The next day the gang hung out at Devon's house. Hung up around chairs and Devon's bunk bed they discussed Drake's kidnapping in her trashed room.
"-And you forgot to mention that Rachel was missing!? This is important Drake! These guys are like the super police!" Devon paced around her room while 'Scare U' lightly filled the empty air.
Drake and Megan sat in the top bunk as they looked down at Hope and the pacing Devon.
"Maybe I can send them another message by posting it online," Drake felt guilty.
"It won't work. You don't even have an account. First they would have to know it's you, and second they would have to be on the lookout. They want to know about aliens not lost friends," Devon said.
"Not to be rude Devon, but that view is delusional. An alien kidnapping our friend is definitely something that would fall into their radar. A post about an annoying housemate did," Megan said.
"Grr! The housemate thing was lucky! There are thousands of posts being made everyday! We have lost our chance!" Devon stopped and sat down in an empty chair.
"... Well It doesn't hurt to try," Hope said.
"Hope is right," Drake shouted, "It may be a small chance, but we will have to take it, for Rachel. We have nothing left to lose. At least we would be proud enough to say we tried!" He took out his phone to create an account.
With zero followers or attention he posted a blog about Rachel.
Every so often they refreshed, but to no validation. Without the YSC's eyes, the gang went to the police station to give another report. Mysteriously enough, nobody was there.
"Jinkies! the police station is closed?" Hope was confused. They stood outside of the darkened station.
"Police stations are open 24 hours a day 7 days a week," Megan said looking at her phone.
"This is uncanny!" Drake put his arms up.
"Looks like we're on our own," Devon said, "Well, I'm gonna take a nap. You guys tired me out again," Devon walked away. The rest of them watched her.
"But we have work on this!" Megan said to her.
"Maybe later," Devon kept walking.
"Ok. I am calling a recess," Drake made the 'time out' hand symbol, "I will see you guys when I have made a breakthrough,"
"This is for the exciting part," Johnson said to Oscar. A cloud hung over their once warm sidewalk spot.
"Did you come up with a breakthrough?" Oscar asked slouching.
"Sorta,"
Tweaking further hardware designs on his Deer Intelligence Amplifier or DIA. Drake grew frustrated. He left the baseball sized blob of parts alone to take a nap. Just a little sidestep from his desk to his bed.
In his nap a dream accumulated like some precipitating storm cloud. He was in his high school being chased by some sort of unseen red thing. He screamed and leapt but he always became too fatigued to run like he wished he could. He pushed on anyways swearing it was moments away from his neck hairs.
Turning right in the corridor he was face to face with an out of place brick wall. Blood was tricking from the concrete. He was forced to stare but still couldn't understand for the most part. The blood formed words, then caught on fire like gasoline. Heart racing, Drake popped up out of bed. He tried to calm his idiot emotions into submission, but it worked better when he was nice to his humanity. He looked out of the window near his desk.
A howling snowstorm had struck the night. Wind scraping the sides of his comfortable room.
Would you look at that! There's no need to feel afraid Drake. We are safe in a snowstorm. What a place to be tis our home.
His body calmed and looked out to the window more. Just then Drake thought of something. Words in flame. He texted the gang about it. By 5 o'clock the next day they were traveling after school.
Drake drove up higher elevations towards yoyle Mountain.
"Is this going to take long?" Devon asked. The homework she revived that day was monstrous.
"Mmm, I am not sure. He pivoted the wheel back and forth to get around a rather large rock, "Brr!"
Hope practiced playing her ukulele as quietly as she could, but she didn't know it was actually pleasant to the passengers.
"We would be there already if not for the snow," To Drake's right he discovered something, "Yoy! Look! My deer!" He stopped the car just to point to it. The buck with a live DIA in his skull stood there for a moment before digging his nose in the snow.
"We'll get it later. The snow's too slippery up here," Megan said holding his shoulder.
Drake sighed. His experiment was making all sorts of new developments with his old DIA, and without him. Reluctantly he moved on.
"Are you sure this wood will burn? There was a literally storm yesterday. The snow wasn't that thick, but it's still wet," Devon said looking at the wood in the trunk.
"That's why we have gasoline," Drake said. 2 minutes later they arrived up the base of the mountain. They began to place wooden logs in giant letters.
Spelled out in logs and 2 by 4s wrote
BRING BACK RACHEL
"Now for the lighting. Megan!" Drake announced as the rest of them went over near the van.
Megan struck a match and said goodbye to the wood.
"Arrivederci," she dropped the match but nothing happened.
"... Do it again!" Drake shouted causally. Megan struck the match again and dropped it. The gasoline that drenched the wood lit up and connected the letters. The sun was going down so they had to get started with the next step, if anybody knew what that was.
