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It was a peaceful day in Smileyland, and Kaeloo was teaching Quack-Quack how to do yoga.
"And as you exhale, lift your arms up in the worm-on-a-hook pose!" the frog instructed, raising her arms and her left leg into the air. Quack-Quack raised his arms in the air, attempting to mimic Kaeloo, when he felt a sharp pain in his stomach. The thing about peaceful days in Smileyland was that they didn't tend to last.
"Great job, Quack-Quack! It just screams 'realism'!" Mr. Cat said, his voice dripping with sarcastic sweetness as he cradled an iced coffee in his hands. Quack-Quack did not respond, as the giant fish hook that he had been impaled with was causing him too much pain.
"Mr. Cat!" Kaeloo said.
"What? You're the one who wanted him to look like a worm on a hook! Damn. You can't even help people these days," he said, rolling his eyes and shrugging. He took another sip of his coffee, looking casual and smug.
Just as Kaeloo was about to transform, Stumpy walked by.
"Well, I'll be back! I hafta go pick up Vitamin," he said.
"When did you even get here?" Kaeloo asked, bewildered.
"Quack!" Quack-Quack gestured to a cabinet full of multivitamins that Kaeloo, being the stickler for health that she was, had bought for the main four.
"No, not those vitamins! Vitamin, my sister!"
And with that, Stumpy walked away.
"His sister? I thought he didn't have a sister," Kaeloo wondered aloud.
"Well, sometimes he doesn't have a sister, and sometimes he has seven. He's a real liar," Mr. Cat said.
"Quack?"
"No, seriously! What parents would name their daughter Vitamin?" Mr. Cat scoffed.
"The same parents who named their son Stumpy?" Kaeloo countered.
"Touche," he acknowledged, taking another sip of his coffee.
"Quack?"
"Oh, you want to know Mr. Cat's first name? It's-" Kaeloo started, only for Mr. Cat to do a spit take and get coffee all over her.
"Mr. Cat!" Kaeloo screamed.
"Oops…"
Before he knew it, Bad Kaeloo was standing in front of him. The toad pulled the straw out of Mr. Cat's coffee and repeatedly tried to stab him with it, as Mr. Cat dodged each time, surprisingly agile for someone who was still holding a coffee cup in one hand.
"Quack!" Quack-Quack stated with the most amount of shock anyone had heard him express in the time they'd known him. Mr. Cat and Bad Kaeloo both paused their activities to look at what Quack-Quack was pointing out. The shock was enough to make Mr. Cat drop the remainder of his coffee on the floor as he nearly passed out, and Kaeloo (now de-transformed) caught him just in time.
"Stumpy, you… you actually have a sister?!" Kaeloo shrieked.
Stumpy walked closer. Next to him was a young squirrel with a green onesie and large headphones. The onesie had a picture of a battery on the front, fitting for its energetic wearer, who was visibly twitching and fidgeting.
"The name Vitamin sure does suit her," Mr. Cat said as he steadied himself. He slowly approached the girl to get a better look at her.
"The kid looks a little tense," he noted.
"That's puttin' it lightly! She's a ball o' nerves! She can't stay still! She has concentrated hyperactivity, and nobody can keep up with her! Nobody!" Stumpy said. "Not even me…" he added sadly. His neck spasmed rapidly as the others stared in disbelief.
"Ya don't believe me, huh?"
He took Vitamin's headphones off of her ears and spoke to her.
"Vitamin? Go stretch your legs!"
And Vitamin was off like a shot. She ran around a tree in circles with such rapidity that the tree was felled, and repeated the process multiple times. The rest of the main four were on edge as she zoomed around them.
"Your parents could have also named her Caffeine… or Adrenaline…" Mr. Cat remarked.
"Well, those were on my parents' baby name list but they got ruled out," Stumpy said.
"You weren't kidding, she really is fast!" Kaeloo remarked.
"Yeah, she's real speedy, I tell ya," Stumpy said. "Only the music can calm her down," he added, gesturing to the headphones he was holding.
