AUTHOR'S NOTES -- work has been horrible to me so I dunno how regularly I'm gonna be able to put chapters out...I make you this promise, I WILL finish this o.o;; *cough* have fun ^_^
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Karma awoke the next morning to sunlight creeping in through the guest room window, dappling the bedsheets in splotches of golden light. It was not the sort of sun that one could bask in, and certainly not enough to melt the ever-fallen slow outside, but a welcome change of pace from the flourescent lighting of Sloth's laboratory. She listed onto her side, numbly surprised to find that she was alone...especially since she knew that she hadn't gone to bed that way last night.
She sat up slowly, blinking as the world came back into focus. At the foot of the bed, she noted that someone had set out a pair of black slacks, a flannel shirt checked in white and red, and a pair of plain white underpants that looked as though they were going to be far too big on her. She considered them for a moment before taking up the shirt and slipping it over her bare shoulders, buttoning it slowly as she reflected on what had happened last night, running through a rudimentary mental checklist.
Unexpected? Yes. Enjoyable? Most definately. Regrets? She wasn't sure. She finished wih the buttons and slid out from under the blankets to retrieve the rest of the garments. A moment later, dressed in the baggy clothes, she ventured out of the room, rubbing at her eyes. The house was quiet, she found, as she stretched a little and wondered, with some amusement, if she'd find it completely empty and that this entire adventure had all been a wild dream of some sort.
"My lord, the dead has arisen!" a voice declared as she turned her head, seeing Staggpub crouching in front of the fireplace and attempting to rekindle the nearly-dead embers of a fire. Behind her on the couch, the poogle pup lounged on the cushions, watching her placidly. The tigress smiled at her with an almost helpless shrug. "Blasted thing went out while I was fixing breakfast."
"Where's...umm..." she trailed off, not wanting to sound rude.
"Your friend? He was up almost an hour ago. It seems Jenny's talked him into following her to visit the Snowager today...and they should be back any time now. Did you sleep well?" Karma nodded, stifling a yawn behind her hand. Staggpub nodded in approval. "There's some oatmeal left in the kitchen if you're interested, dear." she told her as an afterthought, taking her set of bellows down off of their hook and beginning to puff at the embers with them, trying to get them to catch on the new wood.
Karma watched her for a moment before feeling her stomach clench and roil in anticipation of food and she realized it had been awhile since she had eaten a decent meal. She padded quietly into the kitchen, finding a pot about a quarter filled with cooling oatmeal inside of it sitting on the stove and a clean bowl nearby with a spoon sitting against its rim. She heard the tigress come up behind her as she spooned the oatmeal into the bowl.
"I wouldn't worry about things between the two of you any further." Staggpub told her gently.
"Huh?" she asked, turning around.
"I may be old, but I'm not niave, darling." the tigress winked. "He's got a tough outer crust, but underneath I think you've found yourself a generally good man. That's what I've gathered at least."
"Hmn...would you know if he was bad?"
"Oh yes." Staggpub smirked, leaning against the wall. "Evil men all carry the same odor about them...it smells like the air around a basket of staticy laundry." Karma, not knowing why this struck her as funny, laughed as she sat down at the table with her oatmeal. Staggpub waited a moment before crossing the kitchen and sitting across from her quietly, watching her eat. "Today you'll get where you're going....have you been missed?"
"I imagine Yahoo and Chomby are probably eating the furniture by now, if that's what you mean." Karma replied. "I hope they're alright."
"Neopets are more self-reliant than you think, dear. And I'll bet my grits on the fact that they're doing just fine on their own."
"Thanks." she smiled. "That makes me feel a little be---"
"GANGWAY!!!!" Karma jolted and looked up as the front door slammed open, Glitz and Jenny rocketing inside.
"SHUT THE DOOR!! SHUT IT! SHUT IT!!!" Jenny ordered frantically, clutching an ice negg in either stubby arm as both she and the doctor slammed it shut again and slid the bolt into place. Seconds later, there was an ear-splitting thud as the door rattled in its frame, seeming to shake the entire house.
"Jenny...." Staggpub growled, her fur bristling.
"Mom, we WERE being quiet! I swear!!" the desert aisha implored. "Then this yutz sneezed and woke him up!!"
"Like I could help it..." Glitz snarled, brushing a dusting of partially-melted snow from his hair.
"I'm getting really tired of this..." the tigress sighed, getting up from the table and crossing the kitchen to the refridgerator as another thud shook the room. Karma watched quietly as she opened the freezer, taking out a flat white and pink object. "Go give him this, and tell him you're sorry." she told Jenny. "And tell him I don't appreciate him trying to ruin my front door." the desert aisha hurriedly accepted the object and scampered back to the doorr, opening it a crack and peering out before quietly slipping outside.
"What was that?" Dr. Death inquired.
"A snowberry tart." she said with an exhausted smile. "I can't tell you the number of times Jenny's managed to wake up that brute and he's come down here snorting and tearing up the mountain after her. I found out after coming home to him ravaging my kitchen one day after Jenny didn't shut the front door in time that he has a sweet tooth for them....so I use them as sort of a peace offering."
"Mom, he's leaving..." Jenny said meekly, slipping back into the house. "Sorry...."
"Jenny, have you fed that poogle yet today?" The aisha, realizing that she wasn't going to get in trouble any further, perked up instantly.
"I'll do that right now!" she exclaimed, bounding off to find the infant poogle. Glitz bent over, picking up the two ice neggs that sat in a scattering of snow on the floor and carried them into the kitchen.
"Well that was about as much fun as a poke in the eye." he remarked, laying them on the counter. "Sorry about the mess."
"Its alright, dear. Snow melts away." the tigress assured him. "About when were you and Karma thinking of heading home?"
"Home? Oh...I don't know...before the day is out, I guess." he shrugged, still panting a bit from running. "I really don't want to just run out on you after everything you did for us." he told her.
"Well I'm sure you don't want to stay either." Staggpub pointed out, smiling a bit. "And I'm sure you need to get back to those who miss you. As I said, this is a service I would have done for anyone. I don't expect to keep you."
"Well, yeah, but..." the techo tried to argue.
"Good then its settled. You go change into some dry clothes, I'll give you each five hundred neopoints for your ferry ride home and to get something to eat when you get there." Staggpub interrupted. "And I want you two to promise me that you'll send your children up to visit me someday." Glitz's eyes went wide as Karma coughed wildly on the oatmeal that had crept down the wrong pipe when she had heard the tigress's offhand statement. No hinting, no beating around the bush, just flat-out there it was.
"We...errmm...." he tried to speak, finding himself at a temporary loss for words.
"YEARS from now, of course!" the tigress chuckled. Karma and Glitz both exchanged a sidelong glance, quietly saying that neither of them had been planning quite THAT far into the future. "But enough of that talk, I suppose." she continued, smiling warmly at the two of them as she lifted her cloak from the hook. "I'll be back."
"Where're you going?" Karma asked.
"To my safety deposit box." she replied, affixing the hood under her chin. "Need to pick up a few things and make a withdrawl from my funds to get you two home. I'll be back shortly."
"I wanna go too, mom! So does Candy!" Jenny cried, scuttling to the door with the baby poogle over her shoulder.
"You'd best not get too attached to that little one, Jenny. Our friends are going to need to take her with them when they go." she warned her aisha. Jenny looked crestfallen.
