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originaldetectivesheep · 6 years

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A Life of Riley Part 1 - The Problem With Grinckles ch 4

Chapter 3

At least it was still almost warm out; at least the sun was out and it was almost warm. That was the good part – that was as good as it got. Because if I had been freezing, or drenched in cold rain, while I was standing waist deep in this goddamned ornamental puddle between the new dorms east of the arts quad, my legs covered in duct tape to keep any more grinckle spines from stabbing me in the shins and my third-best Boca Juniors shirt rapidly declining towards being my fifth-best Boca shirt on account of the sweat and swamp water and fish slime, waving a net around while Wilson yelled and pointed to spots where I should throw more of our groundbait and getting stared at by shocked and disgusted hippies, that would have been too much, and I would have given up on this grinckle garbage and moved to Antarctica or something. As it was it was still sort of endurable. Kind of.

"Leo! Left! Left! Ten o'clock!" I turned, eyes on the water, and saw the flash of red that Wilson was yelling about. I crushed a bread ball in my left hand and scattered it on the water over the fish; the grinckle turned and popped up for the bait, and I shifted my grip to stab in under with the net, swiping it up and out of the water in a flurry of putrid spray and dangerously stabby spines sticking through the webbing.

"Got it! Got another one! One second!" I turned the handle of the net over and over, getting the bag with the squirming, spasming grickle secured so that it didn't jump out while I was getting my glove on. We'd lost a couple on the first pond before I got this down, but after three hours of fish hunting on six pools, I had it down to a science. I flexed my hand inside the thrift-store oven mitt to make sure of the grip, then started turning the net back to open it up again.

"What are you doing? That fish is out of the water! You're torturing it! That's awful! I can't believe this! What kind of ethical researchers are you?" I made sure I had a grip on the fish before I looked up, dorsal spines dug into the cotton not where my hand was, its menacing tail flap flap flapping against the side of the glove; Wilson was backed up from someone blonde and distraught in designer jeans and dreadlocks down to the backs of her knees, trying to guard the fish bucket.

"Hey lady, you're going to torture it more if you don't let me throw it to Wilson up there so he can tag it. Bug off, science in progress." I waved the fish at her, trying to wave her away.

She turned and looked at me. "Is that an oven mitt? Is that duct tape? What do you mean, 'tag'?" She was distracted, so I sidearmed the fish past her to Wilson, who caught it bare-handed; he'd grown up having to watch out and not get knifed by fish, so he could do stuff like this without worrying about the spines. "You – you can't – you can't just throw animals like a baseball!"

She was screaming at me, so Wilson could go on with his work; he balanced the fish expertly on a knee, punched with his biopsy punch through the webbing of the dorsal fin to collect the sample, then slid the sampled grinckle into the bucket with the rest of them with a splash. He knelt down to open up the sample case to collect and document the core we'd taken from this fish; our heckler turned around at the splash, and I had to chip in to distract her while we got the data collected.

"Sure we can; we just did. And now that we did, and got our scientific data, the fish is back in the water with the other ones we've tagged, just like it would have been half a minute sooner if you didn't stick your nose in. Good job. Super productive." I did a golf clap that of course didn't sound like anything because I was doing it with an oven mitt against a fishing net pole.

The hippie's nose ring wrinkled up, and she shot a look at our bucket. "That's – that's inhumane too – that's six, seven, seven big fish in just a half-full tupperware bucket. You can't do this – you can't do this to the earth! Born free! Born free!" She must have been into crossfit or something, because she was deceptively strong for her size – strong enough to pick up our forty-liter bucket, full of grinckles and pond water, and throw it out at me. And that sucker traveled – it rotated in the air, getting a lot of the weight out in a shower of fish and a plume of pond slime that instantly grabbed everyone's attention all around the quad and was probably going to blow up on Twitter in about a minute and a half, and I dove into the water to get away from it, but the bucket itself splashed down a good ten yards past me.

"Born free! Born free! BORN FREE!!" She was screaming her lungs out, and Wilson was balled up on the ground, curled up in the fetal position to protect our data. I pushed myself up out of the water, soaked and stinking and now getting cold as the water dripped off me, and just looked at her; deprived of active resistance, she eventually got herself collected together, gave us the finger, and walked off to bother someone else, mission accomplished. I felt myself over to make sure I hadn't gotten stabbed again while I was underwater, and hiked myself up to go wade out after the bucket.