"It's true that music has extraordinary power over stress! What does she listen to to calm herself down? Celestial harp? Tibetan singing bowls?" asked Kaeloo, who was familiar with such strategies to calm oneself down. Stumpy put the headphones on her non-existent ears. Kaeloo began to shake and curled up into a fetal position.
"This isn't music, it sounds like construction noises!" the frog complained. Quack-Quack rushed to alleviate her distress by pulling the headphones off of her. Out of curiosity, Mr. Cat snatched them from Quack-Quack to try them on too, and pulled them off almost immediately. Then, he put them on Quack-Quack, and held them in place as the duck struggled to break free.
"No wonder the kid is stressed if this is what she listens to!" Mr. Cat said.
"Mr. Cat is right, Stumpy," Kaeloo piped up.
"No, that's 'cause you're not listenin' at the right speed!" Stumpy explained, yanking the headphones off of Quack-Quack. He showed them a dial on the side labeled "speed" with five settings: snail, turtle, human, cheetah, and blue hedgehog. Stumpy turned the dial from blue hedgehog down to human.
"This is what she hears!" he said, as the headphones started to play relaxing Western music.
"Say, this is actually pretty relaxing!" Kaeloo said.
"Yeah, if ya like cowboy music," Stumpy said. "Well... I've gotta go get her back. Too much activity and she'll have trouble sleepin' at night. Vitamin!" he called. Vitamin ignored him and continued to zip around.
"Vitamin, get over here right now or I'm tellin' Mom!" he threatened. That seemed to get her attention, and she rushed back to where Stumpy was standing and tried to stand as still as she could.
"She switches between extremes!" Kaeloo said. "Is she always like this?"
"Yeah, even when she sleeps! I've tried everythin', but she's stuck in her own little world! I can't even play with her!"
"She's in the zeitgeist! These days, speed is the only thing that matters! I'd rather be an old geezer." Mr. Cat scoffed, walking back into the room holding a mug filled with hot coffee to replace the coffee that had fallen on the floor.
"...Quack," Quack-Quack said flatly, his eyes half-lidded in annoyance.
"Twelve is old by Smileyland standards!" Mr. Cat protested. "Froggy and I are practically ancient compared to the rest of you!"
Kaeloo was desperate to change the subject - she didn't like thinking about losing her youth. So she turned to Stumpy.
"If you can't play with her, it's like you don't have a little sister at all!"
"Yeah, and it's like she doesn't have a big brother…"
"It's so sad!" they exclaimed in unison, hugging each other and crying.
Quack-Quack noticed this sight and decided to use his superpowers for good. He wanted to help this poor child. And so, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, enveloping himself in a torrent of energy. Now he too would be able to move as fast as Vitamin. He gently approached her as she sat on the ground.
"Oh… hi!" she said.
"Quack," he greeted, waving at her.
"Oh, you're like me!" she gasped. "That means I'm not all alone anymore! I'm not all alone anymore! I'm so happy! Do you want to play with me?"
"Quack!" he said, nodding enthusiastically.
"Don't you know how to say anything other than 'quack'?"
"Quack!" he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Well, that's a little lame! But for once, I can talk to someone!"
Meanwhile, on the outside, the other three were watching in bewilderment.
"Quack-Quack's become just as speedy as Vitamin!" Stumpy remarked.
Mr. Cat tried to use the opportunity of Quack-Quack being distracted to hit him on the head with a mallet, but Vitamin pulled him out of the way before Mr. Cat could do any harm. Quack-Quack felt his energy start to waver. Even his powers had limits.
"You'll be back, right? You won't leave me all alone?" Vitamin begged.
"Quack," he smiled, offering her a fist for a fist bump, which she accepted.
And with that, Quack-Quack went back to his normal speed.
"Quack," he said sadly, explaining everything that happened to his friends.
"That's terrible! At her speed, Vitamin is like a hummingbird in a world of snails! Everything must be so slow for her! So long! So strange! So boring!" Kaeloo said, her eyes full of sympathy.
