Queen's Gambit Chapter 13

Previous Chapters

Love in plastic (Berdly)
1
https://pastebin.com/TKjKcqVe
2
https://pastebin.com/dDw2ti92
3
https://pastebin.com/2FRWC9jj
4
https://pastebin.com/vJ67iw7N
5
https://pastebin.com/88fCetw0
6
https://pastebin.com/Dj46NYUK
7
https://pastebin.com/DmandfKg
8
https://pastebin.com/2qAE3pbm
9
https://pastebin.com/YFvjUjeu
10
https://pastebin.com/s3Q8nruN
11
https://pastebin.com/MQeRHGWJ
12
https://pastebin.com/pgcGWuRZ

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Draconic Fortune

Chapter 01

Inkheart

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The ride to school that followed an eventful journey through a modern city in a strange 'dark world', was awkward to say the least. Before she turned the key, Mrs. Dreemurr gave Kris a long lingering kiss on the forehead. "I'm so glad you're fine and well."

"I was only having a sleepover, Mom." That and the humming it came with made Berdly rather uncomfortable.

"A mother always worries." The hand-holding was one thing, that was always a good source for jokes. But how close were those two? Was that normal? There was no way this was normal. During their trip to school - cramped as it was - Berdly used what little time he had to open up some of the sheets they had put together for the results on their group project and the paths that led to them.

He would have preferred if they had had another chance to go over them to make sure they were correct. But with sports bags full of stuff Kris didn't need pressing against him from multiple sides and all the distractions that came with a car ride, that was a waste of time. He was relieved when the fresh wind of an opening car door announced that he was free of the synthetic fabric rubbing against his feathers.

He kept it in when he saw - as she did every day - Mrs. D lead her embarrassed son into the school by the hand. He just folded up his arms and walked alongside them. After a long hug, she let go of him at last to head for her class.

Before they were even half-way at the door, Berdly stopped and forced Kris to stop with him. "Wait." When Kris stopped and turned his way, he was met with a very impatient stare. "We're friends now, right?"

He wasn't sure what this was about, so he raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Maybe? Right?"

"So you'd do me a solid if I asked you to, right?" He said nothing. "Right. Could you stop scaring Noelle? Just none of that sneaky grabby stuff anymore?"

So this was what this was about. "But it's fun."

Berdly sighed. "It's not fun." Him acting this way just confused Kris even more, enough to upset him. This was Mr. Smug, master of having laughs and jokes at other people's expense, and now he was telling Kris to cut out one of his favourite pastimes, at least one of the ones from whenever Noelle was around.

Perhaps it was time to take a page out of his own book from when he was in the dark world. Slowly, those corners of his mouth pulled up and twisted it into a wide grin. He slowly raised a finger at the bird. "You've never tried it yourself, have you?

The bird's eyes narrowed. "I can see right through what you're doing."

"So have you?"

"No I haven't. Oh god, you're thinking about doing it right now, aren't you?"

"I'm thinking about frosty hands."

That name however, threw Berdly off again. "Frosty what?"

Without further ado, he entered the classroom. Counter to his expectations, and unlike any usual school day for that matter, a certain easily angered purple reptile was already sitting at her desk in the middle. Tapping with her foot and not stopping when she saw him.

Berdly made sure to look at the black board and away from Susie. His trip through the dark world had left him with a little souvenir that he didn't have the time to replace. A pair of glasses. They worked just as well for him as his regular glasses, maybe even a bit better since they were new. But they were adorned with all manner of colours and decorations taken straight from a very memorable jester that he knew Susie had had a run-in with before.

If and when she saw it, she would surely recognize some of it and draw her own conclusions.

Whistling a melody he picked up on the radio, he strolled over to the windowsill. Noelle was resting on it with one leg, staring out of the window until she noticed him approaching. Noelle was a bit surprised to see them enter the classroom together like this without constantly being braced for banter or something of that sort from one another. Noelle smiled at him. "Good Morning. How did your group project go?"

Berdly wasn't sure how to answer this. "We're still alive. That's a plus." He made sure to take off his glasses, fold them and keep them concealed, and then sat down on the other side of the same window.

She covered her mouth and chuckled. "It couldn't have been that bad."

So far, so good. She got up to walk around her desk and sit down again. "Well we got all of them done at least." Before she could, he pulled out the solutions he and Kris had put together on the previous day and held them up to draw her attention and keep her standing right where she was. "What about you?"

