The Chocolate Girl

Part Two

"A homicidal toddler bent on world domination."

Cassie cradled her head in her hands, avoiding Stewie's nonchalant gaze. "This… sucks…"

Stewie had tried to explain his life's story to Cassie, Samantha, and Jean, but all that did was make Samantha more frantic, Jean care even less about the situation, and Cassie bang her head against the wall repeatedly, trying to think of a way to get him back home.

"…Sucks?" Stewie repeated.

"Yes, sucks," Cassie snapped tartly. "You're too young to get home on your own…"

"Are you underestimating me? I got here on my own, didn't I?"

"Yes, but the park is only about a half-mile from here," Cassie replied. "Your house could be anywhere."

"Why don't you just get in the car and drive around, then?"

"My mom's car is in the shop, and I can't drive!"

"You can't drive?" Stewie repeated. "But aren't you about fifteen…?"

Jean laughed from her perch on the couch. Cassie thought it was because The Fairly Oddparents was funnier than usual, but it was at Stewie's question.

"Remember the time when you were driving that Power Wheels car at our cousin's house?" Jean cackled.

Stewie turned to Cassie. "You could fit inside a Power Wheels car?"

"I got Dared to do it," Cassie frowned sourly. She apparently didn't want to relive the memory.

"That's not my point," Stewie groaned. "My point is, with breasts like that, wouldn't it be impossible to move the steering wheel?"

Cassie blinked and flushed red. "What the hell did you just say?"

"It's a simple matter of body composition," Stewie explained. "The car is designed so that a little kid's head will reach above the dash… of course, in your case –"

Samantha came barreling in and picked up Stewie in a quick maneuver. "I think I've found your home!"

"Good!" Cassie yelled, jumping up off the ground. "We won't have to deal with him anymore…!"

Samantha sighed, picking up her cell phone. "It appears that they live on 31 Spooner Street…"

"That's about six miles from here," Jean complained. "I'm not walking six miles… Make Cassie do it."

"What?" Cassie protested in confusion.

"Aren't you always saying, Mom," Jean continued, "that Cassie doesn't get enough exercise?"

Samantha put Stewie on the kitchen counter. "That's an excellent idea… Cassandra, you should take Stewie home."

"What?" Cassie repeated, still confused.

Stewie sighed. "You're taking me home, bitch!"

"Oh…" Cassie blinked. "Hey, wait -!"
Samantha had already put Stewie in Cassie's arms and was pushing her out the door. Jean giggled maniacally before Cassie had finally cascaded off of the porch with an embarrassing thud.

From the doorway, Jean heard a loud "Damn you all and such!"

-

"So… if it's six miles to your house, and I walk a mile in approximately thirteen minutes, it will take us about… let's see, six times three, carry the one…"

Cassie looked up to the sky, multiplying in her head. Stewie raised an eyebrow.

"Seventy-eight minutes?" Stewie offered drolly.

"Yes," Cassie responded. "Seventy-eight minutes… God, I'm already tired…"

Stewie frowned. Cassie may have been very beautiful, but she really couldn't hold a candle to his genius. However, he still found himself attracted to the raven-haired teenager.

"What if you ran?" Stewie asked.

"It would take only an hour, but I can't run for an hour straight," Cassie replied. "I'd faint before we got to your house…"

"Well, anything that delays my return to the hierarchy of my retarded mother and the rest of her equally dunderheaded family…" Stewie rattled off dryly. Cassie looked forward before she shook her head and turned to Stewie.

"What do you have against your mother, anyway?" Cassie asked.

Stewie blinked. "Well… she treats me like I'm an infant."

"You are an infant."

"I mean…" Stewie rolled his eyes. "I am far smarter than she will ever be, yet she refuses to recognize that simple fact. She treats me like an incoherent drunk."

"Ah," Cassie reacted. "I suppose I see your point… then again, you are a homicidal whack job bent on world domination… how does she NOT notice that?"

"Was I supposed to answer that?"

"Rhetorical question."

