Queen's Gambit Chapter 12

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3
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4
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5
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6
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8
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9
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10
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11
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Love in Plastic

Chapter 12

Point of No Return

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The garden around City Hall was wide and lush. With many bushes cut into sculptures. At least it probably used to be like that, until the brawlers disfigured the sculptures and covered them in spray paint. A few armed lizards with spiky arm bands patrolled the park with guns, but it was safe to assume unless they had something up and ready to give them a leg up, that they wouldn't risk fighting them any more.

The building consisted of a cross of four outer wings that hopefully distributed the pressure from the tower's weight in four directions, with the black blurb that indicated the fountain they were looking for rising up in the sky just a bit behind the building. But the entire front side of the front wing was torn down. It was a miracle that whole thing was still standing.

And in the distance, in the shadows of its interior, Berdly believed he could spot the giant alligator that had worked so long to turn this dream of a city into a nightmare. "So." They all huddled together in the shadow of a bush at the side of the staircase to observe. "Gatore said he had a dungeon right beneath City Hall. Any ideas where we could find something like that?"

"Probably inside City Hall."

"Or possibly..." Pilot stretched out his hand towards a stone structure off to the left. With two wide open and very tall stone doors. "This leads right to a huge mausoleum that stretches across almost this whole park. Everywhere you can see here - right below it, there's corridors of that mausoleum. And those doors have got to be wide open for a reason. That's of course unless the brawlers respect the dead too much to defile their tombs."

"Yeah, nah. From what I've seen as long as the dead aren't brawlers, they're happy to defile as many tombs as they can."

Kris nodded.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"They looted the mausoleum, dumped the people buried down there somewhere else and made it the Don's personal dungeon."

"Yep. Something like that." Throughout this whole conversation, Ralsei remained silent and gnawed at his claws. He was horrified at how whenever you thought those brawlers couldn't stoop any lower, it turned out they were even worse. The problem with getting in there, was that the entrance pointed towards the middle path between the front entrance to the park and the City Hall itself.

Even if only briefly, they'd be on display no matter what if they tried to enter. "We have to get the right angle and then swing right around that outer door, so we can get inside without getting caught." They followed Kris' lead and moved to the side to be positioned in a way in which the stone structure stood between them and the front area where the Don and a few of the patrolling brawlers were. This way they weren't in line of sight.

Berdly grabbed Kris by the shoulder and faced him. "Wait, how are we getting past the fence?"

"What fence?" When he looked back, he found Pilot smiling and a segment of the fence, right in front of them, missing.

"I'm guessing you can't just make a piece of the right wall of that stone entrance disappear too?"

"Not sure if it works that way. I have a better idea. Stay here." Pilot left and went off to the right side. They watched him sneak all the way around the right corner of the park and quite a bit to its side. After they lost him, some time passed before he showed up again, laying out some kind of wire on the floor along his path.

Upon holding it up, he revealed that it wasn't a cable, but the end of a wick. He pulled a match out of thin air, scratched it against a nearby stone surface and lit the end of the wick before dropping it on the floor. Then, they all lay in wait. Eventually, it was time.

All the way on the other side, more firecrackers soared into the air, and patrols all around released their weapons and ran towards the source of the noise and the lights. That was their cue. While the fireworks were still going and heads were still turning, they ran towards the entrance, each one grabbing hold of the outside stone door, swung around it and inside the stone staircase.

"WEAKLINGS! NO MORE DISTRACTIONS! COME AND FACE ME!" It appeared that they had drawn the Don's attention, but it wasn't sure whether he knew where they were. They didn't stop descending the staircase to listen if someone followed them, until they were all the way downstairs. At least as far as this set of stairs took them, as to the left and right of its end, there were two more that led even further down. It was dark down here. Few and far-apart candles only faintly illuminated the place.

Once they did though, a lengthy black cloud manifested out of thin air beside them. And when it dispersed, it left behind a familiar black goat with white glowing facial features in a white suit and his tie sporting a light blue in the light of a nearby flickering light. "Luxon!" Pilot grabbed him by his collar. "How dare you show your face here!"

Samuel smiled and placed his hand on Pilot's. "Oh I wouldn't do that if I were you. Besides, I'm on your side on this one." The jester only reluctantly let go of him.

Ralsei stepped between Pilot and Samuel to prevent any more confrontations and looked up at him. "You are?"

"Don't forget that I've made a deal with Janice. I am here to assure my end of it is kept. I know where she is, I will clear the way for you."

"Wait!" He was about to vanish again until the prince grabbed him by the arm. "If you're on our side now, could you please try and not kill everyone you come across?"

The Dealmaker placed both hands on his hips. "Really now? Those helicopters had people in them too, you know."

This time, Kris came to back up his friend. "Look, me and Ralsei have this thing going on where we try to not kill people if we don't have to. I'm not sure how we were supposed to befriend or pacify the helicopters either."

Though barely visible with all of them glowing, the Dealmaker rolled his eyes. "Fair enough." The revolver that had already appeared in his hand, disappeared and reappeared, but with him holding the barrel rather than the grip, ready to use the grip like a hammer to knock out his targets instead of shooting them. "This won't take long." Samuel summoned a cane into his other hand and then vanished.

After mere seconds, he was back. "Traps disabled, ruffians knocked out. Nothing is between you and her any more. Nothing but yourself that is, of course."

The corridors had rooms to both sides everywhere. Chambers each with a coffin on an altar. Each chamber was turned into a prison cell by hastily attaching a set of bars to its front to keep the ghosts, skeletons and occasional vampires, all of which glowed in white and light green against the darkness of their tombs, that grabbed onto the bars and intently watched the varying group of strangers pass them. "They were talking about lightners coming!"

"You look different than them! You're the lightners, right?"

"The lightners have come to save us!"

"Please open those cages! Free us!"

"Well, if the dead were ever resting, they aren't any more now."

Berdly felt he had to chime in. "Don't do it, Kris." That human was glancing off towards those dead people too much for him not to. "They're just going to cause more chaos."

"We will, on our way back." The dead cheered upon hearing Kris say that. "But keep it down, please...thank you."

The path that Samuel led them in wound around several corners. He didn't begin pointing towards Janice's cell until they reached the very end of the longest corridor this floor must have had. Once they recognized her by her coat, the rest stayed back, while Pilot slowly approached her. She was still crying, just like Gatore said she was. "Janice? Janice! We found you." She did turn around briefly, but she turned her back on him as soon as she saw the jester.

