BOBOVEMBER (Enjoy all the Art~)

“Nah, girl, I love it.” Bo-bobo paused. “Like I love you.”

Beauty beamed. “I love you, too, Bo-bobo.”

“Not romantically, obviously. My heart belongs to Mr. Bean.”

“Same to you. Except for the Mr. Bean part.”

Bo-bobo’s face lit up. “I really do love you, little lady. You make getting up every day worth it.”

“How so?”

“Your presence gives me strength. Your reactions to my jokes always make me want to do more. I’ll admit, sometimes your freak-outs get me down, but I wouldn’t trade ya for nothin’. You’re my favorite person, Beauty.”

Beauty put her fingertip to her chin, screwing her face up in exaggerated thought. “My favorite person is…Softon.”

“Aw, come on! I mean, I get it, but come on!!”

Beauty reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m just kidding. I love my brother, but you’re different. You’re like my dad.”

“I’m too young to be your dad, Bea. Why can’t I be your brother, too?”

Beauty shrugged one shoulder and laced her fingers over her stomach. She watched a clover-shaped cloud drift overhead. “You look out for me in a different way than Softon. I’ve been around you longer. You just seem like a dad to me.”

“In that case, I want Father’s Day cards from now on.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

Bo-bobo blew some air out his nose. “But if I had to put a label on it, you are like a daughter to me, Beauty. I’d lay down my life for you without a second thought. Not that I have many thoughts in my head to start with.”

Beauty tucked her chin against her collar, trying to hide her flushed cheeks. “Thank you…”

Bo-bobo unfurled one nose hair and patted her on the head with it. “Yo welcome.”

A companiable silence fell over them for a little while. Clouds drifted in front of the sun. Beauty raised her pointer finger and traced the outline of a cloud resembling Dengaku Man. Who knew, maybe it was Dengaku Man up there, fired into the sky after some failed Hajike experiment. She’d have to ask him later.

Bo-bobo stretched his right arm out and cradled the back of Beauty’s head. “I don’t want to go home.”

Beauty scooted closer to his side, slinging an arm around him. “There’s no rush. The only thing waiting for us is Don Patch’s second birthday party of the year.”

“Oh, yeah. He’ll be mad as heck if we miss that.” Bo-bobo paused. “Let’s stay here all day, then.”

“Sounds ideal.” Beauty closed her eyes and yawned. “Wake me when a cloud that looks like a donut floats on by. I wanna see how such a thing can exist.”

Bo-bobo patted her on her little pink head. “Sure thing, missy.”

He couldn’t have kept his promise, though. He dozed off quickly after she did. The two best friends lay there on the hill until the sun went down and the others came a-lookin’ for them. They trudged reluctantly to Don Patch’s birthday party, longing for that green hill.

“Suzu?”

“Eep!” She jumped a few inches off the ground when one of said crew addressed her. She whirled around and beheld a pair of vibrantly blue eyes in a round face, framed with short pink locks. Her heart lub-dubbed and she couldn’t imagine why. Anxiety? Guilt? She’d sorta had a hand in turning this girl into a doll…

“Y-yeah…um, Beauty?” Suzu asked stiffly, shoulders bunched high.

Beauty smiled at her in a dazzling reassurance. “Hey now, no need to be so nervous! What’s past is past. I want us to be friends!”

Suzu blinked at her, a bit owl-eyed. “R-really?”

“Yup!” Beauty beamed brighter than the sun, and Suzu had to blink again, lest she be blinded.

“I wanna be your friend, too!” said a second voice, and Suzu looked down to see Dengaku Man clinging to her pant leg, wagging a fake dog tail. Ack, darn it, he was cute, too…!

‘Too’? Did this mean Suzu thought Beauty was ‘cute’??

“I…I’d…” Suzu folded her hands in front of herself and bowed. “I’d like that, very much!”

“Then let’s have one rule,” Beauty said, holding a finger up. “No bowing. We’re friends. Let’s be—”

“Soops caus!” Dengaku Man interceded, climbing Suzu like a mountain and settling down on top of her head.

A giggle tumbled past Suzu’s lips before she could think better of it. She was feeling quite light.

