A/N: I just wanted to say a word about the worst news that I have received in the past month:
As I'm sure you all have heard, Unnatural History was cancelled by Cartoon Network. It's tragic, yes, but also an opportunity. For us. There is no more canon; we are left to invent the rest. The end of the show is not the end of the fanfiction, but rather its true beginning. We have so many loose ends to tie up! What was that roaring noise? Who won the election? What ever happened to Arianna Gish?
Keep imagining. Keep writing. I know I will. And, most importantly, always remember that: when you're open to discovery, the answer will be left.
Back home, Henry was swinging in his hammock, struggling to focus on his Geometry homework. It made no sense to him- the variables and vocabulary and theorems became jumbled up in his mind and couldn't be distinguished as rational ideas. His cell phone rang. He tossed the homework on the floor and leapt across the room to answer it. It took him three tries. "This is harder than the Geometry," he muttered, finally finding the talk button. "Hey, Jasper."
"Hen," said Jasper on the other end, "the Specter is in the DOUM rooms. Get here now." Henry was shocked, and a little perturbed.
"I just ran home from there," he complained. He heard Jasper sigh with exasperation.
"Then take the hybrid," he said. "Just get to the museum."
"I'm on my way," he promised. He flipped his phone shut and sprinted down the stairs. After grabbing the keys to his uncle's car from the side table, he skidded out the door and disappeared into the dark night.
Jasper paced outside the door to the museum, jittery with anticipation and nerves. He wanted to hunt the Specter down at that moment, but to be honest, he didn't believe he could accomplish anything without his bat-ears, jungle-boy, can-fake-his-own-death cousin.
Finally, he heard footsteps behind him. "What took you so long?" he hissed as Henry jogged up beside him.
"Oh, you know," he said, "normal driving stuff. I might have had a wrestling match with the car radio." Jasper rolled his eyes.
"Convinced the machines are trying to kill you again?" he asked, moving towards the door. Henry followed him.
"Hey," said Henry as Jasper tentatively pressed open the door, "toaster is only one step away from psycho robot."
"Whatever," he grumbled under his breath, stepping stealthily into the museum with Henry close behind him. They stalked through the dark mausoleum of artifacts, the silhouetted outline of the monstrous dinosaur skeleton at the entrance becoming sinister in the darkness (though, to be fair, as a giant skinless lizard it had seemed rather sinister in the first place). "Crikey," said Jasper, "the museum is creepy at night." He stopped walking, replaying what he had just said in his mind.
"Did you just say 'crikey'?" said Henry, turning to face him. He wore an expression of pure incredulity, but also looked as if he were inches away from busting out laughing.
"Give me a break," he replied moodily. "I'm overtired and running on four cups of coffee right now."
"I lived in Australia for a year and I don't even say crikey," he laughed, the Specter forgotten for a moment as he basked in the glorious hilarity of making fun of his cousin.
"Just let it go!" hissed Jasper, turning his back on Henry and walking away. Henry rushed up behind him, and laid a hand on his shoulder, signifying that they should stop.
"Did you hear that?" he whispered, looking around. Jasper sucked a gulp of air into his mouth and held it to avoid whatever Henry was hearing from being overshadowed by his breathing. He listened carefully, but he was certain that the noise would be easiest identified by Henry.
"What was it?" asked Jasper quietly.
"You saying crikey," said Henry. He cracked up again, rumbling belly laughs that were usually reserved for National Lampoon movies and Youtube videos about animals doing people things.
"Oh, shut up," he grumbled, arguing with himself over whether it would be a good idea to kick Henry in the shin. He decided that any argument they had was safer if it stayed verbal, because he knew that if he was brainless enough to get in a fight with Henry Griffin he would end up on the floor with several broken limbs within seconds.
"I'm sorry," said Henry, obviously mature enough to remember the task at hand.
"No, seriously, shut up," said Jasper, cocking an ear to the west wing. "I actually did hear something." Henry looked around, his trained ears catching every slight sound.
