Skyber could not believe it.
Twenty-eight hours later. One full day and half a normal sleep cycle. And now she could finally come into contact with this fabled “black market” she heard so much about— and had only been to one of its “attractions”. More than halfway into the investigation before the deadline. She huffed in a young feminine voice. The disguise was going to give her a rash.
The entrance was much how she expected it would look. A small nook tucked in between a corner and an alley. Probably used for maintenance. No more attractive than an old cellar door. Actually, it was an old cellar door. Opening the door revealed a dim and dank staircase leading down some dark area with no discernible end in sight.
As instructed, Skyber went to a particular set of doors on the side of the wall, locked of course. Picking the locks (which took one of her hidden scales) was easy enough, flimsy little excuses of bike locks. She was in.
What used to be an old boiler room was now repurposed into an actual small market, dozens of students crammed together with stalls and boxes, bartering and haggling, arguing and boasting about whatever the hell they sold here. She didn’t care.
All she had to do now was drop the disguise and let all hell loose. Everyone here knew who she was, no one in their right mind would try to stop her. It was even more convenient they gathered here of all places—she could set this up like an old boiler malfunction. What are they going to do, accuse her for destroying their precious black market to the guards?
It was all too perfect. Despite her setbacks in time, she played all of her cards right, and now she could end this nonsense once and for all. No more threat to ERA’s security, no more shady illegal businesses sprouting like weeds, and no longer would she have to worry about—
“Hey, are you gonna buy something or are you just gonna stand there, because there’s a standing fee.”
Skyber’s stream of consciousness broke, planting her facing some dork in a coat.
“What does it matter to you? Your puny establishment will be burnt to nothing in seconds,” Skyber growled.
“…Jeez, take it easy, girl. All I’m saying is you want some glasses or not? You look like you need a pair. Took forever finding these prescription lenses.”
She looked down, briefly inspecting the wares. Anyway, no longer would she have to worry about anything getting in the way of— wait, what was it about glasses? Why did that sound familiar to her again?
A new pair would take forever to get here and she’s practically blind without ’em. You would have to travel across the state just to find her prescription.
Xander. Right. This was probably the stall that sold these lenses that were difficult to get on campus. It bogged her this was even an issue in the first place. Was it that bad that students had to stoop to this level to get their hands on living necessities? If this was her school…
Hold on. Better question: would she willingly destroy a place in the school with the only access to living necessities? Well, of course she could, but at what cost? Then what would become of the school she worked so hard to maintain?
Perhaps this was just a fluke. The one good apple in a grove of degeneracy. Right? Surely not every seller here has something to offer the school itself cannot ethically provide. After all, the guards did find some sort of LSD tablet lying on the street.
…
She had to make sure she wasn’t about to do something she might regret.
But that would cost more time. She reached for her breast pocket, only for her hand to overshoot the space where it usually was, ending up just patting the green fabric of her hoodie. The pocket wasn’t even there, let alone her pocket watch.
What to do?
“Splats!”
A voice she recognized called to “her” in a mixture of panic and relief. Skyber recognized it as Kai’s, Splats most recent reluctant understudy. Of course she roped him into this, and look at him now—running to her in a hurried breath. Looks like the final phase of her plan would have to be put on hold regardless.
“Hey, er, uh, fucktard!” Skyber said, struggling to get back into character.
Kai gave a weird look, not bothering to understand why’d she say that. Luckily for Skyber, he had more pressing matters. “Rude, but whatever. I need your help with something real quick.” He managed to say between labored breaths.
“Can this wait, I’m kinda busy h—”
“THERE YOU ARE!” A shrill yell silenced the hubble of the market. All gazes were now plastered on the stout figure of the blood red penguin standing on the other side of the room. Clyde stomped towards Kai and Splats, the former of the humans giving the girl a worried look.
“What, you’re scared of a lil’ fucking penguin? Just punt the dude, dude.” Skyber scuffed, yet again mastering her smug grin.
Another man came up to the group. “Hey, peck-neck! You knocked over one of my Blu-Ray DVD sets! You have to pay for those!”
