Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Holly Perez awoke to a chill as her phone’s alarm blared through her apartment. The cold wasn’t anything surprising to her for February, and she was well used to waiting until March for her room to be so comfortable in the morning. As she shuffled around the space left by her furniture, nothing suggested to her that today would be anything out of the ordinary. Holly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and the hazel-furred deer woman that glimpsed back didn’t look out of the ordinary either. She straightened out the small, round frame glasses resting on her face before setting about absentmindedly brushing her bright red bangs to one side as she prepared for work.

Nothing about Holly was especially unusual. She was short, but not the shortest person she knew. She was thin, but never looked unhealthy. Her fashion never stood out, and she never particularly cared beyond wanting to seem nice enough. Even the louder color of the off-pink shirt she put on, paired with the simple black skirt that Holly had gotten used to pairing with almost anything and everything, managed to look like it could easily sink into the background. The doe’s friends had long joked that she looked to be the perfect blend of their  average features, and she found the idea far too amusing to disagree with.

Out the door and onto the street, she continued to brush at her hair idly with one hooved hand while the other held onto her bag. By the time she descended  into the nearest subway station, she figured she had gotten her shoulder-length cut into a state that certainly wouldn’t last the whole day, but hopefully would last long enough. The train ride to downtown was cramped and hectic, but between the noise, cold, and coffee she treated herself to at home, Holly was at least sure that she wouldn’t fall back asleep. Despite everything, her commute didn’t bother her.

What waited for her at the end of her commute, however, did bother her. Her stop downtown left her only a block’s length from an old, ornate skyscraper that towered imposingly over all of the modern offices surrounding it. Carved into the pale stone above the building’s broad glass doors was the name “Alabaster.” Most people wouldn’t have cared to make the distinction, but as Holly passed through the doors into a busy lobby she couldn’t help but note to herself that this building was only the head office of “Alabaster Pharmaceuticals .” It was dominant, surely, but still only one branch of the frighteningly large corporation she had learned Alabaster truly was. Alabaster was where Holly worked, and it was what bothered her about her average day.

Holly never wanted to say that she resented her line of work, however. She had confidence in her ability to connect to people, or otherwise get them to connect to ideas in the right ways, and still believed that work like it could be helpful under the right circumstances. The deer believed in this in spite of her current job, which she unquestionably resented. She had aimlessly drifted across careers until landing her current position at Alabaster a few years ago, though she swore it already felt longer than that. Her job here was in public relations, a role that usually left her working in circles. She went about finding ways to sanitize the words and actions of her higher-ups before they managed to damage the tenuous image of Alabaster any more.

Before she could begin any of that, however, the doe first had to navigate the impressively monotonous floor from the elevator to her  desk. The monochrome palette of off-whites and beiges did little to provide any meaningful landmarks by which to recall the way to her destination. Holly was sure that, if she hadn’t already been doing her job from the same spot for years, she would end up lost in the  maze of cubicles. Instead, she stepped into the practiced path she found was the quickest way there. She hoped  to be able to get to her desk for a moment before having her first encounter with her supervisor for the day.

Almost as soon as she stepped off the elevator, though, Holly  was met with the distinctive sneer of her tone. “You know you’re almost late, right?”

Holly turned about to the familiar sight of the middle aged skunk woman who she had called her boss since joining Alabaster. She was in the middle of blowing some faded-black and white hair from her eyes. Despite the impressive presence her large tail carried, the monochrome of her fur combined with the muted tones of her outfit blended together to produce the perfect camouflage for the office environment. Most workers on the floor, Holly included, couldn’t tell she was coming until she was already upon them. She scowled at the deer, her face not quite matching the hint of satisfaction in her voice.

Breaking eye contact as quickly as she could manage, Holly glanced down at her simple wristwatch. She had picked out the accessory specifically in an attempt to be able to check the time without confirming the skunk’s paranoia about people wasting  company time on their phones. Now, its thin hands showed that the doe was precisely on time for the start of her work day.

“It looks like I’m right on time, ma’am,” Holly noted. Her back to the elevator, Holly  had no physical escape routes from this corner of the floor, but she could at least insist that the older woman let her go.

The skunk’s tail merely flicked in response. “If you’re not early, you’re late,” she remarked. “You should know this by now.” Indeed, Holly had gotten the platitude repeated to her countless times, usually coming from this exact person. “You’re on time today, maybe, but if just one thing slows you down next time around then you’ll be cutting into company time.” At last, a sardonic grin grew across her face, bringing her expression in line with her tone. “I could almost write you up for that.”

Before Holly could think, her mouth began moving. “You wouldn’t,” she said, trying to defend herself in any way she could. The more she considered the situation, the more she thought that such flaunting of power was entirely characteristic of her boss.

“I would,” she retorted simply, “if it meant that we wouldn’t have to keep paying you to not be here.” The elevator behind Holly opened again, and the skunk finally stepped aside to enter it herself. As she passed the doe, she slowed her pace. “So, set your alarm a few minutes earlier, would you?”

“Right, sorry,” Holly relented, knowing better than to fight a losing battle like that.

The skunk, now appeased, nodded and disappeared into the elevator. Despite the conversation being over, Holly waited a moment longer to let the doors behind her slide shut completely. She breathed a silent sigh of relief, then continued on her usual route to her desk. The cubicle she worked from was tucked away in a perfect position where it didn’t quite catch the light of  the broad, humming lights above on either side. One was slightly farther, leaving its side just shaded enough to make reading anything on that end of the desk an annoying process. Much of the desk arrangement Holly had produced for herself came from adapting to these little idiosyncrasies.

Her  morning rushed by in a familiar, hectic flurry. She wrote, revised, and conveyed messages across numerous levels of the company, both above and below her. As soon as she had finished one task or was left to wait on a response from another, several more had already been lined up to take her attention. So much focus was devoted to juggling the day’s work that Holly nearly missed the approach of her lunch break. It had happened before, leaving the deer scrambling to take what time she could get while also not falling behind on meeting times later in her day, so she was thankful to have caught herself this time.

Holly knew how full the office was. Despite that, she couldn’t help but feel like she was walking through an oddly empty space on the way back to the elevator. So many figures were sequestered away from view precisely enough to make the workplace appear especially lifeless even when at the height of its activity.

She thought she would be taking another elevator ride alone, only for the tall figure of another worker to rush around the corner as the doors began to close. Holly recognized the coworker, a lanky red squirrel with meticulously combed hair and a dark suit that always looked a size or two too large to the doe.

“Hold it, please,” they called out, and Holly reached a hand to push the closing doors  back open. The squirrel grinned down at Holly once inside. Their tall figure didn’t fill much of the space on its own, but Holly still retreated to the opposite corner to avoid being accidentally smothered by the bushy tail to her side.

“Thanks for the save, Perez,” they said, apparently having burst into a sprint for the last leg of the way to the elevator to catch it in time. “Hate wasting minutes of break just standing there waiting for a ride, you know?”

Holly nodded, taking a second to respond. “Not that more time outside is much better around now.”

They shivered at the thought of it. “I swear it’s not just out there, it’s like it’s colder in here too, these days.”

Before she could speak up again, they continued. “It’s why I’m going to be out of here, next week. Got a whole vacation lined up way down south that should thaw me out after a winter like this.” They looked from the floor number above the elevator door to Holly herself. “Got anything you’re doing with your time off?”

She shrugged, knowing that she hadn’t had the time to even consider a vacation with everything already on her mind. It must have been so long since her last that she would soon have weeks of time saved up, but the logistics of actually going somewhere far away to use  it felt daunting to Holly. Beyond that, she didn’t even want to start considering just how much something like it would cost.

“I guess I’m still thinking about my options,” she finally said. Just as she did so, an electronic chime rang out and the doors to the elevator slid open to reveal the lobby once again. It had been filled on Holly’s way in, but was now so open that she could see halfway across the building’s ground floor through its myriad glass walls and doors flanking it.

The squirrel took the initiative to step out first. “Well, you’ve got lunch to think about it now, huh?”

Holly nodded as she stepped out and parted ways from them, only to almost immediately push the thought aside for a later date. Walking at a quick pace to keep out of the chill for long, she took a deliberate turn down the sidewalk as soon as she had left Alabaster. The deer always took her lunch at a cafe down the block from the office building. The walk there and back always took precious time from her break that she wouldn’t have lost by packing something to leave in the break room, but she wasn’t sure she would be able to handle the rest of her work day without the added distance from the office during her break.

On this particular lunch break, scrolling through a social media feed on her phone as she sat tucked away in a booth awaiting her lunch, Holly happened on a post that surprised her with a rush of nostalgia. It came from an account posting old advertisements and commercials, and her attention had been caught by one featuring a print ad for the candy brand Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies. The vibrant violet and gold branding registered to Holly’s eyes before she had recognized the familiar, cartoonish logo of a sheep sporting a large bow around the neck. Crisply scanned, the image must have been recently taken from some magazine page of old.

Quirky products, as expected of the brand, took center stage on the ad. Chocolate milk-bomb roulettes and color-changing mood jelly beans were displayed proudly alongside what was the latest among the brand’s eccentric ice cream flavors, one mimicking waffles with syrup. They drew up vivid memories that Holly supposed must have been decades old by this point. From how many she personally recognized, the doe supposed the advert must have been put out around when she was a child. She didn’t recognize the exact ad pictured, but still let her mind connect back to how those like it had reached her in those days.

Long had a younger Holly’s imagination been captured by the image of Fords’ as a brand. The bright displays in stores, the rainbow assortment of novelty ice cream flavors in freezer aisles, and nearly any other appearance of the company’s sweets created something more interesting out of an otherwise mundane shopping trip with her parents, whether or not they bought anything. To the deer, it truly seemed that Fords’ could make any fantastical idea for candy into reality, no matter how improbable it might be. Naturally, she now lacked that particular kind of naivete and placed a far more realistic expectation on it. It wasn’t to say that she personally understood how any of Fords’ products were made better now than she did as a child, but her years of work with the technical terms of Alabaster’s production gave her a few, far more mundane, ideas of how they possibly went about it.

Holly couldn’t help but wonder to herself what had happened to the brand since. It had been many years since the doe was an avid candy consumer, mostly for the sake of her teeth’s health, and so she supposed that this could have been the first time the company had been brought to her mind in years. She hadn’t heard any news in the meantime, and she was sure that a brand so old and timeless couldn’t quietly disappear. Before there was any opportunity to sate her curiosity, however, the deer noticed just how close her break was to ending. Rushing back to the office, any curiosity quickly turned into a passing thought when faced with the immediate need to keep up with the rest of the day ahead.

That morning, Holly’s energy had carried her through a quick rush of work and activity. Now, it faltered, and the afternoon began to feel like it stretched into the realm of days. Despite taking a light lunch, her sluggishness persisted for hours. Checking at her watch idly, she again confirmed that the clock mounted on a nearby wall had fallen behind by several minutes once again. In her early days at Alabaster, well before picking up her wristwatch, she had been burned by the misleading time on the clock more than once.

Time was only further dragged out by the waits between important responses and the sit through of another meeting called by her boss to convey what could just as easily have been an email sent to everyone involved. On her way back to her desk from the meeting room, she couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering to the row of small board rooms and private offices which lined the far wall of the floor. Through each open door, she caught glimpses of important-looking figures in expensive suits, lounging on chairs and couches that looked many degrees more comfortable than her own. The doe didn’t find herself envying them, if only because she didn’t want to make the fight to stay awake any harder on herself.

As Holly walked back home at the end of the day, she passed a small corner store not far from her apartment building. In its window was a display including, among countless advertisements for lotteries and cigarettes, a poster depicting new lines of Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies products now in stock. Any thoughts of curiosity the deer had held earlier in the day had completely left her mind by this point, however. She didn’t even notice the Fords branding as she passed and made her way back up to her apartment.

Sitting on her worn couch, Holly’s phone began to buzz expectantly on the coffee table in front of her. A text had just come in from an old friend of hers, asking if she was free that night. There was nothing at all planned for her that day after work, but she hesitated to immediately answer truthfully. Holly knew that it would immediately be followed by trying to organize some evening out with her and the others, and that, after a day as tiring as hers, she would surely struggle to even find the strength to lift herself from the couch for the next hour, at least. Instead, she added to her worrying trend of turning down opportunities to meet up for lack of energy, hoping that she might be luckier the next day.

Chapter Text

For Holly, any thoughts of Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies were barely a distraction before she returned to her life’s expected routine. She could have easily forgotten she had the brief memories entirely if it hadn’t been placed directly in front of her again only a short few days later. It started during her commute home, while the doe absentmindedly hopped from one social media feed to another on her phone. None of her regular cast of follows had anything new of note to hold her interest.

Instead, she drifted to the small group chats she took part in with old friends of hers in hopes of finding something to do during the upcoming weekend. Holly quickly found that nothing was materializing, and so there was nothing to focus on but them giving the first mention of Fords that day. It was all in passing, comments and jokes about a new promotion the company had just begun. Holly didn’t know any particular details about it, but was at least able to interject the convenient circumstances of just being sent remembering the brand before. Almost as soon as it started, the conversation again spiraled off into a few of her friends’ plans together for the immediate evening.

Holly would never call herself antisocial, but even while still on the train she could already feel the subtle pull of her couch’s gravity and knew that she wouldn’t be able to make anything work that night. She certainly never resented being around her friends who lived in the area, and supposed she might have had better luck on Saturday rather than Friday evening. Nobody had spoken a word about the possibility so far, though, and the doe wasn’t excited to once again begin the dance of suggesting something only to find that their silence about the weekend was because of existing plans she hadn’t been privy to. Instead, she rested on the lingering feeling of coincidence surrounding the Fords brand for the brief moment before she arrived at her stop.

As she walked back up to her apartment, there was nothing to make Holly believe that her reminiscing would last any longer than it had last time. Soon after she settled back into her home, though, she found that she and her friends weren’t the only ones talking about Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies. Gradually, it appeared more on every timeline she checked. Excitement was growing surrounding the brand. Holly caught glimpses of the discussion as posts scrolled by, genuine excitement or mockery of the effort put in by scalpers apparently planning a second hand Fords candy market.

Further into the evening, the energy surrounding Fords had become practically inescapable. It didn’t take long for Holly’s curiosity to get the best of her, and she tapped on one of the several trending tags to investigate for herself. Highlighted above all other posts was one directly from the company. A video link was embedded within, and it began to automatically play. The short, familiar jingle played over the company’s stylized logo of Fs and a sheep in profile, giving Holly just enough time to start thinking about what could follow that created so much energy from people before the video faded into another scene.

What she saw next she didn’t expect. A dark, ornate wood desk stretched out before brightly-colored violet wallpaper and the edge of a cluttered bookshelf just barely out of frame. Even from the camera’s limited view, the office looked vintage, and Holly was surprised to see anything so antiquated from a modern company’s press release. It did, however, match the look of the woman sitting behind the desk. An older sheep woman, sporting a head of curly, snow-white wool and a smile that accentuated a few well-worn lines about her icy blue eyes. She wore a purple jacket and a dress with the same wavy pattern Holly recalled from the Fords ads she had seen before. A large, yellow bow accented her look, worn to the side of her neck to form the spitting image of the sheep drawing from the company’s logo.

The old ewe gently crossed her hands on the desk. “Good day! I am Miss Abigail Fords, founder and owner of Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies,” she began, “and I am pleased to announce a wonderful contest to you all!” She leaned slightly from her upholstered chair, and Holly couldn’t help but lean slightly closer to her phone screen to match Fords’ infectious energy.

Fords reached back behind her desk, opening a drawer and fumbling around without looking for a moment. When the hooved hand emerged again, it held a shimmering piece of golden paper before the camera. There was writing on it, but it was too far away and much too tightly packed to discern clearly. Only the company logo was obviously visible off to the side of the text.

“What I hold here is a Golden Ticket. When I’ve finished this announcement, we will hide five of these tickets within the packaging of five otherwise normal Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies sweets. They could be in any variety we currently produce!”

Fords set the ticket down onto the desk and pushed off from her chair. She stepped to the side and motioned for the camera to follow. It slowly spun to the right in place as she trotted around her desk and towards a window. The sheep explained further as she walked. “Those lucky five who locate the tickets will be able to present them to me for the first of their prizes: an exclusive tour of the Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies complex, never before seen!”

After stopping by the window, she drew away its blinds to reveal a view overlooking a long factory floor, lined with shuttered doorways on each side. Rather than being filled with workers and machinery, however, the camera’s angle of the floor showed only pallet after tall pallet, each stacked high with Fords-branded boxes. From the looks of it alone Holly supposed it must have amounted to months worth of what the factory produced, if not more.

“As well,” Fords added, “each winner will be rewarded with a lifetime supply of chocolates and other such products, which they will be able to restock directly from the complex as they please.”

The blinds clattered shut again, and the camera followed Fords back to her desk. For a brief moment, there was no sound but the subtle noise of hooves against a carpeted floor. It gave Holly enough time for it to sink in just why some people would be so keenly interested in winning the contest as quickly as possible. When Fords stood behind her desk again, she tapped the Golden Ticket. “Lastly, on the day of the tour, one of the five ticket holders will be determined the grand prize winner! They alone will be offered a third prize that will far surpass the other two.”

Her finger stopped squarely on the ticket. “As for what that grand prize will be, you all should soon be receiving some hints to the nature of it as the tickets are discovered.”

She finally sat back down and returned the Golden Ticket to its drawer. “I’ll be releasing more announcements like this one to confirm when each ticket has been found. This way, everyone will be able to stay on the same page for the whole contest. Until then, happy searching, and stay sweet!” As modest as the video began, the same jingle played again as the scene faded back to the Fords logo before ending.

Holly was left to herself as she collected her thoughts and digested all she had just learned. The thought of the contest itself didn’t hold her attention much, at first. Instead, it was the general lack of polish in the video that stood out to the doe. Thinking back to her own work, full of careful wording and precise style guides for framing Alabaster in exactly the light that corporate leadership determined best, it impressed Holly to watch Fords showing nothing of the sort. The old sheep’s tone as she described the contest to come screamed a genuine enthusiasm. That, Holly supposed, must have been what captured her interest so easily.

That kind of writing had largely been trained out of Holly after so many years with Alabaster, but it still left her wondering how a change of pace like it would feel. It would surely take some adjustment, but she figured that working with the cheery company would feel more liberating than anything. It was far from the first time that the deer had spent an evening quietly indulging in one of these fantasies. Many times since getting her current job, she had poked around at the hiring status of other positions she might escape to. She cursed herself for it, however. As nice as it felt in the moment, it always turned to a renewed dread the next time she woke up early for work.

This time, something very different happened. Almost as soon as Holly’s fanciful search started, it ran headlong into a wall. Everywhere she looked, she couldn’t find a shred of information about positions or hiring at Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies. Curiously, it wasn’t simply at a position like hers. It seemed across the entire organization, at every level, Fords was not looking for a single hire. Even more mysteriously, the light probing Holly delved into showed no record of the company ever having been hiring before.

The puzzle had thoroughly gripped Holly’s attention by this point, but she wasn’t the only one. A quick search revealed that her exact confusion was shared by a number of others in the form of links to obscure forums and conspiracy message boards. She was reluctant to stray onto more unsavory sites like this, but her search quickly showed that they were the only actual discussion on the matter. Clicking through just one result, she found a thread stretching back years through posts by dozens of equally curious users.

Holly tried her best to gather only the facts of the situation out of the meandering discussion. From what she could tell, there were no accounts from anyone about what it was like on the inside of the Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies complex. The factory itself was essentially in the middle of nowhere, and the people who had gotten closest to it all belonged to the delivery company that shipped its finished goods globally. Despite this, even they weren’t allowed to enter the loading bay off to one side of the complex, instead staying in their trucks and vans as someone inside loaded everything for them. Apparently the entire company was quite well paid by their partnership with Fords, so nobody cared to ask questions. They were the only people who could have asked questions, too, as they were the only company responsible for shipping products out from Fords, and there never seemed to be any deliveries going in.

Naturally, for every bit of information Holly found on the bizarre state of Fords, she found far more posts sharing ‘theories’ about the true nature of the ewe’s enterprise. Some suggested that the entire company was no more than a front for an old wealth German family attempting to hide its activity. By extension, they posited that the Fords who appeared in the video earlier that day was merely a descendant of the woman who founded the company over fifty years ago. Others suggested divine intervention as necessary to the complex’s function, either in the form of an actual god or advanced, alien visitors to the planet. At the same time, one user insisted that a hitherto unknown race of mole-men inhabited the complex, and that they were also responsible for many examples of divine intervention across world history. Apparently, other cryptid suggestions struck the others as more likely than this.

While some of the outlandish theories were entertaining to read, they were only an amusing distraction from Holly’s original search. She had to admit, though, that all of her efforts that evening hadn’t produced a single useful result. As the night continued, any searches about Fords became increasingly cluttered with media reactions to the new contest, and Holly was forced to leave any further investigations until after the excitement surrounding the promotion died down. Despite Fords’ silence with hiring, Holly was sure the allure of the mysterious company would pull her in again, like it had with so many opportunities before. The company felt like a way out of Alabaster, and Holly felt the need to get out. She had idly drifted into age thirty with this job, but was sure she couldn’t stand another year longer.

With her investigation fizzling out, however, Holly was left only with reactions to the day’s announcement. Most of the responses on her timeline were easy to ignore, but chiefly brought to her attention was the same topic in the group chat she had turned down just a few days ago. A few of them had shared their adventures in picking up a Fords product or two just to try their own luck at the contest. Apparently, supplies were running out frighteningly fast. Logically, Holly was certain that she had nowhere near the time or money to give herself any chance at winning on the level of the exorbitant spenders her friends described. Still, she supposed that giving it a try would give her more to participate in the chat with, and something inside of her hoped that something would be left if she only hurried down to the corner store on her street.

Holly was already halfway down the stairs of her apartment building by the time she realized she was trying exactly that. She’d grabbed nothing more than a winter coat before leaving the apartment and plunging out into the winter chill. Her pace was quick, but she kept herself in check to not draw too much attention towards her silly errand. The last thing she needed was another naysaying chat from one of her neighbors trying to talk her down from whatever she was doing. Within a few minutes, she was already there without another soul in sight.

The cramped, familiar corner store was a welcome respite from the frigid February wind that rushed down the street. Holly barely had to turn in the direction of the shop’s sweets shelf to see that it had been picked clean of Fords products. Only the price tags stuck on the shelves implied where a dozen Fords items once sat. She wasn’t facing the counter, but Holly could feel the weary gaze of the store’s lone clerk against the back of her neck. The doe, trying to keep herself from looking so single-minded as to leave immediately on seeing the state of the section, glanced down the length of the shelf. There, detached from the rest of the store’s modest candy section, she caught a glimpse of a small pack of Fords-branded biscotti straws for coffee, clearly ignored for not being placed with the rest of the Fords selection.

Holly took the meager box and bought it instead. On her way back, she couldn’t help the temptation to crack open the lid of the small pack and take a glance inside. Nothing golden flickered under the light of the street lamps, however. The deer returned to her apartment and set the box away in a cabinet. Pulling out her phone again, she returned to report her failed attempt to her friends, only to find that the conversation had already exhausted itself while she was out. Her friends had instead moved on to commenting on obscene ticket prices for a pro sports game some of them were planning on seeing, and Holly dropped back onto her couch as she felt another opportunity slip by her. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait for the excitement around the contest to die down.

Chapter Text

Surprisingly, the hype surrounding Fords’ contest refused to die down. The first few days since the ewe’s announcement had instead seen a growing intensity in the fervor surrounding the topic. It had left the official trending topics list in time with the normal pace of the news cycle, but Holly couldn’t seem to escape discussion of it anywhere she checked. Every site, forum, and timeline she had a presence on seemed to be half filled with posts dedicated to the contest and the growing anticipation surrounding the discovery of the first Golden Ticket. Rapidly, a loose community was organizing.

The new community had several names, but had taken to calling themselves Ticket Hunters. Apparently they were quickly becoming a global phenomenon, or at least that was what Holly gathered from the sheer number of languages their informative posts about the ticket hunt were translated into. Hunters exchanged techniques with each other for maximizing their chances of finding one of the elusive tickets. Just as often, they butted heads and decried each other’s methods as anything from ineffective to unethical. Since their ideas ranged from anything between good luck charms and attempts to impersonate stores to place bulk orders of Fords products, Holly figured both assessments could be equally true.

Many Ticket Hunters simply attempted to theorize about the nature of the grand prize awaiting one of the lucky five. Fords had only promised clues after the tickets began to be found, however, so they were left just as much in the dark as everyone else. This far from discouraged them, instead simply leading to Holly finding more circular or meandering conversations between hunters based on nothing but their own personal reasoning for what sort of grand prize would be most appropriate. The doe couldn’t help but be reminded of the long winded thread of ‘theorists’ she had encountered on the first night of the ticket hunt. Just like before, she tuned out these neverending spirals as best she could.

Aside from discussion, much attention was being given to videos emerging of Ticket Hunters fighting each other in stores to claim their dwindling Fords stocks. Most stores struggled desperately to keep up with the demand from people casually attempting to win the contest, and the dedicated hunters only exacerbated the issue. Each day without news compounded their energy in anticipation of the fateful day when the first Golden Ticket would finally be revealed.

Despite how inescapable the hunters were, Holly began to see them as outliers. Her own circle of friends had almost completely forgotten about the contest within days of the announcement. The whole matter kept Holly torn in two directions. On the one hand, she wanted the opportunity to recapture Fords’ infectious enthusiasm surrounding the promotion like she had weeks ago, preferably without the crash back down to reality so soon afterwards. On the other, however, she couldn’t stand the grief that people were causing each other over the whole matter.

Holly could never have noticed such a large movement losing momentum in real time, though. Only more than a week after the announcement did she consciously realize she wasn’t seeing as much of her timeline dedicated to Ticket Hunters and their escapades anymore. She took the brief respite while she had the chance, taking her time scrolling through Fords-free stretches of posts. The doe hadn’t posted anything about the contest herself, and could only wonder what was going through the heads of accounts she followed which now seemed exclusively devoted to the hunt. A bit of pity panged at her for her more obsessed peers, but more than anything convinced her to keep out of any public engagement with the entire situation.

The more scattered posting she now found also began to stray from guessing at the nature of the contest’s grand prize. It wasn’t surprising, given how little clues they had to work with. Before, some Ticket Hunters had taken to scrutinizing every inconspicuous detail from the original video. Attention was given to Fords’ choice of words, the potted plants visible to the sides of the video frame, and even trying to find a pattern the sea of palettes beyond the window of the ewe’s office. Everything had been picked apart and left behind nothing of note.

Instead, speculation shifted towards who would have the honor of being the first to discover one of the five tickets. For the hunters, it was a foregone conclusion that one of their own would have their efforts rewarded with the first ticket. The question instead became which figure of their community seemed most likely to finally best the odds. They compared and debated methods, resources, area, and a variety of other factors, but Holly supposed that it would most likely be someone with far more wealth than any prominent Ticket Hunter could imagine having in their lifetime.

One lunch break, a week after being able to start forgetting about the ticket hunt, Holly checked absentmindedly through her phone’s notifications. When they brought her nothing, she turned from one app to another for something to hold her interest. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Fords on the trending topic list for the first time that month. Holly was sure that its sudden reemergence could mean only one thing, and she tapped against her phone’s screen to follow through the link.

What she saw on the other side of the link, however, wasn’t at all what Holly anticipated. Scrolling through the trending tag, the posts she found seemed to be nearly exclusively about baseball, not Fords or her contest. Holly paused, almost convinced that she had clicked on the wrong tag by accident, but stopped herself as she landed on an embedded video. Her phone’s sound was off while she was in public, but subtitles in the video kept her able to follow what was happening.

The scene it showed was a bustling press conference. Reporters and microphones vied to be closest to a simple table with a bright blue screen sporting a cursive-B pattern hung up behind it. Seated at the table was an arctic fox woman with jet-black hair which cascaded down into bangs gently brushing at her shoulders. All of the rest was tied up into a long ponytail tucked through a blue and white baseball cap along with black-tipped ears poking up through slots in the hat. She shifted her shoulders to adjust a silver jacket she wore, leaning over the table and gazing over the crowd with piercingly cold, blue eyes. The video had just started, but her look already betrayed boredom with the reporters. According to the caption on the post, this woman was Azure Burle, starting pitcher for the pro baseball ‘Bakersfield Blues,’ and this video had been uploaded less than half an hour ago.

The fox blew and popped a bubble from her chewing gum before answering the first questions launched at her. Holly leaned towards her phone to make sure she was reading the captions right. As of yet, there was still no mention of Fords. She continued to doubt that this video was what she expected it to be up until the moment that Azure smirked, reached beneath the table, and placed something down onto it before her.

The camera shifted to focus on it. Sure enough, revealed so casually, was the first of Fords’ Golden Tickets. It was emblazoned with the same logos as the example presented by Fords during her initial announcement video, and it shimmered under the flat light of the conference hall just as brilliantly. At the sight of it, the reporters in the hall were kicked into a fury of photos and questions. Azure allowed them to calm back down again before deciding to respond.

“You all sure do care about these things a lot, huh?” The vixen shrugged alongside her first remark.

“Well, I don’t see what the big deal is. I found this one earlier today, just in the clubhouse with the team. I wasn’t even trying . It’s not like it’s surprising or anything, really. When you’re number one these things just fall into your lap,” she said, taking particular pleasure in saying ‘number one.’ “It doesn’t matter if it’s the first no-hitter in a season or the first ticket in some sweepstakes,” she flashed a toothy grin at the camera. “If you’re good, you’re good.”

Azure punctuated her answer with another bubble from her gum, and as the reporters’ questions drifted to the team’s upcoming Spring Training, Holly quietly closed the app. With the rest of her long day of work ahead of her, the fox was nearly the last thing on her mind. Only on her commute back home was she met with the fallout of the first ticket being uncovered.

If anyone still doubted the legitimacy of Azure, their suspicions were quickly put to rest. Later that day, Fords herself had put out another announcement video in response. Once again, she was seated at her antique desk, but only barely. She seemed to be even more enthusiastic now than during her first announcement.

The ewe wasted no time getting to the point. “Congratulations, Miss Burle, on being the first to locate a Golden Ticket! I simply cannot wait to meet you in person, and to be able to see what a unique perspective your winning attitude will bring to the tour.” Fords said more in the rest of the video, but aside from showing Holly that the vixen’s name was apparently pronounced “Bur-lay,” nothing else she said reached the doe’s ears.

More than anything, Holly was left conflicted from Fords’ new announcement. The impression she had gotten of Azure from that brief interview earlier in the day was not glowing. Despite that, Fords seemed more excited than ever at the news. Her phrasing putting so much emphasis on the words ‘winning attitude’ struck Holly as almost sarcastic. She still couldn’t shake how genuine the sheep’s energy felt, however. With nothing else to go off of for now, Holly had to be content with feeling torn for the time being.

Naturally, the discovery had lit a fire under the Ticket Hunters once again. Holly had already expected that people far more famous and powerful than any of the communities she encountered would have the best chance of uncovering the tickets. She was sure, though, that none of the hunters would have expected the same. The doe wanted nothing else than to be able to ignore whatever backlash was in store from them, but it was placed in front of her no matter how hard she tried.

Fords’ confirmation had opened the floodgates to Ticket Hunter discourse hours before Holly arrived at the discussion. Starting so late, all the posts she saw became a complex puzzle to decipher any context. Winding threads of replies and reactions referenced each other in ways that made her head spin to untangle, but from picking at them she was at least able to gather the sentiment that they shared. The overwhelming response was incredulity at someone with no connection to the hunter community being the first to find a ticket. Despite their methods and tireless efforts, they had all been beaten to the prize. A sizable number of hunters refused to accept it, insisting that the contest must have been rigged in favor of the rich for the sake of more publicity for Fords and disavowing themselves from the hunt. Some hunters were offended by the notion. Others were outraged.

The worst was yet to come. Discussion soon spilled out from the circles frequented by Ticket Hunters, leading them on a collision course with fans of the Bakersfield Blues. It seemed that Blues fans had only been vaguely aware of the contest as a whole until Azure had suddenly been cast into its forefront. They had no context to the hunters’ efforts over the last weeks, and so had no patience for any of their criticisms of their star player. Some cared enough to verbally combat the Ticket Hunters. From what Holly could gather of her brief impressions of those fans, they looked far more invested in Burle herself than in the Blues as a team.

Those single-minded fans did have the benefit of letting Holly piece together a cohesive, if basic, image of Azure Burle. Apparently the fox had been a baseball prodigy since college, rapidly drafted and launched from the minors into the major league almost as soon as she’d graduated. In her five seasons with the Blues, the organization had turned from a floundering team into consistent championship series contenders. Azure’s closest fans naturally attributed the teams two recent champion titles to her.

Beyond her personal fans, Holly found that Azure was very popular with anyone following the Blues. She was adored for her electrifying presence on the pitcher’s mound. Batters found themselves outsmarted by her even when she looked to barely be paying attention to the moment. Oftentimes they found her more focused on her chewing gum than on them, making her triumphs even more demoralizing for opponents. Being so naturally quick to adapt to new situations, Holly couldn’t see a single Blues fan who was interested in hearing Ticket Hunter arguments about why Azure may not be able to take home the grand prize of Fords’ contest.

Despite that, the hunters were keenly interested in making anyone that would listen care. No matter how unlikely, anywhere a Blues fan was, a Ticket Hunter was there to butt heads with them over the matter of Azure. Few things could pry them away from their hostilities with the sports fans. For the hunters, it was no consolation to know that they may be able to uncover the second Golden Ticket, though some were drawn away from the constant arguments to instead focus on the renewed speculation about what exactly Fords’ grand prize was supposed to be.

The old ewe had promised hints about her final prize as the tickets were discovered. Like before, nothing in the announcement video itself looked like one of these fabled clues. Extensive media coverage had, however, made the writing on Azure’s ticket easily accessible, so Holly’s curiosity led her to start there. In all, the fine writing on the back end of the ticket read:

Greetings and salutations to the lucky finder of this Golden Ticket, and to anyone else who may happen to be in the room at this time! Present this ticket to myself, Miss Abigail Fords, at the gate to the Fords Fantastic Fooderies Complex for one admittance into an exclusive tour, as well as a chance at being the grand prize winner among the lucky five. The tour will be held on a Saturday, two weeks following when I confirm the finding of the fifth ticket, at 10 A.M. sharp! Please be punctual, as I have quite the wondrous itinerary planned for you all to see. If you are the first finder of a ticket, this means you don't need to worry! If you are the fifth finder, now is the time to start planning! If you are the sixth finder, how?

I am greatly excited to get to meet each of you in person on the day of the tour!

Your (soon-to-be) friend,

Abigail Fords

Perfectly cordial, the message sounded like it had been written directly by the older ewe. However, for all of the few details it revealed, none looked to be hints about the grand prize. Holly’s attention was instead drawn towards a curious detail in every clear photo taken of the ticket. Beyond just the letter at the start of each block of text engraved into the message, a small set of random, otherwise normal letters had been written larger and bolder than those around them. The H in “this Golden Ticket,” the L in “exclusive,” the E in “winner,” and the P in “Please” stood out plainly against the rest of the message. Why they did, though, Holly could only guess.

The hunters had picked up on the detail as well. By now, they had almost completely disregarded the rest of the text on the ticket, instead honing in on the secret behind the bolded letters. Theories incorporated the letters in isolation, their context within their given words or even entire sentences. Others had taken to plotting complex lines across the surface of the ticket, creating chains of text from letter to letter that were poured over in attempts to find some hidden message.

None of the leading theories appealed to Holly much, however. She detached herself from the chaotic discussion, but still caught herself puzzling over the cryptic hint the rest of the day. Fords had promised something about the ‘nature’ of the contest with each passing ticket, and yet it seemed like the first of the five had come and passed without anything being learned. Unlike the Ticket Hunters, Holly was certain that no hidden messages had been put in the announcement videos themselves. The first video couldn’t have had anything because Fords had promised any clues in the future from it. The second, also, had no hidden meaning if only because it was so short and unremarkable that there was no room to hide anything. If the sheep had been telling the truth about the world getting its first clue alongside the first ticket, then it must have already arrived in another form.

That ticket was the only place left she could turn to put the little mystery to rest. None of the more sophisticated theories held her interest, however. Each one was far too convoluted to be the direction she supposed Fords wanted people to go in. From the impression she’d gathered of the ewe in her brief appearances, nothing suggested that she was the type to demand triangulation or other advanced methods of decoding a meaning from the four bolded letters. In fact, the opposite seemed the most likely, a simple hint with a simple solution.

‘Help’ was the only word that could be made out of those particular letters. Holly wasn’t the first to note that, if that was all there was to it, then it wasn’t much of a clue at all. Some hunters supposed that the one-word message suggested that the contest was actually a game playing out a dark storyline. A few particularly alarmed people had instead taken to posting that someone was being held captive by Fords, the clue being a cry for help, and that anyone going to the complex had to be prepared to rescue them at all costs. More likely to Holly was the thought that Fords wasn’t planning to deliver a new clue with each ticket, but instead hint at a single clue released piecemeal.

For all of her thoughts on the question, Holly had no intention of coming forward with anything. She feared the Ticket Hunters that had overtaken her timelines and what trying to engage with them might lead to. Instead, she turned to her familiar group chat once again. After some time editing down her message into something that didn’t come across as overly interested, she sent off her theory to the others. If all went according to plan, she wouldn’t find herself lumped in with the hunter community by anyone she cared about.

The response she got back was, predictably, just as casually uninvested as her own message. Like she’d seen before, responses started with a number of jokes about the whole contest being a front for an avant-garde horror project. This cry for help would be only the first hint of dark secrets beneath the surface of the cheery company, they remarked. Holly appreciated the levity some, but found herself simply playing along as she waited for someone to take the idea more seriously.

That side of the conversation died down before long, thankfully. One of Holly’s friends agreed with her that the piecemeal hint sounded far more likely than any alternative. Content with that bit of validation, Holly let their chat naturally drift off to other topics again. The rest of the contest would come down to waiting, she supposed. With nothing else to do about the mystery for now, the doe let herself start settling into that wait, comfortable with the thought that at least she wasn’t completely alone in it.

Chapter Text

By the end of the following week, Holly was sure she had been told more about Azure Burle than she had about any other athlete in her life before, combined. It all came from the same source, dedicated fans of the celebrity pitcher. The faction had grown to dominate any spaces the Ticket Hunters had been using. She occasionally checked in on some of the hunters’ tags to see if the second Golden Ticket had been found, and each time the baseball fans were unavoidable.

Their posts mainly consisted of various justifications for why Azure in particular was destined to find the first ticket. Holly tried her best to internalize as little of it as possible. If she hadn’t, she would have been given a comprehensive narrative of the fox’s rise to stardom. As well, about two dozen interpretations of why she wore the team’s 01 jersey were shared from telling to telling. That iconic number was apparently one of the driving forces behind the team’s most popular merchandise. She supposed it was the most popular, at least, from the sheer amount of pictures shown of Burle jerseys from hundreds of fans that dotted her timeline.

Instead, Holly barely noticed the gentle dwindling of Blues fans’ presence with each passing day. The doe would never have claimed to have a distaste for sports. Around friends, watching whatever happened to be on was always enjoyable for her. None of it, though, held her interest strongly enough for her to seek it out on her own afterwards. She did her best to tune out Blues posting when it came up, but to her annoyance, it now seemed that posts about the contest had been made just as scarce on her timeline as the first wave had made regular posts a month ago. The shift almost made her miss the way her timeline had been before, but only almost.

Any frustration was strictly kept to herself, though. From all she’d seen of Ticket Hunters and Blues fans posting against each other, she already knew that she didn’t have the patience to get pulled into the cycle by making anything public. Her friends wouldn’t be an outlet either, she knew. The last thing the doe needed was to be seen by them as someone who cared so much about the stagnating contest that she needed to complain about it. Instead, she tried to let their winding conversations guide her thinking each evening.

Holly was used to laying awake on her phone that way for hours before actually managing to sleep. She always cursed the exhaustion it left her with every morning, but didn’t do a thing to change her ways. Just before putting her phone down one night, its screen flashed with a direct message to her by one of her friends. The message was nothing but a link to another social app, which was nothing out of the ordinary for that friend in particular.

Pressing through to the new app, Holly was presented with a reel of photos to flick through. Each one showed a young, lop rabbit woman, a couple years older than college age by Holly’s best guess. She sported soft, golden fur, shoulder length brunette hair, and a scandalously revealing bikini on her curvy figure. The reel showed her posing around a pool somewhere out west, with an elaborate mansion occasionally popping up in the background. Holly wasn’t sure what to make of it as she paged through.

She wasn’t totally surprised by what she saw. This friend of Holly’s had a habit of sending over people she thought might be the deer’s “type.” Not only was the rabbit nothing of the sort, though, she clearly must have been far too rich to even consider talking to someone like the deer. Holly was about to raise the question to the friend before pausing as the next picture scrolled onto her screen. Right in the rabbit’s grasp was the second Golden Ticket, flaunted on camera through a couple more suggestive poses at the end of the reel. After the last photo came a brief video. The rabbit held her camera at a high angle, flashed ‘V’ for victory with one hand, and finally reached off screen to grab the ticket and wave it in view again.

“Thanks so much to the big fan who sent this little thing over to me,” she cooed in a playful tone from the phone’s speaker. “Just you wait, I’ll send you back something nice in return for getting me on such an exclusive trip, okay?”

The rabbit giggled in a way that Holly was sure someone must have found cute. “Expect a full travel vlog for this whole thing, not just the tour, all of it! I wouldn’t dream of leaving any of you lovely little things out for a minute.”

After that, the video looped back onto itself. Holly watched it over again, now paying no attention to the rabbit herself as her eyes drifted towards the second ticket. For the most part it looked identical to Azure’s the week before. She could only barely make out that the lettering in its message differed slightly from the first, but the rabbit’s camera was so pulled out that she couldn’t get a clear look.

Holly tapped onto the profile the video came from in hopes of finding a better view. It apparently belonged to one Faye Huffie, and unfortunately contained no clearer pictures of the ticket among any of her recent posts. Instead, she found that the travel vlog the rabbit had promised her fans was far from the first. Positioned between high-end fashion and beauty product spotlights, Faye’s frequent vacations to idyllic destinations around the world dotted her timeline.

Scrolling further, Holly wasn’t sure what to make of someone who must have been at least seven years younger than her having already achieved a far more extravagant lifestyle than the doe could imagine. She chose instead to try to avoid thinking about Faye as much as she could for the rest of the night. The few times she dared check her own timeline again, more of a picture of the rabbit was presented to her.

Among the few Ticket Hunters who had also gotten the news this early, the conversation surrounding Faye placed all focus on the drama that followed her everywhere she went. Spats with other influencers she had collaborated with were frequent, and a few pointed out her apparently sterling record despite this. No matter the situation, each time fans of either influencer involved became convinced that Faye had been in the right.

Sleep eventually found Holly, but it did nothing to shake the dread of the coming fallout from Azure’s fans also learning the news of the second ticket. She was sure nothing good could come from the colossal fanbases clashing against each other like they had with the Ticket Hunters before, but was powerless to prevent it all the same. Instead, she steadied herself by thinking about how the curious situation with the ticket’s ‘clues’ would continue to unfold with the new discovery.

The next morning, Holly did everything in her power to avoid her timeline as long as she could manage. What little time she had before work was instead spent searching for Fords’ announcement to confirm what she had seen last night. Luckily for her, it was already there. Uploaded just an hour earlier, Holly supposed the delayed response came from how late into the night Faye had revealed her winnings.

“Congratulations,” Fords began the video the same as before, “to Miss Huffie on locating the second of my five Golden Tickets! I strongly encourage that both you and Miss Burle read over the directions on your tickets. The last thing I want is for anybody to arrive late on the big day, or bring along someone who wouldn’t be allowed past the gate, so I hope what I’ve left for you is sufficient.”

“Speaking of that day,” she continued, “I cannot wait to meet someone as friendly and adventurous as yourself, Miss Huffie!”

Just as before, Holly stuck on the ewe’s tone. Something to her voice made her sound subtly different to slew of other collaborators she had seen on Faye’s page. She could almost call it genuineness, but even that gave her pause. From what she’d learned of Azure and Faye so far, they didn’t exactly strike her as the friendliest company. Regardless, Fords brought an air of excitement to each announcement she made. It was just enough to make Holly wonder how much of her tone was genuine, after all.

There was still time until her stop, however, and as much as Holly tried to keep away, she eventually found her way back to discussion of Faye’s announcement. The doe knew there was still nothing to glean from the video itself, and so instead looked to the higher quality images of Faye’s ticket for the next cryptic clue. Luckily for her, it’d be harder for her to find a Ticket Hunter page that hadn’t posted it. The message on the ticket was identical to Azure’s, though now a new set of letters had been set apart through bold lettering. The second E in “else,” the first E in “Fooderies,” the K in “ticket,” and the P in “planning” now stood out.

Some hunters were content to speculate further about this new four-letter message, but not all shared their sentiment. Many had their fears from Azure’s reveal confirmed by the next young, wealthy individual finding a ticket. Any assurances that they simply had more resources at their disposal, that soon the rich like them would grow bored with the contest and stop competing, were barely acknowledged. The two winners’ total lack of connection to the hunter community called all of their elaborate tactics into doubt. While some were assured that the balance of interest would naturally swing in their favor, others redoubled their efforts to force the shift.

The hunters’ narrative, however, had to be worked out piecemeal through scattered posts. Just as Holly feared, it had taken less than a day from Faye’s reveal for any and all related tags to transform into a war zone. Naturally, factional lines had been drawn around the fans of Azure and Faye, respectively, leaving the Ticket Hunters a slim majority surrounding the search. There was no debate to be had, only vitriolic arguments and attacks slung blindly from each side. It was all Holly could do to simply avoid the more outrageous claims being made to defame the other fanbase’s idol in the time left before she arrived at work.

When not attempting to verbally assault Blues fans, Faye’s own fanbase spent its time reinforcing why they were so assured the rabbit would inevitably be awarded the grand prize. Her social skills, an apparently innate ability to charm and flatter others, were cited as being all she needed to sway Fords into considering her the favorite of the winners. Not even that was necessary for some, though, as countless fancams and more simply attested to Faye’s looks, media career, and attitude for dealing with ‘haters’ as more than enough to overcome any competition that the other four ticket holders might put up. The rate and intensity of their posting made Holly uncertain whether there were that many more fans of Faye than Azure, or if they simply managed to work faster and far more pervasively.

All of their attacks only served to rouse Azure’s fans back into action. Any lull in activity that Holly might have noticed in the week before disappeared as soon as the character of their star athlete was called into question. Beyond just her physical fitness, they insisted, the fox was a natural competitor at anything she was involved with, and had been her whole life. Despite the apparent lack of any transferable skills from baseball to discovering Golden Tickets, Azure had still won out by finding the first so quickly. This, combined with Faye’s ticket being submitted to her rather than won for herself, was all they needed to be convinced that the real work Azure put in would see her through to the grand prize. As soon as Faye was inside the building with no fanbase to defend her, she wouldn’t be able to put up any fight.

Holly barely had time to wonder if anyone in the argument understood just how random the contest really was. She knew better than to step into the crossfire in an attempt to persuade any of the zealots involved, especially as she stepped through the front doors to the Alabaster building. There was no time left to think about it as she rushed to catch an open elevator. It already had one passenger, a kangaroo woman with slick hair and thick-rimmed glasses. The deer recognized her from around the office, but had never taken the initiative to talk to her before. The woman clearly didn’t look to be in the mood to talk, either, and so Holly was sure the pattern would continue today.

Just as she turned around to face the elevator door again, she was met with the familiar sight of a large tail bobbing intensely in a rush towards her.

“Hold it, please!”

The same squirrel coworker she had talked with briefly before walked across the lobby with all of the speed they could without breaking out into a jog. Once again, they only barely managed to reach the elevator before the doors shut before them. It was quiet as they took a moment to fix their auburn hair after their rush, but it was short lived.

“Back to the grind, huh? Always makes you wish for just one more day of vacation time,” they said, not addressing either of the two in particular. It finally struck Holly just how long it had been since she last saw them. The vacation she’d been told about had already flown by, and she hadn’t put a single thought towards how to spend her own accumulated time.

Nothing but the quiet noise of the elevator followed. Just before the moment could pass, Holly figured that now was a fine enough time to start learning her options and prodded. “Where did you end up going?”

Her coworker lit up as Holly spoke up with the exact followup they’d hoped for. “Oh, it was this adorable little beach town right on the gulf coast! Are you planning on going yourself, Perez?”

“Well, it’s one of my options,” she said, desperately hoping they wouldn’t pry enough to learn it was so far her only option.

“Well, you’d better start planning to get there soon, they say it’s a mess of tourists if you get there after spring break.”

“They?”

“You know ‘heyitsfaye’? She’s got a whole video about it that I used to plan things out.”

Holly paused, glancing at the squirrel’s grin as she debated whether to ask the question on her mind. “You mean Faye Huffie?”

“Oh, you do know her!”

“I mean,” she began before noticing her kangaroo coworker rolling her eyes in response. “I think I saw she was one of the people to win that Fords contest,” she almost finished her sentence before her chest was gripped with the feeling of being seen as caring too much, adding on “thing?”

“True, she did! But that’s not really a vacation we can recreate, y’know? It’s just for fun.”

“I heard about that, too,” the other coworker finally spoke up. “Isn’t ‘win’ a bit of a strong word for having the prize mailed to you by someone else?”

Immediately, the squirrel was cast onto the defensive. “People just care, that’s all! Besides, if they went on their own, they wouldn’t be able to show off the experience to a big audience.”

“Oh, good, she’ll get to profit off of it, too.”

Holly opened her mouth, but before she could get a word out the squirrel continued, and the argument continued to spill out of control. “Why shouldn’t she be able to? It’s her job.” Their voice raised, and Holly gazed longingly at the elevator doors for the moment they would slide open and free her.

“Pretty cushy ‘job’. At least we know that she won’t be profiting off of the big prize, too.”

“And why’s that?”

“I don’t even like the Blues, but I can see that Fords will be able to tell that Burle deserves to be there more than Faye.”

The squirrel was taken aback, and they let out an offended gasp before retorting. Before they could finish a word, however, a chime rang out and the elevator doors opened. Holly, who’d long since regretted having accidentally sparked the debate, rushed out onto the office floor quicker than she’d ever managed before.

Seeing all of the vitriol she’d encountered online suddenly spill over into a real conversation shook the doe. She was careful to not make any mention of knowing about the contest for the rest of the day. The last thing she wanted was to be shoved out of a talk so abruptly again. With the rest of her day at work occupying her attention, she could almost completely forget about the encounter.

By the time she got home, Holly figured that the only safe place left to bring up the contest would be in one of her core group chats. She’d hoped otherwise, but now it seemed any public avenue had closed off to her. Still, the deer had to be calculated about how she approached the topic. All of her friends seemed to have completely forgotten about Fords in the week since Azure’s discovery, and she didn’t want to appear stuck on the idea for no reason.

Instead, Holly left the mention of the contest incidental. Mostly she vented about the argument that had broken out around her in the elevator, and her friends were naturally supportive of her through it. By the end of the tale, some had taken to remarking that no one deserved to hear from people who cared so much about such a silly little contest. Though intended to make Holly feel better about her ordeal, she couldn’t help but feel targeted by the joke as well. She played off the comments as naturally as she could, but as the conversation drifted back to prior evening plans she wasn’t involved with, she also silently noted one new space that it would be best to not mention Fords’ contest in.

As she was in the middle of preparing dinner, Holly’s phone suddenly presented a new opportunity to her. Last week, in the wake of the Ticket Hunters’ progress being swept away in a sea of Azure Burle discussion, some had taken to forming a private, small-scale community on an old forum website. Admission was handled manually and slowly, ensuring that any hyperactive fans would lose interest in it by the time they were admitted, if they even remembered. Holly had apparently registered for the site absentmindedly, and she herself had even managed to forget by the time confirmation of her admission arrived.

There was relief in having at least one place of respite to be able to safely continue following the mystery of Fords. If nothing else, Holly was sure that most of Faye’s fans would have never even seen a forum before, let alone be familiar with using one. At the same time, however, she was struck with hesitation. The impression left by her friends still hung on her, and so while she was free to watch the relatively slow-moving discussion of hunters on the site, she made sure to watch from the sidelines and leave no connecting details between her forum profile and real person. For the upcoming wait she’d be on her lonesome, and so she hoped for the third Golden Ticket to be found sooner rather than later.

Chapter Text

By the time Holly’s hoof had clumsily collided with her phone’s alarm screen, she had already forgotten any details about the dream that had just been cut short. She shuffled out of bed, stumbled slightly, and began her morning routine again. As she waited a moment for her shower to heat up, she lingered by the bathroom door to listen to the morning news from the TV. The weather forecast predicted morning showers, though it was still dark outside her window. Despite that, she still imagined the heavy clouds that would accompany her on her walk to the metro station as she gazed out into the black.

Before she could check on the water getting up to heat, the doe’s ear flicked at the sound of the news anchor saying “Fords.” She took another step out into her apartment’s short hallway, only enough to peek around the corner at the news report. As the story began, the camera gazed up at a towering skyscraper, rows of windows colored with the scattered reflections of city lights. A reporter’s narration introduced the scene. “Here at DECO Conglomerate Headquarters, the third of the elusive Golden Tickets has just been publicly revealed.”

The footage cut to an office inside the building. Its decor was as crushingly minimalist as anything Holly had seen at Alabaster, but was contrasted by the cluttered view of surrounding highrises as the rest of the city stretched on outside of the suite’s broad windows. The single most detailed object in the office was a large, white desk built in an abstract shape.

Seated comfortably behind that desk, her paws crossed and resting atop, was a trim wolf woman with rich, brown fur. Despite how casually she smirked at the camera through her sharp teeth, everything else about her was perfectly kempt. Her hair, dark, smooth, and shoulder length, was parted to one side without a single strand out of place. A tailored, three-piece suit, pastel blue in color, was similarly spotless. Even her tail appeared well brushed into shape as it swayed gently behind her.

The reporter continued speaking. “CEO Delouise Leclerc, however, claims that it’s nothing more than another acquisition for the family business.” Afterwards, the camera footage cut again to a direct interview with the wolfess.

“The first couple of gals didn’t see reason when we reached out to negotiate, but we ended up finding the right price for number three to open up about one of those tickets.” She spoke with a thick east coast accent, one hand resting behind her head as the other gestured along with her explanation. “DECO has a lot to gain from being able to get a word in with Fords, and over here we’re confident that we can be the ones to get her to come out of her shell. Leclerc Logistics already operates a global network, so I’m sure she’ll see the efficiency in getting our people driving her deliveries.”

“Though she claims that is only the beginning for possible cooperation between the companies. Leclerc says she will be attending the tour personally to negotiate a partnership with Fords,” the reporter continued. Just then, however, Holly noticed the steam now swirling around her legs from the bathroom door. Pulled back into the moment, the deer rushed off to get her routine back on schedule.

As she rode downtown, Holly had to make a conscious effort to wake herself up. It was only by the time she was halfway into the station that she realized her rush that morning left her forgetting to make coffee. She knew that the office always had some being brewed, however, and cheap as it may be, she could hardly stand to be picky now. Standing in a throng of other passengers, Holly turned her gaze upwards to avoid creating any awkward situations.

What little space there was between the car’s windows and ceiling was plastered with advertisements. To her surprise, the first one the deer’s eyes landed on was specifically about DECO’s online store. Glancing to the side, she saw another like it closer to the door to the next car in the train. Holly had never taken much time to consciously register the ads that surrounded her during her commute, but now the coincidence struck her as she arrived at her stop and finally escaped the overcrowded metro train.

It didn’t take long for Holly to realize that what she experienced was anything but a rare coincidence. Atop shorter buildings stood billboards advertising the work community of DECO. Benches she passed on the sidewalk were cluttered with what apparently were the benefits given to Leclerc Logistics truck drivers. Holly had always been aware of the scope of DECO, a corporation rivaling Alabaster in size, but had not taken the time to internalize just how all-encompassing Leclerc branding was in the world around her.

She was unsure what to make of the revelation. Instead, as Holly stepped through the Alabaster lobby once again, she focused on remembering to find some coffee before reaching her desk. The first pot in the breakroom had a habit of vanishing quickly each morning, so she was certain to stop there as soon as the elevator deposited her back onto her familiar office floor. Luckily, she managed to reach it without once seeing her boss, something that surely would have slowed her down by precious minutes if she’d been noticed.

