Ready Aim Giggle

(Chronological index: Early in Marriage)(Right after Annie CII)

The couple explored the blanket castle and were very impressed with the sylphs' capabilities. It was roomy, sturdy and imaginatively asymmetrical.

They allowed that it was special enough to stand for another day. That's when Pet started to beg for Buttercup to have a chance to see it.

Denise's parents had commitments through the weekend and the humans weren't fond of having to pick their way through the castle for that long.

"Or, Lurch could drive up and get her," Annie suggested. "She could sleep over for a night or two, one of them inside the blanket castle." Ray glanced at her suspiciously.

"Why me?"

"Because you love your new family, of course, including Pet, and would do just about anything for her." Annie stared her master directly in the eye as he tried to guess if she was manipulating him for some reason.

Then he mentally shrugged. He did love Pet. And he loved Annie. And he knew the little brunette loved him and Pet. So if she was manipulating him, he'd likely survive. And she also might be doing a double blind, pretending to manipulate him to screw with his head.

He turned to say yes directly to Pet and found the blonde sylph hoping. She was holding her breath and had all ten fingers crossed. "Okay, Pet, but you have to call Buttercup to see if she wants to come, and then ask Chuck and Carolyn if it's okay."

"Oh, it'll be fine," Denise was about to say. She got as far as 'Oh.' Pet's eyes opened wide as Q-tips at the thought of making a sylph-to-sylph phone call all on her own.

"Reeeeeeeeeeeally?" she squeaked. "You want ME to make the call? To BUTTERCUP? And ask her first?"

"Of course," Denise said. "No use asking Mom if she says no."

"Come on," Annie said, taking one of Pet's arms. They ran off towards the living room phone, the one with the sylph-lever on the receiver.

"Let's get this locked in quick," Annie whispered. They started climbing the rope ladder.

"Why?" Pet whispered back.

"Before Lurch realizes there won't be any sex in this house, not as long as your Mom can hear."

Pet giggled and climbed faster.

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The visit lasted through the weekend. That meant Buttercup was invited on the weekly shopping trip.

Ray announced that he was going to make the shopping list, then placed the carrier underneath his computer desk.

"Yay!" Pet shouted and started running towards the carrier. Buttercup followed, but noticed that Annie was running towards the sofa/ That was a path up to the top of the computer desk.

"What's going on? she asked.

"We have to load the gun!" Pet shouted cheerfully. She scrambled up to the top of the carrier and knelt by the viewing turret. Buttercup helped disconnect it and lift it up.

A hook was hovering in the air next to them. Annie was running a long, flat davit mounted on the bottom of the humans' desk. She cranked it down and Pet connected the hook. The turret was lifted up and away.

Buttercup helped her daughter swing it over to the side and Annie lowered it to the carpet. Pet warned Buttercup six times to be careful and not step in the hole where the turret used to be because it wasn't over cushions but over the spiral ladder and it hurt to fall down it, or at least it might, no one had, but Annie had been very careful to give Pet a very important safety lecture about open hatches when your attention is on the suspended load.

"I'll be careful," Buttercup promised. Pet nodded and jumped down to disconnect the hook. Annie paid out more slack and Pet moved to the back of the knee well, hooking something plastic in primary colors.

It was lifted and guided into the turret's slot. Buttercup helped settle it evenly and looked it over. It was a toy gun of some sort. A mechanism had been added to the trigger which lead by interlocks to a pair of spade handles at the back. It looked like a sylph could fire this thing.

She touched one handle, carefully, and the thing swung easily. She could also raise or depress it. Someone was serious about arming the tiny.

Annie raised the hook only a bit over the gun, then slid down the cord. "To the armory!" she shouted. Buttercup jumped to the carpet with the rest of them.

The armory was a shoebox with a doorway cut into it, slid under one sofa.

Pet and Annie ran in and came out, each carrying three suction cup darts. "Get some of your own, Buttercup," Annie said. "Before Lurch decides that we have to give you two of ours."

