It was a calm day in Minnaluna. Despite March being the run-up into the hurricane season and already having some quite severe weather from time to time, the temperatures were very pleasant already and there were plenty of quiet days with gradually strengthening sunshine and nothing but some cute patches of small fluffy clouds in a clear blue sky. It was a time when people shook off the bleakness of the winter season and prepared themselves for the upcoming hurricane season bringing in the springtime.
Even in small towns and villages, where the pace of life usually was calm and slow, the increased activity was visible. Not always clearly, but it was there. Farmers did maintenance on their implements and vehicles to get them ready for the spring planting, shops and service stations started re-stocking their wares, companies and even regular people all over the place did a spring service on their cars and trucks. The sales of lumber, screws, nails and metal wire saw a sharp increase as many people also went around servicing and strengthening the supports and protections of their houses and businesses in preparation for the violent weather that would be coming. And sometimes, just sometimes, the approaching hurricane season could deliver an unexpected surprise.
For now, the day was calm. A pleasant temperature, the sun shining, light wispy clouds drifting through the sky, bird chirping. The atmosphere was nice, and seemed to be as quiet and sedate as it usually was in the small farming village of Birch Brook. Yet many people were working on their preparations, coming out of the winter season and going into the turbulent approach of spring. One person was very much not active, however; a semi-tall and very slender serval woman named Doto van der Vyver. She was in fact the least active woman in the entire village, although she found out just how active even her friends were in this season when she went over to the acclaimed Fox Body Garage run by her best friend Monique Winters, the bright orange and white vixen with the so sharply contrasting clear blue skin.
Sauntering into the garage, the serval woman found one of the garage's service vehicles, the light lavender-colored 1988 GMC Vandura panel van, sitting high up in the air on one of the car lifts, with Monique shoulders-deep in the right front wheel well. The vixen initially didn't even look around as Doto stepped into the garage, only turning her head when the serval woman leaned against a post of the car lift and spoke up.
"What'cha doing?"
"Oh! Heya Doto darling." With a playful grin, Monique turned to take Doto into an embrace, in the process leaving large black stains on the serval woman's clothes and face with her very grimy paws. "Doing maintenance, honey. Van was due for a brake job, and now is the perfect time for it. Won't be long now before the farmers start requiring on-site assistance, so I gotta make sure my service vehicle is all up to snuff, right?"
"Gah! Sheesh, do you have to do that?" Doto shuddered at the greasy grime Monique smeared all over her in the hug. "I'm not a grease-monkey like you are, you know!"
"You could have fooled me," Monique grinned, wiping her paws the rest of the way on a rag. "Grease monkeys tend to hang around garages all the time, and you hang around mine so much you're pretty much part of the furniture." She playfully booped the serval woman's nose with a fingertip. "So let me guess, honey; you came here today because you are bored, again?"
Doto smirked and grabbed the rag from Monique's paws to wipe at the smears in her face.
"Yes, I am as a matter of fact. Everyone's so darn busy these days there's hardly anything to do around here, and there's already almost nothing to do around here as it is. I already took a good nap in my garden, but napping only goes so far."
"Aww, is the poor widdle puddy-tat all napped out?" Monique teased with a giggle. "And here I was thinking you were so clever that you'd have deduced I would be darn busy as well because I actually have work to do and need to be prepared for the busy season coming up."
"Oh knock it off, Momo, that's not funny," Doto smirked, even though she only smirked to hide the start of a smile. "Don't you have anything fun to do I could help with?"
"I might, actually," Monique chortled. "But I do first have to finish this, honey, because it is really quite important that my van is up to spec. But hey!" She closed one eye in a cheerful wink. "You can grab a chair and watch me work; I'll even make the view worth it."
Before Doto could even say anything, the vixen had already unzipped her full-body coveralls and started peeling them down her body, showing that as usual, she was wearing nothing underneath. Within a moment or two, the vulpine woman stepped out of her coveralls, shook out her fur a bit and teasingly lifted her bushy tail as she bent over to pick up the coveralls, flashing the clear blue skin of her genitals at Doto. The serval woman shook her head with another smirk that was unable to hide the cheery smile the end of her lips curled into.
