|
I couldn't believe that my own Lupe was standing in front
of me with bared fangs, ready to attack me. As it turned out, I was absolutely
right not to believe that. Wolf spun around and aimed his snarl at the mammoth
floating head of King Coltzan III.
"No!" he declared. "I won't do it! He may not
be much of a human, but he is MY human. And if the fate of Neopia rests on whether
one stupid little Meerca plays Meerca Chase or not, then Neopia is doomed, anyway!"
The whole shrine shook clear down to the foundation
from the force of Coltzan's rage.
"YOU WILL DO AS I COMMAND OR YOU WILL NEVER
RECEIVE ANOTHER BLESSING FROM ME AS LONG AS YOU LIVE!" the ghost king howled.
"Pfft!" Wolf sneered. "Big deal."
I swear the entire Lost Desert rattled with
the roar of King Coltzan's frustration. He was royally ticked off, so to speak.
"You WILL do what is right for the honor of
all Lupes!"
Wolf leveled his eyes in Coltzan, tossed out
his chest and held his head up high. He matched the king regal glare to regal
glare.
"No," my Lupe countered. "I will do what is
right for the honor of THIS Lupe!"
With that, Wolf turned on his heels and strode
away from the shrine. He walked up to me with a grim, determined look on his
face.
"C'mon," he said quietly. "Let's go home."
I flashed him a huge grin. Then I scrambled
up the side of the sand dune. I struggled with the soft, sinking sand to get
up there, but Wolf leapt to the top in a single bound. We both looked over the
top at the same time. Reallyconfused was still sitting where I had left him.
Except that he was now surrounded by an enormous and elaborate sand castle.
"Lookie what I made!" RC squealed in delight.
Wolf shook his head in exasperation and snorted,
"That's one extremely unique Meerca ya got there, Stoneman."
"Nah," I replied with a wink. "That's one extremely
unique Meerca WE have got there, Wolf."
He raised a single eyebrow. Then he broke out
into a laugh. It was the most wonderful sensation in the world to hear him laugh
again.
"C'mon, fuzzball," Wolf said, motioning to RC.
"Let's play some Meerca Chase."
Reallyconfused's mouth flung open. My mouth
flung open. The Meerca and I exchanged horrified glances.
Wolf chuckled at our astonished looks and said,
"What I meant was, I'll race you to the boat home, dum-dum."
My yellow Meerca whooped with joy and took off
like a shot. My fire Lupe streaked after him. I turned and started walking in
the opposite direction. Since they were headed the wrong way, I figured I had
a nice leisurely walk back to the ferry before they finally made it there.
***
The ride back to Tyrannia was wonderfully peaceful. A soft, fragrant sea breeze
blew across the deck and whipped through my hair. I stood at the railing watching
a school of Flotsams playing water-soccer. Wolf walked up and stood beside me.
We stared at nothing in particular in silence for quite awhile. It was Wolf
who spoke first.
"I should have known you would wimp out about
taking him back," he said, shaking his head.
"Yeah, well... Meercas are like gum," I replied.
"Once you get one stuck to you, it's hard to scrape him off."
Wolf chuckled. I cast a glance over my shoulder.
Reallyconfused was happily occupied folding and unfolding deck chairs.
"I just want to say... thank you, Wolf," I said
softly.
He cocked his head at me with a questioning
look, but didn't say anything.
After a moment, I continued, "I'm really proud
of the way you handled yourself today, Wolf. I know that giving up the blessings
and defying Coltzan was a very hard thing for you to do. But I'll make it up
to you, Wolf, I promise. I'll buy up every codestone in Neopia if I have to
and send you to the Mystery Island Academy. You'll be a great Battledome fighter,
like you always dreamed of. I swear you will."
Wolf shot me a sly grin and snickered sarcastically,
"Oh, yeah? Can I have that in writing?"
I punched him playfully on his shoulder. He
countered by knocking me flat on my back. Then he proceeded to drag me across
the splinter-filled deck by my pant leg. It was great. Just like the good old
days.