"Go away." She tried to scare him away, but her voice was trembling so much, her attempts to shout just came out as louder, shaky wails.

He lowered himself a little and reached out for her with one hand. "We're here to get you out of here."

It wasn't any use. She just kept crying with her face buried in her hands. "What difference does it make? The city is dying, and all because I wanted him back. It's my fault! I did all this, and I still don't have him back."

He kneeled down and shuffled a little closer. "You can just go home, he might come home if you do!"

She shrieked back at him. "Get lost!", but as soon as she was looking back at the wall, she apologized. "I'm sorry, I appreciate you trying, but there's no point. It's just...Just go. There's no point in going anywhere without him. Without him, what else would I have to go back to? He's gone. And nothing you say is going to bring him back. Just leave me alone."

"No." He came closer until he was a mere two steps away from her. "There is something I can say." He took one deep breath, paused for a moment after that with his eyes closed, and then took off his fool's cap and spoke with his true voice. "I'm sorry. This cap suits me. I was a coward and a fool."

"Pilot...Pilot?" Still in disbelief at the voice she heard, she turned around to see his face. "Pilot!" She shuffled closer and wound her arms around him. "Pilot! It was you! But why?" She cried into his shoulder for a few moments, before randomly swinging her fists down his back in a sudden tantrum. "Why would you lead me on like this? Why?"

He just took it. The tremors in his shoulders showed to the younger ones that he was as swept up in this as she was. "I wanted you out of harm's way. Either out of the city or in the safety of that town. I thought if I led you around circles, you would give up and stand back at least for a while. The lightners would seal that fountain and we could all go back home safely."

"But why? Why the disguise? Why did any of this happen? Why now?"

"Now is not the best time for this. Come on. We'll go back home, we'll all calm down, wash up and when all the excitement is over, I will show you why. I didn't forget our anniversary, I promise. It is part of the reason why I...why all this happened from the start." They stayed like this for a while. She was still crying, but she was crying into his shoulder and they could all hear that it was subsiding. "Now, now. You want to go home?" Janice didn't say anything. She just nodded with her head against the side of his. "Let's go home." They got up.

With his arm still wound around Janice, the former jester passed by the former club owner. "I guess I owe you a thank you for leading us back to each other. Even if it took destroying the whole city to do so." With a sinister grin, the Dealmaker stepped back bowed, and vanished in a momentary burst of black flames.

With no regard for anything, the human's intentions to push forward burst right out of him. "Now for the ghosts and skeletons." The moment the human brought them up, all the other no longer resting 'inmates' cheered.

"Wait, Kris, you can't be serious."

"The ghosts are our escape plan."

"Do you really think the best exit strategy is to unleash an army of undead?"

"They're still better than the spiky lizards."

Berdly lowered his head and the opening on his beak shifted to the side. "I guess you're right. Okay, everyone! You're free! Time to get spooky and scare those brawlers as much as you can." Kris dug his sword into the metal pipes that were used to hold the gates and yank the lids off to pull them off.

Berdly just aimed his clown pistols at the locks for long enough to make them explode and neither really knew what kind of spell Ralsei was using to open the doors, but it worked. The happy denizens of the mausoleum rushed right past them and helped free more of them. The halls between the chambers became more and more crowded.

Once enough of them for free for them to free themselves at enough of a pace, without Kris', Berdly's and Ralsei's help, the very relieved and very tall couple went up to the teenagers. "My friends, thank you. For everything. I could never repay you in full. But..."

He pulled his cap back out. "Janice. This thing only further enabled my mistakes. But the one who gave it to me, did so with the best of intentions. I wouldn't do it justice if I didn't use it to its fullest. If only once. Is that all right?" She gazed at him and nodded. And sure enough, he put his cap back on. "Let's clear the lightners a path to the Don." With newfound confidence, he set to accompany some of the skeletons up the stairs. "Lightners! Focus on the Don. I will draw enough of the others' attention."

The three of them stayed back for a bit. Kris took a deep breath and gave both others a look. "Are you ready for this? This is it. The final battle."

"Of course!"

Berdly sighed and followed him as they turned around to follow the crowd. "You've always been good with these battles somehow. We'll do this. Whatever commands you have, I'll follow." Now it came. The moment of truth. They ascended the stairs back outside.

Everywhere, floating ghosts and rattling skeletons were swarming the more numerous brawlers. Pilot hadn't done anything yet, but once they joined up, he began to move. He swung one arm to the side and upwards and shouted: "Chaos!" He was putting on his squeaky jester voice again, too. Next to a snake in black leather with brass knuckles on both hands, a two metre wide and long patch of grass just flipped open like some kind of lid.

Mounted onto an oversized spring, a huge jack-in-the-box sprang out. Except instead of some clown- or jester design, the object that sprang out was modeled after Ralsei, dressed in his green robe with his hat, wielding a rifle. Pilot swung his other arm. "Chaos!"

A drake with horns, who's leather clothing you could almost describe as leather armor, was covered in pieces of glittering metal, shrugged together when another patch of grass opened up right behind him to make way for another jack to spring out. This time with a design that depicted a huge Kris, in his armor, striking out with his sword. "Chaos!" A third patch launched a shark that stood on it a bit away upon opening up and sprang out a bunch of bananas for a 'jack'.

The park was very, very big. And thus there was a lot of fence around it. Even with as many people all around, it was impossible for someone to stare at every single piece at all times. So gradually, one by one, it appeared that the segments of the outside fence grew legs and began walking about in random directions.

The defaced bushes fell over and began rolling around. The ones that bumped into a brawler, had spider legs extend out of them, followed by a spider's face and a spider's abdomen and began attacking them.

Before any of them had much more time to react, Pilot took an impossibly deep breath and began shouting anew. "Chaos! Chaos! Chao-Cha-cha-cha-cha" At an impossible speed as if it were just a sound byte being replayed in rapid succession, he repeatedly shouted 'Chaos!' and one by one, each time he did, almost every bit of the park's grass opened up and had more jacks shoot out everywhere.

Finally, Don Gatore stepped outside through the torn-down wall. He was so big, he had to bend down to fit the hole they had torn into the front wall. "WHAT IS THIS? STOP SCRAMBLING AROUND! DO SOMETHING! KILL THE LIGHTNERS AND ANYONE THAT COMES HERE TO HELP THEM."