"Over there," he said in a low voice, pointing. Jasper followed his gaze just in time to see the door to the DOUM room mail shed slam shut. Henry ran towards it and Jasper followed.
"Why do they always go the DOUM rooms?" he asked, reflecting on the unlikelihood that among the vast majority of locations and rooms and crannies in the complex the same place kept coming up. "I mean, does it just attract psychos? Overdorf, Fitzgerald-"
"Hey, what about me?" said Henry, sounding hurt. It was true that he spent most of his time in the Division of Obscure and Unknown Miscellanea.
"You were included in the psycho category," Jasper informed him, pushing open the door with Henry close behind him.
"Hey!" he complained.
"Well, who folds their socks singularly?" said Jasper. "It's insane!" He looked around the shed just in time to see the door to the warehouse swing closed. As they dashed across the disorderly room, Henry realized who was missing.
"Why isn't Maggie here, too?" he asked as they entered the DOUM rooms. They could easily hear footsteps near them, so they chased the unknown creator of the echoing impact sounds.
"She's… she's busy," he said, unwilling to get into it both because he was reluctant to admit how upset he had been upon finding Maggie with Joshua and because they were currently jogging through aisle after aisle of precariously stacked wooden crates in pursuit of the person/possible ghost that had been tormenting their school auditorium for three years.
"Doing what?" asked Henry skeptically, and the thought Joshua Greenwood came unbidden to Jasper's mind. Just thinking about them dancing together was painful enough; he didn't need to be making innuendos.
"Going through her spam," said Jasper, turning sharply around the corner of a large box. Ever since the whole Tamba incident, the two used Maggie's unwanted e-mail as a sort of unofficial code for "with a guy."
"Oh," said Henry understandingly.
"Yeah," said Jasper, still not wanting to talk about it with Henry.
"So I'm guessing you didn't get a chance to tell her about the whole you being in love with her thing?" assumed Henry. The footsteps had quieted, and he was distracted in his interrogation of Jasper as he paced around a section of the cavernous warehouse.
"Not really," replied Jasper. He leaned against one of the towers of boxes and ran his fingers through his hair, already exhausted of chasing down the Specter.
"Who was she-" Henry began, but Jasper cut him off. Chasing the Smithson Specter was not the only thing that he was tired of.
"Look, we really don't have time to be talking about Maggie right now, what with the whole 'we're chasing the Specter' deal, so why don't we put off this conversation until we get home?" Honestly, he was so ready to curl up and go to sleep that he would have collapsed into Henry's hammock at this point. In just the past few hours, he had witnessed the sabotage of a play, watched the girl of his dreams spinning happily in the arms of someone else, and ran through an empty museum in dashed hopes of catching the orchestrator of the aforementioned sabotage. He was ready for the day to be over, and though he hoped that he would not dream, he suspected that he would anyway. Hope had not been very accurate for him in the past few days.
"Okay," said Henry, "but I'm not letting this drop." The pounding of the Specter's footsteps suddenly started up again, and then with the clank of a door which must have been to the mail shed, they disappeared. Jasper realized that it could not be a ghost (not that he had ever seriously considered it), or at least if it were, it was one of those ghoul/monster/zombie sorts of ghosts that had an actual form. There were several fictional accounts of ghosts, and even more supposedly true accounts from gullible crackpots. Every one of them said something different about ghosts, and he was sure that at least half of them mentioned something about ghosts actually having a physical form. If the Specter was ethereal, otherworldly, it at least had the ability to open doors and make noise.
"I didn't expect you to," admitted Jasper. He walked with Henry towards the mail shed, towards their separate cars and, finally, the room that they shared waiting with a rope hammock and a comfortable mattress.
A/N: Yes, if you're wondering, that opening AN was as cheesy as it sounded. Give me a break, I'm at that point right now where I'm so tired that I act a little tipsy.
