The Playground Wars

Chapter Thirteen

I stand as still as a tree, looking up at the skies above me. The Toonbots fly down and spot me. Within moments, they begin to surround my stiff body. A cog starts walking towards to me from the back of the crowd. He smiles gruesomely down at me in his chocolate brown suit.

"Looks like the mouse fell into the trap again," General Cheese says. He leans to grab my arm, but I spit at his face, which manages through the smoke. Immediately afterwards, he slaps my face. I could feel the right side of my face burn like a forest wildfire. He grins, but not for long as his eyes grows wide, looking behind me.

"Look ou-!" he screams but he's interrupted at the gun fire. I turn around, and see 3 Toonbots break down and drop dead to the cold hard ground of the woods. Behind them is a familiar pink mouse, who is the reason I am here instead of being safe at my ex-home Donald's Dreamland.

"Let's go, Oswald," Cuddles says. I want to run to her. She's safe! I'm so relieved. She looks shaky, which is no surprise. I begin to run towards her until General Cheese grabs my arm tightly. I struggle to break free.

"Let me go, you idiot!" I yell with anger in my voice. He rolls his eyes like he doesn't care, until his eyes meet Cuddles. She points a gun at him with her arm shaking. "Let me go," I say one more time calmly. Cuddles makes eye contact with me quietly, without General Cheese noticing. Right after, I elbow him in the eye, and I duck as I hear the gun shoot screws to, once again, break apart General Cheese.

He falls to the ground like the other Toonbots did. Raven black oil spills from where the screw made a hole in his robotic suit. Feelings of joy begin to conquer my mind, but not for long, as more and more Toonbots descend from the skies above. Cuddles motions me to follow her, and I run to her without any interruption. But I as I'm running, a thought makes me stop. General Cheese has survived multiple times. I take the gun from Cuddles' hand and as my eyes meet his black metallic pupils, stained from the oil, I shoot his head. Sparks fly and his remains twitch uncontrollably.

We run to the woods with the Toonbots on our tail. The more we run, the more I feel like the woods will never end. In bad luck, I trip over a log and fall to my knees. I get up slowly, barely escaping the Toonbots. I try to keep running at the same pace as Cuddles. She has her screw gun ready just in case. After about 5 minutes or so, we reach a cave. She goes in as if she already known the place. The cave is dark and a little small, so she pulls out a match and lights it up to guide our way through. We stop at the dead end of the cave, where we feel safe.

"Your knee," she says, looking at my injury with a mixture of shock and fear. I look down, and my whole knee is scraped with blood. There's a cut on my palm from where I touched the rough ground. Near my elbow is a sketchy line that mostly resembles a zigzag; the bleeding continues.

I've been through worse injuries, so this feels like nothing to me. Instead of panicking, I look through my backpack, which to my surprise, survived the fall from the airship. I take out everything and drop it on top of a pile of dry leaves. There's red tape, a watch, my glasses, a dip gun, 3 joke cards, 2 batteries, and juggling balls. There's also a dancing cane broken in half, so Cuddles decides to use it as fire. To be honest, I didn't even know these stuff were in my backpack, as I'm too busy running to check it. I regret not using it in situations from the past, though.

"The best thing for that cut is the tape," she says quietly as Toonbots march right past the cave, unaware of us inside it. I can't think of what to say to her; I haven't seen her for a long time.

"What were you going to say on the airship?" I ask. She stares at the fire sadly, like she's thinking about something.

"It doesn't matter anymore," she responds, still staring at the fire. Soon enough a river of tears flows down her cheeks and onto the dead floor of the cave. "It was horrible," she manages to say with her mouth trembling. "I was lucky enough to escape." Then, a long pause. Silence.