***
Stonekrawk3x greeted us at the door when we got home. His scalp slid back
about six inches when Stonewolf3x walked up to him with a yellow Meerca in his
mouth. He dropped Reallyconfused at the pirate's feet and the Meerca scampered
into the open door giggling.
"It's the new version of Meerca Chase," Wolf
said to his bodyguard with a wry smile. "It's the basically the same as the
old version, except you grab Meercas instead of neggs."
"Arrr, but that sounds like good sport," Krawk
drawled. He then looked at me and said, "Ye be having some company. They be
waitin' in the living room for over an hour for ye."
"Company?" I echoed. "Who?"
"Arrr, but it be yer lawyer and a pack o' his
friends," he replied with a shrug.
I walked into the house and went into the living
room filled with curiosity. It's true that Advisor Wessle was waiting there
for me, but the "pack o' his friends" that Krawk mentioned was every single
important Neopian leader that I could think of. Princess Vyssa of the Lost Desert,
King Skarl of Meridell, King Roo of Roo Island, The Faerie Queen of Faerieland,
Count Von Roo of the Haunted Woods, and even my own leader, Grand Elder Kyruggi
of Tyrannia, were all there standing in my living room I was totally blown away.
"Ah, here they are at last!" Advisor Wessle
exclaimed as he strode over to where I was standing.
"What's going on here?" I hissed when he got
close enough for me to whisper to him.
"They have come to negotiate," the Kyrii said,
proudly puffing out his chest. "This Meerca of yours has caused quite a stir
in Neopia the past few days."
I glanced over at RC. He was doing loop-de-loops
around the legs of everyone in the room while excitedly screeching "Hi everybody!"
at the top of his lungs.
"Negotiate? What do you mean neogotiate?" I
asked as I suspiciously scanned the faces of the high-ranking Neopians parked
on my stone carpet. "If this is about sending RC back to the Meerca Chase game,
forget it!"
"No no no, of course not!" Wessle said, patting
me reassuringly on my arm. "They are more than happy to let you keep your little
Meerca. But it's all of the other Meercas they are concerned about right now."
Kyruggi stepped forward and said, "Let me talk
to him. He is a Tyrannian, after all." The saber-toothed Kyrii shoved Count
Von Roo out her way and approached me. "It's like this," she said in a no-nonsense
tone, "The citizens of Neopia are very upset about not being able to play Meerca
Chase. It's very important to the whole world right now that the Meerca Chase
Meercas return to the game."
"I don't understand what that has to do with
me, though," I said with bewilderment.
"It's quite simple," she replied. "All you have
to do is go to The Neopian Times and announce to all of Neopia that everything
is okay now and tell the Meercas to stop the strike and return to the game.
They consider you a great champion to Meercas everywhere. You are quite a celebrity
to them. If you tell them to go back to the game, they will. If you do that,
all Meerca-napping charges against you will be dropped and Reallyconfused will
officially become your pet. That sounds fair, doesn't it?"
"And what happens if I say no?" I asked.
King Skarl shook his fist at me and snarled,
"Then we'll freeze you into a solid block of ice and drop you into the Maraqua
Ocean where you will sink to the bottom and keep the Mysterious Statue down
there company for the rest of eternity!"
Geez. No wonder they call him "The Grumpy Old
King".
"Why would he say no?" Kyruggi said with a sharp
look towards King Skarl. "We're making him a good offer."
"Well..." I replied, "I guess I would say no
about lying on world-wide newspaper. And if I told the Meercas that it's okay
to go back to the game I would be lying. Meerca Chase is a cruel game and I
am completely against it."
Count Von Roo lunged forward to bite me on the
neck, but King Roo held him back.
"Let a professional handle this," the Faerie
Queen said, gliding gracefully towards me.
She was less than an inch away from my face
when she finally stopped gliding.
"You DO want to help me, don't you?" she cooed
softly into my ear.
