AUTHOR'S NOTES -- A moment of silence for the late Charles Jones. I owe the man a lot....he entertained me when I was young, gave me some of my best-loved movies/cartoons, got me interested in drawing, and made me admire him by continuing to do cartoons in online flash even when put into retirement. Chuck, I hope you went somewhere far better than this and that where you've gone has infinite cartooning tables so that you can continue to do what you love best.
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"Someone's in a good mood." Rose remarked. Dr. Death looked up from his usual paperwork, cutting himself off in mid-smile as he cleared his throat and resumed his normal dark expression. "Oh stop pretending." the uni grinned, elbowing him in the side. "You've been on a high for the past couple days...so what's the good word?"
"Nothing." he insisted, scanning half-heartedly over the body of a form before signing the bottom on the line that requested an official signature and laying it aside.
"Spill it." Rose insisted, grinning gleefully, her tail swishing against the back of her chair in a soft whisper.
"Rose..." he started, warning her with his eyes. She nudged him again.
"C'mon..." she goaded. "You can tell me." a sudden impish light came into her eyes. "Its Karma isn't it?" she asked. He immediately looked away. "AHA!!!" she cried. "You two got together, didn't you??"
"Shush." he told her sternly. The pink uni was not to be denied, however, as she put a hoof on his shoulder.
"Doc, I'm happy for you!" she smiled. "Congratulations! How long have you two been together??"
"I don't know that you'd define it as 'together'. And not long." he said quietly. "I'm humoring her, really. I don't have the same feelings she does and I don't think I ever will."
"Feh. With the way you've been smiling when you think I'm not looking, I don't believe you for one red second." Rose replied. "You're smitten and you don't even know it."
"Can we get off the subject of my private life, please?" he muttered.
"No..." she said innocently, giggling. "Not till you tell me what you two have been up to."
"You're pushing your luck, Rose." he growled.
"For crying out loud, I'm just teasing!" the uni exclaimed, putting both hooves up in a show of peace. "I'll lay off, if you're serious."
"I am." he grumbled. Rose immediately turned to face the front of the room in her seat, looking straight ahead for a moment before impatiently drumming the tip of one hoof on the table. At last, she lost the grip she had on herself and turned back toward him.
"Did you kiss her yet?" she asked eagerly. He threw his pen angrily to the desk and glared at her. "Sorry!" she chuckled, getting up from the desk. "I'll be right back, I need to use the powder room."
"Don't fall in." he muttered, glad for his co-worker's short absense as she trotted out of the main room. It was none of her business what he did when he wasn't working with her...and he hadn't wanted to tell her that, yes, he and Karma had made plans to go out after his shift was over. They had been officially "together" for three days or so, but nothing much had transpired, despite what the few that had found out about them thought.
He had tried to treat their so-called relationship as he would the time he'd spend with a colleague...and most of their alone time had been spent simply talking. There had been an occasional nuzzle or touch of the hand here and there, but nothing he felt that Neopia could make a scandal of. What kept nagging at him was he knew she was tail-over-applecart in love, but he still felt that he wasn't. He liked Karma just fine...certainly more than he liked the whole of Neopia, but when he searched himself, he just couldn't find any concrete feelings for her beyond that.
For the past couple of nights he had listened avidly to the Neopian relationship-oriented talkshow, LoveAid, and had been excited to learn that lots of people were currently in his position...but then disappointed to hear that the hosts' advice had been to drop whoever the caller was having issues with and move on. That just wasn't an option in his particular situation...and he had made himself a promise to talk with Karma about that tonight when they went for the walk they had planned.
He cast a look at the clock as Rose returned and seated herself, feeling irate at the fact that there was still a half hour left in the shift. "Did you get the new adoptees filed off after lunch like I asked you?" he inquired as the pink uni made herself comfortable in her chair.
"Yup." Rose replied.
"What about the new incomings? Are they all fed and watered?" he asked.
"Affirmative." the uni smirked. "Keep trying, doc, I don't think there's much you can get me on."
"I'm not trying to "get" you on anything....I just want to make sure we're all squared away for the night." he defended himself, not looking up as he heard the door open and someone enter.
"Ya know, maybe I'll just go make sure on those incomings." Rose said, getting up, her eyes no longer on him but on whoever had come in the door, a large smile unfurling across her lips.
"But you just said---" the uni, however, was already trotting off in the direction of the back room. Wondering what had caused her sudden exit, he turned to look at who had come in and suddenly understood. Karma stood nearby, outfitted in a deep lavender casual dress. He cocked a brow at her. "This is awfully formal for a walk, don't you think?" he asked, watching as she sat down. The tree frog shrugged and smiled.
"I bought it a couple of weeks ago and I'll be damned if I never get a chance to wear it." she informed him. He nodded.
"Fair enough, I guess." he looked at the door to the back out of the corner of his eye, seeing that it hung open a crack and that peering through it was a single sapphire-colored eye. He cleared his throat loudly to let Rose know she had been seen and the door quickly closed again. "That woman...." he muttered. Karma laughed, unable to help herself.
"So are you almost done here?"
"Nearly...I just need to help close up shop for the night and we should be good to go. Where are we going, by the way?" the techo asked, gathering up the papers he had been occupying himself with and straightening them into a stack.
"Dunno." Karma shrugged. "Any ideas?" He sighed, thinking. "Hey!" she blurted suddenly. "You ever been to the Haunted Woods?"
"Yes." he replied disinterestedly. "Too commercialized. You can't go in there anymore without someone harrassing you to buy something."
"Does much go on there in the evenings?" she asked.
"Not really. It just attracts all the kooks and cults." he told her. "We can go if you want, Karma, I'm just saying its not one of my favorite places to be." She seemed to debate this a moment.
"Yeah let's go." she nodded.
"Alright." He made a mental note to stop off at the bank before they went anywhere, knowing he was going to get cornered by at least one of the merchants and harrassed into buying SOMETHING he didn't need or want. "Are you just going to hover around until the shift's over?"
"If you don't mind." Karma smiled. He shrugged again.
"I don't really mind one way or the other." He got up, gathering the papers into the crook of his arm and meandered toward the filing cabinet to put them away. No sooner had he opened the drawer and begun flipping through the folders, than the door slammed open and a skinny girl with short black hair walked in, followed by not one, not two, not even four, but eight sad-looking buzzes. The techo blinked...and then blinked again as she stepped up to the desk and folded her hands patiently on its top.
".....PLEASE tell me you're here to adopt." he said, deciding not to jump on her just yet. The girl looked at him and then smiled with a sweetness that made his stomach retch.
"Oh....no, I need to give them all up." she smirked, shifting her eyes back to the desk.
"Eight of them?" Karma asked, flabbergasted. One of the buzzes, a red male, looked pathetically in her direction, a tear dripping from one large opalescent eye and pattering to the floor. The girl shot the frog a narrow-eyed look, soundlessly telling her to mind her own business.
"Mind telling me how you've come by eight pets?" Dr. Death inquired, laying the papers down on top of the filing cabinet and crossing his arms over his chest.
"Psh...adopted. Duh." she replied, her attempt to come across as polite apparently forgotten. "I got these guys because I thought they were supposed to be powerful in the battledome, but they're all a bunch of losers." Upon saying so, a small green female that had been standing in the back of the herd burst into wailing tears. Karma, unable to help herself, got up and knelt in front of the stricken neopet, holding her arms out to it in an offered hug. As the buzz noticed the friendly gesture and moved to accept it, the abandoner planted her foot angrily between Karma and the neopet. "Keep your hands off her." the girl ordered. "You're just gonna spoil her."
"Don't talk to her like that." the techo hissed, his voice suddenly icy.
"Who the hell do you think YOU are?" the girl asked, cocking her head and putting her hands on her hips. "You talk to all your customers this way, bucko? Want me to pull your job right out from under you?" Silence hung in the room for a moment as he approached her slowly, leering through his large yellow eyes.
"My contract..." he said, his voice eerily calm. "....states that I find pets new homes and deal with abandoning owners. It doesn't say HOW to deal with them. Now leave your pets, if you're leaving them, and get out."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll keep'em." she shot back.
"All eight of them? I think not." Dr. Death snorted. "The legal limit is four."
"Then keep four of them. I don't really care, you idiot." she snapped, looking down at her party and reaching out, grabbing two reds, a blue, and the green female Karma had attempted to comfort. "I'm having a talk with the employment agency, and we'll see how long you keep your job." she informed him haughtily, whirling on her heel and storming out of the pound with the four buzzes in tow. As she slammed the door, he slammed fist angrily down on the surface of the desk, making Karma jolt a little from where she still knelt on the floor, a bit dumbfounded by the entire exchange.
