Home Alone in Pure Heart Valley

Chapter 9

It was a night-filled evening back on the streets of Lunarton City. In a suite in a moderately fancy hotel, the five Sweetypie children milled about, mostly switching between looking out the windows and fiddling with some of the decorations lying around the suite. The TV was on and playing some random channel for background noise.

"Hey kiddos, who's up for a tasty jumbo shrimp platter?" Badgerclops announced with his custom showman's voice. In one of his hands was a shiny metal plate that held a sort of exquisite appetizer, being obviously shrimp decorated with green leaves and surrounding a single cup of red dipping sauce. The kids stopped what they were doing to swarm around him, already getting ready to clamber on him for a share.

"Whoa! Whoa, hey!" he tried to keep all of them back, "one at a time!" He managed to gently push the kids back down as they stood around him in an orderly manner. Badgerclops lowered the platter until it was at a reachable level for the kids, to which the kids reached over to grab shrimp in no time at all.

It did, however, prove to be a disappointment. There were only five shrimp on the platter overall, with the rest of the plate being completely empty and the central sauce cup having less than a millimeter of sauce left in it. Each of the kids got only one shrimp and could only dress theirs in just a droplet of sauce.

"Excuse me, but where's the rest of the shrimp?" Kevin asked.

Badgerclops didn't look at him. Instead, he innocently started in some other direction, wiping his mouth with his free hand. "Well," he coughed insincerely, "the hotel was kinda low on shrimp recently. This was all they gave me. Honest." The kids just gave him a deflated look before turning away to resume their activities, making an effort to enjoy their shrimps anyhow.

Badgerclops lifted and activated his mechanical arm to tap into available phone lines, trying to make an effort to call for some help regarding Adorabat. It took a bunch of hello-ing and repeating of his request to the place's local operators, mostly in part to lack of context on some instances and a language barrier in another. Granted, he expressed more patience in his calls than Mao Mao, but could only clarify himself for so long that he couldn't help letting a yell of his own.

"Hello!? I'm calling to get info on our deputy!" was more or less his blowup. Even if he did last longer than Mao Mao (he wasn't sure how he compared with Eugene), the pressure came down harder once he caved. It led to him feeling like sobbing. "Why are you making this so difficult!?"

Back in the lounge area of the suite, the kids soon felt like talking about the situation themselves.

"This is so pointless!" Ketchup huffed as she let herself drop on the couch.

"What do you mean?" Chubbum asked in response to the cynical statement.

"We're just sitting around in this hotel! The grownups are too busy wondering what's happening to Adorabat! We haven't gone anywhere since we left the airport!" Ketchup sighed. "This is not the vacation I wanted."

"Well, I just hope my pet spider's okay," Lucky sighed. "How could I leave my little friend behind?"

"This isn't about your spider, Lucky!" Ketchup reprimanded with her hands on her hips.

"I'm pretty sure Adorabat's okay," Chubbum tried to be optimistic. "I mean, she always talks about how tough she is and how she can take care of herself."

Ketchup wasn't assured. "But still...she's small just like us. We don't know what's happening back home." She noticed Badgerclops coming around the corner, letting out a frustrated growl-sigh before letting himself drop down on the couch. The badger tried to wind down with a bit of TV-watching. Ketchup approached him. "Um, Mr. Badgerclops? Is Adorabat going to be okay?"