Summus Proelium

Well, needless to say, I freaked out at that, practically jumping out of my skin with an audible yelp and curse. Around me, the others reacted much the same way the instant the stuffed rabbit started talking. Or rather, most of them did. Paige and Sierra were two notable exceptions. Oh, they reacted in surprise, for sure. But it wasn't when the toy suddenly spoke. They gave absolutely no reaction to that, only jumping after the rest of us yelped. It was like they hadn’t even heard the very thing we were reacting to.

“What?!” Paige demanded while turning in a quick circle. She had one hand up defensively while the other stretched out to cover me with her arm as though trying to block anyone from getting to me. Her eyes were scanning everywhere in the room, but she wasn't even glancing at the rabbit toy. “What did you hear? I can’t--Sierra?”

Before I could even start to ask what the hell she meant by that, the other Biolem girl put in, “Nope, I've got nothing. Cameras show everything clear. There's no one out there. It’s all quiet, no intruders, no nothing. Maybe it’s in their heads?”

Fred was the one who found his voice first while the rest of us were all sputtering and looking back-and-forth between them. “Have you both lost your freaking minds?!” He pointed right at the thing in question. “That toy rabbit just talked!”

The rabbit itself tilted its head and looked at us. It was a little blue thing, about a foot tall, with a levi jacket, shorts, and a baseball cap with holes for its floppy ears to stick up through. Which made it a perfect re-creation of Aspen, one of those Cuddle Corps Minority kids from Ohio, the ones who had possessed stuffed animals or whatever. They had plenty of merchandise all over the world because of how cute they were. But these ones were even better recreations than usual. Even better… waaaaaait….

Paige and Sierra had both turned their attentions back to the toy, which stared right back at them. They looked directly at the spot Fred had indicated for almost three full seconds of silence. Then spoke together in unison. “What toy rabbit?”

The toy itself, which I was very quickly realizing wasn't a toy at all, piped up again. “Uhhhh, Oak?”

That was when another voice spoke up, as a two-foot tall stuffed turtle in a tweed suit and glasses raised his little hand from one of the other shelves. “Ah, I believe the issue is their--what was the term-- Biolem nature?” Once again, Paige and Sierra showed no reaction to that until the rest of us spun to stare that way.

“Wait, wait wait, are you guys--what the fu--udge--” Peyton corrected herself in mid-sentence with a glance toward Wren, “Are you the actual real life Cuddle Corps?!”

Sierra looked between the spot where the rabbit was and the spot where the turtle was, her gaze completely blank. “Okay, something is getting into your heads, people. It's making you see things that aren't there. Maybe it's a gas or something, I don't know. But we need to get out of this place and into some fresh air." Even as she said that, the girl reached out to take Murphy and Roald by the arms as though to pull them outside herself. “Paige, are you sure there’s nothing in the air conditioning?”

Peyton and I were in the midst of telling them both to stop, while Fred and Wren both babbled at each other about where the stuffed animals had come from, and Murphy and Roald were trying to tell Sierra to let them go. Qwerty, meanwhile, bounced back and forth, jabbering a mix of greetings and questions to the whole group. It was all a jumbled mess until a piercing whistle filled the room. Another of the Cuddle Corps, this one a green monkey in a cowboy outfit, was standing on top of one of the shelving units, near the ceiling. She had put two fingers in her mouth to whistle like that, getting everyone's attention. In this case, that included the two Biolems. They jumped just as much as we did. “Oy!” she shouted, “Turn off your stealth already, numbbutts! That’s why they can’t see you!”

Paige and Sierra were gaping that way, before abruptly spinning around to look at the rabbit and turtle. Now they could clearly see and hear them. Almost immediately after that, those three were joined by a little penguin with a snowboard strapped to her back, and a tiny yellow duckling, both of whom pulled themselves out of one of the piles of other toys. Or rather, actual toys. Finally, a little red dragon figure poked his way into view on top of one of the other shelving units across the room.

“Wha-what? What?!” Paige raised her voice, pointing that way while looking completely taken aback. “How are--you weren’t--that’s not--what?” Beside her, Sierra didn’t look any less baffled. Both of them were obviously reeling even more than the rest of us. Which made sense, if they really hadn’t even seen them until just now.

The rabbit raised her paws. “We're sorry! We're sorry, we can explain. Well, some of it we can explain easier than the rest. Um, hi. I'm Aspen. That’s Oak, Maple, Willow, Cherry, and Ash.” She indicated the turtle, monkey, penguin, duck, and dragon in succession. “Uh, as you guys might have, umm… guessed, we're the really real thing, not toys. We're really them. See?” With that, she was abruptly gone from that spot. Not invisible, but a blur of motion that went from there all the way across the room, up the far wall, and across the ceiling before stopping right in the middle to look down at us. “Hi!” She waved with both paws. “Ummmm, it’s nice to meet you, officially and all?” Her voice sounded both awkward and apologetic, squirming self-consciously as she stood upside down on the ceiling.

