I ran all the way to headquarters that night. Despite how tired I was, despite the fact that I was starving, I still ran. And it felt even better when I came to the headquarters.
I entered in quietly so I wouldn't disturb anyone. Sir Astro was still reading. I walked over to the chair next to him and flopped down in it.
"Where's Donald? And the girl?" He asks me, not looking away from the magazine.
"Donald is dead. I let the girl go."
"Donald's dead," he repeated.
Sir Astro and Donald had a lot in common. They were both generals in the first war, and had both experienced PTSD. The only difference between them was that Sir Astro was forgotten as a general- instead he is known as a former drug dealer. Their age gap of about 40 years also made a difference. Donald was a lot more respectable than Sir Astro.
Astro said something to me, but I found myself drifting off into sleep despite my hunger.
After what seemed like a blink I felt something prodding my side, presumably to wake me up.
"Neo!" I open my eyes instantly. Professor Wiggle was trying to get me awake.
"What? What's wrong?" I ask, my words slurred and hardly audible.
"We're leaving." I jolted out of the seat. After a seconds scan of the room, I saw that people were walking out the door.
"Thanks for waking me up," I tell him. I walked beside Professor Wiggle to the door. Everybody was rushing outside and there was a large block.
"So... The outskirts of Jamaa," I say, breaking the silence. Professor Wiggle sighed.
"I hope we don't get caught. Or, if we do, I hope they don't care. But I highly doubt that." Professor Wiggle was a scholar, and if he didn't think it was a good idea to do something, then it probably wasn't.
"Right... What would happen if we do get caught?" I ask him.
"Well... Chances are we would be sold into slavery. Or something along those lines." It was hard not to shudder. The chances of being caught were already high enough. Now we would be sold into slavery?
"Do you think we're going to be caught?" I ask him. He turned to me.
"Honestly?" He asks. I nod.
"Yes," he says. Even though I knew that was what he would say, it still made me scared.
"What will we do then?" I ask him. A path finally cleared through the door. He sighed.
"What can we do? We just have to see what happens." I let him go through the door before me. I briefly wondered what would happen to Jesse if we were caught, but that thought escaped my mind as I walked through the door.
"But we're sticking together, Neapolitan," Professor Wiggle says. I turn my head towards him as we continue walking with the crowd.
"I think it would be best," he adds, addressing my questioning look.
"What about Sir Astro?" I ask. He frowned.
"I'm not so sure I want a drug dealer in our group." I agreed, but also disagreed. Sure, Sir Astro might've been giving out sugar at some point, but he was also a general in the first world war.
"I don't care if he was a general," Wiggle starts, as if he was reading my mind. "He isn't the same anymore. So we can't have him." I nod. It did make sense.
"Okay."
"That brings the question on who else will be in this so-called 'group' of ours."
"Do we need anyone else?" I ask him.
"Probably not."
Jamaa was far away. It would take us, by foot, at least a week. That was interesting too, considering how compact Jamaa's ecosystems were. Toontown consisted mostly of vast plains- it was very easy to build and grow crops. That's why we were a rich country for a while. But all the food in the world couldn't have saved us from the depression we entered after the first world war. In that time Club Penguin had been forming underground and was already planning to attack us.
The first world war was only about a decade ago. Sir Astro was in his twenties, Wiggle in his thirties, and I was about 13. The stress from being a general had caused Astro's hair to start graying, even though he was so young. On the other hand, Professor Wiggle was in his prime. His prices were cheap and the teachers who specified in children were at war, so he set off to teach kids. On every other day he would've taught Cog politics and economics to much older students, but money was short. I never sat in on any of those classes, though. I met Professor Wiggle through Ned Slinger.
Like all other members of the Toontown society, I was scheduled to start killing cogs at age 16. But I had a natural talent in the art of cog killing. Jesse allowed me to start training 3 years before I was supposed to, and because of that I had to do a lot of running around only in Toontown Central. My first task had to do with Ned Slinger and, after seeing my situation, he told me about Professor Wiggle. I decided to sit in on a few of his classes- the ones for the older toons. But the depression had hit hard that year, and there were hardly any of them left. So instead Professor Wiggle became my sort of private tutor. I learned everything from him. I learned cog anatomy, cog politics, cog economics, and even things about him that he wouldn't tell anyone else.
After I got a few years older and Toontown was growing into a suitable society again, Wiggle had me do more serious errands. Errands that gave me ulcers.
So to deal with all the stress I contacted Nurse Nancy about prescription medication. She had given me some- stimulants that I was to take twice a day. And they did work at first.
But then I outgrew them. The stress had won again and I was even lower than before. So I turned to the real stuff. Sugar.
And that was how I met Sir Astro.
The first thing I noticed about him was that he was a 'fight' sort of guy. In a dire situation, he would rather die than run away. I guess that was what made him a good general.
So, he fought for my money.
Despite how many bad things I had heard about Sugar, it seemed like the only option left for me. It wasn't terribly mind-altering- just enough for me to be detached and not stressed. And it didn't cause flashbacks or blackouts, so that was technically an added bonus.
Except it was really addictive. After the first time I snorted it, I desperately searched for more. Any tiny bit of Sugar. It was a drug that made you addicted after your first time.
So I got more from Astro. We weren't close like I was close with Professor Wiggle- It was more of a distributor-buyer kind of relationship. I wouldn't get in his way, and he wouldn't get in mine.
After we both recovered we didn't have a reason to talk to each other anymore. When I did more tasks for the HQ in Donald's Dock, I often saw him on my way there. I guess we never got really close but we still trust each other, amazingly.