With them laying bare from the sleeves being long torn right off the mayor's custom suit, you could see the muscles on his arms shift with his anger, while he raised clenched fist into the air, along with it the gatling gun that was attached to it.

Kris and the others were already walking up to him, but Pilot sped up to dance ahead of them and wagged his index finger at the Don. "Now now, my easily infuriated friend. Is it not rather dangerous to stand so close to a rocket that's about to take off?"

The Don assumed a menacing battle stance, with his elbows raised so far, they were at his head's height. "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU ON ABOUT?"

The jester folded up his arms, smiled, and then pointed to the side of the building. Upon closer inspection, the central tower of it now had fins at the corners that reached all the way to the ground.

The Don even stumbled a bit himself when he saw and heard the bright and noisy stream of fire rushing down from further up in the central tower. From somewhere, a voice announced the countdown. "Four, three, two, one, ignition!" And just like that, with a rush that drowned out all other noises the clock tower of City Hall lifted off and flew away. Leaving the swaths of blackness flooding up from the pool in the distance much more clearly in their sight.

"THAT WAS CITY PROPERTY! MY PROPERTY!" He swung around and aimed his weapons towards where the jester stood, but the moment he did, a cracking noise preceded a wave of confetti showering down right where he was supposed to stand. The giant reptile pulled his triggers, after a second of delay, the stacked-together barrels began to turn and unleash countless shots Pilot's way, but they all hit the earth.

He was long gone by the time the Don had opened fire. Whatever else Pilot may have been doing with that cap, it was working. The brawlers were leaving the area all around, driven away by jacks, giant plant spiders and spooky skeletons. Time for the Fun Gang to roll in. "YOU!"

"Berdly..." Kris tipped on his classmate's shoulder before this went any further. "I'm going to give him an out. One chance."

"What?"

"We did with King, too. We have to see if it's possible. Remember, that stuff we told you earlier. It's obvious that King was under some kind of mind control. We have to at least give the Don a chance to snap out of it."

"YOU MAY HAVE GOTTEN PAST MY TOYS AND THAT OVERGROWN ELK! BUT MOVE ONE STEP CLOSER TO THIS FOUNTAIN AND YOU WILL ALL HAVE FIFTY CALIBER ROUNDS PEEKING OUT OF EVERY INCH OF YOUR SKIN...OR FUR...OR FEATHERS!"

With the wind moving about his cape and a swing of his arm, Kris pointed straight at the Don. "Ralsei! Try to reason with him!"

Berdly couldn't suppress a grin. "Way to be dramatic, Kris."

The prince stepped forward, cleared his throat and tried his best. "Mr. Gatore...sir...listen! The bears, all those creatures down in the carnival, they're not citizens either, and yet they can get along with them just fine. Maybe you can, too."

"THEY WILL DIE AS FAST AS THE CLICKERS WILL, ONCE WE'RE DONE WITH THE FORMER!"

Kris followed Ralsei and moved a bit to the right side. "Gatore, the citizens imprisoned you because unlike the people at the carnival, you were robbing and murdering people. They don't deserve any of this."

"THE MOMENT THEY LAID HANDS ON US, THEY COMMITTED AN INJUSTICE THAT I WILL NEVER FORGIVE! WHAT WE MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE DONE TO 'deserve' IT IS MEANINGLESS! THE INJUSTICE STANDS! UNTIL WE HAD OUR JUSTICE, THERE WILL BE NO PEACE! AND WE WON'T HAVE HAD OUR JUSTICE UNTIL EVERY LAST CLICKER LIES DEAD IN THE SAND!"

Taking this as his cue, Kris lowered his head ever so slightly, and he moved a bit further to the side to help cut off his way in case he was going to flee in that direction. As far as he was concerned, there was no other way than to fight and even kill him. This alligator just wanted to kill everyone no matter what. This stuff about justice sounded like word salad to rationalize it to him.

"NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS, ONCE I'M DONE WITH YOU, WE WILL HUNT DOWN EVERY LAST ONE OF THOSE CLICKERS!" The reptile turned a little smug and began pumping his arms up and down to cheer himself on. "WE WILL KILL EVERY LAST ONE! WE WILL RUN THE SHOW IN THIS CITY! THEN WE WILL RUN THE SHOW IN OTHER DARK REALMS! AND IN THE END, WE WILL RUN THE SHOW IN THE LIGHT WORLD, TOO!"

"That's it." And with another point in the Don's direction, the human called upon their third member. "Berdly! Say something annoying to him!"

Berdly's time to step forward. With both clown pistols drawn from his orange jacket, he was a bit more confident. "Hey! Chippendale Croc! You're not running anyone's show. My two friends met someone like you in the dark world before. Signs of a struggle, a weird obsession with the Knight, he was under the Knight's control. Just like you. You're no Don. A basic street goon at least can think for himself. You can't even do that."

Not only was he not interrupted. The Don wasn't impressed in the slightest. Instead, a wide grin crept up those open jaws. "CURIOUS! YOU THINK I'M THE KNIGHT'S MINDLESS PUPPET, HUH? A MARIONETTE WITH ALL ITS STRINGS AT HIS FINGERS. A TOY FOR HIM TO PLAY WITH AS HE PLEASES."

He bore the many sharp teeth he had. Clean white, but thinner and even more sharp than Susie's. "I'VE GOT HAVE SOME BAD NEWS FOR YOU THEN. YOU WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING ABOUT THE KNIGHT?" The reptile adjusted his fingers to be right on the triggers on both hands.

Kris could tell he was intending to fire any moment. Or at least to be ready to do so any time. Which meant he already had a target in mind. And those brief glances right at him told him it was him.

"THE KNIGHT CAME BACK ONLY A DAY AGO. HE GAVE ME THE SKETCHES, THE COPIES OF WHICH I GAVE OUT WITH A BOUNTY ON YOUR HEADS. BUT WHEN HE DID, HE TOLD ME VERY CLEARLY - HE INSISTED AS MUCH MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE! OF THOSE THREE ON THE PICTURE HE THEN GAVE ME, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, I WAS TO KEEP! THE HUMAN! ALIVE!" They could tell he was inhaling from those nose holes in the front widening.