Instead, she opened the plain, frosted glass door into the breakroom to find it already mostly occupied. The room was cramped under the best of circumstances, but was now oppressive with just Holly and one other coworker, currently pouring a cup from the coffee maker. He was a bulky, broad-shouldered badger, nearly a foot taller than the doe even when not standing at his full height. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back with an excessive amount of product, and his black jacket never quite seemed to be a good fit for his athletic figure. Despite his form making him easily intimidating, as he turned around Holly was met with a familiar, gentle look in his eyes.

“Oh,” he said, apparently not hearing Holly come in, “hey.” His expression tightened slightly as he looked down at the doe until his memory was finally jogged. “Perez, right? Morning.”

“Right,” Holly nodded, shutting the door behind her before adding “morning.” She wasn’t certain when or where he managed to learn her name already. They worked in the same department in the building, as using the same break room on the same floor made that obvious enough. As far as she could tell, though, Holly couldn’t remember ever working closely enough with the badger to need to memorize his name, herself.

The doe didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she hoped to hurry along to an actual topic before he noticed the discrepancy. “So, the news this morning kept talking all about more of,” she wanted to continue, but in that moment the familiar sting of her friends’ waning interest in the ticket hunt hit again. She felt no judgment in how her coworker looked at her, yet she could just as easily imagine the feeling of that gentle gaze turning harsh. Holly presented disinterest as best she could. “That whole Fords’ thing and DECO. It’s a lot of attention to give to one sweepstakes, huh?”

He shrugged as the two shuffled by each other in the tight space of the breakroom. “I can’t say I’m surprised, considering all the moves Leclerc has been making, even just this year so far.”

Holly raised a brow as she poured a cup for herself. “How do you mean?”

Before he could continue, the breakroom door swung open behind them and they turned to face it. There, they were greeted by the familiar sneer of their boss. The skunk, just as small compared to the badger as Holly, caused him to shrink under her gaze.

“So this is where you two are,” she sighed. “Am I going to need to start considering you late for wasting your time here before getting any work done?”

“Of course not, sorry about that,” the badger muttered.

He cautiously passed the skunk and disappeared out the door. Holly mirrored his sentiment with a brief “right, sorry,” before following suit. Back out on the main office floor, Holly already lost sight of her burly coworker. With nothing else to do, she evaded the disapproving view of the skunk and escaped back to her own cubicle.

For a moment, Holly cursed the timing of the situation. Even if she could probably tell where he was about to go with his remarks, it didn’t change how the opportunity to learn something about the hunt closed off to her at the last second. She rarely had any reason to talk with him, let alone about such a specific topic. The more the deer considered how to let him finish later on, the more she realized that she couldn’t possibly swing back to the topic without appearing bizarrely involved. Instead, she resigned herself to the thought that she would have already known whatever he was about to say, but the thought of Delouise Leclerc still stuck in the back of her mind.

Before long, the thought of the wolf was pulled back into the forefront of her mind. Holly had been assigned to several new, short-term projects that morning. The highest priority was tagged onto a press release detailing a quote from Jezebel Curandel, Alabaster’s CEO. The doe was far from surprised by this. She supposed her good work over the years led to her being entrusted with sanitizing the chief’s crass words despite never having encountered the larger-than-life alligator executive in person. Maybe, she thought, her careful, gentle wording was exactly what the corporation needed to balance out the vocabulary of its boss.

The message was unusual, however, in how it was seemingly completely unrelated to the workings of Alabaster as a corporation. Instead, it contained a comment and congratulations extended to DECO and Delouise in securing a spot on Fords’ tour. To Holly’s knowledge, it was unusual for Curandel to comment on any other businesses, usually her work instead consisted of aggrandizing the corporation and obfuscating its issues from the public. As she set about toning down an extensively passive-aggressive tone of the provided message, she quickly suspected the past history the two CEOs must have had with each other. Whether the public was privy to it or not, Curandel found it important enough to not let DECO’s plans for Fords’ go unacknowledged. She couldn’t help that the two had more in common than they wanted to admit.

Like usual, Holly’s lunch break snuck up on her. She shuffled off towards the elevator, winding out of the maze of cubicles and along the edge of the office floor as she did. Passing by a water cooler, she nearly jumped at a familiar voice suddenly calling out from behind her. Turning, she saw the squirrel coworker again, walking at twice Holly’s pace to catch up to her.

They gave a tiny wave as they approached. “Hey, off to lunch?”

“Just about.”

“Great,” they nodded. “I brought my own, but I need to get out and get some steps in today, so I’ll follow you out, alright?”

Holly saw no reason to stop them, and so she shrugged and kept moving. Her thought from before kept pressing at her mind, though, and after just a few seconds of quiet walking she spoke up.

“You know, they kept talking about Delouise Leclerc on the news this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s kept me thinking, Curandel has to be a person like that, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, one hundred percent,” the squirrel nodded, “I don’t know if you’ve been on the receiving end of a conference call with the c-suite before, but there’s an aura to it as soon as they’re on the line. It’s almost like you can feel the sharp-toothed-” they paused for a second. “Oh no.”

“Oh no?”

Motioning forward, Holly saw the issue. The elevator doors, usually shut tight when not in use, sat half ajar and showing a dark shaft within. Even if she hadn’t noticed that, the bright tape blocking the way in would have caught her before stepping in. “Oh, that’s not good,” she said softly.

Slowly, reluctantly, both deer and squirrel looked in the direction of a nearby door containing a stairwell downwards. As they glanced at each other, the squirrel spoke first. “Well, I guess we’re both getting a workout today…”

Holly only sighed as she led the charge down the stairs. As much as her coworker continued to grumble about the elevator just working that morning, it would do them no good in getting it repaired.

“I could’ve told you that it was close to going,” the squirrel remarked when they reached the lobby. “Not that it would’ve gotten them to send the handyman around any sooner. You know what I’d bet?”

“What?”

“That someone already put in a ticket to get maintenance on that a month ago, and the higher-ups haven’t deigned to send someone to our floor yet.”

It wouldn’t have surprised Holly, but she had no way to confirm or deny her coworker’s sentiment. Instead, she simply parted ways with them by the main doors and returned to her normal lunch spot. Finally, she had a chance to check up on the response to Delouise’s announcement that morning.

Disappointingly, almost nothing changed about the intensity with which Azure and Faye fans warred over the ticket hunt in the last week. However she tried to avoid it, she could only stick to private channels and communities for so long. Each time she ventured back out to public timelines she was again assailed with more information about the fox and rabbit. Aside from people uncovering the vaguely amusing fact that “Faye Huffie” was a pseudonym taken to make a brand more appealing than her real name, “Erina Mladich,” it was far from enjoyable to watch the fighting from afar.

While a slight disappointment, the fact that there were still only the two factions present online was unsurprising. Precious few attacks were spared for Delouise by either fanbases on account of the wolf’s own supporters never entering the fight to begin with. Those online could only express how irrelevant to the contest they found Leclerc, and anybody who anticipated she would win was certainly too old to care about defending her in the eyes of the rabid fans. The wolfess, easily twice Faye’s age and considerably less public-facing, must have been uninterested in appealing to the online generations to begin with, and so the discourse would continue as normal for now.

Holly quickly found the only interesting thing left surrounding the news to be looking for Fords’ own announcement video in response. She didn’t need any more confirmation to believe that Delouise’s ticket was genuine, but the inscrutable tone of Fords’ reactions still hung in her mind. Luckily, she quickly found the newest video already uploaded on the company’s page.

“Congratulations, Missus Leclerc, the third finder of a Golden Ticket!” The video already left Holly guessing. Somehow, the ewe either didn’t know that Delouise had purchased the ticket from the true finder or didn’t care to acknowledge it. Her simple grin into the camera remained unchanged from before, so Holly began to suspect the former.

“I am pleased to see,” Fords continued, “other business folks out there who have as much of an interest in the outcome of my little contest as I do! I’m greatly looking forward to getting the chance to speak with you on the day of the tour. Perhaps, if we find the time, we could compare our business methods to each other. I’m sure we’d each learn a thing or two from seeing things from a different perspective.”

The doe tapped off of the video as Fords returned to the same pleasantries and reminders as the other announcements. Certain of how little chance there was that the elevator back to her office floor was fixed by this point, Holly had to leave early. For the whole walk back, anticipation of the dozen-flight climb filled her mind and sparked a preemptive ache in her legs. It didn’t make the ascent back up any easier. The only reward that thinking could have gotten was the satisfaction of being proven right by the burn Holly felt as she exited the dingy emergency stairwell. No satisfaction came, however.

Steadying her breath, Holly trudged over to the familiar water cooler where she encountered her squirrel coworker earlier. They were nowhere to be seen now. As she approached, though, she caught sight of the kangaroo woman that coworker had gotten into an argument with last week. Recognizing she would have company for her drink, the deer righted herself more as she stepped up to the cooler.

The woman nodded silently and shuffled a couple steps aside to give Holly more space as she filled a simple, paper cup. In doing so, however, her long tail swung wide and bumped the side of a potted plant by the cooler. Holly reflexively reached out a free hand in its direction, but it toppled over too fast for her to reach at anything other than air. She glanced over her shoulder to confirm that nobody else saw the display before setting aside her cup and crouching down to upright the plant.

“Sorry,” she said. The word fell out of her mouth before she realized how odd it was to apologize for something she hadn’t done. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t have, uh-” Before she could continue, her coworker motioned at the ground where the pot had just fallen.

“Well, it’s not like there was anything to spill, so it’s all fine.” Looking down at the spot, it was completely spotless. Holly glanced into the pot itself and found the dirt within static and matte. “There’s probably not a single plant on this floor that isn’t made of plastic.”

“It’s a shame.” Holly sighed, releasing some of the tension from the moment. “A little bit of real atmosphere would go a long way here.”

“If only. I know a few things from my home garden that would really brighten things up around here, but you know.”

“Know what?”

“That even if something like that could get through the ten layers of forms and oversight to get approved, it’d take so long that they wouldn’t be in bloom anymore.”

“Ah. Right,” Holly nodded. She took a sip from her drink and allowed the brief conversation to fade away into the sound of the office. Just before she could finish, the loud silence was broken again.

“You’re in the PR department, right?”

Holly blinked as she registered being talked to before nodding. “I am, why?”

“There’s a cross-department meeting with upper management in a minute, so I figure I’ll see you there, too.”

The note of an upcoming meeting had almost left the doe’s mind by that point, but she shrugged. “Probably, yeah. I should probably get going there, while I’m thinking about it.”

“Ditto.”

Without another word, the two disposed of their cheap cups and walked a long path around the edge of the floor to the conference room. Occasionally they passed a door to a darkened office or another meeting in progress. From the few glances she caught of coworkers in them, Holly could tell they didn’t want to be there any more than she did.

Alabaster’s procession of meetings were long past being a source of anxiety for the doe. Instead, the tedium of the workplace ritual set in for her as soon as she sat down at the long, light wooden table in a chair less comfortable than what she had in her cubicle. The others there were familiar, at least, including not just the kangaroo woman she’d talked to earlier but also the badger and squirrel from before. As well, of course, the skunk who oversaw them all sat at the head of the table, tapping away at a few buttons on a speakerphone in the center of them all.

“Alright, I think you all know the drill by now.” The skunk looked down the table at the four, and then beyond at more coworkers Holly was even less familiar with, before starting a conference call with yet another layer of middle management.

The meeting, predictably, struck Holly as something that could have just as easily been an email sent out to the relevant departments. It centered around news concerning Alabaster’s own logistics department. Curandel and Leclerc, apparently, had worked out an agreement to allow Alabaster to utilize warehouses from DECO’s network. That much explained why the CEO already had an eye on DECO that morning, Holly supposed. Anything she had to do regarding this, however, was identical to the usual projects she was assigned to. Aside from the sparse few moments the conference addressed her directly, Holly allowed herself to tune out as best she could manage.

As far down the table as Holly could comfortably see, the others at the meeting grated under the slog as much as she did. Even as they finally broke off to return to their own work, the doe couldn’t quite grasp the ‘aura’ of authority the higher-ups on call were meant to invoke. Delving back into the maze of cubicles, her badger coworker walked in lockstep with her pace.

He rolled his shoulders. “DECO sure wants its hands on everything nowadays, doesn’t it?”

Holly nodded, and a moment later she realized the opportunity being presented to her. “I even saw Leclerc talking on the news this morning about wanting some deal with Fords.” Another twinge of consciousness about how she was perceived shook her, and she added “not that it’s that big business by comparison.”

“What it is, though, is a business they haven’t broken into, yet. I’m sure they talk about it like so much money they’re missing out on.”

“What do you think their end goal is?”

“If not a hostile takeover? Probably muscling out that other logistics company that normally delivers for Fords’.”

Thinking back to the passing research Holly did into Fords last month, the idea struck her as odd. Fords’ as a company was extremely insular. No ingredients were ever delivered to the complex, no employees were publicly known, and even the small fleet of advertising blimps which frequented sports stadiums were all operated in-house. The insistence on using a third party for outwards deliveries appeared an increasingly odd choice. Because of that, she thought, it became the only avenue that a businesswoman like Delouise could use to exploit Fords’.

“Do you think she has a good chance of it?”

“DECO has deep enough pockets to undercut the other company, I’m sure, but if it took going through all of this for Leclerc to even be able to talk to Fords? Something tells me she’s not looking to negotiate contracts anytime soon.”

“Makes sense,” Holly remarked, but before she could ask more the two split off towards separate corners of the floor. This time, at least, she wasn’t left with the sting of a missed chance.

Nothing else interesting came of the rest of Holly’s work day. On her way back home, she was left with the thought of DECO investing so much money into trying to accomplish what apparently no other company had been close to managing in over half a century. She figured something made Delouise feel that she was different to the rest, but the more Holly thought about it the more she saw the similarities between the CEO and her own boss.

Exactly when she arrived home, Holly realized that everything going on that day had managed to completely distract her from the continued mystery of Fords’ secret messages. The Ticket Hunters had long since produced a high resolution image of the third ticket already, so there the doe’s interest didn’t have to wait. On the ticket Delouise obtained, the bolded letters emphasized the R in “room,” U in “lucky five,” O in “confirm,” and Y in “you are.” That was all she could gather, as with each ticket the complex diagrams hunters created to draw meaning from the placement of the letters grew more complex. Now each was so esoteric and referential to past works that Holly struggled to keep up with the discussion in any meaningful capacity.

The lengths the Ticket Hunters went to left Holly stunned. She felt the allure of the vague notions about the grand prize just as strongly as anyone else, but now she felt like there was a rising denial that information about the contest was actually scarce. Where they had nothing to find, it seemed the hunters had taken to inventing their own clues. For many, though, it still wasn’t enough. The faction of disillusioned hunters grew louder by the day, and Delouise being the highest-status winner yet only emboldened their doomsaying. Arguments erupted that because the two most recent winners weren’t even the ones who found the tickets, it would be impossible to have planned in advance. Nothing could change that each new ticket holder was more influential, wealthy, and famous than the last. Doubt covered the idea of Fords’ running a genuine contest. While Holly couldn’t decide either way, she was sure that, knowing what she did of the three so far, she could hardly imagine how spending a day with them could be made pleasant.

Chapter Text

For the first time since the start of the contest months ago, Holly found herself among the first to learn the news of a new ticket being found. Among the first, despite the wait for the fourth ticket being the longest yet. Before, it barely took longer than a week for another discovery to be announced, but now one slow week quietly turned to two. With each passing day, the wait became increasingly obvious to the doe.

The Ticket Hunters proved the most unavoidable sign of the extended wait. With no new developments to take their attention from the act of hunting, a palpable, desperate energy emitted from their newest plans. To procure as many remaining Fords’ products as they could, elaborate schemes needed to be concocted. Organized cells of hunters divided the load of purchasing and searching through Fords’ wrappers to maximize their collective efficiency. Threads on the forum charted average delivery and restocking times for different stores. With this knowledge, hunters swept into stores at the right moments to ensure that as few non-hunters as possible got in on the hunt. Holly only marveled at the amount of waste involved. Surely, not even a group could eat candy at the rate they opened more.

Still nothing presented itself, and Holly was far from the only one perplexed by the sudden change in pace. Some Ticket Hunters adopted the theory that Golden Tickets were deliberately spread across multiple batches to ensure the contest lasted a certain time. These sects prioritized the identification and opening of the most recent shipments possible. Many, not convinced, became exasperated by the incredible odds of no new discoveries being made despite the vast majority of February’s shipments already poured over. Redoubling their efforts, they convinced themselves that their efforts would inevitably be rewarded within the next few days.

Some among the Ticket Hunters proposed a less scrupulous explanation. Theorizing that the fourth Golden Ticket was already found days ago and kept a secret, they claimed that the odd radio silence would continue until this greedy fourth winner received a high enough cash offer to part with their ticket. Holly supposed it wouldn’t be easy to keep something like that private, but also failed to get the image of backroom deals from her mind. The thought stayed on her mind as she reclined on her cramped sofa with a laptop resting on her, one evening after work.

She scrolled idly through a page of video subscriptions, noting how anything of interest already bore a slim red line on the thumbnail indicating it had been watched fully. Clicking instead through multiple channels she frequented produced nothing new, either. By the time she finally looped back around to her main subscriptions page, however, one new upload, mere minutes old, greeted her there. The video was the weekly upload of “Grazing with Grazeland,” a short form cooking show that Holly fell in with some time ago, and it was a sight for bored eyes.

Holly frequently used her apartment’s miniscule kitchen even before Grazing with Grazeland, but usually out of necessity. Admittedly, it also took her some time to acquire a taste for some of the channel’s content. The brand of videos focused on ‘fixing’ recipes never sat with her right, either because of how obvious it was that spending more time and money on a burger would improve on the quality of a fast food meal or because the recipes in question hardly appeared to need fixing to begin with. She supposed that those videos pushing the limits of high-end cooking garnered the most views, but it was the more informative, accessible variety that captured her imagination.

Luckily, the newest video was among the latter. Clicking on it, the familiar sight of Bridgette, the show’s host, awaited her. The black bear woman contributed a lot to the appeal of the channel in the eyes of Holly. She stood broad shouldered and sturdily built. The subtle highlight provided by the bear’s short, slightly-messy blonde hair framed a round face sporting square framed glasses and a reliable grin. Holly saw a genuineness to Bridgette where so many other online chefs carried an air of a fabricated identity. Thinking about it in that moment, the warm nature of the bear, so enthusiastic about sharing her craft, brought Fords herself back into Holly’s mind.

The doe’s own dinner, one of Grazing with Grazeland’s previous recipes, baked over in the kitchen while Holly watched the video. She didn’t pay too close attention to the finer details of the steps in cooking, instead absorbing the atmosphere of the video and allowing her mind to wander. If she wanted to, she could easily check back on the written recipe later. When a shot of the finished product, a delectable barbeque pork sandwich with sauce made from scratch, cut away to the black bear delivering the video’s outro, Holly barely noticed.

Bridgette delivered thanks to her monthly supporters as their usernames flew by along the edges of the screen. Holly long ago began tuning out these common refrains in anticipation of the bear teasing the subject of her next video at the tail end of the episode. Eventually the list finished scrolling and the deer paid attention again. “And also, some apologies in advance are in order to you all,” the bear said, leaning her paws onto the countertop.

“I know I normally let my supporters take the reins when coming up with new video themes, but this time we’ll be doing it a bit differently.”

“You see,” she said as her grin widened. The bear reached under the counter, something she often did to grab ingredients and utensils from off-camera. What happened next, then, was already perfectly framed by her camera. Holly’s eyes widened as a familiar golden glint entered the frame. She blinked, and her mind finally caught up to register the ticket now held on each side by the bear. “I’ve got some big plans in the works when it comes to researching some new recipes. Before you ask: no, this isn’t a mockup, it’s the real deal. Because it’s the real deal, you can expect a string of themed episodes breaking down some of the candy-making magic from Fords’ more famous products before we get back to the usual format.”

Links appeared in the corners of the screen. “Until then, I’ll post updates on my socials which you can find here ,” she pointed vaguely to her sides, “and in the video description. Take care, now!” That simply, the video ended. With it, now only one Golden Ticket in the world remained undiscovered.

An array of other thumbnails filled the video player, and Holly struggled to collect her thoughts. Looking at all feeds and forums she knew, not a single outlet had reported on Bridgette’s bombshell announcement from the new video. After a minute, the reality of her situation dawned on her. It took little debate before Holly decided to forgo her usual policy and make the first move herself.

First, Holly waited a moment to judge the qualities of the prior announcement threads on the Ticket Hunter forum. They tended towards briefness, so not much work awaited her. Still, the doe couldn’t help but let her normal considerations for careful wording, already fresh in her mind after a day at work, take control. After carefully considering the whole of her post, she finally made it public and informed the hunters that they had once again failed.

Immediately and intensely, the response flooded in. In the post, the doe included a time stamp specifically to the bear’s announcement from the video. With how quickly the replies began, the hunters obviously didn’t watch through the entire Grazing with Grazeland episode like Holly. Instead, they first engaged in a whirlwind series of posts to confirm or deny the legitimacy of Bridgette’s ticket. Bridgette stated in the video that what she held was real, and a brief, hectic debate analyzing it confirmed she told the truth. Though she never held it close to the camera, comparing the exact look of the text on the fourth Golden Ticket to the first three revealed the new, bolded letters included. This ticket’s set contained the D in “finder,” W in “Who,” R in “present,” O in “two,” and L in “planned.”

The presence of a fifth letter bolded in the ticket’s message should have been an incredible revelation. All previous tickets contained only four of these special letters, and now surely any theory revolving around the placement of the letters needed a complete revision to work for both four-letter and five-letter arrangements. It would be a major shakeup, if the Ticket Hunters hadn’t moved so quickly from discussing the puzzle to discussing the fourth winner.

Holly immediately found opinion on the bear torn, far more than Azure, Faye, or Delouise before. Given her position, many assumed she was someone genuinely invested in Fords and her methods. That alone provided a change of pace compared to the winners all superficially trying to get something out of the ewe. However, others contended just as intensely that Bridgette only valued Fords for potential content, the chef being just another in a line of celebrity ticket holders.

Emboldened by the response to her announcement post, Holly dared to reply to the thread in defense of Bridgette. She knew full well that no logical need existed. The bear had not and would not ever see what the Ticket Hunters said about her. Regardless, Holly still felt value in the show. Though not a prominent fan in any way, the doe knew how Grazing with Grazeland injected newfound inspiration into the chore of cooking for herself. Bridgette’s recipes proved not only easily followable, but always producing a satisfying meal in the end, though Holly herself always took full advantage of any time the bear noted extra spice should be added to taste. That preference alone marked the sole, occasional alteration to be made to Bridgette’s work. Beyond that, the deep, genuine appreciation the bear brought to her craft kept Holly engaged.

Whatever came during the tour, Holly argued, Bridgette’s care for cooking and attention to detail left her the most likely of the four to leave with Fords’ mysterious grand prize at the end of the day. At least, those qualities would make her more willing to engage with Fords than the rest. Anything she said hardly convinced the disgruntled Ticket Hunters, however. For them, the popularity of Bridgette’s videos proved beyond a doubt the prearranged nature of the entire contest. Bridgette’s channel boasted only a fraction of Azure or Faye’s following, and the per-week schedule of finding tickets had broken, but hunters continued to pile into the thread and exclaim that anyone still buying Fords’ products must want to waste their money.

Though Holly made no attempts to defend Bridgette further, each time she refreshed the page another set of jabs from disillusioned Ticket Hunters awaited her. The doe recalled why she avoided contact with the hunters for so long, and without another post she slinked back off into obscurity. Back on her timelines, Bridgette’s smaller fanbase barely produced a visible ripple in the sea of Azure and Faye’s weaponized fans. The feud continued, only briefly interrupted by the occasional truce to sling venom at the two more recent winners. Invariably, after they found no satisfying response to their attack, they returned to insulting each other for any reason imaginable. As their fights continued in circles, mentions of Fords’ became more sparse. Holly wondered if anyone involved would even remember why they started fighting by the time the contest had ended.

Only when a video appeared on one of her timelines did Holly realize the thought of Fords’ announcement video completely slipped her mind. Now, with no projects to distract her, the deer finally gave it a watch. For the most part, though, nothing stood out from the other videos.

“Congratulations, Miss Grazeland, on being the penultimate finder of a Golden Ticket! I’m certain that your knowledge of cooking will be a delight to the rest of the tour, though I’d like to think I still have a thing or two I can teach you when the day arrives.” The rest contained information Holly didn’t care to hear for a fourth time in a row.

As she closed the video, the doe now couldn’t agree more with the ewe’s energy. She took the matter back to her group chats, now having enough of the broader internet for the next week. Luckily for the panging in her chest, Grazing with Grazeland already became a common topic for them months ago. Holly’s friends proved more than willing to discuss recent videos and encourage her culinary endeavors, creating a clean avenue to bring up the contest yet again.

More than anything, the revelation of Bridgette joining Fords’ tour drew sympathy from Holly’s friends. Knowing all they did of the other three, after all, meant they knew that nothing pleasant could come of having to deal with them all together for an entire day. Two weeks ago, Holly agreed with them fully. Now doubt crawled back into her mind. If another person actually interested in Fords’ found the final ticket, would they and Bridgette be good company for each other?

The conversation drifted on, and Holly’s mind wandered. She never considered herself a dedicated fan of Bridgette or her show, but even she saw an opportunity like that would be special. Beyond simply watching the bear’s videos, Holly also contributed a small amount of support to Bridgette each month through another site. Bridgette often posted about potential fan meetups for her direct supporters on that page. Given that Holly lived on the opposite end of the continent, however, she never paid them any attention before. Even knowing nothing about what went on when Bridgette met with fans, the allure of having a near one-on-one meeting during the tour latched onto Holly’s imagination.

When Holly’s eyes finally came back into focus, she realized how far down the stairs from her apartment she stood. She must have started pacing at some point, she knew, but since then walked out the door, locked it behind her, and made it half of the way outside. The same thing happened back in February, on the first night after Fords announced the contest to the world. Now with the warmer weather creeping in with spring it was less of an issue that Holly again neglected to bring her coat along.

Stepping out into the long shadows cast across her street by the evening light, Holly sighed quietly. The last thing she wanted was to get her hopes too high again. She resolved to allow this surprise walk to be nothing more. A lap around the block would be all, though it just so happened that included the same corner store Holly saw cleared out on that first night. Still, she kept the trotting of her hooves against the sidewalk to a steady pace. This time, the store would be an afterthought spared only a glance.

Holly passed the store and found her glance immediately complicated. Though the shop door stood wide open, a small crowd cluttered the view inside. At least half a dozen people surrounded the counter by the entrance, leaving the shopkeep nowhere to be seen even when Holly craned her neck. The group chattered loudly, but spoke over each other enough that nothing could be made out distinctly.

The doe only barely began to wonder what they were doing until she noticed the unmistakable purple and gold glint of a Fords’ wrapper peeking out from the bag of the closest person to Holly, a casually-dressed capybara woman. Each figure in the pack carried one or two plastic bags from the shop, with each bag stuffed full. Immediately, Holly understood these were Ticket Hunters. What surprised her most about them wasn’t their group tactics or unassuming appearance, but the fact that it took so long for Holly to put a face to the hunters. For the months spent watching them scheme and argue while the contest unfolded around them, they never became more than a distant impression. Now, the deer realized they operated on her block.

The hunters finished their shopping and casually turned to leave the store, one at a time. Holly only waited for the first couple to clear out before leaving, herself. She never saw the state of the candy rack inside, but she didn’t need to. Her view of the desolate shelves on the first night of the contest still sat clearly in her mind. Back then she expected the rush. Now Fords’ faded from the minds of the world at large, but the same problem presented itself.

She walked on, cursing herself for falling for the same trick twice in a row. The public furor surrounding the contest ended months ago, yes, but just earlier that day she read about the increased coordination of the Ticket Hunters in their desperation to secure the final tickets. If anything, she should have been able to see this outcome from a mile out. Holly’s frustration moved from inwards to directed at the hunters, and for a brief moment even towards Fords and Bridgette before she realized that wouldn’t help. However much she kept thinking, though, she couldn’t produce anything in its place that would help. With the hunters’ efforts stacked against her, any fantasy about the sheep or bear became tinged with a tightness in Holly’s chest. She hated to think about it, but now she understood just how lucky someone had to be to merely find an unsold Fords’ product, let alone a Golden Ticket within.

Chapter Text

The world had been unprepared for the wait between the third and fourth tickets. Holly anticipated the hunt might slow down over time, but still struggled with the lack of news. Now, the world waited for closure. It quickly became apparent, however, that any expectations paled in comparison to the wait that came next. The rest of the month passed silently, and the ticket remained hidden. April exited, May entered, and nobody appeared any closer to ending the hunt than when they began in February.

The world failed to make any progress, but not for lack of trying. Since April, the entire Ticket Hunter community became flooded with fake sightings of the supposed final Golden Ticket. A few claimed to be holding onto the prize for themselves, but most came in the form of false auction listings on any site that would take them. Given how Delouise arrived at the third ticket, however, the thought of the fifth being sold off to the highest bidder rested on the minds of all hunters, and so the number of fake listings increased by the week. Many still involved in the hunt produced extensive guides on noticing the telltale signs of a fake ticket, circulating rapidly in the absence of any substantial news.

Whenever news arrived, it brought little comfort to Holly. She assured herself that she held no interest in finding the last of the tickets. Still, the almost daily false alarms made her heart drop, even when every time the announcement was undercut by a lack of confirmation from Fords. Every time, she tried again to convince herself to not be attached to the contest anymore, and every time she seemed to fail. By the time fake listings started to infiltrate her timelines in the form of targeted advertisements, she knew change was in order.

Trying to forget about Fords quickly became a struggle against the timeline environment Holly unconsciously cultivated over the previous months. News about hunter organizations kept reaching her, including the tension growing between their factions. Recent developments reached mainline news for the first time since the beginning of the contest. Stores with candy sections placed sell limits and occupancy caps in desperate bids to spare themselves from any open conflict between Ticket Hunters trying to buy out entire shipments of Fords products before anyone else got their hands on it. Holly feared the chaos of that first week, feeling as though it bubbled just beneath the surface for the moment that the hunter’s fragile peace finally broke down again.

When videos started appearing in her subscriptions covering dramatic scenes of in-store fights, it failed to surprise the doe. She never seriously tried to become involved in the hunt, and the reemerging violence only strengthened her confidence in that decision. The Ticket Hunter forum, also, made it easy to create distance. Hunters that couldn’t fight each other in person took to their niche corner of the internet to form grudges and lash out at each other. Before long, the experience of trying to observe the hunt through the forum grew as difficult as trying to browse one of the many Fords-related tags across larger sites.

Fords’ trending tags, of course, still brimmed with aggressive fans fighting on behalf of their favorite ticket holder. Their arguments circled around endlessly, entrenched in stagnant points, and choked out any other activity regarding the contest itself. Holly, already familiar with enough Azure and Faye talking points to last her a lifetime, tried to place her mind anywhere else. Luckily for her, she found opportunity in May’s quick approach. Her friend group, terminally busy throughout the gradual melting of winter, finally sprung back into active planning throughout spring. Still acutely self-conscious of how these friends perceived her fixation with the idea of Fords before, she redoubled her efforts to be able to reconnect with them in a normal setting. Everything fell into place, a cute spot in town with a spacious deck for the group to meet up at and enjoy the drinks and pleasant weather, arranged for them to come together on the first Saturday of May.

On the first Saturday of May, Holly snapped awake to the sound of her phone ringing obnoxiously on her end table. She rolled over and sloppily tapped at the screen to see what the matter was, and felt her heart drop as soon as her eyes landed on the message. Unlike the month leading up to this morning, the culprit wasn’t another announcement of the alleged fifth Golden Ticket being found. Fords’ contest never entered her mind, in fact, as she saw an incoming call from a number the deer recognized well: her boss. Holly forced herself upright and put her glasses on before answering.

“Hello,” she greeted meekly, as if she could somehow escape the inevitable by not being noticed.

“Perez,” the curt tone of her boss rang through from the other side, “we need you in, today. All hands on deck.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Emergency situation. I don’t have the time to explain the whole thing to everyone I call today, you all will learn what when you’re here. And that should be soon .”

With the simple warning, her boss abruptly ended the call. Holly groaned loudly and flopped backwards onto her mattress for another precious moment. As soon as she could manage to pull herself back up again, she prepared for an unplanned day at work. She rushed through her morning commute, no doubt thanks to how many others slept in that morning. Arriving at the Alabaster office, she glanced down at her watch and found herself only slightly later than on any other day. She sent out a silent hope that her boss considered that good enough for the circumstances.

Stepping into the lobby, the sight of a sparse group greeted Holly. She glanced around, unable to find the ‘all hands on deck’ promised in her wakeup call. An odd calmness filled the open room rather than the usual, frenetic energy of the start of the work day. Whatever emergency situation emerged overnight, Holly supposed, it must have been department-specific. All of this extra room gave Holly plenty of space to maneuver, and also provided her with an unobstructed view of the dark, agape elevator door on the other side of the lobby. The doe, already well familiar with what the sight meant, felt her shoulders drop as she shuffled towards the stairwell.

She took a moment to catch her breath after clearing the final flight of stairs on her climb. Upon stepping through the door into the office floor, it looked only slightly more occupied than expected. Every coworker walking past carried none of the urgency Holly’s boss instilled in her earlier, and none of them appeared to be doing anything other than their normal work. Without her promised explanation about what the emergency situation the department was supposed to be dealing with, the doe simply started walking on her own.

After just a moment, her squirrel coworker stepped out from a row of cubicles and trudged alongside her. They carried none of their usual energy with them, and their eyes never connected with Holly’s. Instead, they locked down onto a mug of coffee grasped tightly between their paws. A moment of silence followed before Holly spoke up.

“Have they told you anything about today, yet?”

They blinked, only just now registering they had been walking with another person the whole time. “Me? Nah, nothing. Sorry.”

“Here’s hoping they give us a meeting or something to let us know, at least.”

“Yeah,” they half-said, half-yawned.

Holly gave them a sympathetic look. “Are you doing alright?”

The squirrel nodded. “Usually it’s fine if I’m up at the witching hour on a Friday night, since I can just wake up at noon, after. What a day today is…”

She only mustered a sharp, sympathetic inhale in response. “I won’t keep you from your caffeine, then,” she said, and peeled off towards her desk. If they said anything in response, it came out in a form too guttural for Holly to understand.

With no way to find any answers to herself, Holly joined the others in returning to business as usual. Despite the apparently unusual circumstances, she received no sign of her boss anywhere while the work day stretched on. Every task became punctuated by the lingering mystery of the supposed problem in the workplace. By the afternoon, Holly’s curiosity overpowered her, and she took a break in pursuit of finding anyone else to talk to. Conveniently, her kangaroo coworker walked up to the water cooler at almost precisely the same time.

“Hey,” her coworker waved briefly.

“Hi.” Holly paused to think about how to phrase the question, but her in ended up being provided for her.

“How are you enjoying this ‘very important emergency shift’?”

“I’ve spent most of it waiting for someone to tell me what the matter is.”

“You and the rest of us,” the kangaroo scoffed, looking across the office floor. “Whatever the problem is supposed to be, it’s apparently not important enough to call in the repairfolk about the elevator.”

Holly blinked in surprise. “They haven’t been here at all to fix it?”

“Not until Monday, I’m sure.”

The doe nodded. “It’s just incredible to me. Such a big problem, and nobody knows what’s going on?”

“One thing I’ve been considering,” her coworker remarked, “is that it was actually only a problem for boss-lady up there, and she just made the rest of us come in with her today to drag us down to her level.”

“You wouldn’t think she would, would she?”

“I wouldn’t put it entirely out of the picture, at least. She sure doesn’t seem like the type to think about if we had any plans for the weekend.”

Only at that moment, Holly remembered her plans for that afternoon. She glanced down at her watch in a panic. The time she and her friends agreed on weeks ago was soon, and they were still blissfully unaware of her being called into work. Already, the kangaroo raised a brow curiously at Holly. Her expression must have already shown something was wrong.

“Sorry, touchy subject?” Her coworker asked.

“No, it’s fine, just,” Holly gazed back at the vague direction of her cubicle, “there’s something I need to grab at my desk!”

She shuffled off, not responding even when the kangaroo woman called out behind her “You didn’t even get anything to drink?”

Holly knew this emergency shift left her no chance of making it to the meetup in time. She knew, also, that her boss still proved absent. Let alone trying to reveal the floor’s emergency, she had yet to even make her presence known to anyone. With how many others seemed absent around the building, Holly began wondering if the skunk woman chose to stay home, herself, despite any summons from on high. Thinking about the situation that way, regret over not simply ignoring the phone call crept into the deer’s mind.

Either way, Holly knew she needed to update the others about her situation. She subtly studied the lethargic activity still milling about in the halls around her. Lengthy gaps formed between anyone strolling by, and still no sign of her boss in particular. She knew only a couple, brief messages would get the matter across to her friends, but still strove to maximize any time she could use. When one last coworker disappeared around the corner, she silently lept into action and retrieved her phone from her bag. Her hooves, though, never gave her much dexterity when typing, and her frantic pace only slowed her down with frequent typos.

When her phone finally dropped safely back into her bag, Holly let out a breath held in since she started her gambit. A second later, she realized her relief came too soon. With a chill rushing down her spine, the deer froze as she felt a familiar gaze burning into the back of her skull. For a moment she considered staying frozen in place, but a trained instinct led her to slowly turn her chair around to meet the disapproving glare of her boss. Arms crossed and eyes intense, Holly knew that, if looks could kill, this look in particular would have already done her in years ago.

“Perez,” the skunk addressed her with a familiar coldness, “it goes without saying how bad you are at hiding that, doesn’t it?”

Holly shifted about uncomfortably. “Right, sorry.”

“And correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, her voice dripping with vitriol, “but didn’t you get that watch of yours to stop exactly this from happening?”

“That’s also right.”

“Here I hoped that calling you over an emergency situation would be enough to keep you on task, but it looks like I do need to say it. So, unless this is some way of telling me that you’re dissatisfied at your position,” she trailed off.

The doe glanced down, tending to creases in her skirt to avoid eye contact. “It isn’t, no.”

“Then remember I have enough on my plate today to not have time to spare on herding all of you individually. Get yourself undistracted, won’t you?”

Holly nodded meekly. She waited until her boss finished turning away before swiveling her seat back towards her desk. Looking over at her bag, across the cubicle from her, she knew her friends’ disappointed reactions to her situation must already be pouring in. Now, she found herself helpless to even check those. Even if her boss experienced a miraculous change of heart and allowed her to walk out at that moment, Holly knew she now lacked the energy or will to meet up with her friends.

For a moment, she feared that she may not have the energy left in her to simply finish her day. Thankfully, however, the rest of the day drifted by without another incident. Her lack of energy hardly made her commute home any easier, though. The subway station abounded with people, unlike her, going to hundreds of different planned nights out across the city. Instead, she sifted her way through the crowd with great effort. At times she pushed against the flow of commuters, and after a struggle finally broke free from them onto the quieter street where her apartment waited.

She hardly looked forward to the evening awaiting her at home, either. The day at work already left her drained, but knowing she now trotted back to her apartment having missed her best shot at spending more time with her friends for the first time in weeks. That deflated whatever enthusiasm left in her body. Her mind wandered, trying to find anything that could save her from another night scrolling through timelines of the same arguments and hate, but came up worryingly empty. Holly’s legs carried her on their own, so lost in her own thoughts that she only barely managed to not fall face-first over a push cart that suddenly rolled in front of her on the sidewalk.

Freezing and looking up, Holly found herself in front of that familiar corner store down the street from her apartment. In front of her, pushing the cart out the front door of the shop, stood a diminutive fennec woman, small compared to even Holly’s meek build. Her small amount of short, dark hair tied up to fit through a square cap she wore. The hat, a striking maroon, matched the tone of her shirt, her sleeves and khaki pants rolled up a few inches for the warmer weather. Her cart, now empty, pointed to the open back of a delivery truck painted in the exact same hue.

Holly stepped back to give her some space in navigating the cart around her. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”

“Ah, no worries,” the fox said in turn. She gave the doe a little nod before continuing on her way to the parked van.

Nodding in turn, Holly took four more steps down the sidewalk before freezing up again. She whipped herself back around as the flash of recognition settled into her mind. The fennec fox’s uniform struck her as familiar, and it took only a moment of connecting the dots to recall where she saw it last. During her previous research into Fords, she saw that exact uniform worn by the obscure delivery company Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies partnered with for decades.

She turned her gaze towards the shop. Surely, if what she saw was a fresh delivery of Fords products, then surely a number of Ticket Hunters would already be upon the store. Holly witnessed their precise regimenting of when particular stores received their shipments, and only now considered that their findings may not be infallible. Leaning into the door, left open to let in a pleasant breeze, she beheld a full rack of Fords products. That alone became a marvel, a sight unwitnessed since February. No denying: the hunter’s strategy went awry, and now a new opportunity presented itself to Holly.

Despite herself, Holly stepped into the store. She wandered over to the unraided candy shelf, wondering why it felt so odd for her. Even with her whole life worth of memories before the start of this contest, somehow the sight of desolate gaps in candy aisles became what she expected of any store she visited. Now, more than simply finding some, the whole array of Fords’ products awaited her consideration. Chocolate bars sat beside fruit gummies, which sat along hard candies, boldly standing out from the competition with their vintage violet and gold wrapping.

Holly knew better than to think she had any chance at something greater with this purchase. She also was anything but a chronic stress-eater. Still, the opportunity to reminisce on a taste that spent the last several months evading her provided some break in the gloom of that day. After just a second of taking in her options like a child in a candy shop, she plucked a simple candy bar off of the shelf and carried it over to the clerk at the register. As they rang her up, she assured herself this purchase would be the start and end of things. The last thing she needed was to become a chronic stress-eater. She politely refused a bag from the clerk, instead dropping the bar into her bag alongside her phone and continuing the walk home.

As she scaled the stairs in her apartment building, the doe kept reasoning with herself. After all, a bit of sugar could give her just enough of a boost to start making something of her evening. She never knew who it was that she needed to justify herself to so often, but the compulsion stuck around for frivolous little things like this. No matter whether she convinced herself that it was the right decision, she couldn’t go back on it now. Not because it was impossible, but because of how absurd she would appear, returning to the store for a refund on a single candy bar. Instead, she dropped her things on the kitchen counter by the door and absentmindedly tore the paper wrapper off of the candy.

Without looking, she spun about and sat down onto her couch. As she did, though, she and the candy bar dropped through a long, amber sunbeam streaming in through her window. An odd glint caught the corner of her eye. When Holly looked down, she found herself face to face with the final Golden Ticket. The doe blinked, blinked again, and blinked once more. The ticket never disappeared like the mirage she expected it to be. Reaching slowly and gently, she tugged at the corner of the ticket to pull it away from the candy bar itself, as if acting too quickly would scare it away.

Holly set the candy bar down onto her coffee table, careful to make sure that it rested only on the wrapper, before turning the ticket over in her hands. It shimmered just as brilliantly as the other four before it, especially in the light of the evening sun. The front side, the one which first stared Holly in the face, contained just a simple print of the company logo with its fanciful ‘F’s and cartoon of the ewe from the videos. Flipping it to the back, she received all of the confirmation she could ever need. The same message as before greeted her in Fords’ own words, but the bolded letters created a different pattern to any of its four mates.

After another moment, possibilities began to catch up to Holly’s mind. With so many hoaxes exposed in just the last week, the last thing she wanted was to be remembered as just another poor fool tricked by a fake Golden Ticket. She fetched her laptop, opened three separate, reputable guides for spotting ticket forgeries, and set about studying her supposed prize. Quickly, though, it became obvious that she now held the genuine article. Every detail that needed to match up with the others did flawlessly, leaving the sole variation exactly where it was meant to be: in the hidden message. Holly’s ticket bolded an A in “admittance,” G in “grand prize,” I in “locating,” C in “ticket,” and M in “time.”

Thinking about the final clue to Fords’ mysterious grand prize would have to wait. Holly grabbed her phone, ready to take enough pictures of it to prove its legitimacy. As she tapped the screen, her eyes widened at the time. Somehow she sat in that spot, marveling at the ticket, for the last ten minutes. To her, it felt like seconds. Once she shook her surprise, she snapped a few photos of each side of the ticket. She closed the camera app on her phone, leaving her hooved thumb now hovering over the messaging app she and her friend used.

After thinking for a moment, Holly grinned. She turned her camera back on and turned the lens on herself, posed casually with the ticket clearly in hand. Attaching it to a message, she assured them that their evening together was back on. The response from her friends flooded in immediately, each one enthusiastically congratulating her on her unbelievable luck. In turn, her own energy multiplied, and she pulled herself from her phone to ensure she wasted no more time preparing for the night of drinking and celebrating ahead. A lot of new things suddenly entered Holly’s life, foremost of them being the amusing thought that, for the first time in a long time, Holly didn’t feel too tired for her friends after work.

Chapter Text

Again, Holly felt herself yanked from sleep by her ringing phone. Her head swimming, the doe’s heart dropped again upon realizing what that could mean. The fear cleared her head, and she rolled over to reluctantly check her phone screen. The number wasn’t from work. She let out a breath of relief. Glancing down at it again, though, she took the breath back in. Instead, the number belonged to her apartment’s landlord. More than ever the temptation to let the call pass tugged at her, but she tapped the accept button to avoid seeing him at her door minutes later.

“Hello,” she greeted softly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and putting on her glasses.

Her landlord’s gravely voice barked through the line. “What did you do ?”

Holly paused, unsure if she heard his question in full. “Did what?”

“You tell me,” he answered, “ you’re the one that has a dozen news crews standing outside looking for you.”

The deer’s eyes widened as she put the pieces together. She rose from her bed haphazardly stumbled over to her bedroom window. A story below, several vans emblazoned with the logos of both local and national news stations crowded the street. From each van came a set of cables snaking towards a different camera crew. They tangled and passed over each other, eventually coalescing into a group of reporters keeping watch over the front door to the apartment building.

Suddenly, her pulse quickened. Holly knew for certain that she only spoke with her friends about last evening’s discovery. While none of them committed to vows of secrecy regarding it, of course, the group still celebrated her surprise winnings openly. Still, she doubted any of them leaked the news after their night of drinks and revelry. She racked her brain, trying to recall anyone who had the time to talk to others that night. Nothing obvious appeared. Some details of the night blurred together, but she recalled a few moments of showing off the Golden Ticket directly to some of her more skeptical friends. Her head spun, had someone else at the restaurant caught a glimpse of the ticket and spread the news from there? The Ticket Hunters always proved quick to spread the news of new findings, but could they have found out so much about where she lived, in just that night?

“ Perez ,” her landlord’s voice rang from the phone, pulling her back into the moment, “don’t try to ignore me.”

“Right, sorry.”

“You’re gonna go give them what they want and tell them to stop blocking the door to the place,” he continued, sarcastically feigning a sympathetic tone. “Aren’t you?”

“Of course, I’ll go talk to them now,” the doe said, but continued standing by her window and staring blankly at the crowd waiting for her. The weight of so much attention pressed down on her shoulders and pinned her in place before she could move her feet.

“You’d better, or I’m going down there and making them get out of here myself,” he scoffed before hanging up.

Still, it took Holly another few minutes to muster enough will to get dressed and make her way out of her apartment and down the stairs of the building. The entire time, her mind raced with all of the questions she may need to prepare answers for. This would be her first time on the news, a far cry from the years of experience the others certainly possessed. Azure and Delouise both revealed their tickets on the news already, and certainly Faye and Bridgette had made appearances before with their own famous work. Holly had nothing of the sort to her name. With no first impression to work off of, would she be free to say whatever she wanted, or would have they already slotted her into a narrative they expected her to follow?

Holly steadied herself some at the base of the stairs. She cracked open the door just enough for light to begin pouring through in a thin line crossing her body before she stopped. Reaching into her pocket, she realized she left her ticket, the exact thing these reporters wanted to see her for, still laying on the coffee table in her apartment. Hoping none of the news crews got a good enough look at her for the embarrassing incident to be linked back to her, she retreated back up the stairs and fetched the fifth Golden Ticket. Only then did she hastily try to make herself more presentable before stepping outside. The morning was still early enough for a chill in the air, and she shivered slightly as she cautiously approached the reporters.

Beams of sunlight illuminated only half of the street, the rest obscured by rows of buildings, and a chill filled the morning air. Holly shivered, dressed only in a simple t-shirt and shorts in her rush to get out of the apartment. The cold hardly affected the crews, though, and as soon as they noticed her, all of their cameras honed in directly on her. Next came the reporters, each sporting a large microphone and forming into a tight semicircle, pinning her between them and the wall.

“Holly Perez,” one called out from the crowd, “any thoughts to give us on uncovering the last of the tickets?”

The doe took a half step back. She expected being interviewed, but also expected some kind of greeting first. “Well,” she began after a second, the words coming out in a stream of consciousness as she collected her thoughts. “It’s exciting, isn’t it? I didn’t expect to even have a chance at getting one, but, well… here I am, right?” She held the ticket up for the cameras, gripped tightly between both of her hands.

Another spoke up. “So that means you’re planning on using it, yourself?”

A different voice barked through the group. “Are you aware of the offers in the millions that have been extended for this ticket?”

“Millions?” Holly repeated, baffled. “You mean millions of dollars? No one’s talked about that to me at all, I only just woke up!”

“Will you consider any offers in the coming weeks,” came the voice of the first, “as they arrive?”

“I,” she began, only to stumble on a word and pause for a moment, “I don’t know, should I be?”

Instead of an answer, more questions piled on. “Did you not get your own ticket from another?”

Holly was taken by surprise by the question, but attempted to answer. “No? How could I have?”

“You have no connections, no bids of your own you made for the ticket? What methods did you use to obtain the last ticket?”

“I bought a chocolate bar from the corner store and found it in the wrapper when I got home,” she insisted, “isn’t that how the others did it?”

“And how many did it take,” a reporter nearly cut her off, “buying aimlessly?”

“Just the one,” Holly replied. A second afterwards she worried that just gave the wrong answer.

“One per day,” one of the reporters followed up before Holly could continue explaining, “or just one ?”

“I already knew I didn’t have a chance of winning,” she said, “so I didn’t bother buying any until I just wanted one normally? That one just ended up being the only one I needed, I guess.”

The response provoked a cacophony of pointed questions for her. Holly struggled to make out any of the details over the clamor until one question cut through the noise. “Are you attending the tour on behalf of Alabaster or Jezebel Curandel?”

Holly considered the narrative and quickly felt a pit form in her middle. Holly rarely caught glimpses of middle management from her position, always far away or heard through a conference call with her department. She had no contact whatsoever with Alabaster’s CEO, a thought that usually comforted her. Now, however, the connection had been drawn for her. Holly knew she made no agreements with anybody to meet Fords on their behalf. To the outside observer, though, the circumstances clearly appeared too perfect to be anything else.

Regardless, she tried to dispel the connection. “I’ve never talked to her,” she stammered out, “so I couldn’t be, right? It’s all something I’m doing outside of work, I mean.”

A different reporter retorted quickly. “Would obtaining the contest’s grand prize affect your standing in the company at all? Would you use it to advance yourself if presented the opportunity?”

The doe’s answers quickly became more desperate. “What would it be able to do? I don’t even know what it could be, really! I haven’t had the time to think about the last clue.”

“What do you think your chances are for going home with the grand prize?”

“Well, I don’t know about that, either,” she continued to insist. “Nobody knows how they’re going to be picking who gets it, so nobody really knows how they’re supposed to try to get it if they want it.”

“Do you have any comments,” the reporters continued, unfazed by the deer’s panicked demeanor, “for the other four ticket holders you’ll be competing against?”

“What should I say? Good luck?” The frenzied pace of the questioning left her with no chance to collect her thoughts about the rest. In any other situation, she may have spared a few enthusiastic words about getting to meet Bridgette in person. Now even she fell to the back of her mind as she attempted to get her story straight in the minds of the journalists.

They moved onto different topics, slamming her with more questions. “Do you have any travel plans in place to reach the Fords’ complex?” The question also gave Holly pause. In her rush to get back out the door to meet with her friends last evening, she never considered how to  arrange the thousand-mile journey from her home city to the rural town Fords had built on the outskirts of.

Several more questions drifted over the crowd before Holly’s attention returned to the moment. By now, the reporters’ questions began looping back on each other. Holly tried to ignore them, afraid of accidentally contradicting her previous answers in the heat of the moment. Instead, she took another step away from the encroaching journalists, only for her back to bump into the door of the apartment building.

“Right, I should probably go take care of those things before I forget!” She blindly fumbled a hand behind her until she eventually found the door handle. “You all have a good day, I suppose?”

With only that meager farewell, she shuffled urgently back into the building. She shut the door strongly behind her, already too panicked to think about if it came off as too harsh. The stairs back up to her own apartment lay before her, but she waited. She caught her breath, leaning against the door and trying to will her pulse into slowing down again. The few minutes she spent outside felt like an hour, and left her similarly exhausted. She thought back to the ease with which Azure handled the press conference where she revealed the first Golden Ticket. Despite the chaos in the room, her years of experience with being interviewed carried her through. Holly had only two weeks to familiarize herself with the attention. She needed to, if only to have the energy to wake up in the morning on the day of the tour.

“So,” a familiar, raspy voice snapped her out of her thoughts, “did you tell them to leave while you were out there?” Her landlord leaned out of a doorway by the stairs, a surly gecko man who, like Holly, clearly hadn’t readied for the day yet.

Holly jumped as she suddenly became aware of her surroundings again. She pushed off of the door to stand upright. “I think I gave them all of the answers they wanted, so they should be going now,” she said, taking a step towards the stairway.

“That doesn’t sound like you telling them to get out ,” he nearly growled.

Holly nodded meekly. “Right, sorry, they didn’t really let me get a word in.”

“Couldn’t get a word in? Weren’t they interviewing you?” He pinched at his brow. “Whatever. ‘Sorry’ won’t get them off my sidewalk. If they aren’t gone in an hour, you’re gonna go out there and talk to them proper.”

“Of course,” Holly said, turning away and quickly trotting up the stairs until she felt her landlord’s glare finally subside.

Back in her apartment, Holly allowed herself to stop and breathe for a minute. She collected herself, despite her first round of interviews not going the way she hoped. Still, she tried to assure herself that it could have gone much worse than it had. Soon, those dozen news stations would broadcast her answers across the continent, and the most she could do now was try to take her mind off of the matter. Not thinking, she reached for her phone.

Her heart dropped again. Every time, Fords provided an update video to confirm the other four winners. Holly hadn’t seen any video like it yet, and her mind rushed to the worst cases. She considered the possibility of her ticket turning out to be an elaborate fake, of her mistake leading to her reputation collapsing under accusations of producing the fake ticket, herself. Her pulse quickened. It remained that way, even when her hoof tapped on the thumbnail of the latest video on the Fords’ channel, uploaded just that morning.

The modest jingle and intro to the video played out exactly the same as before. Once again, the ewe sat behind her desk, smiling forwards towards the camera. Despite the scene looking identical, the doe’s mind filled with a completely different set of feelings. A brief pause before the sheep began talking stretched in Holly’s head as she wondered if those bright eyes had meant to look at her directly.

“I am pleased to announce,” Fords began, “that the search for my five Golden Tickets has finally come to a close! To that end, congratulations, Miss Perez, on being the one to find the final ticket.”

Holly expected to hear her name coming from Fords’ mouth. Still, the sound felt completely surreal to her ears. The ewe continued. “And, might I add, in so few attempts! I would consider myself no stranger to ‘beating the odds,’ so to speak, so I cannot wait to see how you continue to surprise us on the day of the tour.”

The video continued the usual information and reminders from Fords, but now Holly gripped in her hands a reason to pay attention. “Now that the search has concluded,” she explained, “it means it is now time to officially organize the details of the tour date! As is written on all of your tickets, the tour will begin at 10 A.M. I believe Miss Perez ended the contest on the seventh of May, so I expect to see you all within the front gates of the factory complex on the morning of the twenty-first! Do make sure not to forget your tickets, as I will be taking them at the door as your admittance. As well, should you need any help in arranging your travel or stay in the area that weekend, please do not hesitate to reach out to me through my official line.”

For just a moment, the deer considered taking Fords up on her offer. Her position, comfortable enough already, pushed her away from the possibility. Surely the doe had the means to arrange things for herself. As generous as the sheep may be, Holly hardly wanted her first impression to be asking to borrow some money. Her savings included enough for the rare vacation, and while she never imagined anything like this when she first set the funds away, it certainly worked all the same. She chuckled at herself for accidentally putting her stockpiled vacation days to work.