“We’ve got some time before the train comes,” Beauty went on, pointing behind her. “Why don’t we go check out that flower field nearby?”

“Sure!” Suzu beamed, and she followed her, Dengaku Man riding on her hair.

“If you’re not back in time, we’re leaving without you~!” Don Patch sang after them.

Bo-bobo, still busy tying up Jelly J, whacked him with a nose hair. “Take all the time you need, girls! I’ll stall the train if I have to! Ooh, and bring me back a blue buttercup!”

The flower field stretched as far as the eye could see. OVER Castle was nothing but a distant memory. There was only this, these colors and smells, the buzzing of bumblebees and the flutter of butterfly wings. The flower petals quavered silently in the spring breeze, making a wave across the field. Suzu wanted to spend a few eternities here. She wanted to escape it all…

Beauty plopped right down in the middle of a patch of pink and white flowers. Suzu perched a few feet across from her; Dengaku Man climbed down her arm and started picking blooms. “Tell me about yourself, Suzu!” Beauty suggested, dimpling.

“Uh…” Suzu’s cheeks flushed. She tugged at a pink blossom by her knee, feeling its thin stem between her fingers. “What do you wanna know?”

“Just anything!” Beauty put her hands in her lap and sat back, still smiling, but Suzu stumbled into silence. In the past three seconds, she’d forgotten every word she’d ever learned. Beauty seemed to pick up on this, so she led the conversation. “Well, it wouldn’t be fair for me to ask that without telling you something about myself, would it?” She tapped her chin with mock thoughtfulness, already knowing what she was going to say. “I’m Beauty, I’m fourteen, and I like cats, dancing, and chocolate cake!”

“You like cats?!” Dengaku Man barked like a dog. “I don’t KNOW you anymore, Beauty!”

Beauty just petted him on the antenna. “Hm, what else? My favorite book is Fried Green Tomatoes, I’m afraid of lawn mowers, and the fictional character I like the most would have to be Akari from Aria the Animation!”

It really wasn’t a lot of information to process, but to Suzu it was. She was still gathering up her scattered brain cells. Why did this girl’s shining smile strike her dumb?

“Er…” Suzu picked a few flowers and furiously started weaving them together. “I’m Suzu, I’m seventeen, and I like...marsupials? My favorite hobby is drawing. I don’t like horror movies, but I love action ones. And I guess my favorite character is…” She tapped her chin, really thinking about it. “Lisa Simpson?”

“This is all well and good,” chimed in Dengaku Man, who had created and put on his own crown of yellow flowers, “but what I wanna know is: cats or dogs?”

“Cats,” Suzu responded.

Dengaku Man double facepalmed. “Oh for crud’s sake, you two have no taste.”

That got the two girls giggling hard. They caught sight of each other through their tears of mirth and giggled even harder. Then suddenly they were holding hands and just guffawing, foreheads pressed together. Dengaku Man stared at them like they’d taken leave of their senses.

“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Beauty said when they separated, pointing at the flower chain Suzu had set aside.

“Thanks.” Suzu looked it over. “I have no idea how I did it. It just sorta happened.”

“I can show you the proper way to make a flower crown, if you want,” Beauty suggested, already picking some red flowers.

“I’d like that quite a bit.” Suzu’s face was hurting from smiling so much, a thing that hadn’t happened in she-didn’t-know-how-long.

For a few minutes, the two girls worked on their flower weaves, heads bent close as one instructed the other. Suzu could almost forget the dreamy way her heart was beating. She was having such fun.

“Et voila!” Beauty announced after a time, plopping her flower crown on her hair. “What do you think?”

Beauty-ful, Suzu thought, but said instead, “It suits you.”

Beauty gestured to her excitedly. “Now you put on yours.”

Suzu did as bid. “How do I look?” she asked, fingering the flowers she’d killed.

“Exquisite!” Beauty proclaimed at the same time Dengaku Man jumped back onto Suzu’s head and shouted, “Floral!”

“Haha!” Suzu clasped her hands overtop her heart, blushing gleefully. “Thank you!”

