As Pleasant as a Bubble's Pop

     Well, good for him! Now, let's get on with our story!

     ***

     "Oh wow! It's such a nice day outside. I wish I could go out and play with my friends…" Styan thought to herself as she gazed longingly out the window of the room. The blue Zafara knew it was a truly magnificent day out; the sun was shining and several Lupes were lying in its rays, sunbathing. A Meepit and a Feepit were frolicking in a field of Songflowers, which were singing merrily. A group of wild Snowbunnies began tap dancing in a chorus line. It was really a shame that the bars on the windows blocked Styan's view quite a bit.

     She looked around the room at her friends, most of whom were bent over reading out of their books (the teacher had earlier assigned pages 1-200, to be done by the next day). Several students had taken out hand lenses to read the microscopic text. Styan looked back at her desk and continued working on her art project; a scale model of the Wishing Well, due one week from seven days ago. One poor blue Shoyru was nodding off. The teacher, a horrible red Bruce named Mrs. Featherbeakwingspaws, was instantly upon him. As usual, she carried her purse; a horrid thing of bright purple and red stripes. She crept up behind him and removed a small gong from the bag. Holding it right above his head she tapped it lightly.

     GGGGOONNNNNGGG! it went, making the sound that gongs typically make.

     The Shoyru jumped several feet into the air. Styan wouldn't have doubted it if he'd just had his first heart attack.

     "Much better," Mrs. Featherbeakwingpaws said approvingly. "Jeremy, does your falling asleep mean that you are bored with the current assignment? Would you like something else to do?"

     "Oh Fyora no, I beg of you, Mrs. Featherbeakwingpaws! I haven't slept in three weeks! No more, please!"

     The teacher made her way up to the front of the room. "Class," she began. "If you'll look under your desks you'll find a copy of your new reading assignment, The Prunes of Mild Resentment. You'll need to have it read by next Thursday, and your 5 paragraph essay on what the Babaa symbolizes to Mr. Quiggle will be due the next day."

     Styan took out her book and groaned to herself. If she had groaned out loud, she would have had to write a short paper on groaning and its negative effects on the mouth and trachea. Once again, she wished a dark curse on her owner.

     See, Styan's owner and some of her Neofriends had gotten tired of sitting around waiting for the existence of Neoschools. It was not as much because they wanted their pets to get educations and become successful and get good jobs when they got older, and thus, leave the house, (although that was the ulterior motive of a few parents); it was because they had spent tens of thousands of Neopoints on school supplies when they first came out and could think of no occasion when they could possibly need a Punchbag Sid Backpack. Mira, a friend of Styan's mother, had heard of a women who worked as a private tutor while she was at the Beauty Salon. Styan could recall the enthusiastic conversation between the two of them well.

     "Oh Trina!" Mira exclaimed to Styan's owner. "From what I've heard, she's a wonderful women! She has ten children- each of which she taught herself at home! Four of them are still out of prison! I say we hire her to teach our children!"

     "That sounds like an excellent idea! We should let the rest of the girls in our book club know! I know most of them were looking for something for their pets to do over the summer. And what's better than staying inside all day studying things you may or may not ever use in life?"

     The two of them then made a squeal that only Puppyblews could hear and ran off to send mass Neomails to all their friends. A week later, Styan and six of her friends started their classes.

     Styan snapped back into reality. Or rather, reality snapped back into her, in the form of a Battle Muffin at her head. She looked up at Mrs. Featherbeakwingpaws, who gave her a sharp look that said, "Get back to work!" Styan went back to reading a lengthy description of a Flippy crossing the road.

     Suddenly, she heard a loud BANG! Looking up from her book, she saw Mrs. Featherbeakwingpaws collapsed over on her desk, and the desk was slowly giving way to her weight. Afraid this may be some sort of test (anything was possible with Mrs. Featherbeakwingpaws), no one left his or her seats. Finally, a Purple Bori started laughing uncontrollably. He got out of his seat and walked up to the teacher's desk and cautiously bent over and peered at her. Then he began laughing again.

     "What's so funny, Avat?" Jeremy asked.

     "Well, when Mrs. Fatbarbaricwhineypants came back to wake you up, I slipped a poison dart in her purse hoping she'd accidentally stab herself when she was going through it. It seems she thought it was a pen and when she realized it didn't work, she put it behind her ear and accidentally stabbed herself in the head and now she's out cold."

     A huge wave of relief ran over the seven pets. It was like you were innocently walking down the streets of Neopia Central when someone came up to you with a gun and threatened you, and then they pulled the trigger and you discovered it's just a bubble gun and you hear a pleasant pop and you now have clean ears.

     It then came to the minds of the youngsters that they were free, at least for the time being. They were in a room, without their parents, with their evil teacher who struck terror in their hearts and minds and made them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat reciting the rules about subject verb agreements was passed out in the front of the classroom.

     "Soo…now what do we do?" Jeremy asked. "I mean, since we are temporarily free from the teacher who strikes terror into our hearts and minds?"

     "And who makes us wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats reciting the seven pillars of character?" added a Ruki named Emlo.

     The others stared at him. "Well, there's one species better left undiscovered." Avat said. "So now what should we do?"

     ***

     "Got any threes?"

     "No, go fish."

     Avat drew and added another card to his already pitifully large hand.

     "Hey, did it occur to anyone else that maybe we should try escaping?" Styan asked.

     "But how? There's bars on the windows and none of us have thumbs to turn the knob on the door." Jeremy pointed out as all the pets look down at their wings, talons, and paws with only four fingers.

     "Does your owner know what Mrs. F did to your Living Room, changing it all like this?" Styan asked Jeremy.

     "Yes. She thinks it's lovely and she's looking for furniture to make it a theme room."

     "Your owner! She's home right now!" Emlo exclaimed.

     "Yes, but I don't think getting my mom in here and telling her that we drugged our teacher and now we're bored is a good idea."

     "AHHHHHH!!!" Emlo started screaming. "AAAAAHHHHHH!!"

     The others just stared at him. Well, six of the others just stared at him. One pet, a Skeith, was not really entertained by the scene currently in progress in front of him and was counting the tiles on the ceiling. There were 416.

     Jeremy's owner, a preteen girl named Dani, came running. She opened the door and gasped.

     "Jeremy! Where are your Extra Thick Goggles? You'll never get rid of your Blurry Vision at this rate!"

     Jeremy sighed and walked over to his desk and dug in his backpack, bring out a pair of glasses so thick that they looked like they would poke holes in any paper closer than six inches to his face.

     "Gasp! Your teacher! What's wrong with her?"

     "Miss Jeremy, I yelled because I was sick and tired." Emlo explained. "Sick and tired of us being cheated out of an education and you and the rest of our owners being cheated out of hard earned Neopoints She just told us to start reading and before we knew it, she was out cold. Sleeping on the job? Oh, please. How tasteless."

     Dani shook her head and tsked. "Well, come on, all of you. You can go in the kitchen and get some lunch. I need to contact all the girls and explain to them that we're going to need to find some other use for all these school supplies. And another way to teach you."

     And then they all left the prison living classroom and had a nice lunch and rest of the day. Well, except for Mrs. Featherbeakwingspaws, who spent the rest of the afternoon asleep on a broken wooden desk in the middle of a houseful of those who despised her and ended her evening by picking splinters out of her wings and getting the Sutek Beans out of her ears.

The End