Mikan had been chilling on the couch watching TV when her phone started ringing a cartoon theme song.
"Pause the show." She turned to her siblings, Sara gave her a nod as Mikan got up to answer the call in another room.
"Heyyy Mikan! Did you see the news?" Fred's words sounded casual, but the snow-striped girl could sense some nerves behind them.
An uneasy feeling crawled up her neck. "Did Trina or Noodle do anything?"
"Nah not them." She sighed with relief as the comic fan continued. "But there was a robbery with Momakase-"
Green eyes widened, that name hadn't been seen ever since the mystery dinner event, where according to David, the chef/mercenary had left some of her humanity behind in her escape. "Wait, really?!"
Sara was glancing at her from the other room now. "Yeah, just thought you should know, I'd call David myself but uh…" Fred trailed off. "It would be really awkward."
Mikan didn't blame him. "That's fair, I'll tell him." It then struck her that perhaps Fred knew because he had to handle that robbery himself. "Um, is everything okay?"
"Yeah nobody got really hurt! Gogo got a few bad scratches though." Even on the phone Mikan could tell that Fred was skimming the details. She hoped Gogo wasn't hurt too badly, David had told her that Momakase apparently had claws made of graphene now. "But on the good news we did stop Momakase from stealing large amounts of gold!"
"Why am I not surprised it's a gold robbery?" That got both of her siblings' attention now, both of them were staring at her with greedy curiosity. "Okay got to go, have a good day."
Once putting the phone down, Sara was already jumping to questions. "What was that about?"
"Fred was calling me about the news."
David frowned. "Was it about Trina?"
I wish it was that so I didn't have to tell you this. "No, it was about Momakase."
If her siblings weren't eyeballing her before, they were now. "What?!" Both of them exclaimed.
"Yeah uh turns out she was robbing gold." Mikan shrugged. "Which makes sense because there have been a lot of gold robberies lately."
"I'm disappointed in her." David crossed his arms. "She goes off the radar for weeks and is robbing gold like nothing happened."
She didn't even reach out to try and contact him! Then again, last time David had spoken with his mother, he had been several degrees of crossed.
"Maybe she's being forced to do it?" Sara suggested. "I mean, someone's been turning people into monsters, your mother scares me but I don't think she's that scary enough to willingly turn into a monster with scary sharp claws."
"Maybe…" David muttered, burying his face into his jacket.
Mikan went back to the couch and sat next to her brother. "Yeah, she seems scary but Momakase does care for you, I'm sure the whole monster thing isn't completely her fault."
He made a face. "She was helping someone destroy the city with a giant star."
Oh for the love of- "Yeah and that someone was my pops, remember?"
"Oh right." David shuffled his feet. "Sorry for bringing that up."
"It's fine."
Click!
The door opened and their dad entered the house. "Hey Uncle! You're back early!" Sara waved to him.
"Eh, Krei doesn't really need me doing any repairs when he's doing his business meetings." Steven waved it off. "What are you kids up to?"
"Talking about the recent gold robberies." Mikan answered.
The mechanic narrowed his eyes in confusion. "It's plural now?" He had only heard about the strange rock bear attacking the bank, he didn't know there were more.
"My- Momakase was stealing gold." David mumbled, scratching at his jacket sleeves.
Steven's eyes widened. "Oh that's awful."
"That's not the only case." Sara chimed in. "One of Josh's friends told me that his uncle's ship got attacked by Mayoi!"
"Oh I heard about that, wasn't that the shipment the rock bear stole?" Mikan questioned.
Sara nodded. "Yes! That's not even the only weird thing going on at the docks."
She pulled out her phone, going to an online photo said friend posted on a shared chat. The photo was nearly pitch black, but Mikan could see that it was a photo of the docks.
"What the-?" The creepy thing about the photo was that in the water, there was something there, staring at the camera with yellow eyes. The rest of the details were blurry but she could tell it had cerulean scales.
"I think a certain duo that broke into a high school have been hopping on the bandwagon too." Sara grumbled. "Which is great, just what we needed."
The sarcasm dripping from her voice got Steven to comment. "Sara, I'm sure like Knox, they didn't ask to get turned into a monster."
"I doubt it." David spoke up. "They're nothing but attention seeking monsters!"
"David Eliza Ferns!"
