I do not own The Property of Hate nor its characters. Enjoy :)

The harsh sun shot down beams of light onto the dry ground, letting grains of sand glisten like very tiny, hot diamonds lost among millions of others. They created perfectly smooth dunes over the earth, blanketing the parched soil meters below. However, the coating of sand wasn't one hundred percent untouched; two distinct tracks side by side decorated the ground. One was made from a pair of dress shoes with a slight heel, while the other was formed from small, flat boots. The peculiar footprints belonged to an even more enigmatic pair; a TV headed man with a handsome suit and an eight year old girl with brown hair so short she could be mistaken for a boy.

The child wiped her arm over her sweat sticky forehead. In her other short arm was a bundled up hoodie and draped lazily over her shoulder was a creature resembling a green sock puppet, panting like a dog.

"arwee thair yet?" The sock whined.

"For the hundredth time, Assok," Growled RGB as he adjusted the lapels of his robin red blazer. "We will get there when we get there."

"Aaaah…" The puppet sighed and fell limp over the girl's shoulder.

"…RGB?"

"Sigh…What is it now, Hero?" He glanced at the girl, impatiently twirling his cane between his adroit fingers.

"Why do you still have your jacket and gloves on?"

"Pardon?" RGB's antennas twitched in bafflement.

"It's so hot here…" She shifted her own coat in her arm. "Aren't you hot in your clothes?"

"…Oh. No, not really." He muttered. Tugging at his peppermint striped bowtie, he pretended not to feel the daggers of heat the sun dug into him. Just because he didn't have a physical body that obeyed the laws of biology didn't mean he was less vulnerable to the elements of nature. Yes, taking off his extra layers of clothes did sound nice, but he wasn't in the mood to wrinkle his trademark blazer or signature gloves. Besides…

"We're almost there."

"Really?" Hero's eyes grew large as Assok hopped onto her head.

"All mosthair?!"

"Yes; there's a place up ahead where we can take a rest." RGB said. "So no more 'are we there yet's."

"Okay!" The girl chirped and skipped ahead while the sock decided to jump from the crown of her head to RGB's shoulder.

"…arwee thair yet?" Assok hummed playfully into RGB's vents.

"Oh, for the love of…" He slapped his screen, nearly dying his hand with rainbow drool. "Why don't you go pester Hero for a change?"

"Pthbbbp!" The sock blew a raspberry at him. Hero had slowed up by now and Assok used this opportunity to leap back onto her shoulder and nuzzle her small neck. RGB's test pattern mouth formed a jealous frown as he mentally huffed.

"So…are we going to a tree or something? Like we usually do?" The girl asked innocently.

"Ah, so you have been paying attention." RGB stuck his cane into the golden sand as he walked. "You could say that; it's on the edge of this desert with a few hardy trees. You could almost call it an oasis, but without water, thank goodness."

"Huh…" She blinked with a flash of realization. "I'm really hot and sweaty…but not thirsty."

"Like I've said before, that's one less thing to worry about, hm?" He purred, not noticing how they were approaching the downward side of a steep sand dune. Before he could go on, his foot carelessly lost friction and sent his body rolling down the edge of the sandy hill.

"RGB!" Hero ran after him, but soon fell victim to the dune's slippery slope. She tripped and tumbled down with him, crying a muffled 'oof' or 'ack' between mouthfuls of sand.

They met at the bottom of the hill, dizzy from the fall. The girl shook her head and picked up her dusty jacket. When she did, she found Assok underneath it, spitting out sand as if he had drowned in it.

"Ptowey! Ptowey!"

While the sock recovered, RGB sluggishly sat up and wiped the sand from his screen. He plucked off his hat and brushed more sand from it and patted the top to empty out even more sand.

"Are you okay?" Hero asked as she held her jacket and Assok in her arms.

"Just dandy." He grumbled and got to his feet. The moment he straightened his posture, he felt every single grain of itchy sand in his clothes rub against his invisible body. Hero must have felt it, too, as she shoved her jacket into one arm and scratched her side with her free hand.

