Chapter Two, slightly longer than the last.
Again, con-crit welcome, but no flamers, thanks.
South Park is owned by Matt Stone, Trey Parker, and Comedy Central. No money is made from this, and it is purely fan-made.
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"Feeling better?" Clyde looks up at the clean shaven, now short haired Stan towering over him with a smile. It was now nine in the morning, seven hours after the communications failure, and there was still no sign of Craig. There is a bruise on Stan's left cheek, Clyde notices, causing his eye to be half-closed from swelling.
"Mm.." Clyde doesn't want to talk about it, not yet, and Stan does not understand in the way that someone would in the same situation, but he can imagine what Clyde must be feeling, and so doesn't press the matter.
"Listen," Stan clears his throat, looks around Clyde's study, and pulls a nearby chair towards himself so that he can talk to Clyde easily.
"He'll be fine, like I said; if they'd done anything, we'd know by now." Stan rests a bruised hand on Clyde's shoulder, albeit awkwardly, and the brunette looks at it before saying, without looking away,
"He back yet?" referring to Kenny, as Stan took advantage of the fact that Kenny was, in a way, immortal, and killed him whenever Kenny had done something either completely stupid, or he just felt like he needed to kill something.
Stan also looks at the hand and smiles in an almost nostalgic way.
"If he is, I haven't heard from him yet." He removes the hand, and looks up at Clyde; noting the worried expression.
"Don't worry," he winks, rises, and walks towards the study window to drape a leg over the frame, "he enjoyed it!" are his final words before clambers outside, shuts the window behind him, and jogs across Clyde's lawn.
Clyde smiles, sadly, to himself and thinks about Craig. Part of him is sick with worry about how his greatest friend is doing, but the other is telling himself not to worry because Craig's tough and can cope with whatever they throw at him.
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Craig Tucker leant back against the stone wall. He was unshackled, unchained, yet he'd never felt so trapped in his entire life. There was one, small window to his right, and at the top of the wall. It was barred. The door on in front of him was thick, not metal, but thick; as though the room he was in had only recently become a cell. Outside, the guards changed every two hours – by Craig's counting, he had no watch and no clock to go by – and currently there was someone by the name of Tango Bravo, who never spoke. Even when Craig sat with his back to the door and shouted through the thick wood, there was no reply. It wasn't because he couldn't be heard, because he could hear through the door just fine. It was because, even though he couldn't see the guard, he had recognised the deep voice when they arrived and said 'Double Penguin, I relieve you of your duties.' Craig recognised the voice, and he didn't like it. Not, one, bit.
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Gary Harrison sits alone on a beaten up sofa, in a flat in the so-called 'nice' part of town. In his hand is a chipped mug, filled with luke-warm milk, and he's been holding it for the most part of half an hour. He does this most days, just sits and stares at the holes in his carpet, wondering where it all went wrong. His parents left four years ago, he was twenty, and they offered to take him back to Utah with them, but he couldn't. He couldn't.
An unexpected knock at the front door jolts him out of his stupor, and he almost drops the mug in his hands. As though questioning it's very existence, he stares at the door with it's cracked and peeling cream paint job in desperate need of re-doing. But who has the money, these days, aside from those who live up the mountain side?
More knocking sounds, and this time it's accompanied by a voice.
"Gary, for fuck's sake, dude, let me in. All you're doing is staring at the carpet, so open the door or I'll fucking kick it." Stan Marsh's voice is serious, and so Gary hurries to put the mug down and wrench the door open. Sure enough, Stan is stood with his leg in mid-air with Butters Stotch and Wendy Testaburger behind him.
"You know that's very rude, don't you?"
"Fuck off," the two young men grin at each other, and Gary stands aside to let the three of them in. He shuts the door, and ushers everyone into the living room, where he realises that he will have to get two chairs from the kitchen next to them, in order for every one to be able to sit down.
When they are all seated, Gary smiles around at the three of them, though they are wearing sombre expressions.
"So, why're you all here?" he puts forward, and Stan sighs from his place on the sofa next to Gary. Butters swings his legs on the chair that squeaks when he moves, and Wendy crosses her legs before staring at her hands in her lap.
"Kenny found another body last night." Stan says, clearly, and a grim silence follows. It is a short while before anyone speaks, and he sighs deeply. "It was a friend of Ike Broflovski's, Filmore Anderson, and further examinations reveal that he was shot with a .45 calibre bullet, the same as the others." There is another eerie silence, and Wendy adds to the sentence.
