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The fruttens had taken over. It'd just been the one at first, but then as the days passed, more and more seemed to be finding their way to Leo's dorm. She hadn't minded, at first, because they were so cute! but then they'd started making a mess of the room. A big mess. They'd started off with her curtains, because that was apparently some sort of universal minipet snack, before working themselves up to just about anything in her room that wasn't bolted to the floor - and they'd even managed to get her pathling in on it. Good ol' Patty, who'd never even chewed half-heartedly on her shoes before, was suddenly joining the little hellions in razing her room.

And frankly, she'd had enough. She'd been saving her silver to pay Alex for his tutoring help, but really, this was an emergency. He could wait a little longer. Her room looked like a herd of elephants had stomped over it and this was Not Acceptable (capital N, capital A fully intended).

So she'd grabbed what silver she owned and made her way to the maul, fully intent on finding the minipet store she'd heard was supposed to be here. And lo and behold, there it was. Leo entered, stared, and then looked completely baffled. Okay, when she'd imagined a minipet store she'd, um, imagined something slightly smaller. To be honest, what she'd imagined amounted to a bookcase, a few toys and a small enclosure for a few pets.

This was not it. Where did one even start? There were the toys over there and the books over there, but what would help her with her current minipet problem? Should she just pick something at random? It was around this time it occurred to her that she really should have spent a few minutes researching this on the interwebs before coming here.

Okay, it was no use crying over spilt milk now. She'd have to find someone to help her, obviously, but there didn't seem to be anyone around where she was standing. So she'd have to do a little hunting, fair enough!

She passed by the little cages for the baby minipets, the cash register, the rows of FEAR candies and toys before she found it. Well, her. Not it. An employee who seemed to be gently - wrestling? - with a pair of boafoxes all the way down in the back had drawn her attention. "Er, are you alright?" She couldn't see much from behind the employee, but it did seem like she was in a bit of a pinch. "Do you need a bit of help?"

Leo was star-struck. She hadn't recognized the other ghoul from behind, but now she did. She definitely did. This was Amrita, the ghoul who'd taken charge and tried to protect the first years during the Dragonfell adventure. Amrita who'd taken a fall from the chimaera's hand and whose first action upon landing had been to check on the others. Amrita who had made the most impression on Leo out of anyone on the whole journey. The Amrita that Leo had thought of as an inspiration (What Would Amrita Do?) whenever she tried to help other people since the Dragonfell trip.

The Amrita. Who remembered her name. And was talking to her. "U-um." There might even have been a bit of blushing involved with that stuttering.

As Amrita's smile faltered, Leo started to worry that she was making the other ghoul uncomfortable. Well, duh, wouldn't anyone be uncomfortable if someone stared and stammered at them? But this was weird, it wasn't like she was a shy person by nature. Sure, she wasn't a social butterfly by any means, but she had no trouble talking to people.

Usually, that is. But Amrita's smile returned and Leo felt a bit more confident that she could manage conversation. Maybe. "Oh, um, no worries. It was fun." It had been, even if she'd had to wrack her brains for possible candidates for the categories. She still didn't know a whole lot of people, but she'd known even less back then. In the end she'd just picked random people she'd had classes with. She felt kind of bad about that.

"Help me wi-- Oh, right! I recently er, acquired a lot of fruttens. And I don't know what to do with them." That didn't really sound like what she'd meant it to... "Er, that is, they're tearing my dorm apart. Like, really tearing my dorm apart. You wouldn't think anything that small could cause so much damage, but honestly, they're a bit of a terror." Keep on track ghoulie, on track! "I think they might be bored."

Leo nodded fervently, one hundred percent convinced that it would be amazing. Amrita could pull it off, she was sure. She really hoped something like this would come around again next year, when she was sure to know more people to enter.