Her eyes darted about in search of something to look at. And there was a lot to see, since she was looking either at him, or past him out of the window. "I'm afraid we didn't even finish half of them." Which meant they didn't go over them several times to check if they got it right either.

"That's a bit unlike you." Noelle was otherwise so thorough. It must have been Susie dragging it down. Maybe Berdly was a little hasty to call Kris and Susie birds of a feather. Maybe he was a lot better at this than she was. And thus a lot better than he gave him credit for. As for Noelle, it could only have been karma, that something now crept up to Noelle right now.

She reflexibly squeaked when all of a sudden, two ice cold claws grabbed her by the right shoulder and the left side of her neck. Like a swarm of large insects running their digits along it, a crippling dread took hold of her body. She froze in place, she panicked. She saw parts of her life flash before her eyes, especially when a torn, gaspy voice bellowed from right beside her face, into her ear, with its maw no more than two inches away from it. "FRESH VENISOOON!"

She screamed, it was too much for her not to. She gasped for air, stumped forward, landed with her hands on the windowsill, and turned around to face her attacker. But when she did, it was only Kris. With his hands wide open and raised up in the air after he had let her go.

He was laughing without making much noise, as he had gotten used to doing. But the fact that he was, was impossible to hide, so he made no efforts to. What she wasn't expecting though, was that from right next to her, Berdly was giggling right along with him.

She was dumbstruck. Berdly, laughing at Kris' inane pranks? He was always too aloof for that, but here he was. Beak torn into a grin and shoulders shaking. Did Berdly just distract her so Kris could sneak up on her, and now they were laughing at the whole thing, together? "What has gotten into you two?"

Once the laughter simmered down, her friend sighed and got up to head to his desk. "Okay, you win this one. That actually was a bit funny."

There was little time left for Berdly to spend on Kris' antics or Noelle's reaction to them. Physics, the subject their group assignment was in, was the very first class for the day, too, so he immediately submerged himself in going through the results one more time. Sure, if she wanted that, Noelle could risk a D or an E in case this project was seriously graded, but he didn't want to risk sullying his straight A streak.

He didn't notice what was happening until he heard a faint 'eek' from the table to his left. The blushing deer was trembling before a wandering shadow, the source of which would soon loom above the bird.

In his mind, he told himself to stay calm, and only slowly looked up into the unbearably smelly maw that was breathing down his way. Judging by the look of her eyes and the sideways born teeth, the purple beast above had not slept well whatsoever. An either visibly tired or angry, Susie slammed her hand down on Berdly's desk. "Nice glasses." she whispered with a menacing tone. "Where'd you get them? Ripped them off a clown?"

For a moment he was concerned. Then it occurred to him again. She was one step away from getting expelled as it was and except for Temmie and Kid, the entire class was here. And it wasn't whether faculty was too inclined to let things slide. She had long made herself unpopular with staff and students alike and a lot of people would have loved to see her go. She couldn't lay hand on him in this situation.

His beak deformed into a wide smile. "Funny you would say that. Yes. A clown gave them to me."

"How? Where?" She bent further down over him and he inched further down to keep his distance.

She knew. It was undeniable now that she knew. It was getting a bit much. Maybe he shouldn't try his luck too much after all. Time for his exit strategy. Good thing he had a decoy set up to get rid of her. "Well it was really tricky. I'm not sure either. I never would have made it without Kris' help. Maybe you should ask him."

And there those unclean teeth vanished behind those unsettling lips and she rose back up. It was working, she was backing off. With how much she was anticipating showing Berdly the dark world to gloat about it the day before, he figured she would be upset upon realizing that Kris visited the dark world again without her. But now, that was no longer his problem.

As he had hoped, she went back to her seat, in front of the human's, and slid around with her chair. She placed both her elbows on his desk and sat upright enough to reach a clearly taller height than him. "Hey there." She still sounded menacing, but a lot less so now that it was Kris she was talking to. "You got something interesting to tell me?"

Kris, in the middle of setting up all his drawing utensils that at least for today, he had no intention of putting away or swapping for anything, froze in motion the moment she came his way. And when she asked him, his eyes darted up to stare into hers for a few seconds. "Yes?"

She wasn't backing off though. "Shoot."

What in the world was she thinking? They were in a classroom full of people that would raise eyebrows if he started talking about falling into magical dark worlds through closets. He just began stammering. "Well..." He just had to stick to things that he could say without sounding crazy. While not moving one bit, his eyes stared to his right, onto Snowy. "...doing that project together, it did get pretty dark."