"Ya spoke to her? No way! No one's been able to do that before!" Stumpy said. Mr. Cat felt his breath hitch.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the phone. You mean to tell me that this kid has been living with you for… however many years she's been alive, and you've never managed to communicate with her?" Mr. Cat said, raising an eyebrow. "Not a single person in your family? Or any of her friends?"
"Well, no," Stumpy said. "Didn't ya see how fast she is? There's no way we could talk to her!"
"Well, isn't there some method of asynchronous communication you could use?"
Kaeloo and Stumpy stared vacantly.
"You know, things that don't need you to be operating at the same speed! Like writing, which I assume she's old enough to know how to do! Or text messages! Or recording voice messages that you can speed up or slow down!"
"Wow, Mr. Cat! Ya sure are smart! Nobody in my family's ever thought of those ideas!"
Mr. Cat stared at him with an expression that looked neutral from the outside, and successfully masked what he felt on the inside: a growing sense of horror at the implications. This conversation was setting off multiple alarm bells in his head. What Stumpy was describing sounded a lot like child neglect. Why hadn't anyone in this child's family taken the time to come up with such simple solutions? And why were they so content with just… leaving her like that?
"I wanna play with my little sister," Stumpy said.
Mr. Cat felt a strange feeling of jealousy and resentment building up inside him. His own brothers never wanted to hang out with him when he was little, except when it was as a guise to abuse him. He felt the urge to run away and pretend he hadn't witnessed any of this. Regardless, he steeled himself; he felt the urge to investigate the situation more, pushing aside his discomfort. He'd realized recently that he could be a happier version of himself by being nicer at times, and he wasn't going to let that go to waste. He'd look into the matter for both Vitamin's sake and for Stumpy's.
Quack-Quack hauled in a large empty bathtub, sat in it, and instructed the others to get in.
"We're at the age where taking shared baths is weird, not cute," Mr. Cat said disgustedly.
"Quack!" the duck said. This single quack sufficed to explain that if everyone sat in the tub together, they could share his powers.
"What the - why the hell didn't you mention that earlier? How long have you been able to do this for?!" the feline demanded to know.
"Let's discuss that later, Mr. Cat," Kaeloo said, picking him up and putting him in the tub before getting in. Stumpy climbed in too. Once again, Quack-Quack summoned a torrent of energy. This time, everyone was enveloped in it, allowing them all to obtain super speed.
"Everything's in slow motion!" Kaeloo remarked.
"Vi… Vitamin?" Stumpy called.
"Oh, big brother!"
"Hey Vitamin, check it out! I can finally understand ya!"
Vitamin's eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning.
"This is great, Stumpy! It's great! Now we can talk, and say stuff to each other! Like, for example, that you totally suck at soccer!"
"Oh yeah? And what about my video game console? Who broke it, huh?"
"You did! You dropped gribiche sauce all over it, and now it's not working anymore!"
"Oh, the tender bond between a brother and sister! It's so cute!" Kaeloo said.
"Uhh…" Mr. Cat pointed at Stumpy and Vitamin. He was pulling on her ears, and she was trying to bite him.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Kaeloo said, pushing them apart. "There's no need to fight!"
"Yeah," Mr. Cat said. "Why don't we all play a game? I vote hide and seek! Vitamin can be 'it'."
"Aww, Mr. Cat, you really are getting nicer!" Kaeloo said. Mr. Cat pretended he didn't hear that.
Vitamin covered her eyes and started to count.
Kaeloo, Stumpy, and Quack-Quack ran away as fast as they could to hide somewhere far away. Vitamin was about to get to 10, but Mr. Cat caught her by the shoulder.
"Hey, don't you know how hide and seek works? I'm supposed to find you, not the other way around! And you interrupted my counting!" Vitamin complained.
"Actually, kid, I wanted to talk to you," he said.
"You wanted to talk… to me?" she asked, her eyes sparkling.
"Sure did!"
Now, what should he ask her about? The others were bound to notice if this took too long. Ah. He should probably ask about food. Stumpy always seemed pretty hungry, now that he thought about it.
"Do you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day?" he asked.
