Might As Well Start Offering Punch Cards

It was a dark, gloomy (in an aesthetically-satisfying way) day in the Haunted Woods, and Balthazar the bounty hunter was stalking his quarry.

He moved through the thick foliage with a grace and silence that seemed implausible for a Lupe of Balthazar’s bulk, but he’d had a lot of practice.

Colorful light flickered faintly through the leaves—mostly shades of purple, mixed with a few greens and a bit of orange. He heard voices, too, and as he drew nearer to what he assumed was a quaint little faerie picnic (the flittering twits always seemed to be having quaint little picnics, or whimsical outdoor dance parties, or other gatherings along those lines) he was able to pick out words:

“—yeah, someone spotted him a little south of here a few days ago. But rumor has it he’s planning to keep moving south to restock on bottled fire faeries.”

“Oh! So he’d probably be pretty interested in me, then.”

“Don’t worry; you can stick with us for now. There’s plenty of food, so help yourself. These sandwiches Mizibel brought are super-good.”

“They do look good. Thanks for letting me crash your picnic. I just got out of a bottle earlier today, so I’m kind of out of the loop.”

“Oof, here’s hoping you don’t get netted again. At least not too soon.”

Balthazar grinned. They’d all be netted soon if he had his way.

He paused once he got close enough to peer through the veil of leaves at the faerie gathering.

A group of tiny faeries sat on an array of tiny picnic blankets and ate from an arrangement of tiny picnic baskets. For some reason, a lot of faeries who lived outside of Faerieland were small enough that whole groups of them could live in a single tree.

While he appreciated that it made them easier to net and bottle—though he did know a few good shrinking spells for faeries who weren’t conveniently tiny—it also meant that he couldn’t really enjoy the picnic once he’d bottled all the faeries. He’d barely be able to taste those itty-bitty sandwiches. It was just one more injustice that faeriekind had inflicted on poor old Balthazar.

Still, he’d have his preemptive vengeance for the lack of sandwich satisfaction when he popped as many of the picnickers as he could into his specially-prepared faerie bottles.

“I feel like we’ve met before,” said one of the tiny earth faeries.

“Um. Maybe?” said the fire faerie. “You do look kind of familiar.”

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here, though,” said a dark faerie. “That’s a classic Faerieland accent if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Guilty as charged,” said the fire faerie. “I’m… kind of avoiding it these days, though.”

“Can’t blame you,” said the earth faerie. “It’s full of stuck-up city faeries who’d probably cry at the sight of plants that weren’t in neat little rows.”

“Uh, yeah,” said the fire faerie. “They sure do like their… rows over there.”

“And they all seem to like being large for some reason,” the earth faerie continued. “It’s weird.”

Normally, Balthazar would be thrilled to put an end to this scintillating conversation, but something made him hesitate.

Something about that fire faerie seemed strangely familiar to Balthazar, too.

Now, Balthazar had been in this career path for long enough that he’d definitely caught some of these faeries more than once. Probably more than twice, even. For some reason, despite the fact that the Haunted Woods were his favorite hunting ground—not least because he lived here, so it was convenient—the faeries here didn’t seem scared enough of him to actually move, or stop throwing stupid little faerie picnics, or otherwise make themselves scarce and his job harder.

Which was nice and all, but sometimes it did make him wonder why.

He tried never to wonder for too long, though. There was really no use trying to make sense of faeries, and besides, the more energy you put into thinking about useless stuff, the less energy was left for doing the actually important things in life, such as capturing faeries.

But there was something about that fire faerie...

“Well, it’s been super-nice chatting with you, and I really appreciate the sandwich, but I don’t want to impose too much,” said the fire faerie, fluttering into the air. “I’ll just be heading out now.”

Oh no you won’t, Balthazar thought, then lunged out of cover, swinging his net.

A gratifying chorus of shrieks rose into the air as Balthazar’s net swept over the picnicking faeries, followed by a swift winnowing-down of the chorus as Balthazar popped all the faeries he’d caught into specially-prepared bottles.

He’d gotten a good few in that sweep of the net, though he’d missed that one fire faerie. Still, he’d gotten a decent haul, and…

...and that fire faerie was still here, hovering within easy netting distance even after all the other faeries had fled into the trees.

The obvious thing to do was to capture her. If she was too much of an airhead to get out while the getting was good, then surely he should take advantage of that fact.

But instead, he just stared at her.

She fluttered anxiously. “Um,” she said after a few moments. “Aren’t you going to capture me?”

Balthazar’s eyes narrowed. “Why aren’t you trying to escape?”