He pulled up his weapons, swung right Kris' way and began to fire. Kris ran straight ahead, waited out the barrage and ducked under the start of it on his way. He rushed inside, past the Don, up the half-molten railing to take shelter there and hide around the corner in the mostly open ruin of this public building.

Where the bullets struck in the mayor's attempts to hit Kris, splinters of charred wood and the powdery residue of molten and brittle plastic was blown into the air around them. Even towards the laughing mayor himself. "DOES IT LOOK LIKE I AM EVEN TRYING?" The left and right wing of the building had an upper floor, one of which Kris had made it to, connected to the ground floor with stairs.

With him turning around and pointing both his weapons inside, Berdly saw his chance. And there came Kris' command to use it too. "Berdly! Smugshot!" He pointed both his pistols at the mountainous reptile. He waited for the circles to overlap the way he needed them to, and shot. The little 'bang' flags came out of the barrels and a patch of skin the back of the Don's left shoulder bloated up and exploded, splattering the wincing creature's blood in various directions.

"YOU LITTLE..." By the time he turned around, Kris jumped off the railing with his sword in position to swing and bury it into the creature's back. Right above where the ammunition belts that covered his chest and back crossed. And deep enough into the solid flesh for it to make for something to hold onto.

Unfortunately, he realized too late that he made a miscalculation. Unlike Susie, the Don had a tail long and wide enough to match his size and with a single, painful swing, he could slam him aside and knock him onto the ground. "ANNOYING MONKEY! EAT LEAD!"

Kris quickly pushed himself up. "Ralsei, defend and protect, Berdly, shoot a lot!" He didn't have more time for more detailed commands, as the Don raised both his arms in opposite directions. One of his weapons, he aimed at Kris, the other at Berdly. Kris ducked under the weapon arm, ran closer to his enemy, re-summoned his sword and jumped up.

Already when pushing himself off the ground, he struck out to swing his sword with everything he had to bury it at least a bit into the arm that was already lowering itself his way. Berdly stretched out his pistols and fired again and again as if his life depended on it. And his bullets did hit the creature and penetrate his skin, but it was beyond unrealistic how sturdy Gatore was.

Before he could do much more, the Don's weapon was pointed at him and he pulled the trigger. Right as he did, the prince had swung his bright scarf around himself and Berdly, and used his magic to harden it. The bullets still got through, they were still painful enough for them to be thrown off balance and came with enough force to launch them back a bit, but they weren't nearly as strong as they could have been.

Hanging onto the hulk by his sword like before, Kris saw the Don raise a leg to try and kick him off. He swung his legs forward, let go of his sword and dropped onto the ground not far away and got back up as fast as he could. Not a graceful move, but he avoided getting kicked with the full force of that creature's leg.

He ducked away from the soon incoming gunfire behind a staircase. Those gatling guns were made of solid metal and longer than his actual arms. He figured the more they injured Gatore's arms, the slower he was with moving around the weapons mounted onto them. Kris did manage to hit him. Just not enough to do much. "ENOUGH!"

The Don finally made a decision on who to go for and turned around to pursue Kris. When the human realized that, he rushed further behind through a doorframe to the ground floor rooms below the right hand wing's upper platform. The frame was too small for Gatore to get through without tearing the whole thing down, so as soon as he was sure he wasn't at an angle where he could be directly hit, he had more brief commands to shout out to his already closing in party members. "Berdly! Ralsei! Jevil thing on the arm!"

While the enraged alligator was grabbing the upper side of a doorframe to rip it off along with the wall and floor above, Berdly and Ralsei exchanged a questioning look. "Jevil thing? Wait, Jevil thing!" He meant the routine they did every single time Jevil was done with one of his attacks. Before the mayor could pull away his arm or aim it their way, Berdly began to aim for it and Ralsei made sure his rifle was released one last time.

Only unlike with Jevil, they didn't so much fire their weapons one after the other, but at the same time. The back of Gatore's upper arm bursting open in a bloody explosion made him flinch enough to stop tearing open the ceiling to get to Kris, and the salve of bullets the prince sent his way only further tore open and deepened his wound.

The Don grunted, and apparently changed his mind on who to go for. He pushed through the pain of his heavily bleeding arm and swung both his weapons up to the bird and the prince. They fled up the stairs like Kris had before. And ducked, but even so, albeit softened by Ralsei's scarf, he did hit them a few times.

Below, Kris realized what kind of room this was down here. On a large table lay an enormous stash of plastic bags. Each one filled to the brim with what he could only guess was the same dust some of the Don's goons sold on the street. What Ralsei and Berdly needed more than anything, especially now, was a diversion.

He thought of something, but with the Don standing right next to the torn-open doorframe, it was almost as precarious as his last two maneuvers. He hadn't touched the lights since they set out to visit the Dealmaker. If he made one mistake, he'd have to start over from there. Even so, he had to try. He grabbed one of the dust bags.

Luckily for him, when Berdly and Ralsei drew Gatore's attention by inflicting a heavy wound on his right arm, he stepped away from it for a little. With a bag of dust in each hand, the human charged outside, past the alligator and only stopped when he was only just out of range for his tail to hit him. He dropped one bag on the floor and summoned his sword back into the hand he had carried it with.

Once the already weakened creature registered him coming back out enough to start turning around, Kris took this as his cue. He tossed one bag up into the air and when it fell back down simultaneously with the Don's face turning his way, he swung as strongly as he could with his sword starting behind him, downwards, and with all the momentum gathered on the way, upwards straight through the falling bag.

Cutting it open mid-fall and unleashing a cloud of dust that got both in his eyes and those of the alligator. He was taken a lot less by surprise though, so he had an opportunity to grab the other bag and run through the opposite doorway into the lower room there to put walls behind him and the Don again.

"MY DUST!" When the surprised giant was still busy rubbing his eyes and the prince was occupied patching up his and Berdly's wounds, something caught the bird's attention. Ralsei's gunfire had left little dents on the Don's right hand weapon.

The weapon itself wasn't indestructible. That gave him an idea. He ran to the end of the upper platform to look down past the railings and aimed his pistols down at Gatore's right hand weapon. Specifically the components that funneled the ammunition from the box that hung off his elbow, to the weapon he used to fire at him at Ralsei with before. He timed the circles on the reticle that appeared and pulled the triggers.

