[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Sole Purpose

Genre: Comedy

Length: 3606 words

B/D: It's been a while since I did a QPverse story, and my characterisation is rusty. (I really need to update Aru's, since her voice pack came out in the interim.) But I wanted to do a brainless funny story, so this is it, I guess!

There were a number of qualifications you needed to have before you could hold the illustrious title of Santa.

Firstly, you had to be a cute anime girl. That went almost without saying, but it also cut down the number of people eligible for the position by half or more, depending on how mercilessly you enforced the ‘cute’ part. (Aru, safe in the knowledge that her cuteness was sufficient, maintained that the benchmark for cuteness was very high indeed.)

Secondly, you had to have some aptitude for the numerous required secondary skills a Santa needed to possess. Yes, the List would take care of the whole partial omniscience thing for you, so you could tell when people were sleeping, and when they were awake, and what their various sins were, and why most of those sins would make exceedingly juicy blackmail material if you somehow became Not Santa again. But it wasn’t going to teach you basic breaking and entry, or how to approach a reindeer without being kicked in the stomach. Those were beneath the purview of the List.

Thirdly, you had to have big feet. This was the factor that many cute anime girls who were skilled in the practices of larceny and animal husbandry lacked: the majority of them had teeny tiny feet, all the better for making them look vulnerable and adorable when they took their shoes off. But that wouldn’t do, for Santa. Santa needed the feet of a polar bear or a snowshoe hare. Santa needed to spread his weight across the slippery ice and snow to help his balance and to leave convincingly large bootprints on people’s rooftops.

There were a few other requirements, like a strong back and the ability to run around all night without having much to eat and drink, so it followed that the platonic ideal of Santa was a cute anime girl, cross-bred with a dromedary camel. But in the absence of that, Aru had feet big enough to fill Santa’s very demanding boots.

That, among other reasons, was why she hated shoe shopping with a passion that could send shivers down the very bones of the Earth. It just wasn’t fair. Her feet only ever felt comfortable in men’s shoes, but men’s shoes had so little variety. There were only two colours, and they were black and brown. Black and brown! Where were the blue shoes of the suede variety, the loafers in effervescent pink? Where were the kicks with the rainbows on the front and the rollerskates in the heel? Did guys just not like fun? Who didn’t like fun?

On top of that, there were only two real shapes to pick from – you either got a boot, or you got a tiny faux-leather boat with laces on it. They were such safe options, and Aru thought it was a little sad. Did nobody in the male population have the boldness to rock a peep-toe? Was the Mary-Jane a step too far? Where were the slingbacks of yesteryear?

There were advantages to being a guy when it came to clothes, she supposed. They had pockets everywhere. She would have sold her soul to find a nice dress with more than a single pocket on it, but clothes for men were replete with them. Spare patch of fabric on that shirt? Slap a pocket on it. Annoyed at the fact that you can’t hold things with your knees or your elbows? Slap a pocket on them. What’s that? The entire inside of your jacket isn’t doing anything? Sounds like you need a couple of pockets on that, friend. Men seemed to have more pockets than they had clothes, and as a girl who carted around enough presents for all the world’s children, she wanted that lifestyle.

She was still musing over some moccasins when she heard three very loud and familiar voices enter the store. Her first instinct was to drop to the floor and roll under a shoe rack. Yes, it looked weird, and yes, she felt bad about exploiting her natural stealth capacities as Solid Santa, but –

“C’mon, QP. I know you were looking for a snack, but did you have to bring us to a shoe shop? Pick somewhere where the rest of us can eat something, too.”

“Syura… You know I can end you, right? That that’s just a thing I can do?”

“You cannot end Syura, the Lord of Malfeasance. Her dark power has grown too strong. She will be waiting at the end of time, where all things collide… ufufu.”

“Krila! Don’t take her side!”

“Little did you know, QP, that Krila is my underling for the day. I gave her my croissant and she gave me her soul!”

“But, Krila! What about your fealty to the beast gods?”

“Only a fool would expect loyalty from a member of Waruda.”

“…I meant to ask about that. What do you even do for Waruda, anyway?”

“…Covert surveillance operations. My purpose is to insinuate myself into the beast god’s group, discover her plans for anti-Waruda magic or operations, and then report back to the Dark Beast Pierrot. In return, they offer me a tribute of bread filled with the blood of red beans.”

“We never plan anything, though.”

