Chapter 35: Fact Tanks
They managed to fool the SCPD drones.
Martin must have been on to something when he criticized the corruption of officials. If he had been wrong, the drones would have realized that he and Lonnie were hiding in barrels full of cold water and piles of dead fish. But no. Being buried in a pile of dead fish was enough to trick the hovering scraps of metal into thinking that no human was hiding in the boat's supply closet when they were being surveyed at the border.
'Authorization to proceed', they heard a computerized voice mutter. They stayed put in their cover for another ten minutes until Alva gave them the warning call that they could come out. "Get me a bottle, you woman!"
"We really need to work on your ideas of codes," Carly grumbled while she and Bevalheath removed the lids of the barrels. Lonnie was the first to emerge, spitting water out of her mouth.
"GAG! It's more revolting than the water in Penna's old sewage rivers!" She choked the rest out of her mouth. Martin stepped out of his barrel and immediately shook the water off him. Most of it landed on Alva, causing him to send some sparks out of his suit that brought up some flames onto Bevalheath's hair. The latter started screaming until Lonnie dunked all the water and fish of her hiding spot onto him.
"That's payback." She put the barrel back in place. Carly placed a hand over her mouth to avoid the others seeing her giggle.
"You learn too fast," Bevalheath said in displeasure.
A yawn suddenly came out of Lonnie's mouth and her eyes started to lose focus. "Uh oh," Alva gasped right when Lonnie fell on the floor and started snoring.
"Seriously!" Martin hissed. "Now you sleep?" Then it hit him. "Hang on. Alva, what time is it in the Raft? I don't even know the amount of time I spent on the Raft."
"The ZAM-Trio and their boss took you two from Auradon at the Auradonian time of 2pm or something. By the time they teleported back, it was 2am. Carly, what time is it now?"
"Close to 8am." Carly pulled out a pocket watch. It didn't go at all with her grey attire, since it looked like one of those cheap, green plastic pocket watches with tarantula motifs that you'd find in the lame punk stores. Add in the fact that there were multiple scratches on it, this is definetly not something you'd give to a proper lady. "With the twelve hour difference between Auradon and the Raft's location, first-timers always faint on the first time. I wonder why Martin still hasn't fainted."
"Probably because he zapped me with one of his bolts," Martin said. He quickly searched and sniffed through the boxes in the supply room until he hit the jackpot. His arms pulled out at least two bottles of...
"Not my dad's golden Wuthering Heights bourbon!" Bevalheath dropped on his knees and begged. Martin simply ignored him and uncorked the first bottle.
"Martin, what are you doing?" Alva exclaimed when he saw the guy dunking a majority of the golden liquid right inside Lonnie's open mouth.
"Improvising." He then sprinkled the second bottle all over the girl's cheeks, neck, and shirt. "In case we run into people wondering why my 'sister' is asleep, intoxication will be the reason."
"Not a dumb idea," Carly nodded. "It's already a miracle that Bev's dad Heathcliff can actually drink this stuff while barely holding the newspaper."
"I told you to not call me Bev!" Bevalheath snapped while he disposed of the empty bottles and threw them in a crate. Martin picked up Lonnie and lifted her before throwing her over his shoulders. He had to pinch his nose to realize that he poured too much of the ghastly alcohol.
They went up to the dock just in time to see the boat approaching their dead end. While the three Raft VKs were busy parking it, Martin gasped in awe at the sight of the city before him.
He couldn't tell if it was the Isle or if it was Auradon...or...a city out of his pure imagination. Urban paradise mixed with slum hell. All the buildings, small shacks to skyscrapers, built out of gray metal to make it seem like a concentration camp, yet so clean and not made of Auradon's leftovers. A metropolis combining the glamour of Tokyo and New York and the hidden darkness of the Gotham City alleys and Isle of the Lost. Even the gray metal warehouses that were being loaded with fish collected by fishermen looked straight. Up above, the virtual sky reflected a sun being covered by gray clouds.