Something nudged at her side and she turned to see a yellow buzz that had been left behind whimpering and holding out its two clawed arms hopefully. Karma wrapped her arms around the insectoid neopet and hugged it gingerly as it sobbed against her. Poor thing...she wondered when the last time was it had been loved at all. Among the other buzzes that had been left behind, another yellow stood stoically beside the desk, looking confused as to why it hadn't been chosen to go back with its owner, a red cowered nearby, blubbering to itself, and a blue, looking to be no more than a few hours old, looked vacantly around the room, trembling violently.
"How could she??" Karma asked, still holding the buzz as Glitz managed to get a leash on his anger and move to collect the abandoned neopets and place them in the back. "The poor things are so upset and---"
"It happens all the time." he interrupted her. "We get at least one case like this a day....senseless abandonment because the pet wasn't all the owner thought it was cracked up to be. And they ALL end like this. Hurt feelings, broken trust, and me having to sweep up the pieces."
"How do you deal with it?" she asked, standing as the yellow buzz clung to her in a panicky grip.
"I don't....that's where THIS came from." he told her, pointing at his mane of gray hair. "Twenty-eight and looking like I'm eighty-two, thank you very much."
"What's going on out here?" Rose asked, looking concerned as she bustled out of the back and surveyed the new arrivals.
"Another visit from one of Neopia's 'upstanding citizens'." he told her and then shifted his eyes to Karma who looked to be near tears as she gently tried to pry the buzz away from her as it sniffled and hiccupped against her shoulder. "Maybe you should go outside and get some air." he suggested.
"N-No, I'm alright. I just still can't believe she did that." the frog said shakily.
"We'll probably see her again in another couple of days to drop off the other four. People like that don't stay away long." the techo said regretfully. His expression turned sour again. "The prat didn't even fill out the forms. Do you four have names?" he asked the buzzes. The insects looked puzzledly at one another.
"Mzzzz....name izzz Retardo12." the yellowbuzz Karma wasn't holding informed him. "That'zzzzz dorkus0701, the one she'zzz holding izzzz ugly_bugz, and the blue one'zzz 001imalozer."
"I think you got gypped, my friend." Dr. Death informed the neopet, scribbling the names down quickly.
"How sad...." RoseMadder remarked. "And you look like such a nice bunch of neopets too..." she stepped forward and picked the infant blue buzz up. "Awww....poor little one." she cooed, nuzzling it. The neopet giggled and playfully grabbed Rose's muzzle between its paws. She looked first at her co-worker and then at Karma before grinning. "Oh get out of here, you guys." she chuckled. "I can handle this." Glitz and Karma looked at one another a moment, silently discussing it with their eyes.
"No, I need to get them in the records, Rose, and--"
"Oh psh! I can do that myself!" she insisted. "And I'm not doing anything tonight....unlike some other people I know." she dropped a wink at the doctor upon saying so. "Now shoo! Get out of here!" she insisted, waving at the air as though he were a fly.
"Alright...." he said doubtfully. "But do you think you'll need any help or---"
"Nope! Go on!!" she interrupted. "Go have some fun! You can pay me back by not being late for work again tomorrow." she added.
"Deal." he sighed in resignation, watching as Rose approached Karma and gently pried the buzz out of her arms. It protested a bit, but seeing that the uni was yet another kindly soul, surrendered itself and allowed Rose to take it away from the frog.
"He'll be fine." Rose whispered, assuring her. "You take the doc and get on out of here." she added, giving Karma a nudge. After a moment more of cajoling and urging, the techo and frog were out the door and, after a brief stop at the bank so that Glitz could withdraw five hundred neopoints from his account, they found themselves on a bus bound for the Haunted Woods.
"You sure you don't want to stop at your house so you can change?" Karma asked, sitting across from him on the bus and eyeing his labcoat. He looked down at himself quizzically.
"What's wrong with my coat?" he inquired.
"Nothing. You just look like you're ready to operate on someone rather than go out on a date."
"Shh!" he hissed reflexively, wincing as he heard surprised murmurs from those who had heard her.
"What?" she asked, looking confused.
"I just....I don't want people talking about it yet, is all." he told her quietly. "We can't be out very late either...I leave Snap outside when I'm not home and the forecast said we'd get some rain tonight."
"Alright...I wasn't planning on making it a late-night ordeal anyway." she shrugged.
"Hello folks, if I could have your attention for just one minute, we're nearing our station in the Haunted Woods so all our travelers who are getting off there, this would be a good time to get your belongings together. I'd like to thank you for riding with us and have a good day." The bus driver's voice crackled over the intercom at the front. Karma cast a look out of the window to see the beginnings of a dark body of woods in the distance that was steadily drawing nearer and contrasted greatly with the gentle greenness of Neopia's knolls and fields.
She watched, spellbound, as the bus was swallowed by the darkness of the interwoven trees and shrubs and as she stared, the vapored form of a ghost drifted past her window, leering at her through narrowed red eyes as it did so.
"There's lots of those here." Glitz informed her disinterestedly, straightening himself up a bit. "All kinds of imps, actually....we'll be lucky if we don't get a visit from the pant devil. I hope you don't have anything on your person of any value." Karma reflexively patted the single pocket on the dress's right hip, finding only the slight bulge of her wallet.
"No, nothing." she assured him. "What's the pant devil?"
"A pain in the tail. Let's leave it at that." he shrugged, idly wishing for a cigarette but pushing it out of hand, knowing she'd complain. The bus's brakes squealed as it came to a controlled stop.
"Ladies and gentlemen, all off for the Haunted Woods. Our next stop is the gaming center." the driver informed everyone as Karma and Glitz got out of their seats and filed out of the bus with scattered others. The first thing to strike Karma about the woods was the musty ancient scent of dead leaves surrounding her, and the underlying smell of smoke. Off in the distance, something cackled maniacally.
"Well, you wanted to come here." Glitz informed her, watching as she looked startled by the surroundings.
"Never said I didn't." she replied simply. "The ghosts here...they won't hurt you, right?"
"Not much at least." he replied. "I've never heard of the spooks here killing anybody if that's what you mean." Karma felt a small shudder rack her body and wondered if coming here had been a good idea. He smirked at her apprehension. "They won't bother you much unless they think you're threatening them." She cast an uneasy look at the hundreds of pairs of glowing red eyes that peered at them from the dark of the woods. "Now where'd you want to go, Karma?" he asked.
"I don't know, what is there to do?" she inquired. He thought for a moment, trying to remember everything the Haunted Woods offered since it had commercialized itself..
"Games mostly. The locals here like to see how many visitors they can send running off to get them things that they need because they don't like to do it themselves. If I were you, I wouldn't let them sucker you into anything." He told her as they walked in the direction of an eerie yellow glow that illuminated a large clearing in the woods where a strange bazaar was gathered. As if one cue, something rose from the ground to their right and Karma yelped in surprise as an enormous monster that seemed to be all mouth and eyes burbled and then spoke in a booming voice.
"Fooooooooood!! I am so...sooooo very hungry!!" the creature moaned. It fixed its rhuemy gaze on the both of them. "Will you feed me?" it rasped. Glitz gave Karma a light shove to keep her walking.
"Sorry, we're busy." he informed the thing as they passed.
"Youuuuuu will regret denying the Esophagar!!!" the monster wailed, sinking back into the muck it had risen from and disappearing.
"See what I mean?" he muttered as they kept walking. "Now if you had said yes, he'd have you running yourself ragged looking for things to stuff himself with and you'd be lucky to get a thank you, let alone have him pay you back."
"Umm...Glitz?" Karma asked, pointing over his shoulder. He turned his head to see two ghosts hovering over his shoulder, one clutching his wallet between its waif-like hands and giggling maniacally.
"This one's got some money...." the one holding his wallet declared to the other.
"Hey!!" he cried, startled and outraged all at once. "That's mine!" The other ghost cackled and moved forward, poking him with one stick-like finger. He gasped as an icy feeling coursed through his body and found himself unable to move and helpless to stop the ghost as it opened his wallet and withdrew an 80 neopoint bill.
"HAHA!! Good haul, amigo!!" the ghost hooted, dropping the wallet to the ground and waving the bill triumphantly in the air. The other ghost zipped up beside its companion and the two trailed away, laughing, into the woods. The techo grunted, forcing his fingers to move and flexed his fists slowly, the immobilization magic they had used on him beginning to wear off and making him feel uncomfortably tingly. Karma, who had watched the spectacle and had been dumbfounded by what had happened, now moved forward and gently put a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" she asked tentatively.
"Damned....ghosts....." he said slowly, taking great pains to form each word as his jaws slowly unlocked again. "I hate it when they do that." he remarked, feeling the last of the magic wear off as he bent over and picked up his wallet, counting what was left in it. "And it just makes it worse that we're on THEIR home turf for a change."
"Sorry...." Karma muttered, looking down. "I didn't know this place was such a hassle. Why don't we get out of here?"
