Gorilla’s head was small and he was strictly advised against thinking too much.
“Grabber, where are they? Where did these stupid dolls go? Go and have a look!” General ordered.
Grabber was a robot, metallic and shiny. Claws like those of a crab served as his hands. The right claw was in the form of a pair of pliers for grabbing and the left like a pair of scissors for cutting. It was precisely the robot, with his claw-scissors, that had cut a hole in the box, through which the soldiers had climbed out. A gun barrel that fired stickies with a terrible force stuck out of Grabber’s iron stomach. A key jutted out of the robot’s back. It was necessary to wind it every hour, otherwise the robot would switch off.
“I can’t, Commander! I’m not programmed to go and have a look. I’m only programmed to grab!” the robot reported.
“You’re not soldiers, but klutzes! Have to do everything myself. Can’t entrust anything to anyone!” General stamped his feet.
Grabber and Gorilla looked at each other.
“General, why did we get out of the box?” Gorilla asked and scratched his head.
“To conquer all indiscriminately, blockhead! First, we’ll take over this room and these dollhouses will be ours. We’ll build a base here and then attack the ice-cream kiosk. Kids love ice cream very much. We’ll force them to throw away all the toys. Instead of old toys, different kinds of teddy bears, dolls, and bunnies, let them buy pistols and Tommy guns!”
“Good thinking, General! We would never have thought of that!” Gorilla was thunderstruck.
“That’s why I’m the commander and not you!”
“General, the toys have come out of the house. They’ll be here in five minutes. I see two dolls and two midgets with big ears,” Grabber suddenly reported.
“Those are rabbits, you stupid piece of iron! Everybody ready for ambush! When they come closer, we’ll capture them,” General whispered.
Gorilla and Grabber hid in a box and General behind a leg of the bed.
“I hid well, right, Commander?” Gorilla yelled from his hiding place.
“Shut up, klutz! They’re already close!” General threatened Gorilla with a fist.
The doll Olga was glad to have guests. As Pookar predicted, she had something to treat each of them. Pookar got a whole pot of apple jelly and a plum cake. There was canned fish for Muffin. Olga had stored up a jar of wonderful, very strong mustard for Flamy. Anybody’s eyes would have crawled to their forehead with such mustard, but it suited Flamy’s taste. He even started to snuffle with pleasure. Muffin and Flamy were promptly stuffed and they started to feel drowsy.
“One shouldn’t go for a stroll after lunch! Self-respecting animals sleep after lunch!” Muffin purred, yawning.
“That’s it! And after waking up, we can dine immediately. We’ll grow!” Flamy agreed. He was a rare sleepyhead. After all, he had already slept in the trunk for a hundred years. Muffin and Flamy instantly fell asleep, huddled close to each other.
“You clearly overfed them, Olga! It seems that only I haven’t finished eating!” Pookar remarked. Having said this, he unnoticeably undid his belt and moved it to the last hole.
Olga took the rabbits by the paws and took them for a walk. Pookar lazily dragged himself along behind them, his hands in his pockets. Making small talk, the friends were gradually getting closer to where Grabber, Gorilla, and General were hiding.
When the toys got close enough, General jumped out from behind the leg of the bed and fired a water pistol at Olga. “Hooray! Catch them! No one gets away! Catch them all!”
Gorilla jumped out of the box, confusedly firing the machine gun and yelling, “Stwike! Stwike!” When Gorilla got excited, all the sounds got mixed up in his mouth and he stopped articulating “r.” Grabber was running amuck working his tracks, snapping his claws, and speeding towards the bunnies. “Hold it there, rabbit hats!” he rattled.
At first, victory was on the side of the soldiers. The doll Olga screamed and almost fainted when General spattered her lace apron with a water pistol. Gorilla threw one of the sticky bombs and Truvor’s feet instantly stuck to the floor. In response, Pookar gave General such a push that he fell and became entangled in his sabre, “Help! Untangle me, quick!” General yelled. Grabber, who had almost caught Sineus with his own claws, dropped him and ran to help General.
At that moment, Gorilla seized Pookar and raised him high above his head. “Wow, what a sharp little fatty! Won’t get away fwom me!” Gorilla boomed.
Grabber, forgetting about the bunnies, clicked his claws and advanced on Olga. The doll pushed the robot away and said angrily, “Don’t touch me! We’re scarcely acquainted. Your hands are cold!”
Olga accidentally touched the key on Grabber’s back and started to turn it the wrong way. Something clicked in the robot and his tracks starting spinning at different speeds, so that the robot started to travel in circles. Olga had discovered by chance Grabber’s most vulnerable spot. “Damage of working mechanism! Breakdown! Breakdown! Breakdown!” Grabber repeated mechanically.
Pookar was also lucky. When Gorilla lifted him above his own head, a hammer, which Pookar used to crack nuts, fell out of his pocket and almost cracked Gorilla’s forehead. From the other pockets poured pieces of iron, jars, and beetles in matchboxes. All this rained down on Gorilla’s head. “Help! Can’t fight this way!” Gorilla squealed.
A beetle crawled out of a matchbox and bit Gorilla on an ear, and another fell right under his bulletproof vest and began to crawl around there. “I’m ticklish! Ew-w-w-w! T-take this p-pest away!” Gorilla started to jump on the spot and dropped Pookar.
General fired the water pistol at the bunnies and Olga but could not hit them at all, as his helmet was constantly sliding down over his eyes. “Stop! Let’s aim! I have a little water left! Catch them quickly, my brave soldiers! Where are you going, boneheads?”
However, Gorilla had already fled, dragging the machine gun. Grabber rolled behind him, jingling his iron interior. General thought for a bit and ran after his soldiers. “Retreat! Hoorah! Hoorah! Retreat!” he shouted. General realized that under conditions of general panic, an order to retreat would be the most correct. Later, he could tell his soldiers that it had been planned this way from the very beginning.
Pookar got up from the floor. “Great, we thrashed them! Now they won’t bother us for a long time! Only it’s unclear where they came from. They didn’t fall from the sky!”
Olga frowned and almost cried, seeing her dress stained and the blue bow missing. “Pookar, won’t you help me find my bow?”
Pookar looked around. “Aha, here it is! Look, Olga, the box was cut! What could this mean, huh?”
Olga looked at the box with a hole on the side cut by Grabber’s claws. “The soldiers probably climbed out of the box. Peter himself is mean and he has pushy toys. Look how they soiled my dress! What do I look like now?”
“You look fine!” Pookar comforted her. This did not console Olga.
“Where are the bunnies? Where did they go?”
“We’re here!” Sineus and Truvor looked out from a half-opened desk drawer. They were trembling a little and clinging to each other.