Cassie and Stewie walked along, no longer in the same enmity that surrounded them back at the house (after the Power Wheels comment), but rather, for the first time that day, slightly relieved that there was still seventy-five minutes left of the walk.

"Cassandra?"

"Yes?" Cassie answered.

"Sorry about the Power Wheels thing…"

Cassie stuck her tongue out. "That was my sister's fault… she seems to think that she's better than me in so many ways."

"I know exactly how you -… Cassie?"

Cassie had walked into the street, hiding behind an older car.

"What the hell -?"

"My mom told me about that guy," Cassie began in a whisper tone. "He's one of my mom's exes… she told me never to go near him…"

"That guy?" Stewie asked before a thought dawned on him. "Oh God don't tell me…"

Stewie peeked out over the car and gasped, jumping down in a hurry.

"Jesus, mother of Mary and Joseph!" Stewie muttered under his breath. "THAT dated your mom?"

"So you know him?" Cassie asked.

"Know him? Hah!" Stewie narrowed his eyes. "He babysat me once… after telling us all about Megan's Law…"

Cassie turned pallid, fearing for her sanity. "Okay… if I hold you the way I'm holding you now, I can sneak out from behind this car and pass him unnoticed…"

"Who the hell are you and what -? Oh, he-llo…"

"Too late, Cassandra," Stewie grunted. Cassie looked up and screamed. Glen Quagmire was hovering over her head. She stood up hurriedly, clutching Stewie close to her heart (so close that the tot could hear the girl's heartbeat).

"Aren't you -?"

"Bye!"

Cassie began to walk away at a brisk clip, all the while holding Stewie to her as if she feared for his life.

Well, she has good reason to fear for my life, Stewie thought. But she doesn't know that he won't touch me…

Much to Cassie's chagrin, the car began to drive up to her.

"How old are you, then?" Quagmire asked when he rolled down the window.

Cassie's eyes narrowed to slits. "Not old enough to sleep with you!"

And she continued on, holding Stewie in a death grip. Stewie felt his foot fall asleep in Cassie's grip.

"Are you sure you can't outrun him?" Stewie asked. "I want to feel my leg again."

"Sorry," Cassie replied, loosening her grip on the child. Even at Cassie's near run, Quagmire was able to keep up with her.

"What do you want, pimp!" Cassie yelled as soon as the window rolled down.

Quagmire opened his mouth to say something, but paused. "Did you just call me a pimp…?"
"Yeah!" Cassie shrieked. "Leave me alone, you pervert!"

"Are you a single mother?"

"No! This isn't mine!"

"Quite obviously," Stewie added under his breath.

Quagmire thought for a second. "You seem to be… a bit angered."

"No," Cassie replied sardonically. "Really?"

"Maybe… maybe I can help you with that… if you just came with me…"

Cassie bit her lip, summoned the rest of her rage, and bitch-slapped Quagmire with all the force she could muster.

"Leave me alone!" Cassie yelled again before running away. Stewie noticed how fast the scenery was flying by his eyes, and thought to inquire about it.

"I thought you said –" Stewie began.

"Shut the hell up," Cassie managed to peter out in a half-hearted voice. "Just… just be quiet for a few minutes, okay, Stewie…?"

Stewie looked behind him. Quagmire had driven away, much to his delight.

"I know you told me to shut up, but… he's gone now…"

Cassie turned around slowly. Quagmire was gone. She turned back to Stewie, a tear catching in her eyelashes. She was hurt for reasons Stewie didn't quite understand, but knew perfectly well.

"Sorry… about that… it's just… oh, forget it," Cassie finally spat. "Let's just get you home."

"Good idea…" Stewie finally answered. They had been on the road for about twenty minutes, a good five of which had been spent running.

Cassie said nothing for five minutes. She looked to the horizon, where the sun was beating down on both of them. Stewie looked up at Cassandra, solemn-faced and pale as snow.

The sooner they got away from this street, the better.