"You're a shameless exhibitionist, Momo."
"I'm a naturist and a nudist, as is everybody this side of the country," Monique chortled while she turned back to the front right wheel well of the lavender-colored van on the car lift. "There's no shame in that, and you know that as well as I do. Besides, despite all that complaining you do, you always seem to very much enjoy the view."
"Well, who in their right mind wouldn't?" Doto said, finally breaking down and letting go a giggle. "You're so gorgeous and you have such nice contrasts on that sexy body of yours that you would turn all heads even in the largest nudist colony in the country."
"This whole country is a nudist colony," Monique chortled while she resumed the replacing of the brake pads in the right front brake caliper she had been working on. "Come to that, you made the best decision ever when you moved to this country, honey, because you darn well fit right in."
"I suppose I can't really argue with that," Doto shrugged with a smile, pulling near a chair and sitting down. "So do you mind if I talk to you while you work? That's already a decent help against the boredom, you know."
"So long as you don't mind I keep my eyes on my work while you talk," Monique smiled, bringing another cheerful smirk to Doto's face as she used her bare fingers to smear some copper grease on the brake caliper's retaining pin instead of using the small brush on the inside of the small grease jar's cap. "The more I can keep my concentration with this, the sooner I'll be done, you know."
"Yeah yeah, I know, I'll let you work," Doto nodded. "Do you have much more to do?"
"I'm actually almost done, this was the last corner," Monique said from inside the wheel well. "Just gotta bleed these brakes and put the wheel back on, and the van will be ready for service."
"Okay, cool," Doto nodded, sitting back and crossing her legs. "Have you done anything with that car we found a while back yet?"
A few weeks earlier, Doto had walked in on Monique being fully naked while cleaning out an old building on the premises of the garage. Having helped her vixen friend clearing out all the stuff in that building, they had eventually unburied an old car, a Plymouth Laser, which had been hidden under all the boxes and crates and bags and loose stuff that was piled in the building. Monique chortled softly while she wiggled the hose of a brake bleeder bottle over the bleeder nipple on the right front brake caliper and started pumping the trigger on the handle to pull a vacuum.
"The Laser? Sure, I gave it a good wash for one, changed all the fluids and the battery, and got it running. Why, are you looking to finally replace that ratty old wagon of yours? In that case I'm gonna have to disappoint you; I sold the thing already."
"That's fine, it wasn't my kind of car anyway," Doto shrugged, pressing her lips into a smirk again. "And there is nothing wrong with my station wagon, Momo, it's a fine precision instrument of speed and Italian elegance I'll have you know."
"A fine precision instrument that was the successor of the car that gave Alfa Romeo its bad rep because they were treated so poorly they rusted in the brochures already," Monique teased playfully. "Seriously, I'm amazed the thing hasn't collapsed into a pile of powder under your butt yet."
"Sure you're amazed, you're the one who refurbished that car for me, and you put so much rust treatment and undercoating on it that it bottoms out every time I hit a ripple in the road," Doto smirked, poking out her tongue at Monique's back.
The vixen cheerfully grinned across her shoulder.
"So what you're meaning to tell me is that I did a good job?"
Doto laughed shortly and shook her head.
"Yes, Momo, you did a good job. Because you're a great mechanic, and an awesome friend."
"Thanks, sweetheart, I appreciate that a lot and I'm so very happy to hear that," Monique smiled, hanging the brake bleeder bottle from the passenger door's handle and leaning over to pick up a wheel leaning against the post of the car lift. "Could you be a doll, sweetheart, and hand me those lug nuts and that impact over there on the tool chest?"
