The Faerie's Revenge

      With a pounce and a snarl, he leaped, capturing the Faerie with a swipe of his paw. As he pinched her wings and dropped her into the jar he growled, “My little friend, you are quite a capture. You will make me very rich. Very rich indeed...”

      “Who you calling ‘little’?”

      The hunter turned. The ground was clear, but in one of the branches high above his head, a Faerie swung from a bough. Her maroon hair and fiery wings suggested she was a Fire Faerie, but when she winked at him, she revealed shocking emerald eyes, compared to the Faeries’ usual brown ones. But what puzzled him more than her eyes, was how she got out of the jar.

      He glanced at the container, and instead of seeing a Faerie, a small doll lay in its place, a mechanical smile plastered on its face. At first he thought she had broken out, but the jar was still intact. What’s more, she was not the small pixie he had just caught; she was only a few inches shorter than him. “What? How’d you? The size?” he stuttered, glaring at the creature who sat above him.

      The girl jumped down, and for a fleeting moment Balthazar thought she had surrendered, but she hovered slightly above him and rapped her knuckles on his forehead, something only an insane person with a death wish would dream of doing. “What kind of Faerie hunter are you if you don’t even know what we can do?” she asked, floating back to the tree, landing on a slightly lower branch, “If you ask me, I think you just need a shrink. Nothing a few hours of therapy couldn’t fix.”

      The Lupe’s temper had reached its limit. He lunged at her, but his claws caught empty air. The Faerie stood on a higher branch. “What else were the Faeries supposed to do?” she said, gazing down at him, “It was Saturday night, and the clubs were closed. They were Dark Faeries anyway, what do you expect?”

      The hunter jumped again, but the Faerie led him farther up the tree. “So what if they teased you? You look like you’ve bullied a bunch of people anyway. What are you exactly, some sort of deformed Gelert?”

      “I’m a Lupe!!” he roared, attempting to catch her once more, but again the attempt was in vain. She stuck her tongue out at him, only causing him fury to flare. “Come here, you!” he shouted, but at least controlled his temper enough to know not to jump. He was seeing red, as soon as he caught that Faerie, she was dead.

      She chucked a pine cone at Balthazar, (which hit him straight in the snout, enraging him even further, if that’s possible), and told him, “How rude! I have a name, you know; it’s Sasha.”

      Balthazar had cleared his head; leaping again he snarled, “Good, now I know what to put on your tombstone!”

      But again Sasha avoided him. As he leaned against the tree, panting for breath, she announced, “Your hand-eye coordination sucks.”

      Balthazar didn’t reply. Instead he grinned up at the Fire Faerie. She had led him up the tree; there was nowhere else to go. “Any last words?” he asked, as he lunged.

      “Just one,” she replied, launching into the air, “Good-bye.”

      It was only too late that Balthazar remembered she could fly, and even later that it occurred to him that he couldn’t. By that time he had hit the ground. The Faerie was long gone.

     *Three days later*

      Balthazar was still sore from his defeat, not to mention a fall from a forty-foot-tall tree. As he trudged back to his lair, as he so creatively called it, a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach made him move faster. As his cave came into view, the Lupe saw bright lights spark from within it, and then slowly fade away. When he got into earshot, a giggling sounded. The hunter swallowed hard; something wasn’t right.

      He ran the short distance back to his cave, throwing open the door. Inside was chaos. Hundreds of faeries, his personal collection, whirred around inside. Broken glass was everywhere, jar caps littering the ground. He tried to maintain his calm, but as soon as the Faeries saw light, they flew past him into the sunlight. His life’s work, gone.

      “Nice place you got here. A little dark, though; every heard of sunlight?”

      Balthazar turned slowly, hoping he was just imagining that voice. He wasn’t. Sasha, that Fire Faerie that had embarrassed him so neatly a few days earlier, sat perched on the windowsill, staring at him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded through clenched teeth.

      “Oh, nothin’,” she said, casually popping open a jar, sending an Air Faerie whizzing in between Balthazar’s legs. “Saw the place, decided to see who lived here.”