“Okay, I’ve got so many questions,” Sierra snapped as she looked around at all of them. “But first, why couldn’t we see or hear you until now?”

“You’re robots!” The dragon, Ash, announced while flinging himself off that shelving unit to fly around in a circle over our heads. “You’ve gotta be.”

“Biolem, I believe, is the preferred term,” Oak, the turtle, put in thoughtfully. “Either way, your senses possess a technological component. You see, as most Touched do, we possess a secondary ability, less obvious than those we utilize openly in our day-to-day activities for public consumption. Maintaining the secret of this gift has always allowed us something of an advantage against those who--”

He was interrupted by the penguin, Willow, who blurted, “We can turn invisible to technology! Just spit it out, dude.” She took the snowboard off her back, stepped on it, then hovered right up in the air in front of us. “Cameras, alarms, sensors, anything like that, it can’t detect us. Living people and animals can, but not uh, not tech stuff.”

Cherry, the duck, bobbed her tiny head. “It’s s’posed to be like how toys can secretly move around without getting caught on cameras ‘n stuff! Mister Imens didna like us using it cuz he always wanted the cameras to see us!”

“And because exposing our ability to become invisible to technology would have taken away one of our major advantages,” Oak pointed out mildly.

That was a hell of a lot to take in, and we had barely started. All of us stared that way for several long seconds while they stared right back at us. Finally, I raised my hand before slowly speaking up. “Ooookay, maybe we should start from the beginning? Where did you guys come from? How long have you been here? Why are you here? What do you want? Wait, are you working for the Minority? Are you--did you transfer? What did they--how… what’s going on?” Even as I started blurting out those questions, I felt a rush of fear. Obviously, they already knew far too much. They'd been here long enough to find out… well, basically everything. They had to have seen me without my mask, along with the others. They’d heard me called by name, they knew we had Pittman upstairs, they’d heard us talk about the Ministry, they knew everything. It was a staggering thought. I was trying very hard not to have a complete meltdown right then. Actually, to be perfectly honest, the shock of the whole situation was probably the only thing stopping me from losing my mind completely.

“Okay,” Aspen agreed, hopping down from the ceiling to land on a nearby shelf. “We’ll tell you everything. Why we're here, how we got here, all of it. But I, um, think the first thing we should say is that we're not gonna tell anybody about your secrets.” All six of them held up their paws (or wing, in Cherry’s case) before intoning, “We promise!”

Oak spoke next. “You have undoubtedly come to understand just how many secrets we have inadvertently acquired during our short stay here. It was not our intention to spy quite so effectively, and as we have just sworn, we also have no intention of using those secrets against you. Regardless of how these next few minutes play out.”

Qwerty, apparently unable to hold himself back any longer, took a running jump and extended his wings to glide over and land against one of the counters nearest where Ash had landed. “Hey, you can fly! How did you do that?!” His head snapped back and forth between the stuffed dragon and the spot where Willow was still hovering on her board. “Can you guys teach me how to fly?”

Wincing, I cleared my throat. “Uh, maybe we should focus on finding out what these guys are doing here before getting into anything else.” I exchanged a glance with Paige, who still looked completely taken aback by this entire situation. I was pretty sure she was silently screaming in her head about the fact that these guys had been here for so long and found out so much without her having the slightest idea. It was a staggeringly sobering thought.

Fred found his voice, actually managing to sound like he knew what he was doing at that moment. “Okay, let's do this right, then. Everybody find a chair and sit the heck down. We're all gonna stop jumping and flying around for a few minutes, and just sit together so we can get on the same page. You say you aren’t about to go blabbing about the secrets you found out in here, but we still don’t even know how you got here or anything else. You’re the real deal Cuddle Corps? Like the ones from Ohio?” Belatedly realizing he had contradicted his own request, the man shook his head. “Never mind! Chairs, sitting, talking, all together now!” Even as he said that, Fred was already walking around to grab random chairs, shoving them together into a circle in the middle of the main shop floor. “Everybody siddown already!”

Well, how were we supposed to argue with that? He had a point, the only way we were going to get anywhere with us was to sit and talk it out properly. So, we did just that. Soon, we were all gathered in that circle of chairs. The Cuddle Corps were sharing one together, all sort of piled up in a group at the top of the circle with the main counter behind them, while the rest of us were spread out along the rest of the circle around them. I was doing my absolute best to sit quietly with my hands tightly gripping the armrests rather than grabbing onto the living stuffed animals and shaking them. I wanted to start shouting question after question at them, but kept it under control. They were going to tell us everything, I just had to be patient. Even if my stomach was busy getting itself into a boxing match with my heart. This was terrifying, just knowing these guys had found out so much so easily. If they did want to expose us, what… what could we even do?

No, Cassidy, calm down. Breathe. Keep it together. Just focus on listening right now. These guys had intentionally revealed themselves when they didn’t have to. And it didn’t sound like they were interested in threatening us or anything. They just wanted to talk. Besides, they were part of the Ohio Minority, and everything I’d seen about them made the group look… well, adorable and fun.

