They're Multiplying

"Huuuuuuuutch! They're multiplying! I thought they couldn't do that!" Astro cried as he got through the Imporium's door, the bun inside the store turning their attention towards the new arrival.

"What? What do you mean by that?"

Astro dipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out two near-identical uniqors and presenting them to the confused brunette.

"...What?"

Astro took a breath, explaining as he made his way across the store. "Well I came home from work yesterday and found both of them lying in Meteor's sock pile. I thought I was just more drunk than I originally thought but I'm like... completely sure I'm sober now. Unless you're saying what because I'm actually only holding Meteor and the other one is a hallucination, in which case I have a slightly more concerning issue to take care of"

Hutch followed beside him, fidgeting as they spoke. "No no! They're both real, I just, uh... you just found them in your room? How’d they get in?"

"Unless I got my memories are already failing me, yeah. I don't know where I'd even find them naturally. And through my window, probably. I usually leave it open so the air doesn’t get stale. Also I named this one Comet"

"...So, you're keeping Comet?"

"Well Meteor looks less likely to die of stress when they're together so I thought it would be rude to separate them"

Having made it to a comfortable corner of the pet shop during the conversation, Astro slid down the wall into a comfortable cross-legged position on the floor, Comet hopping out of the palm of his hand to trot around the Imporium.

Hutch watched the uniqor move around the store, calmly checking out the various toys and other imps in the building, the quadruped sitting down when a jestie ran up to it to perform tricks.

"Well... are they giving you any trouble?"

"Nah. Seems pretty happy to just lay in the sock pile so far"

"Well, uh, do you have any idea how they got into your room? Because imps definitely can't reproduce, sexually or, er, otherwise"

Astro shrugged, passively stroking Meteor's back with a gentle finger. "I dunno man, I was hoping you'd have some sort of theory. Maybe they were buddies before that one impup chased Meteor into my burrow? So Comet found Meteor and just settled in"

"That could be it... some imps can form close relationships with each other to the point they refuse to be separated, so if Lolly separated them it would make sense for them to seek each other out. Although depending on the distance, it's impressive that Comet managed to find Meteor again..."

"Lolly?"

"Ah, uh, yeah, the orange impup? I have someone else helping train him, since we shouldn't just leave a wild imp running around like that"

Astro hummed, nodding to show his agreement. "True, true. Very responsible. I think Comet's about to fight your not orange impup, by the way"

Comet had a wide stance, huffing at a nervous impup. Astro could only tell the imp’s emotions since he had sat through some of Hutch’s lectures about imp behaviour and how to tell their emotions.

The talks had been informative, Meteor got to keep the sock pile it'd made in the corner of his room since apparently that made it comfortable, overall great. Now Astro had another uniqor that was definitely putting on a threat display right now. Alright, an imp with anger issues. Was that common? Astro thought uniqors were meant to be pure of heart or whatever. Or was it that they were attracted to the pure of heart? Neither of those really made sense to him, they were made of hellish energy. How had he gotten one with the worst anxiety he’d ever witnessed an imp experience and another that apparently had something against impups? Could one even hold an imp accountable for being discriminatory against another kind of imp?

While Astro was lost in his own mind, Hutch had managed to separate Comet and the poor impup that had done nothing wrong, bringing the former back to their recently appointed owner.

Seeing that Astro was actually paying attention to the outside world again upon being handed his second uniqor, Hutch launched into a new lecture on imp care, and how to safely prevent a potential fight, or stop an ongoing one. Since Comet seemed to be aggressive towards impups, training the uniqor would be important as to not get anyone hurt, whether it be itself and other imps or any buns that might get caught in the crossfire of a chase.

Astro listened as well as he could, humming occasionally to show he was paying attention. He was already sure he’d have to ask some other time for most of the information to be repeated, since he hadn’t been prepared to sit and listen so his mind began to wander, but he managed to take some notes so he’d remember the overall gist of what Hutch was saying so he’d at least know what to ask questions about.

He set up another time to come see Hutch about trying to get the two uniqors used to impups, as unfortunately it wouldn’t be possible to simply avoid that kind of imp altogether with how commonly the affectionate beings were kept as pets by other buns, so it would be ideal if Meteor and Comet stopped running from or trying to fight them respectively.

Astro could already feel the pain and a half trying to train the two was going to be, but the chances of him giving them away was brought down to zero the moment he had named them, so he was going to try his best getting the two properly tamed even if the two worked against him every step of the way.