A/N: Work is currently preventing me from doing much of anything, but i'm gonna keep on keeping on. For love, for the gold. for THESE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA... which I wasn't even actually born in to begin with. My mother had me on a cruise ship, which still do this day nobody believes me about. ANYWAYS.
The following Monday came as it always did after an exciting weekend: a swift punch to the face, shattering any sort of calm one had built up the previous night. But, for Raiden, Allison, and Gabriel, it was significantly more calming, as they could quickly ignore the massive internal problems amongst themselves with the daily grind.
Something, however, was a bit off today. The school was much emptier than usual, with tens of students and even a few teachers not showing up, which Raiden inquired about over lunch. "Is it just me, or is the school an awful lot quieter this morning? I mean, barely anyone's here."
"Hey, look on the bright side!" Allie said, motioning with her head over at an empty table. "Portia and Maribel aren't here, so at least we don't have to worry about them ruining our day!" As the three sat down, Gabe nervously clicked his tongue as he stared around the nearly-desolate courtyard. "It does bother me, though. I mean. What could have caused this?"
"You're seriously worried about those jerks?" Allie asked. Gabe rolled his eyes. "Well, yes... err, no! Not in the way you'd think, though. I mean, what if there's some new super-virus making people sick, or some sort of creature mass kidnapping… again."
"I dunno, why'd they go through all of this again?" Ray asked. "I mean, I guess it could be something normal for once, right?" He saw Kevin walking through the rows of tables, and waved him over, scooting to the side for him to sit down next to him. "Hey, have you guys seen Lucy?" Kevin asked as he sat down. "I haven't seen her all day, and I'm wondering if she got sick, too."
Ray's eyes awkwardly shifted between Allie and Gabe, but he kept his cool and answered back with a half-smile. "Ah, I'm sure she's fine. Don't worry about it!"
A few hours passed, and in the meanwhile Janet Pierce-Okamoto and Denise Wallace had been in the midst of a sort of ladies' day out, talking about their sons and just enjoying each other's company. Denise had remembered around near the end of lunch that she'd forgotten to pick something up from her sister's house, and they decided to drop by there before heading back to their respective homes.
Of course, neither woman had been expecting to find her front door unlocked, or to find her in a rather disheveled state. Her eyes were agape, glazed over, and her jaw was clenched shut. She was slumped over in a chair, in a rather clumsy position, as if she'd just been plopped down like a doll. The strangest sight of all were the tiny little marks on her head, with six in an arc in the center of her forehead, almost resembling a tiny row of teeth.
Denise screeched in horror and Janet felt sick, covering her mouth in fear. Denise rushed to her sister's side, shaking her and calling her name, hoping to wake her up from her near catatonic state. A loud thumping noise coming from behind the house was the only thing to pry Janet's attention away, and she stepped outside to investigate.
As she neared the backyard, she sound the source: an Attic Reaper, its eyes light purple and sleepy, rusting around in a rubber nose, attempting to find a good position to fall asleep in. In fact, it was so preoccupied in this action, it didn't even notice when Janet scooped it up and threw it into her bag, zipping and clenching it tight. Looking around to make sure nobody had seen what had happened, she pulled out her phone and trotted back over to the front door.
"My phone was in the car, I'm calling an ambulance!" she quickly explained to Denise, who had managed to awaken her sister, but had no such luck in having her explain what exactly had happened. The two thought it best to cut their day short, and Janet proceeded to quickly walk her way to the Five Paths studio and down into the temple. At this point, the Attic Reaper in her bag was starting to stir, growling and squirming about, trying to free itself from the satchel.
"Mom? What are you doing here?" Ray asked, having just come in himself. "Ray, this is something really, really important. Are any of your teachers around?" she responded, her eyes darting about the place. Master Jaha, with the apparent senses of a hawk, appeared on the steps of one of the higher rooms, gazing down at the both of them. As she slowly made her way down the sitars, Janet's bad proceeded to kick and rustle harder, as Janet's grip tightened harder.
"I do wonder how big of a problem it could be if you could contain it in there," Jaha uttered, as she finally got down the steps and face to face with Ray's mother. With a deep breath, Janet opened the bag, and the Attic Reaper leapt out with a loud hiss. Jaha blocked the creature with a mana pulse from her gauntlet, and it laid on the ground, too tired to move any further.
"An Attic Reaper," Master Jaha explained. "Capable of much more than you'd think." Lifting the tiny beast up in her withered old hands, she chuckled a bit. "That's what we have in common, I suppose. But, I digress. I have a feeling that this may be the source of all the children's absences at your school, Raiden." Ray cautiously walked closer and staring down at its resting form. "What can this little thing do?"
"Oh, nothing much," Master Jaha said, stroking it like a cat. "It can sink it's fangs into any bit of flesh it so desires, leave you paralyzed in a nightmare until someone can wake you from it, usually the 'someone' being a much larger monster looking for dinner. They also snore quite loudly." Janet and Ray both cringed, and then then turned to ask him "How many other kids were home sick today?"
"I dunno! I lot of them, I guess. I mean, I know me, Allie, Gabe, Kevin were at school…" Ray's eyes widened as the dawning horror hit him. "But Lucy wasn't." He bowed reverently towards Master Jaha. "I'll be right back, I left my phone upstairs, and there's something I've gotta check up on!" She nodded. "Fair enough. In the meanwhile, I'm to examine this little reaper to find out exactly where they're from."