Martin seemed so hypnotized, Alva had to spark him again to keep him awake. The four teens, and Lonnie being carried over Martin, made their way onto the straight, bricked floor of the port. Being a VK, Martin had no problem blending in. Most of the fishermen they passed ignored them or hid disapproving looks from Lonnie. It would seem like they bought the facade of Martin's 'sister' being drunk and that her 'brother' had to carry her around. Even one of them muttered something about how women should be more worried about doing laundry or pleasing men rather than drink themselves off.
Good thing that Lonnie was unawake, otherwise she would have flipped at the sexist comment.
"Guys. Devil dead ahead!" Carly nudged at the boys. They looked ahead and saw her marching towards some middle-aged man with grayish red hair hauling up crates full of dead calamari and oysters onto a blue navy pickup truck. The logo MCSCOTT AQUARIUM, which had a childish picture of a redheaded pool boy being mauled by a humanoid shark, was covering the sides of the vehicle with spray paint. "Mr. McScott!" She called out.
The man looked up from his work. Martin's nostrils agitated from suffering the odor of the man. Chlorine, shark bait, and god knows what else that man swam into!
"Well, if it isn't the little Carly Courtney!" The man spoke in a mild Canadian accent while rubbing Carly's hair in an affectionate manner. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"It's kind of embarrassing, but a friend of mine got intoxicated from over drinking and we were just planning on stopping by to see Scarlett..."
"Scram in the vehicle." He aimed a finger at his truck full of crates. "Conscious ladies in the front passenger seat only." Carly gave a toothy grin and skipped her way to the front seat while the boys struggled to sit as discreetly as they could between the crates. It was more challenging for Martin as he still held onto Lonnie once the man turned on the fuels and his truck smoked its way out of here.
"You guys consume too much fish," Martin complained. Normally, he didn't mind eating fish, especially since it was his preferred source of protein as a vegetarian, but just being around too much of it was a nightmare. Not to mention that the fowl scent was starting to remind him of Gilliard and how he was missing his best friend.
Great Lord, he could only imagine the panic they must be having on Auradon. Monkey Fist would be losing it, Bates would be overly worried, and Ruby...
His heart ached a lot at the thought of Ruby. He missed her the worst. He hadn't lied when he told her that he couldn't bare imagining life without her. Only a day or so had passed since Voldemort spirited him away and Martin was suffering from not being near Ruby. And the most dreadful part was that the world could end anytime, but he'd never know whether or not she made up her mind on his marriage proposal.
'I just need time to think this through,' he recalled her saying that night before Family Day back in the apartment. 'It's such a big step for me. I just...At least give me a week maximum to think it out.' Naturally, as patient as he was, he agreed to give her time to think. For safety though, he had gone to her father during Family Day and asked the man if, should Ruby accept his proposal, Martin would have the man's blessing. Mr. Wayne had given him an approving answer. It was no surprise that he and Monkey Fist were mutually agreeing that it was only a matter of time before the two aristocratic families joined together. The results would have been satisfactory for both parties: the Wayne family would have their millionaire status ranked up to members of the royal court, and the Fiske family would not only be permanently relocated back in Auradon, but make up for wasted money with the obviously high future dowry. The butlers were just hoping that the couple wouldn't rush ahead to give them more rascals to worry about.
Martin punched a crate near him. To think he'd die and never know if Ruby would have accepted. If fish could kill, he hoped the ones drowning his feet would.
They drove through a few streets in the First Sector. Seeing the local villains move around in their city stunned Martin. "How can one prison look like...I don't know..."
"An evil paradise?" Bevalheath narrowed his eyes drily at a passing shack selling taboo talismans. "Probably to keep us so that we'd wish to never leave."
Martin nodded.
Something then caught his eye. For a moment, he thought he saw a pure, grey metal wall passing him, but when he blinked slowly, making the world move slowly around him, he actually saw something move in the wall. It sort of looked like rectangular blood cells ranging from black to light cyan blue that were all moving in one particular direction, even when Mr. McScott turned his vehicle around. "Am I seeing things or are there...veins in the walls?"
"Nope. Those are the Raft's digital veins," Alva said. "It's all the virtual network linking the three Sectors together. All that data you're seeing is heading to the exact heart of the Raft." He pointed behind the truck, down hundreds of blocks, and several skyscrapers away. A large column made of glass, yet shining with such white neon light, seemed to touch the very top of the virtual sky, making it the tallest thing Martin had seen so far in the prison.
