Digging

     The Library Faerie cocked an eyebrow at the short human who addressed her. They were friends, to say the least. They met every Saturday when Jadestorm tripped to the bookstore, and all incidents considered, they got along quite well with each other.

     She took a deep breath. "Jade, you sound like you just pounded all four of your pets and drowned at the bottom of the ocean."

     "Do I?"

     "You look like that too."

     Jadestorm combed her dark hair with her slender fingers, before raising her eyebrows. "I - okay, so there is something wrong."

     Maria stared at her. The human's eyes were bloodshot, and her cheeks were a tired shade of puce.

     "Oh, you poor -"

     "Not with me," she said quickly. "It's about Stripes."

     The faerie twisted her angular face, struggling to match the name. "Stripes... Stripes... isn't that the pet who cleaned out your fridge?"

     "Yep. That one. The Xweetok."

     Hazel eyes frowned in puzzlement. "But isn't cleaning the fridge a noble act?"

     Jadestorm shook her head. "Right, so it probably is, but recently, he's slipped back to where he was before - worse, actually."

     "You're obviously not very good at discipline, Jade."

     The owner looked downwards and twiddled her fingers for a while, buying the time to say something reasonable rather than something uncommonly stupid. "Now see here, Maria," she finally explained, "you can't really blame me when there's nothing to do about it."

     She shook her head. "Stripes, you see, has been sneaking out every night to do something suspicious, and none of my traps have ever stopped or snagged him in his process. And you add it on to the fact that he always brings that shovel with him..."

     Stripes stuck his shovel into the dirt.

     At once, three pairs of foreign eyes followed its path as the iron sheet dug into the ground, releasing clouds of dust that glowed wanly in the light of the full moon. The Acara, Aisha, and Buzz raised their eyebrows simultaneously.

     "Bunch o' dirt again," the blue Xweetok groaned. He threw the grime back, where it landed with a thud on something moving. Someone gave an audible moan.

     "Watch it!"

     "Your turn again, Marcia299999102."

     Stripes stood back once again, and leaned on his shovel. He had dragged it out of his house with much difficulty - particularly owing to his owner Jadestorm. What was it now - a giant wall only destructible once some excruciatingly difficult trigonometry brainteasers had been solved and decoded? Well, it might as well have done him in. Only the fact that the hapless girl had left the answer key on the dinner table gave him some luck.

     It was worth the risk, what he would get on this - assignment.

     "Donut," said the Acara, bending down to pick something up. She immediately gobbled it down.

     "You glutton."

     The waiting was boring, but the prizes were fine. He'd heard tales of people digging up paintbrushes and striking it rich overnight, and he'd heard a lot of them. Well, who knows...?

     "Go."

     Stripes was suddenly shaken out of his gold-filled reverie by a well-defined poke in the backend with an abnormally sharp shovel tip. The Buzz, apparently well-known for his lack of patience, was starting to lack his patience very eagerly.

     The Xweetok gave an apologetic smile that turned promptly into an annoyed twist of his mouth. Turning away, he dug in again, and immediately felt something as hard as wood. "Yeah, we're done," he shouted, chucking the earth away.

     An elongated hexagonal box came into view, combined with a slightly ghastly smell that was reminiscent of something ancient. "In Loving Memory" was inscribed in fading italics at its middle. The hinges gave way quickly as an overly enthusiastic Gelert tore it open, holding a vial of violet potion. "Negative," he called out. "Where's my hundred NP?"

     "N00b," Stripes spat. He kicked the surplus of dirt that had mounded into a mountain. It would be five minutes before he could have another go at it.

     His foot caught something furry, and it shot out, landing right on his palm. A Meepit, with large, emotionless eyes, stared at him.

     "Meep?"

     Ignoring his dignity, Stripes gave a loud whoop. A Meepit was one million in the trading post, and one million could buy a lot. With a wide grin, he put the Petpet in his sack, and set off for another open grave.

     Digging up dead people was definitely profitable.

     "Stripes, there's suddenly a million NP in our bank account, and I wanna know where they're from."

