::Sneaker's SnacShak – We've Expanded the Team, Damnit::

[Received, 3:58] Sorry, I can't get away from the house right now. Packed with relatives. Stotches and McCormicks here, too.
[Received, 3:59] Can you come here?
[Received, 3:59] … bring rope, maybe. You can climb through the window and avoid the crowd.

Wendy had to stare at the chain of texts she got back from Dee. She'd heard about the group her family had ended up with for Thanksgiving back when it was just a plan to get a bunch of her clan together after the government had finally laid the fuck off. She hadn't imagined that it would be enough chaos that she'd be encouraged to bring a rope and attempt entry through a second-floor window as opposed to the front door.

Then again, she also didn't question Dee's judgment in the matter. The last thing she wanted was to be accosted by far-flung relatives of Dee's and be delayed in the front-room by cousins who were bored as the adults settled in for football.

She also had a ready supply of black nylon rope, specifically part of the Call Girl load-out she kept secured in a small safe she'd convinced her parents to buy for her- insisting that one was never too young to secure their personal documents like social security card, birth certificate, and passport in a fireproof locked box that only she knew the code to.

Granted, she kept that stuff in there, too- prudent was prudent.

So she arrived outside Dee's house after making excuses to her own family; specifically using Stan as a scapegoat and telling them that he needed someone with him right now who wasn't a raging alcoholic and throwing his father specifically under the bus to make the plea... though, she didn't know what was going on at the Marsh household right now. For all she knew, Randy was drunk off his ass and ranting at his children in the most abusive manner about the deterioration of American family values. Then again, if he was, she really suspected Shelly would be the first to show the man a knuckle sandwich for his efforts; that girl had gotten dangerous since she'd become a rare freshmen on the varsity high school volleyball team for her downright deadly style. Turned out she could punch a ball just as well as she punched faces, and her knuckles were already hardened from years of being a scrappy, angry young woman.

[Sent, 4:18] I'm here.

Wendy sent the text as she wandered in the space between houses; Dee's bedroom window was on the side, just beyond the back of the detached garage, and it swept open as Wendy stared up from the ground with a coiled rope in her off-hand. A moment later, Dee's head popped out to peer down and briefly wave before tossing down... was... was that a sack of marbles? Into the snow.

Wendy blinked at the item for a moment before she realized what it was for- a weight so she could throw an end of her rope up. The sack of marbles had a string that she'd be able to easily knot the end of her rope around. Smart.

Little too smart for Dee.

"... Kenny's idea?" Wendy called up as she picked up the sack, tying the knot and testing it before playing out a length of rope and giving it a spin. She was fairly certain she'd be able to chuck it with some accuracy.

"How'd you know?"

Kenny's head was the next to appear in the open window, with a broad grin to mirror Dee's somewhat soured expression at not being given any credit.

"Just a guess." She smirked. Dee solved puzzles by breaking shit the majority of the time. Every now and then she was known to piece shit together, but that shit was usually LARP weapons made out of heavier materials than foam so that she could break more shit with greater leverage and reach. If something actually clever was going on, it was usually because the young man behind Mysterion was involved in some capacity. "Okay, back off a little- I'm gonna toss this up and I don't wanna hit anyone in the head."

Spinning the sack of marbles up to an appropriate speed, Wendy found herself rather smug as the toss flew true and she let the rest of the slack rope slip from her hands until she only held the end of it. Despite her warning, however, she still heard a cry of pain from the room above... and it wasn't Dee or Kenny.

"... Butters?" She asked. "Oh, God, did I hit you?"

Sure enough, the poor blond boy was the next to appear in the window, rubbing his nose with one hand and holding the bag of marbles with the other. "'S okay, Wendy, I know you didn't mean it." He assured, laughing it off. "Sure smarts though!"

"Is there anyone else up there?" Wendy demanded, honestly surprised. Dee's family usually had an unbreakable open door policy that applied to all of her friends... exceptions must have been made in the light of nosy cousins who likely did not respect the sanctity of the adolescent desire for a private room away from all the noise.

"N-Nope, just us fellas!" Butters reported as he stopped holding his nose. It was a little red, but not bleeding.