“Lastly,” Fords added, “I’d like to extend great thanks to everyone who participated in the contest over these last few months! Your enthusiasm has flattered me, and I’m glad to see so many good sports about the outcome. For now, however, I suppose I must be saying goodbye to you all. The next time I ‘come out of my shell,’ per se, you will know of it here, first. Until next time, farewell!” The last announcement video ended, and with it the ticket hunt officially concluded.

In the wake of the announcement, Holly’s attention absentmindedly drifted from the video back to her social media timelines. There, however, she found far fewer ‘good sports’ than Fords promised in her closing remarks. Her phone paused for a second to load when she switched from one app to another. The reason quickly revealed itself when notifications and messages numbering in the hundreds suddenly adorned the menu on the side of her phone screen. The deer dared a cursory glance over the pages of them, and like expected found wave after wave of obscene comments and videos of Faye Huffie from her loyal fanbase.

Holly glanced up at her profile, noting it still being set to be publicly visible. She rarely used it to post before, and so never found a reason to close it off before today. Even last night, her excitement in celebrating with her friends kept her mind far away from any implications about her social media presence. Today provided the perfect opportunity, and Holly quickly took it.

With her profile made private, and after a few minutes of deleting incoming messages, it sank in for her how all of her work barely made a dent in the imposing number emblazoned in the corner of her screen. The doe decided to not waste her weekend on the fool’s errand, instead. She tapped back to her timeline and, predictably, started to find clips uploaded of her surprise interview. Silently, she cursed the messy state of her hair and the lack of time she had been given to fix it before being presented to national television. Certainly the others had much more time and much more help to prepare for appearances like this.

In trying to get away, Holly left her timelines untouched and unpruned for a while. Now it appeared few of her follows still cared enough about the contest to share around its final development. Most came in the form of devotees to either Azure or Faye. Both fanbases still generally warred against each other, but now occasionally spared the time to sling halfhearted attacks in Holly's direction. With so little presence to work off of, most attacked the sheer obscurity of the doe. Naturally, they concluded, such a nobody stood no risk to the chances of either of their idols taking home the grand prize. At the same time, a few scattered comments proclaiming an impending “Holly Sweep” felt more mocking than anything. Just a week ago, the deer may have agreed with either of them. Now, however, she felt the attention of millions of eyes resting upon her, taking in all of the scant information scattered across her profiles to make up their minds about the finder of the fifth Golden Ticket. With a tap, she discreetly closed the app and set her phone aside.

Even after taking some time to prepare breakfast for herself, the sinking feeling of being judged from afar hung over Holly. She knew better than to check any major social media, at least until the initial clamor began to cool down, but when she sat down with her meal an old habit led her to open up her laptop nearby. At first, she attempted to stick to her video subscriptions, a normal mealtime activity for her, but they struggled to hold her attention even after only a few videos. At that moment, she needed anything to stand between herself and the inevitable work of arranging transport to the remote complex.

Videos failed to do the job, so instead Holly turned her attention to the Ticket Hunter forum she registered to back in February. Despite her frequent browsing of the insular community, she held minimal posts to her name. Given the face of the hunters exposed to Holly over the months, her general silence was entirely by design. Her largest contribution to the forum came in the form of breaking the news of Bridgette’s discovery, and even that encounter left her scrambling back to silence and anonymity. Now, her pace quickened as she considered that anonymity and if she had somehow missed any threads connecting her real personality to this throwaway account. If they existed, she doubted the time between her interviews and that moment provided enough of a gap for them to put the pieces together.

When Holly arrived at the front page, her grip tightened on her laptop. Pinned to the top of the forum, second only to the rules of the site, lay a thread bearing the news with both her real and screen names. The connection had already been cemented. The original post linked to a clip of her interview, effortlessly connecting it back to her account. Now, hundreds of posts from across the community responded to the remarkable news. A wave of disbelief followed, astounded by not only a Ticket Hunter finally joining the ranks of the other winners, but one from their own group. For some, however, disbelief quickly turned to outright denial. Beyond some congratulatory comments extended to Holly, a vocal few began stirring themselves up in response. They felt no satisfaction about their months of effort going to waste in favor of someone who, apparently, hadn’t tried at all to participate in the hunt. The outrage of these few over Holly’s single Fords’ bar intensified over the course of the thread, driving Holly away from attempting to post anything in her own defense.

She continued paging through responses, and before long she found comments confirming her fears. They latched onto one of the narratives from the hectic interview earlier in the morning surrounding her connection to Alabaster’s CEO. Since Holly couldn’t have found the ticket for herself, they reasoned, Jezebel Curandel must have handed it off to her. The disillusioned hunters theorized that the doe’s humble face simply masked the corporation’s intent. Her position specifically managing public relations for the corporation only strengthened their conviction in the idea. At best, their outraged theorizing stopped at that point. At worst, however, some believed her to be an agent of Alabaster specifically spying on the Ticket Hunters’ methods to steal them for Alabaster’s gain. Worse still, some labeled her as a direct collaborator with Fords to ensure that no normal people found themselves on the tour. Holly struggled to begin to guess where some of their theories arose from, and wisely chose to not try questioning why either company would be so blatant in suddenly putting their spy under such public scrutiny. Like before, she felt a tightness in her core as the narrative about herself continued to slip from her control.

She caught the time out of the corner of her eye, already creeping into the afternoon. The thought of how much day she spent reading the thread pulled her abruptly out of her mental spiral. Holly closed the tab and began to search for something controllable, instead. Unfortunately, that meant Holly resorted to distracting herself by arranging her upcoming trip. Getting a flight on such short notice proved an expensive ordeal. Actually getting to a town as rural as where Fords’ factory resided, then, became an even more complicated endeavor. The tiny town possessed only a local airport with scant service provided to it outside of the shipping of Fords’ products. Any route there necessarily required multiple, criss-crossing stops at larger airports, working downwards in priority until finally transferring onto a plane bound for the town.

The amount of work needed to settle all of the ensuing details more than easily kept Holly distracted for the rest of the day. The week that followed passed by in a blur of going to work, responding to messages and inquiries while home, and collapsing onto her bed each night even more exhausted than usual. Very quickly, Holly found the arrangement unsustainable. Though the trip already promised to expend most of her saved vacation days, Holly realized that another few coveted days had to be used, if only to carve out a week of rest in advance.

Holly long anticipated that any rest she got on the Wednesday and Thursday before her flights would be solitary. With the main celebration alongside her friends taken care of, they all returned to their busy lives. Work could be set aside for one day here or there, but not so soon after their night out. When Holly’s days off finally arrived, she first prioritized sleeping as much as possible. Eventually, though, even the tired deer struggled to keep herself in bed any longer, and she chose to brave her online presence once again. In the week since her announcement, the media response to her mostly died down. She had no fans, after all, and arguing against nobody only kept Azure and Faye’s fans interested for so long. For that, she silently thanked her work. It kept her away from taking any interviews, which surely would have given them more ammunition to level against her. 

Though they struggled to direct any of their energy at Holly, those passionate fans only increased in energy. The date of the tour rapidly approached, and every fan Holly found only intensified their arguments against each other and their predictions regarding the mysterious contest to come. Even the rare fan of Grazing with Grazeland occasionally appeared in the flurry of discussion. They, however, primarily concerned themselves with which parts of Fords’ product line Bridgette would be deconstructing after her return from the complex. Holly failed to match their culinary bloodlust when it came to Fords’ sweets. From the accepting attitude she saw in the bear’s videos, she presumed that Bridgette wouldn’t be quite as extreme, either. Either way, the change of pace from the usual talking points refreshed Holly’s enthusiasm about next Saturday. At some point on Thursday, the thought floated into Holly’s mind of watching more of Bridgette’s videos in preparation for meeting her in person. She quickly shot down the thought, certain the bear must already be tired of encountering super fans over the course of her online career.

Friday morning finally arrived, and Holly awoke in a frenetic state. She silently cursed herself for not packing more for her flight ahead of time as she bustled about her apartment. The doe fought against herself and her luggage all the way out the door, down the street, and into the metro station. Time passed quickly for her, thanks in part due to double and triple checking every detail of her trip. Holly flew through to her flight effortlessly, flowing along with the bustling crowd of the central airport with a rehearsed ease. From there, she found herself in a series of sparser flights, smaller airports, and shorter legs of her trip. By the time she left her last regional airport, she saw so few others boarding alongside her that it surprised her to not incidentally encounter any of the other four ticket holders aboard.

Somehow, her last flight felt as though it dragged on longer than all of her others combined. Lacking anything to keep her preoccupied for the last leg of the journey, Holly finally found the time to think about the bolded text on the back of her own Golden Ticket. The Ticket Hunter’s wild theories regarding the clues faded to the back of her mind. Instead, either from her own exhaustion or desire to see her personal theory through, the deer set her focus purely on the distinct letters. That plan left her with A, G, I, C, and M to work with, which she could only assume were intended to spell out the word ‘magic.’ Like with the other tickets, the important letters jumbled their order slightly, but clearly the set only spelled one possible word.

As Holly mulled over her ticket, avoiding the passing glances of the other few passengers, she gazed out of her seat’s window. The midwest landscape, flat enough when viewed from the ground, now completely leveled out into a sea of green fields dotted by roads and trees. The only definition came from a wash of golden evening light coating the sides of low hills. In the distance, she made out the shape of a hamlet, modest homes and no building taller than three storeys clustered tightly together like an island. When the plane grew closer, the single runway of the local airfield came into focus, but Holly’s attention drifted elsewhere.

Instead, on the opposite side of the town from the airfield, the Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies complex finally revealed itself. Pressing up against one of the town’s main streets, an ornate, red brick building with dark, slanted roofs towered at least two storeys over the rest of the village. Tall windows striped its exterior, and four squat, square towers dotted the corners of the front building. Without the short, sprawling industrial buildings that stood in rows behind it, the sight almost looked more like a castle than an office. Between rows of the buildings, a cluster of old smokestacks loomed above the complex like a copse of blackened trees. They starkly framed the setting sun between them, casting long shadows over the few grassy hills nearby. As the plane began to descend, Holly wondered what waited inside the mysterious complex to make the grand prize contest so ‘magical.'

Chapter Text

Holly’s Golden Ticket placed the start of the tour unambiguously at ten in the morning. The doe’s first alarm, however, rang out in her cramped hotel room at six. Over her years at Alabaster, she fell into a comfortable rhythm with her morning routine starting at that time. She could have easily changed it on her phone, but her fear of being late to the event stopped her. Days before, she worried about the possibility of not getting enough sleep before the tour, but found that her day of travel left her more tired than she realized as soon as she collided with the bed. A hoof fumbled about for her glasses, and she silently lamented getting more sleep than most nights but waking up more tired.

As she roused herself from bed, a silence struck her. Every morning in her apartment was accompanied by the sounds of thousands going about their lives outside, no matter how late at night or early in the morning. Where the sounds of the city never rested, Holly wondered if this sleepy town would ever wake up. Despite this, the lack of distractions made it harder for Holly to focus throughout the morning. After readying herself for the day and double checking that everything she needed was in place, nothing stopped her mind from wandering. Previously, she had only put thought into the experience of attending the tour with Bridgette. Now, the deer considered the other three guests to accompany her that day. Compared to the bear they were each colossal figures in their fields. Passing ideas for how to interact with them swam about in Holly’s head, but onto each clung doubt over whether someone as average as her would be treated with the same rules as with each other. Periodically, her alarm blared out and stirred her out of these thoughts. Each layer, half an hour apart, Holly set in the off chance that she slept through the first or fell back to sleep. Now, turning each off in turn provided a brief respite from her anticipation.

When the final alarm rang at nine in the morning, Holly finally decided to leave her room and make the walk to the factory complex on the other side of town. The night before, in the wake of others coming into the village, she managed to find a ride from the airstrip to her hotel. Now no such ride presented itself, so she set out early to arrive with time to spare. She tucked her ticket away safely into her bag. Despite how quiet the town seemed, the risk of her prize being recognized by someone along the way seemed too great to chance. With another triple-check in order, she finally departed from her room and down into the cozy hotel lobby. There, she passed by a trio of girls she figured to be at least ten years younger than herself chattering to each other, and she took comfort in them paying her no attention.

Emerging from the hotel, she spotted the sight of the factory’s smokestacks high above the rest of the village skyline. Their rich maroon hue became washed out in the bright morning sunlight, but provided all the direction Holly needed to start walking in the right direction. The streets she walked had no sidewalks, and seasons-old potholes marked its surface, but were surprisingly broad and left her enough space to travel safely. Partway through her walk, she passed over a railroad crossing cutting directly through the main street. Holly peered each way down the straight, lonesome line, wondering if it too connected back to Fords’ factory. The occasional delivery vans in the rich maroon of Fords’ partner company left no room to wonder, though, and helped assure the doe that she was still going in the right direction. Despite its length, a subtle breeze kept the walk from wearing on her.

After some twenty minutes of walking across town she turned the corner around an old general store and came face to face with the ornate iron fence which wrapped around Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies. At an intersection in the road, one of the four streets branched off into a large gate. Beyond laid a small, gravelly yard that sat before the complex itself; its umber brick walls broken up by tall, arched windows extending to sloped roofs far above. One of the delivery vans from earlier reappeared from around the side of the complex and rumbled up to the front gate. A pair of police stood guard on the outside of it, but they didn’t react as the driver hopped out of the van to open and close the gate manually before driving out and disappearing down the street.

The pair finally reacted when they saw Holly cross the street towards them. She froze in the middle of the street for a second, not considering the safety of it as she rushed to collect the  Golden Ticket from her bag. The one on the left, a mink man with messy, auburn hair, gave a stern look to Holly, and then to her ticket. “You’re with the group?”

Holly nodded, holding up the Golden Ticket more plainly. “Am I too early?”

“No,” he shook his head, “but you’ll be waiting on the other side of the fence for the rest to show.” With that, the pair parted and allowed the gate to swing open again.

The heavy, iron gate glided open with no resistance, despite its apparent age. Holly nodded in acknowledgement to the pair before stepping through, onto the packed gravel and dirt of the yard. The two continued to exchange small talk with each other, and Holly stepped closer to the white stone stairs leading up to the main building’s door to give them some space. She nearly jumped when the grumbling of another van broke the silence she created for herself. Looking back, she found it not to be another delivery van, but instead one adorned with a news station’s logo. A reporter and camera exited, took one look at the pair of police before the gate, and waited by their van. Over the next few minutes, several other vans arrived and deposited similar crews around the front gate. As the familiar scene developed outside, Holly became thankful for the gate separating her from another interview.

The crowd of reporters parted briefly to allow a squat, blocky car to pass. It paused briefly at the intersection with the gate before deciding to pull up alongside the grassy edge of the street nearby. A door swung open on the opposite side. Then, poking up over the roof of the car, Holly glimpsed the distant image of Bridgette’s blonde hair and black, women’s cabbie hat. She stepped around the car and flashed her ticket to get through the gate. As she approached, the doe got her first proper look at Bridgette Grazeland in person. Besides her hat, she sported a desaturated green shirt, its sleeves rolled up to reveal a white undershirt beneath, as well as equally neutral-toned pants connected to a wallet chain that swayed and glimmered in the light with each step.

Bridgette turned about briefly to deliver a wave to the reporters on the outside of the gates, and Holly took the opportunity to pull her gaze away for fear of making the bear uncomfortable. Instead, she locked her eyes on the Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies sign over the front door, engraved into a sheet of stone that stood out against the dark brick. When Bridgette finally arrived at Holly’s side, the deer realized the sheer height difference between the two of them. The bear towered easily half a foot above Holly’s head. With nothing to say, Holly kept her eyes elsewhere and allowed silence to fill the gap. Bridgette looked around the yard for a moment, craning her neck slightly to see around the corner of the main building better. One hand patted at her thigh a couple times, then the other fiddled with her chain.

Finally, she looked down at Holly. “So, it’s just the two of us for now?”

Holly glanced at the slowly growing crowd behind them, and then up at the bear. “I don’t think I saw anyone else when I got here, so,” she said, suddenly realizing she lacked anything else to add, “yeah.”

“Some host, having us wait outside for her,” Bridgette sighed. “You’d think that right through those doors there’d a lobby or something, right?” She motioned at the broad double doors into the front building, which sat cold and unmoving.

“I don’t know,” Holly shrugged, “maybe there’s some surprise she wants to show us when we go in?”

The bear chuckled. “It’d better be some surprise, then.”

A beat passed. Holly fidgeted before trying to break the silence. “...What are you thinking of talking about in your video, after all of this?”

Bridgette blinked, her attention turned elsewhere in the silent moment, before looking at Holly again. “Whatever Fords ends up showing us, I guess. Fancy dessert or ice cream or anything, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve touched up all of them before, I know my way around them.”

“‘Touch up’?” Holly repeated. “Are you sure you’re not getting ahead of yourself, or something?” At the risk of sounding too harsh, she tried to backpedal a beat later. “I just mean, it’s not like she’s shown us the recipes yet.”

“Yeah, well, she hasn’t let us inside yet, either,” Bridgette retorted, “and that’s not giving a great first impression, already.” She took a step to the side to get a better look at Holly. “Look, there are a lot of companies out there that always brand their stuff as ‘made with love,’ ‘handcrafted,’ ‘artisanal,’ right?” Holly nodded, unsure of where the bear would take her point. “But every time it’s just marketing fluff. Look at where you are,” the bear pointed at the building. “It’s a factory , there’s nothing ‘handcrafted’ about an assembly line. A business can’t afford to make anything with as much care as someone making it for themselves. When you deal with this stuff as much as I do, it stops being surprising.”

“Right, sorry,” Holly said, breaking eye contact from Bridgette and gazing back across the yard.

The bear shrugged. “Don’t be sorry, most people never have to think about this sort of thing.”

Still, Holly silently cursed herself for the careless first impression. Of all the ways she had hoped her first interaction with the bear might have gone, a lecture was not on her list. Now, her instincts kicked in again. In any other case she might try to make herself small and quiet in an attempt to slip away from any further disapproval unnoticed. The yard they waited in, though stood empty of even any stray bits of scrap Holly might expect to find around a factory. The two of them waited alone and left Holly with nowhere to hide.

Luckily, it proved a short wait to endure, as the attention of the whole crowd turned back to the sea of activity parting again. There emerged a lower, older styled car in sleek black. It pulled up to the gate, and from a back door emerged Delouise Leclerc. She straightened out her stark white, precisely fitted three-piece suit before sending her ride away to slink off around the corner. The wolf brushed some of her dark hair from her eyes and grabbed her phone from her bag to raise to her ear. Despite apparently being in a conversation, her walk kept her pace as she effortlessly showed her ticket and walked through the gates. Without acknowledging any of the reporters or Bridgette and Holly, she walked off to the other side of the yard to stay out of earshot.

Almost as soon as the gates shut behind Delouise, another, bulkier car stopped directly before the pair of police. The passenger side door swung open and Azure Burle hopped out onto the sidewalk before performing a light stretch. When Holly first saw the fox back in March, she sported a casual outfit. Now she appeared in her full Blues uniform. She still sported her blue and white baseball cap, and now matched it with a white jersey covered in navy pinstripes. The team logo marked its front, and her name and a large 01 marked its back. She tucked both it and a blue undershirt, each slightly too large for her figure, into a pair of pants in the same blue with a pair of black stripes running down the side of its legs. The bagginess of her jersey nearly obscured a black belt holding the ensemble together.

Unlike the others, Azure lingered outside the gates long enough to take a few questions from the reporters. When she finally entered the yard, she glanced at Delouise before approaching the other two instead. As she neared, Holly heard her jaw still working away chewing on some new piece of gum.

“Would you look at that,” Bridgette spoke up first, grinning and nudging Holly gently with her elbow. “Looks like miss ‘number-one’ showed up fourth.”

Azure glared at the bear, and blew an unamused bubble with her gum before responding. “Grazeland,” she said, her voice dripping with disinterest, “I get that you think you’re guaranteed that grand prize with all of the cooking you do, but you don’t get how quick I am to adapt. To anything .”

Bridgette crossed her arms. “You think that’s what this is about, her silly bonus prize? Look, Fords doesn’t have anything I want, so don’t go thinking I care.”

The arctic fox returned to her stretches, barely making eye contact with the bear. “Hey, however you wanna cope with it, doesn’t matter to me. Just try not to get your hopes up, you’ve got as slim a shot as the rest,” she added, finally looking at Holly.

Holly shrank back in turn, and she pointed a finger meekly at herself. “You mean, me?”

Azure made no effort to hide her sigh. “Yes, you , and her ,” she said, pointing to Delouise, “and the rabbit chick, whenever she gets here.” With her explanation finished, her focus returned solely to her chewing.

“Right, sorry,” Holly squeaked out, though clearly only Bridgette heard her. The bear’s disapproving gaze settled onto the deer again, and Holly began to wish that she hadn’t said anything at all.

Delouise finally finished her call and strolled over to join the rest of the small group. She just opened her mouth to speak before a sudden commotion in the crowd drew all of their attention back outside the gates. The audience outside seemed to have ballooned in size since Azure’s arrival without any of the four noticing. Now, though, the shrill cheers became unignorable. Slowly but surely, the mob parted again. From it emerged the figure of Faye Huffie in the passenger seat of a convertible waving to her adoring fans. Her lop ears and fluffy hair blew gently behind her as the car approached. A black and white checkered top parted around her bust and midriff, held together in the front by a gold ring in the center of her chest that complimented thin gold bands on her wrists. As well, multiple ear piercings matched a a pearl necklace and similar piece on her exposed navel, making it hard for Holly to find any part of the rabbit left undecorated. When combined with her hot pink yoga pants, Faye’s outfit left little of her figure to the imagination. She climbed up onto the back seat and hopped over the convertible’s door by the gates. There, she took several pictures of herself with the crowd in the background, and the police struggled to keep the dozens of young girls from getting too close.

When Faye finally passed through the gate, she turned and waved to her fans one last time before strolling over to the group with a pronounced sway in her hips. She approached Bridgette first, waving her phone. “Say,” she said in a bright, cheery tone, “how about a fun little shoutout to Grazing with Grazeland to start things?”

Bridgette seemed unimpressed by Faye’s entrance, but nodded and put on a smile. “Sure thing,” she said, and the shorter rabbit wrapped an arm around the bear’s waist as she held up her phone for the pair to take a smiling picture. She took a second to confirm it came out well. Satisfied, her arm held in place, hovering awkwardly as the pair shuffled apart. Faye concerned herself with uploading the image, Bridgette adjusted her glasses, and the smiles on both of their faces quickly faded as they returned to business.

Meanwhile, Delouise approached Azure with a hand outstretched for a shake. "Burle, right? You've been making a real splash in the majors these last few, haven’t you?"

Azure's hand didn't move from her pocket. "I'm surprised you follow baseball. Your types usually just waltz around on your dozen golf courses, right?"

Delouise chuckled at the jab. "Hey now, I’m more than just another Red Caps fan, here. When you're in big business like me? You need to know a thing or two about everything, and I know a little bit about what you’re capable of. And speaking of, how’d you feel about playing in a Leclerc Stadium, if I just so happened to be in the market for some naming rights?"

The fox glanced down at the wolf's hand, still hanging, and then back to her eyes. "If you knew a thing or two, you’d know I'm in free agency, right? If I don't want your name on my park, I can jump ship any time I want." Azure popped a bubble, and then stepped away to put Faye between them instead.

Faye, in turn, sidled up to Delouise with a bright grin and hands planted confidently on her hips.

"You know ," she winked at the wolf, "you look like the kind of lady who has plenty of brands that could use a boost, and I just so happen to have a lot of very lovely fans who will buy anything that I endorse to them!"

Delouise raised a brow at the rabbit, deep in thought, before snapping her fingers in realization. "Ah, you , right. Sorry, but the number boys say that you and your buddies don’t keep top billing long enough for any full contracts to be worth our while."

Faye stared at Delouise, perplexed by the response. "...So?"

"So? Pass," Delouise finished, before fishing her phone out of her purse again. "Now, I need to make a call," With that, she tapped in a number and turned away from Faye, left gazing at the back of the business woman's head, utterly bewildered.

A confused "eh?" was all she could muster in response.

Bridgette, barely holding back her laughter, explained in the wolf’s stead. "What she's saying ," the bear explained, "is that they're all counting down the days until you need to put out your big 'apology video' and you stop being useful to the brand."

The explanation, then, got Faye's attention. She glanced at Bridgette, then shot a pouty look at Delouise's back. "As if some drama would ever do something like that to me," she huffed.

Unlike last time, Delouise stood close by the group, and Holly overheard the wolf’s side of the conversation with some business partner of hers. “Of course, this shouldn’t take long,” she said. “Do you have any idea how old that sheep is? She’s probably half senile by now. It’ll be the easiest wheel-and-deal I’ve done all week.” She paused for a second to listen to the response on the other side. “Yeah, now?” A brief pause followed as she glanced down at her watch. “It is about ten, isn’t it? Fords should’ve been here now, but really, what’d you expect?” Another bit of silence followed. “Yeah, yeah, you get to that.” She smirked as she went quiet once more. “Oh, please, Jez, if anyone needs luck today? It’s you .”

With that, Delouise hung up and stashed her phone away. Her eyes connected with Holly’s, and the deer realized then that she had apparently crept closer to the wolf to hear her better. Before any panic fully set in, however, Delouise began talking again.

“You,” she said simply, snapping her fingers once more in an attempt to jog her memory, “...Perez.”

Holly, frozen in place, willed herself to speak. “Yes?”

“You’re the one from Alabaster, aren’t you? All that talk, and she just couldn’t help but keep an eye on me,” the wolfess chuckled.

“I, ah,” the doe fumbled her words for a second, realizing exactly who the ‘Jez’ on the other end of the line must have been. “I’ve never actually met Miss Curandel personally,” she responded. Nervously, she glanced to the side, only to catch the sight of Bridgette shrugging and looking away. Holly’s mind raced to decide what the gesture meant, only to be stopped by the wolf’s voice.

“Yep. Sure you haven’t,” Delouise winked, “what’s the story for how you got your ticket punched, then?”

“I mean, I just got it from the corner store?” Holly continued to insist.

Delouise’s sharp-toothed grin only widened. “Oh, you’re a riot, aren’t you? Here, let me guess, you just happened on the buck you used to pay for it out in the street, too?”

The deer struggled to find the words to say in response, but Bridgette found them instead. “Does it really matter to you how any of us found these things? You already bought one, you don’t need another.” Holly resisted the urge to sigh in relief at having someone else defending her for once.

“Oh, maybe it doesn’t, but I just love the little fairy tales that the little guys come up with when you give them a little squeeze. What, are you here to defend the ‘integrity’ of whatever little show Fords’ wants to put on for us?”

“Trust me, I am not on her side,” Bridgette stated. Though it was targeted at Fords, Holly couldn’t help but feel like she was included in the sentiment.

“You’d better not be,” Azure added. “The last thing I need is some rigged contest messing up my record.” Bridgette rolled her eyes.

Faye took a brief respite from the others while the trio continued to bicker. She wandered off to the side of the group and preoccupied herself with her phone. Holly took the opportunity to shuffle up, gently clearing her throat to get Faye's attention. She waited, but it failed to get Faye’s attention. Holly waited a painful moment longer before speaking up.

"Hey, uh,” she began, catching herself before she accidentally recited the rabbit’s username back at her. “Faye, right?" That finally got the rabbit's attention, her lop ears flopping slightly as she looked up at the doe. "I'm Holly... but you probably already heard about me a couple weeks ago, maybe?"

"Oh, it is you!" Faye wore a large smile, and quickly reached her free hand around the back of Holly's shoulders. "Smile, 'kay?" She held up her phone and took a picture of the two before setting about uploading it. She talked as she typed. "You know, I just love meeting all of you little guys, you're just the sweetest fans I could ask for!" She barely glanced up from the screen to remark.

"Us… ‘little guys’?" Holly repeated, still processing how quickly the rabbit grabbed her.

Faye giggled, "Well, yeah! I mean, no offense or anything, but, sweetie? This outfit probably costs more than your whole house , you know?"

Holly's head tilted slightly as she pondered that response. "Is that supposed to be... a good thing?" Faye's tone remained unchanged since she first spoke to Bridgette, which made it increasingly difficult for the deer to tell what was going on in the rabbit’s head.

One of the rabbit's hands left her phone for a second to wave away the question. "Oh, you are just adorable! "

Deciding she felt sufficiently alienated already, Holly allowed herself to drift off to the left side of the pack to await Fords emerging from the factory. She checked her wrist watch. As Delouise mentioned, it read 10:08, well after when Fords promised the start of the tour. Still, the decorated double doors into the complex remained shut tight. Another minute passed, and then two, the audience still in silent anticipation of the chocolatier's grand appearance.

Faye checked the time on her phone, then checked her feed, and finally began typing away at her screen. By Holly's count, Azure reached five different bubbles blown and popped since arriving at the complex. Her pace increased slightly as she grew more bored by the wait. Holly looked over the other four ticket holders, then glanced back at the crowd. She paused, and she cautiously tapped on the shoulder of Delouise to her right.

Delouise shot the deer an irritated look in response, but once Holly managed to get her to look back at the gates her attention also became locked onto it. There, emerging from the front of the crowd of spectators and reporters, came the aged ewe woman from the announcement videos. Fluffy, white wool contrasted the rich hues of her modest, violet dress, separated into a light upper half and dark lower half by a wavy pattern reminiscent of the company’s branding. Aside from that, only a fine jacket of the same deeper tone obscured the way her outfit gently hung off of her welcomingly plump form. Just like before, everything down to the golden-yellow bow she sported to one side of her neck looked like it walked directly off of the wrapper to a Fords’ bar. The sheep trotted casually up to the front gates, a cane in one hand and a white canvas bag in the other. A hand fished around in the bag for a moment for a keychain. There, she slowly sorted through them, comparing them to the lock on the gate.

As she searched, the crowd behind her began to murmur at the ewe's appearance. The candysheep responsible for the contest, who apparently hadn’t made a public appearance in decades, now stood before the public as casually as someone returning from their daily walk. Somehow, nobody in the crowd saw her approach until she emerged from the palisade of reporters. No one dared speak up, fearing being proven wrong. Finally, the ewe stopped on one key in particular, and after effortlessly opening up the gates and stepping into the yard, she dutifully locked it behind herself.

When she turned about once again her eyes lit up in delight at the sight of the five, who by this point had all turned around to watch her approach. "Ah, you're all here, and exactly on time! I'd feared that some of you may choose to be 'fashionably late,' but this is lovely news! It means we can start right away."

The sheep cleared her throat and tapped her cane against the worn gravel with a soft click. "Good morning! I am Miss Abigail Fords, and as promised, today I will be showing you all the wonders of my factory that I can manage." She paused for effect, and no one in the crowd or the group said a word. They continued to process the perplexing reveal of Fords in silence. Taking no notice, she trotted around the group and up to the top step just before the front doors. 

She turned about, extending a hoof outwards to the five. "Now, ladies, may I see your tickets?"

Chapter Text

A brief silence followed, punctuated by the low drone of the crowd muttering far behind them. Detecting their hesitation, Azure stepped towards the sheep with her Golden Ticket held out proudly. She glanced back at the other four, and for the first time since arriving she grinned at them before turning to address Fords.

“Hey. Got any more of your little hints about the grand prize contest?” she asked. “The quicker I get that squared away, the quicker I can sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Fords took the ticket with a hoof and looked it over briefly before beaming at Azure. “Ah, such motivation, Miss Burle! I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that everything you needed to know for that was already included in the five hints so far. You’ve certainly had the most time to prepare.”

The vixen mulled over the answer as she chewed. She stepped around the sheep onto the top step. Delouise quickly followed her up, reaching into a pocket in her jacket to retrieve her ticket. When Fords extended a hand to take it she instead found a firm handshake from the wolf.

“Delouise Leclerc, DECO CEO,” she began, not releasing Fords’ hand, “and have I got the deal of a lifetime just for you, Fords!” After another second of intense shaking, she finally let the hoof go.

Fords’ smile persisted despite the rough grip, however. “Missus Leclerc! I suppose you would want to speak with me in the privacy of my office, today?” She attempted to reach for the ticket a second time, but the wolfess pulled it out of reach with a flick of her wrist.

“Well, it’s not like they have anything to contribute, here,” she motioned at the three behind her, “do they?”

“I suppose not, if you insist,” Fords nodded, “though you must excuse the wait until then. Our itinerary for today is simply too full to pause in the middle. We should have more than enough time after the tour has concluded,” she explained, and with one final attempt Delouise allowed her to take the ticket and deposit it into her bag.

“Well, we can walk and talk, while we’re at it,” Delouise added before joining Azure by the door. Holly gripped her ticket slightly tighter in preparation for approaching, only for Bridgette to step ahead before the doe finished working up the nerve. She glanced away from the bear, instead watching Faye, who had turned completely around to wave at her fans in the crowd.

Bridgette gave a little nod to Fords as she offered up her ticket. “Fords, morning,” she greeted her simply.

“Why, feel free to simply call me Abby, Miss Grazeland!” The sheep took the ticket. “Excuse me for being forward, but I’d like to think that, given our shared interest, you teaching me a thing or two and myself teaching you a thing or two today should bring us close enough for it to be appropriate.”

“Uh, sure,” the bear added, looking past her to the facade of the building. She adjusted her glasses before joining the other two. Holly waited until Bridgette fully cleared the steps before lifting a hoof. Before she got half a step forwards, however, Faye’s shoulder bumped against hers suddenly and sent her stumbling slightly. The rabbit, unfazed, bounded ahead with a peppy enthusiasm.

“Why, hey there! If it isn’t my favorite sheep,” Faye said, brandishing her phone again, “picture?”

“Your favorite? What an honor!” Fords beamed as Faye snapped a series of photos of the two of them together. “Though, as much as I would like to say that you’re also my favorite bunny, Miss Huffie, I’m afraid that you have quite the steep competition on that front.”

“Oh, for sure,” Faye giggled in a tone Holly found almost patronizing, “don’t worry about it, alright?”

Fords nodded, and a silent second passed before she spoke up again. “Your ticket, Miss Huffie?”

“Ah, right, riiight,” Faye playfully tapped her hand against her head in realization. She passed over the ticket in her free hand before also sidestepping Fords.

Holly straightened out her skirt and glanced behind her to the crowd beyond the fence. She knew that only five tickets existed, but double checked to ensure she wouldn’t be interrupted again. By now, the vast crowd had begun to clamor loudly again as the ticket holders disappeared from view.

Fords’ voice yanked her attention back into the moment. “Miss Perez,” the sheep called from the steps, “I believe you are the only one left before we can begin!”

The deer straightened up and hurried over to Fords, her ticket held out. “Of course, sorry,” she apologized meekly, “I shouldn’t be slowing things down, especially with the itinerary and everything.”

The sheep shook her head reassuringly as she took the final ticket. Only now, Holly realized just how much she needed to look up to make eye contact with Fords. The sheep must have been nearly a foot taller than the doe.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Miss Perez,” Fords remarked, “as much as I’d like to see everything I’ve planned for today, the pace is yours to set! We can adapt as needed for what works best for you all.” With that, she turned about to face the other four and tapped her cane once more against the stone steps. “Speaking of, why don’t we begin right away?”

The ewe searched for another key and, finding it, stepped between the four women to unlock the ornate doors before them. Pushing them open easily, she stepped aside to allow the group to enter first. They all did so, and Holly spared one last glance towards the crowd before the doors swung shut behind her and the noise of the crowd faded away into the near silence of the complex’s front office. Turning forwards again, Holly found the group standing in a modest lobby. Unmistakably antiquated, it featured an unattended, curved desk wrapping from one corner of the far wall to the other, beyond which symmetrical halls stretched deeper into the building. A stark contrast to the array of receivers and computer monitors Holly expected from Alabaster’s front desk, she failed to find even a single phone perched across the smoothly curved wooden desktop. Hanging lights cast a faint sheen on the wood finish adorning much of the room and hummed idly to themselves.

Fords stepped carefully backwards to stand in the center of the room without ever looking away from the group, “I believe that you will all be leaving through this entrance as well, so if you have any things you wouldn’t wish to carry around with you for the entire tour, this should be a fine place to leave them.” She motioned to some long, cushioned benches on either side of the front doors. Only she, Holly, and Delouise carried anything resembling a bag, and as Holly stepped over towards one of the benches to set down her purse, Delouise simply tossed hers onto the other and turned to face Fords again.

“So, Fords,” the wolf began, “what took you so long getting here? It’s not exactly a good look, being late for your own event.”

“Ah, I was just out on a bit of simple shopping. Groceries and the sort, supplies for the week. None of it is related to the tour here today, though, so you don’t need to worry about them,” the sheep explained. Instead of depositing her own bag, she motioned the group to follow her and lead the way down the left hall.

Delouise continued her conversation before anyone else spoke up, “You know that you can get other people to do that sort of thing for you, yeah? A big place like this should have plenty of folks on your payroll, why do it all yourself?”

“Well, I suppose that sort of job just wouldn’t fit them,” Fords shrugged.

Azure popped a bubble from her gum, and all eyes traveled to her. “Who are ‘they’ supposed to be, anyways? This place looks deserted.”

“It’s Saturday,” Bridgette countered, “most people don’t work those.”

“But,” Holly added after a beat of silence, “I did see some delivery trucks leaving this morning, so there must be something going on today, right?”

Fords nodded. “Indeed, there are deliveries outgoing even today! In fact, since we’re already walking in the direction of the Packing Room, why don’t we make that our first official stop on the tour?”

Delouise stepped ahead of the rest, her sharp-toothed grin emerging. “Perfect! I’ve been meaning to talk logistics with you, did you know that?” With that, she set a quick pace for herself and Fords, pulling ahead of the other four.

The rest of the group willingly lagged behind. Once out of earshot of the wolf and sheep, Faye looked up from her phone and down the hallway, then back at the rest. “Okay,” she spoke up, “being honest, all of you, does that lady seem… ‘all there’ ? I think she sounds like she’s a bit too old to be doing all this.”

“Either she isn’t, or she’s putting up a pretty good act,” Bridgette added, glancing through an open doorway into a dark room as she walked by. Holly followed suit, finding a printing room containing little more than a printer with a heavy layer of dust accumulated on it.

“It’s an act,” Azure concluded, locking eyes with the back of Fords’ head ahead of them. “I can see right through it, already.”

“The real question is what she thinks she’s gaining from keeping it up,” Bridgette nodded.

“Sympathy?” Faye said, as though asking the question to herself. Satisfied with her conclusion, she nodded. “Yeah, sympathy.”

The trio took Holly aback, the way that they talked about Fords in secret. She didn’t agree with them, or at least didn’t want to agree with them, and certainly had nothing to add to their covert conversation. Instead, she tried to distract herself by peeking into more open rooms along the way. One, labeled ‘break room’ by an adjacent plaque, still seemed illuminated from within. Inside was a familiar sight to the break room she frequented at her own office, though probably larger and better lit than hers.

In the room’s center stood a simple wooden table, and on it was a discarded glass and plate. Holly blinked and leaned in to take a closer look. A few crumbs and chocolate chips sat discarded atop the plate, and what looked like a thin film of leftover milk coated the inside of the glass. Whoever had eaten there had eaten recently.

“Hey,” Bridgette’s voice suddenly rang out, and Holly realized that while she stood, waiting in the breakroom doorway, the others kept walking. She glanced back down the hall, finding all five of the others had stopped to look back at her. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing, it’s just,” Holly began, and she could feel her cheeks growing warmer at the interruption she caused. She chuckled awkwardly at the thought she prepared herself to utter. “Was that… milk and cookies someone just had?”

Delouise chuckled audibly, more earnestly compared to Holly’s, and turned to the old ewe again. “Is that it, Fords? You’re expecting a visit from Mister Claus in May ?”

Fords grinned as well, but shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t be the case, and it’s quite good that it isn’t. Why, if even one of those festive little toys or wind-ups found itself set loose in the complex? Well, it’d simply be pandemonium! So I believe we can all be thankful for that.” Satisfied with her answer, she turned and continued trotting down the tiled hall. Faye shot a look of deep satisfaction from being proven right before following as well.

A moment later, Fords paused before reaching the large, umber, metal door at the far end of the hall, and instead turned to face a particular closed door on the left wall. This one displayed a plaque marked ‘Office of Abigail Fords.’ A frosted glass window built into the door obscured its interior. “Ah,” she said, tapping her cane, “would you all please excuse me for just a moment? I’d like to drop off my own bag before we reach the Packing Room. In fact, it may even be an opportunity for you to say hello to my secretary, Debra!”

Not waiting for a response, she unlocked the office door and peeked her head through the doorway. Fords let out a disappointed hum. “It seems she’s also out and about. Ah, well,” she said, stepping in for just long enough for Holly to see an unoccupied desk with another shut door behind it, “she’s bound to turn up sooner rather than later. We have plenty to see, as well!”

Closing the office door behind her, Fords turned her attention back to the metal door. The words ‘Packing Room’ covered it in bold, white paint. “Now,” Fords began, “some might find it odd for our tour to begin at the tail end of the manufacturing process, but it’s truly the only central point to the complex. Wherever they come from, right through these doors is where everything we have ever ever produced is gathered to be shipped off across the globe!”

Fords pushed the door open, and the group stepped out onto a metal catwalk wrapping to the left around the edge of a large, open factory floor. Holly immediately recognized it as the same view from the window of Fords’ office during her first announcement video. Retracing her memory of it, her eyes traveled first to the palettes of packaged Fords products seen in that same video. In person the vast space the neatly stacked crates took up became even more apparent as they obscured most of the floor around them.

From there her gaze drifted to the left wall, beyond the stairs at the end of the walkway. There, a row of small, shuttered openings allowed products to be deposited directly onto conveyor belts. The belts stretched across the room, occasionally broken up by machines and mechanical arms which packed the wrapped sweets into Fords-branded boxes, secured them together in large crates, and carried them over to a long line of loading bays on the right end of the room. Most bays sat shut and inactive, but one close to the catwalk gently pushed boxes from an active conveyor into the back of a familiar, maroon delivery van.

“Awfully expensive equipment you’ve got down there, Fords,” Delouise remarked, leaning against the catwalk railing.

“Only the finest and most efficient would do, considering how much needs to be packed in the average day,” Fords noted, walking further down the platform to give the group more room to stand.

“Well, ‘efficient’ isn’t the word I’d use for it,” Delouise continued, rapping her claws against the rail. “Those things must cost an arm and a leg to keep working. It’s no wonder you’re running a ghost town around here, I bet you’re bleeding your company dry with these gizmos alone.”

“Or maybe, hear me out, here,” Bridgette rolled her eyes, “something can be good without boosting the bottom line.”

Delouise shot the bear a smirk before continuing. “And that, folks, is why I’m up where I am, and why you’re down where you are. Look, here:” She pointed down at a few spots along the line. “And there, and there. Just at a glance, I can already spot three places where it’d be much cheaper and more efficient to put a body down on the floor doing that job instead of a robot. The best part? Each of them would do it for a fraction of the cost per hour.”

“All of them, just doing one job, each? I can’t help but think that would become awfully tiring, Missus Leclerc. It’s hard to imagine that tired-out folks would be more efficient,” Fords pondered aloud.

“For sure, that sounds like the most boring thing ever,” Faye added.

“That is certainly also an important consideration, Miss Huffie,” Fords nodded.

“Eh,” Delouise shrugged, “if they don’t feel like working hard enough to keep up you can just replace them. They’re a dime-a-dozen.”

“You mean just firing them on the spot?” Holly spoke up meekly.

“Don’t see why not,” Azure remarked, “you can only cover for your weak links for so long. I’ve propped up too many cheap rookies to care anymore.”

“Point is ,” Delouise said louder to draw attention back to herself, “Leclerc Logistics has plenty of bodies to spare, if you ever decide on saving yourself some cash.”

“A kind offer, Missus Leclerc, but I’m afraid I must decline,” Fords responded. Holly swore she could hear a slight weariness in the ewe’s voice. “The complex has always had precisely enough help around to get by on its own.”

The comment provoked a question from Holly. “So there are people employed here? I looked into it some, but couldn’t find any proof of it.”

Delouise smirked. “What’s that, Perez? You’re looking for a career change? You know, DECO has plenty of PR positions you could apply for, any time.”

Bridgette ignored the wolf’s advance and spoke up instead. “Of course there’ll be people around somewhere, how could there not be? Just because one room is automated, it doesn’t mean you can run an operation as huge as this all on your own.”

“Then where are they supposed to be?” Faye piped up.

Fords’ face lit up at the question. “Why, I’m glad you asked, dear!” The ewe began leading them across the catwalk to the left wall of the Packing Room, passing by a long, dark window Holly supposed must connect back into the offices. The catwalk continued along the wall briefly before terminating in a set of stairs down to the concrete floor beneath. “I can show you one such place right now!”

“When did we get up on the second floor, anyways? That hallway was flat,” Azure glanced back to remark at the other guests.

Holly shrugged. “Maybe it slopes down around the sides of the building?”

“Sure didn’t look like it from the plane,” Azure said, and popped another bubble. Faye climbed down the stairs directly in front of her, the height difference placing the bubble directly behind the rabbit’s ears.

Faye scoffed, stopping the group to turn around and look up at Azure. “Can you stop that, already? The last thing I need today is to get gum stuck in my hair,” she said, her voice raising slightly.

“No,” Azure stated, and sidestepped past her to reach the bottom of the stairs.

Fords trotted by, paying no notice to the bickering behind her. She passed several large doors similar to the entrance to the Packing Room before pausing in front of one in particular. This door, also labeled in painted text, read ‘Canal Wing: Locks’. The sheep turned to the group, her cane pointing at the metal double doors. “Right through here should be the perfect place to begin,” she explained. “For a great deal of our products, they start in this wing, so we ought to do the same!”

Bridgette glanced incredulously between the sign and sheep. “A canal? Are you serious? In a place this small? It’d be completely useless.”

“I would agree wholeheartedly, Miss Grazeland, if our system only went inside,” Fords nodded, placing her free hand on the door beside her. “Luckily for us, however, that’s far from the only place it goes!” With that, she pushed open the door, and the light and heat of broad daylight suddenly hit Holly’s face. When her eyes finally adjusted, she marveled at what she saw on the other side.

Chapter Text

At first, Holly almost believed that the door led the group right back outside. As she scanned the horizon, she quickly realized otherwise. Chiefly because the tall, iron fence she saw encircling the entire complex before was nowhere to be seen, allowing her to see the distant horizon in the first place. In fact, beyond the long, brick wall of the factory complex stretching off behind her, she failed to find any sign of the town that the factory sat at the edge of. Even without having memorized the surrounding landscape by any means, the bright, grassy meadows appeared completely unfamiliar compared to the rolling farmland that covered the surrounding countryside.

Natural sunlight bathed the wide open field before them. No clouds hung in the sky, and the gently rustling grass around them appeared to be a far more vibrant green than what Holly had seen during her walk that morning. Bushes and trees dotted gently rolling hills, but each sported neon-bright purples and reds on their leaves, and unusually striped fruits, passingly resembling candy canes, hung from their branches. Looking back towards the factory wall once again, an odd visual struck Holly. The door leading back into the Packing Room sat open, providing an anchoring point to the doe, but the rest of the wall continued on, apparently featureless despite the long row of doors which appeared to have lined the side of the last room. Before Holly spoke up about the discrepancy, the voice of Fords pulled her attention forwards towards a dirt footpath winding over the low hills and over the horizon.

“Why, it’s always so nice to be able to come here on mornings like these,” Fords mused, trotting ahead of the rest of the group. Like Holly, they also looked to be trying to understand the sight before them. Despite the lack of response, the sheep addressed the group again. “Now, don’t any of you be afraid to help yourselves, you all!”

Faye glanced at the others before speaking up. “...’Help ourselves’? Help with what?”

“Help yourselves to the free samples, I mean,” Fords responded, nodding.

Azure glanced about and popped a bubble before facing Fords again. “And where’s that supposed to be, exactly?”

“Why,” the ewe chuckled, “everywhere! Around here, candy is growing off of the trees, the flowers are the most charming little icing decorations, and everything down to and including the landscape is some sort of sweet. You see, the earth in this area is actually a lovely, rich, dark chocolate.” She stood proudly before the group, and a gentle breeze blew a faint, sugary scent in from the world around them.

“No way,” Faye said, her voice full of wonder. The rabbit stepped away from the others to inspect some of the candied plantlife closer. Holly also scarcely believed what the ewe said, gazing off into the distance and pondering how far the sugary land stretched.

Bridgette raised a brow at Fords. “So, you’re having us stomp all over what was supposed to be a free sample?”

“Well, I supposed you wouldn't be interested in grabbing a shovel to grab any chocolate soil to sample immediately,” Fords shrugged, “so it’s all the same in the end.”

The bear rolled her eyes and began walking after Faye. The others followed suit. They saw the rabbit approach a short tree with broad, amber leaves. What looked like large, crystalline honeycombs hung off of its branches and shimmered in the sunlight. Faye tugged at some of the leaves and, satisfied by how they held onto the branch, instead attempted to pluck off one of the odd fruits.

She barely began before it popped off of the branch suddenly, and she yelped in surprise. A second later, her surprise turned into a disgusted groan instead. When the group finally caught up with her, Holly saw that the candy shell of the honeycomb must have shattered in her grip, coating her hand in a sticky, golden substance which the rabbit now tried desperately to shake off.

“Not to worry, dear,” Fords said, approaching Faye and producing several small cleaning wipes, “it’s simply honey!”

“It’s simply gross ,” Faye grimaced as she cleaned herself off with Fords’ help. When she looked up again, she grinned up at the ewe. “You’ve got some nicer ones I could try, don’t you?”

Bridgette scoffed, turning from the tree itself to look at Faye before Fords got out a word in response. “Oh, please . You can survive getting your hands dirty. I’ve had way worse than that in the kitchen before, it’s fine.”

Faye’s turned her bright smile over to the bear. “Oh? Yeah, well it does make sense that you’d be used to working with your hands dirty, Bridgette,” she said in a sing-song tone, and Holly continued to doubt the sincerity of the rabbit’s grin.

Delouise continued along the trail, chuckling amusedly at the sight of each new candy she passed. She picked them off of bushes and branches, taking a nibble of each before tossing the rest off to the side of the path. “ Some presentation for a bunch of free samples, Fords,” she remarked. “Say, tell me, how much did it cost to put all this together, huh?”

The ewe cocked her head slightly at the question. “How do you mean?”

“I mean how much it cost to make all of these little novelty candy things you’ve got, put them into place and all that,” Delouise continued. “Did you get them from somewhere, or did your people make them in-house?”

“Ah,” Fords caught on, but shook her head. “All of these species are locally sourced from the area! Only a bit of fine pruning here and there was necessary to keep things a touch more presentable for you all.” She turned back to address the others. “As such, you all shouldn’t be afraid to sample, as well! It will all grow back in time.”

Azure prominently popped another bubble, pointing at it as she did before stating “Preoccupied.”

Faye shrugged, sighing. “Oh, I’d just love to, really! Since you worked so hard on it, y’know? But I can’t just cheat on my diet!”

The arctic fox raised a brow at her. “Here’s a concept for you.” she said, “Maybe if you used those yoga pants for what they’re supposed to be for? You might be allowed to eat something every now and again.”

The rabbit placed a hand firmly on her hip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can tell when someone works out,” Azure explained, “and you don’t work out.”

Faye huffed indignantly, walking ahead before stopping by a waist-height rock which Fords had perched herself upon while waiting for the group to catch up. On closer inspection, the worn, slightly rounded stone revealed itself to be a dried-out marshmallow, the likes of which Holly expected from a sugary breakfast cereal. “Oh, how cute ,” she said, looking back at the vixen, “this one looks just like you, Azure! How sweet of them.” The fox responded only with another bubble, which again caused Faye to recoil in disgust.

Fords tilted her head in confusion towards Faye’s comment, even as the rabbit stepped away and opened up the space for Delouise. “Really, though,” she said, “what would I need to do to get some of these moved over to one of my places?”

“Well,” Fords pondered aloud, “you would be free to sample whatever you like, but I’m afraid that none of the flora here would be able to thrive in the outside world.”

The wolf stepped one paw up onto the marshmallow stone and rested her arms against her knee. “Yeah, yeah, you love playing hard-to-get with your little secrets, don’t you, Fords?”

“I’m not here to hold secrets, Missus Leclerc. I’m simply telling you what I’ve learned from my years of experience,” Fords insisted calmly.

Bridgette arrived soon after. “Experience with what? Plants that are supposed to be growing finished candies that can only live in an environment specific to your own factory?” She did nothing to hide the disbelief in her voice, even chuckling at the absurdity of her own statement.

“Indeed, Miss Grazeland,” the ewe nodded, satisfied with her answer.

“Eh, you wouldn’t get it,” Delouise added, “you’re not the kind of person a vanity project like this is meant to be impressing, you know?”

Holly, hanging off to the side of the group so far, finally felt compelled enough by her curiosity to speak up. “Miss Fords, what environment is this supposed to be, exactly?”

“I’ve taken to calling this particular region the riverlands, myself,” Fords answered, “I think it rolls off the tongue quite nicely, wouldn’t you say?”

The doe looked around her, not finding a single river in sight. “And,” she asked cautiously, “where would those be? The rivers, I mean. I can see the, uh, land . Just fine.” She grinned, trying to cover up the way she stumbled over her words. Fords paid her awkward delivery no mind.

“Just downhill,” the ewe said, standing up from her seat. “It’s far from a long walk, as well, so if you’d like we should be able to easily pay the canal system a visit!” With that, she pointed her cane further down the trail and the group walked on ahead of her, Delouise leading the charge and taking tiny samples of more sweets as she passed them by.

As the tour group walked down the caramel-brown trail, Faye grabbed her phone and began taking some short videos of the sights around. When she finished she tapped decidedly on her screen. A moment passed, and she began to tap her foot impatiently against the ground. She glared down at her phone’s screen, and finally turned to look at the ewe.

"Hey, Fords? Don't you get any reception in this place?"

"Why, of course I do," the sheep nodded, "I trust you saw the video which I put on-line to congratulate you, Miss Huffie! Although, I can't make any promises for when we aren't within the factory itself."

"What do you mean? We're still inside, right?" The rabbit pointed to the horizon of the candy landscape. Sure enough, the distant skies appeared to be another brick wall lined with tall windows. It looked the same as the appearance of the factory’s exterior walls, aside from the fact that they now towered high above even distant mountaintops, slightly blurred by the hazy blue of the clear sky.

"Ah, I suppose over there would be in the factory, yes. Though right here is decidedly not, as you have found." She nodded at the rabbit's phone and trotted off ahead without any further explanation.

Holly continued to drift from the group, walking ahead for a short while and stepping off of the trail to check a peculiar looking plant. It seemed to be some kind of bean, but shifted between colors as she approached until it settled upon a bright orange hue. Something about it struck Holly as familiar. Before she put any more thought into it, though, the sound of Delouise delivering yet another pitch to Fords made her look at the group passing by. Turning back to the plant, its beans suddenly shifted to a dull gray.

Fords stopped by her. “Ah, I see you’ve taken notice of one of our mood bean plants!” Holly nodded in acknowledgement, and the sheep continued. “They’re fascinating things, really. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the mood jelly beans we make here, but it’s plants like these from which we pick them.” She looked at the plant herself, and her smile broke for a second before recovering. “Unfortunately, it seems these aren’t in the healthiest state at the moment. We’d do better to find some brighter ones if you wish to have a proper sample of any.”

“Right, thank you,” Holly said meekly, stepping back towards the trail before Fords spoke up again. However, Fords kept her attention on the doe before she made her escape back to the edge of the pack.

“Speaking of, dear,” the ewe noted, “I can’t help but notice that you haven’t taken any samples, either. I don’t suppose you also have a diet to worry about, like Miss Huffie does?”

“I don’t actually,” Holly said quickly, her speech quickening in pace as she grew self-conscious, “sorry. It’s just that all of this is a lot for me to take in...”

Fords nodded sagely. “Ah, I understand completely, dear. It was the same for me as well, to start. I think we can get you well adjusted before terribly long, however!” She looked ahead to the others, who had stopped and spread out to allow the pair to catch up. “There,” she said, pointing her cane at Bridgette, who stood beneath a tall tree with red and white leaves in a candy cane pattern. “Miss Grazeland seems to have found something nice. Perhaps you could both try some?”

“Sure, if you think it’d be a good pick,” Holly shrugged.

Fords beamed with pride. “Why, I know that everything along this trail is lovely, I’ve tested it all personally, you see.” With that, she sent Holly on her way.

By the time Holly arrived at the tree, the black bear had managed to bend down a branch long enough to collect a few of the peppermints which grew on it. She popped one into her mouth before taking out her phone and typing intensely on it.

