Penny slowly woke up from the pain, and was surprised to find herself inside a house. She was lying on a couch, with a pillow and a blanket. Her jacket, shoes, pass, and glasses were off of her, and her hair was down. The sun was shining from a window, and the smell of food was in the air. She smiled, and slowly drifted back to catch a little more sleep, when:

"U.G.L.Y, You ain't got no alibi, You ugly! Hey! Hey! You ugly!" It was the sound of a loud, not to mention annoying stereo from upstairs.

"Carter, turn that junk off!" An unfamiliar male British accent yelled at him.

"Eh, you don't know music!" The male New York accent from last night called back.

"Your music, is how you say, crap!" The female French accent called to him.

"You guys know nothing!" The New York accent called back.

"We know a lot!" Another male British accent said, though his sounded more like it was from the East end.

"Guys, you'll wake up the girl!" The female New York accent yelled to them.

"Too bad, you already did." Penny called to all of them, and they stayed quiet for a little while.

"Carter's fault, not mine!" The female New York accent yelled out.

"I'll get you for that later." The male New York accent called out, and a young adult slid down the stair banister. He wore a long-sleeved cream-colored long sleeve shirt with thin green horizontal stripes, brown pants, red suspenders, maroon shoes, and a green flat cap on his long, yet slightly jutting out hair. He also had a cigar clamped in his mouth. He must have been the Carter that the others were talking about.

"You're Carter, right?" Penny asked.

"The one an' only!" He said, extending his suspenders with his thumbs. "Commodore Carter, that's what they call me!"

"No they don't!" The East end accent said. It belonged to a high schooler that looked like he was in his last year of it, with droopy brown hair, a white polo shirt with a red bowtie, mauve pants, taupe shoes, and sunglasses that moved with his emotion. He stumbled a little, due to the fact that he was blind, and using the railing as a guide. "You're a liar, an' ya know it!"

"Ah, shut it, Edwin!" Carter said, taking his cigar out of his mouth for a moment, and then putting it back in.

"Why don't you, as you say, shut it!" The French accent from last night said. She was a Japanese young adult, with black hair in a flip, a blue beret, blue scarf, black-and-white checked sleeveless dress, black knee-high boots, black elbow length gloves, and a small black pack that was attached on her dress. She had heterochromia, one of her eyes being yellow, the other being blue. She also had black eyeshadow, black lipstick, and a small fang.

"Stay out of this, Sabrina!" Carter said, through gritted teeth.

"Mmm…no!" Sabrina said.

"Yes!" Carter shot back.

"No!" Sabrina said, obviously happy that she was winning the fight.

"Yes!" Carter shot back again.

"Why don't you both stop?" The first male British accent said, as he walked down the stairs. He was a young adult, though a little older than the others. He wore tan pants, tan shoes, a black coat with tails that looked like it had seen better days, a monocle, and a black top hat with a white band on his bright green hair, which had two long hairs sticking out from under. He also carried a black cane, but it looked more like a walking stick or a tap dancing stick.

"Oh, joy." Carter said, his voice filled to the brim with sarcasm. "Godfrey's here to intervene."

"Yes, I am!" Godfrey said, pointing his cane at Carter, just a few inches from his face, only to have another hand lower it. It belonged to a female young adult. She wore a black dress with white polka dots, a red hat on her flipped out black hair, and carried a small red pocket book.

"Now, let's not do this." She said, in a soft British accent.

"Great, now Lydia's gonna stop the brawl!" Carter said, even more annoyed. "Who else will be there to stop it?"

"How's about me?" The female New York accent said. A high schooler a little older than Penny then came downstairs, wearing a short-sleeved green jumpsuit with a red lightning bolt, dark red boots, a white cape with blue trimming and red stars, short yellow gloves, and a white crash helmet with red and blue petals on the top, over her orange-red colored hair, which stuck out in a slightly choppy fashion from under.

"An' now Birdie's here!" Edwin said, unlike Carter, he was happier about it. "That leaves…"

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" A very soft female British accent said, walking down the stairs. It was coming from a young adult, but she was the oldest out of all of them. She had platinum blonde hair that stuck out from an intricate headband, and wore a light blue dress with a slightly darker blue shawl with a silver brooch on it. She also wore blue slide-on shoes, and had a blue lantern dangling from one of her arms, while she carried a pair of opera glasses in the other hand.

"…Gloria!" The rest of the house's boarders said at the same time. (Carter being the only one that was upset about it).

"What?" Gloria asked, cupping a hand over one of her ears. "I can't hear you!"

"Not this again…" Carter said, pressing a hand to his forehead.

"So, are you guys the ones that I was supposed to see? You know, for the paper." Penny asked, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

"Oh, right, that." Birdie said, pulling off her crash helmet, and pulling out the paper, folding it into a paper airplane, and having it land on Penny's lap. After unfolding it, there was a light pink peach stamp now on it.