-

"Where on earth could he have gone?" Brian thought aloud, pacing. Lois had freaked out, Peter had accidentally thought that Chris was missing (and when Chris came home, Peter almost called off the Amber Alert – thank God Meg knew the difference between Chris and Stewie), Meg had already gone off to search the side streets with Chris, and Brian had been pacing back and forth for an hour and a half.

"Maybe he ran away, like that time he left the note about the button…" Brian pondered. He quickly debunked the theory. "He likes the swings too much to have run away from the PARK, of all places… what if he was kidnapped or something…? But who'd want to kidnap that hellion…?"

Brian thought back to earlier in the day, when Stewie had been babbling on about some raven-haired goddess of some sort.

"Peter," Brian asked the fat man, who was currently looking at his hands. "Do you think that maybe Stewie ran after that chocolate selling girl?"

Peter ignored Brian looked up to the television, which was showing a rerun of Seinfeld.

"He lives in a bubble!"

"Boy…"

The laugh track started. Brian sighed, but Peter got an idea.

"Maybe Stewie went somewhere else to live or something!" Peter cried. "It makes perfect sense!"

"Why the hell would THAT make sense?" Brian asked.

"Because! I mean, what if he was at the park and didn't realize that he didn't leave with Lois, but with someone else?" Peter wondered.

Brian rolled his eyes. "Stewie isn't THAT inattentive – wait. What if he left with that chocolate selling girl?"

"To the Peter-cycle!" Peter yelled. "We'll go door to door!"
Brian sighed. "Oh Lord… I'll stay here with Lois…"

Brian waited for a crazed voice to say, "SURE you'll stay with Lois… perverted dog…" But it never came. Brian began to think that maybe he was beginning to miss Stewie.

"SURE you'll stay here with Lois…" Peter began to say.

Brian blanched. What if Stewie resurrected the Peter robot, causing misdirected panic?

"…Dogs can't do much on an investigation anyway!" Peter finished.

Brian closed his eyes. "You know what? You wouldn't do much on an investigation either…"

The doorbell rang. A harried Lois ran to the door.

"Wow, I didn't know that she could run that fast," Peter noted dully.

Lois threw the door open.

"Stewie -!" Lois raised an eyebrow. "Quagmire? What are you doing here?"

"I found Stewie, I think…" Quagmire began before Meg and Chris pushed Quagmire out of the way, ran into the house, and slammed the door in the now disoriented Quagmire's face.

"Meg? Chris?" Lois raised her other eyebrow.

"We can't find Stewie," Meg sighed.

Peter grinned widely and hugged Meg happily. "You came home! You came home! I knew that you would!"

"Dad, Stewie's gone missing," Meg corrected him.

"Oh yeah," Peter remembered, letting go of Meg and putting her down. Brian sighed and placed his head in his hands.

"Where on earth is he?" Brian asked again.

"Well, uh, maybe he ran away," Chris offered. "You know, got on a Greyhound and ran away, fearing his impending… uh… is Stewie getting married?"

Lois ignored him. "What are we going to do, though? I mean, Stewie can't survive for long on the streets! He'll starve!"
"He'll get dehydrated…!" Meg shuttered.

"He'll crap in his pants!" Peter gasped.

The door swung open, a dazed and very confused Quagmire standing behind it.

"Quagmire?" Brian said in shock. "When did you get here?"

"Quagmire!" Peter began. "I knew you'd -!"

"Stewie is missing," Meg corrected her father for the third time.

"I know where Stewie is," Quagmire finally said. "He's with a teenager about four miles from here."

-

Three miles, actually. In the time it took Quagmire to get his message across to the Griffins, Cassie and Stewie had only a long uphill slog to go through to get to the Griffin's house. Cassie had gained her color back, and was talking again. Stewie was still a bit shaken by how unnerved she was, but just accepted it as hormones or something even weirder (like she'd never been hit on before and, being ultra-feminist-movement, felt violated, or that there was a restraining order on Quagmire by Samantha).

"We only have about thirty-nine minutes to go," Cassie told Stewie.

"I don't want to know how bad it is back home," Stewie admitted.