When he realized from where Susie was looking, that she didn't get the hint, he subtly nodded to his right, and then his left, where Catti and Jocks were. "...then we listened to some music and watched a dance." Immediately upon hearing this, Berdly leaned to the left of his chair, turned around and glared his way. Even behind several layers of vagaries, he still didn't want Kris talking about his closet.

Kris just ignored it and stared over to Noelle. Susie was starting to follow his eyes and picking up on what he was telling her. "...then things got really difficult though. We almost didn't make it. But in the end, we went through it all guns blazing."

Those vertical pupils of hers widened just a bit. With her elbow still on the desk, she brought one hand closer and pressed one claw into his chest in her usually painful manner. "Empty classroom, after classes. Him, too." She pointed at Berdly with her thumb.

When she took that claw back, Kris sighed and nodded. Her hips stirred with a faint chuckle, and she grinned down at him. "Weirdo." You could tell how comfortable she was, with how she refused to get up to turn her chair back to the front and instead, shuffled around her own weight leveraging herself on Kris' desk. With no regard for how loud she was being or how she was misaligning his desk in the process.

Just like on the previous day, when Physics class was about to start, with Berdly having his and Kris' fully worked out answer sheets ready and on his desk, their clumsy teacher came nigh-stumbling into the classroom.

Once class and teacher were done greeting each other, and she was about done placing the things she needed for class on her desk, she clapped her hands and sighed. "I've got good news - or uh, bad news depending...I've looked over yesterday's new group project sheets and uh - I'm not sure what she - I must have made some mistake."

Oh goodness. He hoped this didn't mean what he suspected that it meant. "The pro- the problems in your worksheets were way too many and some of them way ahead in your material. It wouldn't be fair if I graded them - so uh...joy!" She haphazardly spread her arms and tried to elicit applause. There was a cheer coming from a few desks. "I mean if you actually tried to solve all of those I'd be happy to look them over. But if you didn't, it's no big deal."

It was then, that Berdly either purposefully, or as a knee-jerk reaction, lost all hold in his muscles and dropped the side of his head onto the open-and-ready notebook on his table. Kris - at least on the outside, didn't react at all. He just remained completely still. Even though he felt the same way as his project partner felt. The all-nighter, all that work, searching for his sister's doll, overthrowing a foreign ruler in Berdly's toy box.

Possibly unlike the rest of class, they made all this effort, but were denied the fruits of their labour. And thus, their struggles were in their entirety invalidated. It felt a bit like finishing the kind of video game that was a fad for a time, where the hero would struggle his way towards working miracle after miracle, each greater than the previous one and save the world, only for the story to deny him the girl in the end. All, as he was explained later, to appeal to a misled notion of 'deep storytelling' or to pander to contemporary politics.

You would play it all the way to reach the end, or in his case, watch your brother do it, and wind up asking yourself: Why did the hero bother doing any of it? He should have just watched the world burn. At least he would have gotten some relaxing entertainment enjoying the show.

Kris was already considering spending some time drawing instead of paying attention to class on this day. At this point he wasn't intent on wasting a second on school material at all any more. Mrs. Alphys collected what little answer sheets there were to be had early on and was surprised enough by Berdly's and Kris' effort. Especially when Berdly was asked about it and said that Kris contributed as much to it as he did.

Surprised enough to leave the human to his own devices, which he welcomed. He had a wide assortment of tones for each colour ready, too. His Mom was at least to a harmless degree, aware of his and Asriel's hobby and had packed all the colours he needed in her excessive preparation for last night's sleepover.

He already knew of a few things to draw, so he got right to it and concentrated on that. The first thing, to warm up, was a comparably simple sketch of the cliffs. With those back-and-forth wiggling pollen-like things he and Susie saw in the dark world, the smooth, but uneven cliff walls, and Lancer hiding in a shadow up high and shooting spade symbols at them.

The second thing, was to erase what he had to, in order to undo what Noelle had done to her discarded 'The Devil' card, fill it again with what parts of the background he had to erase, and then complete it very carefully by giving him Asriel's face. And imitating what little of her art style he could discern while he did it.

And to match the character it depicted rather than the person he was modeled after, he gave him an evil grin and a tired, dismissive gaze in his eyes directed straight at the viewer.

