"The new normal" (Kaiju Paradise story)

Chapter Seven: "...Friends?"

Owen sat against the tree in the middle of the room and sighed to himself, looking around for a moment before yawning and starting to curl up on a couple of the cushions next to the tree, looking to get a bit of sleep.
He was just beginning to doze off before a sudden sound alerted him to someone entering the room, footsteps, very quiet, and subtle ones, probably another human ready to get the drop on him.
Slowly reaching for his saber, he prepared to face whoever it might be about to attack him, and when the sounds were close enough to him, he ignites the saber and flings it up at the figure.
His ears droop and his guard drops all at once as he notices...it was only the frightened face of a ghost fox at the end of his saber.
After a tense moment of awkward silence, Owen opens his mouth to speak, but before he can even make a sound, the ghost fox dashes away in a cloud of electricity, shocking him for a moment.
Owen considered following the fox, but decided against it after a moment.
He yawned again and started curling up on the cushions again, actually being able to slip into sleep this time with no interruptions.
A few hours go by and he's suddenly stirred awake by the feeling of something batting at his face.
He opens his eyes drowsily to see Ocean smacking at his face with his paws and saying something that he couldn't process yet.
"Wake up! Smack Wake up already!" Smack x2
Owen eventually leaned up lazily with a small stretch of his arms, staring down at Ocean with an unamused look as he turns his focus onto him.
Ocean chuckles nervously and looks away awkwardly for a moment.
"Uh, heh heh...I...just wanted ya to, well, wake up..."
Owen rolls his eyes and gets up after a moment, accepting the fact that he won't be able to sleep too long in this place without being woke up.
"Well, you got me up now. What do you want?"
Ocean looks around for a moment and looks back at Owen raising a...non existent brow.
"You don't notice anything new with me?"
Ocean asks with a hint of offense in his tone.
Owen raises a brow and looks at Ocean more closely, and he realizes with a facepalm; "Ocean found a hat." He thinks to himself, annoyed that he missed something so simple and obvious.
The hat was fairly simple, nothing more than a cap colored a dark gray, with a small logo and the word "Laminax" written on the front of the cap.
"You have a cool thing to wear, so I get a cool thing to wear."
Ocean states firmly, which gets a chuckle out of Owen as he starts walking out of the garden, Ocean quickly follows after him.
"So uh...what was that about earlier?"
Ocean suddenly asks, looking up at Owen with a confused face.
"Uh...what was...what about?"
Owen asks back, taking a quick glance at Ocean before looking back at the halls and rooms they passed.
"Uh. You practically ditched me earlier! Meanie..."
Ocean says with offense, his steps becoming more serious and upset as they continued walking.
Owen rolls his eyes slightly and chuckles softly,
"Heh, sorry there buddy, I needed to do something at that moment and time, and I had to hurry."
"Hmmmm. Fine."
Ocean eventually relents, his steps returning to normal and the offense in his eyes softening.
"Anyways, I need you to leave again"
"Wait, wha-?!"
"Kidding. Kidding, bud."
The two chuckle to themselves and go back to focusing on the area around them, they were back at the balcony again.
"Heyyyy, wait a minute...when did you have two rips in your suit?"
Ocean says suddenly, inspecting the two slashes that were on his back.
"Huh?"
Owen initially replied before talking back
"Eh...nothing much, just a couple of small rips-"
"They go completely down your back."
"Well, uh...I just kinda got stuck on-"
"They're both in different directions."
"....you know what, just don't question it."
"Ok!"
"That...went better than expected." Owen thinks to himself before returning his focus to looking around the balcony.
There was relatively nothing going on, there were no gootraxians or humans around the area, and was about as quiet as it could get, outside of the voices of others in the nearby rooms of course.
Owen was just beginning to relax with the silence when there's suddenly a crashing thud of many objects from behind the two.
Ocean, being a defenseless slime pup, jumped with a yelp and scrambled to the safety of the back of Owens leg, Owen however, turned around to see what had caused the sound, his paw near his saber in case the need arose.
There was a pile of barrels and other metallic objects a little ways behind them, with a ghost fox buried in the pile...well, he assumed it was a ghost fox, there were the two tails of a ghost fox sticking out from under the pile. Owen also noticed a few humans running in as well and immediately surrounding the pile, chuckling and talking amongst themselves. There seemed to be 5 or so humans in the group, 3 had bats of various different colors, another had a machete, and one had a....bat with...blue crystals sticking out from it?
Owen couldn't help but stare at the crystal infused bat...he knew he's seen one before...but where? And when?
"Damned amnesia..."
Owen thinks to himself with an irritated grumble as he and Ocean hid behind a small stack of crates and boxes nearby.
