Neoplay: Two Faeries and a Wannabe Evil Overlord - Part Six

The Mynci took Cera down a dank hallway. Ara followed, intent on figuring out what was going on around here and keeping Cera safe and out of too much trouble. I brought her here, she scolded herself. It's my responsibility to make sure she stays safe.

     Cera was taken into another room, where countless numbers of pink pets hung out in cages. They had a strange, unearthly look about them, and the glazed look in their eyes freaked Arathyne out. The Mynci led her over to a room with a cell full of other unpainted Bori and put her inside.

     "Now stay there," he told her sharply. "I'm going to go get your other little faerie friend now. She won't be joining you in that cell unless one of you magically changes species." The Mynci turned and left both the Bori room and the main room.

     Ara slipped in through the metal bars on the window of the door and sat next to Cera, trying to form herself together. She managed to solidify if not become visible. She realized that with this solid invisibility, her clothes were seen but her body was not.

     "Cera, it's me," she whispered.

     She looked next to her and saw Ara's clothing floating in midair. "Ara? That you?"

     "Yeah, it's me."

     "How did you get here?" she asked, confused and worried. "And where's your body?"

     "Apparently, I can become air," she said softly, eying the other Bori that sat huddled at a table in the corner farthest from them playing cards. "That's when none of me can be seen. But when I solidify and I'm still not visible, apparently it's just my body that's invisible. I'm trying to see if I can stay solid so I can touch things while making my clothes invisible too."

     Cera still didn't understand. "Air?" she asked, lifting up a hand and seeing if she could feel Ara's shoulder. Her hand didn't go through Ara like she thought it would when she tapped it. "Yeah, try that, then go get the key," she said slowly, still staring at the clothing in front of her. She brought her hand down and looked away at the other Bori who were still staring at her like she was crazy and talking to herself.

     She nodded then, remembering Cera couldn't see her head, said, "Got it."

     She focused on turning the clothes invisible. After a few moments the tingling entered the fabric of her sweatshirt, making that invisible and showing her white shirt. She focused again and that vanished, making her unseen from the waist up. Next went her shoes, and then her jeans. She touched the wall, making sure she was still solid, then stood up. She concentrated, thinking about becoming air and slipping through the bars.

     After a time, it worked. She flew gently through the bars and found a chain of keys hanging off the wall. She solidified herself and found her whole self visible, body and clothes and all. She searched the keys until she found one marked "BORI". She stuck that key into the lock and the door opened.

     "Cera, come on," she said, noticing the other Bori that began attacking each other to get towards the exit. "Hurry!"

     Cera's first instinct was to fly. She zoomed out, her wings beating fast. She grabbed Ara on the way out and continued to fly down the hall. She landed once she thought they were far away. "Okay, those other Bori will distract everyone, so we should be able to find a way out." She was out of breath. She folded up her wings and looked around. They were in a dark hallway, but there was light farther up ahead. "Which way do you want to go?" she asked.

     "Let's go this way." Going at a run, she led Cera through several doors and rooms until they reached a dead end. She was still running and she looked around, thinking fast. An air vent with sounds like voices coming out of it was high up in the ceiling. She grabbed Cera's wrist, still running, and closed her eyes. The tingling rushed quickly through her and Cera, and she shot up in the air and into the air vent, Ara directing her swiftly, keeping a firm grip on Cera's air-like wrist. "Don't let go," she shouted, her voice sounding like a ghostly whisper despite its intention of being a yell. It seemed that whoever she touched turned invisible or like air with her, which was all the better. She sailed through the vent, following the voices, until they found it. Cera was screaming the whole time, but it sounded quiet and phantom-like. Ara dove through the vent exit into the room where the voices were. Her momentum slowed, but they crashed into the ground with an inaudible thud, their molecules slamming together painfully when they hit the ground. They had landed behind a pile of junk, with the source of the voices on the other side. She gasped for breath. The hit had been silent, but it knocked the wind out of her, and they both became visible.

