A/N: And we're back people! Part two of Life is Abominable Episode Four: Hostiles! I'm not going to lie, I've planned so much for this episode and I got something in mind that's going to probably make some of you gasp, and others might cry too. I'm not going to give it away though, because that would give away what was meant to happen. But anyways, back to today's update. Enjoy!
Previously on Life is Abominable...
While on board a train to the Dahe village, Max has a horrifying vision with Rachel Amber, who tells her that there was somebody else involved with her murder and when the time comes she will have to make one final choice. Dr. Zara has caught onto Dave's treachery and discovered he released Jin, as well as provide him with a bag of weapons as well as the only physical copy of her mental health records. Mr. Burnish has also requested that he be sent a digital copy of Zara's record as he starts to have regrets and doubts about hiring her for his team. Max and the others have made their way to the Dahe Village after hitchhiking on board a cargo train to search for Jin so they can travel along the Yangtze River. Now, Max and Yi wander the farmer's market to try and find their friend as well as shop for supplies to help continue their journey to the Himalayas...
The Dahe Village. 10:36 AM
Not even noticing Yi was still inside the Polaroid Originals store, Max continued to browse around the farmer's market until she stopped at a stand that sold some delicious looking red apples as well as some other fruits and water bottles. She purchased about twelve bottles of water, and twenty apples and placed the plastic shopping bag inside her camera bag alongside her Polaroid.
"Guess that's it for the food" Max said to herself before she turned to her left and saw another stand that sold sky lanterns. She couldn't help but be mesmerized by the different sky lanterns that were on display and for sale. A lot of them had some beautiful designs painted onto them, and others simply were blank or had Chinese symbols that meant certain things painted on them.
"See anything you like, miss?" the merchant who was running the stand asked Max politely.
"Just looking for now. But, I'll let you know if I do" Max told him. He nodded and went to tending to another customer, allowing the brunette to browse his stand as she pleased. Max then noticed six different lanterns that had beautifully landscapes painted on them. She then took note that each of these landscapes were places she and Chloe had been to during their journey to get Everest home so far. On these six lanterns were highly detailed paintings of Shanghai, the Yellow Mountains, the Gobi Desert, and the Dahe Village. The other two were places they had yet to see on their journey, the Leshan Giant Buddha statue, and Mt. Everest. Max then got an idea and turned to the clerk that spoke to her before.
"Excuse me. I'd like to buy these lanterns, the one with all those really pretty landscapes on them" said Max. The merchant smiled and stood up to remove the lanterns Max had asked for from the hooks on his stand's roof and placed them inside a plastic shopping bag. Max then took out her money and handed it to the clerk after he had told her how much they would cost.
"Have a good day, miss. I hope you enjoy those lanterns" the merchant told her.
"Thank you. Same to you, sir" Max politely said before leaving the stand to continue looking around for Jin. After a few seconds, Max realized that Yi wasn't with her.
"Wait a minute, where the Hell is Yi?" she asked herself out loud.
"Right here!" Yi answered, which made Max jump where she stood and let out a loud gasp.
"Oh, sorry. Did I scare you?" asked Yi.
"Yeah. Jeebus, you almost gave me a damn heart attack, Yi" Max told her, her hand resting over her chest where her heart was.
"Sorry about that. But anyways, any sign of Jin?" Yi asked.
"No, not yet. I was able to grab some food and water to last us a little while longer until we get to the Himalayas though. What about you?" Max replied.
"Same. I got distracted by something which was when I lost you" said Yi, lying about staying behind in the Polaroid store to buy Max the SX-70 she planned to give to her as a friendship present as well as a thank-you gift for taking her on this fantastical journey with them.
"Okay, we'll just have to double our efforts. I'm going to go check in with Chloe, Everest, and Peng and take these supplies to put them in Chloe's backpack. Think you can keep looking for just a little while longer?" Max asked.
"Yeah I can" Yi confirmed with her friend before Max gave her a quick hug and started walking back in the other direction to rendezvous with Everest, Peng, and Chloe.
Back with Chloe and Peng, they kept on looking around for Jin while still remaining in the area Max had told them to stay in. Peng sat on top of Everest who was still clad in his Yak disguise that he and Yi had put together for him, while Chloe remained on the street keeping a close out for anyone who looked remotely like Jin.
"See anything, Chloe?" asked the nine year old.
"Nope. I don't see a single sign of his slicked back hair that's probably got a crap-ton of product swimming around in it" Chloe joked, which made Peng let out a giggle.
"Glad to know you think that's funny. But seriously though, I'm worried about Jin. It scares me to think if Zara got him" Chloe said, her smile disappearing from her face as horrible thoughts of Jin being tortured and beaten by the sadistic woman flowed throughout her mind. Chloe then turned to her left to see the same man from before who was herding the other yaks from earlier approach Everest and stare at him with an odd look on his face.
