It was contradictory.
How the uneasiness of the waters rocked the boat, yet bring tranquility like a parent rocking their child's crib.
How the cup of tea near you was supposed to make sleeping easier, only to boost your tolerance to the point that it had no effect anymore.
How Gibby, Sandy, Mei, and MK rest peacefully, which under normal circumstances, should be calming. Instead, it made you question how they could be so calm, no matter the thoughts that currently plagued their minds.
You wouldn't lie...
You envied them.
At first, you tried Sandy's sleepy tea. But like mentioned before, that didn't work.
But then you tried to start a food coma. It wasn't working, and you didn't want to empty the snack cabinet that fast.
And then you just lied down. With your eyes shut, your other senses did what they were supposed to do. That only lead to you being hyperaware of every snore, every shift, every mumble. No matter how many times you shift to the other side or change positions, nothing seemed to work.
Maybe it didn't help that Stain was back, with Gibby being asleep and all. They didn't even say anything. They just sat on the corner and...stared. Mockingly. Watching you with curious eyes, just to see you struggle. Just to see how long it'll take until you finally gave up.
You weren't willing to give them that satisfaction, so you tried to ignore them even being there. But keeping your eyes shut wasn't doing you any favors. Stain was silent as a dead body, but the creaking of the boat and the sound of the still waves sent an uneasy feeling through your being.
That the thing could sink at anytime.
You have water powers now, sure. But that little voice in you that urges you to stay alert only fueled the fire of worries that kept spiraling in your head, no matter how much you wanted it to cease.
Hesitantly, you sat up, before looking at the others sleeping nearby. Mei snored the loudest, laying sprawled on her sleeping bag within the comfort of her dragon onesie. MK was more in an infant-like position, clinging onto a pillow with both arms and legs while his hair breathed freely with the lack of his iconic bandana.
Gibby slept soundly on a nest made from the ruined pillow fort, where she curled up into a ball, not too different from Mo who was next to her. Finally, there was Sandy. In typical Sandy fashion, he wore a nightcap, eye covers, a striped nightgown, and hair rollers on his beard. The big guy snored as well, although less louder than Mei.
Good, they're all asleep.
Carefully, you pushed yourself up, slowly shimmying yourself off the blankets until you were finally on your feet. Still ignoring the inky elephant in the room, you went ahead and grabbed your phone to check the time.
'4:08am'
You unplugged it, now with the battery full and all. With that out of the way, you made sure not to step on any cat tails as you walked closer to the door with silent steps. You slowly turned the knob and swung the door open, keeping the noises and creaks to a minimum.
Stepping outside and into the deck, you were greeted with the cool ocean breeze, the dark blue sky, and the blanket of fog that covered both the waters and the city itself. The fog made it harder to see that small faraway mountain that you sometimes see when you squint close enough.
Still ignoring the dark entity standing on the doorstep, you made your way to the sea-crate base. A quick trip inside later, you sat yourself in front of the monitor before powering the thing on.
Finally logging into one of your UCF accounts, you found a notification on the inbox. Lo and behold, every single paper she's taken a snap of. Both under normal light, and UV light.
You may have used multiple accounts to stir up theories into the right direction. How weird the timing was when one of the tidal ghosts appeared. Why he only did during the race. What was happening during the race that prompted him to show? What was he trying to say?
Fast forward to now, you were scrolling through UCF. How people started to catch onto why that specific passenger showed up. Because like most passengers, his life was well documented. One post stated:
'The song Fairytales was about the songwriter's ex-girlfriend. In the same manner, we looked further into this specific passenger's ex. From her old Facebook account, just her description gives us two of her favorite novels.'
'Blue, by Danielle Steel, and Cracks, by Sheila Kohler.'
'Blue Cracks.'
The theories began to build up from there. From the title of the book, to the blue cracks that road workers tried their best to fix before the race.
You already sorted through most of the theories, correlations with cracks and buried demons. Lists of buried demons. and that's not counting the theories from your other performances.
But along with Rasmus' eavesdropping, Gibby's dream hopping ability, and Alix's further cooperation as well, UCF was a good source of gathering intel. Whether it be for getting to the bottom of this, or for later use.
Well, that, and that same little chess piece you used just yesterday. A little bit of snooping from your stay at Mei's place confirmed your suspicions that the technology is pretty much identical to the base. Which makes sense, since it was her that built it.