The deer approached cautiously. When she realized that she proved so silent that Bridgette failed to notice her coming at all, however, she took the initiative to speak up. “I thought we weren’t getting much of a connection out here?” She tried to make her question sound more like simply noting a possibility.

Bridgette looked up from the screen. “Yeah, well, that hasn’t changed. You just don’t need a connection to use the notepad app, so.” She shrugged, waving her phone screen in Holly’s direction for a second before returning to her work.

“Right, sorry,” Holly added. “I guess you’re taking notes for things you’ll talk about in your video about this, right?”

“Videos, plural .” Bridgette started by correcting her, “But pretty much, yeah. I’m figuring out what these things are probably made of, so I have something to work off of when I make my own take.”

Holly blinked in response. “You can figure out that much just by tasting them? Wow.”

“For the most part,” the bear nodded, “when you’ve been doing this as long as I have you just kinda pick up a taste for these things.”

Holly nodded, “And you’ve been doing this for…?”

“Around eight years, now. Longer, if you count me all the years I was making things before the channel went up,” Bridgette answered before finishing what she was typing and slipping her phone back into her pocket. She grinned genuinely down at the deer. “I told you, I know my way around these things.”

“So that’s the reason why you aren’t asking Fords directly what she uses, you just know?” Holly continued, “Or is that for another reason?”

“ That ,” Bridgette said, looking over at Fords as she spoke with the group, “is because I don’t exactly trust her word on how any of this stuff gets made. I mean, really, growing sweets in some candyland inside of her factory? Give me a break.” She rolled her eyes before offering Holly one of the peppermints. “Want one? They’re okay, but nothing special. They probably grabbed these right off the production line before planting them up there,” she mused.

“Oh, thanks.” Holly took one from Bridgette’s hand, but didn’t eat it immediately, “I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach any of those on my own.”

“Yeah, well. Leave it to Fords to forget that not everyone is six-foot-whatever-she-is, huh?” Bridgette started walking back towards the rest of the group. “Of course, there’s probably a lot of things she can’t remember, by this point. She’s not getting any younger…”

Holly walked along quietly to neither confirm nor deny Bridgette’s theory. When the pair rejoined the group, Fords was explaining another tree to the other guests. “I’m sure many of you have heard of chocolate oranges,” she said, motioning to a tree sporting chocolatey, orange-shaped fruit, “but they’re simply one of the varieties of chocolate fruit I’ve experimented with making orchards of!”

Azure plucked one off of a low-hanging branch and tossed it in her hand. “Good weight to it,” she commented on it and grinned. She motioned Holly to step aside from the trail, and the deer complied. The fox gripped the chocolate orange tightly, wound up for a pitch, and launched the orange down the path. It sailed in a broad, rapid arc through the air before disappearing behind a low hill. “You see that? Perfect form,” she said, looking incredibly pleased with herself. “What do you think that was, 90, 91 mph? And that was when I wasn’t even warmed up.”

“Why, I never would have thought one so similar to a baseball,” Fords observed.

“It seems like a bit of a waste, though,” Holly added meekly, “doesn’t it? Just throwing it away?”

Azure shrugged. “Fitting in a bit of practice is never a waste. You’ll never get close to my level without it,” she explained before pausing to pop another bubble. “But hey, if you really want it that bad, you can go check how far my throw went. We were already headed that way, weren’t we?”

“Too right! A splendid idea, Miss Burle,” Fords agreed, taking the lead once again. “We should be nearing the canal now, which Miss Perez mentioned wishing to see, earlier.” She trotted ahead, and soon the pack crested the grassy hill.

Bridgette pointed down the trail from the top of the hill. “What’s wrong with that river of yours, Fords?”

Beyond the rolling hills, the mint green landscape sloped gently down to what looked like a river, dotted with bushes on each side and gently cutting through the landscape. To their left a series of locks and dams raised it higher. To the right, it disappeared into a tunnel which burrowed into a hill. The rich brown color of whatever flowed through it, though, lended credence to Bridgette’s question. Even from a distance, the waves on the canal’s surface appeared slow and deliberate compared to normal water.

“Why, I’m glad you noticed, Miss Grazeland,” Fords said, pointing her cane towards the river. All five women had already locked eyes with it before her gesture, but now a couple glanced at her in anticipation of the impending explanation. “That little marvel down there is the starting point of our complex’s canal system.” She then pointed at the tunnel’s portal. “With it, you can travel anywhere on the factory floor or beyond in no time at all! And to answer your question, Miss Grazeland, it is just as it’s supposed to be. On account of being, I must note, comprised of one-hundred percent chocolate.” The ewe accented her last point by tapping the end of her cane against the ground.

 “That’s the canal? You move things around in your chocolate supply?” Bridgette asked, a brow raised. “You know there’s no way that can be sanitary.”

“I assure that all workers and equipment on the canal system are made perfectly sanitary precisely to prevent those sorts of issues, Miss Grazeland,” Fords nodded.

“Workers? What workers?” Faye began looking around at the open, lonely plains. “We haven’t seen anyone else this whole time! Weren’t we supposed to go here because there was someone you wanted to show us-”

Before she could continue the thought, a whistling sound echoed sharply out of the tunnel and over the meadows. All six women turned their attention to the unexpected noise together. Anxious from the surprise, Holly also glanced back over the others for a second. In that instant, swore then she witnessed a flash of ire in Faye’s eyes, but it so quickly faded back into the same surprised look as the rest that she convinced herself she must have misseen.

With a soft, mechanical chuffing noise, the source of the sound steadily revealed itself. An ornate narrowboat, painted up the violet and gold of Fords’ branding, emerged from the tunnel at a decent pace. It gently spit steam from a short funnel, and with another long wheeze from its whistle moved over to moor against a platform on the near side of the canal.

When it fully emerged from the tunnel, the group beheld its petite pilot dutifully steering the craft from the rear. It appeared to be a rabbit, like Faye, but at least half her height and sporting a pronounced dewlap. There also appeared to be a pair of spindly antlers popping out of the scruffy head fur between their upright ears, but not quite matching them in length. They dressed in a sharp coat over the feminine shape of their stout stature, as well as dark pants tucked into a pair of creamy puttees just above the paw. The bright shades of bronze and brown across the outfit’s palette made it difficult to distinguish from the chocolate canal behind them, saved only by the bright white fur that covered all exposed parts of its body. Holly felt an odd sense of familiarity at the sight.

“Ah, how lovely! I was hoping the girls might be willing to meet you all, today,” Fords remarked, and a door at the front of the narrowboat opened.

From it exited a number of other figures, identical in all ways to the pilot of the boat. A dozen poured out from the boat’s cabin, some hopping onto the nearby bank to rummage between candied plants and others spreading large, feathery wings from their backs to flutter over to the locks. There, they grabbed at large, wooden spoons nearby and began mixing the chocolate within each lock. A distant hum of music and squeaky chatter accompanied them as they set to work.

“The ‘girls’?” Azure repeated, shooting an incredulous at Fords. “What the heck are these things supposed to even be?”

“Why, they’re all the wolpertingers! Well, I suppose they’re not all of the wolpertingers, in full, as there are quite a few others out and about elsewhere, but, well, I’m sure you understand,” Fords explained. Azure popped another bubble, not revealing whether she did or not.

With that extra shred of information, Holly’s memory suddenly connected the dots. “Wolpertingers!” She repeated, triumphantly clapping a fist into her open hand as she recalled an afternoon browsing oddball theories about Fords’ factory. “They’re an old German cry-” she paused, stumbling over her words for a second as she thought up a word more presentable than ‘cryptid’, “-myth, of little fairy rabbits! But,” she turned to Fords, “they aren’t real, are they?”

Fords nodded and chuckled. “Very clever of you to know ahead of time, Miss Perez! In fact, the wolps are precisely as real as you and me.” The sheep stopped for a second to reflect on what she had just said before issuing a correction. “Or, I suppose, we are just as fake as them, from their own point of view. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”

“You hired German, chocolate-making fairies to work at your factory. Perfect, just perfect ,” Delouise chuckled to herself. “Do they yodel while they work, too?”

“They certainly could, I’ve heard it on more than one occasion,” Fords added. “That said, I wouldn’t wish to sell the girls short! They appreciate a wide variety of musical genres, I can assure you. And all the while, they’re quite the wonderful help. I surely wouldn’t be where I am today without their help along the way.”

“What do you mean?” Holly asked, “I mean, how did you figure out they were real ?”

“Well, despite any misgivings I may have had, I suppose I knew about them from the very beginning, really.” Fords looked down at a nearby group of the wolpertingers, who had abandoned their work entirely to frolic through the field together. “In fact, before I get ahead of myself, how about I tell you all the whole story?”

Chapter Text

Fords sat down atop another small outcropping of marshmallow rock, this one colored a soft, pastel pink, and motioned for the others to gather nearer. As they did so, Holly allowed herself to take a subtle step closer than the others to listen better. The sheep began looking across the landscape idly, musing aloud to herself. “Now, where would be the best spot to begin…?”

After a moment, her eyes landed on something and she pointed her cane in its direction. The group looked over to see a broad, old oak perched near the rounded top of a gentle hill. “Ah,” she said, “I believe it all started precisely there!”

“What did,” Azure asked, “making this room, or what?”

“Ah, my relationship with the girls, I mean,” Fords explained. “Of course, I was just a lamb back then, so I apologize that I don’t remember it all quite perfectly, but I would say the broad strokes are quite unforgettable.”

Delouise spoke up. “You grew up around this part then? Honestly, gotta say that I’d figured that for a minute, now,” she nodded to herself, “you know, since it makes a lot more sense you’d build something so out of the way from everything because you’re nostalgic for the area.” The wolf gazed out across the sugary landscape. “Thinking about it, this wouldn’t be a bad place to play a few holes, would it? Say, Fords, how much of this podunk town did you have to buy out to make room for this project?”

“None at all, quite luckily,” Fords grinned, “this space was always right on the edge of town. In fact, I first discovered it while aimlessly playing outdoors, one fateful day.”

As she spoke, some of the wolpertingers who had broken off from the main group wandered towards the group. Hearing Fords begin to recount her history with them, they talked to each other in hushed tones, nodded resolutely, and sprang into action pantoming the scene behind her. Clearing out a space in the grass for a stage, one wolpertinger took to frolicking and gazing around in wide-eyed whimsy before stumbling and gently tumbling to the ground. Holly blinked, and the fairy’s outfit and fur suddenly sported a palette of violet and lavender not unlike Fords’ outfit.

“It was quite by accident, as I recall,” Fords continued, apparently not noticing the theatrics of the wolpertingers behind her. “One careless moment out in the fields was all it took for me to stumble through the door from there to here.” The purple wolpertinger’s friends picked her up from the ground and they continued playing together. “Of course, I was far from one to complain about it, having suddenly made so many new friends! As I recall, there weren’t many other children my age in town at that time, so I was sure to come back and play with the girls again every day. It surely made for the most fun summer I had known, by that point.”

Continuing to demonstrate, the wolpertingers cycled through a number of different, momentary games. At times they tagged, at others they played hide and seek, and many more with less immediately scrutable rules followed. Holly gazed back across the chocolate canal, where some groups of fey mimicked the games she now witnessed up close. Meanwhile, others kept themselves preoccupied picking candies from trees and batting them through the air to each other to load them into the narrowboat. She noticed a particular chain of five managing to bounce a chocolate orange off of their heads before landing it safely in the boat, and she couldn’t help but crack a smile at their achievement.

“Why,” Fords noted, “that must have been the summer of… ‘twenty-four, thereabouts?”

“Twenty-four,” Faye repeated, “like, nineteen twenty-four?”

“A century ago nineteen twenty-four?” Azure added.

“That should be right, if my math is true,” Fords nodded.

Faye cast a wary look at the others, conveying clearly her personal theory again shifting from Fords acting senile to Fords genuinely being senile.

“Uh-huh,” Bridgette hummed, doing little to hide doubts.

Fords continued. “Of course, that was only the first summer of several. Naturally, however, as I grew older I didn’t have the same amount of time to spend with them. Folks around me didn’t care for me to spend my spare time with what they were assumed were simply my ‘imaginary friends.’” A few of the fey giggled at the suggestion. “Why, after a while they even managed to convince me that’s exactly what they were.” The purple wolpertinger’s friends split off and hid behind the tree, but she simply shrugged and continued frolicking.

“Not a tough idea to sell someone on, really,” Bridgette shrugged, “active imaginations are what kids are known for, after all.”

“But,” Holly added, “if you forgot about them, how did you end up back with them?”

“Well, I may have forgotten that they were real, for a spell,” Fords elaborated, “but I never forgot what they had left me with! The memory of the sweets and sights they gifted to me stuck with me for years. Even at age twenty I could still vividly remember cruises through the chocolate riverlands, or our trips up and down the ice cream slopes beyond. The magic of what candy could be never left me.”

“That… doesn’t really say how you got back?” Faye observed, beginning to toy with her phone again as Fords’ explanation wore on.

“All in good time, Miss Huffie,” Fords nodded in the rabbit’s direction before continuing. “Now, it didn’t take long for me to find that the candy industry at large was far from being so inspired in its methods.”

“I’m not sure how inspired it can really get,” Azure noted, shrugging.

“Not at all! If they were to be believed,” Fords nodded, “ it was all machines and mixers and logistics and all manner of cold, emotionless production.”

Bridgette nodded. “Can’t blame them, that’s the only way you stay afloat. When you get to the factory scale it’s about efficiency, not fun.”

“And, hey, not everyone has the eye for logistics, do they,” Delouise added quickly. “But that’s not a problem at all if that kinda thing bores you, Fords. Logistics are my speed, if you didn’t notice, so you can leave those parts to me and stick to what’s fun for you to work on, alright?”

“Well, that was certainly my plan, Missus Leclerc, but unfortunately the others didn’t seem quite so ready to accept less strictly artificial ways of producing sweets,” Fords explained.

“Unsurprising,” Bridgette noted.

Fords sighed gently and shook her head. “Indeed, given the time, but I was far from deterred! I continued through my twenties, looking for a partner who might invest in the ideas. Business owners, bank lenders, one after another turned me down, but I had to keep heart for what I believed in!” The wolpertinger representing Fords fluttered from one fey to another, though each coldly ignored her.

“Makes you wonder what they were seeing that you weren’t,” Azure said, popping a disinterested bubble.

“It sounds ,” Delouise butted in, “like they didn’t know what they were missing out on, did they? After all, you still ended up keeping the biggest sweets business in the world afloat, didn’t you?”

“I very much did, so I suppose all’s well that ends well,” Fords beamed.

Holly raised a hoof inquisitively. “But, if you did, then that means someone had to hear you out eventually, right? What changed?”

Delouise spoke up before Fords. “You see, Perez, it’s all about running into someone who’s just the right type to take your idea to the finish line. A real leader, a visionary , is what you need in a situation like that.” She stepped closer to wrap an arm around the deer’s shoulders. Holly tensed up, but kept as still as possible. “The world’s full of sheep and wolves,” the wolfess continued, “the sheep don’t know what’s gonna succeed until it’s already popular, and by then the wolves have already profited off it the most. Don’t be a sheep, if you can help it.”

“Great analogy you’ve got there,” Bridgette said, “but, say, doesn’t that make you the sheep and Fords the wolf, here?”

Delouise made a finger gun at the bear before letting Holly go and approaching Bridgette instead. “Say, Grazeland, you do a cooking show, right? DECO’s got a cookware line, you know, something like that could be a nice bit of cash flow into your show and an easy way for all your little fans to follow along with your example, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure, but .” Bridgette responded, stepping further away from the wolf. “I only let something get an ad read on the show if I’ve confirmed its quality, first. I know that DECO brand you’re talking about, and I can tell you now that I’m not biting.”

Holly glanced over the others as Bridgette shut down the deal. Azure appeared more bored than ever, and Faye wore an incredulous look as the wolfess attempted her pitch on every other guest in turn.

Finally, Azure rolled her eyes and groaned softly. “Are you done , yet?”

“Sure,” Delouise said, shooting the vixen a frustrated look before turning her toothy grin towards the sheep once more. “Fords was just about to tell us about her own story about bucking convention, weren’t you?”

Fords’ face lit up as the wolf’s tangent ended. “Indeed I was,” she nodded, “of course, convention is quite the tricky thing to buck. ‘You’re being silly, Abby,’ they would say. ‘You wouldn’t last a day in the real world, Abby,’ and to think I almost believed them!”

Holly nodded cautiously. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because, Miss Perez,” Fords explained, “when I was at my lowest I decided to return to my roots.” The violet wolpertinger strolled down the trail, head down and cartoonishly dejected as she kicked a pebble along. “I supposed something must have been missing that I couldn’t get other folks to see,” she nodded back at Azure, “so I came right back here to where I first got my ideas all those years ago. In doing so, I happened to stumble right back into the wolps and their world!” Again the wolpertinger tripped, and an even larger group of them gathered around to pick her up.

“As you could imagine,” Fords continued, “it was a rather surprising reunion for me.”

Azure tilted her head. “Was it really that shocking to look at? Just a few of these, eh, whatever-you-call-them fairies messing around?”

The ewe nodded. “But if you can believe it, Miss Burle, it was even more of a surprise for them.” The acting wolps crowded around each other as they tried to get a better look at their violet counterpart. “You see, the girls all looked like a day hadn’t passed since I had left them all those years ago, but I had grown into a woman in my time gone. I was so tall compared to them that for a moment they mistook me for the Wolpertinger Queen herself!”

“‘ Queen ’?” Faye suddenly repeated, her attention drawn from her phone by that choice of word, “who was calling you ‘queen’?”

“The girls,” Fords said, and the acting wolpertingers lifted the one representing Fords onto their shoulders, “though their mix-up was rather easily set right when they brought me to their candied palace only to find that the real Wolpertinger Queen was already there.”

“Is she like you? The Wolpertinger Queen, I mean,” Holly asked, now standing closest to Fords in the wake of the group shuffling around Delouise.

“In some ways,” Fords pondered, “mostly in terms of personality , I would say, rather than physicality.” Six wolps stacked up onto each other’s shoulders. “Physically, she’s a woman easily twice my own height, and even softer than your average wolpertinger, not to mention highly decorated for her inventive ideas.”

“‘Her ideas’,” Holly repeated before the wolpertinger leaning tower collapsed under its own weight and pulled the group’s attention away from Holly’s thought. The tiny women tumbled, flapped, and laughed away from their cartoonish formation. With that aspect of their show completed, they scattered among the guests, attempting to draw them into their games. Azure popped another bubble in the face of one fluttering in front of her, and she snidely mimicked the gesture before fluttering off. The group tried its best to keep their focus on Fords rather than the fairies, though Faye struggled to keep the nearby wolps from taking peeks at her phone screen.

After a moment, one of them, the wolp sporting a violet coat rather than the brassy browns of her companions, approached Holly and grinned. The deer gave a meek wave in greeting, and the fairy rabbit giggled before darting around her in the air. Holly turned about to see what the wolpertinger was doing, but the wolp continued to dart around and lead the doe in several quick circles before chuckling at the silly display she’d made Holly put on. Growing dizzy from the spinning, Holly responded with a weary laugh of her own before sitting down on the minty grass by the trail.

As soon as she did so, the playful little lady followed suit and situated herself directly on the deer’s lap. Holly gasped as the fairy made herself comfortable, delicately raising a hand to pet at the wolp’s plush dewlap, and she eagerly leaned into the touch. After a second of gentle petting, Holly glanced up and realized that all eyes now rested on her. As well, Faye now aimed her phone’s camera squarely at the scene of Holly and the wolpertinger.

“Oh my gosh! Hold it right there for just a second?” The rabbit took several pictures of Holly with the wolp. “Perfect! Can’t believe I didn’t think up such an adorable photo op first, you know? You’ve got a real knack for this.”

“Well, I mean,” Holly stammered out, shrugging, “I didn’t think of it myself, it just kind of happened on its own.”

“In quite a similar manner to my own friendship with them,” Fords noted. “A healthy dose of serendipity is all it took. After the mix-up had been cleared, I learned quite a lot about the Wolpertinger Queen and her role with the girls. As it turns out, she had very little to do with being a ‘queen’ as we would understand it, and much more with being a creative guide to the energy of the other wolpertingers.”

“Yeah, well, what can you expect, really? Royals like to be on their best behavior when they’ve got guests around,” Delouise remarked.

“And so was the Wolpertinger Queen. She would simply suggest ideas to the other wolpertingers as they came to her. At times the girls would spring into action to immediately carry them out, while at others it seemed they pretended to not hear her at all. I supposed that it mostly came down to their personal preferences for what seemed the most fun. Given they had taken a liking to me in the past, I wondered if it might be possible that I could also suggest something to their liking! Of course, by that point in my fledgling career I was quite well-rehearsed, so I chose to deliver my business pitch, as originally inspired by the girls, back to them.”

“So that’s where the money came from,” Delouise said, snapping her finger at the conclusion to the story, “and I guess the rest is history, huh?”

“You could say that,” Fords shrugged. “After all, there were quite a few resources involved in the making of the complex, though I don’t recall ever once seeing a wolpertinger who cared much for money in particular. Rather, the Wolpertinger Queen had her own conditions for making my idea work. Chiefly, in order to share some of their magical sweets with the mundane world, we would need to be able to establish a foothold on the outside which was similar enough to the wolps’ home for them to feel comfortable.”

“So then that became the factory?” Holly asked.

“Precisely, Miss Perez,” Fords said, “each brick of the complex was laid either by wolp hands or my own, and all with the intent on making it similar enough to here ,” Fords swung her cane about to motion at the landscape, “for the girls to be able to pass between the two freely. For how spirited they are, even a wolpertinger can’t stay in the mundane world for long without being drained by the cynical energy all around them. Only the most daring have braved the outside world over the years. If there are folks who spotted them before, it must have been some of those adventurous wolpertingers.” She nodded at Holly as she referred back to her recognition of the wolps.

“Luckily for us, however, by the time we opened for business it was precisely what the girls needed. The rest, then, is history,” Fords concluded.

Delouise approached the sheep again, a hand outstretched and primed once more to shake. “It sure is. So don’t mind me asking or anything, but don’t you think it’s high time that we started talking about the future of this place instead?”

Chapter Text

“Ah,” Fords said, standing up again and brushing her dress flat, “I suppose you mean the next stop on the tour, Missus Leclerc? I’m glad to have been able to share that with you all, but I do suppose it’s about time we got moving again, yes.”

Delouise shook her head and chuckled in a tone that made Holly’s skin crawl with condescension. “Nah, not that, Fords.” Rather than awaiting a handshake, the wolf stepped beside the sheep and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I’m talking about the future of your business here, and I mean its future with DECO in particular.”

Fords gazed down at Delouise with a brow raised in confusion. “What was it that you had in mind, then?”

“‘What I’ve got in mind’? Well, I’m glad you asked, Fords. I think the first step here is getting these little workers of yours to show us what they can really do,” she explained. “You said they built this whole place for you, didn’t they? Was that all manpower, or are your buddies good with heavy machinery, too?”

The ewe stifled a giggle at the suggestion. “Why, certainly not! Those sorts of contraptions wouldn’t pair well with the girls, whatsoever! Every brick of this complex was laid by a wolpertinger’s hand, or my own.”

“See? Even better, that shows some real drive behind them, you know,” the wolf continued. “It sounds to me like it’s high time you drop that small-fry delivery company you’ve got and get your little ladies working for Leclerc Logistics, instead. Have you considered how much you could be saving in logistics by splitting your production across multiple global facilities, Fords? This is just the start of what I can do for you.”

“I suppose there are quite a number of other ways to pass between the Wolpertinger World and the world at large, yes,” Fords noted, “but once outside the girls would grow just as drained as when they leave the complex from here, so it wouldn’t be much help to you.”

“Ah, don’t worry about those little details, that’s what the managers are for. We’ll just see about making a break room or two they’ll be able to work with, that’s all it’ll take,” Delouise countered, “ and you can swap them out whenever you need, too. Just how many have you got running around here, Fords? Hundreds? Thousands, even?”

Fords looked off, deep in thought, but only for a few seconds before she came to a conclusion. “Total? …Enough,” she shrugged. “I believe I’ve seen as many as thousands in one place before, but it’s the sort of thing where you could never expect an exact count.”

The wolpertinger resting on Holly’s lap, satisfied with the affection given to her so far, stood up, stretched, and strolled away. Holly took the opportunity to stand up next to Faye. Glancing back at the wolf and sheep, she leaned in to speak more softly with the rabbit. “Did she say there are so many of them around here that she can’t keep track of them all…?”

“That, or she can’t remember the number and that’s an excuse,” Faye noted, glancing Holly’s way.

“No clue how she can run a business if she doesn’t even know who’s working for her,” Azure remarked.

“Could be she’s hiding that she knows the answer from Leclerc,” Bridgette suggested. “Business people just love keeping things from each other if they think it’ll give them any leverage.”

“I’m not sure what she would gain from that, though,” Holly said, still quietly.

“Well, if Leclerc keeps pressing like this, I think we’re all about to find out,” Bridgette shrugged and looked back at the pair.

Delouise tapped her foot against the ground, pulling away from Fords’ side to face her directly. “Don’t sweat it. DECO has the resources to get a headcount when we need one, you know. What matters now is the broad strokes, what we’ll be doing for each other in this deal, right?”

“I’m sorry to say, dear,” Fords said, “that it doesn’t sound so far like either the girls or the Wolpertinger Queen will be terribly interested in following through with your idea for a deal. At least, they wouldn’t as it currently stands. I’m sure if we have the time later, we could ask them their thoughts on it.”

“What they want doesn’t matter, Fords. This is about you and me, we’re the ones calling the shots,” Delouise snapped back.

Fords tilted her head slightly. “Why is it that you keep talking about the girls, then?”

Delouise let out a frustrated sigh. "Look, I don't know what game you think you're playing, Fords, but I'm here to try to run a business, you get it? Stop entertaining those no-names over there for long enough to think about how much money DECO will, not ‘can,’ but will make FFF, then give me a straight answer." The wolf shot a deathly serious glare at Fords.

Rather than flinching away from the look, Fords only scratched her chin as she carefully considered her response. "You know, Missus Leclerc, I’ve just come to realize something,” the ewe began, and Delouise’s ears perked up in anticipation. “You see, for the most part, my end of things tends to work much less like a business in the conventional sense, and far more like a... non-profit, you could say? Thank you for putting that into perspective for me!"

The wolf’s fierce eyes twitched. "You're kidding me. You can't build up an industrial site like this, make some vanity candy room project, keep everything afloat for decades? And then go and try to tell me that you're not keeping one red cent! With all of those little things obeying your every beck and call, too? Do you really think I don't know what kind of goldmine you're sitting on here? You’d have to think I’m some kinda idiot! C’mon, how little do you have to pay them to work for you?"

"Well," Fords said, looking down towards the wolpertingers by the riverbank, "they don't work for me at all, when you get right down to it. I simply supply the girls with ideas, and they carry out the fun ones entirely on their own." One of the little fairies waved to Fords as they made eye contact, and she waved back.

"I've had it up to here with the jokes, Fords, capiche?" Delouise produced a checkbook and pen from her suit pockets. "Name their price, and I'll match it, maybe double it. Get these girls working in any real facility, and you'll see what this work ethic can do to transform logistics. I can use them to come out on top in the end, and I can do it with or without you."

"I'm sorry, Missus Leclerc, but I'm afraid that I meant every word! The girls aren't beholden to a single thing I say," Fords shrugged dismissively.

The wolfess nearly growled in frustration, putting her checkbook away for the moment. "Maybe not to you , but here, it’s your lucky day. I'll give you a taste of what a natural-born leader can do. Watch me." With that, she left Fords' side and made her way down to the closest group of wolps.

A moment of stunned silence later, the others followed her down the trail. Holly looked anxiously at the rest. “What exactly is she going to do, down there?”

“Something stupid , it looks like,” Azure noted as she passed and took lead of the second group.

The narrowboat at the bank of the canal had been fully loaded with chocolates and candies by the time the tour group neared it. Some wolpertingers continued to toy with the load, making another little tune to themselves. They stopped as Delouise approached, however, and they looked up to face her with simple grins.

“Hey, pipsqueak,” she said, delivering her sharp-toothed grin to the wolps, “who wants to make some cash today?” None of the little rabbits responded. “Let’s start with something simple. You all do food and drink, right? First one to get me a black coffee is the first one of you that’ll get paid .”

They glanced at each other, shrugged, and returned to what they were doing. Delouise visibly fumed at the lack of a response, but attempted to regain her composure. “Not the ones that do that kinda job? Not a problem.”

She looked down for a second and noticed a small brownish stain on her suit jacket’s sleeve. “I think something from one of your little candy bushes came off on the suit, how about one of you take care of cleaning off the jacket? It’s dry clean only, but it looks like your uniforms already get the same treatment, so that shouldn’t be an issue.” The wolpertingers continued to ignore her, humming their tune together again.

Faye let out an amused hum at the display. “What, do they not speak English or something?”

“Oh, they most certainly do,” Fords shook her head as the other five stood a short distance behind the wolf, “but it’s just as I said. They don’t think her ideas are fun enough to be worth their time, so they aren’t paying her any mind.”

“Fun, huh?” Faye turned towards the boat, cupping her hands around her mouth to call out to the wolps. “Uh, do a flip?” At once, three of the wolpertingers flapped their wings to perform little aerial tricks before landing back on the boat’s roof. The rabbit clapped at the display, even when Delouise shot her an incredulous look.

“Be quiet back there, will you? I’m working,” Delouise barked.

“Fords,” Azure rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to be running this thing. Why don’t you tell Leclerc to stop embarrassing herself so we can get a move on, already?”

“I’d quite like to,” Fords said, shaking her head reluctantly, “but Missus Leclerc seems to be listening to me just as little as the girls are currently listening to her!”

Delouise continued her demands unimpeded. “How about a private cruise on that little boat of yours, then?”

The wolps continued to ignore her, but Fords spoke up in their stead. “Actually, dear, we were already planning on giving the entire group a ride in just a moment.”

A glare back at the sheep silenced her long enough for Delouise to keep talking. “Right,” she growled before facing the fey again. “Alright, look here, let’s start in your wheelhouse instead, alright? Get me a hard candy or something, if you’ve got some of those on your boat.”

At that, one of the wolps leapt into action. She dug around in the pile of harvested sweets before producing a small, bright pink candy and tossing it to Delouise. The wolfess caught it, smirked, and pocketed it without so much as looking over what she had been given. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it? Now, about what else you’ve got in there. How’s about you all make me a nice sampler from what you grabbed around here, why don’t you? One of everything you’ve got.”

A pause followed where the wolpertingers glanced at each other. Their smiles widened, and they turned their attention back to Delouise. “You’ve got it, ma’am, only the best,” one said in a light, sing-song tone that Holly found nowhere near as high-pitched as she anticipated. “You’ll put our skills to the test!” With that, they scattered from the boat and across the fields to its candied plants.

Azure chuckled. “Did they make that rhyme on purpose?”

Fords nodded. “How observant, Miss Burle. As far as I can tell, a wolpertinger has never said anything that doesn’t rhyme.”

“Well, isn’t that just adorable of them?” Faye cooed.

Bridgette simply rolled her eyes at the display. Holly glanced from her to Fords, who had adopted a slight furrow to her brow as she watched Delouise waiting patiently by the canal.

The deer stepped closer to the ewe. “Is there something wrong, Miss Fords?”

“Nothing to be worried about, I’m sure,” Fords waved aside the concern, “but I’m just not sure that Missus Leclerc and the girls are on quite the same page about what she wants from her idea.”

Finally, the wolps emerged again from the brush surrounding the river. They returned to the boat, each carrying a little candy with them. While Delouise only issued her command to a dozen wolpertingers at most, now easily twice that lined up before her. As they approached, they continued their music from before. First the sound of drums, but quickly followed by guitar and bass, in the span of a moment the area became filled with the sound of instruments rolling over the hills from the distance, though it sounded like it was being performed directly in front of them. Then, in unison, the wolpertingers began to sing.

One of everything? An easy task,

All you had to do was ask!

A loose circle of eager wolps formed around the wolfess. Each vyed to hand Delouise their chosen sweet first. Delouise took one in each hand, taking small bites of each before discarding them like previously. She laughed at the enthusiasm of the fairies, and she also spared a smug look at Fords before continuing to sample.

“Huh, so you critters can listen, after all! And look at that, you do sing while you work, what’re the odds?”

Only the best for Miss Delouise,

For only the best can appease-

A boss that won’t settle for less,

Demanding to complete excess!

“Hey, now,” Delouise remarked, patting a wolpertinger on the head as she passed, “don’t you lay it on too thick, now. It’s still day one with your new boss, ladies. You all oughta be-” she began before being interrupted by more wolps appearing and placing new sweets into her hands even more insistently. The wolf’s smirk began to falter.

Dishing orders day and night,

Filling workers with fear and fright.

We think her attitude’s rather rude,

And yelling spoils our magic mood.

We all find money such a bore,

And yet you keep demanding more?

You act like it makes you so great,

But honestly? We can’t relate!

Delouise struggled to keep up with the increasing pace of the wolps. She attempted to toss some candies aside, including directly into the canal itself, but no matter what she tried a new serving of whatever she attempted to get rid of quickly found itself foisted back into her hands.

Capital’s a silly thing,

Making people dance on strings,

Makes them work until they weep,

For bits of paper on the cheap.

Doesn’t matter to Delouise,

Warnings pass her ears with ease!

She’ll strip off parts ‘til they capsize

To make those lines forever rise!

Always racing to make a quick buck,

We think can lead to some bad luck,

And milking cash cows ‘til they’re dry,

To get a slice of every pie!

With each passing verse, the wolpertingers grew more forceful. When her hands grew full, some took to fluttering up to Delouise’s face and stuffing their chosen sweets into her mouth on their own. She swatted them away as best she could, but only managed to get her mouth at most back down to half-full.

“You all better quit that, right now,” she attempted to bark at them, but her mouth’s sugary contents muffled her command. “You’re gonna… gonna…” her voice trailed off as she looked beyond the crowd of wolpertingers surrounding her and towards the ones still approaching. Each one carried a larger portion than the last, from novelty-sized candy bars to a three-layer wedding cake being held up precariously by three wolps working together. As more sweets were shoved down Delouise’s throat, it dawned on Holly how the wolf’s figure steadily grew wider and softer, straining against the precise fit of her suit.

We don’t really understand it,

Always swiping like a bandit

Cold old coins or slips of paper

Are all that’s there to really sate her.

For what? We ask, a puzzle indeed!

Keeping cash from those in need,

And ‘til she buys out every store

Demanding more and more and more!

As their song progressed, it grew louder and more intense, aided by a brass section which gradually integrated itself into the bombastic melody. Still, Holly failed to find a single wolp in the area holding anything resembling an instrument, aside from a couple in the mob carrying cream horns for the wolf. Delouise attempted more sputtered protests, but failed to utter a single word out before another wolpertinger dutifully filled it again. With each oversized candy her body grew fatter, and each time she tried to swat away a flying wolp or their sugary payload she only managed to add another haphazard stain to her suit. Seams strained and frayed, struggling against the wolf’s body as she became hundreds of pounds heavier than she entered. The button on her jacket snapped off, and her newly rotund belly spilled forward and over her thighs with its freedom.

There is no limit to her greed,

Only money sates her need,

Cash is her life’s one desire,

Plus numbers soaring higher and higher!

But what does all of that dough do?

What has money done for you?

You took it all, but even now

You’re hunting for your next cash cow!

As her weight skyrocketed, the wolfess became cartoonishly fat. Still, the extreme portions only intensified. The wolpertingers bearing the wedding cake finally cornered her, and with each slice stuffed into her she swelled visibly. Delouise attempted to push her way through the singing crowd, but she stumbled at each step from the newfound thickness of her legs. She groaned, waving wildly at the wolps while her whole body wobbled and swayed heavily with her.

Holly pulled her eyes away from the bizarre scene for a second to look wearily at Fords. “Is it safe for them to be doing this to her?” Fords, however, seemed too caught up in enjoying the music to respond.

Azure spoke up for her. “No way it is. She’s gonna be sick .”

“Her!? I’m gonna be sick!” Faye wailed, looking between the fox and the fat wolf.

Delouise continued her struggle to free herself from the wolps, but instead, after a moment of stumbling, fell to the ground with a heavy thud. It took a moment for her fattened figure to stop wobbling and allow her to force herself up onto her hands and knees. She slowly pushed by the wolpertingers, using her now-thick arms to better shield her mouth at the cost of smearing more of the mess from her cheeks onto her sleeves. Despite this, they still took passing shots at feeding her and making her escape even slower. Delouise weaved chaotically through the mob of feeding wolps, causing them to scurry out of the way just to avoid being flattened beneath her cumbersome footsteps. For each little rabbit she managed to swing at, another two bounced back quickly.

So be prepared to get your wish

To sample one of every dish!

You think that money gives you power,

But we know it just leaves you sour.

Money makes your world go ‘round,

And makes a wolf’s mind get unwound.

Without those greedy, selfish bosses

Your problems’ll vanish like their causes!

That greed for green is really tragic,

Ditch your money and there’s more magic!

No CEOs to yell or smirk,

And far less Delouise Leclercs!

So as you go and bark and shout,

Or whatever you think’ll make us rouse,

Don’t worry how to pay us out-

Miss Delouise, it’s on the house!

The wolf finally broke free from the bulk of the crowd, and the wolps’ song broke into a cacophony of laughter as Delouise continued her strained, messy escape. Some wolpertingers remained around the boat, while others pursued Delouise across the field until they all entirely disappeared over a hill. Fords applauded the spontaneous performance, and several of the remaining wolps bowed proudly in response.

“What,” Bridgette began slowly, “was that supposed to be?”

“A song,” Fords answered simply. “The girls are quite the avid performers, when given the opportunity.”

Faye stood on the tips of her toes to look in the direction Delouise fled before turning to face Fords. “How’d they know her name? Or figure out all of those rhymes so quick?”

“There’s no way you can do something like that without practice,” Azure added.

“Too true, Miss Burle,” Fords continued, “and that’s exactly why the wolpertingers have been practicing their improvisation skills for centuries! It’s one of the most time-honored traditions of their culture, you see. As such, they’re quite prepared for any situation and for any rhyme.”

“Man, she really wants us to buy all that, huh?” Bridgette muttered under her breath to Holly before speaking up to the group. “Yeah, and where are we supposed to believe they got that wedding cake from, exactly?”

Fords beamed at the bear. “Why, from the wedding , of course! Some of the girls decided it seemed like great fun, and they put on a simply grand one over in the Craft Wing recently. If only the ticket contest had ended a few weeks earlier, I'm sure you all would have loved to see it in person.”

“But, uh,” Azure noted, “aren’t you normally supposed to eat the cake at the wedding?”

“And,” Bridgette added, “if it’s been sitting around for that long then it definitely would’ve gone bad by now. Something like that wouldn’t be safe to eat normally, let alone get shoved down your throat .”

“Ah, that’s just them getting a bit enthusiastic about things,” Fords shrugged. “I believe some of the girls in the bakery never got the memo that it was time to stop baking more cakes for the guests. Still, I’m sure they'll move on once they've grown tired of it.”

Holly hadn’t broken her gaze from the point where Delouise fled from view. As the conversation started to drift elsewhere, though, she looked back to Fords. “So, what’s going to happen with Delouise, now?”

“A pertinent question, Miss Perez,” Fords said. “I suppose the girls will keep playing around with Missus Leclerc until they also grow tired of the idea.”

Holly nodded, but continued. “And after that?”

“She’ll get lost out there for sure, running wild like that,” Azure remarked.

“She very well might,” Fords nodded, “did she not have a proper guide to show her the way back to us! Of course, she’ll likely also want some help with her current state, so,” she turned to look at one of the wolps still giggling with the others atop the boat. “Would one of you care to help give Missus Leclerc a quick run through the Thinning Room, and then help her find her way back to me again? She should be easy to find, over that way.” She motioned her cane back towards the fields. One wolpertinger nodded eagerly and began flying off in the same direction.

Bridgette chuckled briefly. “‘Thinning Room’? Mind telling me what kind of factory has a room like that?”

Fords tapped her cane against the ground. “Why, those mints aren’t going to thin themselves, now are they?” Some wolps chuckled more at the wordplay.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Azure noted, popping another bubble.

“And,” Holly added, “they’ll be able to, you know, get rid of all of that while she’s there?”

“The most of it, at the very least,” Fords explained. “It depends a fair amount on how much Missus Leclerc is willing to cooperate with the girls when they arrive, you must understand.”

“She’d better hope that she does,” Faye said. “Did you see her there at the end? How her belly was just all out there ? So gross, I couldn’t imagine being so huge …” She shuddered at the thought, and Azure rolled her eyes at the dramatics.

“Yes, it seems her request did have a dramatic effect on her figure,” Fords nodded solemnly, “so it may take some time yet for her to be ready to continue with the rest of us. In that case, she should be able to rejoin us later on.” She tapped a brief rhythm into the ground with her cane and a pair of wolpertingers quickly set a small gangplank between the narrowboat and ground, “As for us, we can continue onto the next stop I have planned for today’s tour, starting with a brief cruise on the complex’s canal system!” With that, the sheep trotted aboard.

Chapter Text

Azure briefly tested the gangplank with a foot before boarding and walking by the sheep. She continued down the short steps from there and disappeared through the door into a cabin occupying the middle of the narrowboat. Faye took a short video of herself winking at the camera as she boarded, but her smile faded as she once again tried and failed to upload it.

“Fords,” she said, glancing up from her phone and adopting her grin again, “you’re sure there are places coming up where I can get some reception, right? It’d be so cruel of me to not keep all my fans up to date with the amazing things we’re seeing around here, you know?.”

Fords nodded eagerly. “Why, certainly! I know for a fact there is at least one stop coming up on the tour which is custom-made to have as much outreach as possible.”

Faye lit up at the response. “Oh, you’re just the best ,” she said in a sing-song tone almost reminiscent of the wolpertingers before Fords motioned her to follow Azure inside.

Bridgette glanced warily between Holly and the boat for a second. Holly attempted to offer the gesture of letting her board first, but the bear shook her head. “Oh, don’t worry about me. That’s not the part I’m worried about,” she noted softly to the deer before stepping ahead and embarking.

Holly followed closely behind, but paused as she passed Fords. The ewe failed to notice this, busy reminding several wolps of the steps they still needed to take before departing. Once finished, she turned about, and her eyes brightened at the sight of Holly. “Ah, Miss Perez! Is there anything I can help you with before we depart, dear?”

“Ah,” Holly said, not realizing how long she had been lagging behind. “I was just wondering where exactly you were planning on going from here.” She looked uneasily from Fords to the well-lit canal tunnel ahead.

“An excellent question,” Fords nodded, still smiling brightly at the doe, “and the truth is that I have several potential stops ready for us to visit, depending on which happens to be closest when we finish our cruise today.”

“I see,” Holly made eye contact with the sheep again. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this, huh?”

“Why, I don’t see how I could have done anything but,” Fords responded. “After all, it’s my responsibility as your host for today to make this tour as perfect as possible,” she paused and gazed off in the direction Delouise ran away just minutes before, “despite any hiccups.” Before either dwell on the thought for very long, Fords tapped her cane against the deck of the boat. “But it should be smooth sailing through the canal, so there’s nothing to worry about now.” With that, she motioned Holly in through the door, and she followed suit.

Inside the narrowboat’s cabin, Holly found a surprisingly spacious seating area compared to the cramped impression given by its size on the outside. Its wooden finish and richly colored walls reminded her of the offices the group had passed through earlier. Though now, instead of a desk the cabin contained rows of upholstered seats alternating between the walls and flanking some modest tables. A door at the opposite end of the room revealed some of the bins the wolps had loaded with candied produce earlier. The other three guests still situated themselves about the cabin. Azure and Bridgette sat opposite each other, and after a quick glance towards Holly and Fords Faye took a seat next to the fox.

“Now,” said Fords, and Holly stepped aside to give a clear view of her, “I must ask that you all keep to your seats for just a moment as I speak with the pilot for our cruise today. I can only assume, considering the circumstances, that you all may now wish to save any further free samples for later on in the day, so we’ll be making a slight adjustment to our itinerary!” As she said so, a wolpertinger walked through the cabin, grabbed a captain’s hat left on one of the unoccupied seats, and placed it confidently on her head before carrying on towards the rear of the boat. “Once that is arranged, we should be able to depart.” Fords followed along behind the wolp, leaving the four to themselves.

Finally stepping out from the corner, Holly tried to take a seat by Bridgette as discreetly as possible. The bear, already preoccupied looking out of a round porthole window, helped her on that front. She groaned softly to herself, only Holly close enough to hear.

“...Is something wrong?” Holly asked, trying to speak softly as well.

Bridgette rolled her eyes in response. “It’s just. This has ‘cheap amusement park ride’ written all over it,” she remarked, louder. “They’d better not be trying to milk another song out of this. I didn’t sign up for an annoying musical.”

“What did you sign up for, then,” Azure said, “an excuse to complain about stuff?”

“I signed up for anything real I could put in a video,” Bridgette countered, her arms crossed.

“Well, I sure haven’t had any problem finding things like that, Bridgette,” Faye noted, waving her phone at the bear.

“Good for you, but I’m not talking about this manicured candyland stuff Fords has been showing us, I’m talking about her real methods and recipes,” the bear explained.

Azure popped a bubble in response. “If you need to know when we’ll get to that, just ask her .” She motioned towards Holly, who froze in response.

“Me? I mean,” she began to stammer out before the fox cut her off.

“That’s what you were sitting out there talking to her about, right?” Azure said. “Or were you trying to schmooze her into giving you a better shot at this grand prize business?” She chuckled at her own suggestion.

“Is, uh,” Holly asked, looking around at the uninterested reactions of the other two. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not just ‘supposed to be,’” Azure noted, “it already is funny, what everyone goes through just to try getting a leg up on me at anything.”

“Well,” Faye said, “if you’re confident enough to not want to talk to the person running your game.”

“Yep,” Azure replied simply, “I won’t need it, so what’s the point?” She blew another bubble.

Faye let out a little hum, though to Holly it sounded strained, before getting up from her seat and approaching the deer. “ Say ,” she said in a soft, drawn-out tone, “mind swapping with me for a bit? My ears are just so sensitive in this kind of place, so I can’t be around all those chewing noises or I’ll get sick. You understand, don’t you?” She brushed her long, lop ears with a hand as she talked, and she wore a pitiable expression.

Holly looked to the other two, both appearing completely unmoved by the plea. Regardless, she nodded weakly, trying to muster a smile. “I don’t think that’d be a problem,” she said, standing up from her seat.

“Oh, you’re just the sweetest ,” Faye exclaimed affectionately as she swooped in to take the seat for herself. Before Holly got out another word, she heard the telltale trotting of Fords returning to the cabin. Frantically, she took Faye’s former spot.

“Good! It seems everyone is comfortable,” Fords nodded as she looked over the four, “so that means we should be clear and ready to go,” the boat’s steam whistle suddenly cut her off, echoing through the cabin. A second later, the narrowboat gently lurched into motion. “...Right now!”

“So,” Bridgette remarked, turning in her seat and resting her arm on the back as Fords took a chair in the rear of the cabin, “what was it you needed to talk about that took that long?”

“Oh, it was just a matter of directions, for the most part,” Fords said, resting her ornate cane against the wall. “Dinghy knows the canals better than I do, you see, and we have quite the complex system down here to allow one to get anywhere one might need to be.”

The bear blinked silently in response for a moment before repeating, “...’Dinghy’? That’s her name?”

“It’s an adorable name,” Faye cooed, “and did you see that little hat she had on? Gosh!”

Fords nodded gleefully. “They all have quite the charm to them, don’t they?”

From there the conversation died down, and the puttering of the boat’s engine filled the cabin as the boat steadily turned about and entered the tunnel it had first appeared from. Dark bricks lined its interior, nicely complimenting the gently lapping chocolate beneath. Even as the sunlight of the candied landscape faded behind, the tunnel remained well lit from lamps built into the ceiling overhead. Gazing out of the nearest window, Holly watched the entrances to a dozen different side tunnels drift by, each one seemingly identical to the one the group currently cruised down.

Holly gave the cruise just enough time for the monotony to get to her, then glanced about at the other guests. Fords looked intently out of one of the windows by her, unfazed by the repetitive scenery. Azure looked to be staring off into space as she blew another bubble from her gum, while Faye seemingly found reception again and concerned herself with her phone. Bridgette, however, locked her gaze firmly on Fords, herself. She glanced back in Holly’s direction as she felt her eyes, though, and the deer quickly looked back out the window to avoid the accidental attention.

The near silence dragged on for a while longer, until Holly felt compelled to somehow break up the quiet. “So,” she began softly, “has anyone else been thinking about the clues we got for this? About the prize, I mean?”

Fords’ face lit up at the suggestion. “Ah, yes! I’d quite love to know what you all think of them. The girls and I put in quite a bit of work making them how they are!”

Bridgette shrugged. “Sorry, it wasn’t really what I was spending my energy researching, going into this.”

“Yeah,” Faye added, “I was thinking a lot more about the fun coming up instead of competing over something, y’know?”

The ewe nodded. “In that case, I do hope that both of you have been enjoying yourselves, so far!” She then turned to look at Azure. “And you, Miss Burle?”

Azure only started paying attention when her name was mentioned, smirking at the ewe. “Me? I’m fine with the grand prize being a surprise when you hand it over.”

“Of course, though I’d also like to think that putting together the hints is a part of the fun,” Fords noted. “Miss Perez, I suppose that you’re the one who’s put the most thought into it, then. What do you think?”

“Oh,” Holly stammered out, her eyes shooting down to her hooves as the others all set their gaze on her, “I guess so, yeah.” Desperate to no longer be put on the spot, she continued. “But, uh, Azure? Wouldn’t it help you with your plan to win, or something like that?”

“It’d only tell you the prize, not how to win it,” the fox countered, “and even if it did it’d only put you all at even more of a disadvantage. I found one first, remember? I’d figure out whatever puzzle they hid in there first, too.”

Faye tilted her head slightly. “Is that really a big of a head start?”

Azure shrugged. “Doesn’t need to be. With how the rest of you don’t even care about winning? I was the one driven enough to go out and find the first ticket, so it’d be inevitable.”

“Yeah, well ,” Faye continued, “at least that means you didn’t buy yours off of someone like Delouise back there. I mean, can you believe that? We’d probably all still be together if the real third winner showed up, right?”

Fords hummed in thought. “I suppose, though I can only imagine what that sort of person might be like, who’d be willing to sell off their prize like they did.” Holly decided not to mention that Delouise likely paid the real third ticket winner enough to not have to work for the rest of their life.

“ ‘Real’ third person?” Bridgette repeated, her eyes narrowed at Faye. “Didn’t you also bribe one of your fans to give you a ticket?”

Faye waved off the accusation. “Oh, come on ,” she said, returning to her sing-song tone, “where’d you even hear something like that?”

Holly shifted in her seat some before speaking up. “From your video, right? The one you posted when you got it, I mean.”

The rabbit’s waving hand paused for an instant before she continued. “Oh, that? It was just a gift, really! I didn’t even ask for it! That’s nothing like going out of your way to find someone and buy it off them…”

Azure leaned back into her seat and rested her hands behind her head. “Leclerc tried to pay you off too, huh? Her people wanted to get in touch with me, but I shut them all down. I knew I couldn’t pass up on coming first in this contest twice in a row.”

“Why, I’m sure that it took just as much effort from Miss Grazeland and Perez to get this far as you, Miss Burle,” Fords commented.

“If you could call it that,” Bridgette shrugged. “I ended up with one pretty much on accident while researching a video. It was stuck right to the bottom of the lid of one of your ice cream pints.”

Fords grinned. “Ah, what a creative choice from the girls!”

Holly glanced her way. “You mean, you didn’t know that’s where it was?”

“Oh, certainly not,” Fords shook her head. “I didn’t want to be able to accidentally clue anyone in on where they might be, so I had the wolps figure out some fun hiding spots on their own.”

“Well, you sure kept everyone all scrambling to find the last ones for a few months, there, so I guess they were pretty good at hiding them,” Azure nodded.

“I mean,” Holly noted, “it was a lot harder to find anything in stock, by that point. When I managed to buy a chocolate bar one day I just happened to find a ticket with it.”

Azure blew another bubble at her. “Oh. You’re still sticking to that miracle story of yours, huh?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I mean, it’s what actually happened, so,” Holly stammered out.

“Sounds like you’re jealous she managed to find hers in less tries than you, Burle,” Bridgette said, her words punctuated by the shifting of the boat as it turned down one of the many identical tunnels to its side. “Do you even remember what you got yours from?”

“Of course I do,” Azure scoffed, “it was one of those fruit roll things they make, with the flat gummy. The whole ticket was rolled up with it.”

“Well,” Holly continued cautiously, holding onto her seat as the boat began to twist and turn more frequently, “was it any good? I haven’t tried one of those in years.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Bridgette responded instead, “miss pro-athlete probably didn’t bother to eat any.” Azure simply rolled her eyes in response.

A quiet moment followed, and Fords’ gaze fell on one of the long tunnels the boat passed. “Ah, she’s skipping that, then? Well, true, I suppose that room would be better for the end of the day, yes,” she mused to herself.

Holly spared a glance out of the window, herself, and found that the narrowboat had somehow just entered an incline. The tunnel sloped gently upwards, though the chocolate that filled it looked as still as when perfectly level. She cast a wary look at Fords, who appeared entirely unconcerned by the situation.

The deer hesitated, but couldn’t help but ask. “Miss Fords, are you sure this is, uh,” she paused for a second to think about her next words, “going the way you want?”

“I’m pretty sure we just took four right turns in a row, a minute ago,” Bridgette added, “so wherever we’re going, we’re not getting there anytime soon.”

“It’s a cruise , though,” Faye responded, “you’re supposed to take your time and enjoy yourself a little, right?” She looked expectantly at Fords.

“Quite right, Miss Huffie,” the ewe agreed. “I wouldn’t worry at all about it, if I were you. Confidence is key, you know, and doubly so when it comes to navigating around the complex!”

Azure raised a brow at her. “Pretty sure the directions are the most important part. Do you even know where we’re supposed to be going at this point?”

“I certainly do, Miss Burle,” Fords began, before the whistle of the boat echoed through the tunnel. With that, the narrowboat was steered over to another stone brick platform on the edge of the tunnel, flanking the edge of the canal. “In fact, I believe we’ve just arrived.”

The boat came to a halt, and a moment later the wolp pilot from before walked back through the cabin. She deposited her hat back on an empty chair and disappeared out the front door. Fords stood up first and motioned with her cane for the others to follow along.

“So,” Holly said as she stood up, “will you tell us where we just went, now?”

“In due time, Miss Perez,” Fords said comfortingly. “I’m sure it will become rather self-explanatory in just a moment.”

With that, the group left the cabin behind and took the gangplank back onto solid ground. Further down the platform, a large door like the one leading into the Canal Wing stood built into the side of the tunnel. Along the way, however, there also sat a small, wooden booth. It looked out of place compared to the brick and metal of the rest of the canal, and sported a sign that the group stood too far away from to make out. The wolpertinger from the boat strolled up to it and hopped over its counter before waiting dutifully.

“Now,” Fords said as she led the tour along the dock, “I’m sure some of you may wish to keep a memento or two from your visit here today.” She then motioned towards the booth. “So, I’m glad to say that you’ll find the first opportunity for such, right here!”

As they approached the booth, its sign came into view, reading ‘On-Ride Photos.’ The wolpertinger’s head only barely peeked over the counter. Still, she flapped her wings, each time giving her enough of a boost to organize a set of printed pictures across the countertop. The group paused to look them over. Each came in the style of pictures from a theme park ride, with the Fords’ logo emblazoned in the corner and a chocolatey splash effect layered over its edge. Oddly, the photos were all taken from a high angle, one Holly supposed would be impossible given the completely covered roof of the cabin they rode in. Aside from that, most of the pictures looked completely mundane, featuring the group sitting calmly and talking to each other as they had during the cruise, contrasting the high energy of the frame.

One, though, featured an image of the boat rushing down a near vertical drop. All of the guests looked in various states of panic or excitement. Azure and Bridgette hung onto each other tightly, and Faye was caught in the middle of recording the ride on her phone. Holly was gripping her seat even tighter than she remembered, and Fords had her hands raised up as she enjoyed the drop. All of the empty seats in the cabin were also filled by a number of excited wolpertingers.

“Hey, Fords,” Azure said, grabbing the picture and holding it up to the sheep, “this never happened. I didn’t even sit with her, what gives?”