She followed the other ghoul down the aisle, listening carefully. This was partly because it was Amrita talking, and partly because she really needed to do something about those fruttens. "Floresce sound nice. I've never had any fish, but they can't be harder to keep than something that burns your homework." Her brow furrowed - was it safe to keep something that burned things at will? She knew some undeads could get quite, er, dry, so maybe it wasn't the best idea.

Then again, Amrita probably knew better than her. "I've never even heard of death charms before. What are they?" She absentmindedly scratched her arm as she watched the taller ghoul take a box from a shelf that Leo had no chance of ever reaching. "Um, I think six fruttens. No, seven. No wait, six. Roundabouts." She shrugged. Really, one frutten more or less probably didn't make the greatest difference.

She carefully took the box, turning it over and looking at the toy. It could work, maybe. They did seem fond of chasing things. "This looks nice." She gave a shy smile at patchwork ghoul. "But you might be right about the stampede thing. Do you think having multiples would help or just make things more chaotic?"

"I'd like that." Her voice had gone shy again, argh. Leo willed it to return to its normal cadence.

She nodded as the other ghoul described her fruttens as a herd - really, it was. She was kinda afraid she was going to go to bed one night just to wake the next morning and find that they'd multiplied. Seriously, she didn't think she could take any more fruttens - any more minipets at all, for that matter. It'd been a cramped dorm to start with, but her little herd didn't exactly make things better. Still, she adored each and everyone one of them, and if another mini had come to her door, she'd probably end up taking that in as well. She was a softie like that, really.

"Er... they need exercise?" Her sheepish expression just about said it all. "I haven't been doing that. There's just so many and some of them don't really come when I call, so I figured it'd be a bit of a hazard."

But the suggestion of taking them out for a sit and a play did sound like a good way to start. "That sounds like it could work. But do you think I should get leashes for them or something, just to make sure they don't get lost when we go out to play, then?" They would get lost if she brought all of them out at once, she knew it. They didn't have the directional sense to get from her room to her bathroom. "Can they even play with a leash on?"

"Sure!" Leo nodded enthusiastically at the prospect. A day with Amrita and seeing a new minipet, what could possibly get better?? "I'm free pretty much any time, really!" That wasn't exactly true; she did have a strict schedule for studying, but for this ghoul, she could always make time.

Studying the harness with interest, Leo noted how durable it seemed - it did look like it could hold even her most hyper frutten, and the low price meant that while she would be spending some silver on it, at least it wasn't as much as she'd feared when she entered the store. She could live with a little bit of downtime on her own spendings, as long as the fruttens stopped destroying everything. "That sounds like a good idea." She nodded again, smiling.

"Ohh, there are enclosures? I've never noticed." But then again, she hadn't spent much time exploring campus. Maybe she should've. "Sounds just about perfect. And yeah, you're probably right, some of them might have separation anxiety. One went with me to the bathroom and the others shredded one of my last remaining curtains. Then again, they really like shredding curtains, so it technically could be anything." She thought for a second. "I can always work on teaching them how to be separated without going berserk later on, if we need it for anything."

Adding her number didn't take a whole lot of time, and Leo quickly handed the phone back to Amrita with a smile. "There, that should be it."

Her smile turned shy and she shrugged. "I don't think anyone'd mind, in that case - if no-one's using them for anything anyway, I mean. At least this way they're not totally going to waste?" Better that someone was using it, she thought. They were there for a purpose after all, and if that purpose was no longer being utilized, well, then they could get a new one. And minipet enclosures seemed pretty damn handy, in the mare's opinion.

The older ghoul's advice on how to stop the fruttens destroying everything seemed pretty sound to Leo - and pretty easy, too, which was always a plus. "Yeah, that seems like a good idea. I'll definitely try that out. I should probably get some treats as well while I'm here, then. D'you have any recommendations?" Who knew, maybe there was some special treat that all fruttens universally loved or something. That'd be great, because the generic brand of Fear treats she'd been buying didn't quite fall in the taste of all her fruttens - some loved it, some hated it. Sometimes she wished that minipets were just a tiny bit less individual.