A Long Time Ago...
He won awards for his excellence and genius tendencies.
He was considered by many to be the most intelligent creature that had ever
seen Grippaw's Glade in the many, many years of it's existence. He read almost
every book, mastered almost every game, tinkered with almost every item.
Yes, Hypotenuse was smarter than any other Lupe
in the entire territory of Grippaw's Glade. The checkered Lupe could beat any
challenger in a game of chess, play the oboe with magnificence, and reach the
highest level of NeoQuest in less than twenty-four hours. He memorised poetry
and recited it beautifully, and there was always a distant, pondering look in
his eyes, distracted, as if he were looking at the stars.
And yet, despite his wonderful creativity and
unquestionably powerful viewpoint on life, he was BORED.
His enormous brains were going to waste, rotting
away within the confines of the classroom he taught in. He saw no point for
his existence except to 'oooh' and 'aaah' people with his awards and keep the
attention of 30 students an hour for 5 hours each day. Although he was a genius,
he was in poverty, and he was starting to get memory problems.
With his brains going to waste, very few social
interaction, and his mind stuck in neutral from the lack of challenging problems,
it was only natural for the depressed genius' mental capabilities to begin to
slip.
He began to sink lower and lower into the slump
of mediocrity.
Until the day. The day that something happened,
something that changed his life forever...
Hypotenuse's Classroom
Hypotenuse sniffed the air warily as he shoved
a textbook back into place in his desk. His eyes rolled around the room carefully,
taking in every detail. The lights had just burned out, and although this startled
the somewhat absentminded Lupe, he knew that it was no cause for alarm.
However, he did find that it was uncomfortably
dark. With no lights outside and at that late hour, it couldn't have been anything
but dark without lightbulbs. Of course, that was just common logic. Hypotenuse
had stayed behind to tidy up his classroom a little, as he usually had to do
every evening. Today had proven to be especially difficult, since one of the
students thought it would be amusing to set off a stink bomb in the closet.
The school, too poor to afford Janitorial Services, had left him to fix up the
mess himself.
But as he finally put the mop back into the
closet, he sensed that he wasn't the only one who had stayed behind that gloomy
day. Hypotenuse could feel some creature staring down at him...but who? Or what?
That's when he saw them. A pair of huge, button-like
eyes were peering at him from the top of a student's desk. They seemed to flash,
as if they had just been peering around the room like Hypotenuses had and were
now focusing straight towards the Lupe What had startled him the most, however,
was the large, shining white, sharp tooth that glowed from underneath the button
eyes.
Something was smiling at him.
The teacher, once again in a state of fear,
clutched his large, heavy desk for support as the eyes continued to blankly
stare out at him. As he tried to calm himself down, his eyes adjusted to just
make out the silhouette of a meerca. A small, golden meerca, to be precise,
perched with a cheery, bucktoothed grin on top of one of the desks.
It was simply a plushie, his logic concluded.
A simple, golden plushie made with fine cotton and expertly stitched in some
factory somewhere. Nothing to worry about.
He sighed, scratching his messy mop of hair
and fixing his black-and-white necktie as he approached the ancient desk and
the strange doll.
"That's it?" He muttered. "A stupid toy? Geez,
from the size of these eyes I thought it was the pant devil..."
He plucked the plushie off the desk with mild
amusement, still staring into those blank black eyes. They were less intimidating
now that he knew they were simply two button eyes, sewn on, perhaps by hand.
"How were you smuggled in here? I would have
noticed if one of the students dragged such a brightly coloured toy into my
classroom. Then again, the lights aren't on, and my vision isn't getting any
better..."
He smiled as he noticed something dangling from
behind the plushie's small, round body.
"Hey...a cord? You can talk, eh little buddy?
Well, let's just see what you have to say."
Partly because of curiosity, but mostly because
of flat-out boredom, he pulled back the cord. It slowly sunk back into the cloth
back as a high pitched voice rattled out from a hidden voice box inside:
"Hello! I want to be your friend!"
