Mandelbrot had been having a great day until he got home. It was the last day of school, and he happily spent the day doing nothing but discuss plans with his best friend, Egam. They talked about how much Root Beer they’d drink, how late they would stay up, how long they would sleep in, and obviously, no more school for months.
Mandelbrot himself was pretty normal. He had semi-long brown hair, dark green eyes, was pretty well liked in school, and was decently athletic. Egam, on the other hand, was almost the opposite of Mandelbrot. He had rather short blond hair, brown eyes, was generally disliked in school, and did not play sports at all. Both of them were sixteen, though turning seventeen soon due to Summer birthdays. Egam was almost always reading, while Mandelbrot hadn’t finished a single book in years. No one knew how two people so different were such good friends, but they didn’t find it weird at all.
While he had a great day in school, strangely, Mandelbrot’s day got bad when he got home. He threw his books on a chair near his front door, then walked into the kitchen. His mom was in there checking the mail, and she looked up at him as he walked in. “Oh, Mandelbrot, I’m so glad you’re home,” his mom said, “I trust you had a good day?”
“Very,” Mandelbrot responded while pulling a piece of pie from the fridge, “So glad the next few months will be nothing but relaxing and fun.”
His mom looked worried for a second before saying, “Uh, honey, about that…”
Mandelbrot stopped with his pie-filled fork half-way to his mouth. “Oh god mom, please, don’t tell me, not Summer camp!”
“Well, hear me out!” she responded. “This is a very special Summer camp, Farm Camp!” Seeing Mandelbrot’s very confused and angry face, she continued, “Oh come on, this will be great for you! You’ll learn lots of stuff, and have tons of fun!”
Mandelbrot was on the urge of a meltdown at this point. “I don’t care!” he exclaimed, “I want a Summer of rest and fun, not working!”
“Now listen here,” his mom furiously said, “I spent a lot of time and money getting you into this camp, you should be thankful! You’re going, and that is final!”
Seeing that further argument was pointless, Mandelbrot stomped off to his room. Slamming the door behind him, he looked around the room. It was extremely messy, clothes on the floor everywhere, old dishes and food everywhere. He spent a few minutes looking for his phone, then called Egam when he found it.
"Who is it?” Egam said after a sigh.
“It’s Mandelbrot,” he responded, “You’ll never guess what my mom is making me do this Summer!”
"Farm camp,” Egam said flatly.
Mandelbrot was slightly taken aback, not knowing how the heck Egam guessed that. “Uh… Yeah… Isn’t that so stupid?” he demanded furiously. “Wait… How’d you guess that?”
Egam paused for a few seconds before saying, “Because I’m being forced to go, too.”
___
And so, a week later, Mandelbrot and Egam were on their way to Sunflower Seed Farm Camp. Each of them packed enough clothes to have at least a different outfit each day, various portable game systems, and Egam packed at least twenty books. Both of them were silent on the drive there, starting out the window looking depressed the entire time.
After two hours, they finally arrived. Leaving without a word to Mandelbrot’s mother, who had offered to drive Egam to the camp as well when she learned he was going too, they headed to the main area. They had to be dropped off at the front of a long dirt path, then walk down that themselves. Mandelbrot sighed and said, “So much for that relaxing Summer of Root Beer and sleeping, huh?”
Egam nodded glumly, then responded by saying “Who knows… Maybe this won’t be so bad. Maybe they’ll have Root Beer here, and the work won’t be so bad.” He didn’t sound convinced.
After a few minutes of walking, they arrived at the camp itself. Everywhere they looked, they saw nothing but fields of crops. Building wise, there was only one big house, a standard barn, then around three cottage looking places. The house was very nice, along with it being at least three stories tall, it had a fresh coat of paint, and looked very comfy. Meanwhile, the cottages looked pretty rundown and depressing.
It took nearly twenty minutes more to reach the buildings, due to having to walk around a large field of corn. When they got close to the buildings, they saw a sign reading, “ATTENTION CAMPERS: Please report to Mr. Turilli inside of the main building.”
“Guess the main building is the big house,” Egam said.
