So what happened to Mei Mei?
Soon the three young girls arrived.
Even Bruce entered in the sewer. He was a little battered.
To Gabriel's great surprise Antonella was also with him.
"Are you ok?" the chubby girl asked.
"I'm… I'm ok… thanks!" Gabriel answered when he stopped feeling surprised.
To be fair his chest was still hurting for the scratch.
"He has a scratch!" Bruce pointed out.
"Let me see it!" the chubby girl said.
She looked at the scratch and took some bottles and band aids from her backpack.
"Here, let me heal your wounds!"
"I'll fix his shirt!" the girl with braces said.
Soon his chest pain disappeared and his shirt had no sign of scratches.
"Wow thanks!" Gabriel said stunned for the kindness of the three girls.
"Who are you anyway?"
The girl with glasses talked;
"Right, where are our manners? I'm Priya!"
"I'm Abby!" the chubby girl said.
"And I'm Miriam!" the girl with braces also said.
"We are Mei Mei' Best friends!" Priya explained.
"I'm Gabriel!"
"Yes we know you!"
"Really?"
"We were keeping an eye on you since Antonella told us what happened in Yang Di's arena. When my daughter said "Awooga" to you we knew you were in trouble!"
"What's going on?" Gabriel asked.
"Yes, I know you have a lot of question! Here, follow us!"
The group brought Gabriel to a control room were a Chinese man with glasses was waiting for them.
"He's Jin… my husband!" Ming Explained before entering in the room.
Soon all the eight humans took a seat.
Abby offered some snacks from her backpack.
"Well, before starting I have to say sorry to you!" Ming Lee said to Gabriel once she got everyone's attention.
"For what?" the boy said confused.
"It's a long story but, trust me, it's my fault if you now are in this situation. But soon you'll see why!"
She started to tell the story.
"As you can see giant red pandas are supposed to be war machines. My ancestor Sun Yee was the first to obtain certain powers. She was a mother of two daughter, when she lost her husband she had to find a way to protect them by bandits, so the gods give her the power to turn herself in to a giant and vicious red panda, symbol of the Lee's family!"
"In order to protect the lineage from future menaces all the female members of the Lee's family started to inherit this power. All the female members always inherit this power once they reach the adult age but for Mei Mei things were different. She inherited this power this year when she turned thirteen, much earlier then expected!"
Gabriel was stunned. The monster who tried to eat him was just a kid.
The Chinese woman continued her story;
"Now here's the part where you should blame me. When bandits where no longer a problem we started to seal our red panda spirit inside an artifact, mine is inside this necklace!"
She showed a necklace wit a red jewel.
"So we tried to do the same with Mei Mei but she refused. She couldn't renounce her panda spirit, it was giving her a sense of freedom she never felt before. I didn't agree with that. I insisted very much on convincing her to seal her spirit but, after many struggles, I gave up. She convinced me to keep her powers promising me to make a fair and responsible use since my daughter is a precocious. She has a great sense of responsibility!"
Ming Lee lowered her head for a while. The bad part was coming;
"But that wasn't a wise choice. She promised me to make a good use of her power and so it was… at least for a while. Then, as the days went by, Mei Mei started to act strangely, she looked like she was tired and stressed. At first I thought (also her and her friends too) it was understandable, Mei Mei worked hard for a project (we'll get to this later) so I thought it was tiredness, she was spending a lot of time outside home. A couple of days of rest and everything would be fine. But things went worse. Mei Mei looked even more stressed like she was struggling for something inside her. One day she stopped answering the phone. When her friends arrived came to my house telling she ate Carter I realized she lost the control of her powers!"
The Indian girl with glasses continued the story;
"It was a luck we were playing basketball when all this happen! We had just finished training when we heard Carter screaming "Help! Somebody help me!". We quickly run in the school hall and we found Mei Mei, turned into a red panda holding Carter.
She looked surprised to see us while Carter was unconscious in her arms!"
The chubby black haired girl continued the story;
"We asked her what she was doing but she didn't answer to our question like she was unable to recognize us!"
The girl with braces continued;
"So we sang "There's nobody like you!" but it didn't work, usually it works when we need to calm her down!"
"Then we tried to free Carter from her grip but it was impossible, she was too strong. When she realized we wanted to subtract the boy from her she ran away but first she put Carter in a safe place. She ate him!" Priya concluded taking off her glasses and drying her tears.
Abby: "It was a shock for us! So we quickly ran to Ming! We informed her about everything. She was shocked too! A lot of questions came out of our minds; why Mei Mei did such a thing?
Why she wanted Carter so much?"
Miriam: "I found the answer! Mei Mei had a crush with Carter. My suspects began when I started to remember the day when Mei Mei came to school once her hair turned red!
