<>
“Hey, it’s better than walking. They could’ve oiled the chains once this decade though.”
“Hush up, I can see the skyscrapers already.”
“We could already see the skyscrapers all the way from Quaint. They’re not small.”
The sun was long past its zenith when, having navigated through offroad bike lanes and then a labyrinthine criss-cross alleys for two hours, they were finally somewhere approximating the city center. What felt like an easy four-hour bike-tour to Isaac and Sophia had Andri huffing and panting.
<
“Hey come on, it’s only another kilometer or two.” At the inconsolably despondent cries of Andri, Isaac couldn’t help but break out into a smile.
“You’re so evil,” Sophia said as she handed Andri a water bottle.
“What? He got to show off his combat moves for a whole week. Let me have this.”
“Irredeemably evil.”
With no idea where to go, they decided to ask the next-best person, which turned out to be a cameraman from lavender news on break.
“Just head north, towards the old town center,” he said between bites of a home-made meal that smelled heavenly. A groan came from the back of his news-car.
A reporter woman was lying in the back wrapped in a sleeping bag, with an ice-pack on her forehead and so, so many used tissues all around.
“Just one more interview…” she muttered through red-rimmed eyes. “I can do it. Cammie’s rarin’ to report.”
“Ignore her, Cammy got hit by a dizzying–skill from one of the contestants.” The cameraman shrugged. “People always think they need to use their skills to solve everything, and then they don’t even check whatever is behind what they’re shooting. You’re not one of those kinds, are you?”
“No sir, not at all,” Isaac said, and hoped that whoever had that skill wasn’t waiting up ahead. “So, the old parts of town?”
“Can’t miss it.”
Now that they had a direction, they could hopefully hone in on the part where the exam was truly being held. There was little time left until 7PM, closer to one hour than two.
“Well, we're in a town, and this place is old. We're almost there,” Isaac said as they pushed across a thin canal. A number of thin fish swam gently along its banks, and whenever he thought they weren't looking, Andri's eyes drifted over to them.
“I thought you can’t eat fish,” Isaac said.
<
<
Unless its a medical condition, I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out his bane.
<
“Who knows?”
<
Isaac didn’t comment.
<
“We're almost there,” Isaac said again, to reassure himself more than anything since nobody else was going to keep up morale. Sophia wasn't much of a glass-half-full type, and Andri was… Andri.
Someone’s stomach growled. Isaac looked at the catman, who was really good at staring back at someone while looking the exact opposite direction.
“Sorry we’re all out of sandwiches.” Isaac sighed dramatically. “Has anyone seen a sandwich-place that isn't closed yet?
“Isaac. Focus.”
“I am very focused. And conscientious. At this rate I’ll never be able to pay my sandwich debt.”
Andri scrunched his nose. <
“You earned those sandwiches fair and square.”
“Let him talk,” Sophia whispered to Andri. “He gets like this when he's nervous. Just be glad he isn’t sappy-sad.”
Isaac huffed. He was not going to get sappy-sad, and he wasn’t nervous anyways. The directions couldn’t have been more clear, the old town was right there. If the answer wasn’t going to jump out at them, they’d have to comb through the entire place, and that meant they were screwed either way.
He looked up, squinting at a road sign that was taped off and covered in a paper bag.
“Isn’t that illegal?” he asked no one in particular.
Sophia followed his gaze. “Maybe they’re planning to take it down?”
“This is the third one I’ve seen so far.” And looking back, every sign that went up and down the road had suffered the same fate. Even the street names were covered or blacked out with tape.
“Weird. Do you think they—”
Andri suddenly perked up.
<
His ears twitched here and there, like a satellite dish trying to locate a signal.
“What is it?” Sophia asked. “I don’t have mink-level hearing.”
<
“Brains?”
<
<<”Brains, brains, brains.”>>
Isaac focused and after waiting for a good half minute, he could hear it too. A man stumbled out of an alleyway wearing some sort of Hallow’s Eve face-paint. Isaac could hear him mumbling and cursing below his breath.
“Dangit, I think they’re all gone already—” his eyes caught Isaac’s and for a moment, they both just stood there. Then a smile blossomed on the man’s face and Isaac suddenly understood what the mask was supposed to depict. “Brains!”
He was a zombie. And like a zombie, he shambled towards them with an eager zombie-gait.
“Guys, does climate and habitat day include a carnival?” Isaac asked as they backed up.
“Not that I know of,” Sophia said, then yelled: “You’re going a bit fast for a zombie!”
“Brains! I’ve gotta do what I gotta do. Brains!”