Apparently, she's been building the thing ever since she started visiting you to get those commissions. Which would be somewhere between the DBK incident, and the Weather Station incident. That explained why she was so adamant to have Sandy teach her how to build tech stuff during the time too.
So since you wanted to upgrade those really outdated drive(s), what better than by copying the scripts from the base's software? A little bit of reverse engineering and editing later, and that left you with drives updated with Dragon family tech.
What? You weren't going to insert an outdated drive to a high security control panel tablet thing.
Conveniently enough, the drive helped you to bypass the research facility's first layer of security without having to copy its script as well. You didn't really knew it was Dragon-family made as well, since that was before you saw Mei's dad. Except for one problem. Only the first layer of security was Dragon software.
The second was purely Cervidae.
...So it's like nothing changed.
So that leaves you with a different headache. Bypassing the first layer of security means you have to deal with the second, with possibly more behind it. Which means it might not be the last time you and Alix go in the damn lab.
And maybe after that, you could try and hijack the doc's stuff as well.
Wow, do you have a lot on your plate right now.
You couldn't make more deals with demons yet, since you still have to find out how blood oaths work, nor can you do the same with humans because you didn't know exactly what you wanted yet.
You had to babysit Lily, go on camping trips with Mei and MK, do those commissions, getting info from Gibby, doing performances, sleepovers, cat-sitting, meet up with Rasmus when you can, checking the doc's papers for invisible ink, getting translation updates from Tang...
Plus the fact that you and Matchstick haven't explored a blue saffron temple yet. Probably because being babysat meant he'll have more difficulty escaping.
It was a good call to check other temples on your own first, just to make sure Red doesn't find anything he could use against you once he does join you. Hid them away for the scholar to examine.
But now, you found yourself scrolling on your phone with the translations he sent you, your curiosity eating you up. With just what you had to do with the rebel group in the first place- what were these temples even doing in your home country?!
You breathed deeply, before sighing.
One at a time, Bell. One at a time.
More time has passed as you did everything you were supposed to do right now. Stirring more theories, checking the newsfeed for the current happenings you should be aware of, trying to reverse engineer the second layer's script, all that stuff.
And then there was the photos Alix sent you.
One of the papers seem to mention the city's mayor as a person of interest. More specifically, apparently Cervidae considered him an enemy. Now, that struck as odd to you. If Cervidae is this secret shady science org, then what was stopping them from taking the mayor out?
Why was the mayor a threat in the first place?
Now, you know something was up with that guy. After finding the third account, you searched him up, both on a search engine, and on UCF. Seems that both UCF users and non-users share a similar verdict. How they thought with how successful the campaigns were, it would've been a woman named Wan Suzhen that should've been mayor.
Instead, there was a picture of this empty-eyed guy in an article. Some people in UCF don't even think he was part of the election. And now that you're revisiting the website...
He looked familiar.
Have you seen him somewhere before?
Now that you thought about it...
You opened your phone and went to your little group chat consisting of MK, Mei, Sandy, Pigsy, Tang, and yourself. A little chat called the Monkie Troop. And yep, although the first three were already asleep before they could see Pigsy's message, you and Tang managed to read it.
Liangpig: 'Sleep early, MK. The mayor just called me a while ago. Said he was gunna come in the shop tomorrow to congratulate you.'
-Pigsy erased his nickname-
Pigsy: 'And stop changing my nickname, Mei!'
Cram_Tang: 'First time?'
You sighed. Good timing that you saved this account for last. But now, you get to see the mayor firsthand as a bonus, so you can visit the third user after that. With you already acquainted with Rasmus and Alix, this'll be your last user to visit.
...
Maybe.
It better.
After doing everything you needed to do for the next hours, you turned the monitor off before standing up to stretch. Noticing Stain's absence was enough for you to know that Gibby just woke up.
Leaving the base, you were met with a warm sunrise and lavender sky, before heading back inside the living room. Greeting you behind the door was Gibby, patiently waiting for you like a cat. A normal morning routine by this point.
"Morning, Bell!"
You yawned. "Morning, Gibby."
Why were you only tired now?
A quick glance to the couches and you'll find the other three still asleep...somehow, despite Mei's snores. You went to cabinets and grabbed some of the ingredients they bought yesterday, before setting them on the counter.
"Good news! I found more stuff we can work with!" Gibby then got on the counter. "Do you want me to say the names?"
"Actually, can we save it for later this time?" You groggily spoke as you took out the pan. "I uhh, didn't get a lot of sleep."