Beauty gazed at her for a moment, long enough for Suzu’s heart to beat harder, then tilted her head. “I really do hope we can be good friends, Suzu,” she confessed. “Can we?”

“Of course!” Suzu assured her.

At that very moment, a train whistle blew from the other side of the field. The Ticketmaster’s voice echoed across the valley: “All aboard the Polar—I mean, the Hallelujah Land Express! If you ain’t here in two minutes, you ain’t goin’!”

“Gah!” Beauty sprang to her feet. “Suzu, let’s hurry!”

“Right!” Suzu popped up beside her. Dengaku Man tumbled off her head, but luckily fell right into Suzu’s arms, and she carried him as they made a break for the train.

Gasser and Don Patch had already boarded the train. Bo-bobo, Jelly Jiggler slung over his shoulder with a rope binding his ankles, looked back at the girls and the dog-thing as they hustled over. “Just in time! Which is good because I was about to send a bloodhound after you!”

“Hmph. Bloodhounds ain’t all that,” Dengaku Man sulked.

“Did you get me a blue buttercup?” Bo-bobo wanted to know.

“Uh…” Beauty took her flower crown off. “How about you take this instead?”

“No! I wanted a blue buttercup! A pansy-ass flower crown won’t cut it! Gosh, Beauty, you don’t know me AT ALL!!” And Bo-bobo ran into the train, sobbing waterfalls.

Beauty and Suzu stepped onto the train, and the conductor appeared to take them to their private car (it had been a pretty set of tickets Suzu had stumbled into). Suzu knew she would have to step back in as the group’s guide now…

“Hey.” Something nudged her. She looked over at Beauty and saw her grinning. “Let’s beat Halekulani fast. That way, we can spend some time having fun in the park!”

“Sure!” Suzu chirped. It wasn’t near that simple, but still, she hoped…

I like Beauty, she thought, watching the girl as she jumped on the bed of their private train car with Don Patch. I’ve never liked anyone before, so I don’t know what to do, but I know it. I like her.

“Hey.” Someone else nudged her now. Dengaku Man had climbed back onto her head. He leaned down to whisper in her ear, “Just so you know, I ship you hard.”

“!?!?!?” Yelping wordlessly, Suzu jumped up high. Dengaku Man flew off her head and smacked face-first into the ceiling.

Suzu retreated out the back door to the rear platform. She could vaguely make out Jelly Jiggler on the end of his long rope, scraping along the tracks. Suzu smacked her palms over her burning cheeks and flustered.

“Ooh! I got it!” Rice plucked a movie off the middle shelf and flashed the title at her. It was Shrek the Third. Suzu peered at it for several seconds, face expressionless, before raising her gaze to Rice’s. “You know me so well.”

“Un!” Rice made a cute little noise, popped a kiss on her temple, and put the movie in. Suzu locked her fingers around Rice’s wrist and teleported them back onto the couch so they wouldn’t have to move. They each leaned against an arm of the couch and laid back, putting their feet in one another’s laps. It was cozy.

The movie opened on the disgraced Prince Charming, working for penny farthings in a dinner theatre. Despite having watched this movie together dozens of times, Suzu and Rice still giggled in sync as they watched Gingee and the others roast Charming’s performance. Rice laughed even harder when Charming started crying in the alleyway.

“Charming’s got a face that just makes you wanna punch it,” Rice commented. “I would like his hair, though.”

Suzu teleported again, her shortest distance yet, so she was laying cuddled up on Rice’s chest. “I like your hair the way it is,” she said, tugging on his light brown bangs. “I’d be sad if you changed it.”

“You know, I’m actually a blond,” Rice admitted, combing his fingers through his locks. “This is all dye.”

Suzu ogled at him. “Seriously?”

“Of course not. I’m kidding.”

Suzu smacked him on the chest. “You’re terrible.”

“But do you still love me?”

“Yes.” Snickering, Suzu pressed a teeny kiss to Rice’s collarbone. “I do.”

On the screen, Shrek was fulfilling his duties as the fill-in king. He sliced a guy during his knighting ceremony, sent a boat off just a little too hard and set it on fire, and got all gussied up with Fiona for a big party. Rice and Suzu idly traced circles on each other’s skin as they watched the silliness.

