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The door of duplex 72 burst open, and out stormed Freddie. He was still in his sleeping clothes- the same old sweat shorts and a ratty old muscle tee with the sleeves cut off. Back inside there was a neatly folded uniform and a very cryptic note. The pain in his biceps and on the back of his neck should have spoke volumes, but he wasn't going to believe anything until he got out of the strange room.

He shielded his eyes when the sunlight hit him, and when they adjusted the sight that met him made him hope like hell he was having some sort of nightmare.

He staggered further away from the door of the duplex, his bulbous eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.

"Nuh-uh, no, no ********' way..." he groaned.

The note hadn't said anything about being fired, just some weird s**t about perspective and breasts. What was he supposed to make of that?

It was a joke. It had to be.

Freddie walked like a man in a dream, turning around in slow circles as he tried to get his bearings. It'd been a long time since he'd been in the village, and even then that had always been in a jeep. The last time was that incident with the wolf and rabbit. He never noticed realized how expansive the place was before.

When Newt came into view, he stared. He shouldn't have been surprised, he was right in the middle of the freak show now. Newt's eyes, at least were larger and much more grotesque than his own, which made him smirk. But as he got closer he recognized the dirty jumper. Freddie blinked dumbly, thinking back... take away the green skin, the eyes, the hopping, and the hair and figure were familiar.

"You!" he exclaimed.

He'd missed Newt... in his own special, abusive way.

The stutter was all the confirmation Freddie needed. He laughed, and for the moment the whole question of why the hell he was in the village was forgotten. "I knew it!"

He slowly circled around Newt, that horrible grin stuck on his face. "I'd been wonderin' where they hid you..." He stopped and leaned forward to get a better look at Newt. "Never woulda guessed this!"

All the puffing up, along with the frog noises, made Freddie turn his head away in disgust. He felt gratified, after Newt finally spat his name out, that he remembered him, too.

"That don't matter," he said dismissively. The question, however, had been enough to make the grin waver. "What matters is that yer here, and I'm here and... Well, it's been a while, ain't it?" He snickered. "How you been? Good? Nobody givin' you trouble?"

He could change that, and the triumphant return of that gap-toothed grin said as much.

"Aw, now that ain't good." Freddie was overplaying his dismay a bit too much to make it believable.

Without another word, he stepped forward and bent down. He grabbed a fistfull of Newt's jumper and used it to haul him up.

Freddie laughed and let go of Newt. "Don't do what?"

"You gotta relax, buddy," Freddie said. He dusted Newt's shoulders off with his massive hands. "Yer actin' like I'm gonna do somethin' bad to ya."

This was bliss. It was almost enough to make Freddie forget why he could've possibly woken up in a duplex. He grinned at Newt and very lightly chucked him on the chin. Afterwards he immediately wiped his hand off on his sweat shorts.

"I'm not gonna do nothin'," he said. "Least not while yer expectin' it."