Author's Warning: Like everything else, this takes place in my series, set up by the events in my first story "More Than My Friend" where the big event is that Frankie adopts Mac as her "little brother". If you haven't read that story yet, I strongly suggest you do so now, or else you might get terribly confused.
"…Hello?" Frances "Frankie" Foster inquired cautiously as she opened the front doors and peered outside. At first, her eyes were unable to discern a single thing other than near pitch-black. All moonlight was totally obscured by the monstrous storm clouds that bombarded the land below with a downpour so fierce the young woman could barely hear anything above the pounding rain.
After glancing about fruitlessly, the young woman paused to scratch her head as she was beset with befuddlement. She could've sworn that she had heard someone crying just a few moments before, but why-
Suddenly, a clap of thunder boomed like a barrage of cannon fire, badly startling the caretaker. However, that nasty surprise absolutely paled in comparison to the intense shock that struck her just a moment later when a flash of lightning temporarily illuminated the night sky, finally revealing Foster's surprise visitor.
"Oh my God!" Frankie cried out as soon as she finally spotted the wicker basket and its blanket-swaddled cargo lying just inches away from her feet. As another roll of thunder roared, immediately the little bundle burst out bawling shrilly in fright. In an instant, the redhead's maternal instincts had kicked into high gear, and without wasting a moment, she hastily bent down and delicately gathered the little one into her arms.
"Shhhh, don't be scared!" Frankie cooed softly. "Shhhh, it's okay, it's okay! It's all right, you-"
The gentle reassurances abruptly ceased the instant she brushed a bit of blanket aside to reveal what was undoubtedly the strangest-looking abandoned baby that she had ever laid eyes on in her entire life. Flummoxed, at first she could do little except gawk dumbly at the bright azure orphan in her arms, with its nose-less and ear-less face, complete lack of hair, and fingerless hands that tightly clutched a stuffed teddy bear.
"B-baby want…want paddleball!" it gurgled as it tugged cutely upon its bright pink bonnet.
Without a word, Frankie abruptly let go, allowing him to plummet right back into the basket with a startled squeal.
"Blooragard Q. Kazoo, have you no shame?" the caretaker, unmoved by his cries, clenched her fists and shrieked furiously at the top of her lungs.
"Not imaginawy fwiend! Baby!" Bloo insisted as he batted his eyelids and attempted to look adorable. Already absolutely livid at this point, Frankie just averted her gaze with a scowl.
"Bloo, cut it out! You're not fooling anyone! This is so awful in so many ways, I...I honestly don't even know where to begin!" she lamented. "Oh for crying out loud, did you really expect me to fall for this? I mean, of all the crazy, half-baked-"
"Not Bloo! Baby!" Bloo only snapped stubbornly in reply. "Give baby paddleball, now!"
"Honestly! I can't believe you're doing this all for your stupid toy! I told you a hundred times already, you're not getting it back anytime soon, not after what you did to the sofa in the living room!" Frankie snarled defiantly. "You hear me? The saw is not your personal toy, and until you understand that, you are not getting back-"
"Goo goo ga ga!" Bloo blurted out squealing desperately to try and convince her that he was indeed an abandoned infant. "Goo goo ga ga! Goo goo-OW!"
In no mood to deal with the utter absurdity of it all, Frankie roughly nabbed him by the arm, and forcibly dragged the miscreant back inside the house.
"Hey, c'mon! Leggo! Leggo!" he yelped. "You want to get arrested for child endangerment or something?"
"Is that it? Is that what you want?" she growled. "Fine! If you want to be a baby, I'll treat you like one! It's 7:00, way past time for babies to go upstairs to bed!"
"Hey!" he protested as she forcibly pushed him towards the stairs. "Whoa, calm down! YOu wanna get in trouble for child endangerment, or what?"
"GO TO BED!" the furious young woman howled as she stomped her foot. It was then that the aggravatingly stubborn blob finally realized his horribly over-complicated plan had failed, and without another word he scrambled upstairs and out of sight.
Once he had vacated the scene, Frankie took a few seconds to rub her temples as she elicited a heavy sigh of exasperation.
"Dear Lord." She groaned before fetching the blanket and basket out on the front porch. "Of all the crazy ideas, that was just plain-"
As she tried to reenter the mansion, she suddenly found her path blocked by a pigtailed little girl standing directly in the way as she gazed expectantly into the fuming redhead's eyes.
"What?" Frankie snapped grumpily.
Taken aback, Goo scuttled back a bit as she whimpered confusedly, "I…I thought someone was calling for me…."