"You didn't?" She tilted her head with concern. "But what's the point of a sleepover if you don't get enough sleep? Don't tell me you're going back to being awake all the time-"
"I'm not, I'm not..."
You then fried some eggs, then sausages, then mushrooms. While the food sizzled, you opened some cans of beans. You could hear the gibbon whine softly at the sight of the food as you did your magic and cooked the rest of the ingredients.
The sizzling and the savory air brought you a sense of comfort that you don't get to have that much. The small things like cooking in the comfort of your pajamas, while everyone else bar Gibby was asleep.
After loading all three plates and setting the utensils, you just settled with making a grilled cheese for yourself, as well as taking the bowl of leftover beans. Gibby stared with hungry eyes at the oranges you juiced, a pitcher of orange juice now on the counter. With three glasses on the counter, you went ahead and made matcha for yourself just to wake yourself up.
Three plates of full English breakfast, ready to be eaten. Satisfied, you sat on one of the chairs, before digging in your grilled cheese and your bowl of beans. The scent of the food caused one of the three to stir, namely MK.
The celestial primate next to you giggled. "Wakey wakey, sleepy monkey!"
"Hmmnggg..." He sat up, rubbing his eye. "What's that smell...?"
The sight of the plates were enough to fully grab his attention, drooling at the sight as if a choir was singing around it.
Jumping off the blankets, he zipped to the counter with sparkly eyes.
He grabbed the spoon and fork before digging in, pausing to savor the food with a satisfied sigh. How he and the others eat so fast was beyond you.
"Bell, you made this?!"
"Yep." You took a bite out of your sandwich. "And don't talk with your mouth full, that's gross."
"Hehe, you sound like Pigsy!" Gibby pointed out, earning a taunting 'Pffft!' from MK.
You rolled your eyes. "Speaking of, he said that the mayor's gonna congratulate you at the noodle shop. I'd eat faster if I were you."
"What's a mayor?" Asked Gibby, before getting cut off by MK suddenly coughing.
"Wait-" MK stopped to gulp down his food before continuing. "The mayor?! He wants to visit me?!"
You nodded with a hum, taking a spoonful of beans. "Yup. You know there's juice too, right? You're gonna choke with how fast you eat."
"Well, you're the one that told me to eat faster!" He shot back.
"Yeah, speak for yourself too!" Gibby joined in. "You eat the slowest out of all of us!"
"Really now? We've never seen you eat." You raised a challenging brow, only for Gibby to quickly shoot back.
"Is that a challenge?" She smiled jokingly. "Wait til I get untethered and I'll make you eat your words!"
"Don't, she'll take too long!" MK chuckled, eating a slice of a hash brown after.
"Haha, you two." You smirked, stirring your matcha before biting on your sandwich again. "In my defense, I just like savoring the flavor."
"Well now you sound like Mister Tang." He teased, then stabbing the fork on a slice of tomato. "But that doesn't mean you have to eat that little. We can wait for you to finish."
"I just have a small appetite, comrade." You shrugged. "It can't be helped."
"Oh yeah, I forgot you sleep eat-"
"No I don't."
"...Yeah you do-"
"Yeah they do." Gibby added.
"No I don't."
"Liar liar pants on fire!" Gibby mockingly sang.
"Shush, you!" You jabbed a finger on her chest. "I'm making improvements!"
Chuckling, MK then grabbed the pitcher and poured himself a glass of juice. "So I had this weird dream."
"Mm?"
"I was inside one of the balls in a capsule vending machine. There were five other balls, but only one of them was closed and I couldn't see what's inside."
He then bit on the sausage, continuing despite his mouth still being full.
"I couldn't see anything outside either, because everything was dark out. But I could hear different people speaking."
"Did you remember what they said?" Gibby asked, probably because wanted to know what she missed, considering her dream ability.
MK shook his head. "No...Oh! But there was something else! A skeleton hand took the capsule I was in out of the machine!...But then it burned away."
'Real climactic.' You thought.
"I was falling so I panicked, but then I got caught inside a lotus. The ashes of the skeleton hand fell and turned into blue light, and then they clumped together to form two people."
"One of them had a deer head for some reason."
You froze right when you were about to eat another spoonful of beans. Granted, this was just a dream of MK's, but...
"...What else happened?"
"Well, the other guy looked like some ancient soldier with a bun. They were talking, but... I couldn't hear what they were saying." MK recalled, his memory of the dream slowly fading away. "Then, the lotus petals detached and carried me away somewhere else."