“Is that so? Odd,” Fords remarked, scratching at her chin, “I do remember designing that element for the ride. The girls were quite excited about it.”

“It’s probably just some kind of digital edit of a picture,” Bridgette shrugged. “You can make anything with those these days, don’t believe it just because you see it in a ‘photo’ once.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s awfully fun!” Faye gazed over the photo as Azure set it back down on the counter. “How much for a copy?”

“Why, I wouldn’t think of charging any of you for some simple fun like this,” Fords stated.

“You really are just the best,” Faye cooed at her, “you know that?” With that, she swiped up the photo, took a picture of it on her phone, and tucked it into a pocket. The others started gathering around the next door while she did, and she and Fords both strolled over to join them.

Bridgette leaned against the brick wall, tapping the door to her side.“So, Fords. What was it that’s so big you needed to take us all the way out here to see it?”

“Yeah, I’m still waiting for the showstopper, over here,” Azure added.

“Well, since I believe that is all of us accounted for,” Fords answered, “then it’s my pleasure to welcome you all to the next stop on our tour: the Menagerie Wing!”

Chapter Text

As Fords pushed open the doors, the warmth of daylight hit Holly once again. Now, unlike the lush, mint green plains which met the group back in the canal wing, this ‘wing’ came bathed in a golden glow. A near-flat horizon stretched for miles, filled with long, gently swaying grass. A large, clear lake extended off into the distance to the left, and some dry, dusty patches dotted the landscape. These had sets of rough, round pits carved out of them, each with a neat guardrail lining its edge.

As the group stepped through into the wide, dusty plains, Holly once again glanced back to check how the complex behind them compared to how it looked from within. Like before, the apparent outer wall of the complex extended off unyieldingly towards each horizon, though now instead of the brick-lined tunnel of the canals it resembled a massive barn with a bright red coat of paint. Also unlike the last time the group emerged ‘outside,’ the barn walls flanking the wing curved gently as it continued into the distance, wrapping around the lake and field to encircle the entire Menagerie.

“My apologies for this wing being less tidy than others, dears,” Fords began, “but the wildlife here simply wouldn’t feel at home if we kept the Menagerie as clean as we do indoors.”

“Well, at least you’re trying,” Faye soothed her, “and you’re clearly already working miracles at keeping us clean to not have us end up as much of a mess as Delouise after that crazy drop on the boat ride, right?” Holly decided not to challenge her on the drop not actually happening, instead wandering aimlessly towards the lakefront.

"Uh, ‘wildlife’?” Bridgette repeated, her voice ringing out directly next to Holly’s ear. The doe jumped, only now realizing that the bear had come along just behind her to the lake. “Don’t tell me you’re keeping fish in here, Fords?” Bridgette chuckled.

Fords nodded. “Well, they had been doing just fine keeping themselves here before we arrived, of course, but yes indeed! Nowadays, we just take as much as we need to keep up with production and leave the rest to do as they will.”

Azure raised an accusatory brow at the sheep. “What kind of candy are you all putting fish in? Don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a pretty easy way to make all of your customers hurl.”

“I can understand the concern, Miss Burle,” Fords explained, “were the fish not candied themselves, as well!”

“Meaning you make candy in the water? How?” Holly asked.

“Well! It’s not ‘making’ so much as ‘collecting’,” Fords continued before gazing across the water. After a moment her eyes settled on a strange object sticking out of the lake’s surface. “Ah, see there? I believe we could give you all a demonstration in just a moment.”

Holly strained her eyes at the narrow object peeking above the still waters. “Is that… a tube?”

“Too right, Miss Perez,” Fords beamed at her, pointing it out to the rest of the group. “To be completely precise, it’s one of the girls’ snorkels. They pride themselves on their exceptionally hands-on approach at fishing, you see.”

Bridgette glanced away from the snorkel tube to look at Fords. “Yeah? How long has the thing been down there?”

The ewe shrugged. “Well, she may have gone under just moments before we arrived here, or she may have been underwater all morning! It all depends on whether she has her eye on any catch in particular.”

Faye zoomed in as far as her phone’s camera allowed, but seemed unimpressed by the view. “Is there a way you could call her back over here for a second to let us get a good look? That sounds way too cute to leave without getting some pics of…”

“I suppose I could, Miss Huffie, but,” Fords said, not breaking her gaze on the tube, “it seems she’s already making her way back on her own. What timing!”

Holly watched the snorkel start to move around, circling for a brief moment before making a beeline towards the shore. As it did, more of it appeared above the water, and though it was already longer than any snorkel the deer had seen before, it continued to tower taller by the second. By the time a wolpertinger emerged at the water’s edge, clad in a modest bathing suit rather than the jackets she’d seen the others in, the tube easily extended fifteen feet above the rabbit woman’s head. She carried a large, red gummy fish, held aloft over the top of her head. Holly tried her best to stifle a giggle at the cartoonish sight, but the sight of Faye stepping back and angling her camera to capture a panorama of the snorkel wolp made her unable to resist. She felt an unamused gaze from both Azure and Bridgette, however, and stopped just as quickly as she began.

“So,” Bridgette remarked, “is the snorkel the bit we’re supposed to be laughing at, or is it the thought that you’re putting soggy candy out on shelves?”

“There are still some necessary preparations to be made to it before it’s ready for that purpose, Miss Grazeland,” Fords elaborated, “but largely, yes.”

Azure popped a bubble from her gum. “Even though it’s about fifty times bigger than any candy fish I’ve ever seen in stores, huh?”

“Portioning would be a part of those very same preparations, Miss Burle,” Fords nodded. “We have some remarkably skilled gummongers elsewhere in the complex.”

“Let me guess,” Bridgette smirked, “they make gummy worms for bait over here?”

Fords’ eyes lit up at the sarcastic suggestion. “A fine idea, Miss Grazeland! However, I think you’ll find that the actual process is even more fascinating than that.” The sheep promptly turned around from the lake and began trotting off into the tall grass. The wolpertinger dropped her fish and snorkel tube onto the ground before following energetically behind. The bear cast a wary look at Holly before the rest of the group followed along, trying to keep pace with the sheep’s lead.

The grass grew so tall that it quickly obscured the doe’s vision, and Holly feared getting lost in the sea of plantlife. Only the sheer height of Fords, her wool sticking out above the grass like a cloud floating over the surface, allowed the group to follow behind her until they reached another dusty clearing. Fords stopped near its edge, and the rest looked expectantly towards her.

“Alright,” Azure said, “when does the fascinating part start?”

Before Fords answered, the ground beneath them began to shake. At first it came as a gentle vibrating, but it quickly intensified and a low rumbling from the distance joined the ominous display. Holly cast a worried look at Fords, but failed to speak up fast enough before a giant gummy worm, brightly colored in blue and red and easily twenty feet long, burst out from the grass and into the clearing. Half a dozen wolps clad in armor made of chocolate bark clung desperately onto it, each trying to wrestle it in different directions. It bucked about wildly, knocking them off only for them to flutter back onto it seconds later.

“Now,” Fords said, speaking loudly to be heard over the commotion, “some of the wildlife in this wing can be a bit more rowdy than others, yes, but I assure you that the gummy worm is quite harmless!”

Faye yelped and ducked behind Bridgette. “Are you really sure about that? It doesn’t look harmless to me…!”

Bridgette stepped aside. “I’m not your shield, Huffie!”

“What? But you’re big enough to protect both of us from that thing! Don’t you care that it might run over me!?” The bunny countered.

“Um, Miss Fords?” Holly said as Faye and Bridgette continued to bicker and circle around each other, more focused on keeping the other closer to the fight than on avoiding it. “Are you sure that the wolpertingers can handle that? They look like they’re struggling a bit to control it.”

Fords nodded, silently considering something. She scratched at her chin before something behind her drew her attention. “Ah, there you are! Just in time, dear.” Turning around, Holly and Azure saw yet another wolpertinger stepping out from the grass, lacking armor but otherwise identical to the others.

Holly tilted her head curiously. “Is this… a good sign?”

Fords beamed down at the deer. “This, my dear, is Diana. She’s the strongest wolpertinger I know!”

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Fords,” Azure remarked, “she looks just as scrawny as the rest of them.”

“At first glance, I suppose, but,” Fords trailed off her explanation, motioning the pair to lean down for a better look as she spoke to Diana. “Diana, would you mind doing that thing of yours for us?”

Without a word, the wolp grabbed the end of her jacket’s sleeve and tugged it back in one smooth motion. As she did so, she revealed the giant, chiseled musculature of her arm, which now seemed to be more fit for a bodybuilder twice her size. Azure, struck silent by the display, simply allowed her current bubble to pop in response. Even as Diana tugged her sleeve back into place and her arm returned to its normal, slim appearance, she and Holly struggled to find words.

Fords applauded Diana politely. “Excellent, dear! Isn’t she just a marvel?”

Holly blinked some to make sure her eyes hadn’t deceived her. “Where does she hide all of that?”

“Why, if I knew, I’d tell you,” Fords shrugged, “but Diana prefers to keep her methods to herself, and I’d rather not pry.”

Diana calmly walked into the clearing, approaching the gummy worm with steady steps unimpeded by the shaking of the ground. Seeing her approach, the other wolpertingers scattered to the edges of the clearing and watched intently. The giant worm stopped writhing, instead righting itself and pointing directly at the mighty wolp. They stopped some feet away from each other, staring the other down before both suddenly leaping into action. A moment of furious wrestling ensued, knocking up a massive cloud of dust which made it difficult to follow the battle. It eventually settled as Diana slowly but surely overpowered and pinned the worm to the ground. As soon as she did so, she leapt onto the back of the worm. She clung to it tightly as it reared up imposingly, only to begin guiding it forward and riding it back into the grass from which she came.

The incredible display pulled Faye and Bridgette out of their argument. After watching the gummy worm disappear from view, Faye spoke up. “Wait, where’s she going? I didn’t get any of that!” She glanced between Fords and where the worm had disappeared.

“Then let’s follow along, all!” Fords declared. “You’ll all be able to see our process here in action on the other side.” With that, she led the group back into the grass the way they had just come.

Once again, the sheep’s wool and the dust of the wrangled gummy worm led the way, all Holly had to keep herself from wandering lost in the tall grass. When they emerged at the lakeside again, they found Diana still riding the worm around in circles in a struggle for control, though she now sported an oversized cowboy hat atop her head. In one great motion, however, she managed to tug it in the direction of the water and leapt into the air as she drove the candied creature into the lake with a mighty crash.

Faye, still panting from the sprint, struggled to hold her phone still enough to capture the scene as she looked over at Fords. “...When did she get the hat?”

Fords blinked, as though properly mulling over the question for the first time just now. “The same place where they get the rest of their costumes, I suppose.”

“Looks like a lot of work for not a lot of payoff,” Azure remarked.

“Yeah,” Bridgette said, shaking her head disapprovingly, “what exactly were we supposed to be having ‘demonstrated,’ Fords?”

With her work done, Diana gently landed by the waterside, dusted her hands off, and strolled off in the direction of the door the group entered through. An instant later, a pack of other wolps, all of them sporting the same swimsuits and snorkels they had seen before, dove into the water in pursuit of the worm.

“Well,” Fords shrugged, “you did ask about the process of luring in fish for the girls to catch, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, except,” Bridgette added, “there’s no way that putting on that show every time would be enough to keep up with even half of the number of those things you put on shelves constantly.”

The ewe nodded. “You certainly wouldn’t be the first to have that concern, Miss Grazeland, which is why the girls specifically pursue the largest gummy worms they can manage for this purpose! Anything smaller simply wouldn’t be enough to go around for all of the gummy fish we need.”

“But how are you sure that there are enough of those big ones to keep up?” Holly noted.

Bridgette spoke up before Fords. “Aside from knowing that she’s only putting on this show once?”

“Rather,” Fords said, “because of how quickly more of them pop up! If the girls didn’t help control the gummy worm population like they do, they would surely have overrun the area by now.”

“ So ,” Faye began, finally looking up from the video she took after reviewing it on her phone, “what other funny little things do you have around here you wanna show us, Fords?”

“Why, I’m glad you asked, Miss Huffie,” Fords nodded, and motioned them all to follow her away from the waterfront again. She took the group on a shorter walk, along a path cut through the grass rather than straight through the growth. Soon, they emerged into a broad clearing filled with a number of the fenced-off pens Holly glanced over earlier. They approached the closest, filled with sheep -animals, rather than a sheep-woman the likes of Fords- adorned with pastel pink and blue wool, and watched a small group of wolpertingers at work.

“Ah,” Fords noted, stopping by the fence of the pen, “the candy floss flock! This is one of the little wonders of the complex I’ve always found quite charming. Anyone can spin candy from cotton, you see, but it takes a real group of experts to maintain a flock for wool as healthy as this.” Her eyes landed on one of the groups in particular. “Hm! It seems the girls are still in the midst of taking inventory.”

Azure leaned casually against the fence. “‘Still’? How long have they been at it?”

“It must be weeks, now,” the ewe shrugged.

“Are the rest somewhere else? That doesn’t look like weeks worth of counting,” Bridgette remarked. From what Holly could see, no more than a couple dozen of the candied animals mulled about in the pen.

“Of course, Miss Grazeland, though it isn’t the quantity that’s the issue,” Fords said before motioning at one of the groups of wolps. “There, you should be able to take a look for yourselves.”

Glancing over, one of the wolpertingers in the bunch bore a clipboard and pencil. She began to intently tally up the candy sheep, but quickly lost steam. After just a few moments of sluggish counting, her eyes grew heavy and the fairy flopped over onto the ground, snoring softly. Another wolp picked up the clipboard to continue the job, but succumbed to sleep just as quickly.

“The rest of the wing had inventory taken of it in record time,” Fords explained, “but this last pen has always been the biggest issue.”

“Oh my gosh, that’s just adorable of them!” Faye cooed, snapping some quick pictures of the wolpertingers in their growing sleep pile. Afterwards she looped around the pen, aiming her phone’s camera instead at the sweet sheep themselves. Each time she did, however, another wolpertinger trying to take stock fell asleep directly in her line of sight. She carried on her attempts until the piles of wolps led her in a full circle around the pen. Frustrated at every turn, she huffed sharply through her nose.

When Faye rejoined the group, Holly delivered a suggestion. “Do you think it might turn out better to just let one of the wolpertingers be in the picture with the sheep?”

Faye jumped at the doe’s voice, clearly caught by surprise. Her eyes leapt over to Holly, and the deer saw a flash of frustration in them before they registered who asked the question. “Oh,” she said in her usual sing-song tone, “it’s okay, I can totally get why you’d think that! But it’ll be better if I can get some pics with just the one in there, trust me. “She waved off the comment. “It’s a whole algorithm thing, you know?”

Holly didn’t quite understand what ‘an algorithm thing’ meant, but decided not to press the issue. A second later, Fords continued. “In that case, if you’ve gotten all the photos you think you can, we can move along.” With that, she trotted off towards another pen. Holly followed, but a glance back revealed Faye lingering by the candy sheep pen just a bit longer than the others, her phone raised.

Next, the group arrived at a pen with a few bulbous, shining beehives in its center. Holly marveled at them, certain they looked more like a cartoon drawing than a real object in front of her. Several wolps stood around the hives, looking outwards with stern expressions. They all kept a close eye on the group as they approached the fence.

“Now, honeybees are one thing,” Fords began, “but bees who are themselves made of honey have the potential for a far greater output than any other variety! It can be tricky work, finding the right balance between using the honey as a flavor and using it to make more of the bees, but I assure you that the results are well worth it.”

“So these are what made that stuff you crushed last stop,” Azure said, looking over her shoulder to watch Faye approach, “isn’t that right, Huffie?”

Faye took one glance at Azure and the hives before shrugging with an innocent giggle. “I guess they must be, huh?” With that, she tried to keep walking straight on to the next pen, but stopped when it became clear that nobody had any interest in following suit.

“I don’t think they should be that close to those things without any protective gear on,” Bridgette commented, pointing at the few wolps in the pen.

“You’d be right in any other case, Miss Grazeland,” Fords nodded, “but these honeyed bees have their little stingers made out of soft honey as well. They can’t exactly sting, as a result.” She gazed out over the pen as well. “Luckily, the girls are able to keep their hives safe in their stead, so the busy little marvels never have to worry about a thing as they tend to their hives!”

“Yeah, it’s really cool, but,” Faye said, pointing towards the next pen over, “what is it that the girls are up to over there, Fords?”

“Ah, I’d love to tell you!” Fords beamed at Faye before addressing the others, “Shall we?” She then trotted off to follow Faye to the next stop.

The other pen, far larger than the other few they had seen so far, stretched off nearly as far as Holly could see. Inside resided a herd of cows in a wide variety of colors. Some were a standard black and white, while others came in rich browns, hot pinks, or bright cyans. Several wolps, each wearing a little cowboy hat not unlike Diana’s, chased a group of them around with bright red lassos.

“It’s not easy,” Fords said as she leaned against the fence, “to keep so many different flavors of milk and ice cream organized and accounted for in our production, but being able to get them all directly from the source simplifies the process considerably.”

Azure crossed her arms as she also leaned on the old fence. “What’s so hard about it? Looks like they’re color coded just fine, they should be easy to keep track of.” One of the cows apart from the corralled group strolled over to her, this one bearing a striking violet hue to its fur coat. “...Why purple, though?”

Fords nodded. “Ah, that would be on account of her being responsible for the grape flavor of our peanut butter and jelly ice cream we produce! Her friend with the peanut flavor should be around here somewhere as well, if the girls aren’t busy trying to wrangle her at the moment. It can be a time-consuming process, depending on how many of them get involved.”

The fox gave Fords a suspicious look. “Why do they need to control them at all?” The purple cow trotted directly up to her, and she gave it a little pat on the head for emphasis. “They’re not going anywhere, see?”

“Ah, I understand,” Fords nodded. “You see, it’s not to keep them from running off, Miss Burle, but rather to get the girls into character! You see, these wolps here are currently responsible for making licorice rope, but without being able to put themselves in the shoes of some honest candy lassoers, the product would simply feel ingenuine. It’s the sport of it which is important to the girls.”

Azure let out an amused huff at Fords’ choice of words, and her eyes locked onto the wolpertingers fluttering around the herd. “Whatever sport they think they’re playing, they don’t look that good at it, do they?” After a moment, she popped another bubble and glanced at Fords. “I could outdo them.”

Fords chuckled cheerily at the remark, but paused after Azure failed to join in laughing with her. “Well, maybe on some fronts, Miss Burle, but I’m sure that even someone as accomplished as yourself would have to admit the advantage that their airborne agility gives them.”

Holly saw a spark in the vixen’s eyes at the assessment. “That’ll just make it a fair competition, Fords. They might be able to flutter around or whatever, but just look at those scrawny little things they call arms. I’ve easily got them beat on strength, and probably stamina too.”

Azure barely finished her rebuttal before some wandering wolps between the pens hurried over to the group. Hearing the fox, they nodded at each other with bright grins on their faces, and spread their wings to lift off from the ground. A second later, each had grabbed Azure under one of her arms, and together they effortlessly hoisted her into the air.

Azure kicked and shouted from suddenly being handled so easily. “What the?! Fords! Keep your little fairies under control,” she exclaimed from five feet in the air, “before I get them under control for you!”

Fords broke out into laughter again at the display, and Holly found it hard to stifle her own giggle. A moment later, the wolpertingers set Azure gently back onto the ground. Soon, Fords calmed down enough to explain. “It seems they just wanted to show their might off a little, Miss Burle. As you’ve seen with Diana, and now, of course, a wolpertinger can be quite the strong little thing, when the situation calls for it.”

The fox brushed herself off as she scurried away from the giggling wolps, sparing them a quick glare before returning her attention to the ewe. “Alright, I’m tired of this stop.” She took a step away from the group. “Fords, where are we going next?”

“Yes, I suppose we should get a move on if we still want to see everything that’s in store for today,” Fords agreed, and began leading the group around the large pen. After a few minutes of walking, the group approached another long wall stretching towards the horizon, with yet another striking red barn door adorning it.

“Now,” Fords said, “this is another part of the complex I have been very excited to show you all, today. I think we’ve seen enough of our outdoors facilities for the moment, so allow me to direct you back to the factory floor for an overview of the Imagining Wing!” With that, she swung open the door and trotted eagerly inside.

Chapter Text

Once inside, a long hallway dotted with yet more doors stretched before the group. Unlike the modestly ornate wallpaper of the front offices, the Imagining Wing possessed a near blinding white painted uniformly across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Only a rainbow-colored pattern broke up the monotony. It traveled straight down the center of the floor, with some colors branching off to disappear under doorways while the rest continued along. Each door, then, had also been painted in the same color as its associated line.

“Now, as you may have already figured,” Fords began, leading the group down the hall, “there is quite a bit of creative thinking that goes into looking after a complex like this. There are ideas to be had, problems to work around, and all manner of other creative endeavors that beg my attention from time to time.”

“Seems like a lot of floor space to give to just finding a place to think, though,” Bridgette shrugged.

“Ah, but space is the least of our concerns around here, Miss Grazeland!”

“It’s the one perk of building so far out into the middle of nowhere, huh?” Azure guessed.

Faye let out an amused breath. “You mean, the one thing aside from the area being absolutely gorgeous , right?” She looked from Azure to Fords.

Fords, however, hadn’t been listening since Bridgette posed her remark. Finally, she snapped back into the moment with a realization. “You know, Miss Grazeland, it’s good of you to have mentioned that! If I may, allow me to show you one particularly important room to the creative process we’re fostering in this wing!” She trotted down the hall briefly before stopping at a door with a green stripe branching off into it. “This,” she explained, “is the Green Room, a staple of the Imagining Wing.”

The ewe pushed open the door and stepped aside for the group to peer inside. Within, Holly found a room utterly coated in a rich, emerald green hue. Everything from the walls to the simple furniture within looked completely uniform in color. Without the light within the room casting shadows, Holly wondered how easily the furnishings could completely disappear against the walls behind them. A wolpertinger, sporting a green jacket and a minty color to her fur to match the palette around her, sat at a table within and waved to Fords as she noticed her. Fords waved back politely, but gave no explanation about what the group now looked at.

Holly broke the silence with a meek chuckle at the bizarre sight. “Well, the name didn’t lie, I guess?” She looked up at Fords, and then over the room again in an attempt to understand it. Quickly failing at that, the doe instead asked directly. “Why green in particular, though? Is it important for helping you get particularly ‘imaginative,’ or something?”

“Close, Miss Perez,” Fords nodded, “but it goes even deeper than that, you’ll find. I’m sure you are all familiar with green screens as they are often used for the sake of special effects in the movies, yes?”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re real used to working with special effects, around here,” Bridgette chuckled under her breath, just barely loud enough for Holly to hear.

Fords took a couple half-hearted nods as a sign to continue her explanation. “You see, much in the same way that people who make movies can cut away the green to show what special sights they’d like to instead, this room being so green makes it easier for me to, in a way, ‘cut out’ what’s around me as it is and better imagine what could be, instead!”

Azure rolled her eyes. “Oh, so it’s called the Imagining Wing because we’re just supposed to imagine something impressive happening? The room doesn’t actually disappear, does it?”

“You’d be surprised at just how little of a difference there is, to the right kind of mind.” Fords said, and shut the door to the Green Room.

From there, the group strolled down the hall for another moment before another idea struck Fords from the blue. “Ah, you know,” she said, looking around at her surroundings, “I believe we’re now quite close to a room that’s rather relevant to you all, in particular!” She took another moment to consider her directions, and eventually her eyes landed on one door in particular. She pointed it out, this one a golden yellow, before stepping over. “Here we are,” she said and pushed the door open with the tip of her cane.

Inside, the sight of a cluttered art studio met the group. Easels, paintings, and materials for a dozen different mediums hung off of walls or simply lay scattered across the floor. One of these, a pink pastel, rolled past Fords’ feet and into the hall, which Azure effortlessly kicked back into the doorway. With the extent of the mess within, Holly failed to imagine any of them being able to even take a single step inside. Instead, they looked over the bits of art visible from the door. Most of the works featured designs for various Fords products and package designs. The rest came in the form of depictions of wolpertingers in a broad, random assortment of styles. Most visibly, a herculean marble figure with a simplistic wolp’s head atop it stood towering above the rest of the room in the back corner. Near the middle of the room sat a wolpertinger wearing a painter’s smock over her usual jacket, as well as a particularly askew beret which struggled to stay on her head with her antlers and ears in the way. Her fur and clothes, dotted with splashes of color, only gained more dots of stray paint as she worked on a canvas. After a while she acknowledged the group, turning about on her seat, an oddly large, yellowish block, and waved to Fords with her paintbrush.

“Good afternoon, Delilah,” Fords said with a wave before returning her attention to the group. Holly blinked in surprise and checked her watch. Just as Fords had said, it was already shortly after noon, over three hours since they first entered the complex. “Now, Delilah here is the most artistically driven wolp I’ve seen in all my days. It was her, in fact, who came up with the design of those Golden Tickets you all found.”

“ Oh ,” Faye said, cooing in wonder, “do you think she would be able to draw one of us, Fords?”

“Well, I suppose you’d have to ask her yourself and see how fun she finds the idea,” Fords shrugged.

“I’m surprised that she can get any amount of work done in there,” Azure added, “that bench she’s on sure doesn’t look comfy, either.”

“Ah, that’s no bench, Miss Burle,” Fords noted, “it’s an ingot! All five of your Golden Tickets were taken directly off of that bar of gold.”

“There’s no way that’s actually gold ,” Bridgette said, now gazing at the giant ingot incredulously. Holly tilted her head slightly to observe the golden glimmer across its surface, marveling at the bar the size of a refrigerator.

“Good thing we aren’t here with Delouise, she wouldn’t be able to control herself around something like that,” Faye remarked softly, low enough that only the other three guests heard. Azure silently scoffed, but Bridgette smirked at the comment.

“Miss Fords,” Holly said, “I knew that your company brought in a lot of money, sure, but how can you afford to have something like that sitting around?”

Fords nodded. “Ah, right you are, Miss Perez, but this bit of gold in particular wasn’t bought with money from the business. The girls were simply lucky enough to stumble upon it in an old, tucked-away corner of the complex not long after I first came up with the idea for the whole contest, and we took it as a sign.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bridgette added, “ and where do you expect us to believe they just had it lying around? I mean, why would they even want something like that, after their little song and dance about how much they hate money?”

Fords scratched at her chin for a moment before responding. “Well, I suppose I would have to ask them when I get the time. We must have had some idea ages ago which required it, but I can’t quite put my finger on what… I suppose it didn’t pan out, in any case.”

Holly blinked in surprise at the answer. “You mean you forgot? How many ideas have you all come up with together that you could forget about something as big as this?”

“More than you’d think! New plans are dreamt up around here on a daily basis, you see. It can be tricky to keep track of them all, especially when not all of them make it all the way to production.”

While Fords talked, Faye got several pictures of Delilah’s finished paintings. Afterwards, she turned her attention back to Fords. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll come back to you if you just give it a minute, right?” She waved off Fords’ concern.

“Why, it wouldn’t be the first time, Miss Huffie,” Fords agreed, only for her eyes to light up again, “but, if you all don’t mind, we could also try jogging my memory more actively!”

Without waiting for a response from the four, the ewe closed the door to the studio and trotted off energetically down the hall. The group hurried after her, and followed her as she made several sudden turns down side halls and around corners. With Fords’ lively gait, most of the group started to trail behind after just a minute of walking.

“Miss Fords,” Holly called out to the front of the pack, “what is it exactly that you want to show us now?”

“You’ll see in good time, dear,” Fords called back before stopping in front of another large, industrial door a moment later.

Faye and Holly took a moment to catch their breaths after the brief sprint to keep up with the sheep’s wild directions. As they did, Holly felt the chill of Azure’s judgemental gaze rest on her display of exhaustion. Once she recovered, the doe glanced up at the metallic door before them, these coated with a deep blue.

She turned to Fords. “Is this the way into another wing of the complex?”

“A fine guess, Miss Perez! This is, in fact, the very origin point of the entire Imagining Wing,” Fords corrected her gently.

“This better be good, then,” Azure remarked.

Fords grinned at the fox. "I believe it just may be! So, allow me to welcome you to the creative core behind everything that happens in the complex: my Inventory!"

The group entered the room, finding themselves in a dark forest of machinery. Massive contraptions weaved around each other, as well as pipes and conveyors. Countless display screens blinked cryptic signals and statuses, bathing the group in a multicolored light despite the metallic canopy preventing sunlight from the windows reaching the concrete floor. Every time Holly's eyes tried to track the shape of just one machine, she found herself growing dizzy from the sheer complexity of the system until she centered her focus back onto the other four.

"An inventory? Like, for keeping stock of things?" She posed the question to Fords just to keep her focus off of the metallic maze around her. She wondered how anyone could keep track of any single thing in such a room, let alone some extensive factory's stockpiles.

Bridgette voiced the same thought before her, however. "Just what can you keep stock of, here? It's a mess."

"Why, Miss Grazeland," Fords nodded, "my Invent -ory is for keeping stock of ideas ! Every idea I've dreamt up for the factory floor began as a prototype here before being refined into more replicable forms. Everything you see here is the past, present, and future of Fords' Fantastic Fooderies." She motioned the group onwards through the labyrinth of passes and clearings. With no direction, though, Holly waited for Fords to lead the way.

Azure peered down several of the cluttered side paths through the room as they wound their way around machines. After a while, she loudly popped another bubble. "So, got any good ideas to show us while we’re here, or are we just cutting through to get to something worthwhile?"

The sheep paused for a second to ponder the question before tapping her cane decisively against the floor. "Indeed, there are quite a few things I could show you all about here that I'm proud of! As for something nearby, let me see," she considered several forks ahead in the clear trail before veering off to the right. "I have something in mind, and it happens to be just over here!"

Holly glanced warily at the others before the group followed after the ewe again. Bridgette returned the look as they walked quickly and rolled her eyes. “She sure has a habit of running off without thinking about if we can follow, doesn’t she?”

Azure stepped by her and glanced over her shoulder. “I mean, if you can’t keep up with someone as old as her? That’s on you.”

“Okay, but ,” Faye began before yelping again as a wolpertinger suddenly fluttered by her from around a bend holding a comically large wrench, the hunk of metal scarcely missing her head as she ducked beneath, “is it really that ‘hostly’ of her? It’s like she doesn’t even care if we all get lost in here…!”

“We won’t,” Bridgette noted, “but not because of anything she’s doing. I’ve been keeping track of our path, y’know, since just about when we got here. It’s not going to be if she gets us lost, but when , so I’m ready.”

Holly nearly tripped over some wires lining the floor, but managed to keep herself upright. “So,” she asked, “how has she been getting us places so far?”

“Luck, if I had to guess,” the bear responded simply.

As they passed, the doe took a second to glance down the winding path that the wrench-bearing wolpertinger came from. Tucked away under a canopy of mechanical arms and thudding pistons sat a set of several heavy, metal tables. A wolpertinger stood at one, seemingly deep in focus. After a second, she shook her fist and suddenly cast forth a dozen different dice. She eagerly looked over the results of her roll, and set about collecting different flavors from bins and bottles around her and dumping them all into a single funnel built into the table. Holly supposed that it must be some way of inventing new, unconventional flavor combinations for candy on the spot. At the same time, she supposed that the method didn’t produce winning combinations the majority of the time.

Before she dwelled on it any longer, Bridgette’s voice pulled her out of the thought. “Hey. Keep up, Perez,” she said. At that point, Holly noticed how far she had begun to lag behind again. Bridgette had stopped to face her directly, while Faye looked over her shoulder but kept walking. Azure and Fords, then, carried on, both of them too far ahead to be seen.

“Right, sorry,” Holly said softly before picking up her pace once more. 

The three hurried forward again, following behind the glimpses of Azure’s stark white tail around corners and bends to stay on the right trail, before finally catching up with Fords a minute later. The sheep had stopped to greet another wolp, this one seated at a drawing table with an array of remarkably small pencils. She waved to Fords before returning to her work, wielding two pencils at once and sketching away at schematics so intricate that Holly craned her neck and strained her eyes to make out even some of the large-scale details involved.

“That,” she began, but stopped to take another deep breath, “is a lot to fit on one blueprint, isn’t it?”

“I thought so as well, Miss Perez,” Fords said, “but the girls aren’t keen on being wasteful, so if they can take care of everything on one page then they’re sure to do it.”

“I can’t imagine how long some of these must take to make.”

Azure leaned to the side in an attempt to peer around Fords. “Longer than we’ve got time to wait around today, I’m pretty sure.”

“I suppose so, Miss Burle, in which case,“ Fords continued, “how about I instead show you some of the contraptions the girls and I have been working on over the years?” She peeked ahead as well, and then motioned the group to follow her around another turn. “This one over here is a fun story, for instance!”

The sheep pointed at an oddly-shaped machine. To Holly it almost looked like a Christmas tree made of dull metal, only with hatches and pipes branching off from it near its base. As the group approached, she also picked up the vague scent of something burning .

Fords tapped it with her cane, and a hollow sound reverberated through the contraption. “This here is what happens when an idea gets a bit muddied somewhere between being dreamed up and being produced in the Inventory. Some of the girls thought they were building a ‘bauble’ gum machine for the holidays, and some thought they were making a ‘bomb-le’ gum machine for playing pranks. The end result that the machine makes? Not quite as good as the two ideas that went in.” She giggled at her tale.

Holly stifled a brief chuckle as well, but a deafening silence from the other three quickly stole her mood to laugh at the story.

“Of course, there have been many more practical ideas we’ve seen come to fruition in this room,” Fords shrugged, “so if you’d like, we can see some of those in action.”

“Oh, for sure !” Faye nodded. “As fun as you can find, okay?” Bridgette shot her a bewildered look, but the rabbit simply beamed back at her.

“Certainly, Miss Huffie,” Fords said, and led the group deeper into the metallic jungle. After effortlessly navigating a couple more forks in their path, they passed the sight of a wolpertinger fluttering over an old ironing board. She flattened out a wad of some sort of gummy candy, then pressed it into that shape with a clothing iron.

“Azure,” she said, pulling the fox’s attention over to the scene, “you don’t think that’s where they could’ve made that snack you found your ticket in, do you?”

“What? Oh,” Azure gave the ironing wolp only a brief glance, “maybe, I guess. Does it matter, though?”

“I don’t know, I thought it might be interesting for you,” Holly tried to explain.

“Well, then I’ll let you know when I start getting interested,” Azure remarked and stepped to the front of the group once again.

The next time the tour group stopped, they found themselves in front of a metal table covered in chocolates and adorned with a number of rods sparking electricity. A wolpertinger with a frazzled lab coat and puffed-out fur fiddled with its sweet contents.

“This here,” Fords began, but paused to think for a moment, “ seems to be an attempt to get properly in-character during preproduction of this year’s line of Halloween-themed candies.”

“D’aww, she’s adorable ,” Faye cooed, stepping closer. “Just look at that little costume!”

The rabbit rested a hand on the table as she got a better look at the wolp’s work, only to immediately yank it back as the surface delivered her a jolt back. All of her hair stood on end from that brief shock. Holly detected a grin from Azure, her first in a while, as well as Faye shooting a brief glare at the fox’s obvious pleasure with her situation.

“Okay, so,” Faye said, quickly patting her hair back down into shape, checking herself with her phone’s camera to make sure it worked,  “what next?”

Bridgette lagged behind the group with Holly again as they set off. “Who needs that much power for some little Frankenstein costume? If Fords gets any more into her little ideas, things are gonna get dangerous for all of us,” she said in a low tone.

Holly glanced between the bear and sheep. “You, uh, don’t think she knows what she’s doing?”

“I know she doesn’t,” Bridgette responded. “This can’t be how she makes anything here. What I didn’t expect was her trying to make her little setpieces so elaborate. It’s like she can’t even tell the difference.”

“Is,” Holly stepped over a low-lying pipe, interrupting herself briefly, “is there supposed to be a difference?”

“Of course there is,” the bear remarked, “just think about everything so far. It’s all staged little scenes, like a theme park. You should know this.” She looked down at the doe. “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, twenty-something?”

Holly chose not to correct her age to thirty. “Right, sorry,” she said under her breath and pushed further ahead.

By the time Holly and Bridgette finally caught up with the rest of the group, they had all stopped again to look over another machine, too engrossed in the odd sight of it to notice the pair’s momentary absence. Now, they stood in front of a large, polished ring, mounted on a stand with colorful, pint-sized jars bound to its outside. Wolpertingers dutifully added drops of flavor to and scooped the contents from the jars, before suddenly all fluttering around it in loops. They bobbed in and out, each time pushing on the ring to spin it faster until it twirled about violently, rotating on its axis with the stand and humming audibly from its speed.

“This rather dramatic device,” Fords began, “is an ingenious method the wolps have put together for perfecting our new recipes. It allows for precise control not only of what flavors we put in, but the exact rate and length of mixing that it all undergoes! If you recall the ice cream flavors I discussed earlier, this machine allowed us to find the perfect mixtures for those flavors, and more! It’s quite the versatile thing, too. Not only can it be retooled for any kind of mixing the complex might need, but it also serves as a fun bit of sport for the girls.”

“Sport, huh?” Azure remarked, looking over the machine as it spun, “doesn’t look like any kind I’ve ever seen.”

Fords shrugged in response. “Well, I call it that, but it’s perhaps most accurately a game the girls like to play with each other, seeing how fast they’re able to make it spin, how they can break their old records, that sort of thing.”

Azure raised a brow at the explanation. “Yeah? Who’s the record-holder right now, then?”

“Well, it isn’t just the one,” Fords noted, “they enjoy the collaborative effort of it, so they tend to work together to find ways to push their record higher.”

The vixen stepped back to get a full view of the wolps as they shifted between formations and pushed the machine faster. “No teams or anything, huh? No leaderboard or anything?”

“Not unless you consider them all to be working as one big team, I suppose,” Fords chuckled, gazing up at them at work. “Thinking on it, I don’t suppose I’ve seen any wolpertingers who are quite so competitive in the way you may be used to.”

With Azure’s questions answered, Fords turned back to look over the rest of the group with a grin. At that moment, Faye was in the middle of typing on her phone. She stopped when Azure once again popped a disinterested bubble by her long ears.

" Right ," the vixen remarked, gazing up at Fords with an unamused expression, "so, you said we were going to get to the part with the stuff that’s interesting to us soon, right? Was that supposed to be it? Half of those just felt like weird things I’d come up with in my sleep. Only difference is that I wouldn’t bother to remember them after waking up."

Fords matched Azure's gaze once again, though the ewe now looked so deep in thought as to be gazing straight through the fox. Finally, her eyes lit up in realization. "Ah, of course! Right this way, you all. I've remembered just the idea that may capture Miss Burle's imagination." With that, she trotted off deeper into the Inventory with renewed speed.

Chapter Text

After several more winding turns and switchbacks between daunting machines, the group emerged into a much broader clearing in the middle of the room. For the first time since entering the Inventory, and leaving the Packing Room, the ceiling became visible through the metallic canopy high above. A few desks and drawing boards sat scattered about, each one manned by wolpertingers in oversized lab coats and safety goggles. Some chattered to each other, while others frenetically operated the towering machines lining the edge of the clearing. These wolps chucked maniacally to themselves, and delivered the occasional arc of electricity between their antlers.

In the middle of the clearing, standing apart from the rest of the mechanical forest, lay one, monolithic machine. It towered up to the ceiling like a pillar, and it connected to the rest of the canopy with a dense cluster of pipes, pulleys, and flywheels, all of which clattered with idle activity as the group approached. Fords trotted directly over to what Holly supposed must be the front of the odd contraption. There, she nodded to a wolp who had been operating a control panel from atop a wooden stool. The fairy woman beamed at the signal and promptly hit a large, flashing button on the panel. With it, the machine whirred into action.

“We are now in the deepest region of my Inventory,” Fords explained, turning around and speaking over the din of mechanical work behind her, “which is where some of my oldest projects and ideas are stored so that we can continue to tinker with them. What I have just activated,” she glanced to Azure with a grin, “is a revolutionary device I’ve taken to calling the Hyperbolic, Universal Gummifier! H.U.G., for short.”

“A big ‘hug’ machine? Cute!” Faye interjected. “What does it do? Make some kind of-”

A set of chimes within the machine rang out a brief jingle from the H.U.G., cutting off Faye’s sentence just before it finished. “Would you look at that,” Fords said, reaching over to a push panel not unlike something on a vending machine. She reached inside of it, fumbling her hoof aimlessly about for a moment before retrieving from it a singular stick of off-white chewing gum, “it’s finished!”

“So… what? It’s just gum ?” Azure asked, a brow raised in curiosity at the freshly-produced sweet.

“Not ‘just gum,’ Miss Burle,” Fords replied, holding up the stick to the light of a display screen, though the better lighting revealed no special details on it, “but rather an idea that struck me some time ago. I was reminiscing upon a particularly pleasant dinner I once had weeks before then. I supposed it would be impossible for any other dish, even made using the same recipe, to give quite the same impression as the first. That is, unless they could all come not just from the same recipe, from the same batch, like anything else produced in the complex. Thus enters my H.U.G., which can capture the full experience of any meal and compress it down into a convenient pack of chewing gum! This stick happens to be that fateful meal which I’ve been attempting to recreate all this time: a formal, three-course dinner of appetizer, main course, and dessert.” Her explanation concluded, Fords proudly waved the stick of gum before the group.

Azure glanced at the others, and Bridgette spoke up first. "Hold on, three courses, all at once? All the flavors are going to mix together, that’d be disgusting . How are you expecting to make something like that work?"

Fords wagged the gum at the bear in a tut-tutting manner. "Unfortunately, Miss Grazeland, it’s still an industry secret, for the moment! At the very least, it will be until the girls finish fine-tuning our process into something we can transfer to the factory floor. Regardless, the idea still shows quite the early potential, and I’m sure you’ll be just as pleased to see the finished product as I will be! Why, just imagine how useful it may be for a child who hasn't learned to cook, in need of a meal while their parents are out."

"Or maybe an adult who's hurrying to work and can't spare the time to get breakfast?" Holly suggested.

Fords nodded enthusiastically. "Clever, Miss Perez, or perhaps even-"

"A pitcher bored out of her mind as she cruises to a shut-out game?" Azure declared, stepping forward and swiping the gum out of the ewe's hoof before she could react. The fox gave it a closer look over, turning it over in her own grip, clearly unimpressed.

"That it could! And in any meal you could be craving mid-game," Fords said, nodding confidently.

"I'll have it, then," Azure said, spitting out the piece of gum she had been working on and disposing of it on the underside of a nearby table.

At that point, the tell-tale furrowing of the sheep's brow returned. "I wouldn't recommend that, Miss Burle. As I said, these are all still under the purview of the girls in R&D for a little while longer."

The arctic vixen rolled her eyes at the warning. "Look, Fords. I know you don't get out too much, so I'll make it easy for you to get. This is kind of my thing, alright? An endorsement from a star player can win you a whole lot of favor with people you didn't even know could buy candy.”

“I certainly appreciate the generous offer, Miss Burle, however-”

“You don’t need you to ‘however’ me, Fords. I’ve been trying to find something actually interesting in this place all day. Unless you wanna cut the innocent act and show us where this ‘grand prize contest’ is meant to be?”

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that, but-”

“Then I’ll take my free sample while you try to remember what your plans are, alright?” Azure took a step back and smirked. “Besides, giving out the first sample of this stuff to number-one , how much more perfect can you get?” Without waiting for Fords to answer, Azure stuck the gum in her mouth, and her jaws began their repetitive work once again.

“Oh, great ,” Bridgette said, leaning against the same table Azure had just stuck her old wad of gum beneath, “we’re stopping for this, now?” She glanced to Faye, who looked just as disinterested with Azure’s dramatic ‘sample,’ but soon her eyes rested on the fox alongside the others.

“Yeah, we’re stopping for this now,” Azure responded, her hands moving to her hips as she rolled her eyes at the bear’s impatience, “because it’s taking a minute.” She intently chewed at the gum for another moment before one of her brows raised curiously. “And there it is.”

Another second passed, the air around the group filled only by the soft beeping and buzzing of machinery, now accompanied by the sound of Azure’s conspicuous chewing. That alone kept all of their attention squarely on the fox. She blew a bubble with the gum, and unlike the gray color it sported before, the bubble appeared to have shifted over to a rosy pink.

“Some trick you’ve got here, Fords,” the fox said, looking over to the ewe as she stood restlessly at the back of the group. “How’d you get this to feel so real, not just taste like it?”

“Well,” Fords said, the subtle shifting of her weight from one hoof to the other slowing as she explained, “I’m glad you appreciate us not cutting corners on the project. It’s not simply a flavoring, you see, but a real, fresh bowl of tomato soup that was compressed into part of that gum. If you wouldn’t mind ending your little demonstration here, however…?”

“Pass,” Azure stated, and blew another bubble. Now the gum appeared to be far darker in color, with a reddish-brown tint. “What’s the main dish, huh? A steak or something?”

“Roast beef, to be exact,” Fords answered. Azure chuckled at the response, and although Fords chuckled alongside her, it sounded forced to Holly.

Faye rolled her eyes at the other three crowding around Azure. "Do you all really care about a little taste test that much? Can’t we just, you know, keep moving while she’s doing… whatever she’s doing?" She held her phone out in conspicuous disinterest, Holly still caught her glancing frequently at the arctic fox along with the rest.

"I mean, should I not be? Miss Fords does seem awfully concerned about it," Holly asked in a low voice.

"What, worried it'll taste gross? Whatever," Faye snapped back.

Bridgette shrugged. "I'm just waiting for the moment she gags from this monstrosity."

“Here, Fords,” Azure said, “would you feel any better if you got some feedback from this? You can start with the fact that it’s taking too long to get from taste to taste.” A moment later, the fox smirked. “Finally, there's dessert… awfully fruity, huh?”

“Blueberry pie,” Fords said meekly, “and we’re planning on adding a side of ice cream to future iterations of the recipe…”

“Well, that’ll be something, won’t it?” Azure blew another bubble, this one a bright blue. “Alright, show’s over. Did you finally remember what we’re supposed to be doing here, Fords?”

Faye winced once again at the sound of the bubble popping, but unlike before her eyes hung on Azure instead of returning to her phone. For a second, she tilted her head at the sight of the fox’s face. Then, she grimaced at it.

“ Ugh ,” Faye groaned disgustedly, “what’s that on her nose? Did she get gum stuck on it?” She shuddered at the thought.

Bridgette, already facing away in a rush to continue, turned back around to get a look for herself. “It’s not stuck , Huffie, looks like something from it rubbed off onto her fur.”

Just as Bridgette described, a blue splotch, the same color as the last bubble Azure blew, now adorned the fur along the end of her face. Every time Holly blinked, she swore it began to reach a bit further out from the vixen’s nose.

Azure let out an unamused hum. “What are you all going on about, now?”

Bridgette scoffed at Azure’s dismissive remark. “Seriously, have you seen yourself, Burle? Something’s got your face messed up, somehow.”

Holly backed up from the scene to stand by Fords, who had returned to anxiously bobbing from hoof to hoof several paces away from the group. “Is it… spreading, Miss Fords?” The sheep nodded silently in response.

“Alright, Fords,” Azure said, speaking up to reach the pair in the back, “what’s your game here? Is this supposed to be some weird part of your contest? Did you put them up to it, too?” A second later, the blue coloration spread all the way from her face down her neck and disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt. Her hair, too, shifted from jet black to a richer, more violet shade. The fox caught something out of the corner of her eye, and her gaze darted down to her arm and hand. Blue fur crept silently down it from her body.

“ Fords ,” she said again, her voice more tense than before, “if this is some new prank of yours, you’d better cut out whatever it is right now!” Her jaws continued to chomp away at her gum even as she turned over her hand to watch it turn entirely blue, and even as she twisted about to watch the white fur steadily disappear from the tip of her tail.

“Oh, dear,” Fords sighed.

“Miss Fords,” Holly asked, “is there something wrong?”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Fords assured her, “although it appears Miss Burle chews quicker when she’s stressed, which may complicate things, ever so slightly...”

Before Holly asked Fords to elaborate, a low, growling sound emanated from somewhere within Azure’s middle. The noise pulled both of their attention back to the blue fox, now doubled over slightly from discomfort. “ Guh ,” she grunted, “that felt kinda funny-”

Cutting herself off, the fox’s eyes suddenly shot open in surprise. She stood back up, and her trim, athletic figure suddenly swelled outwards, pinched tightly around the middle by her pants’ belt. Unlike Delouise before, who seemed to put on hundreds of pounds of fat in a minute, Azure looked as though she had some kind of ball trying to grow directly out from the middle of her body.

“Fords, get back over here,” Bridgette barked back at the two, “what’s supposed to be going on with her, now?”

“Well,” Fords began, trotting closer, but only to the very back of the group, “it’s an issue we’ve always had with the dessert in these formulas. We’ve tried it with a dozen different varieties of dishes, but this last one here always seems the most resistant to proper portioning.”

“Uh, that doesn’t answer anything?” The bear glanced between Fords and Azure as the latter swelled wider and rounder, stumbling as her body’s balance shifted dramatically with new weight.

“It means that the dessert course doesn’t exactly stop when it’s meant to, and,” Fords shrugged, “well, as they say, ‘you are what you eat.’”

Bridgette blinked incredulously. “So, she’s what?”

Holly spoke up to answer. “What, she’s as much blueberry as she is fox, now?”

Fords nodded wearily. “It’s a common principle among the girls, for this reason. Now, it seems her body is adapting quite quickly to what it thinks it ought to be,” Fords added.

“ Gross …!” Faye wailed. The rabbit retreated back with the others, but also pulled out her phone to train it on Azure.

Holly tried her best to keep her eyes off of Azure’s predicament, but the spectacle became hard to ignore as the curve of her body stretched out to interfere with the fox’s limbs. Most of the length of her toned arms and legs still stuck out awkwardly from her middle despite her body’s bizarre transformation, but they steadily disappeared as her round core continued to grow. “Why didn’t you tell her about that before?”

“It’s a rather embarrassing point, in all honesty,” Fords sighed. “Can you imagine a woman like myself being bested by dessert for this long? The tabloids would never let me hear the end of it, I assure you.”

"Someone! Do something !" Azure whined and struggled against herself, but she continued to fill each space with yet more conspicuous chewing.

"Well, if you insist, dear," Fords replied, “I was hoping to save this for later, but…” She flipped her cane upside down in her grip. A hoof waved over its bottom end a few times before, suddenly, it conjured a fresh bouquet of red roses which she plucked into her free hand. She smiled at her own feat, though the furrow to her brow remained.

“That’s certainly ‘something,’ wouldn’t you say?" The other three looked at her in bewilderment for a moment before the loud snap of Azure's belt breaking pulled the lot back into the moment. Looking back at her, the vixen now appeared to be more circle than figure, her arms barely poking out from herself beyond the elbows. Her jersey and pants gradually parted without her belt holding them together, revealing a broadening expanse of blue middle.

The ewe shuffled awkwardly at the incredulous looks. "Ah, it seems that lightening the mood won’t help things much, in which case,” she concluded, "that shouldn't be an issue at all, we have quite the well-drilled contingency prepared for precisely these sorts of situations, Miss Burle!"

“Whatever you’re planning on doing, you’d better get to it quick, then,” Bridgette said, “your ‘guest’ over there is looking fit to blow, about now.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be worried about that possibility in particular, Miss Grazeland,” Fords explained, “Miss Burle has quite some time before any blueberry buildup would become that explosive .”

The assurance only made Azure’s eyes widen in panic. She now sat immobile on the Inventory floor, easily as wide as she was tall. With her legs entirely vanished, her bottom side rested on the ground, the tips of her toes only barely managing to make contact. Azure now looked as though someone squeezed a giant, vibrantly blue fruit into the stark white of the athlete's uniform, nearly unrecognizable as a fox save for the reminder her head and tail provided. Her figure settled into this near spherical shape, her own body pressing up into her chin and pinning her head in place while her hands and feet only barely managed to peek out impotently from her own circumference.

Faye’s eyes widened too, though Holly swore she saw a flash of glee in them for just an instant. “You don’t really think she could… y’know ?”

“Oh, I quite well know that she could, Miss Huffie,” Fords replied, “but it’s all as I told you. This problem has become so persistent over the years that the girls are quite used to solving it by now. Miss Burle is also far larger than a wolpertinger, I might add, so naturally she has a greater capacity than them as well.”

“Well,” Holly continued talking to keep her mind off of the ominous noises of gurgling and creaking coming from Azure’s body, “what are they going to do to help her?”

“A quick trip to Fruit Processing should be in order, naturally,” Fords said.

“Excuse me, ‘processing’ ?” Bridgette repeated to herself before glaring at Fords. “You know, all of the food processors I know don’t exactly leave fruit in one piece at the end, do they? You said it’s supposed to help , didn’t you?”

“Well, I’m not certain how the field may have developed outside of the complex, but I’ve found that the girls have become quite skilled with the large-scale presses we have located there,” Fords responded proudly. “Miss Burle should have nothing to worry about, they all have quite the delicate touch, when needed.”

As soon as Fords mentioned them, a number of the wolpertingers from around the room sprang into action. Several doffed their lab coats to reveal black and white jackets in the same style as their usual costumes, while others emerged from behind machines and corners with lavender palettes to their clothes and fur. One of the black and white wolps fluttered up towards Azure while the others huddled closely together in some kind of secret discussion.

The blueberry fox struggled in vain to kick her feet against the ground and push herself away, but her inconvenient shape and weight afforded her nothing more than rocking in place slightly. “Fords, you’d better get this thing off of me,” she demanded, her voice quivering despite her bold words. The wolp in question prodded at Azure several times, her petite finger bouncing back from the fox’s surface. Afterwards, she set one of her long ears against the surface of the fox, and after a moment of intense listening she turned and nodded to the others. At the signal, the remaining wolpertingers broke from their huddle with a cacophony of cheers. As they did so, the sounds of a rock song began to echo through the Inventory. It sounded distant at first, but grew clearer until it centered on the group.

“Miss Fords,” Holly called out over the music, “what was that wolpertinger doing?”

“Why, it seems that she was officiating,” Fords explained, “and concluded that Miss Burle is regulation size and pressure for a wolpball! I suppose we’ll get to see a game of it today.”

“Wolpball? What’s that supposed to-” Faye began to ask, but was cut off once again. Gathering around Azure, the wolpertingers began to chant in unison with the music.

Let’s go Burle, let’s go!

Let’s go Burle, let’s go!

The rabbit blinked at the display. “Are they… cheering? Nothing going on here right now is worth cheering for…!”

Bridgette groaned in anticipation of the song to come. “Oh, please, not again with this.”

All of the wolps continued undeterred, however, starting a new song as they converged to each of Azure’s sides and pushed at her, rocking her more intensely back and forth with each collective shove.

Here’s a pitcher world-renowned!

Undefeated at the mound!

Striking fear ‘n’ striking out hitters!

Won’t hesitate to leave them quitters!

Azure Burle, the fox in question

To her, losing’s no suggestion

Only slackers could drag her down

Without her carry, would the team drown?

Finally, with one strong push the wolps rolled Azure entirely over onto her side, the fox’s ponytail whipping about from being spun. Taking advantage of her momentum,, the team of wolpertingers began rolling her around in odd patterns through the clearing, weaving between the workbenches and tables while lapping the H.U.G. multiple times. One of the officiating wolps traced their path around the floor in chalk, while another looked intently down at a stopwatch she held in her little paws.

Having fun is what sports are for

But Azure’s always wanted more

Even since she was a beginner

She’s always been the sorest winner!

She tore through the ranks like some big league chew,

The minors just could never do!

She conquered all that they brought on,

‘Til her head was going, going, gone!

Yet at the top, she stands alone

She can’t let any share her throne

All the credit, all the glory

Acting like a solo story

The team stopped Azure suddenly, then reversed their course and retraced their steps along the chalk path they had just made. One of the officiating wolps fluttered ahead and began marking spots along the trail with various symbols. Each time Azure passed over one of them, the wolp team scrambled to push her briefly off course until she rebounded back onto the track, groaning and yelping wearily with each collision. Every time the wolps returned their ‘ball’ from their latest excursion, numbers appeared on monitors, and lights blinked all over the clearing, though Holly failed to find a single one of them labeled like a conventional scoreboard.

Her curiosity got the better of her. “So.. is there a particular goal to winning at ‘Wolpball’?”

“None that I’ve found,” Fords explained. “For the girls, what’s more important is the spectacle of sport, and of increasing complexity as the game continues until it collapses under its own weight. I’ve seen games of Wolpball which lasted days before they finally fell apart.”