"Actually, its not ours." Glitz offered. "It followed us out of the sewer pipe." Jenny immediately looked hopefully at her owner with pleading eyes. Staggpub remained firm, looking sternly back at her neopet and mouthing the word "No." The desert aisha looked crestfallen.
"But yes, you two can come if you want. Go get your coat." Jenny, momentarily forgetting her disappointment, lit out of the room and down the hallway to find her jacket. She returned a moment later, Candy peeking out of the front of the zipper inquisitively. "Can we get ice cream?" she asked.
"We'll see, Jen." Staggpub replied, opening the front door and waiting until her neopet had bounded out into the snowdrift before passing through it herself and closing it behind her. Instantly, the house seemed horribly empty without them and left Karma and Glitz with only one another for companionship.
"Hi." he offered at last.
"Hello." Karma replied, smiling a little.
"How're you doing?"
"I'm alright." she shrugged. "Are you? I mean....with what happened?"
"Oh yeah, sure." he assured her, nodding. "It was probably long overdue anyway." He paused a bit. "Though I'd appreciate it if we kept it quiet. I get enough static as it is from Rose and it would sound so much better to say we narrowly got away from the jaws of death than to say we were off in some stranger's cabin bunking in the same bed."
"Agreed." the frog nodded, laughing. "And I really don't think its going to sound all that great to say a petowner let hereslf be seduced by a neopet, you know?"
"I didn't really look at it from that perspective." he remarked, cocking a brow. "The tabloids would have a field day, you're right."
"Okay then, we'll both stay quiet." she offer.
"Sounds good to me." he told her, taking a seat across from her at the table. Another long pause passed between them as Karma uneasily stirred the remnants of her oatmeal.
"Did you mean what you said?" she asked him.
"Huh?" he asked, looking up from staring blankly down at his hands.
"Last night." she prodded gently.
"Last night..." he repeated, trying to bring back the details. "Oh. OH!" he stumbled over himself, inwardly wincing at his lapse in memory. "Of course I meant it. Its just not an easy thing to say, Karma. Its not like I've had much experience in this kind of thing." She nodded, saying nothing. "Hey..." he said gently, reaching across the table and touching her wrist. "Once we get back and settled in, can I take you out somewhere?"
"A date?" Karma asked, feeling stupid for asking.
"May as well put a little tradition in it." he smiled. "I know it won't be the same without Sloth breathing down our necks and wading through the sewers..."
"There ya go...the magic's been sucked straight out of our relationship." she snickered. "But yes, I'd love to if you don't mind the staring we're going to get."
"I figure its a softer introduction to all of this than..well...the alternative." he smirked. She nodded in understanding. As though sharing the same wavelength of thought, they leaned across the table and shared a quick kiss.
"What're you going to tell Rose?" Karma asked when they broke.
"About us? She knows."
"No, about where we've been."
"She's going to draw her own conclusions no matter what I tell her." he shrugged. "Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. No matter what I tell her, she's going to be all aflutter and making wedding plans and thinking this was all a huge ruse for us to have time alone." He scowled a bit.
"Heh...that bad, huh?" Karma chuckled.
"She's done it before..." he replied, a look of remembered exasperation crossing his face. "She was convinced for awhile that the new blumaroo delivery girl and I were going to be an item about a year ago...she even tried to set us up on a couple of dates."
"What happened?" she asked, intrigued.
"The blumaroo quit and transferred to Mystery Island."
"Ouch."
"Feh. She was a ditz anyway." he shrugged. "So what do you say? Home?"
"Home." she agreed, picking up her empty oatmeal bowl and taking it to the sink to wash it out.
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"Well....this is it, old pal..." Yahoo groaned, sprawled out on the floor. "I'm too weak to move...."
"We've not eaten in forever...." Chomby grunted, splayed out not far from Yahoo on the carpeting.
"Our owner abandoned us....Rose said she'd come back and never did....."
"I can see a light, Yahoo...." Chomby whispered. "I think.....I think the angels have come.."
"Its so beautiful...." the cybunny whispered, tears of joy stinging his eyes. "I go now to a better place....goodby---"
"You can stop the melodrama now..." Rose sighed, emerging from the kitchen with a plate of waffles balanced on her hooves. "How much do you two *eat* anyway??" she asked, setting the plate down and watching as the cybunny and chomby sprang up from the carpet and galloped across the floor to gobble the food down. "Its a wonder Karma kept you in this place at all with all the food you go through..." her answer was muffled grunts and chewing. The uni sighed, sitting on the edge of the couch and slumping.
She had run an ad for Yahoo and Chomby in the Neopian Times yesterday morning and had gotten dozens of takers almost instantly from interested owners who had been eager to get their hands on a limited edition pet. She was still running background checks on them all and so far hadn't been impressed with any of them. She supposed part of it was that a part of her still didn't want to believe Karma and Dr. Death were actually gone.
The news article two mornings ago had shaken her horribly and she hadn't slept much at all....the heavy circles under her eyes showed that plainly enough. The mental images of a jumble of bones kept popping into her mind's eye...and, on its own, her brain had conjured up horrific details of the doctor struggling with one of the Haunted Woods' many terrors....the fight, the agony of his dying scream, the crunching as he was devoured....
She shook her head violently to rid herself of those details. She didn't want to even entertain them right now. If he had been eaten, then there was precious little she could do about it except move on with herself. Yahoo and Chomby would be placed in a new home and she would next run an ad for a new coworker to replace the bloated walrus sitting in Dr. Death's seat right now. That was that.
She jolted a bit at the sound of the front doorknob rattling and pricked her ears. Chomby and Yahoo continued to gorge themselves, apparently not noticing. Rose watched as the knob turned and the door nudged open and a familiar head poked hesitantly inside. It couldn't be....but there she was.
"Guys?" Karma asked hesitantly, swinging her head in the direction of the shameless waffle feast taking place in the middle of the living room. The frog paused a moment, stunned, and then grinned broadly. "Yahoo! Chomby!!" she cried.
"Eating. Go 'way." Yahoo muttered between mouthfuls, not comprehending anything other than the food in front of him.
"You guys I've missed you so much!!" Karma exclaimed, diving between the two of them and seizing them both in a crushing hug.
"Now what in the hell---" Yahoo began, and then caught an achingly familiar scent on the ominous being that had interrupted his breakfast. "Karma...?" he asked, his nose wriggling and sniffing wildly at her shoulder and upper arm. "KARMA!!!" he cried. "YOU'RE BACK!!!" The cybunny threw his head back over his shoulder at Rose. "She's back! Didn't I tell you she'd be back?!?" he asked jubiliantly asn Chomby blubbered in incoherant happiness and buried his face in Karma's shoulder.
Rose found that she was trembling uncontrollably as she smiled broadly. If Karma was back then there might be a small chance....
"Karma?" she asked hopefully. Karma looked up from hugging her two pets and looked at the uni with a breathless smile. "Did...umm...did the doctor...?"
"We just got home." she informed the equine. "He said he needed to stop back off at his house, feed Snap, and get changed."
"Oh thank god...!!" Rose sighed, nearly collapsing with relief, a few tears of relief slipping down her cheeks. "We all thought you two were dead...."
"We almost could have obliged you there for a little while." Karma smiled. "Its a long story."