The sibling's eyes widened, their full names never got spoken unless they were in trouble. "What?" David, poor oblivious David had no idea how hurtful his words sounded in context.
"I know the whole monster crisis is stressful, but that's extremely disrespectful!"
"Well can you blame us? They attacked Bridgeton!" Sara argued. "One of them's an enabler, and the other's a spoiled brat!"
"Sara Angelica Ferns, how could you say that about my-" Steven paused, his eyes widening as if he realized something. "I have to go."
Before any of them could speak, Steven walked to the door leading to the basement and went down there without a glance in their direction.
"I think Dad's upset we insulted High Voltage." Mikan stated.
"Oh come on!" Sara complained. "They're just thieves with a knack for destroying public property, what's the big idea?"
David seemed to realize what he said might've been too harsh. "I mean… that's all they did, they didn't kidnap anyone or seriously hurt any civilians."
"I doubt Ari could say that." The sweater girl might've said the nick on her face was from a cat, but said nick appeared after the attack on Bridgeton.
"Fair, I don't know why Sienna thinks they're cool." He grumbled.
Mikan pinched the bridge of her nose, her siblings were so oblivious. "Because they're cool performers, you guys aren't getting the point!" She had a feeling why their dad was so upset.
He had almost said "my-" before cutting himself off, was Steven about to say "my friend?" It was out of the left field, but he had been rather upset ever since Bridgeton.
Mikan was nothing if not observant. "I mean they did steal from Krei-Tech, but Dad hadn't thrown any shade their way despite that, maybe he used to know Barb or something."
"I doubt it, Dad wouldn't be friends with any thieves." David crossed his arms.
"David, you do remember what your mother does for a living, right? You only got mad at her because she was hurting people!" Sara pointed out. "Jeez, and I thought the daughter in that duo was a brat."
"Hey!"
Mikan held back a chuckle. "Well, she's got a point Mr 'I can't stand veggies that aren't sushi,' I mean maybe you could've been a thief if you were raised by your mother!"
David sighed, his sister had a point, he just hated to admit it. "Right… I guess we were a little too mean."
As if the universe decided to answer their questions, Steven came back, this time dragging their mom along.
The kids flinched as they saw their eyes were rimmed with tears. "Hey Uncle, we're really sorry for what we said." Sara muttered.
"Yeah even if we were angry about Bridgeton, we shouldn't have been so mean." David added.
Steven nodded at the two. "It's alright, I'm sorry for losing my temper at you two, you didn't know about…" He glanced over to Sally, who also nodded.
"About what?" Mikan leaned over, trying to read the expressions on their faces.
Sally was the one who spoke. "Do you kids remember when Steven told you about an old friend of his?"
"That best friend at your wedding who you claim witnessed the robot army thing?" Sara raised her hand.
"Hey it was true!" Steven pinched the bridge of his nose. "Anyways, I just was so upset that you two were insulting her and calling her and her kid a monster."
At first, the two frowned in confusion, wondering what their uncle meant, but then it hit them as Mikan stood up. "I called it!" She pointed to their parents. "I knew you knew Barb, but these two didn't believe me!" She was grinning as she pointed back to her siblings who had wide eyes and gaping mouths.
"Mikan Peggy Ferns, it's not funny." Sally pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Oooh this explains so much…" Sara was rubbing her temples.
That's why her uncle was so upset about Bridgeton! "Now I feel really bad for calling her an enabler."
Steven sighed. "You didn't remember her, it's fine."
Sara still felt bad, she shouldn't have insulted High Voltage anyways, they most likely weren't willing participants in the monster crisis. But she was so blinded by anger about Bridgeton she kept that detail in the corner of her mind.
"So you used to know Barb from High Voltage…" David muttered. "And you went to school together…"
The mechanic nodded. "Yes, we went to the same trade school."
"What was she like back then?" Mikan asked curiously, she was the only one who didn't have vague memories of the duo.
"An arrogant show-off who thought she was so great and the best at everything!" Sally grumbled, Steven gave her a look. "Okay that's an exaggeration, we used to er… be very competitive, kind of like a rivalry."
"I was glad when you two stopped bickering." Steven admitted, then turned back to the kids. "I knew Barb for a long time, she stood up for me in middle school, and we became best friends after that."