Wilson was sitting up by the time I dragged the bucket back to the shore, checking over the data with a grease pencil, shaking his head. I thumped the tub up on the grass and sat down next to him. "Let's just call time on this pond," I said. "We're short samples, but seven's almost up to what we were looking for, and it'd take us all night to catch another three fish that we hadn't caught yet. Let's go somewhere else and see if we can't finish another pond or two before dark. Freaking hippies, man." I shook my head, scattering the last of the water out.

Wilson nodded, opening up his backpack and tucking the data sheet back inside. "Yes. I agree. It's more important to cover more places lightly than fewer with depth, this point in the investigation." He shook his head. "And we need to go fast, and not make a disturbance. I thought I understood women from this country, but –"

"Yeah, like I'm saying, man; freaking hippies. But it's not that bad – when we get to that lake behind Pettingill Hall, we're going to have to watch out, there's frat houses over that way. This chick at least had a reason for wrecking our bucket here, even if it was a dumb and bad reason; some of those frat bros will throw you in the water just to be a dick." I stood up, pulling out my phone. "I'll text Yuping and ask which of the ponds near here we should hit next – or did you have something spotted?" I thumbed open our map and swiped it to zoom in, finding where we were and looking around for pins from the rest of the team.

Wilson had his phone up landscape, braced on his knees, splitscreening between the map and a spreadsheet. "I think the best is to go from here to the Facilities pond next to the sand depot – it is only a couple hundred meters, and Remy has it 'not confirmed'; I think we fish there, for half an hour, and if we don't find a fish, then we can set a border. Unless Yuping has something he hasn't pinned yet; I will text him and check." He flipped the spreadsheet out of the way and popped up Messenger.

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "I'll pick up the bucket and crap and start moving; we'll want to get going that way anyway, since –" My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down to a text from Remy:

> yo dude can I call you real quick?

This was weird. What the hell did Remy want to talk about by voice instead of texting like a normal person? I poked his icon and swiped over to call him, bringing the phone up to my ear. "Yo, Remy, it's Leo, what up?"

"Hey, yeah, I know it's weird but dude, I dunno how to explain this. It would be hard by text and if I just sent you the pictures cold you wouldn't know what the hell was going on. Lemme take a second and think about this."

"What? What's going on? Remy, where are you at?"

"I'm on the road – I'm over on the side of one of those access roads on West Campus, the roads through the woods around the tennis courts and the incinerator complex and all those little ponds out there. One sec, lemme drop a pin and it'll pop on the map." There was a rustle in the phone as Remy moved it around to check himself in, and I put the phone on speaker so that I could look at the map and see what the hell was going on.

"Okay, so I'm out on these roads out here, and dogg, you are not going to believe this even after I send you the pictures, but there are fish, like that grinckle fish you guys are hunting, squished in the road like roadkill." I caught a notification in our group chat, probably those pictures he mentioned. Wilson would have got it too, but he was ignoring his own phone, stood up and leaned over mine, staring into the map and Remy's mic-crinkled voice through the speaker.

"So someone dropped a fish," I said, "I don't know that that makes it a thing; these grinckles flop around and fight like hell once you grab them, and if you fill up a bucket too high, they might get out. I know the people fishing for them aren't doing it for trophies and don't want to let their food get away, usually, but –"

"No, Leo, Leo, this is serious. It's not one fish. It's, like three fish, three or four fish each time, and this place I'm posted up on is like the third one of these places that I've come across. It's like these fish are like crossing the road and getting run over. I didn't pin it before because I didn't know what the hell was up but dude, it's wack. It's mad wack – can you like come over here and have Wilson take a look at this because I don't know what the hell is up with this fish biology, man." There was a note of almost panic in his voice, and I took a deep breath. This was still just fish. This was still just weird fish, and Remy was overreacting and seeing things, and it wasn't going to get any weirder.

"All right," I said, "we'll come over and check it out. I can see your pin – can you pin where you took the other pictures?"

"Like I said, I didn't pin when I shot them, but I left geotagging on, so I should be able to import them into the map that way. Give me a sec while I get that set up."

"No problem," I said, "you can do it while we're coming over. It'll probably be about fifteen minutes – we had kind of an accident with some hippies and I'm covered in pond water, so we'll have to walk instead of taking the bus."

"Gotcha," Remy answered. "You'll probably see the map buzz in a couple minutes. And watch out – this shit's weird enough without you go and drag water fights with hippies into it. Catch you in a few." The grinckles themselves were weird enough without you bringing in them getting allegedly roadkilled, I wanted to say, but that wouldn't've been productive and Remy'd already hung up anyway. I lumped the bucket up onto my shoulder and checked the map for the way we'd have to get going towards Remy's pin.