"Umm, yeah, usually, unless I oversleep during the weekend and then it's too late for breakfast."
"Have you ever been deprived of food?"
"What does deprived mean?"
"You know, when someone doesn't give you food."
"Yeah! I have!"
Mr. Cat's heart sank at those words.
"How often?"
"It happened last week. We had a really big chocolate bar at home that Mom bought for us, and we were supposed to break it into equal pieces and share it. But my sister Moldie ate my share and told everyone that I probably ate it super fast and that's why they didn't see me eating any."
Mr. Cat was relieved. It was just a child misunderstanding what he meant. Good, it looked like Vitamin - and by extension Stumpy - had adequate nutrition. Of course, now that he wasn't worrying about Vitamin, he could use this situation to cause some of his trademark mischief.
"Sorry to hear that, kid! Tell you what. Why don't I share my drink with you? That might make you feel better," Mr. Cat offered sympathetically, holding his still half-full mug out to her.
"Thanks, Mr. Cat!" Vitamin smiled. She took the mug and drank a few sips. Then she grimaced. "Ew, what is this? It tastes bitter!" she complained. Before she could protest any further, her body started to speed up, even by Vitamin standards.
"It's coffee," he grinned. "Anyway, I don't really feel like playing anymore. I'm off to do my own thing. You have fun with the others now though."
And with that, the two parted ways. It was time for Mr. Cat to cause mayhem in Smileyland.
The first person on Mr. Cat's list of annoying people to target was Game Rule. That annoying goody two-shoes made Kaeloo look laidback in comparison. He snuck into Game Rule's "office" (a random room that she had claimed for herself) and saw her there, opening an envelope that revealed itself to contain a piece of paper. The microwave dinged, and she went to get whatever she'd left in there. Mr. Cat rushed to read the paper.
" LIST OF NEW RULES FOR SMILEYLAND'S INHABITANTS ", read the title.
Mr. Cat grabbed a blank sheet of paper, wrote a new list, left it in the place of the original, and ran away. Game Rule didn't notice a thing. He paused to wonder who could be writing these instructions to her, but decided that he didn't have time for that right now - he only had a limited amount of time before the super speed wore off, and he wanted to maximize the effects of his pranking spree.
Game Rule returned and read the list and gasped. The very first thing on the list had been violated already.
Meanwhile, at Olaf's igloo, Olaf and Olga were enjoying a bowl of borscht.
"How is the soup, dear?" Olaf asked Olga. Olga did not respond, for obvious reasons. The pleasant moment was interrupted by Game Rule teleporting into the igloo and blowing a whistle, startling Olaf.
"You are currently in violation of a rule."
"What rule?" the penguin demanded to know. "All I am doing is enjoying a meal with my lovely wife."
"And that is exactly the problem," Game Rule said. "According to the new rules for Smileyland inhabitants, nobody is allowed to eat healthy food anymore. Only junk food from now on," she said, making the borscht disappear with her powers. "Any further resistance will be met with a penalty."
"These rules keep getting stranger and stranger," Olaf sighed as he trudged to the fridge and grabbed an ice cream cone. He sat down and unwrapped it.
"Ah, nothing beats a nice cold chocolate ice cream," he said.
Just as he was about to lick it, Mr. Cat sped into the igloo and, unnoticed by Olaf, stole the ice cream and replaced it with a dust bunny from under Olaf's couch. It would seem that Serguei was slacking off on his duties as butler.
"EURGH!" Olaf screamed, picking bits of dust off his tongue. "Olga! I think the igloo is haunted!"
Once Mr. Cat was done laughing, he decided to go mess with the bunny twins, because why not?
Meanwhile on the other side of Smileyland, Vitamin finished counting to ten, in the amount of time it would have taken a normal person to count to two. She casually started to walk around looking for the others. Of course, what Vitamin considered a casual stroll could easily match the running speed of an Olympic sprinter.
