Chapter 14: The Gremlins

Gremlin Gus zipped to and fro trying to stop the fairies and gremlins from fighting as well as trying to find traces of the missing teens. Neither attempt received much progress though. Gus stopped in the middle of the Crater, panting, when a sharp black streak crashed in front of him. He gasped, then let out a sigh of relief when he recognized the kneeling figure of Helper.

"Thank goodness!" Gus exclaimed "We need your help! You see..."

He trailed off. She stayed kneeling, breathing hard. Slowly, her head rose so that he could just see her dark eyes glaring at him. She sighed again, as if deciding something in her head. She rose to her full, three foot height (even though she wasn't very tall, her current mood left a strong impression)

"What happened? Simply?" She asked in an eerily calm voice.

"I-I know it look bad, but-" Helper raised her hand for Gus to stop talking.

"Simply" she stated again with more anger strained in her voice.

Gus stood straighter and cleared his throat.

"They somehow escaped our barricade without a trace. Once they left, everyone started blaming each other, causing more fighting." Gus reported.

Helper simply nodded and looked around the Crater at the small fighting figures. She twirled her finger in the air, and pointed it to the ground.

"Group meeting. Now." She said along with the motions.

Gus nodded worriedly and ran off to call the other gremlins. After a brief argument with each group, they all gathered around in the center of the Crater.

"Where'd they go?" She asked in that icy voice. It sounded so unnatural and different from her typical sarcastic, energetic speech. In a spooky way... the dark, demanding mood she was in fit her perfectly.

All of the gremlins and fairies alike stood and looked at each other blankly. Some started to mumble, but no one stepped forward to comment. Helper balled her fists and closed her eyes, desperately trying to hold in her anger. Someone cleared their throat to gain her attention. Her eyes snapped open and she glanced down ready to shout at them to speak up, but she stopped. Her mind flashed back to when she had been introduced to the other gremlins in the soon-to-be Disney Air Force Hanger (this was still during the great Small War between the Fairies and Gremlins)

"Thanks again, Gus," Helper said. She was two feet tall now and her eyes darted everywhere, wanting to keep every detail sharp in her mind.

"What for?" Gremlin Gus asked as he walked on the second floor catwalk, which was level with Helper's forehead.

"For, you know, letting me into your home..." Helper explained "I know how private you are with your life. Especially to strangers..."

"Oh, Not at all! Any friend of Oswald's is a friend of ours." Gus said cheerily.

Gremlins ran this way and that with supplies and ammunition, ready for an attack from 'the enemy'. A while ago, Gus had come to Oswald (one of the few toons outside the Gremlins that Gus really trusts) asking for help fighting off 'the enemy', but would not elaborate. Oswald had suggested that Helper go instead, as she loves to help people out, plus she's never been to the Gremlin hanger before. It took a while, but Gus finally agreed. Now here she was, in the heart of Base Operations, on the eve of a great war. Gus asked for help in fighting the war, but Helper's main goal was to stop any future conflict.

"Over there is my main office," Gus pointed out "and across the way are the main sleeping quarters."

"Who is that?" Helper asked suddenly.

She pointed to a corner of the hanger which was crammed with scrap mettle and spare attachments. Sitting atop the mound of scrap was a very small gremlin, even by their standards. He was the youngest gremlin she had ever seen; whereas the others looked like miniature 30-40 year-old men, he could pass for 13-15 at the oldest! He was scrawny; his oil-stained, midnight-blue coveralls were noticeably too big for him. His peach nose was a little bigger then his fellow gremlins' and he had an amazingly pale face. A small tuff of rust-colored hair stuck out from his hood and hung over his goggles, which he blew out of his face occasionally. He was currently fiddling with seemingly random parts, tossing one over his shoulder every now and then and picking up a new one from a pile beside him.

"Him?" Gus asked (to Helper, he sounded almost afraid). Helper nodded. "Oh, that's Thomas."

Gus sounded sad as he answered. Curiosity (naturally) overpowered her and she went to investigate. Gus tried to call out to her, for her to leave him be, and part of her agreed. Before she could change her mind, Thomas had seen her.

"Hello." Helper said politely.

He looked up at her nervously, then back down to his trinket, trying to ignore her. She, surprisingly, didn't get upset. Instead, she sat on the stone floor next to Thomas' pile and watched as he worked. He worked tensely at first, but slowly relaxed. When Helper spoke again, he listened this time.

"I should probably introduce myself," She said "I am the Helper of the Kingdom, but everyone calls me The Helper, or just Helper."

He nodded and looked back at his project. After trying another piece and deeming it unworthy, he spoke up.

"That's an odd name," he said very softly.

Helper looked at him in shock. But it wasn't the comment that suppressed her (she'd already heard it too many times to count), it was his accent. It was American, and not Southern or Ghetto or New York, but a typical 'young man's' kinda voice. She was told that all of the Gremlins were from Europe, (and had European accents to match, she noticed) but Thomas spoke perfect English.

"M-my name's Thomas, by the way. Gremlin Thomas." He added.

Helper quickly recovered and seized the chance at a conversation with the shy gremlin. She smiled.

"Well then, Hay Thomas. Whatcha doin'?" She asked.

"I'm...*gulp*... I'm trying to make all of these different, uh, tools and p-parts work together. So it'll be like...like one tool." He unsteadily explained. (maybe not perfect English)

"Like some sort of MultiTool?" She asked.

"Um, well, yeah." he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "It's to, uh, make things easier. S-so instead of carrying around a toolbox, it's just one tool."

"Sounds cool!" Helper said. "Have you shown anyone else?"

"Yeah," His face darkened with sadness, "I-I have. Everyone I show it to thinks that it's gonna be a... another bust... another failure by Thomas."