One of the metal bars deformed and burst open, with metal shrapnel flying everywhere, including right onto the Don himself. "WHAT?" The ammunition box only dangled off of his arm by the one remaining point it was being held from and the chain of bullets was severed. At least on one arm, he was going to run out of ammunition very soon.

The human on the other hand, ran straight towards the Don again. He was more confident in those dust bag stunts to work now. He threw the dust bag upwards and forwards the Don's way, and while running after it, swung with his sword downlow and upwards right at it again.

On his way, he was feigning the wrong angle, and when the beast raised his arm and swung down to try to crush him, still blinded by the suffocating cloud, the human had already made a sharp turn to the side and sprinted straight past him and back upstairs to the other two. His plan was to open his inventory to grab cake pieces to heal himself and the others back up.

But that was interrupted when something lit up. A bright red glow emerged from his chest. Strings of this red glowing thread connected to Ralsei's hands. He smiled and nodded. A little swirl of light in all colours of the rainbow formed around the prince's hand. When he stretched it up into the air, the light surged up from the floor and around all three of them. All the pain was going away. Bullets still stuck on them loosened and fell out.

Within a moment's notice, the wounds the three of them had sustained, were healed. Even their clothes and armor were restored. No cake necessary. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!" Now facing all three of them at once, the alligator wound his left arm around his right arm, grabbed the gatling gun by its barrel and ripped the rest of it right of of the arm that must have been growing numb from all the blood loss and grabbed it with his left arm to swing it up and past his shoulder.

With the ammunition box still attached to its end. He raised it again, and began swinging it around like a club or a morningstar. With a slow, but powerful swing, he hurled it right at them onto the upper floor. Staggering them just from how much the ground shook under the impact. Where it struck, it burst straight through the floor they were standing on and dragged the lower ceiling and anything that may have hung onto it with it to the room below.

While he did, something unexpected happened. Kris got a phone call, from Janice' number. While cowering together and bracing himself to dodge whatever attack might come next, he put them on speakerphone. "Lightners!" It was Pilot. "I'm going to need you to get out of that building and fast." They had to jump to the side just to dodge another attack. The Don's swings were slow, but each time they came, there was less of the upper floor left to dodge onto.

"Why?"

"Because that 'rocket' that took off is flying in a loop, it's a homing rocket, it's aiming for Gatore and it's coming your way right now. You've got to get out before you get caught in the crossfire." They had to jump to the side again. It was a good thing those weapons were so heavy and both his arms were injured, or else the Don wouldn't have been slow enough for them to evade his attacks so easily.

Nonetheless in sight of their limited time, Kris grew desperate enough to just start throwing his sword at the Don, re-summoning it and throwing it again. It was surprising how well a technique for throwing pens and pencils worked for aiming and throwing a solid metal weapon. It did work to throw off the creature, too. For a second, Gatore let go of his 'club' to reach for the sword that was heading for his face, right before it vanished. only to be thrown again. His right arm grasped the edge of the upper floor to hold onto it. The railing and the ceiling below crumbled under the force of his hand.

"What?" Berdly shrieked. "You can't be serious! How are we supposed to..." Kris tapped his shoulder and pointed at the outside wall. He immediately got what he meant, stopped pointing his guns at the Don and aimed for the corner between the floor and the outside wall instead.

Kris and Ralsei had to scramble to distract the Don and dodge another of those swings that rocked what little was left of the floor, because it took two explosions from Berdly's weapons to blow an actual hole outside. "Quick!" Before they could figure out some good timing, Kris jumped ahead and landed on his hands and feet. He had remembered that you could actually fall from much higher distances here than in the light world.

And once on his feet, smiled at the other two and waved at them to do the same. Ralsei trusted him enough to do it without hesitation. Berdly had to fluff up his feathers from how deep a breath he needed to take to muster the courage, but then followed him outside and out of the Don's reach.

Just in time, too, as while he was still falling, the mayor's torn-off gatling gun burst through the outside wall and wound up lodged against the more solid spot where the wall met the corners of the upper floor.

The Don's second weapon was stuck, but they could see from outside, while backing off, how the walls giving in indicated where the furious reptile was smashing his fists against it. "HEY! WE'RE NOT DONE HERE!" As a last resort, the Don, having climbed upstairs by now, or at least, onto the rubble that now united the upper- and ground floor, and tried aiming and shooting them through one of the holes in the wall with his remaining weapon. But with them having gained quite some distance as is Ralsei using his shawl to protect them was enough to ward off most of the damage from the bullets.

With the phone still running while Ralsei healed them, Pilot went on. "You've got to get out of there now!" The sound of the rocket drive was getting so loud it drowned out everything else. Kris took this as his signal to gesture for them to run further as fast as they could. And within mere moments from there, air currents raged across the area and almost dragged Berdly and Ralsei with them.

With a crash and rumbles that would go on for ages, thew tower had come back and crashed right into the building, digging its way into where Gatore and the three of them were less than a minute ago. Straight through the side of the roofless ruin and it kept sliding and crushing against itself as most of it bore its way through City Hall and its foundation further and further, until the front end of the tower finally came to a halt, several dozens of feet ahead of where City Hall ended.

Gradually, the noise settled. Dust from burst open and dragged-along walls and probably squashed stashes of 'dust' filled the air and settled much more slowly than the rumble. And even when things mostly calmed down, they could still hear the crackle from blocks and bits of pieces of either the ruin, or the tower that leveled some more of it, falling out and rolling off of the heaps.

All while calming down, catching their breaths, wandering along wide, smoothed out tiles. Kris couldn't help but wonder. "Is it over? Is he dead?"

Finally, Berdly could put away those guns and take a look at their new surroundings. "Let's hope he's not in-character, otherwise he might not be."

The area behind City Hall reached very far what must have long been the wall, back in the light world. Even though now a lot of it is covered in rubble from the crash, from only a few metres out of the back wing of City Hall, a long swimming pool stretched across two hundred metres all the way to a mansion and its garden far away on the other side. In the middle, it extended into a large, circular pool that surrounded the fountain they were looking for.

The semi-liquid darkness that flooded up looked so enormous from up close compared to what a distance Kris and Susie had to work from.

"In-character?" Of course Ralsei didn't really understand what they were talking about.

"Yes he...he's an action figure, okay? His character is a bionically enhanced super warrior who ran away from the military to open a bar. And only the broodiest, scummy criminals and mercenaries would visit his bar, because it's really big on bar fights."