She obeyed and ran back. There was a paper coffee cup that was mounted below the lip of the carrier and used as a quiver. Their darts would be just within reach.

The arming of the carrier was finished just as Ray printed the list. He put his MP3 player and the sylphs in the carrier, kissed Denise goodbye and let the pets wave.

"What, Denny isn't coming with us?" Buttercup asked. She was loud enough for the humans to hear.

"Denise is not…comfortable with the level of attention I give to the proper arrangement of a shopping cart," Ray said.

"I put eggs in the cart and SOME one shouted, 'WRONG!' So I don't go." She sounded cheerful enough as she blew kisses to each sylph. Annie ducked.

Then they were in the car.

"You get three shots," Pet told her mother as they went to market. "Anything you want to be in the shopping cart, you have three tries."

"Why can't we just ask Ray for what we want?"

"Oh, we can," Annie said. "But this stuff he won't turn down. He can't. He has pre-promised to accept it."

"Ah. So if you ask for candy, he may say you have enough, but if you shoot a bag, then he'll buy it."

"Yeah," Annie nodded. "I mean, you can ask for, like, RC Cola? But Ray thinks that stuff is battery acid, so he'll point out that we could never finish a can before it goes flat. Then that would be wasteful."

"But that's not an excuse for not picking something that's been darted," Pet added. "He can't! It's a solemn pinky promise."

"That's solemn," Buttercup nodded. "Does it have to stick?"

"Yes. That's very important. If it bounces off, Lurch might say he didn't see the choice, so he'll grab stuff at random."

"I got fig paste," Pet moaned. "I wanted orange marmalade. He brought home fig paste and made me eat a fig paste sandwich! He said it was my choice and I hadda."

"How was it?" Buttercup asked curiously.

"Coerced," Annie growled. "No way it could be any better than yucky."

"Well, it wasn't that bad," Pet started to say. Buttercup knew the family well enough by then to know Annie's immediate reaction.

She spoke along with the other sylph as she protested, "It's the principal of the thing!"

Annie spun to stare at the older sylph, suspicious that she was being mocked. Then she decided to just take it at face value. "See?" She jerked a thumb in Buttercup's direction. "She knows."

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The MP3 player would hang from Ray's neck, and so would the ear buds. The music wasn't for him, it was for the sylphs.

"Don't listen to it," Annie cautioned them. "It's meant to distract us."

"But some of the songs on the playlist," Pet explained, "are from the 70's." Buttercup blinked. "With a heavy drum beat that drives Annie's feet to dance and she gets distracted like she's supposed to."

"Disco is my downfall," Annie admitted.

"And you know me, Buttercup, I hate to see someone dancing alone, so I end up as distracted as she is and Ray zooms down the candy aisle and we end up with lemon yogurt and a box of Winnie-the-Pooh bandaids."

"We'll just have to see about that," Buttercup said firmly.

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Ray clipped the carrier to the cart's bow, raised the safety rails and lifted the girls to the top. He waited until they had loaded the first dart, in the manner of a rehearsed artillery squad, and then started shopping.

Nobody tried to select anything in Produce. Their choices were known and influenced the menu easily enough.

"But if we had this gun in the kitchen," Annie mused, "we could go a long way towards getting the food spiced PROPERLY." She kept the dart trained on the garlic bin as they went by.

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Annie's first shot was to get a box of toaster pastries. Ray had lifted two from the shelf, but not Annie's favorite flavor. She shot past his waist, making him flinch.

But he obediently put the box in the cart.

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Ray liked chunky salsa, but for sylphs that meant wrestling with a glumph of mashed tomato that squirmed like a squid. So Pet aimed her first dart at the smoother stuff. It bounced off and fell to the linoleum.

Ray spun at the sound of the gun's spring and saw the dart land. He reached for the bottle of pickled beets.

"I thought it was a good shot at the Salsa," Buttercup said in a dangerous tone. Ray's hand hardly paused but dipped down to the salsa bottle.