"Hey!" The little boy yelped in surprise as he was suddenly showered with a hail of soapy droplets.
"Wasn't me!" the lanky redhead giggled mischievously as she went back to her mopping, as if the child would actually fail to consider the fact they were the only two souls present in the sunlit foyer. After he wiped the suds from his hair, Mac immediately lit up with a grin as he clambered off his hands and knees and bared his scrub brush playfully.
"That's it, you asked for it!" he laughed as he returned fire. Snickering like a schoolchild, his guardian took a mock fighting stance as she pointed her improvised weapon at him.
"Oooooh, if you think you're gonna take me on, think again, pal-"
Just before they launched into a lively water fight, their merriment was abruptly interrupted by the unmistakable clamor of something wailing loudly outside.
Instinctively, Mac promptly forgot about their mischief as he tensed up with alarm. "What the-"
As he became awash with concern, Frankie meanwhile didn't appear to be the slightest bit panicked by the distinct bawling they could hear coming from the front porch. Instead, she merely put on a fierce scowl as she grumpily placed her mop aside and made a beeline for the doors.
"Don't tell me you think I forgot about yesterday!" she snapped as she peered outside, only to confirm her worst suspicions as she looked down and saw the familiar wicker basket, holding a concealed little bundle.
"Oh, an abandoned infant on our very front steps! Never seen one of these before!" Frankie hurled her arms up in the air and exclaimed sarcastically before she removed the small note pinned to the basket.
"And what do we have here? 'Please, care for my child, and give her the love, care, and paddleballs that I could never give her. Sighed, a poor heartbroken mother'…and of course mother is spelled with two M's here." Frankie read aloud unsympathetically before crumpling the paper and tossing it aside.
"Is that it? Is that the best you can do?" she shouted crossly at the swaddled bundle. "You really think a stupid note's going to make all the difference in the world this time?"
"Frankie?" Mac inquired as he appeared at her side. "Frankie, what are you yelling at-WHOA!"
The instant he laid eyes on the basket's bawling cargo, the color promptly drained from his face in horror as he looked incredulously to the livid redhead.
"Frankie!" the mortified little boy involuntarily shouted. "Why are you screaming at -"
"Don't tell me that's a baby, because it's not!" she snapped viciously as she leaned over to show him the truth "It's just your crazy imaginary friend, and without a doubt the worst scheme I've ever seen in my whole entire life-AAAAUUUGGGHHHH!"
With a lung-bursting shriek of panic, the redhead recoiled and frantically scuttled a few steps back. It wasn't as if the one year-old-baby girl lying in the basket was a fright to see; quite the contrary, the black-haired, hazel-eyed little one was exceptionally adorable. What nearly gave Frankie a massive heart attack though was the simple fact that the wailing child was actually there on Foster's doorstep to begin with.
"AUGH!" Mac yelled along in unspeakable dismay, unable to believe his own eyes. "Frankie, why were you just yelling at the-"
Too stunned to speak, Frankie just gawked wordlessly at the child for a moment before pointing stupidly at the crumpled note lying nearby. Then, without further ado, she gingerly scooped the bawling infant up into her arms and instinctively began rocking it gently in an attempt to calm it down.
"What is going on here?" Mac yelped as he floundered helplessly in confusion. "Frankie, what-"
The boy didn't even need to read the note; all it took was but one glance for him to recognize the all-too-familiar handwriting. As his eyes almost bulged to the size of dinner plates and bugged out of their sockets, his arms fell limply at his side as he murmured incredulously to Frankie in an uncontrollable tremor, "N-no…no, he didn't…he wouldn't actually…"
Unfortunately, the terrible truth literally reared its head only moment later when Mac glimpsed a flash of azure in the nearby bushes out of the corner of his eye; no doubt a certain someone was watching carefully nearby to see how well his scheme worked. The culprit hadn't merely returned to the scene of the crime; actually he had never left it to begin with. As the child became flush with a terrible rage the likes of which he doubted he had ever experienced before, he suddenly moved like lightening, and actually leapt off the porch into the shrubs below.
"OOF! Hey, what do you think you're-OW! Hey! Hey! Lemmego! Mmph! Argh! Leggo! Leggo!"
No matter how much he protested or how wildly he thrashed about, all of Bloo's attempts to escape were all in vain, and after a brief struggle, his creator forcibly lugged him into the open and up the porch stairs.
