Author's Note: My first Foster's fic! I got totally hooked on this show a couple of months ago, and got inspired to get off my lazy rear end and write something! "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" is property of Cartoon Network, and was created by Craig McCracken, so I own none of the characters herein. I also have to give some credit to Brad Bird and "The Incredibles", even though this is NOT a cross-over, for some inspiration, and "The Incredibles", of course, are property of the Walt Disney Co. and Pixar. There IS going to be some very mild Wilt/Frankie "fluffiness", so if that bothers you in the least, don't read this, but in this fic, it won't progress beyond that(though I might consider something a bit stronger if I write another one). Enjoy!
Every Picture Tells a Story
Chapter 1: Suspicious Minds
This was NOT Francis "Frankie" Foster's good day, no sirree. It has started out well enough, but long about 8:30 am, things had started to slide downhill, at a rather alarming rate. First, there was the almost-food fight at breakfast, followed by the backed-up toilet on Floor six. Nothing quite like a backed-up toilet early in the morning to start the day off right, huh? Then, as if that weren't bad enough, an entire metal filing cabinet had turned up missing from Mr. Herriman's office-a whole darned filing cabinet! Of course, his precious files were still there-scattered helter-skelter on the floor. Obviously it was not files that the low-life thief had been after, but the cabinet itself, and Herriman had sworn that before the day was out, he'd have the rotten culprit in hand and at his mercy!
It had been while listening to his latest rant that Frankie's best friend(well, best HUMAN friend, that is) Kathie had called to tell that their plans to go out club-hopping with LuAnne and Cherie had had to be put on hold, due to Cherie's mother's gall bladder surgery, which was rather unexpected. While Frankie didn't wish gall bladder trouble on anyone(OK…maybe SOME individuals, who she would prefer remain nameless at the time), it was a great disappointment for the 22-year-old red-head to have to give up on the one thing she had to look forward to during the course of the next 24 hours, as a distraction from everything that seemed to be going absolutely wrong. They'd been planning this Girls' Night Out for three weeks, setting a date and time when everyone seemed to have everything in order, for once, and everyone's schedules permitted, which was a rare thing. Then, Cherie's mom just HAD to have gall bladder surgery.
Figures…
"And now THIS!", the red-head said out loud, to no one in particular. "THIS", as it turned out, was a bus that wouldn't start. Wouldn't even try to start, uh-uh.
Frankie, you see, worked for her grandmother, or more specifically, for her grandmother's establishment, which happened to be a rather unique(to put it mildly)half-way home/adoption agency for Imaginary Friends, living, flesh-and-blood beings who had become real the moment a creative child(or in some rare instances, adult)imagined them. It just happened that this establishment depended on, for transportation, a rather old and flamboyantly-decorated former church bus, and that this old bus, like most older vehicles, tended to be rather fickle. Alright… it was a royal pain, and often seemed to choose the worst possible times to make its royal pain status known. Like now, when Frankie really needed to make a trip to the supermarket. Her efforts at starting the thing had been met with nothing more than a sterile, "Click-click, Click-click" of a solonoid; nothing so much as a whine from the engine, which meant one of two things: dead battery, or dead alternator. Frankie was hoping for the lesser of two evils, a dead battery, since she DID have a set of jumper cables in a storage compartment at the rear of the bus, and COULD use her grandmother's Pontiac to jump-start the bus, at least long enough to go by the auto parts shop and get a new battery…yet one MORE expense.
Gritting her teeth, the young woman pulled the hood catch, unfastened her seat belt, and got out of the bus, stomping to the front to lift the hood, where she spent a good five minutes checking the battery connections just to be sure they weren't loose, and staring at the battery as if to start the thing by telekenesis. Failing to accomplish much with that tactic, she groaned out load, muttering about how things could not POSSIBLY get any worse, and how it was only 12 in the afternoon, and stomped around to the rear of the vehicle to get the jumper cables from the storage/luggage compartment.
"Watch it be the alternator," she growled, knowing that a new alternator would cost much more than a battery, and would not respond to a jump-start, which meant she'd have to beg her grandmother for the use of the Pontiac, something the old lady was rather reluctant to agree to, most of the time. "It had BETTER not be the alternator, 'cuz at least if it's the battery, these babies will do the trick. All I'll need is these jumper ca…WHAT!"
"These babies", i.e., the jumper cables, weren't there.
"Now I KNOW I left 'em RIGHT HERE!", an exasperated Frankie exclaimed, trying to recall any other time she'd used the jumper cables recently, or anyone else who had used them, but drawing a blank on both accounts. She sighed and let her weight fall against the side of the bus, hand to her forehead, hoping for some vision of where she'd last seen the jumper cables if not in this compartment, but remained still quite certain that it was right here, in the storage compartment.
Suddenly, a pattern began to emerge: first the rabbit's filing cabinet, now her jumper cables. Only WHO would have any use for both items? Frankie knew it wasn't nice to point fingers without hard evidence, you know, that "innocent until proven guilty" deal, but in spite of her best efforts at giving a certain Someone a benefit of a doubt, her mind was overwhelmed with color, and that color happened to be blue.
0000000000000000000000
As Frankie entered the foyer of the huge, ornately Victorian mansion that served both as HER home and place of employment, as well as home to several Imaginary Friends of an indescribable array of sizes, shapes and personalities, most awaiting adoption, she was on the lookout for ONE Imaginary Friend in particular, She had a hunch-call it "Women's Intuition", or whatever, that HE would know something about her vanished jumper cables, and probably the missing filing cabinet from Mr. Herriman's office as well. And when she got her hands on him…
Before the young woman could reach the foot of the staircase that led to the sleeping quarters of most of the house's residents, though, her train of thought was interrupted by a voice, entering from her left.
