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"Deserved it?" Scarlet said to the Floud. "What could
this Lupe have done to deserve you harming him?"
"I wasn't trying to hurt him," the Floud said.
"I was just trying to get his attention."
"Well, you have it," the Lupe said, still shaking.
"You have my complete attention."
"So what's your story?" Scarlet asked the Floud.
"Oh! Finally! After all these months!" the Floud
squeaked excitedly. "Ahem…"
"This place where we're standing is my family's
ancestral nesting ground. Generations upon generations of Flouds have been born
here, including me. But a few months ago, this Lupe and his friends came. They
took over our land and built this place, which I believe you call a 'world,'
on top of it. We tried to stay here and adapt the best that we could, but the
Neopets called us 'pests' and a nuisance and chased us all away. The protests
we gave were completely ignored. I guess they felt that we weren't worth listening
to.
"We ventured out into the rest of the Endless
Plains and found a group of Meekins that let us stay with them. That night,
a group of Flouds met to come up with a plan on how to get our land back. Their
final decision was to have some of us come to the 'world' in our post-carrot
form and deliver a message to the leader. Flouds were sent to do so, but every
time, I heard, the Neopets panicked and sprayed that orange stuff at them. Then
they ejected them again."
The invisible Techo, who had taken out of the
kit a little box to catch the Floud in, dropped it back in and blushed.
The Floud turned to the Lupe and said, "We knew
that if we did not get through to you before this 'world's' existence was made
known to the rest of Neopia, we might as well say goodbye to our home. I was
not one of the Flouds sent by the others. I just happened to be sunning in the
Endless Plains when this Zafara and Chomby came up on me. The Chomby chased
after me, and from instinct, I ran to here. As a result, I accidentally brought
this 'world' its first visitors, who I knew would leave and tell others about
it. Knowing there was not much time left, I took it upon myself to give talking
to you one last shot."
"And that's why you came after me like that,"
the Lupe said, thoughtfully.
"We just want our home back," the Floud said,
sniffling.
The Lupe sighed, shook his head, turned to the
crowd of invisible Neopets that had been watching, and said solemnly to everyone,
"I have an announcement to make concerning the future of the No-see-ums. I had
already planned to say this before, but this Floud incident delayed me. It is
time to bring this world to an end."
A loud murmur came from the crowd.
"My original reason was that an invisible world
just can't work. I found out when I took these two visitors on a tour of this
world. Now I could fix the welcome sign and add descriptions to the invisible
food item tags, but there are a lot of things I can't fix. The games weren't
fun, the invisible items were frustrating to shop for,…and I'm not even going
to talk about the Invisible Petpet Shop."
"No, please don't," Snowberry said while rubbing
a bandaged spot on her arm.
"There's no way I can correct those problems,
and there's no way that the No-see-ums will be able to survive without their
income. Not to mention it will be less interesting. But, anyway, that's now
a side point. More importantly now, I have found out that I have kicked these
little guys out of their home."
"Does this mean what I think it means?" the
Floud asked with wide eyes.
"Yes," the Lupe said, looking down at the Floud.
"Your people will be getting their home back."
"Yeah!" the Floud squeaked, bouncing up and
down.
The Lupe turned to Scarlet and Snowberry and
said, "Thank you for your time, young ones. You have been a big help here, in
more ways than one. I'll show you back to the Endless Plains."
"One more thing," Scarlet said, "What about
that free invisible paintbrush that you promised me?"
"Actually, I don't think I'm going to release
the paintbrush," the Lupe said. "I figure that there is no sense in doing so
since the No-see-ums are going to be removed."
"Why not? I thought that the invisible paintbrush
was a wonderful invention. Not every paintbrush is associated with a particular
world. Think about the speckled and striped paintbrushes. And also, I can think
of some really good practical uses for it. Neopia's heroes could use it to outwit
villains, for instance."
"Yeah, that is true," the Lupe said, rubbing
his chin. "How about this: I'll give you all of the invisible paintbrushes that
have been produced here, and you can get them to the pets that would like to
have them. They're not worth much to me anymore."
