Chapter 2: Bayside After Dark

Jessie, Lisa, and Nanno were shopping at the mall. The outfits that Jessi and Lisa had Nanno try on ranged from stylish yet casual clothing for school, to more formal attire for school dances and such, and they had her try on a few ridiculous outfits too just for fun. Nanno was a good sport about it, and everyone was having fun.

Unbeknownst to Jessie and Lisa though, a suspicious character was observing them from across the mall. Dressed in a somewhat raggedy but colorful outfit, and sporting a dubiously-real mustache and beard, the obviously disguised man in question was getting many odd and worried glances, as mothers bundled their children closer to them and hurried on.

Bored, Zack Morris pulled down his glasses. "Shh, it's me, Zack." He informed his imaginary audience. This was a little habit of his, something he did just for fun. Or that's what he told himself; in reality Zack addressed his imaginary audience whenever he felt that he wasn't receiving enough attention. That, or he wanted to gloat about some devious scheme of his.

"I bet you're wondering why I've followed the girls here to the mall in this gypsy outfit." Zack said problematically, as the people around him hurried away even faster.

"I bombed out with Nanno earlier today, but Zack Morris is no quitter." Zack, a known quitter, lied. "So now I'm gathering some intel, trying to find out what Nanno likes, anything that might be useful basically. I know it's a little odd following them around like this, but I'm not hurting anyone. Actually, this will be a good thing for Nanno eventually, when she has a great time on our date."

Zack spied on the girls a little longer, before he saw his chance. Lisa and Jessie had begun trying on outfits too, and now all three of the girls were in the changing rooms at the same time. All while Nanno's backpack was sitting unattended at a seat outside of the changing rooms.

Zack crept over, opening the backpack and leafing through it. He knew he didn't have much time, so he couldn't afford to do more than take a brief glance through Nanno's stuff. Zack observed the contents of her backpack. Boring school supplies, but that was a given. Then there was… oh. Zack wasted a moment blushing furiously as put the tampons back. There was always a risk of discovering tampons when rooting through a girl's stuff, but it never failed to make Zack uncomfortable when he found them.

Still, Zack bravely soldiered on. Zack found a flyer about a litter cleanup day at the park, scheduled for tomorrow on Tuesday. Nanno must be planning to attend after school.

Zack smirked. At last, something Nanno cared about; she was a tree hugger. That meant Zack had an in! Zack zipped the backpack back up before he heard one of the girls coming out of the changing rooms.

Zack gasped, but luckily the bench was not directly in front of the changing rooms, so he still had a split second to act. Zack dove into a rack of clothing, hiding himself. He wasn't convinced his brilliant disguise would fool his friends up close. It wasn't that his disguise was bad, he told himself. Just that Lisa knew clothing too well for his attire to fool her, and Jessie was just too sharp for Zack's own good.

Lisa had come out of the changing rooms, looking as good as ever. She glanced Zack's way, attracted to the motion out of the corner of her eye, but she was too late, Zack was already hidden. Jessie came out next, and then… Nanno.

And what Nanno was wearing was not anything like what the girls had tried on up until now. She was wearing a rather tight, rather low-cut, very sexy black dress. She was dressed to kill, and Zack nearly died then and there, and a strangled, guttural sound escaped his lips.

"What was that?" Jessie asked, peering around, alerted by the strange sound, and Zack nearly panicked.

Nanno paused for a moment as the group glanced around, but then she shrugged, and dear god Zack thought, every move she made suddenly seemed unbearably sexy. "Maybe someone here has a service dog." Nanno suggested. "It sounded more like an animal than anything else to me."

To Zack's embarrassment, yet also to his relief, the group agreed, and went back into the changing rooms once more, to change back into the outfits they had come in with, though not before Lisa and Jessie complimented Nanno on how good she looked in that dress. When they were back in the changing rooms, Zack slipped away, feeling the need to take a very cold shower.

Later that evening after cheerleading practice was over, Kelly knocked on Screech's bedroom door, and a robotic voice responded with a "Come in."

