Homecoming: Part Four

     "Nope," McCloud agreed. "That adventure was sort of one disaster after another. And, unfortunately, the place I chose was little better. But by this time, we had been gone from home for a few weeks—longer than I'd ever been before. I missed Almedha and I wanted to go home more than ever. Ru was the opposite. The more time he spent looking for Jelly World, the more he had to find it."

     "Did Almedha know how unhappy he was?" Anna asked.

     "I don't know, but what could she have done about it?" McCloud asked. "I knew that Ru belonged with us. And I belonged at home. But Ru was sure he belonged in Jelly World even though he had no idea where it was and I wasn't even sure it existed." McCloud sighed, and frowned. "And our visit to Tyrannia was the last straw for me."

     "You both went back home afterward," Anna said. "Because Ru obviously didn't find Jelly World."

     "Well, I could just tell you, but don't you want to hear the story?" McCloud asked.

     "Oh, yeah," Anna agreed, curling up under her own blanket as the snow continued falling in the darkness outside. "Go ahead."

     McCloud smiled and crossed his paws and looked out the window. That day in Tyrannia had been nothing like today. That was for sure...

     *********************

     "This is better," Rushishi muttered, looking up at the sun responsible for the sweltering Tyrannian heat.

     "At least there are no ghosts," McCloud pointed out, watching a group of hunched-over Myncies make their way across the street. "No clowns."

     "No coconut crème," Rushishi pointed out with a smile. Then he frowned. "All there is to eat here is omelettes," he said, looking down at the omelette in his hand. It was a sausage omelette, while McCloud's had some kind of vegetable in it. McCloud didn't care so much. He was just happy to be eating semi-normal food again.

     "At least it's not a Blumaroo tail steak," McCloud muttered.

     Rushishi didn't respond to that, but got up from his seat on the ground and started walking toward the plateau. "Hey," McCloud said, bounding after him. "Don't you want to play putt-putt?"

     "No," Rushishi answered. "I heard there was this dark cave up there that no one has ever been to the end of. Maybe Jelly World is on the other side."

     McCloud sighed. "Are you kidding me? Don't you remember what happened last time we went into a cave-like thing?" Rushishi looked at McCloud like he had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe he really didn't have a brain... "Geraptiku? The tomb? Any of this ringing a bell?"

     "Life is so easy for you!" Rushishi snapped.

     McCloud stopped walking and sat down. Just what was that supposed to mean?

     "You were brought home when you were just a baby. You know where you're from and you know where you belong! Pets like me, we don't have it so easy, all right? We don't belong anywhere. If I can find Jelly World, then maybe I will belong somewhere."

     "But you already do," McCloud objected. "Almedha adopted you; you belong with us. Why don't you see that?"

     "Why don't you see that I'm not like you?" Rushishi asked. "I'm grateful I'm not in the Pound anymore. Really, I am. But I want... I want..."

     "You have a family now. What more could you want?" McCloud asked.

     Rushishi frowned at him. "You'd never understand."

     "I do!" McCloud snapped. "You know what I always wanted? A brother."

     "You don't just adopt one of those and expect it to work out," Rushishi pointed out.

     McCloud sighed, rolled his eyes. "I know those don't just appear out of thin air and it takes hard work to make one. But you know what? No one anything less than family would have followed you all over the world like this! So if I'm not your family, then what do you want?"

     Rushishi stared off blankly at the horizon of Tyrannia before shrugging mutely.

     McCloud sighed and looked up at the sky toward a star invisible in the daylight: the Virtupets Space Station. "I guess... I wanted you to be family so badly I never thought about if you wanted that," he sighed. "But if you really don't want it, then I don't want to force you into it. You can keep looking for Jelly World if you want to. I'm going home. And... you can always come back sometime. If you want."

     Rushishi smiled weakly. "Thanks for the offer."

     "Be careful," McCloud said, picking himself up and dragging himself off to the singular Tyrannian Inn.

     He checked once to see if Rushishi was following him... but he should have known better. He was alone, now, and so was Rushishi. He checked into the Inn and decided that he would leave in the morning for home. Wouldn't his owner be surprised to see him? Without Rushishi...

     He spent that night looking out his window toward the plateau, wondering what Rushishi could have possibly been doing in that cave. He thought to go after him a couple of times, but Rushishi wouldn't have liked that. He didn't want a family, did he? He just wanted Jelly World to be real. All the owners and brothers and sisters in Neopia wouldn't ever change that.

     As for McCloud, he was pretty sure that, after this, his adventures were over. And he bid them good riddance, too! He didn't need them. All the ghosts and scary things and stuff like that. He didn't need those things at all... Maybe...

     He sighed and rested his chin on the window sill. But it had been fun, half of him admitted. And all he had ever really wanted in his whole life was a brother. He could still have one of those, he guessed. Rushishi just hadn't worked out, McCloud told himself. And that was okay. He liked Ru the way he was and wouldn't have wanted him to change.

     Ru was just one of those people that didn't need or want family.

     McCloud sighed again and looked toward the plateau where he was pretty sure Rushishi was tromping around in a dark cave somewhere. "But..." he asked no one. "But what if we need you?"

