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Greg, not so grody
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Norithics
Norithics' Gallery (4216)

Issue 03 - Face to Face

This one's gonna hurt
s2ep3.doc
Keywords male 1109083, female 998879, fox 231866, cat 198406, wolf 181305, dog 156290, rabbit 127860, tiger 36835, bat 34517, raccoon 33928, otter 33507, goat 21093, panda 17603, sheep 12998, ferret 9610, badger 6385, weasel 5669, spider 4393, iguana 852, partners 2541 648, partners 386, natalie grayswift 352, carrie oakenfield 228, erwin goldstein 130, jacent danger 127, samantha masterson 110, max tangent 107, aren tenthwood 44, grendolyn murcbee 40, cedric onyx 27, alliston madriccie 22, coul sael 21, jessalynn sabel 10, amanda lee 10, officer murphy 7, bo briggs 5, grigori wallak 4, jordan alpine 4
Moonlight shimmered on a quilt of finely woven azure ripples. The bed of dark sea worked up a froth that floated through the air, playing on the dome's latent energies. The result was a dazzling spectacle of twinkling blue lights that almost perfectly mirrored the ocean's distant ripples.

"Wooow..." murmured Mandy, whose awed smile formed beneath the twinkling blue of her eyes. "I've never seen it at night before."

Beside her sat Grigori Wallak, who was just as happy to look at her as the sea spray. "It's one of my favorite places to go to just... sit and think."

"It's beautiful." Her teeth hinted from just behind her just-parted lips. After a few minutes, she brushed some hair out of her eyes. "What kinds of things do you think about?"

The otter shrugged, a simple, pleasant air about him. "I don't know. Stuff." He looked up, his smile lopsided and thoughtful. "Life. What it would be like to maybe play Tackle Toss in the pros." He smirked bashfully. "How much I wanted a partner."

She craned her neck forward a little, just to be cute. "What's it like now that you've got one?"

He slowly licked his lips. "... So. We're making it official?"

Mandy stared, sand flecking between her toes as she wriggled them intently. "If that's okay with you."

A cold spray of ocean tickled Greg's nose, making it wrinkle up and his whiskers wiggle. Mandy noted that he was devastatingly cute when this happened. "That is so much more than okay with me."

"Yesss!" The panda girl grinned from ear to ear, fist-pumping before realizing what she was doing. "I'm... sorry, I'm probably the biggest nerd ever."

"No, it's okay!" He tried to tamp down the grin spreading on his face. "I guess it's just weird to me that you'd feel like you were the lucky one."

"Really? Why?"

He shrugged. "I was never all that popular or... you know, anything. That, and the whole 'Grody Greg' thing."

She rolled her eyes. "Ohmigosh, that?? Nobody even remembers that. It was aaages ago!" she laughed.

He blushed a bit. "Well. I don't know! I guess I just thought that was still the impression."

"No!" she scoffed. "Nobody still thinks that." A short silence passed between them, Mandy trying to contain her eager smile. "Hey. Put your arm around me."

Greg looked a little embarrassed he hadn't tried to already. "Oh, uh, sure! I was still working up to holding hands." A nervous laugh escaped him. He gingerly draped an arm over her shoulders.

"C'mon~!" Mandy pulled on his hand, curling his arm further around her thin frame and putting hers around him in turn. "I don't want you to get all nervous just because we're a thing. I want that same Greg I joke around with and play-... god. Can you believe we lived in the same town, went to the same school, and yet we met on Skyships of Conquest?"

"I know, right?" He shook his head, not sure whether it was sad or hilarious. "I would've never guessed it'd come to this."

"Yeah... so hey." She looked at him with intent, brushing the hair out of her face. "You wanna make out?"

Greg only laughed. "... Yeah. Oh, yeah."

The two teenagers embraced, slowly situating themselves in a position that felt comfortable. Sounds of escaping breath, meeting lips and muffled laughter emanated from them as they explored one another. After a minute or so of this, they parted, catching their breath a little. "It's so different in person."

"It really is," he agreed. "I like how your legs feel, though," he admitted happily, running a hand over her thigh.

"I like your back. There's so much of it," she added.

Greg's hot cheeks dimpled. "Let's do it some more."

"Definitely~"

They got down in the sand again this time, happily seeing what else they could discover about one another. Suddenly, Greg sat up, as did Mandy. "... Did... you hear a rock band?"

"Sssomething like that? For a second," she agreed.

They shared an awkward silence for a moment. "... Meh!" Plop, back in the sand.

 -
- -
 -

"So why are you out here already?" asked Grendolyn Murcbee, who sat on the outside of a jungle gym in the late-morning sun while her friend Aren struggled just a little bit to get to the same area.

"Yeah!" He grunted. "Don't the high schoolers get out to recess later?"

"Yes," acknowledged Jacent as he used the gym as a toehold, doing crunches from an upside down position. "But as of today, I no longer qualify as such." He pushed himself up, then relaxed. "They've sent me back."

"To what, Eighth Grade?" asked Gren.

"To Kindergarten," he grunted.

Aren burst out laughing. "Haha, what! You're in Kindergarten?! Ow!" He winced from the goat's elbow.

"It's only temporary, to see how quickly I can pass each grade." Jace grunted again. "And I still get to have some classes with high-schoolers." Another rep. "But to be honest, it's kind of nice to have some courses I can understand. Today we did finger painting." He stopped, noting, "I made an elephant."

"Yeesh. That's rough. At least you're enjoying it, though- I'm kinda jealous, I'd love to go back to Kindergarten! It was a lot of fun. Hey, maybe we could tutor you!"

"That's very generous." He flipped up and away, landing on the gravel. "But for now, I think I'm going to play hopscotch over there."

"... Good move, goofus, you laughed at him," the goat chastised as Jace left.

"Like he was gonna feel any better when a kid offers to tutor him!" countered the tiger.

"... Meh. I dunno, I don't think it bugs him that much," Gren noted. "It's probably that he lost his superpowers and stuff more than anything." She shook her head. "I don't blame him, I wish I had some, too."

"Well sure, who doesn't?" The boy brushed some hair out of his face.

She sighed. "I know." Her knees drew to her chin as she bent forward. "I just hate feeling so helpless... what if something happens again? What if it gets bad, and-... I don't wanna lose my grandpa..."

"Hey."

They both looked up at a bunny girl of roughly the same age as them, holding a kickball.

"I heard that there's a weapon hidden somewhere in this town," she said provocatively.

"A weapon?" Aren asked.

"Yeah. Something they were doling out to the Army, but everybody was too scared to get it, or something like that."

"Really??" Gren tried to rein in her surprise. "Where is it?"

She shrugged. "The old power plant."

They gasped in unison.

"That place??"

"It's been abandoned for years!"

"Why would anyone leave something there?"

The bunny girl leaned in conspiratorially. "To charge it, duh."

They looked at each other slowly, considering the ramifications of that. "Whooooaaa..."

After a moment, a bell chimed from the school building, and the girl turned her head. "Aw. My recess is over. See ya!" And with that, she ran back inside.

The goat and tiger hopped down. "Aren, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Awesome spooky power plant??"

"With a crazy powerful weapon inside it??"

They high-fived. "Let's do it!"

 -
- -
 -

The hall was littered with students shuffling out of classes and accessing their lockers. Unlike the ones designed for smaller kids, these had been put in to accommodate the older students and make them feel a bit more comfortable.

"You alright?" Bo Briggs asked her friend and fellow packmate, Jordan. "You look worse than I do," she added with a wry smile.

