Pigeons
Crash had two problems.
The first problem was that the girl was not going to let him take the butterfly out of her pocket at all. He had been trying for almost fifteen minutes, but it just wasn’t working.
The second problem was that the girl had started looking at him with big scary bug eyes, and was licking her lips like he was an especially delicious pizza shaped like a teddy bear.
“Brains, teddy!” she said hungrily, “Brains!”
Crash just stared at her.
“No bwains for you,” he said sternly.
“Brains!”
“I don’t fink you have bwains,” Crash told her, “You definitewy don’t act wike you do.”
“BRAINS!” screamed the girl, and finally, Crash had had enough. He squirmed out of her arms, dropped on the ground, and with his quickest karate moves, snatched the butterfly out of her pocket!
The good news was, she didn’t seem to care about the butterfly anymore. The bad news was, she grabbed him by the ear and started shaking him like he was a bottle of orange juice that she was about to open. At first, it was fun to be shaken like that, but after a few seconds, Crash started to feel like he was going to throw up.
“Put me down!” he yelled.
The girl stopped shaking him, looked at him with her crazy bug eyes.
“I want your brainses, teddy,” she said.
“You can’t have dem,” Crash replied.
“I’m hungry,” the girl said.
“Eat a gwapefwuit,” he said, “dey’ve got vitamin C.”
The girl seemed to be thinking about grapefruits, and Crash found that when he wriggled a bit, he was able to pull free of her chubby little fingers. He dropped to the ground and started to back away slowly, keeping careful watch on her to make sure she didn’t chase him or something.
But then he noticed something odd: the girl didn’t have her mommy around anymore. She was all alone, in the big city, with lots of big, scary-looking strangers all around.
Crash looked down at the butterfly in his hand, then back to the girl.
“Where’s your mommy?” he asked.
The girl checked around in circles.
“Mommy brains?” she asked.
“No, not mommy bwains,” sighed Crash, “Where’s your mommy so you can go home and eat gwapefwuit and pwobabwy swobber on your dolls and stuff?”
The girl checked all around again, and then, in a freaky monster voice, she started to cry!
“I want my mommy!” she sobbed, “Where’s my mommy? Where?”
The other people on the street were starting to look at the girl, and Crash noticed right away that they all had the same creepy eyes, and were walking like someone had knocked them over the head with bricks. They were not the kinds of people you wanted babysitting a three-year-old.
He reached over and grabbed the girl by the hand and pulled. She didn’t budge, just looked at his hand, then at his face sadly.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re gonna find your mommy,” Crash grumbled, “but first we hafta find out where dis bubberfwy hid my waser gun. I’ve got a feewing we’re gonna need it soon.”
When Crash looked back around, he saw something truly awful: the butterfly wasn’t in his hand anymore! He gasped, looked left and right quickly, and only then noticed it…
… a pigeon right next to him was munching down the last bit of the butterfly’s wing!
“No!” he yelled angrily, “Dumb birdie! Give it back before…”
But it was too late … the pigeon started to shake, and then it shot sparks into the air, and before Crash could react, it was glowing bright green like the butterfly had been!
“Oh super,” Crash sighed as the pigeon freaked out and flew off into the sky, far, far away. He grabbed the girl’s hand tighter, and they chased after as fast as they could, before anything else could go wrong!