Lucinda eventually got them settled, she had had her parents and a sibling living with her not long ago, and as such there was a heap of mattresses and mostly intact bed frames, although one or two had had some slats stolen to repair other things around the bastion house.
There were also some old sheets, which were slightly yellowing with age, but no one minded about that, they were just happy to have a bed that they could call their own for however long they were going to stay.
The bedrooms they were occupying were on the top floor of the funny pyramid, above the lounge and kitchen. They were very small, but there was just enough room to fit three of the beds in the room that was to be taken by the boys.
Lucinda graciously offered Michaela the option of sharing her room, but the skeleton declined after explaining to the others that she didn’t need to sleep anymore, Bobby thought it made perfect sense considering her lack of biology, but found it interesting that he hadn’t even considered that at all.
After they were all ready for bed, Gary busted out the cards again and they played a few more games of Go Fish until either their eyes were involuntarily closing or they were accusing Gary of cheating or—in most people's case—both. Bobby slept very well that night, glad to have finally cleared up the mess they’d had with Lucinda, the rats had even returned her gun, which Lucinda had been a bit confused about.
Thankfully Gary and Mcgunkin didn’t snore much that night, but he was still woken up early by the extraordinarily odd noise of metal hitting metal faintly echoing through the building. Curious, Bobby got up and slipped on his suit, finding everyone else still asleep. He had just left the room when the noise came again, and Lucinda appeared from hers. She held a finger to her lips and motioned him to follow her. Then they crept downstairs, keeping quiet.
The loud noises were coming from the other side of the big metal door in the entrance, Lucinda checked her gun was loaded and then turned on a little television beside it and after a warming sequence, showing the logo of some probably long bankrupted or bought out technology company, an image appeared on screen.
It wasn’t the clearest, but there was a group of seven people in multicoloured robes with grainy sound accompanying them.
“-CINDA, LUCINDA, are you in there, we just want to twalkkk!” said a grown man in a star wars jedi costume doing a baby voice.
He raised his right hand, which held a metal telescopic rod formed of pipe sections and badly painted green. Then he smacked the rod into the metal door, creating another loud thunk.
Lucinda let out a sigh and pressed a little red button connected to an old intercom microphone. “Derek, what are you doing here at 6:30 in the morning, don’t you and your friends have better things to do with your lives?”
The man let out a laugh, then suddenly went high pitched in what Bobby now realised was a really really bad yoda voice imitation. “We do what we will do and we, the Jameson Jockey Jedi, have business here.”
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Bobby held in the urge to giggle, “Are these the idiots we were warned about encountering out here? They look pretty harmless.” Lucinda’s face went a bit strained, which was mirrored by Bobby when he realised the intercom was still on.
“H-Harmless? HARMLESS! I’ll show you harrrrmless.” Derek yelled, sounding more like an Ewok than Yoda for a minute.
Lucinda turned off the intercom, “One hundred percent chance he now destroys your van.”
“What, but we have to stop him, don’t you have a gun?” Bobby frantically asked.
“Yeah, but look at his friends, I would say that I’m more than a little outnumbered.”
Bobby closely examined the other people dressed in robes and noticed the large bulky tubes badly hidden under their robes, he even noticed a minigun strapped to one of the lackeys backs. I’m not sure even Micheala could survive being hit by the business end of that gun
Derek did a bad imitation of a sailor, putting his makeshift lightsaber to his eye, and then pretending to zoom in on the van, “Looky here boys, I think we’ve found some treasure.”
“Idiots not even keeping his act straight, Pirate or a Jedi?” Lucinda mumbled rhetorically.
Derek kicked the side of the van, and then collapsed and rolled on the floor, having stubbed his toe. Half a minute later he got back to his feet, his face red with humiliation. Then he swung his metal pipe and shattered the windscreen.
“Aw come on,” Bobby said, “Is he gonna wreck the whole thing?”
“Nah, he won’t be bothered, but he will smash all your windows, then steal anything that looks vaguely valuable.” Lucinda explained matter-of-factly.
“How do you know this dickwad so well?” asked Bobby.
“There used to be a sort of schooling system down here, funded by a charitable organisation. They spent countless hours hammering out a treatise between all the gangs and other people just trying to survive, so that there would be a whole non aggression thing around the school.”
“Used to be?” said Bobby, noticing her use of past tense.
“It got shut down when the organisation got sued to oblivion by cubecorp, there was something they were trying to hide, but no one found out before the debt collectors turned up, dismantled the organisation and took the staff away.”
“Huh and Derek?”
“His older twin brothers, who were the Jameson scions at the time, were the school bullies and as their younger brother he got whatever he wanted against whoever he wanted. There may have been a non aggression pact for the adults, but that didn’t stop complete anarchy existing among the children.”
Bobby winced as Derek caved in the passengers window. “I… see”
Derek's lackeys continued watching the door, not turning their backs as Derek broke into the van and broke the driver's side window from the inside. Then he vanished into the back of the van, hitting things randomly as he went.
He returned a few minutes later with the old skylink laptop and the bag of kibbles they had brought for Fluff. Derek thrust his hand into the bag and shoved a bunch into his mouth while saying something incoherent about stealing snacks.
Bobby vaguely enjoyed it when the idiot's face somehow went more red and he began spitting out kibbles and choking, but that enjoyment was a lot less than the annoyance over the van being trashed.
Not wanting to antagonise the man child anymore, he and Lucinda watched on in silence as he continued lashing out until he eventually did get bored and left, perfectly fulfilling Lucinda’s prophecy.
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