It was bittersweet looking back at those memories, middle school was a dark and lonely time for him, bullies drawn to him like a moth to a flame after his parent's divorce and he was sent to live with his grandparents. "She even taught me how to defend myself from bullies, she was honestly like the sister I never had."
Sara blinked in surprise, she didn't know the two were that close. "Yeah she was a buzzkill just like an older sister." Sally complained. "She kept shutting down all of my cool ideas!"
"Sally, one of them was trying to make your own homemade rockets, and remember how that went after Barb told you not to do it?"
"Don't remind me, she never let me live that one down."
David raised his hand. "How come you stopped talking to her, was it because of the supervillain thing?"
Both of their parents had sad looks on their faces. "It's complicated." Sally mumbled, her voice sounding smaller now, it made the kids wanna give her a big hug. "We had… an argument, and I guess both sides were too angry to fix it, so we just stopped visiting her."
"And then next time we saw her… well next time I saw her was when she was stealing from Krei-Tech." Steven rubbed his sleeves. "We don't know why she started stealing… but we have a theory, and I really don't want it to be right."
The kids wisely decided not to push that button, Steven's voice sounded strained and he was hesitating to speak. Whatever happened in the past, it must've been really bad.
"I wish we could remember them." Sara grumbled, crossing her arms. "Stupid forgetful human brains…"
That's when Sally held up a book that had been sitting on her lap, and placed it on the table. "Here, this is an old photo book of ours, we kept some pictures of our New York trips."
As she flipped open the pages, Mikan and Sara were gazing at the images. "Woah, that's kind of weird." Seeing younger versions of High Voltage was a little odd for Mikan.
"You're telling me." Sara muttered.
"Can you guys please describe these pictures?" David asked. "I can't see them and I feel like I'm missing out on something important."
"These ones were when we were like eight…" Sara pointed to a picture that had the two of them smiling at the camera. A young girl with blond hair covering one of her brown eyes was sitting right between them, but the camera had snapped as her eyes were half closed.
"I remember that one, Juniper was really tired that day." Steven explained, chuckling at the memory. "She had just gotten over a fever, poor thing."
"Huh, that's kind of familiar." David realized, as a very fuzzy memory played in his head.
"Why do you keep yawning?"
"M' tired…"
He smiled a little, now that he was remembering. "Oh yeah I think I remember that! She still wanted to hang with me and Sara even though she was really tired."
"I kind of remember that too, but mostly because my mom was okay with me going with you." Sara sighed. "Probably glad she got a break from me…"
"Let's not bring up Minerva." Steven flipped to another page of the photo book, one of the pages had David sleeping on the couch.
"Awww!" Mikan was squealing, as beside her kid brother on the couch was the same small girl in the other photo. "This is so cute it's giving me cavities."
"What's giving you cavities?" David frowned in confusion.
Sara noticed the photo and smiled. "It's you and Juniper asleep on the couch, that's adorable."
Then she noticed Mikan snapping a photo and fiddling with her phone. "Mika?"
"This must be shared with the world." Mikan stated, that's when all three of their phones chimed.
"Mika… did you post that?"
Their older sister was grinning. "Maybe in the group chat?"
"Delete it!" David exclaimed. "Delete it now before Sienna sees."
"Too late." Mikan smirked. He squeaked red and hid into his hoodie. Sara opened up her phone to see that Mikan had just snapped a photo of David.
Weird. "I'm guessing we're not telling our friends about…?"
Mikan made a face. "Yeah uh, that'd be awkward considering the whole-" She gestured with her hands. "Monster thing."
"Oh, right." Sara winced.
"Can we at least tell Sienna?" David asked their parents.
Steven and Sally exchanged looks before nodding. "You can, if you want to tell your friends that's fine." Sally told them. "But I agree with Mikan that it'd be awkward considering current circumstances."
Steven nervously chuckled. "Yeah, that's an understatement…"
"Who's this?"
Sara had flipped open to the next page and saw a photo of someone she didn't recognize. A man in a blue business suit with darker blonde hair, his blue eyes were staring at the camera with a strange emotion.
He had his hand wrapped around a younger Barb's shoulder, she was smiling at the camera, but for some reason, Sara had this uneasy feeling in her chest seeing the man.
Sally was glaring at Steven. "I thought you got rid of all the photos of him!"
"I think I missed that one…" He mumbled. "Uh sweetie, don't worry about that one. We don't talk about him."