"No." he sighed, stuffing the wallet back into his pocket. "We don't have to. There's still things we could do here if you want."
"Yeah but we've not even been here five minutes and already something bad's happened." she pushed. "I don't want this to be one of those nights we look back on and groan about." He was about to answer her when he was interrupted by a slightly gruff, but friendly voice.
"Hello..." it said. They turned to see an impossibly large mushroom towering over them, its crown wobbling a bit as it spoke. "Can I interest you two in a green healthshroom today? Or maybe you'd like something a bit more exotic. I have some very nice bloatershrooms...." The giant mushroom looked from Karma to Glitz hopefully.
"I've never been especially big on mushrooms." the yellow techo told the living fungus. It seemed to wrinkle in on itself, as though wounded by the poundkeeper's words.
"I see....well, perhaps your lady-friend then...?" he asked.
"Actually, yeah." Karma agreed. Glitz fought not to slap his forehead in frustration as the mushroom lit up instantly. "What?" she asked the techo. "I just want to get a couple of healthshrooms just in case something happens to Yahoo or Chomby someday." Glitz grumbled obscenities irately as he trailed behind Karma and the giant mushroom as it led them to its neopia-reknowned Apothecary, already knowing that the shopkeeper was going to attempt to take both of them to the cleaners if he could.
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Little more than an hour had passed and, after finally tearing themselves away from the pushyness of the shopkeepers, Karma and Dr. Death were again on their own.
"That's a lot more than I wanted to spend." he grumbled, examining the bag that held several mushrooms the Apothecary-keeper had coerced him into buying. "What am I supposed to do with these?"
"I dunno...keep'em under your desk and throw them at random people who walk in?" she suggested.
"You're not helping." he sighed.
"Sorry." she chuckled, putting a hand on his shoulder as they walked. Something in the bushes cackled at them and made obnoxiously loud smooching sounds through slimy-sounding lips. "Oh, get bent." she said to it. It laughed loudly again and sounded as though it were scampering away. "Where're we going?" she asked.
"I don't know." he shrugged. "I just need to get away from the people for a minute. I don't like being harrassed, it makes me nervous. That and I'd like to walk out of here with at least half of what I came in here with in my funds." She nodded in understanding as they wove their way through the clustered trees and bushes, coming shortly upon a small clearing. "Good enough." he remarked, moving forward and sitting at the base of a spindly pine tree. Karma remained standing, looking over her shoulder worriedly. What if they got lost out here? It was already pushing past evening and into the night. No, that was ridiculous. From the clearing, the lights and voices of the churning bazaar were still clearly visible. They were only fifty feet or so from the beaten path, after all, so getting lost would take a lot of doing on their part.
She moved to sit beside him, slipping a bit on the loose carpet of pine needles, but managed to make it to the ground without falling as she situated her skirt a bit. It felt good to sit down, and admittantly, it was a relief to be away from the constant clamour.
"So what did you end up buying?" he asked her. She opened the paper sack containing her mushrooms and fumbled in it a moment.
"Two green healthshrooms, a blue and...umm..." she blushed and took something out. Glitz squinted to see it in the darkness. It looked to be a gnarled purple toadstool of some sort.
"What's what supposed to be?" he asked.
"I dunno. The shopkeeper said it was something magical." she shrugged. "A gnome shroom, I think."
"The one that's supposed to turn into a gnome at a certain time of the day?" he groaned. "Karma, that's an old wive's tale."
"Hey, do I look like an old wife to you??" she asked. He paused for a moment, biting his lip against a smile. Realizing that she had just trapped herself, the frog swatted his leg playfully. "And you'd better think long and hard before answering that, pal." she added as he snickered.
"No, not a wife...maybe a mistress. Or maybe a concubine." he told her, smirking as he said it.
"Oh gee thanks." she muttered, hoping he was teasing. She felt his hand alight on her wrist and pat it gently, removing her annoyance at him almost instantly as she leaned backward, resting her head on his shoulder.
"You know we're going to catch hell if someone sees this." he told her.
"I know." she replied simply, snuggling closer. He hesitated and then put an arm around her shoulders, half-holding her. "This is nice." she purred. "How come we haven't done this more?"
"Besides the fact we've only been close for three days?" he asked. "It might have had something to do with all the time we spent at each other's necks."
"That might have done it." she agreed, brushing her snout against his throat softly. He felt a tremor of warmth pass through his chest, but, as he brought himself to look down into her orange-hazed eyes, he still didn't feel anything strong for her. The wanting was there, but the love didn't seem to be following. It was maddening in the way that it taunted him and....well, probably time that he came clean with her about it.
"Karma, I need to level with you, I think..." he began, trailing off as her hair brushed softly against his jaw.
"Mm hmm?" she asked.
"I know you're enjoying this...to a certain degree, I am too----stop that." he muttered, shivering as she nuzzled the nape of his neck. "But I think that---"
"OW!!" she jolted straight up, her hand flying to her left shoulder.
"What's wrong?" he asked, alarmed by her outburst.
"Something stung me." she said, suddenly feeling inexplicably sleepy. It felt as though someone had affixed a lead weight to every part of her body as her fingers explored whatever had hurt her shoulder. It was long and sleek with a surface that felt like glass. "Owww..." she moaned, whimpering as her world began to spin out of control and a red haze prickled at her vision. Glitz watched, puzzled, as she reeled drunkenly onto her side, something green protruding from her skin. He reached out, gingerly plucking it from where it sprouted from her flesh and examined it.
He had no sooner recognized it as a medical syringe than a sharp pain blossomed directly beneath his jaw, making him cry out. A burning sensation instantly coursed through his body and he found it hard to keep his head up. The pine needles that made up the floor of the woods suddenly looked uncommonly comfortable as his eyelids drooped. He was dimly aware of a faint thud as his body struck the ground and then everything faded into blackness.
From the bushes, there was a rustling and then two forms emerged....one large and hulking, and the other sleek and refined, clad in a trailing black cape.
"Hrmm...that was uncommonly easy." the eerily smooth yet gravelly voice of Dr. Frank Sloth remarked as he surveyed the downed bodies of Glitz and Karma. At his side, a large mutant grundo flexed its bulging muscles and grinned.
"For me's to squeeze!" he declared, opening his meaty palms and reaching for the unconscious bodies' necks. Sloth turned, casually withdrawing what looked to be a rod from an inner pocket in his cloak and prodded the grundo's upper arm with it. It crackled and emitted a few sparks, making the grundo howl in pain and goggle down at his master.
"Now then, it wouldn't do us much good if they were both broken, would it, Meat?" he asked the large monster. It pouted its massive green lip out and looked abashedly at the ground. "I didn't think so. Now pick them up GENTLY." Meat grumped, but complied, wrapping his hands around the techo and frog's torsos and lifting them carefully. "Very good. Maybe there IS a brain floating somewhere in that vacuuous skull of yours." Dr. Sloth commended sarcastically. "Now follow." he ordered, carefully withdrawing a pendant from where it had been hidden around his neck and softly chanting an incantation. The wind around them howled as a swirling green porthole opened itself before them.
Briskly, the doctor and his slave, carrying the unconscious Glitz and Karma, stepped into it. As quickly as it had appeared, the porthole was gone again, leaving nothing behind to tell of its presense except for a few stray tumbling leaves. Off in the distance a cricket hesitantly chirped in the sudden silence....its call was greeted by another and soon the woods carried on its happenings as though nothing had happened at all.
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"I'm getting sick of this..." Rose remarked to no one as she sat alone, behind the desk the next morning. She had been more than leniant on Dr. Death the past two weeks and excused his tardiness and absense more than she should have had to. It was nearly time to open and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him yet. Her attempts to call his house had been left unanswered and she had left several irate messages on his machine.
She liked to think of herself as the understanding sort and had even hoped that he and Karma might do well on their outing together, but it was passing the point of ridiculousness when he was leaving her with all the work, all the time. Yesterday had been Lenny day....and, inevitably, what that meant was that there would be a huge influx of Lenny abandonments today from all of the bandwagon-hoppers that had rushed to the stockhouse to adopt one to be a part of the trend and now had no use for the neopet.
Outside, she could already see a few people waiting, all of them with a pet in tow that could be nothing other than an incoming adoptee.. The pink uni made a silent vow that if his excuse wasn't better than he and Karma had been off rutting somewhere and had lost track of the time, she'd personally tie his tail in a knot the next time she saw him. Casting another rueful glance at the clock, she sighed deeply. Time to open for business.
She crossed the room, unlocking the door and stepping back as those who had been waiting began to file in and form a line at Dr. Death's side of the desk and begin their noises of impatientness as they noticed his absense.
"If you'll all hang on a moment, I'll be with you shortly." Rose informed them all as they looked at one another in a confused manner. Some of them drifted over to the provided chairs nearby to wait while others remained rigidly at the desk, refusing to give up their place in line as Rose picked up the telephone, determined she would have SOME sort of revenge for being left alone as she dialed up the employment agency. Someone picked up on the end of the third ring and a musical faerie's voice was heard.
