teh 1337est n00zpaper Circulation: 180,126,803 Issue: 447 | 11th day of Relaxing, Y12
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Of Times Gone By


by gammock

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"Tell me! Tell me! Please?" The Christmas Zafara hops around in place as she holds on to Gammock's arm.

     "Tell you what?!" the old, yellow Lupe asks as he regards her sideways and smirks.

     Lisa June stops hopping for a moment and grips his arm tighter. "About when you were little!" the young Zafara replies.

     The Lupe raises an eyebrow and stares up in thought. "When I was little...!" Gammock says mostly to the room at large as his mind goes back to when he was but a young Lupe.

     "Alright..." he says as he leads her to the couch and sits them both down. "...You want to know how I became yellow?" he asks, smiling.

     Lisa June's look of surprise is both comical and endearing. "You mean you weren't always yellow?" she inquires, one ear drooping slightly.

     "Nope!" Gammock grins. "When I was born, I was actually red."

     This makes Lisa June laugh. "You'd look silly red!" she chuckles.

     Gammock shrugs, faking exasperation. "Well, it's the truth. Tell you how it happened..."

     This is Lisa June's cue to snuggle up as she listens attentively. Gammock always seems to be full of stories and Lisa June just loves stories.

     "It all started, as they say, a long time ago in Neopia Central,” Gammock starts off his story. “Now, I was poor and basically living on the streets. My friends and I were getting pretty hungry, but back then they didn't have a Soup Kitchen yet. Or a Money Tree, for that matter!"

     Lisa June stares up at the old Lupe and frowns. "Then how did you eat?"

     Gammock smirks and crosses his arms in mock defiance. "I was getting to that, actually. As I was saying, we were poor..."

     "Who's we?" she interrupts. This time the Lupe's exasperation is only partially faked.

     Leaning back and sighing, the Lupe gives the Zafara a sideways glance before continuing, "We is me and Mack and some other guys whose names I can't really remember. Some Wocky and I believe a Bruce, but it could have been a Korbat too, for all I know... Well, in any case! So we were poor and hungry. And there's this guy with a fruit stand near the corner of the street, right? So we..."

     "What guy?" Lisa June asks as she props herself up on one arm.

     "Uhh, I don't know. He was old back then so he's probably gone by now. Some guy who had a fruit stand; we'll call him Bob. Happy now?" Gammock says with a broad smile.

     "Yeah, sure! Bob the fruit stand guy!" Lisa June chimes in and settles back down.

     Gammock nods and chuckles quietly to himself. Then he picks up his story once more. "Okay, so Bob the fruit stand guy is standing there minding some customers and we're standing at a distance. Now, he knows us because we hang out there a lot. Stands like his were pretty popular with kids like us.”

     Lisa June raises an ear and twists her head around to look Gammock in the eye. “Why were they popular? Did he sell really yummy fruit?”

     Gammock shrugs and shakes his head. “No better than most. It's just that it's easier to run away when you're out in the streets rather than from inside a store.”

     “But why would you run away?” the young Zafara inquires.

     “Because we didn't have any money, like I said. But we had to eat somehow. Anyway; he knows we don't have any money or owners, but he's not going to give any fruit away because people didn't care too much about strays back then. Nowadays if you're walking around homeless, it's not a big deal because you've got the Soup Faerie and all sorts of places you can get stuff for free. Back then, not so much." Gammock shrugs and gestures around himself as though they can see the street through the walls of their home.

     "Things are different; times have changed. Anyway, so we're waiting until he gets some more customers. You know, a lot of stories these days show people waiting until there's no one else around, but it's actually easier..."

     "The fruit stand!" Lisa June interrupts. "...I want to hear about the fruit stand!" She makes a grab for his whiskers to see if she can tug at them and Gammock traps her hands under his arm, sticking his tongue out at her.

     "Okay, okay! Fruit stand...!" Gammock exclaims.

     "Yay!" cries Lisa as she twists around to pull her hands free once more.