"Hey! Hey, what's gotten into you? Can't a guy just relax in the bushes without-"
"Where is she from?" Mac whirled his friend around and demanded frantically. Unsuccessfully trying to play innocent, Bloo replied unconvincingly, "Where's who from? Frankie? She lives here, where do you think she…oh, good gosh!" he gasped, attempting to act believably surprised as he clapped his stubs over his cheeks. "Where on earth did that come from?"
"We know it was you!" Mac snapped fiercely. "Knock it off! We need you to tell us where you took her from, and-"
"Cross my heart and hope to die, I'm just as appalled as you guys!" Bloo replied. "This is terrible! What mother would heartlessly abandon her own child? This is-"
As soon as she had calmed the infant in her arms somewhat, reducing its howls to mere whimpers, Frankie promptly squatted down, took a deep breath, than roared furiously, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
"AUGH!" Bloo wailed as the force of her cry knocked him clean onto his back. "Whoa, calm down-"
"Calm down? Calm down?" she shrieked in disbelief, unintentionally frightening the child in her arms to the point where it started to bawl again. "You stole someone's child! Bloo whose baby is this? Whose? Whose baby is this?"
"How should I know?" Bloo answered in an uncontrollable quaver. "I…I-I swear, this is the first time I've seen her-"
"You filthy, filthy, filthy liar!" she bellowed ferociously. "Just stop it, all right? Stop it, just stop it! No one believes you! We know it was you! You kidnapped someone's child, all for what? For what? A stupid paddleball, that's what! Are you insane?"
"Kidnap?" Bloo repeated in horror as she threw him on the defensive. "Hey, whoa! Hold the phone here! Whoa! Whoa! What do you think I am, some kind of sicko? This is someone's baby we're talking about! I'm only borrowing her for like, a half-hour, tops, and…wait, wait, no! I mean…her mother abandoned her here on the steps, and we have to-OW!"
After transferring the crying baby securely into one arm, Frankie leaned over and cuffed the imaginary blob with a hiss. "You really are crazy, you know that?"
"Bloo, what do you think you're doing? You can't just 'borrow' someone else's kid!" Mac cried as his creation started to cower under the barrage of outraged screams.
"Chill out!" he started to beg once he realized his absurd scheme was getting nowhere. "I…I told you, it wasn't going to be for very long at all! She was playing outside, and her mom went inside for just a second to like, answer the phone or something...I swear, I never planned to take her for long at all, I just…I just thought that if I had a real baby here, Frankie would…give it my paddleball, and…and then I'd…I'd…just…put it back, without…"
After thinking hard about what he was actually saying for a moment, his eyes bulged as he realized with a mortified whimper, "...I...I-I could've planned this out a lot better, couldn't I?"
"YOU THINK?" Frankie screeched as she bounced the sobbing little one in her arms. "Her mother is probably going into hysterics right now, if not having a heart attack at least! We need to get her home! NOW!"
"Where did you find her?" Mac demanded angrily.
"I-"
"Where? Where'd you take her from? Where? Where?" Frankie asked frantically, as she rapidly grew shriller by the instant in her skyrocketing panic. "Where'd you get this baby from, Bloo? WHERE?"
"Just from the next block over, at a small yellow house with a big blue mailbox!" Bloo blurted out. "Y-you can't miss it! Right by-"
Once they had pried out the information they so desperately needed, the caretaker and boy were off in a flash. They sprinted full-speed off the porch, dashed across the lawn, bolted out the gates, and started racing down the sidewalk as if a pack of wolves were trailing them.
"Shhh…it's okay, it's gonna be all right…" Frankie tried to coo softly to the wailing infant. "It's all right, we're gonna get you to your Momma as soon as we can…shhhh, it's all right, it's all right, sweetie…"
"He's out of his mind! He's completely out of his mind!" Mac ranted angrily between ragged gasps while he bounded alongside the caretaker. "I swear-"
"Forget about it for now! We'll deal with him later!" Frankie snapped. "What we have to do now is to get her back home as soon as possible before this gets out of h-"
As if fate was openly mocking her, all of a sudden a police cruiser abruptly zipped by, with sirens blaring. As it suddenly whirled about in a spectacularly executed U-turn, immediately the young woman and her charge ground to a dead halt as gut-wrenching fear seized control of them, forcing both their hearts to skip a beat each.
"Oh…no…." she whimpered breathlessly as the vehicle screeched to a halt just a few yards away. With her heart rate now picking up the pace fivefold, instinctively she tightened her hold on the bawling infant in one arm and drew the whimpering little boy close to her with the other.