"Thank you for calling the employment agency, this is Atrina. How may I help you?"
"Hello, this is RoseMadder calling from the Neopian Pound." the uni began.
"Oh hello, dear. What can I do for you today?" the faerie inquired sweetly.
"Its about my co-worker. He's a no-call, no-show this morning, and I'm up to my ears in work." As she spoke this, a couple of the abandoners looked at one another and got up and shuffled quietly back out the door, their lennies safe from the pound for the moment.
"Dr. Death? That's strange....isn't he usually religious about his schedule?" Atrina asked.
"I don't know..." Rose sighed, exasperated. "He's undergone a few changes in his life as of late, and I can excuse it only so far. I've been calling him all morning and he hasn't answered. I'm just tired of this."
"That's understandable. Tell you what, we'll send a scout over to his house to see what's wrong with him and if we can't turn him up at home, we'll send you a temp to help with things until we find out what's going on."
"Thank you." the uni sighed in relief.
"Just hang in there." Atrina told her, and then hung up. Rose laid the phone back in its cradle before turning to tend to the people still waiting.
"I can take whoever's next." she called. The abandoners all eyed one another and started for the desk at the same time, pausing to glare at each other and argue over who had been first. Rose groaned and laid her head between her hooves on the desk. Already she could tell this was going to shape up to be one of those days she'd spend the weekend trying to forget.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The portal tore through the stoic silence of the inner laboratory as it opened wide, allowing Dr. Frank Sloth and Meat entry. Personally, he didn't care for portal travel very much, but it was an easy and convenient way to get around without being noticed. The time lapse was something he could never get used to. Though he had spent only seconds within the portal, when he emerged, sometimes as much as a week had passed in the world around him. A stout purple grundo looked up from the microscope it had been squinting into.
"Ah! Back already, sir? You were only gone the night this time." the grundo scientist simpered. Dr. Sloth strode past disinterestedly, not sparing the scientist a second look as Meat thundered behind him, still carrying the two limp bodies. As they meandered down the hallway, the doctor was startled by a loud crash and paused in his gait as a mutant kacheek scuttled out of a doorway, being tailed closely by flying coffee mugs and silverware.
"HEADS UP, DUDE!!! ESTROGEN-FEST IN THE BREAKROOM!!!!" the malformed neopet yowled, narrowly dodging a fork as it wisked past his head and imbedded itself in the wall directly above his exposed and pulsating brain.
"You little son of a bitch!! Get back here and take it like a man!!" a female's voice commanded from inside the room the kacheek had run from. Sloth heaved a sigh and shook his head.
"Meat, wait here." he ordered in an exasperated voice. The grundo obediently froze, apparently having no intention of venturing into the eye of whatever storm was raging in that room as the doctor impatiently bustled inside. Perched at the sink of the break room, clad in a white labcoat that had a large purple stain on the front and ready to hurl what was left in a glass artificial creamer jar at whoever walked in next was an olive-skinned young lady, the angry blush in her cheeks almost identically matching her fiery red hair that framed her face in haphazard commas and strings.
Sloth reflexively ducked nanoseconds before the glass jar flew over his head and shattered against the wall behind him in a cloud of shards and white powder. At the same time, the girl gave a startled gasp upon recognizing him and seemed to forget her anger for the moment as he straightened himself up and favored her with a high-seated look.
"Temper, temper, Ms. Pendragon." he scolded, turning to close the door.
"Oh...Doctor..." she breathed, reaching up reflexively to smooth her hair back. "I'm sorry I thought you were--" he raised a hand for silence and crossed the room, standing directly across from her.
"Pray, tell me what happened...." he asked, extending one finger to clear a stray lock of hair from her cheek. The girl, Wizlow Pendragon, momentarily lost her train of thought at his touch.
"It was..." she began, waiting until he dropped his hand again to finish. "It was that damned little dustball, Squick." she informed him. "He shook up all of the sodas and LOOK at this!" she spat, pointing at the bust of her labcat where the purple stain had set.
"What does it matter to you anyway, is my question." Dr. Sloth said. "Unless you work in the laboratory, the coat isn't necessary."
"I was in the lab earlier." she said defensively. "And with all those scummonkeys you've got working here, I didn't want to take chances on having my actual clothes ruined. This is my only labcoat and now its trash." He nodded in understanding and then rested a hand on either of her slender shoulders.
"Wizlow, go get changed." he told her gently. "Screaming and yelling like an inbred kyrii is very unbecoming to you." She opened her mouth to protest but felt her words die on her lips as he gave her shoulders a squeeze. "Aside from myself, you're the last representative of our race. Let's act like it, hmm?" She nodded in resignation.
"Good girl." he smiled, turning to leave.
"Hey!" she called after him, making him pause and look over his shoulder at her, his red eyes inquisitive. "Are you doing anything later?" she asked, smirking. Sloth shook his head and chortled.
"You're incorrigible." he told her in mock-exasperaton. And then added "We'll see." as he opened the door and returned to the matter at hand in the hallway. Meat still stood, patient as an ox, Karma and Dr. Death over each shoulder. "To the observation cell." he informed the grundo. "Let's get these two logged and put away." Meat nodded stiffly and followed as the mad doctor continued down the hallway and rounded a corner where there was a single door, vaporlocked and guarded by an alarmed keypad.
Sloth deftly keyed in the access code and waited as the security system processed it.
"Access granted." a computerized voice droned as, with a hiss, the door opened to reveal a sterile white room. A wild-eyed scorchio looked up from where it was busily puttering around a table, alternately scribbling on a notepad and checking on several flasks of bubbling liquid.
"Ah, velcome Doktor! Velcome!" the scorchio greeted him in a heavily accented voice. "Zee expedition, it vuz a zuccess, I presume?" Dr. Sloth grunted in reply, walking past the scorchio and approaching a large enclosure in the corner of the room that was outfitted to hold specimens under observation. It had last held a group of rambunctious kacheek children that he had wanted to try his transmogrification potions out on. Now it would house his latest two subjects.
He slid open the door and stood aside as Meat hefted the two limp bodies inside, preparing to toss them into opposite corners of the enclosure, looking first over his shoulder to see if Sloth was watching. Seeing the disapproving glare from the doctor, the grundo cringed and forced himself to lay them down instead of throwing them as he had planned.
"Dismissed, Meat." Sloth informed his lackey, watching as the hulking monster lumbered out of the room as he closed the door to the enclosure, looking at the dormant bodies of Karma and Dr. Death through the vented plexiglass of their new quarters.
"Fine zpezimens you haff chozen, Doktar." the scorchio commended, scuttling up beside Sloth and peering inside as well. "But vhy zese two?"
"The majority of the creatures in Neopia are still children." he explained. "And all of the adults are either unobtainable or would be missed too much. This male, from what I have seen, is a rather unliked poundkeeper." a twisted smile curled his lips. "Who knows? I may be doing everyone a service by taking him off their hands for awhile."
"Ahh very goot. Very goot." the scorchio chuckled. "And ze female?"
"I've not seen her around much." Sloth admitted. "But two adult techos would give more accurate testing results than only one. Especially in case something goes....awry." The scorchio burst into peals of disturbing laughter at Sloth's comment. The doctor whisked his hand backward, colliding it with the scorchio's nose in a stinging blow and silencing his laughter. "Its not a laughing matter, professor." he informed his worker icily. "No neopet has been destroyed by the lab ray yet, but if one ever is we'll have a very messy situation on our hands. Do you understand me?" The scorchio rubbed at his snout and nodded, not without a hint of resentment.
"Zere iz zomethink odd about her, zo." the professor remarked, peering at Karma's form through the glass intently. "I haff never zeen a techo mit such an odd tail." he added, looking at the frog's stubby tadpole's tail.
"My guess is there was some crossbreeding somewhere in her lines." Sloth shrugged. "Its not an issue unless I say so, professor."
"Aff courze, doktar. I am not queztioning you." the scorchio replied. "But I vonder....might I haff permission to obzerve her a bit?" Sloth narrowed his eyes at his worker.
"If observing is all you plan on doing, fine." he told the scorchio curtly. "None of your damned experiments." The professor looked slightly hurt but quickly straightened up again.
"Az you vish, Doktar Zloth." he smiled with a salute. The doctor watched them both a moment more before turning to leave.
"I want to be notified when they awaken." he called over his shoulder.
"Uff courze!" the scorchio called back. "You zhall be ze first!" As the door closed with a hiss, the scorchio turned back to the holding pen, opening the lock. "Affter I have done a few examinationz, zat is...." he added quietly as he stepped through the door, hefting Karma, with some difficulty, into his arms. She wasn't as light as he had thought her to be. "You are a ztrange one." he said, grinning. "Let'z zee juzt how ztrange you are...." He added, half-carrying, half-dragging her toward the testing facility.
