The Orphan That Spoke

By Emilydisney17 and Joei Write

Chapter one

It all began one bright and sunny day. People in the city of Oakton were busy minding their own business as they went to work, took walks or had picnics in the park. Our story is based in that very park, known as Liberty Park and it was not about the people that were visiting today, but of the animals that lived in it. More particularly, a purple squirrel named Surly.

Surly had just returned from the city to pay a visit to his park home. He and his best friend, a blue rat who didn't talk much named Buddy, had been out scoping for more places to find nuts and steal them away to use for the park's food supply, but so far they had no such luck. The purple squirrel was lost in his own thoughts as he tried to figure out what to tell the park's new leader, the beautiful and devoted red squirrel Andie, about how rotten his luck at finding food had been.

He was picturing himself with the park animals practically pulling his tail off and eating it for winter in case the food supply ran out so suddenly when he spied a bunch of collage students studying exams and having a picnic with their projects before the table along with their lunch. Seeing the basket with food in it gave Surly an idea.

He sniffed the air to make sure he wasn't going nuts with the wavering aroma of food the basket and swiftly spun around to see Buddy. Surly brought his paw up to his face and made a quick motion with his fingers, gesturing for his rodent companion to circle around the basket. Buddy understood the signal and dashed behind a bush near the basket. He then dove out of the shrub and curled up against the side of the lightweight container. The minuscule rat peered around the rim of the woodwork and eyed the dozen collage students.

"Come on Buddy," Surly said to himself as he watched from the tree they had spied the basket from "You can do it." He sat impatiently and waited for one of the students to reach for the basket. That would be Buddy's cue.

Before his eyes, one of the pupils got up from her seat and made her way towards the basket. Surly grinned evilly, A girl would be much easier to scare then a guy. They always shrieked at the sight of rodents, this shouldn't be any different. He pressed his paws together before he closed his eyes and plugged his ears.

A deafening scream shattered the still park atmosphere and soon the stampeding of footprints was heard. Surly eyes popped open and saw the students bolting away from their picnic. Screaming for bloody murder as if a psycho was after them and shouting insults at his friend in a mindless babble of language. He tucked in his tail and ran head first fown the tree and promptly walked over to Buddy, who was proudly sitting on top of the picnic basket.

"HAHA! Oh man that was rich! It works every time! We should do this more often, what a riot!" Surly said as Buddy pulled out a bag of pretzels and handed them to his friend. Surly opened the bag and ate one. It was salty and crunchy but not half bad. He gave one to Buddy to eat and he smiled as he licked his lips. After taking a good look inside the basket they were disappointed that there were no nuts inside, but the food they had pillaged turned out to taste just as rewarding as a lifetime supply of nuts. Now for sure he had something that would make the park proud of him and Buddy.

"Who would've thought that getting food for the park would be so easy?" Surly asked Buddy "If we had known how good this stuff tasted, we would've started robbing humans of their food years ago! Now how are we going to get this basket to the old mill?" Buddy tapped his friend's shoulder and the squirrel looked at where his rat friend's paw was pointing at; a series of small hand made cars the students were working on before they abandoned the picnic. Surly and Buddy smiled at each other and got an idea. Soon they were pushing the basket down the path to the old mill where the winter food was stored with the wheels below the basket. "Buddy this is probably the greatest idea we've ever had!" Surly said as they steadily wheeled the basket along.

Once they arrived at the mill Surly tallied up the food that he had fathered that day, along with the basket he'd nearly filled the mill's stock up to halfway. "Ah," Surly groaned "That'll never be enough to feed the entire park for the winter. Even with this basket were still short. We gotta find something else to feed the park. Maybe we could pay the nut shop a little visit, They've never let us down before right?"

He turned around and looked to the other side of the basket and saw Buddy as he pushed the basket into the pile before he shrugged and Surlly was too worried to be angry or offended. Now what was he going to do?

Once they left they left the mill swarms of animals burst from the side and crowded them "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Surly yelled at them as they shot a million questions at him.

"Surly, how did it go?"

"Did you get more food?"

"How much do we have now?"

"Will it be enough?"

The voices tore through Surly's ears and he hollered "STOP!"

The animals stopped as suddenly as he shouted. Surly was a bit surprised at first but then he recovered and said "Well, I've got good news and bad news. Good news is that we found some human food we can use to last for winter."

The animals cheered.

"The bad news is…" Surly said as he toyed with his paws with a frown on his face "It's only enough until the middle of winter."

The declaration made the animals stop and exchanged worried looks on their faces and at the purple squirrel.