"Brawls."

His head dropped a bit. "Yep. Brawls. That's why they're the brawlers. I used to think they were cool when I was really small. But crocodiles, lizards, dragons, other reptiles, they're all really horrible people. If you teach children how great reptiles are, you only set them up for disappointment when school comes around and they actually meet one."

What followed was an awkward silence. Kris stared at Berdly with a hard to discern look. "Kid and Jocks are reptiles too, you know."

"Well then, they'll have to do a lot better to make up for what..."

"LIGHTNERS..." Under whinging and struggling, a heavily wounded and bloodied alligator crawled out of the rubble in front of the side wing he was buried in. His trousers and suit only existed as small tatters, the ammunition belts wound around his cartoonishly muscular chest were long ripped off and he was still covered in bits and pieces from the tower. "THE FOUNTAIN! THE FOUNTAIN THAT WILL PAVE OUR WAY TO THE LIGHT WORLD! I WON'T LET YOU TOUCH IT."

Berdly could only mischievously grin at the Don. "How? You lost your guns." And he drew his own just to be sure.

"WHO NEEDS GUNS IF I CAN JUST RIP YOUR HEADS OFF!"

All of a sudden, with newfound strength and a terrifying speed, he got up and rushed straight their way with his mouth wide open. When he arrived, the three of them jumped back. He snapped right where Kris had stood before. If he had jumped back a millisecond later, he would have ripped his arm off.

Then he tried to grab him with his mouth again. He was aiming specifically for Kris. Then he just ignored Berdly's continuous gunfire and grabbed Kris with both hands to hold him in place. He opened his mouth wide and brought him closer. Either without even thinking about it, or by instinctively knowing what to do, Kris reached into the Don's mouth with his hand and summoned his sword right between the beast's jaws, with its blade pointing right onto his upper part.

Those jaws slammed together in an attempt to grab Kris.

Only that they didn't. Not completely. In trying to bite down on Kris, the giant reptile pushed the blade further into his upper head. He froze and shuddered. Kris immediately heard and felt him wincing and struggling for air. So much so, that he actually let go of him and took a step back to struggle to pull the sword out again. But you could tell from his fumbling that touching the sword only made it hurt even more. "ARGH! AGH KHAY HAR THAGH!" You couldn't even understand what he was saying any more. While the beast stumbled backwards towards the narrow pool of water, Kris, Ralsei and Berdly finally stood together again.

And now, the red light in his chest was glowing again. The strings of glowing power flowed and connected to Berdly's clown pistols. They exchanged a glance and both immediately had an idea of what was going to happen. "So it really did happen!"

Still with the stumbling reptile in his eyesight, Berdly pointed his pistols at him. This was do or die time. If they let Gatore pull that sword out now, he might just kill them after all. When he did point them at his target, two red dots appeared where he was aiming, as if his clown pistols had laser pointers. In multiple locations on Gatore's body, bigger and more slowly moving reticles appeared. Berdly just aimed for the first one he could find, and with the dots on the circle, pulled the triggers.

The circle and reticle accelerated, 'succeeded' and then vanished, but the others were still there, and a new one appeared somewhere else. "Berdly!" Kris shouted. "Smug Barrage!" As fast as he possibly could, with a speed and accuracy only a bird could muster, he aimed for one circle after the other and without thinking, hit as many of them as possible.

Out of desperation, he slipped into a kind of trance in which he wasn't focusing on one point any more and just keeping an eye on the big picture while moving those dots from mark to mark. He fired and fired and fired for his dear life. He didn't count how many of those circles he struck at the right time, but they were a lot until he missed for the first time.

But when he did, all others disappeared, and in every single location on Gatore's body, that he had struck the circle in, his skin bloated and that part of the beast's body exploded. All of them at once. Most of his entire front side blew up in rapid succession, in a smooth wave of very bloody, very gory explosions. Spraying blood and actual chunks of him all around. The combined force launched him back into the pool, where the soon lifeless creature's blood and entrails sullied the already dark waters.

Finally, he was definitely absolutely dead. They could all see his lifeless body with their own eyes. They were overcome with relief, much more so than when they were still a bit on edge just before. Kris was so glad, he let himself drop onto the pavement they were standing on by now.

Kris was relieved beyond measure. He didn't actually expect this to work. He already brought a knife to school at all times. He had to remember to pull it out more often. When he pushed himself back up, and the three of them got a little closer, a creeping cold snuck up their backs. Not in a bad way. It felt as if something about this fountain was really important. "I can't believe it's already over."

Berdly couldn't understand the prince's weird idea of how long they were supposed to be here. "Already?"

"We already made it to the fountain and I...Berdly, there's so much I wanted to ask you about Kris. What does he do in the light world? What's his favourite colour? What foods does he li-"

"Chocolate." He very bluntly interrupted the prince to answer as easy a question as this. "He eats that stuff up like crazy. Make him something out of chocolate and he'll never complain."

Kris wiped the last few bits of dust and alligator drool off his armor. "He's not wrong."

"Still. I hope I get to meet you again."

Berdly grinned. "Try to have it involve less homicidal reptiles next time."

And the prince smiled back. "I'll try."

Something moved, but it was too faint to really register for most of them. "I guess this is it. This is the part where we seal the fountain." The motion from before repeated itself, but a lot more strongly. "So how did you do it last time?" This time, the ground shook enough for none of them to able to deny it. "Geez, what is it this time?" Kris continued to stare at the fountain.

When he was there with Susie, they said goodbye to everyone they met before sealing it. Maybe they had to do that for it to work. With each time that the ground shook, it shook more strongly. And soon, Berdly hasted over to the distracted human. "Kris, this is you isn't it. Did you make a life-sized Susie plush and bring it to my room?"

Something like this was enough for him to snap out of it. "What? I mean no."

Looking back at him, the bird was frantic. A wide stare and strong, cutting gestures accompanied what he was saying. "Then WHAT. In the Angel's name. Is THAT?" Something came crawling up the city. Something big. Something so big, the front of its body was enough to cover the entire city, a lot of which they could see from up here. It was about as big as the cliffs from the ocean all the way up, except that it was one giant entity.

It had purple, scaly skin. An enormous, nigh-impenetrable brown mane hung off its head. Most of its body was covered in a long, dark grey-blueish jacket that was torn as much as its blue jeans were.