Owen watched with anger as the humans circled around the pile of objects, occasionally stomping down the ghost foxes tails since they were stuck, it always got a yelp of pain out of the ghost fox.
"I better not have been like this when I was a human."
Owen thinks as he observes the area, looking for something that could help deal with all the humans. His eyes fixate on a large toxic vial suspended above the 5 humans, filled with the same acid of the toxic barrels.
"That'll work."
Owen taps Ocean slightly to get his attention.
"Alright bud, find me something to throw will ya?"
Ocean nods eagerly and rushes off for a little bit, returning with a knife in his mouth after a minute or so.
Owen takes the knife and pats Oceans head once before looking up at the vial, holding the knife up to line up his shot at the rope holding up the vial.
With a small wind up and stylish twirl with the knife, Owen flings it at the rope and a small 'rip' is heard from the rope as it cuts. Owen looked at the vial eagerly before groaning silently as the vial didn't fall.
"Dang, I really hoped tha-" SMASH
Owens ears flick up and he and Ocean look back at the group of humans, who were now covered with the acid, shouting and yelling in a panic and full of pain. Well...almost all of them, one had managed to see the vial before it dropped and avoided it and was now watching as the rest of their group burned, the human quickly snaps out of their state and escapes afterwards.
Owen and Ocean then carefully made their way up to the pile to get the ghost fox free.
Owen flipped over the barrel that had the foxes tails stuck and helped the fox up to its feet, as they had seemed to have taken quite a bit of damage from the humans earlier.
They had a slice over their cheek and one of their eyes, and a few stabs riddled around their torso, their fur was split away from the points of impact, allowing the wounds to easily be seen.
Ocean followed Owen as he walked over to the furthest door in the area, half supporting/half carrying the ghost along as well.
The three enter the silo looking room quietly, looking around in case there was any other people in the room as well, Owen eventually puts the ghost fox down against a wall after he decides that it's all clear.
"Yeesh...they've had a rough time with humans, haven't they?"
Owen starts thinking to himself as he looks over the Ghost fox carefully.
Eventually, he looks back at Ocean, who was half paying attention/half entertaining himself by playing around with a bat nearby, swatting it around the floor every so often.
Owen rolls his eyes slightly and looks around for anything that may be of use.
He shuffles around the shelves in the room, looking for something to help him with this.
He recognized a small red case like object with a white plus symbol on it, but after a few moments of trying to do something with it, throws it away with an annoyed groan.
"Uhg, everything here is useless for this situation!"
He looks back at the fox and notices a few electric sparks flickering around its fur, then turns to look at a convenient taser on one of the shelves.
"Well, this is sure to be one of my dumber ideas...but, not like there's many ideas to have"
Owen grabs the taser off the shelf and a little moment of fiddling with it later, shoots it at the fox, who twitches for just a moment before a small explosion of electricity blasts off of it, and all of their wounds seemed to be...gone??
Owen blinked twice in shock and looked back at the taser in his paws
"That worked?"
Meanwhile, Ocean was still playing with the bat, not paying any attention to the two behind him anymore.
Owen slowly walked back up to the ghost fox and knelt by it, tapping it gently and springing back with surprise as the Ghost fox jumps up from his touch and waves his arms wildly as the ghost fox prepares to flee.
"Hey hey hey! Wait!"
The two freeze in their tracks, the ghost fox looking at him curiously and Owen looking at the fox with surprise, clearly not expecting that to have worked.
"Uh...you can at least say thanks for me kinda saving you there..."
Owen says awkwardly and the foxes eyes widen slightly at his words.
"Y-you...saved me?"
Owen nods a bit, and the ghost fox looks around awkwardly before asking another question.
"W-why?"
"Well...why not."
"But you d-don't even...know me...and I-i don't know you..."
"Meh, I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"But-"
"But nothing, I felt like it, so I did it."
An awkward moment of silence fills the room, aside from Ocean still obliviously messing about with the bat. Eventually however, Owen manages to get out another sentence.
"So...uh...you got a name? I'm uh, Owen.."
"...Shocker..."
Owen tilts his head slightly.
"Shocker is your name, or 'Shocker, my name is Owen'?"
Shockers eyes widen a bit and he waves his paws nervously
"N-no! T-thats my name..."
Owen chuckles a little bit and pats Shocker on the shoulder.
"I was just messing with ya buddy, don't freak out about it.
"Buddy?"
"Well...yeah...ya know...buddy, amigo, friend..."
Shockers eyes lit up at the word friend
"F-friend? Are you saying that we're...friends?"
"Well, it depends, you wanna be friends?"