TBC.............
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"Someone's in a good mood." Rose remarked. Dr. Death looked up from his usual paperwork, cutting himself off in mid-smile as he cleared his throat and resumed his normal dark expression. "Oh stop pretending." the uni grinned, elbowing him in the side. "You've been on a high for the past couple days...so what's the good word?"
"Nothing." he insisted, scanning half-heartedly over the body of a form before signing the bottom on the line that requested an official signature and laying it aside.
"Spill it." Rose insisted, grinning gleefully, her tail swishing against the back of her chair in a soft whisper.
"Rose..." he started, warning her with his eyes. She nudged him again.
"C'mon..." she goaded. "You can tell me." a sudden impish light came into her eyes. "Its Karma isn't it?" she asked. He immediately looked away. "AHA!!!" she cried. "You two got together, didn't you??"
"Shush." he told her sternly. The pink uni was not to be denied, however, as she put a hoof on his shoulder.
"Doc, I'm happy for you!" she smiled. "Congratulations! How long have you two been together??"
"I don't know that you'd define it as 'together'. And not long." he said quietly. "I'm humoring her, really. I don't have the same feelings she does and I don't think I ever will."
"Feh. With the way you've been smiling when you think I'm not looking, I don't believe you for one red second." Rose replied. "You're smitten and you don't even know it."
"Can we get off the subject of my private life, please?" he muttered.
"No..." she said innocently, giggling. "Not till you tell me what you two have been up to."
"You're pushing your luck, Rose." he growled.
"For crying out loud, I'm just teasing!" the uni exclaimed, putting both hooves up in a show of peace. "I'll lay off, if you're serious."
"I am." he grumbled. Rose immediately turned to face the front of the room in her seat, looking straight ahead for a moment before impatiently drumming the tip of one hoof on the table. At last, she lost the grip she had on herself and turned back toward him.
"Did you kiss her yet?" she asked eagerly. He threw his pen angrily to the desk and glared at her. "Sorry!" she chuckled, getting up from the desk. "I'll be right back, I need to use the powder room."
"Don't fall in." he muttered, glad for his co-worker's short absense as she trotted out of the main room. It was none of her business what he did when he wasn't working with her...and he hadn't wanted to tell her that, yes, he and Karma had made plans to go out after his shift was over. They had been officially "together" for three days or so, but nothing much had transpired, despite what the few that had found out about them thought.
He had tried to treat their so-called relationship as he would the time he'd spend with a colleague...and most of their alone time had been spent simply talking. There had been an occasional nuzzle or touch of the hand here and there, but nothing he felt that Neopia could make a scandal of. What kept nagging at him was he knew she was tail-over-applecart in love, but he still felt that he wasn't. He liked Karma just fine...certainly more than he liked the whole of Neopia, but when he searched himself, he just couldn't find any concrete feelings for her beyond that.
For the past couple of nights he had listened avidly to the Neopian relationship-oriented talkshow, LoveAid, and had been excited to learn that lots of people were currently in his position...but then disappointed to hear that the hosts' advice had been to drop whoever the caller was having issues with and move on. That just wasn't an option in his particular situation...and he had made himself a promise to talk with Karma about that tonight when they went for the walk they had planned.
He cast a look at the clock as Rose returned and seated herself, feeling irate at the fact that there was still a half hour left in the shift. "Did you get the new adoptees filed off after lunch like I asked you?" he inquired as the pink uni made herself comfortable in her chair.
"Yup." Rose replied.
"What about the new incomings? Are they all fed and watered?" he asked.
"Affirmative." the uni smirked. "Keep trying, doc, I don't think there's much you can get me on."
"I'm not trying to "get" you on anything....I just want to make sure we're all squared away for the night." he defended himself, not looking up as he heard the door open and someone enter.
"Ya know, maybe I'll just go make sure on those incomings." Rose said, getting up, her eyes no longer on him but on whoever had come in the door, a large smile unfurling across her lips.
"But you just said---" the uni, however, was already trotting off in the direction of the back room. Wondering what had caused her sudden exit, he turned to look at who had come in and suddenly understood. Karma stood nearby, outfitted in a deep lavender casual dress. He cocked a brow at her. "This is awfully formal for a walk, don't you think?" he asked, watching as she sat down. The tree frog shrugged and smiled.
"I bought it a couple of weeks ago and I'll be damned if I never get a chance to wear it." she informed him. He nodded.
"Fair enough, I guess." he looked at the door to the back out of the corner of his eye, seeing that it hung open a crack and that peering through it was a single sapphire-colored eye. He cleared his throat loudly to let Rose know she had been seen and the door quickly closed again. "That woman...." he muttered. Karma laughed, unable to help herself.
"So are you almost done here?"
"Nearly...I just need to help close up shop for the night and we should be good to go. Where are we going, by the way?" the techo asked, gathering up the papers he had been occupying himself with and straightening them into a stack.
"Dunno." Karma shrugged. "Any ideas?" He sighed, thinking. "Hey!" she blurted suddenly. "You ever been to the Haunted Woods?"
"Yes." he replied disinterestedly. "Too commercialized. You can't go in there anymore without someone harrassing you to buy something."
"Does much go on there in the evenings?" she asked.
"Not really. It just attracts all the kooks and cults." he told her. "We can go if you want, Karma, I'm just saying its not one of my favorite places to be." She seemed to debate this a moment.
"Yeah let's go." she nodded.
"Alright." He made a mental note to stop off at the bank before they went anywhere, knowing he was going to get cornered by at least one of the merchants and harrassed into buying SOMETHING he didn't need or want. "Are you just going to hover around until the shift's over?"
"If you don't mind." Karma smiled. He shrugged again.
"I don't really mind one way or the other." He got up, gathering the papers into the crook of his arm and meandered toward the filing cabinet to put them away. No sooner had he opened the drawer and begun flipping through the folders, than the door slammed open and a skinny girl with short black hair walked in, followed by not one, not two, not even four, but eight sad-looking buzzes. The techo blinked...and then blinked again as she stepped up to the desk and folded her hands patiently on its top.
".....PLEASE tell me you're here to adopt." he said, deciding not to jump on her just yet. The girl looked at him and then smiled with a sweetness that made his stomach retch.
"Oh....no, I need to give them all up." she smirked, shifting her eyes back to the desk.
"Eight of them?" Karma asked, flabbergasted. One of the buzzes, a red male, looked pathetically in her direction, a tear dripping from one large opalescent eye and pattering to the floor. The girl shot the frog a narrow-eyed look, soundlessly telling her to mind her own business.
"Mind telling me how you've come by eight pets?" Dr. Death inquired, laying the papers down on top of the filing cabinet and crossing his arms over his chest.
"Psh...adopted. Duh." she replied, her attempt to come across as polite apparently forgotten. "I got these guys because I thought they were supposed to be powerful in the battledome, but they're all a bunch of losers." Upon saying so, a small green female that had been standing in the back of the herd burst into wailing tears. Karma, unable to help herself, got up and knelt in front of the stricken neopet, holding her arms out to it in an offered hug. As the buzz noticed the friendly gesture and moved to accept it, the abandoner planted her foot angrily between Karma and the neopet. "Keep your hands off her." the girl ordered. "You're just gonna spoil her."
"Don't talk to her like that." the techo hissed, his voice suddenly icy.
"Who the hell do you think YOU are?" the girl asked, cocking her head and putting her hands on her hips. "You talk to all your customers this way, bucko? Want me to pull your job right out from under you?" Silence hung in the room for a moment as he approached her slowly, leering through his large yellow eyes.
"My contract..." he said, his voice eerily calm. "....states that I find pets new homes and deal with abandoning owners. It doesn't say HOW to deal with them. Now leave your pets, if you're leaving them, and get out."
"Yeah? Maybe I'll keep'em." she shot back.
"All eight of them? I think not." Dr. Death snorted. "The legal limit is four."
"Then keep four of them. I don't really care, you idiot." she snapped, looking down at her party and reaching out, grabbing two reds, a blue, and the green female Karma had attempted to comfort. "I'm having a talk with the employment agency, and we'll see how long you keep your job." she informed him haughtily, whirling on her heel and storming out of the pound with the four buzzes in tow. As she slammed the door, he slammed fist angrily down on the surface of the desk, making Karma jolt a little from where she still knelt on the floor, a bit dumbfounded by the entire exchange.
Something nudged at her side and she turned to see a yellow buzz that had been left behind whimpering and holding out its two clawed arms hopefully. Karma wrapped her arms around the insectoid neopet and hugged it gingerly as it sobbed against her. Poor thing...she wondered when the last time was it had been loved at all. Among the other buzzes that had been left behind, another yellow stood stoically beside the desk, looking confused as to why it hadn't been chosen to go back with its owner, a red cowered nearby, blubbering to itself, and a blue, looking to be no more than a few hours old, looked vacantly around the room, trembling violently.
