"OUTRAGEOUS! IMPOSSIBLE! TREACHERY!"
By this time, Prince Nixel was ranting in anger, pacing the floor of the throne room. How was this golden boy him? Not an ounce of evil, not a hint of mischief, heck, he didn't even have the audacity to pose as his deceased father and take control of the army of mindless clones of his species? What kind of person doesn't want to do that?
As Prince Nixel continued to rant in the background, Flain shifted his attention elsewhere. He had bigger matters to press onto. As much as he hated to admit it, the puny prince had a point. They DID need to find a way out of here.
"So, are there any gaps into our home anywhere we can just slip through and be done with?" Flain asked, expecting no simple answer.
"Unfortunately, no." Dr. Nexchem sighed. "I'm assuming that the device my duller counterpart created took up a large amount of energy for the rift to be created, am I right?"
"That and a poorly-timed Cragster punch." Flain explained. "Not sure what could cause that "oomph" like ours did, since we've already had a few major life changing events happen in our town, this one almost seemed like a tiny energy amount."
As the room gave a collective sigh of defeat (save for Prince Nixel, who was still spouting out single words of how impossible his doppelganger's ideas were), Flain relooked at everything. The Cubit-like gemstone topping the queen's scepter. The now rainbow-stained jumpsuit that was fished out of the pipes and was dripping onto the throne room's floor. The rainbow pipes themselves.
"Would…changing the lifestyle of an entire species be considered life changing enough?" Flain pondered, as the gears in his head started to turn. "As in…giving them the gifts they've been throwing away?"
"I HATE IT." Prince Nixel chimed in, though at that point, it was impossible to tell if he was listening to the conversation or still rambling on about his dislike of the situation.
"Well, if HE hates it…" Prince Nexil decided, glaring at his gloomy counterpart. "Then I like the idea!"
"Sounds lofty." Chill said. "Doc, could that work?"
"Well…" Dr. Nexchem pondered. "If it was done all at once, somehow conglomerating all of the mass of an entire population into one location, then there's a possibility. The only thing is how that could possibly be done, is all."
"We use Bounder's idea." Flain bluntly said.
"What?!" Chill and Bounder said in unison, Chill in shock, Bounder in amazement.
"Yeah, it's convoluted, sure," Flain admitted. "But it's the only way that we could sneak around. I mean, they thought Princey-boy here was one of them. All we need are duplicates of the jumpsuit and quick color changes and we're good. Is there a tailor around here or something?"
"PATCH, WE GOT A PROJECT FOR YOU!"
"…Thanks for busting my eardrums, Bounder."
"No problem, Chill!"
At the edge of the Nexoground was a small clothing store. Now, Nexils weren't known for wearing many clothes, but all that did seemed to have all their needs taken care of by this small shop. It was modest, simple, and yet miles ahead of anything Nixels would have. Flain, Bounder, Chill, and a begrudging Prince Nixel knew this was the place to be for what they needed.
"I'm coming!" A feminine voice called from the back. Through a curtain, a clay-shelled Nexil walked out. She was square-eared and wore a Mountbatten pink bandana tied around her head as if she was tying back nonexistent hair. Around where her neck should be was a silver chain with a bright red heart locket on the end of it. Most strikingly was the fact she only had two fangs, missing the middle fang on her top. For some reason, this, combined with her voice, had some inkling of familiarity to Flain.
"It's kind of an 'emergency project'; I guess you could call it." Bounder admitted, holding out the rainbow tie dyed jumpsuit to her. "We need recreations of this for the four of us…just not, rainbow."
"They have to be as boring and bland and gray as possible!" Chill piped in, cringing at the lameness of the idea.
"And whatever the nametags are." Flain added, trying to ignore the odd inkling he still had, along with the fact that Patch seemed to be sizing him up as some amazing spectacular, just because he wasn't a Nexil.
