Chapter One: A Call for Action
“I thought I told you not to come here.” His voice was gravely, clogged, and missing the “chords” from his vocal chords.
The bedridden officer’s head was propped up by two stiff pillows and he was surrounded by a surplus of tissue paper, with crumpled wads shamefully sprawled out on the floor beside the foot of the garbage bin. And amidst the crumpled wads stood a crumpled idiot.
“And I thought you’d realize I don’t listen to you that often— Speaking of which, I see why you wanted me to stay away, yeesh! You look like a mess!” Joan looked around the room, highly aware of his footing to not step on a landmine.
Charlie sniffed. “What do you want?”
“A million bucks would be nice, but that’s not what I came here for.” Joan chuckled, and took out his phone. “Things have been derailing quickly. You know, about the plumbing—”
He spoke with air quotes.
“—Unfortunate that you got sick now of all days, ‘cause I’m getting a feeling this case’ll blow real soon.”
Charlie rolled his dehydrated eyes. “And what did you want me to do about it?”
“I wouldn’t know, you __were put in charge of it.”
Charlie groaned, which turned into a cough. “Do I have to do everything in this department? Why don’t you check my emails about it, since you’re so invested?”
Joan sighed, narrowing his eyes at his colleague. “Those were my orders alright. Not like you’re going anywhere soon, as they said. You got your card on you?”
“No. Check my desk, probably left it there overnight. Go on, you’re breathing in my germs.” He went into another coughing fit.
“Yeah yeah, don’t die on us gramps.” Joan waved him off and left the room, leaving Charlie on his own.
Or so he thought.
Hidden from sight, covered in a cloak of illusion, stood the young witch in the corner of the room. She couldn’t recall how long she stood there but now she knew it was all worth it.
Ever since Charlie contracted Ligma (or so Joan told her) he’d been in that bed the entire time, coughing, sneezing and missing a total of 37 used tissues thrown at the waste bin. If he was going to croak, who else would feed her pistachio ice cream in the middle of the night? Not only that, how else would she show to him that she would totally be better at this officer business in every conceivable way?
For example:
Chapter One Point Five: Night Time Television and its Consequences on Adolescents
If someone were to ask Joan how to best spend your time, he would simply tell you to not —but, lo and behold, here he was, being questioned by his recently adopted gremlin of a daughter this exact question.
“Why’re you asking?”
“Why ain’t ye telling?”
Joan hunched to the coffee table with a wince and snagged the remote, pausing the television. “‘Cause you should be in bed right now.”
“So should you!”
Joan sneaked a glance at the hour hand of the clock, having a brief “oh shit” moment to himself before forming an answer.
“Tsk, Damn. You got me there.” There was still a half full bowl of popcorn on his lap, the buttery aroma insisting that he stayed. He patted the cushion next to him with a defeated smirk. “Next episode?”
The gremlin smiled. “I won’t tell Peggy if you won’t!”
And so the two ended up wasting the entire night on a season-long binge of Brooklyn-Nine-Nine. Certainly a waste of time to some, but for the witch, a true learning experience. Charlie might have looked disappointed to find the two on the couch at 3 A.M, but the joke was on him: Gyssabel was now a certified cop.
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Chapter Two: The Wonders of Modern Witchcraft
Now that Charlie was bedridden and an open case presented itself to her, Gyssabel had the chance to show that Ligma-ridden peg leg that she was clearly better at his job than him, and should be able to watch T.V. whenever she damn pleased.
The doors to the ERA guard department burst open, making the front receptionist jump from their seat. They would notice a young teenager donning a women’s police uniform from 1970’s London, stupid hat and all. She hardly even noticed them. In fact, she was already at the other side of the lobby, walking around like she owned the place.
And just like owning a place, it doesn’t necessarily mean you know everything about it. In the case of Gyssabel, you don’t know anything about it. In such cases, you may end up circling the entire building twice over and running into the same Rabbit Therian guard, who stood more and more confused every time you confidently strutted by.
“Erm, Gys?” Oliver finally broke out of his daze and stopped the young detective by the third time she passed him.
She stopped and turned heel at his call. “Oi, Stumpy! Can’t ye see I’m at work ‘ere? Make it snappy!” She then proceeded to snap her fingers at him.
He stiffened a laugh. “Are you lost?”
“No.”
Oliver stared. Gyssabel grinned for a good minute.
“..Yes.”
“Did you… want to find something here?”
“Och, aye! ‘Twould be so kind o’ ye to follow me to Peggy’s office! Ye were always such a good deputy!”
Oliver smiled and shook his head. “Right, right. Off we go, then.”
The guard followed Gyssabel in front of her and led her to the shared office of himself, Joan, Claude, and Charlie. He sat her down to Charlie’s cubicle and went to the door.
