Chapter 28: Wanderers
"We promise to take good care of your friends...slash, kids." A nurse said as she led Callie, Marie, Adstrum, Arisara, Jack's parents, and Chives out of the hospital. "We just can't permit you to stay here until they heal. It wouldn't be healthy for you guys."
"Ah, yes… That's quite understandable…" Chives replied.
"You there. Girl with the hoodie… You were pretty impressive with helping out with the medical equipment."
"Wh-who me?" Arisara got nervous.
The nurse nodded in response.
"You were kinda like a doctor… how do kids these days do that?"
"...Uhhh… i-internet…"
"Go to med school, kid. You got talent."
Arisara seemed flustered.
"Okay. Please take good care of them!" Callie yelled as the nurse walked back into the hospital.
"So what now, guys?" Adstrum asked as he put an arm around Callie.
"I can't help but worry about them…" Marie sighed.
"Don't worry about them, Marie. Let's go do something to take our mind of them for now. They'll be fine." He started walking and looked around.
"I guess you are right… Come on, Arisara."
"Oh, coming" Arisara jogged to catch up to them.
"So, Chives?" Callie looked up at the butler.
"Yes?" Chives looked at Callie.
"What is there to do in this town?"
"Eleede is famous for our lit up nights. It's a strange mystery, but firefly Inklings magically light up in the evenings. Provided if they are healthy enough for it."
"Oh, that sounds pretty. And yeah, Cici did light up a few times. She shines pretty." Callie smiled.
"Ah, yes. There is usually a Festival of the Sea this time of year. Of course, that will be where you will be performing."
"Oh no...Jack and Cici will miss it…" Callie sighed.
"Well no. It lasts until the end of the month. My lady hasn't ever been back to one since… the accident…"
"Oh...okay...um…" Callie thought for a moment. "So...to take our minds off them...um...what else is there here?"
Before Chives could answer Adstrum ran ahead. "OOH! WHAT IS THIS!?" He was headed for a building with a sign in front reading 'Human Museum.'
"Human? Oh, right. The ancient monkeys." Arisara rubbed her head
"Isn't that the species that was alive before us?" Callie asked. "Also, what's a monkey?"
"That's what my…. Caregiver told me… So I haven't a clue."
"Addie seems excited." Callie smiled at the inky black inkling as he run up to the entrance.
"Come on, guys!" He yelled at them. "This should be interesting!"
"Heh, I have never seen this side of him" Marie started walking toward the museum.
"He reminds me of...well, me!" Callie smiled widely. "He's so excited. It's making me excited. It's contagious!" She started bouncing a bit.
Arisara paused for a bit, shuddered, and looked around. She seemed wary of something.
"You all have fun. Mariana and I are going to go with Chives." Mr. Trench said as he and his wife walked off.
"I shall get the tea and cookies." Chives followed after them.
"You okay, Ari?" Callie asked as they went inside, Adstrum immediately looking at all the things on display.
"Yeah…" She jogged to Callie.
"Okay." She smiled and hugged the octoling as they caught up to Adstrum and Marie, who had stopped in front of a fossil. Adstrum was looking at it while Marie read the plaque in front of it.
"'A 12,000-year-old fossil of a creature with an odd internal skeleton. Its small skull indicates the creature was likely primitive with little intelligence. This specimen appears to have been fossilized in the middle of some kind of ritual.'" Marie said aloud before raising an eyebrow at the fossil.
"Skeleton?" Callie asked as she walked up. "Internal skeleton? What's the point of that?"
"These kinda make my skin crawl…" Arisara walked around the bone pile.
"Ritual?" Adstrum laughed. "It's obviously playing a video game. I hope it won."
"I'm still confused. Why did they have bones? It just seems like they would hinder them."
"They were a lot stronger and durable… and also sooo much heavier" Arisara replied.
"Oh. Well, I bet they couldn't do this." Callie said as she did a perfect split, a smirk on her face.
"But we can all do that…" Marie raised her brow.
"True…" She stood back up.
"The hell?" Adstrum said as he looked at a different display, this one showing strange thin strands of long fur. "Is this what they had on their heads?"
"It's labeled as… 'Hair.'" Callie read the plaque.
"Think they might have been as fluffy as Judd?" Marie asked.
"Doubt it." Adstrum replied. "Wonder if they had control over their… 'hair'."