“I… cramp up if I fly too soon after eating,” said the fire faerie.

“You’re flying now,” Balthazar said.

“I wouldn’t call this real flying,” said the fire faerie. “It’s just hovering.”

There really was no making sense of faeries. Balthazar swung his sackful of bottled faeries over his shoulder. “You look familiar.”

“Well, you’ve caught me before,” the fire faerie said.

“I’ve probably caught most of the faeries around here at least once,” said Balthazar. “But you…”

He leaned in, squinting.

“I’ve definitely caught you before,” he said. “Several times.”

“Well. Yes,” said the fire faerie.

“In fact…” said Balthazar. “Now that I think of it, didn’t I catch you just last week, not too far from here?”

“You sure did!” said the fire faerie.

“And I’m pretty sure I caught you a couple weeks back, too,” Balthazar said. “Just a little east of here.”

“That’s right! It’s pretty dumb of me to keep coming back here, isn’t it?” said the fire faerie. “Guess you should net me again. Y’know, teach me a lesson.”

Balthazar grimaced. “Okay, you’re really starting to weird me out. Just how many times have you wound up in one of my bottles?”

“It, uh, doesn’t matter,” said the fire faerie. She glanced over her shoulder. “Like I said, I’m not going to fly away, so you may as well just put me in one of your bottles now.”

Balthazar stepped back. “You know what? I don’t think I’m gonna do that.”

The fire faerie’s fluttering faltered for a fraction of a second. “Wh-what? Why not?”

“Because I don’t like faeries,” said Balthazar. “Most faeries don’t want to be caught, so I catch them. But if you want to be caught, I’m not going to catch you. I’m gonna head out now. Bye.”

He turned to go, but the fire faerie buzzed around him, hovering right in front of his face.

“Wait!” she said. “Think of the money! You could make so much money selling me!”

“Bottled faeries are actually pretty cheap these days,” said Balthazar. “Just one faerie doesn’t make that much of a difference in my payout.”

“What!?” said the fire faerie. “You’re not even getting good money for us?”

“Market’s pretty saturated,” said Balthazar. “But I don’t do this just for the money. I do it for the satisfaction of making sure you guys know you’re not the biggest, baddest things in Neopia.”

The fire faerie’s gaze darted from place to place, scanning the forest for something that obviously wasn’t Balthazar. “That’s, um, great!” she said, though she seemed rather distracted. “Think of how satisfying it’ll be to stick me in a bottle!”

“Nah,” said Balthazar, tucking his net back into its designated belt-loop “I think I’ve caught enough for one day. I’m good.”

“Come on!” said the fire faerie. “Look, I’ll make it easy for you—just pop open a bottle and I’ll fly right in!”

“Nope,” said Balthazar, turning a little to the left and walking around her. “Find some other bounty hunter to bother.”

“But I don’t know where any of them are, and by the time I figure it out it’ll probably be too late!” said the faerie. Once again, she swooped right in front of him, hovering dangerously close to his muzzle. “Come on, pleeeeeeease?”

His hand shot out, neatly pinching her wings between his fingertips, and he held her right in front of his eyes.

“Too late for what?” he asked.

“It doesn’t matter!” she said again, wriggling in his grasp. “Just bottle me, quick, before she—oh nooooo…”

Balthazar heard the sound of someone tromping through the underbrush somewhere off to his left. He turned and saw the faint glow of faerie light.

“Bottle me bottle me bottle me bottle me please just bottle me now,” the fire faerie said.

“Shush,” said Balthazar, giving her a little shake, which made a little golden sprinkle of faerie dust fall from her wings.

The light grew brighter, and the sound of breaking underbrush grew louder.

“Why aren’t my teleportation spells working?” cried the fire faerie.

“Anti-teleportation enchantment,” said Balthazar. “Keeps faeries from poofing right out of my net. Or out of my hand, in this case.” He took a deep breath, then called out “Over here!”

“Nooooooo!” cried the fire faerie.

Moments later, a full-sized air faerie emerged into the clearing. “What in Calabrus’ name is going on here?” she asked.

The air faerie was wearing a pale blue suit and shoes that were a little too nice for tromping through the Haunted Woods. Her hair, which was a blue a shade darker than her suit, was pulled back in a long braid, and she was holding a briefcase in one hand and a crystal on a string in the other; the crystal was floating, pulling gently towards the fire faerie.

“You tell me,” said Balthazar. “This little weirdo seems to want me to bottle her. I’m guessing you’re the reason.”

The air faerie sighed, tucking the crystal into her suit pocket. “I hate it when people do this.” She cleared her throat. “Falara, daughter of Aralae?”

