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its-lxcked · 4 years

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Septuple Solo Para: Well, Gang...

“Sammy, I mean it, I don’t care that we’re in Auradon. There’s no way in hell you’re gonna convince me a place is really haunted,” Sylvia is saying as Nancy walks over to sit with them at lunch.

“Look, I’m just sharing the rumor. Oh, hang on-- Heather!! Over here!!” Sammy waves to her new friend, gesturing to the seat she’d saved, smiling at her sister as well. “Hey, Nance. I was just telling Sylvia about the thing I texted you about.”

“The haunted, condemned house?” Nancy asks, because Sammy texts her about literally everything.

“Like, the what?” Heather asks as she sits down with Sammy, before remembering her manners. “Oh, right, like, I’m Heather, so totally nice to meet you. What’s up with the haunted house?”

“Nancy, Sam’s older sister, and that’s Sylvia. Sylvia and I are part-time amateur detectives, so when thinks get wonky, they usually get swung our way.” Nancy nods a bit with a half-hearted wave with a soda in her hand, before taking a swig.

“She’s also leaving out that neither of us believe in ghosts,” Sylvia adds on.

A tall boy walking by catches himself and staggers backwards at that comment. “Sorry, couldn’t help but overhear. You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Uh, no, I really don’t,” Sylvia shrugs. “It’s always someone faking terrifying stuff just to keep nosy people away or to get insurance money for something. At the end of the day, Nancy and I unmask the bad guys and they go to jail.”

“Well, that’s not very fun. Mind if I pull up a seat?” He’s asking, but he swings his legs around a seat anyways with the girls. “I’m Grayson Fenton. 1/4 ghost myself.”

Nancy chokes on her soda, coughing for a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, it’s a bit of a story, but the long story short is that an accident in my ghost-obsessed grandparents’ lab half-killed my dad. He and I can both transform between a solid form and...”

Grayson suddenly turns into a shadowy figure of himself, reaching out and passing his arm through the table before switching back and bringing his arm back up to rest on the table. “...well, my dad’s ghost form looks more humanoid than mine does, but you get the picture. Our job is to keep ghosts from wreaking havoc on the mortal world by making sure they stay confined to the ghost zone.”

Sylvia is sitting there, open-mouthed and looking completely and utterly horrified. Finally, finally, she chokes out a simple, “What?”

Grayson shrugs as Lily sits down across from Sammy, reading the looks on the other four girls’ faces. “What happened?”

“He’s a ghost,” Sammy points to Grayson.

Lily pauses and shrugs. “That’s Auradon for you, I guess.”

“One-quarter,” Grayson corrects. “And my job is to catch actual ghosts. Our gear for that is more than a little... unconventional. Like, check this out.” He pulls his Fenton Thermos out of his backpack. “This actually is meant to pull in ghosts and trap them for later release in the ghost zone. I’m... obviously not in the position to demonstrate it, as the only nearby even slightly ghostly entity.”

“That’s ingenious inventing,” says a boy looking over Grayson’s shoulder, forgetting that boundaries are a thing.

Grayson jumps. “Whoa! Do you mind?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry, my bad. Oliver Robinson,” is the response, extending his hand to Grayson.

“...Grayson Fenton,” he finally meets, shaking the other’s hand, glancing at the girls, who all shrug simultaneously.

Nancy nods to the last open seat at their table. “You’re welcome to join us, Oliver. We just go severely off topic. We were on the haunted house.”

Oliver raises an eyebrow as he sits down. “We were on the what now?”

“I’m with him, but you have my interest,” Lily offers, sitting up a bit.

“Oh, there’s this rumor about some super haunted building on the outskirts of the city, guess the building got condemned but they weren’t able to tear it down because something kept stopping them whenever they tried. The theory goes it was the house’s original builder and owner,” Sammy explains.

“Okay, no, yeah, I am definitely in camp ‘random homeless man living in a condemned space and trying to keep people from tearing down his home’,” Sylvia instantly says, before munching on a carrot stick.