My head nodded all by itself without my telling
it to.
"And if you help me, I can be very very generous,"
the Faerie Queen said in a sweet whisper.
I could feel my knees starting to get weak.
"Enough of this nonsense!" Advisor Wessle snapped,
pulling me backwards and stepping between us. "No fair taking advantage of simple-minded
humans with hypnotizing spells!"
The Faerie Queen shot Wessle a disapproving
glare and glided back to where the rest of the Neopian leaders stood.
"Faeries!" my lawyer muttered and shot her a
disapproving glare of his own.
"Look, there has to be some way we can resolve
this," Princess Vyssa said with irritation.
My fire Lupe spoke from the corner of the room
where he had been watching.
"Actually..." he said as he cocked his head
thoughtfully. "I think there IS a way to solve this problem. I think I may have
an answer that will satisfy everyone."
Every eye in the room turned in his direction.
"And?" Advisor Wessle urged. "What is the answer?"
The huge fire Lupe scanned the room for a moment
to make sure that he had everyone's attention. And he certainly did have everyone's
attention. Everyone except RC, of course. The Meerca was hopping around the
room trying to catch a stray moth that had floated in.
"Let's talk about the problem first," Wolf said.
"If I am not mistaken, the problem here is that practically all of Neopia wants
a Meerca Chase game. But no Meercas want to run around crashing into walls anymore,
right? Well... why do you have to have to use live Meercas for Meerca Chase,
anyway?"
"What do you suggest? That we should use DEAD
Meercas?" King Skarl sneered.
"No," Wolf replied sourly. "I am suggesting
that you turn Meerca Chase into a VIRTUAL game. You could redesign it so it
has computer generated Meercas in it, not REAL ones."
"You know, that's not a bad idea!" King Roo
exclaimed. "It might actually work!"
"Yeah?" King Skarl grumbled. "But that could
take months to do. What are we supposed to do in the meantime? We need Meerca
Chase NOW."
It was my turn to step in.
"Well... if you promise that it's only temporary...
and if you promise to read all of the dim-witted Meerca Chase Meercas enough
books to get them to average intelligence... and if you promise to find them
all good homes... well... I guess I could talk to the members of the D.U.M.D.U.M.
union about going back to the game on a TEMPORARY basis."
King Skarl swooped forward, grabbed my hand
and shook it vigorously.
"Done!" he shouted with something close to sheer
joy.
I must confess that Advisor Wessle was a heck
of a good lawyer. Less than a minute later he had a contract all written up
for everyone to sign. When it was done, the mob of Neopian leaders started to
file out of my Neohome with smiles on their faces. The last one to leave was
the Faerie Queen. Just as she was about to walk out the door, she leaned over
and whispered sweetly into my ear again.
"Don't concern yourself about old Coltzan. I
promise you that your pets will be getting a LOT of random quests from my faeries
from now on."
"Wow! Thanks so much, your majesty!" I said
as she glided off.
Advisor Wessle stepped up to me after all of
the leaders were gone.
"I have three important papers for you," he
said, handing me the sheets he was holding.
The first was a notice that said all of Meerca-napping
charges against me had been dropped. The second was Reallyconfused's official
registration form that said he legally belonged to me. And the third was Advisor
Wessle's bill. It was for thirty-five thousand Neopoints. I didn't even flinch
when I saw it.
"It's the best Neopoints I ever spent," I said,
shaking my head, "But I hope you have an easy payment plan."
"Of course!" he replied with a wink. "You have
my number. Just call whenever you need more legal advice!"
He turned and disappeared out the door. I sank
into my stone armchair. I was totally whipped. But it was a happy-relieved-satisfied-whipped.
I looked over at the stone sofa. RC was curled up fast asleep with a moth twittering
on the tip of his nose. Wolf walked over and parked himself on the stone carpet
in front of me. He sighed a deep sigh.
"What's wrong, Wolf?" I asked.
"I dunno," he shrugged. "I'm bored..."
THE END
| 