“No…” said the fire faerie, hanging limp in Balthazar’s grasp. “That’s… um… my twin sister.”

“You don’t have a twin sister,” said the air faerie. “And if you did, my tracking spell wouldn’t work on her. In any case, my name is Zephra, I’m a process server, and I have some papers for you.”

“I don’t wanna get divorced!” Falara protested.

“That’s not really my business,” said Zephra. “My job is to serve you with these documents.” She opened her briefcase, pulling out a small stack of what were presumably divorce papers.

“I… I can’t accept them right now,” said Falara. “I’m being captured by Balthazar.” She perked up a bit. “So she still can’t divorce me!”

Zephra looked at Balthazar, a strained expression on her face.

“Well,” said Balthazar, “It seems I have a bit of a problem on my hands. See, if I stick Ms. Runaway Divorcee in a bottle and sell her, that’ll make her happy. Apparently. And the last thing I want to do is make a faerie happy. But if I hand her over to you, that seems like it’d make you happy, which I’d also like to avoid doing.”

“I can tell you right now, nothing is going to make me happy about this situation,” said Zephra. “I’ve been trying to track this faerie down for months, and unfortunately the fact that she’s spent almost all of that time in a bottle means that divorce proceedings have been on hold for quite some time.”

“Eh? How can you tell she’s been bottled?” Balthazar asked.

The air faerie patted her pocket. “The tracking spell. When she’s in a bottle, tracking spells can’t pick up her location.”

“Huh,” said Balthazar. “Is that, like, a thing? Faeries getting bottled to escape legal paperwork?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Zephra. “And avoiding paying their taxes. And evading debt collectors. And occasionally trying to hide from criminal organizations.”

Balthazar really didn’t like the idea that he’d been helping faeries in any way with his bottling operation. Still, he was a business-Lupe… “Maybe I should start charging for that sort of thing. I could reserve a few shelves at home for extended stays. Balthazar’s Glass Hotel: no amenities, but hey! Whoever’s chasing you can’t track you down with magic!”

“I’ll be your first customer!” said Falara.

“How much you got on you?” Balthazar asked.

“Um,” said Falara, digging through her pockets. “...let’s see… looks like I have 53 Neopoints.”

“I’m not running a charity, Ms. Fugitive-from-the-Lawyers,” said Balthazar. “Besides, those coins are way too small.”

“I can unshrink them!” said Falara. “Besides, you bottled all those other faeries for free!”

“If I may interrupt,” said Zephra, “starting some sort of business where you keep fugitives bottled in your home would just bring the people searching for those fugitives right to your door.”

“Ugh, you’re right,” said Balthazar. “Guess I could still charge a bottling fee if I find someone who seems a little too eager to be bottled, though.”

“Wait, I found another 10-NP coin!” said Falara. “I can pay 63 Neopoints!”

“How about next time you’re dodging divorce papers, you come back with a little more than that,” said Balthazar.

“How about you stop trying to dodge divorce papers at all,” said Zephra, “and simply allow your partner to move on from this relationship?”

“We have a Kadoatie together!” Falara said. “What’s going to happen to Princess Shmoopykins if we get divorced?”

“Well,” said the air faerie, “while it’s really not up to me, given the fact that you’ve left this… Princess Shmoopykins in your spouse’s care for the last few months while you were off getting yourself bottled, it’s quite possible she’ll be granted possession of the Petpet in question.”

“Noooo…” Falara said.

“In fact, I don’t know of a single judge that looks kindly on spouses who draw out the divorce process like this,” said Zephra.

“What if… can’t you just go back and tell her I’m really, really sorry about the thing with her ex?” said Falara.

“You can tell her that yourself, though I suspect she’ll want to receive any communications solely through her attorney,” said Zephra. “In any case…” She sighed. “Mr. Balthazar. I need to provide my client’s spouse with a copy of these papers. Once I do that, my duty to my client is considered complete. I’m sure my client would be deeply exasperated, however, if her spouse were to be bottled immediately after I handed her the papers, as, by Faerieland law, time spent in a bottle isn’t counted against the deadline for the spouse to respond to divorce papers.”

“So I’ll be making two faeries unhappy if I hand her over to you, then bottle her,” said Balthazar.

“Yes,” said the air faerie.

“But I’d still be making one happy,” said Balthazar.

“‘Happy’ is a strong word,” said the air faerie.

“Content. Relieved. Satisfied. Whatever,” said Balthazar. “Still, I guess I don’t want to stand here all day holding this pipsqueak by the wings. Tell ya what, you can hand me those papers, I’ll hand them to Matchstick over here, and you can be on your merry way.”