Getting up from the chair, Doto teasingly and playfully smacked the vixen's bare bum before stepping over to a rolling tool chest and grabbing a pawful of lug nuts and a cordless impact gun. Monique laughed and swished her bushy tail while she set the wheel over the studs, taking the lug nuts Doto handed her and screwing them in place to secure the wheel. Knowing her friend's work pattern, Doto also took a torque wrench from the tool chest and handed it to Monique once the vixen had lowered the arms of the car lift until the van was sitting back on the floor. Monique smiled and torqued down the lug nuts in a star pattern, then stepped over to a small sink in a corner of the garage and washed her paws. She also drove the van around and around the garage a few times, speeding up and braking firmly to bed in the new brake pads, and eventually parking the van back in its spot on the garage forecourt, smiling at Doto watching her as she walked back into the garage. Without even the slightest indication that she was going to put any clothes back on, the vixen washed her paws again and also took some time to clean the greasy smears from her face and forehead, all the while cheerily swaying her bushy tail back and forth.
Once she was done cleaning herself, Monique turned to Doto and winked while she wiped away the grimy smears she had put on the serval's face earlier.
"Now then honey, care to follow me out back and see the chore I have that you can help me with to not be bored anymore?"
Doto squeezed her eyes and twitched her long whiskers at the wet cloth Monique wiped her face with, curling her lips into a mild amused smirk again.
"If I have to follow you out back for it, I dread to think what the chore may be."
Monique leaned in and swiped a quick playful lick over Doto's narrow nose pad before dropping the wet cloth in the sink and letting go a short laugh.
"I can assure you it's nothing devious, honey. It just so happens we have to be in that building we cleared out the other day, that's all."
Doto twitched her whiskers again at the lick to her nose and batted a paw at Monique's bushy tail, as the vixen had already turned to lead the way out of the garage via one of the back doors. Outside, they walked over to the old building behind the main building and stepped inside. The serval woman ducked down with a squeak when something fluttered over her head the moment Monique flicked on the lights.
"Gah! What the hell was that?"
Monique chortled and pointed a finger upwards.
"That was part of the chore I have to take care of and which I can use your help with, honey."
Doto wiped a few locks of her short hair from her face and slowly looked up, blinking at a number of elongated fluffy dark brown balls hanging from the beams of the building's ceiling.
"What the hell are those?"
"Fruit bats, honey, a whole darn colony of them," Monique chortled. "Apparently they came in here for shelter during that storm a few days ago, and it seems they have decided to, well, hang around, haha!"
"How'd they even get in here?" Doto said, running the fingers of one paw through her short hair and looking around.
Monique gave a light shrug.
"I have no idea, but I do know they have to get out of here. I'm turning this building into a full-size paint booth, and I can't have any critters flying around freshly painted cars."
"Okay, makes sense I guess," Doto nodded. "Where do you reckon they came from? I didn't even know we had fruit bats around here." She looked up at the fluffy balls to study them a bit more intently. "They kinda look like Egyptian fruit bats, I remember those were around in Port Elizabeth. But how'd they get down here?"
"This country holds many wonders, honey," Monique chortled. "As for these here in particular, I did some scouting around when I first found them in the building here, and it seems like they may have come from that grove down by Mango Marsh, you know? I also talked to some folks who have experience handling wild animals and they let me know I'm allowed to catch and release them, and they told me how to best do it." She sent Doto a cheery wink again. "So, feeling up for the job, honey?"
Doto shrugged lightly.
"If you know of a way we can do it safely without hurting them or them hurting us, sure, I'm down. Heck, I may remember a trick or two from my college education as well once we get into it."
"That's the spirit," Monique chortled. "C'mon, let's get geared up. I talked to that environmentalist lady just outside of town yesterday and got some nets and gloves and a cage and all that kinda stuff."
"Alright, that'll work," Doto nodded.
She followed Monique back out of the smaller building and into the garage building. All the while, the serval woman could not help amusedly shaking her head. Talk about an unexpected turn of events! Of all the things she had thought might happen when she went out to visit her vixen friend, being asked to move a small colony of fruit bats from one of the buildings was most definitely not on the list!
Oh well. At least it was very effective against the boredom.
