The Stronghold

Missing: One Sanders

One week later...

"I am going to throw you out of the window if you don't stop trying to eat Salt!" I shouted at Tom, hands balled into fists. The lion cub snarled at me and then curled into a sulky ball.

Salt hid under the bed, quivering. Georgina swiped her paw under the bed to try and reach him, barking. I shoved her aside with my leg and dragged Salt out, putting him into the hutch I'd bought offline.

We'd moved hotels immediately after people had become animals. We were getting further away from the Stronghold, further away from Thunder, and more and more confused. Emmi, Shaade, Sophie and I had been waiting for Rebecca to return but we'd eventually given up and were working on ways to try and find her again.

"Maybe... maybe those creepy skin people took her?" Shaade suggested.

"Nah," Emmi said, shaking her head. "They took quite a few things, like my Pokemon and half your magic, but not Rebecca. She left all by herself."

"Why?"

"She was running away from the fight," I said flatly, lifting Georgina up and putting her behind the dog gate. She growled and jumped up, trying to nose open the latch.

"And so everybody got turned into animals," Shaade murmured, "apart from you guys. Why are you so special?"

"Sophie's already half an animal, Emmi lost her powers and it's to punish me for not being evil," I said, ticking them off my fingers. "Rebecca might be an animal by now, I don't know."

"Nobody knows where she is," Sophie said, scratching her ear. "It's really annoying."

"What I want to know is why the creepy skin man said 'we' when he was saying about me being evil," I said thoughtfully, sitting on the bed and absent-mindedly stroking Tom's head. He rolled over onto his back and yawned, wriggling about and messing up his tufty mane.

"Perhaps he works for another organisation like Thunder or Rainfall," Emmi said. I stared at her for a few seconds before clicking my fingers and jumping up, much to Tom's displeasure.

"Brilliant!" I shouted, pointing both my forefingers at a confused Emmi. "That's exactly it!"

There was a knock at the door and I froze. The hotel we were at had said no animals so Shaade had waited until night before lifting them all up to the window using weak shadows mixed with light.

"Hello?" a muffled voice said. "Is Mr Rogers there? Pepper Rogers, owner of Spirit Metal?"

"Yes, he's here," I said, walking to the door and opening it a crack. A young boy dressed in the smart hotel uniform was stood outside the door, red and gold cap at a jaunty angle, one or two buttons undone on his jacket.

"A letter for you, sir," the boy said, bowing and handing the envelope to me. I muttered my thanks and shut the door with my foot, tearing open the letter.

"It's from creepy skin man," I said, skimming it quickly. "Here, I'll read it to you.

'To Mr Rogers,

'We demand that you close down your company, Spirit Metal. That will mean closing down all the other companies you recently took back." I'd asked Thunder's permission to get my business back and they'd said yes.

"This, as you know, will destroy the economy. Again. And it will also hurt your friends - with no hotels, banks, supermarkets, newspapers, there will be nothing for them to live off, nowhere to work.

'We also give you a word of warning. There is another way to break this curse, but to do so you have to first get all your Super Glitches back. That means finding Rebecca again, seeing as how she still has powers.