::Sneaker's SnacShak – Fuck Me There's Six of Them Now::
Up until today, Stan had not been aware that Dee's house had a basement. He'd always just assumed the door off the living room had been for a linen closet or something of the like, having never seen the door open and never having had reason to attempt the knob. Today, however, after waking up to texts from both Kyle and Wendy, and having the group of Kyle, Dee, and Kenny stop by to 'pick him up' for a group meeting, he became aware of Dee's basement by way of being ushered past the door and down the stairs before he could offer any argument.
Not that he had much to give; not with a baby doll in his arms that had woken him multiple times the night before, dressed in blue clothes that coded the doll male.
"Jesus Christ, this place is legit."
Despite sleep deprivation, Stan still had the capacity to peer around the basement room he was being led into. It was kinda like a home gym, what with the bench press and weights in the far corner, the punching bag hanging in the middle of the room over a square of old carpet, and the elliptical machine aligned with the far wall and facing the other corner... but that wasn't it. There was a work bench, too, with an old laptop and a smattering of notebooks in-between childhood collectibles like Chinpokomon dolls and Pogs. Among the clutter were more utilitarian things, like duct tape and a hot glue gun, and beneath the bench was... were those Dee's old LARP weapons? It looked like some of them were broken... maybe he was fixing them. Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, he could turn to the left and spy a cupboard beneath the stairs that had a lock on it, and a space directly beneath the upper landing that appeared to have a square of burnt orange 80's carpet fit to it, as well as a couple of bean-bag chairs thrown down for seating.
To top it all off, there were white Christmas lights looped in and out of the exposed rafters, giving the room a real kid's secret place kinda of vibe.
"... oh god, is this your make-out room?" Stan suddenly asked, looking between Dee and Kenny as the couple passed him by, heading for the little cubby under the stairs.
Dee didn't turn back to look at him, simply flipping the bird as he went and grabbed a wheeled chair that had been scooted up to the workbench, yanking it over to add to the seating near the carpeted hidey hole beneath the upper landing. Kenny laughed, flopping back on one of the beanbag chairs like this was home-sweet-home.
"I mean, that's not all we do down here." Kenny smirked, wiggling his butt until he found his groove.
"It's been our de-facto hideout for about a month."
Heads twisted; Stan spied Kyle out of the corner of his eye also whipping about to look back at the top of the stairs, recognizing the person coming down just by her voice and her shoes.
"Wendy!" Stan cried in surprise, gripping the doll in his arms a little tighter.
He'd been an ass to the rest of the group yesterday because of how worried he was about this project reflecting badly on him. It also brought up some shitty memories of how he'd treated Wendy after the egg incident- he'd not answered her text this morning. He'd almost ignored Kyle's but having the group arrive on his doorstep made them hard to ignore. Even then, there'd been an icy silence between him and Kyle. Stan knew he'd hold onto it until he humbled himself and apologized for going off, but there hadn't really been time for that yet this morning.
Just looking at his friend gave him an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach; something he wished he could vomit up, but it just sank deeper and deeper and made his guts twist the longer they were in the same room but not talking.
"Hey Stan." Wendy called, but she remained at the top of the stairs for an extra moment. Her voice quality changed, sounding like she'd turned back to talk to someone behind her. "Yeah, down here, c'mon."
Another set of shoes joined her on the upper landing, and the basement door shut before the descended in tandem. Wendy had arrived, with Butters in tow.
"Hey guys!" Butters greeted, looking utterly elated to be here. In his arms... was another baby doll- the one that he was sharing with Dee and Clyde, if Stan remembered correctly.
He noticed Wendy didn't have hers- who was her lab partner? They must have had it at the moment.
"We don't have enough places for everyone to sit." Kenny observed, although Dee had once again departed to improvise another chair. She'd gone to the bare-basics bench-press in the corner, removing the weighted bar to place on the floor, and picking up the mildly padded wooden bench to bring it over, adding it to the additional possible seating around the cubby hole in which Kenny had already claimed a spot.
"I can sit on the floor." Butters offered. "Me an' Izzy don't mind."
"Izzy?" Kyle asked incredulously. "You named it?"
"Just cause they're dolls doesn't mean ya gotta be all mean and impersonal, Kyle." Butters rebutted, arriving at the bottom of the stairs with Wendy and idly rubbing the back of the pink-clad doll in his arms. "Giving her a name and treating her nice makes the project kinda fun, like a little bit of make-believe, but grown-up style."
"I named mine Chuck cause I wanted to chuck him out a window." Kenny offered from across the room, snickering.
