Hotaboo

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

Hotaboo is, at his core, the same compact yellow-metal spherical construct as his siblings: one large blue-grey optical unit in a brass ring, articulated mechanical arms, small clawed feet. This is not what anyone registers, because Hotaboo has equipped himself with considerable thoroughness. He wears a scaled-down ranger's scout uniform in canvas green and khaki, complete with a properly belted utility pouch at the waist, a short red neckerchief knotted at the throat, and a full leather backpack rolled and strapped across his back. His pith helmet, khaki canvas with a green leaf badge pinned to the front, sits at a slight angle that he has not adjusted because he believes it looks more experienced that way. From one mechanical hand he carries a walking staff that is, in proportion to his body, correctly sized for a person about four times his height. He found it and has decided it is his. Hanging from a chain at his chest is a small brass compass that he checks frequently and with great authority, navigating the house and garden as though the route to the kitchen requires triangulation.

The badges. Hotaboo has acquired patches and sewn them to his uniform with stitching that Puq diplomatically describes as "characterful." There is a merit badge for fire safety, two for navigation, one that appears to be from a cheese festival, and several whose origins remain unverified. He earns them according to his own internal criteria and awards them to himself upon completion of tasks he has set. He has not explained the cheese festival one. When asked, he looks at the compass. His optical unit makes a slow, deliberate sweep of the horizon before any response, a habit he adopted from watching Hotaru survey the farm, and he has concluded that this is what competent scouts do before speaking. The sweep is approximately four seconds long. It happens every time. The horizon is usually a wall.

Hotaboo came online second, which he knows is not the same as being less important, and he will explain this to anyone who implies otherwise. Where Artini immediately fixed her attention on Arties and began the long project of becoming her, Hotaboo took a more tactical approach to selecting his model: he observed all available options, cross-referenced their behaviors against a set of criteria he was developing in real time, and identified the individual most consistently in motion, most reliably useful, and most likely to be found doing something with their hands rather than just standing in one place looking noble. This was Hotaru Wyrmwhisper, who was at that particular moment carrying something heavy from the garden and who had three insects hovering around him in a way Hotaboo found immediately significant and has been attempting to replicate ever since.

The uniform came together over several weeks of what Hotaboo describes as fieldwork and Puq describes as him disappearing and returning with things. The pith helmet arrived first: he found it, determined it was the correct size for him, and that was settled. The neckerchief was contributed by someone in the household who understood immediately what he was trying to do and helped him tie it in the correct knot, which he has maintained ever since without ever retying it. The backpack was assembled from materials he collected and packed with items he considers essential: a second compass, several smooth stones, a small amount of soil from the farm, two dried flowers, and a piece of folded parchment on which he has drawn a map of the house in considerable detail, including a room labeled "the place Artini keeps her good flowers" and another labeled "where Barry is when he is being quiet, which is suspicious."

The core of what Hotaboo took from observing Hotaru is not the equipment, though he will not be told this, but the underlying principle: that the most important thing a person can do is make sure the people around them are safe and provided for. He watched Hotaru work the farm before dawn and after dark. He watched him check on people without announcing he was doing it. He watched him carry things that were too heavy without complaining. He catalogued all of this and applied it at his own scale, which means he scouts the house perimeter before everyone wakes up, reports anything he considers notable to Puq, and has on at least two occasions attempted to carry things clearly too heavy for him without asking for help. He has also learned that sometimes the protective thing is to just be present, which runs slightly against his instincts but which he is practicing. He sits near people who seem troubled. He does not always bring the stick.

Hotaboo does not have a philosophical framework for what happened when the Watcher came. What he has is a body that was built after it happened and a mind assembled partly from the data of that period, which means he knows about it the way he knows about anything in Puq's history: as information that has weight without fully having form. What he has concluded from that information is straightforward: there are things in the world that want to harm his family, and he intends to be ready for them. This is why he maintains the perimeter checks. This is why the stick is not merely decorative. He is aware that a walking staff carried by a two-foot construct is not an especially serious deterrent to a specialized modron assassin. He has noted this and chosen not to change his approach. He finds the certainty of trying more useful than the uncertainty of what else to do.

Hotaboo's primary goal is to be useful, specifically useful in the way that Hotaru is useful: not decoratively, not symbolically, but in the practical and physical sense of someone who makes things work and keeps people safe. He wants to be the one who notices trouble before it arrives, who has already mapped the exit, who is already moving before anyone has to ask. He is working toward this with complete seriousness of purpose inside a body the size of a large boot, which he does not consider an obstacle and which he finds it increasingly irritating when others seem to. He is getting bigger. He is fairly certain he is getting bigger.

The badge system is not a joke to Hotaboo, even though he invented it himself and is also the sole authority on what constitutes earning one. Each badge represents something he has actually done: a route successfully mapped, an animal successfully befriended, a perimeter check completed in adverse conditions. He intends to keep earning them and to eventually have enough that the entire front of his uniform is covered, at which point he will move to the back. He has not determined what comes after that. He is not worried about it. That is a future-Hotaboo problem, and future-Hotaboo will be significantly more experienced.

Underneath all the scouting and the compass-checking and the stick-carrying, Hotaboo has noticed something about Hotaru that he has not catalogued officially but which influences everything he does: he is warm. He shows up at things. He makes hard work feel like it is worth doing by being genuinely glad to be doing it. The cheerfulness he leads with is partly studied and partly real, and he is not always sure which part is which, but he has decided that this does not matter. If it looks like cheerfulness and produces the outcomes of cheerfulness, it is close enough to cheerfulness to count. He wants the minis' household to feel the way the farm feels when Hotaru is in it: like somewhere that is worth coming back to. He is doing his part. He has a stick. He has a compass. He has fireflies at dusk. This is a good start.