"It's cool Butters, Wendy knows." Kenny's voice, a little distant. "Gimme that, we gotta rig it through the clamp to pull her up..."

Butters knows Dee is a girl? When did that happen? Wait a minute-

"Clamp?" Wendy blinked, finding the how she'd be ascending up the side of a house to be the more interesting subject right now. She could figure out Butters's security clearance later She'd worn the right kind of gloves on the assumption that she'd be climbing.

"Yeah." Kenny's head reappeared as Butters disappeared. "Dee's got all the stuff she uses for making shit in her closet- we rigged a makeshift pulley out of a heavy-duty clamp and an old bit of PVC pipe with some grease on the inside. You wearing a belt?"

"Plastic, not leather." Wendy responded, getting the plan instantly. "I'll loop my end through all my belt loops and tie it over the belt; should be secure enough."

"Awesome." Kenny grinned before he disappeared back beyond the window. A few minutes later, Wendy found herself being heaved up the side of the house, and was soon crawling through the open window with Dee grasping her by the shoulders and helping her flop over onto the bed parked just beneath the sill. Upon arrival she was able to see the system they'd rigged- first that the hard corners of the sill had been rounded with another section of pipe that had been split and opened to act as a bumper the rope could easily slide over, and that the clamp Kenny mentioned had been anchored to the edge of Dee's open closet. Kenny and Butters had been beyond the cobbled together pulley, making up the force that had yanked her up the side of the house. Meanwhile, it appeared that Dee had been positioned between the pulley and the window, risking rope burn to act as a manual safety catch in case one of them lost their grip or the pulley gave.

Thankfully, no disasters had occurred and she was safely up... and getting down would be a much easier proposition.

"Why didn't you tell me you had people here?" Wendy demanded as she sat up, unraveling the knot in the rope that had secured it around her hips and teasing it back out of her belt loops, tugging her shirt down from its ridden-up after she unzipped her coat. Dee had busied herself with tugging the hard plastic of the pipe off of her window sill so she could shut it against the creeping cold, and Kenny had gone to release the clamp from the edge of the closet while Butters coiled up the rope.

"She told you our families were here- I saw the texts." Kenny smirked dryly. "You shoulda guessed we'd be hanging out."

"... fair point." Wendy conceded after a second, letting Butters draw up the loose end of the rope as he finished coiling it. "That was a pretty cool trick, though. You always find ways to make stuff out of nothing." She marveled at Kenny.

"Butters gets credit for this one." Kenny deflected with a snicker, the clamp releasing from the closet edge to reveal it had left a mark in the wall. Oops. He had a seat on the floor, tucking the item into the closet for now and leaning back on the wall as if to hide the damage done to it before Dee could turn around and see it."Kid is crafty as fuck."

"Awee, you guys." Butters turned bashful instantly, blushing as Wendy took her rope back. "It wasn't nothin, just figured it would be easier to make a pulley, and Dee's always got lots of scraps in her closet."

Dee's head whipped around after the window slid closed, coming to the edge of her bed and letting her butt down with enough force to bounce, feet hitting the floor so her elbows could plant on her knees while she stared rather intently at Butters. Wendy read her look pretty fast.

What the hell do you know about my closet? Is what that face said.

Wendy nearly rolled her eyes. Sensitive much?

"You remember that one time, a couple years ago- the food festival, where we..." Butters trailed off a little, glancing to Wendy and Kenny and then giving off a nervous laugh. "Y'know, with the paper towels?"

Dee blinked, and then had to cover her mouth as she nodded, holding in a laugh that made her cheeks turn red with the force of refraining. Her eyes screwed shut as her shoulders shook.

"Paper towels?" Wendy asked. This must have been for a while ago, she didn't know about it. What food festival? The last food fest she remembered in South Park had been right after the whole Mitch Conner becoming Mayor thing where they got the trio of Mysterion, Buttlord, and Call Girl together for the first time. After the dust settled from that, there had been a food festival in South Park that had ended in disaster...

"Oh my god, did you guys have something to do with that?" Wendy asked in horror.