“Right then, ‘Boss’. Don’t work yourself too hard like Charlie does, eh?”
“Oi! Donnae talk to me ‘til I’ve ‘ad me mug, mate!”
Oliver cooed, showing himself out. “Call me if you need anything!”
Finally, she could get to work. The case wouldn’t crack itself, after all. Now all that there was left to do was crack open this metal box and get the mail. But before she got her hammer, she took a closer inspection at the box… it looked like a small television set. Now she realized why the guards sat in front of it for hours at a time.
The screen in front of her was off. Of course. She must have needed a remote, and there was no sofa to dig it out of. Maybe calling Oliver would — No, no. Can’t boast superiority if you call for help like a pansy! She’d have to figure this out on her own.
Maybe the remote was on the telly. She felt around the screen, her fingers bumping into a set of three buttons on the bottom left side of the thin box. Like a smart detective, she left no stone unturned and pressed all of them at the same time.
The T.V. flickered to life (at max volume) with an image of a set of four flat squares, rewarding Gyssabel for her clever thinking.
“A-ha!”
USER: OFFICER CHARLES WALKER
ENTER PASSWORD TO LOG IN
Perhaps it was clearer to her now that this was no ordinary T.V. If it was, it’d be airing one of those Chinese cartoons Oliver watches all the time. Besides, what T.V needs a password to use?
She remembered trying several times before to just scream at the TV to change channels and the like, but only when using the remote control would she actually get a response. This machine was likely just as uncooperative. Gyssabel looked at the mechanical typewriter contraption below the screen. She pressed the C key.
ENTER PASSWORD TO LOG IN:
C_______
Amazed, Gys pressed more buttons on the typewriter, and more letters magically appeared on the screen. She suddenly thought back to a fuzzy memory of her mother writing down something with a quill and paper. It took so long. Now, letters just appeared out of nowhere. What did those guards call this thing again? A computer? Of course. It sure did com its puters. She patted herself on the back. Another mystery under her belt. She pressed the ENTER key, assuming it would enter the password.
ENTER PASSWORD TO LOG IN:
CCHZ,67OWNT1738.OWJR=NRLL27
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
Her smile remained, because the computer was so obviously impressed with her skills it asked her for the password again. Twice.
ENTER PASSWORD TO LOG IN:
PASSWORD
INCORRECT PASSWORD.
ENTER PASSWORD TO LOG IN:
LET ME IN
INCORRECT PASSWORD. LOGIN LOCKED. PLEASE INSERT ID.
Piss.
“Oh, morning Gys.” None other than her partner in crime law walked into the office. “Nice.. uh. Getup. You covering Boss today?”
She put her feet up on the desk, conjuring a mug of coffee. “Pff, are ye jokin’? I’m outright doin’ his job fer ‘im!” The girl lifted the mug to her lips, making a very, very audible slurping sound.
Joan peeked around the cubicle. “Without the computer logged in?”
“…Of course! Part of th’ process! It’s like ye never worked this job before, Kitty!” Gyssabel sipped even louder.
“Ah, wasting time on the first day of the job. You learn so fast.” Joan laughed and rolled a chair to sit beside the detective. “You mind sharing the work station? Got a few errands to run.”
Thank the stars. “Fine by me! Yer lucky I feel sorry for ye.”
Joan opened one of the drawers Gys neglected to rummage through and picked up a plastic card with an ugly photo on it. He placed it into a slot in the large typing machine and the screen changed, now cluttered with a bunch of junk. Joan grabbed the misleading piece of plastic they call a “mouse,” clicking on the drawing of an envelope. A window popped up and a large, long list of letters began scrolling down beyond the horizon.
Gys stared at the screen and realized each of these text boxes were letters. Letters that would’ve taken envelopes, pieces of paper, hours of writing with quill and ink and then sealing them with wax. Not to forget how long you’d have to wait to receive the mail, if at all. But here they were, in the hundreds, thousands even, just appearing out of nowhere. And they just kept coming. It was mystifying.
Joan began looking for a specific message, clicking on each mail going down. Most of them were just words, long, boring, drawn out. Much like this line of thought–
“THERE!”
The lion flinched, stopping whatever he was doing instantly. “Huh- Wha?”
“Money!” Gyssabel pointed to one of the mails titled “Deals you’d die to miss!” just between something-something “Plumbing” and something-something “Water Leaks”. Attached was a large image of a Texan desert, promoting FREE five-hundred dollars for every stake of land claimed in the Frontier.
Of course, she didn’t get any of that aside from “FREE” and “five-thousand dollars”.
“Gys, that’s just spam mail.”
