Dawn on Jefferson: Chapter Seventeen - The Healing Power of Popcorn

Chapter One: Getting Up
Chapter Two: Where I Live
Chapter Three: The Walk
Chapter Four: School
Chapter Five: Introducing my Friends, the Merry Pranksters!
Chapter Six: Walking to Mom's
Chapter Seven: Mom’s House
Chapter Eight: It Began on Constitution Hill
Chapter Nine: Attack of the Awknerds!
Chapter Ten: No Awknerds Were Harmed
Chapter Eleven: The Breaking Shadstorm
Chapter Twelve: Where I Envy Grilled Cheese
Chapter Thirteen: Doom! Doom! Doom! Where I Want to go to School! The End Must be Nigh!
Chapter Fourteen: The Game is a Foot
Chapter Fifteen: Uncomfortable Revelations!
Chapter Sixteen: WAITAMINUTE!

Chapter Seventeen: The Healing Power of Popcorn

Popcorn!

Who'd have thought it had magical properties to save the universe!?! Or at least slay an argument...Tom was either a genius or an absolutely evil deviant who had laced his popcorn with happy sauce. The stuff we swear the school nurse keeps above her desk and eats for lunch. No one is that happy! At least not if she is a human being. We debated whether she was human. We were on an alien world, after all.

While I doubt Tom's pilfering skills, I have to say I lean towards him being an evil deviant rather than a genius. No one who makes the awful puns and is as awkwardly dorky as he is could be an evil genius.

Hey! He's OUR awkwardly dorky, evil deviant!

DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PICKING ON HIM!

(that's our job!)

AND DON'T THINK ABOUT STEALING HIM AWAY EITHER!

(he's ours! sold his soul to us in the 1st grade. too bad so sad, you guys just look and see what you could have had)

MUHAHAHAHA!

As we munched with greatly reduced passions and talked. We were agreed. We wanted to go check out the spot where the helmet was and the legless footman appeared: we even named it Creepy Follow. Tom nominated me as Icky Trod Stain to go with our naming theme and I downgraded him from deviant to just got lucky once mentally.

And was probably needing that luck to get away safely once the popcorn stash was revealed.

If you haven't figured out our puns there, I'm not explaining. Sheesh.

If you ask again, I shall have to mock you for a second time.

There were serious problems with our goal of going to see where the Legless Footman went. The first was the site was cordoned off by the Bureau of Interplanetary Investigationsor BII (Bees, by the way is how most people call them) and would be for the next week at least.

Secondly, the US Marine Corps had a squad in Shadwell now. It was a precaution against trouble. There were no signs of a massive invasion fleet, but even so, no one wanted to be in the little town wiped out. The USMC Planetary Commandant didn't want to be the gal on duty who lost the first American town on an exoplanet to soldiers from another country either. Not on her watch!

And then there was the parents of Shadwell. They were well and truly stirred up. And they were watching.

The Bees were going to be doggedly thorough: first major case on Jefferson within their jurisdiction: Jefferson was so far out in the boonies of human space, interplanetary affairs were restricted to if someone tried to smuggle something onto Jefferson and that was almost completely ridiculous given the cost. The Marines were going to be watching for people sneaking around. And then the 'Rents. Oy.

To even get out of school was going to be a challenge. To not be tracked as we did our thing was going to be an even bigger challenge. Remember our Boosters? They are AWESOME. However, they are the single easiest way to track anyone, anywhere. Parents upload tracker software all the time to their kids' boosters: Mom did so to be me before, remember? The law forbade doing so to our brain implants directly, but...you had to wonder. That meant at least ONE of our five sets of parents had probably placed a hacker tracker on our boosters.

This meant we had to swap out our boosters. What?! You didn't think kids in the 22nd century aren't STILL better at tech than their parents?

We also needed a distraction to get out of school. After all, with the increased security, the drones were going to be everywhere. We could hack cameras temporarily, but if the drones were all out of whack someone might actually figure out what we were up to and then on top of that, someone would have gotten hurt. There WAS someone out there with an Indian combat suit or so it seemed.

And then the Marines...they had tech. Tech that made what we had look like sticks and stones compared to modern boosters. Or so we were sure.

We knew we also couldn't be directly involved with the distraction. If we were, we'd get caught. Tensions were just running too high. The parents were just too flipped out. It was annoying. That meant we had to get META with our Merry Pranksterhood. We would need someone to do it for us at least. And get caught in the right way. And not care.

We felt rather uncomfortable then. We knew who we were going to have to talk to. And she didn't like us. She actually liked Tom a lot. Too much. She wanted to add him to her collection. But she especially hated me. I was the one who stood between her and Derplicating Tom. It made me queasy to think about.

But we all knew what had to be done.

We were going to have to talk to Maven.

And none of us liked it.