"The McLean Tower." Bevalheath said with a scowl. "Home of the McLean and Hatchet Clans. This is where all the science holding the Raft, the sea monster, the Sectors, and the prisoners together. Tamper with anything in the control room and we'll all be doomed."
"How so?" Martin asked.
"Like the Isle, the Raft is being enforced with both magical and scientific bonds," Alva explained. "When you weaken one, the other starts to destabilize until you decide to crush it. With the Raft, not only does it keep the prison in one piece, but it also makes sure to pin down the sea monster on the ocean level with no chance of escape. If the control room gets destroyed in the McLean Tower, then all that's left to do is take four virgins to dance a Polynesian tribal chant that'll permanently destroy the monster's chains."
"And then Kalai Tamatoa starts devouring whatever comes in her way," Mr. McScott suddenly spoke up from the driver's seat right when they pulled into a parking lot behind a greyish blue painted metal building shaped like an upright shark tooth. The logo of the MCSCOTT AQUARIUM was printed on the dirty glass doors and flagpole. A scent of chlorine ten times worse than the man himself evaporated from the building.
The boys and Carly quickly helped Mr. McScott bring his crates of seafood into the storage room. Feeling grateful for the teens bothering to help him out, Mr. McScott gladly took Martin's burden and carried Lonnie up inside a small living room that was roughly the size of the game room back in Auradon Prep. As Lonnie was being settled onto a rusty old couch and being covered by a brown blanket, Martin couldn't believe the state of the place, with the solid walls yet fainted blue paint, the modernly-functioning but retro-looking kitchen, the dusty furniture in one piece, and the foul fish odor of the entire aquarium actually mixing well with the scent of kitchen grease and unclean vacuum. This place was oddly well for the home of an imprisoned, third class villain. Martin had seen quite a bit of the slum neighborhoods that were isolated from his old home in the Northern District, the only safe haven and paradise on the Isle of the Lost for the rich and powerful aristocrats. He had even dared looking at the shack Ruby had lived in while the latter was off on her insane quest.
He still remembered the first time he had seen it. While Ruby was away, he had dared to let Florence Poison Isley show him the shack she had lived in. At first, he had thought it was some poor prank. The place was made entirely out of wooden planks and tin plates hardly kept tightly together. The material on the ceiling barely kept the leaks from coming in, making the muddy floor he stepped on even muddier. Ragged curtains had been hung up to separate the 'house' in quarters: two bedrooms with just one pillow and a blanket laying on a pile, a kitchen that involved a small hole to make a fire and roast the rotten fish before tossing the bones away on a pile, and a bathroom with just a leaking pipe sticking out of the wall for a shower and a rusted bucket for other reasons. This was by far the worst shack in the slum where the poor supervillains lived.
Martin had wanted to believe that the daughter of Poison Ivy was pulling his leg, but the latter facts were evident. Against the odor of cat fur, Martin had surprisingly managed to pick up the scent of his beloved all over the place, the two strongest being the kitchen and the small pathetic excuse of a room. Ruby's 'bed' had the most of the scent she had on the last night they spent together.
'I can't believe Ruby and her mother lived here,' Martin said before Florence escorted him out of the shack and away from the unsafe neighborhood.
'Yeah well, with their lack of finances and the fact that they almost can't stand each other, Ruby pretty much lived her friends,' Florence, being one of Ruby's supervillain offspring friends, said. 'She always smelled like chrysanthemums whenever she took a shower at my place. Mom almost mistook her for a bouquet the first time she used our bathroom.'
"GAH!" Martin presently hammered his head onto the nearest wall.
"Easy there, boy!" Mr. McScott gruffly pulled him away and forced him onto the nearest chair. "You want your concussion to ring all the way to the McLean Tower."
Alva quickly placed a hand on Martin's forehead. "I think the first day insanity is getting to him," he said anxiously. "Mr. McScott, where the Hell is Scarlett?"
A shrilling scream and a series of splashes followed his question. "Never mind. She's cleaning the Fang Clan Tank."