"Why?"

"Because, when I get home, it'll probably be same old same old: I'll start laughing, and Lois'll think I'm constipated, and the stupid whore will try and change me, and then Peter will ask who the baby is, and Meg will be crying about how no boys ever call her, and Chris… oh, God knows what he'd be doing around now…"

Cassie paused. "If that's true, why'd they put out an Amber Alert?"

"No idea," Stewie confessed. "And I really don't care."

A car drove by Cassie and Stewie. Stewie almost thought nothing of it before realizing that he had most definitely seen that car before.

"Was that a red car?" Stewie asked.

"Yeah," Cassie responded. "Why?"

"Run like hell!"

Cassie ran, and as she did a sliver of color drained from her face. "That wasn't…"

"No it wasn't that! Just run!" Stewie yelled.

Cassie covered about a half a mile before she gave out and sat down on the cold cement.

"Is that all you can do?" Stewie asked in a stupefied voice.

"No, I also play soccer," Cassie snapped back in a sarcastic tone.

The red car had turned around and, because Cassie stopped, had caught up with them. Emerging from the car was a redhead (Lois), a fat guy (Peter), a fat blonde kid (Chris), a brunette donning a pink sock hat (Meg), a white dog sipping a martini (Brian), and Quagmire, much to Cassie's surprise.

"We've been caught," Stewie sighed. "Damn."

"THAT'S your family?" Cassie nearly crapped her pants. "That's who I sold the chocolate to this morning! THIS is your family?"

"Well…"

"Then you knew me! Hell, I can't believe I didn't recognize you!" Cassie continued.

"Heh. About that…"

"You followed me home on purpose, didn't you?"

"Actually…"

"This is like The Exorcist!"

"Okay, NOW we've gone too far," Stewie muttered.

Lois picked up Stewie, nearly in tears. She turned to Cassie. "Why did you do this?"

"I followed her home," Stewie clarified.

Brian nearly barfed in shock. "You stupid bastard!"

"What?" Chris asked, lost already.

"Stewie followed me home… we tried to call the hotline, but it was clogged with calls," Cassie lied. "Stewie told us your address and -!"

"We?" Peter asked. "You mean you and Stewie?"

"No, I mean my mother and I," Cassie grunted. "I was taking the baby home to you."

"I think you were really going to use it in a pagan ritual dictated by the laws of your Benedictine cult religion!" Peter yelled.

Cassie rolled her eyes. "There are no cults on Spooner Street."

"How do you know?" Lois asked.

"Didn't I see you earlier today?" Brian murmured. Suddenly it hit him full force.

"Is that the raven-haired goddess that you were babbling on about for half the day, Stewie?" Brian asked innocently. Cassie's jaw dropped.

"WHAT!"

"The dog talks?" Peter mused.

"Of course the dog talks, you didn't know that?" Quagmire said skeptically.

"Raven-haired… what the hell?" Cassie repeated.

"You stupid bastard!" Brian yelled at Stewie again.

"So this was all because of your bawdy crush!" Cassie screamed.

"You got the whole town worried for no reason!" Brian screeched.

"What on earth were you thinking?"

"Were you even thinking?"

"Or were you too blinded by the light?"

"The light of the fires in hell?"

"So… you didn't kidnap Stewie?" Lois interjected.

Brian and Cassie looked up sheepishly and realized that they had been chewing out an infant. While Brian didn't care, because he knew that the Griffins, for the most part, didn't pay attention to anything unless it came in a beer can or as a sex toy, Cassie felt very embarrassed and her face turned red.

"No, I didn't kidnap him," Cassie responded in a calm tone.

Lois looked blank, but then smiled. "Oh, okay. You must come over to our home, though… imagine trying to walk a baby home…"

Cassie's eyes widened. "So, you aren't mad at me AT ALL?"

"Of course not!" Peter responded. "It's a Family Guy story! Everything turns out good in the end!"

"You must stay for dinner!" Lois exclaimed, clapping together her hands in delight. This considerably restricted Stewie's body movement.

