Kadoatery Khronicles: Part Four

     Winona apparently heard the alerting meow. She woke up and sniveled, “It’s my fault! I gave him the candy! I-I’m sorry!”

     “It’s all right, Winona.” Vash looked back over his left shoulder. “We’ve got to get George!”

     “Ren and I will help,” he heard Suiko mew, “I’m not sure Firefly will be up to it.”

     “Wait!” a voice yelled. Vash recognized it as Firefly. The green Petpet opened his cage and hopped onto the floor, where it turned out the other two were standing. “I take back what I said about Freddie. I’ll help, too.”

     “Great!” Vash purred, “We have to get George over here.”

     “George is at his Neohome. We should go there,” Suiko suggested.

     Ren objected. “No way! We have no idea where the guy lives! Besides, it’d be too dangerous to go alone to a place we need to find, then come all the way back! We have to do something quick.”

     “Then perhaps we should find a way to contact him.”

     “That’s crazy! What are we supposed to do, send him a Neomail? We don’t have fingers or anything!”

     Suiko sighed deeply, her fur sticking up just a tad, obviously refusing to lose her patience with Ren. Vash’s ears were pricked. He knew that Ren and Suiko were intelligent Kads. They’d work out something. “Let’s try to find his home, anyway. Surely he has information like his address in here.”

     “He keeps everything way up on his desk.”

     The blue Kadoatie darted to the desk. Eyes narrow and focused, she gathered all her weight and tried to spring onto its surface. Her paws grasped the top of the desk and she tried to pull herself up, but her short legs with their little muscle turned out not to be much help and she dropped off onto her back

     “No good. We have to stand on something.”

     Everyone heard a loud scraping sound from the back doorway. They glanced around for its source and quickly noticed Ren pushing a couple boxes of cookies from George’s office. The Island Kadoatie left them against the desk. “Alright,” he said, “This should give an extra boost.”

     Vash nodded. “Thanks, Ren. And great idea, Suiko.” He faced the wall of cages. “Who knows the address?”

     Ren looked annoyed. “You could have asked that before I got those boxes.”

     “Yeah, sorry. But just in case.”

     Everyone was quiet. A few Kadoaties shook their heads and some meowed responses, all negative.

     “...Alright. Everyone, go look for his address!”

     The three male Kadoaties split up, searching for something of use in the room, while the Kadoaties whispered to each other in hopes of remembering something helpful. Suiko was standing behind Vash with flattened ears, shaking her head. “Ugh! I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that. I’ll think of a backup plan! I hope finding the address doesn’t take too long!”

     “Relax, Suiko,” Vash assured her, “We’ll get this to work.”

     “Shut up, everyone! Look what I found!” Firefly yelped urgently from George’s desk, pointing to a yellow sticky note, “This is George’s address!”

     Vash dashed and jumped to the desktop with the aid of Ren’s expertly placed cookies and read aloud the address. “1122 Aisha Avenue. Does anyone know where that is?”

     Suiko squealed with joy. “Thank goodness! That’s not too far from where I live! It’s just a couple of blocks away.”

     “Alright!”

     Vash knew what to do immediately. He moved his cookie boxes to the door, right under the doorknob. The pink Kadoatie hopped onto them and gripped the knob the best he could with his forepaws. He jerked his body to the side and, just like he was hoping, the knob turned. He gave another jerk backwards, yanking the door open.

     “I’m off. Guys, you keep an eye on Freddie.” Then he raised his voice and shouted, “Hey! Everybody, listen! When I come back, I want you to meow as loud as you can and look in Freddie’s direction!”

     The Kadoaties all nodded as Vash dashed out through the doorway and turned to follow the sidewalk.

     **********

     In what was thankfully a short time, George bolted through the door of the Kadoatery with an out-of-breath Kadoatie in his arms. “So, what did you need, Vash?” he chirped. “I gotta say, it must be really important for you to get out and come all the way to my house.”

     He quickly noticed all the meowing, though, and faced the wall of cages. “Hm? What’s the matter, gang?”