“That’s just it, they can’t find any evidence at all that there’s anyone in the house,” Sammy says. “I just thought it was cool.”

Nancy shrugs a bit. “I mean, I haven’t had a good mystery in a while. Or adventure as a whole.”

“Told you should’ve come to Annapolis,” Sylvia grumbles under her breath.

“Like, what happened in Annapolis?” Heather looks at Sylvia innocently.

Sylvia chokes on her carrot stick, holding up a hand and coughing and sputtering for a minute. “Absolutely nothing major, but it was a change of scenery.”

Nancy rolls her eyes. “What I’m trying to say is...”

...and that’s how, hours later, seven kids pile out of the van Sylvia had driven them over in, walking up the overgrown path as the sun sets behind them to an empty house.

“Okay, just because I brought it up doesn’t mean I wanted to tag along,” Sammy is grumbling a bit as Nancy passes out flashlights to the rest of them.

Heather nods. “Like, could we have at least come out here during the day?”

“Well, last I checked, we’re all going to school, so, not really, no,” Nancy points out. “C’mon, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Nonexistent,” Sammy points out, still grumbling as her sister pushes the flashlight into her hands.

“C’mon, it’ll be quick,” Grayson shrugs. “I have a ghost sense. I get a specific chill when there’s a ghost nearby. You’ll even be able to see my breath. Then after this I think we can pester Sylvia enough to stop for ice cream.”

Sylvia rolls her eyes, clicking her flashlight on and pushing on the front door, shining her light in as it creaks open, not locked. “Ooh, that’s a sign. I don’t like that.”

Though it does lean more towards her theory that someone’s been coming and going. She presses on in and the others follow after her, with Heather taking up the rear of the group and taking a moment as the others fan out inside to look back over her shoulder and around outside to make sure there’s no threats out there before she follows them in.

Lily holds up a stick she’d grabbed from outside on her way up to the porch, using it to gather up some cobwebs and pull them out of the way. “This place does look pretty empty, I have to say.”

“Huh, that’s odd,” Nancy’s saying from another corner, poking her head around the corner of a doorway and then looking back in.

“What’s odd?” Sammy jumps at every little creak and casts a panicked look to her sister.

“The proportions of the rooms here. Almost like...”

Oliver walks over, knocking against the wall Nancy’s staring at and getting back a hollow thunk. “Oh, definitely a hidden passageway. Welcome to Auradon, older builds are bound to have them.”

“Yeah, but that’s like, castles and stuff, isn’t it?” Heather looks curious.

“Well, there’s gotta be a way to open it from here,” Sylvia takes charge. “Fan out, start pulling on things, especially things that would normally look like solid fixtures on the wall.”

Grayson pauses, then swaps to his ghost form and walks through the wall. After a second, the wall slides open slowly, and Grayson shines his flashlight out at them, his hand pressed against a button on the wall. “...found the trigger.”

Nancy laughs. “Score! All the rewards, half the effort. I like you. Let’s go.”

Sylvia grumbles under her breath. Sammy shines her flashlight in and squeals. “Ew!!! Ew, ew, ew, I am absolutely not going in there!”

Nancy sighs. “Fine, then we’ll split up. I’ll take Grayson and Lily and we’ll see where the tunnel leads. The rest of you can search the rest of the house. Sound good?”

The others nod, and Sylvia immediately starts to the stairs as Nancy presses onward. Heather sighs and sets a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. “I totally get it, don’t worry. Thank you for saying something, I didn’t wanna look like a wuss in front of a bunch of people who don’t know me.”

Sammy shrugs and heads towards a door on her right, underneath the stairs. Heather follows after her as Oliver heads up after Sylvia.

Sylvia had found an old bedroom and was just about to walk out when her foot nudges a floorboard, popping it right off. Glancing down, she blinks at the sigh of a box inside, kneeling down and picking it up, opening it up and gasping in shock. “Jinkies!”

“What?” Oliver walks over, peering over her shoulder at the box and letting out a low whistle. “Woooooow.”

“So, what do you think is going to be at the end of this?” Grayson asks, from the back of the pack.