“Y’know, if you have to be envious of anyone’s looks, it should be Shrek’s,” Suzu said as Shrek and Fiona struggled to kiss each other in their ridiculous outfits.

“You for real?” Rice asked, lazily raising an eyebrow.

Suzu giggled into Rice’s pajama shirt. “Well, I think you’d look good in that,” she teased, pointing her pinky at Shrek in his ridiculous pastels and powdered wig.

Rice blinked a big, round pair of eyes at her. “Well you’re in luck, because I have that precise outfit in my closet! I’ll model it for you tomorrow!”

“Haha! Ha…” Suzu guffawed into Rice’s chest, and he just hugged her and loved on her.

Wrapped together, they looked sidelong at the movie. The dying king bestowed upon Shrek the future of the kingdom, and when Shrek panicked, the king offered him an alternative. As Shrek, Puss, and Donkey began their long sea voyage, Rice made a thoughtful noise against Suzu’s hair.

Suzu wriggled in his arms until she could look at him. “What?” she asked curiously.

“Nothing,” Rice sighed. “I just really feel for Shrek in this movie. Being a king is a big responsibility. Not everyone’s cut out for it.” He paused. “I thought I was, though.”

Suzu linked her arms around his neck and rested her whole weight on his chest. “Tell me. If you became the Wiggin King again, would you make me your queen?”

“Of course!...is what I would like to say, but you need to be Wiggy to even be considered.”

“In that case, teach me your Wiggy ways.”

“For real?!” Rice yelped excitedly, sitting up and nearly dislodging her from his lap.

Suzu anchored herself to him so she wouldn’t fall off the couch. She put her palm to his cheek and locked eyes with him. “I want to be with you always, Rice. Learning to Wig Out is just par for the course in this relationship.” She beamed. “Maybe I can even help you reclaim your title one day!”

Tears brimmed in Rice’s embiggened eyes. “Suzu…” He threw himself at her and rolled them around on the couch. “I love youuuuu!!”

“Rice, really now!” Suzu giggled, her heart thudding fast in her chest. “We can start my lessons after the movie!”

“Oh, right!” Rice quit rolling and lay back, positioning her back on top of him. “I don’t wanna miss the princesses’ team up!”

“That’s still a long ways off,” Suzu observed, watching Artie hang by his underwear in the high school auditorium.

“But it’s the best part. I loves me some strong women.”

A light blush sizzled behind Suzu’s cheeks. Tucking her face against Rice’s neck, she whispered, “I love you…”

The ground lurched and Lambada nearly took a swan dive off the top of the tower. Scrambling for purchase, he backed up just in time to see lava spew from the direction of the Runaway Robot Range. And interspersed in the lava? Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Hundreds of him.

“ULTIMATE BO-BOBO ERUPTION OF MAGMA!” bellowed the man’s suave voice from the depths. Lambada rolled his eyes in annoyance, then squinted into the heat. He could vaguely make out the shapes of Ujikin TOKIO, Star Saber, and Chisuisui in the mess. Lambada clicked his tongue. Of course, Ujikin would be useless.

“You’ll fall, Bo-bobo,” the Polygon Prince said out loud, watching the flying Bo-bobo’s start to fall and go “whee!”

Lambada crouched down on the ledge, combing the bumfuzzled crowd for signs of Bo-bobo’s comrades. He needed to know his enemy to beat them.

A hodgepodge of colorful characters were celebrating right outside the gate to the Robot Range, jumping up and high-fiving and dancing. Lambada took “inventory” of them and matched them to their filed photos: a blue jelly, an orange thing, a punk kid, a scarfed loser, a poo-head, a white dough-boy, and—

…Hm.

There was a girl, and she looked perfectly ordinary. Lambada skimmed his recent memory of Baldy Bald the Fourth’s briefing of what the generals were to expect. This pink-haired girl from Bo-bobo’s group had no special powers and played the damsel-in-distress act. Everyone loved her, the reports said. But lordy, what was her name?

Lambada stroked his chin and smirked. “Maybe I can use her against you,” he murmured to the last falling Bo-bobo.

