Coming over the hill in the golf cart, Lili, Coraline, and Norman had little time to react to the hooded figure in the middle of the road.
Stepping on the brakes as hard as she could, Lili managed to stop right before she hit the figure.
Coraline was the first one to recover. Looking at the boy she saw that he was likely a teenager and was not the same hooded figure that had kidnapped her. In his hands, he carried three glass containers.
"Oh come on. You freaks should not have gotten up that fast." The teen said. At the word freaks, Norman and Lili flinched.
Definitely a teenager. Coraline thought. And he seems to be working with the kidnapper.
Coraline grabbed a golf club from the cart running towards the guilty party. The teenager took one look at the girl and her companions then ran away screaming, dropping the glass containers on the road.
Coraline scolded. Men can be such babies. She turned around and saw Norman inspecting the three glass objects.
"What are they?" Norman asked. He picked one up and turned it around in his hands.
"Whatever they are that guy seemed to really want them." Coraline said.
"We should take them and set them on fire." Lili said with a huge smile on her face.
"Now hold on, let's not jump to any conclusions." Norman said. "That guy seemed like he knew something about the three of us, even though I've never seen him before. Don't you think that is a bit suspicious?"
"Sounds kind of like a super villain." Lili interjected.
"Maybe but we don't know that for sure. He could be just someone who wants to help. I think we should return these things or use them against him somehow." Norman continued.
"If he wants to help, then we'll give them back, and if not, we use them as bargaining chips. " Coraline responded, putting one of them inside her bag and throwing another to Lili.
Lili rolled her eyes but put the glass cylinder in her own bag while Norman stored the one he was inspecting inside his hoodie pocket.
Coraline smiled as she got back into the cart. This kidnapping case was getting better by the second. Her other two companions had on similar expressions, each thinking the exact same thing.
Onwards to adventure, the three thought as they traveled off into the sunset.
Mabel's group arrived at the diner. Similar to the police station, the diner was completely abandoned, so the three ate the pie that was left out on the counter and dropped the money in its place once they were done. After that, they roamed around town looking at the buildings around them, like the library and a laser tag place. The fact that there were no adults anywhere did not seem to slow the female of the group down at all.
"Oh let's check out this place!" Mabel gasped, pointing to the Museum. Without waiting for an answer, she bounded into the building.
"Where does she get all that energy from?" Neil asked. Upon running around town he learned that during the months that he could not recall he had apparently become more fit and was surprisingly able to keep up with the girl if he was just walking.
The other boy shrugged. Parking his bike at the bicycle rack he followed Mabel in. They had learned quite a few facts about the town running around. Wybie now knew that they were in a place called Gravity Falls, not too far from where he and his grandma lived.
They entered the building to find Mabel staring at a poster with some blond haired kid with puppets on his hands. The picture had been horribly defaced at one point. Wybie and Mabel thought the best part of the defacing was that someone had drawn a speech bubble with the words "I kiss puppets".
Noticing that the two boys were behind her, Mabel spun around. "Guys, I had a great idea! Let's play hide and go seek! The rules will be that you can't leave town and you can't move from your hiding spot once you have chosen it!"
Wybie smiled. "Sure, I guess it could be fun."
"I'm in." Neil said.
"I'll be it." Mabel cried. Without allowing anyone to question her she turned around and started to count. "1… 2… 3…"
Neil yelped and ran into the museum to try to find a hiding spot.
Wybie thought about telling Mabel she should just wait in a room until the time was up but thought better of it, running after Neil.
"100" Mabel yelled. Upon finishing the girl ran out the doors where the street lights were just turning on.
"Okay, unless I'm mistaken, aren't towns support to have people living in them?" Coraline asked.
The trio had gotten to town around nightfall, having taken several bad turns. Now they were driving around, looking for anyone who might be able to help them.
"Let's try the diner over there," Norman suggested. Throughout the drive Norman had to break up the many arguments between the two girls. Now, entering the place of their destination and not find a human or ghost, Norman was starting to get a bit creeped out.
Lili, fed up with driving, turned the little golf cart into one of the parking places.
They opened the door and found that the small diner was about as messy as the Mystery Shack. Some food was even left on the tables.
"It looks like everyone just vanished." Norman commented as he peeked behind the counter into the kitchen.
"Maybe after getting into a fight." Lili observed, glancing down at broken chairs on the floor as well as other various bits of debri.
Coraline ignored the two, looking around with her own eyes. "Well this looks like a great mess we've landed in. Any ideas?"
The younger two looked back at Coraline, shaking their heads.
Coraline sighed, "Look, we came to this town looking for someone to help us. Now that we are here we haven't seen one person, child or adult, around this stupid place. I don't know about you but I think we need to take some action before whoever did this comes back for us. So are you with me?"
Lili sighed. "You might be pushy and annoying, and normally I would never want to work with someone like you, but yeah, I'm with you." Lili agreed, shaking the other girl's hand.
Norman smiled. "I'm with you, too. So what is our first plan of action?"
"We should find out what's happening and see if we can find some survivors."
"I have some walkie talkies," Lili pitched in, pulling them out of her bag. The other two members of their party gave her a weird look. "What? I stole them from the Shack."
"Seeing as this place is a ghost town, I don't think anyone will care what we take." Coraline said, grabbing the device. "But since we have walkie talkies, we can split up safely. If you find anyone or the person responsible, report it into the walkie talkie and we'll come to you.. We'll meet back here in 2 hours to report our findings."