"…I see your two dust bunnies and I raise you three dirt clods" Dan brushed a handful of dirt towards the space between himself and the Blanks whom he found himself playing the strangest game of poker with. LU—C had pulled the slightly crumpled & stained deck of cards from her pockets not too soon after they had been tossed none-too-carelessly into the bed of one of the trucks bound for Area 49B. Kubritz had returned at some point whilst they were being loaded into the trucks and watched with unrestrained glee at sight of her 'bounty' (not the humans, of course, but the aliens & halfa). They had yet to see hide nor hair from the aforementioned dictator, which made Dan wonder if that was a good sign or not.
Some of the mortals had fallen asleep at some point into their journey, whilst Vex had been bound in chains and unconscious when tossed inside before they had left the mothership, with Aaarrrggh watching over them. Despite himself, Dan thought it selfish to abandon them to rejoin with his duplicate at a time like this. He could hold out for a little while longer if he needed to, but he was starting to feel the strain of splitting himself in half for so long.
"Hoohoo~you feelin' lucky, punk?" RK—Y chortled over his wife's shoulder, despite having folded long ago.
"I—"
"—AAAAAHH!" It wasn't until the scent of wet pine could be smelt on the wind, that the Commander finally awoke with a jolt as they went over a particularly large pothole. Of course, that set the rest of the teenagers off like a bunch of warning bells as they startled awake as well.
"By the Ancients!" Dan swore as he jumped, hand over heart, startled by the sudden noise.
"PIPE DOWN BACK THERE!" Costas banged on the dividing wall between the truck bed and the driver's seat.
"You don't seem to understand what a rescue mission entails" Vex groused, sounding entirely too pompous for someone bound in chains once he got his bearings.
"Well, excuse you!" Toby stuck his tongue out, despite looking rather sheepish as he hid under Aaarrrggh's large stature with an exaggerated yawn.
"Aja! My ninja-kicking angel!" Steve panicked as he raced towards the blonde Blank sitting there with slightly crumpled playing cards in her hands, making Dan scoot back a place or two to avoid a lapful of energetic jock.
"Angel? I'm not dead, silly" LU—C laughed, eyes rolling about in her head.
"Ah! What happened to your face?!" Steve surged backwards in much the same manner as he had raced to her only moments before.
"Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!" LU—C blinked as the two Blanks glitched a few times before returning to their original transductions.
"M-mrs Lucy?" Steve started, jumping to his feet to inspect the elder woman. Dan could only imagine what kind of confusion was swimming within that noggin of his and the idea that his girlfriend & her robot mother could possibly be one & the same. "Aja is Mrs Lucy? Are they the same person? Aja, are you in there? Can you hear me?"
"Calm yourself, young oaf" Vex snapped as RK—Y freed him from the chains binding him and Steve tried to peer into LU—C's mouth. "I suspect that Aja and Krel are fine, thanks to these two"
"I'm a helper!" RK—Y chirped in agreement, even as Dan noted certain patches of skin & cloth which had been singed off during the raid.
"Alright kiddies! Nap time's over!" LU—C chirped as she rose to her feet, letting the cards flutter to the floor.
"I knew you were bluffing!" Dan exclaimed when he noticed the terrible hand which lay discarded at his feet as the blonde's finger blazed to life. The finger-turned-welder was then placed against the corrugated iron of the back door and used to cut out a rather large hole for them to escape out of. Rising to his feet alongside the others, Dan watched in amusement as the blonde jock turned into a kicked puppy at the drop of a hat.
"I don't even know who you are anymore, Aja" Steve whined pitifully.
"Surf's up, buckaroos!" LU—C declared with a chortle as she kicked down the cutout from the door and jumped out into the night, surfing away on a wave of sparks & corrugated iron.
"Move out!" Vex ordered in agreement, leading the mossy troll to launch himself forward and out of the new hole without complaint.
"Geronimo!" RK—Y cheered as he jumped next, followed by Toby who unsheathed the War Hammer and just floated out into the rain.
"Okay, I can do this" Steve pumped himself up, arms swinging as he prepared to jump. "Who's the man? I'm the man! Who's the—ah!"
"—Ugh!" Dan rolled his eyes as he unceremoniously kicked the blonde from the truck and flew out after him with Eli's shocked gasps & Vex's pleased chuckle playing in his ears.
Thanks to Aaarrrggh's quick reflexes, the jock barely bounced along the asphalt before he was caught in stony arms and set upright next to his classmate with a fond pat on his helmeted head. Not a moment later, Dan turned to find both Vex and Eli flying out of the truck and bouncing along the asphalt until they came to a stop at their feet.
"Woohoo! I did it!" Eli cheered as he slid from Vex's grasp and jumped to his feet, hands in the air.
"What! You did nothing!" Vex denied, pushing himself upright.
"Is everyone alright?" Dan asked, tail flickering in the glow of Toby's helmet flashlight from where he hovered.
"Well, what's it look like?" RK—Y croaked from off to the side where he lay, not quite put together as one would have hoped.
"Um…" Dan balked, blinking at the pill-shaped head of the Blank which was still in operation despite the decapitation and the body which stumbled about like a zombie in a horror film.
"Oh honey!" LU—C dashed to his side. "Are you okay?"