"Oh, your yak is odd looking" he said. Peng then hopped off Everest's back and stood right next to him looking offended with his hands on his hips.
"Hey! Don't body-shame my yak!" Peng said. Everest let out a grunt as if to say "Yeah".
"Yeah man, what did the yak ever do to you?" asked Chloe with her arms crossed against her chest with a look similar to the one Peng had on her face.
"I'm just pointing out that I've never seen a yak like yours before" the farmer said.
"Well, he's a special case. We got him for pretty cheap at a state auction a few months ago. He's grown pretty attached to us, and he will attack anybody who even looks at him weird" Chloe said with one hand on Everest's head giving it a gentle pat. Everest nodded in reply with what his surrogate-aunt had just said with a sly smile on his face. Now the farmer was looking nervous.
"D-D-Did you uh, um... train him to do that?" asked the farmer while tugging on his shirt collar nervously.
"Nope, it just comes as a natural instinct to him" Peng answered.
"Oh well, in that case, I apologize for body-shaming him. Have a lovely day you two" said the farmer before walking over to his own herd of yaks and began leading them further down the street, away from the disguised Everest and the two humans walking right beside him. Chloe then flipped the farmer off with both her middle fingers behind his back so he couldn't see him.
"The nerve of some people, am I right, Chloe?" asked Peng as he hopped back on Everest's back.
"Tell me about it" replied the blue-haired girl as she continued to look all around the market for Jin.
"Chloe, look! Max is coming!" Peng called out.
"Mama's back! Look, Auntie Chloe! Mama's back!" Everest called out to Chloe in her thoughts. Chloe then watched Max walk up to them.
"Hey, Super-Max. You find him?" asked Chloe.
"No, Yi said she'd go look for him. I came to store all these supplies I just bought in your backpack" said Max as she took her shopping bag full of food and water bottles out of her camera bag.
"Think it'll be enough until we get to the mountain?" asked Chloe.
"Yeah, it should be more than enough actually" Max replied as she watched Chloe store every last apple and water bottle into her backpack. She then looked to see Burnish's armored truck driving down the hill and approaching the farmer's market slowly.
"Oh crap. Guys, they found us" said Max as she pointed up to the truck. Chloe and Peng began to look very worried, and so did Everest. Chloe then reached into her back pocket and took out the gun she stole from the Burnish goon she knocked out and loaded it.
"The minute I see that redheaded sadist, she's getting a bullet right between her damn eyes" Chloe growled, her grip on the gun tightened. Max then noticed another yak was walking up right beside Everest and pulled on his costume with it's teeth, causing it to fall down to the ground and Everest was exposed.
"NO!" Max exclaimed as her surrogate-son was unmasked from his disguise. Chloe then saw many more armored black SUVs come down from different roads and followed closely behind the large truck.
"There are too many of them. We can't take them all at once" Max said before she heard hovering coming from her hands. She looked down and saw a glowing blue aura emit from the center of her right palm, and it looked very same to the blue aura Everest emitted whenever he used his own powers.
"What the Hell is this?" asked Max to herself before she realized something. When Everest healed her hand, some of his own power must have been placed inside her body before the cuts were sealed up. Max then got an idea and stood in front of Chloe.
"Stay there, I got an idea" said Max as she held up her hand that was glowing.
"Max, what are you doing?" the blue-haired girl asked.
"I don't know, but I think I'm about to find out" Max answered before the blue aura began to surround her body and blow through her hair like the wind. Chloe also noticed Max's blue eyes began to glow a brighter blue. Peng and Chloe watched in absolute awe as their brunette friend began to display a new set of powers. She then let out a yell and slammed her open palm on the street, making several glowing blue-green crystals emerge from the ground like spikes. The crystals impaled and destroyed half of Burnish's SUV convoy, some of them even blew up the minute the crystal went right through the vehicle.
"Max, what did you just do?" Peng asked. Max then lowered her hand and the blue aura disappeared, her eyes stopped glowing as well.
"I don't know. But it felt... really good" she replied before she heard someone call out "Hey, you!" to them. Everyone looked to see Yi and a visibly injured Jin sitting in a small boat with a motor on the back with a large duffel bag sitting right in the middle.
"Jin! For once, I am seriously glad to see you!" Chloe said before tucking the gun in her pocket again and hopped inside the boat. Max and Peng followed suite, and Everest was the last to get on board the boat.
"It's good to see you again, Jin" said Max. Yi then began to look at Jin's body to see multiple bruises all over him.
"Jin, you're hurt" Yi said with concern in her voice.
"I'm fine, don't worry about me. We've gotta get out of here before more of them show up" Jin said before he twisting the control shaft of the boat's motor and began driving them up the river and away from the Dahe Village. Peng then looked down to see Jin's shoes were all muddied up and covered in grime.
