Work Text:
Flippity flap went the wings of the goose, as it wandered along on a sun dappled day.
It was out looking for another assignment.
It wandered around until inspiration struck. Inspiration always came in the same way, it looked like this:
To do:
Make man cry
Make man wear mismatched socks
Prevent man from firing employees
Hide man's company keycard
Blow fuse box
Get a pat on the head
Decorate a desk
Make man bite tongue
The goose didn't know why it had to do these things, it just knew these were things that had to be done. It padded its way over a gentle slope of the ground, out of a copse of trees. And there, was a house. A house whose entire Southern wall was made of glass, from the doors to the walls to the railings of the third floor balcony.
The kitchen window was open a crack, letting in the wind, which poked and prodded at a great chandelier of emeralds, which clinked gently. Twenty feet under this chandelier sat a man. He was crying into his cereal. This was his subject, the goose sensed.
The bestubbled man finished his cereal and walked over to a framed photo of a woman and a baby. He picked it up, and then alternately yelled and monologued at it for 15 minutes. The goose opened the back door and let himself into the house, trailing the sad man around as he talked to himself, occupying itself by unplugging any appliance it came across. The man's keychain, less keys and more just a plastic figure of Hatsune Miku, hung from his belt and clacked as he moved.
"YOU are the best, Erlen. No matter what anyone says," he ranted as he walked down the hall past some Nigerian bronzes into a bathroom.
Buzz buzz went the man's obnoxious electronic toothbrush, and the goose leapt for his belt and swiped the keys with the finesse of a lifelong thief. He waddled five feet away and dropped them on the floor between a discarded pillow and a cumsock.
The goose waddled back into the kitchen, where a maid was cleaning up the debris from the man's cereal eating/crying jag. She left the glass of whiskey untouched. Pat a pat, went the goose's feet, and the maid looked up.The goose blinked at her in its most beguiling way and sat in a pretty pose. She smiled at it, and continued cleaning.
The sound of the toothbrush from the other room abated, and became "Where the %$^& are my %^& keys?! They were right here! No, I must not question my own genius. I must have just put them down somewhere."
The voice came closer to the kitchen, and the maid darted out of sight. The goose, too, made itself scarce.
The man's phone rang from a side table where it had been charging. "Why the %^&* is my charger unplugged? Kyle? What the ^&*( is it now Kyle?" The goose ducked back into the room and retrieved the keys, sneaking up to the man and puting it back on his belt with none the wiser. After a very confused and raving 10 minutes, it was time to go into the garage for the day to begin.
The goose hopped on the back of this guy's fancy car and clung for dear life as he sped off to who knows where to enact his life's work.
The car vroomed into a parking lot next to a building labelled SPACEFLEX with little curlicues at the ends of the letters. His parking spot, wedged between two handicap spots, was labelled "HEAD HONCHO."
The sad man sat in his car for 20 minutes, first playing candy crush while listening a podcast episode about himself, then typing and erasing a mass email to his employees. As far as the goose could see through the back window, it said: "Should I dress more formally for work? Please reply yes or no. If you vote yes, I really will dress better in the future."
Another employee walked by and Elren jumped up and exited his car. Elren had mysteriously not been able to find his keycard that morning.
The goose made sure to unplug the fancy car where it was charging before following them into the building. It wandered around for an hour, sampling the beer on tap in the lunchroom, crawling into an employee's sleeping bag, getting some pets from the secretary. It eventually found Kyle's desk, and decorated it with some rocks, candy and shoelaces from elsewhere in the building.
Duty could only be delayed so long, however, and the goose espied Elern leaving his office in a foul mood. He stopped by an employee's desk. "You! What are you doing right now?"
The employee jumped. "Uh I'm uhhh-"
"Which team are you? You're fi-"
"HONK" went the goose. Elern looked around. Is there %^*&(* waterfowl in the office?!"
"HONK HONK" went the goose. What an offensive thing to call a goose!
The man went around the office, finding employees and yelling at them until he ran out of employees. The goose was unfortunately unable to prevent a small team of technicians from being fired on the spot.
After two circuits of the building, the man checked his phone. "Good, 3000 steps." He returned to his office and the goose could see him lift some 2lb weights and eat a keto english muffin. He then admired his guns in the mirror (an AK-47 and a beretta, one kept in his pocket, the other under his desk) and strutted back out into public. "Aw yeah, rocket inspeeection time" he whistled to himself as he left the room.
Back in the parking lot, he did not notice that his car was unplugged - a shame, as that had taken the goose considerable effort - but instead, as he began driving, down the parking garage ramp, out of a tree-lined office park, accelerating on the onramp of a freeway and oh! The roof his car flew off! There it went, and landed with a crash in a bush.
"$#%^&**^%$!" said the man.
The goose was glad it was clinging to the bumper, not the rear window wipers! It stealthily hopped in the backseat.
As they drove to the launchpad slash rocket home area, a further inspiration struck the goose:
Bonus goal: trap man in rocket
Challenge accepted.
Elren went in to inspect the rocket with an unfortunate technician named Dorinda. A few minutes after they crossed the threshold, the goose entered. The goose grabbed the technician's phone and hightailed it for the door with a honk, and flung the phone as far away as possible. The technician chased after it, out of the rocket, and the goose painstakingly dragged the hatch shut, flapped up onto the panel and stomped around on as many buttons as it could reach. Some alarming lights and sounds flashed. That seemed promising. The light above the door turned red, which seemed final.
Poor Dorinda reached her phone as it started ringing. "Stuck, sir? Are you sure?" She looked over at the entrance of the rocket. "It's going to take you a few hours to get out." A pause. "There isn't anything I can do about it, all of the door technicians are on Jan's team." Another pause. "Yes, the Jan whose team you let go this morning, sir!"
But then there was a rumble. And then a squealing noise. Dorinda's face paled and the phone fell from her hand. The rocket began to shift, like the face of a great techtonic beast trying to hold in a yawn. The goose flew as far away as fast as it could go, reaching some technicians spouting things like, "What the fuck?" "What's happening?" "Who turned it on?" and jumped in a golf cart speeding away. The driver was on the phone, saying frantically, "...-ailsafes, no. He told them to turn them off. You know we do what the bossman says, no arguments!"
Only one of the rocket's engines deployed and it shot off at an odd angle, arcing up diagonally into the sky as it juddered through the atmosphere. It was very small, and then a bit bigger again as it spiralled down into the water. It landed with a splash and a distant, hollow poof sound. It exploded. Neither the rocket nor Elrn were any more.
Bonus bonus: save the world.