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Tim came to the god’s face, fidgeting with his hands and taking breaths to steady himself. “... excuse me?”
Its head turned - what was probably its head? - and suddenly his request seemed stupid, but he had already come all the way there… “Uh… hi. I was wondering if you’d be alright with granting just a little request for me? Nothing much, ah, I promise, I just-”
There was a low, dull hum, as though already tired of him. “... and? Spit it out. I don’t have my visitor’s hour open forever, I hope you realize.”
Right. What he was… meant to say. He could do this.
–
When Tim awoke the next day, it was to a heavy feeling in one of his arms, and a dull headache, as though something else was trying to manifest itself - rude, really, as that was his brain to control.
He stretched his arms above his head, hoping the weight would die off…
“You look really stupid when you yawn. Do you always look like that?”
If it wasn’t attached to him, he probably would have thrown the thing across the room, mind stalling for a moment as the words registered.
“... what?”
“Oh, and slow, too. Isn’t this going to be wonderful. Why are you still fucking staring at me like that?”
… right. A request to a god. A tricksy god at that, apparently, but he couldn’t exactly leave a deity a bad Yelp review.
What were the chances that, in the initial panic, he had worded something a bit off…
“You said ‘childrens’ show’. Not child-friendly. Either way, anything below eighteen is a legal child, so teenagers count with that - surely you can manage just a bit of vulgarity, hm?” At this point, the random mental interjections was practically normal. Sure, why not have a god telepathically yell at him for not being exact, this morning couldn’t get any stranger-
There were probably reasons making deals with gods wasn’t advised.
And so now to live with the little bugger he had cast upon himself.
Maybe trying to learn puppetry naturally would have been a smarter move, he realized, suddenly not able to go about making breakfast without constant cursed criticisms. In his defense, eggs were just fine scrambled, and not breaking the yolk was too much stress-
–
“... I mean, you have some kind of position of power, correct? I know you’ve got a whole gang with you, but… connections, right? So… so would I be right in assuming you could maybe, ah… get me something? Some way to perform in front of an actual audience?”
“You wouldn’t get through a single line without losing your train of thought, don’t you even try to pretend here, motherfucker-”
Not with the constant commentary, no, Tim thought, not able to respond quite as casually outside of his head.
Wally - the man he was trying to talk to, if Tom could just shut up - huffed, something amused crossing his green face. “Is he always that bitchy?”
Tim nodded, expression that of a man who had completely and utterly given up.
“... have you ever tried getting rid of the little bastard?”
Well, it was safe to say Tim had never felt quite so stupid before; that was actually a really great suggestion. He had… attempted it before, of course, but that was mainly just fits of rage leading to grabbing at the stupid puppet’s head and wincing as it bit at his fingers.
“Uh… I suppose… not? Probably, um, would be good to… at least to give it a shot, since I don’t know if he’ll budge easily-”
“I don’t want to be here any more than you want me trapped here, dickwad. You just mope about and look stupid, I have no want to stay.”
Served him right, anyways.
“How about Losky? I think he’s got something you can work with, though I wouldn’t swear on it. He sure is… something.”
Yet another idea that Tim probably should have been able to come up with on his own, but if it took that little bit of force to realize a solution he probably should have been able to comprehend, well, he’d sure take it.
“Alright… yeah. I’ll, um, see about that…”
“... so you want me to do something to get the puppet off?” Losky hummed, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at the little thing. “Weeeell, you’re just in luck! I’ve been working on a new creation; my patented - not quite yet, but bear with me - Detach-o-tron 3000! Now, with more power and better function, it should be able to get anything and everything detached in due time! I haven’t tried it out much yet, but the mechanics are simple enough that I should be able to make it work-”
“Anything? Including your stupid rambling so we can stop wasting my time?” Tom huffed, quite childly pouting from his spot on Tim’s arm. It wasn’t even a good jab, per say, which was half of the reason why Tim wanted the bugger more than gone.
“I- right. Getting there, don’t you worry,” Losky sighed, walking over to one of the room’s corners and pulling out a rather strange-looking contraption indeed. The little arcade-machine-like claw was set around Tom’s puppet neck, and he protested rather loudly.
Of course, he didn’t have lungs, so it wasn’t causing him any pain or anything, just rather an affront to his dignity.
“Hey! The fuck do you think you’re doing, smartass? I swear to fucking god, if you break so much as one seam, I am going to fucking cut off your limbs, and see how it makes you feel-”
“I can see why you want him gone,” the other muttered, setting the other set of clasps around Tim’s arm. It seemed as though Losky had forgotten that one of the affronted was human - to a degree, at the very least - and could feel pain just the same. But Tim didn’t bring it up, knowing Tom was already going to be enough of a distraction for a while.