Andri hissed as the man’s groaning turned loud and festive. Isaac didn’t even need to look at him to know that the commotion was attracting attention. From further in the alley and a road at their backs, the same call echoed closer and closer. “Brains! Brains! Brains!”
“Is this still part of the pre-exam?” Isaac asked as Andri turned and made for an alleyway, eye-typing a long, long message.
<
“Brains!”
A pile of trash burst open and Isaac got to see how high a surprised mink could jump. The answer was high, high enough to hook himself into an awning on the first floor. The boys turned, and pounced on Sophia instead.
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“Gotcha! We got one!” One boy a bit older than Isaac yelled.
“Two for one! Huzzah—”
Isaac’s [Cavitate] activated, and he hooked Sophia by the scruff while blasting the boys off her. That left them flailing in a pile of trash, and Sophia quite yellow.
Is it territorial marking? Glow in the dark? And why yellow?
“You two,” Isaac said, channeling every ounce of imperial authority, like Hammond when he discovered the smashed vase they’d tried to hide under a cupboard. “You’re here to stop us too. This is part of the exam, right?”
The first boy leveled a finger at Isaac. “He used a skill on us.”
The two had to be brothers, because one of them looked just like the other, down to the splotch of smeared face paint on their left cheeks. She tried to wipe the yellow paint off her face, but only succeeded in distributing it more.
“I did.” He crossed his arms. “What are you gonna do about it?”
“How dare he?,” said the second one. “Does he have a casting license?”
“Yes. That was my non-lethal skill.”
The boys blinked, mouths agape.
“Awesome,” said one, “What’s your other skill? Is it [Fireball]?”
“It has to be a melee skill. [Cut], [Bash] maybe?”
Maybe he wasn’t being as intimidating as he’d thought.
“Alright. What’ll it take for you two to focus and tell us the rules of this part of the pre-exam?”
The twins looked at each other, nearly synched up. The right one started talking in what Isaac thought was their real, non-showman-like voice. “Sure, if you can guess what our skill and support skill we used.”
He turned to the resident nerd, Sophia. They all had leafed through skill catalogs for hours on end, but when it came to words on paper, her mind was like a sponge while Isaac’s was more like a sieve.
“It’s [Camouflage], obviously,” she said. “With a [Twinned] support skill, to cast it on two of you.”
“Ah, but both of us could have the same skill, and then used it twice, no?” said the first twin.
Sophia looked them up and down. “Nah, not rich enough.”
The second one smiled at her. “Girl, [Camouflage] is so obvious up close. We would’ve needed an [Empower] support skill to become as invisible as we did.”
“Or you just needed a shaded alley and a pile of black trash bags.” Sophia crossed her arms too.
The stare-off continued for a while before twin number two threw his hands in the air.
“Well shit, you got us. So, the rules of this game is simple: It’s a game of tag. You as contestants have to dodge us, the zombies. Zombies aren’t allowed to run and every one needs to call out ‘brains’ once before tagging you with some paint. The paint marks a wound, three wounds from different zombies and you’re out. For every one we catch, it’s a thousand gups.”
“That simple, huh?” Sophia asked. “And what’s our objective?”
“Thats—” His brother gave him an elbow to the ribs. “A secret.”
“Ok,” Isaac said. “What if I let you tag me once?”
Four eyes lit up. “Both of us?”
“No. One.” Isaac said and tried to keep the nervousness from his face. “We’re already late. Give us a chance, at least.”
“Deal,” they said synchronously, perhaps a bit too quickly.
He signed one of their forms, they covered one of his cheeks in yellow and then pointed him to the old school. They were quite nice, as far as zombies went. They even offered to escort them all the way.
<
“Oh absolutely,” Isaac said. The school building was already in sight, towering over the oldtown cityscape with its red brickwork and wide rectangular facade. As they moved towards it, Isaac noticed more and more colorful posters with variants of ‘safe house this way’ scribbled on them, all pointing the way they were going.
Andri poked his arm just as they were nearing a suspiciously empty cul-de-sac. As one, the three turned around and snuck back to the main road. They got ten meters until one of the twins behind them yelled something.
“And now, brains — wait, why are you—”
“— they’re trying to scamper, you idiot!”
“No, you’re the idiot!”
Isaac grinned.
“Thanks, but we’ll find our way there ourselves!” he called, and was met with the indignant cries of quite a lot more people than just the twins.
“Spoilsport!”
“Boo!”
Isaac cackled as he legged it, Andri and Sophia right at his side. Andri looked considerably mellowed out, and Sophia was always up for a quick jog.
Well, at least they didn’t lie to us.