     The Zafara’s eyes followed those of the Kads. Soon realizing where the problem was, he sprinted to Freddie’s cage and examined the spotted Kad. “Oh my goodness!” he gasped. He ran to his desk, set Vash down on its surface, yanked open the drawer, and looked through some papers. “The Petpet Veterinary Center,” he muttered to himself, “The Petpet Veterinary Center, the Petpet Veterinary Center, the Petpet Veterinary Center... There it is!”

     As quickly as he came in, George sprinted outside, slamming the door behind him.

     **********

     “Not yet!” the veterinarian Lupe sighed.

     “Keep trying!” the royal Kougra shouted, patting her cub on the back, “Don’t worry, Jennie, Freddie will be just fine!”

     Vash’s tail switched back and forth anxiously. “C’mon, Freddie!”

     Then it happened. The Kadoaties all heard a cough, and then they heard the clang of something hard hitting a metal floor. The vet shouted, “Yes! It’s finally out! The Kad coughed out the candy!”

     “Freddie!” Jennie shouted excitedly, running to and hugging her Kadoatie.

     “You know,” said George, scooping up Vash, “this little Kadoatie actually came to my house to get me over here. This certainly isn’t your average Petpet.”

     The little Kougra grabbed the pink Kad and squeezed both him and Freddie. “Oh, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!”

     Freddie gave Vash an odd little chuckle, wincing a little, as his throat still hurt.

     “Imagine when we tell your owner, Vash! She’ll be so proud of you! What a little hero!” George clapped his hands.

     Vash managed to squeeze out of Jennie’s arms and fall back onto the desk. Once he gathered himself, he looked around at all the other Kadoaties. “It wasn’t all me,” he announced proudly, “I had help from my best pals, Suiko, Ren, and Firefly!”

     **********

     At the end of the month, Ciasa came running to Vash’s cage. “Hello! There’s my little hero!”

     She reached a paw between the bars of the cage and scratched her Petpet behind the ear. He purred. The whole “hero” thing was getting old, but it was nice to know he was finally going home after such a crazy stay.

     George came out from his office. “I’ve got news! Good news and bad news!”

     “Okay, what is it?” Ciasa asked.

     “The bad news is... Firefly, your owner isn’t coming back from Krawk Island.”

     Nobody but Vash noticed the green Kadoatie gasp.

     “I just got a Neomail from him. He wants to get away from Neopia Central and he’s moving to the island. No Neohome he could find allows landbound Petpets.”

     Vash saw his friend’s eyes water. “Don’t feel bad! Maybe we’ll like the good news,” the pink Kadoatie comforted.

     “The good news is he said that you, Ciasa, would probably make a good owner. All the Kadoatie owners heard about your Kad’s clever trick this month. Obviously, you raised him excellently. You get to keep Firefly!”

     “Fabulous!” Ciasa shouted, lifting up the two Kadoaties, “Now I have two heroes for Petpets! I’ll be going now. Goodbye, George!” She walked through the door to the sidewalk.

     “Goodbye!” the Kadoaties in their cages squealed, waving to the pink and green heroes.

     “See you, everybody!” they mewed back.

     Ciasa perched a Kad on each shoulder as she walked home. Vash looked at his friend. “Are you upset?” he asked, “Even a little?”

     Firefly shrugged. “Kind of. But I guess it’s not that bad. My owner really didn’t have lots of time for me.”

     “Ciasa plays with me every day,” Vash blurted, getting excited. “She gets me all the best food and toys, too.”

     “That’s good! I never had any other Petpets to play with before, either.”

     “Neither did I. It looks like things are going to get even better for us both.”

     “Right!”

     The pink Kadoatie was reminded of the conversation he and Firefly had on his first night at the Kadoatery, which made another thought pop into his head. He smiled. “At first, I didn’t want to go to the Kadoatery. But hey, if I knew all this would happen, I’d run here myself!”

     They laughed.

     True, a lot more good had come out of the stay at the Kadoatery than he would have ever thought. In one month, he made new friends, was called a hero, got a new friend for life, and finally was going home. Could things get any better for a simple Petpet like Vash?

     He purred, relaxing himself, going limp on Ciasa’s shoulder. Life is good, he told himself. Life is good.

The End