“Could just be an emergency exit from the house,” Lily says in the middle, shining her light along the walls.

“I doubt that, though,” Nancy says, hanging a right with the tunnel and coming to a set of stairs leading down. “Oh, I definitely doubt it now.”

Carefully, she presses her foot on the first step, testing her weight against it and then stepping down. “They seem safe.”

“That’s reassuring,” Lily remarks dryly, but follows behind her nonetheless.

At the bottom of the stairs, they come upon a locked door. Nancy glances to Grayson, who passes through the door but then comes right back. “Nope. That’s actually a really, really complicated looking lock on the other side. More like a puzzle than a lock.”

Nancy nods and gets into her bag, producing her lockpicking tools. “Then this calls for plan B.”

“So, how often do you do this stuff?” Lily asks as she keeps her light balanced on the lock when Nancy kneels to break in the old fashioned way.

“I’ve been on cases since I was a little kid. It’s fairly regular work, I guess. You’re the mechanic, right?”

“Aye, that’s me,” Lily notes with pride, smiling a bit. “Your sister speaks highly of you, y’know.”

“She talks about you a lot, too,” Nancy remarks, pausing when she hears a click. “There we go.”

Pushing the door open, she gasps. “Oh, my, god.”

Sammy sighs as she runs her fingers over the desk in the study she and Heather had found. “I know the place is condemned and stuff, but if Sylvia and Nance are right and the problem is just a squatter, you’d think they’d do a little better job cleaning up the place. This is just gross.”

“Hey, like, take a look at this,” Heather responds, turning around with a paper in her hands that she’d picked up from an end table beside an armchair. “These are, like, financial records. And they’re, like, recent, too. The name’s torn off.”

“What? Let me see,” Sammy walks over, taking the paper from her friend and reading over them by the light of her flashlight. “Yikes. Whoever these belong to, they’re not doing so well. Wonder how these got here.”

Both girls share a look when they hear some floorboards creak behind them. A hand on her shoulder causes Heather to whip around and deck the strange man who’d grabbed her, and Sammy screams.

Sylvia and Oliver’s heads shoot up at the scream downstairs, and Sylvia frantically shoves the box they’d found into her bag as they tear back downstairs to find the girls, discovering Heather holding down a guy who’s grumbling beneath her heel.

“Who the hell are you?!” Sylvia snaps, now very suspicious given what she and Oliver found upstairs. He glares at them and doesn’t answer. Sylvia rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna see if I can get reception outside.”

“No need,” Oliver says, holding up a finger.

“Do you have cell service in here?” Sylvia raises an eyebrow.

“No, but I’m a Robinson. I don’t need cell service.” They come back with a small metal sphere from their pocket, hitting some buttons on the screen part and causing it to let out a soft, steady beep. “My dad’ll pick up on that and call the police and give them our location. We should check on the others, though. We can’t be sure this guy’s alone.”

“I’ve got him contained,” Heather says, pressing her heel into his back further to drive the point home. “Go.”

Sylvia and Oliver nod, and Oliver hands the small ball to Sammy before he and Sylvia head back to the secret passageway.

Nancy stares in shock at the bodies before them. Probably other people like the kids, nosy about the alleged haunting, who got too close to something. Though she’s not sure how to judge what would be considered “too close”. Grayson stays back in the doorway to make sure no one can sneak up on them from the tunnel or shut them in, but she and Lily press onward into the room. “I...”

“Nancy, I’m not the detective, but I don’t think that all of these bodies have come from just the past few months since the building was condemned,” Lily murmurs.

Nancy looks over to where Lily’s pointing her flashlight, at the skeletized remains beyond the first three they’d seen upon walking in. “I think you’re right.”

“We need to get out of here,” Lily says. “Before we’re next.”

“I concur with that one,” Grayson says from the door, but then looks up. “Someone’s coming.”

The girls look up and rush to join him at the doorway, relaxing when they see the two people who descend the stairs. Sylvia sighs. “Hey, there you guys are. Everyone okay?”

“We are. What happened up there?”

