TYNG: Petpetsitting - Part One

      He looked up when he heard the quiet padding of his older sister's four beige paws on the wooden floor. Anise was a yellow Wocky, and his only sibling. "Hi, Anise," he grinned, patting his Spyder's back again, which made Daz purr softly, almost like an Angelpuss.

      "Hi, Olli," said the yellow Wocky. She padded into the room, her extremely loyal and faithful Gruslen Chera walking along behind her, saying "Ugga ugg!" almost nonstop, like an odd Tyrannian chant. "I was thinking that a meeting with the rest of the TYNG is in order right about now."

      Oliver and Anise, as well as quite a few other young Neopets from their small neighborhood, had made a club called "The Young Neopets Gang" or TYNG for short. They met in a large field from two to three times each week to just generally have fun and talk together.

      "That'd be just great! I'll go out and ask all of them if they can come out to the meeting place," said Oliver, puffing out his chest importantly and bouncing out of the door on his springy tail with Daz clinging tightly to his bouncing shoulder for dear life. When Oliver reached Anise's best friend Janelle's house, he rapped loudly on the door and called, "Is Janelle home?"

      The door opened before Oliver could knock a second time and an elegant white Aisha stood there and smiled when she saw Oliver. "Are you ready for another TYNG meeting?" she asked, before brushing past the green Blumaroo without waiting for his reply and heading for the field. Oliver raised his eyebrows at the swiftly retreating Aisha.

      He continued all along the block and met all of the Neopet members of TYNG and found that all of them were with the same result as Janelle. After a quick while, all of the members of TYNG were gathered on the field, forming a very large and very precise circle. "Is everyone here?" asked Anise loudly, once they had settled down and all eyes were on her. She was the self-appointed leader of TYNG.

      A murmur of assent came from the assembled Neopets. "Good," said Anise, smiling. "Now, this meeting's speaker is Jeff, am I correct?"

      Jeff, a red Scorchio, saluted smartly and nodded, a grin plastered on his face. "Correct!" he said brightly. "Now, I was thinking, if we really want to do some fun things all together in a group, we will need a few Neopoints. But our owners use all of the NPs that we earn for themselves! We need to find some way of having some NP that we use for our own purposes like doing some fun stuff with our gang! I suggest that we brainstorm ideas that we could do to raise some NP for ourselves. Does anyone have any good suggestions? Stupid ones will just be ignored."

      After the Scorchio's rather lengthy speech, there was a few moments' silence before almost every Neopet gathered there in the circle started to give all of their ideas at once. It almost sounded like a competition of who could say their ideas the loudest. "Whoa, whoa!" laughed Anise, fighting to keep . "One at a time, people! We'll go around the circle in the clockwise direction, starting with Janelle and then going to Jeff, and so on."

      "Okay," said Janelle. "I happen to think that we ought to do a bake sale or something. You know how much those old Chia ladies on the end of the block like muffins, pastries and all of those other baked goodies. We would be able to make a lot of money off of that!"

      "Good idea, Janelle. Now, onto Jeff," said Anise, shifting her amber-colored eyed gaze onto the red Scorchio who had made the introduction speech.

      "Anise, I don't have any suggestions. Pass," said Jeff politely. He motioned vaguely with one arm at Rachel, a graceful young shadow Cybunny who lived three houses away from Anise and Oliver.

      "You're sure? Okay then. Your turn, Rachel," replied Anise, turning her amber eyes on the shadow Cybunny.

      Rachel thought for a moment or two and then she proposed, "We could go around weeding peoples' gardens! Those old Chia ladies would love that! They're too old and stiff to take care of their own gardens anyhow, and the once pretty flowerbeds are now overgrown with weeds! I mean, we could pull those weeds and then plant flowers for them as long as they provide the flowers! It would be fun, especially for us gardening nuts here!" the Cybunny concluded.

      "Interesting. Who here is a gardening nut?" asked Anise, turning to the assembly of Neopets on the field. About one third of them raised their hands. "Wow. Quite a few of you out there," remarked Anise, before looking at the scrawny starry Nimmo crouched to the side of Rachel. His name was Neal. "Well, Neal? What's your suggestion?"

      The Nimmo stared off into the sky, apparently fishing about for what to say. "Hmm…" he muttered, blinking his large black eyes and curling his tongue up into a spiral and then releasing it again. He repeated this quite a few times. "Well, there's always the obvious," he said after about five minutes. "We could all go and play those easy-peasy games like Meerca Chase II, Faerie Bubbles, Volcano Run, Mootix Drop and all of those other easy ones that give you a fair amount of money for each time you play it, if you're good at them. If everyone here plays Meerca Chase II three times each and only send score if you get over two hundred points, we could get a fortune from that!"

      Anise thought about that for a few moments, and then said, "That's a good idea, but I'm not really sure if everyone here is actually good enough at Meerca Chase II to earn themselves over two hundred points each time they play."

      "We are too! Of course we are! It's easy to get two hundred! That's a measly amount compared to what I usually get!" a fierce tirade broke out from the gathered members of TYNG.

      Anise jumped and raised her paws in mock fear to defend herself from the loud calls from the Neopets assembled in the ring. "Okay, Neal's plan might work then," she said. The entire field quieted down immediately at her comment. "Now, let's go on to Caitlin," the Wocky turned an expectant amber-eyed gaze on the purple Ixi.

      After pondering her answer for a few seconds, Caitlin said brightly, "I think we should do something like the Kadoatery does for Kadoaties, except we do it with all different kinds of Petpets! We could take care of them while their owners are on holidays somewhere! I can't imagine how much people would pay to have their Petpets taken care of for a few days while they're gone on holidays or something!"

      "I like that!" hooted Anise gleefully. Then, turning to survey the rest of the group, the Wocky asked bossily, "All in favor of taking care of Petpets until their owners return from wherever they might be raise their paw."

      She grinned when she noticed that everyone's paw was waving in the afternoon air, and then she said loudly, "Motion passed."

      A bout of cheering rang in the field, but one small red Usul named Ginny had a very good question. "Whose Neohome will the Petpets stay at?"

      The cheering ceased almost immediately, with each member of TYNG considering this question. "How about ours?" suggested Oliver, stroking Daz gently. "We have an entire attic that's empty! Plus I've played Petpetsitter more times than you can shake a stick at," at this, he stuck his green chest out proudly.

      "That's a good idea! I'm sure that our owner would let us do it!" said Anise happily.

      "She wouldn't even care if we kept Petpets in the attic and fed them, and took care of them, and all of that other good stuff that you need to do with Petpets!" said Oliver gleefully, clapping his hands excitedly and almost knocking Daz off of his shoulder, where he looked around at the gang of young Neopets.

      Anise smiled at the whole gang, who was cheering again. Anyone passing might have thought that the circus had come to their neighborhood from the noise that TYNG was making in the field. "Petpetsitter fundraiser it is!" she proclaimed loudly, over the hubbub that the group was making. "Now, we need to make posters and advertisements so that all of the people in our neighborhood know exactly what we're doing. Who's willing to do that?" she looked inquisitively around the ring of TYNG members.

      "I will!" said Janelle. "What do we need to say on them? 'Petpetsitting: In Your Neighborhood!'" she grinned and chuckled. "Sounds cheesy, doesn't it?"

      After a moment's pause, Anise admitted, "It kind of does sound cheesy, but that's really okay! I like it anyway! Sometimes, because it's so cheesy, it gets more notice. Now, think of some more slogans that will advertise what we're doing. Be sure to give our address on the poster. Meeting adjourned."

To be continued...