The Candy Caper

     I had no idea how it could have happened. The closet was always kept locked, and only those council members who regularly gave out prizes had keys. That meant it had to have been one of the Neopets that had an owner on council... which, of course, included my pets. It was inconceivable that one of them would have stolen from the guild, yet I was having just as much trouble imagining that any other pet in the guild might be a suspect.

     None of us wanted to wrongly accuse one of our pets. I tried to narrow down the field of suspects, hoping to find the culprit before he or she ate all the candy. I inspected the closet. It was clear that whoever stole the candy needed to be tall, nearly a meter at least, or be able to fly. The till was on a high shelf, and couldn't be reached any other way.

     The Neopet also needed to have herculean strength. The lid on the jar was tightly sealed and hard to pry open, but, then again, a Neopet that was on the petite-side could make use of the dispenser at the bottom of the till. A slender paw could fit through, requiring hardly any strength at all.

     I looked at the pawprints again, but they were very smudged. It was impossible to tell how big they were.

     In short order, I appealed to the other members of the guild to help me find the candy, and through clever sleuthing, they narrowed the possibilities for potential culprits down to just two suspects. I arranged a townhall for the upcoming Friday.

     ------------

     "Penniest! AnnaDeanne! Come here. It's time we had a chat with you both." I projected my voice in the direction of the Guild's kitchen, where two very helpful (if a bit smug) Neopets, Mobaro and Nisiko, were holding the apprehended suspects.

     The two faerie Neopets came into the Guild's Multipurpose room, followed closely by their wardens. I indicated that they should take seats at the front. Both looked as dejected as Fyora the day her kingdom crashed down from the skies. The room was otherwise populated with a smattering of guild members and their Neopets, but despite their presence, the chairs I'd set out largely remained empty.

     "I promise it wasn't me!" blurted out my panicked Xweetok. "I don't even like candy all that much!" I felt a twinge, and wrestled internally with the guilt of having put my own pet on trial.

     "It wasn't me either," the Poogle replied, with a much steadier voice. She leveled a scorching gaze on the smaller pet. "What would I have to gain from stealing candy?"

     "Alright, alright, that's enough." I said. "All I need from each of you is a statement about what you were doing and when on Tuesday the second."

     Penniest paused for a moment. "Well, I obviously took Cuddles to see the Turmaculus. I think that was around 9:30 in the morning."

     "Anything else?" I prodded, trying for 'stern but fair' and probably failing. My Neopet looked like she'd been painted ghost.

     "I don't remember!" She choked back a small sob.

     "That's okay. AnnaDeanne, what were you doing?"

     "I was at home mostly. Reading, painting. I went out to go shopping at one point in the afternoon, but items were out of stock everywhere I went."

     I motioned to Nisiko and Mobaro. "Thanks, you two. If you don't mind, I'm going to have you head back to the kitchen for a while."

     As I watched them go, I breathed a small sigh. It was time to call forward The Witness. A small shadowy figure stood up and walked to the front of the room. As she turned around, Xentria's eyes shone out from her velvet black fur.

     "Okay, Xentria, I'm going to ask that you tell everyone here what you told me, before." I glanced back at the people and Neopets that had gathered. Some were starting to look bored. Time to wrap things up.

     She blinked, and in that brief space of time, disappeared nearly entirely. "I was there, on Tuesday. I was out here, in the Multipurpose Room. They didn't see me." She took a breath and blinked again. Even her voice seemed to disappear into the background. "I'd just gotten back from sneaking in, to grab something from the Snowager. I'd gone, at 6:55 am. It was a two-and-a-half-hour trek, back from Terror Mountain, to the Guild Hall, here in Faerie Cloud City." Blink. Breath. "I was playing with the Shadow Korbat Plushie, that I'd picked up. By that point, it was 9:25. I know because, I looked at the clock, and wondered what else to do, with the morning." At that point she stopped.

     I prompted her, "and then what happened?"

     She blinked and breathed. "I saw a pair of wings, disappear into the Prize Closet. No one else, was around. No one else, saw. Just me. I heard them, moving things around. Then they left. I didn't see anything, more than their wings. I didn't think, more of it, until..." She paused again, longer than she had before. "Until you made the announcement, that the candy was missing."

     Finished, she walked off and promptly disappeared at the back of the room. She made no motion to me before she left, just did so simply and quietly. I thanked the crowd for being there. It was pretty clear who the culprit was.

     "AnnaDeanne!" The relief of having just cleared Penniest's name was mixed with bewilderment. The guild leader's pet? But why? It seemed so random and sudden.

     "She's getting away!" screamed Nisiko from the other room.

     I crashed through the kitchen's doors in time to see the Poogle perched on the sill above the sink.

     "Just give up! I need the candy. I'm hatching something way more important than your silly Valentine's Day candy toss!" And then the Poogle pushed off and flew into the night.

     Quivering, Penniest rushed to my side. "She's so strong!" she sobbed, evidently having tried to help.

     As I comforted her with a hand on her head, gears were turning in my mind. If AnnaDeanne needed the candy for something, that meant it hadn't been eaten, and if it hadn't been eaten, it could still be found.

     I rushed to the prize closet, hastily shoving my key into the lock. Those in the audience who hadn't left yet looked up with renewed interest.

     "The candy hasn't been eaten! We can still find it!" I explained. "I know this seems silly, but there's a LOT missing, maybe even half a million Neopoints worth."