The first person she found was Stumpy. Vitamin had never thought that playing hide and seek with Stumpy was fun. Not because of her super speed, which ruined games like tag and basketball, but because Stumpy sucked at it. He seemed to believe that if he couldn't see you , you couldn't see him. And so, Vitamin found her older brother hiding behind the couch, with both of his feet sticking out so she could clearly see them.
"Found you!" she said, tapping him on the shoulder.
"Rats," Stumpy said. Vitamin sped away. "Hey, wait! How did she get so fast again?" he mused aloud. "Did the super speed wear off already? What a ripoff!"
Next, Vitamin found a bunch of boxes of varying sizes in the middle of nowhere. One of them was very large and she heard breathing from inside it. Kaeloo was very obviously inside the box. Vitamin opened the box. A bunch of bats flew out, which would have startled her if they weren't so slow from her perspective. The bats flew into Smileyland's forest, where screams could be heard. A drop of sweat rolled down Vitamin's forehead. Suddenly, the young squirrel heard giggling. She looked around and realized that the giggling was coming from a tiny gift box, not much bigger than her hand.
"Oh yeah, I forgot we lived in a cartoon," she said. Vitamin pulled the ribbon off the box and it came undone, and Kaeloo jumped out, physics be darned.
"You found me!" Kaeloo said, smiling. "Umm… is it just me, or do you look really restless again…?"
Vitamin sped off to go look for Quack-Quack. Stumpy strolled up to Kaeloo.
"I think the super speed wore off," he said, shrugging. "C'mon, let's go help her look for Quack-Quack."
Quack-Quack was standing there with his head buried in the ground like an ostrich. Inexplicably, this was preventing Vitamin, Stumpy, or Kaeloo from being able to find him. Vitamin walked right past him, intending to check the bathroom.
"I'm surprised the super speed wore off so quickly," Kaeloo said to Stumpy.
"Quack?!" Quack-Quack said, pulling his head out of the ground.
"Oh, there ya are!" Stumpy said. "Maybe you should keep hidi-"
Quack-Quack shook his head frantically, looking worried.
"Quack!"
"... What do you mean it didn't wear off?!" Kaeloo asked.
"Do ya think Vitamin was affected by your powers and got super speedy too?" Stumpy asked.
"Quack," the duck said. That was a no.
"Why do ya look so pressed?" Stumpy asked.
"Quack!"
Kaeloo and Stumpy's faces paled. What Quack-Quack had just told them was that if their super speed wore off, Vitamin would be moving at a speed so fast that they would be unable to see her.
"Oh no! I can't go back home and tell Mom I lost another sister!" Stumpy said.
"What do you mean another -" Kaeloo paused. "Wait, where is Mr. Cat?" she asked, her eyes narrowing as she came to the belated realization that the feline was probably up to another no-good trick.
Elsewhere, Pretty and Eugly walked along the beach.
"It's a good thing we were able to get away from the forest with that bat infestation," Pretty said. "It's too bad those other losers are too poor to afford a trip to the beach."
Eugly mumbled something, fanning herself with a fat stack of cash.
Rookie mistake , Mr. Cat thought to himself as he sped by and stole the cash.
Eugly noticed immediately, though she hadn't been able to see that it was Mr. Cat; all she saw was an orange blur, and then her cash was gone. She mumbled to her sister, using sign language to communicate what had happened. Pretty sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Of course this happened. I'm not even surprised. You really are an idiot, Eugly. It's a good thing our parents have at least one child that isn't a disappointment," Pretty said.
That made Mr. Cat freeze in his tracks. His mind was flooded by unpleasant memories of his brothers taunting him. He snarled. He'd be keeping the money, of course, but there was no way he'd be letting another abuser take advantage of their more vulnerable sibling. Especially not Pretty, considering everything she'd put him and his friends through. He saw a sheep painting a picture of the ocean nearby and used his newfound super speed to steal the sheep's paintbrush, and darted back towards Pretty at full speed.
"Vitamin? Vitamin!" Stumpy called, searching for his sister. He looked behind the couch.
"You know, usually when someone is 'it' in a game of hide and seek, they're the ones doing the searching," Kaeloo said, closing the door to the bathroom after confirming that Vitamin wasn't in there.
