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See, there's this thing called Pavlov's dog.
Usually, Wally wouldn't remember stuff like that. Experiments, psychology, it wasn't his thing. Sit him down in front of any sort of mechanics and he'd do fine, leave him unattended, and he'd have an entire room clean in ten minutes or less! His memory wasn't the best though, especially not for things like this!
But Pavlov's dog had the word dog in the name. There was at least one dog involved. And that was the only thing that made it interestin' enough for him to ask Norman about it after hearin' someone down in Heavenly Toys mention it!
Pavlov, the guy who did the experiment, would ring a bell whenever he was givin' his dogs (names not said because people didn't think it was important to share the dogs’ names, why wouldn't the dogs be important?) food. Over time, the dogs would start expectin' food whenever they heard a bell ring. Start buildin' up saliva and everythin'!
That shouldn't have been anythin' noteworthy. Since when did Wally care about psychology?
Well.
He may have accidentally Pavlov's dog'd his favourite co-worker, the head of Heavenly Toys, Shawn Flynn.
Sounds nuts, right? How the hell could Wally accidentally do that to someone? If he was gonna, it'd be on purpose!
Really, he should see if he can somehow Pavlov Sammy into bein' nice.
This time, though, it was a 100%, Wally Franks guaranteed, accident.
Whenever he went into the Heavenly Toys with his keys, Shawn would poke his head out of his office or wherever he was at the moment.
Happened once, and Wally didn't twice about it.
Twice? Coincidence, JDS was full of those.
Five times, and he was beginnin' to think he might have accidentally conditioned Shawn to pop out whenever he heard his keyring jinglin' on his tool belt.
This was one of his more harmless mistakes, at least!
But apparently, people have been weaponisin’ it.
Ya may ask, Wally, why would anyone wanna weaponise ya accidentally Pavlov's dogging your co-worker?
So they could mess with Shawn a little.
He was alright with people playin' little tricks, messin' around. He did it all the time to Sammy, Shawn, Mr. Connor, and everyone else he could think of!
But it'd been gettin' a little out of hand. This isn't the first time his keys got stolen without him noticin' until he needed them! Norman did it occasionally, but really? Ya would think he'd get better at noticing when they were being taken, but no such luck.
Jack said it was because he had next to none spacial awareness, whatever that meant.
He huffed as he finally made it down the final stairwell, takin' a drink from his water bottle.
Mr. Drew needed to get more elevators installed. He could probably run a marathon at this point with the best of them!
At least he'd never need to do any real cardio. Joey Drew Studios had him running around enough weekly.
He'd been about to walk inside when—
Jangle.
At least seven different keys hit against each other, the thing jinglin' and janglin' away.
"Wally?"
He finally walked inside.
And wouldn't ya know it, Shawn was already comin' out from behind that massive thing in the middle of the room. Havin' been no doubt in the production area from before.
The thievin' employee, Angus of course, was damn near smirkin' (Wally couldn't see it, but he could sense it). Holdin' Wally's keys.
Shawn wasn't oblivious to it, smilin' at Wally before lookin' down at Angus. Face dropping at his smirk.
"What's that about?"
"Heh! You should see yourself, Mister Flynn! This is how we should be getting you for stuff, pretending Mister Franks is down here!"
"He's right behind ye, Angus."
Angus looked behind him, finally spotting Wally.
One of his legs fell from his chair in surprise.
"Did I summon you with this thing?"
"Ya could say that! I'm gonna be outta here if I gotta ask Sammy for more keys again, though, so I need those back."
"Ye took his keys again?!"
If Angus had any of shame, he'd probably look it!
But he didn't, not even after Wally plucked his keyring from him and headed up the stairs.
Listenin' to Shawn gettin' after him for takin' Wally's keys again, Angus takin' a sip from his canteen like there was nothin' goin' on.
Wally shook his keyring again as he passed Shawn by on the stairs.
It might've been a little mean, but he couldn't help but laugh with Angus at how quickly Shawn's head turned to look over at him.