"Now let's think carefully about this," the reindeer admonished.

"I'm gonna do it."

"You'll get muddy!"

The plushie was undeterred as he prepared to leap down into the shallow stream. Bryce knew how his "best friend" got when there was running water to splash around in.

The caribou was running out of ideas. "Just come back down and hop on my back and... we'll have a nice singalong on the ride home. Won't that be fun?"

"Watch me! Watch me!"

---

Bryce has difficulty taking Franz places. Franz has a tendency to hide from people who aren't his owner, to the point that Bryce can't even convince his friends that his sentient ferret plush is "real". The one time he dragged him out of hiding to show him off he immediately went into low power mode. After that he learned to respect Franz's wishes.

(Can robots have social anxiety? Don't they just have, like, programming? Heck if Bryce knows.)

However, going out on a hike in the woods, just the two of them, is a-ok. Franz loves to scamper around and chase after little critters, and Bryce imagines he's giving his companion much-needed stimulation outside of the house.

But there are moments like this where he gets a little naughty.

Now, Franz is washing machine-safe, so his getting soiled should be no big deal, right? The problem is that he hates going in the wash and Bryce can't figure out how to put him into manual sleep mode first. The "sleep now" voice command only causes him to simulate sleep (making comical "honk-shu" noises) and Bryce isn't about to invite someone over just to watch him do the laundry. Plus it would seem a bit cruel.

So, cautious negotiations like this are sometimes necessary. They rarely go Bryce's way.

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