Second chapter for today. As always the standard disclaimer applies: I do not own the Happy Tree Friends; they are the property of Mondo Media. I own only my own characters and this story. Now here's chapter 32:

32 – SUSPECTS

"So" said Tony Ride, "how does one find the one or two guilty humans on a list of 30? We don't have the solidarity of the animal ethic, or the common memory of the A.I.s, so what's left?"

"Good old fashioned detective work" said Toothy, "how many people do you need to help you narrow the field?"

"I don't know" said Tony Ride, "but a good four or five to start with."

So it was. Tony was joined by Anna, Barry, Toothy, Sniffles, and Robot for the work of trying to eliminate suspects. There's no real need to go into that part of it; suffice it to say it was routine drudge work which eventually managed to conclusively eliminate all but three of the names on the list. But whittling three suspects down to two, or one, was the hardest part of all.

"So we've got Sara Swutt." said Tony Ride, "John Halloran., and Zach Wile, all of whom have the proper access, and none of whom have accounted for what they were doing when the Marauders penetrated the shield. Now how do we separate the guilty from the innocent?"

"Assuming that only one of them is guilty" said Sniffles, "two of them could be working together."

"Or all three" said Toothy.

"Maybe" said Tony Ride, "but somehow I don't think so. The more people in a conspiracy the more chances someone will slip up."

"What do they want?" asked Toothy, "there must be a reason that they helped those two marauders get in to the city."

"Yes" said Robot, "to cause as much trouble as possible. The logical reason for that course of action is to cause a distraction."

"Use the Marauder trouble-makers to draw attention away from what you want to do?" said Barry, "that makes perfect sense. But they couldn't foresee that the marauders would be caught so quickly."

"And with this investigation going on" continued Anna, "it means whatever they wanted to do is suddenly that much harder, or even impossible." She looked pensive. "If only we knew what it was..."

"With all of the distractions keeping us busy" suggested Sniffles, "maybe the two scouts were just the advance of a larger attack that we wouldn't be able to defend against as effectively."

"That doesn't feel right somehow," said Tony Ride, "if you're going to mount a full scale attack on the city you'd try to rush in as many attackers as you could as soon as the forcefield went down to overwhelm us before we could mount a defense. You wouldn't waste that on just two people. There must be something simpler than that."

"There is" said Robot dispassionately, "it would allow for minimum effort from the Marauders but would, in our current circumstances, undoubtedly be fatally devastating to us."

"In our current circumstances..." murmured Barry thoughtfully, then suddenly his eyes almost popped out of his face. "No" he exclaimed, "they wouldn't..."

"XL-Jack-3 most certainly would," said Robot in his same calm voice, "if he could. Which is why all of our defenses are redundantly triplicated in case of failure."

"But not everyone knows that" said Sniffles, "I never did until I joined the Council."

"No" said Robot, "and that's as it should be. It is virtually impossible to cause the flight system to fail and crash the city – but we, in this room, are the only ones who know that."

"Which means" said Tony Ride "that our traitor will probably try to sabotage the system anyway."

"We'll be watching" said Barry grimly, "and when he or she tries it – "

(To Be Continued)