Martin placed a hand over his temple and rubbed it impatiently. "Remind me again why we need to be in an aquarium to gain access to an information broker?"
The eyes of Mr. McScott widened. "Oh, so that's why you wanted to see my kid!" He said to Carly. "Why didn't you say so?"
Carly narrowed her eyes. "What do you think?" She pointed at the wall. "Can we speak with her?"
"Depends if she's still alive." The screaming came back as he headed towards a door and opened it, leading to a pile of stairs. "Oh, by the way, Alva, how's Aaron holding in the Third Sector?"
Alva stiffened at the question. Carly, however, started to fume and her cheeks reddened. "WHAT?"
"So, let's check out the tank!" Bevalheath quickly dragged the confused Martin with him. The boys followed Mr. McScott down the stairs as soon as he closed the door behind them, leaving Alva to suffer the wrath of the angry force that guided Carly into breaking his circuits. Martin was trying to put the pieces together until...
"I can't believe it!" He exclaimed in a sudden geeky tone. "You're Scott from TOTAL DRAMA! So, that means that Carly is actually COURTNEY'S DAUGHTER! AWESOME!" He was shaking like an excited schoolgirl.
"I never knew that the son of Monkey Fist would be into teen drama reality shows," Bevalheath remarked sarcastically.
"What? I mostly watched for the dramatic excitement!" His eyes beamed at Mr. McScott. "You were among the best in manipulation!" The man chuckled at the sight of the boy being such a fan.
Bevalheath quickly changed the topic. "What were you talking about concerning Aaron?"
The man sighed unpleasantly as they walked down the metal steps. "Shortly after the Tri-Relay Games, the news spread in the Raft that the Dark Jerk took Aaron and Rídegel back with him while he left the others to the hands of Auradon," he explained. "Duncan and Mr. Barron are still kept in cells. The Dark Jerk disposed of the Grand High Witch by turning her into a rat and chopped her off in a meat grinder. Talk about irony."
"But what does it have to do with Aaron and the ice skater?" Martin asked.
"They're the only two slaves out of the ones that got exposed that he deemed useful. Rídegel for her flawless contribution in helping Ethelinda Edgar steal Penna De Mort's Horcruxes, and Aaron for being the only one undeterred by Auradon's redemption attempts. While Rídegel went back to her parents, the Dark Jerk saw more use in Aaron, especially since he's like the main community leader in the First Sector. So he's holding him and still blackmailing him with his father's life."
"Aaron may be a delinquent like Duncan, but he's resourceful and fiercely loyal," Bevalheath added. "Aside from the McLean and Hatchet Clans, everyone in the First Sector looks up to him. I bet the old freak thought he could enslave us further by using our leader."
"Seriously?" Martin snorted. "The reformee?"
"Yes, the reformee. He's quite the dark person," Bevalheath said quietly. "Then again, I'd say you know all about it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Martin demanded.
"Hello, have you seen yourself?" Bevalheath waved a hand at him. "You used to be a legend among everyone in the Raft! The dangerous super-criminal Martin Fiske, aspiring young villain aiming for world domination through monkeys, highly and darkly rich and handsome! Men envied you, women swooned for you, children wanted to be you when they grow up! You were inspiration! And now? You're reduced as a dog to the people who chased you, being forced to degrade into a life of good! When Alva described you and went to save you, I was expecting some sort of evil hero in need of assistance, but we got this!"
"Easy there, Bevalheath..." Mr. McScott warned.
"What would I have to do to convince you I'm evil?" Martin demanded angrily.
"I got an idea for the two of you!" Mr. McScott impatiently grabbed them by the hair and dragged them downstairs. "You can prove your evil by harpooning for me with your bare hands Fang!"
Meanwhile, back in Auradon
"We can't trust the SAP."
Another meeting was being held to discuss on how to invade the Raft. Unfortunately, it was delayed to discuss on the war because now they had a more complicated story. Marius and Bayen, after swearing on the River Styx that they spoke the truth, told the entire audience about what they had overheard when they accidentally eavesdropped the SAP leader and Chase Young while the old villains made off with a sample of Penna's blood. "We can't trust the SAP," Beast repeated what he had said earlier.
"I must say I agree with you." Marius nodded.
