Popcorn! Who'd have thought it had magical properties to save the universe!?! Or at least slay an argument...Tom was either a genius or an absolutely evil deviant who had laced his popcorn with happy sauce. The stuff we swear the school nurse keeps above her desk and eats for lunch. No one is that happy! While I doubt Tom's pilfering skills, I have to say I lean towards him being an evil deviant rather than a genius. No one who makes the awful puns and is as awkwardly dorky as he is could be an evil genius.
Hey! He's OUR awkwardly dorky evil deviant!
DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PICKING ON HIM!
(that's our job!)
AND DON'T THINK ABOUT STEALING HIM AWAY EITHER!
(he's ours! sold his soul to us in the 1st grade. too bad so sad, you guys just look and see what you could have had)
As we munched with greatly reduced passions and talked. We were agreed. We wanted to go check out the spot where the helmet was and the legless footman appeared: we even named it Creepy Follow. Tom nominated me as Icky Trod Stain to go with our naming theme and I downgraded him from deviant to just got lucky once mentally.
If you haven't figured out our puns there, I'm not explaining. Sheesh.
If you ask again, I shall have to mock you for a second time.
There were serious problems with our goal of going to see where the Legless Footman went. The first was the site was cordoned off by the BII (Bees, by the way is how most people call them) and would be for the next week at least.
Secondly, the US Marine Corps had a squad in Shadwell now. It was a precaution against trouble. There were no signs of a massive invasion fleet, but even so, no one wanted to be in the little town wiped out. The USMC Planetary Commandant didn't want to be the gal on duty who lost the first American town on an exoplanet to soldiers from another country either. On on her watch! And then there was the parents of Shadwell. They were well and truly stirred up. And they were watching.
The Bees were going to be doggedly thorough: first major case on Jefferson within their jurisdiction. The Marines were going to be watching for people sneaking around. And then the 'Rents. Oy.
To even get out of school was going to be a challenge. To not be tracked as we did our thing was going to be an even bigger challenge. Remember our Boosters? They are AWESOME. However, they are the single easiest way to track anyone, anywhere. Parents upload tracker software all the time to their kids' boosters. The law forbade doing so to our brain implants directly, but...you had to wonder. That meant at least ONE of our five sets of parents had probably placed a hacker tracker on our boosters.
This meant we had to swap out our boosters. What?! You didn't think kids in the 22nd century aren't STILL better at tech than their parents?
We would also need a distraction to get out of school. After all, with the increased security, the drones were going to be everywhere. We could hack cameras temporarily, but if the drones were all out of whack someone might actually figure out what we were up to and then on top of that, someone might get hurt. There WAS someone out there with an Indian combat suit or so it seemed.
And then the Marines...they had tech. Tech that made what we had look like sticks and stones compared to modern boosters. Or so we were sure.
We knew we also couldn't be directly involved with the distraction. If we were, we'd get caught. Tensions were just running too high. The parents were just too flipped out. It was annoying. That meant we had to get META with our Merry Pranksterhood. We would need someone to do it for us at least. And get caught in the right way. And not care.
We felt rather uncomfortable then. We knew who we were going to have to talk to. And she didn't like us. She actually liked Tom a lot. Too much. She wanted to add him to her collection. But she especially hated me. I was the one who stood between her and Derplicating Tom. It made me queasy to think about.
But we all knew what had to be done.
We were going to have to talk to Maven.
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