catching a chirop

Maybe Bex is a little more of a pet person than she thought she was. 

Memmy sits happily in her pocket, snoozing happily. All that's visible from first glance are the two little purple horns peeking out. The little phloof had pretty much taking up his home there, retreating back whenever he was even a little tired. It was… very cute. Even outside of his original purpose of making Bex look less intimidating, she was finding herself fussing over the little puffball.

So… maybe she wanted to spoil him a bit. Can’t blame a bun for wanting to treat her pets nice. She had already… maybe… given him a dango. He just looked so expectant about it that she couldn't help it! And she wasn’t complaining about him being purple, it matched her aesthetic well enough.

And now she was here, at the Imporium. Just for a few things! Maybe a toy or two if there were any specifically for phloofs. Or maybe some smaller imp-sized soft plush things, Memmy would probably like that… She has a deal she has to close on soon, but surely a quick trip into a pet shop couldn’t take that much time.

Hopefully the cute shopkeep would be in today, they seemed the type to know quickly know exactly what to buy an imp to spoil it. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and enters the Imporium. 

It’s total chaos in there. There’s things off the shelves, pillow piles thrown every which and where, bags of treats spilled out on the floor. In the midst of this chaos, Hutch seemed to be dealing with… one imp?

Now that she’s noticed it, despite it being full of mess, there was a noticeable lack of actual imps anywhere. No huge piles of impups and phloofs, no remils or furdins scampering around and causing trouble. Just a single chirop doing what half looks like battle with Hutch. And the shopkeep isn’t even in bun form; the size advantage of doll form seemingly having no effect on wrangling this imp.

“Keep the door shut!” With her entrance, Hutch looks behind them with slightly wild eyes. “It’ll get out!”

Bex closes the door behind her quickly, leaning against it. Memmy stirs in her pocket, and she gives him a few quick pats to calm him down. That seems to work well enough.

“Come on boy! Come down here! Just… settle down!” A few quick pats is absolutely not going to calm down the fluttering chirop, which has taken to trying to nest in the ceiling. Hutch sighs, rubbing their eyes with their hands as the imp lands in the rafters. “Not what I meant…” 

Hutch continues to stare up the imp, seemingly having forgotten Bex entered as all.

“So, having trouble?”

“Oh! What? Uh,” they start, turning towards her. The second they take their eyes off the chirop, it takes the time to settle into its new rafters perch. “Yeah, a little. I was taming this one in the back, since all the tamed imps are adopted out, and it is not cooperating at all. C’mon boy, be good! I can get you treats.”

Bex chuckles, looking up at the chirop. “It doesn’t look like asking politely works all too well.”

“Well, it does sometimes. Once I actually tame it,” Hutch says, ruffling their hair and looking at the chirop. “It just takes a little work. It’s not actually all that hard, if you’re not worried about it getting away. The only reason he got out was I didn’t have an extra pair of hands to close the backroom door when I was bringing him over, so it was a whole thing...”

Bex looks Hutch over as they ramble, evaluating a few things. Helping out with imps didn’t seem like exactly the sort of thing she would excel at. But… if she was planning on getting new toys and revisiting the store more than once or twice, getting in good with the shopkeep may be a good call. And it was a little cute how nerdy they got about imps. Easy resource if she ever wanted to know more about something Memmy wanted. It probably wouldn’t take that long to help either, and she could probably still make her meeting.

She makes this decision before Hutch is finished describing something or other about imps and grabs the stepladder she sees on the side of the store.

“Alrighty,” she interrupts. “I’ll help you get him down, and then you can show me how to tame it, hm?”

“I- huh? Oh! Yeah, that’ll..” Hutch says, caught off guard. “Yeah, you can help, sure! Two hands will be- I mean, two pairs of hands will be better than one.”

“Yeah, exactly,” She says, setting up the step stool under the imp. ”Here, you distract him, and I’ll get him while he’s looking at you.”

They nod, grabbing some of the treats from where they’re spilled on the ground. They make a clicking sound and begin waving around the treats. The chirop peers down from their perch curiously, but makes no move to go after the treats. Still, they’re looking away for long enough to Bex to reach forward and grasp it with both hands.

The imp struggles and wiggles, but she has a secure enough grip without hurting it to step back down the step stool. 

“Okay, what room do you- Oh jeez,” she says, struggling to keep it in her grasp. “Quickly, lead me where I need to take it.”

Hutch scrambles into action, opening the back room door for her to slip into with the imp and shutting the door behind both of them. Just as the door closes, she loses her grasp on the slippery chirop and it begins to flutter around. However, this room was clearly built for this purpose in mind, and the place it finds to perch is still very much in reach for the both of them.

“Well!” Hutch says, slightly out of breath from the mad scramble. “We got it in the room! Excellent, now the process begins. If you keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn’t hide anywhere, I can begin actually taming it.”

Bex nods, hopping up to take a seat on the cleared desk in the room as Hutch works. She’s willing to sit here and be an extra pair of hands. “Sounds good to me. How do you tame an imp, anyways?”

“Lots of praise and reinforcement in the form of snacks,” Hutch says, pulling a small bag from their pocket. 

“C’mere boy,” they hum towards the chirop, shaking the bag of treats again. “Don’t you want something to eat? A yummy snack, yeah?”

The chirop tilts its oversized head, considering. With nowhere else to hide or avoid Hutch, they seem to have realized that the only option really was to consider it.

Hutch approaches closer, and takes a few treats out of the bag. Their voice is definitely softer, with a firmness to it that didn’t really carry over to whenever Hutch spoke with her. It’s cute, in a way. They’re really dedicated to their craft.

