The next day the small toon was already gone by the time Orion woke up to Sirius pushing the pie to his hand for breakfast, though he could remember during the earlier hours of the morning, when he’d been drifting in and out of sleep, hearing what sounded like the window sill creaking. When he initially saw that it was just him and Sirius alone in their little hovel, he assumed that would be it. That the monochrome toon had taken his leave and was out of Orion’s life for good.

            At least, he’d thought that. Until he’d come back from walking Sirius that night to hear a little, cheeky ding at the window, like what he’d hear when an elevator reached its chosen floor. And, when he turned to look, there was the toon again, leaning casually against the side of the frame. Even to this day Orion was not sure what made him walk over, stance still guarded though he didn’t make any move to force the smaller being from his perch. The toon simply smiled and sunnily offered two baked goods, loaves about the size of the smaller being’s forearm with what smelled like cinnamon sprinkled on the top. And Orion somehow found himself reaching out and taking them from the little being.

            “Did you steal these?” He couldn’t help but ask, even though he hadn’t been sure what he’d do if the answer was yes. They were both grown, Orion was hardly responsible for the toon, and on a somewhat less ethical side he knew that especially since the war, people were far more wary of chaotic-type beings than ever. Perhaps to the point of even denying them service on the grounds that it might put them out a business. Logically enough, it turned many in less friendly areas to thievery, though not everyone had fallen to that sort of thinking. Unfortunately, they were few and far between nowadays.

            “No, actually. Bought these fair an’ square.” The monochrome toon replied jauntily, a proud note in his voice as he bounded down from the sill. Orion put the loaves down in the empty pie tray, turning to look at the smaller figure as the toon sauntered closer, though still stayed out of the hunter’s space.

            Orion, for his part, sighed when he realized that this was twice now that the monochrome toon had brought him food, and probably twice now that he was likely going to be staying with him and Sirius, but he still didn’t even know the small thing’s name.

            “You seem to have me at a disadvantage.” Orion felt he probably could have figured out a better manner in which to get a conversation going, though at the time there was a part of him that felt almost gratified to see the toon actually flinch a little. “You know who I am, but I do not know anything about you. Not even your name.”

            “Oh! Y’coulda just asked, they call me Cel.”

            “Like in a prison?” Orion asked, brow furrowing a little. The newly named Cel meanwhile had looked a little stunned that the hunter would even jump to such a conclusion. Well, stunned for a few moments, before he snapped back into the conversation with a somewhat strained smile.

            “Oh, no, it’s suposta mean, like an animation cel, though the full word is celluloid. Y’know, like in pictures? Movies? Cartoons?”

            It still didn’t really explain anything, and something must have shown in Orion’s face because ‘Cel’ immediately clarified.

            “They’re the little drawin’s that people make when they’re drawin’ the cartoons, when they make ‘em pose and stuff?”

            Alright, that clarified things a little for the hunter, but Orion’s experience when it came to the more modern forms of the arts was still middling to none. Still, Cel hardly looked perturbed, instead looking about before seeming to settle on the wall opposite the rundown couch, mismatched gaze flicking over the somewhat pockmarked and ill-kept marks from late nights and bouts of frustrated temper. However, what really surprised Orion was the fact that Cel barely gave any of these a moment’s thought, instead somehow producing what looked like a black briefcase of some sort from seemingly nowhere. Opening that, the toon let a projector screen spring from the depths of the case, rooting around for a moment before coming up with the projector itself. This Cel set up behind the sofa, putting a reel in and turning on the machine with a click of a button. Unfortunately, given Orion’s height and where he was standing, he ended up getting a quadruple eyeful of the unfiltered light.