"They did." Kenny confirmed somewhat sternly, looking as Butters had a smirk of mischief and Dee still hadn't recovered from her fit. Mysterion had been the one to put a stop to that particular mess, though the culprits had never been brought to justice. Still, as much as Kenny tried to look severe about an old fiasco that had pitted him against the other two, the facade cracked for him to laugh as well. "Fuck! Guys, do you remember the look on Cartman's face when sewage backed up into his house?"

Dee sputtered behind her hand, kicking her legs and scaring a cat out from beneath the bed, who then bolted into her open closet.

"You guys are disgusting- you flooded half of South Park with that stunt!" Wendy crowed.

"You gotta admit, Wendy, it did sow quite a bit of chaos." Butters grinned- no one could argue it was off-brand. "A-and Buttlord needed a break after all that do-goodin' didn't change a lick with his dad screwin' his mom an' all. I just let 'em hit for the other team for a while."

"You broke the sewer!" She crowed at him.

Kenny fell onto his back next to the open closet door, cackling. Air buzzed out between Dee's fingers.

"Wait a minute- Butters- you... you know Dee is a girl now?" Wendy quested, cocking her head a bit and getting to a subject that would hopefully be less hysterical to the rest of the room.

"Yep!" Butters nodded, seeming quite proud of himself. "I-I mean, I just found out a bit ago, but... uh... I'm mighty honored that Dee's trustin' me enough to let me know. Makes a lotta sense, now, why she's so pretty an' all."

"But you just called Buttlord a he."

"Well, yeah- we all played characters when we played Superheroes. If Buttlord were a she, she'd be a Buttlady."

If the laughter in the wings had been calming down, that whipped it right back up again. Kenny rolled into a ball on the floor, clutching his gut.

"Or... or maybe a Buttbaroness?" Butters muttered, seeming to give it some concerted thought. "Now that I think about it, what's Buttlord a lord of anyway? 'S a title, but who gave it to 'em? Dee, I think your backstory has a plot hole..."

"... ho boy..." Wendy muttered as Dee flopped onto her side on her own bed. "Guys, that's not really the concern right now, if we could pull ourselves together..."

"She- she's right-" Kenny gasped from the floor, dragging himself upright and wiping a tear from his eye. "Holy fuckin' shit though you guys... swear to God the next time you pull something that's gonna make Cartman scream like that, get me in on it, okay?"

"B-but you beat us up for it." Butters stuttered, turning to look at Kenny. "I-I mean, Mysterion beat up Professor Chaos... an' I got grounded fer having a black eye for picture day."

"Maybe Chaos should have thought about that and taken a break the week before picture day." Kenny smirked with a shrug. "Mysterion was just doing his job- justice can't take breaks for photo ops."

"Unless it's for the franchise." Wendy dropped in pointedly as Dee slowly recovered, taking deep and slow breaths and sitting back upright. "Guys, really, can we reminisce later? I didn't just climb through a window for my health y'know... uh... but- Butters, have you been... briefed?"

"On how Dee's got superpowers on the internet that make people go nuts for things she posts? Kenny was just tellin' me about it." He confirmed, deciding to sit in Dee's office chair while the girl appeared to be comfortable where she was seated on her bed next to Wendy. "He was just gettin' to the bit where it's like talkin' to people sometimes makes them go a bit coo-coo and stuff, which is why she won't talk even after we all heard her sing at the homecoming dance- There's no tellin' whose immune and who might go nuts."

"Well, the homecoming dance was a specifically doctored voice aiming for a targeted effect; it was the first experiment into compelling certain behavior. With her raw voice, however... yes, that's right." Wendy nodded a little. "Kenny and I have had full conversations with her without strange effects, but... well, I don't suppose you'll ever forget Agent Russel?"

The laughter was gone from the room. Both Kenny and Dee winced at the mention. Butters moved a hand to his side where he'd been shot by the government agent who had come to South Park. He was a man who had quite violently lost his mind after being apprehended by the police, and proceeded to escape custody and go on a shooting rampage that had ended at the Stotch house.

"D-Don't suppose I will." Butters agreed with a little nod.

"Dee told him to forget everything he'd learned in South Park. Best we can tell, that command made his brain eat its own ass until he was delirious and violent. She didn't know that's what would happen, but..."

