Chapter Text
The melody was quiet at first. So quiet that the sound that actually woke Mikey and Donnie up was Casey shuffling to the front door.
“Casey?” Mikey called out, propping himself up with an elbow.
Casey doesn’t reply, simply unlocking and opening the cabin door, letting the wind and moonlight in. Casey himself was only wearing his pajamas, something way too light for the cold forest air. Despite that, the teen walked outside without a word.
“Do you hear that?” Donnie asked.
And Mikey could hear it. There was the faint sound of a flute playing in the distance. “Yeah. Do you think it’s the spirit?”
“Perhaps,” Donnie admitted. “We should get the others.”
“Un,” Mikey agreed. He got off his bunk to wake Ryoko while Donnie woke up Raiga.
“Why is it so drafty?” Raiga said, shivering inside of his sleeping bag.
“The spirit is luring Casey away,” Donnie explained.
Raiga sat up. “What!?” He had fully zipped himself up in his sleeping bag, looking more akin to a caterpillar than a bundled up individual.
Ryoko was already out of her bag, slipping on a sweater. As the four got out of their cabins, it was revealed that it wasn’t just Casey that was getting bewitched. Every other cabin had open doors, each with their respective gaggle of teens staggering their way towards the lake.
One of the campers even fell, but got up right away, unfazed by the tumble.
“They’re getting pied pipered!” Mikey said.
“Guardians, transform!” Ryoko ordered.
The quartet quickly made their way to the lake. Duskset was the first to spot the perpetrator. He tugged at Daybreak’s sleeve, pointing up above the cliff that surrounded the lake. There was a lone figure standing above, the glint of a metal flute in their hands.
Despite the quiet signal, the figure noticed the Guardians. The figure paused the playing, stopping the campers in their tracks. Like puppets with slacked strings, they all collapsed to the ground. Thankfully, none of them had made it to the water. But none of them were also waking up.
Daybreak pointed after the absconding figure. “Guardians, go!”
They all gave chase, throwing caution to the wind against their new adversary. Besides, what could it possibly mean if they were running away? Not being strong enough, or at least not confident in their abilities to take them all on was a possibility. Another reason might be luring them into a trap. It better not be the latter, if they knew what was good for them.
“Halt, villain!” Daybreak called out after their adversary, as if that would do anything.
“Oh my god Donnie, she said the thing,” Dawnrise complained.
“I know Mikey, I know,” Midnight replied. “Just ignore it for now.”
They soon came across a small cabin in the woods, the door slightly ajar. Daybreak was the first at the door frame before skidding to a stop. Unfortunately, her siblings didn’t stop in time, colliding into her with enough momentum to make them all fall over.
When they kept falling, the duration was long enough for Dawnrise to realize they had fallen into a pit trap. He tried to float again, like he did before. But the trap wasn’t that long of a fall. He learned that the hard way as he fell on top of his siblings.
As Dawnrise looked up, the cabin surrounding the pitfall turned a neon blue, looking like a digital blueprint of the building instead of the real thing. It glitched and seized, before dissipating into blue particles.
“Note to self,” Midnight said in a daze. “Hologram projections are a thing now.”
“Maybe it was always a thing and this is the first time they used it against us?” Dawnrise suggested.
“And they used it to pull this shit?” Duskset asked.
“Well, we did fall in,” Midnight pointed out. “So it works.”
“To be fair, I stopped in time,” Daybreak defended.
Their bickering was stopped by a shadow, hovering above the trap and peering in. It was the piper Duskset had seen on top of the cliff.
“Oh, I cannot believe that worked!” the figure said, clapping with glee.
They were large and imposing in stature, a hard juxtaposition to their exuberance. On their head rested a turban, and Dawnrise was able to make out a large round snout that protruded from their face.
“Is that the hippo mutant?” Duskset observed.
Dawnrise squinted in an attempt to get a better look, the moon high above them obscuring the piper’s face in a shadow. But it wasn’t hard to see the definite features of the hippopotamus mutant that started it all. The very first one that got away.
“I think it is,” Dawnrise said.
The hippo man turned to someone behind him. “How did you know they were going to be here?”
