Chapter 193 - Teddy Bear

"PETUNIA!!" Miss Nabi shouted while hurrying down the staircase after hearing her shouting loudly earlier.

"Miss Nabi?" A familiar voice called, which made Miss Nabi's fast heartbeat slow down a little bit.

"Shelby? Poker?" she said while descending down the stairs and watching Poker the bear carried Petunia like a baby and even swung her a little bit in an attempt to make her calm down.

"Miss Nabi!" Shelby said in a relieved note with teary eyes which made Miss Nabi worry.

"What's wrong? Why is she crying? What happened to Petunia?" Miss Nabi asked restlessly and landed on Poker's furry shoulders.

"Petunia couldn't recognize us anymore, Miss Nabi. She thought Poker was going to eat her," Shelby said in a jokingly manner which made herself laugh for a moment before going back to a serious note, "But really, I'm very worried about her-"

"AAAAAAAAAAH!" Petunia screamed, which arrived as an aggressive meow to Karizze and her friend's ears.

"What's happening here?" Karizze whispered and stayed low while still leading the group down the stairs, watching a bear rack a silver cat on his shoulders and seemingly in a conversation with the squirrel and the butterfly which she thought was a ghost before.

"Should we still go down there?" Lorenz asked hesitantly, being the most frightened of them all especially after seeing a big bulky brown bear conversing with a talking butterfly.

"Is that the cat? Daddy said I need to give this back to her!" the innocent little Lizzie said and went ahead of Karizze down the stairs courageously which made Lorenz and Karizze sweat buckets while whispering for her to come back aggressively.

"I'll go get her," Gonder volunteered and went on ahead, only to catch the attention of the animals talking downstairs with his heavy steps down the metal stairs.

"A human! Quickly, hide!" Poker said and jumped behind a slightly thick pole not far from him like what he had been doing forever whenever he encountered humans in the forest.

And thanks to that, humans who just got lost or were intentionally hunting in the winter forest just find him cute and let him go whenever he does that.

"Don't worry, they're friends. I asked them to come here after hearing about the collar in their hands," Miss Nabi explained briefly.

"What collar?" 

"Petunia's memories," Miss Nabi said, which confused Poker and Shelby even more.

"How does that work?" Shelby, a very enthusiastic squirrel who likes to hang out around humans in order to observe their advanced technology, said while staring at the collar in the little human girl's hands.

"Butterfly! Please give this to her," Lizzie said and held the purple collar up with both of her hands to reach Poker's claws which Poker just naturally accepted as if he was receiving a gift from a friend.

And just as Poker thought the female child couldn't get cuter than that, when Poker finally moved the collar away from blocking Lizzie's face from his view, Poker got even more amazed by the innocent smile that the child was holding on her face.

"That's the same face that humans do whenever they see me hiding behind a sickly tree," Poker said his thoughts out loud accidentally which kind of distracted Miss Nabi from what she was going to say.

"Right! Can you please put on this collar around her neck, Shelby?" Miss Nabi said after shaking her head and getting her thoughts back together.

"Lizzie, come here!" Gonder whispered loudly from the end of the staircase with his arms wide open, trying to convince Lizzie to come back but Lizzie was just amazed by the big bear standing in front of her and even hugged his left leg which was almost the size of her whole body!

"Lizzie!" Karizze said, contributing in calling her sister back but was still too afraid to move closer to that bear who was weirdly calm and not aggressive towards people.

"It's okay, he's my friend, guys. Thank you for your help," Miss Nabi said all of a sudden from a hidden angle which made Karizze and Lorenz's hearts drop again out of shock.

"Please don't do that," Karizze said while trying to recover her composure once again just like what she did earlier while Lorenz just went back to his panicking state and balled himself up in one of the staircase steps while covering his ears and murmuring some things that none of them could understand.

"Sorry," Miss Nabi said.

"So what's going to happen now?" Gonder, the only one who was unbothered by the ghost theories, said while watching Miss Nabi fly around them over and over again.

"We wait for the Stat-hut to finish rebooting inside her brain."

"The what?! That's a Stut-hut?!" Gonder exclaimed in shock for not expecting a collar to be a Stat-hut which also made Miss Nabi slap herself for leaking such important info to strangers.

"Doesn't matter! We just need Petunia to take control of herself again and eradicate that fake Petunia wannabe who thinks she's all this and that after being able to control most female guards at her command," Miss Nabi suddenly babbled which Karizze heard and pulled her out of her shocked state.

"What do you mean Petunia wannabe? What's happening out there? Can you tell us so we can help? We've been stuck in that storage room for hours and something big like this just suddenly happened. Please tell us so we can help," Karizze said, which surprised Gonder and Lorenz.

"What suddenly got into you?" Gonder whispered to her to which Karizze only ignored.

"Lizzie! Come here!" Karizze shouted which altered Lizzie to get away from the bear she was trying so hard to hug even though the height difference was enormous and Poker had no intentions of squatting down just to let her hug him.

"B-But I want to hug teddy bear!" Lizzie said while being pressured into going back to her sister but Karizze knew that all she needed to do was to call her again which she did and ultimately succeeded with.

"Good girl," she said and gave her upset sister a warm hug from the back instead.