The machine turned on with the flick of a switch, and Tim would have flinched back from the bright light if not for the fact that he was, well, currently held in place.
There was a sharp, painful sting for a moment, almost enough to bring out a cry of pain from him - Tom was busying himself with strings of curses and slurs. What they were directed towards, exactly, Tim couldn’t be certain.
And then… he could move his hand freely, without the weight of the stupid little puppet.
It had been so long, the feeling was absolutely foreign. As his eyes readjusted to the room’s dim lighting, the sight was… disturbing wasn’t quite open enough.
Of course, there hadn’t been much in place of his hand that he could feel, ever since Tom appeared. And now, it was resorted to some sort of little stublike thing, barely resembling what it had been like oh-so-long ago.
Losky hummed in approval at his machine having worked, staring at both of his ‘subjects’. “... what happened to your puppet thing?”
Because Tom wasn’t just laying limp on the floor, yelling about being dropped or a lifeless figure.
No, he had sat up, looking around with the same deadpan stare Tim had gotten so used to, perhaps with just a bit more life.
“... finally. Out of that goddamned prison; you’d have no idea how painful it was to be stuck with that dickwad-”
Losky huffed, and his eyes moved over to Tim’s current predicament. Much less positive of an outcome, albeit expected to some degree.
“Here, I think I’ve got a roll of bandages; that can’t be anything pleasant, and I’m shit with medicines, but infection would be horrible after you got the first little growth out of that hand.”
Tim huffed out a half-hearted laugh, shrugging. “I’d be more than fine with that myself.”
And so they both left the room, door open and unlocked. Why would they need to lock a puppet away in a lab anyways, that would be stupid if the little thing couldn’t move.
Ah, how beautifully, innocently naive.
As the bandage was tied off, after plenty little hums of discontentment, there was a loud CRASH, and the house shook on its baseboards.
Tim ducked under the first thing he could find, which happened to be the nearby desk. “Earthquake?”
Losky’s eyes darted out the window, seeing sticklike, gargantuan legs shaking the ground with every step. “... no. Something much worse.”
“... so you just left him, able to wander about as he pleased?”
“I didn’t know he could walk! If we did, I don’t think he would have been allowed all that freedom-”
“There is a monster currently rampaging our city, and you didn’t think to check if the thing had legs before you left it?”
“My fucking house is ruined!”
Losky was, in bits and pieces, recounting what had just gone down. Tim was left in some kind of shock, blinking dazedly. What the fuck had the past couple of hours been.
First the little creature was removed, then somehow found what had been described to him as Losky’s ‘Giant Juice’, whatever the fuck that was meant to mean, and then torn a hole through the walls. That wasn’t damage that could be mended with an I.O.U. that would never be refunded and fresh cookies, now would it?
Wally sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose - or at least close enough to it.
“... and I’m assuming you want me to help with the little bastard?”
Losky nodded rather violently, and Tim spoke up for the first time since he had seen the monster of his little puppet. “... he wants power. Always has, always will. So… so it’d take something powerful to distract him, and… and he’d head somewhere powerful.”
“Do you know how much we’d have to pay to replace the government if that moron steps on it?” Losky huffed.
“Then we get there before he does. I can probably get a good bribe in if we have enough of a cash prize… I have another idea too, but that’d be harder to pull off unless you know what makes him tick - Tim, I’m looking at you, since you’ve spent the longest with him. If we take the helicopter, we should be able to beat him there, and hopefully, it’ll be loud enough to attract his attention-”
“Since when did you have a helicopter?” Losky interrupted, completely shocked by that.
Wally laughed. “Since never, but I’ve got a guy who needs to… repay for something, if you get me, so we’ll just need to use that a bit earlier than I’d planned. Tim, I’ll need you over here to discuss how we want to go about this…”
The droning of helicopter engines was loud in everyone’s ears despite the headsets; noise cancelling would mean they wouldn’t be able to hear the little bugger they were going out to get rid of.
A plate of cookies was set in Tim’s lap, and Losky waited on with a small vial; it would start dissipating the moment it left the container, so they would wait until the cue to add it in.
And, louder than the whirring, were footsteps.
Tom was… tall. Staggering over all of the city, scraggly legs absolutely demolishing cinderblock buildings, it was honestly hard to believe this was the same pouty puppet from just yesterday.