"We've gotta find her before the super speed wears off! At least that way I can, I dunno, hold onto her or somethin' so I don't lose track of her!" Stumpy said.
Mr. Cat walked in, pulling a bat off of him and tossing it over his shoulder.
"Oh hey there, barna-" he started, but Kaeloo grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him.
"MISTER CAT! WHAT DID YOU DO?!" she screamed.
"Oh, you know," he said with a smug grin and a fake halo above his head, "the kid was looking kind of sluggish so I gave her some of my coffee. Sharing is caring!"
"Me beat up Kitty?" Bad Kaeloo asked from inside Kaeloo's head.
"No no, now isn't the time, Bad K," Kaeloo said, shaking her head.
"Aww, what?!" Mr. Cat asked, frustrated.
"Quack!"
This simple "quack" sufficed as an explanation of the current situation. The color slowly drained from Mr. Cat's face. He hadn't realized that the situation would get this bad. He tried not to let the discomfort show.
"At this rate I'm never gonna get her to calm down!" Stumpy wailed.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Cat," Kaeloo said.
"Whoa, whoa, Froggy, calm your t-" Kaeloo shot him a glare and he gulped. "A-A-Anyway, I've got this." The cat beckoned the others to huddle with him and whispered his plan.
"Sounds like a good idea," Kaeloo nodded.
Mr. Cat put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
"Hey, kid! I found the other players for you!"
Vitamin shot to where the cat was standing.
"Anyway, hide and seek is a little boring, don't you think? I think we should play something else!" he suggested. "Why not play a little game of tag?"
"That sounds like fun, Mr. Cat," Kaeloo agreed. She was a terrible actor, but Vitamin was too young to notice the stilted delivery.
"Okay, Vitamin," Stumpy said. "You count to five, and we'll start runnin'."
Vitamin nodded and everyone started running. The first person to get caught was Stumpy, to nobody's surprise.
"Aw, come on!"
Vitamin started to catch up to Quack-Quack, but he teleported a few feet away, forcing her to speed up to catch up with him. As Quack-Quack was starting to run out of energy, he needed to go to the fridge and grab some yogurt, so he signaled to Mr. Cat to take over. Mr. Cat ran past Vitamin in the opposite direction as Quack-Quack.
"I bet you can't catch me!" he taunted, blowing a raspberry. As Vitamin started to chase after him instead, he pulled out his bazooka and launched one of the missiles, hopping on top of it as it shot into the air and riding it into the distance. Vitamin would have no trouble catching up to a person, but the missile made it harder. As the missile was about to land, Bad Kaeloo pulled Mr. Cat off of it and threw him several more feet at full force, allowing him to fly through the air once more. Mr. Cat effortlessly landed on his feet. Vitamin leapt in the air to tag him. Instead of running away, Mr. Cat put out his arms… and caught her.
"Tag… you're… it…" she said, out of breath, now back to her original speed. Her eyelids were starting to droop. She was very, very tired from all that running.
"We did it!" Kaeloo cheered. "Your plan worked, Mr. Cat! We were able to tire her out!"
"Man, I'm beat," Stumpy said.
"You didn't even do anything," Mr. Cat snarked.
"Well, that doesn't mean I can't be tired!" Stumpy said.
Just then, the bunny twins walked by. Pretty noticed everyone moving erratically at a high speed and scratched her head.
"What are those losers doing?" she asked her sister. "Mr. Cat should really get some better friends."
Kaeloo, Stumpy, and Quack-Quack froze in their tracks upon seeing Pretty. It didn't last long, however, as Stumpy and Quack-Quack burst into peals of laughter.
"Stop laughing, all of you! This isn't funny!" Kaeloo said, trying her best to sound as if she wasn't stifling a hearty chuckle as well. "Mr. Cat, how could you do this?"
Vitamin opened her eyes to take a look too, and Kaeloo tried in vain to cover her eyes, but it was too late.
"Why does that girl have a bunch of wieners painted on her face?" Vitamin asked, giggling.