            Blinking and now pressing his clawed hands to his face, Orion was about to try rubbing the spots from his eyes but becoming uncomfortably aware that it wasn’t going to work especially given that both sets of arms were trying to get in on the act. And, disorientated as he was, it made a snafu of what should have been a simple gesture. The growl of frustration he let out must have been something, given that Cel immediately left the projector to rush over. Though the fact that Orion’s claws were still being brandished and were somewhat flailing as he tried to work between the upper and lower set of arms kind of stymied the toon from actually trying to physically steer the much-taller hunter to the couch, Cel still gave it a good verbal try.

            “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shoulda warned you. It’s alright, jus’ siddown and I’ll show y’what I mean about th’ celluloid stuff! An’, I dunno, maybe y’can get a few laughs outta it, after all, these are cartoons.”

            Through a haze of spots Orion looked down at the monochrome toon, taking in the earnest, mismatched face that sat just under his waist, and for a moment envisioned throwing the being right out the window. The image only lasted for a second though, and dissolved immediately; Orion knew that he couldn’t do it now, with two gifts under the belt and the fact going that up until now the toon had been content to leave as little a mark on his hovel as possible. Besides, if there was one thing he remembered about toons it was that inflicting direct harm or slighting them could end poorly for the slighter, even if the toon had been in the wrong.

            So, with a mix of good morals and wary foreknowledge, Orion settled back onto the sofa and blinked the last of the spots from his eyes. Cel, meanwhile, had gotten the reel in the projector going, words flashing across the screen in the modern English alphabet. The hunter had learned the letters awhile ago, as English tended to be the language of common communication no matter where he went, but he hadn’t had to read the lettering for quite some time. Not to mention the title didn’t make much sense on its own; “Baseball Bugs”? He knew of the game, vaguely, but was fairly certain there weren’t insects involved at any point…

            Colorful images and characters played across the screen, Orion watching as an anthropomorphic rabbit somehow managed to play against an entire team of burly men, and neither side was particularly willing to play fair. Hijinks aside, Orion was hardly sure of how the game was supposed to be played but he thought he could at least pick out what was not supposed to be there. Cel put in another reel when that one was done, and mostly because Orion couldn’t think of any reason to say no he didn’t stop the toon. It wasn’t like the hunter would be doing anything other than sleeping and this…wasn’t completely unpleasant.

            The next short was in black and white, titled “Minnie the Moocher” and definitely wasn’t quite so clear cut as the last. This one started with a girl being yelled at by her parents for not eating her food and ended with a musical number and a horde of ghosts and what he could only assume were some sort of demons or underworld creatures. Cel took a little more time to explain that one as he was putting in the next reel, saying that the studio made the animation around the song that was playing, which was why one of the creatures moved a little differently in that one scene compared to everyone else. Something called ‘rotoscoping’…

            “It’s pretty much one big thing for Cab Calloway, he’s the guy singin’ the words that character is sayin’.” Cel explained, gesturing enthusiastically at the screen once the short had ended. Even while the toon was putting in another reel, he was still talking. “The rotoscopin’ was so the walrus toon could move like Calloway, an’ Calloway sang the song! It’sall kinda an elaborate thing built aroun’ th’ song!”

            The next reel detailed a rabbit and a duck trying to convince a hunter to shoot the other instead, Cel giggling the whole way through the cartoon, some of the gags even getting a laugh or two out of Orion. It was pretty standard fare for a tale regarding a good trickster, and a not-so-good one.

            “That’s one’a there best bits! Daffy an’ Bugs are the biggest names in cartoons, in lotsa ‘Verses! Stuff like this made ‘em famous!”

            The next reel also featured the rabbit, Bugs, with the hunter again. This time the chase had somehow gotten onto a stage, giving the wily rabbit more than enough props to use in his efforts to get away. By the time the short was done, they’d both laughed over something or other, and when Cel turned to Orion and asked what part the hunter had found the most funny, it had taken a moment of thought.

            “The part where he’s trying to give him hair, and doing stranger and stranger things while keeping a completely straight face the whole time.”

            “Ah, so a stoically comedic kinda guy! I’ll be keepin’ that in mind.” The toon replied, just giving the suspicious look Orion gave him a cheery wink. “Also, what good’s the comedy if he corpses?”

