Chapter Twelve
Flamy Saves Truvor

General stood beside a map in his headquarters behind the bookcase and thoughtfully traced with a finger on the map, pretending to think. The map was drawn on a scrap of wrapping paper and portrayed the room from above. Gorilla had drawn the map and it turned out to be extremely confusing. It was dusty behind the bookcase. Gorilla was constantly sneezing so loudly that everything around shook.

“Can you sneeze any louder, bird brain?” General shouted at him.

“Yes, I can,” Gorilla growled. “Achoo!” It was such a powerful sneeze that the map was torn off from the wall. The helmet flew off General’s head and smacked against the wall. Bang!

“Klutz! You’ll give us away! Why don’t you put in some work with your head for a change?” General stamped his feet.

“Yes, Commander! As you say! Bang!” Gorilla rammed his forehead into the wall and smiled contentedly.

“I’ll shoot you, idiot!” General pulled out his pistol.

“Neuh-uh, don’t shoot!” Gorilla shook his head.

“Why?”

“Gee! Your water was all gone there.”

The kidnapped bunny Truvor was sleeping on a chair in front of General. Since he was a little bunny, he was used to sleeping during the day. Gorilla’s terrible sneeze had woken Truvor. The bunny woke up and began to tremble. General saw that Truvor had opened his eyes and was overjoyed.

“Finally! We’ve been waiting for two hours for you to wake up! Tell me the military secret!”

“I don’t know any secret,” Truvor muttered.

General pouted. It seemed a little longer and he would start to cry. “So boring! If you don’t know, then think. Come up with something!” he ordered.

“I would love to, but I’m still little and I can’t,” Truvor whimpered.

“Fine!” General got angry. “If you don’t want to meet us half-way, then don’t… Then we’ll torture you! Gorilla, proceed!”

“Proceed with what?”

“Torture, half-wit!!!”

Gorilla scratched the back of his head, walked hesitantly to Truvor and made a savage face. “Humph! Now I’ll eat you! How I love eating little bunnies!”

Truvor raised his sleepy face and saw Gorilla’s silly face. He stopped crying, looked for some time in bewilderment at the grimacing Gorilla, and suddenly burst out laughing! Among all the toys, Truvor was the one that laughed the easiest.

“Stop! Come here, Gorilla! I’ll explain to you how to torture!” General was furious. He was so mad and turned so red that his helmet became red-hot.

Gorilla obediently went to General and they began to whisper. Then Gorilla rolled up his sleeves and approached the bunny. His arms were huge, hairy, and terrifying. “Tell me the secret or I’ll torture you by tickling!” he said and began to tickle the bunny.

Meanwhile, the bunny’s friends were thinking of how to rescue him and chase the soldiers away from the room.

“Just so you don’t poke your nose into them, they have these nasty pistols that fire burrs and paint. They instantly stain from head to toe,” said Olga.

“Do you want me to smoke them out from there?” Flamy released a jet of flame from his nostrils.

The cat Muffin fanned the smoke away with a paw, “Forget it! You’ll set something on fire!”

Sineus pleadingly touched the school gnome with a hot paw. “Think of something, Scholarchkin! You’re so smart! Think a bit and you’ll definitely come up with something!”

Scholarchkin frowned and began to walk around the room. He was not accustomed to thinking in a different way except on his feet. He had to walk. Olga even woke up at night sometimes because a restless Scholarchkin walked in the attic above her head.

Flamy and Muffin watched Scholarchkin tensely. Their heads turned, following him right-left, right-left. Several minutes passed this way. Then the gnome suddenly jumped and shouted, “I have an idea!”

An hour later General, Gorilla, and Grabber were playing hide-and-seek. It was the only game they knew. Perhaps if they had known more games, the desire to fight would have disappeared by itself. The soldiers left the bunny Truvor at the headquarters behind the bookcase. After plenty of tickling, the heartily laughing Truvor had fallen asleep and was snoring quietly in the chair. He knew no military secrets and the soldiers had lost all interest in him.

The game of hide-and-seek had only just begun. The robot Grabber was “it.” He stood, eyes closed, and counted to five. The robot was the only one of all the soldiers who could be “it” honestly, without peeking. Grabber’s voice was raspy because he had not been oiled for a long time.

