Lost Ordnance, Condemned to the Credenza Void

The box arrived with the usual fanfare—the crinkle of plastic, the tearing of cardboard, sounds that usually herald something of potential interest for me. But instead of a new corrugated scratching surface or a delightful packing-paper nest, my human extracted this… grim little man. He set it on his desk, a miniature sentinel of solemnity, and began the meticulous, almost surgical process of equipping it. I observed from my post on the leather chair, tail twitching in mild irritation. This was not a toy. It was a chore. My human, a terrible strategist, positioned the soldier near the precarious edge of the desk, its weapon aimed at a stack of unread mail. An amateur's mistake. He failed to account for the high ground offered by the bookshelf, or the potential for an ambush from behind the monitor. He fussed with its pose, bending a knee here, tilting the head there, a battlefield commander with no concept of actual battle. I yawned, a pointed display of my professional disapproval. He was playing checkers while I was thinking in three-dimensional, gravity-assisted chess. Then, the moment of opportunity. While attempting to attach a minuscule pouch to the soldier’s belt, his clumsy fingers betrayed him. The piece, a tiny, dark gray rectangle, slipped from his grasp and skittered across the hardwood floor, coming to a rest near the leg of the chair. My human sighed, a sound of defeat I know well. He peered under his desk, patting the floor blindly. I remained perfectly still, a portrait of innocence, tracking the lost "ordnance" with only my eyes. It was a test of my stealth capabilities. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, he gave up and returned to his desk, leaving the now-incomplete soldier to guard its pile of envelopes. I waited for the low hum of the computer to signal his complete distraction. Then, with the silence and grace of a shadow, I slipped from the chair. A single, deft paw-tap sent the lost accessory spinning under the heavy antique credenza, a place from which no object has ever returned. The soldier-man itself is a bore, a stoic piece of plastic unworthy of my claws. But as a delivery system for treasures? For that, it has earned a temporary, and very conditional, stay of execution. It can remain on the desk, for now.