He had another thing in mind to do after giving Samuel his face back, but it had to wait. Like all classmates that had their desks in front of each others', Susie sat only a step away from the front of his desk. And even from where the imposing dragon sat, she towered high enough over him that he would have had to bend to the side to see most of the black board. Like he always had to, sitting in the back like he did.

And today, occasionally, at far-apart moments, she would slowly turn around and sneak a suspicious glance his way, as if she was checking whether he was still there. After the first two classes, she stopped. Even beyond that, she looked a bit more relaxed in general. Where did she think he was going to go? Then again, it didn't matter.

When the coast was clear, he took a book appropriate for the current class and big enough for his purposes. He placed it standing upright by its edges to ward off unwanted attention from a certain univited onlooker. That gave him at least enough time to cover his next piece should she turn around or get up.

The reason he was paying enough attention to Susie to pick up on all these things, was because the next thing for him to draw, was her. Not Susie herself the way she sat there, but the way he remembered her from two days ago. The way she looked in the dark world. With the way her scales looked there, the unusual hair colour, the clothing.

He spent more time getting the 'Devilsknife' right than any of the clothing. The curved, scythe-like axe Jevil had given her upon disappearing. And he was all the more happy to not have been caught by the easily provoked model to this work, in spite of him having gotten carried away and focusing entirely on the drawing most of the time. Had she turned around in all that time and flipped or looked past the book, who knew what her outburst would have entailed.

As for the two to his left and right, Jocks and Snowy, throwing them off was easy. They long ceased paying attention to him since the other two pieces weren't interesting to them and they had no way of connecting her to the color scheme he was going with, so all he had to do, was to keep something more inconspicuous on his desk and right on her face.

He took a lot longer than with the other pieces, and made more of an effort in adding and redoing details, but in the end, he looked upon his work with satisfaction. In the end, relieved that nothing bad had happened in the time it took to make it, he turned it around.

And like with all his drawings, he took a pencil, found a location where it would either not show on the drawing itself, or be hidden by the dark background, and with added strokes to each line to make it stay, wrote the name he gave it on its back. He called it 'Axe'. Once he was done and Axe was safely stowed away, he gave in in to the fatigue that unexpectedly caught up with him without a hint of shame, and spent the rest of class sleeping.

When the bell rang and the last class was over, Berdly made sure to pack his things and get out of here. Fast. But he wasn't fast enough. By the time he got up, the dragon was no longer behind him. She was in the hallway, leaning against the lockers with her hands in her pockets hair hanging over her eyes.

But her body and head were unmistakably angled to face him. If he did something extreme like open the window to climb outside that way, she would dash his way. The only way out was to join the crowd of leaving students and navigate past her that way. Unfortunately, that plan didn't work out either.

While he was marching between Catti and Snowy, she simply forced her way to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Hey there." She smiled. "Wanted to talk about something before you go." He tried ignoring her and pulling himself free, but her grip on his shoulder was so strong that he simply couldn't.

With narrowed eyes, he stared up to where he expected hers. "You're not going to let me go, are you?"

She paused for a bit to wait a little more for the students and Mrs. Alphys to move along further, before she opened her mouth and showed him her teeth again. "What do you think?" After a few more seconds of listening and watching the others leave the classroom, she let go of his shoulder, only to grab him by the throat pulled him back. "That's an interesting pair of glasses. And I want to hear all about it."

"Stop - stop!" In his struggles to break free, Berdly didn't notice that she was holding him tightly enough to carry him and merely keeping him at his original height. When she did lift him up, he stumbled and lost hold of the ground. His struggles annoyed her enough to drop him again and hold him by one hand. She wound up dragging him across the floor by his calves. "It's a long story, Susie."

"I got time."

Grasping onto her hand with both of his own, he struggled for air. "It's a love story."

"Could be political drama for all I care." Susie was the kind of person that had a radar. And Noelle was the kind of person that wasn't on it. So neither the dragon nor the bird really paid attention nor noticed the doe watching aghast as the big purple reptile dragged her struggling captive to the desk right behind her own, and pulled two chairs closer to sit next to the slumbering human.

The bird kept protesting between wheezes. "I'm pretty sure there's some political satire in there, too."

She just grunted right back. "Wouldn't have guessed otherwise with nerds like you two."

