Hi people! Sooo I updating TWO chapters this weekend! Yay! It's good progress I'm making, and I'm having tons of fun writing this. I hope you guys are having fun reading it!

*Quick note: the Italics excerpts farther into Jim's POV in this chapter are from the book, "Little Women," by Louisa May Alcott, so don't get confused. Jim is reading while waiting for the cops to call his name.

Also—I was being really stupid and forgot to tell you: the time period is kind of into the future. In this world, just so you're not confused kids below 18 can STILL be executed; JUST LIKE ADULTS CAN. But only—I repeat, ONLY—if the crime is huge.
For example, murder. Hint, hint, wink, wink. Big giveaway for the story.

Okay, let's get on with this chapter already!

ENJOY!


The cops are here. But I didn't do it this time.

-Jim

Jim walked into homeroom, and the first thing he saw was a cop. His gut instinct was to bolt, but instead he paused in the doorway, fingers skimming his backpack strap.

"Uh," he said, eyes darting around. His classmates looked as freaked as him.

He spotted Ariel Triton, looking tired and hungover, as did most of his classmates; the ones at the Triton girls' party.

"Mr. Hawkins," said Mrs. Potts, his homeroom teacher. "Come on in. Late as usual…" she marked him late on her attendance chart. Jim slid into position three seats away from Charlotte La Bouff. Charlotte turned to him. "Did you do it?"
Jim blinked. "Huh?"
Charlotte leaned over Carla Hemingway, between the two of them to whisper in his ear. "Did you steal Princess Kida's Crystal?"

Jim shook his head. "Whoa, whoa—what the hell is that?"
Charlotte leaned back, disappointed she didn't have someone to snitch on. "Never mind."
Mrs. Potts tented her fingers on top of a large manila envelope. "Class, this is Officer Rhimes. He's here to talk to certain students about a crime that happened last night. We believe someone that attends Walt Disney might have committed it. So he's just going to talk."
Cory Liu raised her hand. "Are we still going to all our classes?"
Mrs. Potts tucked a frizzy piece of graying hair behind her exquisitely small ears. "No, we're actually going to stay in homeroom until the police are gone and have a sort of extended study hall. So…." In a feeble attempt to be cheerful, Mrs. Potts slapped her palms together. "Get out your independent reading books! I want silence."
Officer Rhimes stepped forward. "I'll just be calling kids up by alphabetical order. If you hear your name, just step outside for a moment into my office. First up: Abinford, Gaston?"


Time passed.

Nearly an hour had gone by. Charlotte was filing her nails, and Jim, who didn't have a reading book, as usual, had resorted to drumming his pencil against the top of the desk.

Jim spotted Aladdin Ahmed, who had been called out by Rhimes as well a few seats in front of him. He reached forward and tapped Jamie Cerlich on the shoulder. "Get Aladdin for me."
Jamie reached forward and tapped Aladdin's shoulder, gesturing back to Jim.

Aladdin grinned weakly. "Sup, man."
Jim got right to the point. "What did the cop ask you in his office?"
Aladdin cracked his neck. "They asked me where I was last night, if I'd ever seen the Crystal, if I'd seen any unusual characters on Green Bay Street. I said I didn't, and they just glared at me, like they knew I was lying." Aladdin shuddered. "Rhimes' eyes are like black pools. You can't lie while looking into them. You can't hide anything."
Jim raised his palms in the air. "I have nothing to hide. I didn't do anything!"
"Then," said Mrs. Potts, passing by. "You have nothing to be afraid of, Mr. Hawkins. Take out a book."
Jim slumped. "I don't have one."
Mrs. Potts shook her head with annoyance. "I'll give you one. How about a great American classic, mmm? Would you like to read one of those?"
"No."
Mrs. Potts smirked. "Wrong answer, Mr. Hawkins." She vanished behind her desk and then brought out a paperback book with four young women in old fashioned gowns on the front.

She held it out in front of the frowning boy. "How about Little Women?"


" 'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."

Jim rolled his eyes, trying to stop reading without Mrs. Potts noticing. Officer Rhimes stuck his head in the door.

"Damigo, Vitani? Outside in my office, please."

Jim raised his head and began to close Little Women, trying not to shudder at the old-fashioned language and girliness of the girls within the dreadfully boring pages.

"Mr. Hawkins," warned Mrs. Potts. "Return your eyes to the book."
Jim obliged.

" 'Oh, if life is often so hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it…'"

Jim gritted his teeth. Geez, shut the hell up, Mary Lou or Betsy Ann or Emily Sue or whatever their names were! He lowered his head to the smooth wood of his desk. Life is very often hard, he thought. Life throws cliffs your way that can very surely make you fall to your doom, but you'll never pass that point in your life unless you learn to fly.