Without a hint of hesitation Clyde curled his large flipper-esque hands into a fist and smashed it into the man’s groin. He fell wordlessly like a ragdoll. The surviving humans dropped their jaws.
“You punt him first, Splats. You don’t have any balls to lose.”
“SHUT UP!” Clyde pointed his heritage-shattering finger at the two of them. “Or I’m gonna make sure yer children’s children won’t ever see the light a’ day! Ye think you can keep getting away with this, eh? You and that brat of a boss a yours! OH, AND SPEAK O’ THE DEVIL!” Clyde pointed directly at Skyber.
Uh oh.
“Uhm. Kai? What the fuck?”
The delinquent sneered. “Don’t ask me, I did exactly what you told me to. It’s not my fault your business ethics keep blowing up in your face, Splats.”
Fucking figures.
She should’ve expected this. Maybe it wasn’t the market that was shady; maybe it’s just her_._ She pushed the thought aside to face the bigger picture. What would Splats do in this situation?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Skyber said plainly, raising a finger. “Anyway, let’s go Kai!” She grabbed him by the wrist and bolted. Backtracking out of the boiler room, up the staircase, through the cellar doors, and face first in a large wall of light emerald crystal.
“Pretty sure they saw this coming…” Kai gulped, backing away from the golem the girl ran into. Skyber held her nose and looked up, meeting the hollow gaze of who Clyde knew as simply… Bob.
The penguin in question burst through the cellar doors behind them. Cornering the students between them. “No more running away this time, broad! Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me four times? I’m gonna make sure yer funeral will be empty!”
Skyber didn’t know whether to feel threatened by him or bad for him.
“Four times?” She blurted.
“I told you it was overkill! Now you’ve turned our trade partners into opps, and we gotta clean up the mess you made.”
Skyber almost wanted to defend herself, but was reminded of her current situation once she had to dodge Bob’s massive fist through the ground she stood on. Her lighter form made her lose balance, toppling near instantly. She concealed a frustrated billow of smoke escaping her lips.
Kai frantically constructed something with his ability, anything to defend the impending attack. He wouldn’t know how glass would fare against crystal, but what he had in his hand anyways was a long cylinder resembling a pole or staff of some sort.
He didn’t even have time to test his weapon against the titan before getting his back thrown out with a web-footed drop kick. He groaned as he rolled on the ground, bumping against Skyber.
“Watch where you’re falling, asshole!” Skyber yelled. Keeping character was a lot more important than winning. And surprisingly more fun.
“Shut up before I join their side! Just use your can or something, help me shake these idiots!”
Right. Her Electi ability.
“I… don’t have it.”
“You don’t have the one thing you carry around every day?!”
“I-I lent it to Nova, for some prank they’re pulling today! Don’t sass me, you useless glass blower!”
“Whatever then, ginger! I think I got a way outta here.” Kai staggered up, grabbing the chipped staff. It would shatter by itself in a few seconds regardless. He capitalized on those seconds, rushing through. Skyber followed. Bob and Clyde jumped back, expecting a rush attack but getting an attempted retreat instead.
Bob stomped his foot into the earth, a pillar growing under, through, and bursting out ahead of the students, blocking their path. Skyber looked around, spotting a fire escape ladder bolted to the right. She ran up to it, Kai getting the same idea. He threw his glass pole into the other two, just as it was about to dissolve. It hardly stalled them.
Skyber was the first up the ladder, just ahead of her understudy. A loud clank pierced the air, a projectile chunk of crystal embedding itself in the side of a metal rung. They climbed faster, now with Clyde behind. Another chunk of crystal shot out beneath, barely scraping Skyber’s green jacket. She could hear Clyde cursing as they crested the horizon of the building roof.
“Hurry up, Q-Tip!” Skyber pulled Kai’s hair up as he climbed over the last rung.
“Ow! The hair, dammit! Let go!” He winced, cursing the girl’s horrible common sense. “Ugh. You think we lost that Candyland reject?”