"Damn wench… get OFF me!"

"You look halfway normal," Meg noted, the first words she'd spoken to Cassie. "What's your name?"

"Cassie," Cassie said. "Cassie Yvonne…"

"I'm thinking of a word," Chris interrupted Cassie when she was about to get to her last name. "And it's not kitty. What is it?"

"What?" Cassie murmured.

"You look a lot smarter than his lot," Brian interjected. "I'm Brian, the family dog and refined gentleman-like -!"

"If you're so refined," Stewie countered, "why'd you direct a porno film?"

"I'm Meg," Meg said to Cassie, directing her away from Brian and Stewie. "Your hair is very beautiful, I must say… what shampoo do you use?"

Quagmire smirked.

"Have you ever been -?"

Cassie socked him. "Remember Samantha's restraining order!"

-

"I'm thinking of a word. And it's not -?"

"It's kitty."

"Oh my God, you're psychic!"

Chris ran into a wall, and Cassie sighed. Every six seconds, Chris had asked Cassie what the word he was thinking of was. It was still amusing to Stewie, who delighted in watching Chris hurt himself on the same wall every six seconds, but Cassie found Chris a bit too stupid for his own good.

Brian was reading The Phantom of the Opera, Meg had been helping Lois in the kitchen and talking to Cassie at different intervals, Quagmire was no where to be seen (at least, to everyone's knowledge – he appeared at the most random of times), Peter was watching a rerun of Friends (The One Where Ross Gets Divorced), Chris was playing the insipid word game with Cassie, Lois was cooking (and strenuously objected to Cassie helping; as Lois put it, Cassie was a guest), and Stewie was attempting to show Cassie his family's video memoirs, which was an interesting idea in itself.

"What's this?" Cassie asked as Stewie put the tape into the VCR, turning off Friends.

"Hey!" Peter cried. "That's the one where Monica cleans the kitchen!"

"Isn't that EVERY episode?" Brian observed, not looking up from the Gaston Leroux novel.

"These are the family memoirs… hah, these should be interesting… I haven't seen them in a while," Stewie admitted before plopping down on the couch beside the armrest. Meg sat down next to Stewie, and Cassie sat beside Meg. Lois came in and sat next to Peter, and Chris sat next to her. Brian sat in the middle of them all… and the tape started.

"Peter, what did you promise me last night?"

"That I wouldn't drink at the stag party."

"What did you do?"

"Drank at the stag pa – Woah! I almost walked right into that one…"

"This looks awfully familiar," Cassie noted. "Like something out of someone's collective consciousness being broadcast on a television network… like a much beloved yet cancelled animated show…"

"You aren't the only one who thinks that the case," Brian noted dryly.

Meg cocked her head. "Do you think that we should end this story now?"

"No, let's shove in one more pop-culture reference!" Chris begged.

"But we didn't even get to dinner," Lois complained.

"Look, let's end the story first, and THEN we'll eat dinner and biscuits," Brian offered.

"No biscuits," Stewie countered.

"All right, no biscuits, but let's end this anyway!" Brian offered loudly.

"Right!" the entire group said, before someone came into the room.

"Woah. I've never seen so many cheerleaders in one place!" Quagmire marveled.

"Oh, for God's sake," Stewie moaned. "Get on with it already!"
At that moment, the author suffered a near-fatal heart attack, rendering the story finished.

The End

A/N: "The author's not quite dead, sir!"

Yes, the last segment of this story was there for no reason, but I felt – hey, there was enough plot, and we needed a truly Family Guy-esque part where nothing of relevance happens for about five minutes. And, yes, Chris did get his pop-culture reference (or three) and I finally finished this thing. And, as I look at the page counter, I realize that it's about twenty pages long! Holy crip! I'll stop boring you and give you the disclaimers.

A/N 2: Oh, sorry, I had to add this – for a freshman effort, was this a good Family Guy story? Or did it suck?

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Family Guy or any of the other cultural references stuck in here at random intervals.