"Jin, your babies" said Peng.
"Well, Peng... my babies are all grown up. Now hang on tight, we're almost out of the village" Jin said as he continued to pilot the boat up the stream against the current. Everyone then saw Burnish's armored truck drive off the edge and into the water, but not before the wheels tucked themselves into the sides of the vehicle and a large boat underside formed right where the wheels used to be.
"I thought bad guys only had shiz like that in cartoons!" Chloe said. Max then stood up from her seat and moved over next to Jin.
"Max? What are you doing!?" Jin asked, but she didn't answer him. She held up her hand and her palm began to glow blue again, as well as her eyes. Once the blue aura began to surround her again, she focused as hard as she good and began to form a whirlpool in the center of the river. Everyone else watched in awe as the whirlpool grew to become a gigantic tornado made of water and Burnish's truck got caught right in the middle.
"Okay, that is Hella cool" Yi said in awe. Peng and Jin had their jaws dropped in shock at what they were witnessing right now.
"Have an ICE day you psycho pricks!" Max said before blew down on her hand and created a gigantic gust of wind which grew larger and larger the more it got closer to the water tornado. The minute the wind touched the surface of the water, the entire tornado turned to ice and the truck was sealed inside a gigantic icicle.
"How did you do that?! How is that even possible!?" Yi exclaimed as she watched Max sit back down after using her new powers. She looked down at her once injured hand and turned to face the others.
"I think when Everest healed my hand back in the desert, he transferred some of his own powers into me" Max explained.
"So he can give people powers too? That is so freaking cool!" Peng said in amazement.
"Guess you really are super, Super-Max" said Jin with a smile on his face. This earned him a smack on the back of his head by Chloe.
"Ow! What was that for!?" Jin asked.
"Only I'm allowed to call her that" Chloe pointed out. Everyone then began to hear the sound of cracking ice and turned their heads to see that the truck was glowing bright orange and was emitting extreme levels of heat. The ice tornado that once imprisoned them was now shattered and they were free once more. The truck/boat began to catch up to them once more.
"Go faster!" Yi shouted to Jin.
"I'm trying, but this is as fast as it goes!" Jin said as he tried to make the motor go faster but to no avail, which earned him a roll of the eyes and an un-amused look from Everest. Max then turned to Everest and began speaking to her using the telepathic bond between them.
"Everest, do something!" She shouted out in her thoughts with urgency in her voice. Everest then pushed Jin to the front of the boat before ripping the boat's motor off and tossing it into the water. The young yeti began to hum and place both his hands into the water, which created a gigantic wave that increased the boat's speed.
"It's working" Yi said happily as they began to get further and further away from Burnish's truck/boat. Peng then looked ahead to see they were getting too close to the shore and that they were about to crash as well.
"Oh, no. Guys. Guys!" Peng shouted out to get everyone else's attention. The others looked to see the shore and tried to get Everest to turn, but it was too late. Now, the boat was riding along the shore in a giant field of yellow flowers. Chloe then noticed that the truck had just crashed and flipped somewhere else into the large patch of flowers, which made her smile.
"Hope you died in that crash" Chloe snarled before looking to to the front of the boat again. Everest then began using his powers to make the ground lift up like a gigantic tidal wave like the ones in the oceans.
"Woah... this is amazing" Max whispered to herself as she watched the ground move like water and Everest was piloting them across the beautiful ocean of flowers that stood before them.
"This is impossible!" Jin shouted in disbelief as they continued to surf along the flowery surface of the ground.
"Come on Everest, make it go bigger!" Peng said. Everest nodded in reply and kept on humming, making the biggest wave of flowers anybody had ever seen in their entire lives. The wave kept getting bigger and bigger until it crashed down onto them and the boat crashed outside a large jungle. The boat was totally destroyed and everyone was lying down on the ground, covered head to toe with the flowers that the giant wave Everest created was made of.
"Ughh. My aching head" Max groaned with her hand on her forehead. Chloe then came running up to her and helped her back up to her feet.
"You alright, Max?" asked her girlfriend.
"I'm alright. Just a little banged up, but I'll live" Max answered. Yi then sat up gasping.
"Peng!" she shouted.
"Where is he?" Jin asked in worry as he sat up a moment after Yi.
"Mama! Auntie Chloe!" Max and Chloe heard Everest call out to them in their heads. Everyone then turned to see Everest whining and looking over an unconscious Peng in worry. The four ran over to the boy with worried looks on their faces. Everyone was scared that Peng could have been seriously hurt or maybe even dead from the impact of the crash. They noticed the young boy was breathing and groaning in pain and they could feel a wave of relief wash over them and began helping the boy up.
"Peng?" Jin asked.