“With all due respect, I won’t be getting any closer to you,” said the air faerie, who had entirely too much of a sense of self-preservation for Balthazar’s taste. “I have a certain talent for interrupting spells—including teleportation spells, which is quite handy in my profession—but I’d rather not take chances if you try to shrink me.” Frowning, she looked down at the paperwork she held. Then, with a flick of her wrist and a whispered spell, she summoned a long, sharp pin to her hand, which she used to stab the papers to a nearby tree.

“All right,” said the air faerie, stepping back. Way back. “You can come and take those—nice and slow, if you don’t mind—and hand them to Falara. Not exactly orthodox, but at this point I’m willing to take it.”

Balthazar looked at the fire faerie in his hand. There was a strangely thoughtful look in her eyes.

“Well, guess that’s it,” said Falara, looking at the pinned papers. “I guess I have no choice but to take those divorce papers.”

“I wish you’d figured that out a few months earlier,” said Zephra. “You’re the worst divorcee-to-be I’ve ever had to deal with, and I’ve had some absolute gems.”

“Thanks!” said Falara. “Say, Balthazar, I bet you’ve never gotten a faerie divorced before.”

“Dunno. Not like they’d tell me,” said Balthazar, shrugging. Falara had really perked up, and Balthazar thought he had an inkling why. Still, he ripped the papers off the tree trunk.

“Kinda large papers for a tiny faerie,” he noted.

“She’s usually larger,” said the air faerie, still keeping her distance. “Still…”

The air faerie murmured another spell, flicking her fingers towards the papers in Balthazar’s hand, and the papers shrank down to around the size of a postage stamp.

“There,” said the air faerie. “Now she can read those while she’s in the bottle.”

“Sure,” said Falara. “I’ll totally do that. Hand me that paperwork, Balthy.”

“Balthy?” Balthazar asked, pointedly not handing her the divorce papers.

“I feel like we have a real rapport going on,” said Falara.

“I feel like I’m going to shove you in the tiniest bottle I have as soon as I help serve you these divorce papers,” said Balthazar, which was probably the strangest sentence he’d uttered in his entire life. Still, he offered her the teeny-tiny divorce papers with a flourish. “Here you go, Matchstick. One set of divorce—”

Predictably, the papers crumbled to ash in Balthazar’s fingers—warm ash, and thankfully not hot enough to burn, which was surprisingly-considerate for a faerie—and Falara cackled.

“Not today!” the fire faerie crowed.

“Hm,” said Zephra, who didn’t look nearly as discomfited as Balthazar—or Falara, for that matter—might have hoped. “Oh dear. That will certainly make it harder for you to respond to your wife’s petition for divorce. Thankfully, according to court precedent, using your magic on the papers counted as receiving them, so my job here is done.”

“What!?” said Falara. “No!”

“You now have thirty days to submit your response to the court,” said Zephra, smiling like a Meowclops who’d just cornered a Miamouse. “As it seems you’ve rendered the copy I provided unusable, you should know that you can request copies at the Faerieland Central Courthouse to allow you to complete your response. Failure to respond within thirty days—notwithstanding any time spent trapped inside a bottle—will result in a default judgment.”

“No…” said Falara. “That’s not fair!”

“I think it’s quite fair compared to the way you’ve forced me to hunt you down these last few months,” said Zephra. “Have a nice divorce.”

The air faerie—who was, alas, standing out of range of Balthazar’s anti-teleportation wards—disappeared in a puff of shimmering sky-blue smoke.

Falara dangled limply from Balthazar’s pinched fingers, clearly dejected.

“Well, you tried,” said Balthazar. “And failed badly, but hey! You did try.”

The fire faerie sniffled. “My wife was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I ruined everything.”

“Sure did,” said Balthazar. “I’ve gotta wonder, though—what exactly was your plan there? Just keep getting bottled for the rest of your life?”

“I hoped she’d cool down after a year or two,” said Falara. “Maybe she’d start missing me. And then I could come back home to her and Princess Shmoopykins.”

“I gotta say, that’s the dumbest name for a Petpet I’ve ever heard,” said Balthazar.

Falara sniffled again. “It was my idea. It made her laugh, though. I… I’m gonna miss making her laugh.”

“Well, guess you shouldn’t have done whatever it was you did with her ex,” said Balthazar. “Don’t tell me what it was, though, ‘cause I don’t care.”

Falara sniffled yet again. “You might as well just stick me in a bottle now. What’s the point of anything if I can’t be with her?”