"What do we do now?" Hope asked.
"Oh, well we scream and stuff," Drake took out a large yoyle flag from the van. Bouncing around the letters at a safe distance he crazily waved the flag around chanting: "BRING BACK RACHEL!"
Hope laughed. She hopped in line behind him.
"BRING BACK RACHEL!" She shouted playing an awkward cord on her ukelele every chant. Megan and Devon made a gong out of a frying pan Drake brought and a stick. They hopped a little slower while still chanting. After about 20 minutes of this the gang got tired, but they didn't give up.
"I hate this... but I'm doing this for Rachel so..." Devon panted.
"I kinda.. needed the... workout... and the practice," Hope said.
Like a baseball bat, the gang was suddenly hit with a strong snow filled wind. It picked up like a blizzard. putting out the fire and knocking over the friends. Confused and hurt, Drake propped himself up off the rocks to discover he was in a blinding storm.
"How could this be?" He tried to use his voice to comfort himself, but he couldn't even hear much of that.
Somebody heard you.
He didn't think it would be like this.
They are trying to scare you.
Should I be scared?
He held his body close for security, but the snow in front of him had stopped in mid air. The confusion causing him even more panic. He didn't even notice his feet were off the ground before it was too late. Drake couldn't move to even look up. He couldn't even scream.
Welp, this is how I die.
He wanted to thrash out, but not even his own body was his to control. The tractor beam fully lifted him into what looked like a mini dining hall, or cafeteria. He was lifted up into a glass tube looking out to this dining hall.
Are there blades above me!?
His imagination went wild, but that wasn't the case. Something from behind his head struck his neck, and the next thing he knew he was in an empty metal room.
He sat up on the floor and looked around in the situation. There was a door, but it didn't even have a handle to grip. Drake went over to observe it anyway. He gripped it using his palms and tried to slide it open. He attempted this in between breaks for hours.
This it It! I'm gonna go insane in here!
"AHH!" He struck the wall with his right foot, but that only caused him flail into a seizure. His body and mind was on full panic mode. Drake huffed and shivered after the episode ceased.
Usually one would call 911 when you have a seizure.
It wasn't like him to have one.
What's that sound?
It was always there, but only now did it start to bother him. His heart rate jumped. The sound reminded him of a microwave, and it was only increasing. With nothing left to do Drake went back to the door to try and open it again. His vision was starting to fade.
Nonono! stay awake!
If he collapsed there was absolutely nothing he could do to defend himself.
After a while he passed the brink of blacking out, but still felt the pressure increase. After even more time he got a better grip of the door.
He clawed it, and thrust it sideways. It broke the lock, so he pulled it out of the way. He laughed at his luck. He didn't feel right, and he knew that, but he couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. Drake laughed out loud in triumph. He hobbled over down the hall he heard something, so he turned to look.
There was a prism with a green laser weapon.
"AH! WHO ARE YOU!?" Drake squaked. He held his skull, which also wasn't quite right. He stumbled over to the alien prism impulsively. It pointed it's laser gun at his head. Drake screamed at its movement and punted the prism into the wall. It killed the thing while at the same time causing a large dent in the wall. Behind him he heard a sound, so he turned around again. The same alien he just murdered was reprinted out of a machine attached to the wall down the hall.
More footsteps.
Drake turned to look at more prisms down the same side the first one came from. They had green laser pistols, that they opened fire with. Drake jumped up and rushed back to the one reanimated prism. A laser hit him straight into his oddly shaped skull killing him.
Later he awoke in the same room again with the same old skull, and the same old hands.
For what seemed like forever, Drake endured this metal box experiment. Sometimes he would claw at the walls and scream, while other times he would melt or hallucinate. All the other times he would become drunken and vomit.
All these ended in a shot to his skull, whether the experiment went on for hours or days. Somehow he always woke up to the same nightmare. He had forgotten when he started, and gave up on there ever being an end.
When he was fully drained, they let him out without starting the experiment.
The aliens were tame around him. As he was looking outside his doorway one tapped his leg. With an arm on his back he held a mug. The prism gave Drake the mug and walked into a big room ahead. Drake smelled the drink.
"Hot chocolate?" He didn't trust it, but carried it anyways. Drake walked out of the chamber corridor and into a high ceilinged room. Mechanical experiments were underway by 2 aliens.
"Can I ask what is going on?" Drake said delicately.
"We're done with you," Drei said bluntly. His face had moved to his back so he could look at Drake.
"Are you going to dispose of me?" Drake asked. He stood stiff.
"If you mean bringing you back to Earth than yes," Drei said.
"Y-you're letting me go?!" Drake felt tears well up in his eyes. It almost seemed unrealistic.