"You alright little buddy?" Chloe asked.
"Come on, say something. Peng?" Max piped in. Peng then began gagging and coughing. Everest began too cough and retch up as well. After a few more coughs, Peng puked out some yellow flower pedals onto the ground between his legs. Everest continued to gag and retch.
"Oh no" Yi, Max, and Chloe said in unison at the exact same time.
"Everest, no. Everest" said Jin in worry, holding up his hands in front of him. Everest's cheeks began to inflate, signalling he was getting ready to vomit.
"Hold it in" Jin told him. But it was too late, Everest regurgitated an entire landslide worth of flowers out of his mouth and onto Jin's body which knocked him to the ground. Once Everest finished puking up flowers, Max, Chloe, Yi, Peng and their fluffy friend began to laugh at him.
"Hey Jin, you got a little something right here" Yi said laughing.
"Yo, Big Bird! Do you think you can tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" asked Chloe in between her laughs.
"Oh my God, you're right, Chloe! He totally looks like Big Bird!" Max exclaimed as she pointed at his flower covered body. Jin then shuddered and every last flower pedal came off his body and landed at his feet. Everest then gasped which caused everyone to turn to face what he was looking at. Yi's Violin was snapped in two, while Max's Polaroid was completely smashed to pieces.
"Oh no!" Yi said as she ran over to the violin. Max began to sob as she walked over to the destroyed camera and started to cry as she held the parts in her hands. Chloe then got down on her knees and wrapped her arms around Max in a hug, the same way Max did to her when they dug up Rachel Amber's body in the Arcadia Bay junkyard.
"Max, it's okay" Chloe whispered comfortingly into her girlfriend's ear. Max didn't listen and she just continued to cry. Everest felt so bad, he felt like he was responsible for the destruction of both Yi's violin and his mama's Polaroid. He then watched as Yi ran into the jungle sobbing and crying, and then looked back down at his surrogate mother who continued to cry.
"We can get another one, Max. It'll be fine" Chloe said, but she knew that it wouldn't be enough to replace the camera. That Polaroid was once her birth father William's camera, and the only thing she had left of him. Now that it was destroyed, she felt like all she had left of her father was permanently gone. Everest then began to cry as well and spoke to his unofficial mother and aunt in their minds.
"I'm so sorry. It's all my fault" Everest said telepathically before he began to cry and let tears stream down his face. Chloe and Max looked up to see the guilty Everest crying and began walking over to him.
"Hey, hey. It's not your fault buddy" said Chloe using her thoughts.
"Mama's just upset. And Auntie Chloe is right, what happened isn't your fault. You can't blame yourself for something that was out of your control" said Max using her own telepathic bond with the yeti to reassure him.
"But I broke your camera" said Everest, still feeling responsible for Max's Polaroid being totally smashed to the point of it being completely repairable. Max then looked up into Everest's watery eyes and began to gently caress the side of his face with her left hand
"It's just a camera though, it can be easily replaced. If anything were to happen to you though, I could never live with myself. Things like cameras can be replaced, people can't" Max said out loud instead of using her thoughts.
"I'm not mad, I promise" said Max before giving Everest a kiss on his nose, which made him hum happily.
"But what about Yi's violin?" asked Everest in his mind. Max then turned back to see Yin's violin still destroyed and lying on the ground in two pieces.
"I can probably fix it" Max said out loud before walking up to the instrument and lifted up her left hand and opened her hand to prepare to do a focused rewind on the violin. Before she could get a chance to use her powers to restore the violin, Everest stopped her and pulled her hand away. The yeti shook his head at her before picking the pieces back up into his large paws.
"No, wait. Maybe I can fix it" Everest said in Max's head before he turned around and began to tinker around with the violin. Max and Chloe only watched as Everest continued to fiddle around with it, but couldn't exactly see what he was doing with it. But after a few minutes, Everest turned back around and revealed that Yi's violin was completely repaired. There was hardly a sign of damage and the strings were put back in place too.
"Wow... it looks new. Like it just came out of the factory" Chloe said as she stared down at the instrument. Max then noticed something different about the violin, the strings were white like the color of Everest's fur.
"Everest, did you...?" Max asked, but Everest only nodded in reply before she could finish her sentence.
"That's real Yeti fur strings on it? Now that's what I call an improvement" said Chloe as she stared down at it.
"I just hope it'll play the same way it used to" said Max, hoping that Yi will happy when she sees her violin was back in one piece.
A/N: And that's a wrap on part 2! I wasn't expecting to end this chapter on a slightly sadder note because of Max's Polaroid and Yi's violin being destroyed, but at least now they lost Burnish and Zara again for the time being. The journey will continue in part 3 and we'll find out what lies in store for Max, Chloe, Everest, Yi, Jin, and Peng. Please review, thanks!