“Yeesh, you’re a sad sack,” said Balthazar. He really ought to go ahead and bottle her—that was kind of his whole thing—but...

He sighed, then turned his free hand face up right under Falara, gently setting the fire faerie down so she stood on his palm before he released her wings.

“Listen,” said Balthazar, holding her up so he could make proper eye contact. “Women are overrated.”

“Uh,” said the fire faerie. “What?”

“Women,” Balthazar repeated, “are overrated. I mean, look at me! I’m tall, famous, muscles for days, plenty of cash saved up from years of capturing faeries… by any reasonable standard, I ought to be a hot commodity on the dating market. But do you see me with a girl? Nah. Having a woman around would cramp my style, y’know? They’re all too intimidated by my rugged, independent bachelor lifestyle, anyways.”

“But… I…” Falara started. Then she paused, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “You know what, you’re right!”

“Always am,” said Balthazar.

“I don’t need her!” said Falara. “I’m… I’m free now! I can do whatever I want, and I don’t have to care what she thinks!”

“Right on, Matchstick,” said Balthazar.

Falara’s wings fluttered, and she started to rise into the air. “Yeah! I’m gonna go out right now and shoot my shot with Il—”

With a speed honed by years of hunting down his magical quarry, Balthazar snatched Falara right out of the air and popped her into the empty bottle he’d pulled out of his bag with his free hand while she’d been distracted.

“Dang, that was cold,” came a voice from a branch above him.

Balthazar looked up. There was a small dark faerie sitting in the tree, watching him.

“If you’ve got a problem, why don’t you come down here so we can discuss it?” Balthazar said, grinning.

“I’m good,” said the dark faerie. “It’s not like she’s a friend of mine. And I kind of regret giving her that sandwich. Sheesh, I thought my ex was bad.”

“Eh,” said Balthazar, tossing the bottle into his bag along with the rest of the day’s bounty.

“I think you might have saved her life, though, depending on what name she was about to say,” said the dark faerie. “Though now that I think of it, she could be doomed whether she went after Ilere or Illusen. Illusen wouldn’t hurt her, but Jhudora might.”

“Darn,” said Balthazar. “Guess I’ve done a good deed today. I’ll just have to make up for it tomorrow by catching more of you little pests.”

“Pretty sure you were planning to do that anyways,” said the dark faerie.

“Yep,” said Balthazar. “Boy, do I love my life.”

Whistling a merry, off-key tune, Balthazar slung his bag of bottled faeries over his shoulder and started back towards home.

Some time later…

A Zafara popped the lid off an orange faerie bottle, waiting eagerly for a fire faerie to pop out and offer him a blessing.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Just as he was about to lean over the top of the bottle and say “Hello?” into the bottle’s mouth, a fire faerie cautiously emerged.

“...oh, hi there,” said the fire faerie, perching on the rim of the bottle. “Mind letting me know where I am?”

“You’re at my home—I live on Seti Street, just a little east of the main marketplace,” said the Zafara. “In Sakhmet,” he added, realizing that this poor faerie might not even know what land she was in.

“Oh, said the faerie. “Lost Desert, huh?”

“It’s kind of weird how outsiders call it that,” said the Zafara. “I mean, I sure don’t feel lost.”

The faerie looked sad. “I’m feeling a little lost right now, actually,” she said.

“Oh,” said the Zafara. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the faerie replied. “It’s not your fault, anyways. It’s just… some things didn’t go the way I planned. And now I have to figure out how to move on with my life. Maybe work on myself a little. You know.”

“Um. That sounds… tough,” said the Zafara, wondering if there were a tactful way to move the subject towards the blessing Neopets traditionally got after freeing faeries from bottles.

“It is,” said the faerie. “But I’ll live. Somehow.” Her wings fluttered, and she hovered a little over the bottle. “The Lost Desert, huh… well, I’m gonna go shoot my shot with Nuria!” said the fire faerie. “Have a good one!”

With that, the little fire faerie whooshed away, zipping through an open window and out into the sunlit sky.

“But…” the Zafara said as the faerie receded into the distance. “My blessing…”

He looked sadly at the now-empty bottle.

Then he shrugged.

“Well, guess there’s plenty more where that came from,” said the Zafara, reaching for the next faerie bottle. Just a few more fire blessings and he’d be able to use Warlock’s Rage!

It was a bright, sunny day in in the (not actually very) Lost Desert, and Falara the fire faerie was seeking her quarry...

Epilogue: After She Shot Her Shot

“Absolutely not,” said Nuria. “Now get out of my desert.”