"How could she??" Karma asked, still holding the buzz as Glitz managed to get a leash on his anger and move to collect the abandoned neopets and place them in the back. "The poor things are so upset and---"
"It happens all the time." he interrupted her. "We get at least one case like this a day....senseless abandonment because the pet wasn't all the owner thought it was cracked up to be. And they ALL end like this. Hurt feelings, broken trust, and me having to sweep up the pieces."
"How do you deal with it?" she asked, standing as the yellow buzz clung to her in a panicky grip.
"I don't....that's where THIS came from." he told her, pointing at his mane of gray hair. "Twenty-eight and looking like I'm eighty-two, thank you very much."
"What's going on out here?" Rose asked, looking concerned as she bustled out of the back and surveyed the new arrivals.
"Another visit from one of Neopia's 'upstanding citizens'." he told her and then shifted his eyes to Karma who looked to be near tears as she gently tried to pry the buzz away from her as it sniffled and hiccupped against her shoulder. "Maybe you should go outside and get some air." he suggested.
"N-No, I'm alright. I just still can't believe she did that." the frog said shakily.
"We'll probably see her again in another couple of days to drop off the other four. People like that don't stay away long." the techo said regretfully. His expression turned sour again. "The prat didn't even fill out the forms. Do you four have names?" he asked the buzzes. The insects looked puzzledly at one another.
"Mzzzz....name izzz Retardo12." the yellowbuzz Karma wasn't holding informed him. "That'zzzzz dorkus0701, the one she'zzz holding izzzz ugly_bugz, and the blue one'zzz 001imalozer."
"I think you got gypped, my friend." Dr. Death informed the neopet, scribbling the names down quickly.
"How sad...." RoseMadder remarked. "And you look like such a nice bunch of neopets too..." she stepped forward and picked the infant blue buzz up. "Awww....poor little one." she cooed, nuzzling it. The neopet giggled and playfully grabbed Rose's muzzle between its paws. She looked first at her co-worker and then at Karma before grinning. "Oh get out of here, you guys." she chuckled. "I can handle this." Glitz and Karma looked at one another a moment, silently discussing it with their eyes.
"No, I need to get them in the records, Rose, and--"
"Oh psh! I can do that myself!" she insisted. "And I'm not doing anything tonight....unlike some other people I know." she dropped a wink at the doctor upon saying so. "Now shoo! Get out of here!" she insisted, waving at the air as though he were a fly.
"Alright...." he said doubtfully. "But do you think you'll need any help or---"
"Nope! Go on!!" she interrupted. "Go have some fun! You can pay me back by not being late for work again tomorrow." she added.
"Deal." he sighed in resignation, watching as Rose approached Karma and gently pried the buzz out of her arms. It protested a bit, but seeing that the uni was yet another kindly soul, surrendered itself and allowed Rose to take it away from the frog.
"He'll be fine." Rose whispered, assuring her. "You take the doc and get on out of here." she added, giving Karma a nudge. After a moment more of cajoling and urging, the techo and frog were out the door and, after a brief stop at the bank so that Glitz could withdraw five hundred neopoints from his account, they found themselves on a bus bound for the Haunted Woods.
"You sure you don't want to stop at your house so you can change?" Karma asked, sitting across from him on the bus and eyeing his labcoat. He looked down at himself quizzically.
"What's wrong with my coat?" he inquired.
"Nothing. You just look like you're ready to operate on someone rather than go out on a date."
"Shh!" he hissed reflexively, wincing as he heard surprised murmurs from those who had heard her.
"What?" she asked, looking confused.
"I just....I don't want people talking about it yet, is all." he told her quietly. "We can't be out very late either...I leave Snap outside when I'm not home and the forecast said we'd get some rain tonight."
"Alright...I wasn't planning on making it a late-night ordeal anyway." she shrugged.
"Hello folks, if I could have your attention for just one minute, we're nearing our station in the Haunted Woods so all our travelers who are getting off there, this would be a good time to get your belongings together. I'd like to thank you for riding with us and have a good day." The bus driver's voice crackled over the intercom at the front. Karma cast a look out of the window to see the beginnings of a dark body of woods in the distance that was steadily drawing nearer and contrasted greatly with the gentle greenness of Neopia's knolls and fields.
She watched, spellbound, as the bus was swallowed by the darkness of the interwoven trees and shrubs and as she stared, the vapored form of a ghost drifted past her window, leering at her through narrowed red eyes as it did so.
"There's lots of those here." Glitz informed her disinterestedly, straightening himself up a bit. "All kinds of imps, actually....we'll be lucky if we don't get a visit from the pant devil. I hope you don't have anything on your person of any value." Karma reflexively patted the single pocket on the dress's right hip, finding only the slight bulge of her wallet.
"No, nothing." she assured him. "What's the pant devil?"
"A pain in the tail. Let's leave it at that." he shrugged, idly wishing for a cigarette but pushing it out of hand, knowing she'd complain. The bus's brakes squealed as it came to a controlled stop.
"Ladies and gentlemen, all off for the Haunted Woods. Our next stop is the gaming center." the driver informed everyone as Karma and Glitz got out of their seats and filed out of the bus with scattered others. The first thing to strike Karma about the woods was the musty ancient scent of dead leaves surrounding her, and the underlying smell of smoke. Off in the distance, something cackled maniacally.
"Well, you wanted to come here." Glitz informed her, watching as she looked startled by the surroundings.
"Never said I didn't." she replied simply. "The ghosts here...they won't hurt you, right?"
"Not much at least." he replied. "I've never heard of the spooks here killing anybody if that's what you mean." Karma felt a small shudder rack her body and wondered if coming here had been a good idea. He smirked at her apprehension. "They won't bother you much unless they think you're threatening them." She cast an uneasy look at the hundreds of pairs of glowing red eyes that peered at them from the dark of the woods. "Now where'd you want to go, Karma?" he asked.
"I don't know, what is there to do?" she inquired. He thought for a moment, trying to remember everything the Haunted Woods offered since it had commercialized itself..
"Games mostly. The locals here like to see how many visitors they can send running off to get them things that they need because they don't like to do it themselves. If I were you, I wouldn't let them sucker you into anything." He told her as they walked in the direction of an eerie yellow glow that illuminated a large clearing in the woods where a strange bazaar was gathered. As if one cue, something rose from the ground to their right and Karma yelped in surprise as an enormous monster that seemed to be all mouth and eyes burbled and then spoke in a booming voice.
"Fooooooooood!! I am so...sooooo very hungry!!" the creature moaned. It fixed its rhuemy gaze on the both of them. "Will you feed me?" it rasped. Glitz gave Karma a light shove to keep her walking.
"Sorry, we're busy." he informed the thing as they passed.
"Youuuuuu will regret denying the Esophagar!!!" the monster wailed, sinking back into the muck it had risen from and disappearing.
"See what I mean?" he muttered as they kept walking. "Now if you had said yes, he'd have you running yourself ragged looking for things to stuff himself with and you'd be lucky to get a thank you, let alone have him pay you back."
"Umm...Glitz?" Karma asked, pointing over his shoulder. He turned his head to see two ghosts hovering over his shoulder, one clutching his wallet between its waif-like hands and giggling maniacally.
"This one's got some money...." the one holding his wallet declared to the other.
"Hey!!" he cried, startled and outraged all at once. "That's mine!" The other ghost cackled and moved forward, poking him with one stick-like finger. He gasped as an icy feeling coursed through his body and found himself unable to move and helpless to stop the ghost as it opened his wallet and withdrew an 80 neopoint bill.
"HAHA!! Good haul, amigo!!" the ghost hooted, dropping the wallet to the ground and waving the bill triumphantly in the air. The other ghost zipped up beside its companion and the two trailed away, laughing, into the woods. The techo grunted, forcing his fingers to move and flexed his fists slowly, the immobilization magic they had used on him beginning to wear off and making him feel uncomfortably tingly. Karma, who had watched the spectacle and had been dumbfounded by what had happened, now moved forward and gently put a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" she asked tentatively.
"Damned....ghosts....." he said slowly, taking great pains to form each word as his jaws slowly unlocked again. "I hate it when they do that." he remarked, feeling the last of the magic wear off as he bent over and picked up his wallet, counting what was left in it. "And it just makes it worse that we're on THEIR home turf for a change."
"Sorry...." Karma muttered, looking down. "I didn't know this place was such a hassle. Why don't we get out of here?"
"No." he sighed, stuffing the wallet back into his pocket. "We don't have to. There's still things we could do here if you want."
"Yeah but we've not even been here five minutes and already something bad's happened." she pushed. "I don't want this to be one of those nights we look back on and groan about." He was about to answer her when he was interrupted by a slightly gruff, but friendly voice.