"This sand is really itchy…" She commented and rubbed her nails into her brown hair.

"Annoyances."

"Huh?" Hero stared at RGB, who was brushing dust off his sleeves, fighting the urge to scratch.

"These are The Sands of Annoyance. A few grains in your clothes is bearable, but too much can lead to anger if you're not careful." He replaced his hat back onto his TV screen and looked around. The desert stopped next to his two tone shoes, and immediately dissolved into dry, crusty earth. A few yards away a couple of tall, tough trees sprouted from the parched soil. Their leaves were needle thin and their bark was wax thick.

"Are these trees…?" Hero poked at the plant's semi-smooth surface. "They look more like cactuses."

"Well, they live on the fringes of a desert." RGB explained. "I'd say it suits them to look like cacti, no?" He walked towards a large tree and hung his cane on one of the lower branches.

"Is…is this the place?" The girl asked as the man removed his hat from his TV head.

"Yes. Just for a short while, though." RGB inspected his boater hat as he continued. "Long enough to get the sand out of our clothes and take a breather." He pointed at another cactus tree a couple of meters away. "See that tree over there?"

"Uh-huh."

"Go over there and shake out your clothes."

"W-what?" She asked as she scratched her stomach. The eight year old was too young to fully understand the unsaid rules of modesty, but she still knew-or felt, rather-that going naked out in the open wasn't normal.

"Calm down; no one's around, and I promise not to look." RGB hooked his hat and cane onto one of the needle-like leaves and began to peel off his blazer. "Remember when I said too much annoyance can lead to anger? That's the last thing we want." He shook his jacket in the air like a rug. "You may want to shake out Assok, too."

"…Okay…" Hero looked uncertainly at Assok inside the crook of her arm. He tilted his head in a sort of shrug. The girl shrugged back and walked to her tree. Before she disappeared behind the trunk, she hesitated and glanced over her shoulder.

"Even my underwear?"

"Where ever there is sand." RGB barked back. She could only see his arms from behind his tree. "Relax, it's not there's a pedophile on the prowl around here."

"A…what on the prowl?"

The man froze, reevaluating his choice of words. "Oh, me and my big, test pattern mouth."

"N-never mind." He stuttered as he neatly hung his red blazer on another branch. As the man tugged at his crimson gloves, the girl disappeared behind her tree, temporarily shoving her smooth talking friend out of her mind.

Hero gently placed Assok besides her feet. She stretched her jacket in her hands and shook it vigorously in the air. Fine sand particles flew out of the fabric with every shake. Once her hoodie was free of itchy annoyances, she draped it over a low tree branch and stared at the rest of her attire. After ten minutes of shaking out the rest of her clothes and emptying out her shoes, she scooped Assok up in her young hands. The girl and sock stared quizzically at each other before she carefully shook the sand out of him from his back end. She placed him into her free hand when his mouth started to scrunch in an odd way.

"Ah…ah…ah-CHOO!" He sneezed himself out of her hand and was sent flying into her other hand, where he landed into a charming ball.

"Gesundheit." Hero giggled and affectionately stroked his head. With a purr Assok hopped onto her shoulder. The girl grabbed her hoodie, wrapped the sleeves around her waist, and tied them into a simple knot. She smiled, feeling no itchiness on her body.

The girl walked away from the shade of her tree and approached the one RGB was behind when she decided to slow down. Surely he'd be done shaking out his clothes by now, right? Then again, he wore a hat, blazer, bowtie, shoes, shirt, and long pants-his wardrobe was much more complicated then hers. Maybe it would take him longer.

Hero quietly stopped two feet away from the cactus tree. His prized hat, cane, and blazer still dangled from the same branch as before, but now with his rose pink shirt and ruby colored suspenders with them.

"So RGB's half naked I guess, right?" Hero thought. That's when she remembered that his body was invisible…or at least what she'd seen in the past was. No neck stuck in the middle of his satellite dish collar, no ankles peeking out above his shoes, and no wrists sticking out of his gloves. She had even seen him with rolled up sleeves before, advertising his transparent forearms. Did that mean the rest of his body was the same? Was he now a floating TV set and a pair of pink pants?

