Chapter Two: Incident Report
Min Min woke up a little from the simple sight of tears reflecting the moonlight in Mechanica's face. "H-Huh? You okay, Mechy?" She immediately became quite concerned.
"N-N-Not exactly..." She sniffled. She held onto the rim of her mech's bucket nervously, like it was the only thing keeping her safe.
"What happened?" Min Min bent down a little, putting her hand on Mechanica's.
"L-Lola came to see me a-and... I-I dunno exactly, she j-just... She was acting w-weird... "
Min Min peered into the darkness all around, as if expecting to see Lola out there somewhere. "Okay, just come inside, we'll take care of you." She made way to one side of the hallway and allowed Mechanica's mech to pass by her and into the living room.
Mechanica switched off her mech, leaving it by the side of the sofa, and crawled out of it. She accepted a blanket from Min Min and curled up in it, holding her knees to her chest, still sniffing.
"So Lola turned up at your warehouse...?" Min Min reiterated, seating herself opposite Mechanica on the other sofa.
She nodded. "I-It was about an h-hour ago, I think. I-I took a while to get here in my m-mech..."
"And what did she do...?"
Her shoulders raised uncertainty. "I-I'm not even s-sure, really. She just k-kinda grabbed me and d-did a thing ... A-and then it looked like there were two of me?"
"Two of you?" Min Min raised an eyebrow. She was still half asleep, admittedly, and that was a strange thing to try and understand.
"W-Well... She did th-this cloudy thing?" Mechanica waved her hand in front of her face, as if to mimic the steam effect she had seen. "A-And then it was just me ."
"...I don't get it?" Min Min muttered.
"Th-There were two of me. L-Like all that smoke came up a-and then..." She sighed. "...I don't know. I don't know what I saw... It all happened so quickly, a-and it was dark."
"It's okay." Min Min reassured her. "Do you wanna stay here for tonight? We can talk about all this more with Ribs in the morning." In all honesty, a big reason she was saying this was simply due to being really tired and eager to get back to bed. She cared immensely for Mechanica, of course! ...But it was really late.
Mechanica nodded. "I-I'll try to remember things more clearly in the morning..." She let out a heavy yawn.
"I'll get you another blanket and you can sleep on the sofa, if you want. I'll get you a proper pillow, too - those sequin cushion things Ribs puts everywhere suck to sleep on."
True to her word, Min Min arranged a bit more comfort for Mechanica and assured her she'd just be a shout away if needed. And with that, she returned upstairs and got right back into bed with Ribbon Girl, who continued to sleep soundly without a single stir.
"Munch munch, crunch crunch... Munch munch, crunch crunch..." Ribbon Girl mumbled as she hopped her way down the stairs the next morning. "Gotta munch, gotta cr-"
She paused in her step as she entered into the living room on her way to the kitchen, her eyes meeting Mechanica's, as the latter sat up on the sofa with an open book in her hands - one she had brought with her the night before..
"...Hey, Mechy!" Ribbon Girl got out as her eyes ran around the room in confusion.
"Why were you saying that...?" Mechanica looked at her, in just as much confusion.
"Uhhh... I dunno." Ribbon Girl admitted, a little embarrassed. "It's just kinda a thing I do when I go for breakfast, I guess..." She cleared her throat. "So, um, when did you get here...?"
"Oh? I thought Min Min would have explained..."
"She's still asleep." Ribbon Girl shrugged. "Did something happen last night?"
"Kinda..." Mechanica looked down, a little uneasy about it all. "Min Min said I could sleep here and we'd all talk about it once she's up."
"Ah." Ribbon Girl nodded. "Want some breakfast, then?"
"Sure!" She smiled. "Gotta munch, gotta crunch."
Ribbon Girl groaned, embarrassed. "You are not allowed to tell Min Min about that."
About an hour later, Min Min came downstairs too and headed right for the kitchen, where the other two were already sat. "Sup Mechy!" She greeted, now well-rested, before taking her seat and grabbing a few pancakes from the stack Ribbon Girl had prepared. "You sleep okay?"
"Mmhmm!" She nodded in return. "I'm really sorry for waking you up..."