As two uniformed officers hastily clambered out of the car, Frankie took a deep swallow, tried to plant on a pathetic excuse for a disarming grin, and murmured rather lamely in her defense, "This…is not what it looks like…"
"…I'm sorry, it's just...I'm really just not sure what I'm looking for." the squat, middle-aged woman ruefully confessed as the imaginary rabbit led her through the house to show off the current stock of imaginary friends up for adoption. "See, I-"
"Trust me ma'am, there's hardly any need to fret." Mr. Herriman assured her. "Don't worry, I'm sure our fine establishment has exactly the friend that'll suit your child perfectly, it won't-"
"Wait!" the woman suddenly interrupted as she gestured for them to stop halfway across the foyer. As Mr. Herriman politely came to a halt and shot her a curious glance, she took a good, hard look at the lanky redhead not too far off, crawling about on her hands and knees as she scrubbed the tile floor.
As recognition suddenly dawned upon her, the woman gasped, and her eyes widened to the size of saucers before she leaned close and began whispering under her breath to Mr. Herriman, "I…I think I I've seen her before! I'm sorry to pry, but...well, is…is that...Frances Foster? The same Frances Foster that they mentioned in the newspaper yesterday? The one involved in that whole ordeal where that woman's child was actually...I'm sorry if I'm wrong, it's just that the resemblence is so-"
The imaginary rabbit nodded and answered honestly without a moment's pause, "No mistake, that is indeed her, our resident caretaker and my creator's granddaughter."
Immediately her eyes widened a little in utter astonishment, and for a few moments the woman continued to stare, as if unsure of what to say. "You...you must be so…so…after what she actually did, you just must be so-"
"Yes?" Mr. Herriman inquired as he watied patiently for her to get over her temporary stammer.
"Proud!" the woman blurted out with a gigantic smile. "Oh you must be so proud of her!"
"Well…yes, to say the very least." He chortled modestly with a bit of a grin as he signaled for them to keep moving. "Shall we continue?"
As they exited into the next room, the praise only continued to gush forth with praise. "Oh goodness, to think that she was able to find that little girl even before the police managed to arrive, why…oh, I'd just hate to think of what would've happened had she not been there to save the child, I'd just hate to…"
In just a few seconds the two were gone, leaving Frankie alone to finish her chore. With her already unusually high spirits boosted a bit by the snatch of conversation she had overheard, the young woman broke out whistling a willy-nilly tune as she continued on with her work, sounding as happy and carefree as if she were taking a stroll in the woods.
"Hey." A familiar voice suddenly greeted.
Without even glancing up at the imaginary blob entering the room, Frankie replied warmly, without so much as even a trace of annoyance, "Hey."
"Soooo……" Bloo struck up with a slightly devious grin as he tugged his little arm behind his back. "Couldn't help but notice that it looks like someone's a big-time hero now, huh?"
"Well, it wasn't headline news or anything, but...yup, you could say that." she answered modestly as she scrubbed away.
"Name in the paper and everything for trying to get that baby home safely?" he added casually.
"Uh-huh." She answered.
"Feels pretty good, doesn't it? All the people congratulating you, and all the attention? Plus all the free publicity the house is getting, that's pretty nice, too."
"You bet."
"That's nice. " he commented with a badly stifled snicker. "I hope it lasts for a while, because it would be such a shame if…oh, I dunno…someone 'accidentally' revealed what really happened to you and the 'lost baby' that you 'found'."
"Oh, really?" she paused and asked quite calmly. The astonishingly irrepressible imaginary friend nodded and giggled a little before he went in for the kill.
"Yeah, y'know…hey, how about this? I could help and make sure no one tries and blab on you, or anything like that." He suggested with a sly wink. "Don't worry, it wouldn't be any trouble. All I'd need is my trusty paddleball, and we won't ever have to worry about-"
Suddenly, she calmly drew up onto her knees, and wearing a bright smile, she sweetly interrupted while passing the brush into his hands, "How about this; for now you help me out more around the house, and I'll make sure no one tries to tell who was responsible for getting that baby 'lost' to begin with. Deal?"
Bloo seemed like he was going to reply, but as soon as he realized he actually had no leverage whatsoever despite what he thought rather wrongly earlier, the little imaginary friend was instantaneously struck speechless in horror. While the slack-jawed little blob gazed incredulously at the young woman, Frankie merely chuckled, gave him a quick pat on the head, and then wordlessly excused herself from her duties.
As the caretaker strode off, humming softly to herself, Bloo finally snapped from his stupor and begrudgingly went to work with a scowl.
"Hmph," he grumbled bitterly. "Last time I ever try and do her a favor…"
The End