I had the bucket with all our stuff to manage, and Wilson was dialed in on his phone, tracking the pins as Remy put them in and swapping around between apps like he was onto something, so Remy saw us before we saw him, coming up on where he was, him and his bike at the side of the road on a gentle curve covered in fallen leaves. He waved, and the motion got my attention, and I picked up the pace to get over, thunking the bucket down at his feet. "Hey, good to see you guys; sup Leo, sup Wilson." Remy had his hand out and shook like he always did. "This is where it's at – you see the pictures? The last ones was from right here." He pointed out ahead of us onto the curve: onto the splashes of red scales in the orange leaves, the smears of stinking guts and solid, knobbly backbones that hadn't gotten crushed under whatever's wheels. I hadn't seen the pictures – too much stuff to carry – but just looking at this, it was pretty easy to see how Remy got the idea that the fish were being roadkilled. There wasn't a whole lot else that could explain something like this.

I took a few steps out onto the road, looking and listening around for traffic. Wilson didn't follow; he was staring driven at his phone, fingers hammering madly at the glass. "It's… yeah, Remy, sorry I doubted you. The spray of these fish… it's like they were just in this one line across the road, and that's where they got ran over. It looks weird as hell, but I don't know what else it could be. I don't know how this even happens, or what it is, but shit, you're right. Fish roadkill. What the hell."

"This corner is a corner because of two ponds," Wilson said behind me, a nervous energy in his voice like he'd cracked the case. "One of them, on the inside, is marked by Yuping as a big good fish pond; there are three students who have caught at least three fish from there. The one on the outside is 'no fish' – three different students have fished there and found nothing, but not in the last week. These fish were killed this morning, perhaps only as long ago as last night – the guts would not be this solid if it was older. It is the same with the other two sites – they are a shortest distance between ponds with different levels of noted fish presence. If there are fish in the road, it is that someone is moving them – probably from ponds of many fish to ponds of fewer fish."

I spun around, punching a fist into an open hand. "Of course! If this was a dump, they probably wouldn't want to draw attention to themselves seeding every stupid pond on campus with these things – they'd use like a septic truck and barf it out the hose into a couple ponds, maybe one full truck per pond, only however as many as they could fit in one night. But they don't want to give themselves away with a mass fish kill either, so they'd have to thin them out – like with gill nets and put it on a trailer on a Bobcat to drag the extras around to other ponds, spread them thin so that they'll melt off and we won't have nine hundred dudes doing a fishing derby on one pond to attract attention." I paced along the road, thinking.

"If they moved fish as late as over last night, they might still need to move more fish – and if we can catch them doing it, we can find out who's behind this and then Remy can just put them in a crossface chokehold or something and we can get the whole story out of them that way instead of having to genetically analyze any more grinckles." I looked up. "Wilson, you've been on your phone – are there any more gaps where they might move fish into ponds that don't have them yet?"

Wilson smiled, holding up his phone with a false-colored map on the face. "Way ahead of you, Leo. I have already mapped out the distribution space: we had to to set the parameters. And on the way over, I found some other shortest points: there are six more spots, I think, that we might find the same dead fish, if not now or tomorrow."

Remy leaned over, looking at the spots in Wilson's perimeter. "Yeah – yeah, I get that. I was past a couple of those, though, and I didn't see no dead fish there – not yet." He looked over at me. "So what – are we gonna do a stakeout?"

I shook my head. "There's three of us – I'm not counting Yuping, Riley's not gonna let him out of the lab – and six maybe-crossings. We can watch half of them in person, max, and there's no telling if they're even gonna go tonight, or not till next week. There's a smarter way to do this – but I'm gonna need to bring in someone else. Is that ok?" I felt bad about asking sight-unseen like this, but if I mentioned that it was Sajitha I needed to bring in, Remy's tongue would be flapping out behind him like a '30s cartoon wolf, and if I mentioned her by name I'd also have to tell Wilson that she was in the Applied Physics lab. He'd get over it, though; to the extent that he had a type, as far as I could remember, Sajitha was Exactly It, and he'd be too busy showing off to her to worry about what she might or might not be telling Riley about what was going on.

As it turned out, I was worried for nothing. Remy shrugged. "Do what you like, man. This is your deal, dogg, I don't care who spots me in, just as long as I can drop a naeryeo on this fish burglar's head when we find'em." He mimed pulling his knee up to start the axe kick.