"I'll probably end up hearing it from the doc when we go to work next...." she said, getting up and approaching the frog, giving her a brief hug before suddenly jolting. "Oh no! Snap's still here! Dr. Death's going to think he got stolen again!" she cried, looking frantically about the room for the doglefox. Not seeing him in the living room, she trotted in the direction of the bedroom, returning shortly with a very sleepy-looking Snap. "I'll be back soon." she told Karma. "And don't get me wrong, Karma, I'm so happy to see you again I just.....oh god, I've been through hell these past two days. Those stupid morons they have working in the police force declared him dead and---and---"
"The doc's fine, Rose." Karma smiled. "And I'm pretty sure he's missed you too, whether or not he wants to admit it." she addded. The uni beamed at her before rushing out the door with Snap over her shoulder.
"Karma, where were you??" Chomby asked, looking up at her with baleful eyes, his face a smear of butter and syrup from the waffle binge moments ago. "We were so worried!"
"In a bad situation, Chomby." she told him, kissing his forehead. "Its alright now."
"Yeah but where?" Yahoo pressed. "Why'd you leave us??"
"I didn't get a choice, really, Yahoo. I was--"
"Did you and the doc get married??" Chomby asked hurriedly.
"No...actually we were..."
"Did he run away from home and you went to look for him?" the dinosaur interrupted.
"Will you shut up, stones-for-brains?? She's trying to explain!" Yahoo shot at the chomby, making him flinch a little.
"Sorry, geez..." Chomby sulked.
"Has Rose been taking care of you guys all this time?" Karma asked, noting that the apartment was cleaner than she had expected and that the only mess, really, was the scattering of waffle crumbs around the plate of breakfast the uni had set down for the two pets moments before.
"Uh huh." Yahoo told her. "She's been droppin' by after work to make sure we had something to eat."
"Oh wow...she didn't have to do that. And she took care of Snap too?" her pets both nodded. "Sounds like me and Glitz owe her one."
"So c'mon! Where've you been??" Yahoo implored one more time.
"Well, we got picked up by Sloth." she began.
"Sloth? As in Doctor "I'm a jerk" Sloth?" Yahoo interrupted. Karma sighed, her irritation at being cut off constantly threatening to overcome her joy of being back with her neopets.
"How about we get these waffles cleaned up and I'll tell you about it afterward?" she said, pointing at the partially-eaten pile of breakfast on the floor. "Guys, you couldn't have been THAT hungry. It looks like a starving wolverine went through that plate." Chomby blushed a little and Yahoo gave her a lopsided smirk.
"Whaddaya want from us? Rose is a good cook." the cybunny told her, hopping out of her arms and lifting up the plate, faltering a little as he moved to carry it to the sink. Chomby hesitated a moment and then followed after him with Karma bringing up the rear, beginning for a fifth time to tell their story.
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Glitz paused on the front doorstep of his house and shifted the baby poogle's weight to his other shoulder as he paused in mid-reach for his pocket, realizing for the first time since he had gotten off of the ferryboat with Karma that his housekeys had been in the pocket of his labcoat when they had been captured. Oh well....unless a passing Zebba had mistaken it for a "shiny" and run off with it, he kept a spare key hidden on top of the frame of his side window in case of emergencies and now hopped off of the porch and crossed around to the side of the house to see about retrieving it.
As he strained to reach the top of the windowframe without dropping the baby neopet, he was mindful of the fact that the jeans he wore were threatening to slide off as he stretched out. No sooner had his fingers brushed against the cold metal of the key and closed around it than there was the loud hiss of a window sliding open behind him.
"Hey! Whaddaya think yer doin'??" a familiar voice demanded to know. In his arms, Candy gave a yelp of surprise.
"I missed you too, Jespie." Dr. Death remarked, narrowing his eyes slightly.
"You..." the tuskaninny said, his tone softening instantly. "They said you were dead on the news..." He no longer sounded aggressive, just quietly puzzled.
"Sorry to disappoint all of you." the techo sighed, turning to walk back to his front door.
"Where've you been anyway?" Jespie inquired, cocking a brow. "What were you trying to pull getting everybody to believe you were dead?"
"I wasn't pulling anything." he replied. "And if they believed I was dead, then good for them. Maybe I'm a zombie."
"Cute, doc. That's really cute. What? You didn't think you were getting enough attention? Or was this just some pathetic ploy to get people to stop hating you?" The old vehemency Glitz was used to began to creep back into the walrus neopet's voice. "And what the hell is that thing?" he asked, pointing at Candy.
"That's a baby." he replied. "Keep your voice down." The chubby tuskaninny's eyes flew wide at this.
"A baby?? What're you doing with a baby???" His eyes looked like they were about to pop straight out of his skull.
"Its not mine. Its Karma's. She didn't want to spring it on her other pets just yet." He fitted the key into the lock and pulled open the door.
"Who's Karma? What're you---" the door slammed shut, cutting him off in mid-question. Jespie paused, blinking dumbly for a moment before shaking his head and retreating back inside his window, closing it again. "Jerk." he muttered, meandering back into his den to see what was on TV.
Inside, Glitz instantly headed for the back door, hoping Snap was alright as he tossed the key onto the bookcase as he passed it.
"Snap?" he called, pulling open the door. The petpet did not rush to greet him and a sense of foreboding stole over him....had Snap starved with no one to care for him? He ducked back into the house, laying Candy gently on the couch, before hurrying back outside. "Snap? Snap where are you??" he called. No answer. "Not again..." he groaned, turning to hurry back into the house.
"Here! He's here!" a breathless female voice called. He paused and turned to see Snap being held over the top of his backyard fence between a pair of hooves.
"Rose?" he asked, breaking into a brisk run across the grass and all but slamming into the fence as he hoisted himself upward and peered over the top at the pink uni clutching the doglefox and grinning hugely.
"You're alive!" she beamed, mouth hanging slightly open as she panted thickly, having run all the way here from Karma's apartment.
"I'm alive." he smiled back. "Come around front, Rose." he told her. "This fence is jabbing me in the gut."
"Oh! Of course!" she grinned foolishly, turning and running around the perimeter of the fence. He could hear her hooves clop hollowly against the pavement as he lowered himself down from his perch and hurried through the house to meet her. As he opened the front door, the doglefox was thrust into his arms, followed shortly by Rose all but flinging herself at him, hugging him tightly. "Oh doc, its been hell..." she whimpered. "You've gotta come back. I'm going crazy."
"Why?" he asked, a little bewildered by the attention as he readjusted his grip on Snap while the doglefox wildly licked at his face. "Unless they replaced me, I'll be back tomorrow, Rose."
"You're going to need to talk to the employment agency." she told him, her voice slightly muffled against his shoulder. "Everybody thinks you're dead."
"So I hear....how'd they dig up that conclusion? Wishful thinking?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a small squeeze before backing up and detaching the uni from him.
"They found a pile of bones in the woods." she explained. "And they just assumed, I guess. You were gone and they found your ID tag."
"Gonna need a new one of those too, I guess." he sighed, smirking a little. Rose, though she was glad to have him back, was a bit puzzled. He seemed much more tranquil than when she had last seen him....not ready to bite her head off at a moment's notice as he usually was.
"Where did you and Karma go? What happened?" she asked. She gasped suddenly. "You two didn't get married, did you?"
