Neglect's Revenge: Part One

      Vendette sighed and trudged downstairs while muttering, "Soon this will all be worth it. Soon I'll be a Darigan Kougra."

      Vendette arrived downstairs and looked briefly around the kitchen. It was the usual breakfast. Some fishing food, some gross food, and the very familiar jelly and omelettes. This looked promising; there was no poisonous jelly or rotten omelettes. If he ate any more of those he really would be sick.

      His owner spotted the dismay in his eyes and said, "Cheer up, Vendette, we're only another one hundred thousand neopoints away from your Darigan paint brush. If we budget our neopoints, keep finding jobs, and visiting the Money Tree, of course, then we might be able to get your paint brush in a week or two!"

      The Kougra looked up, excited as well as joyful. "Race you to the Money Tree?"

      "No way, you'd beat me without a doubt. I'll clean up our breakfast mess, then meet you there."

      Vendette bounded away as fast as lightning towards the Money Tree.

      His owner finished up with her work and started walking towards the Money Tree to help her prized pet get more neopoints. On the way there, she started to wonder, "Does Vendette ever get lonely, having no siblings around? After all, he's all alone and we might enjoy having a new brother or sister…"

      Suddenly the sound of a whimpering, maybe crying pet caught her attention. She stood still for a moment, wondering if it was merely her imagination calling to her. She heard nothing so she decided to continue walking. Once again, she heard the sound of a crying pet. It seemed like it was coming from behind the hospital, so she ran there to investigate. What she saw shocked her; it was a baby Aisha no more than a few hours old, all alone while sitting on the dirt covered ground. She burst out speaking to it, "Oh, you poor baby! Where's your owner? You must not have one, you poor innocent baby. I think I'll adopt you, and I'll name you Innocenza! That means innocence. Oh you poor dear, let's go introduce you to your big brother!" She continued babbling to the Aisha while she walked towards the Money Tree.

      In the time it took her to get to the Money Tree she had already decided that the little Aisha would have her own room and furniture. She would also require toys to keep her occupied, as well as play pens in almost every room. Not to mention way more cleaning supplies and baby food, of course. She was so caught up in the joy of now owning this pet, whose color she didn't yet know, that she didn't even think that perhaps Vendette wouldn't be as thrilled as she was. The thought never even entered her mind, let alone her thoughts.

      When she finally arrived at the tree, with Innocenza in tow, she saw that Vendette's hands were absolutely filled with neopoints. She didn't know how many, but she figured it was many tens of thousands. When Vendette saw her, he staggered up to her and spoke with what little strength he had left, "Someone… generous… rich… all to me… ninety thousand."

      She realized that this was very heavy so she took about half of it and walked off to the bank to deposit it. She then deposited it and ran back to the Money Tree to get the rest so that she could deposit that as well. But when she got there, Vendette stopped her.

      "What is that, that thing? It's been clinging to my leg ever since you left, and didn't I see you walk up with it? It seems to have a few major issues with the whole concept of not drooling all over me!"

      She giggled and answered, "That's your new baby sister, and her name is Innocenza! Isn't she just adorable?"

      "It's my new WHAT? How could you do this to me?! You know how expensive it is to take care of a pet! We're only ten thousand neopoints away from my paint brush and now you're going to throw all that work away to this Aisha! Now you're going to want to paint her too, what color do you have in mind? And what about training her? Are you going to try to make her as strong as me?"

      She looked at Vendette, somewhat angrily. "Look, she was alone. I don't know what color she will be and I'm not spending all of our neopoints on her, calm down."

      Vendette looked back, accusingly, "Oh you won't? Then I guess she won't have her own room or furniture, we won't have to buy more cleaning products, or more play pens for almost every room, and she certainly won't need any baby food. She can eat omelettes and jelly like we do, I guess."

      She responded, partially defeated, "It won't cost that much. Ok, so I will have to buy those things, but then we'll go straight back to earning neopoints for you. Besides, aren't you being sort of greedy? You've gotten almost everything you could ever dream about, but now you're mad at this helpless Aisha because I might be adding a new pet to our family."

      Vendette responded doubtfully, "We'll see then, won't we?"

      Vendette proved to be right as their neopoints slowly dwindled down to one million.

      One day, a few months after Innocenza had been adopted, Vendette yelled at his owner in frustration, "Either Innocenza lives like we do or you can find yourself a new Kougra!"

      His owner stared at him, shocked. "But I thought that you two were finally getting along, and we're finally making back the neopoints that we spent on her. It's not her fault, it's mine."

      Vendette was beyond speaking in a civil tone, "Then abandon her! All she's been since you adopted her is trouble. And she looks like she might be turning invisible. Soon I won't even be able to see her annoying me!"

      A light bulb was almost visible over his owner's head, "You're just jealous, aren't you? I'm paying more attention to your sister than you. That isn't all that you're jealous about though, is it? She grew into a color. You turned blue as you got older, but she's turning invisible."

      Vendette argued, his face red and his eyes more consuming and accusing that fire, "No. We were only ten thousand neopoints away from my Darigan paint brush. Now we're three hundred thousand neopoints away. Innocenza isn't innocent at all!"

      All he got as a week's worth of grounding and being immediately sent to his room until he was ready to think about things logically.

      Vendette finally cooled over and worked many times harder towards his prized paint brush. His owner was always checking on the prices of the paint brushes; he just figured that she was trying to find and maybe even reserve an inexpensive one. What he didn't know was that she was looking at more paint brushes then just Darigan.

      One day, a few weeks after his owner started furiously looking at prices, Vendette returned home from the Money Tree only to receive the shock of his life. In the kitchen, a beautiful royal Aisha was daintily eating dinner. However, this wasn't any ordinary royal Aisha, it was his little sister, Innocenza. Vendette just stood where he was, unable to move or even to close his mouth. This was not what he wanted or expected. What was going on?

      He immediately ran to the bank and asked how many neopoints they had saved up. The total was a mere three hundred thousand neopoints. Something was wrong, very wrong. When he had deposited the neopoints a few hours before there had been one million one hundred thousand; this was not right.

      He ran back home and immediately confronted his owner, who was absolutely consumed with cheerfulness and joy.

      "Why is Innocenza royal? Why do we only have three hundred thousand neopoints left?"

      His owner just danced around gleefully while hardly responding with, "I found a royal paint brush for almost one million neopoints less than it's worth. I immediately withdrew the neopoints and bought it. Then I took Innocenza to the rainbow pool with me and painted her! Isn't it simply marvelous?"

      Vendette cried out in pain, sorrow, and shock, "Of course it isn't, what happened to my Darigan paint brush? Have you forgotten how long I've been working with you so that we could buy one?"

      His owner just shrugged and responded, "We can save up again. This chance would never have come again; this is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. I still can't believe it was underpriced so much! This is so wonderful."

      Vendette stopped crying and ran away from his old home while screaming at his old owner, "I hope having one pet again is just as marvelous as that underpriced paint brush!"

To be continued...