Keeping Your Friends: Part Four

by Eugenitor

I woke up to a knocking on my door. "Outta bed, sleepyhead. Get your stuff," Really_Wise_Guy told me.

"Ehh? I haven't slept in for days now..." I said, waking up and picking up my backpack. "What's...?"

"Construction. It's Sunday and I've got homework due Monday morning, so I want to see more of the NeoHome before I start working on it." Lord of the last minute, he is.

I followed him down the stairs, only taking my first look at the silver room that was recently placed next to mine. "Hey, what is that room for anyway?"

"Going to put something important there when I get it. Let's go play some Gormball." My owner and I played games and did stuff together for the next six straight hours. If I didn't mention I loved him before, I will again now. He's the best owner ever.

"Only an hour left for construction," he said, checking his portable console that all humans use. "Good... good. All right, Horatio_Kyrius, go play by yourself for a while."

"What?" I haven't heard him tell me to go away for any length of time before.

"All right," I said, shrugging and zipping off to the Pool where we usually meet. Lucky for me, he was there again, in his usual annoyed state, with a pair of cheap plastic boots on for some reason.

"Hey, Horatio. What a coincidence. My owner tells me to bug off and you come."

"That IS weird. My owner wanted his privacy too." Although, of course, he'd never tell me to 'bug off'.

"You're not going to believe this. Somebody's obviously been telling my owner how to make money. This is the guy who got mad at me when I took that bitten omelette to my sister!"

"He got mad?"

"Like a Lupe with NeoRabies. Forget it. Anyway, somebody's been being nice to him, giving him tips and stuff and all. He's even been playing NeggSweeper, even though he's bad at it. I get fried so much listening to him tell me where to go next. But he found the money to buy me a toy. Ha." He pointed at his feet and I realised that he wasn't wearing boots at all- they were simply very badly busted-up roller skates with no wheels remaining. I found myself wondering whether or not Dr. Sloth exists in the human world. "But maybe with some of that 'mad money' of yours, we can." He was interrupted by the arrival of a NeoCop- which is a very rare event.

"Yes, officer?" he asked, only to be surrounded by a blue force field.

"HEY!" I shouted, at the same time he shouted, "What did I do?!"

"You did nothing. Pets without owners are immediately taken to the Neopian Pound by law," the NeoCop said, pulling Carnivore along at a rapid, steady pace.

"But he HAS an owner!" "But I HAVE an owner!" we both shouted simultaneously.

"Incorrect. The value of Carnivore_T_Rex's Owner is 'null'." This is ridiculous... but the NeoCops' database is never wrong. Then I realised that I shouldn't be protesting this at all!

I pressed a button on my wrist-communicator. "Really_Wise_Guy! Get to the pound, c'mon!"

"Why should I?" Because.. "I'm already there!"

"WHAAAT?!" I sputtered out, before dashing at 160 speed straight to the Pound. (A number of pets and owners marveled at the prospect of someone with as much speed as I have dashing TOWARDS the pound instead of AWAY from it like usual.)

Really_Wise_Guy was casually leaning against the wall. "They should be here annny..." The NeoCop holding Carnivore and the NeoCop holding his sister walked in the door. "...minute now." He walked up to the empty adoption desk. "I'd like to adopt two pets," he said, pulling 160 NP out of his wallet in a flash. "Don't bother showing me your selection, I know who I have in mind. Him and her," he said, pointing to Carnivore and Little_cheeky. As he dropped the NP on the desk, the two NeoCops deactivated the force fields and vanished into thin air. Carnivore had his mouth wide open, showing his rows of pointy Grarrl-teeth. His sister, now also mine, just looked confused.

He led us out of the Pound in a state of shock. "Hmm. Construction's still going on--I guess I better take you three out on the town for a while." He looked at the very frightened, very confused Little_cheeky. "You look like you need it." The yellow Kacheek only nodded her head in reply. She's going to need more than that, I realised, but a month or so of therapeutic coaxing (e.g. being treated like something other than carpet dirt) should probably help her a lot.

"So how'd you do it?" I asked him. "I know you had this all planned out." His grin said it all. "He obviously got rid of himself.. what'd you do, buy him a Ceiling-Mounted Rope Neck Brace?" Carnivore laughed hard at that.

"Nope. I simply became his friend for a little while. I told him how to get money, I told him how he could become at least slightly better off than he was. I even gave him stuff."

"So it was YOU!" Carnivore shouted in amazement. "But how'd you get him to delete himself?"

"Simple. After all that truthful information, after telling him how to get money and NP, and when he finally, really believed that I wasn't going to lie to him at all, I did just that. I told him that the NeoPets gods would take pity on him and give him NP if he asked to get deleted."

"You manipulated him good!" I replied.

"I didn't manipulate. I just took advantage of his stupidity."

"So where are they going to sleep?" I asked. Of course, I wouldn't mind it at all if they slept in my room forever. I can spare the space.

"What do you think the construction was all about, anyway? I told you something important was going to be in there." I was just slack-jawed. Carnivore lost his state of shock and started cheering; Little_cheeky did as well. And he took us out for fifty minutes of fun before we finally arrived home, and he disappeared to go and do his homework.

As my siblings rejoiced at the sight of their new silver-lined rooms, I knew that life was going to be great.

The End