"Huh? No!" he exclaimed. "I know I don't have class, but I'd like to think I'd at least get to know her longer than a week first..."
"Stranger things have happened." Rose smiled, broadly. "So what, then? Give."
"Sloth." he told her. "He's sniffing back around Neopia, apparently, and we had the distinct honor of being his test subjects."
"Oh no..." the uni gasped. He nodded quietly. "What did he do to you?"
"Blasted us both with a ray....aside from screwing with my species and burning the hell out of Karma, it really had no effect." Rose nodded, though something in her eyes said she wasn't buying this story....and she was just waiting for him to tell her what REALLY happened. However, before he could confirm this, she looked past him at the baby yellow poogle who was peering over the end of the couch and seemed inordinately fascinated with his carpet.
"A baby....!!" Rose declared, gasping. Dr. Death rolled his eyes, knowing that from here on out, she would hear nothing he said. Her greatest weakness, aside from chocolate truffles, was small children. He stumbled a bit as she hurried past him to the couch and scooped Candy into her arms, cuddling the little poogle close. "Doc, where'd you find such a little sweetie??" she asked, cooing and nuzzling the little poogle. Candy, apparently, enjoyed the attention and burbled happily in the uni's arms.
"It found us." he shrugged. "One of Sloth's failed experiments. Actually, its going to be Karma's pet once we get things situated."
"But this one's far too young to be given over as a pet!" Rose gasped. "If the police found out--"
"After all we've been through this past week, Rose, the police is the last of my worries right now. And if they want to be petty enough to take Candy away from Karma, then that's their business. Its not as though either of us have an attachment to her. She followed us out of the sewer."
"The sewer...?"
"And how Staggpub knew that she had been a poogle at one point is beyond me....she looked like a decrepit mutant puppyblew..."
"Staggpub? What....?" Rose's query was cut off by a sharp yap as Snap wriggled out of his owner's hands and landed neatly on the floor, running in excited circles.
"Have you been taking care of him all this time?" he asked her.
"Yeah." Rose nodded. "I couldn't just leave him in your backyard...he's been staying with Karma's pets and I've been taking care of them all." He smiled a little, clapping a hand on her shoulder.
"Then I think I owe you one." he told her. Rose blinked bewilderedly, unconsciously tightening her grip on Candy a bit. This was was most definately not the Dr. Death she was used to. Snap, in his excitement, skidded sidelong into the bookcase, rattling it and showering himself in a scattering of softcover John Saul and Dean Koontz books he had collected over the years. The doglefox yipped and skittered away from the mess, jumping up onto the couch and instantly laying down, trying in a last-ditch effort to look innocent. "You up for dinner tonight?" he sighed, approaching the mess and kneeling to pick up the books.
"Dinner...?" the uni asked warily.
"Yeah. I don't think Karma would object. She owes you just as much as I do. Would give us all a chance to talk about what went down this past week and we'll pick up your tab, sound fair?"
"I---sounds great!" Rose grinned. She made a mental note to mark this on her calendar when she got home as the first time the doctor had invited *her* anywhere, admidst all of the times she had offered him lunch or dinner in passing during their employment and he had refused
"Great...pizza or hot dogs, Rose?" The uni paused a moment to think.
"Pizza." she said tenatively.
"Meet you there at six...for now, I hope you don't mind, but I really have to get things back in order." Saying so, he absently picked up the telephone and began to dial the number to the Employment Agency to ask about his job's current standing. Rose stood quietly for a moment, still cradling the poogle as she watched him stand by patiently until the other line was picked up and he began to speak with one of the agency's operators. Smiling, she gently laid the poogle infant back on the couch and left him to his business.
As she let herself outside, she felt a rush of elation. The doctor was back, Karma was fine, and it seemed she was going to be able to tell Ms. Whorley exactly what she thought of having her as a co-worker before too much longer.
Things were starting to look up, and about time too she thought to herself as she walked happily back to her own home.
"No...no I'm not dead." Glitz sighed as the operator he spoke to continued to grill him. "No this isn't a prank call....look, I just want to know about my job status." he sighed.
"Now listen, I'm getting tired of having to play referee to these jokes. They're in horribly poor taste and I don't care HOW disliked of a neopet he was, it still doesn't give you kids the right to play around like this!"
"Did I just start talking Tyrannian or something and not know it?" he asked. "I AM Dr. Death, alright? I've been through a week of hell, I'm trying to get everything back in order and it would make it so much easier on both of us if you could just give me a yes or n---" there was a sharp click as the faerie he had been speaking to hung up on him. He paused for a moment, dumbfounded, before frustrated anger set in. "Son of a bitch...!" he hissed, tightening his grip on the reciever. He jolted a little as the sound of snapping plastic and crunching metal issued from his hand and the reciever fell from his palm in two pieces, hitting the carpet with a dull thud.
He blinked, not exactly sure what had just happened. There was no possible way he possessed the strength to have crushed the phone...hell, he had barely able to break a pencil in the past. Seeing as how he had rendered his telephone useless anyway, he experimentally picked up the dialing pad and held it tightly between his hands, pressing inward. His muscles trembled, but nothing more. Not even a crack in the plastic casing. Whatever had possessed him a moment before was gone now.
He turned to see both Snap and the baby poogle looking at him with curious expressions and he let his breath out in a long sigh, kneeling to pick up the remnants of the reciever. His mind drifted back to the lab ray and all of the times he had been zapped with "no effect". Maybe more had changed in him than they had thought, he mused. Just what he needed to cap things off, after all....some stereotypical rush of strength whenever his temper flared up. He guessed by the time his tax return came in, he'd turn green, tear out of whatever clothes he was wearing and start referring to himself as "Hulk".
Oh well...he wasn't going to jump to conclusions just yet, he decided. Maybe it was a fluke...just maybe. Snap trotted up, tail wagging gently and snuffled at his fingers as he picked up the shards of plastic protruding from the carpet. The techo hesitated a moment before smiling faintly and roughly touseling the petpet's headfur.
"You wanna go for pizza tonight, kid?" he asked the doglefox, remembering that he still had to inform Karma that they were going out. As though understanding, Snap pricked his large ears and his tail sped up a bit. He picked up the last of the crushed reciever and scanned the carpet for more...and not finding any, got up to throw the ones he held away. When he returned, he seated himself on the couch beside Candy. Snap instantly leapt up beside him, curling up and resting his head on the doctor's knee. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you missed me." he told the doglefox. Snap gave a cursory thump of his tail against the back of the couch. He squinted, attempting to see the small digital clock on his radio.
Almost three....that gave him plenty of time to get cleaned up and get to the store and find himself a new phone before he had to worry about meeting Rose and Karma. Not to mention to get into a set of clothes of his own, he thought as he looked distastefully down at the baggy clothing Staggpub had given him. He was fairly sure he looked like he had just crawled out from under a bridge....the looks people had given him when he had passed them on his way home had confirmed this...that or else maybe they had been trying to decide if they were seeing things or not. Just how farspread had the rumor gone about his death, anyway?
He sighed, reaching out and picking up Candy before she could wriggle off of the edge of the couch. Oh well....whatever people had come to believe, it all boiled down to one thing: that he was planning on sticking around for awhile longer. And maybe people were going to have to rethink him before too much more time passed, he mused. After all....how many maniacs that enjoyed nothing more than the pain and torture of neopets turned up with a girlfriend and shared priorities on a infant?