Sara nodded, taking the photo out and handing it to her aunt. The moment Sally had the picture in her hand, she started ripping it into shreds. "Wow, you must really hate what's-his-face." David commented.
"Was he an old college friend or something?" Mikan raised an eyebrow.
"You could say that…" Her uncle glanced away.
Oh… Sara had a feeling of who that man was, and based on her parent's behavior, he wasn't a good person. She wasn't sure what he did, but something in her heart told her that he was the reason why her parents had lost contact with their friend for years.
"Um, so I guess seeing them again as supervillains must've been shocking." The wavy-haired blonde rubbed the back of her head nervously.
"Yeah, I wanted to reach out to Barb, but she didn't talk to us for so long, why would this be different?" Steven sighed, a few tears in his eyes. "I figured if she did want to talk, she'd reach out to us."
"But then Bridgeton happened." Sally buried her head into her palms. "I hope they're okay…"
That was scary to think about, what happened to High Voltage. "Maybe after things go back to normal, you should talk with her." Mikan suggested. "She's lucky to have a friend like you Mom, I'm sure she'd be happy to see you after the whole monster crisis."
Sally's eyes lit up with hope. "Yeah, I guess I should." An idea was forming in her head what to do if-when her old friend and her daughter were back to their human selves, but that was for another day.
She couldn't wait for that day, but Sally hoped that Barb was doing alright, whatever was going on with her and whoever was creating the monsters, it didn't spell anything good.
Ferns and Nerds group chat:
Hiro Hamada: Why is there a picture of kid David in the group chat
David Ferns: MIKA BETRAYED ME
David Ferns: I TOLD HER NOT TO POST IT!
Mikan Ferns: You're lucky I cropped the picture if you're gonna be mean abt it
Honey Lemon: Cropped?
Sara Ferns: MIKA
Mikan Ferns: oops
TheLittleMermaid: Why is it cropped?
Wasabi: Why the crop
Fredzilla: Ha-ha jink
Wasabi: : (
Mikan Ferns: That would be snitching
Sienna Kline: Cookie you still look cute
David Ferns: thanks…
Gogo: Tsundere
David Ferns: POT MEET KETTLE
Honey Lemon: Hey don't call my gf a pot!
Hiro Hamada: She's clearly the kettle
Honey Lemon: HIRO I S2G
TheLittleMermaid: HL is tired of being nice D :
Mikan Ferns: Why did I make this chat again
Mikan Ferns: Oh wait ; )
"Mr. Hamada, phones are not allowed in class." He looked up from the chat, seeing Granville giving him a stern look.
"Sorry." He squeaked, placing the phone in his pocket and turning back to his notes. I've been so zoned in on Liv I need to catch-up in school. He had a feeling the dean was going to talk about that later. I could ask her for advice, I mean Granville is on a first-name basis with Liv…
He shook his head, now was not the time for that! Why do I keep mixing up superhero stuff with school stuff? Curse his brain and it's lack of focus…
"Weird of you to be scatterbrained, Genius Boy." He glanced over to the nosy biotech major over his shoulder.
"What do you want Karms?"
She huffed. "Rude, just checking to see what's got you so distracted, you looked kind of sad."
Hiro hesitated, he didn't want to bring up Liv, that was a sore subject. Sure, they had both gotten over the whole argument after the Mayoi, but bringing it up again would just reignite that fire.
So instead he brought up something else. "Just worried about my sister."
"Is she okay?"
It was heartwarming how concerned she sounded. "Well, she's said some stuff about her parents that's got me really worried."
Karmi narrowed her eyes. "What kind of stuff?"
He glanced back at Granville, who had stopped her lecture to let the students work on their assignment before turning back to Karmi. He then explained everything, from Ari's low self-esteem at first to her expectations of getting punished for the tiniest of things.
When he was done talking he saw raw anger in her reddish-brown eyes. "That's…"
"Yeah, we had an argument about it, it got patched up but I'm really worried about her, what if there's more she's not telling me?" He worried she was having more bad dreams, more bad memories, but the sweater girl kept a tight lip about those things.
Ari never liked talking about her past, even the good parts sometimes.
"You know you can't force her to talk about it Hiro." Karmi pointed out. "But the next best thing you could do is be there for her, y'know?"