     "Sorry," she managed to choke out quietly when her voice came back.

     Cera nodded. "It's fine," she said in a small voice, trying to pick herself up.

     "I think," said Ara between breaths, "I went a little... too... fast."

     "Yeah. Maybe a little."

     "Well, I mean, come on, we have, erm, so many already!" came a male voice. The way he said 'so many' made it sound forced, as if it were a painfully obvious lie. Ara stood up — the pile of junk was a few feet taller than her—and peered through a gap in the wall of discarded things. She saw a pink Mynci—The same one? she wondered — talking to a large computer screen where a little pink Meepit was shown. She frowned. The Meepit had a mustache. "Why can't we just invade now? The cells are driving them crazy!"

     "That craziness will be better for them when we release them on the unsuspecting Neopians," the Meepit informed him sternly, his mustache moving as he spoke. He had a funny accent, the kind of accent believed to be spoken by a certain fellow named Adam and his cronies, but Ara didn't know too much about that. She was taken aback for a moment. A Petpet that could talk? And with a foreign accent?! Why couldn't Ebitak do that? She began to wonder what her Spyder was up to. She'd left him back at the house. "Besides, I want more for my army. I can't possibly take over Neopia with just a few hundred minions, can I?"

     "No, I suppose not," the Mynci said with a sigh.

     "Answer me this, Kale," the Meepit growled. "We've hundreds of Neopets, and very few humans. Why is this?"

     Kale the Mynci rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I don't know, Boss, the humans don't seem as stupid as we thought they were."

     "Nonsense!" The Meepit pounded his little fists on whatever surface he was sitting at. It sounded like a desk. "Who's the newest you've even attempted to take?"

     "Well, we tried to get this one brown-haired girl to come with us," Kane answered. "She was shopping for some groceries and got really mad when me and Rhys tried to take her."

     Arathyne froze. Was that Lucy they were talking about?

     "She put all her stuff to the side and chased us out of the store, yelling in some foreign language. It was actually really scary."

     Ara smiled slightly. Yep, that was Lucy, all right.

     "So you didn't get her."

     Kale shook his head. "No, sir, we didn't."

     Ara sighed in relief. At least she'd gotten away.

     Cera was confused. Meepits taking over Neopia? She had heard it before, but thought it was just a joke. Where were they going to get an army of Meepits anyway? The pieces of the puzzle fell together in her mind. The pink pets! They did have a weird look to them, she remembered. "Ara, we have to stop them! The pets, they are changing the pets into Meepits!" She was panicking again.

     "Keep your voice down," Ara warned quietly. "And not Meepits... Meepit followers."

     Cera was still confused. "Well, whatever is happening, we have to stop them!" Despite her words, she wasn't quite sure if she was really up to saving the world. She wasn't the hero type, and even if they did save the world, they wouldn't get any recognition because no one knew about it.

     "What is that noise?" the mustached Meepit asked. "Is that you, Gloria? Come out from behind that junk and bow before my almighty-ness, hmmm?"

     Ara winced. The Meepit was really creeping her out.

     Gloria? Who the heck is Gloria? Cera made a face just thinking of who Gloria might be. She was quiet after that, though, not wanting to become the next 'Gloria'.

     "Oh, come now, Gloria, don't be shy... Kale, go get her."

     Kale rolled his eyes and walked behind the junk. Fortunately for Cera, he blindly reached out and grabbed Ara instead. He pulled her out. "Here you go, sir," he grumbled.

     "Why, Gloria! You've changed your species! I rather liked you a Zafara; it was quite dashing, really."

     Arathyne's eye twitched. Cera almost laughed when the Meepit actually thought she was 'Gloria', whoever that was.

     "Do you like my mustache? Grown quite a bit since you last saw, hmm?" His accent made the whole thing even weirder.

     "Oh, yeah, sure," she mumbled. "Mustache... Yeah, that's- that's great..."

To be continued...