“He’s not the only one ye should be worried about!” Clyde quickly jumped from the fire escape ladder, making an impressive arc above them and landing right in front of the two, scowling madly. He held his fist towards them. “I won’t let you get away with this! You KNEW how important Lily’s belongings are, it’s the only things left of her home! You knew how ERA and its dumb-fuck security just rejected the packages without givin’ it a second look! So not only you charged us extra, you SENT. US. GARBAGE!”
Kai looked down as the person he thought was Splats was finally facing her consequences. Bob had somehow reached halfway up to the rest of them—slowly but surely, he was growing out his own legs to reach their height. “Splats, if you wanna offer a return policy, now’s the time!”
Skyber doubted Splats would stoop this low for extra change, even if she was petty. Her working theory was that the girl misjudged how important this was and thought she could swindle some silly looking Anthro by giving him some garbage. It wasn’t his, after all, how would he know? “I don’t have my wallet on me— and I don’t think they’ll let me go get it!”
“I don’t need the damned money, which I will take anyway, I need the job to be done! And if you won’t do it right, I’ll make an example outta ya when they find your broken body in the infirmary! Isn’t that right, Bob?”
The golem had just reached the top of the building. His rock helmet peered over like a periscope. Kai wanted to bonk it like a whack-a-mole, but he wouldn’t make the glass in time. He turned to his crooked ringleader. “Now what, genius?”
Skyber appeared worried, they wouldn’t be able to seriously harm her before the disguise would burn off but it would be just as bad, the operation would be a bust. Sure, she could whack the two of them to next week, but ERA will be shut down by then.
It would be so much easier if she was herself, she thought.
And an idea formed in her head.
“Hey-hey-hey, wait, Clyde hear me out I didn’t try to sell you garbage, ok? That’s just what my guy sent my way, I figured it was your friend’s so I didn’t think anything was wrong, yeah?” Skyber faked a nervous stutter. It would be best to make him think he got the upper hand for now.
“YOU DIDN’T TRY TO?! Don’t make me laugh! You sent us 20 copies of Shrek 2 on DVD!”
Really Splats? “I-I don’t know what she’s into! I thought she was some… Weirdo collector or something! Look, I can make it right for you! I have a way to guarantee whatever you need to get here will be in your hands! Err, flippers!”
Clyde huffed, crossing his arms. “And how will you do that? Drone delivery above the school fence? Get someone to just fucking leave ERA and get it back?”
“Yes!” Skyber said confidently, holding her hips with a smirk. She was already regretting what she was about to say.
“I’ll get Skyber to do it!”
Clyde furrowed his brows and Kai looked at her in bewilderment, speaking slowly. “The tall dragon maniac you told everyone to keep away from the market so she won’t burn it down for ‘the greater good?’” Skyber felt offended.
“She doesn’t have to know! I can say it’s a… a favor for one of my old friends! We’re friends, right Clyde?”
“If friends want ta’ choke each other on a daily basis then we’re practically soulmates. Fucker.” Clyde mocked, glaring at the two of them.
Kai shook his head. “Does that big purple woman even like you?”
Skyber kicked his shin to shut him up. “Of course she does! She can’t get enough of me. Believe me.” The worst part about this was she couldn’t say a thing to Splats after this. And she had plenty to say to her. “I’ll make sure whatever it is gets to you in a week, if not feel free to bash my head in, okay?”
Clyde and Bob exchanged a look, or what Skyber could guess was a “look” from the crystal.
“Fine. I can’t say I don’t find the idea of her of all people in the academy doing a job for me unappealing, but I swear if it’s a second late I’ll hang what’s left of your hair at the door to the market like a wet mop!”
Kai and Skyber sighed in relief.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.”
Nova had quickly come to realize that they had a lot more to do than just keep Splats at bay from Skyber’s double agent heist. Any other third party that would harm the operation fell into their responsibility as well.
Hence walking the streets of the shopping district never felt so nerve wrecking. What was once an exciting distraction away from Skyber hours ago now felt like a place of potential disaster. Nova turned their gaze front and back, their ears propped up with overly sized antennas coming out of them to pick up any sign of danger.