Wilson nodded with folded arms. "As long as it is not Riley you need to ask, I am fine."

I nodded back. "Yeah, no worries. I've got a friend who works a desk in Facilities – lemme text her real quick, I'm pretty sure she can lend us some infrared motion cameras." Remy's face was already making the connection to Sajitha's job, while Wilson hadn't met her yet and was looking at him confused; I slid that problem over to the side for the future, and went back to my pocket for my phone.

Chapter 5

#nanowrimo #alifeofriley #fiction

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crowsvalentine · 7 years

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Juvenile Delinquents Part 2

Aye look what I managed to do. Here’s part 1.

The school was made up of four wings. The boys and girls dormitories on either end of the school, the classrooms which all looked over the woods that lay just beyond the fences, and the recreational spaces which included a dining hall, a pool, a gym and a television room. It would have been like any other boarding school Percy had ever attended, only this time he’d have to look out his windows and see he giant iron fence that lined the property. He decided that that was a fair price to pay than having his entire room made out of bars.

Unlike the school, Leo Valdez was exactly how Percy imagined him to be. A short, loud, annoying bundle of energy that he was tired of within five minutes. However, he decided to give the boy some slack, he noticed how he tensed with every fireplace they passed, which there were an unnecessary amount of. Ms Valdez, Leo’s mom, never mentioned how Leo ended up in this place, Percy was starting to assume it was something related to arson.

It was lunch time by the time his tour ended, he was to be given his room after they ate and it was the highlight of Percy’s day. Looking through the window on the dining hall’s doors did not do the room justice. When Percy followed the crowd inside, he was awestruck by the size of it. It was almost the size of his entire floor in his apartment building, circular tables filled the space and a serving station not unlike those is high school cafeterias was positioned in the corner next to the doors. What had Percy the most shocked was the wall facing the gardens and how it was covered in windows, he could get used to eating in a place like that.

As he walked further into the hall, he noticed the rest of the walls were lined with pictures, the discolouration of some of them proving how old the school actually was. There was one thing on the wall that caught his eye, a photo, and the man in it looked oddly like him. Same green eyes, same messy hair, the only difference was the man in the photo seemed happy with the patchy facial hair Percy refused to keep on his face.

“Do you have some twin from the seventies?” Leo asked. Percy didn’t answer, he just gave the photo one last look before turning and walking to the serving station.

Unlike when he first arrived, the kids in the dining hall did not hide their lingering stares. Watching to see which table he’d choose to sit at. Percy adamantly avoided a table filled with kids who looked a bit too pretty to be held up in a school like this, some glared while others made a show of sliding over to make room for him on the circular bench that lined the table. Another table housed a group of girls, all dressed in what looked like their gym uniforms, and upon closer look he realized they were all just wearing the same thing in general.

Leo seemed to be pushing him in the opposite direction, as if avoiding that table all together, “The Hunters, no one really knows how they all managed to end up here together,” he was nudging Percy, trying to get him to look away, “really only keep to themselves, it’s better that way.” Percy only nodded in response, but when he looked back he noticed one of the girls smirking at him, as if she knew a secret about him that not even he knew yet.

“Where are you taking me anyway?” Percy wanted to ask, but before he could, Leo was already sliding onto a bench. The table had only one more occupant, the choppy haired girl Percy saw when he first stepped onto the grounds.

“Who’s wanna-be bad boy?” The girl said, she didn’t even glance at Percy, her eyes were only on Leo and it kind of annoyed him that she spoke as if he wasn’t there.

“Jackson, you?” She seemed impressed with his ability to answer for himself, when her eyes met him he managed to not look away.

“Piper McLean, have a seat and tell us your sob story, Mister Jackson.”

He didn’t tell him his sob story. Instead he scarfed down his burger, making it obvious he didn’t want to talk about how he ended up there. However, he learned how his new friends- friends? Yeah, friends. He learned how his new friends were arrested and smart talked out of juvy and into this place. Piper had stolen a car right out of the lot, but she claimed the dealer had just given it to her because of who her dad was. That wasn’t a believable story but the fact that her dad was famous did get her out of jail time and only four years in O.A. She’d already been there for two.

Leo Valdez was a different story. He was young when he accidentally set fire to a neighbouring garage, old enough to be arrested but not to attend O.A. At only age eleven he found himself being taken away from his mother and being sent to a home for troubled kids. He was allowed to go back home only a year later. However, he was arrested again for picking the lock of a badly chosen car that belonged to the owner of a large Law Firm. It was then that he was sent to Juvy but was allowed to transfer to O.A. for good behaviour and because he fixed the security system in the facility.