"Hello..." it said. They turned to see an impossibly large mushroom towering over them, its crown wobbling a bit as it spoke. "Can I interest you two in a green healthshroom today? Or maybe you'd like something a bit more exotic. I have some very nice bloatershrooms...." The giant mushroom looked from Karma to Glitz hopefully.
"I've never been especially big on mushrooms." the yellow techo told the living fungus. It seemed to wrinkle in on itself, as though wounded by the poundkeeper's words.
"I see....well, perhaps your lady-friend then...?" he asked.
"Actually, yeah." Karma agreed. Glitz fought not to slap his forehead in frustration as the mushroom lit up instantly. "What?" she asked the techo. "I just want to get a couple of healthshrooms just in case something happens to Yahoo or Chomby someday." Glitz grumbled obscenities irately as he trailed behind Karma and the giant mushroom as it led them to its neopia-reknowned Apothecary, already knowing that the shopkeeper was going to attempt to take both of them to the cleaners if he could.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Little more than an hour had passed and, after finally tearing themselves away from the pushyness of the shopkeepers, Karma and Dr. Death were again on their own.
"That's a lot more than I wanted to spend." he grumbled, examining the bag that held several mushrooms the Apothecary-keeper had coerced him into buying. "What am I supposed to do with these?"
"I dunno...keep'em under your desk and throw them at random people who walk in?" she suggested.
"You're not helping." he sighed.
"Sorry." she chuckled, putting a hand on his shoulder as they walked. Something in the bushes cackled at them and made obnoxiously loud smooching sounds through slimy-sounding lips. "Oh, get bent." she said to it. It laughed loudly again and sounded as though it were scampering away. "Where're we going?" she asked.
"I don't know." he shrugged. "I just need to get away from the people for a minute. I don't like being harrassed, it makes me nervous. That and I'd like to walk out of here with at least half of what I came in here with in my funds." She nodded in understanding as they wove their way through the clustered trees and bushes, coming shortly upon a small clearing. "Good enough." he remarked, moving forward and sitting at the base of a spindly pine tree. Karma remained standing, looking over her shoulder worriedly. What if they got lost out here? It was already pushing past evening and into the night. No, that was ridiculous. From the clearing, the lights and voices of the churning bazaar were still clearly visible. They were only fifty feet or so from the beaten path, after all, so getting lost would take a lot of doing on their part.
She moved to sit beside him, slipping a bit on the loose carpet of pine needles, but managed to make it to the ground without falling as she situated her skirt a bit. It felt good to sit down, and admittantly, it was a relief to be away from the constant clamour.
"So what did you end up buying?" he asked her. She opened the paper sack containing her mushrooms and fumbled in it a moment.
"Two green healthshrooms, a blue and...umm..." she blushed and took something out. Glitz squinted to see it in the darkness. It looked to be a gnarled purple toadstool of some sort.
"What's what supposed to be?" he asked.
"I dunno. The shopkeeper said it was something magical." she shrugged. "A gnome shroom, I think."
"The one that's supposed to turn into a gnome at a certain time of the day?" he groaned. "Karma, that's an old wive's tale."
"Hey, do I look like an old wife to you??" she asked. He paused for a moment, biting his lip against a smile. Realizing that she had just trapped herself, the frog swatted his leg playfully. "And you'd better think long and hard before answering that, pal." she added as he snickered.
"No, not a wife...maybe a mistress. Or maybe a concubine." he told her, smirking as he said it.
"Oh gee thanks." she muttered, hoping he was teasing. She felt his hand alight on her wrist and pat it gently, removing her annoyance at him almost instantly as she leaned backward, resting her head on his shoulder.
"You know we're going to catch hell if someone sees this." he told her.
"I know." she replied simply, snuggling closer. He hesitated and then put an arm around her shoulders, half-holding her. "This is nice." she purred. "How come we haven't done this more?"
"Besides the fact we've only been close for three days?" he asked. "It might have had something to do with all the time we spent at each other's necks."
"That might have done it." she agreed, brushing her snout against his throat softly. He felt a tremor of warmth pass through his chest, but, as he brought himself to look down into her orange-hazed eyes, he still didn't feel anything strong for her. The wanting was there, but the love didn't seem to be following. It was maddening in the way that it taunted him and....well, probably time that he came clean with her about it.
"Karma, I need to level with you, I think..." he began, trailing off as her hair brushed softly against his jaw.
"Mm hmm?" she asked.
"I know you're enjoying this...to a certain degree, I am too----stop that." he muttered, shivering as she nuzzled the nape of his neck. "But I think that---"
"OW!!" she jolted straight up, her hand flying to her left shoulder.
"What's wrong?" he asked, alarmed by her outburst.
"Something stung me." she said, suddenly feeling inexplicably sleepy. It felt as though someone had affixed a lead weight to every part of her body as her fingers explored whatever had hurt her shoulder. It was long and sleek with a surface that felt like glass. "Owww..." she moaned, whimpering as her world began to spin out of control and a red haze prickled at her vision. Glitz watched, puzzled, as she reeled drunkenly onto her side, something green protruding from her skin. He reached out, gingerly plucking it from where it sprouted from her flesh and examined it.
He had no sooner recognized it as a medical syringe than a sharp pain blossomed directly beneath his jaw, making him cry out. A burning sensation instantly coursed through his body and he found it hard to keep his head up. The pine needles that made up the floor of the woods suddenly looked uncommonly comfortable as his eyelids drooped. He was dimly aware of a faint thud as his body struck the ground and then everything faded into blackness.
From the bushes, there was a rustling and then two forms emerged....one large and hulking, and the other sleek and refined, clad in a trailing black cape.
"Hrmm...that was uncommonly easy." the eerily smooth yet gravelly voice of Dr. Frank Sloth remarked as he surveyed the downed bodies of Glitz and Karma. At his side, a large mutant grundo flexed its bulging muscles and grinned.
"For me's to squeeze!" he declared, opening his meaty palms and reaching for the unconscious bodies' necks. Sloth turned, casually withdrawing what looked to be a rod from an inner pocket in his cloak and prodded the grundo's upper arm with it. It crackled and emitted a few sparks, making the grundo howl in pain and goggle down at his master.
"Now then, it wouldn't do us much good if they were both broken, would it, Meat?" he asked the large monster. It pouted its massive green lip out and looked abashedly at the ground. "I didn't think so. Now pick them up GENTLY." Meat grumped, but complied, wrapping his hands around the techo and frog's torsos and lifting them carefully. "Very good. Maybe there IS a brain floating somewhere in that vacuuous skull of yours." Dr. Sloth commended sarcastically. "Now follow." he ordered, carefully withdrawing a pendant from where it had been hidden around his neck and softly chanting an incantation. The wind around them howled as a swirling green porthole opened itself before them.
Briskly, the doctor and his slave, carrying the unconscious Glitz and Karma, stepped into it. As quickly as it had appeared, the porthole was gone again, leaving nothing behind to tell of its presense except for a few stray tumbling leaves. Off in the distance a cricket hesitantly chirped in the sudden silence....its call was greeted by another and soon the woods carried on its happenings as though nothing had happened at all.
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"I'm getting sick of this..." Rose remarked to no one as she sat alone, behind the desk the next morning. She had been more than leniant on Dr. Death the past two weeks and excused his tardiness and absense more than she should have had to. It was nearly time to open and she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him yet. Her attempts to call his house had been left unanswered and she had left several irate messages on his machine.
She liked to think of herself as the understanding sort and had even hoped that he and Karma might do well on their outing together, but it was passing the point of ridiculousness when he was leaving her with all the work, all the time. Yesterday had been Lenny day....and, inevitably, what that meant was that there would be a huge influx of Lenny abandonments today from all of the bandwagon-hoppers that had rushed to the stockhouse to adopt one to be a part of the trend and now had no use for the neopet.
Outside, she could already see a few people waiting, all of them with a pet in tow that could be nothing other than an incoming adoptee.. The pink uni made a silent vow that if his excuse wasn't better than he and Karma had been off rutting somewhere and had lost track of the time, she'd personally tie his tail in a knot the next time she saw him. Casting another rueful glance at the clock, she sighed deeply. Time to open for business.
She crossed the room, unlocking the door and stepping back as those who had been waiting began to file in and form a line at Dr. Death's side of the desk and begin their noises of impatientness as they noticed his absense.
"If you'll all hang on a moment, I'll be with you shortly." Rose informed them all as they looked at one another in a confused manner. Some of them drifted over to the provided chairs nearby to wait while others remained rigidly at the desk, refusing to give up their place in line as Rose picked up the telephone, determined she would have SOME sort of revenge for being left alone as she dialed up the employment agency. Someone picked up on the end of the third ring and a musical faerie's voice was heard.