"Nah, don't worry 'bout it." Min Min smiled, squeezing a bunch of syrup onto her pancakes. "You clear your head a little bit? I couldn't really make out what you were saying much last night."
"Mm..." She nodded. "I'm still not super sure on what happened either, really. It doesn't make much sense to me how I remember it."
"Can one of you fill me in on this...?" Ribbon Girl added quietly, still in the dark.
"Mmm! Full story, Mechy." Min Min motioned for, putting some pancake into her mouth.
"Okay, well..." She took a sip of her milk and then set the glass down. "I fell asleep while building something and then I woke up around... I dunno, but it was early in the morning. And there was someone banging on my door, so I went to open it and Lola was there."
"Lola...?" Ribbon Girl repeated. "How did she know your address?"
"Um... I'm not sure, actually." Mechanica took a moment to think to herself - it was something she hadn't actually considered until just now. How odd. "Well, she said she was just passing by and wanted to show me a new circus trick or something. And then she grabbed me..."
Ribbon Girl looked solemnly at Mechanica, a twinge of worry in her eye. "...And then?"
Mechanica shrugged. "...I don't know. From what I remember, she did this thing where she kinda..." She paused again, then sighed. "I really don't remember it right. It was this weird thing with smoke and then, like..." She shrugged.
"I don't like it." Min Min mumbled. "I was just beginning to feel comfortable around Lola and then she pulls something like this."
"W-Well I don't think she necessarily meant bad! I-It was just weird..." Mechanica cleared her throat, uneasily remembering something. "...She did threaten me, though."
"Threaten you?!" Ribbon Girl gasped, leaning forward. "Threaten you how?"
"Sh-She just said if I tried to follow her she'd... Hurt me, I guess."
"Gosh." Ribbon Girl looked wide-eyed at the table. "Well I am not letting her get away with that."
"Let's beat her up." Min Min casually suggested.
" Min. " Ribbon Girl sighed.
"Kidding!" She assured. "Mostly, anyway. What do you think we should do?"
Ribbon Girl thought for a moment. She wasn't exactly the most confrontational kind of person herself, and Min Min still had something of an underlying fear of clowns to her, so neither of them would really be best to address Lola straight-up. "Hm.. Maybe we should tell Coyle? She's rather protective of you, after all."
Mechanica shrugged. "I-I guess so... I just don't want Lola to get into too much trouble."
"Coyle isn't exactly the easiest person to get talking to you, though." Min Min added, running her finger into some of the syrup on her place and licking it off. "Even for Mechy, she's still pretty 'your-problems-aren't-my-problems'."
"She's trying to be better, I think." Mechanica smiled softly. "I think she wants to help more than she does, she just doesn't like doing so. But I've been helping her set up an open-hours kinda thing? It should be in a couple hours, actually."
"That should be fun." Min Min laughed to herself. "I can't imagine she likes having open-hours."
"She doesn't." Mechanica admitted, giggling a little.. "It's only once a week and she's been doing it for less than a month, but she's complained about it a lot and tried to give up on it about a hundred times."
"Well, she's still our best bet." Ribbon Girl sighed, taking Min Min's empty plate over to the sink to watch it out. "We can leave shortly, then. I suppose it's better to get there before anyone else does, or she'll be less likely to listen to us."
About a half hour later the three of them pooled into Min Min's car and headed off to the ARMS Lab. According to Mechanica, the first few open-hours sessions took place at the tip of a skyscraper in the middle of downtown during rush hour. It was clearly all in an attempt to discourage people from coming to see her, but it quickly became too much effort for her to have it anywhere else but the ARMS Lab anyway.
The trio arrived and Mechanica brought them in as guests, thankfully bypassing the visitor paperwork they would have otherwise had to do - yet another one of Coyle's discouragement attempts. Mechanica made a brief stop to pick up Coyle's mail for her, as she had a tendency to miss it herself, and then they headed to the designated area of the Lab where they were set to meet with Coyle. They soon came to a smart wooden door with a foggy glass window embedded in it that read ' Dr. Coyle's Babysitting Department '. With a roll of her eyes, Ribbon Girl gave the door a knock.