“Some guy tried to attack Heather and Sammy. Not sure exactly what happened, but Heather had him ground with a foot against his back. We came down here to get you. What’s in there?” Sylvia stretches up on her toes to peer over.

“We need to get back up there. NOW.” Nancy says, shoving through the group and taking the stairs two at a time back up the tunnel.

Oliver’s about to ask questions when he sees the bodies at the same moment as Sylvia, the two taking off after Nancy with Lily on their heels. Grayson glances back one last time before going ghost and shooting straight back up into the main house and then follows the sounds of a scuffle to find Sammy and Heather, Heather grappling with the girls’ would-be assailant.

As the others skid in, Sylvia draws her taser, trying to get a good lock on the guy. Heather seems to notice this and flips them into a position that only seems unfavorable to her for a moment. Sylvia nods and fires, locking the guy up and givine Heather a shot to properly restrain him.

Sammy still looks entirely stressed out. “This is why I hate the mystery business.”

“Okay, what is going on around here?” Oliver asks, not noticing Nancy over at the desk.

“That’s an excellent question, kid,” comes a voice, and the seven look over at the new person in the door. He holds up a badge. “Auradon PD. We got a call from one Wilbur Robinson regarding his son and some kind of emergency beacon?”

“That’d be me,” Oliver holds up his hand, reaching out and reclaiming the beacon from Sammy to deactivate it. “Oliver Robinson. I alerted my dad to our location when we caught this guy after he tried to attack Heather and Sammy.”

Sylvia looks up from where she’s been reading over Nancy’s shoulder. “Officer, I think I’ve just about got it all figured out.”

He and the others turn their lights to her. Nancy holds up the journal she’d been reading from. “This was left here by the original homeowner. He was a private man, and he had every reason to be. He was a cat burglar. Most of the money and jewels he stole were sunk into building his private residence, with a room to hide some of his bigger pieces hidden from any prying eyes. He even writes he plans to allow himself to die in there to throw off anyone daring hunt for his treasures. That’s the skeleton Lily and I found in the basement.”

“But he didn’t hide the most precious pieces with them,” Sylvia picks up. “Those were kept separate, somewhere he chose not to write down. I’m talking a minor fortune for any kingdom or any individual in jewels. He wrote of them, but not where they were hidden. Our new friend here was sabotaging the efforts of the city to tear down this house for fear the jewels would be lost forever, or unearthed by city workers and given to the museum. What I can’t figure out is why--”

“The financial slip!” Sammy exclaims, picking up that paper from where she’d dropped it. “Heather and I found this before the guy snuck up on us. The name’s missing, but whoever it belongs to is in financial ruins. Finding any of the original owner’s treasure would bail him out from a debt he could never ever escape otherwise.”

The officer looks impressed. “You kids are pretty good at this thing. But, I do have one last question. Where’s the missing jewelry?”

“I found it,” Sylvia says, reaching into her bag and pulling out the box she and Oliver had found upstairs. “I knocked into a loose floorboard in one of the bedrooms upstairs and this was under it.”

She opens it up, revealing the jewelry inside it to the group under the light of a collection of flashlights. Sylvia adds, “Like I said, minor fortune. Enough to buy your way out of debt, or... disappear and never be seen again.”

“Well, now, that’s impressive,” he says, in shock, but not really moving for anything else, staring at the box in Sylvia’s hands.

Nancy notices, instantly getting a bad feeling. “Officer, where’s your backup?”

The instant Nancy asks that question, he scowls, and that’s all Sylvia needs. She slams the box shut and tosses it to Grayson, who grips it tightly and focuses, turning both it and himself into a ghost and shooting outside the house with it towards the van.

Heather yelps as the guy breaks loose from her at last and ducks his swing, scowling. “I’ve just about had it with this.”

“I hate detective work!” Sammy yells as Lily brushes in front of her, trying to get them both out the door.

Sylvia scowls when the fake officer bears down on her. “Oh, hell no, I did not just survive Annapolis for a dirty cop and a wannabe crook to beat me.” She kicks him right between the legs and then shoves him over as Heather knocks aside the crook, and the rest of the group flees out the front door to the van.