“One, two, three, three, three, three, three…” Grabber rattled on.

“Jammed again!” General said angrily, climbing out from under an old newspaper. He ran to the robot and turned the key in the back. Then he quickly crawled under the newspaper, trying not to rustle the pages.

“Three… three… four… five… Here I come!” Grabber counted and opened his eyes.

Two light bulbs served as his eyes. When the robot closed his eyes, the bulbs turned off. Now the bulbs lit up. Grabber looked all around attentively. Nobody! The robot turned his tracks on to the quietest speed and went seeking.

“Hi, I’m here!” The robot suddenly heard a loud unfamiliar voice behind his back. Grabber whipped around and clicked his claws, but saw no one, only an old red ball lying on the floor. Grabber’s eyes glowed so brightly in perplexity that the bulbs almost burnt out. When he turned back, the red ball was gone.

Grabber found Gorilla soon enough. He was hiding in the body of a wheel-less toy truck, which had been lying about behind the bookcase for a few months. The giant quickly tired of being in the truck. He started to putter and sigh loudly. The truck was shaking completely and almost broke apart.

Gorilla and Grabber forgot about General, found a big tennis ball, and began to throw it. General, lurking under the newspaper, was glad at first that no one found him, and then became a little bored, but near the end almost howled from idleness. He suddenly realized that no one was looking for him and got out from under the newspaper. He was immediately knocked over by the ball, which Grabber threw with force.

“Halfwit!!! You should be looking for me!” General yelled.

“Excuse me, Commander! But you always get mad when I find you. Today you were hiding under the newspaper. You rustled and the helmet peeked out,” the robot growled.

General stamped his foot, sulked, and grumbled that they were all blockheads and it was not clear at all why he played with them. “Let’s go to headquarters! We’ll plan some mean trick for those toys!” a dissatisfied General grumbled.

When the soldiers reached headquarters, Gorilla’s foot suddenly hit against a round object. “I have found a new ball! Orange!” Gorilla was overjoyed, lifting his leg.

“Wow! What a huge orange! How did we miss it earlier? Don’t you dare kick it! It’s very tasty!” General grabbed the orange.

“My orange! I found it!” Gorilla growled.

“I recognized it! Without me, you would think it’s a ball!” General went for his pistol but remembered that it was not charged.

“I found it!” Gorilla advanced threateningly on General.

“Very well, I’ll share with you! The orange is big, enough for two,” General recollected suddenly. He hoped that Gorilla would forget about the orange and he could eat it by himself.

After entering their little house made of newspapers, the soldiers put the orange on the table and stared suspiciously at each other. General smiled unnaturally. Gorilla’s eyes shone with undisguised greed.

“D-don’t y-you want to wash your hands?” General asked as casually as possible.

“No, I don’t! I never wash them!” Gorilla kept his eyes on the orange.

“Bad! Oranges can only be eaten with washed hands! Otherwise, they explode. You won’t have time to open your mouth and – Bam! – it blows you up like a soft-boiled egg!” General lied.

Suspicion started to stir on Gorilla’s stupid face. “Then let’s wash hands together! Let the orange lie here for the time being!” he said.

Leaving Grabber on guard, General and Gorilla got out from behind the bookcase and rinsed their hands in a small puddle. The neighbours above left traces of water all over the floor, constantly flooding Masha’s room, and the puddle never dried. After washing, the soldiers rushed to the orange.

“Keep the peel for me!” General was crafty.

“No, for me! Me! Me!” Gorilla argued.

“Well, as you want… I’ll let you have the peel! All right, I’ll take the flesh,” General yielded.

He decided to cheat the simple-minded Gorilla, and he would have succeeded, but when they returned to headquarters, they found that… the ORANGE had disappeared!!!

“Where is it? What have you done with it?” The soldiers pounced on Grabber.

“No one came into the room! No one went near the orange. Only the two of you!” the robot rattled.

Knowing that Grabber could not lie, General and Gorilla stared at each other with suspicion.

“It’s you! You took it!” General lost his temper.

“No, you! Give me my orange quickly!” Gorilla began to shake General like a kitten.