"You have been unsuccessful in the experiments we've done on you. We don't need you anymore," Drei walked over to a toolbox shaped device being tweaked by Eins. Drake followed.
"Can I ask what that is?" He pointed to it.
"It's a SESC, a Stationary Earth Species Converter. It initiates transformations within earth life. I'm just tweaking the human setting. Humans are very complicated," Eins said.
"Could I?" Drake asked to look at it.
"No," Eins said bluntly.
"Oh, sorry," Drake wanted to stay on their good side. He swaggered over to Zwei's protect. That alien was working on a shrub made of metal.
"What is that?" Drake asked leaning back and forth.
"It's an iron bush. It's living iron," Zwei didn't even look up at Drake from his papers. Drake looked at the shrub a little longer before moving on to an experiment that wasn't currently being worked on by anyone.
It was a silver box 6 feet long lying like a coffin on a table. A glass window had him look inside. His heart sank. Rachel's face was in the view of the window. She was unconscious in some ooze.
"W-what are you doing to Rachel!?" He never thought he would see her this way. It looked like she was dead, succumb to science.
"Now now. We are just testing radiation on her," Drei said calmly from across the room.
"But you can not! That will give her cancer!" Drake held his head.
"Who cares," Zwei said not looking away from his work.
Drake couldn't understand how to talk to them. They were delusional, and without morals. Drake bit his lip hard, and paced around for 5 minutes. He finally decided what he was going to do.
Drake sighed.
"Do not do radiation experiments on her... do them on me. I am the only human subject you need," Drake said. He wanted to cry, taking one for the team was going to kill him.
"You'd do that?!" Zwei looked up from his papers and metal bush.
"Yes. In fact if you have any other humans here you are working on, release them! I am the only one you need," Drake felt his body lose faith in his soul as he put his thumb on his chest.
"Eh," The aliens looked over at dented walls and crumbled experiments. Drei walked over to Drake.
"Will you obey, and never struggle?" A test subject who didn't trash their things was very valuable.
"...Yoy," Drake said.
The aliens gathered at the center of the room and talked amongst one another. After coming to an agreement Drei went back to Drake.
"You have a deal, if you burn our evidence. The humans are after us. Burn what they know. Deny us," Drei said.
"Will I have to be your experiment still?" Drake asked.
"Of COURSE!" Drei hissed he put his little stick arm out for a handshake. Drake shook it, so the deal was set.
"So no more humans were experimented on?" Oscar asked. They were walking again.
"Well yeah," Johnson sighed, "Except for my private stuff," He put his hand on his face, "Uhg I'm just as bad as they are! No wonder Ball hates me. I've been poisoning David and Nelly with gummies," Johnson breathed.
"You trust me with that knowledge!?" Oscar's eyes were wide about the poison.
"Honey I can't die, but I can definitely kill you," Johnson took it as a joke.
Oscar looked away.
"What were they trying to do to you?" He asked.
"Well, they were shooting chaotic rays into my body hoping I would be able to control the chaos I took in. It never happened, but they were recently successful with a brand new subject," Johnson sighed, "I've been experimenting with them for a long time now. My human brain occasionally gives me the edge when it comes to coming up with ideas for them. They've become lazy these past years.
I tell them about TV and they all of a sudden want to see Earth TV live wherever they go. I do my own stuff too, but to borrow from them I always need a trade.
With these trades, I helped yoyleland build up the city, and grow metal berries and purple grass," Johnson explained.
"That was you!?" Oscar couldn't believe it.
"Mm hmm. The aliens gave me power here on Earth. If I wanted to be king of yoyleland they could make it happen in a heartbeat.
The more control of the government I have the more they can mess around without getting bothered. I might have power on Earth, but if the aliens want to put a human in a freezer for 5 years I have to oblige," Johnson said.
"Why don't you just tell the government to shoot them down?" Oscar asked.
"They would come back to life and start a war with Earth. They told me so. Bla-blam!" Johnson said pretending to shoot a gun.
"What's stopping them from starting a war anyway?"
"Bleh!" Rocky threw up in the purple grass.
"People can't make TV if they're dead. Also, if they are at war the aliens can't do Earth experiments without being shot at. They just want to do science,"
"But how can they only use you? Different people are... different with like, different genes," Oscar raised his arms in the air for a moment.
"They just change my genes if they need a different type of person. They remake me when they're done," Johnson sighed again, "I've died countless times. But my spirit has been dead a long time,"
"Have you told anyone else this?" Oscar stopped walking, and so did Johnson.
"..No," Johnson looked around uncomfortably.
"Thanks for telling me," Oscar said.
Thanks for telling me too
Thought the confused remains of Ball.
They stood outside Diggs house.