Paris Healtown turned around and around inside her broad pink bedroom. She was anxious, pensive, while Zach was playing with Tobby on the bed. She snapped her fingers, sat down in front of the large mirror of her dressing table and started adding more lilac powder to her lids.
"Petrushka!!" She suddenly screamed. Zach had to cover his ears.
With tremendous velocity, a clumsy and homely maid with brackets and glasses knocked and got in.
"Say, Ms Paris," she said in a worn-out voice. "Good evening, Mr Zach." She had never seen that Dalmatian puppy in his lap.
"Call Alfred, instantly," Paris commanded.
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"Right away, Ms Paris." She let her head down. Then, she addressed Zach. "Mr Zach, I recommend you to leave. It is really late."
Paris whammed her table.
"Who do you think you are?"
"Oh, sorry Ms Paris it's just that..."
"You're just a stupid maid. You're no one with the authority to give any recommendations to anybody."
Zach was used to these reactions from the girl. They happened every day, more with Petra Bankoku, whom Paris seemed to deal more with.
"Yeah-yeah, Ms Paris, I apologize."
"Your inferiority is disgusting, Petrushka. Those airs of yours! Ha, never tell Zach what to do."
Petra was always taking care of Paris, the youngest daughter of her lady, Paien Healtown. She was the one who raised the three girls but she was especially fond of her. But Paris treated her like a rat.
If Matilda sees Zach, she could ground Paris for weeks.
Petra started to sob.
"Again? Oosh, get out, woman! Bring me Alfred. What a nuisance! I'm gonna fire you one of these days."
The maid shivered, approached a nightstand and left a jar of muranko juice and a tray of lemon cookies before leaving the room staggering and sobbing. Zach always saw her sobbing, so he took that as a regular reflex of hers. But it still warmed his heart the mistreatment his best friend gave the woman. Well, anyone.
"You know what's interesting, Paris."
"..."
"That your dog came out of your handbag out of the blue."
"Don't escape the reality, Zach. You very well know this dog came out of that yellow sphere, and you also know that Gina Belt's dog can talk. Oh, a dog like that is what I need, it must be an esp."
The striped girl was fancying about Hunter, another whim to her list, and the moloid boy didn't feel like accepting the strangeness of the events.
"I must have it, I'm gonna kidnap it," said Paris combing her red bangs with an insane visage.
"It's got already an owner, it's Gina's."
"Oh, c'mon. I got what I want, always, and end of the conversation, you're talking a lot, Zach."
"I am doing it!"
"Shut up, Zach, obey."
"No." This kind of arguments could go on but Zach was appeased easily, over all if Paris bribes him. He was the one and only friend for her. Everyone ran away her, she was detestable.
A moment of silent after his negation, Zach asked her what name she was going to call the Dalmatian by.
"Tobby. That's all it says."
They surely didn't know it wasn't a Dalmatian puppy but a Teddysprout, and did not talk as Hunter but panted 'Tobby' every time. It actually acted more like a usual dog, playful and dumb.
"Hey, Paris," Zach added, fishing a wrinkled colorful pamphlet out of his back pocket, "I'm gonna take part tomorrow. We haven't decided yet what circuit to use, it may be the one near here or the one that's Downtown."
'First Skyboard Competition of the New Year' was printed on the paper. Paris's eyes spurned the invitation without perusing it, she was still making herself over in the mirror.
"Great Zach, but I'm not going. I have zero time for that stupidity."
Petra broke back into. She was all fussy and shakier than usual, sobbing, she explained:
"Ms Paris, Jim will be here in a while and ..." she trembled. A rough voice was heard coming over. "Oh, Ms Matilda is going up! I was telling you..."
But there was no time for complaints and whatnot, Zach fumbled his things and darted to open the window leaving the puppy on the bed. He jumped out and a trace of fire was drawn in the dusk. The boy has gone away on his worn-out megaboard. Zach Mole was a skyboarder, a practician of the skyboarding, a sport where you slide through a circuit in the sky using megaboards. It was very popular among preteens, an evolution of what used to be skateboarding.