“I know. It’s great. Ufufu.”

Aru had, momentarily, stopped breathing. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see them. They were her friends, for a given definition of ‘friends’. She just didn’t want them to see her when she was staring down the barrel of a size twelve. So far, nobody seemed to have noticed the fact that her feet were of a size most prodigious, and she was loathe to draw attention to the fact. As useful as they were for being Santa, they weren’t… Well, she didn’t think they were the most feminine or attractive feature to have. Not the kind of thing she wanted to broadcast, or talk about, or really think about until the moments in which they came in useful.

The only solution was to sneak out of the store without QP and company noticing her. For once, she was glad that Syura existed, because Syura would keep the other two distracted with her nonsense, trash talk and off-colour flirting. Krila was also functionally blind in one eye and also wildly off her rocker, so she wasn’t too much of a concern. The real problem – as always – was QP. For now, she was hiding in an aromatic maze of faux-leather and disinfectant spray. But that wouldn’t fool QP’s nose forever. It couldn’t. Sooner or later she would stumble across the telltale, hopefully delightful scent of Aru and grow suspicious. It was a matter of time.

Inching herself forward with her elbows and forearms like a true sneaking professional, she began to simulate an exit plan. They were heading to the back of the store, to look at all the novelty shoes. She couldn’t really get behind the idea of novelty shoes. They looked like tiny turtles that had been caught in a shower of hot glue and rhinestones. But that gave her a chance to make it to the end of her shoe rack closest to the entrance. From there, she could duck behind the rotating carousel of belts – why were they selling belts in a shoe store? – execute an unnecessary combat roll to the tills area, buy a stick of chewing gum (again, why did they sell chewing gum?) and then escape with her dignity mostly intact.

Then she began to simulate problems with her exit plan. Like what would happen if one of the shop clerks saw her sneaking around under the shoe rack. Obviously, her first reaction would be to say she had dropped her contact lenses, which didn’t exist, and was looking for them. But that would almost undoubtedly result in the clerk stopping to help her, and then she’d be stuck in the shop until QP and company noticed her and came over, and QP would look at her with those good doggy kind of eyes and say, “Aru, what are you doing here”, and she’d give her the excuse and she’d say: “Wow, I didn’t know you had contact lenses!” And then the shop clerk would get suspicious and pull out his double-barrelled shotgun, which as a member of the retail industry she was sure fifty percent of all shop clerks carried with them at all times, and then she would have to flee and everybody would notice her huge feet and it would be awful.

What if she got to the bit where she had to do an unnecessary combat roll and then, mid-roll, somebody mistook her for a ten pound bowling ball, picked her up, took her to the nearest bowling alley and bowled a strike with her? She weighed an awful lot more than ten pounds, so when she hit the pins she would almost certainly knock them all over. In fact, she would make a spectacular bowling ball, up until the point where the arm came down and tried to put her through the machine that spat the bowling balls back out, at which point she would be in exceptional pain. But for that one bowl, that one strike, she would be like a baseball bat made from a tree felled with a lightning bolt: unstoppable, and ultra rare.

She shook her head. Trains of thoughts like these were why she had to have coffee in the morning. She hadn’t had coffee this morning, because she had been mentally fortifying herself for the ordeal of buying shoes. She was a caffeine deprived lapin, and that was almost as bad as being on medical-grade hallucinogenics.

It was at that point that QP, seeing Aru’s feet sticking out from the end of a shoe rack, seized them and pulled hard.

“Aha! See, I told you it was Aru! I would recognise those legs anywhere!” she boasted as she hauled the struggling bunny out from her shoe-laden sanctuary.

“I knew you were the kind of girl that’s obsessed with legs. I bet that’s why you don’t like any of my shmup protagonist designs, right?! All this time I thought you had a good reason, but you just don’t like the lack of thighs!” Syura grumbled.

“I don’t like your shmup protagonists because they look like a bunch of circles. They don’t even have necks!”

“I-it’s programmer art! Games are a multimedia package, so you can’t expect me to be good at every single skill they need, right?”

“Yeah, but then the personalities are a little weird, too. Your main character talks about mango ice cream all the time. What’s with that?”

“Eating is a universal human experience! Giving a character a signature favourite food is a cheap way to make them relatable!”

“Don’t take such obvious shortcuts! You can be better than this, Syura! Do your best!”