"OK…now I KNOW I put that pail back in the utility closet…and pails just DO NOT get up and walk away…"
Turning towards the voice, Frankie found herself face to, uhm…legs, yes, legs. A very red, very thin, very LONG pair of legs, clad in a pair of white tube socks with red-and-blue trim at the top, and a pair of absolutely enormous black-and-white high-top sneakers. It was necessary for her, or pretty much anyone else, to tilt her head back to actually be able to see the owner of that pair of legs, socks, and sneakers, one of the few residents of the house whom Frankie actually thought of as being quite sensible, the Imaginary Friend known as Wilt.
The tall, lanky red being seemed to be rather out-of-sorts, which was actually quite unusual for Wilt. He was someone you could almost always count on to have a big smile on his face, and his typically cheery attitude was as infectious as the common cold. This was in spite of the fact that at sometimes in his past, before he'd ended up at Foster's, Life had dealt Wilt a pretty harsh deck of cards. His left arm was nothing but a stump, and of his two eyes, situated on stalks protruding from the top of his head, only one was even a real eye, the right one. The left, like his left arm, had been lost in some horrible incident of which Wilt refused to talk, and a googly fake eye, much smaller than the real one, had been put in place to at least try to give his appearance some semblance of balance. Black scars marred both cheeks, the remnants of where heavy stitches had once been placed, to close deep wounds. Today, though, that normally-happy demeanor that could add a breath of sunlight to a wake looked puzzled, and a bit aggravated. Wilt's one good remaining hand rubbed at the back of his head, and he was looking this way and that, obviously searching for something.
Frankie had just enough to time to think, "Join the club…", when the tall Friend, so intent on his own search that he'd totally failed to notice Frankie, nearly walked right into her.
"Hey, WHOA, whoa…Wilt! Don't step on me, I've had a bad enough day without getting squashed!" Frankie called out as she actually had to take a step or two backwards.
Her voice snapped Wilt out of his search mode, causing him to jump a bit himself. "Frankie! I am SOOOO SORRY…I didn't even see you! I am really, REALLY sorry; are you OK? Bad day? Not because of ME, is it? If it is, I am really, really soooo sorry!"
"Nope, not because of you, I promise. Everything ELSE seems to be messed up, but it's got nothing to do with you, really." Frankie assured the tall red Friend. Wilt's strangest habit was that he was a chronic apologizer. He apologized even for things he didn't do, like now, for instance.
Frankie added, "Say, you seem to be looking for something. That puts us both in the same boat, since I'm looking for something, too. TWO somethings, as a matter of fact."
"Yeah, you know that plastic pail I always use to mix cleaner in when I wash down the kitchen counters and stuff? I ALWAYS put it back in the utility cabinet next to the pantry, but today, when I went to clean the counters like I always do on Fridays, I couldn't find it. You haven't seen it, have you?"
Frankie knew that there was no point in questioning as to whether or not Wilt had actually put said plastic pail back in the utility cabinet the last time he'd used it. Chronic apologizer or not, Wilt was very reliable, and if he said he'd done something, he'd done it.
"Well, I guess your pail and Mr. Herriman's filing cabinet and MY jumper cables have all fallen victim to the same set of sticky fingers. Question is, WHO would bother to take stuff like that?"
In the seconds that followed Frankie's inquiry, one of those moments occurred, which seemed to happen rather frequently these days, in which it appeared that she and Wilt shared the same brain, for they arrived at the same conclusion, simultaneously, and they each answered the question, simultaneously.
"Bloo", was the answer to the question, as to whom might have taken a plastic pail, a metal filing cabinet, and a set of jumper cables…plus who-knows-what that just hadn't been reported missing yet. They each nodded in agreement with the other's assessment.
Frankie groaned in exasperation, gesturing in mid-air as if to ask "WHY", though she knew it was almost pointless to do so. Since coming to live at Foster's, the Imaginary Friend in question, the only one besides Mr. Herriman who was not up for adoption, had often proved his little blue self to be a major pain-in-the-you-know-what, and Frankie had had a suspicion all along that he was the culprit behind this latest string of object "relocations", a suspicion echoed by her tall red companion.
"You know", Wilt interjected, "ever since Mac brought over his DVD of that movie-what's it called, you know, the one about the Super hero dude and his Super hero family, Bloo's been actin' sorta strange…'scuse me, strangER. He told Ed and Coco and me he was gonna be a Super Evil Genius, and invent all this technology to sell, and make himself rich so he could take over the world!"
Frankie raised an eyebrow. "What, you mean 'The Incredibles' ? If I catch him with my jumper cables, I'M gonna show him something evil, alright! Have you seen him, by the way?"
"Yeah, I think he's upstairs in our room. Saw him headin' that way not too long ago with a pair of oven mitts or somethin'…he WAS sayin' somethin' about 'his latest technological weapons breakthrough', so unless I miss my guess, he's still there."
"Thanks, Wilt. I knew I could count on you to be the one helpful person on a day like today." Frankie reached up and gave Wilt's long arm a gentle pat, bringing back that smile to his face to make the aggravation of the morning seem a bit less…well, less aggravating. "I guess I better head upstairs and confront our little "Evil Genius", huh? I'll let you know if I find your cleaning pail, and I have a feeling I WILL." With that, Francis Foster turned and started up the long flight of stairs to the living quarters, and to the room shared by the four Imaginary Friends, Wilt, Coco, Eduardo, and of course, the prime suspect, Bloo.