WARNING: If the movie Child's Play disturbed you and you still have problems with animated objects that simply shouldn't be, you may want to click the back button. Now. No one will be weilding a knife or anything of that sort, but this story is a little creepy.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Static Shock or Child's Play, but I do own a bear named Mr. Meow. And how that name comes about in this fic is pretty much how it came about in real life.

Mr. Meow

Virgil whooped with glee.His dad had finally gotten his rather large collection of plushies out of storage. They'd gone in several years ago when the Hawkinses had had lice, and no one had bothered to get the stuffed critters back out when it was safe to. That resulted in all but a fortunate few of Virgil's beloved stuffies being mildewy and having to be thrown away.

One of these few was a two and a half foot tall teddy bear that was aslimp as a ragdoll from how much Virgil had dragged it around when he was younger. It was the only critter in his collection that actually didn't have a name. Virgil had always been careful to give each of his stuffies a name.

Just... not this one. Oh well. Maybe Rich can help, when he gets his lazy butt up, Virgil thought. A wicked grin came over his face. Why wait?

With that, the teen pounced on his sleeping friend. That didn't get so much as a grumble out of Richie, so Virgil decided on a less tactful tactic. Tickling.

Nope. Still nothing. He sighed. Richie always was a heavy sleeper. This gives me license to get out the big guns! The mocha-skinned teen bounded cheerfully downstairs, a maniacal grin on his face. Mr. Hawkins and Sharon pointedly stayed away from him. With a cackle of unholy glee, Virgil grabbed a glass, put in a bunch of ice cubes, and then filled it with water before bounding back upstairs to his room.

Leaning over Richie, the less sane of the two dipped his fingertips in the ice water and flicked it on Richie's face. The sleeping teen stirred, but didn't wake. Virgil's grin suddenly got a whole lot more evil. Heupturned the glass, pouring half ofthe water on Richie. The blonde boy sat up, eyes wide as he coughed and sputtered.

"What the hell!" Richie yelled.

Turning to try to cover his smirk, Virgil replied, "Sorry bro, but I just couldn't get you to wake up."

"Yeah, I'll bet you're sorry. Haven't you ever heard of 'sleeping in?' Normal people do it all the time on Saturdays."

Virgil rolled his eyes, but grinned. "Hey, if I have to suffer through Sharon's attempt at waffles and scrambled eggs, so do you."

Richie sighed, finally getting out from under the covers and standing on the floor. He yanked on a clean pair of jeans and his ever-present hoodie. Both teens ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs, pushing and shoving each other the whole way to the kitchen. They crammed down breakfast as fast as they could, in hopes of not tasting it, then ran for the living room. They playfought loudly for control of the TV, then settled on a channel that would be playing cartoons most of the day.

Eventually, even the 'toons failed to hold their attention, and the boys wandered back up to Virgil's room. Virgil began sifting through his closet, but must not have found what he was looking for, because he moved on to his dresser. Richie just sat back and watched with amusement as his friend searched high and low, muttering, "I know it's here somewhere." Under his bed was where he found the thing he was looking for. He grabbed a large teddy bear from another corner of the room, and pulled his finding over the bear's head.

An Oregon Ducks t-shirt.

On a bear.

Richie was sure there was irony in that somewhere, but he was too busy wondering why his best friend put a shirt on a teddy bear in the first place. Although, Richie had to admit that the shirt fit pretty well. Better than it had onVirgil, who practically drowned in it the one time he wore it. Richie cast a glance in Virgil's direction in time to see him kiss his fingertips and say, "Magnifico! My work is done here," in a really cheesy attempt at an Italian accent.

Richie rolled his eyes and asked, "So what's his name?" He had long ago learned that with Virgil you were in trouble if you called a stuffy an 'it.'

Apparently that was a tough question, because Virgil frowned and tilted his head like he did when he got called on to answer a question in math class. At last he said, "Dunno. Never named him."

"Hmm." A few seconds of thinking on the part of both boys yielded nothing. Virgil almost fell asleep staring at one specific area on the popcorn-paint wall, where it looked like there was a face with a long, hooked nose and shifty eyes. A bear suddenly in his face and a noise to accompany it jolted him out of it.

"Meow. Meeeow." Richie was making some very realistic kitty sounds. "Meooooow!" And bobbing the nameless bear's face up and down in front of Virgil. Sometimes he had to wonder if either of them were exactly sane.

Thus ensued an entire day of Richie following Virgil around with the bear and meowing. It earned Richie some pretty strange looks from Mr. Hawkins and Sharon, but the blonde was uninhibited by their stares. After all, what was being thought insane if you could annoy the hell out of your not-easily-irkable best friend?

Night fell, and the nameless bear was finally left alone a few feet from Virgil's bed, where it was slumped against his dresser after Richie unceremoniously plopped it there. It was all but forgotten as the two teenaged boys found other entertainment. A few hours after dinner Mr. Hawkins put his foot down and insisted the boys and Sharon better get to bed. If they didn't he was going to make them all work at the Center the next day, and he threatened to get them up at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Not someone to be messed with if he could so easily disrupt your plans to sleep late.

Sharon grumbled, but the boys took it all in stride and raced up to Virgil's room. Virgil paused in the doorway. "Hey Rich, wasn't Mr. Meow facing the other way when we left?"