"... I guess that's valid, too." Wendy mused, crossing over and taking the swivel chair while Dee ducked into the carpeted area, no doubt nabbing a more comfortable spot for himself. Stan followed after, getting a proper look inside to see there were a total of three beanbag chairs; one black and two white, with the one that Dee was plopping his butt into having a star drawn on it in thick black marker lines.
"Annie named ours Aiden." Stan offered, deciding the bench was good enough for him... and also wanting to take the seat closest to Wendy. Butters and Kyle were the last to file into the space, Kyle taking the black beanbag and Butters settling himself on the outdated carpet.
"Awe, that's a cool name." Wendy smiled, and suddenly Stan felt his cheeks turning very red.
He wished he'd taken credit, but knew better than to back-track. Wendy was smarter than that.
"Scott and I settled on naming ours Mattie." She went on, shrugging slightly. "I wanted something gender-neutral, and went to the thrift store to get some different baby clothes just for fun; green, white, orange..."
Of course, always doing something just a little different. "Oh, that's- that's cool." Stan stammered, inwardly wincing as he failed to deliver that line with any confidence. It almost sounded sarcastic.
Worse, it sounded like his dad pretending he knew what the fuck his mom was talking about when he didn't care.
Kyle cleared his throat. "... so, we're all here, right?"
Rescued from the awkward by more awkward.
"Right!" Wendy agreed, leaning forward in the chair she'd selected, which happened to make her taller than the rest of the group at the moment. "So, thanks to Kyle having a bit of a brain storm earlier, we've managed to get a flood of information from local machine shops and garages about projects going on both in and around town. From the responses, we've got three candidates that sound like they might fit the bill for what we're looking for- shady renters who wanted privacy, are using up a lot of juice, and paid cash to keep their names off the books."
"It's kinda scary how fast that happened." Kyle laughed, covering a bit of nervousness. "... and how many privacy laws got broken in the process."
"That's why we're all happy Buttlord stopped working for Chaos." Kenny snickered.
"Wait- machine shops?" Stan quested. "What's going on?"
"Oh, jeez, that's right." Butters flirted with cursing before filling Stan in. "There might be an abandoned secret lab somewhere near South Park, and we're trying to find the person who's tryin' to fix it!"
… more super hero stuff. Jeez, Dee's been knee deep in this shit for like three months now. Before it was just shady secret agents, and it was only a couple times a year. The fuck happened? "Does this have to do with the place the cat lady was trying to find?" Stan quested.
"Exactly." Wendy confirmed. "We've reason to believe someone, possibly a government agent or a rogue individual out for themselves, is trying to repair the facility and knows where it is. Butters realized that something big would need power and space, thus why we're investigating garages and shops."
"Smart." Stan marveled... not that he was surprised. Lotta stuff flew over Butters' head, but he knew his shit when it came to building stuff. "So, three leads... what now?"
"We need to investigate them in detail." Kenny responded, leaning forward and getting serious. Elbows sat upon wide-splayed knees and his fingers came together to mesh in front of him. "Which means getting in after-hours, canvasing every location, and documenting as much as possible to examine in detail at base. Once we know which one is our guy, we'll know which shop to watch. If we're lucky, we might even get an ID before we go back to school on Monday."
Stan noticed that Dee had gone tense. The guy was usually pretty loose; he let his weight fall where it would, and never really seemed bothered by anything. Oh, sure, he had a resting fuck the fuck off face, and Stan had learned over the years that the guy was always ready to throw down... but he usually looked like a space cadet, chill and a billion miles away with a thousand yard stare that could unnerve anyone.
Right now? The guy was leaned forward in a similar posture to Kenny, but his shoulders were tighter, hunched up higher. Minor differences exuded an energy that suggested the guy wasn't sleeping well... and probably wouldn't until this shit was put to bed.
I still owe him for yesterday- the way he stood up to Eric. The least I can do is help with this shit.
"This will be done most effectively in teams of two." Wendy added. "One person conducting the search, the other doing look-out. It would also be best if we hit all three in the same night, so we're done once the shops realize they've had intruders and possibly involve police presence. Ideally, this would mean putting one experienced person with each inexperienced one; Kyle and Kenny, Butters and Dee, Stan and myself."
"Tonight?" Stan questioned. "But what about these little bundles of... joy?" He asked, slightly holding up the robotic baby in his possession, which seemed to know it was being talked about and began to cry, triggering him to curse. "Oh, fucking son of a- now? Really?" He asked, fumbling in a pocket for the molded plastic bottle that had come with the doll to 'feed' it.
"It does seem a little rushed; can't we wait until this project is over with?" Kyle asked as Stan's doll hushed, accepting the bottle as the correct action.