General’s teeth started chattering. “A d-d-dis-s-grac-c-ce! L-let go r-right now! I’m your co-commander!”

Grabber moved around the two and clicked his claws. He did not know whose side to take.

Suddenly laughter rang out above the soldiers’ heads. “Ha-ha! Hiss-hiss! Ha-ha! Ha-ha!”

The soldiers instantly stopped fighting and looked up. Nobody!

“Ha-ha! What fools! Ha-ha!”

It was worthwhile to see the soldiers’ faces at that moment. The helmet flew off General and his mouth opened by itself! Gorilla became red and again stopped articulating “r,” “Help! Spook! Tewible wobber!”

Grabber’s tracks started to turn in different directions. The light bulbs flashed brightly. He fired a sticky at random from the gun barrel at his stomach. The sticky flew away into space and was seen no more.

“What fun! Oh, I can’t, funny!” A cheerful voice rang out near the ceiling.

All of a sudden, one more General, similar to the former, like a twin brother, appeared beside Gorilla. “Hiss-hiss! Klutz! Grab that General! He’s an impostor! Iron, forward!” General growled.

“I’m real! Hands off! Not me, grab him!” The real General was scared.

The two Generals ran around headquarters and got entangled once and for all. Gorilla’s mouth fell open and he could not move. Grabber rushed from one General to the other, clicked his claws, and repeated, “Conflicting data! Conflicting data!”

Then one of the two Generals disappeared and a twin Gorilla appeared instead. “Guard! Substitute! Wun for your life!” the twin shouted.

“Mama! I’m scared!” the real Gorilla yelled and ran right through the wall out of the headquarters made of newspapers. Grabber rolled out after him.

A scared General raced behind. He held his helmet and yelled, “Wait, where are you going? It’s not according to regulations! I should be the first to retreat!”

No sooner had the soldiers run out when a terrible crash was heard. It was Pookar’s anti-guest traps snapping into action. While Flamy was distracting General, Gorilla, and Grabber, Pookar and Olga stretched ropes and built anti-guest traps.

A ripped-open pillow fell on Gorilla. He immediately had a fit of sneezing, clucked incoherently like a harassed chicken, and fired the machine gun until the thumbtacks ran out. Grabber was tangled in the ropes and dangling in the air, turning his tracks. General found himself in an empty jam jar. The jar had been placed sideways, and General had barely run into it when the lid was closed. “Boo-boo! Boo-boo-boo-boo!” came from the jar.

Then the friends freed the bunny Truvor. Sineus and Truvor were so pleased that they were back together that they even started crying. They naturally wiped their tear-stained faces on the doll Olga’s apron.

“Well? You need this!” Olga said severely to the soldiers.

“We won’t do it again! Please forgive us!” Gorilla whimpered, wiping his nose with his huge fist.

“Boo-boo-boo-boo! Boo-boo-boo-boo!” rang out from the jar.

“General says that he’ll try to reform,” Scholarchkin translated.

Flamy flew out of the newspaper house, extremely satisfied. “How did I have them? ‘Bang!’ with the tail. And he, ‘Mama!’ How that one jumps, but the piece of iron, that one generally… How he falls! Hiss-hiss! And this one in the helmet, when he sees me, thinks that it’s him! Great! And I to him, ‘There! Here I am for you!’ And he, ‘Ah-h!’” Although Flamy’s story was incoherent, he had success with the audience. The cat Muffin even asked with an “encore!” for a repeat giving more attention to details.

“What shall we do with the soldiers? Perhaps let them go?” the doll Olga interrupted Flamy.

“Let’s tickle them! Let them tell their military secrets! I like that a lot!” the bunny suggested timidly.

“Mama! I’m afraid of tickling! I’m not playing this way!” Gorilla howled. He hopped away on one leg with tremendous speed, dragging the pillow with him. The second leg was caught in the pillowcase. Grabber ran after him, rumbling his iron interior. Behind them, looking back, ran General. “You forgot me! The boss should retreat first!” he yelled.

“Lost your helmet! Which way?” the friends shouted after him.

After a few days, Peter left for Tula and took the box with the soldiers with him.