“Come on Nova, we’re almost there!” Splats said excitedly, looking back at the fuzzball. “We gotta start somewhere small so people don’t instantly notice— it’s gonna be the funniest shit you’ve ever seen!”
Nova turned, their antennae straightening out. They crammed them back into ears. “Hm? Oh, of course! I knew you were the master at this!”
“You know it, now watch and lear- what the fuck?!”
They stopped at what appeared to be a battlefield in an alleyway. A giant pillar of clear rock came out of the earth like a stalagmite, bits and pieces of concrete were tossed about the ground like popcorn after a long movie. Crystals were shot into the fire escape ladder next to the side of the wall, as if shot by a tank, and shards of glass glittered the floor. The hinges to a cellar door at the very end were visibly loose.
“Something the matter, Splatty?” Nova asked, as if the spectacle was commonplace for them.
“The ma— I mean, the- uh, the… GIANT PILLAR OF CRYSTAL!” The girl stretched her arms out to gesture. “Somebody started my prank before me!”
Splats seemed sure about her statement, but Nova thought otherwise. They remembered meeting up with her immortal friend just an hour prior, exchanging information and refreshing disguises before setting off their own ways again. They knew this was the current meeting place of the black market, and Splats was trying to cover up her shock.
“I am looking respectfully,” Nova said. “What do you think we should do?”
“Hold on, hold on…” Splats said, frustrated. She paced around, kicking the dirt with every step. Finally, she had something.
“We’ll do the prank here! I can’t have myself be outdone by some half-assed modern art demonstration!”
“And that’s why Clunk is banned from taking showers!” Claude said. “Pretty funny, eh ol’ Charlie Brown?”
His colleague grumbled. “That’s not my name.”
“Ah, you’re no fun! You’re like an old man, you walk like one too,” the more playful of the two teased. He would have said he was just pulling his leg, but that would probably warrant a foot in his shin made of metal.
“Soooooo, you’d think we’d run into a giant stone pillar out here already. You think the report was off?”
Charlie stopped, pulling Claude back. His eyes widened by a very small margin, though nonetheless widened.
“Claude, tell me something.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
“Is it only me, or does this street look the exact same as the last two?”
Claude looked around. “Don’t look at me, I was just following you! Thoooough, now that you mention it… this place does look kinda familiar.”
“We should stop walking forward, then. Let’s take this alleyway. It’s bound to lead us somewhere different.”
The guards went into a narrow, unusually dark stretch between two of the same-looking buildings they had crossed thrice already. Even under a cloudy night sky as this, it was hard to see anything. They turned their flashlights on. The conditions hardly improved.
“This isn’t your average everyday darkness. This is… advanced darkness.”
“Can you not make the same cartoon reference every time we go out at dark?”
“Just an observation, ol’ Charles.” Claude snickered to himself, just before tripping on some indiscernible object on the ground. “Woah! Hey! What gives?”
“Watch your step, Claude. I’m not taking you to the infirmary like last time.”
“Yeah yeah, I know! Hey, where’d it go? I could have sworn it was bolted down or something.”
“So what was it?” Charlie had moved right next to him, observing the empty ground.
“That’s just it! I dunno! Here, let me…” Claude started kicking the ground. At first, it looked like a stupid action, until his boot struck something wooden, and completely invisible.
“There! You hear that? I’m not crazy, Charlie, I’m not!”
“Huh. For once, you didn’t pull something out of your ass.” He crouched down, poking at what he expected to be air, but felt like a rigid surface—something of wooden texture, yet laid over with a coat of acrylic.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say this was painted—”
“Howdy, fellas!” A voice way too close and way too loud greeted the two guards, making them both almost jump out of their uniforms. Claude flailed his hands about, while Charlie reached for his taser. They saw a short figure with big, white orbs for eyes, multicolored luminescent fur from head to toe, dressed in everyday attire for a perfect sunny morning. An odd combination for a student, even by ERA standards.
“You two look lost! Need any help?” The being asked. The guards lowered their defenses.
“Oh, we’re fiiine, just on a boring night patrol is all. Nothing to see here!”
“We got a report we’re looking into, came in just an hour or two ago. We’d prefer not to have civilians on the scene right now. It’s past curfew, anyhow. You should head back to your dormitory.”
