Shawn walked back to his house, making his way up the front lawn. Erica had gone to her own house down the block, nervously fretting about Ralph's predicament. Eddy, for his part, didn't seem as concerned with Ralph as much as he was concerned about 'the investigation' as he called. 'The investigation' was what Eddy referred to finding Ralph and the Pig-thing.

As he opened the door and made his way upstairs to his room, he heard Ralph's voice from inside the room.

"'Pew'..'pew!'" Ralph said as Shawn pushed open the door. Ralph was sitting in the middle of the floor playing with the G.I. Joes.

"What are you doing here?" He asked as Shawn entered the room. "I thought you were outside p...p...p..playing."

"Ralph!" Shawn felt a huge surge of relief, and for once he could actually express his feelings out loud. Then he got control of himself and lowered his voice so that no one else in the house could hear what he was saying. "I thought the pig monster got you..."

"No." Ralph said with the innocence of a kid who didn't realize how upset his parents might be that he ran off. "I was just...just...just...playing here.  I was just playing here after it got gone in the forest. I was just...just....playing here after the Pig monster got gone in the forest."

Shawn had heard sometime adults who had little kids got very upset, very tired when trying to manage them. They ran off. They moved things around that they shouldn't be touching. And above all, they seemed to be completely oblivious to dangerous things and situations. Shawn had witnessed this kind of activity on the playground when the hall monitors during recess would get upset at the 3rd graders for climbing up trees--entirely too high for them---completely oblivious to the concern that parents or other authority figures might have for there safety.

"Oh, that's okay Ralph." Shawn felt too relieved to be mad. He sat down and picked up a couple of discarded Joes and played with Ralph a bit. And then after a while, the thought he'd been meaning to ask Ralph occurred to him once more. "Hey Ralph, do you always know when the pig monsters comes here? Do you think he'll be back?"

"Pew!...pew!...pew..." Ralph said, making the figure shoot into the air.

"Um...y...yeah. The Pig is the...carnie...the l...lead...l..lead carniv..v..v.vil carnie. It's Hogwash. He takes the kids and make's 'em work. He's a snatcher. Cherrywinks will come and he likes to slice kids so he can rebuild the Circus. But H..H...H...Hogwash, he just want to snatch kids from the real world. When the Circus opens, he sells all of the prizes that the snatched kids make. That way, he...he..he can get the souls of the people that win or buy them. But that only happens when the Circus o..o..o..opens. He's a snatcher. He'll c..c..come from under the bed and take kids. And he makes them into sl..sl..sl..sl..sl..slaves."

"But yeah I get a f..f..f..f..feeling when he's about to c..c..c.c..c.c..c...come around."

"You said before that the Circus is fighting over souls so they can be in charge when it opens up. But Hogwash doesn't take them, right? Not until it opens?" Shawn made the Joe flip backwards as it was shot by an imaginary Cobra henchman. "Do...do you think if next time he came here, we could give him some buckets of acorns, and maybe some shiny stuff from the thrift store? Get him on our side, even a little?"

"Hogwash...he...he..love acorns. They don't grow in the Circus underworld." Ralph explained.

"Pew! Pew! Pew!" He momentarily went back to the G.I. Joes.

"He might like it. To get for acorns is...is..is...is....something he might liked for to have." Ralph agreed.

"He'll be back for...for..for..for..more. Or for more kids."

Shawn nodded seriously as a plan took form. "Okay, I think we should try and gather as many acorns as we can. Then next time he comes, we can offer them to him. I've got a little pocket money, so maybe I can find some other stuff he likes too. The clowns already hate me, so we should try and make some friends, right?"

"Make..new friends...but keep the...the..the..the old. One is silver and the other...other...other..other gold." Ralph agreed, adding a well rehearsed rhyme.

Ralph looked around, as if he was unsure of what to do or how to proceed. The look of a little kid who agreed with an idea, but needed to be led to action.

"Okay, it's dark now, but I might have a little free time tomorrow, so we'll find some buckets and go collecting acorns. We'll do that whenever we can until you have a feeling that he's coming, right?" Shawn tried to think of any other pieces of a plan that might help. "We can also bike to the thrift store, and you can point out anything you think he might like. I've saved up a few dollars. And-hmm, Eddy was still really interested in finding the monster, so I should probably try to head him off too. But that's for me to worry about. For now, we'll concentrate on the acorns."
This message was last edited by the player at 11:51, Mon 12 June 2017.

"Acorns!" Ralph agreed. "A...ac...acorns!" he stammered, happy to be included in Shawn's plan.

The rest of the night went well. Shawn, Ralph and Bobby all got a chance to relax. Mom even let them have ice cream. It wasn't until the following day when Shawn would put his plant to work, getting ready to gather all of the acorns necessary and then head off to the thrift store with Ralph.

OOC: End Thread