He had escaped once he heard Matilda's steps coming over. Matilda–a grotesque odd being–disliked the friendship of her sister and the moloid's, not for being such but rather for being poor. So, Zach did the same thing most people would. Matilda was a villain, malignant, eviler than what Paris could ever get to be.
There was no Matilda; however, the tremor of her announcement was enough to fear of her. Instead, Jim Jumoku came in the pink bedroom after letting know his silent presence behind the door. He was the butler of the Healtowns' for uncountable years and he seemed like he had always been dispensed with emotions, showing no more than a phlegmatic expression and an extreme servility. Paris had the bad habit of changing the names of her staff, claiming there is not one more important than her own name.
"Alfred, I need a favor tonight." She knew Jim would not say no to her demands no matter how fried they were as he was her own goon.
Gina Belt was incognito. She wore a pair of black glasses and a khaki coat and held a leash from which Hunter faked walking as a regular dog. They were taking a lap in the Condos region, searching for the Healtown Manor. They needed to locate the rubin. Suddenly, the moon lit their way through the sidewalk and found a lot of endless grinds and flashy buildings with yards and yards of green surroundings.
"Can you smell it?" Gina whispered.
"Almost ... though is confusing."
Both of them planned to retrieve the yellow rubin. The dog had a feeling it had turned a Teddysprout and due to Paris Healtown's possible incompetence, it wasn't adequate for her to be a changer, or at least that was the egg Gina put in Hunter's head.
They soon hit the right grind. A splendorous giant H was carved in the metal and behind it, a titanic dwelling in marble white was rising. It had two open-mouthed lions watching onto two pillars to the sides, separated by a white broad stair whose beginning was the rosewood gate of the main entrance of the house. Beautiful windows with lintels on the front walls and a loft was peeping to the right side of the house. The manor was located in the center of a large green field hundreds of yards long, there was also a fig tree and three luminous limousines were outside a garage capable of lodging a helicopter.
Gina soon took a glimpse at the ferocious dobermans near the stairs and the electric security system covering the grinds. It was all Brand Healtown, what kind of gadgets did they not have?
It was quite an issue to break into with this infalible net of security, Gina established, but Hunter said it was easy for it to trespass.
"So, do it. Fly with your ears over the house and blow everything with your tiny glowing spheres," the girl shouted.
"Hey, you, girl, what are you doing there? You're not rich."
It was Officer Elli, the First Policeman of New Heart Hill. Why was she around?
"How dare you?" Gina screamed, stomping the sidewalk. "How do you know I'm not from here? You should open your eyes wider," Gina exclaimed, annoyed, grabbing her waist.
The woman didn't answer but it was logic that Gina was neither a millionaire nor owned a property in that region. The altercation made Zach's approach invisible. He hid into some bushes upon seeing Gina Belt and the dog from the sky when he was returning home.
Both the Teddysprout and the changer were warned to get out and Hunter agreed, at least with knowledge where the Healtown girl lived. It could do the rest of the job on its own.
"I'm feeling dizzy. Something big is going to happen near here," the dog said. "I can feel a great energy mustering up."
Gina made her way back but Zack had listened to this. The moloid boy made a call.
A couple of hours later, Gina was getting set to go to bed. She was confident Hunter's new disappearance would bring the other rubin home–the dog liked to pop off for hours, making the Belts wonder about its whereabouts.
It was sort of 10 pm already, a black van with no plate spit a shadowy spindly figure out. Cindy Junson, who lives in front of the Belts, was peeping out of the window. Her living room light was the only yellow spot in all Crown St, but soon she felt tired as a big mosquito stung her neck. The girl then dropped to the floor and no witnesses were peeping out of their houses.
Indeed, the black figure knew what to do and how to do it efficiently. It had thrown some kind of tiny dart with soporific from its position to Cindy Junson's neck as well parked the van away the dim light of the poles. The figure proceeded to open the Belts' grind and go up through the cinder-block steps of the flowerbed. The figure had no weight and no life, not a minimal creak or stomp can be heard of its shoes, how good at skulking it was. The striped girl was very dangerous counting this in her material.