Mr. Alpine rubbed his eyes blearily. "I've been running down leads since we got off school last week. It used to be I'd have given my arm for a mystery to solve- now I've got three that all need my attention. Not the least of which being why so many people can't sleep."

"Yeah, well, I appreciate it, Jordie." She patted his shoulder. "The sooner you solve that one, the better." She took a deep breath and let it out wearily. They shared a moment of shared concern before he let her get her things back in her locker.

"Hey, guys!" Mandy called from across the hallway, a big otter in tow. "Okay so, you know I was telling you about Greg? This is him!"

"Hey there," Bo smirked with about as much enthusiasm as she could muster, to which Greg replied in kind.

"Ah yes, I remember watching you trying out for tackle toss," Jordan recalled with a friendly demeanor. "Pleased to meet you."

"Oh, yeah," Greg nodded. "And I remember you from the netball team. You... sound a lot different off the court."

He chuckled. "I believe the clothes make the man. Anyway, I'd introduce you to Geoff, but he's still putting his trumpet away." Jordan paused a moment. "Come to think of it, weren't you the one rumored to have fended off some of the monsters during the invasion?"

"Yep!" Mandy answered for him, squeezing his shoulders. "That was him!"

He smirked. "Heh. And without any alien assistance, no less. Bravo."

Greg's mouth formed a grin, but he still felt embarrassed. "I just... did what I thought I could." He blinked, looking down at his hands. "Oh, crap. I forgot my tablet in class; I'll catch up with you guys in a minute." With that, he left, his ears burning.

"Well, he's certainly a catch," Bo smiled at Mandy. "I guess it's about time yooou- is that Cedric?"

They all looked down the hall as the purple-haired badger walked through the double doors, strutting in like he owned the place. "In the flesh. Did you miss me??"

"What do you want?" asked Bo, clutching her tablet to her chest.

He responded by slapping it out of her arms, sending it clattering to the floor. "What I've always wanted- your smiling faces, twisted in fear." He shoved her bodily into her locker, which she was altogether too weak to resist.

"No!" she protested, before the locker door slammed shut, followed by insistent banging.

Jordan winced. "She's claustrophobic, let her out! GRHK!"

Cedric pulled his tie outward and choked up on the knot- literally. "Or what, Sherlock, you'll deduce you're a sniveling coward?" He yanked the weasel's belt out of his pants loop in one motion, wrapped it around his knees and pulled it tight. With a fireman's lift, he plunked him head-first into the trash bin, half-naked and struggling. His gaze set on Mandy.

"Don't hurt me, I'm not resisting!" she backed away slowly as he pounded a locker open.

"But that's why I'm going to hurt you!" He grabbed the seat of her pants, eliciting a squeak from her. "Because you're weak!" Her strangled squeal filled the hall as he gave her an enormous, painful wedgie, lifting her up by the back of her pants and slowly depositing her on the coat hook of the locker.

"Gngh! It hurts, let me down!"

He responded with a sharp slap, bringing tears to her eyes. "You've let me down, sniveling string bean. If you know what's good for you, you'll keep- QFWGRRR!!"

Greg, who had returned from class, gut-checked Cedric into the lockers with barreling momentum. There was a momentary bounce backward before the badger slumped to the floor, coughing. "Leave 'em alone, asshole!" he barked, heat filling his face.

"Or what, Grody Greg?" he taunted, somehow, despite the wheezing and pained gasps. "You gonna rub your grunge all over me? I'll do whatever I want to your little panda pal."

The otter saw red, pursed his lips and pulled a big arm back. When he thrust it toward the badger's face, his hands came up and wrapped around his wrist, stopping the attack. Cedric's sadistically dextrous fingers dug in under Greg's and wrenched his fingers back. "AHNGH!!" he grunted out, pain firing up his arm and lighting up his head.

"You wanna fight me, Wallak, we'll fight," Cedric warned maliciously. Greg brought his other arm back and punched the badger in his gut, sending him into another stunned coughing fit, but it only made him increase the pressure on Greg's hand- it felt like his fingers were going to break clean off. The otter's arm trembled as he tried to go for one more swing.

Without any warning whatsoever, Cedric ate a right and left jab, then an uppercut, all of which were machine-gunned into his face before he had a moment to see it coming. When he was done doing a punch-drunk pirouette, he saw the leather-jacketed spider who dealt the blows. "You were real stupid to come back here, Onyx."

He laughed despite his bloody nose. "Whaddya doin', Sabel? These aren't your kids."

She didn't even put her fists up, offering him only a sidelong frown. "Your face needed redecorating." Her glance turned to Greg. "Help 'em out, I got this."

"Oh you've got this!" The badger barked out maliciously, rising to his feet. "Let's test that theory, Champ."

Cedric was a quick and resourceful sadist, but Jessalynn was known in the ring for her quickness. His punch came, but her head turned to the side as if water flowing around a river rock. More attempts were met with similar results, her eyes locked on his face as she fluidly escaped his fists. Her hands finally came out of her pockets, balling into fists, and the next dodge came with a lightning-quick right cross counter.

He reeled and turned back at her, rage filling his eyes as his pupils shrank to pin points. "Get crushed, bug! ERRAGH!!"

When Cedric rushed at her, she dodged heavily to the side, stomping on a piece of string on the floor. With a twirl, she brought her foot up and leaned with her back against the wall, raising the string to knee-height across the hall. The badger bully tumbled end over end, rolling to a stop at the door, his body cringing in pain. She leaned over just a scoche and dismissively replied, "Spiders are arachnids, genius."

Cedric stood up, gnashed his blood-soaked teeth and shuddered. "Finally you marshmallows find your guts. It's irrelevant, anyway; I only came here to send a message." He stood tall once more. "Tell Grayswift that we have Arus. She wants it back? Tell her to come and get it." He turned, shoved the door open and stormed away, just as suddenly as he came.

"Th-Thanks," Mandy noted appreciatively as Greg let her down, adjusting her pants with a wince. "What was that all about?"

"I don't know," Greg admitted, trying to pop the locker open. "Nngh..."

"Stand back a sec." Jessalynn ran a strand of webbing from her palm to the locker, sticking it carefully to it. She did the same with her other hand, repeating this motion half a dozen times in a careful rhythm, weaving the strands into each other before offering the rope to Greg. "Now pull."

The otter wrapped it around his hand, braced his foot against the locker and yanked it open with a loud popping sound, at which point the terrorized sheep jumped out of it, panting. "Ohgodthatwasawful!"

Jordan, after getting helped out of the trash bin, pulled up his pants and knelt down to comfort Bo. "I've never seen him get quite that violent toward bystanders for no apparent reason... regardless, thank you, you two. Excellent work."

"No problem," Greg nodded meaningfully.

"He was on a big stupid rampage," Jessalynn waved it off. "It would've been in my lap sooner or later. Anyway, I've gotta let Oakenfield know about this. Catch you guys later."

 -
- -
 -

The abandoned power plant stood as it had for decades, a tall, imposing industrial castle on the edge of the Governmental Sector of Locksmouth. Once, it powered the entire city, using a variance of resources in order to create a sustainable power supply. With the invention of Fusion power, however, the plant lost its purpose, more and more buildings going off the grid and employing their own localized power sources- even those that depended on a ground supply only usually shared a generator with a handful of other buildings at once.

The place had been scheduled for demolition dozens of times over the years, but work crews had always been delayed- other jobs closer to the city, equipment problems, trouble working out the logistics of knocking down such a solid construction job- and as a result, it still stood to that day.