"I think me and my assistant can get this done." Patch said, still sizing up Flain, as she turned towards the back of the store. "Blitz, can you come over here?"
"Coming!" Another somewhat-familiar voice to Flain called from the back, as a bright yellow-shelled cat-eared Nexil came out from the back of the store from the same curtain, also somewhat taken aback by the sight of Flain momentarily.
"Blitz, do we have any…ahem, 'boring' materials that we could recreate these in?" Patch asked, showing him the chromatic clothing she was holding onto.
"I think we have some really old fabric we never used, maybe?" Blitz suggested. "It's scratchy, it's boring, and it's probably the worst thing to wear."
"That's perfect!" Flain said. "The worse-looking, the better!"
"You guys are weird." Blitz said. "I don't get why you want boring when you can have cool like this thing!"
"It's…kind of a hush-hush big secret." Bounder admitted. "But it's for a good reason, trust us!"
"Whatever you say…" Patch sighed, as she grabbed some tools and started to get to work.
It took quite a few hours, to the point that it was worthless to even attempt to work out the plan that night. It would have to wait until morning. However, with proper stillness (a challenge on Bounder, who almost seemed like he was a wiggle worm over a Nexil), proper critiquing (something that was not Prince Nixel's forte, as he seemed to keep hurling insults throughout it, but everyone learned to ignore him), and with the proper art skills (something that Patch and Blitz thankfully both had), four jumpsuits made out of the tackiest, dullest, and plainest gray fabric were completed. All four of them bore a dull nametag with a random serial number on them.
"So, what do you think?" Patch asked, still a touch confused by the work she had to create.
"They're boring, they're bland, and they'll make us look like Messils." Flain said, as Patch and Blitz looked down, disappointed in their work. "They're perfect!"
"You really mean it?" Blitz asked, as his and Patch's hopes immediately rose up.
"Totally, dude!" Flain happily said. "They're just the thing for the big plan!"
"Seriously, what IS this plan?" Patch asked, now entirely lighthearted.
"Trust us, you'll see!" Bounder said, a grin spreading across his face. "If tomorrow turns out like we want it to, everything will be amazing and right as rain!"
"Once again, can't thank you enough for this, little dudes."
"I can, Mixel. I think these two deserve nothing."
Since the attack couldn't go on until tomorrow, along with Flain and Prince Nixel were without a place to stay for the night, Chill and Bounder let them crash in their apartment. While it was technically hardly big enough for the two of them to live in, let alone two extra guests, one of them bigger than the standard size of the species that lived in the city, it was still a free sleeping location.
"Once again, ignoring you." Chill said, as he threw a pillow and blanket towards at the prince. Whether or not it was an accident that they both smacked into them or not was all up to opinion.
"So, you really think this'll work?" Bounder asked, as he tucked himself into his bed. "I mean, I came up with the idea and I'm even starting to doubt it now…"
"I'm confident it will." Flain said, tugging on the t-shirt that was lent to him to use as a pajama shirt. It was slightly short on him, even for an oversized one in Nexil terms. "It's all about confidence, helps make it work. Little Glorp Corp kid back home was confident that superheroes existed and he ended up saving the town once."
"Ruining my chance of destroying it." Prince Nixel mumbled under his breath, though loud enough that everyone could hear the distaste in his voice.
"Anyways," Flain continued, not bothering to pay the prince any mind. "It'll be quite a feat to get through, so we'll need enough energy for it."
"Right." Chill said, starting to warm up to the plan inch by inch. He pulled on the switch of the lamp that sat in the middle of the small bedroom, plunging the room into darkness. "Night, all."
"Night." Flain and Bounder's voices echoed back, as they settled in to sleep. Flain could swear that he heard Prince Nixel attempting to jiggle the door to escape, even though it was preemptively locked and Flain was given the key for a "just in case" safe keeping. He must have eventually given up, because the noise gave up eventually, and grumpy deep breathing took its place.
This plan had to work. It really just had to.