PA 3.5: End of a Tail

Chapter XXIX Part II

The dog grumbled nervously, butterflies welling up in her chest as she desperately tried to figure out the situation before it blew her head open. Was it justified to condemn Patches for what he had done? Was the literature club falling apart due to the notoriety of its ex-vice principal? Was there really nothing more the poodle could do? Did Holly seriously set her up on a date with a cat she had spoken to once?

"No... No..." Luna muttered, glancing into the reflection offered by her spectacles and observing her sharp, red eyes narrow, contrasting against her brown puffy fur. "Date has five different definitions..." She bit at her narrow jowls, letting her small canines sink into the fur before she squeezed the taut flesh between her teeth in an anxious fit. "And even if she did mean that, a date isn't necessarily romantic- she just means a social arrangement."

Luna took deep breaths. She shut her eyes as she exhaled, then drew in breath as she polished her cracked glasses with the sleeve of her black jacket. "Oh... I wish she never saw that stupid comic, I should've just kept the dang things hidden elsewhere- like at home! Ughhh..."

The poodle scooted in her chair, then took in the vastness of the Hachiko library for a moment before walking in front of her table and observing the calligraphed "HHS Literature Club Membership Requests!" on the parchment taped to the front of it. "I should've really just put this thing outside, nobody can even see it here..."

She walked to the door, swinging it open and narrowly avoiding one of the many arrows she had printed and taped onto the door and surrounding area so as to bring attention to the membership request forum. It was funny how much a little anxiety had done to her thought process, and how critical of a mistake something as small as the one she had made was. She felt the mounting anxiety of underperformance start to dig at her skull, and calmed herself down by shutting her eyes and counting down from twelve. In the midst of her counting, her thoughts stopped, then turned towards potential solutions to her anxiety.

"Maybe... she's still at home?"

In a flash, the dog had weaved past the few students still lingering inside of the halls after-school and approached the teacher's lounge. Once inside, she quickly checked her pocketbook for Tigger's number, finding the aggressively large text written in capitals as was apparently the cat's style. In moments, she had dialled the number and began to listen to its ring...

Riiiing

Riiiing

"Yoo!" came the cheery, bellowing voice of the striped cat.

"Ah!" Luna exclaimed, "Tigger?"

"Can't come to the phone right now," the automated message continued, "so just leave me one and I'll hit you back! Also if y-"

The voice suddenly cut off with a loud beeep, signalling the abrupt, unintentional end of the recording and beginning the silent static of the voicemail.

Immediately, a wave of calm hit the dog for a reason she couldn't quite fathom, then the panic she had felt before reared its head in and proved too much for the poor poodle to handle. With a scrunched expression she gently placed the wall-mounted phone back into its receiver, thanked the staff for letting her use it, then marched outside the door and silently shut it behind her.

"Okay, it's alright," she began, moving past the students congregated in the halls without a second thought, "Just play it cool. She'll come in, see that you're-" she frowned "that you're a huge nerd, and then she'll make her excuses and leave." Aaagh! What was she thinking? What was she doing?! Holly was easygoing enough to garner respect from the burly cat, but Luna had more respect from the teachers of Hachiko than she would ever have of its students. She was the total opposite of a jock- she was a bespectacled, uptight, analytical nerddd.

She opened the library door with a bellowing sigh. "Holly, why would you do this to me?" She shut the door behind her, locking it against the staff's explicit directions, and began to loudly stomp around the room in a fuss, murmuring out curses at the unbelievable complexity of the situation she had found herself in. "It's just a social gathering!" she told herself, "You'll be fine! It's not a date, it is not a date!" She began to attempt to focus on something else, but her shuddering brain anxiously demanded she neatly analyze the issue before it could be compartmentalized and ignored. "At- At least the library is close to the entrance," she muttered, "I can hear her knock on the front door and open it for her at the very least- that way she won't think I'm just abandoning my duties like some non-commital sloth." She winced afterward at her words, glad Doug wasn't there to be offended by them.

With a loud exhale, she turned towards the table fraught with brochures. "First thing's first. I need to move this table outside maybe? Or- no she might prefer privacy? M-Maybe then I should just clean up, or-"

There was a sudden, raspy cough that came from behind one of the bookshelves closest to the rear of the library. It belonged to a high-pitched voice but sounded involuntary- like someone sputtering out chlorine after diving into a pool.

"Hello?" Luna asked, "Uhh! Sorry! T-The library is reserved for the literature club after school today..." There was no response from the other, though Luna could only think about how they had definitely heard all of her panicking over Holly's words.

As she edged closer to the "Dog Your Own Dogventure!" bookshelf, her extended claws tapped against the wooden floor with each footfall. She was terrified, scared, but clutched at her heart and let her mind race with possibilities of who it was, and why they were silently sitting in the corner of the room- had they just fallen asleep during class and not been woken?

"Hello?" she asked.

When she turned the corner of the bookshelf, she gasped; what she saw wasn't what she had expected. Although she expected to find someone, she didn't expect it to be her long-lost friend and her newly found one. She had imagined the next time she'd see him, that his eyes would be gleaming with his sadistic tendencies, instead, one of them was swollen shut and the other was only cracked open a smidgeon, the orb within pointed towards the dog to his left - Olive - who was unconscious and leaning their body against his shoulder. Both dogs were splayed out against the wall, like either of them had been mortally injured and were spending their last moments in each other's company.

Without sparing her a glance, Patches sighed exasperatedly, "... Great..."

--- Author's Note:

:3c


Also, there's been an update to the fanart chapter, including a new drawing and a new piece of writing! Check it out for some extra stuff!