“Our emperor has his sources,” a female voice replied. It was a familiar voice, someone Dawnrise had met recently.
Another figure appeared beside the hippo man. A hooded figure. But even without removing her hood, Dawnrise could tell that it was the falcon girl from before.
“My, my, what do we have here?” she asked. It was obvious she wasn’t looking for an answer. She turned to her accomplice, resting a hand on the hippo man’s arm—he was too tall for her to reach his shoulder. “Good work, Ron. You’ve proven yourself to be a worthy addition to the empire.”
“Ron!?” Dawnrise squeaked. “We got got by someone named Ron!?”
He didn’t get a reply.
Ron was practically jumping up and down. “So what do we do with them? Take them back to the emperor?”
“We could,” the falcon girl said. “But wouldn’t it be easy to get rid of them here and now?”
Ron stammered. “Wait... you’re not actually suggesting... killing them, are you? But... they’re just kids!”
“So?” the falcon girl retorted.
“Glad to know you’re willing to kidnap us, not murder us,” Duskset snarked.
Ron huffed. “I have standa—”
He was cut off abruptly by Duskset jumping out of the pit, sai in hand. Ron’s knee jerk reaction to lean back just a tad saved his bacon, so to speak. He landed on his butt with a scream. He patted down his face, checking to make sure there were no new holes in it. When he realized he was unharmed, the hippo man growled. “Oi, watch it!”
“You forgot to seal the pit!?” the falcon girl shouted.
“Okay, you are asking me to do a lot of things tonight!” Ron said. “You didn’t even help dig the pit!”
Duskset landed and was quickly joined by the other Guardians, weapons at the ready. The once brightly shining moon was suddenly masked behind a blanket of clouds, sending the realm below into a world of shadows. Even the wind howled, whistling above the treetops.
Dawnrise tightened his grip on his nunchaku in anticipation.
The falcon girl stepped in front of Ron, holding up her spear, ready to battle as well. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.”
Daybreak was the first one to charge at her. They clashed weapons, the sparks shining brightly in the night. The falcon girl’s eyes seemed to shine even in the darkness.
“Aren’t you an eager one?” the falcon girl said. “Aoi-chan?”
The falcon girl leaned back, attempting to unbalance Daybreak. The blue guardian was ready for the trick this time around. Instead of catching her off guard, Daybreak followed the movement with ease, pressing both of their weapons close to the falcon girl’s neck.
“Fast learner,” the falcon girl complimented. When she noticed the other Guardians had her surrounded, she broke away from the clash. Using her wings, she summoned a gust in distraction as she retreated to perch on top of Ron’s shoulders.
The squawk that came out of Ron’s mouth was less than indignant. “Do I look like a bird perch to you!?”
The falcon girl pressed on something on the side of her head, possibly an ear piece? “But sire—”
She visibly winced, letting go of the communicator in her ear—the voice on the other side was so loud, Dawnrise could hear it, but not enough to make out any words. The falcon girl pressed on the ear piece again. Her voice was even, but with an obvious tone of irritation. “Yes, sire.”
A bigger gust of wind was summoned. It was more like a small tornado than anything. And when the winds disappeared, the moon returned, revealing that the two had escaped into the night.
“Agh, I can’t believe Hypno-Potamus got away,” Dawnrise complained. “Again!”
“The fuck?” Duskset asked. “Hypno -what?”
Midnight groaned. “Oh my god, there is no way you’re going to go with that.”
“What? He’s a hippo and he hypnotized the other students!”
“Fine. What about the other one?”
“She already has a name. She’s not a mutant, remember?”
“Right,” Midnight said, rolling his eyes.
The four returned to the lake, surprised to find that everyone was still passed out. From the looks of it, no one had moved from the spot where they had collapsed, either. They were all breathing, at least.
“So what do we do? Just leave them here?” Duskset asked, nudging a sleeping camper with his foot.
“I don’t think it’d be wise to just leave them out near the lake like this,” Daybreak said.
Duskset groaned. “So what? We’re going to manually put everyone back?”
“Yeah. Looks like our night isn’t over just yet,” Midnight said. “We should report this to onee-chan and Shelldon, too.”