Jim knew he yet had to learn to fly.

"Jim."
He turned around to see Ariel Triton leaning forward.

Was she crying? Mascara was smudged underneath her eyes and her nose was bright red.
"Jim," Ariel said. "Jim—can you do me a favor?"
Jim leaned back. "Anything—as long as it doesn't concern reading Little Ladies."
Ariel gave him a small smile. "Little Women. It's Little Women. And—it doesn't relate to that. I want you to ask your mom if I can have a pay raise."
Jim leaned back as if she had just slapped him. "You literally just started working at the Benbow three days ago. She won't do it."
Ariel narrowed her eyes. "She will if you ask her."
"No, she won't!"
"Mr. Hawkins! Miss Triton!" cried Mrs. Potts. "Mr. Hawkins, read your book!"
Jim turned around slowly.

Ariel slumped, and a tear settled on her eyelashes. "Please," she begged in a whisper.

Jim was still turned around and he didn't plan to look at her again. "If you tell me why."
"Jim, would you just—"
Jim whirled around, frustrated and furious. "Tell me why, Triton. Tell me now."
The redhead took a deep breath. "I'll come over today after school and tell you. Okay? I promise."
Jim calculated. Work was tomorrow, and Ariel was coming over today. He could easily ask his mom after she told him. He nodded his consent at her, and she smiled in relief.

"Hawkins, James?"
Jim froze. Ariel's sea blue eyes widened. Jim focused on Officer Rhimes, a tall muscly man with dark, dark eyes, just like Aladdin had promised. They carried dungeons and steel traps and blazing fires. They had locked more than just one man in prison.

Jim got up and began numbly following Rhimes out the door.

"If you'd step into my office," said Rhimes coolly, parting a sea green curtain to the side of the hallway.

It wasn't an office; it was more of those cheap cubicles, seperated from the rest of the world by a soft curtain.

Jim ducked into the confines of it. There were two chairs, a red plastic one, and a big threating black swivel chair.

The red plastic one was a folding chair, cheap, and looked like the Bad-Boy Timeout chairs his mom used to put him in when he was little.

Jim sucked in air and took a seat. The chair squeaked under him.

"Don't look so nervous, Hawkins," said Rhimes, settling into his black swivel chair. There was a low-wattage bulb hanging on a single thread above them, and a metal desk—a small one—seperating the two chairs. Holding judgment as solid as a concrete brick.

Jim leaned back in the chair, trying to act cool and natural.

Rhimes leaned forward. "I'm just gonna ask you some questions, Hawkins, and you're gonna give me some answers. Comprende?"

"Yeah."
Rhimes squeezed the handles on his chair, and made his muscles flex. Jim's cheek muscles twitched. "Where were you last night at aroud two in the morning?"
Heat flooded Jim's cheeks. "A party."
"Where?"
He shifted uneasily in the hard plastic confines. "The Triton girls' house."
Rhimes wrote it down. "Okay. So you were still there at around two. When did you leave?"
"I left at two-thirty."
Rhimes scribbled down more information on his clipboard. What could he possibly be writing? I've barely told him anything. "Why did you leave so suddenly at two-thirty? You look like a person who'd rather be partying?"
Jim shrugged and decided to tell the truth. "My friend needed a ride home."
"Who's your friend?"
Rhimes sounded like such a pedophile. Jim let out a breath. "Wendy."
Rhimes was still patient and going at it. "Okay, son, that doesn't really help, does it? Wendy who?"
"Wendy—Darling."
Rhimes's eyes widened. "Yes, another girl, Dani Spark, mentioned that she gave Wendy Darling a ride to the party. Why didn't Dani give her a ride back? Perhaps you and this Darling girl were co-conspirators! Perhaps you stole the Crystal together, to sell it and split the money!"
Jim shook his head. Rhimes was moving too fast. Where he had gotten this conclusion from Jim had no idea. "Dani gave her a ride, probably, but Wendy had a family emergency at home and couldn't find Dani."
Rhimes moved his pencil across the paper. "Couldn't—find—Dani," he spoke out loud as he wrote. "Where do you think Dani was? Do you think Dani had snuck out of the party to go steal the Crystal?"
Jim stood up in the chair. "Stop. You're accusing that innocent freshman girl of stealing a Crystal? None of us frickin' knows were the princess lives! I thought she went back to Atlanta or wherever she came from a long time ago. After the assembly, I mean. Stop blaming stuff on other people."
Rhimes looked cool and collected. "But that's my job, isn't it, son?" he said softly. "I'm a secret agent working for Princess Kidagakash. She wants me to find out who took the Crystal."
"For the love of God!" Jim yelled. "She's a princess! Ask her to buy herself a new frickin' crystal! She doesn't need to get the same—exact—one."
"Ever thought of sentimental value? Life connection?" Rhimes shot back. "That's what's happening here. For your information, Hawkins, the Crystal is connected to Princess Kida's life."
Jim's eyes widened as he understood.

