Perspective: Part Three

      Sunny (after finishing the game of Lenny, Lenny, Pteri she was playing with some Blumaroos) came over and lifted him out of the crib. She checked his diaper (while Nick clawed at her) and, once satisfied it was clean, put him down in the block area.

      Feeling bored and kind of lonely, he walked over to a Grarrl to have a conversation.

      "How did you become a baby?" Nick asked, not really wanting to know, just wanting to hear the sound of a real discussion.

      To Nick's astonishment, the Grarrl replied with a series of gurgles and squeals.

      'Honestly, the pet's owner must be horrible, not teaching his pet how to talk…' Nick thought as he came up to a jubjub.

      "How did you become a baby?" Nick asked. Again, he was answered with unintelligible sounds.

      After asking five more neopets the same question, and getting nearly the same reply from each, Nick sat down to think.

      'I can think and talk understandably, but they can't…?' Then it hit him - he could do these things because he became baby a different way than they did. He was sprinkled with man-made 'Baby Powder' and they used a baby paintbrush or had gotten zapped by Boochi!

      At that moment, Tess, Sarah, and Rose walked in, each with different color nails and glossy fur (or, in Tess's case, hair). They scooped up Nick, who was sitting lost in thought, handed Sunny some neopoints, and walked out the door.

     ~~~~~

      They arrived back home and ate some grilled cheese sandwiches. Nick gave in (only because he was so hungry) and ate a jar of Forest Fruit baby food. It tasted awful.

      They finished their sandwiches, put Nick in a pink play pen, and were just settling down to read the books they had gotten on their way back from the Beauty Shop, when the doorbell rang.

      "I'll get it!" both of the girls shouted and ran for the door. Sarah got there first, as she had longer legs. She opened the door to a large mutant Kougra.

      "Can Nick come out to, umm…play?" he asked in a voice that was anything but sweet. By 'playing' he meant vandalizing the local parks, terrorizing young neopets on their way to piano lessons, and ruining birthday parties, among other equally horrible things, a practice which their owners were ignorant of.

      "I'm sorry, Taro, but Nick has had an…." Sarah searched for an appropriate word, "accident, so he can't play right now."

      Nick was currently trying to hide himself under some pretty pink pillows in the play pen. 'I can't let Taro see me like this!' he thought desperately. Honestly, he hadn't thought before about what his friends would say if they saw him in that condition.

      "Gee, that's too bad. Can I come in to see him?" Taro thought maybe that Nick had a bad case of Neoblues or he had broken a leg, nothing like what had really happened.

      "Of course you can come in to see him! I bet he's been lonely without any friends to see! Come on in, we're in the living room." Tess called from her place on the sofa.

      Taro reached down and pulled up some pink lilies (roots and all) from the front garden, hoping to get on Tess's good side. Grinning, he walked into the room, saw Nick, and dropped the flowers to the floor.

      "Whoa, Nick!" he paused, probably searching for an explanation, "Did you buy a baby paintbrush?" he looked inquiringly at Tess.

      "No, dear, it was an accident. It wasn't Boochi, either," she said quickly, seeing the question forming on Taro's lips, "I'll go read in another room, to give you two some alone time." She got up, still reading her book, and walked out of the room, Sarah and Rose behind her with their books, stealing curious glances back at the figure staring into the play pen.

      Taro looked at the cowering little form, sneering, "So how did you become baby? Oh yeah, you can't answer me, because you can't talk!" He burst into ridiculing laughter. Nick wanted horribly to yell out the reason, but he didn't want Taro to hear his new lisp.

      "You're wearing a diaper!" Taro pointed at it. Mockingly, he pinched his nose, "Phew! You sure smell bad! Do I have to change it for you, little baby?"

      He reached into the pen and picked up Nick, who wanted to hurt Taro in as many ways as he could. Nick clawed at him, but he had no claws; Nick bit him, but his teeth were dull. He was utterly helpless.

      "It's time for your nappy-wappy, little baby!" Taro carried him into Nick's room, and stopped at the sight of the frilly pastel furniture.

      "Look at your crib!" Taro placed Nick inside it, laughing again. He placed him under the blankets and pinned them down under both sides of the crib wall, forcing Nick to lie down.

      "I'm going to go find out how you became baby, and then I'm going to tell everyone!" Taro whispered into Nick's ear maliciously, then left the room, probably to find Tess and force the story out of her. By 'everyone', he meant the entire school, including the group of neopets (mostly mutants and Darigans) that Nick was leader of. Their pastimes included shutting small neopets into their lockers, ripping up their homework, and bullying them during recess. Everyone hated them, Nick the most, as he was the biggest and meanest. It was the ultimate humiliation.

     ~~~~~

      Nick had never been teased before, so his time with Taro was a new experience to him. He now understood how pets felt when he bullied them. He was ashamed that he had ever made neopets feel the burning numbness that he felt now. He lay awake hours after Tess and his sisters had gone to sleep (he had had a nap) thinking about the cruel things he had done in the past.

      He suddenly sat up, Rose's birthday was in three days! Tess had been saving up for a pink paintbrush for her for a long time. Nick knew this, and that's why he didn't ask for a Darigan paintbrush when he was first changed.

      Before, he didn't think about a gift for her at all, but now he did. He was completely sorry for all that he'd done to her, and to Sarah. But what could he give her to make up for it? Nick yawned, now was not the time to think of a gift. Frowning slightly, he drifted off to sleep.

     ~~~~~

      Nick woke up to a sunny blue-skied day. After the first shock that he had of being a baby, he waited patiently in his crib for Tess and the girls to get up and take him out. When Tess walked in, he greeted her with a slightly annoyed, (he'd been waiting for an hour) but nonetheless, smile and a "Goo mornig!", which Tess took to be a "Good morning!" She scooped him out and gave him a bottle of caramel flavoured Kougra milk, which he drank somewhat cheerfully.

      He spent the day figuring out how to manage his new body - figuring out that he wouldn't need toilets anymore, learning that he couldn't function properly without at least one nap during the day, and experiencing firsthand what happened when he ate a BLT sandwich. He also learned another very important lesson - how to look cute and pathetic so he'd get his way. He just had to turn on his puppy-dog-eyes charm and he got whatever he wanted. It worked almost as well as threats had worked before.

      But he didn't forget about Rose's birthday. Every minute that he wasn't doing something, he was thinking about what he could give Rose for her birthday. If he asked Tess for help, then she'd probably get some horrible lipstick and wrap it up saying 'From Nick' on the outside, and he didn't want that. If he asked Sarah, she wouldn't be any help at all and would surely tell Rose about it. He wanted something that would prove to her that he was honestly and truly sorry for all that he had done in the past.

     Would an apology note with a guarantee that he would never hurt her again in his whole life work? Nope, it was too simple, he needed something more extravagant; that would sound as if he was forced to write it, not sincere. He quickly ruled out beauty products and clothes in his head. Books wouldn't be good, either. Rose had plenty of books and besides, books wouldn't convey the message that he would be trying to give her. She already had a petpet (a pink puppyblew roughly the size of Nick himself). She didn't collect anything like stamps or trading cards that he could get for her. Nick was beginning to think of this as an impossible task.

      When it was time for him to go to bed, he still hadn't thought of the perfect gift.

To be continued...