“I don’t even know which cabin most of these people belong to,” Duskset complained.
“There should be a list with everyone’s photo in the ranger station,” Midnight said. “I’ll lockpick it.”
Duskset rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
Midnight made quick work of the lock, got the list and everyone got to work. Dawnrise called Miwa, surprised she even picked up considering how late it was.
“Okay, that explained why Shelldon woke me up half an hour ago,” Miwa said. “He couldn’t tell what it was because it was too faint, but wanted me to be on high alert.”
“He has a range?” Dawnrise asked.
“I mean... it kinda makes sense?” Miwa offered.
“I guess. What do you think about Hypno?”
“Nothing we can do about the missing mutant. Although it’s kinda worrying he successfully got recruited by Kraang. Not to mention that his ability to control people is disturbing, to say the least.”
“Yeah. But it seems we’re immune to it?”
“Well that’s good.” She let out a yawn over the phone, not attempting to stifle it at all before excusing herself.
“Goodnight, onee-chan,” Dawnrise said.
“Goodnight, Micchan,” Miwa mumbled. “Say goodnight to the others for me.”
“Hai.”
Everything returned to normal the following morning—or at least as normal as it could be, because try as they might, the Sky Guardians couldn’t return everyone to their exact sleeping positions. No one had memories of last night, thank god—not like that mattered. What did matter was how mostly everyone woke up in a different bunk they had fallen asleep in. They were all out of their sleeping bags and most had a loose leaf or twig in their hair—some even had gravel and dirt in their bed.
No one reported it to an adult or ranger, though. It was too disturbing to even be reported on. Like come on, someone had broken into everyone’s cabin and took them out of their sleeping bags and shuffled them around their bunks? One of the campers even had a scraped knee. How does anyone even begin to explain that without making it sound absurd?
Aside from the unexplained, the only other event that happened that morning was Ryoko getting caught being in a different cabin she was assigned to by a ranger. She had initially planned to sneak back to her cabin before the morning patrols, but had accidentally slept in due to events of last night. The situation, fortunately, was excused when it was quickly determined she was simply with her siblings. And Casey.
“What kind of prank is this?” Casey asked, removing a leaf from his hair.
The Yamato siblings simply shrugged, pretending to be as weirded out as Casey was.
There was tension in the air for most of the morning, but thankfully everyone seemed to shake off the disturbing awakening as the day pressed on. Both Cabin 21 and 9 found themselves on the same hiking activity. The terrain was a lot rockier than they expected, exhausting them quickly. As a group, they unanimously decided to chill in the mess hall for a while, catching their breath.
“Yamato-san, your sister is calling!” The voice was unfamiliar. All four looked at the one who called for them, a ranger with a foot out of the nurse’s office. The four siblings then exchanged looks with one another.
“Which one?” Raiga called back.
“She says it doesn’t matter,” the ranger said. “Actually, she just clarified that Ryoko-san is probably and I quote, ‘for the best’!”
That sentence shifted everything, a chill suddenly filled the air.
Ryoko looked at her brothers with worried eyes. Mikey felt his stomach drop. That couldn’t be good. The grim expression on the rest of his siblings’ faces indicated similar sentiments. With much hesitance, Ryoko got up, giving her brothers one final glance before walking to the office.
“What do you think the call’s about?” Raiga asked.
“Maybe she just locked herself out of the house,” Mikey suggested.
“We could only be so lucky...” Donnie muttered. “Knowing us...” He trailed off, but Mikey knew what Donnie was implying. Knowing them, it was probably something worse.
Mikey kicked Donnie in the shin anyway, even though Mikey knew that he was right. It was still rude to point it out. What if he jinxed it?
The call wasn’t long at all. In fact, it didn’t take more than a minute. Ryoko returned to her brothers, looking pale and shaken. She doesn’t even bother sitting back down on the bench.
“Nee-chan?” Mikey asked.
“It’s Mom,” she said, her voice quiet. “Their cruise ship got attacked and they both were helping other people evacuate.” Her eyes became misty. “The mutant grabbed her and she got knocked out and... and she’s not waking up.”