fandomtownies | Fern-ado Animal Shelter, Tuesday

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Fern-ado Animal Shelter, Tuesday

Zack stepped in from the jungle outside into... the jungle inside the animal shelter. Which earned a blink. The whole place seemed to be done up like some kind of prehistoric habitat, full of creatures Zack couldn't even begin to identify.

Girl, still normal, gave a dubious 'whuff.' The puppy playpen, at least, was still present, if made of wooden poles tied together with vines, though the dogs inside were... uh... well, they acted like dogs, anyway.

Zack glanced at Girl.

"I'm afraid to see what's happened to the cats."

The cats would still be cats, just bigger and with more impressive teeth. The guinea pigs and a few of the fish species were surprisingly unchanged. A lot of the birds were still small, just rather more toothy and carnivorous than he remembered them being.

What he really should have been concerned about were the roof-chickens.

Fern-ado is open for all your prehistoric pet needs.

[OOC: Open!]

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It was a fairly decent walk, realleh, between the dorms and the animal shelter, but that walk was doing very little to settle the low-key distress under that squinting stone exterior of Wayne's. One could pretty easily look the other way when it came to blue aliens, or suspend a bit of disbelief when it came to talking dogs, or simply pass over ideas like magic by swiftly changing the subject. But it was a little hard to ignore it when the whole world managed to go and change itself like this overnight, and he didn't know how to deal with it.

Dogs were good with helping to deal with things, and he'd already planned on helping out again with the good boys this week, too. But the closer he got to the shelter, the more Wayne worried that what he'd find when he got there wasn't going to be dogs at all.

Still good boys. Just not...dogs.

He was definitely glaring at the store in disapproval by the time he got in, trying to weigh which emotion was currently stronger: his desperate need for puppies or his desperate need to ignore that any of this existed.

This one was a real head-scratcher.

What a mixed bag of emotions this one was going to be, right? On the one hand, as Wayne stepped into the shop, he'd be met with the excited barking of a pen full of puppies who definitely recognized him, tails waggling and tongues lolling out of the sides of their snoots just like any ol' good boy.

... They were also some kind of tiny sauropod, this week. In fact, the only actual dog in the shop seemed to be Girl, who was still casting a wary eye toward the puppy pen, as if trying to puzzle out just whether the puppies inside it could be trusted.

"Uh, hey," Zack greeted, sounding a little bemused himself. "Uh."

He glanced at the puppy pen.

"... Hey."

Some days, even Zack Fair was at a loss.

Well, at least you weren't buried in them this time around, Zack, so that in and of itself was an improvement from last time.

...a small step forward, really, for a large leap back, but sometimes you just had to focus on the positive.

Wayne's head snapped toward the puppy pen, his body following as he squared a stance that way. Y'know, if he squinted a bit (more) and didn't think too much about it, they almost seemed a bit like Gus in this case, and Gus was such a good old bo, not really fluffy, either, so maybe it might work.

Then his head snapped toward Zack, his body then following, squaring a stance his way with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops. "Don't think I caught your name last time around," he noted. Something good and solid and not dinosaur related to maybe set things off on a decent foot around here.

"It's Zack. Zack fair," Zack replied, and opened his mouth again for a moment as if there was something that needed to follow that line, but... he didn't. He wasn't going to. No sense throwing his rank in here, even if back in his own world, it absolutely meant something again. "And this," he gestured to the one dog-shaped dog in the whole shop, "is Girl."

Girl gave a little wag of her tail in greeting, ears perked and alert.

"Zack," Wayne nodded to him. "Girl." He nodded to the dog that was actually a dog and fought down the thought of just sticking to her on that merit alone. Then he nodded to Zack again. "Wayne. How are ya now?"

The world seemed to have gone completely moony, but at least you could trust in good, ordinary civil greetings, right?

"Can't complain too much," Zack offered, because, look, there were tiny pterosaurs flitting around the inside of the shop and he was pretty sure they used to be canaries, he had at least one or two complaints. "But I'm getting by. You?"

"Oh, not so bad," said Wayne, which was a damn dirty lie, but no reason to make a fuss about it, especially if Zack wasn't going to, either. There was maybe a bit of a frown and a concerned lift of his eyebrows as he looked up and thought he saw one of those tiny pterosaurs flitting around up there, but he was, for the most part, pretty good at not seeing things if he didn't want to see them.

The thing with the dogs, though, now, that was a bit more difficult, because he'd really been looking forward to those dogs.

"Came in todaaaay," he drawled, "to help out with the dogs again. But, I'll admit, I'm not so sure what to do about it if the dogs aren't really dogs at the moment, are they?"

"They seem to be acting like dogs," Zack offered, looking at them a little sidelong. "Barking, tail-wagging. I think I saw one sniffing another one's butt a little earlier."

Need-to-know info there, yep.

"I guess... maybe we could see what other dog-things they'll do. Maybe they're just... uglier breeds?"

He was trying so hard, Wayne.

He was trying, and Wayne could see that, and he deeply, deeply appreciated it. To the point where he wasn't even going to bother pointing out that it was impolite to talk about sniffing butts, even when you were talking about supposed dogs.

"Okay, Zack," he said, brow furrowed but with a determined nod, "Zack, okay. You're likeleh onto something there. Got some tennis balls? Mebbe a good stick? Start 'em out with a little fetch?"

"Sticks, we've got," Zack replied brightly. "We have plenty of sticks, actually."

He reached over into a bucket of what would have been dog toys any other time, and pulled out a nice, solid stick, offering it to Wayne.

"If you want to do the honors?"

Wayne took the stick with a grateful nod. "'Preciate it," he said and, in his usual stiff, energy-conserving moments, turned toward the puppy pen, taking the few steps toward it, and then looking down at the dino-pups thoughtfully. Then, he held up the stick.

Now that he had their attention....

"Go get 'er, boys," he said, sending the stick soaring expertly to the other side of the pen, causing a veritable stampede of dino-pups as they all turned around and eagerly rushed after it. There was a little bit of playful wrestlin' and fightin' over the thing, but, eventually, one of them emerged victorious and came prancing back, the others close in its wake, to drop the stick proudly on the ground in front of Wayne.

"'Ats a good bo," murmured Wayne, bending over not to pick up the stick so much as to give that particular dino-pup a nice heartly ruffle on the top of his head, while a few of the more restless ones nearby pranced a little with eagerness for the next throw. But they had to be good and wait.

Zack just watched, and grinned.

"Lots of good boys," he agreed.

They seemed to pass the Fetch!Test, at least.

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Fern-ado Animal Shelter, Tuesday

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