"I'm dying to go there and bomb that big-lipped bimbo in the face with my gloves!" Gina exclaimed sitting at the mirror, looking at her weaponry onto the table near the laptop. It had been a surprise to receive this from her absentminded father who usually ends up blowing everything he makes apart. The lights were cut off. "Again? It's not hurricane season."
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Mr Mitchell was put to sleep in the kitchen by the figure. He had broken the main door's glass and then went into as it had been before. "The first door to the left once I am upstairs," the spindly figure whispered to itself.
Gina's brush dropped to the floor, she picked it up and felt the sweet scent of the fog that quickly invaded her bedroom in darkness. She had no time to put on the gloves or resistence. The black-haired girl felt a vaccine in her butts and the fog ate her. The spindly figure used a lantern and looked under the bed and inside the highboy, no Dalmatian. What to do?
---
The dog entered the Belts house through a portal in the kitchen room and squinted its eyes when sees Gina's dad snoring almost naked on the floor. 'Did someone abuse him? Nah, he probably would be like this all over the house if Gina didn't hinder it.'
Gina's bedroom was dark but untouched, without counting the main door's glass, it all looked like the same.
"What were they looking for? This doesn't look like a rubin-goaled attack. The girl was just kidnapped," Hunter said calmed. "But I can smell my own rubin. It's not actually far from here." The dog propped its right foot on the windowsill and jumped out of it, flapping its ears to ascend the night sky. It was the perfect night to 'fly', it was night, nobody would catch it if it knew how to hide well.
That van over there was stinking in rubin odor. Hunter felt curious to know where they were taking her so, it followed invisibly over the clouds, the poles and the foliages through the center road as far as ... the Condos region. "Why am I not shocked?" The Teddysprout said once it watched the plateless black van being swallowed by the Healtowns' garage. The problem was to get into. 'Portals magic' didn't work as Gina fancied; you can't create a portal to a place you haven't seen before so, Hunter couldn't be inside the Healtowns' manor with that method and honestly, the atmosphere of this place made it feel dizzy. There was also the uncertainty of the security system of theirs, as the Teddysprout ignored modernity.
How to trespass the manor without being pelted, electrified or anyhow perceived? Even painless, each Teddysprout must conserve their bodies. Hunter sat on the branch of a stocky tree planted on the front sidewalk to ponder.
---
Paris Healtown frowned in bitterness and began scolding her grunt.
"Alfred, you idiot! You mistook a hostage, I wanted the dog not the girl."
Gina Belt was left hand-tied and gagged on a wooden chair inside a white-milk room. In front of her, the blonde and the black figure, now possessing a recognizable face, the butler. Also, some indistinguishable white doors on the walls.
The butler didn't flinch and remained phlegmatic, like Paris's insults were not being deposited in his jar. She was giving him insults because of his bad move but he said nothing, and didn't justify or defend himself. It was annoying.
"Dismiss."
"What will you do with the girl, Ms Paris?," the butler asked, pointing at the chair.
"I got things to ask and things to charge."
The kidnapper left the white room without questioning anything so, the girls were left on their own.
Paris took the gag out and slapped the Belt girl. Gina woke up and tried to untie herself. If she got away with hers, Paris might feel pain.
"Why am I here? You're a freak, Paris Healtown!" Gina shouted, moving brusquely.
Paris laughed, conserving her distance from Gina's kicks.
"Anachronopetle!" The rich girl exclaimed and a little boy with a white porcelain theater mask came from one of the doors and stood by her side. Gina was horrified, she didn't really know what to expect and she was not used to this feeling, having most of the possible results in her own fan.
"You owe me some," Paris said.
---
Hunter took an impulse from the branch and started flapping over the Healtowns' grind. A mass of electric rays joined, surrounding the perimeter of the manor and hitting Hunter's body, electrifying it and scorching part of its plush. The Teddysprout resisted the attack and kept on flapping over the driveway. It felt no pain but its body was being attacked, plus its rubin wasn't complete. A wrong calculation and its own gem would turn itself off.