     "Okay, fruit stand. Well, we waited until he got some more customers, then we sneaked a little closer. As he turns away from us to help this lady fill this bag with tiger fruit we come charging forward, grabbing the first thing we can and then we high tail it out of there!" He makes a sweeping motion with his arm as a demonstration, smiling broadly, a twinkle in his eye as he seemingly relives the moment.

     "High tail? What's that?" Lisa June asks.

     "High tail, well... It's an expression. Not sure where it comes from, but I'm sure it's easier running when your tail's not dragging along behind you. So; high tail. Means we were running pretty fast."

     "Oh..." Lisa June nods her understanding.

     "So we're running through the streets. Meanwhile Bob's not the only one following us. Some guys saw us take the fruit and seem to want to be heroes, right? They're a lot younger than Bob, so we're in trouble. That Korbat/Bruce guy gets caught first and it only takes like another minute before the Wocky gets caught too. I think his name was Al, or Andy, or something... Something with an 'A' sound. Anyway... where was I?"

     The young Zafara kicks the edge of the couch impatiently. "You're running away!"

     "Oh yeah, right. Mack and I were the only two still running. I'm gripping on to this ummagine so hard it's starting to bruise and leak fruit juice all over my hand. I look around and one of these guys is almost right behind me. I look ahead again just in time to see I'm about to crash in to some woman and her kid. She's got all kinds of stuff in her hands and I spot a paint brush handle." At this, Gammock sits up a little as though bracing for impact.

     At this, Lisa June flips on to her stomach and props her head up on her hands. "Oooh! A paint brush! What kind?!"

     "Well, I had no idea what kind of brush it was. But I get this plan, even though I'm only seconds from colliding with her," Gammock states, glancing sideways at her. He looks back ahead of him quickly as he prepares to continue his story.

     One of the Zafara's ears droops again as she tilts her head questioningly. "What's colliding mean?"

     Gammock pauses and turns to look at her as though he just noticed someone else is in the room. "Collide. Collision. It's another way of saying I'm going to crash in to her because I can't avoid hitting her anymore."

     "Oh, okay,” Lisa June says with a nod. “My Spardel collides with the door a lot..."

     Gammock chuckles and pats the Zafara on the head. "Yup. That he does. In any case, so as I'm crashing in to her, I make a grab for the paint brush handle. To bystanders it just looks like I'm trying to push her out of the way or something. But I manage to grab the handle and I turn around the nearest corner. As soon as I'm out of sight from the guy who was chasing me, I splash myself with that paint brush, tear my hat off and toss the ummagine behind a few boxes."

     Lisa June looks mildly surprised again. "You were wearing a hat?"

     Gammock grabs the white rag that he usually ties around his head and shows it to her. "Well, it wasn't really a hat. It was more like this, just a different color. So anyway, I'm standing there and I wrap that rag around my neck like a shawl and I sit down on one of the boxes, trying to calm my breathing down to make it seem like that wasn't me tearing around the corner just now. The guy comes running around the corner before long and stops. He looks at me, looks down the alley, looks at me again and goes, 'Hey, kid! Did you see a red Lupe running down here just now?' And I go.."

     "And you said 'no', right?" the Christmas Zafara says, smiling.

     Gammock crosses his arms and smirks at her. "Why would I say 'no'? That would have been pretty suspicious. I mean if there was really someone else sitting there, they would have noticed me stumbling around for sure. Especially with all the noise that lady I had bumped in to was making and the guy behind her yelling at me to stop. No, I said, 'Yeah, sure! He turned left right around there!' and I pointed down the alley. Then he thanks me and runs off again. Once he's out of sight, I put my ummagine in one of those empty boxes so I can carry it around unseen. It wasn't until I reached for the ummagine that I actually noticed it had been a yellow paint brush."

     "So if you used to be red, how come you didn't change it back?" Lisa June asks as she pokes at Gammock's side.

     "Well, I was planning to, initially,” Gammock replies. “It's just that I had no money to get another paint brush. After a while, I just got used to it."