“Uh,” Faye squeaked, stepping behind Bridgette again, “didn’t you just say that she doesn’t have days, Fords?”

“Well, those are the longest examples I’ve seen,” Fords nodded, “but on average they’re brief enough that Miss Burle should have plenty of time afterwards to be escorted to Fruit Processing. Given the line of rulemaking they seem to be following today? This should only take a few more minutes, if we were to take the ‘ballpark estimate’, per se.”

“Number one”’s her favorite phrase

SHE’S her favorite source of praise

“If you’re good, you’re good” on repeat

But today we think she’ll meet defeat

Does she remember how a team game works?

They have this funny little quirk

Where all the teammates work together

And when they do, they act more clever!

Bridgette pinched her brow. “Why are they wasting any time at all, if she’s actually in as much danger as you said?” She once again stepped aside to keep Faye from using her as an ursine shield.

“I mentioned it before, but the girls just have quite the love for sport, and that goes doubly so for collaborative ones like Wolpball,” Fords explained.

As the group talked, the wolps continued to increase the complexity of their game. Now, some of the stops along the chalk path resulted in the whole team reversing course and traveling the track backwards for several stops before suddenly switching back to traveling forward again with renewed speed. Other excursions resulted in multiple collisions, with the wolps ricocheting Azure off of several targets in complex trick shots before she returned to the line. The rate at which her tail flung around her rounded body showed how dizzyingly fast she rolled. Subsequent bounces sent her rebounding even further than earlier ones, and Holly worryingly suspected that was a sign of the fox’s internal pressure growing even higher by the moment.

Other rules piled on almost constantly, as well as more wolps joining in to collaborate on their collective, nonsensical score. Some wolpertingers began rearranging the tables around the clearing to create more precise trick shots with Azure, and others simply began forming a small tower of themselves balancing atop her as she rolled. With each new diversion from the original course, another wolp topped the stack.

Maybe then, we can remind

What it’s like to be more kind

To give a sample of the theme

By playing a sport with just one team!

Being at the peak, the one and only

Sounds to us like it’d be lonely!

So to save her from being best of all,

She’ll finally get to “be the ball”!

The game grew more convoluted until even the officials joined in the game in an active role with the rest of the wolps. Several of the makeshift scoreboards around the clearing completely abandoned displaying status or numbers, instead taking to simply displaying particular colors or designs on their monitors, further obscuring the ‘score’ Fords had mentioned the wolps were playing for. All the while, the tower of wolps above Azure grew. At least a dozen stood, balanced precariously on each other's shoulders in a single-file stack, though it became harder to keep an exact count as they stretched off towards the darkened ceiling far above.

As the wolpertingers approached their final verse, the music rose in intensity. Almost all wolpertingers not already incorporated into the tower stopped pushing Azure for a moment and scattered across the room. They grabbed at the tables and desks, dragging them across the floor and quickly rearranging their playing field to form a clear track around the other ring of the clearing. Meanwhile, an officiating wolp began drawing a set of rings on the ground, each one larger and containing the last, while a few others turned over tables and boards to produce an improvised ramp pointing directly at it.

So play along, you’ll be less bored

Than only caring ‘bout wins you hoard

You’ll see less sore winners to ruin your play

And many less Azure Burles!

Azure’s gone so far without doubt,

So late to learn she’s finally struck out

That you could’ve been playing AND having some fun,

But at least when it comes to worsts, she’s still number one!

With their new ramp constructed, the free wolps converged back onto Azure. Together they picked up the pace, using their open track around the clearing to build up speed with the fox in tow. They made two quick laps around their track before suddenly diverting course directly towards the ramp. Once they lined her up, they accelerated as quickly as they could manage before  hitting the jump and sending Azure sailing through the air for a few seconds before bouncing down against the floor of the Inventory. The impact jostled the tower of wolps, and it tumbled to the ground as the wolps giggled and celebrated where on their target the blueberry fox had just landed.

With their song finished, most of the wolpertingers scattered off back into the corners of the clearing and beyond, still laughing and chattering to themselves as the music died out. A few continued to roll Azure, clearly dazed from how quickly her head had spun about over the course of the game. They pushed her back the way the group had first entered the Inventory, and a moment later they rounded a bend, taking the fox completely out of sight.

“That was even more elaborate than the last time,” Holly noted softly.

“It’s like they were wasting time on purpose,” Bridgette remarked back in a low tone. “What do they gain, trying to make us worried like that…?”

Fords waved off the pack of roller wolps before returning her attention to the remaining three. “For those who were concerned, I believe that was slightly on the shorter end for an average Wolpball game. Regardless, I’m glad you all got to see even that much, the girls simply knocked it out of the park once again!”

Faye smirked at the pun. “So, where are they taking her now?”

“A good question, I suppose I should see if they would appreciate some input,” Fords said, waving one of the officials from the game to come over. “If you don’t mind,” she said, “would you all care to use the narrowboat moored out by the Menagerie Wing to bring Miss Burle to Fruit Processing? Our guests here are concerned with her state being treated in a timely manner.” The wolp nodded excitedly, and fluttered off to catch up with the group rolling Azure.

“If she’s going to be alright, then,” Holly said, “is there anything else we were supposed to see in here? I mean, before all of that happened?”

Fords hummed in thought. “Well, even if we weren’t already behind on our itinerary, I don’t suppose there’s anything else in the Inventory that could have been quite as impressive as the show we just witnessed.”

Bridgette pushed off from the table she had been leaning against and looked around at the twisting paths leading back out into the Inventory. “Where to next, then?”

“I believe, to keep up with our schedule best, it’d be good of us to take the canal wing again to our next stop.”

“Uh,” Holly noted, “ but didn’t you say that the boat we were on is going to be used for Azure, now? Probably going somewhere different?”

Fords thought on it for another beat before nodding. “Ah, too right, Miss Perez! In that case,” she trotted over to some other wolps and spoke to them for a moment. The trio followed along, but by the time they caught up to Fords the wolps had already dispersed in different directions. “There! They’ll be fetching another boat for us, now. Until that’s collected, though, we’ll have a bit of time to ourselves with which we can see the sights in a nearby wing!”

“Really?” Bridgette said, her arms crossed. “There’s not one better way to get around quicker than one of those old things?”

“Not unless you’d prefer to take the bicycling trail, Miss Grazeland,” Fords shook her head, “and considering that the only bike we have on hand which would be able to accommodate all of us at once is a tandem bike, I suppose we don’t quite have the time today to put in all of the necessary practice to work something like that optimally. Instead, if you all will excuse me for just a moment,”

The ewe stepped towards one of the workbenches in the clearing, and with surprising ease pushed it aside. Beneath, she revealed a panel of floor with a latch on it, which the ewe lifted using the end of her cane to reveal a trapdoor opening into a stairway downwards. Colorful lights shone from below, and she stepped aside to allow the remaining three guests to pass. “After you!”

Chapter Text

The second the trapdoor closed above Holly’s head, the cacophony of the Inventory’s many machines faded away into the ambiance of the complex. Fords trotted down the wooden stairs last and stepped around the three to lead the way once again. Holly looked ahead at the hallway she now stood in. Once again, a concrete floor and brick walls greeted them, though now their umber hues lay disguised beneath the colorful lamps Holly caught glimpses of from above. Doors painted with geometric designs dotted each wall, and directly over each sat one of the vivid lights in a different, bold color. Behind them, the wooden steps receded back towards the ceiling, and Holly turned around to find the hall stretching off in the other direction in exactly the same way. Fords took a moment to consider each way before nodding to herself and pressing on forwards.

“This should do just fine,” she said, motioning to lead the group onwards. “We can start with a visit to our Perennial Wing, and then adjust further if we need any more time for the girls to collect a boat for us.”

Again, Fords’ long gait set a quick pace for them to follow. This time, however, after just a moment of following, Holly watched Faye slowing down slightly, glancing at the others to signal them to let Fords’ lead stretch. Holly obliged, and both she and Bridgette joined Faye in creeping towards the edge of the old ewe’s hearing. Fords, her eyes locked forward, noticed none of this. With enough distance between them, the rabbit spoke to the pair in hushed tones. “So, is she just gonna, you know, ignore what happened back there?”

Bridgette shrugged in response. “It probably wasn’t half as real as she played it up to be, that’s why.”

Holly shifted uncomfortably at the improvised huddle. “But, if it wasn’t, then what was it that we actually saw back in there?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Bridgette sighed, “but I know I’m not jumping straight to it being some magic fruit gum like Fords kept saying. It’d do you good to not take everything someone like her says at face value, Perez.”

The doe blinked. “‘Someone like her,’ meaning what, exactly?”

“Didn’t we already go over this? She’s either been acting all day, or bought into her own hype too much to realize she’s still acting.”

“Well, whatever you think it really is,” Faye added, “that whatever it was was almost as disgusting as how loud Azure was chewing before.” She grimaced, though Holly couldn’t remember any sounds coming from Azure aside from popping bubbles and bored remarks. Faye allowed no time for her to press the odd detail, though. Instead, she picked up her pace again, unceremoniously ending the trio’s little meeting to bound ahead to Fords’ side once more. As she did, the ewe finally stopped in front of one door in particular, this one possessing a lamp shining a bright, golden color, and turned around to watch the group rushing to catch up again.

“Why, I hope you all aren’t becoming too tired from all the traveling we’ve been doing today,” Fords said as the guests finally caught up to her again. “Hopefully being off your feet for our upcoming cruise on the canal will help give you a moment to catch your breath.”

“Hopefully,” Holly nodded, “though, what did you call this place before? The ‘Perennial Wing’? What do you all do in here?”

Fords’ face lit up at the question. “I’m quite glad that you asked, Miss Perez! The Perennial Wing is the domain of any of the important treats which we don’t make year-round. Just now, we’re stopped before the door to the Seasonal Sweets rooms, where we prepare our selection of holiday-themed candies and anything else of the sort, all depending on the relevant time of the year it happens to be.”

Demonstrating, Fords stepped over to the door and gave it a push open before stepping back to allow the trio to peer through. Again, the warm sun hit Holly’s cheeks, as well as a wave of humidity that poured into the hall as though the sheep had just opened up a sauna. Stretching beyond the doorway lay a scenic, tropical beachscape. Brown, sugary sand formed the ground and extended off over a few low dunes towards a shining, foamy ocean. Palm trees with red leaves dotted the modest landscape, and several of which provided shade to a small stand staffed by wolpertingers. Other wolps in different colors played around with each other in the heat of the sun, all of them dressed in modest swimsuits rather than the formal jackets and costumes of those before. Most of them formed into a crowd as they chased around a novelty extra-large beach ball. They batted it between each other energetically, but seemingly without any of the structure Holly saw in their previous game of ‘wolpball.’

“Since it’s currently springtime, what you’re seeing now is a preview of the summer line which we’ve been preparing ahead of time.” She pointed out the gaggle of playing wolps with her cane. “The girls over there are, in fact, mixing together some fruity flavors for an upcoming set of popsicles. This method of mixing provides the most summer-y twist to the flavor, I’ve found.”

Holly felt a pit form in her stomach. Though not resembling wolpball, the sight of the wolps toying with a ball of that size drew up too vivid of a memory for the deer. That feeling only worsened as she watched a pair of other fairies roll a clear container filled with a rich blue juice towards the beach ball. The group paused their game as the pair arrived, and they quickly sprang into action to drain a portion of the tank’s contents into the ball and return to their play. With their stop complete, the two wolps waved the others off and carried on their way.

“Say, uh,” the deer said as softly as she could manage, trying to get only Faye’s attention, “you don’t think any of that stuff in there came from, you know ,” she struggled to continue her thought, the words failing to form in her mouth despite how clearly the image sat in her head.

Faye glanced up at her from her phone, scarcely paying attention to the sights. “Hm? I don’t think what?” She asked, but her eyes returned to her screen after a second to take some quick pictures of the wolps at play. “You know ,” she said, loud enough to pull the attention of the whole group, “if I only knew that we would be stopping here today, Fords, I would’ve brought my own bikini for the occasion!”

“That would certainly have been a fun way to spend the afternoon, Miss Huffie, if only we had that much time, today,” Fords nodded. She then directed the group’s attention back towards the wolp rolling the juice tank. She pushed it up to one particular wolp who had been leaning casually against the stand, the only wolp in the room wearing sunglasses. She shot a silent finger gun at the tank, and immediately a layer of frost sprouted across the outside of it.

“There we can see Dahlia helping to freeze over the juice for new popsicles,” Fords explained.

Faye recorded the display. “What’s she actually doing to it, though?”

Fords grinned. “Being cool, naturally! Despite the heat, she’s more than cool enough to freeze things around her by her sheer presence.”

“‘Cool’ is a long way from ‘freezing,’ you know,” Bridgette rolled her eyes.

“Indeed it is, Miss Grazeland. That is why only the absolute coolest wolp I know of could be up to the job of helping with popsicle production!”

“ Right , sure,” Bridgette said, rolling her eyes. “So, are we doing another detour through this scene or something?”

“You might think, given our route so far,” Fords nodded, “but I was actually intending to show you all a fascinating aspect of the Seasonal Sweets Room, beforehand.”

Fords shut the door to the room, and the heat of the tropical beach quickly dissipated. She tapped the door with her cane, and immediately the light above changed from gold to stark white. When the ewe opened up the Seasonal Sweets room again, a rush of cold air poured out. A chill raced down Holly’s back, and she retreated a step back to keep away from the sudden cold. The door no longer opened up into a beach scene, but instead a quaint valley tucked away in a snowy mountainscape. A simple trail wound its way from the door down into the valley, stopping at a set of hot springs gently steaming into the frigid air. Like the canal before it, the springs sported a chocolatey brown hue.

A number of wolpertingers reclined around or inside of the springs. Some sprawled out across towels, while others rested on graham cracker rafts which bobbed on the surface of the spring. All of their fur sported a white tone dotted with warm oranges and browns, and to Holly all appeared several degrees fluffier than the all of the earlier wolpertingers the group had encountered along the way.

“Now, naturally,” Fords explained, “only us up north are preparing for summer at the moment. Down in the southern hemisphere we need to be ready to deliver our line of winter treats! As such, the girls have been preparing the hot cocoa springs for precisely that purpose.”

Bridgette glanced down at the relaxing wolpertingers with a tired expression. Silently, she stuck her arm through the doorway and waved a paw around for a moment. She sighed at what she felt before returning her gaze to Fords. “Is getting a bunch of their fur in the chocolate really helping? Sounds to me like it’d only put it further away from being ready to ship, unless you’re telling me they’re made of marshmallows or something.” She chuckled to herself.

“Clever of you to have noticed, Miss Grazeland,” Fords said genuinely, “in fact, from all of the research that’s been undergone over the years, it is believed that the closest current relative to the wolpertinger is the marshmallow. They’re quite similar in more ways than you’d expect!” The bear continued to laugh softly for another second until it became clear that no one was joining in. Growing silent, Bridgette cast a quick glance at the other three in turn, but Holly swore the bear’s amber eyes rested on her the longest.

“Well,” Holly said, placing a hand on the open door frame, “you’d think, a door like this going straight to the other side of the world would have everything built the other way around, just to keep it from all being upside-down, right?” Gradually, her lips contorted into a slight grin, one that hoped that her own little joke could reveal something about how either Bridgette or Fords were acting.

Instead, Fords continued to nod sagely at the new comment. “That was quite the puzzle for us to overcome back when the Seasonal Sweets Room was first conceived, Miss Perez. The trip through this door was ever so disorienting until we started building all of the southern ones upside-down to compensate.”

Holly blinked in surprise at her comment not only being taken with complete seriousness, but also entirely confirmed by Fords with the same ease she took Bridgette’s joke as fact. She made eye contact with Bridgette again, who rolled her eyes at the whole exchange.

Faye spoke up next. “ So , you’re about to tell us that we don’t have any time to hang out here either , huh?”

“I’m afraid that would be the case, Miss Huffie,” Fords noted. “In fact, I believe that now we should have spent enough time here for the girls to have found another way for us to keep moving. I suppose it’d be best for us to check, now!” She shut the door, cutting off the cold air as she did, before trotting off down the hall. “Luckily, you’ll be able to have quite the similar experience with our transport.”

Fords led the way to the far end of the hall, where another large, metal door awaited. She again pushed it open with an effortless tap with her cane, and a familiar sight greeted the group once more. They stood on a stone platform overlooking yet another long, brick-lined tunnel. Though almost identical to the tunnel they used to travel to the Menagerie Wing that morning, Holly quickly noticed the canal itself now sporting the pale tone of white chocolate rather than the dark hues from before. As well, where once the narrowboat had been moored now floated a modest gondola. At its rear, a wolpertinger wearing a straw hat and striped shirt waved them over to board.

“Hold on,” Bridgette said, leaning to better look down the length of the tunnel each way before turning back towards Fords. “Are you telling me you have two separate canal systems tucked away in this place?”

The ewe tilted her head inquisitively at the question. “I only have the one, as of the last time I checked. It wouldn’t be half as useful as it is now if you could only go to half of the complex using it.” She paused for a moment to think about what she said, then chuckled. “Or, I suppose that each section would be exactly half as useful as the whole thing, considering.”

She tapped her cane against the ground to punctuate herself. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for just another moment, I’ll be plotting our next course with Dinghy, once again.”

Faye stepped around the group to get a better view of the fairy. “Dinghy? Like, the same one as before? She did that whole costume change just for us? So cute!”

“There’s nothing that the girls find more fun in than their costumes,” Fords nodded before stepping over to the canal’s edge and leaning down to speak with Dinghy.

“It could be the same one,” Bridgette remarked with Fords out of earshot, “ or she can’t remember how to tell these things apart. Can’t write off either.”

“You know ,” Faye remarked, dropping her voice and side eyeing Bridgette, “it’d probably help you a little to at least pretend to be on her good side. You’re not getting anywhere with the cold, logic-girl act, really .”

“I am a little surprised that her energy today hasn’t at least been a little infectious,” Holly added.

Bridgette scoffed. “I might start being genuinely interested today once Fords decides to show us how she genuinely makes anything in this place.”

Fords returned to the group’s side a moment later. “I think it’s best if we have just a brief cruise down the canal, this time. We have quite the exciting sights to see just over in the next adjacent wing, so we shouldn’t waste time.”

Dinghy pulled the gondola up to the canal wall, and Fords stepped onto it first. She and Dinghy stood near the back of the small boat while Holly and Faye took a row of seats across from them. Bridgette, then, sat by herself another row forward. As soon as they were all seated, the wolp pushed off from the dock with a long pole and sent the boat coasting down the canal.

Like before, they passed many more tunnels branching off in all directions. Holly glanced down one, witnessing a pair of wolpertingers in hardhats walking directly up the wall of the tunnel and upside down onto its arched ceiling. One opened up a toolbox also resting on the ceiling, though nothing fell out from it into the white chocolate canal below.

The boat continued onwards without anyone so much as noticing the gravity defying-sight, leaving the tunnel behind and leaving Holly with no opportunity to bring attention to it. Her opportunity lost, she instead glanced at Faye, using the cruise as another opportunity to record clips for her videos. The rabbit whipped her phone about, pointing it at herself, the tunnel, and even Dinghy at work. Once satisfied, she delivered a single, decisive tap to her screen to segment off the clip.

Immediately afterwards, though, she turned the camera back on herself to address her apparent audience directly. “Could you all believe that this is the second canal cruise we’re going on today? We are out here getting absolutely spoiled by how generous-” she began, only to be cut short by the sound of Dinghy beginning to sing. Unlike the other songs the wolpertingers had performed that day, this one featured an aimless, wordless vocalizing from the wolp. Her melody harmonized with a gentle accordion tune echoed through the tunnel from nowhere in particular, and the canal pleasantly reverberated the sound of the casual song.

“Say, Fords?” Faye cooed, speaking up to be heard over the sound of the music. “Could you get her to hold off on that for just a second? It won’t take long to make this, really!” She asked politely, but Fords simply sat in place, far too engrossed by the music to pay Faye any mind. Her request ignored, the rabbit leaned back into her seat and pouted.

Holly sat and listened to the music for a moment for a moment before leaning over to speak with Faye directly. “Is it that important that you get that done right now?”

A look of genuine surprise washed over Faye’s face as she paused to register Holly talking to her. Realizing the question came from the doe, she locked eyes with Holly and shrugged casually in response. “Oh, well, I’m sure that you’re not used to it or anything,” she said in her saccharine tone, “so you wouldn’t get it, I totally get that. But it really is important that I get all of this for my lovelies! Even if I can’t send it for them to see as it happens,” she glared briefly at the icon on her phone showing no signal, “I can share everything together at the end, you know? I can’t just leave them out of all this.”

“Honestly, you should count yourself as lucky just to have what you got, already,” Bridgette remarked. “With how exclusive Fords made this little event of hers? I’m shocked that she isn’t demanding we all keep everything we see here a secret or something.”

Holly hadn’t thought of it before, but now that the discrepancy had been brought up she couldn’t help but consider just how odd it was. From all that Holly had researched about Fords’ reclusive nature, she had concluded that the sheep must be particularly shy when it came to sharing her methods or interacting with the outside world. Now, though, she had acted so outgoing and energetically over the course of the entire day so far. She struggled to square away the two images of Fords into the same person, and Faye took the opportunity to talk instead.

“Of course, I’m sure you’d look at it that way,” the rabbit said, glancing in the bear’s direction before returning to her phone, a smirk growing on her face, “but we work in different leagues of videos, you know? I’ve got a whole different situation, here, and people recognize that.”

Bridgette scoffed at Faye’s insinuations, but the gondola bumped against another dock and cut off any response she may have been thinking up. The jolt coursed through the boat and paused Dinghy’s song, allowing Fords to be pulled back into the moment. She blinked rapidly for a moment, taking stock of her surroundings before nodding. Wordlessly, Dinghy hopped off of the small boat to moore it again. “Ah, it seems we’ve already arrived! It’s a wonder how a bit of music can help to pass the time, isn’t it?”

Dinghy waved the group off as they disembarked once more, taking a sharp step upwards to reach solid ground. The dock connected several doorways along the tunnel wall, but Fords led the way directly to the closest. To its side, a large, green sign akin to something Holly expected to see on the highway designated the door as belonging to the ‘Distance Wing’. Without a word of explanation, Fords ushered the group inside. There, they stood in a sort of garage, well lit despite how few lightbulbs dangled on wires from the ceiling. Cluttered workbenches lined the walls, and despite the numerous, unidentifiable parts scattered around in crates or leaned against benches, Holly failed to find any evidence of an actual car in sight. Aside from the sound of humming electricity, she heard only a distant rumbling coming from somewhere else.

“Right through here,” Fords said, leading the group in a winding path around some stray crates, “is a particularly popular room for the girls to visit, and I believe that it’s not hard to see why.” She strolled over to the far end of the garage, where a shuttered door stretched across almost the entirety of the opposite wall.

The sheep tugged at a nearby cord, and the door lifted open to let in a flood of bright light once again. Holly’s eyes adjusted, finding a full, dirt race track presented before them in a wooded area. Stacks of tires separated them from the track, which wound over itself a few times before disappearing around a bend in the distance. On either side of the garage, rows of metal bleachers sat unoccupied, with yet more densely packed evergreens forming a wall behind them. All up and down the track, packs of wolpertingers raced by on go karts, each unique in design and paint work. The racers jockeyed for position with each other, handling the technical course with impossible speed.

“Welcome to the Travel Room!” Fords cupped a hand around her mouth to speak up over the whir of a dozen small engines and whining tires, “where a practical line of testing is conducted in order to ensure that all ‘travel-sized’ portions of our products are truly travel-friendly!” Stepping closer to the track, Holly only barely made out the vague image of wolpertingers holding fun-sized candy bars and compact tubes of sweets as they drove by.

Bridgette leaned against a stack of tires before looking back at Fords. “I’m not really sure I’d call anything here ‘practical,’” she said. “I mean, those travel sized things are supposed to be made for car trips or airplane flights or whatever, not race tracks, right? You’re ‘testing’ them for all the wrong trips.”

“As we might use them, that’s quite right,” Fords nodded, “but the girls found that trying to test out their more conventional applications grew far too dull far too quickly for their tastes. As such, they’ve put together this as an alternative testing method. After all, if they’re able to enjoy our products in an environment like this, then they’re certainly fine for mundane situations as well.”

Bridgette looked out over the course again before pausing as she came to a realization. “Hey, wait a minute,” she said, pushing off of the tire fence and pointing towards the track. “They’re racing out there, right? After that whole song and dance about how much they hate competitions? They’re competing against each other right now, what gives?”

“It may seem that way to the untrained eye,” Fords explained, “but the wolps have never kept track of who finishes first or second when they race about like this. In fact, they don’t even have discrete ‘races’! This given circuit has been ongoing since the creation of the Distance wing, with the girls simply dropping in and out of the running as they desire. You see, they’re much more concerned with the joy of pushing the limits of their chosen karts and enjoying their snacks without compromising their speed. Though with how engaged they get, I can certainly understand why it may look like they’re trying to outdo one another.”

“ Gosh ,” Faye said, leaning against the ramshackle fencing herself, “I’m sure they’d love getting a chance to drive around one of the cars I have back at my place. I bet they could get it running faster than all of these little karts of theirs put together!”

“Yeah, sure,” Bridgette chuckled,  “and, uh, how many of those have you actually driven yourself to know that?”

Faye huffed indignantly. “Well, if you have to know-” she began to raise her voice. The sudden roaring of an engine drowned out the rest of her sentence completely, however. All four turned to look at its source, finding a giant kart rocketing down the course. Easily three times as large as the petite go karts the other wolps drove and sporting a checkered paint job and an imposing engine sticking out of its back, it barreled around the bends in the course at speed. A number of smaller karts surrounded it, only increasing the chaotic sound as it raced past the group. Faye yelped at the intense sound and backed away from the railing to assume her familiar place behind Bridgette once again. The bear glared down at her impatiently.

“Ah, I was wondering if we might get the chance to see Delia at work while we were here. She’s certainly one of the most passionate wolpertingers I know of, when it comes to the Distance Wing,” Fords explained as the roar of the engines finally faded around the distant bend in the track.

Neither Faye nor Bridgette paid Fords any mind, however, instead still leering at each other aggressively. With a quick shove, the bear sent the rabbit stumbling away. Faye took several steps back as if trying to keep herself from falling over, and Bridgette scoffed at the dramatic display. “Aren’t you tired of that ‘little meek girl’ act already, Huffie? I told you, stop using me as a shield!”

Faye stomped her foot on the ground in indignant retaliation. “Yeah? Well, how come you aren’t tired of keeping this attitude of yours going all day, Bridgette? Or are you just that unlikeable all the time!?”

Before Bridgette fired back again, Fords nearly lunged towards the pair to thrust her cane between them. Their attention shot towards the ewe, who pleaded with the two. “ Please , dears! There’s no need to get heated on a day like this.” She stepped between the pair, waving her hooves gently to encourage them to put more distance between each other. The fight defused, Fords sighed to herself before turning to face Faye in particular. “Now, Miss Huffie, I’m aware that some of these recent stops have been… let us say, unkind to your demeanor. So, how about we go visit the stop I promised would be to your liking, earlier this morning? In fact, that particular wing should even allow your phone reception to return in full quality!” The sheep spoke with confidence, but Holly’s eyes drifted to the subtle sight of the ewe’s brow furrowing again.

Faye let out an exaggeratedly exasperated breath before nodding in agreement. “You know ,” she said, effortlessly returning to her sweet, sing-song tone, “I’ve been thinking about what you meant by that all day. You have no idea how sweet you’re being, listening to me like that!”

The ewe grinned at the positive change in tone from the rabbit’s response. She tapped at the asphalt beneath their feet with her cane. “Lovely! Then, everybody, come right this way. The next room just so happens to be right next door!”

Fords turned around to lead the way back into the garage. Faye began skipping after her enthusiastically, but paused to glance back at Bridgette with a snide look. Bridgette, visibly still frustrated, crossed her arms and glanced down at Holly, still at her side. “Can you believe her?” She asked in a low, grumbling tone. Holly failed to find any words to respond to the explosive situation she had just witnessed, let alone any that Bridgette might accept, and the bear scoffed at her silence before following the rest of the group.

Chapter Text

Stepping over the clutter of the garage again, Fords swiftly escorted the group from the Distance Wing back onto the canal platform. She gently shut the doors to the wing behind the group as they idly spread out. “Now, if I’m not mistaken,” she said softly, not finishing her thought as she trotted further down the platform to an unremarkable, unpainted door. Fords opened the door, peeked through, and nodded decisively before leading the way through it. Faye, still beaming, spared another glance back at Bridgette before following suit. The two followed as well, finding a cramped, concrete back room with little but a metal, spiralling staircase in its center. 

Faye looked around the unimpressive room, then craned her neck to look up the stairway stretching above them. “Is the stop you lined up for me somewhere up there, Fords?” She looked expectantly at the ewe.

Fords nodded excitedly in response. “Indeed, Miss Huffie! It should only be a brief climb to reach our next destination.”

The rabbit giggled in glee at the confirmation before leading the way up the spiral stairs. Each grated step creaked with age as the group made their way up, and Holly found herself drifting further backwards in the pack. Following Faye’s example, Holly leaned back to try to get a better view of how high the stairwell spiralled upwards, only to find it continued for what looked like dozens of floors before disappearing off in the distance. Dizzied by the height of the structure, Holly locked her eyes forward as resolutely as possible before following behind Bridgette.

Completing the set, Bridgette leaned over the handrail to gaze up at the sheer extent of the stairs. “‘Only a brief climb,’ huh?”

“Well, luckily for us we won’t need to ascend all the way to the top of the complex for this upcoming stop, Miss Grazeland. Like I promised, I wish to give your feet a bit of a rest,” Fords stopped climbing to grin through the gaps in the steps down at Bridgette below.

Holly only glanced up at the sheep before locking her gaze back forward. Still, the sense of vertigo renewed itself in her. “Just how far is it, Miss Fords?”

“Only to the next landing, I suppose,” Fords answered simply.

“Gosh, it’s no wonder we weren’t able to get any reception this whole time,” Faye remarked, “just look at how much stuff there is stacked on top of us! It all got in the way, didn’t it?” Her cheery voice echoed through the stairwell, which gave her a brief pause. Thinking on the noise, she stuffed her phone back into her pocket. “ So, let’s hope we get to, you know, wherever we’re going pretty soon. The acoustics in this place are terrible for getting any video.”

Almost as soon as Faye finished talking, Fords arrived on a metal landing in the stairwell. Another small door awaited her, this one marked only with some kind of small spiralling pattern in its center. She opened it before trotting up a couple steps higher to clear the way for the others to enter first. “Right this way to the Attention Station, dears!”

From the name alone, Faye’s eyes lit up in delight. Before Bridgette or Holly could sidle past her, she stopped on the landing to address Fords. “Wow! That sure sounds exciting already, and we haven’t even gone in yet!”

“I was hoping that the name of this room in particular may help to grab your attention as well, Miss Huffie,” Fords beamed, satisfied by the rabbit’s response.

Faye waved off the remark, a smirk on her face. “Oh, you’re just too nice to me, you know that? Let’s see what this place is all about, alright?”

Finally, Faye pressed on, bounding through the door and freeing up the pair to follow behind. Stepping through as well, Holly found herself in a broad, open, circular chamber. A lattice of metal supports lined the walls, stretching up at least another five storeys upwards into a broad dome, though she struggled to glean the exact shape of it due to a layer of indistinct floating objects bobbing around high above them. Finally able to look down again, she found that the group again stood on a sort of raised platform. In the center of the room sat a lowered pit, five feet deep, ringed with handrails and lined with brick all the way down to its grated floor. A dark, indistinct shape rested beneath the grating, and a circular plate of solid metal gripped tightly to the grating in a way that almost resembled a small stage. Somewhere far above, shafts of sunlight shone into the Attention Station.

In the open air overhead, wolpertingers fluttered about freely. They looped around each other in little aerial stunts, some dressed in their usual jackets, now lilac in hue, and others donning bulky, orange headsets paired with matching ties. A few even waved about large pieces of candy corn fashioned into shining batons, using them to direct the maneuvers of the other wolps. Occasionally, some of the fairies broke away from the group to fly upwards towards the vague shapes hovering near the top of the room. Though the numbers of their little fluttering pack steadily diminished as Holly took in the room, the sound of their games never grew any quieter.

Faye looked baffled by the sight of the room. She quickly stepped over to the handrail and leaned on it as she looked down into the pit below, as if it held the secret to why Fords chose this stop in particular. With nothing else to do, though, the rest soon joined her side, gazing down the brief drop to the grated floor below. The rabbit tilted her head and craned her neck to try to find any angle that satisfied her curiosity, and her long ears flapped about behind her as she did.

“ So ,” Faye spoke up after a moment, looking over at Fords, “is this really all there is to here? Or are we not actually at the place you wanted to show me-”

Once again, the bunny failed to finish her thought before being cut off. This time, the culprit came in the form of a jovial piano tune resounding through the entire room from somewhere up above. Wolpertingers fluttered down to the group’s level, singing to each other a familiar jingle. Holly barely registered their lyrics, instead trying to place the tune to a particular commercial she recalled seeing as a child decades ago.

A charming taste in every bite,

Making the world fun and bright!

Enjoy the magic as you please

From Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies!

The doe sighed as her memory failed to conjure up a satisfying answer to the familiarity of the song. Instead, she turned to watching the acrobatics of the wolpertingers for a moment. Only now she realized that, no matter how the wolps exerted themselves in their performances, their singing voices never wavered. Impressed, Holly glanced around at the other three. Bridgette pinched her brow as yet another song began, while Faye glared up impatiently at the wolps’ interruption. Neither Fords nor the wolps paid them any mind, and the latter dropped down further to perform directly for the group.

So welcome, new friends, to this wing!

We’ll help you all adjust to things,

This Attention Station, it’s where it’s at,

All eyes on you in no time flat!

It’s rather easy to understand,

A public lift gives you a hand!

And in this case, when we say ‘you’

We mean, of course-

“ None of you!” Faye suddenly exclaimed, halting the music in its tracks with her outburst. She gripped the railing tightly, her teeth bared in aggravation.

Fords blinked as the music stopped so ahead of time. “Hm? Is something the matter, Miss Huffie?”

“Oh, don’t bother   trying to keep playing the innocent act, Fords!” Faye snapped at her, “I haven’t bought this act of yours all day, you know. I don’t know what your problem is with me, but you better get it out already!”

“I’m not sure I understand. I don’t believe I’ve been doing any acting, today,” Fords began, but now Faye cut her off as she continued to rant.

“As if ,” Faye spat out, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know why everyone here is so obsessed with making sure I can’t get a word out today, but I’ve had it with all of this!”

“ Wow ,” Bridgette muttered at Holly’s side. “I mean, I figured she’d lose it at some point, but not this badly.”

Before Holly could respond, Faye’s wrathful look shot their way. “And you two can shut it, too! I can’t believe all of you, acting like it means nothing to get to star in one of my own travel vlogs alongside me.”

Fords took a step back from Faye in stunned silence. Instead, Holly tried to speak up in the ewe’s defense, “I’ve been trying to not say anything while your camera is rolling,” she pleaded, but Faye piped up again to stop her short.

“Yeah? Well, some great job you all’ve been doing at it, huh?” The rabbit steamed. “Do you all even know who I am ? Who it even is that you’re dealing with, here?”

Faye pushed off from the railing, gesturing wildly at the other three. “I’m Faye fucking Huffie! Do you get that? My fans could make all your lives hell if they knew even half of how you’ve been treating me, today. You’d better start showing me some of the respect that I deserve here, or,” she trailed off for a second, gazing down at the platform in the middle of the pit, “or…”

A fiendish grin spread across the rabbit’s face as she turned to face the others again. “Or I’ll start making you give me some respect,” she said, swinging a leg up and over the railing to straddle the edge of the pit.

Holly looked over to Fords, whose brow was furrowed more intensely than she’d seen all day. Still, she failed to say anything at all, let alone something that might assuage Faye’s rage. With no choices left, Holly spoke up again. “How are you going to do that…?”

“I’m going to do it,” Faye said, her look somewhere between a glare and a manic smile, “by getting on that stage and showing all of you what a real performance looks like!”

Bridgette groaned loudly in response.  “Yeah? And what makes you think that any of us even want to hear another song at this point? Oh, even better, what makes you think that you could even give us one?”

Faye smirked at the bear’s questions, playfully flicking her hair and ears off of her shoulder. “I was in theater , you know,” she cooed haughtily before swinging her other leg over the railing and dropping into the pit.

Faye took a moment to collect herself as she landed on the grating. As she did, Holly inched closer to Fords and spoke to her in a low voice. “Is it safe for her to be down there, Miss Fords?”

“Safe? Yes,” Fords’ response sounded nearly like a whisper, “there’s nothing dangerous anywhere here, it’s just,” she trailed off and simply watched Faye continue.

As the rabbit strutted out to the center platform, the telltale backing music of a heavily produced pop song echoed through the Attention Station. Faye stepped up onto her improvised platform, took center stage, and turned around to look up at the other three with a deeply satisfied expression. The music bent to her will, and she took it all in stride as she began her own sudden performance.

Now  -this- is perfect for the newest of new

To get everyone’s gawk, stare, and view!

And if you can’t see, it’s -obviously- me

That they all mean when they say “you”

So crank that dial to eleven,

And slam every input to high heaven!

The world can’t wait, shoot it right out the gate,

For my fans, all two-hundred-million and seven!

Wolpertingers descended from higher up in the room, and they watched Faye’s display while gripped with total fascination. Some attempted to join her on stage, but she swatted them all away as a spotlight appeared over her in particular.

So send me up or you’ll be over in a week,

I-

One wolp attempted to riff off of her. “- Need to bark as loud as you can squeak? ”

Faye silenced the little fey with another snap in their direction.

Shut it, it’s -my- turn, freak!

Watch my numbers blowing up!

When my views double, that’ll be enough,

All eyes are on me!

Right where they should be!

You’ll-

Faye suddenly vanished in a cloud of pale white gas which shot up through the grating all around the stage. When it finally dissipated, Holly saw her coughing and sputtering on the stage, her performance stopped in its tracks. After regaining her breath, she glared up at Fords and stomped a foot against the ground.

“ Finally , I don’t think I could’ve handled another one of those,” Bridgette said under her breath.

“ Fords ,” Faye barked at the ewe, “what was that supposed to be?”

“It looked to be the Attention Station activating,” Fords called warily back down to her.

Holly peered cautiously down at Faye as a slight whirring began somewhere beneath the room. “And what does it ‘activating’ mean?”

Fords sighed. “Well, the Attention Station is less of what you may call a ‘stage,’ more of a ‘staging ground,’ you see. At the moment, it seems to be trying to get Miss Huffie ready.”

Holly glanced back at the sheep. “Ready for what?”

Suddenly, the whirring noise intensified, drowning out any response Fords may have been preparing. The sound reverberated loudly through the room, and Holly squinted to see what looked like a giant fan spinning beneath the grate, only barely visible through the mesh of metal. A second later, the rush of air it pushed upwards reached the group, sending their hair blowing wildly in the wind. Faye’s hair flicked around most extremely of all, and even her lop ears bobbed up and down from the sheer force of air beneath them.

A perplexed look flashed across Faye’s face for a brief instant before her eyes shot down to look at herself. To her shock, starting from the bottom up, the rabbit’s body grew more puffy and rotund. She pressed her paws into her hips in a desperate attempt to stem the tide of her body’s growth, but to no avail.

With her first attempt stifled, Faye resorted once again to shouting demands up at Fords, straining to be heard over the loud fan. “Fords! What do you think you’re doing?! You’d better get down here now and fix this!”

“I would quite like to, Miss Huffie, believe me,” Fords called back, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard better, “but I’m afraid that by the time I arrived down there, you would already have rejoined us all again, up here!”

“Another cryptic promise, just great ,” Bridgette said wearily.

“I only mean to say, Miss Grazeland,” Fords said, turning to her for a moment, “that I doubt Miss Huffie will be grounded for very long.”

Holly struggled to pull her eyes from the bizarre display of Faye’s curves inflating outwards. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” Fords continued, “that what Miss Huffie was just sprayed with was a special concoction we’ve produced for maintenance on our advertising blimp fleet. I don’t suppose you’re familiar?”

“I am,” Holly nodded, sparing only a glance at Fords, “but what did it do to her?”

“It did what it always does to all of our aircraft,” Fords said, “it made her permeable one-way to the helium that fan is currently directing towards her, sealing up gaps that it might leak out through, and ensuring that she’s elastic enough to match standard fleet size!”

Holly looked incredulously at Fords’ explanation before returning her attention to Faye, whose body grew rounder even faster than Azure’s dizzying transformation just before. She continued screaming up at Fords, but with each threat her voice grew higher pitched and less comprehensible. Bridgette clamped an ear shut in an attempt to block out the ferocious squeaking coming from the rabbit.

Before long, a neatly spherical shape subsumed nearly all of the rabbit’s body beneath her arms. It stretched out her bright yoga pants, which gripped tightly into what was once her trim, exposed midriff. Infuriated, Faye stomped the ground again, only for the force of it to send her light body rocking uncontrollably. The ballooning rabbit struggled to keep her footing for a second before starting to fall upwards. As she did, her whole body flipped upside down, with her head and dangling lop ears becoming the only thing left still weighing her down.

Holly gazed upwards at the open air and wolpertingers above Faye as the bunny began to rise ominously. “How far up is she going to go?”

“Why, just as high as the rest of the fleet, assuming that the Attention Station is functioning properly today,” Fords answered, somehow not detecting the concern in Holly’s voice.

Faye continued to rise, ascending past the group and allowing them to get a glimpse of her face, now red with fury. Even as the distance between her and the fan grew, her growth failed to stop, only slowing. Her body continued to round out all over, and it stretched beyond her normal height. Her head and identifying features gently sank into pronounced divots as the broadening sphere of her body grew taller than herself. As she rose higher, her ears became the only way to tell where her head must be.

Bridgette leaned against the railing in blatant disinterest. “I guess your magic spray must have also made her clothes able to stretch about four times as big as Burle, huh?”

Fords nodded. “Too right, Miss Grazeland, it’s one of the many wonders of this compound we’ve developed.”

Another moment passed, and Faye’s growth gradually began to steady out. By the time the expansion finally stopped, Holly supposed the rabbit must easily be at least fifteen feet across. Despite this, the relaxed fit of her overstretched outfit showed that her titanic body was anything but a tight squeeze for her gaseous contents.

The din of her squeaking protests and complaints continued to echo from on high before being drowned out by the music from her song picking up again. Wolps from all around the Attention Station sprang into the air, directing each other around in more aeronautic tricks before their formations converged on the giant rabbit.

Listen up

For who’s coming up!

A rising star,

And she’s rising far!

As the wolps took control back over the music, they began the struggle of batting Faye around through the air. Many simply bounced off of her like a trampoline from her sheer mass, while others worked together to shift her course.

Hey everyone, come look at Faye!

How could she be in such dismay?

Normally so sickly sweet,

But now she’s been swept off her feet!

But isn’t it that she wanted it?

Demanded, said she’d be the perfect fit?

A superstar, rising high,

Beloved by all, who could deny?

Some wolpertingers broke off from the group to quickly fly up to the very top of the Attention Station before returning at the helm of some of the company’s familiar ad blimps. Just as Fords claimed, Faye now resembled them in scale, though in shape she looked far rounder than their oblong structures. The wolps began piloting the aircraft, creating new formations which incorporated Faye herself as one of their number.

“Well,” the deer said, “if you’re right, does that at least mean Faye isn’t in any danger, like Azure was?”

Fords sighed in relief. “Indeed, Miss Perez, if that serves as any consolation. The compound used on Miss Huffie should make her equally as durable as our fleet!”

Holly glanced at the wolps that played around below Faye, now including some costumed air traffic control wolpertingers singing into their handheld lights.

Or is that just what the camera sees,

And when alone she’d act how she pleased?

Takes someone’s boost then pushes them down

And if she gets mad, runs them out of town!

The only thing she cares about

Is chasing after precious clout

Even now, she’s spent all day

Pouting and gossiping to get her way!

As the song progressed, the wolps’ tricks became increasingly more elaborate and daring. Their blimps bumped into Faye directly, pushing her around between each other as the other wolps orbited the scene. The pronounced bouncing of each impact punctuated the thudding beat of the song that echoed through the Attention Station.

To think! Her fans don’t even know

Just how low a rabbit could go

And that she’d do it all to them too,

If just to sneak an extra view!

Now, this part might just send you reeling,

But all your fans all have real feelings!

And when you drop that thin veneer,

Tell us, who do you think cheers?

It’s always been an awful trend,

Watching starlets leap ‘friend’ to ‘friend’

Stepping stones, that’s all they are,

Who said -you- get to be the star?

Faye rose further up into the hangar high above, and the wolp’s display rose right along with her. By now, Holly only barely managed to distinguish the black and white pattern of Faye’s outfit from the rest of the blimp fleet, standing out slightly more from its stark checkered segments. Despite the growing distance, the song came through just as clearly as when the song had begun.

Funny how this bunny crier

Just couldn’t push her brand up higher

Instead this rabbit’s pouty fit

Has turned into our favorite skit!

Just know that folks aren’t your subjects

It’s easier than you’d expect!

Count on friends to care, not obey,

And you’ll meet less Faye Huffies along the way!

Now, if she still wants us to try

To shoot her numbers to the sky

We would only ask her why,

What could she want, when she’s so high?

After that, the wolps finished their newest song and continued toying with their blimp fleet as Faye rose to the same level of the original, indistinct balloons Holly saw upon entering. The sound of the music continued to echo through the Attention Station for a moment longer before finally quieting down, leaving the group in silence once again. Holly continued to lean against the railing and gaze up at the fleet until her eyes completely lost track of which of the vague shapes above belonged to Faye.

“They’ll be able to get her down,” she asked, turning to Fords, “right?”

Fords tapped her cane against the floor. “Doubtlessly! And they’ll have all the time they need to escort Miss Huffie to the accompanying station where blimps are deflated for maintenance. We only open the hangar doors to practice maneuvers with the fleet on Saturdays, so there should be no risk of her floating out to the exposed sky.”

Holly blinked, putting the pieces together in her head. “But isn’t it a Saturday, today?”

Fords thought on the matter, her face blank for a moment before her brow furrowed again in realization. “I suppose that it is , Miss Perez. But still, I’m quite confident that the girls will be more than capable enough of bringing Miss Huffie back down to safety before she so much as gets close to the hangar doors!”

Holly found herself unconvinced by the faltering tone of Fords’ voice, but Bridgette spoke up before she could. “Are we done here, then? I didn’t expect you to start running out of ideas for all of this stuff so quickly.”

Fords nodded. “I suppose I can see how that’s a concern, Miss Grazeland. In which case, we should keep on moving, ourselves! There’s still plenty to see before the day is through.”

“Yeah, well, hold on for a second,” Bridgette retorted. “Before you go running off again, how much of what you’re talking about is actually new enough to be worth stopping for? It looked like you gave up on showing us how to make anything here and just wanted to entertain us with whatever. But, well, look at where we are now, huh? Recycling.”

Fords tapped her cane against the ground anxiously, and Holly spoke up for her. “I mean, I’m sure you can think of something along the way easily, right? A couple things feeling familiar is probably a fluke more than anything.”

Bridgette shot a suspicious look at Holly before turning to face Fords again. “ Can you?”

Fords remained quiet for another moment before nodding and motioning the group towards a door on the other end of the Attention Station. “I’m certain I can, if you only give me the chance to prove it to you! All we have to do is find a better stop.”

Chapter Text

As the pair stepped out of the Attention Station, Fords hastily shut the door behind them and paused there for a brief moment. Afterwards, she turned back around and looked over her remaining two guests. “Now,” she said, scratching at her chin, “where would we have the best luck of finding something nice?” As she mused to herself, she shuffled by Holly and Bridgette and towards a railing behind them. They now stood on a concrete mezzanine overlooking a large, open hall. A mirror image of their own mezzanine lined the far side of the hall, and the factory floor below whirred with mechanical activity. A number of smaller doors lined the walls, and wolpertingers bustled in and out of these before fluttering over the railing and onto the factory floor below. The fairies looked far lesser in number, here, and Holly took the silent moment to wonder if the group had somehow looped back to somewhere near the Packing Room. Meanwhile, Bridgette stepped over to Fords’ side and leaned against the railing as she awaited the ewe speaking up again.

Instead of making any kind of announcement to the two, though, Fords simply made a sharp left and led the way forward through the airy hall. She glanced at the series of unmarked metal doors along the left wall, sometimes pausing to consider one, occasionally even going so far as to rest a hoof on its handle, but each time she wordlessly shook her head and moved on to the next. Bridgette looked down at Holly expectantly, and the doe shrugged before choosing to speak up. “Ah, is there somewhere in particular you’re looking for, Miss Fords?”

“Not quite yet, Miss Perez,” Fords shook her head, continuing to pass from one door to another. Now she opened each only a crack before shutting them again. “At the moment, I’m still brainstorming our route to come! You see, it’s far from the first time that inspiration has leapt out at me during this sort of line of thinking, so it shouldn’t be long.”

During her explanation, she continued to open and close doors in a row. With each, she trotted closer to one marked with a large, red X in sloppy paint which spanned its broad double doors. Absentmindedly, she cracked open the ominous door as she finished speaking to Holly. She tried to push it shut again, but instead found the doors flung open powerfully from the inside and Fords stumbled away to keep on her feet. A frantic bubbling noise emanated from the doorway, and the culprit soon revealed itself as a frothy, amorphous brown form which rose up from the darkness beyond the doorway.

“Oh, dear!” Fords wailed, rushing back to the pair of doors and slamming her hands against them. “Not now, not this room…!” As she struggled against the doors, a group of nearby wolps sprang into action to help push the door shut again. The bubbling shape redoubled its efforts, though, and the group began to lose ground once again.

Holly looked over the display, wide-eyed and stunned. “Miss Fords, what is that ?” She called out over the chaos unfolding in front of her.

“I’m afraid that the explanation will have to wait until the situation is back under control, dear!” Fords exclaimed back at her, digging her hooves into the smooth floor and gaining little traction.

The doe glanced over at Bridgette, still looking over the scene from her perch against the railing. She sported an unamused expression, and shrugged dismissively in response to Holly’s gaze. Sighing in resignation, Holly stepped forward and joined in on the pushing effort, pressing her shoulder against the metal door with all of her might. With her bit of added force, the group finally forced the doors closed once again, and the bubbling sound soon faded away into the ambient noise of the busy chamber.

Fords breathed heavily and took a moment to recover from the sudden scuffle. As she did so, she double and triple-checked that the door had been completely sealed off again before daring to step away and address the two. When she regained her composure, she tapped her cane grimly against the floor. “That, dears, was one of the greatest mistakes that I’ve made in my long career as a candymaker.”

Unconsciously, Holly’s head tilted in curiosity. “What exactly was it supposed to be?”

“Before you start, though,” Bridgette added, “can we get the quick version of whatever story you’re about to tell?”

Fords nodded her head. “Indeed, Miss Grazeland, but I suppose that you ought to know, considering,” she said, her sentence trailing off as she glanced warily back at the doors. “What you both just saw was the result of an attempt I made some years ago to make a more bubbly drink of milk, something almost akin to a kind of soda! All of the benefits of a fresh glass of milk, while still touching on the experience of a fizzy soft drink, that was the idea for it.”

Holly shuffled her feet idly. “Shouldn’t it be in a cup or something like that, then? And not like… that ?”

“You see,” Fords continued, “we soon learned that milk bubbles are many degrees more durable and tenacious than any soda bubble you may find in another drink. No matter how much it fizzed up, or how its bubbles grew, we never managed to pop a single one. It quickly grew out of hand, as I’m sure you understand. The best we can do now is to keep it holed up in that room so that we don’t risk it coating the entire complex.”

“Killer bubbles,” Bridgette said, her arms crossed. “Alright, sure.”

“Well, luckily for us they’re far from ‘killer,’ Miss Grazeland,” Fords noted, “but they’re still terribly disruptive. Not to mention that they’re not particularly fun for the girls to try dealing with. We occasionally see a particularly adventurous wolpertinger braving the chocolate milk monster’s room, but she always returns defeated before long.”

“So,” Holly said, “it’d be best to go around that room, right?”

“Too right, Miss Perez,” Fords said, gazing down the long room at the array of doors stretching as far as the eye could see.

The sheep decisively trotted by several more doors before stopping before one in particular and pulling it open. A familiar amber glow streamed into the hall from the doorway, and Holly peeked through to see the striking image of the broad, open Menagerie Wing once again. Its long grass still waved gently in the wind, and though the sun now sat closer to the horizon than during their first pass through the wind, she still felt its comforting heat from where she stood.

“Like, for example, by looping around through-” Fords cut herself off as she turned to look through the door and froze in realization. “Ah, the Menagerie Wing! We’ve already visited there today, haven’t we?” Holly simply nodded in response. “In that case, we’ll need to find a more fresh locale for you.” Fords shut the door without another word.

“Please,” Bridgette nodded.

Complying, Fords stepped to the next door over and opened it just as quickly. This time when she turned around to check its contents, Holly peeked around to join in trying to deduce where the bizarre layout of the complex may take them next. There, they both found the Green Room, viewed from the exact same angle as though Fords had just opened the door in the Imagining Wing once again. Holly gazed wearily up at Fords.

The sheep’s brow furrowed at the sight. “Well, it can’t be said that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” she mused, “but I’m afraid I don’t have that much time to think up some new ideas for where to take you all.” She turned around to face the group again as the door swung shut behind her. “That said, would you two mind giving me just a brief moment to think on exactly that matter?” Without waiting for an answer from either of them, she hastily trotted down the mezzanine and out of earshot.

As she left them alone once again, Bridgette pushed off of the railing to stand closer to Holly. With the distance between them and Fords, she spoke in an open tone. “Is this what you were expecting to have happen to you, today? Any of this?”

Holly glanced down the way at the ewe before looking up at the bear again. Bridgette stood slightly shorter than Fords, but Holly felt as though she needed to tilt her head upwards even more intensely to make eye contact with the bear than with the sheep. “In what way?”

Bridgette let out something between a chuckle and a scoff. “You’re kidding, right? I mean,” Bridgette responded waving an arm at the broad hallway, “we saw maybe a handful of real parts of the factory right at the start, and then it’s been nothing but this one stop after another. I know you’re not in on her weird plan or anything, so, really, you don’t need to keep up with this whole ‘audience participation’ angle she’s going with now. It’s okay.”

The assessment completely took the doe aback. She struggled to say anything other than “What plan…?”

The bear pinched her brow in response, grumbling to herself for a second before responding. “Okay, actually, why are you acting like this, now?”

Fords finally returned to the pair, leaving Holly to try figuring out what Bridgette meant on her own. “I’ve just had the finest ideas, dears,” she called out, trotting half of the distance towards them before beckoning them to join her in front of a particular door. Holly led the way, and soon all three stood before a particularly ornate entrance painted in red and white.

Holly looked to the door, trying to anticipate what they might find on the other side. “What did you think up? Is it something in there?”

“Some things in here, to be more precise,” Fords beamed. “You see, my realization was, in fact, twofold! Firstly, I supposed that we would do well to leave the Leftovers Wing behind us to find something more engaging. Secondly, I realized that we’re actually in possession of the perfect mode of transport to help brainstorm a sufficient next stop for the tour, as you two will be able to help. We’ll take a brief ride through several of the complex’s floors to allow you two to get a smattering of ideas for where we could go next. Then, once you’ve chosen. we’ll already know ahead of time that wherever we end up will be precisely to your tastes!”

Finally, Fords pushed open the door, revealing on the other side another great, open chamber with a small, metal platform extending outwards for them to step onto. Bright lights shone all around in a myriad of colors, and waiting at the end of the platform sat suspended  some sort of round, glass cabin, a stripe around its base painted a rich blue. Stepping onto the platform, Holly saw that this room extended many storeys back downwards, disappearing into a blur of shadows and colorfully flashing lights. She quickly stepped back into the center of the platform, keeping away from the meager railing as she waited for her head to stop spinning.

“This,” Fords explained, walking across the platform to open a door into the glass cabin, “is a ferris wheel of our own design that the girls and I, at sometimes, like to use as an elevator to get from floor to floor. All adjacent rooms on its path are windowed, you see, so you should be able to clearly observe everything that we pass along the way down to the bottom, as a sort of sampling of this end of the complex. Do let me know if anything interests you.”

Bridgette glanced over the railing for a second before gazing at the ferris wheel cabin again. “Is this supposed to be your take on a freight elevator or something? Must not need to move anything fast, then, spending all of that time going left and right in a circle instead of moving towards the next floor.”

