In the weeks after the incident with the electro-thermal bounty hunter, Dan found himself more or less sequestered away in the confines of the mothership, too afraid to venture outside even though he knew (thanks to Aja & Krel's retelling of their escape) that Colonel Kubritz and her division had intervened at just the right time to free them and capture the creature, with her being none the wiser. In other words, with Tronos locked behind military walls, Dan was fine to step outside but that was far more easier said than done; particularly as he had had to relive his death. In fact, if Dan had his way, he would've locked himself up in either the Ghost Zone or the mothership; but since portals weren't his forte and he refused to step outside to even find one, that only left the mothership.
Mother had treated him with kiddy gloves in the first couple of days—they all had really—far too wary about their own actions and other zappy things that might incur a relapse. It may have been a little annoying for the halfa, especially after those first few days, but there had been one or two close calls that justified such actions. Specifically, in the workshop as Krel worked on creating the wormhole generator to get the Akiridions home, or Aja trained with Zadra & Vex.
As the days wore on, however, Mother had been growing increasingly frustrated that the halfa had more or less shacked up in the furtherest, darkest corner of the ship and refused to move (within the daylight hours. Zadra had been surprised on more than occasion to find the ecto-boy shuffling through the dark like, well, the dead). In fact, Mother was pretty sure that Dan had gone almost full caveman when he allowed his hair to grow out, owing to the fact that she could recall several times where the halfa had mentioned an evil doppelgänger that scared him senseless, and who looked eerily similar to his current appearance (minus the manky boxers & ironic ghost t-shirt). The only ones who seemed to enjoy this situation was Luug and Cujo who was more than happy to play with each other.
As it was, Mother's saving grace came in the form of the local high school, or more specifically an email which let all the graduating students letting them know that today was the last day they had to clear out the last of their things. This included art projects, woodworking projects, the theatre department and so on, in preparation for Summer School which was supposed to be starting soon, alongside the deep clean that would be done as soon as the janitors had free run of the school.
Garbed in only an oversized Amity Park: Most Haunted Town in America! t-shirt and his gym shorts with his keys attached to the belt loops, Dan found himself standing in the sparsely populated hallway of his (now) alumni high school as he cleared out the last little pieces of his locker. It appeared that a lot of his peers had been thinking along the same sort of lines as they too, had left their clean-outs to the very last minute. Like Dan, they only they were likely here was because they had someone breathing down their neck to get the job done. To be fair, they had been warned time & time again, that if anything was left behind & not claimed in time, then it was going into the bin.
The flickering lights above Dan set him on edge, but he brushed it off as the generator just warming itself up after a brief period of not being in use. He should have known better; should've listened to his instincts that were telling him to get the hell out of there. But he ignored them and that would be his downfall. Unlike last time when he met the electro-thermal bounty hunter head on (although not intentionally), this time, Dan didn't even get to glance back at the electro-thermal creature before something connected hard with the back of his head and blackness descended like a heavy curtain. He was out before he even hit the ground.
The summons to Arcadia High for something known as 'Summer School' was not what Aja had thought she would be doing that day (especially as she was itching to play around with her newly upgraded serator), but nonetheless she found herself stuffed behind a school desk in her human disguise alongside her brother and a few other of their peers. She had noted a few of the older students wandering around the halls as they emptied their lockers and collected the last of their media projects. She could've sworn she'd seen Dan's white locks disappear around the corner alongside a bouncy brunette in rotund glasses.
SLAM!
"Welcome to Summer School! All right! Listen up, slackers! This is bootcamp for your brain!" Coach Lawerence decreed as he entered with a slam of the door, hands clasped behind his back and cap nestled tight on his head. He came to a stop at the front of the room where a large purple banner haloed his broad figure and he turned to pluck a clipboard containing the roll call from the teacher's desk. "Now—wha—Aaarrrggh?! What're you doing here?!"
"Uh…he's looking to expand his educational horizons?" Toby tried as the large troll managed to squeeze himself into a desk that shattered the moment he sat down. Not that that seemed to dissuade the troll, instead he just happily swallowed an idle book that had been laid before him.
"Also got hungry" Aaarrrggh added shamelessly.