The mental picture of him like this ensnared Hero's curiosity. She tip toed closer, hesitated behind the fat tree trunk, and slowly peeked behind the corner.

Several feet away RGB's grumbling-to-himself TV head hovered in the air, just like Hero thought. However, waving in the air were his pants, trying to shake off every last grain of sand. Obviously RGB was shaking them out with his hands, which were ungloved and therefore unseen. Floating where his hips and thighs were was a pair of loud, ridiculous boxer shorts with flame patterns printed everywhere.

Hero never put much thought into what he wore under his classy clothes, but she never imagined something as silly as this. Before she could clamp her hand over her mouth, a hearty laugh slipped past her lips.

"Pfft-ha ha ha ha HA!" The girl bent over her stomach as RGB whipped around.

"Wh-what-?!"

Hero continued to crack up as she fell backwards and rolled on the hard ground. Assok, who had fallen off her shoulder laughing, too, wiggled with glee besides her.

"W-what in Hell's name are you doing?!" RGB demanded, frantically trying to cover his embarrassing underwear. "And how long have you been standing there?!"

"W-we-ha ha-just got h-hee hee-here!" Hero squeezed between laughs. Tears leaked out of her eyes while her legs kicked in the air above her.

"Just because you can't see my body doesn't mean I don't need privacy!" The man barked as he crammed his invisible legs into his pants. "Now go, shoo! Shoo!" He ordered with as much composure as he could. Red and magenta ink-the colors of embarrassment-dripped out of his screen as he glared at the still laughing girl and sock puppet.

"Ha ha ha ha…aha ha ha ha…" After a few wheezy breaths, Hero recovered from her laughing fit. She wiped her eyes and looked back at RGB, now half dressed, before she cracked up all over again.

"Oh, for pity's sake…" RGB grumbled. He gently but firmly shoved Hero away all the way to her tree. "Stay here." The man commanded as he pointed at the girl's chest. "And no peeking."

"Ha ha-o-okay…ha ha!"

With a huff, he turned around. After two steps, however, his foot mashed into something plush and alive. He looked down to find Assok with his mouth stuck onto RGB's transparent toes. The sock let out a muffled giggle while the TV man frowned, whipped around on his other heel, and kicked the talking piece of cloth off.

"Haaaaaah-oof!" Assok crashed into the back of Hero's head and fell to the ground. The girl glanced behind her and made eye contact with her companion. After a brief silence, they both broke into silly smiles, trying to contain their laughter yet again.

RGB sighed in frustration and stomped back behind his tree, feeling annoyed-and it wasn't just because of the sand still in his clothes. "Well, the sooner I get it out, the better," he thought.

While the man carried out his business, Hero and Assok sat against the waxy tree trunk idly, chuckling as quietly as they could. By the time RGB returned to them fully dressed, their laughter had subsided into tight smiles.

"Well, then…I'm assuming you both are ready to proceed?" RGB asked.

The girl and sock duo nodded together.

"Alright then. Let's get moving." He turned around and began to walk. "Come along, spit spot." Hero scooped up Assok, perched him on her shoulder, and jogged up to RGB's side.

"…Just so we are clear," He said, spinning his cane in his right hand nonchalantly. "You two are not to mention anything that you saw to anyone else."

"You mean your underwear?" Hero nearly burst out laughing again, but she managed to hold her tongue.

"Yes, that." RGB hissed. "You are not to mention to anyone about my underwear. Understand?"

"Okay."

"Good."

"…can I ask you about them, still?" Hero tilted her head. "Just one question?"

"If you must. What is it?"

"Do they change when your clothes change? Like when your suit changes color, does your underwear change, too?"

…

"…Let's leave that question unanswered for now, shall we?"

AN: This fanfic was inspired by a TPoH fancomic I made a while ago. Unfortunately I can't insert a link here to it on . Rats :/ Well, you can still find it on my deviantART and tumblr accounts if you're curious.