Stuffed Up

4. Now That We're Men

"So this is real?" asked Mang.

Cooky - who was standing at the foot of the beds - nodded his head as he looked at the others seated upon it. Tata had helped him to wake the others up to their new reality; some harder to wake than others. Hearing the 'click' of the bathroom door as it opened up, Cooky turned his head to the side to see Tata emerge with a wet washcloth over his eye from having been accidentally elbowed by Chimmy.

"But how?" asked RJ as he ran his hands along his white sweatshirt; a small pout forming upon his full lips. "I'm not fluffy anymore."

Chimmy looked at Tata standing beside Cooky. His face colored with a blush at the sight of the washcloth.

"I'm sorry, Tata. I didn't mean to."

"You're fine," said Tata. He brought the washcloth away from his eye, squinting it and trying to focus on the abstract art on the wall behind the beds. "I don't think you broke it."

"As odd as this is, the better question is where are our owners?" asked Koya, directing them back to the topic at hand.

"They were taken last night," said Cooky. "Don't you remember?"

"I do remember those ninja men..." said Chimmy, "And our owners certainly didn't seem to want to go with them...Are they okay?"

"We don't know," said Shooky, "Which is obviously why Koya was asking the question."

"Right," said Chimmy, blushing again as he tucked his hands into the sleeves of the yellow sweatshirt he was wearing.

"I wanted to stop those men last night, but I couldn't," said Cooky, remembering how Lorelei had dropped him as she had been unceremoniously dragged out of the room, "But now we can do something about it. We've got to while we can."

"But what exactly do we do, Cooky? We don't even know where those men took them," said Mang.

"Now that we're men, we've got to figure something out," said Cooky.

As silence settled in the room, a distinctive gurgling sound could be heard. Mang looked down at his stomach where the source of the noise was coming from. His eyes widened into two large saucers as he placed his hands on his stomach.

"I think I have a monster in my belly!" Mang shouted in alarm; everyone except Shooky looking at Mang in concern.

"It's not a monster," said Shooky. "That's your body telling you you're hungry. I should know. Iris gets cravings all the time even though she wants to keep dieting."

"But it sure sounds like a monster!" insisted Mang as his stomach growled again.

"Okay, new plan," said Cooky as he rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. "We split up into two groups. One group will go try to find food while the other group will report our owners missing."

"I dib being in the food group!" said Mang as he shot one hand up into the air. "I don't wanna die!"

- - -

"Cooky, are you sure that we should be doing it this way?" asked Tata as he followed Cooky towards the hotel's reception desk. "What if we get in trouble?"

"Why would we get in trouble for reporting our owners missing?" asked Cooky.

"It'd probably be wise to not say they are our owners," spoke up Shooky who walked a few steps behind them. "Humans don't have owners."

"True," said Cooky, coming up a few feet short of the reception desk. He turned to look at Tata and Shooky. "What do we say then?"

"Just say some women we were hanging out with the other night appear to have disappeared," said Shooky. "I mean, surely something like that should work."