“Wheeeee…!!”

~*~

Lambada prided himself on a lot of things, but his transformation ability was his favorite. He could turn into anything he wanted after seeing it just once, and it was absolutely flawless. No one ever suspected a thing when he was hiding before their very eyes!

“Hm, yes,” he hummed, appraising his disguise in a funhouse mirror. Big blue eyes, pink hair, doofy smile—he had that girl to a T. He couldn’t change his clothes to match hers, but with the face so perfect, what did it matter? Using this girl’s face, Lambada would sweet talk Bo-bobo’s allies into letting their guard down, and—

“WHAM!” he exploded, throwing his fists up. A passing child saw and heard him and burst into tears, clinging to his mother’s skirt, a feat which only pleased Lambada further. Thrilled to bits, Lambada stalked the crowd, out of the shadows. All he had to do was find a mark…

“Ah, man! This game is rigged!”

“You want another go, little fella?”

“OBVIOUSLY! I need to take that hamster action figure home or my wife will divorce me!”

Lambada’s transformed ears, speared with green earrings, perked to a voice. He was in the game booth area of the park, and he’d found just who he needed. The little white dough boy from Bo-bobo’s group was trying his hand(?) at a shooting range, aiming for a miscreant hamster. Lambada whistled cheerfully under his breath. This was going to be easier than he thought.

The white thing must have sensed Lambada behind him because he looked up from the hamster. “Hm? Beauty?”

“Hi~!” Lambada trilled in his best falsetto, raising a hand.

The white thing’s sunglasses cracked. “WAAAHHHH!!” He tumbled right off the ledge of the booth.

Lambada feigned a look of concern. “Oh no, uh…you! Are you all right?” he warbled, scooping down beside him.

The white thing peeled its face off the ground, took a look at Lambada, and crab walked backward. “B…Beauty?” he stuttered, squinting so hard his eyes pushed out of their sockets.

“Yes, it’s me, your friend! You remember me, don’t you?” Lambada laughed, waving his hand lightly.

“Uh…” The white thing stood and stared at him, a broken look on his face. Lambada fought a devilish smile. Heh, what a chump. He bought it lock, stock, and barrel.

The white thing stood still for a good while, just looking at his “friend,” until his face finally brightened in recognition. “Beauty! It’s about time! You promised to win me something at the fair!”

“I did?” Lambada retorted automatically, blinking. “I mean, uh, of course I did! What do you want?”

“I need that Hamichin action figure! My very future is staked on it!”

Lambada straightened up to look and see what the white thing was indicating. “Oh, that? Hey, I saw an even bigger one down that way!”

“For realsies?! Take me there, Beauty!”

Snickering in his mind, Lambada led Bo-bobo’s tiny ally into an alley, where—

BONK! –he finished him.

“That’s one down~”

~*~

But Lambada’s bloodlust was not slaked. He needed to mace the other rebels…he needed to get Bo-bobo. So Lambada stalked him some more. From afar, he watched the ridiculous man take down Combat Blues and Jeda the Wind God, waiting for the opportune time to step in. Lambada admitted it, he liked to show off: he needed just the right chance to make a flashy entrance.

He got that at the Coin Drop Stage. Lambada was already on his way there when he got a Calling Bubble from Z-Block commander Bubble-uba. Lambada squished it in his palm and it relayed a message: Bo-bobo at the Coin Stage. Need backup. Bubs.

So Lambada climbed that building, too. “I got your bubble,” he singsonged, looking down at Bubble-uba and Bo-bobo with two of his friends. “You could’ve used your cell phone. I have come to join you.”

“Master Lambada! It’s an honor, sir, truly it is!” Bubble-uba cheered. “Let’s take these fools out together!”

“What?! You wanna take us out?!” Bo-bobo and his friends gasped, dressed as pretty girls. The two friends were the orange thing and some brown-haired guy Lambada had yet to see.

“Nah, I think I’ll let you handle it for a while,” Lambada drawled, feigning a yawn. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Uh? O-okay…?”

“Have some of these, though.” Lambada pulled a lever and unleashed a coin shower on the combatants. “You guys collect coins?”