TBC.........
((Yup more...))
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Karma awoke the next morning to sunlight creeping in through the guest room window, dappling the bedsheets in splotches of golden light. It was not the sort of sun that one could bask in, and certainly not enough to melt the ever-fallen slow outside, but a welcome change of pace from the flourescent lighting of Sloth's laboratory. She listed onto her side, numbly surprised to find that she was alone...especially since she knew that she hadn't gone to bed that way last night.
She sat up slowly, blinking as the world came back into focus. At the foot of the bed, she noted that someone had set out a pair of black slacks, a flannel shirt checked in white and red, and a pair of plain white underpants that looked as though they were going to be far too big on her. She considered them for a moment before taking up the shirt and slipping it over her bare shoulders, buttoning it slowly as she reflected on what had happened last night, running through a rudimentary mental checklist.
Unexpected? Yes. Enjoyable? Most definately. Regrets? She wasn't sure. She finished wih the buttons and slid out from under the blankets to retrieve the rest of the garments. A moment later, dressed in the baggy clothes, she ventured out of the room, rubbing at her eyes. The house was quiet, she found, as she stretched a little and wondered, with some amusement, if she'd find it completely empty and that this entire adventure had all been a wild dream of some sort.
"My lord, the dead has arisen!" a voice declared as she turned her head, seeing Staggpub crouching in front of the fireplace and attempting to rekindle the nearly-dead embers of a fire. Behind her on the couch, the poogle pup lounged on the cushions, watching her placidly. The tigress smiled at her with an almost helpless shrug. "Blasted thing went out while I was fixing breakfast."
"Where's...umm..." she trailed off, not wanting to sound rude.
"Your friend? He was up almost an hour ago. It seems Jenny's talked him into following her to visit the Snowager today...and they should be back any time now. Did you sleep well?" Karma nodded, stifling a yawn behind her hand. Staggpub nodded in approval. "There's some oatmeal left in the kitchen if you're interested, dear." she told her as an afterthought, taking her set of bellows down off of their hook and beginning to puff at the embers with them, trying to get them to catch on the new wood.
Karma watched her for a moment before feeling her stomach clench and roil in anticipation of food and she realized it had been awhile since she had eaten a decent meal. She padded quietly into the kitchen, finding a pot about a quarter filled with cooling oatmeal inside of it sitting on the stove and a clean bowl nearby with a spoon sitting against its rim. She heard the tigress come up behind her as she spooned the oatmeal into the bowl.
"I wouldn't worry about things between the two of you any further." Staggpub told her gently.
"Huh?" she asked, turning around.
"I may be old, but I'm not niave, darling." the tigress winked. "He's got a tough outer crust, but underneath I think you've found yourself a generally good man. That's what I've gathered at least."
"Hmn...would you know if he was bad?"
"Oh yes." Staggpub smirked, leaning against the wall. "Evil men all carry the same odor about them...it smells like the air around a basket of staticy laundry." Karma, not knowing why this struck her as funny, laughed as she sat down at the table with her oatmeal. Staggpub waited a moment before crossing the kitchen and sitting across from her quietly, watching her eat. "Today you'll get where you're going....have you been missed?"
"I imagine Yahoo and Chomby are probably eating the furniture by now, if that's what you mean." Karma replied. "I hope they're alright."
"Neopets are more self-reliant than you think, dear. And I'll bet my grits on the fact that they're doing just fine on their own."
"Thanks." she smiled. "That makes me feel a little be---"
"GANGWAY!!!!" Karma jolted and looked up as the front door slammed open, Glitz and Jenny rocketing inside.
"SHUT THE DOOR!! SHUT IT! SHUT IT!!!" Jenny ordered frantically, clutching an ice negg in either stubby arm as both she and the doctor slammed it shut again and slid the bolt into place. Seconds later, there was an ear-splitting thud as the door rattled in its frame, seeming to shake the entire house.
"Jenny...." Staggpub growled, her fur bristling.
"Mom, we WERE being quiet! I swear!!" the desert aisha implored. "Then this yutz sneezed and woke him up!!"
"Like I could help it..." Glitz snarled, brushing a dusting of partially-melted snow from his hair.
"I'm getting really tired of this..." the tigress sighed, getting up from the table and crossing the kitchen to the refridgerator as another thud shook the room. Karma watched quietly as she opened the freezer, taking out a flat white and pink object. "Go give him this, and tell him you're sorry." she told Jenny. "And tell him I don't appreciate him trying to ruin my front door." the desert aisha hurriedly accepted the object and scampered back to the doorr, opening it a crack and peering out before quietly slipping outside.
"What was that?" Dr. Death inquired.
"A snowberry tart." she said with an exhausted smile. "I can't tell you the number of times Jenny's managed to wake up that brute and he's come down here snorting and tearing up the mountain after her. I found out after coming home to him ravaging my kitchen one day after Jenny didn't shut the front door in time that he has a sweet tooth for them....so I use them as sort of a peace offering."
"Mom, he's leaving..." Jenny said meekly, slipping back into the house. "Sorry...."
"Jenny, have you fed that poogle yet today?" The aisha, realizing that she wasn't going to get in trouble any further, perked up instantly.
"I'll do that right now!" she exclaimed, bounding off to find the infant poogle. Glitz bent over, picking up the two ice neggs that sat in a scattering of snow on the floor and carried them into the kitchen.
"Well that was about as much fun as a poke in the eye." he remarked, laying them on the counter. "Sorry about the mess."
"Its alright, dear. Snow melts away." the tigress assured him. "About when were you and Karma thinking of heading home?"
"Home? Oh...I don't know...before the day is out, I guess." he shrugged, still panting a bit from running. "I really don't want to just run out on you after everything you did for us." he told her.
"Well I'm sure you don't want to stay either." Staggpub pointed out, smiling a bit. "And I'm sure you need to get back to those who miss you. As I said, this is a service I would have done for anyone. I don't expect to keep you."
"Well, yeah, but..." the techo tried to argue.
"Good then its settled. You go change into some dry clothes, I'll give you each five hundred neopoints for your ferry ride home and to get something to eat when you get there." Staggpub interrupted. "And I want you two to promise me that you'll send your children up to visit me someday." Glitz's eyes went wide as Karma coughed wildly on the oatmeal that had crept down the wrong pipe when she had heard the tigress's offhand statement. No hinting, no beating around the bush, just flat-out there it was.
"We...errmm...." he tried to speak, finding himself at a temporary loss for words.
"YEARS from now, of course!" the tigress chuckled. Karma and Glitz both exchanged a sidelong glance, quietly saying that neither of them had been planning quite THAT far into the future. "But enough of that talk, I suppose." she continued, smiling warmly at the two of them as she lifted her cloak from the hook. "I'll be back."
"Where're you going?" Karma asked.
"To my safety deposit box." she replied, affixing the hood under her chin. "Need to pick up a few things and make a withdrawl from my funds to get you two home. I'll be back shortly."
"I wanna go too, mom! So does Candy!" Jenny cried, scuttling to the door with the baby poogle over her shoulder.
"You'd best not get too attached to that little one, Jenny. Our friends are going to need to take her with them when they go." she warned her aisha. Jenny looked crestfallen.