As enthralling as Aru found a conversation about character design to be, she had lived her entire life without having QP’s hands around her ankles and had grown to appreciate the freedom that it gave her. She began to struggle very, very gently, in the hopes that if she did it gently enough, QP wouldn’t notice when her grip slipped and she could then burrow back under the shoe rack to relatively safety. Unfortunately, she didn’t struggle quite gently enough.

“Oh. Oh! Hi, Aru! What are you doing here?” QP asked at last, giving Aru’s leg’s one more tug to bring her fully out into the open. She reached down a hand to pull her up, and, reluctantly, Aru took it.

“Oh, wow, QP. I just don’t know. What could she possibly be doing in a shoe store?” Syura asked, and got an elbow to the ribs for her sarcasm.

“I kinda meant ‘what are you doing under the shoe rack’, but thanks for the input, Syura.”

Krila took a dramatic step forward, and held her hand in front of her mouth as she laughed. “Fufufu. It is as plain as day; only a child would not see the intentions of the pale-eared beast. She was holding communion with the furtive guardians of the shoe industry: the fell gnomes that lurk in the shadows of their wares. Truly, I did not think I would encounter another gnomish scholar in this unenlightened age.”

QP raised an eyebrow, and Syura followed suit. It might have been the first thing they agreed on that day. “Uh, gnomes?”

“All shoes are made by gnomes. Others may seek to obfuscate this divine truth, but I, Krila, emissary of the void, bear witness!”

QP’s ears flopped down. She was less than convinced. “…So, say I went home right now and made a pair of shoes. What then?”

“Then you would be a gnome.”

“But I’m not a gnome. I don’t even want to be a gnome.”

“Then do not trespass upon their duties, or you will be swallowed up by their subterranean arts.”

That was the nice thing about having Krila around. It was almost impossible to focus too strongly on any one topic while she was hurling nonsense at you, so any uncomfortable questions just fell by the wayside as you tried to figure out what she was saying. It took her only one tangent to render the question of why Aru was slithering around under the shoe racks completely unanswerable, even to Aru herself.

“Well, whatever. I’m glad we met up with her here. The party feels empty without our barbarian rabbit maid,” Syura said, shrugging her tiny shoulders. “I hate shopping for shoes, so let’s just quickly grab some sneakers and then we can go out for ice cream.”

For once in her life, Aru’s heart resonated with Syura’s. Her heart was ready to quit shoe shopping forever, to submit herself to the great gacha of online buying for shoes you had never tried on and might be delivered in the wrong size anyway. Her body was ready for ice cream, because it was always ready for ice cream; there was a space deep within herself that she had carved out for ice cream, probably with a spoon. Actually, she was just deeply enthralled by desserts in general; tiramisu was a particular favourite, especially if it was brought out in a glass container to show off the lovely layers.

“Syura! We’re looking for running shoes, not sneakers. If you get the wrong kind, they can mess up your knees,” QP scolded.

“Who cares, right? I won’t need knees after I flunk PE. I just need a good chair with wheels on it. A really good chair.”

“Don’t just casually write off PE like that!”

“Sorry, QP, but this is the cruel reality of the world. Nobody has the resources to do everything, so you have to prioritise. If you spend points in graphics, you have to take them out of level design. If you perk into programming, you can’t unlock the PE skill tree. I’m just saving resources that would go towards getting a bad grade in one subject, and putting them in a subject I have a chance of getting a fantastic grade for.”

Aru narrowed her eyes. “And just how many points did you put into making excuses for laziness? Just do your best, no matter what the subject is.”

“That’s fine for an Energizer Bunny like you, maybe. The rest of us have lives.”

Aru was saved from pointing out the irony of Syura saying somebody else had no life by Krila, who had ascertained that no shoe in the store was shadowy enough for her tastes and was now seeking entertainment. “I am sorry, Flame-Haired Cyber Ghost. There are some truths too horrible for even a Dark Apostle like myself to accept. A strong body is needed to contain the demonic energies.”

Syura gasped. She had been sure that Krila was her ally. In fact, she was also sure she had paid Krila the sum total of one (1) croissant to be her ally. It was a betrayal unlike any she had ever known, apart from the time she invited QP over for a sleepover and then QP ate her pudding while she was trying to sneakily touch her tail.

“Wouldn’t it be great to just skip PE, though? Don’t you get picked last for group sports every time?”