"Maybe?" Callie shrugged as she looked around some more, her eyes falling on a strange bag with pipes sticking out of it. "What? Is that supposed to be a human instrument?"
"'How this device could make music is a mystery to us. But judging from the rips and tears found on this thing, it may appear that even the humans might not have liked it as much, either.'" Adstrum read the plaque. "I'm sure some must have liked it."
"Isn't that just a party horn?" Arisara stared at a small birthday blower.
"Looks like it." Callie nodded and looked at her cousin. "You find something, Marie?"
"It's an egg…. Do humans lay eggs?" Marie thought about it.
"Um...maybe?" Callie shrugged.
"I think they ate eggs as a source of nourishment." Adstrum said. "At least according to what I learned in school." He looked around and saw a room labeled 'Music.' "Huh. They have an area dedicated to what they listened to?"
"OH! Maybe that could be helpful for us, Callie" Marie seemed excited.
"Huh? How? We already have our own form of music." She felt Marie drag her toward the area. "But I guess we could find something that might inspire us." She smiled at seeing her cousin's excitement. "Yeah! Let's go look!"
Arisara followed behind them.
Adstrum was about to follow them when a different signed caught his eye. He looked at it and smiled widely at seeing the word 'Weapons' over an entrance to a different room.
Arisara looked at a device with many button like keys.
"It looks a lot like Marina's weird guitar, doesn't it?" Callie stood next to her and pressed her finger on one of the keys, a soft note playing.
"Yeah, but it sounds like something Aria would play."
"Interesting." Callie poked a few more of the keys and smiled. "This is kinda fun. Try it."
Arisara pressed a few keys, making a short melody.
"It sounds pretty" Marie smiled.
"It does." Callie nodded before her attention was grabbed by something else.
Marie and Arisara watched her walk to a brass tube with one end much wider than the other, and it was twisted in many strange angles.
"Um, how does this thing work?" She spoke into the larger opening. "Hello?"
The two shrugged and read the sign. As they stood there reading it Callie kept examining the strange device, eventually getting an idea as she found the smaller opening.
"I wonder if…" She blew into the mouthpiece, making a large horn sound come out of it and making both Marie and Arisara jump.
"Callie! You don't know where that's been!" Marie covered her mouth
Arisara was stuck on the ceiling, the small octopus shaking.
"Sorry." Callie said as she held back a laugh. "You two should see the looks on your faces." She looked up. "Sorry, Ari!"
Arisara calmed down again and got back down.
"What else is there?" Callie looked around again.
"Hey, where's Adstrum?" Marie asked looking around for him.
"Huh? Addie?" Callie noticed he was gone as well. "I didn't notice him walk off. He must have seen something that caught his eye."
"Hey, I've seen Aria play this before" Arisara walked to a large instrument with many strings and three pedals.
"Oh! What is it?" Callie ran up.
"Something called a haarrp? Or a string instrument according to Aria."
"How does it work?" Callie reached her arms toward it but Marie pulled her back.
"Let's see…"Arisara sat down on a chair.
She played a soft and simple melody by plucking the strings.
"Very pretty." Callie applauded.
"How do you know how to play?" Marie asked.
"Well as a…. Grunt for Octavio… I was supposed to keep his daughter safe… She played it often when I watched her. So I guess I sorta learned some."
"Wait. You babysat? And Aria is a queen now…" Callie thought for a moment. "How old are you?"
"I am 17… it was not too long ago… Like 2 or 3 years ago."
"Um...then how old is Aria?"
"28."
"You babysat a 25 or 26 year old octoling?"
"Bodyguard… not babysitter…To prevent agent 1, 2, or 3 from harming her. Though she would have just killed us all. She had, like, no control over her water powers."
"Oh…" Callie looked at Marie.
"Yikes…" Marie looked back at her.
"Um...okay. That's interesting. Glad she got the hang of her powers." Callie smiled nervously.
"I'm glad she's not evil." Arisara sighed.
"Us too." Callie nodded. "You see anything that interests you, Marie?"
"What's that thing?" Marie walked to a thing that had metal rods of various sizes. She took the hammer and struck one, the sound of a bell coming from it.
"Oh, interesting. It's like that wind chime that we had on our porch. Except a lot louder!" Callie smiled.
"Heh, I kinda like this" Marie struck another one.
"Fun, huh? This place is great." Callie clapped.
"... This place is owned by…. You know what, I am not surprised. I would be surprised if it was someone else…" Arisara folded the Museum map and put it away.