"Y'know I technically have another fourteen seconds before I open..." Coyle grumbled from within.
Min Min sighed and opened the door anyway, allowing the three of them to enter. In here was a rather classy office - large mahogany bookcases lined with leather-bound novels, a series of world maps neatly pinned up on the wall, a small set up of tea and coffee equipment in the corner... It was the kind of thing you'd expect from a college professor who still had their sanity. Not a bad clean up, Coyle.
There was a tidy desk at the center of the room and a large and comfortable chair positioned behind it, where Coyle was currently sat, her feet up on the desk as she leaned back on it. "God, there are three of you?" She grunted, immediately uninterested. "I need to start charging for this."
Mechanica approached her. "I picked up your mail for you..." She set the stack of envelopes down on her desk gently and then stepped back to be with Ribbon Gir and Min Min.
Coyle picked up the letters. "Y'know today's your day off, right?" She flicked through them lazily and set them back down.
"I-I know, I'm here because... Um..." She nervously played with the bottom of her shirt in her hands.
"Something happened last night." Ribbon Girl spoke for her. "We figured it would be best to talk to you about it."
"Fine, fine, take a seat." Coyle sighed.
The three of them looked around, before Ribbon Girl spoke again. "There... Are no seats here..."
"Oh yeah, forgot about that." It wasn't a coincidence, really. Who'd want to stick around for long if you had to stand the whole time, right? "So what do you want? Please make it something important for once. I had Ninjara here last week complaining about a backache and Misango the week before sayin' Spring Man got stuck down a well. Neither of which actually mattered to me." She leant back again. "Well, actually, it was Springtron that got him down there so I guess the well thing was kinda my fault..."
"Mechanica got a visit last night." Min Min began for them. "It was probably like two or three AM and-"
A knock on the door interrupted her. Coyle rolled her eyes and dramatically sighed. "Why do so many of you have to come to these stupid things? Learn to deal with your own stupid problems. " She muttered, before raising her voice. "Yeah, yeah, come in already..."
The door swung open and the four of them were met with Lola's smiling face. "Honk honk, Coyle."
"Ew, you're in the clown stuff again? No thanks, bye bye."
"Hey, I got stuff I need to talk about!" Lola glared, before turning to the three by her side. "Oh, hey girls." Ribbon Girl glared at her, while Mechanica seemed to slip a little behind her for safety. Min Min seemed just about ready for a fight without any delay.
"Okay, fiiiine, what do you want then?" Coyle sighed. "Actually, let these three go first, they arrived before you."
"Uhhh, it's fine, she can go first." Ribbon Girl mumbled, hoping it'd be something quick and pointless so Lola could get out of there before Coyle asked them for their own report.
"Okey dokey." Lola shrugged, turning back to Coyle. "Mummy came to see me after my circus show last night and uhhhh..." She bit her lip. "Well, he's said before that he had some sorta... Side-effect? For the resurrection stuff?"
"Oh, he has loads." Coyle replied, sitting herself up a bit more. "Raisin' the dead doesn't come without its flaws. This better not be about his blood pressure, though."
Lola shook her head. "He's said before that there was a risk of, like, a rage-state or something...?"
Coyle's eyebrow raised. "Yeah, he became what we referred to as 'feral' a couple times shortly after his resurrection. Starts fights, doesn't communicate right... What you'd expect from a zombie, really. But one of those fast ones that are super violent - not those boring slow ones. Those movies always suck." She gave a big sigh and leant forward, taking a notebook and a pen from her desk. "You think he entered that state again last night, then?"
"Well, he hit me." Lola mumbled. "Seemed pretty ordinary before that. Oh! But his ARMS were out even though he didn't have a mask on."
The three girls to the side each seemed taken aback by that detail. Coyle, who had been scribbling Lola's story into the notebook, paused and looked up at her. "What do you mean he didn't have his mask on? You can't put your ARMS out without a mask on. That's ARMS 101."
" I know. " Lola rummaged through her colourful handbag, which was surprisingly deep. "But that's what I saw."