“Oh, the pillar’s just over there if you’re looking for that! Six blocks down and take another right! At first I thought it was just modern art!” They sheepishly tug their hands behind their back, rocking back and forth on their heels.
The men exchanged a look.
“That report came from upper management. You couldn’t have known that,” Charlie said. “We didn’t mention anything about a pillar.”
“…Whaddya mean? I just assumed it was about the pillar, since it just came up outta nowhere! It’s right out in the open, at least seven meters tall!”
Claude then gasped. “Hey, aren’t you that madlad who swindled Joan and Oliver outta some good chocolate? I wanted a bar, y’know! What are you trying to pull with us this time?”
Nova’s eyes widened. “Uh oh. Well would you look at the time, it’s past curfew! I should really be going, have-a-good-night-you-two!” Their bright angel-like wings fluttered open and they took to air, making a mad dash out of the alley.
“One of these nights again, huh? Guess we’re promoting you from Walker to Runner!”
“Shut the hell up and run, Claude.”
The guards immediately gave chase to the flying suspect. They flew low, but they had a big lead ahead.
“Whoever you are, you’re under arrest!” The one-legged officer called out, taking out his taser and setting it off.
They dipped around the electric nodes. “I’m not ‘Whoever You Are’, I’m Nova!” Charlie suddenly found his right hand in a firm shake with Nova’s own extremely stretched out hand. It pulled away like a rubber band. “Nice to meet you!”
He made a mental note of multiple sub-abilities Nova possessed. Just like one other giant violet-coded student he encountered.
Nova rounded a corner, thinking to themself they just might get away while leading the guards away from the painted-over market entrance. That was, if they hadn’t crashed into two exact copies of Claude as they were looking back.
“We got ‘em! We got ‘em!” One of them shouted, clenching onto the escapee in a bear hug. “Claude’ll be so proud of us!”
“Can’t believe they actually showed up… what a nightmare…” the other moaned, doing the same, but with much less “hug”.
Somebody else jumped down from a nearby ledge, just as the officers rounded the corner too. The alleyway was suddenly echoed with the sound of fizzling gas and the entire area was covered in white chalk dust.
“Don’t worry Nova, I got your back!” Splats looked to Nova, equipped with her spraying mask and her signature can. She went to release the celestial being… but found that they did not need freeing.
“OW my hands! My cute little hands are gooone!!” Cloo cried, slowly fading away.
“Finally, sweet release,” Clad lamented.
The smoke had all but dissipated as well. Splats did not have the faintest idea what was happening.
“What the- what did you-”
Nova shrugged. “I thought I told you I nullify Electi abilities, silly!”
Of course. How could she forget. Splats facepalmed. She blew her cover for nothing.
“We should probably go before these guys bite the dust!” Nova grabbed the prankster’s arm, pushing past the clones. They soon stopped disappearing once out of range, eliciting very mixed reactions.
“Or maybe before the cops fucking arrest us, ya ever think of that?” Splats snarked, running away behind them. She yanked her arm away, choosing to branch off on her own. Splitting off should divert their attention, a few minutes of running and they’ll be scot free. And so she ran. She ran until she saw nobody left.
“I can’t believe I actually made it!” Splats laughed, taking another sharp corner only to be suddenly lifted into the air with an audible “yoink”.
She could feel her heart drop to the floor, coming face to face with the lion guard that she and Nova tried to sell cardboard to.
“Wh- what are you doing here?! Let go of me!” Splats struggled against Joan, but was no match against his superior raw strength.
“Sorry little lady, you heard the boss, you’re under arrest,” Joan said calmly.
“I couldn’t catch the other one, my acid wouldn’t work. They just flew away!” Oliver soon joined his feline companion, hunching down and regaining his breath.
“That’s fine, the ambush worked. We got one of the suspects that interfered with the investigations. Go tell the boss and friends we’re heading back, I’m taking this one to questioning.”
“Hey! I didn’t even do anything! Fuck you guys and your bullshit laws!” Splats rebelled, squirming fruitlessly.