Author's Note: Gasp! I finally wrote chapter two! Amazing, eh:P I'm going to try to let myself off here by saying that I haven't had my computer for three weeks…but I have been using this one, so that's not a great excuse. I'm not letting my NTAG fics go for that long without an addition again, though… really. Anyway, enjoy the story!
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"Where'd she go?" cried Leah. The little white Weewoo hovered in the air, whipping her head around in an attempt to catch sight of Dragonfly. The elf seemed to have vanished. The room she had gone into contained nothing but a bookshelf.
"She didn't leave any trail at all," Sage said, searching the floor for footprints.
Leah gritted her beak. "She won't get away with this! I might even charge her tax on that Belle doll for this hassle!"
Loud laughter erupted suddenly, filling the room and the ears of the human and Weewoo. "MUAHAHA!"
"That's Dragonfly!" cried Leah.
"YES! IT'S ME! BUT YOU'LL NEVER FIND ME! MUAHAHAHAHA…"
"Quick! Find out where the sound's coming from!" Leah said, flying around the room in a frantic search for the source of the noise.
"HAHAHAHA…"
The maniacal cackling continued. "Doesn't she ever take a breath?" Leah muttered.
"HAHAHAHA…"
Sage covered his ears. "This is starting to get annoying."
"HAHAHAHA…"
"It's coming from behind the bookshelf!" Leah exclaimed.
"HAHAHAHA…"
The White Weewoo heaved herself against the side of the large bookshelf and began pushing with all her might. Sage watched in amazement as the bookshelf slid smoothly across the floor, revealing a large hole in the wall that had been hidden behind it.
"How'd you do that?" Sage asked, eyeing the heavy shelf and the small Weewoo.
"Elementary, my dear Sage," Leah said, casually flipping up her wings to reveal a pair of golden rings hanging from the white feathers. "Power bracelets."
"I should've known," Sage muttered.
"HAHAHAHA!" The maniacal laughter was louder and clearer than ever.
"Come on," the White Weewoo said, flying down low and zipping into the hole in the wall. "We're going after Dragonfly."
Sage hesitated, eyeing the dark emptiness beyond the hole. "Fine, but Pillow's going ahead of me." He shoved the steel-plated bedding accessory into the hole and then crawled in after it, pushing Pillow forward as he went.
The crawlspace was narrow and pitch dark. Dragonfly's manic cackle constantly floated through the tunnel. Sage inched along slowly, making sure that Pillow investigated the strange path ahead before he stepped forward himself, always following behind the dull sound of the Weewoo's beating wings.
"Leah?" he asked in a small voice. "Can you see where we're going?"
"I'm following the sound of the laughter," Leah replied.
"HAHAHAHA…" Dragonfly's voice echoed through the tunnel. Sage shuddered.
"So you can see where we're going?" Sage asked.
"No, not really," Leah said. "It's all totally dark."
"You mean you have no idea where you're leading me?"
"I'm leading you towards Dragonfly."
"Yeah, but for all you know, there could be a fifty-foot cliff up ahead and you wouldn't see the edge."
"That's all right; I can fly."
"Yeah, well, I can't!" Sage reminded her.
"Oh, yeah. Too bad."
None the more comfortable for the conversation, Sage advanced more and more gingerly as they went on. The laughter grew louder and louder.
"Dragonfly seems to be staying in one place for some reason," Leah muttered to herself.
The White Weewoo bumped into something hard in the dark. She whipped out a lantern, casting a magical glow around a small area of the tunnel.
"A magic lantern? Leah, just how much equipment did you steal from Link?" Sage asked.
"He's too busy playing with fairies to notice. Besides, I left the boomerang and the fire arrows in my room." Leah held the lantern close to the object she'd just stumbled upon. The Weewoo let out a groan.
Sage dared to peek over the top of his pillow to see what was the matter. He found himself looking at a tiny digital recorder—after all, who uses tape recorders these days?—stuck upright in the ground. Loud maniacal laughter was issuing from its speaker, the very sound that they had followed all the way down here.
"I can't believe we fell for the oldest trick in the book!" Leah fumed.
"'We'? You're the one who had the idea to follow the laughter," Sage pointed out.
