I'm back! And I'm ready for more nonsensical misadventures with our favorite French teenage animal themed superhero team.
I wish I could say I'll be more frequent, but between finishing my Animaniacs fic and continuing this one I got a new job as a cake decorator in a bakery. Free time is diminished but I'm not abandoning this at all.
Previously on Squad Goals…
Mayura hid her shock at seeing just who came to her rescue, playing it cold and neutral. "Why did you help me escape?"
Felix grinned, "I'd like to have a chat about the Peacock Miraculous."
Now…
Mayura paused, taking in what the boy was saying. If he was interested in the Peacock Miraculous, then there was only one thing to do.
A moment of still silence. Then Mayura pushed Felix into the sewer water and ran away. "Pwooweh! Come on, really Nathalie?!"
With this anticlimactic conclusion, now we can move on to a completely different story!
"This is going to be so much fun! Thanks for coming with me!" Sabrina strolled down the street with Max and Kim on both sides of her.
"We should be the ones thanking you for inviting us." Max pushed his glasses up while he walked "I've never been to an escape room before, and I have calculated a sixty-eight percent chance that this will be an exhilarating experience." The remaining forty-two percent did leave them with a chance of Kim doing something to get them banned for life, but the horse hero was willing to be optimistic about those odds.
"I've never been to an actual escape room either, though getting locked in Chloe's winter wardrobe was pretty much the same thing." Sabrina recalled, still perky despite the trauma of being trapped for nineteen hours and getting yelled at by Chloe after she broke an ice skate while carving a hole for her to crawl out of. Fun times. "My dad was saying that the police force has been using an escape room as a training exercise and it made me want to try it for myself!"
Kim, as always, was pumped up for whatever challenge they would come across. "This room isn't going to know what hit it after we're through!" He punched out forward like a boxer. Evidently, he had no idea what an escape room even was. While Sabrina and Max had the brains to solve the puzzles, they were going to need Kim's brawn to cover their weak noodle arms.
OXOXOXOX
The trio paid and went inside the escape room. A video monitor on the wall played a pre-recorded message as the doors were locked. A woman's voice spoke over the visuals. "Welcome to Escape the Room! An escape room where your goal is to escape this room!… Really? Who wrote this? Ahem, you will be given two hours to gather clues and solve puzzles to find the three room keys to escape. If you need assistance in case of an emergency, please use the help buzzer, but be warned that it can only be used once… that's stupid. What if there's a second emergency? What if no one picks up the first time?… fine, I'll finish the script-now then, each clue will be written on a special card. Underneath this monitor is the first clue. Good luck and remember; we can watch you but we can't hear you scream… how much are you paying me to read this?"
The interior was set up like a retro-futuristic styled living room, whatever that looks like. Sabrina looked underneath the monitor but only found an empty shelf. "Isn't the first clue supposed to be here?"
"That's peculiar. Maybe it fell?" Max looked around the floor, but alas, there was no paper to be found.
"Maybe it's INSIDE the TV!" Kim rolled up his sleeves and prepared to rip the flatscreen from the wall.
Sabrina and Max frantically pulled the more athletic boy back. "No!" "It won't be back there!" their voices overlapped.
With Kim persuaded to not cause any unnecessary property damage… for the time being, Sabrina made her way over to the emergency buzzer. "I believe a missing clue counts as an emergency. How are we supposed to escape if we don't know how to find the keys?" she reasoned. Pressing the big red button on the wall, a loud buzz rang out, and the girl leaned over to speak into the microphone. "Hi, um, excuse me? We just entered the escape room and the first clue is missing. Could you tell us what it said so we can get started?"
Silence. They waited, but with an entire minute and thirty-nine seconds (according to Max) gone by, it was clear no one was going to answer. "Did they all go out to lunch? Why aren't they answering?" Kim scratched his head.
In the control room:
Every employee that worked in the Escape Room was head-banging and doing air guitar to the hottest power ballad in Paris. 'GAAAARRRRYYYY! I WILL AVENGE YOU GAAAARRRRYYYY!' No one paid any attention to the monitor showing the inside of the room. They all thought someone else was paying attention. Just like they thought someone else put the clues back in place for the next players.
Back to the room:
"So to recap-" Max pushed up his glasses. "We are trapped inside an escape room with no clue to make progress. It also stands to reason that if our starting clue is MIA, then we have an percent chance that the rest of the clues could be missing as well."
"No clues?" Kim repeated, "Then how are we gonna get out? Should we transform?" He pulled the sweatband on his forehead forward to show the circlet hidden underneath.
Xuppu briefly came out of hiding "The cameras can't see us kwami, anyway!"
Sabrina, Max, and their kwami's unanimously objected, "No!"