Glances were shared between the three people in the room who knew about this shit. Dee looked down, frowning deeply.

Wendy remembered that Dee had skipped out on trick or treating with everyone to go to the hospital with Butters, to sit and wait until he got out of surgery. She knew how much Dee still felt guilty about that, but she had to assume Butters being here meant he was in the loop now. Dee wouldn't have asked her over if that wasn't the case.

"She also kinda broke time a little bit to try and save your ass." Kenny confessed where Dee couldn't do so herself. "There was a version of reality for a bit there where you died in your living room before the EMTs could arrive."

Butters seemed shaken by that information, his face going a little white as wide eyes studied the floor for a long while.

"I... I remember that." He muttered lowly. "But I kinda don't? It's... they're both there. It comes an' goes." He fumbled, eyebrows knitting.

"Memory echo." Wendy explained. "Kenny and I are pretty used to them- the further it goes into the past, the harder it will be to remember the other timeline... but flashes sometimes come back like de'ja'vu or in dreams. Keeping a journal sometimes helps with the am I losing my mind feeling. We pool ours to keep a record of what's happened in deleted timelines, in case we learned anything important in aborted alternate versions of events- I can invite you to the Google Doc if you'd like."

Butters went quiet again, this time for quite a bit longer. Wendy could see him chewing on his lip, his hands coming together in his lap to fidget as he processed that. Then, as if he suddenly crashed back to earth all at once, he became bolt upright in the office chair and looked out at the assembled group.

"W-wait- so, you're like- the real thing? You three, you do this super hero thing but with real villains with real guns and no make-believe powers or super computers or character classes or recovery items or nothing?"

"Pretty much." Kenny shrugged, once again leaning on the fucked up part of the wall. Dee still hadn't noticed it. Wendy wondered when she would, and how pissed she'd be about it. "Most of the fuckin' magic comes from Wendy over there- she was always legit as a fucking New York stripper with the hacking and shit."

"Colorful, Kennith." Wendy smirked.

"Hey!" He glared from beneath the clumpy fake fur trim of his hood.

There was one person on this earth that got a pass on calling him Kennith, and she wasn't in this room... and Wendy knew that. She smirked and added; "That and time traveling farts have kept the group alive for a hot second, but apparently that's a skill learnable by anyone with powerful enough gas and iron-clad ass control." Or so Dee claimed- she also claimed that it was Morgan Freeman who taught her the ways of time farting. Sometimes Wendy didn't know when Dee was fucking with her.

Speaking of, Dee still hadn't looked up form her own knees. Not since Russel had been brought up. Wendy nudged her, and the girl's shoulders drew up as she shrank back a touch.

"That's... gotta be so stressful." Butters marveled.

"Huh?" Was the stereo reaction from Wendy and Kenny. Dee looked up in a non-verbal version of the same reaction. Wendy hadn't expected that- as she understood it, both Stan and Kyle were regularly complaining about how cool it was and how unfair it was that they weren't included in the vigilante stuff anymore. They straight up didn't tell Cartman for fear that he'd fuck shit up with his stupid need to be the center of attention. To hear someone assess it properly was... different.

"Well, I just think that it's gotta get hard- I mean, I- u-uh, Professor Chaos takes breaks all over the place because it's a high-pressure job and it's hard to do it all the time. Golly, if you couldn't just hang up the cape and put the costume away once in a while, I think a person might go nuts after a bit. J-just, go to pieces over all the stress, dontcha think? And with government agents and time travel and not bein' able to talk cause it might make people coo-coo and real bullets and people gettin' really, actually hurt? That's gotta be some scary s-shit, ain't it?" Butters was talking to all of them in a way, but he was really directly talking to Dee, staring at her with wide eyes that had opened to a lot of new things today. "... are you okay?"

Wendy looked. Dee was staring back. The girl seemed to be in shock.

She gave her another nudge. Dee audibly inhaled, and then got up off the edge of her bed to cross the room.

"Uh..." Wendy uttered.

"Dude-" Kenny started.

"Eh?" Butters questioned, rather briefly, before he was lifted up off of the office chair in what could be best described as a bear hug.