“Must be,” Mandelbrot responded, “I don’t see why anyone would want any of the other buildings as a main one.”
Walking up to the house, they noticed that a large door was open already, which they walked through. Inside, they saw who they assumed was Mr. Turilli sitting in a fancy chair. He was balding, with a few patches of gray hair left, had very high eyebrows, a rat-like face, and was extremely fat.
Mr. Turilli looked up at them as they came in, and in a very high-pitched, annoying voice said, “Oh joy. More little demons to torment me. I suppose I should ask you for your names, to make sure you’re actually supposed to be here.”
Mandelbrot looked at him nervously and said, “Err, sir, I’m Mandelbrot, and this is Egam.”
“Mandelbrot and Egam…” Mr. Turilli mumbled while checking their names off a list he was holding. “Yes, well, things appear to be set. Leave your things here, they’ll be taken to your cottage later. By the way, you two will be staying in Cottage 2, it’s the middle one, with another person, she’s already here. Go on, you can find yourself. Leave!”
As they were leaving, Mandelbrot said, "Wow. I hate him already."
Egam responded, “Me too. He has such an annoying voice, and the way he looks…”
They continued to rant about how much they already hated Mr. Turilli until they reached their cottage. Since they’d heard the person they were staying with was already there, they knocked on the door. Both of them were very surprised when they saw a girl around their age open the door. She had shoulder length pink hair, stormy blue eyes, and a slender build. “Can I help you?” she asked them. “Uh… According to Mr. Turilli, we’re supposed to be staying here with you,” Mandelbrot responded.
The girl’s face suddenly brightened, “Ah, that’s nice to hear. I was afraid I’d have to stay in this creepy old place by myself.” She moved out of the way and let them inside. Looking around, Mandelbrot and Egam realized that the cottage was pretty, well, horrible. Their beds were basically slabs of wood, covered with a blanket, and they could see straw poking out. The walls were very dusty as well as the floor, and there were spider webs all across the ceiling.
“I’m Ariie, by the way,” as Mandelbrot and Egam looked around the cottage. “What’re your names?”
Egam was the first to respond, by saying, “I’m Egam.”
Mandelbrot gave Egam an annoyed look before saying, “Mandelbrot.”
Ariie smiled then said, “Well, looks like I’m not the only one with a weird name around here. Everyone else I’ve met so far have had names like Alex, and James, and Stephen… All normal.”
“Mandelbrot’s not THAT weird,” he muttered defensively. “Anyway, do you have any idea what we’re going to do here?”
Ariie thought for a second before saying, “Not much. All I know at the moment is that we’re supposed to meet back at the main building in a few hours, where I think they’ll tell us. Until then, they told us to dowhatever.”
“Might as well walk around the place and get used to it,” Egam said, hopping off his bed and heading out the door.
Mandelbrot started to follow him, then turned around when Ariie was just standing there. “You should come too, if we’re going to be staying in the same place for the next months, we might as well get to know each other.”
Ariie smiled then walked out the door too. “Thanks, nice to see someone here is nice, the others here I’ve met so far have all kept to themselves and refused to talk to me. I really don’t know why.”
They started walking toward Egam, who had raced ahead, and Mandelbrot said, “Well, uh… I have a theory.”
“Which is?” Ariie asked.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s your hair,” Mandelbrot said. “I mean, it’s not everyday you see someone with pink hair.”
Ariie looked slightly shocked by this, “I should’ve known. I always get weird looks from people in school when they first meet me.”
Egam, who had somehow gotten behind them at this point, asked “Then why not just stop dying it that color?”
Ariie looked slightly insulted by this, and said, “My hair is not dyed! It’s naturally pink. I know, it sounds unlikely, but it really is.”
Egam responded, “Ok, ok, sorry, didn’t mean to offend you…”
They quickly discovered that there really wasn’t much to see. They walked around all of the buildings multiple times, then walked around a few of the fields. They occasionally saw another camper, but they never bothered to stop and talk to them. Eventually, they heard a bell ringing from the house, and assumed that meant it was time to go there.
