Background: This story is from the first six monsters adopted. Back then, Paintball and Portrait were best friends. Watercolor was the baby still, and Acrylic (Portrait's sister) hadn't been adopted yet. Throughout the whole story, the monsters wear electric arms.

 

     "WAKE UP!!! WAKE UP!!!" Watercolor shrieked. "Watacala hungergy."

Paintbrush hurried over to Watercolor, as the other monsters sat up rubbing their eyes (with electric arms).

     "I'm so excited," Portrait exclaimed.

     "I bet the road trip is gonna be fun!" Canvas agreed.

     "Paintball," Paintbrush called. "Can you start breakfast? I'm busy with the baby."

     "Hey! Watacala no baby."

     "All right," Paintball said. "Help me guys."

     The other monsters followed her to the kitchen. Portrait started the stove then grabbed a bowl which Canvas cracked eggs into. Paintball ripped open a bag of pancake mix and worked through the recipe. Splatter was frantically hunting through the fridge for strawberries with a bowl of blueberries and cream balanced on her hip.

     Upon seeing her idol at work, Watercolor hopped from her mother's lap and ran towards Portrait. "I want to help," Watercolor shouted. "I want to help." But she accidentally knocked over an open bottle of orange juice into the pancake batter Paintball was mixing.

     "Watercolor!" Paintball groaned exasperatedly.

     "It's fine," Paintbrush sighed, rushing to help Canvas at the stove, which was dinging and beeping impatiently. "Just add less water."

     After the orange-juice pancakes were cooked, the eggs were scrambled, and Splatter had failed to locate the strawberries and replaced them with cantaloupe, the monsters sat down to an interestingly smoking, steaming breakfast.

     "Well, here goes." Canvas lifted a forkful of pancake to her mouth.

     "Yuck!" Splatter mumbled through a mouthful of eggs.

     "Spppllth!" Everyone turned to see Canvas choking out the pancake.

     Portrait was quietly picking orange chunks partly covered in whipped cream from her bowl.

     Everyone looked at each other awkwardly.

     "Well," Paintbrush said to break the silence, "what say we visit McDonald's?"

     The monsters agreed, and so followed much grunting and pulling, until the car was loaded with everything they could possibly need (including the raisin-peeling machine, due to Canvas). They stopped by McDonald's for Egg McMuffins, then piled back in the car.

     Five minutes later, Watercolor said, "Mommy, Watacala wanna wee."

     Splatter and Canvas snickered. Paintball looked up from her Rubik's cube and groaned. Portrait said, "okay. We'll find you a bathroom. Why didn't you go at McDonald's?"

     Paintbrush sent a grateful glance at Portrait as Watercolor whined, "I didn't have to."

     Paintbrush turned the car around and everyone used the bathroom again.

     Once back in the car, Paintbrush explained, "our first stop is the Wild Mountains. We're taking a hike on Deer Mountain and all the landscape, and camping on the trail."

     "Sounds fun!" Splatter said.

 

     Several bathroom breaks, hamburgers, and solved Rubik's cubes later (over a few days), the troop arrived at Deer Mountain.

     "Where to?" Portrait asked, searching a park map confusedly.

     "Eagle Trail," Paintbrush replied vaguely, also staring at a map.

     "Da way!" Watercolor yelled, pulling at her mother's tail. "Da way!" She pointed.

     "How do you know?" Canvas asked.

     "Cuz the map say it north and thas north," Watercolor answered confidently.

     "How do you know that?" Splatter inquired.

     "Cuz it's 8:00," Watercolor explained, "and the sun rises in the east and sets in the west."

     Paintball looked up from her map and stared at Watercolor. "Brilliant!"

     They followed Watercolor, and found Eagle Trail.

 

     “Well,” Paintbrush said. “Let’s go.”

     The group had walked back to the car, packed everything their bags could hold and came back to Eagle Trail.

     They set off down an old path and walked for a while, every so often pausing to point out a deer or something.

     Days and nights passed. Eventually, the troop came to a lake.

     “We'll have to rent some of those canoes,” Paintbrush said, pointing.

     Each canoe held two people. Each pair took their own backpack and another item. Paintbrush and Watercolor went in one with the tents, Paintball and Portrait took the meat, and Splatter and Canvas grabbed the fire starters and marshmallows.

     After a short while, they started getting bored.

     "I know," Canvas said. "Let's go fishing."

     "Brilliant," Splatter said, rolling her eyes. "If only we had the materials."

     Canvas grinned mischievously and reached in her bag. Out came three long sticks.

     "Fishing poles?!" Portrait called from her boat.

     "Yup!" Canvas yelled back, then paddled fishing poles over to the other boats.

     "Can I try?" Paintball reached over to take the pole from Portrait. For a while she sat catching nothing.

     "No no, you have to move it a bit," Portrait said.

     "You can do it, you’re better," Paintball sighed, handing it back. "I’ll be right back."

     She climbed up the boat and swiftly dove into the lake.