"Our transformations would still be on camera!" Max reminded them, intensely staring at the monkey wielder until he fixed his sweatband and let his kwami back into his hood.
"Besides, this was always meant to be a challenge!" Sabrina was oddly intense "No clues mean we're just doing it on hard mode! So let's stop yapping and start clue searching!"
The boys blinked, not sure how to react to this side of their usually timid classmate "Woah." Max muttered.
Barkk discreetly flew up to the other two holders. "Her father insisted it would be too challenging for her." She disclosed. Granted, it was less about his daughter's own ability and more about the supposed difficulty he and his officers encountered. Further granted, Roger and his squad were absolutely terrible at escape rooms. One guy wasted half an hour pulling on a push door.
Sabrina noticed her friends were still standing around while she was reaching underneath a dresser. "Come on, the clock is ticking!" she urged them.
"Aye aye ma'am!" Kim saluted. A bowl of fruit on the table caught his eye. "Aha! I bet a key is inside one of the fruits!" he snatched an apple and bit into it before Max could stop him. It tasted weird, not very apple-y.
"Kim, those are wax fruits!" Max took the apple from his best friend. He grimaced at the large bite missing from the false fruit.
OXOXOXOX
Twenty-five minutes of captivity later- "Actually, it was twenty-seven minutes later." Max interrupted the writer. Sigh. Twenty-SEVEN minutes of captivity later and the trio managed to locate the first key.
"I found one!" Sabrina called the other two over. She was standing atop the sofa and spotted an unusual glimmer coming from inside one of the hanging lamps. Getting closer, she could see a brass key hanging on the lightbulb.
"Excellent work Sabrina!" Max congratulated her. He could also see the key now from down below. The light was hanging higher up than any of them could reach. Even Kim couldn't grab it as he tried leaping up at it from the couch.
Kaalki briefly poked her head out of hiding to chime in "We could easily float up and bring the key down, though the levitating key shown on the video lens will raise further questions."
The dog heroine held a hand to her chin. "They wouldn't just keep it dangling where no one could reach it. There has to be a puzzle to lower the light." She reasoned.
Max's eyes traced the wire keeping the light airborne, following it into the wall where he saw it clump behind the wallpaper. He judged the trajectory of where the most likely path the wire would run and happened upon a light switch control with four knobs. "I believe I may have found our puzzle." He informed his companions and led them to the switches. Max tested one of the knobs and a light brightened and rose. Changing the direction of the knob, the light dimmed and lowered. He tested them all, but none lowered the correct light.
Sabrina followed what he was doing and moved a knob that Max had already turned. To their surprise, they could hear mechanisms moving in the ceiling. "How did-" The sole girl realized that Max had still been turning a knob when she moved hers.
"Is the ceiling broken?" Kim asked, taking a bite out of a wax orange.
"No, it appears that moving the knobs in tandem activates an unlocking mechanism that, with the correct combination, should lower the light with the key," Max explained. Kim blinked in confusion. Max sighed. "Think of it like entering the combination for your pool locker."
Now that Kim understood. "Gotcha, so we just keep twisting these till it clicks!" The taller boy took hold of two knobs and moved them in opposite directions. There were no extra sounds that time, so Kim tried going the opposite direction, to no avail.
The trio took turns moving the knobs. Every few tries, they'd find the next part of the combination. The ceiling lights went up and down and turned on and off. One combination straight up summoned a disco ball in another corner of the room, which served no other purpose than just an amusing Easter egg. Max carefully adjusted the knobs. He had used every combination possible with two at a time. "We have exhausted all options with pair combinations. Perhaps we should try multiple at the same time?"
Max and Sabrina grabbed two knobs each, while Kim took the one remaining. "Let's move them all towards the left first." Sabrina suggested. No results occurred for the first few combinations, but turning three of them to the left and the rest to the right made something click in the ceiling. The trio watched as the key-bearing light finally lowered slowly… before slamming itself into the ground and shattering glass everywhere.
The teens shielded themselves from the flying glass. Sabrina carefully stepped around the mess and picked up the key. "It's down." She awkwardly smiled.
"All right! Two more to go!" Kim cheered, biting into a wax banana. Then he moved the fruit to his hoodie so Xuppu could take a bite. Max and Kaalki shook their heads in disappointment.
OXOXOXOX
"Are you certain another key is inside of here?" Max questioned the girl, who was currently lowering her arm into the top of a retro television.
"Positive." Sabrina affirmed. Kim had tried to turn on the old TV but the screen remained blank even with the power on. Sabrina deduced that another key was likely hiding inside, and the top of the TV was easy to remove, which aided her theory. She reached around inside. There were no wires, but there were parts that moved and clicked. Sabrina touched a smooth shape and felt it over to confirm it was the second key. "I've got it-"
The redhead paused with dread filling her stomach. Her arm was stuck.