This time when they entered the main building, another large door was open to their right, which they walked through. It appeared to be a meeting room of some kind, with a lot of tables around a slightly raised area of the room, where Mr. Turilli was standing. Along one of the walls were large windows that looked out onto one of the fields, and the walls were all painted a lime green color.
Mandelbrot, Egam, and Ariie found three empty seats and sat down. It appeared most of the other campers were already there, and Mr. Turilli gave them an annoyed look. “Yes, well, looks like everyone is here now,” he said. “Now, the owner of this farm, Mrs. Lucid, has told me to inform you little demons of various pieces of information about the farm. To start off, I’ll tell you about some of the rules. Rule 1: No fighting other campers. Rule 2: No going into the main building at night. Rule 3: No going into the fields at night, you may only stay near the buildings.”
Anyone who breaks these rules shall be punished. You’ve probably seen the barn by now. As punishment for breaking the rules, you will be forced to stay in there for a whole 24 hours, with no food, water, or comfort. Your only company will be the animals staying there, and the ghost of a little girl supposedly murdered in there.”
After this, there were various cries of “You can’t do that!”, “That’s inhumane!”, etc. In response to this, Mr. Turilli yelled, “Silence! I don’t care how you feel about the punishment, that’s what it will be, and no amount of whining from you brats will change it. Now, shut up so I can finish my speech!” After this little burst of anger, everyone in the room quieted down instantly.
“Now then, let’s move on to what you will do while you’re staying here,” Mr. Turilli continued, acting like nothing had happened. “There are various jobs that are to be done around here. These range from helping gather crops to planting them, and from cleaning the chicken coop to milking cows. You will get a new job each week. Every Monday, you will be taught how to do each job, then for the next five days you will do them yourself under the supervision of your teacher. You all may have Sunday off to rest.”
Now, it’s time we all had dinner, because sadly, I’m forced to keep you all living via giving you drinks and food. You may find the Dining Room in the room opposite this one when you exit. You may only drink milk and water, any sodas and other flavored drinks are for councilors and myself only. What food you will eat is decided by the councilors each day. Now, get out of here! Go on, go, I don’t want you in my presence!”
Mandelbrot, Egam, and Ariie stayed in their seats for a minute longer while the rest of the people in the room were practically killing each other to get out first. When everyone had left but them, they finally got up and left.
“Finally, some food! I’m starving,” Egam exclaimed.
"Me too,” Mandelbrot agreed, “I haven’t eaten since this morning.”
Walking into the Dining Room, all three of them decided to find a table first, since once again, the rest of the people were bickering over who would be first. They found a table near a window overlooking another field that conveniently only had three seats, while the rest had four or five. “So, uh, Mandelbrot, I was just wondering…,” Ariie said, then when Mandelbrot raised an eyebrow at her, she continued, “Err, this may sound silly, but, can I just call you Mandel instead of Mandelbrot? Mandelbrot takes a while to say.”
Mandelbrot gave her a look of mock annoyance, before saying, “Sure, you can call me Mandel, as long as I can call you Arr.”
“Arr?” Ariie demanded, “What do I look like, a pirate?”
Mandelbrot laughed slightly before saying, “I’m just kidding, go ahead, most people I know call me Mandel.”
“Hey guys, I don’t need to interrupt your oh-so-interesting conversation, but the line is clear now,” Egam cut in.
They all stood up and walked toward the right side of the room, where there were people handing out trays of food. After each of them getting one, they headed back to their table. “Err… I’m really not sure what this is supposed to be,” Mandel said nervously, poking what looked like meat with his fork.
“Are these supposed to be tater tots?” Egam said, poking some half yellow, half brown, cylinder shaped things.
“I’m not sure if this is broccoli or an actual tree,” Ariie threw in. After this, all of them just shrugged it off and ate it anyway. It was pretty horrible, but since they were all rather hungry, they ate it.
While eating, Mandel looked around the room. He saw that at the northern wall there was a long table, with various people looking a good five to ten years older than them eating. “I wonder who they are?” he asked Egam and Ariie.
“I’m going to assume those are our councilors, and Mr. Turilli in the middle,” Ariie said.
