37. Intimidation!
“Filippa stumbled through the ruins of civilization, her feet dragging. A gust of wind blew fine dust into her face. From the crumbled concrete of now-gutted buildings, their steel rebars, exposed and bent.
“‘Why did she do it?’ she wondered. Why did her friend end the world?
“Today’s search for others was, once again, fruitless. It really seemed she and her parents were the only survivors of the apocalyptic event. Mercy from her omnipotent friend. Yet, so cruel.
“When Filippa returned home, the only building standing intact within miles, Mamapin gave her—”
“Buttons, will you shut up?” Rippa interrupted. “I’m trying to think here. Besides, what’s with that bleak narration?”
Buttons pouted. “Well, you yelled at me as if I caused an apocalypse or something.”
“You know what? I’m actually very impressed you can just make up a story on the fly like that.”
Buttons blushed. “When you have nothing much to do, you get good at it.”
Rippa looked at her friend for a moment and decided not to press it further. She returned her attention to the X feed on her phone.
The whatthefuckery Buttons and Goggles had unleashed in Congress had turned the world upside down. Rippa herself had yelled at Buttons when the child had burst in with a gleeful face. After muting her mic, of course.
“Buttons, what the fuck was that?” Rippa had yelled. “Did you just threaten Congress?”
“Yes, I did!” Buttons had gloated. “I did very well, didn’t I? Goggles says my delivery was perfect.”
“Do you even know what you just did?!” With that, Rippa had apologized to her viewers and ended the stream.
And now, she was doomscrolling on X. Shit was hitting the fan, while this dumb kid sat beside Rippa, her little head leaning in to read Rippa’s For You feed.
“Look!” Buttons pointed at a post. “I’m based, see?”
“Yeah? Look,” Rippa said, pointing at the next post. “This girl is saying you shat on our Constitution.”
“Ha! I don’t defecate. Goggles teleports—”
Rippa pinched her nose bridge. “Buttons, she’s saying it metaphorically.” She then sighed. “Buttons, really. You trampled our Constitution and threatened Congress. Just… where did you even get the idea?”
“Oh, we were inspired by the scene from Ghostbusters. You know Gozer?”
Rippa gasped. “He… you…” She gave up. “Just… why?”
“Intimidation!” said the child cheerfully. “Now everyone knows they better leave me alone.”
Rippa eyed her friend.
“Trust me, Rippa. It works. Cats arch their backs, bears stand on their hind legs, men puff their chests and raise their fists. That’s how it works.”
Rippa sighed again. “You know what? I need to talk to Goggles—” She stopped.
The cosmic octopus. ‘I’m already talking to Goggles, am I not?’ she thought. But then again, was Goggles talking to her?
“Wait here. I’m gonna tell Mom I’ll be at your place.”
With that, Rippa left her room and went downstairs. She heard voices coming from the kitchen.
Mom was talking to someone.
“—and to think they are entitled to her when they do not even represent one-tenth of the global population… that rubs me the wrong way,” Goggles’ voice was saying.
“Goggles, good you are here,” said Rippa as she entered the kitchen.
Mom and Goggles were having tea at the island.
“Oh, Filippa, we were just talking about the Congress thing,” said Mom.
“Yeah, about that. Why were you guys so aggro?”
Goggles raised his eyebrows. “Hmm? I thought it went pretty well.”
Rippa flailed her arms. “She threatened our elected leaders! She declared herself to be some, some, emperor!”
Mom chimed in. “Yes, Buttons really did come off that way.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and?’!”
“Allow me to explain myself.” Goggles put his cup down and took a deep breath. “She wanted to be left alone. She did not want to cause any trouble. Solely for that reason, she allowed men to trample her, beat her, violate her, spit on her, sell her to the highest bidders…”
Rippa and Mom shut up.
Goggles continued, “And she slept under bridges and in goat pens. She begged her way across the continent back and forth in the rain and snow.” After a pause, he added, “For thousands of years.”
“Goggles…” Mom tried to say something, but she was at a loss for words.
“And men forced her to reveal herself, and now she has to coexist with humans as a god. So, if you don’t mind, I dare say she deserves to do so on her terms. From the top of the pyramid.”
“Goggles!” Buttons’ voice startled everyone. The kid was just entering the kitchen. “You can’t just do an exposition dump like that. That’s bad storytelling.”
“Oh, Buttons, you poor thing.” Mom hugged the kid and patted her back. She then quickly turned around to prepare hot chocolate.
The child sat beside Goggles and stole a sip from his tea, and then decided the whole cup was now hers.
“It wasn’t all that bad,” Buttons said. “I had good times, too, really. For instance, I had jolly good fun with the Golden Horde.”
“Buttons,” Rippa managed to speak with a cracking voice. She reached across the island and put her hand over Buttons’.
The kid looked up from her tea.
Rippa cleared her throat and… “Never mind.” But she still squeezed the kid’s small hands.
***
After Buttons and Goggles had gone home, Rippa lay in bed and doomscrolled through X posts again.
Half the internet was furious. ‘Fuck that arrogant kid,’ was their stance, but not in the ‘Let’s kill her!’ sense, but rather in a condemning way.
‘But what are you gonna do about it?’ Rippa thought. Well, there really wasn’t anything anyone could do about Buttons. The kid was simply… too Godzilla.
She remembered what Goggles had said. She recalled Buttons stomping her feet in frustration. Even after enduring all that… ‘we still managed to fail her and forced her hand one more time.’
The other half was ecstatic that the big fish just got humbled by an even bigger fish. ‘Oh, how the turn tabled,’ said someone with many flags in their bio.
And then there was a loud minority voice. ‘Rippa is a fascist. Of course, Buttons turns out to be also a fascist.’
Rippa wanted to find these people and strangle them, but then again, that’d be playing into their rhetoric. In the past, she had tried to reason with them. Argue and debate. But she had quickly realized there was no point… ‘Well, that sounds familiar.’
Rippa groaned. She realized her yet-to-be-scheduled stream featuring Buttons was going to be another utter chaos that’d once again push her moderators to their limits.
‘Maybe we play some games instead of doing a Just Chatting?’ she mused. She bolted upright and made a note on her to-do list to ask Buttons about why the kid got banned from Fortnite.