     Portrait spotted a pink electric arm break the surface and wave. Then Paintball must have seen a fish, and she was off like a rocket. She easily caught up to the fish, and circled it five times before reaching out and snatching it. Gripping it tightly, Paintball snuck to the side of Canvas and Splatter’s boat and lifted the fish out of the water.

     In a low, gruff voice she muttered, "that’s not nice."

     Surprised, Canvas and Splatter whirled around then laughed. Splatter reached to help Paintball get the fish in the boat. Then Paintball climbed into their boat and Splatter tried to dry her off by whirling her tail around. It wasn’t really working, and Splatter accidentally knocked Paintball back in the water.

     "Oops," Splatter said, trying not to laugh. "Maybe that wasn’t such a great idea."

     "Hey, you know about centrifugal force?" Watercolor inquired, and the others shook their heads. "It means when you go in circles really fast, inertia causes things to go out. It’s actually caused from inertia, not gravi-"

     "Whatever," Paintball interrupted to avoid a lecture from Watercolor. She tried flying in circles as fast as she could, and sure enough, the water flew out and dried her. Then she flew back to take the fish from Splatter and Canvas’ boat.

     "Anyone know what kind of fish this is?"  Paintball asked, looking directly at Watercolor.

     "Oncorhynchus gorbuscha, pink salmon. It’s the smallest kind of salmon," Watercolor recited. "Yummy."

     When they stopped on land for the night, they cooked the salmon. It was really good. After dinner they set up their tents and sleeping bags and were just about to climb in when Splatter exclaimed, "wait! We forgot to roast marshmallows!"

     So everyone sighed and got back out, and they opened the bags of s'mores ingredients.

     "Anyway. it’s only 10;30," Paintball said. "We have to stay up till forever."

     Paintbrush sent Paintball a look that clearly said No way young lady. Paintball shrugged.

     “MMM!” Watercolor shouted. “MMMMMMMMM!”

     “Enough,” Canvas said, then took a bite. “MMM!”

     “Hypocrite,” Splatter said through a mouthful of s’more. “MMM!”

     Portrait smiled, and pulled her marshmallow from the fire to check on it. “Want a marshmallow, anyone?”

     “Ooh, me!” Watercolor, Paintball, Splatter, and Canvas piled on Portrait to get to it. Portrait’s marshmallows were always perfectly golden and crispy on the outside, with a melty soft inside.

     Portrait laughed. “I’ll make one for each of you. This one goes to Watercolor.”

     “Yay!” Watercolor grabbed the marshmallow and began stuffing it in her mouth.     The other monsters waited patiently* to get their marshmallows, then Paintbrush got one.

     Finally everyone had eaten as much as they could hold and after not brushing their teeth, they got in bed.

 

     In the morning, the crew packed up and set back otu.

     They rocked along the water, until Watercolor got really bored. Like really bored, as in “I'm bored. I’m bored. Are you bored? I’m bored. I'm soooo bored. What can I do? I’m sooo bored…” And it was driving everyone else nuts.

     “Pretend like we’re on an ocean voyage,” Paintbrush suggested.

     “Hey, look!” Splatter pointed. “A… a…”

     “Two deer!” Paintball exclaimed. “A doe, and…”

     “A buck,” Watercolor filled in for her.

     “Follow them!” Canvas suggested.

     So they paddled faster. But they never caught up.

     “Oh, well,” Paintbrush sighed. “Time to set up camp anyway.”

 

     The next day, after a couple hours, Paintbrush announced, “We’re reaching the end of the lake today.”

     All the monsters cheered. “My arms are sooo sore,” Splatter and Paintball complained.

     That whole day, the monsters looked for the end of the lake. They took turns and made up games to find it first. And finally, after a while, Paintball spotted a brown-yellow spot, which expanded into a beach.

     “I wanna play on the beach,” Watercolor requested. “Please please please!”

     “Oh, okay,” Paintbrush gave permission. “Just a little bit.”

     “Yay!” The monsters chorused.

     “Lucky it's warm,” Canvas commented.

     “I’m going swimming,” Paintball announced.

     All the monsters found something to do, and they played at the beach for hours until Paintbrush said, “Time to go set up camp.”

     “Aww,” the monsters complained in unison.

     “Can we come back tomorrow?” Watercolor asked. “I wanna see if Sandy will still be here.” She gestured toward a snowman - completely made of sand! “Oh, and my sand-balls and sand-burgers,” Watercolor added, pointing to some spheres comprised of sand, then dug out of the ground three flat disks of sand and stacked them. “Hungry?” She offered the thing to Portrait.

     “Uh, no thanks, you enjoy,” Portrait said, hiding her disgust pretty well.

     “C’mon, let’s go,” Splatter interrupted. The monsters trailed back to their stuff and started walking along a path, until they came to an opening in the trees.

     “Camp!” Paintbrush said, and everyone set up the tents and sleeping bags then ate and crawled into the bags and fell asleep.

 

 

*just kidding.