"But, don't worry!" Surly quickly said "There's always the nut shop! It'll be like before and…"

"Only with won't be, not this time." Piped up a voice from the crowd; It was mole, Andie's second hand who came out of the crowd along with Andie herself. "The pigeons have just informed me and Miss Andie that the owner of the store and the dog are going away on vacation and that the entire place will be on lock down with one of those brand new security systems. They won't be back for a whole month."

"A MONTH?!" Surly cried in alarm as the other animals gasp in alarm. "We can't wait a whole month for those nuts! Winter is coming early this year and we're still not ready and by the time they get back we'll probably be frozen stiff and half starved!"

"Calm down Surly." Andie said "Snow hasn't fallen yet and there are other nut stores out there somewhere we can raid."

"She's right?" Mole said "What about we sent Grayson out to help?"

"You kidding me? After he botched up the first nut gathering of summer assignment we gave him?" Surly asked "He tried tackling those human security things and he and his team ended up looking like furless rats! Remember that everybody? Do you guys want to end up in the nude too? Do you?! And need I remind you how long it took for Grayson's fur to grow back?"

"Ok, granted the security was more… dangerous then we thought," Andie said "But I believe we still have a chance for us to gather enough food we need as long as we work together and search as hard as we can."

Surly looked at the red squirrel and saw compassion in her eyes but also a hint of worry, she had ment what she said but she was having a bit of a hard time believing it herself.

That was what he needed to keep his spirit up. There was no way he was going to turn her down now. "If you say so Andie." He said and he turned to Buddy saying "Let's go Buddy, we gotta find more food." And they were off before anyone else had said another word to them.

"Good luck guys." Andie said softly.

They jumped about through the city, over rooftops and down alleyways, but they couldn't find any good clean food. They'd found banquets in trash cans, but that was food only suitable for rats and other vermin. The park needed, and deserved, better.

Surly scaled a building and looked around, scanning everything he saw until his eyes spotted a large square building in the distance. He didn't recognize the building but he could detect the faint scent of food drifting over from it. He gestured Buddy to fallow him and they were off in the direction of the building.

They nearly got hit by several cars as they crossed the road to it but whatever that building was it was sure popular with humans and Surly figured that with this much humans there has to be that much food around too!

Once Surly and Buddy saw the food section they knew they had hit the jackpot! But there was one little problem; with all these humans around how were they going to get in and steal all the food for the park to survive winter before they could notice? They needed to get rid of them. But first they had to find a way inside the building.

First they tried to enter through the air vents, but a powerful gust of air blew them out.

Second they tried to sneak in with the garbage cans but they got garbage dumped on themselves.

Third they tried to fly in and out but they kept hitting the windows or doors until their kite wings were destroyed.

Finally they tried to break in while the humans were loading toys into the mall but security found them and whacked them out with a broom.

"This isn't working." Surly said as he rubbed his aching rear. That human that had gotten rid of him and Buddy sure knew how to use a broom "We've gotta figure out something else; Something clever, something crafty, something that those humans would never see coming… But I don't think we're going to find that thing around here Buddy."

Buddy nodded, and held his head since that last attempt gave him a pounding headache.

"Hey!" Surly said "Let's head back home, maybe the bruisers can dig another hole, then we'd be in the clear."

They continued back over the rooftops and through allies and scampered down some metal flights of stairs. They made their way back down to the ground and Buddy lowered his ears in worry about breaking into the mall.

"I know Buddy," Surly said, noticing the look on his friend's face "This won't be anything like that heist at the nut shop. This will be bigger, daring and even more dangerous. We'll have to be at our A game if we're going to pull this off."

CLANG!

Surly and Buddy yelped when they heard a clanking sound breaking the privacy of the pair and both rodents turned to notice a little girl by the entrance of the alleyway. She seemed young, couldn't be any older then ten and they watched the fresh tears that ran down her face from her nearly swollen eyes.

They also noticed that the child was dirty with stuff you'd find in a trash can, her long black hair was oily, her blue dress was covered in grime and her black and white shoes were coated with mud. She sat down in the shade of the ally, continuing to cry as she rubbed her stomach, which was growling very loudly. She was in such a state of misery that Buddy couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Sure his kind hated humans but Buddy had what those creatures did not; a heart of gold. It was a quality that made the rat motion towards his friend, begging him to help her.

"What? You wanna help her?" Surly asked "Aren't you forgetting something pal? When was the last time a human ever helped us? And I mean actually helped us by shoving food into our mill huh?"

Surly didn't know it but his voice attracted her and she crawled towards them "I mean, come on, humans don't just waltz right up to us and happily say 'Hi, how are you? Nice to see you, mind if I share my food with you?"

"Well, I would if I had any." The girl said