Wendy shared a glance with Kenny, both of them letting out faint chuckles.

"Awee, it's okay buddy..." Butters soothed. "I'm here for ya."

A break had been taken. Kenny had been sent downstairs to return plates and retrieve desserts as adults settled in to watch football and kids ran amok in the back yard. Alyssa's dad had briefly stopped him to ask if everything was okay, to which he assured they were doing fine upstairs and didn't need anything. Satisfied, or maybe just distracted by entertaining, he was easily released and allowed to proceed upstairs with a glass dish that had been loaded up with one of everything on offer back in the kitchen. Slices of both classic pumpkin pie and a less traditional strawberry rhubarb pie sat side-by side and shared the same massive glob of whipped cream, mildly crowded by a pile of decorated cookies that covered the range from chocolate chip to weird white balls of sugar that were apparently called divinity. Lemon bars had been a contribution from one of the visiting families, and another had brought one of those store-bakery containers of brownie bites. Finally, in the center of the plate was a glob of 'dirt pudding'- chocolate pudding covered in Oreo cookie dust with random gummy worms hiding in the mix.

Really, Kenny could have been forced to watch Dee's cousins all afternoon, and this shit would have made it completely worth it. He'd spied Karen outside with the other kids, and seeing her face smeared with the remains of chocolate and grinning instantly made his day about 90% better. The other 10% was seeing Kevin leaning sulkily against the back fence, but still dutifully watching over their little sister. They'd talked before leaving the house.

Arriving back, it appeared that Dee had finally managed to tempt Junior out of the closet, though the cat had instantly taken refuge inside her T-shirt, with only his tail hanging out from the lower hem. Coming with a tray of sugary treats, the group re-located to crowd Dee's bed, Dee looking as if she were cupping a baby bump as she prevented a cat from sliding out of her shirt in the process.

"Okay- so what's the big deal, Wendy?" Kenny opened up, snatching a lemon bar for himself. He'd been really into citrus lately. "You said you had news about the folder."

"I did." She confirmed, brushing a few strands of black hair back as she leaned back against the wall just before the window. She reached for a classic chocolate chip cookie, and used it to scoop the pudding in the middle of the plate. "It's been... confusing work, honestly. The majority of the content has been redacted- blacked out with a marker. If I had the originals I might be able to get results with some tools, but right now the majority of what I've been able to piece together has come from hand-written notes in the margins. I think I've identified three doctors- two who were doing observation, and one who was analyzing samples. They argued a lot on the edges of the forms." She chomped on her pudding-laden cookie, holding the treat with her mouth as she busied her hands to retrieve her phone, flicking through photos until she had something to show the class. Once she did, one hand returned to hold her cookie as she bit down.

Kenny leaned forward to peer at the picture as Wendy chewed. It appeared she had nothing less than a conspiracy wall in her room, with loose leafs of paper from the folder pinned up. At least there weren't any colored lines of string that he could see. This specific photo was close enough to identify handwriting in the margin of a page that was more black boxes than words; messy, loopy cursive that he had to squint at before he could identify words. 'Are you kidding? This sample is obviously contaminated. Try again.' Was at one point in the page, and lower down on the other side was a different script. Block letters and all capitols, as if the person meant to shout on the page. 'MORON, YOU KEPT THEM IN THE SAME ROOM? SHE'S PREGNANT.'

He scoffed faintly. He could guess what the redacted report was about, and the result was currently sitting next to him; Dee, who had to take a break from soothing a skittish cat inside her shirt to also peer at the image.

"What's this folder about?" Butters quested blithely.

"Government kidnapped Dee's parents before Dee was born. They've got social media powers too- less potent." Kenny reported, chomping into his lemon bar as Butters broke off the tip of the pumpkin pie slice and shoved it into his own mouth. "She was born at the facility where they kept 'em, then they broke out."

On the run since day one- kinda catchy. Better than the bullshit backstory Cartman came up with.

"And I'm guessing they only got the opportunity because the plan was to move them." Wendy informed, the rest of her cookie having vanished and swiping through a few more photos of her wall. "Check this one out."