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Pet's second dart sailed true and straight and hit the glass front of the freezer. Ray stopped the cart. He eyed the angle from the gun to the dart and decided that she'd aimed for blueberry sorbet.

"No!" she protested. "The cart was moving! I wanted the Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby!"

"Ben and Jerry's is four doors along, Pet," Ray explained. He picked her up and carried her away to show where she should have aimed. Buttercup was about to intervene, but she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to find that Annie had an indulgent smile.

"What's with you?" she asked. "Ray's teasing Pet about the fact that she can't read. And you're just standing there?"

"Eh," Annie shrugged. "Bet you a Snicker's bar she comes back with Chubby Hubby." Four feet away, Ray was arguing that the dart's height was about right for Pumpkin ice cream, if she'd shot the right door. Pet shrieked.

"She's getting agitated."

"She's getting attention," Annie pointed out. "The whole point of the gun is to make shopping fun. And it is.

"Denny's a professional purchaser for the hospital. She doesn't want to spend more time shopping, it's not fun. Ray's happy to relieve her burden and loves the responsibility. And he loves teasing us. And you know Pet loves to be teased."

"She does," Buttercup nodded.

"That fig paste? She was the center of Ray and Denise's attention for about forty five minutes for that one bite. And now she gets to tell the story. Dad was aghast at how the poor little girl suffered."

Buttercup nodded. "I expect she'll get equal sympathy from Chuck." Annie nodded. "And what do you get?"

"I get to grouse about a stingy owner, or about the inaccuracy of the weapon he allowed us, or about how fast he goes down the cookie aisle." She turned to look the other woman in the eyes. "But I never make Pet feel bad about getting attention."

"Good," Buttercup nodded. A very high squeal drew their attention. Pet was happily hugging her carton of B&J's CH. Then squealing and shivering. Then hugging the carton again, squealing and shivering, all the way back to the carrier.

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Since Buttercup wasn't planning on shopping, she wasn't watching the shelves as they went by. So she happened to be glancing up at Ray as they started going down the candy aisle.

The music was in the middle of a song from a movie soundtrack. Ray touched his pocket. Suddenly the headphones of the MP3 player beneath them started playing My Sharona.

Annie was holding the gun, tracking the bags of Gumi Bears. She found it deliciously ironic to make Ray buy things that would end up stuck to his ear.

The bass started, though, and her feet started to tap. Then her head nodded.

Pet wasn't holding the gun so she just broke out immediately in dance. The sylphs almost lost their footing as the cart sped up.

"Dirty rotten cheater," Buttercup muttered. She glared at the human. He saw, noted, and shrugged off her expression.

Buttercup stepped back, hands reaching for the gun handle. She had always thought this song was a bit creepy. The lyrics "Always get it up for the touch of the younger kind." bothered her, so she didn't feel like dancing.

Ray watched closely, but made no move to stop her. Of course, if Buttercup won the Gumis, it wouldn't be as ironic. It wouldn't be an Annie victory.

The sylph got right behind the brunette, reaching for the triggers… The bags were coming up fast.

Then her hands rose swiftly, covering Annie's ears. She shouted "Fire when ready, Gridley!"

"Oh, yeah!" Annie snapped. She corrected her aim and let fly. The snapshot nearly tore the bag of Bears off the rack. Ray stopped, a tacit admission of defeat.

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Pet spent her last dart on a box of birthday candles in the baking aisle. Ray paused the cart and they looked up to see him ponder.

"There aren't any birthdays coming up, Pet," he pointed out.

"Yeah, I know, but birthdays are really fun and the cakes are really great and if we could make one while Buttercup's here we could have some cake and ice cream and candles and we can all run around and blow them out together, like we used to do before Denny and I moved out and I miss that more than I miss almost anything."

Ray stared. And lifted up the box of candles. "Well, I suppose we'll need a cake. What flavor?"