A single bullet was launched, carrying a very weak dose of tranquilizer; nothing would knock out the big guy just yet, but since he was far from a normal person, and his genes were already stretched from the growth serum, it’d be best to play everything safe.
The monster of a puppet turned around, beady eyes locking onto the helicopter. He wasn’t injured, just pissed.
Everything was going according to plan so far.
“You… you puny creatures! You really thought that little thing would be able to take me down now? After all this? Bullshit. Tom will not fall, as the city will come to learn until their demise by his own hand!”
The stupid thing had only grown more conceited after being enlarged; now, instead of only babbling curses, he was killing while he was at it.
“Not trying to take you down,” Wally shrugged nonchalantly, leaning against the door to the helicopter, despite his shiteating grin completely demolishing that idea where it laid. “No, instead we wanted to congratulate you! You’ve done so much already, of course you’re going to be our new ruler!”
The egomaniacal side of the puppet was already being fed, and his defense visibly lowered at that.
“... ah?”
“Absolutely! You’re a king around here now! And a king must be respected, like any other glorious ruler before him-”
That was the cue. Losky dropped a small amount from the vial onto each cookie, wafting away the initial cloud of purplish fume that emerged. Tim shook as he stood, and Wally continued his spiel. “... and with respect, comes offerings!”
“I made cookies,” Tim muttered, holding out the plate and stepping to the door of the helicopter. Thankfully, the fear was completely on-brand for him, so it wouldn’t raise any suspicion from the puppet.
“... what the fuck-”
“I- chocolate chip! Just- just like you said you liked, um… just try one for me, please? I spent so long trying to get the recipe right-” Tim practically pleaded, moving the plate closer. It didn’t really do much in the grand scheme of things; he was currently halfway out a helicopter’s door, moving a tray a couple inches at best closer to a gargantuan monster that could easily kill everyone in the copter with just a wrong breath.
Tom huffed, and Tim could vaguely tell the puppet’s eyes had rolled, despite not really being given enough room to properly emote and move around despite their new size.
A cookie was taken from the plate.
Tom popped the whole thing in, being too large to exactly take polite bites. He took a moment to chew, then took another.
And another.
It was working, and Tim would have cheered if it wouldn’t have outed their whole deal.
“I… I suppose they’re not bad…” Tom sighed. “Surprised someone would waste their time teaching this shitfest how to bake, but I will take them…”
“Here, come to the helicopter; that way I won’t have to hold out the plate, and you can take as many as you’d like,” Tim muttered, brushing off the backhanded compliment. He was more than used to that with Tom by that point anyways.
The monster walked closer to the aircraft, seemingly not noticing how the cookies were changing in hue and shape; Losky hadn’t had time to test around with DNA yet, and so it wasn’t expected that they would need so many. Store-bought cookies were added to the pile, now doused in the purple liquid.
And it was like a switch had flipped. Tom seemed to be dozing off, beady eyes hazing over.
“... fuck dude, how many of these shitty things do you have-”
Tim shrugged, stifling a chuckle.
Tom slumped forward, slowly at first then completely falling, right into the open arms of Wally; Losky was still hiding in the back in case more cookies were needed, and of course Tim’s hands were already in use to keep up the plate.
And the only reason Wally was able to even attempt to hold Tom was the fact that the puppet was back to his normal size. The little thing seemed completely tuckered out, and it was hilarious to watch the rowdy creature go to sleep in someone’s arms, not that he stayed there for long.
Tom was placed inside a mason jar, three air holes poked out from the top. They weren’t even sure if a puppet could breathe, but it was better to be safe than sorry, not that Wally really seemed to be all too concerned with Tom dying in his sleep.
The helicopter landed, and Losky was the first to step out, messenger bag now much lighter since the majority of its contents - so very many packages of cookies - was in the stomach of the still-sleeping puppet. The vial had been set in a pocket next to the larger, less-manageable one; ‘Shrink Sauce™’.
Losky liked to invent in pairs, and it usually ended up working out the best; if he could make a characteristic alter in one direction, he could probably do the same in another easy enough.
Wally followed shortly after, seemingly more than relaxed; the situation didn’t really physically affect him much, and was alright with returning to normal.
And finally, Tim came from the aircraft, a glass jar cradled in his arms. He might hate Tom, sure, but he couldn’t leave the puppet to die in a helicopter alone.
“And now we see how long his shelf life is,” Losky had said as Tim moved a couple books from the top rung to make room for the still-sleeping creature, and the latter couldn’t help but chuckle.