Chapter 4: New Faces and a Headache
Amy woke up lying on what felt like one of the cots at the nurse's office back at the school building. She could hear a pair of voices, but when she opened her eyes, she found it impossible to focus her eyesight, which was blurry and fuzzy – somebody had taken from her glasses. She didn't try to move – without her glasses, she could barely tell what or where anything was. All she could see was grayish white – had to be the ceiling. She turned her head to one side, and was met with the same grayish white – wall. She turned her head the other way, and immediately squeezed her eyes shut – that had been an assault of pure, unadulterated color, without any filtering or outlines to give it some control or context. Amy rubbed her forehead when the headache suddenly kicked in.
What had happened to her? The last thing Amy remembered before blacking out was her dad – no, Professor Johnson – handing her over to the folks in black. After that, nothing… Amy tried opening her eyes again, and was relieved to see that the colors were less intense on her blurred vision. There were two different blobs – one thin and yellow, and the other round and purple, and from what she could tell both were wearing white coats. It was after the headache calmed down that she realized they were speaking English.
"… And that explains how white-haired girl attracts antagonistic attention from peers." One of the two finished. "What is real mystery is how my first lab crash-landed on Earth in first place. Is very unlikely."
"Are we really questioning something that happened twenty years ago? What's important is what we're going to do with her!" A second voice added, and Amy could barely make out the yellow blob gesturing to her.
"True, Pleakley, is not the big problem. Big problem is we do not know if human scientist knew what he was doing when tampering with genetic samples. Evil genius will need time to analyze DNA, in order to make sure white-haired girl is stable, and hopefully get results soon. But we do know that white-haired girl must have bad vision if prescription glasses are this thick." Amy had to squint in order to find the glint of her glasses in the large hands of the purple blob. It wasn't until the purple one stopped talking that Amy decided to sit up.
"Um… excuse me?" Amy felt the two blobs turn to look at her as she sat up. Amy scooted back to brace herself against the wall – people in general made her nervous, and she couldn't tell if these two were even human or not. "Where am I?"
"Ah!" The purple one lifted his thick-looking arms – she thought they were arms? – in the air. "White-haired girl has woken up. Welcome to evil genius Jumba's laboratory on big red battleship. I am evil genius Jumba, and this" he gestured to the yellow blob, "is not-so-evil assistant Pleakley."
Amy frowned and squinted as she tried to figure out whether or not the yellow one was waving at her. "I'm Amy…" she whispered, "Um… I can't really see you… where are my glasses?"
"Oh, yes, you are needing glasses to see. Here you go." Amy reached out and took the glasses from the one called Jumba, and closed her eyes before putting them on. When she opened them again, what she saw caused her to jump backward, banging her head against the wall when she did.
"Nice going," Pleakley said, glaring at Jumba with his large, single eye. "You didn't give the poor girl any warning!"
"How was I to know she would get scared? Most humans on island are not afraid of Jumba and Pleakley," Jumba responded, his smaller pair of eyes blinking. Amy could only look back and forth between the two while massaging the bump on the back of her head. Oh, her head hurt…
"Wh-what… you guys are…" Amy mumbled incoherently, eyes flickering back and forth between the two of them. They both looked at her.
"I am so sorry miss," Pleakley started, "We didn't mean to frighten you. You see, Jumba's an expert on-"
"Genetic experimentation!" Jumba lifted his arms in the air, and Pleakley ducked only at the last second. "And you are very interesting case. I have been assigned to ensure that your DNA is stable and not a threat before we reach planet Turo."
Amy blinked. "DNA… ow…" she rubbed the back of her head again. Why was she suddenly getting this headache? She didn't have any migraine pro- "Wait, did you just say we're going to a different - "
Amy was cut off as the door to the small lab opened, and the woman in the suit she'd seen earlier walked into the room.