"Quiet," Leah hissed. That crafty Dragonfly! How dare she lead them so far with a red herring! She was probably miles away by now, with Nut in her clutches.
"Well, Dragonfly had to plant this recorder here, right? Maybe she's up ahead," Sage suggested.
"I doubt it."
"It can't hurt to check."
"Fine, you go look for her."
"Me?" Sage gulped.
"Yeah."
"You're the one with wings! What if there's a fifty-foot cliff up ahead?"
"Oh, come on, who ever heard of a cliff inside an underground tunnel?" Leah scoffed.
"This is NTAG," Sage reminded her.
"Oh, right." Leah thought for a moment, and then zipped around behind Sage and pushed him forward. The human, unable to resist the force of the power bracelet-enhanced shove, went hurtling forward. His foot swept the edge of an incline, and he soon found himself hurtling down into empty black space. "AAAAAAHHH!"
Leah listened to Sage's fading scream. Flying calmly ahead, she observed the surroundings by the light of the magic lantern.
"Wow, a fifty-foot cliff. Who would've thought?"
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"MUAHAHA!"
Far away from Sage and Leah, in a brightly-lit room on the other side of a secret door in the wall of the room Dragonfly had disappeared in, a certain elf was laughing just as maniacally as her digital recording. In her hand she held a disheveled and very annoyed Belle doll.
"Oh, I love my auctioning skills! HAHAHA! Sage and Leah won't be coming back anytime soon now! HAHAHA! I can't stop laughing evilly for some reason! HAHA!" Dragonfly said gleefully.
Nut stared at her. "You're insane!" she said in dismay.
"But of course! We all are!" Dragonfly grinned.
"Good point." The Belle doll struggled to get out of Dragonfly's grasp, but what could a toy—albeit a living, breathing, moving toy—do against a manic, fully-armed elf?
"HAHAHA!" Dragonfly roared.
"Look, are you going to do something with me, or are you just going to sit there laughing like a maniac all day?" Nut asked, annoyed.
"I'll do something, just as soon as I get rid of this irresistible urge to laugh. Hold on, I'm working on it. HAHA, HAHA, HAHAHA…"
Nut sighed and folded her arms. Her scales felt dry and dusty from being out of water for so long. The ocean seemed like a distant memory.
"Ha… ha… ha. There, I think I've done it," Dragonfly said, apparently having gotten a handle on her maniacal laughter function. "Time to put my pretty Belle doll to work."
The elf stepped into an adjoining room. There, a desk was set up, on which lay stacks of books with pictures of Sloth on the covers and dozens of loose papers. A ray gun was acting as a paperweight. Behind the desk sat a man with wild, dark hair and a malicious glint in his eyes. He grinned evilly as Dragonfly entered the room and dropped Nut on his desk. The man's hand immediately fell to stroking the Belle doll.
"She's a pretty little thing," the man said. "As promised, Dragonfly, I will pay you 25,000 NP an hour for the right to pet this doll."
"Sounds great!" Dragonfly grinned. "I knew she was worth every coin of those five million and one Neopoints that I didn't pay!"
"Get your filthy fingers off me!" Nut jerked under the creepy man's hand, squirming and flinging her tail about. She happened to glance at one of the papers on his desk and was horrified to see that it was a list of death traps that were to go in an evil fortress. "Dragonfly!" she screeched. "I thought you said you'd give me to the good boss! You know this goes against my moral values!"
Dragonfly shrugged. "Sorry, the evil boss pays better."
Nut glared, her eyes practically shooting beams of fire at the elf. The evil boss looked down at her in distaste. "Dragonfly," he said with a displeased expression on his face, "This wasn't in our deal. Take this doll back."
Dragonfly stared at him. "What? She's a Belle doll for you to stroke, just like you asked."
"I wanted a pretty little doll that would smile at me all day long, not an angry thing that screams all the time and wriggles like a fish!" the evil boss exclaimed, his voice growing louder. "Take her back!" He threw Nut at Dragonfly, who caught the Belle doll.
The elf looked at him in disbelief. "Okay, fine, but you were stroking her for about three minutes, which means you owe me…" She paused, thinking. "What's 25,000 divided by 60?"