"Then you saw it wrong." Coyle insisted.
"Well, my vision was a lil blurry after the hit, so I thought I did see it wrong." She pulled her hand out of the handbag. "But then I got camera footage from my security people." She extended her hand to Coyle, attempting to pass her a- "Huh?" She blinked at the rubber duck she was holding her palm. "Sorry, this isn't it!"
Coyle glared, unamused, as Lola began to rummage through her handbag again.
"Ah, here it is!" She pulled a rather long tennis racket out. "...Wait, no, this isn't it either."
"Lola..." Coyle sighed.
She removed a trophy shaped like herself, then a fully prepared turkey dinner, then a bowling ball...
"Y'know, I've got stuff I wanted to do today..." Coyle continued to glare, impatiently. The other three to the side of the room were equally as tired of this gag as she was by now.
"...Ah!" Lola smiled as she removed a small USB drive and handed it to Coyle.
" Finally. " Coyle grumbled as she took the USB. "If this thing starts spraying bubbles the second I plug it in, I swear... " She picked up a laptop from out of another desk draw and paused, looking around her desk curiously. "...Hm." She then settled on pushing the large globe she had on it to the floor, so she had space to set the laptop down.
Mechanica caught the globe just before it collided with the wooden floor paneling, and gently placed it to one side. Oddly enough, it had a series of red X's and circles dotted around it on various major cities. Never change, Coyle.
With the USB in the laptop, Coyle skimmed through the footage and found the point Lola had talked about - Lola reclines back in her chair, begins to yawn, and Master Mummy's ARMS extend quickly and equip some Buffs. "...What?" Coyle muttered, pausing and replaying the footage a couple times.
"See?" Lola shrugged. "Is that a thing of the resurrection orrrr?"
"No, it's not..." She glared at it. She hit play and watched the rest of the scene. Mummy grabs Lola, brings her in close, and then-
Coyle's eyes grew wide. "What the hell was that? " Once again, she began to replay it over and over. "He... He shapeshifted?!"
"I guess so?" Lola shrugged. "I had no idea what to make of that. He got all smokey and then I was just lookin' at another me."
Mechanica's eyes widened. "C-Can I see that?" She approached the desk cautiously as Coyle spun the laptop around for her. She, alongside Ribbon Girl and Min Min, watched the end of the clip where Mummy had changed into Lola.
Min Min blinked rapidly. She turned back to Mechanica, remembering what she had said the night before. 'Two of me'...
Mechanica turned back to Min Min and Ribbon Girl, fear struck across her face. "Th-That's what I saw!" She pleaded. "That's the same thing Lola did!"
"I what now?" Lola asked, confused.
Min Min turned to face her and addressed Coyle. "Lola came to Mechanica's place last night and grabbed her, then-"
"No I didn't!" Lola interrupted. "I was dealing with that last night!" She insisted, motioning to the video on the laptop.
" Mechanica said... " Min Min continued. "That Lola grabbed her and then got all that steam stuff in her face, and then there was another Mechanica in Lola's place."
Coyle leant back on her chair again. "Mummy grabs Lola then becomes Lola ... Then that Lola grabs Mechanica and becomes Mechanica... "
"Wait, hold on." Ribbon Girl paused. "Are we saying there's someone going around shapeshifting into people...?"
"Hm." Coyle thought to herself. "Well, two's a coincidence and three's a pattern. Until we hear another report of an encounter like this we should assume-"
Another knock came on the door.
"Ugh, really? Fine, come in." Coyle sighed dramatically.
Kid Cobra peered into the room. "Yo, whddap guys!"
"What are you here for?" Coyle got straight to the point, unwilling to bother with greetings.
"Yeah, uh, do you think it's cool if I let a bro run over my ARMS for a live stream? I told my fans it'd be a thing for one millie subs, but I didn't think I'd actually be getting there so quickly." Everyone in the room seemed to roll their eyes at this, but Kid Cobra didn't really notice. "Like, I guess it'd be cool? But my ARMS are snakes, and that doesn't really survive being squashed as well as, like, ribbons or bracelets or..."