"Just imagine if we got you on the wrestling team!" Coach gushed. "We'd finally make it to state!…Ahem! I'm getting ahead of myself! First, we gotta do attendance. Wait—! Tarron? You don't belong here!"
"Finally!" Krel exclaimed triumphantly."We agree on something!"
"Slow your roll, DJ Kleb—Aja, it says here you need to make up…gym? But you're my star athlete!"
"This doesn't make any sense; this must be some mistake" Aja stage-whispered to her brother before she spun in her seat to talk to the two trollhunters behind them. "What are you in for?"
"I missed 45 days of school" Toby chuckled sheepishly, "Apparently trollhunting's not good for you GPA"
"Eurgh" Aaarrrggh burped as he continued to shovel textbooks into his mouth.
"You okay there, Wingman?"
"Mmm! Education tasty!" He hummed in reply before something out of the window caught his attention. He wasn't the only one; several of their classmates suddenly rushed over to the windows where they caught glimpses of several military-looking vehicles pull up outside. Aja felt her stomach drop when a horde of hazmats exited the vehicles and Colonel Kubritz strolled up the path like she owned the place.
As the hazmats swarmed the school and those within the classrooms spilled out into the hallways to see what was going on, the two Akiridions and trollhunters were left behind in the empty classroom, where they made sure to shut the door. There was a small frosted window carved into the upper half of the door which allowed for some visual into the hallway and Aja had to swallow a gasp when she found Colonel Kubritz chatting with Coach Lawerence, right in front of them.
"How can I help you, sir—uh, ma'am?" Coach stuttered to attention in front of the Colonel.
"Colonel Kubritz, Scientific Military Division" Kubritz tersely introduced. "There's been reports of a localised biohazard. We have to make sure that no one is infected with this foreign pathogen, lest we have a full-blown outbreak"
"Outbreak?!" Mary gasped as she was scanned by one of the hazmats. "You don't thinks it's Jim Lake disease, do you?!"
"No" Darcy replied, "Because that isn't real"
"What? But I donated to Eli's Walk for a Cure!"
"Hehe—hey! Watch it! Watch it! Hehe—hey! Is this really necessary?" Coach pursued through his giggles as he too, was throughly scanned. "The school's healthy, Doc; I should know, I teach gym"
"That's our judgement to make" Kubritz retorted.
"Unless you show me there's really some sickness here, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave"
Haha! Yes! Aja silently cheered, Go Coach!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The device that the hazmat was holding suddenly lit up, as if on cue, scaring the teacher and all those who stood in the vicinity. Behind her, Toby and Krel shared a scoff at the action; Krel, because of the poorly constructed device and Toby, because of the poorly timed special effects. Whatever the case, it was more than enough to send Coach into a tizzy.
"Huh? Uh, what? It's real?" Coach stammered, gesturing wildly in his panic. "And I—and I have it? What's—what's the prognosis—?"
"Seal the premises!—" Kubritz ordered.
"Lock me up!"
"—Level Seven Medical Quarantine!"
"I can feel it! It's draining my life force! Oh God! It's in my veins!"
"Geez Coach" Toby rolled his eyes at the performance that could put Ms Janeth's Shakespeare to shame. "Always so dramatic"
"This school is now under my control" Kubritz decreed as Coach panicked. "No one gets in, no one gets out"
"Why do I get the feeling these aren't the kind of doctors who hand out lollipops?" Toby worried.
"Because these so-called 'doctors' are here for us" Krel shuffled over to the wall of windows as he mused aloud. "Summer School…it's a trap!"
"We need to move! Now!" Aja's warrior training kicked in as she turned to scan the hallways once more. This time, Kubritz and her horde seemed to have moved on to another empty classroom where they were rounding up all the stray students and interviewing them.
"…And have you noticed anyone acting unusual lately? Like maybe they don't belong here?" The voice floated out from the next classroom over. Aja froze at the question, head just barely peering around the corner, where she soon found Mary being interviewed by a pair of men. Thankfully with Mary far more focused on her phone and the two soldiers with their backs to the hallway, they fugitive four were able to sneak passed on quiet tiptoes.