"I did warn you that the Young Clan members were as slippery as legless lizards," Gehörnt said matter-of-factly as he played with a cow skull, using his demon magic to morph it into another animal's skull before morphing again for five seconds.
"Please tell me you guys might know who the SAP leader is!" Ben told Penna's gang. "Bloodyle?"
"As much as she confided with me the most, I don't remember my sister mentioning anything about some witch after her skin so badly that she would create a coven regime." Bloodyle turned to Bayen. "You used to sneak into her room back on the Isle. Haven't you seen any of her archived documents?"
"Archived documents?" Marius asked.
"Penna had a habit for writing manuscripts that recorded all the lives of the people she ruined in alphabetical, age, or relevance order," Bayen said. "Unfortunately, there were some crimes she did not want to share with us. I've encountered quite an amount of ripped pages, I'd say that Mandire's murder is not the only crime she wants to forget."
"Well, if it helps, I've heard of one rumor about the SAP leader back on the Raft," N Tina volunteered while her eyes were still glued onto her laptop. Since she seemed more interested in playing her computer game than sharing her information, Fairy Godmother had to briefly confiscate it. N Tina grumbled and slouched on her chair. "It happened about seventeen or eighteen years ago..."
"Hey, I think I know what day you're talking about!" Brittany gasped. "It was on that rainy, foggy day in the first weeks of October. The Dark Lady said that she had to do an errand outside of the Isle and teleported away. When she came back three days later, she looked like she had been in a catfight!"
"Of course! She even snapped at Bloodyle to butt off when we all asked her what happened!" Roedor said.
"You mean she never told you were she was going?" Mal asked.
"Trust me, when the Dark Lady says she doesn't want to talk about it, she means 'smash everything in the castle and leave me alone unless you want to die.'" Roedor pointed at N Tina. "I bet that's what happened. Penna De Mort got into a fight with the SAP leader!"
"And boy do the rumors say it was terrible!" N Tina shivered. "All the SAP witches and wizards in the Third Sector kept talking about how the SAP leader gave birth to such a powerful baby with her mortal husband, she almost died of childbirth until Chase Young ripped the fetus off her womb and used one of his ribs to create a shell that held the baby in until the little fellow was ready to come out. With his mother and father's unique gifts and the insane amount of Heylin magic from his 'blood godfather', the baby was said to be capable of such evil power that if he had stayed, then he'd unleash a thousand years of darkness!"
Everyone gasped in horror at the idea of the world plunging into darkness that could kill everything from vegetation to living creatures. "So, the baby was a weapon," Marius said.
"Not quite." Gehörnt shook his head. "Even with its great potential in evil, the little beast had his mother's unconditional love that only rivaled the ones she had for her husband and world domination. Her friends also enjoyed the baby to the point that she entitled them as her child's future mentors in evil once he was old enough to join their ways."
"Yeah, but that never came to be." N Tina said. "From what I heard, the witch wanted to have her son move into his father's home for a while when the kid was only a few days old. Next thing you know, she and the rest of her pack heard insane wailing coming from her child's nursery and that's when they saw Penna De Mort trying to kill the baby with a dagger on the throat. And motherly witches are the worst creatures to bug when you threaten their babies. A big battle took place between the two sorceresses until Penna gave up and left, but not before scarring the witch's face with her dagger and promising that harm will still come to her son as long as she lived."
Marius felt like was a cube of ice being smashed into pieces. "W...What happened then?" He couldn't believe it.
Penna? Capable of committing infanticide with her own bare hands and no magic?
"Well, the witch and her friends had to agree that the baby wouldn't be safe with them until he matured, so she sent him away to live with his father and placed a protection spell so that Penna wouldn't assault them." Gehörnt nailed a perfect shot by throwing the bone into a trash can ten feet away from him. "Unfortunately, by endangering another witch's son, particularly when the witch herself has magic far more ancient than Penna herself, the only thing that Penna has done is spark the creation of a society that wishes her off the surface of the world just because she ruined their lives for fun."
"I can actually list a few." N Tina took her laptop back and pulled out a 3D projection of all the witches and wizards in the SAP. Many gasped in horror. All the members were only the worst villains that ever existed. Not even Maleficent could compare to them.
