As Thief Heart reached the top he got hit in the head by a pillow.
“YOU IMBECILE! WHY DID YOU RISK YOUR SAFETY LIKE THAT?!” Mend Heart’s eyebrow was twitching as they glared at Thief who was recovering from the pillow.
“Love you too buddy. Look it all worked out, even with the surprise Void Heart appearance.”
“And what if it didn’t?! Dammit Thief, we could have lost you. If we lost your ability, we were toast.” Thief Heart frowned as he heard Mend’s worry and walked over, putting his arm around Mend and patting their shoulder.
“Sorry bud, look I’ll be more careful and listen to you. I mean, Void Heart is gonna be angry with me now so, gotta be careful.” Mend sighed but still smacked Thief Heart upside the head as Noble Heart walked over, True Heart coming over with some tea.
“So, while we have you two here, we’d like to dive into the history of our family here in Care-A-Lot.” Noble began, while Thief and Mend sat on the couch opposite of the two.
“Yeah, when you said ‘son’ earlier, about Funshine, you really emphasized the term. What was up with that, he’s just your son born that way right?” Cheer and Tenderheart exchanged quick glances without Thief or Mend noticing as True gave a small sigh. She looked at Thief before starting.
“Funshine was born a female, but transitioned a few years ago. Of course, we all accepted him and worked on making sure we used male pronouns. Took a month total? Some of us slipped a bit at first but after a month it was normal and no mess ups or back tracks.”
“Really, I wouldn’t have guessed he transitioned. Not really something I’d think about. He’s a guy now and that’s all that matters.” Thief sipped his tea before continuing. “So, anyone else transitioned, or not on the binary?”
“Well, there’s two who don’t follow the ‘binary’ that are here all year round, and another two who appear during a certain holiday each.” Noble heart sipped his tea as Mend and Thief exchanged curious glances.
“So, Togetherness is genderfluid, they came with no name or belly badge at first, but eventually gained their name and badge and their place in the family.”
“Wait, what do you mean, True?” Mend was curious at the last part.
“Noble and I brought many of the bears and cousins here as cubs. The ones who weren’t originally on the boat with us were Grams, Watchful, Baby Hugs and Tugs, Wonderheart, Oopsy, Togetherness, and Laugh-A-Lot. They joined in after Care-A-Lot was created and Dark Heart was stopped.”
“Still didn’t stop us having to deal with No Heart here and there.” Cheer gave a bit of a side comment as she mentioned No Heart, only for True to give her the mom stare making Cheer hush up.
“Anyway, despite that we accepted them as family. Besides Togetherness, Swift Heart Rabbit was born female but is non-Binary, they don’t like gender terms.”
“Oh, so they’re the same as me.” Mend Heart smiled a bit. “I’m non-Binary as well, it’s why Thief never uses a gender term when talking to me, he knows me enough by now.”
“I sure hope I would, if you can throw a pillow that hard I don’t want to know what would happen with a heavier object.” Thief joked as Mend gave him a small punch on the arm.
“Well, good to know your pronouns, Mend Heart. We’ll be sure to make sure everyone else knows as well.” True Heart gave Mend a warm smile that made Mend smile back as well. They were starting to feel as if this was where they belonged, along with Thief. However both knew they couldn’t lock those thoughts in yet, especially given their nomadic nature lately.
“So, not to break up the storytime and everything, but Void Heart’s castle stopped rearranging. Three hours exactly.” Tenderheart walked over with the timer.
“If his castle resets after we do a mission, and it resets every three hours, than at our rate we can get another two, wait three hours, another two…” Mend Heart began to calculate stuff, until the door opened as Grumpy and Bright Heart rushed in and were huffing.
“Grumpy, Bright Heart, dears what’s the rush?” True Heart walked over with Noble Heart.
“Thief Heart, Mend Heart, it’s complete!” Bright Heart held up a backpack, which got Thief’s eyes to light up.
“The third glider is complete?”
“Yeah, no thanks or nothing. We completed it a few minutes ago.” Grumpy gave a small wave of his hand before Thief hugged him happily.
“Ah thank you, both of you! We just found out Void Heart’s castle resets every three hours. With this, we can rescue three badges at once.”
“In the time it’d take for us to get six, which would have required three trips, we now only need two trips. This really does make it much easier! Thank you, both of you!” Grumpy gave a bit of a surprised look before quickly changing to his indifferent grumpy expression, as Bright smiled happily.
“We’re just glad we could help!”
“Alright Mend, we need a plan. Who am I taking with me?” Thief turned to Mend with the look of being ready for a mission.
“Alright, I’ll go with you and let’s take Funshine.”
Cheer smirked and called Funshine to come with his special skill. After a few minutes Funshine walked in with a bow in his hand and arrows in a quiver.
“Oh, you’re an archer dude?” Thief smirked as Funshine walked over.
“Heck yeah, let’s do this!” As Funshine lifted his arm to point, Thief saw the post-op scars under his fur. Thief didn’t decide to even make a remark, Funshine was a male, that’s all that mattered anymore. Thief went over how the glider worked as the three walked down to where the Cloud Car was. Funshine hopped in the driver seat as Mend got in the passenger and Thief in the back. After buckling in True and Noble waved them off as they drove to Void Heart’s.
“Ok, so from what Good Luck said, the enemies drop on the orb and absorb it?”
“Yeah, once they do they’ll attack us. They’ll most likely call allies so, if Mend approves, whenever I get one I pass it to another and they go as the other two rush off before the enemies arrive?”
“While a good idea, maybe we should note a room with one each and then figure out a quick path to each so we can move ASAP.”
“Or, my thought, we just shoot an arrow at the creature before it can land.”
“Funshine, appreciate your enthusiasm but they might scream as soon as you aim the arrow.”
“Oh…Fair point Thief.”
“We’ll figure out the plan once we get a good idea of the layout. If anything, we can glide into three different levels and start a search and if we need to, meet up somewhere. If we see Void Heart, we’ll use Thief’s smoke bombs to escape, even if we don’t have a belly badge. We can’t risk him getting our marks, especially YOU Thief.”
“Loud and clear Mend. There’s the castle and the empty space where I wish he had a drawbridge made for us.” Funshine looked ahead and came to a stop before they were too close. As all three got out they looked at the newly arranged castle. “Well, that’s not how it was earlier. We ready team?”
“Yeah, three smoke bombs please, each?” Mend held their paw out to Thief who handed them six Smoke bombs as Mend gave Funshine three and they opened their gliders jumping off the cliff, as Funshine watched. In a second Thief and Mend’s gliders caught wind and blew them upward as Funshine followed and the three flew around, looking for open windows before all finding a room full of pedestals and nodded entering it. As soon as they did, bars came down on the door and window as Thief pulled his knife out, Funshine grabbed an arrow as Mend pulled out the grappling hook. Despite every badge in the room, void creatures appeared and grabbed them, running into the walls and going through that. Thief cautiously checked and saw his paw could go through the wall.
“They want to separate us, Mend we’ll need to separate.”
“You three will be ok, Tenderheart’s got a map system started as you three travel. Focus on finding a badge and escaping.” Cheer’s voice came over their ear pieces as the three nodded and split up, Mend and Thief running one way as Funshine ran the other. All three silently promising to escape safely, especially since Thief and Funshine had a promise boop.