“Or a meaty clue! There’s fifteen-thousand dollars on the line now, the case thickens! I’ve got to find it before it falls into the wrong hands!”
Joan turned away from the screen. What he thought was cute a few seconds ago was starting to turn into a cause for alarm. “What are you talking about?”
The young detective sprung out of her chair and made it to the door. “And I know just the loudmouth who’d have their wee flippers all over this!” She left without explaining anything else, leaving the pink lion confused and concerned.
“Loudmouth? In on it.. Oh. Fuck. OLIVER! CODE GREEN!” Joan sprang out of his chair and bolted for dear life.
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Chapter Three: The Game is Afoot!
A certain loudmouth faced off against his two cohorts squeezing together on the same side of the table they all sat on, whilst he only took up a third of his side across from them.
There were five Draw Four cards on the pile. Lily put on her best poker face. Clyde wore a cheeky grin. Bob was probably shitting himself, because now it was Clyde’s turn.
“One card at hand. An UNO, even.” Clyde announced. Lily rolled her eyes for the fifth time this match. “If this is anythin’ but a Draw Four, I’ll be takin’ this pile o’ shite right to me beak.”
His grin grew three sizes that day. “ALAS!” He raised his last card in the air and slammed it on the table. A Draw Four!
“I. WIN!”
Clyde jumped onto the table to gloat, only to find nobody was there anymore.
“Oi!” He looked around. “Yer’ supposed to read’em n’ weep, not read’em and fuckin’ disappear!”
He turned his ugly beak again, and instead of seeing the library he hosted their obnoxiously loud session of UNO at, he stared into an open black abyss.
Eyebrows scrunched, he jumped off the table which disappeared behind him, and took a few steps forward.
Clyde found himself at the table again. But the cards were gone. His only source of entertainment!
His eyes widened. “I gotta get outta here!”
Clyde turned heel and sprinted as far as his grubby little bird feet could take him. But he only ran into the table once more.
Now at the table, sitting legs up on it, was a gremlin in officer’s clothing. Everything turned to black-and-white. Film grain covered every visible surface and complementary mood jazz filled the air. She stared at the penguin through her two pairs of sunglasses.
“Fifteen thousand dollars!”
“I’m finally losing me marbles.”
She slammed a folder down. Polaroids the size of UNO cards slid out, depicting scenarios (such as Clyde poisoning the water supplies, burning crops, and delivering plagues onto houses) that, despite his track record, surprisingly never happened.
“Ye think I wouldnae be onta ya… I know what’cha did, an’ I got enough proof to send yer sorry tail back to Africa!”
“I think ye meant Antarcti- WAIT THAT’S NOT THE BLOODY POINT!” He pointed a flipper at the witch. “The ‘ell are ye doin’, kid?!”
“Och, gettin’ defensive, innit mate? Ready to confess?!”
“Ye’d be defensive too if you were framed for shite you never did!” Clyde picked up one of the photos that lost its illusory façade. “All a’these are fuckin’ nonsense! This one’s just me eating pistachio ice cream!”
“My ice cream! Now we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Cooperate, and I’ll make sure they won’t make a rug outta yer feathers.” She smugly folded her arms. The shows made it sound so cool to say out loud.
“ENOUGH! Either ye tell me exactly what’s going on and why the fuck I’m stuck in NOWHERE LAND, or I’ll GIVE YE SOMETHIN’ TA ARREST ME OVER, IF YER STILL ALIVE!”
Gys slammed her hands on the table. “Admit it! Ye stole the fifty thousand dollars! Ye hid them somewhere underneath th’ school! Ye ate me pistachio ice cream! You’re ugly and stupid and fat! And I bet you pee on old people too! You VILLAIN!”
“What kinda shite they shove into yer vitamin gummies, you fuckin’ wench?! I didn’t do any of those things, and I especially didn’t steal no fifty grand, which ye said was fifteen a minute ago!”
“Donnae change th’ subject, ye inbred French bulldog! Yer mates do crimes like this all the bloody time!”
“And where the hell do ye suppose we’ll steal that “fifty grand”, pinch the pennies from the fountain in the gardens?! There ain’t no bloody banks in this place, and lest ye didn’t notice, WE CAN’T LEAVE.”
Gyssabel gasped. “The garden fountain! Of course!” She pounded a fist to her palm. The moment she did so, the noir setting dropped. They were back at the library. Bob and Lily watched them, sharing a crystal bucket of popcorn. “The perfect hiding spot! They’d never suspect there’s money, where there’s money!”
“…That makes ZERO sense. The hell are ye goin’ to do? Blow up the fountain?”
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Chapter Four: Gyssabel Blows Up The Fountain
This was it. All the pieces were puzzling together. Like… like a… Gyssabel will get to that later when she writes her autobiography about the stunning tales of her detective prowess. Now was the time to strike the iron while it was hot, and finish this case with an explosive finale.