"It's kinda spooky," Gren said with more reverence for such a thing than most children would have.

"Yeah," Aren agreed, an excited shiver going up his back. "You sure nobody'll find out we're here?"

The goat girl dismounted from her bicycle, putting the stand down as Aren hopped off of the stunt pegs. "Nah. Nobody comes here. Even when they're supposed to."

"Good. You remember the plan?" the tiger asked, an eager smile on his face.

"Yeah," she nodded in the affirmative. "I climb inside, you tell me what to do so you can get in. So, my turn first." She looked around the outside wall, seeing a lot of smoothness. It was tall and didn't look like it had anything to climb on. She pushed away the nagging feelings of doubt that pooled in her stomach. This was a real mission, she had to find a way. "Let's see..." After a quick run to and fro, she saw a part of the wall where the bricks had fallen out halfway down the wall, the rest of them jaggedly set. "There we go..."

"Careful, Gren!" Aren called after her, watching her take step after step upward.
"Just don't look up my skirt."
"I'm not! ... Wait, you're wearing shorts anyway."
"I knew you were looking!"
"Gah!"

If she was being honest, Grendolyn was happy for the distraction- the idea of the bricks coming loose crossed her mind once or twice on the way up, menacing her resolve. But once she reached the top, a quick look around showed that the catwalk inside was sturdy enough to hold, so she hopped onto it. She flipped on her PET and made a gesture which summoned Aren's projection. "Alright, I'm in."

"Do you see a way in?"

She looked around, noticing that there were a ton of panels and switches strewn about in various places, some requiring ladders to access, others simply located on the catwalk. "There's a ton of stuff up here. I don't know what I'm looking for."

"All I need is in an air vent. Look for something that mentions it, or something that looks like it might control those."

She walked around for a few minutes, shining her little flashlight around. "... Wait." Gren spotted a panel that had a picture of what looked like a fan. "I think I found it! Now I- wait. Isn't the power all off? How's this even gonna work?"

Aren's projection chuckled a little. "Don't worry about it, vent controls are manual. Like, mechanical. They have to be, or they'd cause a huge meltdown and you'd never be able to stop it. But it does mean you're gonna have to pull really hard."

The goat looked down at the lever beneath the panel and smirked. "Don't worry about me, mathlete," she teased. "Just try not to fall down anything."

~(_)~

Aren watched Gren's projection as she struggled with the lever for a minute, then finally, laboriously yanking it in place. At the exact same time, the vent opening popped up. "Good work, gruff!" he teased right back.

The vent was easy enough to get into. There was more than enough crawlspace available for him to maneuver around and even turn back completely if he needed to. Of course, he wasn't about to do that at this point; the prospects of what awaited him inside were all too exciting. There was something about abandoned places he relished- the eerie silence, the isolation, the sense of purpose lost in each object... it was an almost hypnotic draw.

The vent's orientation changed a bit, becoming a diagonal climb. His knees made a little more noise than he wanted, but the angle was thankfully not too steep. "Uahn!" he cried out in staccato tremor, realizing almost too late that there was no more vent. He grabbed the remainder of the vent under him with both hands, looking down and around. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, it made visual sense to him why he didn't detect the change. The whole room was dark, the occasional yellow blades of sunlight cutting in through the windows proving insufficient to light the place up to any appreciable degree. He peered ahead and noted that the vent hadn't simply ended; it had been interrupted. A single section of it laid on the floor below, completing the mental puzzle... as well as sending a surge of adrenaline through his body as he questioned anew the structural integrity of the place he was climbing through.

"It is only a few feet, though," he reasoned. He crouched, rump in the air as he readied up on the toes of his shoes, tensing as he imagined a feral bengal tiger leaping onto some unwitting prey...

... then winced as he also replayed the memory of himself trying the long jump at school and falling on his face his first try. "Yeah, maybe not..." Aren hugged the bottom of the vent and looked around for a better idea. "Heeey..." He spotted a chain hanging a few feet away and dug through his backpack, pulling out an electromagnet he'd done as a science project a month back. The ferrous-coiled metal donut with a cable trailing from it sat comfortably in his hand, and he searched around for something else. "Gotcha!" He fished out the power source for his remote-controlled PeTra, hooking it up to the magnet, then leaned out. Aren's arm extended as far as it could, nothing happening for a few moments... then the chain began to swing very slightly. "Yes... come on now..." He took the magnet away when the chain swung away, then re-introduced the magnetic element when it got closer. The principle was the same as pushing someone on a swing. It inched closer, and closer, and closer...

~clack!~

"Yesss!" He grinned, removing the battery from the electromagnet and pulling it away from the chain with some effort.

"What're you doin' in there?" Gren asked.

"Science," he reported proudly. "Gimme a minute, I gotta climb down." It was slow going, but the tiger eventually made his way down to the floor of the room, taking stock of what he saw... and what he didn't. "Crap, I don't see you anywhere..." He did spot, however, a clipboard on the floor. "... What's this?" Neat penmanship played across the page, detailing passages of some kind.

"What did you find?"
"Something somebody wrote... on paper."
"Ugh, why?"
"I don't know. This place must be older than I thought..."
"Well, what's it say?"

[October 19th. Should I tell her of my feelings? Would I be remiss to do that in this day and age? Who's to say she's too young for me? I shouldn't write this here- what if it were found? I can't risk that. And yet, if I don't record my thoughts, I'll go mad about it. Life was so simple for me before I laid eyes on you...

October 22nd. There's something wrong with the fifth capacitor in room 8-J. It keeps overcharging, yet I've been feeding it a slow, controlled voltage this entire time. I'll have to spend the night here.

October 23rd. Spending the night was a bad idea. By day this place is fine, but by night it becomes about as cheery as an ash lot, the panels metal grave plates. I feel like a fool, but with only utilitarian lighting, I run from room to room, breathless in the darkness as I hope not to trip over a forgotten wrench or misplaced crate. The night shift are a sullen lot- a skeleton crew that spares few words and fewer kindnesses. They don't like me, I can tell. To make matters worse, for enduring all this I'm no closer to fixing the problem! The capacitor seems to be drawing power from positively nothing at times- a vexing issue if ever there was. Still, it bothers me little in comparison with the brooding darkness of this place... for a building that lights up the night, it's happy to hoard blackness given half the chance.]

Gren shivered excitedly. "Wow, this is spooky... Keep going!"

[October 24th. I slept through my normal shift! What's worse, I slept it here, without going home. I received an angry letter from my superior telling me that if I liked the night shift so much, I could make it up tonight. Oh, if only she knew how untrue that was- I didn't want to be here last night, and I don't relish it again. Even more troubling, the capacitor has bested me time and again. It's beyond my skills to fix the blasted thing, and I can't understand how after hours of cooldown, it still hasn't lost its charge! I'm about to just call it defective and demand a new one be fabricated. Fie on the cost; no tool is worth a man's sanity.

October 25th. I've discovered something impossible. The capacitor, that accursed piece of static machinery... was never attached to the generators at all. All of the experiments I've done to charge and discharge it have been borne of... I don't even know what. I'm afraid to be around it, if I'm being honest. I have to follow the trail, find... find where it's drawing its power. I have to unearth this mystery, and yet... it means another night here. I can hardly stand the thought of it.

October 26th. I should have gone home.
I should have gone home.
I should have.
If I make it out of here, I'm telling her how I feel.
I promise.
I should have gone home.]