Once she was seated comfortably on her chair, the wrong way round so that she could run her arm around the lean in front of her she reached for Kris with her other hand and flipped over the book to drop on his face. "Morning, sleepyhead. Wish I could sleep well like you. But I hear you've got a good story to tell to help with that." She chuckled in her usual disturbingly low-key manner. "Seriously, sleeping through class. What a freak."

Now at last free from her grasp, but well-knowing he couldn't up and leave, Berdly talked back at her again. "You do that too, you know."

"Shut it, nerd!"

For a moment, the human gave off a disapproving groan. Then he remembered who it was that had just done this, stopped, and instead raised one finger in a gesture meant to say to give him more time to wake up properly. By the time he was done rubbing his eyes and opened them, Noelle had already snuck out of the classroom.

Barring him, Berdly and Susie, all of which sat around his desk, it was empty. He kept running his hands down both sides of his face to help himself wake up for good. "Would you believe me if I said we were looking for a plastic doll, fell into the dark world, beat Jevil and he gave Berdly a pair of guns that turned into a pair of glasses?"

Those yellow eyes kept staring at him, but ever so slightly, her expression eased up. She turned around her chair so she could lean back with her arms folded up. "I wouldn't like what I'm hearing, but I've seen weirder stuff. Keep talking." And so he did.

He began retelling the tale of everything that happened to them up to this point. Starting with their group project and Berdly's sister looking for her doll. Then Berdly finally agreeing to opening his closet, only to fall through its floor and for him to go after him.

When he got half-way through their first encounter with a darkner and was describing what Berdly immediately recognized as Christmas Town, the bird cut into his story. "Can't we skip that part, it's not really important."

"It's still part of the story. It's where we meet Jandsome!"

Susie began to grin enough for her teeth to show. "Now I just want to know all the more."

Kris looked back at her and shot her a gently slow pistol hand. "That's exactly what I keep thinking every time I ask him about it."

"Screw you two!" Berdly usually wasn't vulgar enough to have to censor himself like this, this closet of his really struck a chord with him.

Without saying anything, Kris opted for a compromise and told Susie that they were 'people' that danced and made music without mentioning that they were flowers or red roses. And after that, his narration went a lot smoother. He told her a long tale about shark- and reptile punks and bikers, dressed up as formally presenting gangsters, overconfident magical eagles.

And a police force that couldn't enforce the law, because one of said gangsters was the new mayor of the city and made sure to shut down any attempts of them to do so. Put in place by 'the Knight' himself, possibly the same one he and Susie vaguely heard of in the Card Kingdom.

And of course, the thread that held it all togther, a tale of two lovers who were made and meant to be with each other. Who were happy, until one was about to push what they had a little further, and ran away out of sheer fear of how much it could devastate him, should his beloved against all odds, reject him. Only that he didn't truly vanish. He merely hid his sadness behind a mask made of pranks and jokes and japes at the expense of other people.

And yet from behind his disguise, acting smug and aloof to hide what lay behind it, he joined them as they accompanied his beloved, and wound up leading her on a wild goose chase until, after going as far as fighting and besting a homicidal clown familiar even to Susie, Janice broke from their approach.

And instead of their aimless routes, she sought to make a deal with the devil himself. "LUXON?" Susie near shouted while bracing herself with her hands clasping her chair immediately upon hearing that name. Then she noticed how she was coming across and laughed it off. "I mean that's a weird name. So what about him?" Kris went on, but Susie was only half-way listening at this point. She had to control herself enough to not grasp her friend's shoulders instead of her chair.

So that slimy creep Dr. Luxon was pulling one on her after all. He was real. It wasn't a dream. Not entirely at least. Kris very carefully rummaged through his bag, looking out not to make Axe visible at any given time, while searching for Sam, and then placed him on the table.

When he did, she was absolutely sure it wasn't a dream. That was him. Sure, he had a face now, where he had a torn-and-twisted something before, but Kris admitted that he made that change during class. But she recognized him by the clothing and the demeanour that his pose implied. That was definitely him. That was the snarky wannabe-psychiatrist from her 'dream' last night.

And upon hearing the story progress, past the destruction wrought by the giant alligator as soon as Mr. Luxon opened the floodgates, when they got to Berdly's sister just disappearing and asking an all-knowing hologram how and why, things began to make more sense to her. So you could just dream your way to the dark world.

But your thoughts determined where you went. But if Dr. Luxon and his hotel were in Berdly's toy box, no wonder that Samuel was so confused that Susie wound up in there. Now she was just as confused and intrigued herself. But for now, she just figured that it was because she wanted a dark world adventure, and Canyon City when Kris, Ralsei and Berdly were there, was where there was one to be had.