“Well,” Holly suggested, “they do seem to already be going to lengths to not let anything get boring, so at least it’s consistent?”

Bridgette sighed at Holly’s response, silencing her. “Are you sure about that? I’m not sure that having to sit around in the elevator for longer is going to be anything other than more boring for everyone involved.”

“Ah, but on the other hand, Miss Grazeland,” Fords countered, “its wider path means that we’ll be able to get an even better sample of potential next stops, so it all works out swimmingly!”

“ Swimmingly ,” Bridgette repeated, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

With that, the sheep ushered the pair inside, and the two shuffled in. Bridgette ducked slightly to clear the doorway, but the interior ceiling stood high enough for all of the trio to stand tall. Holly looked over the interior of the ferris wheel, surprisingly spacious even aside from the high ceiling. Long, cushioned seats lined its circular frame, allowing one to sit anywhere and still easily see out the windows on the opposite side of the cabin. Though it felt steady enough to Holly, she still felt her hands digging into the cushion slightly to keep herself steady. Fords sat closest to the break in the seats afforded to the door out, followed by Holly and Bridgette.

“Get us moving, girls!” Fords called out through the door, and on its own it swung shut before the ride shifted into gentle motion.

A moment of silence passed as the ride swung out to the side before slowly beginning to drop from floor to floor. As promised, the far window showed unobstructed views into the rooms beyond. Bridgette’s attention rested solely on the ewe, however.

“So, Fords,” she said, “exactly how much did you have planned for today? It looks like your ‘packed itinerary’ is already running dry.”

“Well,” Fords shrugged, “I did have quite a bit in mind for where we could end up today, but I’m afraid that those destinations likely wouldn’t exactly pan quite as expected for either of you, as you’ve seen with the others who couldn’t be here with us right now. This new plan should suit us much better!”

Holly tried to believe in Fords’ confidence, if only for the old ewe’s own sake. The deer shifted some at Bridgette’s comments, and she moved herself down the long seat slightly to position herself slightly closer to Fords. “Really?” Bridgette said, leaving it unclear if she responded to Fords or Holly. Instead of clarifying, the bear simply rolled her eyes and instead began casting her gaze out the far window. “Then what are we looking at now, huh?”

The deer joined her in looking out from the cabin, finding the first view along the way to be yet another brick-lined tunnel. This one, however, lacked the chocolate filling of the canals from earlier in the tour. Instead, a couple of the company’s advertising blimps, apparently fresh from the Attention Station, filled the open air. Now they flew slowly through the corridor, its width just barely wide enough to allow them to pass each other. One stopped by an elevated platform along the tunnel’s wall, and out from it stormed a dozen wolps, many more than Holly would expect to fit in such a confined space as the little balloon’s cabin.

“Why, that would be one of the ways to and from the blimp hangar,” Fords explained, “they aren’t particularly easy to spot from the Attention Station, so I can see why you may have missed them.”

“Just how many different ways of getting around this place do you all need ? It’s just one factory,” Bridgette asked, a brow raised.

“As many as it takes for the girls to not grow bored, Miss Grazeland,” Fords answered simply before the view of the tunnel drifted out of view.

The next floor down resembled something like an old-fashioned diner, only its counter stretched onwards unerringly for the length of a long hallway. A number of wolps sat on the stools before it, all blissfully snacking on Fords products. One, however, stood behind the counter in what appeared to be a full-body costume in the shape of a peanut, one with holes cut out for her hands, feet, and face. She, by contrast, wore a downright dour expression, though all of the fairies around her looked entirely unbothered by her grim attitude. Holly supposed that must have been the first time she had seen a wolp that didn’t look happy.

“Miss Fords,” she said, “is something the matter with that wolpertinger over there?” She pointed out the aggravated fey.

Bridgette chuckled at the cartoonish frustration on the wolp’s face. “The one rule of this place really is that you don’t follow your own rules, huh?”

“Not at all,” Fords shook her head, “she’s simply the one who’s been designated to the costume for today.”

Holly leaned in her seat to get a better look at the wolp. “‘The costume’? Is she, you know, alright with that? I thought you said that they wouldn’t do anything that they didn’t think they’d enjoy. Why does she look so grumpy ?”

“A fine question, Miss Perez,” Fords nodded, “but I’m afraid that the answer has been completely lost to time, I’ve never been able to find one of the girls who can explain why. That costume, despite how much the girls are loath to put it on, is one of the wolpertingers’ oldest and most valued traditions. This is just a theory, of course, but I suspect it may even predate their dedication to always rhyming what they say.”

Holly gazed out the window again. “Does that mean they have generations, or something that at least works the same way?”

“Well, not from what I’ve seen,” Fords shrugged, “but even still, their more distant history has almost entirely faded off into legend.”

Holly pondered the thought as the ferris wheel brought them down by the next floor. It contained an expansive pool room, with several worryingly high diving boards towering over its edges. Wolpertingers in bathing suits carried heavy armfulls of fruit up with them, only to dive back into the pool and let their sweet payloads splash into the water with them.

The deer watched several more dives from the wolps before speaking up. “Why are they doing that, Miss Fords? Is it a way of cleaning off the ingredients or something?”

“Not quite, Miss Perez,” Fords grinned. “Rather, it’s a way the girls have found to give a bright ‘splash’ of flavor to certain recipes of ours! The water is drained out to be refilled and re-flavored as needed for what we’re making.”

Holly stifled a giggle as the wordplay of the room suddenly fell into place.

Bridgette gazed off at the far edges of the giant pool. “That’s a lot of water to go through in a day, huh?”

“And yet, it’s never been enough to so much as make a dent in our supply, I’ve found,” Fords shrugged.

The bear rolled her eyes as the ride continued to carry the group down to the next floor, the ferris wheel now swinging them back the way in the direction of the platform as it continued to descend. Next came a floor with an incredibly high ceiling. Even as the cabin dropped further and Holly managed to peer upwards towards the top of the room, she failed to make out where the expansive headroom finally ended. At the bottom of the room sat a large, metallic kettle which slowly erupted in a flow of popcorn kernels. The kernels fell down into various vats of different coatings which surrounded the kettle in a ring, and wolps worked dutifully to collect the flavored popcorn. All the while, they amused themselves by being launched into the air by each pronounced pop of the kettle’s lid.

“Well, that’s not right,” Bridgette stated simply.

Holly tried to match where the bear was looking. “What isn’t?”

“The layout,” Bridgette said, “you messed up your optical illusion on this one, Fords. You should be able to see the bottom of the pool from here. You made that one a bit too obvious, you know?” She pointed up to the perilously high ceiling of the room.

“Well,” Fords said, “it’s not so much that the Popping Room is too-” she began, but stopped suddenly when interrupted by a wolpertinger being flung off the lid and directly into the glass separating the Popping Room from the ferris wheel. The fairy’s face pressed against the glass cartoonishly, and she waved through the window as she began to slowly, loudly slide downwards.

Fords waved back politely. “Now,” she said once the wolp finally slid out of sight, “where were we?”

“Weren’t you supposed to be the one telling us that?” Bridgette remarked.

Fords chuckled at the bear’s jab, but Holly felt no playfulness in Bridgette’s tone. “Ah, you’re too right, Miss Grazeland! Let us see, then.” The ewe looked out the window as they passed the next floor and the others followed suit. The next vignette showed an elaborate structure of wolps standing on each others’ shoulders. Their tower stood as imposing as it was broad, with flying buttresses and support beams also formed from teams of wolpertingers keeping the structure upright. Occasionally, Holly caught the sight of stray wolps fluttering up to certain spots in the structure to tag out with others.

“Ah, now here’s quite the sight to behold,” Fords said eagerly. “What you’re looking at now is the largest wolp tower ever produced! That is, largest both in number of wolps and sheer height , mind you.”

Holly took another moment to try wrapping her head around the feat of wolpertinger engineering now before her. “Is this the place where you talked about seeing a thousand wolps at once? There must be at least that many working on this.”

“Correct, Miss Perez,” Fords grinned, “and to think, the structure is still being developed, so we may soon see multiple thousands of the girls in one room, all contributing towards pushing themselves to even greater heights.”

“You’re not telling me you built a whole room just for that ,” Bridgette remarked.

“Why, we certainly did, Miss Grazeland! Recreation for the girls is just as important as production on our sweets, as far as the function of the complex is concerned,” Fords explained.

Holly nodded. “With how the wolpertingers operate? That makes sense.”

Bridgette returned to gazing out the window, uttering only a frustrated “Whatever.”

As their discussion continued, the tower room quickly passed and a much smaller window replaced it. Craning her neck to see inside the cramped room, Holly saw only a humble home kitchen, not unlike one from any of the houses she had walked by one her way to the complex that morning. A few wolps, all dressed up as bakers, bustled around the cramped space while carrying bowls, rolling pins, and freshly baked cakes. Others fluttered above while holding piping bags of frosting, still touching up the decorations of cakes being carried out the door. Occasional bursts of flour clouded the chaos within the kitchen.

Bridgette perked up at the sight of the quaint room, looking the most interested she had been all day as she tried to get a better look at it. “Is this place supposed to be your baked goods operation, Fords?”

Fords herself looked out the window, then nodded warmly. “The Cakery Bakery is a part of it, at least!”

“Yeah, figures, it looks small for a bakery,” Bridgette nodded in turn. “Where’s the rest of it, then?”

“I’m glad you asked! Given we’ve passed that window, we must be soon arriving at the Scratch Wing. You may have guessed from the name, the Cakery Bakery in particular would be where the girls have taken to producing all of our lines of cakes. From snack cakes to fruit cakes to cake donuts, it all comes from right over there.”

Holly tilted her head in an attempt to peer around to the edges of the little bakery. “Does that include the cakes for the wedding?”

“Which includes the cakes for the wedding, yes,” Fords nodded, her grin widening.

“Yeah? It looks too cramped inside of there to make more than one thing at a time, even with how small your, uh,” Bridgette waved her hand as she searched for the word, “ thingies of yours are. Plus, it looks more like a kitchen than an actual bakery setup. How does a little thing like that keep up with everything you’re supposed to be making in a day?”

“It’s simple,” Fords responded, “you see, we have even more going on over in the Bigger Bakery, which is closer to the core of the Scratch Wing.”

“Alright, let’s see it, then,” Bridgette said, an inquisitive brow raised at Fords.

“Ah!” The ewe lit up, “have we finally found somewhere which piques your interest, Miss Grazeland?”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “I mean, I’m interested to see how you actually keep up with this global demand of yours. You could’ve saved us a lot of grief by just taking us to this side of your operation sooner.”

Fords beamed at the bear’s response before sliding open a segment of window in the cabin. “Girls? Let us off right here, if you’d please!” she called out, and the ride came to a gradual halt with the group now directly at the bottom of the wheel. The sheep stood up, tapped her cane against the floor of the cabin, and stepped out from the ride onto a set of stairs back down to ground level. Holly delivered a silent thanks to be on solid ground once again as she and Bridgette exited behind her. “Come right this way, then!” Fords continued.  “I have a feeling you’re truly going to like what you see in the Bigger Bakery, Miss Grazeland.”

Chapter Text

The neon lights which surrounded the ferris wheel continued to blink idly, high above. Only a few shone down to the bottom of the massive chamber, though, leaving it with only a few, murky flashes to illuminate the concrete steps leading down to another metal door. After taking extra care to navigate down into the next hall, thankfully much better lit, the familiarly ornate wallpaper seen multiple times before greeted Holly again, now accompanied by rich wooden paneling stretching up from floor level. She glanced at Bridgette as the bear stepped out of the darkness behind her. Recalling her talking about keeping a mental map of the complex over the course of the day, curiosity gnawed at Holly to ask if their path now took them back into the front office building. Fords continued trotting down the hall and around a corner without another word, however, and the doe lost her opportunity.

Following Fords’ lead, the group turned the corner to behold a jarringly bright and multi-colored leg of the hallway. The hue of the walls changed abruptly, ranging between lively reds, greens, yellows, and beyond. Strips of wallpaper haphazardly covered one another, but never once broke the neat pattern which uniformly adorned all of the different wallpapers. They quickly found the source of the chaos, a small gang of wolpertingers engaged in a frantic conflict to layer wallpaper over the others’ wallpaper. One might flutter over to a green stretch of wall and turn it blue instead, only to be quickly followed by a different fairy to turn it pink. At present, Holly noted to herself, the red paper looked to be winning. The wolps carried their tools and rolls of wallpaper carelessly, and the trio ducked to not be hit over the head by any of their buckets of glue as their artistic battle continued.

“Uh, Miss Fords?” Holly said, ducking even lower to avoid a wolp flying by with another roll of wallpaper, “we’re not disrupting a fight or anything, are we?”

“Why, certainly not,” Fords chuckled in response. “If I had to guess, it just seems to be around the time of year we tend to redecorate the Scratch Wing. The girls can get rather indecisive with each other at times, when it comes to aesthetic sensibilities, but it’s entirely unlike them to outright fight anything.”

Bridgette raised a brow. “So, what you had them doing with Leclerc didn’t count as fighting, huh?”

The ewe scratched her chin at the comment. “Well, while it did seem that Missus Leclerc was trying to fight against the girls , it didn’t seem to me that they were trying to fight back against her, aside from their normal sort of playing around.”

“Yeah, sure,” the bear continued to grumble, turning away from the sight of the wolps as the group turned yet another corner and left the wallpaper battleground behind them. “Anyways, where is this bakery of yours supposed to be, again?”

“Just over here for the Bigger Bakery, Miss Grazeland,” Fords said, brimming with pride as she approached another set of double doors on the right side of the hall.

Pushing them open, the welcome scene of fresh chocolate and rich baked goods hit Holly’s nose almost immediately. She blinked, surprised by the thought that the group had spent so long in the complex without it smelling like sweets at all. Looking over the Bigger Bakery, it delivered on the promise of being much larger than the ‘Cakery Bakery’ the three had peered into earlier. The bakery room, occupying a space several times larger than Holly’s apartment, sported rows upon rows of separate kitchen counters, most of which lay cluttered with trays, bowls, and tools being used by the wolps to mix up dough. Lining the walls, several rows of mundane kitchen ovens glowed with a subtle light as they baked. All around them, wolps fluttered by each other while arranging dough onto sheets or setting out finished pastries to cool. Another array of wolpertingers picked up the batches of cookies, muffins, eclairs, and even a number of pastries exotic enough for her to not immediately recall their names and dutifully whisk them away out of a pair of swinging doors on the far end of the room.

“What you’re able to see now is the very core of all of our baked goods production for the whole of our product line,” Fords explained, ushering the group deeper into the Bigger Bakery and passing by several wolps at work. “As you’ve seen before, there are some smaller, ‘auxiliary’ bakeries we use to hone in on the finer details of particular brands of recipes, but by far the bulk of what gets done happens right here in the Bigger Bakery!”

Fords stopped and turned about to face her remaining two guests. Glancing upwards in her direction, Holly found Bridgette’s eyebrows raised in a hard-to-place expression. “Alright, this is a start, I guess.”

The decidedly neutral response only seemed to brighten Fords’ mood, though. “In which case, let’s take a closer look!”

Fords motioned the others to draw closer to one particular countertop she stood beside, where a wolpertinger had just finished mixing up a bowl of dough and skipped away with it, vacating the space. Leaning in to get a better look, they found that the fairy had left behind a sheet of paper with a messy, handwritten recipe scrawled all across it. At least, Holly assumed it to be some kind of cookie recipe based on what the wolp had been making before strolling off. The paper itself contained almost nothing legible to read. Instead, dozens of sentences overlapped each other at different angles, as well as small pictograms and elaborate diagrams which appeared to spill off of the edges of the page. She glanced away from the page, if only to stop her eyes from straining trying to decipher the impossibly dense writing.

She rubbed at her eyes some, then turned to look at Fords again. “Are you able to read any of this, Miss Fords?”

“Oh, certainly not,” Fords waved off the question. “You see, some of the girls just happen to be quite protective when it comes to the twists they’ve personally put onto some of our classic recipes, and their specific formulae are a part of that system of protection.”

With that note, Bridgette’s brow furrowed, and her expression hardened again. “Hold on. ‘Their own twists’? You’d better hope that you’re talking about the novelty flavors for things you put out Fords, because you do not want to know what happens to companies that put things not from their ingredient lists into their products. Forget the QA nightmare this should be, that’s a legal nightmare waiting to happen if you don’t even know what they’re doing to your recipes.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about that, Miss Grazeland. If it ever became necessary, I’m sure I could convince one of the girls to impart some of her secrets, but it’s far from ever having been necessary,” Fords shrugged.

Bridgette scoffed, looking down at the page again. “From where I’m standing, it looks like you probably should start worrying about that problem pretty soon. Just what kind of recipe is this supposed to be for, even?”

Fords paused for a moment to analyze the nonsensical writing before nodding resolutely. “It looks to me like this particular recipe is some manner of variation on chocolope cookies.”

The bear chuckled. “Uh, chocolate , you mean?”

“So you might think, Miss Grazeland, but I’m afraid not,” Fords countered, “as it would do a great disservice to our process to call it only that. Come look!” She directed the pair’s attention to another of the nearby counters.

There, a wolpertinger flapped her wings to stay aloft while carrying a heavy wooden mallet precariously over her head. Despite the hammer being nearly larger than herself, she hoisted it with ease and intently watched the counter in front of her. Another wolp soon came along, her arms filled with a load of spindly antlers, all rich brown in hue. They looked similar to the ones sprouting from the wolpertingers’ heads, but lacked the neat set of three prongs theirs displayed, instead looking like they had grown out randomly and haphazardly. The newcomer wolp leapt into the air and cast her load down onto the counter. Without so much as giving them time to settle on the countertop, the mallet wolp swung her giant tool around mightily and slammed it down onto the bizarre ingredients with a thud so strong that Holly felt it in her hooves. A second later, the hammering wolp flipped her weapon back over her shoulder, revealing the antlers to be crushed into a pile of neatly divided chocolate chips, which the other wolp brushed gently into a bowl and strolled away with.

“Uh, those things don’t come from other wolpertingers,” Holly asked, shaking one of her legs in an attempt to stop it from trembling after the impact, “do they, Miss Fords?”

“Quite clever of you to spot the difference, Miss Perez,” Fords nodded and then paused for a moment as the mallet wolp reared up to swing once again, letting the impact shake the room before continuing with her explanation. “You see, wolpertingers don’t shed their antlers, but chocolopes do! Most of the time they’re quite the furtive little creatures, even in all my years I haven’t seen more than a glimpse of one, but it’s hardly a struggle for someone to find the old antlers that they leave behind after shedding.”

The thought of the mysterious, parallel wolpertingers tugged at Holly’s curiosity. She opened her mouth, but Bridgette spoke over her before the deer managed a single word. “Hold on, before you go off on this, can I ask that we just cut this talk short so we can move on to seeing the rest of your operation here? We were getting somewhere, I don’t want to lose that.”

Fords blinked in surprise, but continued grinning. “What exactly do you mean, Miss Grazeland?”

“I mean ,” Bridgette began, but a wolp with a cartoonishly large rolling pin fluttered between her and Fords, cutting off the bear’s thought anticlimactically.

“Ah,” Fords said, her attention drawn to the passing wolp, “it seems you two will have to excuse me for just a moment, I’m being called upon for a bit of taste testing!” Without another word of explanation, she trotted off several counters away to accompany the wolpertinger in question.

Bridgette sighed loudly before leaning against the nearby counter, slouched in disappointment. Holly stood close by, and despite the din of the Bigger Bakery still spoke to Bridgette in a low voice. “Is there something else wrong?”

“Of course there is,” Bridgette groaned, waving an arm across the chaotic bakery. “There’s just no way that it works like this.”

“But,” Holly countered, “aren’t we seeing it, well, work ? Right now?”

“We’re seeing a tiny, public-facing part of it, maybe,” Bridgette said, “but you can’t run a global-scale industrial operation on a bakery the size of just this. You’d barely be able to keep up with a few towns trying to use a system this inefficient.”

Her response quickly silenced Holly, and as she tried to think of how to respond Fords rejoined the pair. “I’m terribly sorry for the interruption there, dears. Now, Miss Grazeland, what is it you were saying beforehand?”

“I was saying ,” Bridgette continued, pausing to glance around and confirm she saw no incoming interruptions before continuing her thought. “When are we going to get to see the rest of your baking operation, here? This isn’t anywhere near enough to keep up with your company’s demand, you don’t have to pretend, we’re not fooled by it. I just want to see what you really have set up, now.”

Fords’ brow furrowed as the bear spoke. She hesitated, and when she spoke her first word came out strained. “...I’m not entirely sure what you expect me to show, Miss Grazeland, this is the single largest bakery space in the entire complex. I’m not sure, well,”

“ Please , Fords,” the bear said, cutting off the ewe, “I’m not in the mood to play this game of yours anymore, just be honest with me, here!”

“Bridgette,” Holly said, “I think she’s trying to tell the truth.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t you start with it, too,” Bridgette snapped back. She massaged her brow in frustration before pushing off of the counter and crossing her arms aggressively. “The last thing I need is you of all people taking her side again. Why do you keep taking her side on everything, anyways?”

Holly stepped back as the aggravated bear towered over. A stabbing feeling hit her chest, but her hand felt nothing out of the ordinary as she rested it against her shirt. ”Why are we picking ‘sides’ to start with? I don’t get it…!” She didn’t mean to raise her voice, but she did.

Bridgette pointed at Fords. “Because of everything she’s been doing to us, today! Can’t you see how she’s been mocking us with this act? Aren’t you mad, too? Do you just want to stand here and take it ?” She paused, and in an instant Holly saw some of the frustration fade from the bear’s eyes, now replaced by a wounded emptiness as she looked down at her. “Or is this your way of saying that you’re in on it, too?”

Holly averted her gaze to get away from the bear’s eyes. The feeling in her chest resided, only to be replaced by her stomach dropping out from beneath her. She looked over at Fords, but the ewe simply stood there, wide-eyed and near motionless. “ ‘In on’ what?”

“I don’t know! ‘In on’ whatever insane plan you all have cooked up here, today,” Bridgette answered. “I mean, come on, we could all tell Fords was a loon. Leclerc, Burle, and Huffie? They were all nuts in their own ways, too. You , though,” her large paw swung about, a clawed finger now casting its accusation directly at Holly, “I hoped that you could be one other normal person that I could have with me, today. I guess that’s just too much to ask for in a place like this, huh?”

Holly continued to glance between Bridgette and Fords, desperate for an out but unable to pull her attention away from the aggressive bear for long. Fords, however, only appeared more catatonic than ever as tensions flared with Bridgette. The ewe said nothing in her own defense, and Holly took a deep breath before deciding to try speaking for her. “Nobody here is trying to trick you, Bridgette, really. Fords is trying to show us how it all works,” she said before the bear’s gaze continued to weigh down on her. After a second, the pressure made her quickly add “At least in part, right?”

“You know what, Perez? I don’t even think it’s a trick, at this point,” Bridgette said, “it’d be too obvious if you thought about anything she’s shown us today for even a second. It’s probably some inane kind of point she’s trying to drive home, but she must be too lost in her own head to remember what she actually set out to do.” She glared daggers at Fords, who despite being so much taller than Bridgette seemed to shrink rapidly into the background.

With Fords nearly exiting the scene, all attention shifted back towards Holly. It shook her, but this time Holly resisted the urge to retreat from the bear’s stern look as Fords had. “Well, fine,” Bridgette said, turning to look instead at the unoccupied counter behind the pair, “how about I drive home my own point instead? If you really need a demonstration to see just how inefficient a manual baking setup is for keeping up with a whole factory’s demand, then watch this.”

With that, Bridgette barrelled forwards, pushed aside both Holly and Fords to collect bowls and ingredients from the wolps and their baking projects nearby. In a flurry, she set about preparing a chocolate chip cookie dough, nearly identical to the others still being made by the wolpertingers all around her. Despite her rehearsed efficiency and the added pace she gained from the mission she had just set herself on, it still took some minutes before the bear finally began dolloping the finished dough onto a baking sheet.

Holly spared several more looks in Fords’ direction. The old ewe looked to be mouthing something to herself, but produced nothing audible. With no help coming, Holly shuffled around to the other side of the counter, resting her hands on it as she continued to plead. “Bridgette, really! If you just give her a chance, I don’t think either of you will have anything to prove, here.”

Bridgette looked up from her tray to glance at Holly, who now stood directly between her and Fords. She splayed out her own hands on the counter, mirroring the deer’s posture. “Can I ask you one thing, Perez?”

The doe blinked. “What?”

“Can you please ,” Bridgette said, grabbing the sheet and stepping back from the counter, “either stop taking Fords’ side, or start being honest with me about why you’re here, today?”

“Didn’t we all come here for the same reason?” Holly insisted, then cursed herself as she recalled the other three. “For the most part, at least?”

“Fine, fine .” Bridgette sighed in resignation. She turned away from Holly to instead approach one of the ovens built into the walls of the Bigger Bakery. Holly made no attempt to follow her, instead silently watching the bear’s display.

As she approached, another wolpertinger had just arrived with her own baking sheet full of little dollops of cookie dough. Just as the fairy had opened the closest available oven to her, Bridgette stepped in and bumped the wolp aside with her hip. “Move aside, pipsqueak,” she said as her body check sent the wolp tumbling cartoonishly through the air for a few seconds. “It looks like I’m going to have to be the first person to do something right in this madhouse.” She set her tray in the oven, shut the door, and stormed back to the counter Holly stood at to set down a small, antique-looking kitchen timer onto the countertop.

“ There ,” Bridgette said, looking down at Holly once again, “if you really needed any more proof than everything else we’ve seen today, just think about how long this timer’s going to take, how long it takes each small batch to be finished in normal kitchen ovens like these. Even if all of them were working as efficiently as they could, and look around you, they aren’t . How many batches do you really think they could put out in a day?”

Holly glanced down at the timer, ticking away with none of the urgency Bridgette had moved with when preparing her dough. “It would probably take a while, yeah,” she admitted.

“It’d take too long for anyone in their right mind to believe that,” Bridgette began, but the timer suddenly ringing minutes ahead of time immediately cut her off. She scooped up the alarm to quiet it and look the old device over curiously. “What’s wrong with this thing? I know I set the right time on it,” she grumbled softly. She stopped, however, when a strange noise from the oven drew her attention away from the timer.

A low noise, not entirely unlike what Holly and the group had heard coming from the chocolate milk bubble room earlier, now emanated from that end of the Bigger Bakery. The chaotic noise of the bakery had faded away by now, leaving only the growling to grow and fill the silence. Giving no time to mull over the noise, though, a loud thudding and clanking sounded from within, only barely muffled by the oven door. Said door shifted in place, only barely holding in place as it bent and cracked with each blow.

“Fords,” Bridgette said, glancing frantically from the oven to the sheep, “what did you put in there?”

“Well,” Fords squeaked out meekly, her first words in minutes, “there may have been something that you didn’t intend to add that also ended up in your dough.”

“Like what ? That was the simplest thing I could’ve made, I have the whole thing memorized!” Bridgette shouted in response, pausing for a second as the banging from the oven intensified. “It’s got to be something wrong with what you have here for your messed up ingredients.”

Holly stepped over to Fords’ side again. “Didn’t she follow the recipe closely enough, Miss Fords?”

Fords shook her head. “The issue is the one ingredient that Miss Grazeland had to provide, for herself.”

The chaotic sounds only intensified, and Holly raised her voice again to ask, “What ingredient was that?!”

“You see, the wolps all add love that they feel for their craft to anything that they bake,” Fords explained, “it’s what gives our cookies a quality no other company can reproduce. But, it seems like Miss Grazeland has been making her batch with spite , and we’re about to see what effect that has on the recipe…”

As if to punctuate Fords’ explanation,  the oven door suddenly flung back open with a resounding crash. The sheer force of it sent nearby wolpertingers scattering to the edges of the Bigger Bakery in panic. Out from the oven spilled a giant, globular mass of cookie dough, many times more than what Bridgette had partitioned out onto the cooking sheet before. It sported a drooping, scowling face on its surface made from chocolate chips, and pulled itself out of the oven with long, dripping tendrils.

The bear pressed herself against the counter defensively, a mixing spoon grasped tightly in her paw for lack of anything else to defend herself. She looked desperately between the monstrous dough and Fords. “‘ Spite’ !?” She repeated incredulously. “What are you even talking about, Fords? Call it off, already!”

“ You’re the one who made it, Miss Grazeland!” Fords called back. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid this is entirely unlike anything I’ve seen produced in the Bigger Bakery before!”

The creature continued to spill out from the oven, forming a dozen writhing, amorphous tendrils as its doughy mass moved quickly towards Bridgette. She had only just started trying to dash out of the way of the creature’s warpath before one of its vague limbs wrapped itself around her ankle and sent her tumbling to the bakery floor. Clawing against the tiled floor, she pulled herself upright on her knees and continued to struggle against the cookie dough monster. Despite her flailing, though, the monster almost effortlessly swept her up into its grasp and wrapped itself around her aggressively, binding the bear in place.

As it did so, the wolps collected themselves and recovered from the shock of the creature’s explosive exit out of the oven. Some gathered closer to the scene, and again music began playing through the room, uniformly loud and from no clear source. This time a lively, acoustic backing accompanied the wolpertingers as they prepared their next performance. As they did, the grim thought struck Holly that the light tone of the music contrasted harshly against the terror she saw in Bridgette’s eyes. Then, for the fourth time that day, the wolps began to sing.

Fun-havers beware!

You’re now in the lair

Of a dessert beast

And a killjoy bear!

What more could you expect from Miss Grazeland,

Who delivers every single comment offhand?

And declares she always knows better than

All of us with a single scan!

We can’t imagine just how tiring

It is to see everyone as conspiring

Against you like some kind of test,

For what - so you can keep knowing best?

“Fords!” Bridgette barked from the floor. “Get them to shut up and do something to help !” She sounded as though she would continue making demands, only to be abruptly silenced by one of the monster’s tendrils whipping around and forcing itself between the bear’s lips. She lashed her head side to side as she struggled to break free, but as her cheeks began to bulge outwards from the creature’s doughy payload it became clear she fought a losing battle.

Holly gasped at the violent display. “What is it doing now, Miss Fords?”

Fords’ brow remained furrowed as she assessed the odd situation. “I can only guess, but I’d say that it may be acting as spiteful about being eaten as Miss Grazeland was about making it.” She cast a wary look down at Holly. “A ‘point to prove,’ you could say…?”

The wolps organized into a loose ring as they drew nearer to the creature, grabbing their pots, bowls, and spoons as they approached to arm themselves. As they did, it kept at its work, forcing Bridgette to swallow it in heavy gulps even as a bulge began to form around the bear’s middle.

She might know just how to cook,

And know her facts straight from the books,

But seems like she’s missed out in her racing

All the fun that she’s been facing!

She’s gone and squeezed her eyes so tight

To block out all of the truth’s bright

And keep on seeing black-and-white,

But now it’s coming back for a bite!

And so this fate,

We bet it’s not great,

To bear the weight

Of your attitude on a plate!

Bridgette struggled intensely as the monster worked its way into her, but her movements grew more sluggish as she became dazed by the sheer fullness being inflicted on her. Her shirt and undershirt both gave way and bunched up to her chest as her stomach was forced to swell outwards with doughy contents. It quickly filled her lap before spreading further beyond, with no end in sight from the beast that engulfed her.

“Miss Fords,” Holly said, “isn’t there anything we can do to help her?”

“It would seem that the girls are already preparing to make a stand, dear,” Fords said and pointed out the wolps from before.

Those that had grabbed pots and pans were fastening them onto themselves as makeshift pieces of armor, while others grabbed spoons and spatulas with which to arm themselves against the monster. Moving in together, they continued their song as they leapt in to combat the beast, smacking at tendrils and frequently bumping into the immobilized bear in their flurry of action.

But it’s what happens when you see joy

And say it must be for the hoi polloi

She wouldn’t recognize a shred

Of magic if it smacked her upside the head!

Where’s the imagination, where’s the fun,

In calling things fake before they’ve even begun?

You should know it better than most,

Cooking and baking have magic to boast!

The wolpertingers suddenly leapt at the monster and began combating it, frequently catching Bridgette in the crossfire between their attacks and the creature’s wild lashing. Holly watched on in horror as the mallet wolp only narrowly avoided hitting the bear directly over the head, instead landing a blow against the beast that sent some of its contents splattering across a nearby counter. Its tendrils attacked any wolps nearby, occasionally slapping Bridgette’s large middle incidentally and revealing just how tautly packed she became. When a wolp dropped its guard for too long the creature successfully batted them away, but each time one wolp took a hit, two more took its place shortly afterwards. As the wolpertinger gang slowly gained ground, the cookie dough creature shifted about, trying to flee with Bridgette in tow and stuffing her further all the while.

Could it be the point of this skit

Is not wanting to admit

That anyone could be better off,

Or that the thought of it makes her scoff?

We think -that’s- what gets her the most

(What really makes a bear feel gross)

That what really is her big frustrative

Is the thought that there are folks more creative!

Her act is all about what you can make

And what the best way is to bake,

So how else could someone revel

In a world like that without dragging us to their level?

Chased around the room, the monster only barely managed to hold back the overwhelming force of the improvised wolp battalion. All of its mass now sat outside of the oven, and seemingly half of itself now looked to be deposited directly inside of Bridgette, in turn. Her stomach, now an overblown ball filled with cookie dough, looked far too sensitive for the creature’s rough handling. The chase continued to intensify, however, even as Bridgette’s middle grew out further and rivaled the rest of her body in size.

If that is why she has to frame

Us all as being just the same

Then don’t we have the fix for you:

Why don’t you try this different view?

We’d think it shrewd

To end your feud,

Stop taking our food

With a side of attitude!

At first it may feel a bit strange,

Making such a drastic change,

But it’ll save you much frustration

To wake your fun up from hibernation!

At last, the wolps made a breakthrough in the battle. With a combined push, they managed to cut through one of the monster’s doughy tendrils and break off its connection from Bridgette’s mouth. She sputtered, coughed, and groaned as her mouth suddenly became unoccupied again, but failed to be able to react in any way as the wolps continued to beat back the beast.

Attacking from many directions at once, the wolpertingers at last completely forced the creature off of Bridgette, though they continued fighting hard to stop any further tendrils from reaching back in her direction. Bridgette herself, utterly pinned beneath the weight of her own stomach by this point, sat completely immobilized. With her unable to contribute, any distance put between her and the monster had to be in the form of inches fought for by the warrior wolps.

We can’t do it all, but at least

We can try to help to tame your beast!

Although it may look less like flattery

And something more like assault and -batter-y

It’s time to give those thoughts a beating!

To you and the bear, it bears repeating:

Better to suspend your disbelief

So the world itself won’t give you as much grief

Just know not everyone’s fighting for some crown!

When you see someone on another level, don’t drag them down,

Instead, rise up and join the bandstand,

And you’ll make a world with less Bridgette Grazelands!

So if she stops, then we think that’ll

Be the day she wins the battle

And -if we’re lucky- help others too

To get a clue before they make their monstrous brew!

Finally, the wolps completely turned the tide of battle and drove the creature fleeing sluggishly away from Bridgette. Their victory secured, the musical accompaniment faded away. That still left, then, at least half of the monster still stuck inside of the bear, and she now groaned and whined far away from the action. Clearly only barely aware of her surroundings in such a dazed state, Holly doubted that Bridgette would be able to muster the strength to lift herself back upright with so much weight even if she did have her wits about her.

“Miss Fords,” she said, looking up at the ewe as she applauded the wolps’ display of valor, “I think only half of the problem has been fixed, so far?”

Fords finally looked over at the state of Bridgette again and nodded grimly. “Indeed, it looks like only half of it has. That said, this sort of beast is still uncharted territory for me and the girls, not to mention how delicate Miss Grazeland must be after being put through such an ordeal…” she trailed off into muttering as she pondered the situation to herself. Despite how intensely she thought on the issue, she looked to be getting no closer to coming up with any solution than when she started.

Holly looked back at the wolps, still fighting with the monster to keep it cornered at the other end of the Bigger Bakery. Watching their coordination, she felt an odd sense of familiarity. Suddenly, the similar display from earlier in the day rushed back into the forefront of her mind. She turned to face Fords again, speaking up to get her attention. “Miss Fords,” she said, and the ewe blinked rapidly as her deep focus suddenly snapped, “if there’s anyone who would be able to figure out a way to help Bridgette, wouldn’t they be with Diana and the others in the Menagerie Wing? They’ve probably at least seen something similar to this out there, right?”

A spark appeared in Fords’ eyes as the realization of Holly’s suggestion dawned on her. She tapped her cane against the floor of the Bigger Bakery in joy. “You’re absolutely correct, Miss Perez! I’m surprised that I hadn’t thought to rely on their expertise from the start.”

Almost as she said so, another group of wolpertingers came along with a flat, wheeled cart. They stopped it directly next to Bridgette and, each grabbing one of her hands or feet, slowly struggled to hoist the occupied bear off of the floor and onto wheels. They set her down gently, and pushed the groaning mess of a chef back towards Fords and Holly.

“Dears,” Fords said to them, “Miss Perez here has just had the most wonderful idea, that you all may be able to tame this fearsome beast with the help of the girls over in the Menagerie Wing! Do try to bring the rest of it from over there along with you and Miss Grazeland, please.”

The wolps giggled and nodded at Holly in agreement before springing into action. Their acknowledgement managed to give her some comfort after Bridgette’s outburst and confrontation with the dough creature. Despite everything, Holly felt herself beginning to grin. Then, with a push, the cart started rolling, and the armed wolps set to work corralling the monster out the back door of the Bigger Bakery, following behind the cart carrying Bridgette.

“There!” Fords said. “Quite clever of you, Miss Perez, I’m certain that someone over in that wing will be more than capable of coaxing the rest of the beast back out of Miss Grazeland.” She then turned to face Holly directly. “Which means, then, if you wouldn’t mind following me out to somewhere a bit quieter, we have something of great importance to discuss.”

Holly struggled to imagine what Fords might have had in mind now. She wasted no time following along behind her, exiting the same way they had entered the Bigger Bakery to stand once again, alone, in the Scratch Wing. Now, Holly truly felt the absence of the other four guests, the hall completely silent aside from their footsteps on the wooden floor, and supposed that Fords could now have potentially anything in mind, with only the doe to entertain. As the door to the bakery shut behind them, the silence became deafening, and Fords turned about to face Holly again.

The sheep tapped her cane against the floor triumphantly, the sound echoing through the halls and giving Holly no opportunity to ask what the ‘something of great importance’ might be. “Congratulations, Miss Perez,” Fords announced with a glowing grin, “for winning the grand prize of the contest!”

The doe blinked in surprise. With how busy the day had become, any thought of the grand prize contest had been utterly wiped from her mind until that moment. Now, Fords’ congratulations forced her to consider the vague winnings promised months ago. With only her remaining at Fords’ side, it should not have been surprising to Holly, but she felt surprised all the same. “...I did?”

“Of course you did, my dear,” Fords nodded. “After all, it would seem to me that, from what I’ve learned of you and your four fellow guests today, none of the others would have enjoyed the prize on offer nearly as much as you may!”

Holly shifted uncomfortably at how casually Fords brushed over what had happened to the other four, but instead decided to press further. The question that had burned in the minds of herself and the Ticket Hunters for months suddenly presented itself to her, and she wouldn’t allow herself to miss it. “What is the grand prize, then, Miss Fords?”

“Why,” Fords said simply, her eyes closed in a proud grin, “it’s nothing less than the opportunity to get away from it all! For your grand prize, I’m offering you the chance to remain here, in the complex, with me and to be able to keep your mundane life far, far away. It’s become quite clear to me that you’re already taking well to the wolpertingers and their world, far better than any of the others. As such, I believe you’ll be a perfect fit around here.”

The monumental answer finally arrived, and now it gave Holly pause. Certainly, as Fords had said, the complex and wolpertinger world would be nothing short of an absolute dream to work in when compared to the daily drudge through work at Alabaster. She already fantasized about the mere thought of the opportunity months ago, back when she knew so little about the ewe and how her complex worked. The allure of the mysterious Abigail Fords having a place for her to work pulled her in at first, and now it manifested directly in front of her. Silence returned to the hall, however, as Holly paused and let the declaration hang in the air. Only one caveat stood in Fords’ wording that she needed the ewe to address.

“Now, hold on just a second,” Holly spoke up, “when you say ‘keep away’ my life, you don’t mean all of it , right?”

“ Certainly all of it,” Fords beamed, seemingly not detecting Holly’s discomfort, “your prize is the opportunity to leave it all behind, and have nothing left to worry about!”

The confidence Fords elaborated with caused Holly to take half of a step back from the ewe. Fords noticed that much, at least, and her expression shifted to that of sympathetic concern. Holly had her answer, and she struggled to grapple with it. She thought back to Bridgette and the others, and to everything about her everyday life that she would love nothing more than to do away with forever. But when she thought back further, she reminisced on her close friends who were there to celebrate her Golden Ticket winnings with. She felt that moment of reward when her interest had been granted recognition and acceptance from them at last, and to the community they formed, scattered across the city’s neighborhood as they were. For a moment, she imagined what any of them might think about their night out drinking with Holly, suddenly recontextualized from celebrating her big breakthrough to celebrating her abandoning them without another word. As it sunk in, she found herself speaking up again.

“You don’t really mean completely leaving it behind, right?” She asked, trying to give Fords every opportunity to tell her she had been mistaken. “There’d still be room for trips and visits from friends, right?”

Fords’ brow furrowed in its telltale way, and Holly felt her stomach drop out from her again. “Dear, why would you want that? You know how they act out there, towards people like us,” she said, motioning back towards the doors to the Bigger Bakery, as if to draw up the memory of all four of the other guests and what they had done. “You need a place where you can flourish , Miss Perez, not be stuck crushed under more of that pressure in your day-to-day. I know you may have reservations, of course. As I told you before, I felt much the same way in the early days.”

“I’m sure you did,” Holly nodded, failing to make eye contact with Fords, “but there are people out there that need me. Not everyone out there just wants to use me for something, you know? I’m sure you had,” she trailed off as she took another moment to consider her next words carefully. She glanced up at Fords, only to find her staring straight through Holly and off into the distance. “I’m sorry, but… I just can’t go through with hiding away here.”

Holly cast her gaze back downwards again, and saw Fords’ hands trembling as she gripped her cane. "Ah, yes, of course. Just as well, then," Fords said, her voice faltering slightly as she spoke. She cleared her throat and tapped her cane against the floor with one more soft click. "I suppose that makes sense, in the end. In that case, we shouldn't be far from the Packing Room at this point. You should be able to meet Debra there to discuss the rest of your winnings, should you wish. Have a good day, now." She turned on her heels and trotted quickly away down the hall.

Holly blinked, her mind only barely catching up with the situation by the time Fords had already turned away and gotten halfway down the hall. "Excuse me?" She called out, but Fords continued walking in a solemn silence.

The doe broke out into a jog, catching up and trying to follow behind Fords to the best of her ability, but the sheep’s long gait still allowed her to pull ahead slowly. "Miss Fords! I'm sorry that wasn't what you were probably hoping to hear from me, but where are you going now?"

"Anywhere I can have a private moment, I suppose," Fords said, continuing to gaze forwards blankly.

"Well," Holly continued discouraged, "could you at least let me know what direction that the Packing Room is in? And I mean, if you don't mind, I think we might be able to talk about this-" Before she could finish, however, the sheep had opened a door on the side of the hall, stepped through, and closed it behind her with a harsh thud.

Without thinking, Holly reached for the door and swung it open to continue pursuing Fords. She took half a step in through the doorway before realizing that it now led to a broom closet, one with no other exits and nobody inside. The deer shut and opened the door several times more and waved her hand inside of the sparse closet to confirm that there was no trick at play. Then, she left the door closed. Left with no way to follow, Holly turned around, surrounded by long stretches of identical, muted mint hallways and simple wooden doors. It dawned on her that, for the first time that day, Holly now stood entirely alone.

Chapter Text

Holly waited by the door Fords had disappeared through, mouth agape, just in case something new happened. There she stood in awkward silence for several minutes, certain that the lively activity she had grown accustomed to in the complex would soon come bursting around the corner and putting a merciful end to the uncomfortable scene just before. Despite her hopes, however, nobody came. Instead, every passing minute left the desolate hallway feeling stiller than ever. She peered off in each direction down the hallway, finding nothing but more closed doors and the occasional branching side hall. By now, Holly finally admitted to herself that something may be wrong.

Now the doe’s only companion came in the form of the dull, buzzing noise from the ceiling lights above her. They stretched down the length of the hall in narrow rows, casting out all shadows and leaving the entire space feeling utterly flattened. The endless rows of doors, indistinguishable under the unflattering light, made the monotony feel all the more suffocating. Despite how expansive this part of the complex appeared in layout, Holly felt as though it were about to close in on her at any moment. The subtle buzzing continued, keeping her from so much as even listening out for any distant signs of wolpertinger activity. Unconsciously, the deer’s breath began to quicken.

She continued to try craning her neck enough to peer around the far corners into the other hallways and, failing that, began to think to herself. ‘Well, Fords may not be using the same door to leave wherever it is that she went, that’s all. Still, she couldn’t have gotten that far in so little time.’

For a while longer, she tried to assure herself with thoughts in a similar vein. Despite her best efforts, however, a weight in her legs prevented her from moving her hooves to try looking for Fords, herself. She glanced at the door to the inconspicuous broom closet, checked it again to the same, disappointing sight, and thought about just how impossible it would be to find her way back if she wandered too far and lost track of it. Idly, she glanced down at her watch, noticing that she had somehow already spent fifteen minutes waiting in front of the inactive door. Her heart dropped at the revelation, and she wondered whether it was worth it to wait around in hopes of help that was never promised to her deciding to come and rescue her, anyways. One hand gripped at her other arm nervously while the grim possibilities ran through her head.

Her hands straightened out the folds in her skirt, and Holly silently cursed herself for not thinking about leaving her phone behind her in her bag back at the start of the tour. As she took stock of her situation, with no pockets, no tools, and nothing she could so much as use to mark the particular door she started searching from, any plans drifted increasingly out of her reach. With nothing else to do, she reopened the door into the closet. Somehow, the latent scent of old cleaning products almost provided a welcome relief to the monotony of the hall. Holly turned to look down the hall, stepping away from the closet but leaving the door swung open. Such a basic way of keeping track of the door failed to inspire confidence in the doe, but she did her best to remind herself of how inactive the entire Scratch Wing had suddenly become. With no wolps coming along so far, she assured herself, the odds of one coming by now and shutting her door again felt slim-to-none. Still, she sighed, worried at the thought of what she now readied herself to do.

‘It’s not like the Bigger Bakery would be far away either, right? If there are still any wolpertingers there, they should be able to help. Its doors even looked different from the rest.’ She thought, trying to build confidence in her new plan of action. While she lacked anything like Bridgette’s mental map of their path through the complex, she figured that her short pursuit of Fords down the hall meant that the Bigger Bakery’s doors must still be nearby. Holly nodded to herself in subtle assurance of her plan, and began attempting to retrace her steps as her search began in earnest.

Trying to keep herself grounded, Holly continuously looked back over her shoulder to confirm that the closet door still stood open. She strolled by dozens of doors, none of which put up any resistance to her, though whenever she tried to open one another vacant industrial sight greeted her, barely any different from that first closet. After a while, she stopped trying and instead set her efforts purely towards trying to find her way back to the bakery doors. As she looked around corners and peered deeper down each passing hallway, however, she only found more identical, single doors, entirely unlike what the group had used before. She searched one way down the hall, then the other, always keeping herself centered on the closet and keeping it in her sight almost constantly. Still, the deer wondered if she had somehow managed to miss the recognizable bakery somewhere along the way, and peered deeper into the sprawling hallways and strained her eyes in the hopes of catching her mistake.

As she tried hard to fix her mistake, though, Holly failed to notice herself subtly slipping into another. Slowly and unconsciously, she grew careless as each subsequent hallway got her no closer to recognizing the bakery doors. At first, she merely leaned slightly into each open hallway, careful to not lose sight of her anchor point. Before long, though, leans turned into single, cautious stops to get a better look, and single steps found a few more at a time sneaking in to join them. Finally, when the closet door completely disappeared around the corner for a moment, Holly realized what she had been doing.

Eyes wide, she stumbled backwards into the hall to find her anchor point again. Despite only being gone for an instant, much had changed by the time she looked over the hallway again. Now, no closet door stood open for her reference. Even the mint green hallway had vanished in that moment, now replaced with an unfamiliar hallway which transitioned to red wallpaper in one direction, and blue walls in the other. The branching hallways now stuck out in different intervals than before, and all of the doors returned to being utterly identical. Holly’s pulse quickened again as she realized how stranded she now found herself, isolated in the complex with nothing left to ground her to the others.

Trying to approach with all of her rationality, Holly stuck to the green tinted hall she had just peeked down, hoping that it may still be close to her starting point. She walked by different, branching halls, however, and found all of them abruptly swapping to different colors, leaving her with no hope of finding her way back so easily. Her pace increased, and she struggled not to panic outright. With no options left, she wandered down random hallways, never getting any closer to finding her way out of the labyrinth of repetitive wallpaper. Her eyes darted about in an attempt to find anything to ground herself with, but the halls remained unyielding to her wishes. Before Holly knew it, she had practically broken out into a sprint, stumbling and pushing herself back off of the ground as she kept running. Each time she passed into a hallway with another tint, she felt like the color gradually washed off, making every turn look all the more muddied and indistinguishable from each other.

When she finally ran out of breath, panting and leaning against the wall, she tried to think back to anything from before that might help her now. Holly recalled Bridgette’s remark about the canal boat making four right turns in a row, and tried to do the same. When the doe returned to where she started, though, she found it identical to before, and felt almost mocked by the lack of change. Somehow, she felt a trick had been played on her, and she struggled to understand what that meant. If the complex had been designed with a secret in mind for navigating it that only Fords knew, what hope did someone like her have for figuring it out on her own? Desperately, she called out, now shouting. If nobody was there, then she didn’t care about being heard, and if someone was, maybe being heard was her only way out.

“Fords…! What’s going on, anymore? What am I even supposed to be doing here!?” Only the echo of her voice from down the hall answered her plea.

The deer’s head spun at the thought of truly being left here, and she clutched at her side tight enough to leave a mark. Defeated, she fell to her knees, and eventually sat on the floor with her back against the wall, her head nearly between her legs as her mind raced. She failed to grasp at any reason why Fords would leave her to become lost in this nonsensical maze. It wasn’t as though this was meant to be some kind of punishment, at least compared to the ordeals the others had been put through. With every incident before, the wolps made it quite clear what was happening, while Fords herself sat on the sidelines as an observer each time. Now, completely alone, the familiar pattern of things fell apart.

Holly sighed in frustration. All of that was true, of course, only if she continued to believe that Fords was as powerless over the wolps and their ‘games’ as she had been claiming that day. After all, she thought, Fords never appeared to have any problem with giving directions to the wolps as soon as they had finished having their fun with the others. Earlier in the day, Holly had disregarded Bridgette bringing up the exact same idea after each unscheduled interruption. Now, as her frustration with the ewe’s incomprehensible behavior boiled up inside of her, Holly began to put some stock into Bridgette’s theory. Putting those pieces together, though, only left her feeling worse than before.

She raised a hoofed foot, as far as she could while still in her crouched position. With a grunt, she slammed it back onto the wood flooring, sending a loud clack echoing further down the halls. Holly blamed herself for somehow still being naive enough to be so easily misled that day. Next, she grew frustrated at Fords for being so willing to lead her on and play on her desires for no discernable reason. At least the others had been given clear explanations of why this was happening to them, demeaning as they were. Now, stuck in such an aimless situation with nobody around to rush in and explain Holly’s misfortunes, she admitted to herself that the bizarre ‘lessons’ may have been preferable to this. A moment later, the sardonic thought entered her head that maybe Fords had even managed to forget that part of her formula in Holly’s case.

As soon as she finished that thought, however, Holly froze up. Flooding back into her mind, she recalled the sight of Fords when Bridgette laid into her with the exact same indignation Holly now felt. She saw a hurt in the ewe’s eyes, in that moment, the kind that made it clear someone had been hurt in that way before and already knew the accusations that were coming. If she had experienced that before, why would she still be doing it after all of these years? She raised her head and began to wonder if there was some part of Fords’ method that she needed, and if she could try to glean on her own.

Shakily, Holly rose to her feet again. She racked her brain in an attempt to recall anything from earlier in the day that might clue her in on how to deal with the maze like Fords. The specific directions themselves were useless, as she had already painfully found out on her own. Instead, she thought back to Fords’ philosophy with her own direction-picking. After a while, one particular word stuck out to her.

‘Confidence. That’s what she said ‘the key’ was, right?’ She thought to herself.

When she looked off further down the winding hallway, though, she sighed again. Of course, something like that must be easy for a person like Fords to say, but faith of that kind looked like uncharted territory for Holly. She still tried her best to assure herself. After all, there didn’t seem to be anything supernatural about Fords herself, so anyone should be able to use her technique just as well. Now, with all of Holly’s ideas only leaving her more lost than before, she figured that the least she could do now was give Fords’ way an honest try. That meant having to will herself back into the right direction, as impossible as it sounded.

But if there was some trick that Fords could take advantage of, she supposed, she couldn’t be the only one capable of it. Every other trick she could imagine had only left her more lost, and she was sure that her situation couldn’t become any worse even if this also gave her nothing. There was nothing left to do but try to will herself into the right direction.

She started walking forwards again, slowly and deliberately. Now the doe made no effort to try remembering particular directions that the ewe had used to navigate the complex before. Instead, she focused on trying to recreate the sheep’s effortless confidence with her random choices of direction. No turns felt particularly more or less correct than any others, so Holly picked whichever came easiest to her. After a few more minutes of walking down long stretches of hallways and diverting down side halls, Holly stopped in place and closed her eyes firmly and turned around to face where she had just come from.

With a deep breath, Holly tried hard to bring her thoughts under control. She spoke aloud again, as if saying the words gave them more power. “Alright, I should be somewhere new, now.”

When she opened her eyes again, a completely new scene greeted her, a welcome sight for her. The hallway she walked down just before had disappeared while the deer’s eyes were closed, now replaced by a short stretch of hall leading to a dead end. That alone impressed Holly, being the first of its kind in this wing. The rest of the hall looked even more impressive, though, with a brilliant purple wallpaper which seemed to leap off of the wall compared to the flat, lifeless tones surrounding Holly up to this point. Only a single door made of dark wood sat, seemingly waiting for Holly at the far end of the room. Barely visible from her distance, she also made out the sight of a faint, golden light escaping from the crack beneath it.

At last, Holly released her breath, only now realizing how long she had been holding it. “Thank you,” she said softly. Despite having no idea who or what she had just thanked, it felt like the right thing to do, now. She strolled over to the door, grabbed the handle gently, and took one last, triumphant look at the endless hallways before stepping through.

Through the door, Holly now found herself standing backstage in a theater. The dim light in this room made it difficult to see, as only a single band of light shone through a gap in the thick curtain to her right and illuminated some sparse pieces of equipment and a raw, brick wall to her left. For fear of tripping over anything, she took a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the lighting better before stepping into the room and allowing the door to shut behind her. Able to look around the room better, she saw a few, simplistic controls built into the near wall, as well as the red tone of the heavy curtains. Still stepping carefully, Holly made her way over to the break in the curtains to push them aside and look over the stage itself.

Despite the spotlight visible through the curtain, the rest of the ornate stage sat as poorly lit as the rest of the room, backstage. A few decorations lined the far edge of the stage, glimmering faintly from the indirect light of the spotlight. Beyond it, an inky darkness filled the rest of the vast, open room beyond, making it impossible to see any further. As well, squarely in the spotlight and sitting near the edge of the stage, Fords was alone. She looked off into the dark, almost completely unmoving.

Holly took only a single step before the ewe spoke up, causing her to freeze in place and let Fords talk. “Miss Perez?” The sheep’s voice still wavered, so soft that Holly only barely made out her words. Fords kept her head locked forward, not acknowledging Holly with her gaze. Another spotlight suddenly lit up, however, shining down directly on Holly and forcing her to squint her eyes as they adjusted to the light again. She stepped closer to Fords, her spotlight following her as the sheep continued. “I really should apologize for leaving you behind as I did.”

“I feel like I should be the one apologizing,” Holly said, pausing for a second. “If I knew it would have affected you so much, I wouldn’t have said any of it.”

“There’s no need, dear. It wasn’t so much what you said that affected,” Fords continued, “so much myself realizing something about what I had hoped for today.”