"Chase Young and his daughter, they got humiliated when Penna provoked Shan Yu into losing the war to Mulan," N Tina said. "Wuya and her son Hanlin, condemned them to shift to and back as ghost that decreased their powers. Magica De Spell and her daughter Misticka, stuck with bad luck whenever they run into a dime. Icy and her son Fuar, they almost rotted in the Light Rock Monastery when Penna kicked them there. Hannibal Roy Bean and his daughter Hanna, Penna killed and ate their pet bird and almost did the same to them. Then Oogie Boogie and his kid Queenie..."
"Just STOP!" The Bog King exclaimed. "Are we really doing this, trusting those up-to-no-good magic casters?"
"Isn't there...I don't know, another way to give Penna her powers back?" Marius suggested.
"Trust me, Mal and I spent the entire night researching everything we could on the topic." Evie shook her mirror in frustration. The Evil Queen gave her a small pat on the back for comfort. "I got nothing."
"I don't even know if we're going to find a loophole in time." Dårlig anxiously tapped on his phone. "The smuggler from Romania just texted me at least 50 times to thank me from recommending him to Chelsey."
"Wow, she's fast!" Jessie whistled.
"I know! By the time we were all sleeping, she already ordered a colony of Chinese Fireball and Hungarian Horntail dragons! 70 females, 40 males, and 30 babies!"
"Smart trade." Gehörnt chuckled sarcastically. "Give an entire dragon colony to the biggest eaters of dragon meat. By the time we're all gone in the next 1500 years, Chase Young will have 140 additional cans of Lao Mang Lone soup in his storage."
"Didn't Chelsey say that the soup could be one of Penna's options?" Mal asked. "I mean, for all we know, Chelsey probably go the dragons in case Penna chose to drink the soup..."
"I hope she doesn't," Mulan cut in. "The tales of the soup are notorious. Drinking it may give you immortal youth and power, but at the cost of your human soul."
"Mulan's right. If Penna turns evil by using the soup, she'll lose her form into the one of a cruel monster, and the only way she can retain her 'first' appearance is by drinking the Lao Mang Lone soup in a regular daily basis."
Marius grimaced. Looks like it gave him a good explanation as to why the Young Clan had a large supply of it. And based on the facts, he was willing to bet that the villain would never share his treasured soup, especially to the one he was committed to destroy.
"What about the Ying Yoyo?" Sean asked. "If I remember what Safír told me, if you use either the Ying or Yang Yoyos alone, you lose your current chi and get stuck with your opposite chi unless you can get the first one back. So if Penna uses just the Ying Yoyo, she would come out evil, but if she took another trip, she'd come back good again."
Marius head perked. Maybe Penna would not be permanently evil after all! "That could work!"
"Unless the Young Clan or the SAP refuse to let her use it." N Tina shrugged. "We then have the pentagram, but I highly doubt they want to transfer their magic to the person they hate."
"This is annoying!" Marius paced around in frustration. "Why do we even bother when they obviously don't want to help? Oh, wait! Because they want to kill her!"
"What other choice do we have?" Indimia asked. "We might oppose, but in her condition, Penna will be so desperate that she might do anything to get rid of her father once and for all."
"I don't know." Feige curled a strand of her hair with her finger. "Then again, these people are obviously just trying to eliminate Penna because she purposely never let them on with her schemes. I'd gladly bet on all my hair that if Penna had never created the turn of events that led us to where we are, these villains would have gladly spread permanent world domination and a thousand years of darkness faster than a baby eating pie for the first time."
A large knock came on the door. The guards opened it and a messenger came in, running and panting like a participant of the Marathon of Macedonia. Which was very inconvenient, since he wore dark blue robes, close to Merlin's, but much darker and more modern.
"Forgive me for the sudden appearance, your royal Muggle Highness." The messenger panted and bowed before Ben. Because of the dialect he used, there was no doubt in the room as to who he was and where he came from. "I come on behalf of the Ministry of Magic from London, with a message from the minister..."
"Are we getting arrested?" Bayen asked viciously. Bloodyle quickly kicked him on the foot while hissing at him to shut up. The messenger shook his head, making the other Death Eater kids sigh in relief.
