C-rank Job: The Fateful Meeting of a Prince and a Grape.

“I uh…. I’ll come help out for a few hours. Just need to test all the stuffed animals, right? Sounds easy enough to do for an afternoon.”

“Hello there young man, I could sure use it! I’ll see if I can’t get another person or two before we head out.”

---

“Young lady,” as she was called by the stout protector of the two women she had punished with some passionate food-throwing, was a power whose reputation and assertiveness was foolish to challenge with a tongue-in-cheek remark, which Vera did well to restrain. “You will make amends with community service and receive a modest pay for them because I, Dimm Dougadome, am generous and believe production is the basis of good morale.”

It was considered not quite equitable that Dimm Dougadome, whose uprightness and saintliness in the importances of right and wrong, would contradict itself and irk the demonized insurgent to no end. “Your jewels won’t be necessary, my dude. Community service is voluntary work,” was directed at him, her tone dryer than an autumn leaf, “meant to help people. So, no. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll be on my way."

“I could easily have you arrested for battery if you don’t comply.” Was what he said shortly after her claim.

She couldn’t have been angrier. “Does ‘no’ mean ‘yes’ now? Isn’t that so typical?  I want no part in this sketch ball proposition of yours. So why don’t you just make like a fly and buzz off?”  Vera experienced a pregnant pause. She was a free spirit, a true Bohemian, allergic to involuntary confinement. She had to save herself.  

He soundlessly and confidently sought the help of his trusty ilac and proceeded to alert the holy  forces of law and order.

She gripped her hair and sucked in a deep breath. “I can’t believe you’re dumping this on me. Stop, stop, stop! Ok,” she recanted, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it! What must I do?”
He filled her in.

And Vera did surely despise him, but not as the women from before did her. In spite of the trouble the simmering simpleton suffered from their presentation of her gone viral, there was a scintilla of pettiness in how she handled the two women from the market that made it near impossible for her to defend herself against the little toy-maker's threat of calling the authorities on her or to find fault in his poor use of blackmail in view of the fact he lacked enough employees to run his shop. She shouldn’t have battered the two women with the apples she bought from the kindly merchant for poking fun at her. But when good people forced her to converse giddily about matters she cared little for,  they often taxed her forbearance and avidity to exert herself congenially.  

She would gladly have purchased a variety of other fruits just to make them cry some more about how the big, scary purple-haired lady threw all her groceries at them, also choke Dimwit with her edible weapons of destruction, but dared not make light of her pressing case.  The short old man, for the time being, owned her haunches and he was made the target of her many hateful stares.

What Vera wanted most was to finish the job and run straight back to doing nothing , and during the bulk of her brooding she finally came to a complete halt, for what awaited her inside the factory was close to enchanting. Thus the plump bloke opened the door for her and closed it behind them - only after she went inside.  It seemed as if his devotion was the only thing running this place, and Vera made it painfully obvious to him that she found it odd and a little pathetic. “I am not responsible for what my face does when I see an evil lair that is severely lacking in underlings. Did they all die off from scoliosis or something?”

He told her with finality, “No. Most of them are on vac - “

“Hey, it’s one of your only survivors!” interjected the ditzy Vera, moving closer to the much younger man, her voice barely above a whisper, “If you’re a bootlicker, blink once.  If you’re being enslaved by this snollygoster and you want to run away with me, blink twice.”

---

“What’s your name, son?”

“Uh...it’s uh... Jaeger. I am a… uh, member of the West Fiore Trading Company.”

“I see! Well, I am glad you’re here. My name is Dimm Dougadome, owner of the Dimm Dougadome Toy Factory. Welcome aboard.”

“So, basically all you’re having to do today is to test the plushies. They need to have around certain fluffiness and squishiness to pass on through. The ones that don't, just toss into the big bin behind you and it’ll be carted off to be fixed later. I am going to head out and try to find another worker or two.”

“I uh…. Nah I’m here on my own free will. By the way… what the hell is a snollygoster?”

“Hey… HEY!” Don’t let them go by unchecked young man!”

“Here only a second and she’s already causing problems.”

---

“Hi, I’m Vera.” The purple-haired dunce said, clearly miffed.

Vera was passionately aghast of both the reaction she had received and the simplicity of their designated onus. From this obnoxiously named sod she had acquired the name of his underling and the responsibility of checking each passing stuffed animal for quality goodness , but she also had a liking for cuddly toys and was instantly drawn to the colorful array of teddy bears that went unattended by Jaeger. She momentarily reconsidered her feelings and decided this wouldn’t be so bad. Easy money, it was almost shameful. But then she looked at the mumbling, no doubtedly brain-washed slave of the plushie empire and allowed her hip to jut out just a tad. The awful stink-eye followed after the gaudy bossman left them to their own devices.