Holly’s head tilted curiously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Fords started to explain, but trailed off as she gazed out aimlessly into the darkness beyond the stage. “Well, to begin at the beginning: I don’t suppose you recall the clue that I had left for you all to find in your tickets?”

“I do. Everybody was trying to figure what those emphasized letters on them were supposed to mean, or the words that they were attached to, or,” she paused for a beat before simply nodding. “Yeah, I remember them,” she said as she finally reached Fords’ side, their spotlights now mostly overlapping.

Fords still looked ahead, not turning her head as she continued. “Well, what do you think it all means?”

Holly shrugged. “It’s a message, isn’t it? ‘Help keep your world magic,’ right?”

The answer hung in the air for a moment. Then, Fords finally turned to look up at the deer. She grinned at Holly in a weary way that did nothing to subtract from its warmth. “ You’re right again, Miss Perez.”

“I guess I’m just having a hard time figuring how to connect that to the prize you told me about earlier, you know?”

Fords nodded and glanced away for a second. “Well, that much is because I owe you yet another apology, Miss Perez.”

The doe gripped her side again. “For what?”

“For not being honest with you about your grand prize, of course,” Fords continued. “I’m afraid that, by the end, I thought that my safest option would be to change the prize at the last minute. Now I can see that you would have been more interested in what I had originally planned, after all.”

“If that’s the case, then what was the clue originally supposed to imply?” Holly asked.

“ Originally ,” Fords began before turning her head to face the dark again. “Apologies if I appear prying, Miss Perez, but… have you felt stuck out in the wider world? As though everyone around you was pushing down on you, to keep you held in place?”

Holly knew she felt the same before Fords had so much as finished her question. The back of her neck bristled at the thought of the office culture of Alabaster, and at the memory of so many nights stuck at home, unable to muster the energy to go out and enjoy herself. She nodded. “More than a few times, yeah.”

“I was quite the same, back when I tried to break into the industry,” Fords said. “I wanted to think that I could shop around my idea as long as it took to find just the right partner that might help make my dreams a reality, but in the end I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. Do you recall when I mentioned returning home, to try to reconnect with what motivated me to begin with?” She waited for Holly to nod before continuing. “That was my last-ditch attempt to keep at my business idea, before reconnecting with the girls.”

The doe glanced at the darkness before growing unnerved and responding. “What do you think would have happened if you never met up with them again?”

“There’d be no Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies, for one thing, which I suppose is all that matters,” Fords shrugged. “In the end, what’s important is that I did find the girls, and they allowed me to make a foothold for something brighter in your world.”

Holly nodded again. “And that ended up becoming the factory?”

“It did,” Fords tapped a hand against the stage, “but I had always wanted the complex to just be the start of things. If I could, I wanted to be able to spread the girls’ magic to the whole world, but each time I checked up on things outside it seemed we weren’t making any progress at all.”

“And so you decided to stop checking up at all?” Holly mused.

Fords nodded silently. “There was never anything to worry about in the company of the wolps. It wasn’t until recently I supposed the message may have gotten out far enough for me to try again, and that is what then became our plan for the Golden Tour.”

“So, it was what?” Holly asked. “Some way of getting a sample of how people in the world think, today?”

“In a sense, I was hoping that those who held most interest in Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies on the outside would be those who felt a real connection with it. That those people needed it as much as I do. I also hoped,” she hesitated for a moment, “that someone like that who still lived on the outside could act as a sort of liaison between the wolpertinger world and the mundane world. A partnership like that was the original idea I had for the grand prize, but,” she trailed off.

“But then everyone else happened,” Holly finished for her.

“After Missus Leclerc unfortunately removed herself from the tour group, I held onto some hope that what had happened was only a fluke, and that one of you four would still be what I was looking for,” Fords said, “but then, well, you heard what Miss Grazeland said about us the Bigger Bakery. At that moment, it suddenly felt like I was right back where I was all those years ago, being scolded for my ideas by yet another business owner.”

Fords gazed again into the darkness beyond the stage, and this time her eyes locked onto something that wasn’t there. “‘You’re being silly, Abby.’ ‘You wouldn’t last a day in the real world, Abby,’” she said softly. “I almost believed them.” She glanced at Holly again, her brow furrowed once more and a mist in her eyes. “ Should I have?”

Holly raised a hand and, after hesitating for a second, gently placed it on Fords’ shoulder as comfortingly as she could manage. The ewe didn’t react to the doe’s touch, so she left it there for a moment. “I don’t think so, no.”

The ewe gave a weak chuckle. “Thank you for the encouragement, Miss Perez, but that was somewhat more of a rhetorical question, you see. I meant to say I suppose the world needs my ideas now just as much as it did back in my youth.”

“It does ,” Holly blurted out before stumbling over her passionate words. “I mean, I think that it did need you then, and it still needs you just as much right now. I’m sure you found people you got along with back then, too, even if they weren’t the ones running the banks or other businesses back then, right?”

“I had made plenty of friends in my day, to be sure,” Fords shrugged, “but I knew that they wouldn’t be receptive to the girls either, so I had no choice but to sequester myself away on my own.”

“Did you know ,” Holly countered, “or were you afraid of being turned down again, that time by people who you actually cared about the opinions of?”

Fords went quiet again, and Holly took it on herself to keep talking in the sheep’s absence. “And this time, well, you found me, didn’t you?” The ewe nodded in response, and Holly continued. “Somehow, despite everyone else with so much more power and resources to pour into the contest trying to get the last ticket instead of me, you got me, someone else who needed the girls managed to break through.”

“Well, I suppose there may have been some good luck along the way,” Fords finally spoke again.

“Maybe it’s luck, if you believe that I was the only one out there in a situation like mine,” Holly noted. “But I don’t think that’s how it works, not really. Sure, I was never loud like the others were. You wouldn’t even know I existed if I didn’t find that ticket the day that I did. So then, imagine how many others there are like me who don’t speak up because of how the world pushes them into boxes.” Holly thought back to Bridgette, and her hand tightened its grip on Fords’ shoulder very slightly. “Think about all of the people who’ve been pushed down for so long that they don’t believe it’s possible for someone to be free of it.”

Subtly, almost imperceptibly at first, the house lights in the theater began to glow. As Holly spoke, the lights continued to grow brighter all throughout the theater, but only enough for her to now vaguely make out the outline of the rows of seats beyond the edge of the stage. Fords looked up at her again, not acknowledging the lights. “What do you mean to say, Miss Perez?”

“I mean, well, don’t they deserve this chance too, just like me?” Holly explained. “Right now, you have the chance to be the kind of person that you needed back when you were trying to get your start. You have the girls with you, still, wouldn’t you want them to help those other people like us?”

“I would have,” Fords agreed. The lights brightened again, and Holly caught a glimpse of the figures of a few wolps in the front row of seats.

“I know, it probably doesn’t mean much for me to say this right now. It won’t make it easier to deal with the harsher critics that are waiting back out there,” Holly continued, “but that’s why you made the grand prize what you did, right? You thought it’d be easier if I was there to help? I mean, yeah, I was able to help speak for you with Bridgette when you couldn’t speak for yourself, but the only reason I felt able to do even that was because you started by giving me the space here needed to feel like I could. I think there are a lot of others out there who could too, if we just stayed out there long enough to reach them.”

Instead of responding, Fords slowly rose to her feet. As she did so, the full lights of the theater began to shine down on the two of them, now illuminating a theater filled with rich gold and violet hues not unlike Fords’ own outfit. Now, Holly saw the full extent of the crowd of the wolpertingers. Every seat, save for five in the front row, contained another fairy, all of whom were now celebrating, playing, and singing a thousand little songs to themselves in celebration of seeing Fords’ spirits rise again. The old ewe looked down at Holly, her eyes filled with a deep admiration.

“I don’t think I could have put it better myself, Miss Perez,” she said, her voice strained, but genuine. She extended a hand out to Holly, which the deer supposed she wanted to shake with, only for the sheep to grasp her tightly and pull the doe into a warm hug. The intimate gesture took Holly by surprise for a second, but she soon returned it, giving Fords a firm squeeze. By the time Fords had let go, she seemed to have finally regained her usual, unflappable composure.

“So,” Holly called out over the noise of the wolps, “did any I say help you rethink your idea for the grand prize you’re offering to me, Miss Fords?”

“Oh, please ,” Fords waved her off as they stepped apart, “call me Abby , dear!”

Holly grinned back at her. She chuckled, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. “Oh? Then I guess you should be calling me just Holly, huh!”

The ewe joined Holly in her brief chuckle, nodding in agreement. “Why I should , shouldn’t I? In which case,” she motioned offstage with her cane, “if you’ll come with me back to my office, Holly, I suppose it’s about time that we take a moment to discuss your winnings in detail.” With that declaration, she trotted off, and the doe walked along at her side. Together, Holly and Abby began to find their way through the complex once again.

Chapter Text

Abby’s route back out of the Scratch Wing proved refreshingly quick compared to Holly’s own experience with it. Even though she now understood the nature of the place better, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief as the pair left the winding corridors behind them and stepped through another large, metal door marking the separation of wings. They emerged back into the Packing Room, still packed with its rows of conveyors and familiar, distant industrial noise. Like that morning, most of the machinery lay dormant for the weekend, though Holly noted one of the shutter doors on the outside wall open to load up one of the maroon delivery trucks with crates. They walked along the near wall, passing by a number of doors to other wings and under arches formed by the conveyor belts as a makeshift walkway. With the cheering and commotion from the stage still fresh in Holly’s mind, the gentle tapping of her and Abby’s hooves against the concrete floor sounded unusually quiet.

“So,” Holly said, glancing over towards the neatly-wrapped palettes of prized goods which still stood in towering stacks near the base of the catwalk stairs. “How long can you hold onto these without them going bad, Abby? I mean, I wouldn’t even be able to fit a quarter of this in my apartment, let alone actually eat it all before it spoils.”

Abby chuckled at the suggestion. “Naturally, so the main prize will be sent out in batches of whatever size you and the others would like to receive them. If I’m not mistaken, I believe our delivery partners already service all of the areas in which you five live, so I’ll simply ask them to make one extra stop along their usual routes.”

Holly forced out a smile as she nodded along with Abby’s explanation. The deer supposed that none of the other four would be particularly accepting of their prizes after the days they’d had, but tactfully chose to not bring up the thought as she and Abby climbed back up to the catwalk and strolled by the office windows, retracing their steps back to the start of the tour that morning. Instead, the thought of the offices stirred up Holly’s curiosity again. “Do you think Debra will be around, now? You said she was somewhere else when we went by here earlier.”

“I don’t see why she wouldn’t be,” Abby shrugged, “since we’ll certainly be too busy with our own discussion, there’ll need to be someone who can work out the finer details of the remaining prizes with each of the others.”

Arriving at the doors back into the front office building, Abby turned about and used her cane to hold the door open for Holly to enter before her. Holly nodded, stepped through, and took the liberty of immediately returning the favor by holding open the door to Abby’s office for her in turn. As she opened it, though, the sight of a particularly well-dressed wolpertinger awaited her, seated at the short desk she recalled from her first peek into the office. The fairy occupying the desk wore glasses that looked too large for her face, as well as a neat dress which somehow looked more grounded to Holly than the uniform jackets the other wolps sported. Her fur, mostly a cloudy white, also sported the occasional, messy splotches of rich, brown hues which almost made her look like a marshmallow in the middle of being roasted.

As Holly stood in the doorway, the wolp had been focusing on intently writing some notes onto a clipboard, but after a moment finally reacted to the sound of the door opening. The simple grin on the wolp’s face, the same as all of the others so far, now beamed up at Holly so genuinely that she felt the urge to smile back down at her. “Did Abby manage to screen one through?” The fairy asked. “If that’s the case, then it’s nice to meet you!”

Holly nodded, forgetting about clearing the doorway for Abby in the moment. “I guess it was something like that? Nice to meet you too, though!”

A second later, Abby stepped up behind Holly, effortlessly looking over her shoulder to wave at the wolp as well, cutting their little conversation short. “Good afternoon, Debra,” she said cheerily, “I hope things have been running smoothly enough for you while I’ve been preoccupied, today.”

Debra waved aside the concern with her free hand. “Worry-free, and smooth as can be!”

“Lovely!” Abby said as she motioned Holly towards the door at the back of the small office. Finally vacating the doorway, Holly strolled through Debra’s office and towards Abby’s. As she did, the pair continued to chat. “Have any of the other four guests passed by here for their winnings yet? I’ve told the girls to help guide them this way once they’re able.”

“None of them yet,” the wolp shrugged. Her ear suddenly began twitching as her expression hardened and she listened in for something off in the distance. “But they’ll pass by in a moment, I’d bet!”

Abby shut the door behind her, and Holly stifled a chuckle at the sheer height difference between the tall, standing ewe and her seated, tiny fairy companion. “In that case, would you like to help them with things on their way out? I’m going to be busy in here with Holly for a while longer.”

Debra nodded. “You can count on me, absolutely!”

The sheep accepted the assurance wholeheartedly and confidently ushered Holly to step into the next office. This one, far more consistently proportioned for someone of her or Abby’s size, Holly immediately recognized as being the same from all of the announcement videos released over the past months. Apparently, the ornate, upholstered chair Abby sat at in her videos had a counterpart on the opposite end of the desk. The rich, dark desk, then, stood in the middle of the room, granting a stately feeling to the rest of the simple, antiquated furniture around the rest of the small office. Even the small plant sprouting from a potted plant to one side of the desk carried with it a simple sort of confidence in the context of the rest of the office. Along the left wall, a row of bookshelves struggled to contain Abby’s collection of cookbooks, all stuffed into it haphazardly. On the right, a set of windows overlooked the Packing Room, their blinds now drawn, and a modern camera sat atop a tripod, occupying a corner of the room. Holly supposed Abby must have had one to record her videos, but it nonetheless felt uncannily modern compared to the rest of the office.

Abby deposited her cane next to the camera and strolled around to the other side of the desk. Before sitting down at the upholstered chair behind it, however, the potted plant caught her attention. She pointed it out proudly to Holly, a squat, spindly thing with a few bright, sky blue beans visible between vines and broad leaves.

“Ah, I’d almost forgotten! As promised, this mood bean plant seems to be in better spirits than the one you encountered before. As you can see, they’re usually a much more pleasant sight,” she explained.

Holly nodded, only now recognizing it as the same, ashen-colored bean plant she had seen that morning. “This color looks better on it, I think,” she remarked with a grin. A second later, however, her mind wandered back to the thought of what, or rather who, had originally caused the other mood bean plant to turn such a dull, lifeless color, and her smile quickly faded. “Oh, uh, Abby? One more thing before we start?” As she asked, the plant shifted again. Holly blinked, and it now adopted a sickly yellow hue.

Abby, who had herself had been marveling at the slight iridescent sheen of the beans under the office lights, looked up after seeing their mood shift and gazed over at Holly with a curious look. Unconsciously, her brow furrowed again. “What is it, dear?”

“It’s, you know, the others ,” Holly explained, glancing out the window across the Packing Room. “Yeah, I know you said they’d all be fine in the end, but what…” her words trailed off as she tried and failed to find the right word to describe the bizarre ways in which her four fellow guests had been removed from the tour, “... happened to them back there looked pretty serious to me.”

Abby gazed out the window alongside her for a brief, sympathetic moment, before turning to nod at her. “Ah, I understand entirely, but there really is nothing to worry about, Holly! It may take a bit of time to become used to how quickly the girls can bounce back from each other's jokes, not to mention how much faster they manage it when helping each other. Still, I can assure that before the end of the day, all of the others will be-”

“ Alright ,” a boisterous voice rang out behind Holly, only barely muffled by the door. “ Where is she? ” The deer knew that an accent of that caliber could only belong to one person, and a moment later her suspicions were confirmed as Delouise Leclerc appeared storming down the catwalk, directly in front of the office window. Debra led her along, fluttering up to sit on the catwalk railing while continuing to look over her clipboard. As she paused, Delouise stopped as well, looking around the Packing Room furiously.

As she fumed, Holly took stock of the wolf after not seeing her for most of the day. Her fine suit, still caked with icing, chocolate, and cream, stood out to the deer as just as messy as when the wolf had first fled the group. The stark white she entered the complex in now barely showed through the complex tapestry of vibrant colors. Her figure, at least, looked far more under control than before. Rather than the cartoonish weight the wolps had forced onto her, she looked comparatively normal, though still easily a hundred pounds heavier than how she entered. Despite how considerably she had slimmed down, the tears across her suit’s seams told the story of how large she had gotten, and she still failed to button her jacket over her middle.

The infuriated wolf panted, still recovering from all of the exertion the day had put her through, but her eyes still carried a fiery intensity as she scanned the room from the catwalk in search of Abby. Fords chuckled softly for a second, and Holly realized that she had been sinking down into her chair, as if trying to hide from the wolf woman’s wrath. “Worry not, dear. This window only goes one way. We won’t have to worry about speaking to Missus Leclerc until after we’ve finished taking care of everything, ourselves.”

“It’s just,” Holly sputtered out, trying to find any words to explain herself with, “it looks like she’s not very happy about something. Are you sure that they’re going to all go back to normal? Because it doesn’t look like the Thinning Room finished the job, yet.”

Abby nodded, her eyes drifting over Delouise as she mulled over Holly’s observation for a moment. Finally, she tapped a hoofed hand down on the desk in triumph as she made her conclusion. “It would seem to me that Missus Leclerc must have continued resisting the girls the entire time that she was away from the group. I’d hazard a guess that what we’re looking at here is all of the progress that they were able to make before she was able to break free again.” She thought about her answer for a second longer, and her smile disappeared. “Quite insistent on finding me, isn’t she?”

Holly nodded, but shared Abby’s discomfort at how intensely Delouise gripped onto the handrail with. “Do you think you’d even be able to get her to go back there willingly?”

“I’d certainly hope so,” the sheep shrugged, “but it didn’t seem like Missus Leclerc was terribly interested in listening to what I had to say even in the best conditions. Still, even if she chooses not to return to the Thinning Room, she should be fine. As we can see, she’s already more than mobile enough to evade the girls, and such a driven worker as herself should have no issue in shedding off those last few pounds!” Holly blinked, uncertain if Abby’s comment at the end was genuine.

Holly sat up in her chair again, but kept her eyes squarely on Delouise. Still, she smirked. “She’ll need it, if only because I’m not sure this is something she can just pay someone else to do.”

“And I’m sorry to say that I doubt any amount of money could save that suit of hers in its current state,” Abby added solemnly.

After scanning and exhausting every possible hiding spot in the Packing Room from her bird’s-eye perspective, Delouise returned her ireful gaze back towards Debra. The fairy, still inspecting one of the prize palettes of Fords products down below, paid the wolf no mind until she spoke up. “Yeah, nah, I’m done with all of you pretending that you can’t hear me,” she barked, glaring daggers down at the bespectacled wolp. “I’m here to get Fords to answer for herself about all of this, and you’re gonna be the one to take me to her!”

Finally looking up at Delouise, Debra merely shrugged in response. “I can’t see how. She’s occupied now!”

“‘ Occupied ,’” the wolf grunted, “yeah, right. What are you all doing that’s more important than this, eh?” She reached down and effortlessly plucked the clipboard from the fey’s grip. When she looked over it, however, she quickly growled and limply dropped it to the ground, causing the wolp to chuckle at the reaction. It landed paper-side up, so Holly took a moment to crane her neck and get an angle on what Debra had been working on all of this time. Amusingly, she found that the wolp’s notes were, in fact, a series of a dozen or more single player tic-tac-toe games, all chaotically scrawled over the entire stationary.

“Keep it moving, already,” another voice groaned weakly.

Stumbling into view behind Delouise came Azure Burle. Her fur still wore a shade of blue, though one far more desaturated than the bright cerulean it had gained during her prior transformation. Unlike Delouise, her figure looked to be entirely the same as before aside from that, though Holly found it difficult to tell for sure with the many baggy, messy folds of overstretched clothing that continued to cling wetly to the fox’s body. Beyond just her outfit, the sticky coating covered Azure from head to toe, staining the white jersey of her uniform with a sickly blend of purple and blue which unfortunately matched the dull blue hue of her fur. The only part of her spared from the staining looked to be her hat, which she barely clung onto as she shuffled down the catwalk. Azure propped herself up on the handrail to balance herself, and after the dizzying display she had been put through earlier Holly hardly blamed her.

“Oh, my,” Holly gasped softly at the dire state of the woman.

Abby, though, shared none of Holly’s unease. “Ah, wonderful! You see, I told you that the girls had plenty of time to help Miss Burle, and all while keeping her in one piece. Fantastic work, as always.”

“That still doesn't mean that looks good at all, right now,” Holly added, giving Azure another curious look for a second. “Is she covered in something… sticky ?”

“Why, it’s all you can expect,” the sheep explained, “from having soaked in her own, fresh-squeezed blueberry juice inside of one of our vats in Fruit Processing for the better part of the afternoon.”

Holly turned back towards Abby, shifting awkwardly in her seat. “She isn’t stuck that color, is she…?”

“Why, I’m sure she’ll be entirely back to normal by the time her winter coat grows in, rest assured,” the old ewe idly mused.

Holly considered commenting on how long it would be until that happened, and how the assurance hardly felt assuring because of that, but a loud, sharp squeak audible through the glass completely interrupted her train of thought. In high, slow, floaty steps, Faye Huffie joined the other two on the catwalk. Unlike the two before her, each footfall from the rabbit barely made a sound as she pushed off from the metal grate. Like Azure, she looked mostly the same as she started, though her frazzled hair spoke to her own ordeal. Despite appearing to be in much better shape, she shot the most frustrated glare out of the trio as she approached Delouise and Azure, clearly frustrated by how long it took for her to complete each step as she walked.

She glanced up from her feet at the other two. “What are you all doing just standing around here?”

“Wondering what kind of ungodly wringer Fords must’ve put you two through, for starters,” Delouise answered, looking bewilderedly at the state of both Azure and Faye.

“Oh?” Faye said, a sardonic grin spreading across her face as she realized just how long Delouise had been apart from the group. She turned her gaze towards the sopping wet fox, who appeared none the wiser, and pulled out her phone. “If you want to know that- ” she began, but a loud squeaking noise from her throat suddenly cut through her sentence and stopped her in her tracks. It sounded uncomfortably high-pitched even from inside of the office. Azure, clearly already suffering from a headache, winced at the piercing tone of Faye’s voice.

“Well, at least she looks normal, when she isn’t walking?” Holly shrugged, raising a hand to cover her ear closer to the window.

“That would be the result of a bit of latent gas still left in her system, if I had to guess,” Abby noted. “But once that’s worked its way back out over time, she should be entirely back to normal.”

Faye cleared her throat as she regained her composure. Eventually, she started again, waving her phone tauntingly in Azure’s direction. “If you wanna know, I have so much on what finally ended up dethroning Miss ‘Number-One’ over here!”

Delouise raised a brow curiously at the rabbit’s offer. “I’m listening…”

Azure, however, groaned in realization as she locked eyes with Faye’s phone. “Oh, come on . You didn’t…”

“I did ,” Faye cooed, putting her other hand on her hip in a cheeky pose. “And if you don’t want me sharing it around, then maybe you should tell me what you’re gonna do to-” Again, Faye cut her own threat short with another pronounced, accidental voice crack.

The fox’s ears flicked at the unpleasant noise. Once she stopped clenching her teeth together, Azure spoke up again. “Could you stop doing that, if you’re going to keep talking all the time?”

The rabbit fumed at the fox’s request, stomping her foot against the catwalk and nearly knocking herself off balance again by the force of it. “Yeah? How about I tell you what to do, you- ” her voice trailed off again, up and beyond Holly’s range of hearing.

“Or! How about this ?” A fourth, lower voice entered the fray.

Precisely filling up the rest of the view out the window, Bridgette Grazeland also stepped onto the catwalk. Thankfully, she no longer looked fit to burst around the middle, but now limped about slightly. As well, tears and stains across her pants and sleeves showed how she hadn’t emerged from the battle unscathed. Her sleeves, pulled up, revealed thin strips of bandages which weaved around her arms and covered up an array of little bruises. She also kept an old-fashioned ice pack held tightly to the side of her head. Somehow, Holly felt she looked even more exhausted from her ordeal than Azure. Still, the way she stood over the other three lended her statement an air of authority that silenced even Delouise for the moment.

Holly’s hand slowly rose to her mouth, agape as she looked over Bridgette’s state. “What happened to her?”

“Oh, dear,” Abby said, the furrow of her brow quickly reappearing at the appearance of the bear. “It would seem that I wasn’t nearly specific enough in informing the girls over in the Menagerie Wing about exactly which ‘beast’ they were meant to be taming. They must have gotten Miss Grazeland caught up in another scuffle.”

The ewe stood up and decidedly shuffled over to grab her cane once again. “I should go apologize to her right now,” she muttered to herself as she passed Holly.

Holly reached out from her seat to stop the sheep’s hand, however. “Abby? I’m… not sure that Bridgette would be in the mood to accept your apology as something genuine, right now.”

Abby cast another wary look out at the four, arguing on the catwalk, and reluctantly returned to her own seat.

“Let’s start with the part we can all agree on, alright?” Bridgette continued. “Like how I know exactly what went down with everyone today, and you’re not the only one here who has an audience eager to hear anything about this little trip of ours.” She pointed at Faye, and the others glanced over at the rabbit to watch her visibly fume at Bridgette’s reminder. “So, that means I’m in a position to say this: if any one of you tries to spill anything about what happened today, to any of us? Then it’s all coming out, courtesy of yours truly. If you all can keep quiet about this mess, then I can, too. Understood?”

Faye whined at the bear’s ultimatum. “That’s a dirty trick…!”

“Like you weren’t just about to do something worse , Huffie,” Azure remarked in a low tone. As she spoke, Holly caught Faye trying to inconspicuously slip her phone back out of sight.

“Yeah, great plan, real brave of you,” Delouise scoffed, “but what about Fords and Perez? It doesn’t mean a thing what we all agree to here if they aren’t here for it and end up blabbing, themselves. Where are they, anyways?”

Bridgette shrugged at the question. “Do you really think I’d be here if I knew?”

From the other side of the one-way window, Holly turned to Abby and gave her a little affirmative nod in response to Delouise and Bridgette’s concern. The ewe mulled over the suggestion for only a moment before agreeing with Holly. “It seems to me that they’d all be reassured by us not talking about any of the complications which arose along the way.”

A beat later, as if responding to Holly and Abby, Debra delivered a powerful flap of her wings to grab the attention of the four guests. It also pushed her off of her railing perch for a second, but she fell gently back down onto it with a little bounce. “Privacy has always been key, so I’m sure without doubt that Miss Fords would agree,” she spoke for her in a sing-song tone.

Bridgette motioned at the fairy, shrugging. “Welp. That’s as good as we’re going to get today, I’m sure,” Bridgette said, visibly grating under the wolp’s continued rhyming even now. “So get moving.”

Delouise cast another frustrated look back in the direction of the front offices, holding up the disheveled cavalcade for a moment longer before grumbling something under her breath and leading the way off of the catwalk. Debra let them all pass by, waving them off before dropping backwards off of the railing and backflipping into flight as she went to meet them on the Packing Room floor. Before long, all five had disappeared from view once more, leaving Abby and Holly to themselves again.

“Debra should be more than capable of helping them take care of the logistics for their prizes,” Abby nodded certainly. Holly still doubted whether any of them would particularly care to accept any amount of their prizes, but simply allowed Abby’s statement to hang in the air for a moment longer. With things calming down, the sheep settled back into her chair.

With a warm grin, she tapped at her desk again and leaned forward slightly as she spoke to Holly. “As for us, then, I believe we still have some details of our own to iron out, and now should be a perfect time to settle them!”

Chapter Text

Almost as soon as Holly exited the Fords complex on the way back to her hotel, she had already put in her two weeks of notice for resigning from Alabaster. Two weeks marked the gap between her and her new life beginning in earnest, but already she felt the ripples of it. Her talk with Abby regarding the finer details of the transition from one career to another had gone smoothly, if long-windedly. The pair, now free to enjoy each other’s company, split off into tangents whenever an entertaining idea arose, and their simple talk lasted longer than expected as a result. Chief among the issues to iron out had been the sheer distance between Holly’s apartment out on the east coast and the complex, situated squarely in the heart of the midwest. While Abby assured Holly that plenty of her new line of work would benefit from still living in the city, close to the people the sheep was trying to reach, there were also plenty of things which required Holly to be able to work with Abby in person.

At first, the ewe had offered Holly a quaint, older home the ewe happened to own on the edge of town as a potential place for Holly to stay whenever she needed to stay in the area for business. Holly agreed that solved the issue of where to stay, but not the issue of how to get there, a process she knew would quickly grow to be both time-consuming and frighteningly expensive over so many trips there and back. To that end, the pair left Abby’s office to pay a quick visit to the Imagining Wing in search of any good ideas for dealing with the situation. By the time they had left, they determined that while Holly spent her last two weeks at Alabaster, the wolpertingers would remain hard at work designing and constructing a corridor which could reach all the way from the Fords complex to an otherwise mundane closet door in Holly’s apartment. Holly decided not to bring up the slightly uncomfortable parallels between that arrangement and her experience alone in the Scratch Wing, and instead reminded Abby that she did not actually own that space, being beholden to her landlord. In turn, Abby assured her that anybody as cynical as Holly’s landlord would have no chance of being able to open the door in a way which made the passageway appear. When desired for the door to lead to a closet, it would surely comply. When Holly finally agreed to the plan, the Inventory went abuzz with activity from the girls, who quickly took to referring to the new project in development as the ‘Holly-way,’ and the pair continued their talk on their own.

When Holly finally stepped back out of the front doors of the complex late in the afternoon, descending the short set of stairs into the gravel yard once again, she found no fanfare in response to her reappearance. As she trotted across the yard back towards the front gates, she wondered if the relative quiet of the afternoon surprised her or not. She could only expect that the cars driven in by the others would all be gone by now, with how much earlier the four left the complex that day. With them, or at the very least with Faye, most of the fans spectating the event would have also left early. What she found unusual, though, was the lack of the vast majority of the news presence that had been there that morning. Apparently, when it became clear that none of the four celebrity guests had won the grand prize, all but a few straggling reporters quickly grew uninterested in continuing to report on the story. When she finally reached the gate and stepped out into the mundane world once again, she found herself thankful to have so few reporters to speak with this time around, especially after having such a busy day already. She took little time to answer questions, mostly continuing to walk down the sidewalk towards her hotel while flanked by a few microphones. Holly took the opportunity to confirm that she had, in fact, won the grand prize of the contest, and provided the reason that Abby determined she would enjoy it more than the other four. She chose not to elaborate any further, though, to not step on the toes of any of the others’ explanations.

While the reporters showed little interest in addressing the elephant in the room with her, as soon as Holly’s phone had contact with wifi again she found it assailed with texts from her friends, all curious to know about what had happened to her that day. As well, they brimmed with curiosity over what could have possibly happened to the other four women to leave them exiting the complex in such bizarre states. Still, Holly held strong to the ultimatum delivered by Bridgette in the Packing Room, not wanting to divulge any information that may accidentally breach the uneasy agreement among the group. As much as they wanted to know more about the inner workings of the complex, the deer insisted that she couldn’t say a word on the matter until the others had already spoken out on the matter of what happened to them.

Despite this, her friends continued to pry. Eventually, she relented to their energy by agreeing to divulge some exclusive details about the inside of the Fords complex the next time they could all meet up together. Given the friend group had already worked out a major meetup just two weeks ago to celebrate Holly finding the final Golden Ticket, she knew the agreement would buy her some much-needed time as her friends awaited openings in their busy schedules. Knowing the others, she doubted it would take them long to figure out their own stories for what had happened inside of the complex and let those loose to the public, and she would tell her friends nothing more than that. To compensate, though, she also assured herself that anything not related to the four’s removal from the tour would be fair game to discuss, however hard it may be for them to believe the wondrous sights Abby had shown them.

The day following, she finally returned home to the city, and the series of exhausting flights provided even less fanfare than yesterday for her return to the world at large. She bounced from airport to airport in long slogs of flight, each punctuated by a flurry of activity as she shuffled herself and her luggage from one flight to the next. When she settled back into her apartment that evening, the thought of returning to work the next morning already pressed in her head. That Monday, she settled back into the last two weeks of her old routine. The end of May quietly drifted into the beginning of June, as if trying to go unnoticed. Holly made the most of the time, feeling around the edges of her usual routine and experimenting with pushing what she felt comfortable with. Nothing too dramatic followed, as she still wanted to keep her departure from Alabaster as smooth as possible, but as she readied herself for bed the evening before her last day at the company, the doe dared to allow herself to set her morning alarm a bit later than usual.

While she appreciated the bit of extra sleep that morning, her little experiment barely affected the doe’s morning routine in practice. Most noticeably, she left herself with too little time to make a simple breakfast for herself before leaving. Normally, a disturbance like that would leave the doe worried about its knock-on effects throughout the rest of the day. She assured herself that, as usual, most of her energy needs had already been covered by her morning cup of coffee, which she now adorned with one of the Fords’ biscotti straws she had bought on the first night of the contest. Instead, she used what little time she left herself before her commute to consider her outfit for the day. Her friends often noticed a subconscious tendency for the deer to dress in desaturated hue during the winter, only for the color to return to her wardrobe each spring. As she dug her way further back through her clothes, though, Holly noted the worrying trend that year of the muted colors having stuck around despite the brighter weather. In response, she made the conscious decision to welcome the coming summer with a particular hot pink top.

As she walked down her street, Holly also noticed the opportunity in front of her as she passed by her familiar corner store, and she peeled off from her usual route to drop in and find something to give her a bit more energy for the morning. She walked an aisle, pondering what might be best to get for herself, but ultimately decided not to give herself too much time to overthink the simple decision. The broad selection offered by the humble shop would normally paralyze her as she reasoned out a choice, but she forced herself to simply pick the first thing that caught her interest and trot away with it. While she always preferred a warm meal to start the day, she counted it as a fair trade for the extra rest.

With her impromptu breakfast in hand, she emerged from the aisle and strolled over to the counter. If she wasn’t already familiar with the store, that alone may have been a struggle. A number of racks, tabletop shelves, and stickers almost perfectly camouflaged the register with the rest of the shop, leaving only a narrow space for Holly to hand her pre-packaged snack over to to the attendant on the other side. The attendant, a diminutive mare with short, chestnut hair, glanced up at the doe several times as she rang up Holly’s purchase, apparently conflicted over something.

As she handed it back, the mare finally found it in herself to speak up. “Say, aren’t you the one they kept putting on the news for a while, there?”

The sudden question took Holly by surprise. She struggled to remember the last time she had gotten a genuine question while standing at the register like this. “About the Fords’ contest? That was me, yeah,” she nodded.

“I knew I had to be recognizing you from somewhere,” the clerk responded, clearly satisfied by how she connected the dots.

“Well, that’s probably just because I stop by here so much, you know?” Holly remarked. “It’s funny, I even picked up the last Golden Ticket from the shelf over there.” She gestured in the direction of the store’s modest candy section, its selection from Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies stood out brightly, now no longer picked barren by Ticket Hunters.

“Oh, lucky me,” she remarked in turn, a smirk growing on her face, “I stocked the grand prize and didn’t even get to find out about it until a month after everyone already stopped caring.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll get it next time,” Holly chuckled, as their banter died down Holly left the shop, grins now on both of their faces.

Returning to the sidewalk, Holly redoubled her pace as she made her way down to the subway station. She could only take her morning so laxly and still expect to catch the right train downtown, so she took now as an opportunity to make sure she still arrived at work on time. The doe practically jogged through the station and managed to shuffle in through the door before they slid shut and set the train on its way. She sat down as she took a moment to catch her breath. While she did, a pair of men occupied nearby handholds, a boar and opossum. The possum sported a baseball cap adorned with a stylized hammerhead shark logo, a local baseball icon Holly immediately recognized from how inescapable it appeared across the city.

The train shifted suddenly into motion, and they chatted on. “Catch any of the game, yesterday?” The boar started.

The opossum shrugged in response. “Was barely worth it, the Blues have been collapsing the last few weeks, anyways. It wasn’t really much of a game.” Only half paying attention before, the mention of Azure’s team quickly grasped Holly’s attention.

A pensive sort of nod from the boar followed. “It’s the last thing you’d expect, with how strong they opened this year.”

“They’re still barely using their good starting pitcher, for whatever reason. The rest just aren’t performing like she does.”

He shifted some as he thought. “What, did she manage to get herself hurt that bad during that little publicity thing she went and did last month?”

“How would I know? They say everyone’s been real tight-lipped about it,” another dismissive shrug.

Holly decided to take the opportunity during a momentary pause to interject out of curiosity. “Has she said anything about it, do you know?”

The pair took a surprised second to register that Holly was speaking to them before the opossum finally responded to her. “She said, what, ‘a prank gone wrong’ ? Whatever that means,” he noted.

The boar nodded. “Right? What kinda pranks change the color of your fur like that, anyways?”

Holly tactfully kept her lips shut from there on. Keeping her silence on the truth about what had happened to Azure, she at least took the opportunity to note what the fox’s public explanation was for her condition, to be able to tell her friends later. Instead, Holly silently supposed that might be why she hadn’t heard of much activity from Azure’s fan base since the day of the tour.  If her ordeal had really led to such a decline in Bakersfield’s performance and Azure’s accomplishments since, the fact that her fans now had much less to brag about became unsurprising to Holly.

Holly’s last day at Alabaster passed by mercifully quickly. With the knowledge that any work left unfinished after today would go unfinished in her absence, her higher-ups chose not to issue her any new projects that couldn’t be finished by the end of the day. For a sizable portion of the morning, Holly stripped what few personal effects she adorned her cubicle with, scarce enough to fit into her bag and not have to lug around with her in a box on the commute home. Afterwards she took her usual lunch break and said farewell to the familiar diner she had made an almost daily visit to over the last few years. Later, she strolled back through the Alabaster lobby, and wondered about how her coworkers would take her departure from the company. Then, as if summoned by her thought, the sight of her squirrel coworker dashed across the lobby.

“Hold the door, please!” They called out, and Holly obliged. After taking a moment to catch their breath, they nodded at Holly. “Thanks for that.”

“Of course, Flint,” Holly nodded back. In the last couple of weeks, she finally found herself making an effort to internalize the names of her closer coworkers, if only to remember them by. The grin on their face showed her that her efforts had been worthwhile.

“Say, Holly, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Flint continued, “what was it like there? You know, basically being in a video with Faye. Still waiting on her putting out her perspective from it, so I figured I’d ask.”

The doe shrugged. “I barely even noticed it, most of the time. She was more focused on talking to you all than to me, I guess.”

“Makes sense. I mean, a lot of people are acting like the sky’s falling that Faye didn’t win, but from everything you told me about it? Why would she even want that? She already has her career figured out. You’re probably the only one out of the bunch who that’s an upgrade for, no offense.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly waved off their concern. “But yeah, that’s what Abby told me. I guess they would’ve liked it more if she won and turned the prize over to me, or something? Maybe it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, I don’t know.”

“Well, one thing I do know,” Flint said, “is how cute it is that you’re already on a first-name basis with your new boss. You two sure hit it off quick while you were there, huh?”

Holly opened her mouth to answer, but the ring of the elevator opening up to their floor interrupted her. The two shuffled out and went their separate ways, and Holly supposed that the squirrel’s thought had been a decent point to end on. She thought to herself about the nature of her new partnership with Abby, far from a conventional boss and employee relationship, and supposed that explaining that going forward would have to be one of the first orders of business in her new position.

When Holly returned to her desk, she found her coffee, one of the few things left on her desk, empty. Anticipating the usual afternoon slump of energy, she let her few remaining tasks wait a bit longer and walked over to the break room for a refill. There, she found the room just as constricting as normal, though now with the added discomfort of the June heat leaving the space oppressively warm despite the best efforts of the straining air conditioning. Inside, the imposing figure of her badger coworker already crowded up most of the room as he refilled his own coffee from the communal pot.

“Afternoon, Gavin,” Holly said, and her sudden greeting made him jump in surprise.

He took a second to collect himself as he turned around, gazing downwards to lock eyes with Holly. “Oh. Perez. They’re saying you finally managed to escape. When do the two weeks end?”

“Today, actually,” she grinned.

“Well, congrats to you on that,” Gavin continued. “It sounds like you got yourself some sweet deal out of, uh, wherever it is you’re moving on to, now.”

“It’s a friendlier place, working closer to home,” Holly explained, understating the extent of just how much ‘closer,’ “it’s nice!”

“Well, wouldn’t that be the life?” He shrugged, but then thought about something more deeply for a second. “You know, Perez, I feel like I’m noticing something, but I’m not sure if it’s right or not.”

Holly’s head cocked to the side slightly. “Something like what?”

“Like the fact that you’re normally more tired by this time,” he thought aloud.

“Maybe. I guess I’m just getting a change of pace, right? Trying out a new thing or two, since things are already changing for me.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he said, though as he shuffled tightly around Holly she wasn’t sure that he entirely understood. “Anyways, you enjoy those greener pastures for me, you hear?”

Holly nodded and let him carry on. After taking another minute in the break room to fill up her coffee, she felt surprisingly relieved to return to the main office floor again. Halfway back to her desk, the familiar chill of stern eyes on Holly’s back stopped her in place. Turning around, her boss walked the deer’s way, apparently having stopped something she was doing specifically to approach Holly.

The skunk passed by Holly and stopped, allowing an almost dramatic pause for a beat.  “Don’t you have something to do right now, Perez?”

“Nothing that isn’t small enough to be finished before the end of the day,” Holly responded, still on the defensive with her boss.

“ Right ,” she huffed in response, “you got offered some shiny new job from that contest you won, didn’t you. Just how’d you manage that? If anyone could weasel something out of Fords, I’d have guessed Leclerc could do it first.”

“I guess her negotiation style wasn’t what Fords was looking for,” the doe shrugged.

“Or you pulled off some trick that let you outmaneuver her. I’m not sure if that says more about you or Fords,” she remarked.

Holly grinned. “Who knows? Maybe it says the most about Missus Leclerc. Should I get back to my desk while I let you think about it?”

“Alright, don’t get too cute on your last day,” her boss said, her gaze sharpening. Holly simply nodded again and returned to what little work awaited her.

When she finished that work as well, only a short wait stood between her and leaving Alabaster behind. The doe rose from her desk again, taking the opportunity to stretch her legs and make her way over to the water cooler. She didn’t feel thirsty, but hoped to run into someone else there to have something to preoccupy herself with for a minute. Her plan immediately rewarded her, then, with the sight of her kangaroo coworker getting a quick drink on her own.

“Afternoon, Holly,” the kangaroo said, and Holly waved back. “How’ve things been?”

“Business as usual, aside from clearing out the cubicle,” Holly responded. “What about you, Matilda? Is your garden coming along well?”

Matilda paused in surprise, though Holly couldn’t tell if it was remembering her name or remembering her home garden that had been responsible for it. “Yeah, it is. You should’ve seen it last month, though, when a lot of it was really in bloom.”

“Do you have any pictures of it from then, at least?”

“Probably, but we both know how you-know-who feels about the threat of us losing a single minute of productivity looking through our phones, so,” Matilda waved her free hand dismissively.

“Yeah, I think I know, by now,” Holly chuckled. “Still, when you’re able to, okay?” The kangaroo nodded, and Holly strolled back to her cubicle again, leaving it to Matilda to realize that the doe had come and gone without getting a drink for herself.

Following her old routine again, it felt like no time at all when Holly found herself sitting down in her apartment on her worn couch. She tried to take a moment to soak in the feeling of being truly left to her own devices for the first time in a while. However, she quickly found that it felt mostly the same as usual, so abandoned that idea just as easily. Instead, she recalled her incredible business over the last month leaving her with no opportunity to keep up with the Ticket Hunter community, post-contest. Curiosity gripped her, even though she expected to find the forum left entirely desolate in the absence of any tickets left to hunt for, but she found herself checking on the website anyways. There, a small contingent of hunters still populated it actively, though most of their community had long since abandoned them. Some of them stuck together out of actually growing closer to their fellow hunters through the ordeal, which pleased Holly to find, but most of the remaining members of the forum concerned themselves with continued discussion of the great mystery that is Fords’ Fantastic Fooderies.

Predictably, the transformation the other four guests had undergone by the time they left the complex bewildered anyone viewing the day from an outsider’s perspective. As such, the familiar conspiracies about the company reared their head to explain the inexplicable course the day had taken. They combined, reworked, and remixed their usual ideas in inventive, new ways in order to satisfy their curiosity to know what really happened inside the walls of the complex just two weeks ago. Holly, for just a moment, considered stringing along a hint or two about her experience to satisfy the community, but when she saw just how many messages awaited her in the wake of winning the grand prize, she reconsidered. Quietly, she decided to simply leave the forum behind her.

Where the Ticket Hunters and Blues fans wavered in their activity following the contest, Holly’s ventures onto her timelines showed that one community refused to back down. With nearly the same frequency as at the height of the ticket hunt, Faye’s fan base continued its feverish posting. Now, however, they found no targets to direct their aggression towards. In fact, as Holly suspected, there had been little to no activity from Faye whatsoever in the last two weeks. The doe knew that it was only a matter of time before Faye’s voice finally returned to normal and her flow of content resumed. For all of her fans, however, apparently left in the dark about the rabbit’s disappearance from the media, their desperation rose until Holly saw them panicking over the ‘emergency situation.’ They poured over the most recent posts from their idol, pleading and asking about Faye’s whereabouts and when they could expect her next video. At times, their desperation even turned them against each other, as if that would help bring the rabbit back any sooner. Ultimately, Holly breathed a sigh of relief at their ire, at least, no longer being directed at her recently.

She scrolled further, about to entertain the thought of spending more of the evening relaxing and catching up on the day’s news, when a scheduled reminder rang out from her phone resting on her coffee table. Holly scrambled over to it, nearly falling off of the couch as she swiped it off the table to investigate. When she checked her phone, though, the stabbing feeling in her chest, which had disappeared almost entirely over the course of the last weeks, suddenly returned in full force as she read her reminder. Somehow, she had allowed herself to completely forget about a unique situation she found herself in a couple of weeks ago. Having been promised a larger salary working with Abby than at Alabaster, one of the first things Holly did when returning home was to increase the monthly support she had pledged to Bridgette’s channel through another site. In doing so, she sailed up the tiers of supporters for Grazing with Grazeland. At first she initially thought it would simply lead to a more prominent spot in the list of supporters at the end of each episode of the bear’s show. Later, though, she learned that some of the highest-tier rewards included, among other things, personal Q&A time with Bridgette herself.

Holly had increased her pledges to a number of creators she supported, after returning home from the contest. She had given Bridgette the most, of course, out of a lingering feeling of responsibility for what had happened to her that day. Despite this, she knew that her online presence was detached from any personal details about herself, so even if Bridgette saw, she wouldn’t know that it was meant to serve as any kind of vague apology from Holly. Still, Holly feared what might come of them meeting up again so soon. Not one to make herself any more suspicious, however, she discreetly worked through the process of organizing her ‘first meeting’ with Bridgette. Now, nearly at the scheduled time she agreed to those weeks ago, Holly realized that she had no more ways to keep her secret support going.

She scrambled to make herself presentable in the few minutes before the video call. Making her hair as neat as she could manage, Holly realized that she hadn’t thought of anything in particular to say to Bridgette when the time came. Her thoughts raced, and she tried to think up something as she quickly set up her laptop to be able to see her sitting on the couch. The final minute felt like ten as she waited for the time to arrive, and when the video call finally began, it did so precisely on time. Once the video loaded in, the familiar sight of Bridgette greeted Holly again, still sporting her iconic hat, but now in a warm orange shirt as opposed to the muted green she wore to Fords’. She sat at a simple, black desk, and though the program automatically blurred the environment around her, Holly made out the vague impression of what must have been the bear’s bedroom in the edges of the frame. The bear grinned in a way that looked familiar to her videos, but Holly had rarely seen in person on that day.

“Hey, so,” she began, and then suddenly registered who she was speaking to. The grin quickly vanished from her mouth as she gave Holly a look somewhere between surprised and offended. “Perez? You’re in the Q&A tier?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Holly forced out. “I didn’t really know how to say it, before now.”

Bridgette groaned in response, rubbing at her temples. “Look, thanks for the money, Perez, but really? Haven’t you and Fords done enough to me, already?”

Holly sank back into the couch slightly, the feelings of anticipation from before being thoroughly rewarded. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, well, I don’t even know! I don’t know what funny little plan you two have going on,” she continued, “but can you leave me out of it?”

“I’m not doing this for Abby’s sake, it’s just me!” Holly insisted.

“Yeah, sure,” Bridgette said, rolling her eyes, “just like you two have just happened to have gone totally quiet after everything, like you aren’t planning whatever your next move is supposed to be, together.”

“Wait, what? I thought that you wanted us to keep quiet about everything that happened back there, didn’t you? Weren’t we doing the right thing?”

Bridgette huffed. “And how would you even know that, huh? I don’t exactly remember seeing you or Fords around when I was talking about it with the other four.”

“We heard you all talking from her office,” Holly admitted. “And that probably sounds bad, but since we heard what you wanted out of the others, both me and Abby decided that it would be best if we also respected what you wanted, you know?”

Bridgette, in turn, leaned back in her seat, apparently taken aback. Silence filled the call between the pair and left Holly to wonder what exactly she had said that the bear hadn’t been expecting to hear. Bridgette tapped one of her claws against her desk and finally spoke up again. “Well, okay. I’ve got some good news for you on that front, then. Not long ago I got a message from Huffie. She said that she trashed all of the stuff that could’ve been, you know, compromising from what she filmed that day. So now that the video evidence is out of the way, all we have to do is keep our mouths shut and nobody on the outside ever has to find out what happened to us.” She paused for a beat before adding, “minus you, of course.”

Holly felt a pang of guilt at the targeted final comment, but still willed herself to stop retreating back and instead lean a bit forwards again to get a better view of the bear’s video. “You talked to Faye? When’d you do that?”

“It was a few days ago, now. Did she not tell you or anything?” Bridgette shrugged. “Eh, whatever. What’s important now is that neither of you have anything else from that day you’re holding onto without the rest of us knowing, right?”

Holly held up her hands innocently. “Not us, I don’t think so. I mean, I know that there’s nothing that I could have taken myself. I left my phone in my purse by the door that whole day, remember?”

Bridgette nodded as she thought. “You did do that, didn’t you? Alright, well, then all there is left to do is hope that you’re right about Fords’ character, then,” Bridgette continued. “Has she ever told you anything about what she sent to me, after all of that?”

“You mean where? Like what happened in the Menagerie Wing?”

The bear shot her a weary look. “No, Perez, I mean what she sent me.”

“She didn’t, no, but that’s mostly because we haven’t really been able to talk that much since I got back,” Holly noted.

“It was a box full of chocolate chip cookies,” Bridgette stated simply, her eyes breaking from her camera to gaze off at something in the distance. “Which had a little icing message spread across them, one or two per cookie.” She leaned to the side and fumbled around with something off-camera. Shortly later she finally returned to the center of the frame with one of the cookies in tow. Small, richly golden and speckled with chocolate chips, the cookie also possessed a thin piping of purple icing in the shape of the letter ‘D.’ “Do you know what it said in full, when I finally managed to lay all of them out in order on my counter, Perez?”

“I don’t, no,” the doe shrugged, trying to figure out where a message like that could possibly go.

Bridgette set the cookie aside again, and continued to look over where she kept them as she read “‘Don’t mean to diminish, but we wanted to help you finish.’ Now isn’t that just adding insult to injury, huh?”

“Do you mean that they made that batch out of the dough you made?” Holly asked, struggling to stop herself from smiling as she put the pieces together in her mind. “Well, that seems genuine enough, at least to me. It’s their way of saying that they didn’t want your last memory of that batch to be negative, you know? Turning it into something you can enjoy.”

Bridgette raised a brow at her before sighing. “Well, I’m not sure what I expected. That’s kind of your thing , isn’t it? You just always have to give Fords the benefit of the doubt, you just always have to take everything she says at face value.”

“ Well ,” Holly said, gripping at her side again, “she told me that she would try to help all of you out after what happened, and she followed through on that, didn’t she? No one got seriously hurt in the end or anything. She can act oddly, yeah, but she always means what she says, what else would I think about her?”

The black bear groaned, looking away from the camera as she tried to find the words. “Look, I’m gonna be painfully honest with you here, Perez. I don’t know what to think about that day, at this point. What happened back there should not be possible , period. And that includes what I know happened directly to me. All I want to know, right now, is what makes it so easy for you to just go along with everything Fords says. Magic, dreams, whatever it is that everything back there was supposed to be powered by. We know it doesn’t work that way, but you just accept it, act like it wasn’t completely blindsiding you, too, just like it was with the rest of us. I mean, who wouldn’t think that you’re in on it somehow, by the end of all of that? What gives? ”

Silence filled the air, allowing Bridgette’s question to hang, unanswered. Holly sat with the thought and tried to parse her own feelings about things, something she had been trying to do since arriving home from Fords’ to begin with. She glanced away from the screen, then back towards it. She shifted uncomfortably despite sitting on the single most comfortable part of her couch, and finally tried to answer the bear’s big question.

“If you’ll let me also be totally honest with you, too? It wasn’t easy at all, none of it. It wasn’t easy back there with Fords, and it wasn’t easy any day for, I don’t know, the last fifteen years, at least. When you spend your whole life being told again and again, shown again and again, that people can’t be like that. When all you know is that people who present themselves as altruistic or optimists are always doing it for themselves, in the end. When someone comes along and is actually like that, and actually gives you the chance to let go of that pressure and just, you know, be you for a bit? It’s not easy to let yourself believe, to not be afraid that you’re just going to be let down again. After all of that, I still don’t know if I’m quite there, yet.”

Bridgette’s eyes shut in deep thought as Holly continued to talk, by the time the doe finished, the bear leaned back in her chair as she mulled over Holly’s answer. As she did so, her expression gradually began to soften. A moment later, Bridgette’s eyes peeked open for a second or two, as if trying to study Holly’s expression some more. A long, quiet minute passed before the bear sighed again, this time sounding more mournful than frustrated, and nodded. “Alright, well, good job, Perez, you sure gave me plenty to think about before next time. Do you have anything else you wanted to tackle today, or something?”

“I don’t think so,” Holly shrugged. “If I can keep being honest? I got a bit blindsided by this whole thing.”

“Alright, then I think we’re good to call it here for now,” Bridgette continued before pausing again. “Actually, one more thing. I don’t know if you’re going to be getting this from any of the others, but,” she took a deep breath in anticipation, as if preparing for something painful, “I’m sorry about how I treated you back there, really. I think I was working off the wrong read about what you’re like, and you didn’t deserve to be on the other side of it.”

The sudden apology took Holly by surprise. Of all of the reactions she expected from Bridgette going into this meeting, such an earnest apology had in no way been among them. “Oh! Well, I’m sorry, then, if I gave off the wrong impression back there?”

Bridgette tried to stifle a chuckle, but failed. Unlike during the tour, her laughter somehow sounded a bit warmer. “Really? Are you always like this, Perez?”

Holly’s head tilted slightly in confusion. “What do you mean? Like what?”

“Never mind, don’t worry yourself about it.” Bridgette said, waving off the deer. “Look, I’ll just see you next month, alright?”

“Alright,” Holly nodded, and the call between them ended in a flash.

Holly closed her laptop and laid across her couch, trying to take some time to think about what Bridgette had said. A while later, she got up and paced her apartment slowly. More than anything, she wondered how much of what she herself had said might get through to Bridgette before next month’s meeting. She hoped the bear might approach their shared experience from a different angle the next they talked, but struggled to get her hopes up about it. No matter what, she assured herself that there were still plenty of months in the future for both of them to talk things through. Surely, she thought to herself, that if the two of them just had enough time to keep talking, they would figure out exactly what the other meant today.

For now, though, Holly returned to her simple bedroom. She gazed out the window at joggers and commuters on the street below, and wondered how many of them were like her or Bridgette. Tomorrow, the deer would wake up at whatever hour felt right to her and start working with Abby to ‘help keep her world magic.’ A month from now, she would be speaking directly to Bridgette again and learning how much of her brief plea would be internalized by the bear. Beyond that, into the months and years beyond, she now had no more plans waiting for her. The looming blocks of work days at Alabaster had once kept her both grounded and locked down in imagining her future. Now, those seemingly immovable plans dissolved away right in front of her. Her future lay ahead of her, uncertain, but for whatever reason not uncomfortable. She turned about in place and fell backwards into bed. For the second time in a long time, Holly didn’t feel too tired to do anything after work.