"It has been discovered during the weekly round of inspections of the Ministry's departments that the Department of Mysteries has been vandalized," the messenger said, his voice shivering.
"That's bad," Bloodyle said sternly. "The department's stock of prophecies is as big as Artemis' garden of Memorbs. Which prophecy was stolen?"
"None. But...one was smashed." He quivered a bit more before he finally said the words by screaming. "THE ORIGINAL BALL WAS DESTROYED!"
"WHAT?" Bloodyle was now freaking out. She turned into a basilisk and started slithering around in circles, muttering endlessly on how this couldn't be happening this and this couldn't be happening that. Everyone looked at the Death Eater children for an explanation.
"The Original Ball is the very first wizard-crafted crystal ball," Bayen explained. "They say that only the most insane would dare to touch it and be exposed to all the knowledge of what is present and what is past. Wizards have claimed that only Dumbledore saw the knowledge in the Original Ball. My only confusion is to why they'd have the ball smashed..."
"Why? WHY?" Bloodyle returned to her humanoid appearance and grabbed Bayen by the hair. She then proceeded to shake him viciously like a ragdoll. "The Original Ball contained the most powerful and dangerous mother of all the Time-Turners in existence! The Saturnium!"
"You got to give us more intel, Bloodyle." Minuit replied. "We're not as ancient as you."
"I'm afraid it's more serious than we can imagine." Radiance snapped her fingers. A fog of blue diamond stars hovered at the center of the room, clearing into an image of an hourglass. The hourglass was so unique, since it was made of pure glass, even the sand in it was of a blue sapphire glass. The rectangular pieces holding the bulbs together were shaped to look like intertwining keys, very much like the ones used to make the handles for children music boxes. For each bulb came four keys, eight keys total.
"Back before they were banned, Time-Turners were used by the wizard community to travel back in time for limited amounts in order to handle one's workfare," Bloodyle explained. "But because the universe is full of people who just never seem to learn the consequences of time travel, the Ministry of Magic therefore sanctioned the use of Time-Turners and destroyed them." She pointed at the spinning image of the Saturnium. "This, however, is the VERY first Time-Turner. Created by the rings of the Titan of Time Kronos, it was discovered by the founders of Hogwarts, buried deep in an Ancient Roman burial site. Because they saw how dangerous it was, they hid it in the Original Ball because they thought that nobody would be crazy enough to break the Original Ball."
"Until now," the messenger pointed out.
"How does it work?" Ben asked.
"The Saturnium allows its possessor to travel through time and space as much as he or she pleases." Radiance then made it so that the imaged keys began to glow. "Each key when activated represents the eight forms of time: day, week, month, year, decade, century, millenium, and era." She then snapped her fingers. Her image then showed a purple-fogged silhouette twisting certain keys until it got sucked by a portal that appeared above it. "Depending on how many times you twist the keys, the Saturnium will take you to any date in time that you desire."
"What's the catch?" Mal asked. "I mean there's got to be a price for using such magic."
"Two catches, actually," Bloodyle said. "The first is that you need to use extremely powerful magic coming from eight different sources of magic to activate the Saturnium to its fullest potential. The second is...you need to..." Bloodyle gulped. "Give the Saturnium a time."
"You need to give a time traveling device...time?" Marius narrowed his eyes. "How idiotic is that?"
"It's simple, really." Radiance waved the image away from the center of the room. "Time travel is always used to change the past in any means. With the Saturnium, if you want to change time, than you must trade time. In other words, if you want to change any day from the past, you must give a past day that you won't regret trading up."
"So...let's say for instance I wanted to do something like stop Cinderella from leaving the ball," Jessie said. "If I wanted the Saturnium to take me to the day when the ball took place, I'd have to give up a day just to go to that day?"
"Pretty much, darling." Radiance nodded.
"What kind of day of my past would I have to give up?"
"Oh, it doesn't have to be just your past!" The daughter of Nightmare Rarity shook her head. "You can trade another's past day if you really don't want to trade away a part of your life. However, if it's somebody else's life that you wanted to trade, you'd have to first get the person's consent of taking that day and then give that day along with a portion of the person's blood to the Saturnium."