"Sabrina?" Max could tell something had gone wrong with the key retrieval.
Attempting to pull out her arm, Sabrina answered through gritted teeth, "I think my arm is caught in some sort of mechanism!" In hindsight, there was probably another puzzle that would open the top of the tv and bring the key up. Reaching in without solving said puzzle moved the pieces and trapped the girl.
"Let me try!" Kim grabbed Sabrina's arm and tried to forcefully yank her out.
"Owowowo-STOP IT!" The dog heroine used her free hand to shoo her teammate away from her captured appendage.
Max looked over to try to see inside the fake TV set. It appeared to be a set of cogs had shifted inside and gotten caught on Sabrina's sleeve. "Releasing you will be tricky. We cannot attempt to solve the puzzle with a strong likelihood that you would receive further injury."
"So what do we do?" The token female tried not to freak out.
"I have an idea!" Kim enthusiastically held up a molotov cocktail, already lit and flaming.
"Good kwami Kim!" Max exclaimed, alarmed yet bewildered at the sudden object on fire. He swiftly went and took it from Kim, stomping out the flames with his foot. "Where did you even get that?!"
Kim shrugged. "Dunno." he took out a wax kiwi and nibbled on it.
The dog kwami came out of hiding and went into the TV "Barkk, get back here!"
"Wait a minute." Barkk spoke to her partner. "We couldn't help because it would appear that invisible forces were helping you, right? If I'm inside of here, the cameras won't see any invisible, tiny help!"
Given that the alternative was letting Kim throw a flaming object at her, Sabrina nodded for Barkk to go ahead. The tiny, floating dog phased through the fake television and moved the gears around to release her bespectacled partner. The human trio waited and listened to the inexplicable sounds that came from the box, including but not limited to; a lawnmower, an old timey awooga, crashing glass and a swarm of monkeys… though that one may have been Xuppu.
Finally, they heard a click and Sabrina felt the tightness clamping around her arm disappear. "Good dog!" She would have to remember to give her kwami a belly rub when they got out. With her appendage freed, Sabrina raised up the key to show the boys, "Only one more left to find! At this rate, we'll find it in no time!"
OXOXOXOX
"There's no more time!" Sabrina shouted in despair as she introduced her face to the tabletop.
The countdown was down to only four minutes, and it looked like they were destined for failure without key number three. They'd searched everywhere, Sabrina tried out everything that could be a puzzle, Max calculated the most likely locations and still came up empty-handed, and Kim lifted furniture above his head and at one point straight up just punched a hole into the wall.
Max was equally disappointed. "We're so close! The only explanation at this point is that the remaining key was also not reset alongside the missing clues."
Kim was still bummed they were about to lose, but not bummed enough to stop eating a ridiculously large wax blueberry. "Hey, if we fail, we'll just come back again. Maybe bring the others along too and make a competition out of it!" Competitions with Kim involved never ended well. The other two silently agreed to avoid even the word competition around him for the next week.
The wax blueberry had been devoured and Kim reached back into the wax fruit basket and removed the only remaining wax produce, an eggplant. Max could not comprehend why and HOW he was still eating fake food! "Kim, for the last time, stop eating the wax fruit!"
The redhead paused, noticing a discrepancy with what the last uneaten wax food was. "Wait a second, eggplants aren't fruit. Why would that be in a fruit basket?"
Taking a large bite, Kim only felt pain when his teeth collided with the false eggplant. "Yeow! It's as hard as a rock!"
"Give me that!" Sabrina took the eggplant away from him and banged it on the table. It made a metallic sound. It wasn't made of wax.
Max's eyes widened. "You have got to be kidding me…"
Sabrina grabbed the stem and found that it could turn. She unscrewed the stem off to reveal a golden key hiding inside. "It's here! The final key is here!"
The teens celebrated, and each hurriedly grabbed a key. With only two minutes to spare, they stood in front of the exit door and inserted the keys simultaneously. The synchronized clicks looked really cool, and the door opened for them. "yippee, you made it." The voice from the instructions flatly celebrated.
With their freedom earned and their confidence higher than it had been this morning, there was only one last thing they had to do. "Boys-" Sabrina turned to them dramatically, light shining from behind her. "Let's go brag about this to my dad!"
"Yeah!" Max, Kim and the kwamis cheered. They followed the dog heroine out back into the real world, more prepared than ever for whatever dangers they would face.
Elsewhere, Felix is in a laundromat. Waiting for his clothes to wash while he temporarily wore a crop top bearing the phrase 'Lordy Lordy I'm Over Forty'. He lets out a long, aggravated sigh.