He nodded. "Right, maybe we could visit the docks, we haven't been there in a while." Ari did always love going by the docks when there weren't any shipments going on, she had a blast playing with the waves that hit against the stone. "Thanks Karms."
"No problem, I just hate seeing you so mopey, it looks weird." She rolled her eyes.
"By the way, you're being safe at your internship, right?"
"Yes! Ahhh you don't have to remind me! You and Mikan are always asking me, gosh." Hiro just rolled his eyes at her.
He was just glad that she was okay despite being so close to the lion's den.
Later…
"I missed how clear the air is!" Ari was skipping around the docks, a big smile on her face.
Hiro was glad to see her smiling, but one sniff of the air made him wince. "All I smell is salt and really smelly fish." He pinched the bridge of his nose.
Ari stopped skipping to look at his face, she snickered. "It's not that smelly!"
"Yes it is, I don't even know why you can tolerate seafood!" He complained. "It smells bad!"
He didn't know why she liked the butterfish Aunt Cass liked buying, deliciously cooked or not, the smell was worse than dirty laundry!
"I thought you liked sushi?"
"Fair point." He hadn't had it in awhile. "Man, I haven't had smoked salmon rolls in awhile."
His sister was playing with the water at the docks now. "Because of Momakase?"
He shook his head. "Nah, but I wouldn't order food from her anytime soon."
Ari lifted up her hand from the waves, water dripping from her soaked sleeves and fingertips. "Is it because of the eel thing?"
Hiro made a face. Why did she have to bring it up? This was supposed to be a nice walk! "Yeah."
"I miss them."
"I know." He walked up to her. "They'll come back though."
Ari glanced up at him, a small smile on her face. "Yeah, 'cause you'll bring them back and stop whoever's behind it, right?"
He nodded. "Right." He'd do everything in his power to stop Liv and turn everyone back to normal.
But what if it isn't Liv? A part of his brain argued. He ignored that part, lie detector or not, he knew she was responsible, she just worded the question weird to throw him off the trail!
Right? Because if it isn't Liv...
Who else could it be?
Creeaak
Ari yelped as there was the sound of wood breaking. "What was that?!"
"Probably a cat, I'll check to be sure." Hiro was more curious than scared, but he felt uneasy as he approached a part of the docks where some wooden crates were storing traded goods. Maybe a worker is just moving boxes a little loudly, can't help to check!
But as he walked over to the crates, he noticed that one had the lid slid off, well more like broken than slid off. He walked over to see if an animal had broken it.
All it took was seeing a pair of cold yellow eyes and snarling teeth to make him flee. "Ari run!" He sprinted back to the sweater girl, beginning to drag her away from the scene.
"What? What's going on?!"
"Don't look!"
She looked, and saw in the area of crates Hiro was poking around in, a creature had slithered out of the wooden box, followed by another. It was hidden by the shadows, but she could see menacing yellow eyes.
Yellow eyes she hadn't seen since that fateful dance.
"Oh no oh no-" She let Hiro drag her to safety after that. "It's High Voltage isn't it?!"
"I told you not to look!" He dragged her into an alleyway, a shriek echoed behind them.
Ari slumped by the wall, curling into a ball. "What are we going to do?" She murmured.
Hiro pulled out his phone. "I'll text the others."
He sent a quick "Emergency at docks!" text to alert the others.
"I hope they get here soon…" Ari was glancing out of the alleyway. "I don't think they followed us."
"That's a relief." He placed a hand to his chest. "I don't think they'd be happy with me considering last time I stopped them and Sparkles."
"Well-" Ari gestured to the crate area, Hiro poked his head out to see what was going on. He could see them more clearly as they had slithered out of the shadows, one of them was holding a burlap sack, and the other was scavenging the crates for gold.
Hiro made a face. "How much gold does Liv need for her stupid project?"
"Baymax's lie detector said it wasn't-"
He cut off his sister. "The lie detector also said she needed a lot of gold, and guess who's harvesting gold?!"
Ari's eyes widened, he had made a crack into her wall of denial. "B-But maybe it's a coincidence? Liv's nice… she tried to help me get my memories back, there's no way she would've done that to my best friend."
Hiro glanced back over to the eels. "Well, sometimes you don't see people's true colors until it's too late."
"Like with my parents?"