Suddenly, the buckteeth clamped down into the
black-and-white paw that had pulled his cord, the eyes clouding into a deep
scarlet. Hypotenuse yelped, hurling it from his paws and backing away. The plushie
shot towards the ceiling, disappearing into the blackness. As he nursed his
wounded paw, the Lupe stared meekly up into the darkness.
"Oh dear...so THAT'S how it snuck in here..."
"YOU WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YOUR
LOUSY JOB AND YOUR POINTLESS LIFE, HYPOTENUSE!!"
The twisted, bucktoothed smile widened from
just over Hypotenuse's head. His golden body had abruptly began glowing, illuminating
his position. He backed away, shielding his eyes as the plushie slowly descended
towards him.
"So the legends are true! Eville Merka Plushe!
You were vanquished years ago, and you will be vanquished again!"
"NOT LIKELY, POINTDEXTER!"
With an unearthly howl, the plushie dived at
Hypotenuse's head, knocking him to the hard floor with a thud. Fear swelled
up inside of him as he scampered across the floor on all fours, barely avoiding
the plushie's second dive.
"Why can't I remember how to beat this?" He
muttered, frantically scurrying behind his desk. "I've read about it a million
times before, but I still can't remember how..."
Hypotenuse reached for a thick book that he
could use as a club, looking around the room through his wide, frightened eyes.
Suddenly, with a loud, echoing laugh, Hypotenuse was blasted off his feet with
a powerful smack from the plushie's long tail, collapsing on the ground with
a thump as the horribly transformed toy hung over him, eyes gleaming like red-hot
fire and teeth as sharp and jagged as shattered glass.
"DO YOU THINK YOU COULD EVER POSSIBLY INTIMIDATE
THE EVIL MEERCA PLUSHIE!?"
"You are no plushie!" Hypotenuse moaned, backing
up against the wall. "I know what you are not, and you won't get away with this!..."
"AND WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?"
The plushie grinned, licking his lips with a
cloth tongue. Suddenly, a memory sprang into the mind of Hypotenuse. His mouth
fell open with realisation as needed words poured into his mind.
"AH!! I've remembered!"
Hypotenuse climbed onto his feet, glaring at
the eyes of the somewhat confused plushie. He gathered his courage and began
to recite a strange word over and over again.
"Merka Merka Merka! Merka, Merka, Merka! Merka
Merka Merka!..."
As Hypotenuse continued to chant, the plushie
began to shrink, hissing. Fury on his cloth face, he raised his paws into the
air. A long, sharp claw sprouted from his left, and he used it to slash the
still chanting Lupe on the left arm.
"CURSE YOU!! CURSE YOU, I SAY!! THIS ISN'T
FINISHED YET!!"
In a flash of violet light, the plushie gave
one last scream before fading back into the darkness, not to be seen in the
school again. The checkered Lupe gasped, feeling pain swell up in the large
gash on his left arm.
"Merka...Merka...Merka..." he continued to chant,
teetering slightly from behind his desk. He felt his strength slowly ebb away,
his genius thoughts slowly fading to nothing. He wheezed as he grasped the edge
of the desk for support once again, this time for more than just fear. His paws
trembling, his legs buckling, his face going strangely pale, and his eyes closing,
he collapsed over his desk.
"Merkaaaaaah..."
And the rest was silence...
***
Hypotenuse did not die, but in a sense, he no longer lived. He had lost his
mind, and all he could mutter was that odd chant of Merka, over and over again.
He was one of the last pets to know the truth behind the Evil Meerka Plushie,
a dark monster that inhabited toys to wreak havoc on Neopia.
But maybe someday, someone will be able to decipher
the ancient texts that were hidden so well in his classroom, which was abandoned
shortly after the attack. Someone may be able to figure out a way to destroy
the monster...
But until then, I suggest you put your toys
away at night.
The End | 