"Who owns it?" Callie asked as she walked over to an area full of more modern looking kinds of devices.
"Cici's grandfather. It says he collected things for fun and so the museum was born by his hoarding…."
"Guess the apple doesn't fall that far from the tree, huh? I think Cici has a very old looking phone in her clothing chest." Callie replied as she picked up a strange circular object.
"Maybe it was a gift from him? I don't know" Marie shrugged.
"Well, he hoarded some interesting things." She pressed a button and the object opened up like a clam. "Man, humans had some weird things."
"He was an archaeologist, and collected his finding thanks to his grandmother's findings on how to produce silk cloth from spiders." Arisara read from the brochure.
"OH! Spider silk. Addie would find that interesting. He thinks spiders are cool." Callie said as she wondered how the thing she was holding worked. A friendly urchin employee came up and helped her out.
"Hmm… Didn't Cici say her cloth is made from spider silk?" Marie tilted her head.
"Where did she get the silk from?" Callie asked as the employee placed a strange flat circle with a hole in the middle into the device. He then gave her headphones and plugged them into it.
"You guys didn't see that huge spider in the ancient grove? That is the only spider I have seen, and its web was everywhere." Arisara pointed out.
"Oh. Hope Jack didn't hurt it when he went to get Cici from there."
"I don't really know. We can't really ask them about it now."
"True…" Callie sighed before music started playing from the headphones. She looked at the device in her hands and saw the disc spinning from a small plastic window. "They needed these discs to listen to music? We just have the music on our phones now. Man, humans were primitive, huh?"
"Hey, it's not their faults. I'm sure they did their best with what they had." Marie shrugged.
"Yeah. But they also use discs to play games like we do. They must not be that far off."
"For all we know they could have either been very very stupid or very very intelligent."
"True." Callie put the device down.
"So what do you guys wanna do now? I mean, we have, like, a day? "
"Anything you want to do?" Callie looked at her cousin.
"Hmmm… nothing that I can think of."
"Well, why don't we all go get food tonight? There's got to be a nice restaurant around here."
"Let's see what Adstrum wants to eat" Arisara suggested, "Where is he anyways?"
"I don't know. Addie!?" Callie yelled and looked around. "Addie!" She ran back to the main entrance.
Arisara and Marie ran after her.
"Oh, I think I found him." Callie smiled and pointed to the 'Weapons' exhibit.
"I guess that makes sense." Marie smiled.
"I wonder what he found." Callie walked in and found him taking pictures of many different weapons, but he stopped and stared at one with an interactive function.
"I like what I see." Adstrum smiled and looked at the display. It was a large fuel canister with a hose attached and a nozzle with a handle attached to the end. He pressed the button on the display and a stream of fire shot out of the nozzle.
"Woah!" Callie blinked.
"That could make anyone crispy…" Arisara muttered, "Humans are scary…"
Adstrum released the button and the fire stopped, the smoke and heat rising out of vents in the top of the display that led outside. He smiled widely.
"Oh, he's got that look on his face. The gears in his head are turning." Callie smiled.
"I like. I want. I make." He took a few pictures of it.
"Hey! Adstrum, wanna get some food?" Arisara poked him, "Earth to Adstrum?"
"Huh?" He looked at the octoling. "Oh, sure. I could go for some eats." He looked around and took a few more pictures. "I'm craving a burger."
"Me too!" Callie grabbed his arm. "Let's go somewhere and get food."
"Something warm sounds nice." Marie smiled at Arisara.
"I can go for anything" Arisara followed her out.
"But...I wanna keep looking…" Adstrum whined as Callie started pulling him out.
"You need food, Addie. You can come back tomorrow if you want." She stopped trying to drag him out and instead picked him up over her shoulder.
"What the-?!" His eyes widened.
"I'm a roller main, remember?" She giggled and carried him out.
"Come on guys! We found a good place!" Marie waved at them.
"Coming!" Callie ran with the inky black inkling over her shoulder.
Author's Note: And here is the next chapter! Thank you all for waiting! Hope you like this chapter a lot and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thank you Gajesteel, The Bowser Monster, and Agent Cherry for leaving reviews. I really appreciate them guys.
Well, here is the next chapter, Agent Cherry. Hope you like it. And thanks for the offer, but I don't think we will add in any new characters to this fic at the moment.
I'll see you all next week with another chapter! Hope you all like this one!