Aren finished it, a chill running up his spine. "It's signed... William C. 30."

"Thirty??"

"I guess it was his employee number."

"Whatever!" She shook her head. "That's not important; we need to find this thing he was working on! That was the weapon, I'm sure of it!"

"We should start where he did, room 8-J," Aren supplied. "I'm sending you the schematics I downloaded; they're not for this one exactly, but it's based off this type of plant. It should be the same."

~(_)~

"Okay! Thanks." Gren climbed a small half-flight of stairs leading to another set of rafters in another room, this one darker than the first. "I think I'm in the right place." She looked down at the warehouse-like area below, spotting a number of different rooms with labels of similar format.

"Do you see it?"

"Hold up, it's hard to see from up here. I'm gonna have to go down." The goat girl spotted a ladder at the end of a decrepit walkway, edging toward it slowly before grabbing the handholds. She let out a sigh of relief once her feet hit the rung, climbing down slowly. The climb was agonizingly slow, but she didn't dare move any faster, lest she compromise what little trust she had in the thing's ability to hold anything up. She landed on the ground, coughing a little from the dust she kicked up.

"You alright?"

She nodded, covering her mouth. "Yeah, eck, fine. Nobody's cleaned in here since Neo-Medieval times, though, geez." She regained her wits and pointed her flashlight up, walking slowly between the self-contained cabins that littered the huge room. "Now let's see... 19-I... 2-J... 5-J..." She grinned at the illuminated label. "Bingo. Now- UNGH."

Aren winced. "Gren, are you okay??"

She blinked away the dizziness. "Oof. Yeah, I'm alright, I just... head-butted the door on accident." She frowned. "I hope those divots don't mean it won't open."

The tiger boy stifled a giggle. "I think the fact that there's no power running to the doors means they won't open. Any emergency latches?"

"No luck. Any chance you could get the power going?"

He frowned thoughtfully. "Lemme look around."

"I'm not goin' anywhere," joked Gren, as she looked around in the ever-encroaching darkness. "... Hey Ten?"

"Yeah?"

"When we get out of here, let's order the biggest milkshake we can find."

He laughed. "... Okay."

 -
- -
 -

In Locksmouth, as most dome cities, population was declining. What used to be bustling cities packed with people slowly became chronically under-crowded within a few generations, as was the pattern in Post-Splice Humanity's history: boom and bust population. The current situation was especially severe, however, meaning that the city just had far more capacity than it did people to fill it. As a result, older blocks of houses were abandoned as the people who remained clustered together for social reasons.

For those who treasured isolation, however, those shells of homes offered a sort of Domestic Avalon. Like a certain badger and his two friends.

"I can't believe you figured out how to shave ice with ice," Coul mused, licking at his root beer-flavored treat.

Alliston giggled. "There be nothin' to it once ye get the hang of it. Mmm~!" She sucked up a little hill of strawberry snow and smiled.

"Hey, ringtail. You missed some." Cedric smirked, wiping a bit of shaved ice off the top of Coul's nose and onto his own finger, sampling it. "Mm. I might like yours better."

The raccoon blushed, grinning dumbly. "Y-You can have it if you want."

He laughed, his harsh cackle softened somehow. "Knock that off."

Alliston put her head on Cedric's shoulder. "I'm glad you agreed to try it."

Cedric took a deep breath and leaned back, putting an arm around each of his friends as they sat on the front step of an old, empty house. "Yeah, well. Maybe there's room in my philosophy for self-indulgence after all. What's the point of winning if there's no spoils?"

Coul peered over the hill. "Hey. Is that...?"

Two silhouettes made themselves known as they walked down toward the trio. Their faces were set with anger.

"Grayswift and Oakenfield," Cedric hmphed. "I guess Alpine squealed this location to you after all."

Natalie sneered. "I bet he wouldn't have if you didn't pull his pants down and dump him in a trash can."

Alliston tilted her head and asked Coul, "When'd we do that?"

"He probably would have even forgiven that, if you hadn't shoved his best friend in a dark, confined space and locked her there!" Nat seethed. "She was still shaking when we left school!"

"Briggs?" Coul made a face of confusion. "We were saving that as a blackmail threat for later. Cedge, you didn't cash in on that one, did you?"

Carrie hmphed with a grin. "You were real dumb to try it against Jessa 'n Greg."

This time Cedric furrowed a brow. "He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious; Sun Tzu." Noticing her confusion, he elaborated. "I never tangle with Wallak; I haven't seen him fight, but he's a big sweaty muscle. Why risk it? And Sabel?" He tried to subdue a laugh. "She's itching for it every second of the day; why would I give her the satisfaction?"

Allie made a face of extreme confusion. "My brain's melting, Cedgie, what's going on?"

"Looook." He chuckled, standing up and handing Coul his shaved ice. "I get it. You're bored of school work, you wanna knock heads. I'm always willing to indulge my favorite punching bag. No obstacles, no teachers, nothing out here but empty houses. I could use the exercise."

Natalie's eye twitched. "Why are you acting like- UNGH!" Before she knew it, she'd eaten a punch across the jaw, landing on her back. The wolf stood up, shaking off the blow. She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to get sucker-punched by the badger. No missing teeth this time, not even a cut cheek from one of said teeth. She saw Carrie getting ready to join in, but stopped her. "Find Arus!"

"Find Arus?" Cedric frowned. "Why? Isn't she wherev- UNH!" It was his turn to eat a heavy slug across the face, collapsing into a crouch. "Ah haha, nice. Almost broke my nose with that one."

Carrie lumbered over to Coul and Alliston, a frown cutting deep across her features. "Where'd you put her?"

"Her who? Your hairstylist? I'm pretty sure they died of exhaustion," Coul cracked, earning a snickering high five from Alliston.

A heat grew behind her face. "Arus, you goons! Where's Arus?!"

"Oh, sorry, matey, I think she was in them s'mores we made the other night." Alliston shot her a look full of humorous dismissal. "How in the heck would we know??"

Carrie's fist flirted very closely with the idea of kissing both of them in succession, but for once, reason won out. She pointed up at the door. "This where you live?"

"Yeah, it's ours," Coul answered moments before she burst in. "Hey! We don't go busting into your place!"

Carrie examined the house to the sound of Nat and Cedric conversationally brutalizing each other. It was a small place with two stories, the door opening into a cozy den-like area. It was a bit cluttered, but nowhere near the kind of disarray she'd expected of a place inhabited by those three. She examined a large fish tank that had been filled with a modest amount of sand and held a singular creature inside: a crawler. The six-limbed monster hung lazily from a little decorative tree installed in it, unconcerned with her or anything else. "... Wait. You guys kept a crawler as a pet??"

"Aye, what of it?? Yer boy kept himself a slime! 'Least ours has legs, ye doily-wearin' titmonster."

"Oh yeah, you mean Tickles!" Coul added, plopping down on the couch with his shaved ice. "Isn't she cute?"

"Yeah, adorable." Carrie rolled her eyes. "... Wait."

The crawler noticed her, and when it did, its complexion gradually went from purple to pure white. It climbed slowly up the side of the tank, one of its limbs almost seeming to paw at the glass.

"..." Cat lifted the lid off the tank and reached inside.

"Hey, don't let 'er out!" Alliston complained. "We just got her cage-trained!"