The great fountain stood before her, its ornate stone monument as grand as the treasure underneath.
…But how would she get the money?
“There you are!” Oliver called out from behind the great detective. He and Gyssabel’s partner in law-crime ran up to her with labored breath. “We’ve been looking all over for you!”
Joan panted, hands on knees. “What did you… huff.. What did you do to the penguin?”
Gyssabel smiled.
He went up to her, knelt down and placed both paws on her shoulder. “You gotta tell me what the hell you’ve been doing all day, you’ve been gone for two hours after screaming ‘fifteen thousand dollars!’”
Her smile grew. “T’wasn’t what I did, Kitty, but what I’m about to do!”
She put on a third pair of sunglasses.
“I figured it all out for ye! While you lot were sitting around, watching Chinese cartoons on yer computers—”
Oliver blushed.
“—I was out on th’ field, solving the mystery of the school fountain!”
Joan let go in pure shock. “What does that mean.”
“Peggy’s computer mail said it all! Someone was hiding free money under the school, and I knew just who’d be in on where free money is!”
Joan facepalmed, realizing what she meant earlier. “You don’t mean.”
“Och, I was mean! That silly bloke spilled everything, which led me right here, to the very spot I’m about to crack this case!”
“What case?” Oliver asked.
The detective smirked.
“There are five hundred thousand dollars buried under this fountain.”
Joan looked at Oliver. The hare shrugged. Joan turned back and sighed.
“Gys. None of that is even slightly true. You read a fake email meant to scam you. There’s barely even five dollars in that fountain, and you’re only gonna find some dirt under it.”
Oliver nodded. “Besides… the entire foundation is surrounded by bricks. For someone to go through those bricks that fast, they’d need to…”
Gyssabel smiled.
Joan’s eyes widened. “No. You wouldn’t. You can’t.”
The ends of her lips reached to her ears.
Oliver stepped forward. “We’re not going to let you blow up the fountain!”
“Oh, SHE won’t!” A fourth voice cracked through the air.
An unhinged Clyde stood atop the stone monument, flicking a lit match into a pile of what could only be described as an ametuer action movie director’s wet dream. They barely processed the penguin jump away onto his crystal golem before-
The ground shook as the fountain shot up into pieces, fragments of stone flying everywhere.
Joan and Oliver grabbed their adopted daughter and dropped to the ground, covering her with their mass.
And when the smoke and ringing in their ears finally cleared, they lifted their heads up to the tapping of rain. There was no more fountain, only a crater of busted piping spewing dirty water where it once stood.
“Ugh,” Joan moaned, getting up to his feet. “You two alright?”
“I’ve been a lot better…” Oliver spoke up, rubbing his sides.
“FIVE MILLION DOLLARS!” The witch jumped up, holding out her hands to catch the falling pennies. “I KNEW IT! AND YOU LOT DIDN’T BELIEVE ME, LOOK HOW DUMB YE LOOK!” She gloated, laughing as though she had every right to.
“Are you nuts?!” Joan yelled, actually having every right to, “You could’ve killed someone! You could’ve killed yourself! And for what?! A bunch of nonsense you came up with after 5 hours of binging Brooklyn-Nine-Nine?!”
Oliver turned to his partner with a raised brow. “Joan?”
“…I can explain.”
As if things weren’t bad enough, who better to rear his ugly head to the scene than Claude, crushing his colleagues’ hopes to leave this out of their weekly reports.
“Alright, give it to me straight. How much of this is coming out of my paycheck?” Joan gruffed, turning to Claude.
“What?” Claude tilted his head at him. “Why would they do that? You solved the case!”
Oliver said again, “What case??”
“You know! The case! We’ve been dealing with a pressure issue in the water system for months! Haven’t you been checking your emails?”
Gys cracked her smuggest grin to Joan, rolling his eyes. “I was getting to that, but someone kept me busy.”
Claude shrugged. “Well, looks like you don’t need to anymore! All those mysterious plumbing issues Administration won’t stop yapping about just suddenly—” He wiggled his fingers. “—disappeared! As if, spontaneously blown away…Guess all these pennies blocked the old pumps and caused all of these pressure malfunctions in the plumbing! ERA won’t have to pay thousands in renovations after all! Good work, team!”
He twirled around and walked away.
The three stood in silence, digesting what just happened. After a comically long minute, Gyssabel turned to her caretakers, hands on her hips and a fourth pair of sunglasses threatened to fall off her.
“Anything ye’d like to say now, Kitty?”
“Yeah. You’re grounded from television.”
Gyssabel frowned.
“Piss.”