"I have a little headache actually"
"Ugh, Dad jokes!" Dan groaned as the persistent rain turned him into a drowned rat. Down below, the juniors were trying to take shelter beneath the girthy limbs of the mossy troll who seemed almost resigned at this point.
After about ten minutes of begrudging hiking back along the road, the menagerie of humanoid creatures found a little alcove of trees where they took shelter from the rain to determine what to do next. As Dan plucked his dated cellphone from his pocket, he silently cursed his lack of rain-appropriate clothing (despite knowing that he could transform or turn intangible at any point) and dialled Stuart's number again. Across from him, Vex had pulled up a three-dimensional holographic map of the town which showed them just how far away they were. It still surprised Dan to note that their weapons and other technologies hadn't been confiscated by the hazmats already.
"According to my geo-positioning system, we're still horvaths away from Arcadia" Vex grumbled, blinking the rain from his eyes as he easily calculated the distance between the two blinking dots which showed their positioning. The first dot hidden amongst suburbia showed where the mothership was, whilst the second dot stuck out on the outskirts of town showed where they were, currently.
"You could say, we haven't made a lot of head way" RK—Y's head joked from LU—C's grip whilst his body bumped into a nearby tree.
"Oh! You made a funny, honey!" LU—C smiled.
"Thanks, I was worried that one might go over your head"
"Okay, don't press your luck"
"Stuart's not answering" Dan added as he dialled & redialled the number on his Fenton Phone.
"Varvatos forgot, he has aerobics class on Tuesdays" Vex facepalmed, before he turned to the stocky boy who was taking great joy in RK—Y's Dad jokes from beneath Aaarrrggh's shelter. "Tobias, you must recruit your Nana"
"To drive us?" Toby exclaimed as he spun to face the Akiridion, eyes wide. "But she's legally blind!"
"Well, considering my non-saggy appearance, her ocular deficiency may be for the best. We must expedite our return, the king & queen-in-waiting are in danger!"
"If it helps, my duplicate's still there" Dan offered as he ruthlessly hammered away at the oversized buttons of his phone.
"Wha—Dan! When did you duplicate yourself?!" Toby then whipped around to face the halfa floating above them.
"Er, earlier this evening, when Aja & Luug popped up in the middle of the street while I was out"
"Huh, but why'd you split yourself for that? Couldn't you have just gone to see what was wrong yourself?"
"Er, I was, uh, busy" Dan scratched at his cheek and hoped to the Ancients that it was dark enough to hide the slight flush covering his cheeks.
"What it this duplication you speak of?" Vex puzzled.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! I've read about that!" Eli piped up with gleaming eyes. "Ghosts can clone themselves, right? That's why you feel so many eyes on you in haunted places!"
"Eh, more or less" Dan shrugged as he pocketed his phone.
"And you can communicate with this duplication—this clone?" Vex pondered, brows furrowed in confusion.
"Uh yeah, sort of" He shrugged, not quite sure how to explain it. "Their okay at the moment, if that's what your worried about. At least, my duplicate doesn't feel worried" But the connection is fuzzier than I'd like it to be. He added silently, not wanting to worry the Commander.
"Good" Vex nodded, "Tobias, contact your Nana"
"Fine, fine!" Toby huffed as he pulled out his phone & dialled his grandmother.
Another twenty minutes later, Dan found himself flying alongside the Domzalski's secondhand car as it chugged down the road with the same urgency of a grandmother at bingo. Toby, the only one who held his learner's license, sat behind the wheel with his Nana at his side continuously correcting his methods like a sassy GPS monitor. In the backseat, a blushing Eli who all but sat in Steve's lap, Steve who had tried to brace himself between the car door and the seat in front of him and the Blanks who were more than happy to slide back & forth along the backseat even as squashed in as they all were.
Outside was no better. Vex found himself precariously glued to the roof of the car by his fingertips alone. Dan had offered to ice him to the car for extra support, but the Commander had shaken him off, insisting that something as benign as a student driver would do little to defeat him. By now, he was clearly regretting that decision, especially as they were nowhere near the town's limits yet. But still he held on with gritted teeth of determination and pure stubbornness.
In the meantime, Aaarrrggh had been left to cling to the boot of the car with his heels digging into the asphalt; something which only served to slow the vehicle down even further. The grumbling and gurgling which sounded from the belly of the beast concerned Dan, and he found himself wondering if stone could even turn green, because that was most certainly what was happening here. Of all the things he had seen (and heard) the giant troll do, motion sickness was the last thing he'd think to take him down, but here they were.
"…Now remember, Toby-Pie, you want to keep your hands at 5:00 and 7:00" Nana Domzalski schooled the student driver whilst his classmates and the Blanks slid back & forth along the backseat like marbles in a tin can.
"Coach Lawrence says they're s'posed to be at 10:00 and 2:00" Toby retorted as the tires squealed along the asphalt when they swung around another corner.
"Coach Lawrence is a square, dear" Nana replied manner-of-factually.
"Ha!" Dan snorted a laugh into his hands at the comment. He hadn't known the old woman for very long (barely twenty minutes, in fact), but he could already tell that she was a laugh and a half.
"We're going so slow!" Nana stomped on the accelerator again much to Toby's chagrin.
"Who knew student driving was such a brutal form of torture?" Vex complained, fingers gripped so tight to the car's roof that it groaned under the pressure.
"Car worse than gyre!" Aaarrrggh gagged in agreement.