"Does this have anything to do with the shape shifter?" Coyle asked, bored.
"The what?"
"Did you run into any other fighters last night?"
"Uhhh, no I-"
"Did anyone get all smokey and turn into an ugly snake?"
"...No?"
"Then I don't care - go home." Coyle shooed him away.
"B-But!"
"GOOOO HOMEEEE!" She insisted, until he sadly slipped back out the door. "Ugh. I am so done with these open-hours. Never againnnn." She turned the laptop back around to herself and rewatched the clip. "Okay, so, we need a timeline here. Master Mummy takes Lola's face and then Lola takes Mechanica's. Was that the real Mummy or...?"
"I could try calling him, I guess?" Ribbon Girl asked.
"Wait wait wait, hold on..." Coyle stopped her, as she grabbed that stack of mail from earlier. "I saw a letter from Mummy here... Ah!" She withdrew a purple envelope that bore the title 'Master Mummy - Incident Report'. "See? Smart Mummy, writing in instead of showing up. Less hassle that way."
"'Cept you didn't even read it 'til now." Min Min muttered under her breath.
Coyle ran here eyes over the paper quickly. "Hm... Okay... Huh. "
While Coyle was busy, Lola turned her head back to Mechanica. "You okay?"
"Hm? I-I think so?"
"I mean after last night. I-I swear that wasn't me! I would never do that."
"O-Oh! It's okay..." Mechanica smiled softly. "I'm happy to hear it wasn't really you, i-it just gave me a bit of a fright."
Coyle put down the letter. "Okay, timeline: A strange woman turns up at Mummy's door in the early night. He doesn't recognise her, so we could very well assume that that's the shapeshifter's base form. That or she nabbed some non-League fighters before going after us." She picked up her pen again and began adding all of this to her notebook. "The woman attacks Mummy and then copies him. He didn't have his mask on at the time, so when he got copied she copied him unmasked. But she still had her own mask on under that Mummy disguise, so that's why Mummy had his ARMS out like that."
"Wait, so it wasn't the real Mummy who came to see me?" Lola asked.
"Evidently not, no. Though we don't know his side of things in detail... Hm. We need to speak to Mummy more about this." She put her pencil down and sighed. "Woman takes Mummy's face, then takes Lola's, then takes Mechanica's. Now we just need to know where she went next..."
"Well, why did she go in that order?" Ribbon Girl posed.
"Hmmm." Coyle bit her lip. "I guess if you wanted to get into Lola's dressing room without suspicion, you'd go as one of her closest friends." Lola and Mummy were pretty close friends outside of ARMS fighting, after all.
"And Lola would be someone Mechanica wouldn't really mind seeing turn up in the middle of the night either." Min Min added.
"Right. So where would she go in Mechanica's form?" Coyle returned.
Mechanica shrugged nervously, turning back to the two beside her. "I-I guess I'm closest to Ribbon Girl and Min Min...?"
Min Min squinted at her. "You are the real Mechanica, right?"
"Yesss!" She pleaded. That much was evident, in fairness, because Mechanica had arrived in her mech. "But, I mean, I went straight to you two and you didn't see another me anywhere, right?"
"She could have gone to you, Coyle." Ribbon Girl mumbled. "I suppose you'd be the next closest."
Coyle scratched her head. "I'd be surprised if she knew my address, though. I was in bed by then - I need my beauty sleep too." She sighed deeply. "And I didn't see her, sooo..."
Min Min's eyes widened slowly. "Uh, Coyle, do you have those eye scanner lock thingies in the Lab?"
"Hm? Retinal scanners? Yeah, I installed 'em ages ago. Figured they'd be cool but they're a pain to use for every damn door. Plus no one likes the light shined in their eyes every morning." She leant back on her chair again, casually. "Most of us just use the key cards."
"Dude?!" Min Min stared at her, bewildered that she could be so casual over a major security flaw. "Mechanica works for you! "
"...And?" Coyle stared back, unsure what her point was.
"AND SOMEONE JUST COPIED HER EYES?"
Coyle's face fell quickly as her eyes sprung wide open. " SHIT! "