And soon after that, the lovers were reunited, and after a final act of chaos on the part of the jester, they faced off with the mayor and brought him to justice. "So I only just managed to make him stumble back a bit, and then that red soul thing happened again. It made Berdly use his Smugshot a lot of times at the same time, so I called it the Smug Barrage. Berdly used it to kill him, and then we made it to the fountain and sealed it."

That was at least where Kris was trying to end the story. Going by the look on Berdly's face, his classmate didn't quite agree. "Kris. That's not the whole story and you know it. We covered the closet, so we're not skipping past 'Jaws'."

Kris froze. The anticipation of a predator who had just caught its next meal filled the dragon's eyes. She didn't know what 'Jaws' was yet, but if it was juicy enough for Kris to leave out on purpose, she was interested. "What's - uh - what's 'Jaws', Kris? I'd love to hear that one."

He just scrambled to somehow walk his way around it. "It's - uh a giant creature with big teeth. But by giant, this time, I mean she's - she's several times as big as the whole city."

The anger in Berdly's voice over including the cliffs that were his closet wouldn't let up. "I know for a fact you have her with you. A picture says more than a thousand words, Kris. Why don't we let her take a look herself?"

He froze again, and his eyes moved over to Susie, who didn't seem intent on letting up either. In fact, she shook her head. "I'm not letting you get up from that chair until you showed me what this 'Jaws' thing is." While she said this, his breathing accelerated. A lot. And other than that, he didn't move. He just stared at her. "Sheesh, calm down." She hung her head down a bit and grinned. "Come on, it can't be that bad."

It did nothing to calm him down. "Come on!" When she reached for his bag, he obliged and opened it himself to pull out the drawing and then very, very hesitantly place it on the table. "Oh." Upon giving it a look, she immediately knew it. Not the drawing itself. But she immediately knew what inspired it.

Any smiles and grins slowly faded out of her face. A creature so huge, its little finger dwarfed a windmill next to it several times over, with nothing but teeth for a face. Imposing, and yet familiar. She recognized herself by her colour, her jacket, her shirt, and her hair. Her face stiffened up at the thought that this was her.

She thought it was funny at the time. Now she regretted it. She really got to him a lot more than he let on, didn't she? This was what she must have looked like to him, when she brought him up to her teeth and threatened to mangle him. "Did you - did you make this?" He wasn't looking at her, at least not as far as she could see through his hair, but the pace of his breathing didn't ease up. He was trying to not look afraid.

That was Kris. Always the freak with the weird face she couldn't read. Most of the time. He had the kind of face he could with, but she could tell how agitated he was. It was different from she pressed him against the lockers and all he had for a reaction, was to lazily hang his head down. "You did, didn't you?"

She swallowed her own spit. She felt like apologizing. She wanted to say she was sorry. But that wasn't her. That wasn't 'Susie'. That was okay with Kris, but Berdly would have only gotten the wrong idea.

She snorted. Maybe another time. For now, she had to stop that awkward silence she let settle down on them. She pretended to burst out laughing so much, she had to hold her stomach. "Looks like you went all out with this one. Look at the detail! Got to say, you really captured my smile." She jokingly bore her teeth at him.

That was enough though. "But...let's get serious. So you guys are telling me that if we ever make it to the dark world again, as long as that piece of paper exists, a giant monster that looks like me but several times bigger than that big city could attack us any time?"

Both boys shrugged. "Looks like it."

Now with a much more eased-up mood again, she nodded while pouting. "Anyone else think that's a problem? No-one?" They nodded. "Problem?" She leaned forward. "Solution." She grabbed the drawing, crumpled it together, put it in her mouth and ate it. It tasted - it was hard to think of a way to describe it. But even paper drawn on with ink and coloured with coloured pencils as dinner still beat having nothing for dinner like she expected to.

Well, nothing and trash. It wasn't food, but at least it wasn't literal trash. "There. No more giant Susie monsters to worry about. That a deal or what?", she mumbled with some of it still in her mouth. And thus, that easily, Jaws was no more.

Once she shock wore off, perhaps to appease her, perhaps for another reason, Kris ducked again and pulled up another drawing to show both of them. A much more simple sketch. "Hey!" For Susie at least, it lightened the mood immediately. "That's Lancer up there!" It was a shot from the cliffs during Kris' and Susie's adventure. It was only Lancer's silhouette directing down the spade symbols that passed him, but the silhouette was all she needed to recognize him.