Then, ducks came flying from the perimeters, echoing their menacing quacks in the night. "Huh?" The Teddysprout wondered. The ducks came flying towards Hunter showing chomping teeth and smashing the air with powerful bites. One of them bit its tail. "Go back to your circus, freakish poultry!" And it mustered blue spheres in its mouth and volleyed against the attacking birds. Plush started to shed in the air, its body got maimed.
Hunter felt to the ground.
The dozens of dobermans got close running, they were emissaries of the devil. Some of them gnawed the fluffy lump that had dropped dead to them. Hunter quickly let go but its body was really messed up, its seams were threaded and it felt as dizzy as fogged up.
The dobermans barked and showed their sharp teeth. Hunter gasped.
"Take a bit of this and pay for biting me, filthy animals." The sphere of light that Hunter was making had some symbols inside. It was a seal. He shot with it several dobermans and they shrank until they disappeared, the remaining ones yapped scared and got lost behind the bushes of the manor.
Thus, Hunter advanced to the stairs and stood in front of the giant rosewood door. "Now, how to open this? Oh, this house stinks!"
---
"Why does your dog talk?"
"Get away, I'll bite the hell of you!" Gina shouted, enraged.
"I know your dog is able to talk. It's phenomenon, I want it."
"It's my dog, you won't have it, birdbrain."
"I'm no one's dog," Hunter said. He was getting in from the door the masked guy had come from.
"Oh, you fool, you didn't close the door!" Paris grappled the boy's seaman suit. "Oosh, it doesn't matter. Get him, Anachronopetle!"
The boy in the mask fished out a very pointy feather pen and walked to the Teddysprout. With that tool, Hunter's body would be torn apart instantly; however, a blue sphere sent the boy fly until he hit the back of the empty room.
"Oh no, my Greek henchman!" Paris ran to aid his weird lackey and Hunter vanished the ties from Gina with the same seals he had used against the dobermans.
"Now," Gina closed her fists as hard as to prick with his nails to bleed, "you will have what you deserve, Paris Healtown." Gina Belt's smile was that one of a vindictive bird ready to mangle its cagers to death.
"I don't approve your face, Gina Belt." Paris stood up wrapped up in self-confidence like nothing could beat her, she was in her own battlefield, after all. "Tobby, attack them."
The other Teddysprout pop out her handbag and landed in front of Gina.
"Uh, the other Teddysprout!" Gina announced taking a look at the clone of her own.
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Suddenly, it became a western confrontation. Hunter and Tobby looked at each other for a frozen season of time while Gina and Paris threw even less creative invectives.
"You look awful, brother," Tobby told Hunter and this last one, perplexed, didn't know what to feel. The house was an inundation of distinct scents and played around with its snout, it didn't feel good but absorbed, this is the feeling of a Teddysprout when it's about to switch off.
"Tobby, electrify her!"
"It won't do that, right?" The black-haired girl saw less possible that that walleyed puppy was able to hurt anyone, but Tobby cast a yellow ray out of its open mouth. "Hunter!" Gina screamed.
Hunter did nothing. If Gina hadn't moved away, she would've felt the Teddysprout's power running through her veins and it wasn't going to be pleasant.
"You unhappy lass, Hunter, what the hell are you thinking of? Get her! Make her suffer, her and her retarded dog!" Gina said violently. She was pissed off.
Hunter reacted. It cast a mass of water flowing in its mouth and shot, directly to Tobby but this one shot a yellow ray and both fires vanished in vapor. Gina cried another shot, so did Paris. Both of their rays encountered and embraced in vapor again. "Tobby, electrify them, hotkey!" "Hunter get over with them!" Another cloud of vapor.
Gina wasn't an ignorant, she could witness her Teddysprout's exhaustion–it was evident how immersing in the manor had left it. "Quick, Hunter, cast two rays in a row. I got a plan."
"I don't think my rubin can let me do that, I'm switching off soon."
"I don't understand what you're saying but just trust me."
"Tobby, they're whispering a plan. Shoot them out of my writing room!"