"Actually, its not ours." Glitz offered. "It followed us out of the sewer pipe." Jenny immediately looked hopefully at her owner with pleading eyes. Staggpub remained firm, looking sternly back at her neopet and mouthing the word "No." The desert aisha looked crestfallen.
"But yes, you two can come if you want. Go get your coat." Jenny, momentarily forgetting her disappointment, lit out of the room and down the hallway to find her jacket. She returned a moment later, Candy peeking out of the front of the zipper inquisitively. "Can we get ice cream?" she asked.
"We'll see, Jen." Staggpub replied, opening the front door and waiting until her neopet had bounded out into the snowdrift before passing through it herself and closing it behind her. Instantly, the house seemed horribly empty without them and left Karma and Glitz with only one another for companionship.
"Hi." he offered at last.
"Hello." Karma replied, smiling a little.
"How're you doing?"
"I'm alright." she shrugged. "Are you? I mean....with what happened?"
"Oh yeah, sure." he assured her, nodding. "It was probably long overdue anyway." He paused a bit. "Though I'd appreciate it if we kept it quiet. I get enough static as it is from Rose and it would sound so much better to say we narrowly got away from the jaws of death than to say we were off in some stranger's cabin bunking in the same bed."
"Agreed." the frog nodded, laughing. "And I really don't think its going to sound all that great to say a petowner let hereslf be seduced by a neopet, you know?"
"I didn't really look at it from that perspective." he remarked, cocking a brow. "The tabloids would have a field day, you're right."
"Okay then, we'll both stay quiet." she offer.
"Sounds good to me." he told her, taking a seat across from her at the table. Another long pause passed between them as Karma uneasily stirred the remnants of her oatmeal.
"Did you mean what you said?" she asked him.
"Huh?" he asked, looking up from staring blankly down at his hands.
"Last night." she prodded gently.
"Last night..." he repeated, trying to bring back the details. "Oh. OH!" he stumbled over himself, inwardly wincing at his lapse in memory. "Of course I meant it. Its just not an easy thing to say, Karma. Its not like I've had much experience in this kind of thing." She nodded, saying nothing. "Hey..." he said gently, reaching across the table and touching her wrist. "Once we get back and settled in, can I take you out somewhere?"
"A date?" Karma asked, feeling stupid for asking.
"May as well put a little tradition in it." he smiled. "I know it won't be the same without Sloth breathing down our necks and wading through the sewers..."
"There ya go...the magic's been sucked straight out of our relationship." she snickered. "But yes, I'd love to if you don't mind the staring we're going to get."
"I figure its a softer introduction to all of this than..well...the alternative." he smirked. She nodded in understanding. As though sharing the same wavelength of thought, they leaned across the table and shared a quick kiss.
"What're you going to tell Rose?" Karma asked when they broke.
"About us? She knows."
"No, about where we've been."
"She's going to draw her own conclusions no matter what I tell her." he shrugged. "Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. No matter what I tell her, she's going to be all aflutter and making wedding plans and thinking this was all a huge ruse for us to have time alone." He scowled a bit.
"Heh...that bad, huh?" Karma chuckled.
"She's done it before..." he replied, a look of remembered exasperation crossing his face. "She was convinced for awhile that the new blumaroo delivery girl and I were going to be an item about a year ago...she even tried to set us up on a couple of dates."
"What happened?" she asked, intrigued.
"The blumaroo quit and transferred to Mystery Island."
"Ouch."
"Feh. She was a ditz anyway." he shrugged. "So what do you say? Home?"
"Home." she agreed, picking up her empty oatmeal bowl and taking it to the sink to wash it out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Well....this is it, old pal..." Yahoo groaned, sprawled out on the floor. "I'm too weak to move...."
"We've not eaten in forever...." Chomby grunted, splayed out not far from Yahoo on the carpeting.
"Our owner abandoned us....Rose said she'd come back and never did....."
"I can see a light, Yahoo...." Chomby whispered. "I think.....I think the angels have come.."
"Its so beautiful...." the cybunny whispered, tears of joy stinging his eyes. "I go now to a better place....goodby---"
"You can stop the melodrama now..." Rose sighed, emerging from the kitchen with a plate of waffles balanced on her hooves. "How much do you two *eat* anyway??" she asked, setting the plate down and watching as the cybunny and chomby sprang up from the carpet and galloped across the floor to gobble the food down. "Its a wonder Karma kept you in this place at all with all the food you go through..." her answer was muffled grunts and chewing. The uni sighed, sitting on the edge of the couch and slumping.
She had run an ad for Yahoo and Chomby in the Neopian Times yesterday morning and had gotten dozens of takers almost instantly from interested owners who had been eager to get their hands on a limited edition pet. She was still running background checks on them all and so far hadn't been impressed with any of them. She supposed part of it was that a part of her still didn't want to believe Karma and Dr. Death were actually gone.
The news article two mornings ago had shaken her horribly and she hadn't slept much at all....the heavy circles under her eyes showed that plainly enough. The mental images of a jumble of bones kept popping into her mind's eye...and, on its own, her brain had conjured up horrific details of the doctor struggling with one of the Haunted Woods' many terrors....the fight, the agony of his dying scream, the crunching as he was devoured....
She shook her head violently to rid herself of those details. She didn't want to even entertain them right now. If he had been eaten, then there was precious little she could do about it except move on with herself. Yahoo and Chomby would be placed in a new home and she would next run an ad for a new coworker to replace the bloated walrus sitting in Dr. Death's seat right now. That was that.
She jolted a bit at the sound of the front doorknob rattling and pricked her ears. Chomby and Yahoo continued to gorge themselves, apparently not noticing. Rose watched as the knob turned and the door nudged open and a familiar head poked hesitantly inside. It couldn't be....but there she was.
"Guys?" Karma asked hesitantly, swinging her head in the direction of the shameless waffle feast taking place in the middle of the living room. The frog paused a moment, stunned, and then grinned broadly. "Yahoo! Chomby!!" she cried.
"Eating. Go 'way." Yahoo muttered between mouthfuls, not comprehending anything other than the food in front of him.
"You guys I've missed you so much!!" Karma exclaimed, diving between the two of them and seizing them both in a crushing hug.
"Now what in the hell---" Yahoo began, and then caught an achingly familiar scent on the ominous being that had interrupted his breakfast. "Karma...?" he asked, his nose wriggling and sniffing wildly at her shoulder and upper arm. "KARMA!!!" he cried. "YOU'RE BACK!!!" The cybunny threw his head back over his shoulder at Rose. "She's back! Didn't I tell you she'd be back?!?" he asked jubiliantly asn Chomby blubbered in incoherant happiness and buried his face in Karma's shoulder.
Rose found that she was trembling uncontrollably as she smiled broadly. If Karma was back then there might be a small chance....
"Karma?" she asked hopefully. Karma looked up from hugging her two pets and looked at the uni with a breathless smile. "Did...umm...did the doctor...?"
"We just got home." she informed the equine. "He said he needed to stop back off at his house, feed Snap, and get changed."
"Oh thank god...!!" Rose sighed, nearly collapsing with relief, a few tears of relief slipping down her cheeks. "We all thought you two were dead...."
"We almost could have obliged you there for a little while." Karma smiled. "Its a long story."