"Uh, like him?" Mary intoned, barely glancing up from her phone.
"That's Teddy—"
"How's it going?"
"—He's cool. Anyone else?"
"Welcome to Arcadia, soldier" Mary scoffed. "Being weird is like, 'our thing"
"Thank you, Mary~!" Toby sang under his breath as they passed with him clinging to Aaarrrggh's pelt and came to the end of the hallway without being caught.
"Shh!" Aja shot over her shoulder as a hazmat wandered passed, down the adjacent hallway and declared the southwest wing to be all clear.
"This is bad!" Krel worried, fingers fiddling with each other as the group came to pause at the intersection. "These people imprison exterrestrials!"
"They won't have a problem throwing you under a microscope either" Aja added as Toby slid from his friend's back.
"Mmm, pass" Aaarrrggh replied.
"You guys get out of here" Instructed Krel. "We'll distract the guards' attention and meet back up with you in the mothership"
"Are you guys sure about this?" Toby asked concerned, "They're here for you—"
"—Hey!" Aja interjected as she shot out into the hallway without giving herself time to second guess this half-baked plan. "Evil mad scientist henchmen! Distraction! Distraction!"
"Your distraction is a little too obvious!" Krel scowled as he followed after his wildly dancing sister.
"Get back to the quarantine!" The hazmat ordered, not moving from their guard post. At least they were committed, she had give them that.
"Let's see you quarantine this!" Aja snarled as both she and her brother shed their disguises in favour of their usual Akiridion blue. Behind her, Krel chuckled nervously and out of the corner of her eye she watched Toby & Aaarrrggh back up slightly so as not to be seen.
"It's them! Get them!"
"Now, it's really obvious!" Krel spat out as the two spun to run down the hallway, in the opposite direction from the two hazmats.
"It's working, isn't it?" Aja retorted as the group split and the chase began. "And you said Summer School wouldn't be fun!"
"I—ah!"
"Stop right there!" More hazmats joined the chase, this time coming from their right as they shot through twists and turns.
"Cover me!" Aja called as she cocked her serator and sliced one of the extinguishers off of the wall. It was enough to send the device bouncing to the floor where it exploded into a shower of nitrogen/carbon dioxide and foam that flooded the hallway. It was more than enough for the Tarron siblings to escape and in the confusion, their human disguises slipped back into place.
They had barely made it two steps down the next hallway when the light suddenly went out and an electric feeling zipped through the air, like the calm before the storm."Oh no…" Krel breathed in fright. The two siblings quickly spun on their heels and made to retreat the way the had come only to find their path blocked by the very electro-thermal creature who had been hunting them weeks before.
"Running is useless" Tronos hissed over the crackling of his body. Again, the siblings tried to escape only to find themselves trapped once more, this time by Kubritz and an army of hazmats.
"So is hiding" Kubritz smirked, her neurometer charged and glowing in the dimly lit hallway.
Panicked, Aja cocked her serator and aimed it towards Kubritz, intending to get rid of the easier of their two opponents. Krel, it seemed, had other ideas. "Focus, Aja!" Krel worried as the ionic firearm sprung to life.
"What does it look like I'm doing—?" Aja snapped in retort. But in that one moment of distraction, Tronos and Kubritz moved as one. Tronos easily tossed Krel aside, knocking him out immediately upon impact whilst Kubritz flung Aja over her shoulder and pinned her to the floor with a grunt. Aja winced at the sudden impact that rocked through her, particularly the breath that refused to come in even intakes and the pounding in her head that refused to ease.
"Perhaps you didn't notice my medals" Kubritz purred as she plucked Aja's fallen serator from the ground and used it to threaten the Akiridion. Another grunt and the two siblings were tossed back together again, knocked about like marbles in a tin can. "You're not the only female with combat training here. Of course, I made a few upgrades since our last meeting. Take them to gym class, looks like school's back in session"
"Nice one, ma'am!"
There was one more flash of blue and the transduction hiding the two royals fell away like grass in the wind. Kubritz's crooked grin and numerous medals glistening beneath the light of her serator were the last things that Aja saw before blackness swept across her vision and she fully collapsed on top of her brother like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