"Coconut," Buttercup and Pet said together. Annie blinked in surprise. "It's what she likes," Pet said, nodding at the oldest sylph. "And if we're doing this for her…"

Ray turned his back on the cart. They watched him pick through the mixes and the frosting.

"You got three things in one shot," Annie said softly. "You're sneakier than most people give you credit for." She wrapped her arms around her roommate for a big warm hug.

"But Annie's allergic to coconut," Ray claimed when he came back. Pet gasped. Annie called her master a rude name for sowing hate and discontent.

The three of them argued and blamed and apologized and teased all the way through the rest of the shopping list.

Buttercup just smiled at the way the three were loving each other at the top of their lungs.

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So Pet and Annie had no darts left and Buttercup had no intention of using her three. She was just visiting, after all.

Then she saw a familiar color on the upper shelf of an end cap. Something on special..

When she grew up, Almond Roca was THE treat. Chocolate covered toffee with chopped almond covering, the little foil-wrapped bars showed up at Christmas and birthdays. It just wasn't a birthday until Daddy teased you about the earthquake in Roca or the Almond shortage or the new medical discoveries on the effects of toffee…

And just when you were sure that any jury would give you a pass for killing him, he produced the can and life went on.

She'd never asked for any since sylphing. The candy was too big for a sylph to chew. She'd just never imagined taking to candy with a hammer, like Annie did regularly.

She'd never imagined asking for something like a candy bar that was too big for one sylph to finish, or even her and Pet together, in a timely fashion.

"I was an idiot," she said softly. She could just ask.

"What was that, Mom?"

No one would care if she only had a bug's worth of the stuff. Not this family, not her own. She grabbed the handles of the gun and leaned back.

"What are you doing?" Pet asked.

"Remember to lead the target," Annie advised.

"CLEAR!" Buttercup shouted. Ray flinched at the outburst and let go of the cart. For a wonder, it sailed on true, no hinking or jinking. She pulled the triggers and the dart sprung.

It stuck the can low and to the side, but it stuck. Ray blinked and reached for the cart handle. "RELOAD!" she shouted.

The other sylphs threw themselves forward. Annie knelt and hefted a dart, Pet grabbed it and thrust it down the barrel. Bother sylphs pressed the rubber until the second click.

This shot hit the second can dead center on the label. Ray, Annie and Pet made noises of appreciation at her marksmanship. Or started to. She shouted, "RELOAD!" once more.

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"Oh, you should have SEEN that one, Denny!" Pet said. Denise lifted the two sylphs in her cupped hands, looking from mother to daughter. "It hit?"

"It hit the can so hard it knocked it backwards!"

"Whoa!"

"Whoa, yeah, and it took Ray two tries to get the dart back off so he could put the can on the conveyor and the girl at the checkout thought we got a lot of Almond Roca and Ray said 'she who must be obeyed so commanded it' and the girl looked confused until Annie said 'Pet's mom is visiting and she wants some,' and the girl said 'Some?' and Buttercup, she said, tell her what you said! Tell her!"

"What did you say, Buttercup?"

"I said it was my turn to cook," she replied softly. Denise laughed, probably longer than Ray had, but certainly not louder.

Annie finished directing Ray in how to put the groceries away and allowed him to sit at the kitchen table, too.

"So, where do the cans go?" he asked.

"Well, one here, obviously, for when I visit. But I live in Brunswick," she said. "Would you mind terribly if I took a can home to my family? The rest of my family?"

"Not at all," Denise said, fearing Ray would start to talk about the official rules of the darts.

He thought he realized why she'd answered so quickly and felt hurt that she'd thought he'd say no. Then he noticed Annie was glaring at him.

Annie had a special glare indicating he was being or was likely about to be pedantic. He shut up, before even opening his mouth.

But that's two cans," Pet pointed out. "Where's the third one go?"

"Pet, we're opening the third one right now," Buttercup explained. "Why do we need to worry about where an empty can goes?"



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