Rhimes nodded, his words harsh. "Without the Crystal, the princess of Atlantis will die. And the kingdom will be without a ruler. Perhaps war will break out. Perhaps natural disasters, or famines, or droughts. Perhaps a big rebellion that could stretch to your country. But let's look at the part that concerns you, or whoever took the Crystal." Rhimes got up close in Jim's face. "If Kida dies, that will basically be murder."
"What if the person didn't know?" Jim asked in a hushed, cracked tone.

"It doesn't matter," Rhimes replied calmly. "They're going to be put to death."
Jim shook his head. "That's not right."
"What?" Rhimes tilted his head in a childlike way. "You have anything to confess, Hawkins?"
Jim shook his head again, more rapidly this time. "No. I didn't do anything, I swear."

Rhimes stared at him for a long time, and Jim looked hard into the black pools that were his eyes.

Finally, Rhimes let out a breath and leaned back over his metal desk. "Fine, Hawkins," he said at last. "Go back to class."
Jim started to exit the crude cubicle, and he heard Rhimes say something directly behind him:
"And we better get Wendy Darling in here."


For the first time in my life, I'm afraid.

-Flynn

"Have a seat, Fitzherbert."
Flynn Rider sat down on the hard plastic chair, looking up at Officer Rhimes in his blue police outfit. He cringed at the use of his real name, Eugene Fitzherbert. He had preferred to use Flynn Rider, but apparently, nicknames were not this cop's thing.

"So. I'm guessing you were also at the party last night. At Triton's house."
Flynn nodded. "Yeah."
Rhimes nodded as well. "And—do you know a certain character by the name of Dani Spark?"
Flynn jumped. "D-dani Spark? Yeah—why?"
"She is a suspect."
Flynn nearly fell off the chair. "Dani? Wait, Dani's totally innocent. She's a freshman girl who doesn't care about riches or anything like that. She's just a totally normal, regular society girl who has simple dreams for the future. Y'know the kind: graduate high school, get a summer job, go to college, have a family, e.t.c. She would never commit a single crime."
"So who would?" demanded Rhimes, his nose inches from Flynn's.

Flynn leaned back. "Ever heard of personal boundaries?"
Rhimes smacked the metal desk. "Answer my question, Fitzherbert!"
Flynn shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it would help to tell me what this is all about, Officer?"
The cop chuckled. "Oh, silly me. I didn't tell you?"
"No."
Rhimes's eyes hardened. "Remember Princess Kida?"
"Yes."
"Her life force, her one sustenance, her remembrance of her past, her Crystal—the one around her neck—was stolen from her last night. At around two in the morning. And Green Bay Street—which is where the Baker guesthouse is located—is right near Oceanview Avenue, where Triton's house is. So we were wondering if one—or several—of the high schoolers who attended that party last night stole it."

Flynn froze. "The Crystal."
"That's right."
Pan stole it. He wanted to pawn it to Pigeon! And I was gonna get half of the dirty money! So I'm involved in this scheme. What the hell?!

Flynn took a deep breath. "Let me ask you. If I did steal the Princess's crystal, which I assure you that I did not, what would be my punishment if I were found out?"
"Why, you'd be put to death, of course," said Rhimes, smiling. "See, the Crystal holds Kida's life. Without it, she'll die. It'll be basic murder against the party or parties who stole it. So execution is simply the only way." Rhimes stopped smiling. "Fitzherbert. I know you want to confess something."
Flynn massaged his temples. He couldn't believe he was doing this. "Pan."
Rhimes cocked his head and sat down across from Flynn. "What was that, Fitzherbert?"
"Pan," said Flynn again, blinking. "Peter Pan. Did you talk to him yet? Like, interrogate him?"
"No."

Flynn nodded. "Do that. You'll get the answers you need from him."
Rhimes began to write rapidly on a piece of paper. "Why is that, Fitzherbert?"

Flynn rested his chin on his elbows. "Just trust me. You'll know what you need to know."
Rhimes stopped writing. "Thank you. You've been helpful."
"Yeah," he muttered as he got up to leave. "That's what I'm worried about."


Questions? Comments? Review them! How was this chapter? Hashtag cliffhanger!