Block-letters guy was back. 'P-0069 WANTS THEM. PREP TRANSPORT' was the scrawled instruction in the margin. A third script challenged him on the page, however- smooth letters that were easier to read but irregular in size. 'No. Way. The baby is a week old. Tell them to suck a cock.'

Kenny snickered. His brain instantly read whatever that number was as poo sixty-nine, despite it being P zero zero six nine. Probably a project number.

"Baby? Do they mean Dee?" Butters quested, a note of excitement in his voice.

"Yeah." Wendy nodded, taking back her phone. "They spend another month of forms and reports arguing about P-0069 in the margins; sounded like someone higher up wanted all three transferred as soon as possible, but the doctors kept delaying, always referencing the baby- ah... you." Wendy directly addressed Dee, who had gone tense. Kenny could feel it; she hadn't grabbed anything to eat and still remained bent forward despite having nothing to look at. It was almost as if she were taking a defensive posture despite sitting on her bed where there was nothing to fight. "It's always vague, but I get the feeling people who got sent to that didn't come back. The guy who writes in the big letters wants to do as he's told, the other two keep insisting it's cruel and delaying. I e-mailed Kartwright this morning, and when she got back to me..."

Wendy trailed off. This was the bombshell, why she wanted to talk today.

"She said that's the project that was ongoing in the lab that Amelia was looking for out here. She doesn't know the details, she's not part of the Agency that ran it, but she's pulling strings to try and figure out exactly what it is. Apparently they had some kind of... machine that they were using to experiment on powered people. Kartwright says Amelia couldn't remember enough to describe what it was meant to do, but it messed with her abilities for sure."

Dee's tension had not lessened. Kenny felt as if it were creeping into his own spine, and he leaned over to her to slide a hand up her back and rub her shoulders, trying to gently bring her town. This information was horrifying, that there was a lab devoted to outright experimentation somewhere out there in the Park County wilderness. They'd seen what it had done to Amelia Reynolds; she'd been a barely cohesive old woman who had been trying desperately to find the old lab by stealing cats and using them as her personal search party... a task made easier by her ability to communicate with them, but Dee had ultimately ended up fighting the woman in a monster made up of a multitude of felines when she proved too far gone to reason with.

Also Cartman was there. That never helped.

Dee's jaw was working- like she was chewing on the insides of her cheeks. Wendy hesitated to go on.

"You okay?" Kenny asked softly.

She nodded, red curls bouncing a little with the minute motion. The tension in her face disagreed.

He didn't blame her. Finding out that her family had been lined up for likely inhumane experiments was not a happy thought.

"One more thing." Wendy added, slowly. It attracted Dee's green eyes up, pressing in on the other girl and insisting she go on. With only a beat more to wipe crumbs from her face, she complied. "... Kartwright has been pulling strings with a guy she knows in the Agency- when she brought up P-0069, the guy actually found a recent requisition request, even though the site is supposed to be shut down. She asked for details... but he hasn't gotten back to her since."

"Requisition? Like... someone was asking for materials?" Kenny cocked his head. Uh-oh. "You mean someone out here is rebuilding the place?"

Wendy nodded faintly. "Which means someone found it and had the connections to make that request... and shut up someone looking into it."

Silence. No one knew what to say to that. No one reached for any more food. Sweet treats didn't seem as good with something that heavy in the air. It drug on, beat after beat of utter stillness.

"Ah, hamburgers that doesn't sound good."

That's one fuckin' way to put it, Butters.

::The Author's Corner::

This chapter ended up nearly double long because apparently I needed a ton of fluff, some recap, some memories, and to describe how a MacGyver-ed pulley worked before I could get to the fucking meat of this shit. And it's not even the meat of this story- it's part of the long-term arc of the entire series. This shit should have been at the end of the last story but that one was already three chapters longer than I wanted it to be and I fuckin' didn't want to spend two more chapters doing the goddamn epilogue shitass.

I really did this to myself. The flow is all fucked up but damnit we're gonna roll with it because I am not going to spend time moving chapters around like a moron. SEAT OF PANTS WRITING GO.

Also... Butters I LOVE YOU.

Okay,

ONWARDS!

-Buttlord