"Thank you for calling the employment agency, this is Atrina. How may I help you?"
"Hello, this is RoseMadder calling from the Neopian Pound." the uni began.
"Oh hello, dear. What can I do for you today?" the faerie inquired sweetly.
"Its about my co-worker. He's a no-call, no-show this morning, and I'm up to my ears in work." As she spoke this, a couple of the abandoners looked at one another and got up and shuffled quietly back out the door, their lennies safe from the pound for the moment.
"Dr. Death? That's strange....isn't he usually religious about his schedule?" Atrina asked.
"I don't know..." Rose sighed, exasperated. "He's undergone a few changes in his life as of late, and I can excuse it only so far. I've been calling him all morning and he hasn't answered. I'm just tired of this."
"That's understandable. Tell you what, we'll send a scout over to his house to see what's wrong with him and if we can't turn him up at home, we'll send you a temp to help with things until we find out what's going on."
"Thank you." the uni sighed in relief.
"Just hang in there." Atrina told her, and then hung up. Rose laid the phone back in its cradle before turning to tend to the people still waiting.
"I can take whoever's next." she called. The abandoners all eyed one another and started for the desk at the same time, pausing to glare at each other and argue over who had been first. Rose groaned and laid her head between her hooves on the desk. Already she could tell this was going to shape up to be one of those days she'd spend the weekend trying to forget.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The portal tore through the stoic silence of the inner laboratory as it opened wide, allowing Dr. Frank Sloth and Meat entry. Personally, he didn't care for portal travel very much, but it was an easy and convenient way to get around without being noticed. The time lapse was something he could never get used to. Though he had spent only seconds within the portal, when he emerged, sometimes as much as a week had passed in the world around him. A stout purple grundo looked up from the microscope it had been squinting into.
"Ah! Back already, sir? You were only gone the night this time." the grundo scientist simpered. Dr. Sloth strode past disinterestedly, not sparing the scientist a second look as Meat thundered behind him, still carrying the two limp bodies. As they meandered down the hallway, the doctor was startled by a loud crash and paused in his gait as a mutant kacheek scuttled out of a doorway, being tailed closely by flying coffee mugs and silverware.
"HEADS UP, DUDE!!! ESTROGEN-FEST IN THE BREAKROOM!!!!" the malformed neopet yowled, narrowly dodging a fork as it wisked past his head and imbedded itself in the wall directly above his exposed and pulsating brain.
"You little son of a bitch!! Get back here and take it like a man!!" a female's voice commanded from inside the room the kacheek had run from. Sloth heaved a sigh and shook his head.
"Meat, wait here." he ordered in an exasperated voice. The grundo obediently froze, apparently having no intention of venturing into the eye of whatever storm was raging in that room as the doctor impatiently bustled inside. Perched at the sink of the break room, clad in a white labcoat that had a large purple stain on the front and ready to hurl what was left in a glass artificial creamer jar at whoever walked in next was an olive-skinned young lady, the angry blush in her cheeks almost identically matching her fiery red hair that framed her face in haphazard commas and strings.
Sloth reflexively ducked nanoseconds before the glass jar flew over his head and shattered against the wall behind him in a cloud of shards and white powder. At the same time, the girl gave a startled gasp upon recognizing him and seemed to forget her anger for the moment as he straightened himself up and favored her with a high-seated look.
"Temper, temper, Ms. Pendragon." he scolded, turning to close the door.
"Oh...Doctor..." she breathed, reaching up reflexively to smooth her hair back. "I'm sorry I thought you were--" he raised a hand for silence and crossed the room, standing directly across from her.
"Pray, tell me what happened...." he asked, extending one finger to clear a stray lock of hair from her cheek. The girl, Wizlow Pendragon, momentarily lost her train of thought at his touch.
"It was..." she began, waiting until he dropped his hand again to finish. "It was that damned little dustball, Squick." she informed him. "He shook up all of the sodas and LOOK at this!" she spat, pointing at the bust of her labcat where the purple stain had set.
"What does it matter to you anyway, is my question." Dr. Sloth said. "Unless you work in the laboratory, the coat isn't necessary."
"I was in the lab earlier." she said defensively. "And with all those scummonkeys you've got working here, I didn't want to take chances on having my actual clothes ruined. This is my only labcoat and now its trash." He nodded in understanding and then rested a hand on either of her slender shoulders.
"Wizlow, go get changed." he told her gently. "Screaming and yelling like an inbred kyrii is very unbecoming to you." She opened her mouth to protest but felt her words die on her lips as he gave her shoulders a squeeze. "Aside from myself, you're the last representative of our race. Let's act like it, hmm?" She nodded in resignation.
"Good girl." he smiled, turning to leave.
"Hey!" she called after him, making him pause and look over his shoulder at her, his red eyes inquisitive. "Are you doing anything later?" she asked, smirking. Sloth shook his head and chortled.
"You're incorrigible." he told her in mock-exasperaton. And then added "We'll see." as he opened the door and returned to the matter at hand in the hallway. Meat still stood, patient as an ox, Karma and Dr. Death over each shoulder. "To the observation cell." he informed the grundo. "Let's get these two logged and put away." Meat nodded stiffly and followed as the mad doctor continued down the hallway and rounded a corner where there was a single door, vaporlocked and guarded by an alarmed keypad.
Sloth deftly keyed in the access code and waited as the security system processed it.
"Access granted." a computerized voice droned as, with a hiss, the door opened to reveal a sterile white room. A wild-eyed scorchio looked up from where it was busily puttering around a table, alternately scribbling on a notepad and checking on several flasks of bubbling liquid.
"Ah, velcome Doktor! Velcome!" the scorchio greeted him in a heavily accented voice. "Zee expedition, it vuz a zuccess, I presume?" Dr. Sloth grunted in reply, walking past the scorchio and approaching a large enclosure in the corner of the room that was outfitted to hold specimens under observation. It had last held a group of rambunctious kacheek children that he had wanted to try his transmogrification potions out on. Now it would house his latest two subjects.
He slid open the door and stood aside as Meat hefted the two limp bodies inside, preparing to toss them into opposite corners of the enclosure, looking first over his shoulder to see if Sloth was watching. Seeing the disapproving glare from the doctor, the grundo cringed and forced himself to lay them down instead of throwing them as he had planned.
"Dismissed, Meat." Sloth informed his lackey, watching as the hulking monster lumbered out of the room as he closed the door to the enclosure, looking at the dormant bodies of Karma and Dr. Death through the vented plexiglass of their new quarters.
"Fine zpezimens you haff chozen, Doktar." the scorchio commended, scuttling up beside Sloth and peering inside as well. "But vhy zese two?"
"The majority of the creatures in Neopia are still children." he explained. "And all of the adults are either unobtainable or would be missed too much. This male, from what I have seen, is a rather unliked poundkeeper." a twisted smile curled his lips. "Who knows? I may be doing everyone a service by taking him off their hands for awhile."
"Ahh very goot. Very goot." the scorchio chuckled. "And ze female?"
"I've not seen her around much." Sloth admitted. "But two adult techos would give more accurate testing results than only one. Especially in case something goes....awry." The scorchio burst into peals of disturbing laughter at Sloth's comment. The doctor whisked his hand backward, colliding it with the scorchio's nose in a stinging blow and silencing his laughter. "Its not a laughing matter, professor." he informed his worker icily. "No neopet has been destroyed by the lab ray yet, but if one ever is we'll have a very messy situation on our hands. Do you understand me?" The scorchio rubbed at his snout and nodded, not without a hint of resentment.
"Zere iz zomethink odd about her, zo." the professor remarked, peering at Karma's form through the glass intently. "I haff never zeen a techo mit such an odd tail." he added, looking at the frog's stubby tadpole's tail.
"My guess is there was some crossbreeding somewhere in her lines." Sloth shrugged. "Its not an issue unless I say so, professor."
"Aff courze, doktar. I am not queztioning you." the scorchio replied. "But I vonder....might I haff permission to obzerve her a bit?" Sloth narrowed his eyes at his worker.
"If observing is all you plan on doing, fine." he told the scorchio curtly. "None of your damned experiments." The professor looked slightly hurt but quickly straightened up again.
"Az you vish, Doktar Zloth." he smiled with a salute. The doctor watched them both a moment more before turning to leave.
"I want to be notified when they awaken." he called over his shoulder.
"Uff courze!" the scorchio called back. "You zhall be ze first!" As the door closed with a hiss, the scorchio turned back to the holding pen, opening the lock. "Affter I have done a few examinationz, zat is...." he added quietly as he stepped through the door, hefting Karma, with some difficulty, into his arms. She wasn't as light as he had thought her to be. "You are a ztrange one." he said, grinning. "Let'z zee juzt how ztrange you are...." He added, half-carrying, half-dragging her toward the testing facility.
TBC.............