The chirop eases down off of the perch, hopping along the floor towards Hutch’s hand.

“Good boy…” they say encouragingly. “There we go, good boy!”

It tentatively stands on its tippy toes, snatching the treat out of their hand and hopping backwards out of reach. It then flies back to its perch to enjoy it, all the while Hutch is murmuring reassurances to it.

Bex watches this whole song and dance with an eyebrow raised, kicking her feet from her place on the desk. 

“So that works? You just give them treats and call them ‘a good boy’ and eventually they stop misbehaving?” She asks, after she’s sure the imp is occupied enough with its treat to not be scared off.

“I mean, it’s a little more complicated than that in some parts…” Hutch nervously chuckles, ruffling their hair with a free hand. “It’s positive reinforcement. The big thing is making sure they associate your commands and following them with good things, like treats. I just find that giving them reassurances and stuff means they remember things more easily. It’s like… they remember that coming to me is a good thing because I give them food and they associate all those things with me talking to them.” 

“I guess that makes enough sense,” Bex says. She looks over to the chirop, who has snuggled into its perch after eating the treat. In her pocket, Memmy stirs again. Since he hasn’t been outside of her pocket in a little bit, she reaches in to hold the little imp in the palm of her hand.

Hutch stands, seemingly willing to let the chirop sleep in safety for now before starting up taming again. They turn, and see the small phloof in Bex’s hands. “Oh! Who do we have here?” they ask. Bex grins a bit wider than she would like to as she shows off Memmy. 

“This is Memmy, I got him from you a few weeks ago. He’s actually why I showed up here in the first place. I didn’t actually just show up to help you wrangle a chirop back into your private back room,” she teases. 

As if suddenly realizing they’ve committed a social faux paus, Hutch goes a bit pale. “Oh! Uh, you- yeah, of course, you came here for a reason- uh, is Memmy alright? Or did you come here to get a friend for him?”

“No, he’s fine, and I’m not looking for another one,” she clarifies. “I just wanted to get some stuff to spoil him a bit. You know, part of my reward for helping with that chirop catching could be some of what you have right there.” She indicates towards the bag in Hutch’s hand, and they look down at it as if they had already forgotten it was there.

“Oh! Yeah, that can be arranged, here,” they say, shuffling over with the bag of treats. They pop a few out of the bag, holding them flat in the palm of their hand and offering them to Memmy. The phloof sniffs at them a few times, and then hops out of Bex’s hands to stand on Hutch’s.

“Does the whole positive reinforcement thing work the other way around?” Bex leans back, getting more comfortable. “Like, if I call you a good boy,” she jokes, “Do you want to give Memmy more free snacks?”

There’s a sharp intake of air, and Hutch goes from all the way focused to feeding the imp to decidedly staring up at the ceiling. The red doesn’t have time to creep up their cheeks, instead immediately flourishing like the quick burst of a firework. They let out a noise that is at least a little reminiscent of a teakettle and then immediately snap their mouth shut, like they hadn’t intended for it to come out like that.

Bex leans forward, a grin creeping over her face. Is this what she thinks it is? What is a bun to do? Ignore such easy fun to be had? This is Burrowgatory, land of the sinners, they don’t simply move on from adorable little flustered shopkeeps like that. 

Well, at least Bex doesn’t. 

“Looks like a yes to me then, hm?” she says, her voice dropping low. 

Hutch is conspicuously still avoiding eye contact, and they take a short breath in. Memmy, oblivious to truly everything currently happening, holds a small treat in his mouth and squeaks. He clearly wants to go back to Bex, just as much as Hutch wants to not have to look her in the face right now. Somehow, he’s even redder. 

“C’mon, Hutch,” she says, sliding off the desk into standing. “Let’s not hold my imp hostage. He wants to come back over here. Give him back.”

They’re not more than a foot or two away, but Bex extends a hand out expectantly. Almost on auto-pilot, they step over and gently place the phloof back into Bex’s palm with his treat. She slides the happy imp back into her pocket, and leans forward a bit.

“Thank you, Hutch,” she says. It’s clear they can see the next part of the sentence coming, the way they tense up almost expectantly. “Good boy.”

Hutch relaxes at that, making eye contact now, and Bex can see something in the depths of those eyes. Something very very tantalizing indeed. This was absolutely a path that should be continued down.  

But… there’s not enough time tonight. Not to do anything than be a bit of a tease.

Bex leans in, that smile wider than ever. She takes a second just to take in the entirety of it, the raspberry red face, the nervous smile replaced with something hopeful and hungry for direction, the dilated pupils. 

Then, she pats Hutch lightly on the head twice and takes a step back.

“Well, Hutch,” she says. “It’s been real fun. Real fun. And I’d love to help you out more with… taming imps. But I do have somewhere I gotta be.”

Hutch stares for a few moments, uncomprehending. Then it all clicks in their brain, and they shake themselves a bit, curls bouncing atop their head. (Cute). “Uh- oh, yeah! Uh, yes, yeah- thank you! For your help, I mean. Thank you for your help, Miss…” they trail off, as if only now realizing that they had never gotten Bex’s name. 

“It’s Bex,” she says with a laugh. “Remember that for next time, yeah?”

Hutch is still red, the leash around his neck swinging lightly at his side. Bex notices it distinctly for the first time, and has perhaps a few impure thoughts. 

“If you do,” she continues as she checks that the chirop is still asleep before carefully exiting the door. “I’ll give you a treat.”

Proud of those parting words, she leaves Hutch reddening in their private back room. 

She may not have gotten all the things she wanted for Memmy, but that sounds like a good excuse to come back here more often.