Kelly smiled. "Hello Kevin" She greeted; it had been a while since she'd last seen Screech's robot.

"You don't write, you don't call, I was beginning to feel forgotten. I'm pleased you finally came over to visit me." Kevin… joked? It was hard to tell with a robot.

Kelly winced. "I'm um, sorry about that Kevin. I'll try to keep in touch. But, ah, I'm actually here to…"

Kevin took mercy on her. "To study science, I know, a most noble goal if I do say so myself." Kevin said, understandably given that he had been created as a science project himself.

"Noble, and it can be fun too." Kelly remembered. "Is Screech in his dark room again?" She asked, gesturing to his closet.

"Negative, Screech is there." Kevin said, pointing upwards. Kelly glanced up at the ceiling, as if expecting Screech to be crawling along like Spider-Man, but then heard Screech calling out to her.

"Hey Kelly" That was Screech standing outside his window, on a rope ladder Kelly now realized. "Come on up." He invited, climbing back up the ladder.

Kelly grabbed onto the ladder and climbed up onto Screech's roof. Kelly didn't know what to expect, but what she saw still managed to surprise her. What she at first believed was a pigeon coup sat on Screech's roof, only she realized that inside the coup there were no pigeon's, but instead crows.

"Birds Screech? This seems a little low-tech for you." She said, observing the odd arrangement of objects that existed in one half of the coup. The other half was totally blocked off from the other side. All of the birds were in one half the coup, except for one which Screech let into the side filled with unusual objects.

"Ah, but crows are no ordinary birds." Screech mused, as the crow glanced around at its surroundings.

"I know there's a few superstitions about crows out there." Kelly nodded, but Screech chuckled, still watching the crow.

"There is, but that's not what makes them unusual. I'm talking about science, not superstition. I suspect this crow is about to do something that no other animal, barring primates, could accomplish." Screech explained. "This crow has seen every object in this cage before, and solved puzzles involving them, but he's never seen them all laid out like this before."

Kelly watched as the crow grabbed a small stick, and then took it over to a cage with what looked to be some sort of food inside. It was interesting to see a bird use a stick like this, but Kelly suspected it wouldn't be so easy for the bird to get the food, and indeed, the stick wasn't long enough to sweep out the snack.

What happened next was fascinating. The crow took the stick and instead used it to sweep a rock out from another cage. It picked up the stone, paused for a little, then set it back down. Kelly was confused, and it seemed like the crow was too, but then it picked up the stick and carried on, taking more stones out from more cages. Then it picked up the stones one by one, and dropped them into a clear plastic contraption. The stones fell through a hole onto a plastic panel, and with the third stone, the panel collapsed. A stick that had been laying in the edge of the panel rolled down and out through a slot beneath the panel, and the crow picked up the significantly longer stick. This time when the crow used the stick, it was able to claim its food from the cage it was in.

"Woohoo!" Screech cheered, and Kelly laughed and clapped.

"Screech that's amazing, how did you get it to do that?"

"I didn't do much, I introduced him to basic puzzles and then more complex ones. The little guy is the one with the intelligence to figure them out for himself. Remarkable isn't it?" Screech shared, and his happiness was infectious.

Kelly glanced over at a telescope on the roof, and went over to take a look at the night stars, as Screech put his crow back in with the others, then laid down to look at the stars himself.

"It's so nice up here" she said, "our school is so crazy all the time, it's just nice to get away sometimes to somewhere more peaceful, you know?" Kelly shivered a little as the temperature dropped, and Screech took off his jacket and passed it to her. Kelly smiled, she had nearly forgotten how considerate Screech could be. He was very different from the rest of her peers in that way.

"As much as I love my education, and respect Dr. Mertz, I've got to agree, our school really is pretty crazy sometimes… most of the time." Screech agreed. "But speaking of our education, we should probably head back in soon and hit the books."

"Sure, I always have so much fun studying with you Screech!" Kelly enthused. "It'll be nice, just us and science, no drama, schemes, or trouble."