Carrie held the crawler in her hands, staring intently at it. It didn't make any threatening movements, instead gently holding itself up as well as it could with her help. "Now I know where you've been keeping her..." The white slurmed off of the monster, sliding from its body onto Carrie's hands, coating her and sinking into her flesh. Seconds went by like minutes, the little creature giving up more and more of the liquid until it completely flowed into Cat. Carrie inked over completely, Arus' flesh covering her own as she gently put the crawler back in its cage, then turned to Coul and Alliston.

"W-... What the fuck??" Coul burst out suddenly.

Alliston seemed deeply disturbed. "Yer inklin' was in Tickles??"

"Yes," Cat confirmed with an edge to her voice beyond even the inkling modulation.

"We-... We didn't know!" urged Coul. "I swear, we had no idea!"

Carrie tensed, took a deep breath, then let it out, walking past them. "I believe you."

"No really! It- wait, ye do?"

Cat nodded almost imperceptibly, walking down the steps toward Nat and Cedric. She caught his fist mid-swing, and put a hand on Nat's shoulder. "Stop."

Natalie huffed, sweating. "So they did have Arus!"

"Yeah," Carrie confirmed. "But they didn't know it."

Nat rubbed a bruise on her neck. "Wait... but... what??"

"Now I'm confused." Cedric wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve, and felt a drop of rain on the back of his hand as the sun settled over the horizon. "Why was your inkling here?"

"That much, I don't know," she admitted. "Where did you get... Tickles?"

Coul stuck his head out of the door. "Actually, it was kind of a crazy story. Come in out of the rain and we'll tell you."

 -
- -
 -

"... Did you find it?" she asked after a long silence.

Aren didn't look up from the metal panel, carefully pulling out circuit-completing connectors and replacing them in different orders. He needed pliers to do the job, a crate to reach it and was working in the dark, which he definitely wasn't afraid of, except for maybe just a little bit. "I'm almost there..."

The projection of a goat nervously fiddled with her ruffles, looking this way and that. "Well, be careful. I can't work any of this stuff myself."

"I'll be fine; I'm wearing gloves!" he responded almost cheerfully. "Just one more... that should do it." A big spark shot out of the panel, startling him and frizzing his tail. "... Thaaat's not it. Oh! Duh." He replaced two nodes, then flipped the big knife switch on the side of the panel.

~(_)~

The huge room's lights snapped on loudly. A myriad of massive cylindrical devices began turning in the floor below the one she was on, which she hadn't yet even noticed. Gren crouched along the walkway, staring down at the machines that looked like they were stirring enormous vats of black pudding. "You did it! Ugh... this whole place reeks now."

"It's probably the lubricants; they're probably a hundred years old by now," Aren's projection responded. "I'm surprised they still work."

"Shuddup, don't jinx it!" she urged. "I need 'em to work so I can get in." She ran up to a door with a security panel that booted up, the singular LED light on it glowing a forbidding red. "Now, let's see if this works..." She held up the grungy, long-forgotten  security card hanging by a lanyard attached to a hook. A moment passed, the light turned green and the door unlocked with a heavy click. "Yes! Thanks..." she flipped the card over. "... Pillows, Body P.?"

"It was probably their nickname; get inside!"

Gren slipped in the small room, noticing a tablet left on the console. It was an old one- a plastic grey rectangle with an inset screen. She hit the 'on' button, and to her amazement, it booted up. And booted. And booted. "Geeeeez, it's been ten seconds. These things took forever!"

"I'll bet they knew something about this thing."

The goat girl opened up a file titled 'Personal Log.' What followed was eerily familiar. "October 27th-"

"Hey, wait!" Aren interrupted her. "Wasn't that the day after the other guy stopped writing?"

She blinked. "Well... yeah, I guess, but it had to be years and years after; this is on a tablet, not paper."

"Still, that's so weird..."

She winced. It was a strange coincidence, and inside the context of the rest of this mystery, nothing seemed coincidental about it.

[Oct 27. I was just assigned this post. This part of the plant has a lot of old generators, capacitors and things that never got taken out of the previous incarnation of this place. It's kind of quaint, all the old technology here. Glad I don't have to deal with all those coal fumes, though- bioreactive energy is such a better future for us. Still, it's going to be annoying moving all this old junk out to make room for the new stuff. I was almost done today, converting this room for use in the new plant, but my electrometer went off. I thought for sure it was a joke played by one of the other workers- they like my soft features, I think they're trying to flirt with me, not that I'm complaining- but after I opened up the capacitor, sure enough it was fully charged. I didn't know what the heck to make of it; maybe somebody was squatting and generating power for themselves personally somehow?

Oct 28th. I just found some notes left by the guy who manned this station. They were stashed in a wall; I happened upon them by chance, but they get really weird in places. Still, he seemed to know where the cables lead to from this thing, so I'm gonna scope that out and see where it leads.

Oct 31st. I couldn't leave well enough alone, could I? I knew there was something wrong. I knew it, but I just wouldn't
I can't
I won't
Why would someone leave this here

-Phil O. Peabody]

Gren's fur stood up on end as a chill ran down her spine, to the sound of rain aggressively beating down on the roof. "Yeesh, did this guy go crazy too??" She frowned. "What is this thing anyway??"

"I don't know," Ten replied. "But I did find a map on the back of the first guy's notes. They should lead you to it, and there are other parts here showing how I could get to you from here. Let's meet up for it, okay?"

"Yeah." She nodded, staring at the map pensively. "Yeah, okay."

 -
- -
 -

"You know, actually this shaved ice is pretty good." Natalie held the handle of hers up to her neck, soothing the bruise. "Is this orange?"

"Aye," Alliston confirmed. "I prefer the grape meself! Y'sure you don't want one, ye big-eyed bilge rat?"

"No," Carrie refused for the third time. "Now, tell me how you got the crawler."

Coul nodded. "Sure. It was a weird situation, really. There was a construction crew coming through our 'neighborhood,' I think to start work on repairing some of the air tracks- the rides between buildings were crap before the Incident. Normal enough, right?" He frowned. "Well, one of 'em starts flipping out. She starts losing all the color from her face... and her everything, really. Her co-workers try to calm her down, but she attacks them! It turns into a big scuffle... and here's where it gets really weird."

"That wasn't weird enough?" Nat posed.

"Trust me," Coul assured her, "This takes the cake. Anyway, they're fighting, when out of one of the houses, this flipper-fist comes out. What was your name for them, 'shufflers?'"

"Big, lumpy, one eye in the middle of a big pile of hamburger?" Nat asked.

"That's the one!" he confirmed. "But this one... was black. With a big blood-red eye."

Carrie frowned. "Red and black, huh?"

"Yes, and holy fuck-buckets, he was like King Shuffler. Me 'n Allie came out to knock him around hoping we could score some brownie points, but by a minute in he was whoopin' our asses. Hit like a train, fast as shit, and he never got tired. We may not be that smart, but you guys know we're not wusses either- you've given us enough ass-kickings that we can stay in a fight for as long as you want. But this one... it was like it knew kung-fu or something, thing was wicked."

"Wow," Natalie listened, licking down the cone. "So what happened?"

"I wondered where they were," Cedric answered. "When I looked outside and saw them getting a royal beating by something we slapped down by the dozen, I naturally came out to assist. It was good, but not 'laugh off magma' good, so I slagged it." He paused. "That's where something else weird happened. Instead of running off or keeling over-"

"- It vanished," Natalie finished, miming smoke puffing into the air.

"... Yeah." Cedric furrowed his brows. "How'd you know?"

"We ran into something similar," Carrie explained. "Bugape. The spinny-head things. It was a little one, but it gave us fits, too. Then, poof."