"That brings the death toll to seven." She murmurs, "It turns out that the enemy are still blaming Stan when it's a death that relates back to them… It is unclear to all of us exactly why they're targeting Stan, but we're working on it. Hopefully, we'll be able to stop this madness before anymore people are killed." She finishes, and Gary nods solemnly.
"Let's hope so."
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Eric Cartman stands on his own in his usual place outside the Police station. It had been his idea, after all, to use it as headquarters because the cops were a symbol of authority, and Cartman respected authority above all else. He was fat, not as fat as he used to be as a child, but still on the large side none-the-less, and his black waistcoat was undone over a white shirt, and black tie. If passers by could see him, or if, indeed, there were any passers by, they would think he had maybe just come from a funeral. They couldn't be more wrong, however, because Eric had not been to a funeral since his mother's at the age of twelve. She died from overdose, her own fault, but he couldn't help feel saddened by the memory; she was his mother, after all, crack-whore or not.
The day after her funeral, he had stayed in his house, on his own. He pitilessly shot anyone who dared to try and send him into care, and slowly learnt that he would have to learn to take care of himself if he wanted to get anywhere in life. The first few months were hell, to him. He started (and fortunately put out) seven fires from bad cooking, and had to go some days without food because of stubbornness and refusal to cook anything. He still had a scar on his left index finger where he half-severed it with a carving knife when trying to cut meat.
The only person, who visited him after his mother's death, was Kenny. Eric supposed that, though he would never admit it, he was, in a way, thankful to his friend for being there… but then Kenny left when he was fifteen, and he was left alone. That was the way it was until Ike Broflovski drowned in Stark's Pond, and Kyle, dear Kyle, turned to him to help get back at Stan who he believed was to blame for Ike's death. How wrong he was, but Cartman wasn't going to ruin the one chance he had for human contact, especially when said human was Kyle Broflovski. No way.
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Back in the basement of Shakey's pizza, all important to the 'resistance' had gathered. Kenny, Wendy, Stan, Butters, Clyde and Gary were there, and so was the French, young mercenary, Christophe. No-one, and that means no-one, knew his surname, and so he was affectionately called 'Christophe The Mole' by anyone who was asked for his full name. Asking Christophe himself what his surname was, meant having a cigarette put out on your bare skin. No-one dared, except Kenny who strangely enjoyed it.
A plan to break Craig out of his current location at the Police Station – come enemy HQ was being hatched around on of the old Shakey's tables, with Stan at the head and stolen blueprints laid out in front of them. Earlier that day, both Clyde and Christophe had snuck into the grounds surrounding the Station, and had (for Christophe's sake) examined the tarmac around it.
"As we know," Clyde stands, and begins, "Christophe, and myself, receive updates from our inside informant who shall remain unknown, and he tells us that Craig is being held here," he points to the left hand corner of the blueprints, where two adjacent, small rooms are. "Apparently, the enemy has converted these two offices into cells, and Craig is being kept in the one on the far right. Christophe?" Clyde sits, again, and the daunting Frenchman on his right stands, taking a drag on his cigarette and putting it out on the table, leaving one of many burn marks.
"Oui, ah 'ave exameened ze grround outside ze main building, and ah 'ave peecked ze best spot to begin ze diggeeng." He points out an area at the back of the building, more to the right hand corner than the left, and clears his throat. "Unfortunately, ah weell be on ze wrong side of ze buildeeng, but ah will do my best to release Crag." He sits, again, and leans back on his chair to place two worn military booted feet on the table in front of him, small chunks of dried mud falling loose in the process and scattering on the wood. Wendy, on Christophe's right, pulls a face and shuffles her chair away from the 'mole' and his boots. This earns her a glare, which she defiantly returns, and Christophe scowls at her.
Stan scratches the back of his neck, nervously, and looks to Kenny who is doodling stick figures with gigantic boobs on an old napkin in front of him. He sighs, and crosses his arms; leaning back in his chair to observe his friend deep in concentration with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth.
"Kenny?" the blonde looks up from his drawings, tongue still poking out, and Stan has to stop himself from laughing at the ridiculous sight.
"Anything to add?" the tongue goes back in, and Kenny stands, scrambling in the holey pockets of his orange jacket before bringing out a piece of toilet paper with ink blotted all over it. He takes a deep breath, but before he starts talking, a British double-decker bus comes through the wall with a deafening CRASH and somehow manages to only hit, and kill, Kenny.
There is a stunned silence as the rest of the group stare at the rubble, the remainder of the empty bus, and Kenny's corpse. They continue to stare for a few minutes, before Clyde voices all their thoughts.
"But… we're in the BASEMENT!"