Percy wished he had stories as cool as those; his was a children’s book in comparison.

Sitting quietly as Piper and Leo had their own conversation, he took in more of the students around him. Sitting two tables down from him sat a boy with his right arm and leg wrapped in casts, Percy smirked at the lewd drawings the covered them. The rest of the boy’s table was rowdy and seemed to be amusing the neighbouring tables with trying to distract one of the guards on duty. The guard was obviously immune to their attempts, Percy could tell he was playing along to keep the table occupied. He was kind of curious what that table would do if they were actually bored. Another table was filled with boys and girls who looked like they’d been lifting weights since they left the womb. He was quick to avert his eyes, but not before he caught the ones of a particularly scary looking girl whose glare could probably castrate a man.

“Coming, Percy?” The question pulled him from his wondering and he nodded up at the now standing Leo, “Good, I have class soon so I should take you up to your room.”

The room wasn’t too bad, it was like any other dorm he stayed in, only this time he didn’t have his own adjoining bathroom and he shared the room with three others instead of just one roommate.

“Lunch is still going on and then we have class, so you won’t meet them until later, but you’re rooming with Travis Stoll, Malcolm Pace, and yours truly.” Percy suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at Leo’s bow, the last thing he needed was that much energy in a place he needed to sleep. “ Malcolm is cool, he lets you copy homework and he’s the reigning Super Smash Bros champion, it’s Stoll you need to watch out for, he has a bit of a pranking hobby. You’ll probably learn about that soon though. Anyway, I have tech class in about five minutes so I guess you can roam around until you get called down to get your schedule. Your best bet is to just explore or hit the gym or cry like most kids do on their first day. Are you going to cry?”

Percy shook his head.

“Good because you will be made fun of for the rest of your life here if someone finds out you did.”

Percy raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, I cried and people still wipe their eyes whenever they see me.”

Percy smirked.

“Okay, I’m going to class, make yourself at home,” he pointed to the bed closest to the door, “that one’s yours, fair warning, it’s lumpy.”

After storing his clothes into his assigned dresser and splashing some water in his face in the communal bathroom, Percy decided that his best bet with spending his probably only time alone for the next two years would be to actually do what he did best. Popping in some headphones and just taking a nap. He liked naps, he could imagine he was back in his own bed at home, not in a room where he’ll be stuck with three other teenage boys who could be more disgusting than himself. With the world being drowned out by the soothing sounds of Blondie, he let himself doze off.

When he finally came to, he was quickly reminded of summer days with his mom. The unforgettable smell of chlorine filled his nose and he smiled. However, the smile didn’t last when his hand dropped off the side of the mattress ad instead of the carpet he expected, he was met with something very wet. Eyes snapping open he realized where the smell of chlorine was coming from; he was in the middle of the pool.

“Good morning, Starshine, the earth says hello,” a voice called. He groaned when he turned and noticed almost the entirety of Olympus Academy staring at him. “Think of it as initiation, nothing personal.”

When Percy noticed who was speaking he decided to finally sit up. The speaker was the boy in the casts he saw earlier, next to him was who he guessed helped orchestrate his prank: Leo Valdez and a blonde boy he guessed was Malcolm Pace. Which made the speaker, “Travis Stoll?” The boy smirked.

“The one and only,” he did the physically impaired equivalent of a bow but stood straight back up when the doors opened, revealing the man who disappeared on Percy when he first arrived.

“Dean Grace, we were just-“

“Initiation, yes I am well aware of your practises Mister Stoll. Now, if I am not mistaken you were all meant to be in the dining hall for dinner five minutes ago.” It was all the crowd needed to disperse, leaving Percy stranded. “That included you, Jackson.”

Percy raised an eyebrow and the man, Dean Grace, who only nodded and walked off the way he came.

If Percy was confused before about the man, he was even more so now. Why did the dean of the school feel the need to pick him up when any other officer could have done the same job, and why wasn’t he addressed as formally as the other students? He dropped in the water not willing to get in any more trouble but decided to stay in there longer than necessary. The pool usually calmed him, this time he hoped it would give him some answers.

#I write for pjo #jd au #percy jackson #leo valdez #travis stoll #malcolm pace #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #Heroes of Olympus #pjo #hoo #pjo au #hoo au #pjo fic #percabeth #jasiper #other ships in the future I guess #idk what else to tag #soooo #kay

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