When she spotted Carter taking his stuff from his locker she began to look at him in a somewhat strange way. Like she was liking what she was watching. A further confirmation came when we started to collect money for the 4 towns concert; while collecting money she incidentally fell on Carter, she looked embarrassed but also pleased!"
Abby took a camera from her bag a showed a movie where the bug red panda fell on Carter. Gabriel recognized him from the kid of the milk box.
The girls also narrated what happened to Devon, Mei's second victim;
Priya: "We where helping Mrs. Lee to clean Mei's room when Miriam casually found a notebook with a green hardcover. It was the notebook where Mei Mei used to solve some math exercises. It was her favorite subject! It contained math problems and some drawings!"
Ming Lee interrupted her.
"I asked to my husband Jin to destroy it but he refused it. He said he would be shame discarding such a notebook with such great drawings!"
Miriam: "In fact in those drawings Devon was depicted as a merman. We quickly had a bad feeling. Did Mei Mei had a crush with Devon besides Carter?"
Priya: "So we quickly ran to the store where Devon was working but it was too late! She ate him too!"
"We had to do something, but what? We decided to capture her first. It was a luck we found her sleeping on a three at the Toronto's gravine. Bruce was so gentle he gave us an electrified collar to tame big beast such elephants at the zoo. We quickly tamed our friend and we brought her at the temple of the red panda; as Ming's suggestion if we wanted to cure Mei Mei we had to realize what made her turned crazy, only the gods could give us an answer. But it was unsuccessful, the gods weren't able to give us an answer. After a while we realized if gods couldn't give us an answer then science could. So we brought Mei Mei at the police departments lab. Unfortunately one of the janitors was a Yang Di's spy, so as soon he realized Mei Mei could be a perfect weapon for his dominion campaign he kidnapped her!"
"Fortunately I could realize the janitor was a spy thanks to the tattoo on his neck!" Ming Lee added.
"We know that clan, they were descendant of the bandits our ancestors fought through the centuries! With Bruce help we were able to find their headquarter in few days!"
Bruce also talked;
"I had to save you quickly but Mei Mei was faster than me! I tried to send you a massage but it was pointless! When I saw you turning around the quarter I realized you were about to take bottleneck, so I anticipated you and waited your arrive! You know the rest!"
Everything was getting clear to Gabriel.
"So, what I'm supposed to do now?" he asked.
"You have to stay here! Mei Mei can't reach you down here! If you love it would be a matter of hours or days before she finds you by smelling your scent! In fact she took some days before finding you when you left Yang Di's arena with your twin brother! So stay here because nothing can stop here from eating you alive!"
"And you can stop her?"
Gabriel hoped for a positive answer.
Ming was quiet.
Gabriel didn't like that silent.
"Well..." she said.
"… before she was kidnapped we made a lot of researches in the laboratory, and, unlike the gods, science gave us answer. We recently discovered why Mei Mei lost the control of her powers! The reason? Hormonal imbalance!"
Gabriel felt confused.
"At her age it's kinda usual to have a hormonal imbalance, it happens mostly during summertime. So we studied to find a cure and we did it!"
Ming Lee did a gesture. Abby quickly showed a flask with a red liquid inside.
"Here's the cure! By injecting this serum Mei Mei's hormones will regain full equilibrium!"
Gabriel felt relieved.
"But there's a problem…"
Gabriel felt bad again.
"… the serum won't work as long Mei Mei is in her panda form. She must turn back in her human form first!"
"How can you do that?"
"We are working on this!"
"You are a woman right? Then why don't you turn into a red panda and stop your daughter?"
"No Gabriel, I can't do that! Last time I turned into a red panda I did a lot of troubles which I'm still paying the consequences!"
"She destroyed the Skydome!" Jin Lee pointed out.
"So there's nothing I can do except to stay here?"
"Absolutely!"
"For how long?"
"We can't tell you. But there's a good news, we have more time to solve this situation. As long you are here Mei Mei won't eat anyone else without eating you first. She won't make anymore victims!"
Jin Lee pointed his watch.
"Guess we're late! I'm sorry if you have to stay here. We have to find a solution. But before we leave please make me a favor: don't hate my daughter, she's such a nice girl! You should hate me instead. If I was more persistent you wouldn't be here. You would be with your uncle enjoying your vacations. Please forgive me!"
Miriam also added:
"Make us another favor, don't tell to anybody what we told you. Don't tell to anybody what Mei Mei tried to do to you! Because Mei Mei ran for president of the school's student committee. She won the elections against Tyler the night before she lost the control of her powers. If someone would tell what she did in these days her career is ruined!"
Gabriel nodded.
Before leaving the Chinese woman looked at Gabriel from top to bottom.
"You know what? You look like Carter! No wonder why my daughter likes you!"
When they left the room Gabriel was alone. Bruce and Antonella accompanied the others to the exit of the sewers.
He tried to call his uncle. No answer.
He gave a look at his mobile phone: no signal.