“Master Lambada, how does this—"

“TAKE US OUT TO THE BALLGAME!” Bo-bobo and his friends sang, bum-rushing Bubble-uba.

In all honesty, Lambada knew Bubble-uba would fail miserably, but he didn’t care enough to step in. His plan was to watch Bo-bobo’s fighting style up close, and what better seat than from above?

Bo-bobo’s group and Bubble-uba tussled for a while. The new guy was apparently named Rice, or at least that was what Lambada thought to call him based on the guy’s Super Fist. The guy summoned so much rice that Bo-bobo and the orange thing couldn’t walk two paces without crunching it under their shoes. Lambada plopped his chin in his hand as he watched this new guy fight. It was…hm…vaguely entertaining.

Bubble-uba lost that battle about five minutes after Lambada’s arrival (which loosely impressed the Polygon Prince—he hadn’t expecting him to last four). Bo-bobo and company took to ramming the wall to the next area of the Coin Drop Stage, screaming for “Beauty!” Lambada took this as his cue. Turning a panel of the glass roof into a polygon, he pushed through it and started falling into the stage.

“We gotta handle Lambada before rescuing Beauty!” Rice called back to Bo-bobo, who was using the orange thing to paddle the wall.

“You fools aren’t going anywhere!” Lambada hee-hawed, charging up his aura. “Not even to the bathroom!”

“Now that was…horrible English!” Bo-bobo whimpered.

Rice slid into the space between Lambada and his mark. “Let me take him! You guys go get Beauty!”

“But I don’t want you,” Lambada grumped back.

“Well, too bad!” Rice hollered at him, striking a ballerina pose and lighting up with his own aura. “Super Fist of Rice!”

It was a mistake, opening that coin slot. Rice, to his benefit, was a worthy distraction. While Lambada was dodging his punches, Bo-bobo turned into a worm and snuck out through the coin slot. Lambada tried to head him off, but Rice wasn’t having it.

“SUPER FIST OF RICE: TWICE THE RICE, IT’S TWICE AS NICE!”

Lambada was trapped in a giant, floating rice bowl, Bo-bobo was getting away, and Lambada was feeling vaguely panda-ish. Rice jeered at him from the ground. “That’s funny! You dropped coins in through that slot and that’s how he got out! You gave him a way to escape!”

The panda-ish feeling abated, giving way to the white-hot fury surging through Lambada’s form. Bursting forth with aura, Lambada cast a killer look over his shoulder. “I won’t just defeat you…” he growled. “I’ll make you wish you were never born!”

The polygons came forth. Rice’s face went white as a sheet as he, too, became shapes. Lambada touched down on the ground of sharpened, polygonic coins. He approached the trembling boy, infuriated to see that the guy was taller than him, and leered at him.

“I’m…polygons!” Rice grunted.

“And that’s not all~” Lambada cooed.

“No…I can’t…move…!”

“Let’s wrap this up. Face Lift!” And Lambada used his other favorite move, wrenching a smile-face polygon straight off Rice’s person.

Rice staggered backward, his face even whiter. “What good was that?!”

“Well, it was fun.” And thus, Lambada delivered the finishing blow. Rice tumbled through the vent in the floor and came out of the slot on the other side, blotchy and misshapen. Lambada looked down at him from the window, the boy’s face still hovering over his left hand, smiling blithely.

Lambada hummed delightedly to himself. “Wait until those fools see this.”

“And the Hajikelists blow the base up at least once a week,” spoke his right hand in a tone similar to Dio Brando. “What’s the big dealio?”

Rice stared at his hands eyeballing him. “I’ve caused major damage,” he mumbled in his lonesome voice, lovely but dour. “How can I possibly make up for…for any of this?”

He’d clawed his way to the rank of Hajike King, only to have it handed over as a consolation prize, and then he’d been so desperate to genuinely attain it, he’d hurt people. (Granted, one of the people he’d hurt was Jelly Jiggler and that fella kinda just had a punchable face, but Rice digressed.) He’d nearly turned Bo-bobo’s friends into pandas, which he’d been intending to ship off to Madagascar to party with King Julien. How could anyone forgive that?