Zack had passed on that cold shower, instead opting to follow Nanno after she parted with the other girls. After all, he thought, he had gone to all this trouble to dig up a gypsy outfit, so why not gather as much intel as he could while he was at it? He had already bailed on track and field, so it wasn't like he had anything better to do tonight. What was he supposed to do, study for that science test? Please.

It all worked out, because the girls had spent so long at the mall (typical) that Jessie hadn't had the chance to show Nanno much of anything else before they had parted company for the night.

This time of year, it got dark relatively early, but Zack didn't mind. Bayside was a safe town, even after dark. And for a while, as he followed Nanno, the walk was a pleasant one. It wasn't too cold out, and Zack enjoyed seeing Bayside after dark, and seeing Nanno from behind.

As he followed Nanno, the crowd on the street thinned out, as he seemed to enter a quieter part of town. Must be a purely residential area. Zack wasn't sure he had ever been this way before. The streets were almost eerily silent and empty. Zack gave a little start as a cawing sound broke through the silence, and saw some crows staring down at him from an apartment building. Creepy buggers.

Other than the crows, only Nanno walked in front of him. Alone on the street with her, Zack was starting to worry he'd inevitably be spotted, though he was keeping his distance. But Nanno never looked back or wavered from her course at all. And Zack couldn't turn back now. He'd been following Nanno for long enough, surely she'd be home soon? Zack just wanted to know her home address for future reference, and maybe catch a glimpse of her parents so he knew what to expect. He'd come this far, so he wasn't stopping now.

Then Zack heard a terrible noise. It sounded like a tuba, a flute, and some drums, but it was hard to tell. There was no discinerable rhythm at all, and it was clear to Zack that someone's band practice was not going well. Yet there was an odd repeating quality to the chaos.

Suddenly Zack tripped, and fell to the ground, landing on his hands. He glanced back, and saw that he tripped on somebody's abandoned doll. It was a simple enough doll, with black thread hair and button eyes. But stuffing was leaking out of its throat, which had apparently been cut open. Zack picked himself up and continued to follow Nanno, feeling a drop of sweat on his neck. He didn't hear that awful racket anymore he realized.

As Zack continued to follow Nanno, growing nervous and impatient, they finally passed another person. The man had his back to Zack, so he couldn't see much of him other than he was obviously tall, but what caught Zack's attention was what he was doing. The man was attempting to stuff a garbage bag into a garbage can, but the can was already clearly full. Undeterred, the man simply kept pressing and pushing down on the bag, trying to force everything down into the can. He kept on and on at his task in silence, and was still at it when Zack passed him by.

Shortly after that, Nanno came to a stop. She had paused at an intersection. No one was driving through, but Nanno wasn't crossing the road. Zack was confused, as Nanno simply stood stock still. Was she lost? Had she noticed him? After an uncomfortable amount of time, Nanno stepped to the side and sat down on a flight of stairs in front of the doorway to a building. Was that where she lived? Nanno made no move to get up, she simply sat on the staircase, staring ahead without moving at all. As this went on and on, Zack decided she must live there, but had simply decided to enjoy the brisk night a little longer, and was lost in thought. It looked like he wouldn't be seeing her parents tonight. Oh well, time to go.

Zack turned to leave, and walked away, heading home for the night. The man at the trashcan was gone, but trash was spilled all over the street. Actually, looking at it, most of the trash seemed to be dolls similar to what Zack had tripped on earlier.

Zack kept on walking, and under a streetlight he saw the chalk outline of a human body. Like what you would see at a crime scene, Zack realized. And there was another outline over there, and another, and another… Zack lost count of all the outlined bodies. They seemed to be scattered haphazardly over the entire street here. Someone had a morbid sense of humor, Zack thought, trying to ignore the odd chill he was feeling. Somewhere in the distance, Zack faintly heard creepy, screaming laughter, and he quickly picked up his pace.

A/N:

I didn't make up the bit about crows being able to solve puzzles, they actually are that intelligent. That scene came out of a YouTube video I've seen about crow's ability to problem solve, it's on the BBC's channel if anyone is interested in watching it.