"It's the cliffs. Berdly... You know, the supply closet right here in the school."

The bird's eyes narrowed. "Okay. I'm starting to get the picture. I guess those are the purple walls." Then his finger drifted up to point at a lengthy object with a sphere attached to its top that was tilted to the side, a curved line along the tilt indicating movement. "...those would be the things that wiggle.."

He looked up at Kris with a grin and then moved on. "It looks a bit like some type of fungus to be honest...wait what's that?" He was pointing at a blob with something that could vaguely be construed as a face with closed eyes and a closed mouth.

This time Susie picked up on it. "You just touch them and they..." She followed this up by making an exploding motion with her hands. They were running out of stuff to talk about. "Hey, Kris. Got any more stuff to show?" He shook his head. One Susie drawing was more than enough. Besides, he didn't want her to eat Axe, too. "Right." Slowly, silence took hold between them again. "So where does that leave us? What did we learn about the dark world from this? You know - other than stuff I already knew."

Berdly was a lot less nervous by now as well. He was resting with his arms on the desk and no wrinkles or other signs of making a face. "For one, closets. We've got to believe in the absurd here. You and Kris fell into the dark world through a closet. Same goes for me and Kris when it happened to us. Closets are the common denominator. So closets can be used as portals to the dark world."

"So wherever there's a closet, there might be a way to the dark world."

"Yep. Then dreams. If Pluma was in the dark world while she was just dreaming, then others could dream their way to the dark world, too."

Susie started laughing nervously. "Okay. Didn't think of it that way, but sure."

"As long as you're there at night at least. Then there's art. If Jaws was any indication, any drawings or other pieces of art show up in the dark world as what's on them. Not even just what's really there, but what's supposed to be there. In the end of the day, Jaws was just a detailed sketch with some very faint colouring.

But the Jaws we saw in the dark world looked very, very real. Jacket looked real, skin looked real, hair looked real. So they're not just some ink or graphite projection. It's whatever the artist was picturing in their mind that becomes real in the dark world."

"Okay?"

"That's about it I think. Knowing all that is useless of course. At least I hope it is, because there's no way we'd stumble onto three dark world portals, right? If it can just be any closet, the chances have got to be tiny. It was interesting while it lasted." He sighed and got up.

Susie had heard everything he could tell her, so there was no reason for her to force him to stay any longer. "But it's something we can put behind us now. If it's just any closet it can happen with, let's be realistic, there's no way it'll happen a third time."

Susie slowly lowered her head upon processing it. She tried to laugh it off. "Yeah, who knows. Maybe." But when Berdly was behind her, her smile began to fade. "Hopefully." She looked back up at Kris. "Hey." She subtly nodded towards the exit door. "You can go, too if you want. I'm not keeping you." He hesitated, but he followed suit.

When he already had gotten up and was walking past her, she changed her mind, reached for his shoulder and kept him in face by force. "Wait." She brushed her hair aside to look him clearly in the eyes. "I don't know if it's going to happen again, but if it does. If you find another portal to the dark world. Don't just go off on your own. Tell me. I want to come, too."

He froze for a second. "How?"

"Oh, right." The realization coaxed a twitch out of her. She laughed. "You couldn't if you wanted to, right?" She got a pen out and tapped at Kris' bag to get him to pull out a piece of paper. She wrote down her phone number. "Here. There you go." Not her cell phone number, she didn't have one of those. Her home's landline number. It wasn't much, but at least there was some way of communicating. After that though, they said their goodbyes with a smile.

________________________________

It was already strange, passing by Noelle on his way outside, but Berdly was a bit more put off when he realized how desperate to catch up Kris was, running after him and down the stairs outside the school building. It was strange, but it was Kris. Strange was part of the program with him. It was best to just brush it aside. "You saw Noelle in the hallway too right? She wasn't listening in on us, was she?"

While catching his breath, his classmate pulled off his bag. "No idea. I wanted to show you something." He began to whisper. "I didn't want Susie to see it. Because - you'll get why."

Hearing this only earned Kris a look of disapproval. "If you don't want her to see it, maybe not show me right here." He subtly pointed to the west of the building, where the window in the back of the classroom was. "She's right over there, you know?" Kris luckily saw what he meant. They agreed to take a seat at QC's Diner instead. They just had Kris order a glass of water to justify taking seats there. "So what is this thing you want me to see?"