"And out of it," Alliston added, "Came Tickles." She held up the thing. "Dropped right out of its body 'soon as it puffed away."

"Now that didn't happen to ours," noted Nat. "Interesting. So it's almost like it was holding Arus hostage via the crawler."

Cedric nodded. "You think that Osoth is behind it?"

She shook her head. "She couldn't if she wanted to. She's in pieces after the Greys came and ripped her apart. But then that means that whoever has her parts could use them for whatever they wanted..."

Carrie blinked. "The Greys don't seem like they'd do all this, after the way Echelon described them. Arus didn't see much organization among them either, before she lost consciousness... so who did it?"

Natalie gave the window a steely gaze. "I'm willing to bet it's whoever actually terrorized the school today."

 -
- -
 -

Grendolyn Murcbee walked slowly through the dark hallway. Her heart thumped in her chest as rain beat on the windows, the only light coming in from the occasional burst of lightning. Each photo-like flash revealed the room a little more: concrete flooring, little cracks in the walls, an open door to a small storage room filled with haphazardly discarded furniture and equipment. Her hand was shaking as she reached up to turn the knob on the old-fashioned door, the creaks on its hinges louder than she could have imagined them being.

"GREN!"
"AAAAH!!"

The goat shook off her terror long enough to notice Ten, who was inside the much larger room she was heading into. "Sorry! I didn't expect you so quick." He hesitated. "Were you running... because you're scared?"

"No," she retorted flatly, standing up and walking into the dark warehouse-style room, vaulted ceilings letting in the odd lightning flash that showed a very strange assortment of chains dangling from a device that was hard to identify.

"Oh," he nodded. "Because... you know, I wouldn't blame you," he said honestly. "This place turned out to be a lot scarier than I even thought it would. And that was pretty scary to start with..."

Her features softened as she took note of the increasingly intimidating shapes in the shadows: dilapidated crates stacked haphazardly, chains hanging from a strange ring that looked like a giant motorized clothing rack... something huge in the center of it that stood like a small mountain. Lightning flashed, and for a moment their eyes grew wide- two words in blackened crimson written on rough steel flashed before them.

GO BACK.

"I-... Is that blood?" asked the tiger boy.

"It isn't ketchup... wait. There." She pointed to a jutting structure from the mammoth machine. "What is that??"

"It's... another capacitor!" Aren confirmed. "Wait. A capacitor that goes to another capacitor? That's... weird."

"Why?"

"It's like... if you hooked up a battery to another battery. It's not exactly the same, but it... I don't know, it just doesn't make sense." He scratched his head.

"Doesn't make sense in a maverick, mad-sciencey way??"

"Doesn't make sense in a 'that's really stupid' way. Unless there was something generating and taking the charge, there's no reason anyone would build it like this."

"I think we need to look at it," Gren decided.

"You're right," he agreed. "Gimme a minute while I open this casing."

A deeply unsettling feeling overcame both of them as Aren unfastened the latches. The sensation was unexplainable, but it somehow felt like the darkness was encroaching on them moment by moment. "C-... C'mon, Ten, hurry," she urged.

"I know, I know!" He finally pulled off the last latch and opened it up, revealing a capacitor that positively glowed with bluish-white energy. "Whoooooaaa..." they marveled in unison.

"Is it supposed to look like that??" Gren asked, the glow playing on her face in the dark.

"No way," Aren remarked. "It shouldn't even be visib-... what's it doing??" He leaned closer as it started thrumming, vibrations traveling through the floor.

The stagnant air felt charged as the thing began buzzing, climbing toward some kind of electric crescendo. "It's getting worse! Ten, look out!" She shoved Aren out of the way as hard as she could, sending him toppling to the floor as a bolt of bluish-white lightning shot out of the machine, slamming between her shoulder blades. In a second, it was over. Her pupils shrunk, her body went limp and she fell to the floor.

"GREN!" Aren hurried to his feet, rolling her over onto her back. "Gren, speak to me! Are you okay?? Come on, please be okay!" He stared into her unblinking eyes, trembling. "C-Can you hear me? Say something!" The tiger gazed over her body for injury, but he wasn't a doctor; he didn't know what to look for. "This isn't what I wanted... I... I just wanted you to feel safe again. I thought we could go on an adventure and it might make you feel better... if you could do something great." He frowned. "I was even excited we might find something that would help, some kind of weapon that could make us useful, too." He sat back against the wall, shoulders slumped as he held Gren's head in his lap. Tears edged at the corners of his eyes. "B-But it wasn't worth it if I lose my best friend... s-so c'mon... wake up..."

"It wasn't what you had in mind, was it, pipsqueak?" asked a sneering badger, a smirk on his features, hands in his pockets.

"... Cedric??"

"Oh, sorry. You don't remember me this way." His flesh went liquid for a moment, and within a few moments, the bunny girl from the playground stood before him. "Sorry, I get so caught up in it that I forget who's who."

"Y-You!" he realized. "You were the one who told us to come here! There was never any weapon to begin with, was there??" His tears got hot with anger as he stood, gently letting Gren down. "You just led us into a horrible trap! What for?!"

"Now that's not true," the girl said, her voice maturing with every word as she walked forward. She appeared to age with each step, eventually standing a few feet from Aren, taking on the form of a rabbit girl of high school age. "I said there was a weapon here, and there was. His name is Voltaus. Your little friend's crawling with him now as he sucks her dry for prana."

"An inkling!" the tiger deduced. "Then it was the one creating that over-unity in the two capacitors! Get it out of her!"

She chuckled. "Yeah, I don't think so. Voltaus needs prana just like the rest of us, and that's her. Unless, of course, you'd be willing to give over your own prana so we can feed it to some... pet projects."

"So... be your prisoner, basically, huh?" He pursed his lips, looking back at Gren, then staring hard at the mystery girl. "... If it saves Gren, I-"

"D-Don't do it..."

"Gren!"

The goat rose slowly from the floor, limbs quivering. "Geez, whiz kid, I take one little shock and you're ready to take the fall for me?" She chuckled. "I could understand your pervy crushes, but me?? Well, don't worry, I can handle this little liar." She clenched a fist, electric energy crackling around her hand.

His eyes widened. "Whoa! Is that-..."

"What's gonna teach her a lesson!" Gren opened her palm, firing a bolt of searing white-hot electricity at the rabbit girl, who somewhat appropriately, jumped it.

"You were way too eager to try that out," she noted judgmentally from on top of the rotary ring.

"My teachers call me ambitious!" The goat girl shoved another blast of lightning at their mysterious malefactor, which struck the wall and blasted a twisted hole in it.

The girl simply hopped down, smiling as she strolled toward them slowly. "Hit her with another one, Gren!" Aren urged with a grin. "... Gren?"

"S-... Sure... another... comin' up..." She fell to her knees and would have met the floor a second time if the tiger hadn't caught her. She couldn't even keep her eyes open. "Nnnh..."

"See? I didn't lie there, either. Voltaus needs a lot of prana. More than any one person could generate, and certainly not the meager offerings of a little kid. It's what's kept him locked up in this place for so long, sucking away excess power." She kicked them both viciously, sending the two of them sprawling. "And after a power debt like that? He's gonna eat her from the inside out, now." She tsked, shaking her head. "Should've just come quietly, kitty boy. Some prana, a little information for good old Sarissa, and we might've even let you go. You can't fight someone so much older than you," she grinned.