Right on time, Mr. Turilli stood up and tapped on a microphone before saying, “Ok demon spawn, listen up. I’d like to introduce you to your councilors. These people will teach you your various jobs, keep you in line, and make sure you don’t break any of the rules. This is our Chicken Councilor, Mr. Oamah, our Cow Councilor, Mrs. Hackel, our Crop Councilor, Ms. Planrops, our Sheep and Goat Councilor, Mr. Sheers, and finally, our Everything Else Councilor, Mrs. Three.”
While saying this, each of the councilors stop up and either did a little wave or bow. Most of them were skinny, especially compared to Mr. Turilli, all had a plain outfit of an all green t-shirt and matching pants, and strangely, they all had the same shade of red hair. They all didn’t look very happy to be there, and glared at all of the campers, much like Mr. Turilli.
“Now that you’ve met all our councilors,” Mr. Turilli continued, “I think it’s time for all of you to leave. The councilors and I have very important matters to discuss. You will all be woken up at exactly sun rise tomorrow by one of the councilors, who will then begin teaching you your job for the week. I’d suggest you go to sleep early, though I’d prefer if you didn’t, I just love watching tired children struggle with jobs.”
Not wanting to wait around for Mr. Turilli to start barking at them to leave again, everyone got up and left pretty quickly.
Noticing that there were still quite a few hours of daylight left, Egam said, “Well, what should we do now?”
“I’m really not sure,” Ariie responded, “It’s not like there’s much to do besides look at corn and sit around.”
“She’s got a point,” Mandel agreed, “We might as well just go back to our cottage. Maybe our stuff will have been put in it by now.”
While walking to the cottage, Egam asked in a freaked out voice, “So… D-do you guys r-really think there’s a-a g-ghost in the barn?”
Mandel rolled his eyes and said, “Don’t be stupid. Ghosts don’t exist, Mr. Turilli was just trying to scare people into not breaking any rules.”
“Actually, I’m not so sure,” Ariie told him, “I actually live around the area, and I remember reading something years ago about someone being murdered here. I don’t think it was a little girl like Mr. Turilli said, though.”
After this, everyone, even Mandel, looked at the barn nervously, thinking they’d see a ghost in one of the windows. All they saw was a lot of hay, so they all shrugged, and walked into their cottage, which they’d just reached. Their stuff, thankfully, had arrived already. However, Mandel quickly made a shocking discovery.
“Where are all of my game systems?” he demanded. He’d just checked his bag, and had not seen one of the game systems he’d brought. “I know I packed them!”
Ariie gasped, before saying in a relieved voice, “Oh thank god, Mr. Bunbuns is still in here, even though all of my perfume is gone!”
Egam and Mandel both looked at Ariie, who was hugging a stuffed rabbit. Seeing that both of them were trying hard not to laugh, Ariie blushed and said, “Hey, don’t make fun of me! I’m sure lots of people my age still carry around a stuffed animal!”
Egam muttered, “Not really, but if you say so,” but was apparently heard by Ariie, who hit him on the head with Mr. Bunbuns.
“Well, taking a stuffed animal around with me is nowhere near as bad as taking twenty books with me to places,” Ariie retorted, seeing Egam carefully take out his books one by one.
“Aw, that’s completely unfair!” Mandel whined. “You get your books, but they take my games?”
“Hey, you should’ve read the sign and hid them while we were walking up,” Egam said devilishly.
“What sign?” Mandel demanded.
“The one when you first enter that says ‘No electronics allowed, any found will be taken and not given back until the end of the Summer’,” Ariie told him.
Seeing Mandel starting to freak out, Egam said, “Ah, come on, it’s not that bad! This is the perfect opportunity for you to enter the wondrous world of reading! Here, you can borrow some of the ones I’m not reading at the moment.”
“Like I will understand half of them,” Mandel said glumly, “I haven’t read a book in years.”
“Well, I hate to interrupt this conversation,” Ariie said, “but I’m getting a shower. Don’t any of you even think of peeking.”
Mandel, noticing for the first time that there was a door in the cottage that he assumed lead to a bathroom, said, “Oh, you don’t need to tell us things like, we’re gentlemen! Right, Egam?”