     Lisa June thinks it over for a while, then asks, “So then what happened to Mack? Did he get caught?”

     Gammock shrugs lightly. “Well, I never saw it for myself, but he claims that he jumped over some fence that was too high for his pursuers to climb and that he escaped that way. I kind of doubt that, but Mack was always a pretty strong Grarrl, even at that age, so I pretended to believe him. He did still have his fruit when I caught up with him, so he got away somehow.”

     The old Lupe squints for a moment in thought. “Maybe he just hid out somewhere and didn't want me to think he was a coward. Maybe he just wanted to top my story. In any case, we both got away, so all was good.”

     “Not all! What happened to the Wocky and the Korbat?” demands the young Zafara.

     Gammock leans back a moment, trying his best to remember. “Uh... I do remember seeing them again some time afterward. I think they just decided it had been too close a shave and they went to the pound to get themselves owners. To stay out of trouble, you know?”

     The yellow Lupe smirks. “Maybe they had been sent to the pound against their will by the guys who caught them. I'm not really sure. They were okay in the long run, in any event.”

     Lisa June sits up straight and regards the old Lupe for a moment. “So if going to the pound to get an owner got them out of trouble, then why didn't you and Mack do that too?” she demands.

     Gammock grins broadly. “Ah! An excellent question! I'm afraid I can't really give an excellent answer. All I can say is we were young and as much trouble being on our own was at the time, we still preferred it over being someone's pet. Seemed to us like we'd be on a leash all the time and that was far worse in our minds than running around and changing colors every once in a while.”

     The old Lupe leans sideways and props up his head with his fist. As an afterthought he adds, “Of course, as we got older, we did come to understand that being a pet wasn't all bad, but by then we were already so used to being free and living by our own rules that the adjustment would have been too great.”

     Gammock shrugs and chuckles. “Looking back, I have to say we were just spoiled. It was so easy getting everything we wanted without having to ask anyone for permission or having to rely on someone else. Although we did have some competition...”

     The Zafara's ears perk up at this revelation. “Oh? What competition?!”

     “Well,” Gammock continues, “...other neopets who were used to the same kind of lifestyle as we were. As a matter of fact there were so many neopets like us on the streets, all about our age, that we started forming groups to compete with each other. There just got to be too little stuff for everyone to get what they wanted.”

     Lisa June considers this for a moment, then asks, “But if you were so used to getting what you wanted, then how come you went looking for an owner and came to live with us three years ago?” The look on Lisa June's face is a mixture between a frown and a smirk.

     Gammock makes a similar expression but grins lopsidedly. He crosses his arms and shrugs, stating, “Because after years of being on our own we had come to the conclusion that it was getting harder and harder to beat the competition. Most of the guys we used to compete with were no longer around but we found ourselves constantly up against neopets who were younger, faster, stronger; you name it. In other words, Mack and I were getting too old. So I guess we were looking to retire. Not a moment too soon either, as Mack became ill shortly after, as you know.”

     Lisa June grows sad for a moment thinking about Mack, the old Grarrl. Mack had been slowly forgetting things until he no longer remembered who the people surrounding him were. He even forgot who Gammock was, even though they had been together since childhood.

     Gammock continues quickly after noticing the sad look on Lisa June's face. “Don't worry about that, though; he loved it here and probably couldn't have wished for a better home. I figure he knew his time was running out and that's why we found ourselves at the pound one day. If it had been up to me, we'd still have been out there looking for a new place to stash things or spend the night; I'm too stubborn. Mack knew we couldn't keep going on that way, illness or no, and found us a good home to spend the rest of our days in peace.”

     Lisa June's expression grows from sad to worried and she once again clings to the old Lupe's shoulder. “Now that he's gone, you're not going to leave us, are you?”

     Gammock smiles and gives the Zafara a hug and a pat on the head. “Of course not! I may be stubborn, but I'm no fool; going out there alone now would be a big mistake. Besides,” he adds, “...who else is going to keep you out of trouble, eh?”

The End

 
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