"Then you are very disadvantaged." A kick shoved the rabbit girl aside, throwing her into the wall with a staccato burst of pained sounds. Sarissa fell to the floor, groaning, and where she stood before was a sopping wet Jacent. "Are you alright, my friends?" He smiled, concerned. "I would have brought the others, but I've locked myself out of my PET somehow."

"Jacent!" Aren smiled back. "Boy are we glad to see you! Gren... nnh... she accidentally absorbed an inkling named Voltaus, and now he's sucking her prana dry. If we don't do something, I don't think she's going to be okay..."

"That is a problem..." He winced. "I'm not sure how to-" The boy paused as he looked up at a familiar wolf. "Natalie!"

"Sorry I'm late, Jacent!" she said, breathing heavily under her fluffy white long-sleeved shirt. "There's nothing you can do for an inkling problem. I'll take care of it; you go after that girl!" she pointed down the hallway. "I think she went in that direction."

"Right!" he nodded, running a few steps forward before stopping. "... Wait. Why aren't your clothes w- UNGH!" He fell in a heap as Natalie clobbered him from behind, grinning. Gren and Ten looked on with worry, a sinking feeling in their stomachs.

"Sucker." Sarissa shifted back into her normal form, giggling. "Too bad, kiddies. No rescue this time." She pulled a lighter from her pocket, an angry grin pulling at her face as she trembled sadistically.

"G-... Gren, are you okay?"

"Ten?" She tried to cough, but even that seemed too hard. "I don't feel good," she mewled. "It's like he's taking a bunch of stuff I didn't know I needed..."

"G-... Give him to me!" Aren pleaded.

"Then he'll... just do you in..." she refused. "Can't take her... myself anyway..." Gren smiled sadly as Sarissa gathered up some chains. "Sorry, buddy. L-Looks like we won't get to share that milkshake after all..."

Something clicked in Aren's mind. Voltaus, the journals, the capacitors... it all made sense now. "That's it! Gren! Take my hand." He carefully, slowly concentrated. "If you can hear me, you big blob of goo, I want you to know that I've got just as much prana as Gren. I promise not to let go if you promise to let me have half of you. Okay? Ready?? One... two... VOLTAUS!"

As Ten called the inkling's name, something spread between his hand and Gren's. A bright yellow ink covered their hands, traveling down their arms, then coated their bodies, their eyes and mouths represented by jet black shapes, making up the 'core' of Voltaus. The two kids stood up, holding hands. "Ten, you're a freaking genius," Gren praised the tiger. "And as for you, Sarissa, eat voltage!" She launched a series of broken electric sparks at the bunny girl, forcing her to dodge wildly away.

"Wait... what??" She gawped, disbelieving. "How did- are you sharing him?! That's it; I'm outta here," she decided, climbing up one of the chains on the big machine.

"I don't think so." Aren grabbed a chain as well with his free hand. Instead of random sparks, he produced a constant current of electricity through it, traveling from his end all the way to Sarissa, shocking her hands and sending her tumbling to the floor.

"Ngh! Fuck!" She winced, sprawling. "I won't be compromised! Not like this!" She upended some crates and ran for it, disappearing down the hall. The two children let out a joined sigh of relief, the ink draining from them as they slowly collapsed to the floor.

 -
- -
 -

A slightly more subdued thunder rolled through the skies of Locksmouth, rumbling softly and punctuating the sounds of gentle rain ticking against the windows of the still abandoned Burger Dictator.

"So this Sarissa girl just took off after Jacent showed up, huh?" asked Erwin, seated around the same cluster of table space as the rest of his friends.

"That's how it happened," Gren confirmed, nodding and sucking on a tall, thick milkshake.

Aren pulled away from doing the same via a second straw. "Mm. Yeah! We were lucky he showed! She was kinda tough." They shared a conspiratorial smile with the red-haired boy.

Natalie nodded slowly. "Well, that unravels the mystery of who attacked the school in the guise of Cedric, and why you two took off."

"But that still doesn't tell us why," Sam noted. "Why disguise as Cedric to draw your ire? And why lure the young ones into that musty old place?"

Max grinned, slowly feeding Gropey a tomato. "Maybe she wanted to turn Gren into goat cheese."

"Eww!" she recoiled. "Wait, what?"

Carrie made a sidelong glance at Jacent. "You've been quiet. What do you think?"

He considered it a moment longer. "One of Zhuge Liang's thirty-six stratagems was 'clamor in the East, attack in the West.'" He paused. "It means once your enemy is distracted with another problem of your own creation, you can strike them where they are weakest. Whatever they wanted with Gren and Ten, they had to make sure that we were busy with other problems." He looked around the table. "Alternately, it could have been a move against Cedric. Or both our camps. We don't know how cunning this person is."

Natalie grunted in confirmation. "I think I know what they wanted them for, too. But we need more information."

The front door to the Burger Dictator swung open. An all-too familiar yellow lab stepped through, shut it and leaned back on a divider wall. "That's just what I was hoping to hear."

"Officer Murphy??" Nat looked a mite incredulous. "How'd you find us here?"

"Is the LPD spying on its own citizens now?" Carrie asked dryly.

"Nope," she answered, shaking some of the rain off of her trench coat. "I, personally, am spying on you, personally."

"Well, that makes me feel a lot better," Natalie stood up, turning her swivel-chair around and sitting on the back of it. "Are we under suspicion, or do you just have a crush on me?"

"I have a crush on Justice," she retorted, hands in her pockets. "But I'm not here to put you in cuffs."

"You're here to ask us for something," Carrie guessed.

"Straight to the point; I like that about you, Oakenfield." She cracked her knuckles. "I got a hunch a while back about all these disappearances happening with the reconstruction crews: that it was... 'extraplanar' in nature. Everybody at the station's got their theories, of course- sinkholes, gas pockets, people getting lost in the tunnels. So when I took my own hunch to my superiors-"

"-They laughed at you. Called you a loose cannon!" Natalie finished.

"What? No." She frowned. "What with all the loose ends in the whole Locksmouth Incident, they told me it was a solid lead and to give it my undivided attention. The problem," she explained, stealing a few of Jacent's fries, "Is that it's one lead, out of dozens." She gestured outward with the smallest motion of exasperation. "We don't have half the cops we'd need to give proper attention to even just the decent theories, and we still have other things to investigate, beats to walk, construction sites to protect and jittery citizens jumping at shadows and calling us because their basement gets creaky. We're stretched before we even get started on this."

"Ah," Erwin understood. "And even if you had additional officers, devoting them to this might cause people to get even jumpier..."

"Exactly. Last time anything happened with aliens, I panicked and started shooting guns around without checking who I should even be shooting at. I snubbed any chance to use allied resources. In the interest of not making that mistake twice, I'm here, asking you to help me out, so I can help you out. An exchange of information- your underground connections, my official resources."

"All of us?" Samantha hazarded, pointing at Gren and Aren. "Don't you think they're a bit young for this?"

"I think you're all too young for this," she responded without hesitation. "Except for him," she motioned toward Jacent. "He's old as dirt. Saw the fingerpainting; nice giraffe."

"Elephant..." he muttered with some small note of indignation.

Carrie finally spoke up. "Wait a minute. If this whole thing is just you and a bunch of official reports that don't know anything either, then you can't really back us up. If you can't help, then what's in it for us to tell you anything?"