     The Xweetok got up from his book, stretched, gave a loud yawn, before giving a barely coherent reply. "I'm coming!"

     He made a mad dash for the kitchen table, knocking over several cupboards in the process, and before he had a chance to savour the delicate tinkle of broken porcelain, he was face-to-face with a half-confused, half-angry owner.

     "What?"

     Jadestorm shook her head. "One million Neopoints don't appear overnight in a normal family bank account."

     "Well, this isn't exactly a normal family," Stripes reasoned, "and besides, why are you asking me? I'm sure Princess -"

     "The thing is, when you start sneaking out with a shovel in the middle of the night, people usually begin to ask you funny questions."

     Stripes gave a daft grin and stared at the fridge. Bits of mould still clung to its sides, but it wasn't much of an issue any more. A week after the thing had been cleaned, they'd stopped using it entirely. Little bits of muck were only minor issues compared to the big issue the Xweetok had found himself in right now.

     "You should throw the 'frigerator out, Jade," he said warningly. "We could get into a situation again."

     "No, I shouldn't, but please don't change the topic." Jadestorm glared at him sternly. "I just want to ask, exactly what have you been doing?"

     "Planting trees," Stripes replied automatically.

     Jadestorm buried her head into her hands. "Oh, dear Fyora..."

     The Xweetok waited patiently for his owner to resurface. "Do you need smelling salts?" he asked politely.

     "No - just that you don't really go about planting trees at one-thirty in the morning."

     "Right."

     Stripes gave a quick and pert blush.

     "Okay," he managed to say. "Um, by the way, thank you for leaving the answer sheet to sine 90 to-the-power of cosine 120 degrees on the kitchen table where it was fully available to me, my dear owner."

     The Xweetok managed to escape before the explosion was heard. He was several metres away, in another room, when the boom and crash noise so commonly sounded out in the Jadestorm household came into audibility.

     His owner had plunked her head into the dining-room table, and it had created a decent-sized dent in the tiled floor.

     The midnight clock swung fatefully. Dong... dong... dong...

     Stripes lay in his bed, feet propped up patiently. ... dong... dong... dong!

     The twelfth toll sounded decisively as the Xweetok shot out of his room, grabbing his coat and shovel which both hung conveniently beside the nearest exit. He gave a contented grin. This was the fastest yet.

     Jadestorm, after three days of struggling with locators and traps, seemed to have finally given up, because today, locators and traps didn't exist to bar his frantic way.

     Frost shone on the branches of the bare trees outside as he dashed down the road, a simple shadow in the countless alleys - clandestine shortcuts that he'd discovered over the hours of grave digging.

     He wasn't aware of it, but something was following him, closely but discreetly.

     Stripes pushed open the cold graveyard gates, bronze and black in the night, and made a beeline for the nearest undisturbed tombstone, already surrounded by three other pets. The Flotsam, Jetsam, and Eyrie greeted him kindly and grinned.

     "Ready to dig?" Stripes shouted gruffly.

     "Ready-o!"

     Stripes waited courteously, leaning on the plastic shovel handle, as his companions eagerly plundered the secrets of the dead, picking up the occasional donut. More dirt spewed out, blocking the glow of the stars momentarily.

     "Hey, you Xweetok, it's your turn!"

     Stripes gave a wide, social smile, and lifted his shovel. Perhaps, like last time, he'd get something valuable, like a Meepit. Perhaps, even a Halloween paintbrush. He pondered that. Perhaps...

     "Not so fast!"

     Stripes abruptly spun around, frozen with shock, just in time to see an outraged hand with slender fingers beat down on him in an excellent display of martial arts, before stars came dancing into his eyes like what happened in babyish theatre shows. He fell to the ground in an overly dramatized act, sighing as if in a hackneyed swoon.

     Jadestorm glared at Stripes.

     She glared at the shovel.

     She glared at the tombstone, which was standing dumbly, firmly planted into the earth.

     "What now?" she muttered. "Ah..."

     She picked up the shovel and began digging.

The End