"I'll probably end up hearing it from the doc when we go to work next...." she said, getting up and approaching the frog, giving her a brief hug before suddenly jolting. "Oh no! Snap's still here! Dr. Death's going to think he got stolen again!" she cried, looking frantically about the room for the doglefox. Not seeing him in the living room, she trotted in the direction of the bedroom, returning shortly with a very sleepy-looking Snap. "I'll be back soon." she told Karma. "And don't get me wrong, Karma, I'm so happy to see you again I just.....oh god, I've been through hell these past two days. Those stupid morons they have working in the police force declared him dead and---and---"
"The doc's fine, Rose." Karma smiled. "And I'm pretty sure he's missed you too, whether or not he wants to admit it." she addded. The uni beamed at her before rushing out the door with Snap over her shoulder.
"Karma, where were you??" Chomby asked, looking up at her with baleful eyes, his face a smear of butter and syrup from the waffle binge moments ago. "We were so worried!"
"In a bad situation, Chomby." she told him, kissing his forehead. "Its alright now."
"Yeah but where?" Yahoo pressed. "Why'd you leave us??"
"I didn't get a choice, really, Yahoo. I was--"
"Did you and the doc get married??" Chomby asked hurriedly.
"No...actually we were..."
"Did he run away from home and you went to look for him?" the dinosaur interrupted.
"Will you shut up, stones-for-brains?? She's trying to explain!" Yahoo shot at the chomby, making him flinch a little.
"Sorry, geez..." Chomby sulked.
"Has Rose been taking care of you guys all this time?" Karma asked, noting that the apartment was cleaner than she had expected and that the only mess, really, was the scattering of waffle crumbs around the plate of breakfast the uni had set down for the two pets moments before.
"Uh huh." Yahoo told her. "She's been droppin' by after work to make sure we had something to eat."
"Oh wow...she didn't have to do that. And she took care of Snap too?" her pets both nodded. "Sounds like me and Glitz owe her one."
"So c'mon! Where've you been??" Yahoo implored one more time.
"Well, we got picked up by Sloth." she began.
"Sloth? As in Doctor "I'm a jerk" Sloth?" Yahoo interrupted. Karma sighed, her irritation at being cut off constantly threatening to overcome her joy of being back with her neopets.
"How about we get these waffles cleaned up and I'll tell you about it afterward?" she said, pointing at the partially-eaten pile of breakfast on the floor. "Guys, you couldn't have been THAT hungry. It looks like a starving wolverine went through that plate." Chomby blushed a little and Yahoo gave her a lopsided smirk.
"Whaddaya want from us? Rose is a good cook." the cybunny told her, hopping out of her arms and lifting up the plate, faltering a little as he moved to carry it to the sink. Chomby hesitated a moment and then followed after him with Karma bringing up the rear, beginning for a fifth time to tell their story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Glitz paused on the front doorstep of his house and shifted the baby poogle's weight to his other shoulder as he paused in mid-reach for his pocket, realizing for the first time since he had gotten off of the ferryboat with Karma that his housekeys had been in the pocket of his labcoat when they had been captured. Oh well....unless a passing Zebba had mistaken it for a "shiny" and run off with it, he kept a spare key hidden on top of the frame of his side window in case of emergencies and now hopped off of the porch and crossed around to the side of the house to see about retrieving it.
As he strained to reach the top of the windowframe without dropping the baby neopet, he was mindful of the fact that the jeans he wore were threatening to slide off as he stretched out. No sooner had his fingers brushed against the cold metal of the key and closed around it than there was the loud hiss of a window sliding open behind him.
"Hey! Whaddaya think yer doin'??" a familiar voice demanded to know. In his arms, Candy gave a yelp of surprise.
"I missed you too, Jespie." Dr. Death remarked, narrowing his eyes slightly.
"You..." the tuskaninny said, his tone softening instantly. "They said you were dead on the news..." He no longer sounded aggressive, just quietly puzzled.
"Sorry to disappoint all of you." the techo sighed, turning to walk back to his front door.
"Where've you been anyway?" Jespie inquired, cocking a brow. "What were you trying to pull getting everybody to believe you were dead?"
"I wasn't pulling anything." he replied. "And if they believed I was dead, then good for them. Maybe I'm a zombie."
"Cute, doc. That's really cute. What? You didn't think you were getting enough attention? Or was this just some pathetic ploy to get people to stop hating you?" The old vehemency Glitz was used to began to creep back into the walrus neopet's voice. "And what the hell is that thing?" he asked, pointing at Candy.
"That's a baby." he replied. "Keep your voice down." The chubby tuskaninny's eyes flew wide at this.
"A baby?? What're you doing with a baby???" His eyes looked like they were about to pop straight out of his skull.
"Its not mine. Its Karma's. She didn't want to spring it on her other pets just yet." He fitted the key into the lock and pulled open the door.
"Who's Karma? What're you---" the door slammed shut, cutting him off in mid-question. Jespie paused, blinking dumbly for a moment before shaking his head and retreating back inside his window, closing it again. "Jerk." he muttered, meandering back into his den to see what was on TV.
Inside, Glitz instantly headed for the back door, hoping Snap was alright as he tossed the key onto the bookcase as he passed it.
"Snap?" he called, pulling open the door. The petpet did not rush to greet him and a sense of foreboding stole over him....had Snap starved with no one to care for him? He ducked back into the house, laying Candy gently on the couch, before hurrying back outside. "Snap? Snap where are you??" he called. No answer. "Not again..." he groaned, turning to hurry back into the house.
"Here! He's here!" a breathless female voice called. He paused and turned to see Snap being held over the top of his backyard fence between a pair of hooves.
"Rose?" he asked, breaking into a brisk run across the grass and all but slamming into the fence as he hoisted himself upward and peered over the top at the pink uni clutching the doglefox and grinning hugely.
"You're alive!" she beamed, mouth hanging slightly open as she panted thickly, having run all the way here from Karma's apartment.
"I'm alive." he smiled back. "Come around front, Rose." he told her. "This fence is jabbing me in the gut."
"Oh! Of course!" she grinned foolishly, turning and running around the perimeter of the fence. He could hear her hooves clop hollowly against the pavement as he lowered himself down from his perch and hurried through the house to meet her. As he opened the front door, the doglefox was thrust into his arms, followed shortly by Rose all but flinging herself at him, hugging him tightly. "Oh doc, its been hell..." she whimpered. "You've gotta come back. I'm going crazy."
"Why?" he asked, a little bewildered by the attention as he readjusted his grip on Snap while the doglefox wildly licked at his face. "Unless they replaced me, I'll be back tomorrow, Rose."
"You're going to need to talk to the employment agency." she told him, her voice slightly muffled against his shoulder. "Everybody thinks you're dead."
"So I hear....how'd they dig up that conclusion? Wishful thinking?" he asked, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a small squeeze before backing up and detaching the uni from him.
"They found a pile of bones in the woods." she explained. "And they just assumed, I guess. You were gone and they found your ID tag."
"Gonna need a new one of those too, I guess." he sighed, smirking a little. Rose, though she was glad to have him back, was a bit puzzled. He seemed much more tranquil than when she had last seen him....not ready to bite her head off at a moment's notice as he usually was.
"Where did you and Karma go? What happened?" she asked. She gasped suddenly. "You two didn't get married, did you?"
"Huh? No!" he exclaimed. "I know I don't have class, but I'd like to think I'd at least get to know her longer than a week first..."