He, Rice, was a truly deplorable fellow. He had this second chance at life before him, granted to him by his oh-so-recent adversary, but…did he deserve it?

Rice’s hands looked at each other. Rice was the one controlling them and he still had an inkling they were communicating telepathically. He then remembered aggravatingly that the marker in his pocket was a permanent one and scowled. His two hands “nodded” to each other and came at him.

“There tain’t no such thing as a coincidence in this world, Ricey boy,” said Gene Autry. “It’s fate or luck or nuthin’. And runnin’ into Bo-bobo was both.”

“That’s all well and good,” Rice retorted, “but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little—how do you say—pathetic.”

Dio Brando smacked him in the face. Rice blinked at his left hand, flummoxed beyond reason. He hadn’t meant to do that. Was this the start of Alien Hand Syndrome?

“Hey, you feel that?” questioned Dio Brando, nudging Rice’s pocket where his phone was, opposite the one where he’d kept the (permanent) marker. “Check it out. Could be important.”

“Un, un!” hummed Gene Autry.

“I would if you guys shut up for like, five seconds,” Rice cursed at them.

Gene Autry and Dio Brando high-fived (Rice cringed, having smacked his palms too hard), and Rice pulled his pinging phone from his pocket. It was a text from a number he didn’t know, but still knew who it was right away: Hey buddy, you alive out there?

Rice blinked at the text bubble on the screen. Instead of replying sensibly, he asked something stupid(ly important): How did you get my number?

Bo-bobo replied rapidly: Turns out Don Patch keeps a record of all Hajikelists’ contact information in a little black book in his sock! He says it uses it to score dates. Yeck, amirite?

Rice was smiling. Realizing this, the smile slipped. Then Bo-bobo texted again: Glad you’re okay, little chicken wing. We were worried we hadn’t made it in time.

Rice’s heart jerked strangely, then settled into a lighter rhythm. Smiling a bit more shyly than before, he took a selfie with his left hand posed by his head and sent the pic to the Bo-tector: I am well and good. Just hanging out with Gene Autry. (He didn’t trust Dio Brando not to flip off the camera.)

O rlly? Tell him to come out of retirement! Bo-bobo responded. Then he sent a pic of his own: him playing Japanese checkers on top of a moving train with Jelly Jiggler. My company ain’t as cool. Pause, then another text: Now Jelly’s telling me to put my phone up and focus on the game. What a sourpuss.

A laugh tumbled past Rice’s lips. He smacked Dio Brando to his mouth, surprised at himself. Where had that come from?

Bo-bobo sent a video now. Don Patch, wearing a blond wig and bad makeup, was chasing Jelly Jiggler around the top of the train, yelling something about Little Bo-bobo Peep. Bo-bobo was guffawing like a goon and giving Rice a play-by-play of the action, even though Rice could see everything. “And Donnie swings! And he misses! Jelly’s gnawing on Donnie’s leg. Oh, how the turns have tabled!”

The video ended, but the hillside still rang with noise. Rice was laughing so hard, tears were running down his face. He dropped his phone on his chest and ran his hands down his cheeks. Gene Autry and Dio Brando stood up and looked at him. Rice laughed even harder when they shared an incredulous glance.

“Is he comin’ to ‘is senses?” inquired Gene Autry.

“I think he is,” surmised Dio Brando.

Rice brought his hands back down and wiped his eyes, smudging the permanent marker on his knuckles. How had a conversation with his own hands turned into something like this?

“Maybe,” he said out loud, for his own benefit, “maybe I’m needed after all.”

His phone dinged with another message from Bo-bobo. This one said: Would love to talk more, but it’s gettin’ late and Jelly’s demandin’ another game. I’ll send you pics from our trip to Hallelujah Land! (37 ballerina clown emojis)

Rice laughed so hard his stomach hurt. Just hours ago, he’d been fighting Bo-bobo tooth and nail, and now they were…

“I have a friend,” Rice said out loud, just to hear the words. “And if the time comes that he needs me, I’ll stand beside him.”

Gene Autry poked him in the eyes. “I coulda told ya that!”