Now they just had to get to it, and hopefully they wouldn’t meet too much resistance along the way.
+++
Isaac and most of his siblings had never set foot in a real school. All the tutoring they required was done by either Hammond or Claire, who by the dint of their high tiers did a enough job even with only the two of them. As they rushed past the lifeless halls and drab copy-and-paste classrooms, he was certain that this place would have turned him into a soulless husk.
The school was a den of all things wicked and terrible. Tables were stacked to block off direct routes, pencils and plastic pens were strewn about like arts and crafts caltrops, and the hallways carried every sound so, so far.
Andri zipped through an open door, followed by Sophia, then Isaac, who quickly turned around and slammed it shut. The catman sagged in relief as the gaggle of eighth to eleventh grade zombies following them made no attempt to follow them inside the safehouse.
So many zombie kids. It would be a tragedy if they weren’t so goddang coordinated.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would have been like if it had been him, Zach, Sophia, and the little ones acting out this game.
Zach would have let us move inside unopposed, then sent some zombies to block off our rear before closing the snare around us. Anyone who got out would have been tagged at least once, and by strewing random groups throughout the school, it would be just a matter of time until some kids got lucky.
But that would require a rather large-scale coordination. The kids here didn’t have a Zach, but that didn’t mean that they were helpless. Small groups had their own leaders, and those could screw up their plans on their own.
One of them had tagged Andri’s tail, and now Isaac and Andri were both down to two lives, and Sophia to one. For now, they were safe in classroom 7B, where the safezone was marked with a bunch of yellow tape.
Slowly, but quicker than Andri, Isaac caught his breath. In front of the blackboard, sitting in an old wooden chair as if it was just another day at school sat a small lady, old like a wrinkled prune, her gray hair done up in a neat bun and with a pair of thin glasses that had a strap draped across the back of her neck.
“She’s got a badge,” Sophia mumbled as she elbowed Isaac. “A real one.”
The woman was mumbling something, and between all the huffing and adrenaline, Isaac didn’t quite catch it.
“What?”
“SURPRISE POP QUIZ!”
Isaac flinched. She’s got that teaching voice alright.
And a pop quiz, now? There was a zombie apocalypse going on outside, how did this fit in with that? It didn’t, besides the fact that they were in a school and a school was the natural habitat of pop-quiz ambush predators.
The old crone tapped the blackboard. “Ten questions. Ten answers. Name them all and you may pass.”
“Do we have a time limit?”
“No.” She looked at the clock. It was five minutes to six. “But I suggest you hurry. The school is overrun; Seven o’clock will come sooner than you’d like.”
Isaac agreed. He turned around and pulled a tired Andri and an excited Sophia into a group huddle.
“I know like one of these, maybe,” he said.
Sophia snorted. “That’s ‘cause you never pay attention in class. You’re always so… jittery.”
“I can’t help it! Sitting around is boring.” He looked to Andri. “What about you?”
<
“I know one, five, six, ten,” Sophia casually said, shooting Isaac a look.
“Mine’s a duplicate then. We still need answers for questions three, four, and eight.” He squinted at the blackboard again. “How is anybody supposed to know the courting rituals of the minotaurs specifically on Gideii Prime?”
<
Andri grumbled.
<
“It’s not useless. Reproduction and the type of relationship between sexes is a core pillar on which every species builds their social communities. You wouldn’t want to accidentally misunderstand them, would you?” Sophia asked and blinked innocently at Andri in a way that could only make Isaac sigh.
“So. We need the answer to that, the location of the home planet of mice-men, and some math stuff.” Isaac sighed. “I assume we still don’t have a WettNet connection?”
“Nope,” Sophia answered, flipping through his brick’s menus. With a frustrated sigh he handed it to Isaac, who put on some music, because at least they still had radio. “Guess we'll never find out what the minotaurs are up to.”
<
Isaac and Sophia turned to blink vacantly at Andri.
<
<
“While running past it?”
<>
There was a pause, a moment of silence. The grin that was spreading on Andri’s face was infectious. For the first time since landing in Wett City, Isaac got the feeling that things were going his way for once.
We can still do this.
He wrapped a suddenly very confused Andri in a big group hug and whooped.
“Andri saves the day!” Isaac yelled as the mink yowled in his arms.
“Wooh!” Sophia woohed his yowling only grew louder.
<
Through some contortionist feat, he managed to sneak right out of the crushing embrace.
<
“C’mon, it’s just a hug,” Isaac said.
“He was so soft.” Sophia flexed her fingers like she was trying to stroke that phantom fuzz. “Like a big, huggable cat.”
<
Andri wiped his now slightly yellowed face.
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