"Stranger things have happened." Rose smiled, broadly. "So what, then? Give."
"Sloth." he told her. "He's sniffing back around Neopia, apparently, and we had the distinct honor of being his test subjects."
"Oh no..." the uni gasped. He nodded quietly. "What did he do to you?"
"Blasted us both with a ray....aside from screwing with my species and burning the hell out of Karma, it really had no effect." Rose nodded, though something in her eyes said she wasn't buying this story....and she was just waiting for him to tell her what REALLY happened. However, before he could confirm this, she looked past him at the baby yellow poogle who was peering over the end of the couch and seemed inordinately fascinated with his carpet.
"A baby....!!" Rose declared, gasping. Dr. Death rolled his eyes, knowing that from here on out, she would hear nothing he said. Her greatest weakness, aside from chocolate truffles, was small children. He stumbled a bit as she hurried past him to the couch and scooped Candy into her arms, cuddling the little poogle close. "Doc, where'd you find such a little sweetie??" she asked, cooing and nuzzling the little poogle. Candy, apparently, enjoyed the attention and burbled happily in the uni's arms.
"It found us." he shrugged. "One of Sloth's failed experiments. Actually, its going to be Karma's pet once we get things situated."
"But this one's far too young to be given over as a pet!" Rose gasped. "If the police found out--"
"After all we've been through this past week, Rose, the police is the last of my worries right now. And if they want to be petty enough to take Candy away from Karma, then that's their business. Its not as though either of us have an attachment to her. She followed us out of the sewer."
"The sewer...?"
"And how Staggpub knew that she had been a poogle at one point is beyond me....she looked like a decrepit mutant puppyblew..."
"Staggpub? What....?" Rose's query was cut off by a sharp yap as Snap wriggled out of his owner's hands and landed neatly on the floor, running in excited circles.
"Have you been taking care of him all this time?" he asked her.
"Yeah." Rose nodded. "I couldn't just leave him in your backyard...he's been staying with Karma's pets and I've been taking care of them all." He smiled a little, clapping a hand on her shoulder.
"Then I think I owe you one." he told her. Rose blinked bewilderedly, unconsciously tightening her grip on Candy a bit. This was was most definately not the Dr. Death she was used to. Snap, in his excitement, skidded sidelong into the bookcase, rattling it and showering himself in a scattering of softcover John Saul and Dean Koontz books he had collected over the years. The doglefox yipped and skittered away from the mess, jumping up onto the couch and instantly laying down, trying in a last-ditch effort to look innocent. "You up for dinner tonight?" he sighed, approaching the mess and kneeling to pick up the books.
"Dinner...?" the uni asked warily.
"Yeah. I don't think Karma would object. She owes you just as much as I do. Would give us all a chance to talk about what went down this past week and we'll pick up your tab, sound fair?"
"I---sounds great!" Rose grinned. She made a mental note to mark this on her calendar when she got home as the first time the doctor had invited *her* anywhere, admidst all of the times she had offered him lunch or dinner in passing during their employment and he had refused
"Great...pizza or hot dogs, Rose?" The uni paused a moment to think.
"Pizza." she said tenatively.
"Meet you there at six...for now, I hope you don't mind, but I really have to get things back in order." Saying so, he absently picked up the telephone and began to dial the number to the Employment Agency to ask about his job's current standing. Rose stood quietly for a moment, still cradling the poogle as she watched him stand by patiently until the other line was picked up and he began to speak with one of the agency's operators. Smiling, she gently laid the poogle infant back on the couch and left him to his business.
As she let herself outside, she felt a rush of elation. The doctor was back, Karma was fine, and it seemed she was going to be able to tell Ms. Whorley exactly what she thought of having her as a co-worker before too much longer.
Things were starting to look up, and about time too she thought to herself as she walked happily back to her own home.
"No...no I'm not dead." Glitz sighed as the operator he spoke to continued to grill him. "No this isn't a prank call....look, I just want to know about my job status." he sighed.
"Now listen, I'm getting tired of having to play referee to these jokes. They're in horribly poor taste and I don't care HOW disliked of a neopet he was, it still doesn't give you kids the right to play around like this!"
"Did I just start talking Tyrannian or something and not know it?" he asked. "I AM Dr. Death, alright? I've been through a week of hell, I'm trying to get everything back in order and it would make it so much easier on both of us if you could just give me a yes or n---" there was a sharp click as the faerie he had been speaking to hung up on him. He paused for a moment, dumbfounded, before frustrated anger set in. "Son of a bitch...!" he hissed, tightening his grip on the reciever. He jolted a little as the sound of snapping plastic and crunching metal issued from his hand and the reciever fell from his palm in two pieces, hitting the carpet with a dull thud.
He blinked, not exactly sure what had just happened. There was no possible way he possessed the strength to have crushed the phone...hell, he had barely able to break a pencil in the past. Seeing as how he had rendered his telephone useless anyway, he experimentally picked up the dialing pad and held it tightly between his hands, pressing inward. His muscles trembled, but nothing more. Not even a crack in the plastic casing. Whatever had possessed him a moment before was gone now.
He turned to see both Snap and the baby poogle looking at him with curious expressions and he let his breath out in a long sigh, kneeling to pick up the remnants of the reciever. His mind drifted back to the lab ray and all of the times he had been zapped with "no effect". Maybe more had changed in him than they had thought, he mused. Just what he needed to cap things off, after all....some stereotypical rush of strength whenever his temper flared up. He guessed by the time his tax return came in, he'd turn green, tear out of whatever clothes he was wearing and start referring to himself as "Hulk".
Oh well...he wasn't going to jump to conclusions just yet, he decided. Maybe it was a fluke...just maybe. Snap trotted up, tail wagging gently and snuffled at his fingers as he picked up the shards of plastic protruding from the carpet. The techo hesitated a moment before smiling faintly and roughly touseling the petpet's headfur.
"You wanna go for pizza tonight, kid?" he asked the doglefox, remembering that he still had to inform Karma that they were going out. As though understanding, Snap pricked his large ears and his tail sped up a bit. He picked up the last of the crushed reciever and scanned the carpet for more...and not finding any, got up to throw the ones he held away. When he returned, he seated himself on the couch beside Candy. Snap instantly leapt up beside him, curling up and resting his head on the doctor's knee. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you missed me." he told the doglefox. Snap gave a cursory thump of his tail against the back of the couch. He squinted, attempting to see the small digital clock on his radio.
Almost three....that gave him plenty of time to get cleaned up and get to the store and find himself a new phone before he had to worry about meeting Rose and Karma. Not to mention to get into a set of clothes of his own, he thought as he looked distastefully down at the baggy clothing Staggpub had given him. He was fairly sure he looked like he had just crawled out from under a bridge....the looks people had given him when he had passed them on his way home had confirmed this...that or else maybe they had been trying to decide if they were seeing things or not. Just how farspread had the rumor gone about his death, anyway?
He sighed, reaching out and picking up Candy before she could wriggle off of the edge of the couch. Oh well....whatever people had come to believe, it all boiled down to one thing: that he was planning on sticking around for awhile longer. And maybe people were going to have to rethink him before too much more time passed, he mused. After all....how many maniacs that enjoyed nothing more than the pain and torture of neopets turned up with a girlfriend and shared priorities on a infant?
TBC.........
((Yup more...))