"3,000?" Nut suggested.
"Okay, then, Mr. Evil Boss, you owe me 9,000 NP for the time you spent petting my Belle doll. Pay up!"
"That doll can't do math!" the evil boss yelled. "25,000 divided by 60 is 4!"
"I like the Belle doll's math better than yours!" Dragonfly said.
The evil boss grabbed a calculator and keyed in the problem. The answer that appeared on the screen was 4. "See, my calculator agrees with me!"
"And who programmed that calculator—Sloth when he was five years old?" Dragonfly shot back.
"No! I'll have you know I programmed my calculator myself!"
"Well, that explains it, doesn't it?" Dragonfly said.
"How dare you!" The evil boss grabbed his ray gun and aimed it at Dragonfly.
The elf drew her sword, prepared to fight.
ZAP! A bolt was fired from the gun.
SWISH! Dragonfly's sword cut through the air. The blade made contact with the ray. The energy bounced off of the metal and went hurtling back towards the evil boss. It hit him, and he shrank until they could see him no longer. His villainous clothing sunk to the floor in a heap.
"He melted?" Nut asked, wrinkling her nose.
"Goo-goo. Gaga." A baby poked his head out of the pile of clothing.
Dragonfly eyed the ray gun. "Say, is that Leah's?"
"Must be," Nut said.
Dragonfly groaned. "Rats. Now I've got to hire a babysitter for this evil guy." She glanced at the Belle doll in her arms.
"Don't look at me," Nut said quickly. "I'm off limits for childcare jobs at NTAG."
"Rats, again," Dragonfly said in frustration. She walked out of the room containing the evil babyfied boss and headed over to a large glass tank sitting on a shelf. She dropped Nut into it and shut the lid over her.
"Hey!" Nut yelled, pounding on the glass.
"Sit there and be a good Belle doll while I call a sitter." Dragonfly walked over to a phone and dialed a number. "Hello, operator? Virtupets Space Station, please. Yes. Hello? Oh, hi, Sloth. Could you do me a favor? Yeah, there's an evil guy here who needs some… instruction… from an evil genius like you. Want to come down and pick him up? Great, thanks."
A few minutes later, the green villain in a black trench coat walked into the room, grinning as usual. "Where is the puny mortal who is in need of learning my superior evil ways?" he asked.
"In that room," Dragonfly said, pushing the evil doctor towards the room where the evil boss was held. "I think your first lesson should be on how to evade Boochi's ray gun. Or Leah's ray gun, whichever you prefer."
As soon as Sloth stepped through the doorway, Dragonfly locked the door behind him. "There. He can take care of that evil boss until he grows up again."
Dr. Sloth's outraged yell upon discovering the true nature of his errand into NTAG fell upon deaf ears. Or, if they weren't deaf, their owner was too busy fending off another bout of uncontrollable laughter to pay any attention to it.
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Meanwhile, down in the dark depths of the tunnel, at the bottom of a rather tall cliff, a certain human was alternately flailing for his life and petrified solid with fear. It would be just Sage's luck to fall off a fifty-foot drop and land in a pit of Rabid Shadow Meepits. Just his luck indeed…
Above, a White Weewoo was hovering, with a measuring tape held firmly in her beak. "Sage, you were wrong after all," she announced. "It's not a fifty-foot cliff. It's forty-nine feet and a quarter-inch."
"You think I care about how tall that cliff is now?" Sage screamed. "When I'm trapped in a hole containing about three hundred and sixty-eight evil Meepits?"
Leah watched as the dark mass of Meepits surged towards Sage's face. "It looks like more than that to me, actually. Let's see… one, two, three, four…"
To be continued…-----------------------------------------------
Author's Note: Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed it! Ooh, and I just had to leave you with another "to be continued", didn't I? Have no fear, it won't take as long to find out what happens next as it did the first time. I've arranged things so that I won't dare fail to write the next par—
Gruff voice in the background: Time for your torture.
Familiar-sounding Belle doll-like voice: Aaah, please, no! Have mercy!
Gruff voice: You're paying me to do this until you write that next segment, remember? Now here comes the… FEATHER DUSTER OF DOOOM!
Belle doll voice: AAAAAHHH!
-fade to black-