Tobby and Hunter set their new rays, both the electric and the water ones crashed against each and made a dense vapor in the air of the white room. Paris was getting tired of this same result, she had no clue of a future action but get rid of Gina Belt and steal the talking dog was plan A. Gina didn't want to leave the manor without first making that purse-proud bimbo pay for this bizarre night but understood this was another situation.
Hunter had shot twice. The second ray hit Tobby straight and sent it to the back wall of the room. It was soaked and their material absorbs humidity with fastness, Gina knew this trying to dry Hunter when it got rained. It took two days to get the liquid out completely.
"Tobby!" Paris screamed.
Gina took her dog and ran away the place. When they were running down the stairs, Gina saw the hall flooded and some Warui-Ra sentries thrown wet and sparkling, damaged, as well as Petra, the maid. It had been Hunter, of course. He had made a hole in the door using water pressure.
"Something big is going to happen," Hunter murmured while Gina scooped it running, pulling the big door. They were in the manor's driveway and the clouds started to roll. Hunter pointed at the night sky with its snout. Gina observed a weird-shaped cloud moving through the dark gray ocean from above. The lightning it produced was yellow, red, blue.
"What's that?"
"I smell rubins."
"The direction that cloud is taking is Aznar town. Dog, can you make a portal home? I need my gloves."
As Hunter liked Gina's decision, he made an effort to take both of them home and then, he had to make another portal so they'd come back to the Healtown's yard. The girl had come back dressed up in her pink crop-top and blue skirt and with her gloves, he crashed the grind so they could leave without facing the arduous security system. Both of them began chasing after the rolling cloud. The Condos zone was connected to Aznar town, the moloids' home, but separated by a frontier of concrete. Gina also made a hole in here with her gloves. "Mode One," said the womanly voice in the gloves.
"This is the greenest part of Aznar. The only one with trees and grass, I may say, that cavern is a dessert, literally."
"It smells a lot."
"Huh? Oh holy grief!"
Gina had to take shelter behind a tree. The massive clouds started to shoot rubins to the ground. They were blowing the bark of trees, breaking stones, hollowing the land; sparkles of yellow, red, violet traveled the night. It was a harmful show. The few people who lived around, either in manors or clay houses, were swept and hurt by some fugitive rubins that crashed against windows and cars. The Belt girl observed soon how the clear where they were was shining with the cluster of gems that had dropped.
"Wait for it to stop," Hunter murmured, "and pick them all."
"All?" Gina was miffed. Hunter got her a bag.
The cloud was getting smaller quickly until only a small cotton candy was left. It rolled a last thunder and a big burst of yellow sparkles was rubbed out to the ground. Gina's violet eyes saw it descending with haste, like a sort of comet.
"I'm gonna switch off in ..."
"Don't sleep off, dog, look, Zach Mole is there."
The skyboarder was there to pick up the big rubin that felt last. Gina was about to stop him, a good attempt for her gloves.
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"Stop!" Hunter didn't remember who the girl was talking about, maybe it was too astounded but that black remote shadow wasn't any distinguishable. He wondered how Gina had been able to determine who it was.
"He probably knew somehow this was gonna happen and came to get the rubins too."
Hunter was surprised by its changer's conjectures, as if every theory would be valid no matter its nonsense.
"Let's wait to see what happens."
"The rubin is splitting in two. Oh, seriously? Houston, we got a problem, that brat is becoming a changer. Let's go snap him and snatch his Teddy."
"You can't detach a Teddyspout from its changer just because. Get to work, these pieces of gem won't get picked up alone. Also, I'm switch ... ch ... o ..." Hunter's eyes shut.
"What? Uuuuugh, the hell." Gina approached the clear and started putting rubins inside the bag. An old woman came to her and started picking up gems too. "Get off, crone." The girl shot her with a plasma sphere and the old woman darted like nothing happened.
Gina had set her sight on the distant shadow she believed as Zach Mole. She followed him when he was going and discovered his real appearance when the moon lit him up. It was the same moloid boy with the blue bomber jacket. He had two teddy bears in his chest and entered a dusty house down a hill.
"I know where you live, now," Gina smiled.