"And that's it!" MK finished. Both his story and his food. You turned to Gibby, who only shrugged with her hands up. Satisfied with the temperature of your matcha, you blew on the cup and sipped, setting it back down afterwards.
Finishing your meal as well, you grabbed both your and MK's dishes before setting them on the sink, noticing Mei and Sandy slowly wake up. "Well, if that's it, then can you do the dishes for me? I'm gonna feed the cats and clean the litterboxes."
"Oh sure, no prob."
--
Some time has passed, and all of you bar Sandy were taking a walk to the noodle store. The sun has risen, birds perched on wires, and there weren't that many cars, so crossing the roads weren't as much of a problem.
You only listened while Gibby, MK, and Mei chatted with each other. The topic of the racer that Mei managed to rizz was brought up, followed by a flustered Mei insisting that she probably thought the dragon girl was someone else.
Of course, that did not deter Gibby and MK's teasing.
But on a related topic...
"So Mei, which province did you say she represented again?" You asked, Mei then humming to think.
"If I'm remembering right, she was the racer for Hubei." She recalled. "Specifically? She said she's from Wuhan."
You tried to hide your smirk before murmuring to yourself. "Huh, didn't think I'd hear from that place again."
"What?"
"What?"
You and Mei stared at each other, before continuing the conversation as if nothing happened. You cleared your throat, cutting off the silence before it became awkward.
"Aaaanywayyyy..." Mei continued, swinging her head to the other side. "She said she was staying here for the time being tho. Don't tell Piggy, but get this."
A mischievous grin appeared on her face, before she whispered to all three of you. "She's actually gonna be the delivery driver for the Wild Pig noodle shop."
Gibby gasped. "The one next to Pigsy's?! Doesn't he and the guy that runs that place hate each other's guts?"
"Funny story about that, actually." MK fiddled with the back of his bandana. "Mr. Boar is actually Pigsy's cousin. They kinda hate each other because Pigsy likes tradition, and he likes mixing things up."
"His cousin?" Now it was your turn to ask. "The same one you used to live with, sharing a room with his kids and all?"
Mei looked at MK in shock. "You never told me you had cute little piggy roommates!"
You shrugged. "I always wondered what the beef was between those too."
"I guess you could say..." MK paused with an impish glint in his eyes. "They had pork with each other."
-silence-
"...That was horrible." You deadpanned, Mei agreeing admittedly.
"Yeahhh..."
MK slouched in surrender, Gibby chirping "I liked it!" afterwards.
The subject then switched to a Monkey Mech feature that they were trying to unlock, which by that point, you stopped listening. All that mattered is that your suspicions were mostly confirmed.
This third account you've been eyeing was more focused on the mystery behind the mayor himself, as previously mentioned. And yeah, something was definitely up. The only possible explanation for a suit that crisp is black magic, and the fact that he can dish out money for constant collateral damage from demon attacks supports that.
But also he just looks creepy.
Creepy old man.
Now, the thing about this account is that it only started posting pictures of Megapolis only days before the race, which articles confirmed was the date when the racer arrived. So it was pretty convenient to know that she's only a walk away from Pigsy's.
Now for the final confirmation.
All of you stood in front of Pigsy's shop. Right in time too, as said cook was unlocking the front door. No sign of the mayor yet, though. You told Mei and MK to wait for you there, leaving Gibby behind with the task to look after them.
Especially since you still didn't trust the mayor, and her gut feelings might come in handy.
You bid them a temporary goodbye, before heading your way to Wild Pig Noodles.
...Only for Pigsy to block your way.
Wait, wasn't he unlocking the door just a second ago?-
"And where do you think you're going, kid?" Pigsy crossed his arms, eyeing you suspiciously. "Don't tell me you're a double agent for the enemy!"
You raised your hands. "I'm not, I'm not. I'm just-"
Right as you were looking for an excuse, you caught a glimpse of a disguised bull clone entering the rival shop. Your eyes returned to Pigsy, before you beckoned him to come closer.
You whispered to him before pointing at the bull clone while it was distracted, directing the cook's attention to it. Pigsy's brows raised in alert, before giving you a stern nod; patting your back before heading into his own shop.
With nothing left to stop you, you eyed the short-haired biker girl inside the shop, before walking inside; the bell signalling your presence.
Final stop:
@ Spindrax_On_Tracks
--
(A/n): lmao if you know, you know