Unlocked: Rewritten

Chapter 24

A/N

Hey people! Here's a longer chapter today! :)

Sophie

Before everyone went home that night, Keefe suggested Team Valiant tackle their assigned jobs at a "Research Party." Everyone agreed to do it at Havenfield the next night. Then it somehow became a "Research Sleepover Party," which had a lot to do with Biana's nagging.

Then Wylie suggested they include Tam, since he would know a lot about shadowflux.

Then Biana suggested they might as well invite Linh, Marella, and Maruca so they didn't feel left out.

Then Sophie started to wonder whether Team Valiant would actually be getting any research done during the sleepover.

Even so, Sophie figured it might be good to let everyone just hang out, after all the stress of the past week. Biana must have been pretty lonely at Everglen with both of her brothers gone. Not to mention Keefe, who tried to act like he was okay with what they found in the cache, but couldn't fool Sophie.

The next night, all of Sophie's friends were gathered in Havenfield's living room, talking, laughing, and eating mallowmelt.

"Wanna play truth or dare?" Sophie heard Biana ask.

"No!" multiple people shouted from across the room.

"I vowed never to play that again after what happened last time," Maruca said.

"Okay then! Nevermind."

"So, Glimmer's trial is tomorrow?" Marella asked Tam.

"Yeah," Tam said, "She's super happy about it."

"Happy? Why?"

"She's been waiting for so long, she just wants to get it over with. I know, she's weird."

"She is!" Linh and Wylie both agreed at the same time. They looked at each other and blushed.

"Has anyone heard of a movie?" Dex asked.

"Um, I have!" Sophie said.

Dex rolled his eyes. "Of course. I meant besides you."

"What's a movie? Is that a human thing?" Stina wondered, wrinkling her nose a bit.

"Yeah, but it's really cool!" Dex insisted. "It's like a picture that moves, and it tells a story."

"Does it have sound?" Wylie asked.

"Yep. It's like a play, but projected onto a wall."

"That's... weird," Maruca remarked.

"But it's cool! Here, I brought one for us to watch. It was really tricky trying to get the human movie transferred into Elvin technology. But I basically reprogrammed an imparter to project the movie from its screen. I had to align the binaries so that it—"

"Yeah, we get it," Marella interrupted. "Fancy Technopath stuff."

"What's the movie called?" Biana asked.

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Dex read from the label. "I found it in my dad's collection."

"Oh my gosh, really?" Sophie exclaimed. "I love Harry Potter!"

"What's Harry Potter?" Linh asked.

"You'll see!" Sophie grabbed Dex's imparter-projector-thingy and pressed play.

Keefe

"That was the greatest thing ever!" Keefe said when a list of the humans who had worked on the movie started playing. Sophie said they were called "credits."