“Maybe me, but defi-,” Egam started to say before Mandel smacked the back of his head, “I mean, yeah, sure, definitely.”
Ariie rolled her eyes before saying, “Fine then, I’ll be back out soon. You two look like you could use showers yourselves.” With that, she pulled some clothes out from her bag, and walked into the other room.
Egam was now happily lying on his “bed” reading a book that looked to be at least five hundred pages long, while Mandel sat down on his bed, looking bored out of his mind. “Arg, how am I supposed to survive seven weeks of no video games? Especially when there will be nothing else to do after all of our work is done for the day…”
He heard a muttered, “I’ll go call the wahbulance,” in response.
Sighing, he said, “Ok Egam, you win, I’ll actually… read.”
Egam sat up instantly, then jumped toward the pile of books he put on a shelf near his bed. “Great!” he said, “I knew I’d convince you one day! Now, I’ll start you off with an easy one, like Floppy’s Perilous Adventure.”
“Err, ok, I guess?” Mandel said in a weirded out voice. Taking the book from Egam, he lay down on his bed, and began reading. After a few minutes of reading, he heard the shower turn off, and another minute later, heard a scream from who he assumed was Ariie.
“Get it away! Help me!” he heard her yelling before he jumped up and threw the bathroom door open. Inside, he saw Ariie, now in some pajamas with little sheep and bunnies all over it, cowering before a small centipede. Mandel thought the entire scene was pretty hilarious.
“This is what you’re yelling about?” he said, trying hard not laugh, “That thing is no bigger than your fingernail.”
“Please, just get rid of it!” Ariie cried, looking like she was on the verge of passing out from fear.
Mandel sighed, walked over, and stomped on the bug. He then looked up at Ariie, saw the bunny and sheep pajamas and the horrified expression on her face, and burst out laughing. “Hey! That’s just mean! It’s not my fault I’m afraid of bugs,” Ariie said angrily.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mandel said between fits of laughter, “It’s just… The bunnies, your face, the sheep…”
Ariie blushed before saying, “Well, after the big, stuffed bunny, what did you expect?”
Egam came in after this, looking very confused, before saying, “Ahem, if you guys are done, I’d like to get a shower now…”
“Fine, fine, we’re leaving,” Mandel said, finally able to stop laughing, before walking out of the room along with Ariie.
The rest of the night went pretty uneventfully. Mandel talked with Ariie for a bit until Egam finished, then he got a shower himself. Afterwards, they decided to go sleep, as they were supposedly going to be woken up early.
___
The three of them were sleeping peacefully, when they were suddenly woken up by loud banging on the door to the cottage. “Get up already, brats!” they heard a shrill voice scream from the other side of the door. “You have five minutes to get out here before I break down this door!”
“Get up?” Mandel asked sleepily. “The Sun’s not even up yet!”
“Toasters,” Egam muttered, still half-asleep.
They all got up, looking like they’d pass out at any second, and took turns getting changed. Afterwards, they shuffled outside, looking like they hadn’t gotten any sleep. Outside waiting for them was a man who they recognized as Mr. Oamah. He glared at them, and then said, “About time you got out here. Now, come on, we are forced to provide food to you before you get to work.”
They slowly walked up to the main building, all the while yawning and trying not to fall asleep on the spot. Eventually they got inside and went into the eating area. They got their food and then plopped down at the same table as before. Looking at their food, they saw that they had green colored scrambled eggs and found random meat that looks like a combination of bacon and sausage.
“This looks sanitary,” Ariie said sarcastically. Afterwards, along with Mandel and Egam, she instantly put her head on the table and fell back asleep. After about half an hour, they were woken up by Mr. Oamah, who seemed rather mad. They then marched back outside, and they went over to the chicken coup.
“Now, as you probably haven’t guessed already,” Mr. Oamah began, “I am going to instruct you on the proper care of our chickens.”
“Sounds like so much fun,” Mandel muttered.