     That fully attracted their attention. I brought out the Candy Till, bursting with colourful wrappers despite the recent theft. We'd kept up our usual pace of adding several pieces each day. Weird, I thought to myself. Out in the light of the hall, there were noticeably fewer blue candies.

     "We need to know how many pieces we're looking for. I have the weight of the till from the day of the theft, and I'm going to weigh it now. Accounting for how much we've added in the last 4 days, we'll know how many pieces are gone."

     I placed it on the food scale in the tiny kitchen, people and Neopets crammed behind me. "That's 6.12 kilograms." I checked the log, hanging above the scale. "It was 5 kilos on the 2nd." I took out a single piece of candy. "7.5 grams, so..."

     My head started to hurt. It had been a long day. I looked over my shoulder and smiled. Several guild members had their calculator apps open on their phones. A smattering of hands and paws flew into the air. Despite the tension of the night, I laughed.

     "No need to be so formal. What's the damage? How many pieces are missing?"

     "60!" piped up a very astute baby Aisha. "Which is 450 grams of candy. Which also happens to be almost exactly one pound."

     "Wow, you're sharp as a tack, Myrhi! Okay... one pound of... actually, it's probably all blue candy. Plus, we should remember that AnnaDeanne said something odd as she was leaving - that she was 'hatching something.'" I put a hand on the side of my head, which was still throbbing dully.

     Eyo chimed in. "If we follow those paw prints we found, maybe they will lead us to where-ever that Poogle flew off to, or, at least give us some more hints."

     I nodded, but still felt a like we needed to put some other puzzle pieces in place. Looking at the remaining Neopets and guild members, I asked, blankly, "Do any of you have an idea of where AnnaDeanne took the candy? And what she might be trying to do with it?"

     ------------

     The group assembled the next afternoon was much smaller, a ragtag bunch of the brave, the curious, and the bored. After spending most of the morning's daylight searching around Guild Headquarters, we'd miraculously found a trail of pawprints. Maybe carrying all that candy was too heavy for AnnaDeanne to carry over a long distance. There was no question we were on the right track. Half buried in the muddy tracks, once in a while, was a blue piece of candy.

     We walked for what felt like ages. The pawprints took us right out of Faerieland and then skirted around Brightvale, close to the shore. It was about sunset at that point, and the colours bounced joyfully off the slow, calm waves. On the far shore in the distance, I could just barely make out the distinct architecture of Kiko Lake.

     By the time we made it to Meridell, it was solidly dark.

     "Did anyone bring a flashlight?" I asked. Promptly, a few Neopets stepped forward.

     "Haha, I should have known better. Thanks Temporo and Mogdien." They both grinned at me in reply, glowing brightly.

     We proceeded. The path led up a hill that gradually grew steeper and steeper, until it was pretty clear that it was actually a cliff and that we were going to need wings or grappling hooks.

     "How..." and Hoid promptly held out a grappling hook, almost like he knew we'd need it. Taking a stealthy Neopet along always comes in handy.

     Suddenly, in the middle of the trail, was a giant pile candy wrappers, and off to the side there were the last couple dying embers of a campfire. In the ashes, I could make out tiny glints of blue, reflecting Temporo's glow. Had she melted the candy?

     We pressed on, and found ourselves in the Draik Nest. There, with a huge, sticky, egg-shaped mass of blue candy in her paws, was AnnaDeanne. As we watched, she placed the mass in the middle of the nest, gingerly pushing it away where it clung to her fur.

     "What are you doing?" I called out.

     The Poogle jumped visibly, and swung around. "What are you doing here?!" She'd clearly lost her composure since the trial.

     "We followed you!" piped up Myrhi, evidently not seeing any need for tact.

     AnnaDeanne glowered, and then her anger fell away and in its place was clear despair. "I really thought it would work. I keep moving it around, turning it, picking it up and repositioning it... but... I mean, this looks just like a Draik egg... I thought maybe..."

     "SHE HAS THE CANDY!" Nisiko evidently had even less of a need for tact.

     AnnaDeanne cringed. "I'm sorry! I just... I just... Look, I know I don't look it, but I'm 22 years old. I wanted my own Neopet. Yes, I've had Petpets and I have siblings, but... I don't know. I thought I could hatch one. I thought..." She wiped away a tear.

     I considered the pet's plight, and while I didn't have any ideas that even resembled a solution, I also knew we couldn't stay there. Perhaps more thought could be given to the matter over mugs of hot chocolate. "Why don't we head back to the guild?" I suggested. "I think we've all had a really long day. Maybe some hot chocolate would help in the short term?"

     The Poogle looked at the candy egg, then nodded. "Yeah, okay. I'm sorry for ruining the candy toss."

     "You didn't," I replied. "We have more than enough left over in the Candy Till."

     "Good. I'm glad. I know a lot of members really look forward to it. I'm sorry I acted so rashly." AnnaDeanne considered the semi-translucent blue egg for a moment. "I don't think I can fly it back. It's actually quite heavy for me. I can't imagine how you manage to pick up the whole Candy Till to measure its weight every day."

     I chuckled. "It's not that much of a challenge when you're people-sized." I looked at the egg, then back to AnnaDeanne. "Let's leave it here. That way, there will be a treat for the baby Draiks."

     "I like that idea. They'll start their lives with sweetness."

     With a smile, AnnaDeanne joined us. All was forgiven, and we headed home.

     The End.