In many ways it did look like Susie. But it walked on all fours. It crawled out of the ocean and over the city. Its head still had the length of Susie's head, but Instead of having a face, the front of its head was just a big black hole. Most of its length was just comprised of huge unhealthy-looking yellow tusks and teeth longer than the head itself protruding out of it in random directions. And with drool dripping off of all of those teeth.

When it planted its 'hand' on the city, it must have crushed an entire block. Without moving its head much to do it, it gave a terrifying roar that could be felt in the air and overshadowed any sounds they heard before. Composed of all manner of disturbing sounds within it.

The comfortable cold in Kris' back had long turned into a sensation as though it was being torn apart instead. He just wanted to run away. But there was nowhere he could run where that thing wouldn't catch up. He did however recognize it. "Jaws! It's Jaws!"

Berdly grabbed Kris by what resemblance of a collar his armor had. "So it has a name and you know the name! I knew it, this is your fault somehow!"

It wasn't searching for anything in particular, but it was coming closer and closer regardless and trampling the city as it did.

From various locations outside the city and the outer parts of the city, helicopters and small fighter planes started rising up into the air and firing it from various angles. Getting fired at from the onboard turrets of flying vehicles did startle this 'Jaws', but it didn't do much to repel it. It just began swinging its claws at the choppers, too. "I can slow it down, maybe." Ralsei marched down the pool and away from the fountain."

"What about the fountain?"

The prince raised his hands up in the air and the familiar multicoloured glow appeared around them. "Don't worry about that. As long as I'm the closest darkner to it, it'll work! Seal it!" They saw the same glow manifest near one of the creature's claws. One of its hands was swiping right down at a plane and got caught in the glow. "Hurry, I can only slow her down!"

They quickly got to it. Or at least they would have if they had any idea how. Clueless as to what to do, human and monster stood at the edge of the pool. "So what now?"

Kris could only shake his head. "I don't know, I..." Then he felt it. He felt that same sensation that preceded the glowing of his soul in their fights with Gatore before. And there it was. In bright red light, he saw the red heart leave his own body, glide towards the centre of the black mass. And after a brief flash of light, emit a white light that engulfed first the fountain itself, then the pool, then the area around it, and then everything.

__________________________________

"Ouch! Argh!" Pain, everywhere. At the very beginning, it was pitch black. Then, expanding as a crassly visible circle with Kris and Berdly at the epicenter, the darkness vanished. Unlike last time with Susie, it wasn't dark after that. The windows were open and the sun was about to rise soon. But with its still faint broken light as he only source of light, blocked off by the window frames, the table and other furniture, they were still pretty damn confused.

Both Kris and Berdly felt themselves getting pinched by sharp, edgy surfaces everywhere. And the repeated buzzing sound from Berdly's alarm clock didn't make it any better. "Where are - wait, wait, wait - ah!" Berdly was right next to Kris at the start, but Kris felt the other toy box fall over, spilling all its contents onto the floor, and apparently, Berdly with it. Under wincing and aching he crawled a little further away and got up to finally reach that light switch.

"Berdie?" The timid voice of a confused bird girl came from outside the door. And slowly, the door opened to make way for a concerned little blue bird girl. In fact this was what really drew Kris' and Berdly's attention to it. They had their old colours back. They really were back in his room. Kris was yellow again and had his sweater back on. Berdly was blue like his sister and wasn't wearing a suit jacket and a Stetson anymore. "Berdie! Where you been?"

The exhausted bird just dropped his face and buried it in his elbow for a second. Then he took a deep breath and said: "File it under 'looking for Scott'."

Her face lit up. "Did you find him?" She didn't remember any of this, did she?

"Yes. Sort of, he's..." He looked around and immediately spotted him. He was nowhere near the toy box. The human-shaped plastic doll was sitting with his lower legs hanging off the edge of Berdly's desk. With Pluma's corresponding Debbie doll sitting right beside him. "Right over...there. How did he get there?"

Finally him and Kris got up and walked back to the table. Pilot, or more aptly, Scott was sitting there dressed fully in his Jevil-themed jester's costume, all the way to the cap. Right next to him, neatly folded together, lay the pilot's uniform he was supposed to be wearing.

"Scott!" The happy girl ran right into his room and grabbed all three. "And you got him new clothes, too."

Her brother's eyes narrowed. "Yes. I guess you could say that." But the most confusing thing they noticed, was neither of the dolls.

Pluma was already gone with her two dolls in her arm by the time Kris was staring at it. Next to where the two plastic dolls were sitting before, lay a card. A playing card that Kris recognized. It had 'J's in opposite corners and depicted a human in a court jester's costume. It was the joker card from the empty classroom in school. The very same one, from its design, down to the little crease in the upper right corner. "Berdly, this...I think that's Jevil. How did he get here?"

What was even stranger was that when he tried to grab it, it glided along the table, away from his hand. When he tried to grab it again, it glided away and as if blown up by a very inconveniently arranged current of wind which he could feel wasn't there, flew up in to the air, spun a circle and then flew straight out of the window. Upon watching all this unfold, he just took his hand down, and stripped his face of any particular expression.

As soon as that confusion wore off, the bird struggled to flip the fallen-over toy box back up and shovel all the building blocks and building block figures back inside, while keeping all the brawler figures out of it. Upon flipping it back up, he discovered something right under it. "Hey, Kris. I believe this is yours."

He handed to him a picture, hand drawn on a loose sheet of paper. And not just a doodle, a pretty advanced drawing, too. It was an inked sketch with some moderately filled in colours. With shading, folds in the clothing, tiny patterns to the skin where the jacket was torn, a lot of the hairs on 'her' head were drawn individually and in strokes far removed from the generic and easy to draw anime hair he expected. Drawing wasn't just a thing he picked up a week ago, Berdly could tell as much.

It depicted the exact creature that was trampling what was left of the city when they sealed the fountain. Standing on all fours on a field of green grass. With a tiny windmill next to one of 'her' 'little fingers' to highlight how enormous she was. Complete with that disturbing lack of a face with bigger teeth and tusks replacing it. And the name 'Jaws' was written on the back of the paper.

He could have made some long-winded joke at Kris' expense just based off this. There were multiple that immediately occurred to him. He grinned at Kris for several seconds with his head raised, seriously considering cracking them all at once. But all he said was. "Look, there's a lot of detail here, I get that. But - I mean the size and the tooth face. It's terrifying. The only genre I could file that in is horror. If you have to draw, please no more horror Susie."