“Your perception has been clouded by the Illuminants, Syura,” Krila said, wiggling an eyebrow and breaking into what she hoped was an intimidating cackle. “Yesterday, I was chosen first to stride onto the field of battle.”

“It was hockey, and I was team captain!” QP added.

“Indeed. Our enemies tried to beat us down with their rods of holy power, but for once such as I, who has held her hand in the jaws of a lion, such crass violence is but an amusement.”

“They were really mean about it. They deliberately went after Krila because they thought she was the weak link, so… I stomped ’em,” QP continued, smiling sweetly. QP with no weapon was a formidable combatant; if you armed her with what amounted to a large club, that was upgraded to devastating. “Hey, hey, Aru. What sports do you like?”

Aru thought deeply, not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she wasn’t sure if it was an acceptable answer to give. Her favourite, if she was honest, was golf. You went to what amounted to a very large, beautiful place full of greenery and nature, you hauled around a set of clubs that were much lighter than a standard sack o’ presents™, and you generally had a very relaxing time. She wasn’t good at it, by any stretch of the imagination; her follow-through was not particularly good, and she had yet the master wiggling her fingers before a stroke like all the professionals seemed to do. But it was a nice day trip that didn’t involve hurriedly circumnavigating the globe, which was very much a plus.

“Well, it’s obvious, right?” Syura said, filling in the gap as Aru pondered her answer. “It’s gotta be basketball.”

“Oh yeah!” QP agreed, snapping her fingers. “You’d be perfect for basketball, since you have such huge feet.”

Aru’s blood ran cold. QP had noticed her enormous feet? To be fair they were big enough that it was hard not to notice them, and she had hardly expected QP to go through her entire life without ever looking down at any point, but she had never said anything about it. Maybe she had just been hoping against hope that QP’s brain was too full of pudding to ever really comprehend that one of her best friends had feet the size of dinner plates.

“Huge feet? What does that have to do with basketball?” Syura asked.

“Big feet are more powerful, so she can jump higher.”

“That’s… not how that works. Besides, she can fly. Why would she ever jump when she can fly?”

“Alright, then! Big feet usually mean you have long legs, so you’re taller and better at basketball since you can reach the hoop easier!”

“She. Can. Fly.”

“She said ‘weh’,” Krila intoned dully. She was right, of course. Aru hadn’t realised it at the time, but she had certainly let out a long ‘weeeeeehhh!!!’ at some point in the very recent past.

“’Weh?’” QP echoed, tilting her head and rubbing her chin. “Oh, I get it! Aru’s embarrassed because we’re praising her!”

Syura raised both eyebrows. “Are we praising her, though…?”

“Of course! I wish I had big feet. I feel like I’m never going to get tall.”

“That’s because you are never going to get tall. You’ll always be short and flat.”

“Ha! That’s what you think. The only thing flat about me is my tummy. But all the pudding I eat has to go somewhere, and if it isn’t going to my tummy, then it must be going to my chest!” QP declared smugly.

“Oh?” Syura asked, unimpressed. “If you had to eat that much pudding to get that little bust, it makes me think that pudding isn’t the wonder food you think it is.”

It was at that point that QP rolled up her sleeve. “Don’t. Insult. Pudding.”

Aru watched all this happen distantly, having resigned herself to being known as the bunny with the big feet. But she was brought out of her shell-shocked reverie by Krila tugging insistently at her sleeve.

“Aru. I, the maiden of the apocalypse, do entreat you to prevent the coming war between the holy beast and the flame-haired maiden. I don’t want to be barred from another shoe store,” she said, and shivered.

Despite herself, Aru raised an eyebrow. “How did you get barred from the first one?”

“I asked them to produce the gnomes. They didn’t, which proved that they were gnome collaborationists.”

Aru sighed. In the end, it seemed that all her worrying about foot size was for nothing. QP seemed to think it was a positive thing, and Syura was off in her own bizarre rivalries and game logic to care. The real problem was that she kept letting herself get caught up in QP and Syura’s pace, which was not a pace any sane person should live at. And, for all that she had an ever-present, omniscient voice in the back of her head that kept her appraised of who deserved what at Christmas, Aru considered herself quite sane. As QP and Syura began to square up to one another, the rabbit smiled, and realised yet another useful facet of having large feet.

It made a bigger impact when you had to put your foot down.

A/N: Not the most graceful ending, but again: mindless fun, which I need to have from time to time to perk myself up a bit. I've missed the lunacy that comes from QP's more light-hearted world.