Allie and Gabe had taken a slight detour from their lesson to visit Lucy in the meanwhile. Allison did have her second thoughts about her being fully alright, and just wanted to be sure before joining their friend to question the possible pandemic striking the school. "I'm just saying, it's a little weird that Ray's being totally passive about this whole thing!" she stage-whispered to Gabe, as she knocked on the front door.
"Well, it's Ray. He's kinda weird about his emotions, I mean, he could act like he doesn't care, but be wholly emotionally compromised that the mere thought of displaying any outward appearance puts an obscene amount of stress on… his… psyche." He could see her eyes glaze over as he went deeper into his explanation, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. "He's just being Ray." He reiterated, and knocked on the door once more.
Lucy's elder sister, Rubi, answered the door. "Oh, uh, hello? You two selling cookies or something?" she questioned. "Oh, no!" Gabe said. "We're friends from her school, we're actually here to give her her homework, and you know, pop by to make sure she's still okay and that she's-"
"Help! We're helping her." Allie interrupted, not wanting Gabe to overthink his explanation. They were, after all, bringing her homework, and checking up on her, though the reasons for such were a bit more complicated. It was best just to give the basics and to nevermind all the rest. Rubi invited them in, and the teens walked into Lucy's room, where she was sleeping soundly in bed.
"Well, I think she looks okay." Gabe whispered, setting his backpack down and pulling out the homework papers on her bedside table with a casual whistle. "Man, I wish I got sick so that you could do my homework for me," Allie joked, but she then overheard a very familiar voice as Rubi answered the door again. "Uh, be right back." She said, and quickly walked out of the room to see who it was. Gabe nodded, and his phone softly rang in his pocket, with Ray's unmistakable personalized ringtone.
"Ray, I'm really sorry!" Gabe said, quickly answering. "We'll be there soon! It's just we decided that it was best for you to explain the situation, while we… you… you want me to do WHAT?! …well, okay."
Gabriel took a deep breath, and inched ever so closer to Lucy's bed. He quickly looked under it, and saw that it was completely barren, aside from a few socks and dust clumps. Now that he'd finished that part of the request, he leaned over the sleeping girl and brushed back the bangs on her head, checking for any bite marks or scratches.
As ill-fortune would have it, he lost his balance and landed on top of her. Oh, sure, he'd seen her skin was clear aside from a few moles and freckles, but he'd nearly crushed her. She yelped, and shoved Gabe off her, while Gabe frantically muttered scrambled apologies, his face flushing bright red. Kevin and Allie came into the room, as the two thankfully had become unattached from one another, and now seemed to be in a state of mild mussing.
"Oh, Lucy! You're awake!" Kevin said, his eyes lighting up. "I was really scared that something bad had happened, with all that's been going on at school." Lucy glared at Gabe, who sheepishly took Allie's side across the room. "Yeah, I'm awake now." She yawned and stretched, and then let what he'd said sink in. "Uh, what happened at school, again?"
"Oh, right, you weren't there! Um," Kevin began. "Well, I think something might've made most of the kids sick, like you, uh, could be the flu or some kind of virus…" As Kevin continued, Allison yanked Gabe out of the room and out of the house, telling Rubi that they'd remembered that they were late for their martial arts lesson. "What the heck happened back there with you and Lucy?!" she demanded after she'd slammed the door firmly behind them both. "Don't you have a thing with Sasha, or whatever?"
"First of all, that is extremely sensitive information!" Gabe said. "Second of all, I've just found out what made all the other kids at school sick."
Later that night, atop Tatsurian's back, Raiden and Chavez managed to track down a massive horde of Attic Reapers hiding on the pier of the bay, nestled within a fair amount of stacked wooden crates. Bob gently went down, landing with a dull thud on the concrete as the two duelists activated the lights in their gauntlets. "Be extremely quiet." Master Chavez whispered to Ray. "We don't know how many there are, or even they're even awake, so be-"
"And, here we have it, ladies and gentlemen!" a rather loud voice interrupted. It was a young man, a year or so older than Alakshmi, aided by a girl holding a video camera. "The one, the only, San Campion Bay! And, I, Conner Daniels –a bold, brave, handsome fellow! — have come to witness the mysterious sicknesses plaguing our youth, undoubtedly from the shipped goods from who knows where"
{Oh, not you again.} Hector groaned. Ray's eyes widened, and Bob shuffled backwards into the shade, unsure of what else to do. "Wait, isn't that the guy from Weird San Campion?" Ray asked, and the man turned as if on cue with a cartoonish grin on his face.
"Yes, indeed!" He cried, rushing forward to shake his hand. "And you are all being filmed live, streaming to 5000 people as we speak thanks to our state of the art technology! Jade here rigged it herself." The camerawoman give a thumbs up and continued recording. Conner then turned to Chavez, who was holding his head in his hands. "Out for a midnight stroll, eh, detective? Or, are you researching the ghastly horrors of what all this is occurring?"
"That doesn't even make… alright. Yes, I am out here for that." He sighed deeply. "But you need to calm down, turn that camera off, and go home." Conner was deeply offended. "Go? Now, with we face danger and dread? Surely, you jest!" He waltzed over to a crate, as the camerawoman followed him and Chavez deeply sighed again. "Danger is my middle name."
As he yanked open the crate with a grunt, Chavez spotted a dozen pairs of glowing white eyes nearing around its corner. "No, don't!" he cried out. Tatsurian, noticing the danger, raced forward with a roar, as Ray quickly rushed over to Conner to try and stop him. But, the door was just wide enough for another surge of the little darkness creatures to pour out, sending the place into a frenzy.