The newcomer had made him look mildly incompetent in front of his so-called employer and wanted him to know, without the garnish of words, that he could not blame her for his own mistakes. She didn’t attempt to address the matter more than she actually needed to because she was already admiring the aesthetic and squeezing the fuzzy darlings with childish enthusiasm.  Vera Jayne wore a smile that was unbecomingly queer and unsettling; a great shift in mood. Was he mumbling something spiteful about her? She hadn’t heard his exact words per se but the mumbling was spoken in a tone that was too inconveniently soft for her to understand and made her more aware of his trying presence. She couldn’t help but assume his muttering was meant to safeguard the nature of his complaint and looked him dead in the eye. “You really shouldn’t mumble,” she trilled. “It leaves me to think you don’t have the guts to tell me what’s up. I don’t bite.”

Her words were sweeter than cotton candy dipped in acid as she went about among the collection, testing the bodies of fabric that had been abundantly stuffed with fluff. Her prying eyes of distrust were surreptitiously glued to the exit, but before she could act on her most recent change of heart, which was to run away, there came a mysterious squeaking noise loud enough to frighten her. “I’m not hearing things,” she spazzed, “you are!” Vera Jayne rushed over to his side and watched the plushies roll off the track one by one. The pile that had formed messily before their eyes produced multiple sounds, every cuddly mewl and squeak seeming much darker and less dafter.  The prickly things on the back of her neck caused her hair to frizz up as saw a great big shadow looming over them.

She wasn’t planning on sticking around.

“And on that spectacular note,” Walden gave Jaeger the look of pity he honestly deserved (having to deal with her)  and saluted him with some finality, her voice cowardly and rather thespian whilst she spoke, “I bid you adieu.” As she was rushing to the exit, the plushies came together to form a giant teddy bear and successfully barred her escape by expanding faster than her ability to step around its giant teddy body.  

---

---

“Gag me with a spoon. Whatever shall we do?” she asked, intrigued to have learned that monstrous fluff was the life of the factory and that flamboyant worker was so caught up in the predicament. Her morbid curiosity of what would become of them stopped there, however, the quaking ensued, and fearing what she thought was a war cry coming from the soft being, her traitorous companion turned on her and pushed her in the direction of the beast. It could be suggested there was some fairness in his deed, and that the woman would be the most likely deserving of retribution; but she was too busy utilizing every form of profanity to reflect on it wholeheartedly.

She never trusted that ball of snot.

But she knew something like this was coming. Vera Jayne seemed endowed with the very spirit of the hatred that festered and boiled at the thought of people being so quick to stick their figurative knives so deeply into her back: her full pliant form seemed to respond quickly to the idea of seeing the look on his mug as she fell forward, and not entirely without some balance, and still plummeting, she managed to whirl around speedily enough to smack him in the face with a glance so murderous. She never had the chance to attack the little twerp nor vanish in an invasive cloud of dust. She  looked with exaggerated enmity at the heavy arms, her struggling body enveloped by miles of mohair, and was effortlessly pulled upward.

The peeved bear mercilessly crammed the annoying human down its great maw and regarded the renegade as its ally. The bear too fantasized their partnership as Jaeger Man and Bear Boy, but in their version it was more along the lines of being Bear Man and Jaeger Boy. As for how the stuffed giant got his name, it had gained sentience around the time the young man had introduced himself to the weird creature with purple hair.  It sat down and whimpered freely to him with a mournful belly rub, to which it indicated a stomach ache, as if it had eaten something bad, something spoiled. Vera did not just take it just sitting idly within its stomach. She made quite a ruckus and more so when she found she could not unstick her dust form from the cotton walls that surrounded her.  Her screams, comical at first, were starting to sound grave and pitiful. It was pitch black, increasingly hot, and her powers were starting to become phenomenally useless against simple cotton.

“Let me out, you poor excuse of an insufferable ass pastry!” she yelled, her voice heavily distorted by the ugliness that was her scattered flesh, the texture like colorful soot. Flashes of white, black, purple and peach dust clung to the enclosure and tried desperately to come together to form her writhing physique. She saw nothing before her even after a good amount of time passed; the sound of shoes clicking, with the deep rumble of a voice she recognized,  were all her ears could pick up on. At length she could not say she was surprised as the big idiot himself bagged on her level of disrespect and hardly considered helping her. She might not have cared much as to what he thought of her. What she did care about was the bear with her inside it moving in a certain direction.

“I will ground you into flesh loaf!” she screamed.

---

“Jobs complete, the annoying chick left, said I could get her payment too. She didn’t care for doing actual work.”

“Ah yes. It’s a shame really, kids like that need a lesson in hard work.. And not being a spoiled brat. Can’t be helped I gu8ess, some people don’t want to change. Good job, I’ll let the West Fiore Tra”

“West Fiore? What are  you talking about? What do I have to do with a trading company?”

“You mentioned bein..”

“No, I dont think I did; I’m a freelance mage. Nothing to do with some legal business guild.”

“Nevermind then, just glad you came by and saved most of my bacon, son.”

“No problem, I will also be taking this giant animated teddy bear, It doesn’t seem safe to be having it around all your regular employees.”

“B-by all means, take it!”

“Yo, you still alive in there? We’re out of the factory, you gonna behave now?”