He froze. "Ari I-"
"I don't know if they're good or not, and that's what scares me." Ari's eyes widened. "Maybe you're right that they're bad, but they're my parents, I don't want to think of them as bad since they're not here anymore."
Hiro approached her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, it's gonna be okay."
"Will it? Will it though?" Ari questioned, looking down at the concrete. "What if my memory doesn't get better because I don't want to remember how bad they were!"
The robotics genius felt something wet on his sneakers. "Ari, I know you're sad, but please don't cry on my shoes." It was getting his socks wet and he hated wet socks.
She looked up at him, and Hiro saw that her eyes weren't leaking any tears. "I'm not crying." But it sounded like she was going to.
"Then why are my shoes-?" He turned around, and saw a grinning eel with drooling sharp fangs staring at him. "Run!" Was all he could say as claws wrapped around his ankle and tripped him up.
Ari did not run, instead she stood there frozen in terror as her brother started getting dragged away. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think, all she could do was watch seeing her brother taken away-
"Let him go!" She could breathe again as Wasabi entered the scene, striking the eel with his plasma blades.
Fred bounced over and helped Hiro up. "You okay?!"
Hiro inspected his ankle, there were some bloody marks from sharp claws digging into his skin. "If Baymax was here, I would call it a six."
The comic fan winced. "Sorry, I didn't bring any gauzes with me."
"It's fine." He tried to stand on his own, ignoring the sharp ripple of pain in his ankle, it lasted for about five seconds before he nearly tripped over.
Ari ran before he fell down. "I got you!" She helped to pick him up, once seeing the teens were okay, Fred joined his teammate into the fight.
High Voltage had lunged at Wasabi, electricity dancing in their claws. "A little halp!" Wasabi barely dodged the zaps.
"Let's see if they can handle the heat!" Fred roared fire at them, they shrieked and hopped into the water to avoid getting burned. "Problem solved!"
But the water was bubbling angrily. "Uh…" Wasabi pointed to the bubbles. Not even a second later, one of the eels lunged, water dripping from her scales as she zapped the living daylights out of Fred.
Wasabi tried to pry the mint-green eel off, but got zapped as well until she released her hold onto the duo.
"I'm seeing stars…" Fred mumbled.
"Yeah, me too." Wasabi rubbed his head, then dragged the comic fan out of the way as the eel lunged at them again.
The other one with cerulean scales, had slithered back onto the docks while her mother was distracting the two heroes.
"Can't let them get the gold!" Hiro growled, bad ankle or not, he was not going to let Liv win!
Ari stopped him from taking another step. "Hiro don't!"
But he lunged anyway, knocking the bag away from the eel, the gold didn't fall out, but he did get the attention of an angry teenager-turned mutant.
Juniper was snarling, sharp fangs opened wide as purple sparks flickered around her jaws, it was clear that she was angry at the robotics genius that got in her way.
The sweater girl nearly screamed seeing her worst nightmare once more, her right eye throbbed with phantom pain as the being that had nearly clawed her eye out was coming to get her brother too.
Wait… what am I doing?! Hiro needed her help, and she was just going to stand there?! No, not this time!
Despite her fears, she ran over and placed herself in front of Hiro. "Juniper, leave my brother alone!"
Even if her waterbending skills wouldn't be good against electric attacks, she'd still use them to protect her family.
But then the former dancer froze, her slitted eyes stopped burning with anger and instead filled them up with confusion like a deer in headlights.
"Ari, keep talking." Hiro commented, noticing the change. "I think she-"
But it looked too good to be true. "Juniper… are you still in there?"
It was a simple question, but that got the eel to start backing away from her in fear. "Wait, come back!" She extended her hand out, as Juniper grabbed the bag of stolen gold and her mother rejoined her. "Barb, Juniper, wait!"
They didn't even glance in her direction as they hopped into the water. "Come back…" Ari lowered her hand, sniffling a little.
She shouldn't have been surprised, she had broken her friend's heart, why would she want to be around her? "I'm…" Hiro didn't know what to say to comfort her.
Wasabi and Fred approached them. "Sorry they got away." Fred bowed his head.
"It's fine." The robotics genius waved it off. "But we learned something interesting.
"What happened?" Wasabi frowned.
Ari sighed. "June recognized me…"
Both heroes in armor blinked in surprise. "Wait, really?!" Fred exclaimed.