He left it at that. He dreaded to think what it was like in the dark world version of whatever equivalent to a closet Kris had. "When did you draw that anyway?"

"Yesterday?"

"We were together the entire day yesterday."

"We weren't in most of the classes." Now he couldn't resist smirking at his classmate. No wonder his grades were no good if he spent all class drawing purple dragons. He didn't need to say as much. He knew, and he was pretty sure Kris knew that he knew. He knew Kris knew that he knew just from Berdly reminding him of the book from time to time.

He filtered all the collectible figurines that made up most of the brawlers and arranged them into one pile, dumped on top of the familiar action figure. Don Gatore's dark world form really was on-model. At least the version before they blew up his cannons and killed him. Another thing that caught their attention was the carpet in the middle of the room.

On it stood a plastic plane made of building blocks, a book on astronomy written by a famous astrophysicist and that contraption the skeleton had given to them the day before. Kris picked it up and turned it on. It emitted a long, golden ray that extended in one direction. It was the Hawk King's machine, the one that made that bridge that led them to the city.

While hastily tidying up the area at his toy box and removing as many brawlers as he could, in the upper area within the heaps of building blocks and figures in the box closer to the wall - in a location high up in the heaps that he could only assume this was the upper city - was a tea box from the middle east. Made of solid metal and sealed tight enough to require quite some force to open it. It contained a piece of paper, another drawing.

Drawn with a pencil and here and there, where necessary, it was coloured with a crayon. It depicted a man with white fur, dressed in a white suit, with a white shirt and a white top hat fitted onto his left horn through a hole in the hat. Sitting on an ivory throne, leaning with his face on his left hand and a walking cane as white as his clothes hanging off his right forearm by the curved end. It was pretty clear from the fur, the curved horns and the floppy ears that it was a boss monster.

He recognized Noelle's art style from how the clothes were drawn, but the face was indiscernible. She had scribbled over the face with a pencil. Very aggressively at that, the strokes reached all the way to the ends of the sheet. "Fifteen - The Devil?" Kris had walked up to Berdly and was reading the caption at the bottom of the picture.

"It's a tarot card, Kris. It stands for things like self-indulgence, self-pity, being manipulative, feeling like you're trapped or like what you want is being kept away from you by outside forces, or regressing into focusing on earthly pleasures or short-lived entertainment and a bunch of other stuff."

"You know that's Samuel, right?"

"Yes, I got that. Well, Noelle very obviously didn't want this if she threw it in with all the old building block toys. And after doing...that." He circled the Dealmaker's scribbled-over face. "And I don't want this guy anywhere near where I live. You can have him. You're the art expert here anyways."

"You know, since he had Asriel's voice, I could just rub all that out and draw Asriel's face onto him."

"I'm sure Samuel would appreciate that, but I really don't care."

Before they could further explore what could have been what on their trip through the dark world, the door opened and his alarmed sister came back in. "Berdie! It's - it's his Mom! You're late for school!"

"Oh god, the moment we're back in the light world, the light world problems start again. Quick! I'm not going to be tardy because of you." Kris was sort of helpless as to which of the many huge bags to sift through and what to bring along. "Just grab the most important stuff and leave the rest in the bags."

He found where his wider assortment of crayons and all the rulers and pens were he needed for drawing. He put those in his bag and otherwise closed them and brought them down the many staircases. It was a huge thing, carrying all those large sports bags back downstairs. Kris was used to this, but Berdly couldn't help but wonder what on earth Mrs. Dreemurr was thinking.

While Kris ran over to the fridge to grab the remaining ham sandwiches for reasons Berdly didn't question, he passed one of the mirrors and noticed something. He had to take off his glasses to confirm it. He didn't really notice, because they had the same strength, but those weren't his glasses. They were royal-blue-black, with Jevil's clown pistols, yellow spiky teeth, little lappets and yellow bells at their ends engraved and painted onto the frame.

During his trip through the dark world, apparently Jevil left him a little reminder that it had really happened, by swapping his own glasses for a pair of Jevil-themed ones. But time was too short to go back to search for his glasses. And he didn't notice the difference until now, so they were working for him just fine.

It was their last chance to check their bags on whether they had everything they needed. Mrs. Dreemurr's car would be too cramped for any of them to make major rearrangements, so they opened their bags and got to looking whether they had everything. In-between doing so, Kris paused. "Uh, Berdly. Just in case I don't get to ask later."

"Yes?"

Grand assortment of coloured pencils, check, blank and foldless sheets of paper, check. "So all the jokes aside. In the very beginning, before we saw more of the dark world and you didn't really believe in it yet, you kept saying me and Susie were 'wiggling things' in the closet, did you actually seriously believe that?"

Berdly had all the sheets with the answers they went through this whole ordeal to make. "Yes?" As well as all the books he needed for the other classes on the coming day.

"Why?"

Once he reassured himself that he had his calculator, his rulers and other writing utensils, he stopped and wiped the sweat off his forehead. "You know. Birds of a feather."

This had Kris stop his search for anything he might have forgotten. "Birds of a feather? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well you do have a lot of things...nevermind." Kris' mother was ringing the door bell more and more often.

His classmate stood behind, dumbstruck. "What do you mean we're birds of a feather?"

"It doesn't matter it doe-" She was keeping the doorbell running constantly at this point. They didn't have any more time for this. "Let's just get going."

For a second, the bird was worried about her panicking and doing something strange or extreme if they didn't open that front door for too much longer, so he urged Kris to rush downstairs to the ground floor with him. She did seem a bit worked up standing right in front of the door with mere inches between her and the door itself.

In fact, she must have been worked up for a long time, as she had dark rings under her slightly reddened eyes. Did she sleep at all last night? In surprising contrast to that, Berdly neither felt, nor looked tired upon inspecting himself and his new glasses in the mirror. Neither did Kris. At least not nearly as tired as they should have been considering they were awake the entire night. But she calmed down when she saw them arrive.

The slightly open frown quickly made way for a smile when the human followed him outside. "Good Morning, Kris. Good Morning." Nonetheless, loading all those bags back into the car, squeezing back into the car for Mrs. Dreemurr to drive them back to school made Berdly feel like normalcy was returning to his life at last.