"Oh, so your an inventor,?" Helper asked. He looked down and shrugged. "Well, boo to what they think! I think that this is an awesome idea, and if it doesn't work at first, that just means that you get more puzzles to solve. That's the best part of inventing, I've always thought."

"You know, you're the oddest fifinella that I've ever met..." Thomas gave her a tiny smile. "but I'm O.K. with that."

Up on the catwalk, Gus watched the events unfold in the corner. Eventually, his good friend Jamface stopped to see what Gus was staring at. When Thomas smiled, both of their jaws dropped.

"J-Jamface!" Gus turned to the yellow and purple gremlin next to him. "Did you see that?! Thomas... He...He..."

"Oui, mon ami." Jamface replied in his thick French accent. He slung his arm around Gus. "Little Thomas actually smiled. Perhaps this Helper you brought here will get him finally forget about his older brother, Non?"

"I hope so." Gus said sadly "Him and Prescott were the best pair of inventors that I've ever seen..."

Helped unconsciously touched the pocket she keep her MultiTool in was in. Because of her advice to keep going, Thomas told her, he had kept on working on the MultiTool; he had even made one for her to 'puzzle' with (a.k.a. add and improve upon.) while he moved onto other inventions. She cleared her throat and looked Thomas in the eye.

"Did you see them?" She asked, her voice still frosty.

"N-no, but I have a rear camera attached to our plane." Thomas was the only pilot to admit to sharing his plane with his partner. "We m-might be able to see which way they headed. Or at l-least have the ability to... to narrow down where they didn't go."

"Thanks."

Thomas and Helper were seen a moment later at the cockpit of a small blue plane which was decorated with golden specks which represented Pixy Dust. Thomas was pressing a few buttons and checking Helper's MultiTool, which was attached to the control panel. Eventually, some static and blurry blue images appeared on the MultiTool's screen. Helper was disappointed at the quality camera Thomas was using; he was a brilliant inventor, after all!

"Odd," Thomas mumbled to himself. He was so wrapped up in the mechanics that his nervous stutter had been replaced with quick, half-finished sentences. "This is a high quality, heat sensing camera... But why it's showing fuzzy blue...Wait!"

He pressed a few more buttons till the image zoomed out and a series of small numbers filled the top right corner. He grinned at his success and pointed to the numbers.

"There, I knew it!" He cheered.

"Knew what?" Helper asked

"Oh! S-sorry I forgot you were there." Thomas smiled awkwardly. "Well, the picture is...it's fuzzy, but only on the teens there. If-f you look at the surrounding plants, they are in perfect definition." (not high, perfect) "Al-also, they are a blueish color, not red...If they aren't red that means that they are not, well, not...right? So I, uh pulled up the time, temperatures, and local frequencies...like of the surrounding cameras and speakers and such. Here"

Thomas clicked a few buttons and rewound the type. It showed the seven black outlines of the teens walking away. With the flip of a switch, the screen shrunk and revealed three others: On the top-left corner was the original 'perfect' definition, and the bottom-left was the heat sensor camera. The top-right had an odd chart that resembled a sound graph, (which are often used for recordings) and the bottom-right was a black screen with white, digital numbers that constantly changed.

Helper stared at the numbers intensely, glancing up at the two videos every so often (the sound graph made absolutely no sense to her). While the kids were on the screens, the temperature showed about 46 degrees, the time was about 2:56am and the frequency measurement was well over 100. but once the kids turned the corner, the numbers dropped (except for the time). The temperature was 0 since there was nothing to measure, and the frequencies dropped to 45 even.

"So..." Helper shook her head, not getting the reasoning

"Uh..." Thomas was unsure where to start "Oh, the, um, the frequencies. You see it was at 45 at the end of the clip, when the teens weren't there? Well, when they were there, the frequencies were all the way up to 192.13. Plus on the camera, they're fuzzy, like I t-told you earlier...and everything else was fine."

"Wait, and the temps? They're blue, not red like a normal person would be. So that means... They aren't normal... and with the cold... Are they robots or something?"

"I-I-I don't know what to make of it..." Thomas looked nervous. "From what I can assume... they'er, like, half human or something..."

"Half-human?" Helper muttered.

Something snapped in Helpers head at that moment. Half-human... that could be any number of characters. From what she had heard, there were worlds of Demi-Gods, and Magician teens that she hadn't even explored yet, it could be some of them... No, that still didn't explain the Benny incident or the picture of her. The only way to solve this was to confront them herself.

"Thomas, thank you." Helper nodded to the gremlin. She turned to Adventureland, where the 'humans' had gone. "Gus! I'm trusting you again to prevent fighting. Plus if anyone comes this way looking for me... distract them. I want a moment alone with these mysterious non-toons. K?"

"Uh, alright..." Gus could tell that she was still very upset, but decided let her be.

Helper turned to Thomas.

"You know, your the weirdest gremlin that I've ever met..." She smiled "But I wouldn't have it any other way."

She took off running, leaping gracefully over the planes that blocked her way. when she was gone, Gus turned to Little Thomas (as the other gremlins called him) to see him smiling again. Thomas then turned in his seat and started packing up his supplies. Gus smiled to himself. Oh, Prescott. If only you could see your little brother now...

A/N: YAY! I finally introduced Thomas. He is another OC. I have concepts for him, but nothing's stuck yet. Anyway, Thomas is a genius/inventor and Prescott's little brother... When Prescott turned bad, then good, then disappeared, he became even more distant then he originally was. Helper and Thomas are very close. Other references...
-Jamface was pretty self-explanatory: Second in command, close friend of Gus's, French gremlin
-the Demi-Gods are a reference to Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus series
-the Magician teens are a reference to Kane Chronicles and Bartimaeus trilogies