Murphy cocked her head. "Ah, but you're wrong. I can help you. Because today, two of you left school for no explainable reason, and another two of you left to start a fight with a hoodlum in jeggings. I don't know what lies you came up with to tell to your teachers and parents, but they couldn't have been very good ones, considering the calls I got at the station- and I'll tell you right now that your classmates aren't even gonna pretend to believe 'em." She folded her arms and gave them all a hard cop stare. "So, what'll it be the next time you need to skip Math class and stick your foot up somebody's ass?"

Sam chuckled nervously. "F-... Fashion emergency?"

Murphy rolled her eyes, while Natalie sat back down, looking troubled. "Looks like you've got us by the tail, then. You know our identities and what we're doing... and we really need a cover story, bad." The others seemed to agree, offering sober mumbling to this effect. She shot a dismayed look at Murphy's badge. "But isn't it going to look suspicious if we're helping the Police all the time?"

The policewoman grinned, as if she'd been waiting the entire conversation for this moment. "You won't be with police. I'm 'taking leave' to substitute at your school. Each and every one of you will find, come tomorrow, that you've been recently enrolled in-"

"-Self Defense?"
"Junior Detectives??
"Advanced Law???"

"... Remedial Drama."

 -
- -
 -
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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First in pool
Issue 05 - Phantoms, part 1
Missing friends, missing facts, and mysteries whirl as life trudges forward.

Keywords
male 1,109,083, female 998,879, fox 231,866, cat 198,406, wolf 181,305, dog 156,290, rabbit 127,860, tiger 36,835, bat 34,517, raccoon 33,928, otter 33,507, goat 21,093, panda 17,603, sheep 12,998, ferret 9,610, badger 6,385, weasel 5,669, spider 4,393, iguana 852, partners 2541 648, partners 386, natalie grayswift 352, carrie oakenfield 228, erwin goldstein 130, jacent danger 127, samantha masterson 110, max tangent 107, aren tenthwood 44, grendolyn murcbee 40, cedric onyx 27, alliston madriccie 22, coul sael 21, jessalynn sabel 10, amanda lee 10, officer murphy 7, bo briggs 5, grigori wallak 4, jordan alpine 4
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 10 years, 6 months ago
Rating: Mature

MD5 Hash for Page 1... Show Find Identical Posts [?]
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1,020 views
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21 comments

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Spooderdoodler
10 years, 6 months ago
DAMMIT.

Now I will be in endless suspense until I actually have time to read this tomorrow night after 8.
Skulljack17
10 years, 6 months ago
Drama!  REMEDIAL DRAMA.  Nice!

"Oh, we're...doing a piece on how to respond to a fire!  You have rescue people rush in in large groups into a single place without backup!  That's TOTALLY what we're doing, and nothing else suspicious in the slightest!"

Personally, I dunno much about the other fan characters that have been made up to this point...so it was a surprise to see Gregori and the others suddenly make an appearance.  In a good way, too!  Wonder what that'll mean for what I'll make, further on.

Also, DAMNIT like CodeX96 just said above!  Now I gotta make another inkling for my own use, cause ya got an electrical one like I was hopin' ta use!  >XP
Skulljack17
10 years, 6 months ago
Though...how'd the fake know about 'Groady' Greg?  Curious, if it's been ages and all...heh!
Milkie
10 years, 6 months ago
Haha, more inklings? My, that is a mystery. How many are there, I wonder? No one really asked the important question - that being whether or not Echelon was aware of their existence. Such oversight!
chaosblackwing
10 years, 6 months ago
I must say, it was only through sheer force of will that I didn't knock myself out via epic facepalm when Gren and Ten were exploring the power plant, kept running across the journal entries, and just shrugged it off with 'Eh, they must have been crazy'.

Do they not have horror films in that era?! Even if the answer is no, or those two are to young to have any familiarity with them, Osoth's invasion isn't exactly that old, the idea that they didn't find anything odd(or at least odd enough to call things off) in that situation just boggles the mind...

Poor Jacent, sent back to kindergarten, and his masterpiece fails to get the recognition it deserved. Giraffe indeed...

Also, am I reading it right, are Gren and Ten keeping the fact that they are currently join-hosts to an inkling, and apparently a rather old one at that, secret from the others? I can understand wanting to spare Jacent from the embarrassment of having to admit to being knocked flat/tricked like that, but keeping the fact that there's a new inkling around secret does not seem like the smartest move.

Natalie and Cedric's relationship has certainly taken an interesting turn post invasion, beating the crap out of each other more for habit, and possibly fun than any real sense of malice. Also seems like Cedric's inkie got over it's anger issues with Echelon, that or he's developed a little more self-control with Osoth out of the picture.
Norithics
10 years, 6 months ago
Oh, my!

As for Nat and Cedge, who knows? Maybe Natalie's not the only one who's been coming to understand their inkling~
threyon
10 years, 6 months ago
HNNNNGYAAAAAAY, NEW ISSUE! Also, I'm guessing those dates on the notes in a spooky abandoned power plant occurring near 'Hallowed Halls' was not entirely coincidental?
Eviscerator
10 years, 6 months ago
Remedial Drama..

Law and Order: Fashion Victims Unit.
emar16
10 years, 6 months ago
I can just imagine the looks they had when Remedial Drama was dropped XD. also reading this i am now thoroughly convinced that most if not all the authors and story writers that i follow have a direct link up to the creative side of my brain, because i had an idea for an electric inkling, same color too, that the group finds because he was stuck in a freakin generator. I named him Vult though. If you get an idea for a time traveling superhero back from Jacent's hero days that conveniently shows up right around now lemme know, i got an interesting backstory and character design.
Rakaziel
10 years, 6 months ago
Awesome chapter! :D The power plant story was genius, and the horror very well written, and the other revelations are very interesting, too. By now I wonder if Osoth somehow has created a backup of her personality in case she gets defeated.
Norithics
10 years, 6 months ago
I'm thoroughly glad you enjoyed it so much. : )
ginrei
10 years, 6 months ago
dude...... i fucking love this story
Norithics
10 years, 6 months ago
Fantastic. Music to my ears. =)
daipingan
10 years, 6 months ago
Just marathoned through the whole thing. Your prose is as solid as your art.

Also, just a thought? If a level above 'Shaded' somehow ends up existing, you should call it 'Araki.'

Because that would be amazing.
Norithics
10 years, 6 months ago
I shoulda called this story "Zombie," 'cause everybody shotguns it!
Milkie
10 years, 6 months ago
It's nice to see a story featured on the front page under the "popular" section. It may have fewer views than most drawings do, but it fills me with joy, it does.
PersonaMaltz
10 years, 5 months ago
Ooh, well done twists and turns.  Drama is a good excuse... you need to study your part and go get/make gear for plays.  Now the required...

VOLTAGE COM-M-M-M-BO BREAKER!
UncleCarmine
10 years, 5 months ago
Remedial drama? Had a good laugh at that one. With detective work coming into the fray, I think I might have found, scratch that, KNOW i've found what i'll be reading for the next few months.
Spooderdoodler
10 years, 2 months ago
Well sorry I only just now got back to reading these, but it is nice to have a double feature in store. I am liking where this is going, even if this chapter did nothing but set up a whole mess of questions. Can't wait to see more Nori, keep up the great work!
AlexanderHightail
5 years ago
Like a few others at the top of the comments, my inkling idea has been taken now... I wanted to be a shapeshifter. :( oh well, I can still come up with other ideas, I have three in mind right now.
As for this page, I'm enjoying the pretzel ride. (Also the joke is that I'm eating some pretzels irl)
AlexanderHightail
5 years ago
(Also, am I the only one that doesn't know what remedial drama is?)
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