Mr. Oamah then began ranting about the proper ways to clean the coup, how to feed the chickens, and how to collect eggs. He spent several hours demonstrating how to do each thing, as well as ranting some more. Mandel, Ariie, and Egam spent the entire time half-listening and trying to not to fall asleep. Eventually, Mr. Oamah said, “Now, that’s all there is to it. Starting tomorrow you will be doing everything on your own, with me occasionally checking on you to make sure you’re doing things correctly. Now, get out of my sight. Dinner will be in an hour.”
Happy to finally be done, the three of them quickly walked away. “So tired,” Egam said.
“So bored,” Mandel responded.
“So annoyed,” Ariie finished.
“Well, what do we do for now?” Egam asked. “Standing around whining for another hour seems boring.”
“I think it sounds like a great idea,” Ariie and Mandel said at the same time. They then looked at each other for a second, looked away, shook their heads, and sighed. “I say we take a nap,” Mandel then said. Egam and Ariie nodded in agreement.
___
They ended up sleeping straight through until the next morning, when they were woken up again my Mr. Oamah. After eating again, they spent the day doing random chores for the chickens. They all noticed one particularly weird looking chicken, which was a bit larger than the rest, and had a weird design on its chest. It was colored brown, while its feathers were mainly white, and it looked like two crossed axes with a sword down the middle of them.
“That chicken was seriously weird,” Mandel said while walking back after finishing chores.
“It really was,” Egam agreed. “Did you see how big it was?”
“And the symbol on it,” Ariie added. “Now THAT was weird. I’ve never seen anything like that on a chicken before.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Mandel responded. “Probably just some weird genetic thing, I guess.”
___
They continued their chores for the next few days, each day being as boring as the last. Each day, they would wake up, eat breakfast, do their chores, eat dinner, do whatever for a few hours, then go back to sleep. On the last day they were assigned to chicken coup duty, though, proved to be much, much different than the past few days.
It started off normally. They went through their normal routine, and were in the middle of doing their chores. Mandel was checking for eggs, when he reached the weird looking one. As he was about to check, the chicken suddenly looked at him, and said, “Now, don’t be alarmed, but you are about to be attacked.”
Mandel just stood there for a second, then turned to the others. “Hey, guys,” he said. “I’ve finally gone insane. This chicken just talked to me.”
They then walked up to him, and looked at the chicken. Just as Egam was going to say something, the chicken talked again, “Oh, I assure you, you’re not insane. Just a talking chicken, is all. Now, as I was saying, you are about to be attacked. You have about a minute until then, I expect.”
The three of them looked thoroughly freaked out. “What the… hell?” Egam managed.
“Exactly what I was about to say,” Ariie agreed. “Now, uh, talking chicken, what was this about being attacked?”
“Turn around,” the chicken said.
Turning around, they saw that three penguins were blocking the entrance to the chicken coup. They were dressed head to toe in black cloth, only knowing they were penguins from their stature and the face they could see behind their hoods.
“Now,” the one on the left began. “We can do this the simple way, or we can do this the fun way, which involved various stab wounds to most of you.”
Mandel, Ariie, and Egam all yelped with a mix of intense shock and terror, and cowered at the back of the coup. However, the talking chicken suddenly leaped in front of them, and began to change before their eyes. It grew about four times larger, its claws grew much longer, and its eyes literally turned into fire.
“Fun way it is, then,” the penguin from before said. The three penguins then suddenly threw ninja stars at the chicken, who swatted them all aside with his claws.
With a ferocious cluck, the chicken charged. It clawed one of the penguins in the side, pecked another in the eye, and then did a back flip behind the third as it tried to stab him. He then rammed into it, knocking it into the other two. He then walked after to them and swiped them a few times with his claws.
“The Silent Waddle Squad,” the chicken muttered distastefully. “Why is Vladimir after these three children?”
“Why he wants them matters not to you!” one of the penguins responded.
“Oh, I think it does matter to me. It’s not every day the SWS are sent after three innocent children. Plus, if you don’t tell me, I may have to get swipy again.”
One of the penguins sighed, then said, “Well, I guess we have no ch-NOW!” The three of them then rolled away, and each pulled out a small bag. Throwing it on the ground, smoke suddenly burst everywhere. When it cleared, they were all gone, and the chicken was sitting down in its normal form, acting like nothing had happened.