Kris sifted through his bag and placed another drawing on the table. Bigger than Jaws, Noelle's discarded 'The Devil' card or that little sketch. Bigger and much more detailed. So thoroughly coloured, it was as if the drawing was digital, but he could feel on his feathered fingers that it wasn't. It had smooth shading and close attention to detail. "Geez, you really went all out on this one."

He already knew as much after seeing Jaws, but now he was absolutely certain that this book on drawing dragons wasn't lying around somewhere unused. Kris must have been doing art as a hobby for a long, long time. The drawing depicted a predatory creature. Judging by the snout, a dragon.

Her arms and overall any skin that laid bare, glowed against the dark, spade shaped arcs in the background in bright magenta. Black leather bands with golden spikes adorned her strong upper arms and forearms. Her eyes barely visible under the enormous dark red mane. She wore a vest so long, it was more like a coat. Even though it obviously wasn't a coat, because it didn't have any sleeves.

A big golden, heart-shaped belt buckle held together her too wide, dark red trousers, the lower half of which were in their entirety stuffed into black boots that reached half-way up to her knees. She had such a grin on her face, she was practically glowing. Putting her imposing, yellow jaws on display.

And she had something like a scythe in Jevil's blurple-black-lime colours and with one of his signature bells hanging off a lappet on its back. But its blade was too short for it to be a full-fledged scythe like you would expect a farmer to use, and the blade and grip were too long for it to be a sickle.

"Is that...", he finally asked. "...is that a brawler?" The first thing he thought of, were the reptilian and aquatic punks, bikers and other thugs they met on their trip through the dark world. They all had attire resembling this. "A female brawler with a scythe?"

Kris' expressions were always an enigma to the bird, but he could tell that he was upset from how long he was staring at him before he finally answered. "No, it's Susie."

Well that was disappointing. He was really impressed for a second there. "It looks nothing like Susie." At least that explained why he didn't want Susie to see it. "I mean I get it, that is definitely her face. But everything else, the colours, the..."

"It's the way she looks in the dark world. You weren't blue there either."

"Hm." Berdly pouted. "Okay." That explained the clothing and the messy mane, too. The messy mane in which so many of her hairs were drawn individually. He must have put a lot of effort into making this. Much more than with Jaws. All the more so, everything about this 'Susie' he was looking at was off. Not by much. Barely at all, but everything was off by a little.

He was pretty sure her arms weren't quite that wide. Even if he assumed the perspective it was imagined from to be Kris' height, she seemed a little too tall. Her mane was just as messy as Susie's but he could have sworn it was a bit longer than hers. As for her proportions, her legs were ever so slightly wider even through the awkward trousers, and her chest a teensy bit more imposing.

This 'Susie' looked little bit stronger to him than the real one, and she had a modicum of attractiveness where the original simply had none as far as Berdly could see. To best put the overall impression he got into words, this 'Axe' was an in every respect slightly improved version of Susie. Not an accurate depiction of what she really looked like.

But he didn't want to be too mean, so he decided to skip bringing up most of that and instead pointed to the right of 'Susie's coat. "What's that?" It was the tip of her tail, curved in a way in which you only could if your tail was long and developed enough for you to be able to consciously move and bend it around. "What's with the tail?"

He just gestured onto the picture with an open hand. "She's a dragon."

Berdly rolled his eyes. "Yes, but her real tail is so short, half the class isn't sure if she has one. I have no idea if she has one. It's definitely not as long as this." He paused to look back and forth between the drawing and the person who made it. "I mean you sit right behind her in class. Did you actually look at her when you made this?"

Kris' head moved a bit back, and he began to look down. Not at the drawing, just generally down at the table and not at Berdly. "No. Not really. I sort of got carried away and just drew from memory."

He made THIS from memory? He took coloured pencils and made something with them that was so sophisticated, it might as well have been concept art for a film or a video game? If it was there, which it obviously was at this point, why didn't Kris put any of this resourcefulness into his school work? Putting this into perspective, the bird tried reading the expression on the human's mouth.

Then slowly, he raised his head just a bit and smiled. "Hm, okay. Either way, whatever you do, don't destroy it or anything. I can see you put a lot of work into this one. Who knows, even if Susie found out, you might actually walk out of it alive." Leaving it at that, Berdly got up from their niche and snickered all along the way out of the diner.