On the other hand, maybe judging them based on what the media showed was a bad idea. After all, they weren’t even supposed to be in Detroit, so how did they manage that? And why?

“Are you guys really--” I started before catching myself and giving a long sigh. “Okay, I suppose asking if you’re the real deal probably sounds pretty stupid. There’s not a lot of living stuffed animal Touched out there, let alone ones that look exactly like you. But we’re sort of dealing with a guy who makes living duplicate bodies of people, so it’s not completely out of the question that he could’ve made some of you and found a way to duplicate certain abilities. Like moving quickly and standing on the ceiling. I can stand on the ceiling with these boots.”

The rabbit, Aspen, exchanged a glance with her partners before visibly grimacing. Which was a wild thing to see a stuffed toy do. “Yeah… we uhh, sorta overheard plenty about that. But it’s really us, we swear. See, watch.” She took an audible breath (and yes that was even more wild to see) before jumping off the chair. In mid-leap, her body fucking exploded. It was like she’d been shot by a massive sniper rifle or something. One second she was right in front of us, and the next, fucking poof, she was nothing but bits of fluff drifting through the air.

Yeah, that uhh, that caused a reaction. But even as our entire group started to jump up, shouts filling the room, Aspen was suddenly back. She reappeared right where she had been on the chair with the other living toys. “I’m okay!” She waved both paws wildly for our attention. “See? All good! Sorry, uh, that was probably kinda dramatic.”

Fred, who had stood up so fast his chair fell over with a loud clang, stared while making a slight groaning sound in the back of his throat. “Kinda?” His voice was weak.

“Hey, the point is, we’re not your…. whatta they call them again?” The dragon, Ash, was pacing back and forth along the top of the chair they were all sitting in.

“Biolems,” Oak the turtle noted, giving me a somewhat appraising look. “And while over the top, my sister’s demonstration was intended to show that we are not they. Whatever abilities your Benjamin Pittman might be able to bestow upon his creations, it is rather doubtful that he would be capable of making them reconstitute in full after--”

“Fluffinating,” Willow the penguin finished, giving us a wide smile before ducking a bit behind her snowboard. “That’s what we call it.”

The others were all looking at me, and I tried to sound somewhat collected despite the fact that I still had about seventeen different voices screaming conflicting things in my head. “I--um, yeah, I don’t think he can do that.” Amanda might be able to though, I thought but didn’t say. This didn’t seem like something she would do. If she was going to make fake people to fuck with us, it probably wouldn’t be random Touched from a completely different state.

Aspen bobbed her head quickly, long ears bouncing with the motion. “Right, so it’s really us. We umm, we ran away from home. We didn’t wanna be their trophy pets to parade around in front of the cameras anymore!”

“That’s right!” Ash put in, breathing a quick little burst of fire in his obvious annoyance. “They never leave us alone, we always hafeta go to all their parties. And they’re not even fun parties! They’re boring! Everyone always has to pick us up and squeeze us and take pictures with us and talk like we’re not even real. They act like we belong to them or something.”

“Ahem,” Oak cleared his throat before adding, “What we are attempting to articulate is that, in the wake of our parents leaving us in the custody of the state, our… and I use this word in full irony, ‘caretaker’ sought almost exclusively to further his own career goals and ambitions. We were used as little more than tools to such an end. When not working official Minority training and missions or attending the required schooling, every moment of our free time was spent as props.”

“They used us,” Willow murmured quietly. “‘Come to this event and see the living toy freaks, oh and donate to this cause or this politician or this police group while you’re here.’ Publically stunts.”

Oak gently corrected, “Publicity stunts. But yes, that is the gist of it. We chose to leave an environment which was unsuitable for us. We were offered no privacy, no free time, no true friends there. We were treated not as the living people we are, but as the toys we appear to be.”

“We tried to rob a bank,” Aspen admitted. “You know, so people would think we were bad and stop wanting to see us all the time. But it umm… it didn’t work.” She sounded embarrassed, squirming a little before adding, “So we left. We wanted to come to Detroit cuz you guys are all locked up so they can’t come get us. It’s easier to hide. And now--”

Cherry, the little duckling, jumped up and down at the edge of the chair, those tiny wings flapping a few times as she interrupted. “We wanna help! We wanna protect this place! We’re really good at hiding, cuz if you don’t know we’re the real thing, everyone just thinks we’re toys of ourselves. So we can be your secret security!” She flexed her wings. “I’ll be the bouncer! They’ll never see it comin’!”

“Security?” That was Wren, the kid sounding as dazed as I felt. Qwerty was perched in her lap. “Y-you… you wanna stay here?”

Even as all of them started to blurt a chorus of confirmations and pleas, I held up both hands. “Wait, wait, before we get anywhere with that, how did you guys get here? I mean, you left Ohio--how did you even get to Detroit to start with? And how did that lead you to this place specifically?”

Our visitors all looked at each other once more, before Oak started. “Very well. We shall tell the tale of our journey to this shop.

“It begins, as more very important stories should… with tacos.”