Lily slides into the driver’s seat without even debating it, barely giving them time to all get in before she’s backing out, and Oliver slams the door shut behind him as they get into the road and screech off towards the police station.

As they get away from the house, Sylvia gets into a call in the backseat to get on with the station properly, saying something quieter at first and then speaking up rapidly as she looks behind them and sees the police car coming in hot after them, flying through a rushed explanation of the situation at hand.

Heather suddenly pulls out a star-shaped bottle of perfume, and Nancy notices. “IS NOW THE TIME FOR A PICK-ME-UP TO YOUR BEAUTY ROUTINE?!”

“Not at all,” Heather answers, reaching back and opening the back door and aiming outwards at the way-too-close cop car, spraying at it. The liquid that comes out immediately freezes the car, including the tires, and the two occupants are thrust forward at their windshield in the abrupt stop. Heather reaches out and slams the van door back shut, taking a deep breath. “I knew that one would come in handy.”

She looks back at her fellow passengers, who are no longer staring, and there are 5 and a half (Lily mainly keeps her eyes on the road) pairs of eyes on her. “I’ll tell the story once this is over with.”

When Lily pulls them up to the station, Grayson hands the jewelry box back to Sylvia and the gang heads inside, meeting up with officers who were appraised of the situation and giving them the rundown on everything they had uncovered and discovered at the house. It takes a while to get everyone’s individual statements, but soon, the kids are let go... after getting to see their two would-be attackers brought into the station in cuffs, anyways.

Back in the van, Sylvia reclaims the keys to drive them back to the school, but everyone else is looking at Heather, who sighs.

“Okay. So, like... I’m a spy. I work for an agency called the World Organization of Human Protection, or WOOHP for short. Our mission is to keep the world safe from crazy supervillains with convoluted evil world domination plans, and we also work in security details for world leaders. WOOHP is trying to establish ties here in Auradon, and one of the ways they did that was by sending an agent undercover into the country to help keep everyone at home appraised of things that are happening here so we can offer aid in the biggest situations. What you saw in action back there was the Ice Queen Perfume, which is just liquid nitrogen in a bottle, essentially, that instantly freezes whatever it comes into contact with when sprayed. All my gadgets are made to look like typical teenage girl stuff so that, like, if someone found my spy stuff, they wouldn’t know what they found.”

Sylvia casts a glance at Heather in the mirror. WOOHP. She’d run into them in Annapolis, too, and they’d tried recruiting her before. But she wasn’t interested in that.

Though she wonders if Heather might have been the agent they met in Annapolis. Just briefly. Then, she pulls the van into a parking spot at the school, killing the engine and... sitting there.

They all do, for a minute. Nobody moves to get out, and nobody says anything for a long minute.

Then, Nancy clears her throat. “We made a great team back there.”

“Yeah,” Grayson says. “I mean... it was actually kinda...”

“Fun,” Oliver finishes the thought, and the others all nod in agreement.

Sammy bites her lip, then closes her eyes and clears her throat. “I’m gonna hate saying this, but... let’s do this again, guys. I hate the mystery business, but that was... fun.”

“I’m in if you’re in,” Heather says instantly.

Lily nods. “Aye. Count me in, too.”

“I’m down,” Nancy says, as Oliver and Sylvia both nod in agreement as well. All heads turn to Grayson, who sighs, and sticks his hand out into the center of the group.

“Let’s do this.”

The others pile their hands in on top of his quickly. Sammy pauses. “Okay, but guys, we need a name.”

“Can’t be Mystery Inc.,” Sylvia jokes. “That’s kinda taken.”

“Mystery Gang?” Oliver volunteers.

Nancy wrinkles her nose. “Nah, too similar to our parents. The Clue Gang?”

“No, no, wait,” Heather says. “Like, what about... The Clue Crew?”

The others look at each other at that and nod. Sylvia laughs. “On three. One... two...”

On three, they all break with a dorky exclamation of, “The Clew Crew!”