"Has it ever happened?" Marius asked. "I mean, was the Saturnium ever used?"
"I frankly don't know." Bloodyle shook her head and tail.
"My cousin and I might have seen it while we dream-hopped as infants, but the Saturnium is so powerful that we couldn't tell if it was a dream or not," Radiance added. "I think it might have been responsible for the eruption of Mt Vesuvius or maybe it flooded Atlantis."
"Great, that makes three problems we have to deal with." Ben grumbled.
"Um, actually..." The messenger from the Ministry of Magic spoke up. "We have another problem. The Muggle intern in charge of guarding the Department of Mysteries disappeared on the same night of the vandal."
"Since when does the Ministry of Magic allow Muggle interns?" Bayen spat in a rather racist tone.
"Only when the Muggle has extreme talents in reading the stars." The messenger backed away as slowly as he could from Bayen, making it clear that he didn't want to be near the Death Eater. "That Muggle has proven that she can actually read the stars to conclude probable results in the things people do, the Minister thought that she might have been a Mudblood on the verge of awakening her powers, so the position was given to her."
"A Muggle that reads the stars..." Dusk rubbed her chin. "I feel like it rings a bell..."
"Please tell me it's not another one of your classmates corrupting to the dark side!" Marius rolled his eyes.
"That's the thing, I'm not sure." Dusk turned her vision towards the messenger. "Out of curiosity, did the Muggle happen to be a gothic teen with a Canadian accent who keeps saying how nothing in her life is worth it?"
"I'm afraid I've never seen the Muggle in person."
"Damn!"
"But I did hear the janitor mention her Muggle odor. For someone of her race, she smelled like a bat after taking a bubble bath..."
"It's Gwendolen alright." Dusk cut him.
"Dusk, you can't be serious!" Othello Traviesa cut in.
"Yeah! I mean, Gwendolen was a creepy goth, I'll give her that, but she wouldn't be evil like Espejismo or Corbeau!" Sparrowfire agreed. "Huh. Am I the only who noticed that everytime a reformee backstabs, it's always a guy with relationship issues?"
"Who on earth is this Gwendolen?" Ben asked.
"She's like Aaron Duncan," Dusk said. "And by that, I mean that her mom's Gwen from TOTAL DRAMA."
"Of course!" Dwight snapped his fingers. "I remember out of all the former contestants Chris McLean wanted incarcerated with him, only Gwen managed to defend herself. Unlike Courtney, her lawyer did his job and kept her from going to the Raft. But I didn't know she had a kid who goes to St Luther?"
"Well, Gwendolen doesn't go to the St Luther anymore, that's the thing," Dusk said. "She used to go to school with the rest of us since we were kids, but because she had such a talent for reading the stars just from observing, the teachers' suggested that she tried applying for special education. She transferred out of St Luther to go to this preparatory boarding school for gifted girls in Liverpool so that she could get a highly rewarded scholarship. But that was two years ago."
"She still keeps in touch with us on Skype and we usually see her at the end-of-school-year party," Othello said. "I just don't recall her mentioning her internship."
"It's the Ministry of Magic, you doofus!" Brittany snapped. "Muggles and wizards usually don't interact unless it's for an emergency."
"Yeah, well, we got an emergency now."
Everyone looked at Marius. His expression had gotten darker than usual. And it made sense, because much faster than the others, he already put the puzzle's first half together. "'A day must be given to change another day,'" he repeated the words that still stabbed him in the soul. "'If it's somebody else's life that you wanted to trade, you'd have to first get the person's consent of taking that day and then give that day along with a portion of the person's blood to the Saturnium.' I don't think it's a coincidence that the we just learned of the Saturnium's theft just after Chase Young and the SAP leader took some of Penna's blood. I also don't think it's a coincidence that we're learning this right before Penna decides how she wants to turn evil."
"You mean..." Bloodyle was too horrified to say it herself.
"I mean that it's the SAP leader who stole the Saturnium. She plans on using to erase Penna from history so that she and her coven can get back what they lost. All that the SAP leader needs now to fulfill her quest...is for Penna to trade her a day of her past for her powers."