"Kartwright's contact dropped out on her- no one knows where he went, not even the Agency." Wendy responded gravely. "Someone knows that she's looking into it, which means they may know about us as well. If we wait on it, they could retaliate or run. And..." Her eyes shifted, peering at Dee.
There was that tension. The kid's knuckles had turned white, grasping his own hands. Stan had never seen him so wound up.
"It's not like babies cryin' is a weird noise for people to hear." Butters tried to put an optimistic spin on things. "And no one wants to look at a crying baby that isn't theirs- it makes them feel yucky."
"What about security?" Kyle pressed on to the next important question.
"I've already checked out the three locations." Wendy informed. "Only one of them uses an alarm system, and we'll give that one to Buttlord- it wouldn't be the first one he's disarmed. The other two have CCTV; masks and black spray paint will do the trick in covering our tracks."
"Afterwards is going to be the fun part." Kenny interjected. "Kartwright has been secretive regarding this lab and what might be going on there. Dee doesn't trust her right now- not completely, so the rule is no sensitive information sent digitally, since she's already shown she can get into our phones remotely when she hacked mine for GPS tracking. Before you start taking pictures, turn your mobile data off, along with all connections, and turn your phone off once you're done."
Jeez Kenny, your Mysterion is showing.
"So, we come back here for debriefing after?" Kyle suggested. "We've gotta wait until these places close, and then..."
"It'll be extremely late. As much as I'll want to meet up as soon as possible... well, I've told my parents I'm staying late at Bebe's house to help with something." Wendy shrugged, aware that everyone was going to have to come up with their own excuses. "I'll still expected home after that. If you can organize some kind of sleep-over somewhere, I say more power to you, but Dee's parents are a little... uptight about him staying the night with certain people right now."
"They think I'm a bad influence." Kenny shrugged, blunt in his statement. "They found out I was the boyfriend right before the whole cheesing thing, and then he got a cat. Eric got blamed, but I'm still suspect."
"Shit dude, that sucks." Kyle frowned. "But that doesn't stop at least a member from each team from coming to my place. Butters, Stan, you can tell your parents we're having a sleep-over, and I'll tell my mom we're seeing a late movie."
Stan felt a little flare of hope as he finished with the bottle, lifting Aiden to his shoulder to pat his back until he made the noise that signaled a successful burp; Kyle wasn't utterly ignoring him. He had to remember that just because it felt like the guy hated his guts over what happened at lunch on Friday, that didn't necessarily make it true.
It just made him feel fucking sick the longer it was allowed to linger, anxiety turning around in a black cloud that kept insisting he'd alienated his best friend by being an asshat and suggesting he was only butt-hurt about Eric's ex-girlfriend because he wanted to tap that.
No, no, he hadn't suggested. He'd outright accused.
"Kenny?" Kyle asked, cocking his head. "Do you wanna meet up, too? We'll be part of the same team, but..."
"Nah." Kenny shook his head. "Karen's birthday is tomorrow; I wanna be home so I can surprise her in the morning."
Kenny glanced at Dee. Dee didn't look back. His eyes were trained on a spot on the floor, jaw clenched. Kenny reached across, sliding a hand onto his boyfriend's shoulder, which caused Dee to start and sit upright, jerking his head over and blinking a few times.
Fuck, he's a raw nerve.
"Hey man... remember to breathe." Kenny suggested softly, leaving Stan to feel like he was witnessing something he should not have been; like when he and Wendy hugged for maybe a little too long in the hallway and randos started clearing their throats, he felt the urge to do similar and break up the amount of eye contact that was going on between those two.
Instead, he observed as Butters reached up for Dee's other shoulder, giving him a pat from his position on the floor, causing his head to whip about the other way, a few extra curls escaping from his black knit hat with the force of the turn. "It's gonna be okay." Butters assured in his usual bright voice. "We're gonna find out what's going on, and we're gonna make sure that machine can't hurt anyone ever again."
Dee stared, and blinked. Stan might have been reading too much into it, but Dee's eyes looked glassy, like he might cry.
Are you three like... gay... together?
"We need to prepare." Wendy announced, breaking up the moment that Butters, Dee, and Kenny appeared to be having. "I've got written instructions and printed maps for everyone- let's keep this clean and get it done!"
::The Author's Corner::
TWO CHAPTERS IN THE SAME WEEK? Heaven help us I think a miracle has occurred.
Thank-you to everyone who takes the time to leave feedback; it's always so special to me when y'all take the time to do so, and gives me all the warm-fuzzies that my work is still enjoyed despite the delays.
ONWARDS!
-Buttlord