"Yeah..." She buried her face into her sweater, not wanting to say anything more.
Wasabi gave her a hug to try and cheer her up. "Don't worry, it'll be okay, at least we know we could get through to your friend."
A flash of hope surged in Hiro's chest. Wasabi was right, if his sister was able to talk some sense into High Voltage for even a little bit... "Maybe it means that Liv-"
Ari gave him a look, he rolled his eyes. "Or whoever else it is… it means that their grip on the monsters isn't as strong as we thought."
Ferns and Nerds group chat:
Rachel Rosemary: My feed is full of chickens rn
Hiro Hamada: Chickens?
Fredzilla: I'm getting flashbacks
Hiro Hamada: Why chickens?
Rachel Rosemary: Idk
Sienna Kline: My feed is full of Gramercy memes
Sara Ferns: rofl
Gogo: Been there scrolled that
Sara Ferns: Didn't see you at school today. Are you feeling better?
Gogo: Ye
Rachel Rosemary: What a legend
Rachel Rosemary: We stan
Fredzilla: Okay get off of your phone
Rachel Rosemary: I'm on my tablet
Hiro Hamada: Rich people
Fredzilla: Excuse
Rachel Rosemary: Excuse
Sienna Kline: XD
"Ohhh, Chris!" He looked up from his phone, seeing Diane walk over. "Good news, we've restocked our gold supplies."
He grinned. "Good." She looked less stressed out now. "So, the fish did their job."
"For once!" Diane still had a frown on her face though. "But they're rebelling again."
Chris groaned, every now and then, High Voltage would attempt to escape or lash out at them. "Not again…"
"Can you fetch Sparkles? I'm going to see what set them off this time." The former show host was able to understand their shrieks and growls, so if there was a reason for their rebellion, she would find it and snuff it out.
Chris nodded. "Right away!"
As he left the office, Diane turned her attention to the fish tank, where two pairs of glowing yellow eyes were sneering at her. "Don't give me that look." She approached the tank. "As you two seem to forget-"
Bang!
Her fists slammed against the glass, sending them both fleeing. "You belong to me now! This little game of escape you two keep playing is just going to make things worse for you, or can you not comprehend something so simple?"
The older one hissed at them, no matter how much she punished the duo for their defiance, they still fought back against her control.
It got on her nerves, Diane wasn't a fan of her pets rebelling so much, especially when she was so close to completing her goal.
"I'm back!" Chris sang as he reentered the office, bringing a hesitant Sparkles with them.
"Do I have to?" Sparkles grumbled. "Not like they quit rebelling no matter how much you-" One glare from Diane got him to change his tune. "Okay okay, alright!"
It only took a few seconds for him to decipher the unintelligible growls from the former dancing duo. "So, what's their deal?" Chris questioned.
"She's upset-" He pointed to Barb. "Because her kid saw a friend of hers or something." Sparkles crossed his arms. "Can I go now?"
"Fine."
He left the office without another word. "So, you saw Ari didn't you?" Diane turned back to the fish tank, staring at Juniper, who flinched at her gaze. "Hoping your dear friend would still care about you despite looking like her worst fear?"
Juniper hissed back, eyes burning with hate. "That could spell trouble." Chris noted.
"Indeed, but not to worry Chris." She smirked, already coming up with a dark plan. "Their spirits will break soon enough."
She always won in the end, and after this scheme… there would be no more acts of rebellion to get in the way of her plans. It was amusing at first, seeing their hopeless attempts at regaining their freedom, but Diane had better things to do now.
One way or another, she will get what she wants, even if it results in her hands getting bloody once more.
AN: I have been waiting AGES to reveal that little tidbit... That Steven and Sally knew a certain someone... I left a few hints here and there but it felt SO good to finally reveal!
And I even added an extra tidbit, which is related to QOTW but we'll get to that later.
This chapter is just half lore, half feels, esp Ari feels : ( I want to give her a break but I never do. At least she managed to confront her fears... for now.
Writing Sparkles lowkey hating his job is hilarious, he is SO like "I regret my career choices rn" the more he's at Sycorax XD
Di was totally evil laughing at the end of the chapter, she totally was.
Now for QOTW! This one is theory time-ish
QOTW: Why do you guys think the real reason Steven and Sally hated the mysterious man in the photo albums?