"Come on, kid." Carter said, urging her to follow him, as Godfrey pulled out a chair in the kitchen table for her to sit, and Lydia gave her a plate of eggs and bacon, while the others sat down to their own plates.

"Y'know," Birdie said, her mouth half full, and swallowed. "Ya got guts, girl."

"What do you mean?" Penny asked, mixing up her eggs a little with her fork.

"You're like us." Sabrina said. "You're a, how you say, brave hero for going through theez hard times."

"This traveling around you're doing is amazing." Lydia said.

"But, we still thought you could use a little something else." Godfrey added.

"What?" Penny asked, utterly confused.

"The flashlight." The others (except for Gloria) said in unison, slightly annoyed.

"Oh." Penny said, fingering the new flashlight that was strung right next to her pass. "Sorry, I was busy thinking."

"About what?" Edwin asked, fearing the worst.

"Well, won't my dad notice that I'm gone?" Penny wondered. "I just hope that Donald though of something…"

Meanwhile, back at McDrayke Manor, Donald and The Crows were working on something. They had an oddly-shaped piece of cardboard, and Glasses was drawing a picture on it with crayons. After the finishing touches, they viewed their work. It was a crudely-drawn picture of Penny with her aqua hair and schoolgirl outfit, with the cardboard bended at the neck slightly, and a string attached to the back of it.

"This isn't going to work." Donald said, entirely doubting the whole thing.

"Don't knock it 'til we try it!" Jim said, as Scrooge walked into the room, and the boys tried to look as casual as they could, with Donald holding onto string, but trying to hide it.

"Hello, Donald. Degenerates." Scrooge said, as he walked past them, but stopped and sidetracked when he noticed Cardboard Penny. "Penny, are you okay? You seem a bit thin... and your neck looks wrinkled."

"Uh... Y-Yeah! I lost a lot of weight!" Donald said in a high-pitched voice, while trying to hide his mouth movements, and moving the string while he talked, yet still trying to hide it.

"Okay…carry on with…whatever it is that you're doing…" Scrooge said, as he walked to where he was going, yet peering over his shoulder every so often. When he left, the boys let out a sigh of relief.

"I think we walked right past that one, brothers." Preacher said, and the others nodded in agreement.

Back at the house that Penny was staying at for breakfast, Penny had fully dressed, and put her note in a safe place. She was directed to head into the woods for her next helper. When she turned around to take a look at the house, it strangely looked like a peach pit. Putting that behind her, she walked over to the woods. She found a sign on a tree that said "TULGEY WOODS: Enter at your own risk". Disregarding the sign, she walked into the woods. It completely shrouded out any sunlight, so she clipped off her new flashlight from her pass, and shone it. It let out an odd green light, yet one that let her see nonetheless. She went pretty far into the woods in utter silence, (save for the few panicked breaths when she heard a strange rustling in the trees) until she heard a faint voice singing, that seemed to get louder as she followed it.

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

Penny soon looked up to see a boy that was about the same age as her. He had pink and purple-striped hair in a ponytail, and wore a purple long sleeved shirt with a magenta t-shirt over it, plus purple and magenta-striped pants, maroon shoes, and the whites of his eyes were a pale yellow. The strangest part about him was that he was actually materializing before Penny's very eyes!

"Oh, Chester." Penny said, with a sigh of relief. "It's just you." Penny had remembered meeting Chester in her Art Class yesterday. He thought it would be funny to put brown paint in the teacher's coffee when her back was turned. It was funny at first, but a week's worth of detention automatically makes everything unfunny. Thankfully for him, it was the weekend.

"Who'd you expect?" Chester said, pulling himself in a sitting position on the branch that he was laying on, letting his feet dangle in the air. "Kahn, perhaps?"

"Don't talk about him." Penny said, a flash of anger leaping into her voice for a brief moment. "So, I'm supposed to see you about the paper, am I?"

"Who, me?" Chester asked, feigning shock, and then started to laugh, but it sounded a little like a cackle. "Oh, no. I'm no the one you want to see."

"What do you mean?" Penny asked, completely confused.

"I'm only supposed to tell you to go that-a-way, until you find the old swimming pool, and go into the locker rooms." Chester said, pointing in the direction he wanted her to go. "You have to do the rest of the work." He then started to vanish, but quickly paused where his was

"What is it now?" Penny asked, a bit of annoyance creeping through her voice.

"I just wanted to warn you about something," Chester added, now vanished to the point that only his eyes and mouth (which was grinning broadly, with his teeth gleaming compared to the darkness) "Beware of hitchhiking ghosts!" With that, he completely disappeared, cackling madly.

"Boy, is he mad." Penny said to herself, still staring at the branch that Chester was once on. "And what is he talking about with 'hitchhiking ghosts'?" Penny tried to dismiss the information, and walked in the direction that Chester pointed, unbeknownst to her about the surprise that she was going to get…