CH3

"finding the Wall"

He's one of them.

I can't believe it. After all this time. We never knew.

"You aren't supposed to learn any of that. Ever."

"Why?"

"Don't kid your self Rip, you didn't fi-"

"Bullshit! You just admitted that I found stuff and now you deny it! Whose side are you on!" Ripster yells.

"Hey calm down!" Benz says as he takes a step back.

"No, you tell me why you've been doing this! Any progress I make you debunk! Anything that I have evidence of vanishes.  What is so important that you have to hide, help them hide, that could be so dangerous? Is this what happened? So long ago?"

"None of this was supposed to happen."

"Are you even my friend?"

"That hurt. I never wanted anything bad to happen. I had/have no choice."

"There's always a choice. That girl, is she the key to this?"

"If you keep doing this your going to loose it. Even more than you already have."

"Answer the question."

"I don't know the answer. No one does. She doesn't exist. But…"

"But?"

"But we saw her shoot you. She taught Slamu to cook and other than that there is no record of her. No one knows her name."

"Fine then, what happened to Mako? Where does he fit into this? And what happened to his sister?"

Benz sighs. "I don't know."

"Not good enough." Ripster starts to leave.

"He was like you Rip."

That stops him.

"He was searching for his sister and that girl. Hoping one would lead to the other. He never found anything. Nothing." B

"What about Reeni? What happened to her diary and that photo?" R

"She… I don't know. They said that she never had it, that she made the whole thing up. What photo?" B

"The photo. The one that has us all and a whole lot of other people from our graduating class, at some docks. Do you remember what we did that summer? The year we left FSHS? I doubt it, no one else does." R

"Rip, you have to stop this, if you're not careful..." B

"If I'm not careful what?" R

"… If your not careful you could go insane like Reeni and Mako." B

"What?!" R

"I'm not sure what they were doing, but it was very close to what you are looking into. I don't know what happened to them or where they are… but if you keep this up, you will find out. And then nothing can help you." B

Ripster puts his head in his hands, still standing with his back to Benz.

"I don't know if this will help you or hurt you, but… but Reeni and Mako both hinted at something thing being done to us. All of us. That summer. I never looked into it, I didn't want to." Benz says as he sits down. Benz never was all that brave.

"And that girl was there that summer."

"Yes, that's what they believe. It sounds right, but I don't know." Benz sits down. "I don't want to end up like them." B

"Who did you say could help me?"

"General Thomson, but he said he could help them also. As much as I tell him and, I guess, work for him. I don't trust him." B

"How much about me did you tell him?"

"Not a lot, but I think he suspects something is wrong with one of the Street Sharks. But he doesn't know who, he just told me to tell anyone that needed or wanted help, that he would do it. I think I really messed up."

"Yes you did." Ripster says as he turns around to see Benz curl up in the chair. "Is Leena a part of this? I haven't seen her since before we 'defeated' Paradime." Benz curls up further.

"I don't know what happened to her."

"Neither do we." said Streex's voice, coming from the door.

Turning sharply, both Ripster and Benz stair in shock at the others. All of them; Jabs, Streex, Slamu, Mobey, Rox, and Mantaman. They were all standing in and around the doorway. Looking in and watching, listening.

"We heard you both… talking." Streex says with a shrug.

"How much?" this from a horrified Benz.

"All of it. We didn't know a lot of what you two were talking about. But some of the stuff we did. Like Leena. We can't find anything on or about her. Nothing." Streex says.

"It's like she never existed." Mobey

"Even her colleegs didn't know what happened to her. Some didn't even know who she was. And I'm not talking vague acquaintances. Her faïence didn't know." Mantaman

"We… we wanted to tell you both sooner. But when we saw what was happening to Rip, we well..." Jabs let's the rest of his sentence just hang in the air, hoping one of the others will ck it up.

"We hid our information. Not yours though Ripster. Yours was gone before we started." Rox says as he leads every one out to the main room.

"But, if you all have been working on this, how come I didn't know about it?" Benz

"Because you were so wrapped up about Ripster. That made things easier for us."

"And how come you're not loosing it like I am?"

"Because we didn't push it. Whenever we got to close to something, it was strange… I can't describe it. But when that would happen one of us that person would stop. Leave a note for someone else with where he left off and that was it." Mobey

"We spread out the info. So that what ever was deciding that 'we knew enough' we could have the other pick up on it. We have a nice numbered system, but we all too afraid t look at it as a whole." Mantaman

"And I'm loosing it because I did all the searching my self. Thus pushing that barrier of sorts. Do you think that 'barrier' is what causes our loss of memories?"

And it was.  We all came to that conclusion. They decided to share all their information. Benz figured that since there was no one to debunk anything that we should be able to discuss it. And was there a lot of information.

And it all pointed to that one summer.

What it boiled down to was a theory.

1)         Fusion City is the only city that was ever concerned with fusions of man and animal. There were never any reports of someone not from here being part of it. we thought Mantaman, but then he told us that his family was original from here.

2)         Guy in the sky had absolutely nothing important to do with this. End story.

3)         About 24 or 25 years ago there was a massive disease scare. Everyone had tons of shots. Some of us remember our parents saying it was like being a kid in the 50's – 60's again. That and only kids born in the year 1980-84 had the shot. That was all. And if they had any siblings they also had the shots.

But it was only for those born in the area.

4)         The girl everyone remembers but doesn't might be a key to this. She must know something. So we have/had to find her.

 5)        Find Hybrid, get more answers.

6)         All problems' seem to happen with or around General Thomson.

So… that was our layout. To find out what happened to Leena, Reeni and Mako, we would have to go to the top of the food chain. And the best way to get there was me. Ripster. The insane one.

Brilliant plan, don't you think?