      A small revelation hit Balthazar. She was toying with him. This was exactly what he would do to his victims, before he sold them back to Neopia. Alright, he thought, I’ll play her game. It gives me all the more to gloat about when I’ve caught her.

      “Won’t you please sit down?” he asked, gesturing towards the table. She remained unfazed, but nodded. Balthazar pulled out the chair for her, and left her to go into his kitchen. He pulled out a small contraption from his cupboard. It looked like a tiny catapult, but he knew its real power. As soon as it was triggered, a jar would capture the disturbance. He had saved it for the perfect capture, and as he hid it in the small cake, he knew it was finally time to test it.

      “I apologize for the wait,” he said, setting the cake down on the table, gauging the girl’s reaction. She remained calm, but said, “Not at all.” She gestured towards the cake, “May I?”

      “Of course.” Balthazar grinned, waiting for the trap to spring. But his face change to a mask of frustration and confusion as Sasha cut into the cake. Nothing happened. No boom. No jar. No desperate wailing. Determined to try again, the Lupe grasped the knife and cut himself a piece.

      The knife clanged to the floor as a heavy layer of glass came down on it. The trap had backfired; it was he who was stuck in the jar. He saw it now; he thought it was just a habit, but the Faerie had ever so slightly turned the platter as she cut the cake. She had changed the position of the trap! Sasha got to her feet, saying, “Thanks for the cake, and the capture attempt. Things look different from inside a jar, don’t they?”

      And with that last mockery, she made her way out of his cave, leaving him in the darkness.

     *One week later*

      It took Balthazar another hour and a half to get out of the jar. One can only cut so fast with a steel knife. Since then, he had made it his personal mission not to rest until that Faerie stood in his personal collection, which, no thanks to her, he was slowly rebuilding.

      It was noon when Balthazar heard one of his traps spring closed. He pounced off the couch, knowing that little thing was close. As he raced toward the trap, he was disappointed to see that all he had caught was a baby Grundo. As he bent to release the trap, he noticed the toddler had enormous fangs, and it seemed as though he was growing extra arms. He scooped it up, and was about to throw it in a nearby bush when he heard a voice.

      “Mark! Mark, where’d you run off to?” Sasha’s voice resonated through the trees. Balthazar paused, waiting. When she finally saw them, she stopped and stood on the tree she landed on. “Oh, Balthazar! You found Mark! I’ve been looking for him everywhere!”

      This was his chance. “You want him?” he growled, “Come get him.”

      “Um, Mr. Deformed Gelert, that’s not the smartest idea.”

      “Oh no, what’s the little pixie going to do to? Zap me with her little candle flame?”

      “Ahem.”

      A gruff voice sounded behind Balthazar. He turned, and dropping the baby (who began to cry), he backed away. The figure behind him explained the baby’s fangs and arms.

      “You see,” Sasha explained, “Mark is the Spider Grundo’s kid brother. Joe and I are friends; we went to school together, before he was all mutant-y. Right Joe?”

      The Spider Grundo, Joe, nodded and grinned, baring his fangs at Balthazar. And so, the Lupe did what any self-respecting Faerie hunter would do. He ran for it.

      As Balthazar bolted through the trees, Sasha grinned. “That takes care of him,” she announced, then turned to Joe and Mark. “Thanks for the help guys.”

      The brothers grinned back, and said together, “No problem.”

      Finally Balthazar found what he deemed safety. A gnarled old tree stood by the Haunted Woods, its roots wide enough to hide beneath. He dove for cover, landing in a dark pit below the tree. He heard a sound quite close, and a bright light flickered before his eyes. It took him a minute to realize it was a candle. He peered around it and saw Dr. Sloth.

      “What are you doing here?” the mad scientist asked.

      “This Fire Faerie called Sasha drove me insane, until she finally scared me to death with that Spider Grundo of hers. She nearly killed me!!” Balthazar relayed his recent misery.

      Dr. Sloth looked shocked. “You too?”

The End

That’s my story, hope you like it!! Expect more from me, and from littleevilmushroom, because we kinda are the same person. And please, would someone message me if this gets to NT? I can’t check every day!!