“What jus-,” Mandel began, when Mr. Oamah suddenly burst into the coup.
“What in the world are you doing?” he yelled. “The coup is a mess! The chicken are all loose!”
“B-but, sir, you don’t understand,” Egam began. “These three penguin ninja things popped up, then…” He then trailed off, realizing how unbelievable his story sounded.
“I don’t care about your pathetic little stories! You are all being PUNISHED!” Mr. Oamah angrily responded. “Get in the punishment barn NOW, before I start bashing some skulls!”
Fearing his threats were really warnings, the three of them quickly ran into the barn. They then heard what suddenly like the entrance being locked and barricaded from the other side. They then looked around the barn, and gasped in horror. The entire place had little to no light, but they could see spider webs everywhere they could see. The windows were all barred, and had heavy curtains blocking any light.
“Well,” Mandel began, “This could possibly be the most terrifying day of my life. First, some chicken talks to me, and then it suddenly fights off three penguin ninjas, now I’m locked in here. I think I’ll go back to my previous claim of having gone insane.”
“Yeah,” Ariie agreed. “Insanity sounds like the answer to all of this. Nothing else can be the answer. I mean, talking chickens and penguin ninjas? That sounds like insanity to me.”
“So, it’s agreed,” Egam said. “We’ve all suddenly gone insane. In fact, I don’t think we’re even really in the barn. Just in our cottage, we just see this because we’re insane.”
They all nodded happily, welcoming their newly found insanity. They then decided to call it an early night, since, when you’re insane, what else is there to do, they reasoned. However, as soon as they lay down to sleep, they heard a familiar voice say, “Again with the insanity talk.”
Jumping up, they saw the chicken from before. As a response, they all screamed at the top of their lungs, then began assaulting him with questions such as “What the hell is going on? “Why is a freaking chicken talking?” “Why are those penguin ninjas after us?” and such.
“Now, now,” the chicken responded. “All will be revealed to you in time. For now, I’ll tell you the basics. Pretty much, there’s this penguin. His name is Vladimir, and happened to have found Excalibur. He is now getting ready to use its power to take over the world. He has a group of special agents, infused with some of the power of Excalibur. They are called the Silent Waddle Squad, or SWS, which you just saw.
“They are trained in the ways of the ninja, and carry out special missions for Vladimir. Apparently, he wanted the three of you for some reason, though I really have no idea why. I must now inform you that any moment, he will no doubt send out the rest of the SWS to come get you, as you just saw a very small amount of them. For this reason, you must come with me.”
The three of them started at him in a shocked silence. Eventually, Egam said, “You’ve GOT to be kidding, right?”
“Oh, I wish I was,” said the chicken. “Alas, all of the things I said were true.”
“But, It just doesn’t make sense,” Ariie said. “Penguins with Excalibur? Penguin ninjas? Talking chickens? This sounds like the plot of some horrible movie or book or something.”
“Yes, it does sound hard to believe,” the chick responded. “But, you must try for now. At least allow me to get you to safety, and then we can talk more. I suggest we get going soon, too, since I can already sense the SWS approaching.”
“How exactly are we going to escape, then?” Mandel asked.
“Simple. I happen to know how to do a nifty teleporting ability. I’m a little rusty on using it, though, so we should end up at any random point a good distance away.”
“Huh-uh,” Mandel responded. “Yeah, that makes about as little sense as the fact that you’re a talking chicken, but alright. Do your teleporting thing.”
“With pleasure,” it said. “Also, before we leave, we should at least get to know each other. My name is Cluckie Chan, servant of Sancho, who is the leader of a group against Vladimir. Now, before I confuse you even more, we should be teleporting in… now.”
With that, there was a blinding flash of light. They were in a swirling mass of green for about ten seconds, before they suddenly popped out in the middle of some woods. Ariie, Mandel, and Egam instantly fell to the ground in shock. “I’m not sure if that was amazingly awesome or terrifying,” Egam said after a minute.
“I think a strange mixture of both,” Mandel said.