            “If…he what?”

            “Corpses! Means if he breaks composure an’ laughs on screen. Y’never wanna do that in comedy, though sometimes comedians like t’test each other by seein’ if they can make the other guy laugh.”

            The next reel was another black and white, from the same makers that did the Minnie short. Even starred the same girl character, Orion actually learned her name from the title card this time; Betty Boop. Orion watched with an increasing amount of an emotion that he couldn’t tell whether or not it was wonder or pure confusion. She…he had to take a second, she had left the windows open in a snowstorm, so she closed them and got a fire going in the fireplace, which then turned into a grotesque portal leading to the underworld?

            Truly anything could happen in these cartoons…

            Cel merely looked at him once the short was done, and while Orion figured that it was probably more of the same formula with a cartoon being built around a song, that didn’t mean it made much sense.

            “Wanna see another reel by these guys? It’s called ‘Swing You Sinners’. Music’s pretty good!”

            Orion merely nodded, and another reel was quickly put in. This…made a little more sense. The dog toon had lived a terrible life, and was being punished for it by all manner of spirits and monsters. It probably would have been a little better if he could understand what some of the song lyrics were. From what he was understanding, the dog toon’s (Bimbo’s, Cel corrected) crimes ranged from chasing women and thievery. Not great, but not overly terrible considering they seemed primed to murder him or at least drag him down to the underworld.

            “Yeah, that’s Fleisher Studios for you,” Cel said when Orion pointed it out. “They’re kinda into the macabre, an’ this was before the Hays Code officially took effect, so people kinda went nuts for a bit when it came t’animation. ‘Member the scene in Red Hot Mama, th’ one with Betty Boop an’ the fireplace? There was a scene where she was walkin’ an’ th’ fire behind her showed off her legs. That kinda stuff was absolutely nuts in the 1920s and 30s, especially in the U.S. where they were made.”

            That, did make some sense, if this ‘Fleisher Studios’ was doing these things to push the envelope, to try to test the boundaries of what society would take or reveling in how they had managed to subvert or get something past into the public. Still, there was one question Orion had.

            “What is the Hays Code?”

            “It’s a way things were looked at to make sure they could be shown t’th’ public. If it didn’ pass, it couldn’t be shown. How it got called that was because originally the shorts were sent to a political figure whose last name was Hays. He made a governing office that had to review all th’ stuff comin’ out of Hollywood, from cartoons to movies. One’a th’ things you couldn’t do was have any kind of sexual stuff, so that kind of killed the Betty Boop cartoons. Like that one. Dunno what they would have thought about Swing You Sinners, cause technic’lly Bimbo gets punished for the bad stuff he does, they might still not like th’ imagery though…” The toon was lost in thought for a moment before seeming to snap out of it, leaping up to put in a new reel.

            “Don’ worry, I got some nice stuff too!” The monochrome being hollered from the projector as he fitted in another reel. Before long another title card was flashing onto the white screen, reading Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Snow Use. The snowy landscape opened with the journey of the title character, Orion watching as the simplistically designed rabbit made his way across a frozen tundra. The party the rabbit went to was definitely a lively one, the actions from the dancing to the manner in which the title character drove off a rival to his paramour.

            “That’s Walt’s first animated character, though he lost Oswald in a legal thing an’ ended up havin’ t’make another one. Which we’re gonna meet right now!” The toon declared, racing back over the worn couch to put in another reel. Before Orion even really processed what had happened, the screen was running another title card, this time reading Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse in The Mad Dog. In this short, the toon in question was, well, a mouse, taking care of his dog. Trying to give him a bath, apparently, though the canine in question was having none of it. The hunter shared a look with Sirius, who had peered up as though sensing the gaze of his owner on him.

            Granted, Sirius had never really had issues with baths, or walks. Heck, even grooming was never a problem so long as Orion was doing it.