Chaos in the Hospital

Foxx crept through the vents. The entire hospital was on the search for them, but they were small, quiet and clever. They didn’t want to be found and shoved back into that boring room where people stared at them and took notes. ‘observation’ they had called it, to make sure they didn’t turn back into stone or whatever. They had been here forEVER, and they were tired of re-learning the alphabet and learning to talk and learning to be a… What had that annoying doctor said? Be a functional member of society? How booooooring. Foxx didn’t want to be dull like Dr. hortata. Horatio… Dr… something Mamby Pamby.   They remembered Mamby Pamby because it was a very funny last name and he seemed very… overly fond of it. He was a weird guy all be told. Fixated on ‘doing things by the book’ and ‘following the proper procedures’ and ‘this is a hospital, it’s supposed to be boring.’ and ‘You need to rest!’… To be fair, all the doctors said that last one, it wasn’t just the funny little doctor with his annoying adherence to the rules. He had even removed the squeaker from their chew toy! The jerk!   It was terrible honestly. One minute Foxx had been dreaming away, floating in the beautiful place where nothing bad could ever happen. Seeing the world through the eyes of others. White rabbits and strange tomes and people who could do wild things with words and songs and fire. Foxx had felt lonely, and had enjoyed the dreams filled with fantastical things… and then they had woken up, and the peaceful dreams had made way to agony and pain and reality. They had been locked in stone for… well, they didn’t know. Long enough that they couldn’t remember. Not a thing.   There had been scans, and tests, and a lot of needles. The doctors had babbled at them about things like malnutrition and dehydration and calcification and other very big words Foxx didn’t understand. Also the strange boxes had beeped a lot so she’d broken them for being annoying, and then bit Dr. Mamby Pamby when he’d tried to drag them out from under the bed… maybe THAT was why he was torturing Foxx with boredom? Well, it was his own fault grabbing a frighted, wild animal that was in pain. Just because Foxx was small and cute didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.   Thus, hiding in the vents. It was much more entertaining, a lot less stressful AND they got to hear something other than “ABCD EFG… ugh, now it was stuck in their head. The hospital had been as busy as a kicked over bees nest a while ago, all of the doctors and nurses and guards scattered around looking for the small silver fox with five tails, confused as to why they couldn’t be found. They had forgotten that kitsune were magical beings. Foxx had five tails for a reason… they couldn’t remember what the tails could do, but that was fiiiine.   They were content to just watch people for a while until someone new caught their attention. They were not a doctor, or a nurse, or an orderly. Nor where they a patient, injured, or ill. They were just wandering through the halls, talking to various people and being pressed into service now and again.   Unlike the others though, this person looked as bored as Foxx was. No, not bored… tired. They were tired. They were tired in a way that was as much mental as it was physical. Well, Foxx didn’t remember… but they knew that sort of bone deep, soul deep exhaustion. They felt the pangs of sympathy… empathy? Maybe they should have been paying attention to their speech therapist…   Well, there was only one way to shake a person out of that kind of misery.   “Tag!” Foxx squealed as they burst out of the vents, landed on the person's hair, which burst into flames, and then took off down the hall. In true, chaotic fashion, Dr. Mamby Pamby pointed down the hall and yelled,   “Someone stop that fox!” He was entirely too stuck up on his rules. Honestly. Foxx would have to change that. They grinned, watching as the person with the flaming hair chased after them. A half a dozen people scattered as well when the flaming haired person tried to tag them instead.   “I said stop them, not join them!” Wilhelm protested as he attempted to chase after them. Foxx cackled in glee, wiggled their tails at their flaming playmate, and vanished into a sea of legs.   They traded who was it several times, not just with each other but with other ‘literomancers’. Foxx wasn’t sure what that was, but they were very fun to play with and needed cheering up too! Mostly, it was Foxx and the one named Tempest, as Foxx had learned when Dr. Mamby Pamby tried to scold Tempest for playing childish games. They were both clever enough to fit into some very impressive places, and they both very much liked to leap out and scare the crap out of Dr. Mamby Pamby who screamed every time, he sounded very silly when he screamed too. A short, high pitched scream that Foxx was pretty sure they had heard on a video once. They liked videos. Especially ones with bright colors and explosions.   In a moment of glorious cooperation, they had even managed to run away with one of his shoes after he had screamed in true Wilhelm fashion. How they’d gotten the shoe, even Wilhelm didn’t know, but they had it. Foxx took the other shoe on their own an hour later when he was distracted trying to reach under a table to grab Tempest by the back leg. “Viva la Chaos Revolution!” Foxx yelled as she took off with the second shoe, allowing Tempest to race off in the other direction and for a half an hour, it was Wilhelm versus Foxx in the game of Keepaway. Tempest probably would have helped… if they hadn’t been laughing too hard anyway. Then Foxx tagged tempest after hiding the shoe and the game was on again.     Tempest skidded to a halt, yipping in surprise as Sable appeared right in front of them as they rounded a corner. They skidded right into her back, nearly spilling them both onto the floor.   “Shit! Sorry!” Tempest gasped before flushing bright red when they realized who they had run into.   “Tempest.” Sable’s tone was a little cool. “What are you doing?”   “Nothing.” Tempest said quickly.   Too quickly, and a little too guiltily. They tried to give Sable their most innocent expression, looking as sweet and un-chaotic as they could. Sable raised an eyebrow, not quite buying the innocent expression. Tempest was prone to chaos, and while that chaos was often very amusing, Sable had gotten a call from Georgina begging her to come and ‘put a stop to this’. She didn’t say what ‘this’ was, but she had sounded both annoyed and amused so Sable was pretty sure that Tempest had to be involved.   “It’s really nothing.” Tempest said, tone vaguely guilty in a way that they just couldn’t hide. Given they had been running in the hospital halls, that was evidence enough of some form of wrongdoing. There was a moment of silence as Sable attempted to stare into Tempest’s soul. Tempest might have broken and told all if a small, five tailed silver fox hadn’t sprung out from behind Tempest, used them as a launching pad, and booped Sable on the nose with a tiny paw.   “Tag! You're it!” Foxx squealed with laughter as they darted off, Tempest hot on their heels as they dove into through traffic, weaving between feet and legs, laughing as people yelled, or cursed, at the two miscreants.   “Oh for Frith’s sake!” Sable protested. “You two get back here!” She protested. It was more of a token protest than anything she meant seriously, but the two were already well gone. Neither she nor Georgina looked overly bothered.   “They’ve been at this for hours.” Georgina sighed. “I thought they’d tire themselves out but they show no signs of being at all tired! I was willing to ignore it because Foxx really does need socialization and exercise, not to mention a friend, but I’m worried about them pushing themselves too much.” Georgina admitted before she smiled. “They’ve also been tormenting my brother so there’s that.” she didn’t seem as bothered by that as she could have been. Even with her brother running around missing both shoes, a sock, and a button.   “Well, once they calm down, I'll go ahead and take them back to the Warren with me.” Sable decided. “I’ll call Shy and we can rendezvous. Foxx is a kitsune after all, they should be with other Kitsune, even if there’s only two of them.”     They continued their reign of chaos, much to the amusement of the patients who were bedridden. Many of them were happy to aid and abet the troublemakers. Especially the children who were now running around with ‘superpowers’. Foxx had gotten their hands on an entire wards worth of placebo buttons, and had passed them around to the kids and Tempest had told them all pushing the buttons gave them superpowers for half an hour. Silly things like, it made them immune to mosquito bites, and it made flies afraid of them, and it allowed them to talk to plants and the really fun one, it made their white blood cells strong enough to fight off colds! But only for a half an hour. Fox had a fun one where they told the kids that if they pushed the buttons at the adults, it would cause confusion. It only worked once though, as then doctors would become immune. Which caused a great deal of hilarity as kids in droves pushed buttons in doctors directions and squealed in delight when the doctors where confused.   Other patients started showing up with bright ‘tattoos’ from markers stolen from the children’s wards. Butterflies and flowers and hearts and rainbows. There were also large areas filled with toilet paper, because one particularly vindictive patient taught Foxx about TP-ing. Foxx, misunderstanding, had simply stolen all the back up toilet paper rolls out of each bathroom and stacked them all in Dr. Mamby Pamby’s office and when they ran out of room there, started stacking toilet paper in other places. Like the hallway, and the dining hall.   Foxx had also found finger paints, and seemed to take serious offense to all the white walls and was smearing colors on every wall they could reach. By the time they caught up to this, Foxx was stained in rainbow colors from the paint, and was completely unrepentant… the paint seemed to cheer up some of the residents though, so no one bothered to clean it up.   It took a while for anyone to find the pile of stuff that Foxx had ‘borrowed’, stacked neatly under a large table in the security office. Three clipboards, all empty. Both of Dr. Mamby Pamby’s shoes, his sock and his button as well as his ID badge. Two keyboards, with most of the keys removed and scattered around. Dr, Mamby Pamby’s pager was in there as well, and a half a dozen latex gloves that had been inflated and tied shut like balloons and several of them had funny faces drawn on them using stolen markers, which were also laying in the pile with all the lids off… This was because the lids had all been chewed into messy lumps. So had the back of one of the markers, and explained why Foxx had black ink all around their mouth and chin on top of the rainbow colors all over them.   Rewinding the cameras was the only way they managed to figure out, at the end of the day, where Tempest and Foxx had gone. Tempest had left, looking all pleased with themselves. Covered in paint and silly string, whistling a tune only they knew and prancing about beside them, barely coming up to tempest’ thigh, was a silver fox with five tails, equally covered in silly string and paint. A car pulled up, a door opened. Sable leaned out of the passenger window with a grin and said something to the two troublemakers. Both Tempest and Foxx grinned and scrambled into the backseat while the driver, one Shyredfox, flicked a wave at the camera with a smirk and they all drove off.   Dr. Mamby Pamby was very upset that Foxx had never signed out and went on a two hour rant about hospital Policy, which no one listened to.   Cleanup took two days, but the janitors didn’t mind because someone sent them gift baskets full of cookies, tarts and candy for a week.   Someone also gifted the children’s ward 300 toys. They all had squeakers in them. Rumor has it that Dr. Wilhelm Mamby Pamby had a temporary nervous tick every time he passed the children's ward.