept wasting fireworks. The area was starting to smell like smoke.
“Aargh, aaargh, aaaaargh!” Bee shouted in frustration. “I can’t aim this stupid thing!”
She fruitlessly pressed the button, tried to maneuver her body so that the fireworks would go anywhere but up in the sky but she could not aim the fireworks at the cube. Her back was starting to hurt with how much she had to support the weight of the cannon directly on her back.
Amidst this Bee caught sight of Puppycat trying to punch and kick the cube. His punches and kicks only made the cube wobble, and eventually it reared up and swallowed him whole.
“Puppycat!”
Bee frantically pushed the button. Puppycat languidly sunk to the bottom of the cube.
His melodic burbles floated up as bubbles, and they sounded like he accepted this death or this death was the most undignified way to go. The two concepts were not mutually exclusive, but Bee didn’t have time to decipher his misery.
“Oh! Oh! Maybe I could make it vomit if I beat it up enough!” Bee shouted.
She got melodic protests and with them another grim resignation to this predicament.
“Hey, it’s better than being digested!” she protested right back.
In an anxious hopping from one foot to the other Bee evaluated her options; physical aggression would get her eaten too and the backpack cannon was just impractical for shooting. Quickly, an idea for what to use this cannon for burst in her mind.
Bee shrugged off the spacesuit shirt and without any difficult she tore off the backpack cannon.
Long distance fighting was not working so brute force was the way to go.
Bee swung the cannon at the cube and it collided with the gelatinous flesh. She kept screaming as she beat the cube with the cannon, as if that would make the hits have more impact.
In a bubbly irritation the cube opened up its mouth and ate the front end of the backpack cannon. Bee struggled with the other end and another idea popped up in her mind.
“I got it!”
Bee hurried to the discarded spacesuit shirt and pressed the button. The firework shot out through the approximation of the cube’s head and it collapsed into a puddle. Bee did a victory screech.
Puppycat twitched. He was covered in cube residue.
Bee scooped Puppycat into her arms. In curiosity she drew a finger along the top of Puppycat’s head and stuck that finger into her mouth. Puppycat did a full-body shudder of disgust in her arms.
“Tastes like glue,” Bee said contemplatively. “Well, anyway, let’s go get our money!”
-
Soon after they got paid for dispatching the cube they were transported back home.
Bee still held Puppycat in her arms, who seemed resigned to this new situation.
Bee headed to the kitchen and plugged the drain in the sink. She ran the water until it filled the sink.
“In you go, plop,” Bee said as she unceremoniously dropped Puppycat into the sink. He sputtered in the water.
Bee took the bottle of soap nearby the sink and squeezed some out into her hand. She began to scrub the liquid soap into Puppycat’s fur. He looked up at her.
“You hate water,” Puppycat said.
“Huh? Yeah, but you’re dirty and you don’t wanna lick that stuff off. Bleh.” Bee stuck out her tongue.
Puppycat then asked, “Why didn’t you get anything to eat?”
“Oh, I forgot I was hungry. But I guess the crumbs would turn into fish food if I ate while cleaning you up, huh?”
“Fish food?”
“Yeah, I dunno about you but every time I drop food into water a fish comes along and eats it,” Bee explained. “So every wet food is fish food.”
She began to hum as she scrubbed the residue out of his fur before she stopped suddenly.
“This is okay, right?” Bee asked, realizing too late that this was the sort of thing you ask someone if they want to do before dumping them into a sink full of water.
Puppycat looked disinterested but he didn’t complain which was the closest estimation that he did not mind the current situation at all.
“It’s fine.”
So Bee continued on with her humming and talked about better tasting jell-o and the day continued on as usual.