The Lupe had an invisible Grarrl bring the box
that contained all the invisible paintbrushes in existence, about one thousand
or so, to Scarlet. The box was not too heavy, and Scarlet was a pretty strong
Zafara, so he had no trouble carrying it.
The Lupe and Techo walked Scarlet and Snowberry
the rest of the way back to the Endless Plains. They stopped in front of the
invisible welcome sign, where Scarlet and Snowberry had met the Lupe.
"Take care of yourselves, young ones," the Lupe
told the two Neopets. "Maybe we'll meet again one day."
The Zafara and Chomby smiled and gave the Lupe
and Techo one last wave goodbye as they walked off into the sunset.
"Well, that's the end of that," the Lupe sighed.
"I'm famished. Do you have any ideas on what to eat tonight?"
She replied, "Well, I heard from some of the
other invisible pets about a place that gives out free jelly to anyone who asks
for it. I want to go there and try some of their strawberry kind."
"Really?" the Lupe said, surprised. "What is
it?"
"They called it the Jelly World, I think. They
said I would know it when I saw it because the buildings are made entirely of
orange jelly. But before I go anywhere, I will need to paint myself visible.
Let me go get my Scritchy Sketchy Paint Brush." She took off back towards the
No-see-ums.
The Lupe snickered to himself and said, "An
Orange Jelly world? THAT will never catch on." A few seconds later, he frowned,
thinking, "And, unfortunately, neither will my world." He then turned to the
welcome sign and admired it for one last time.
Back in the classroom:
"So the invisible world was completely dismantled
and the Flouds returned to their homeland," read Miss Giggles. "The Flouds heralded
the Floud in this story as a hero and erected a statue for him where the No-see-ums
sign used to stand. This statue, of course, was only as good as a group of Flouds
could make, and nothing as enormous and fancy as the one his grandson got in
Tyrannia years later, but that's another story.
"Scarlet, once he got back to Neopia Central,
held a demonstration near the Rainbow Pool about the wonders of the invisible
paintbrush, which attracted a large crowd of Neopets and owners. Scarlet, beforehand,
had decided to set his selling price at 250,000 NP since that would give him
the money for a Crystal Boomerang in no time. When he told the crowd the price,
most of the people and pets looked disappointed and started walking away. Scarlet
realized why they did this and felt sorry for them, thinking back to the time
he asked his owner for a Fire, Fire, Your Pants on Fire paintbrush, and she
didn't have enough money to buy it for him. So he called them back and gave
the paintbrushes away for free. 'Oh well,' he said, 'Maybe I'll earn a Crystal
Boomerang one day.'
"Snowberry…still chases after pet pets. She
has some notion about catching them all, whatever that means.
"The Techo moved to Neopia Central, where she…"
POOF! The book vanished in a puff of purple smoke.
"Sold me a defective book," she added. "Oh well,
the end."
The school bell rang in the hallway. "Just in
time," the teacher said. "Have a wonderful weekend everyone. I will hand out
your project grades on Monday."
The students moved their desks back in place
and filed out one by one. Shadow the Draik, Crusher the invisible Grarrl, Casey
the Kyrii, Chase the Lupe, Max the-
"Wait a minute little Gelert," the teacher said.
"I want to see you for a minute."
"Aww," Max said. He turned around and walked
up to the Faerie Gelert at her desk. "Yes, ma'am?"
"I'm going to give you another chance on this
project. I will still give you a grade if you give a presentation on Monday."
"Okay, thanks!" Max said, quite appreciative.
He started to leave the room, but a nagging question would not leave his head.
"By the way, Miss Giggles," Max said, "How did you know so quickly that I didn't
do my project?"
Miss Giggles picked up a copy of the class'
geography textbook that was sitting on her desk and handed it to the yellow
Gelert. "Turn to the first page of Chapter six and read the box on the right
side."
"Max turned there and read out loud, "Vocabulary
words: Endless Plains… Plains Lupe… Floud… Invisible World-oh. Oops." Handing
back the book, he added, "By the way, I didn't read the chapter last night either."
"I noticed," Miss Giggles said, smiling. "See
you next week, Max."
The End
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