"Mr. Meow? Oh, you mean the bear. Uh, no, I don't think so," Richie replied. Virgil shrugged it off. "I'm guessing the name came from my ingenious evil plot to irritate you."

Virgil nodded, grinning. Both teens stripped down to their boxers and undershirts, then literally hopped into Virgil's bed. "G'night Rich."

"G'night V. Don't let the Bang-Baby bugs bite."

Virgil rolled his eyes, though he wasn't facing Richie. Bang-Baby bugs... oh brother... Thought faded away as he began to drift off.He closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them again they went wide with shock. HOLY CRAP!

Mr. Meow was facing him.

He hadn't been facing Virgil's bed when Richie put the bear down, or when they got in bed. Something was out of wack with that bear. "Rich. Rich?" Damn. He's asleep already. That left Virgil on his own to deal with Mr. Meow. He swallowed hard. Part of him was tempted to stay in his bed-- his inner child he was guessing, since that part of him was telling him that as long as he stayed under the covers he was safe. The other part of him told him to get up and put the bear face down if he was so afraid of having it stare at him.

After much internal debate, Virgil grabbed his red baseball bat and poked at the bear with it until Mr. Meow was facedown. He put the bat back under his bed, where he kept it, and closed his eyes.

An hour and a half later, he woke up from a dream. Virgil opened his eyes and-- nearly jumped out of his skin. He saw it. He saw it. Mr. Meow had moved. Right in front of his wide-open eyes. The now slightly-frightened teen sat up, absently pulling the blankets up with him. The bear was no longer face down. It was, for all its floppiness, sitting up and staring straight at him. Maybe I'm still dreaming. He pinched himself, then bit back a howl of pain. Nope. Most definitely not dreaming. Virgil pulled his knees to his chest. No way in hell was he getting anywhere near that bear. Nope. Not a chance.

Instead, he turned his head (keeping one eye on Mr. Meow, of course) and poked, prodded and shook Richie until the other teen woke up. "Richie. Richie!"

"Nnnn..."

"Rich, Mr. Meow moved! I saw it!" Virgil whispered, casting a frightened glance at the stuffie.

"Nn-hnn. Thass nice," Richie mumbled in a sleep-slurred voice. He closed his eyes to go back to sleep, but Virgil poked him again, this time in a ticklish spot. Too tired to entertain thoughts of homicide, the blonde mumbled, "'Ll let y'off easy 'fyou leeme alone."

Panicked, Virgil whispered urgently, "But Rich--" Too late. Foley was down and out. Traitor, Virgil thought sourly. That left him, once again, on his own to deal with Mr. Meow. When he turned away from Richie again, he noticed instantly that while he had been occupied with Richie, the bear had moved again. His left paw was no more than an inch from the red bat Virgil had previously used to knock him over. Virgil almost screamed. He had to get a hold of himself. Okay. What do you do when one of your well-loved plush toys is possessed and potentially homicidal?

Virgil worked up his courage, then grabbed the bear by the top of his head and threw him across the room. Mr. Meow slumped against the far wall and Virgil breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't about to do a victory cheer or anything like that though. He knew all too well that he wasn't out of the woods yet. Until morning, he was at Mr. Meow's mercy.

He grabbed his bat.

V.R.V.R.V.R.V.R.V.R.V.R.

Richie woke to see Virgil sitting up next to him in the fetal position, staring at Mr. Meow in his original position. He also took note of the baseball bat across Virgil's lap. "V?"

Not daring to look away from the bear for even the time it would take to answer Richie, Virgil replied, "Mr. Meow is evil, and possessed, and scary, and evil, and potentially homicidal, and did I mention evil?"

Richie blinked, wondering where his friend had lost his marbles. Maybe Static had hit his head a little too hard last time he'd been thrown into a wall. "Uh, yeah bro. Like, three times already." Virgil nodded solemnly. "Look, not that I don't believe you or anything, but you look really tired and maybe it's just lack of sleep."

This time Virgil did spare him a glance. "Whadda you think caused my lack of sleep?" he asked darkly. He turned his gaze back on 'evil Mr. Meow.'

"Right. Okay. Well, you wanna explain why your teddy bear is evil?"

"It moved."

It? That was new. Virg never ever called plush toys it. Always him, or her. Something about respecting them. But... "V, it's in the same position it was in when we went to sleep."

Virgil's gaze on the bear morphed into a glare. Had he been Kryptonian, Mr. Meow would have been a pile of ashes in a few seconds. "You didn't see it walk there."

That's it. I'm calling the League. V needs a vacation. Bad. I'm sure they won't mind helping out. Dakota isn't too tough to keep clean, Richie thought as he watched Virgil continue his staring contest with Mr. Meow. "I'll be right back. I'm going to the bathroom."

"I'll watch your back, Rich." Totally serious. Straight face, grim determined expression. Virgil tightened his grip on the bat.

Richie escaped the bedroom and went into the bathroom. There he set the frequency on his Shock Vox so he could contact the Justice League. J'onn answered, and Richie thanked whoever was in charge of teenaged superheroes that it wasn't Superman. For such a tough guy he sure could act the part of Mother Hen.

He told J'onn about the situation and concluded with, "V needs a vacation in the worst way."

"I shall speak to the others, and someone will be sent to take care of Dakota temporarily. In the meantime, keep the animal toy out of Virgil's sight and try to keep him calm. We will send someone to pick you up as soon as possible," J'onn replied.

"Thanks man. Err, Martian."

TBC...