     *********************

     The next few weeks at home were mind-numbingly boring in comparison to McCloud's adventures abroad, but he made the most of it. He adopted a petpet and took on the responsibilities of grocery shopping for Almedha, as if those things would add some excitement to his life. Almedha and McCloud were both glad he was home... but sad at the same time. It was a complicated sort of emotion.

     McCloud took his Yooyu to the Grundo Café on the Space Station, since Almedha had it in her mind to do something "gourmet" for dinner that night. The Grundo Café was about as gourmet as you could get up there. He always stopped at the petpet shop, because he liked to watch the little robots play, clanking and tumbling around because they'd only just come off the assembly line and they weren't quite used to their new feet.

     This was it, he thought, watching two Griefers ram one another in the head like it was some kind of game. This was as fun as his life got? He had never been unhappy with that before. Why was he so unhappy now? He was happy at home, with Almedha. He was happy when he was playing with Toad, his Yooyu.

     The little creature paced back and forth on the ground before him, waving his tentacle-like arms as if he were conducting some kind of orchestra. McCloud smiled down at him. "Hey, Toad. What are you doing?" The Yooyu did a flip and then stuck his tongue out at McCloud, a gesture that McCloud returned with a smile.

     "Are you gonna buy something or aren't ya?" a green Grundo holding an N-4 bot snapped at him.

     McCloud frowned at it and said, "No, I'm just looking."

     "Then move along, move along..."

     "What kind of demand is that?" McCloud asked. "I'm just window shopping."

     "Move along, move along."

     "You move along," McCloud muttered, not moving his feet from his spot.

     As McCloud spoke, a security robot ambled up and asked McCloud, "Is there a problem here?"

     "No," McCloud answered quickly, glaring at the Grundo. "Is there?"

     The Grundo pointed at Toad, McCloud's Yooyu and explained, "You've got a petpet and you're blocking the passage of other customers who might actually buy something."

     McCloud looked down at Toad, whose tongue was hanging out of his mouth in the direction of the Grundo, and then around him at the decidedly slothful bustle of the Space Station. "There's no one here!"

     "So you're loitering," the robot identified.

     "Yes," the Grundo agreed.

     "No," McCloud objected, even though he wasn't entirely sure what loitering entailed. "I'm not. I'm looking." The Grundo looked like he was about to object when McCloud turned toward him. "Look, I'm not afraid of you. Or you," he added, casting a glance at the security bot. "I've outrun plenty of clock-work clowns, and you guys aren't even close to being as scary as a ghost."

     "What's that got to do with anything?" the Grundo asked, apparently confused.

     "Nothing," McCloud muttered, walking away a bit. "I'm just looking for petpets for a friend. We'll come back and buy it if I see one that I like, okay?" He tried to think for a few minutes about who that might be, but had no idea. But he could have a friend, he decided. A friend that wanted a robot.

     The Grundo just frowned and went back into his shop as the security bot went on his way.

     McCloud looked back in the window, watching Toad stick his tongue out at all of the robots and occasionally up at him.

     "Nice Yooyu."

     McCloud jumped and spun around to see the familiar Jelly Blumaroo standing there, looking no different from normal. Top hat, check. Long, ratted red coat, check. Glint in his Jelly eye, check. "I thought I was never going to see you again," McCloud said after a moment.

     "Yeah, well, I figured that I already got a place to belong. What fellow in his right mind needs two?" Ru shrugged and came to stand next to McCloud, looking through the window at the petpets. "You got a petpet, I see," he commented.

     "You can have one," McCloud offered.

     "No, thanks," Rushishi said with a shrug. "Not right now, anyway. I think I'd want... a pet more ugly than one of these. I don't know. Someone will adopt these fellows no problem."

     "That's true," McCloud agreed with a nod. "How was your trip?"

     Rushishi shrugged. "No more or less exciting than usual." Then he looked at McCloud with a strange look in his eye that McCloud had never seen in Rushishi before. "So, what do you say we head... home?" Rushishi spun and started to walk away.

     McCloud couldn't help a smile at the mention of home, and out of Rushishi's mouth. He bounded along after Ru and suddenly halted. "Wait. So, does it exist?"

     "Does what exist?" Ru didn't turn around.

     "Jelly World!"

     "Ohhh..." Ru said with a smile over his shoulder. "Maybe." He walked away, then, and didn't look back anymore.

     "What?" McCloud demanded. "You mean that I spent three weeks getting trapped in tombs, chased by ghosts and evil clowns... and I don't even get to find out if it's real or not?"

     Ru just laughed. That maniacal laugh.

     "Ru!"

     *********************

     Anna bolted upright when McCloud said The End in the most unobtrusive way. "Wait a second!" she objected.

     McCloud lifted his head from the couch and looked at her. "What is it?" he asked.

     "Did he find Jelly World or didn't he?" Anna asked.

     McCloud laughed, that laugh he remembered Ru laughing. The truth was, he still didn't know whether Rushishi had found Jelly World or not. But there was another truth, this one more important than anything else he had learned on that venture: "Does it really matter?"

     Anna sighed, turning the chess piece in her hand before setting it down on the window sill next to her. "No," she admitted with a smile. "I guess it doesn't."

     McCloud shared her smile and agreed, "That's what I thought, too."

The End