Chapter #3https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUmq1cpcglQ by: Unknown "Ah'm gonna need y'all ta come to my office."
Wait, what?
"Ten minutes. Be there."
"Miss Holmes, what's goin-" But the line clicked shut without a single answer.
My legs almost gave out, but I somehow mustered enough willpower to keep myself from going catatonic right on the floor, allowing me to stir up a storm's worth of questions in but seconds.
Of anything the call could've been for, of any broken meat grinder that could've had somebody's wedding ring jammed inside, this was the first thing of the season I'd woke up to. Miss Holmes' office was the one door in the faculty hall that never opened, but still towered over all the rest, perpetually overlooking those of the tiny worker chambers lining the other wall and its walkways. She never stepped foot outside, and nobody but the dumbest possible workers would go in, more often than not dragged, kicking and screaming up a show.
We'd never see them till a few weeks later, sobbing. Out of joy.
For the briefest of moments I actually wondered how easy it'd be to smash through the window and somehow tunnel out the Glass Tornado's dome, but then I noticed the clock hanging on the wall, and how long my wallowing had taken me. 7:05, leaving me only five minutes till Miss Holmes'd probably send some sort of personal army to get me.
Thus, with a heavy feeling of terror flooding around my heart, I managed to regain control of my leg muscles and headed out the door.
.....
Nobody I knew was in the row of worker's she'd called up along the platform that hung from the ceiling, with bridges hanging from either side that bore through the walls. Each of us stood stiff, our legs together and hands at our sides, but even while staring straight ahead I could pick out a minor twitch or whimper from anybody at either side.
Couldn't blame them, really. Hell, I was probably doing the worst.
Maybe it was just the fear coursing through me, that I didn't see her in such a long time, or if she'd spent every hour of the time since I'd been hired stuffing herself without relent, but of any of the daydreams or nightmares I'd had at any point of getting remotely punished by Miss Holmes, she was bigger than anything I'd ever imagined. She wore a white business suit that was too clean to be old, a dead giveaway she'd torn through her old one and recently been fitted, but this one was already straining at the buttons and seams. The front drooped noticeably lower than the back to conceal as much possible of her belly; at first glance, you'd think she was doing a crappy job of smuggling around a 50-foot wrecking ball underneath, but the occasional jiggle in its shape and the white-and-brown furred wall of flesh drooping past the bottom and onto the ground warded off any doubt.
Ever for a cow, her breasts were absolutely gigantic, but I tried my best to avoid glancing away from her stern, blue eyes.
"Alr'ight. With christmas comin' n' under two weeks, ah hope ah don't need ta remind y'all that we're gonna need the resort running at it's best for the holiday rush." It was chilling to take her in. Miss Holmes spoke with such a booming voice, but anything seen or heard of her was mostly through posters and phone calls, so seeing her moving and speaking in person almost felt surreal."...and we've gotta lot of loose ends to tie up, just yet."
A long silence passed among us till one of us spoke. "What?"
"Raine." She said simply. "We can't have any freeloaders dirtyin' up the joint at its busiest, so we've gotta taker her out. Now."
Each of us let out the breaths we'd been holding. Miss Holmes noticed, and narrowed her eyes.
"...anyways, she'd had her little fun 'round these parts for too long. By the twentieth, she's gonna be gone. which I know y'all're gonna pull through."
She looked to the right passageway and nodded. Mavis waddled in, pushing a cart with a row of guns laid out. My heart nearly plummeted at the sight, but then I realized they looked a bit too plasticky for a real gun to be, and the spare clips laying near each were bright orange.
Mavis whispered to each worker as they'd claim a gun. "Hi, gregory."
"Hi, Mavis." I whispered back, grabbing myself a weapon. Sure enough, it felt way too light to hold lead ammo.
"These guns're loaded with high-octane tranquilizer darts, a kind that're used by the police. Anybody shot with 'em is gonna grow nice and fat ta roll around, and by the twentieth, she'd gonna be thrown out to the snow. Got it?"
Everybody hollered a mishmash of yeses. "Yes, Miss Holmes!"
"Good. Now, get to work!"
We all ran single-file off of the platform and down one of the bridges, but after passing into the hallway we ran in any direction we saw fit. I lingered in the work lounge for a while, observing the gun in my hand.
At least I wasn't suffering a severe case of bovine booty, but it was still a pretty high request. Raine was one of the staff's biggest mysteries in dire need of solving; we didn't even know how long she'd been hiding out on us, let alone her actual name or even how the hell she'd snuck into Gaia 2.0 in the first place. It seemed like one day, out of the blue, guest or staff just started seeing some Raccoon sneaking around the halls and swiping little trinkets left laying around, only to vanish just as quick as she'd been found. She never talked to anybody, she'd never left any messes to clean up, she never left any demanding notes, hell, if anything, she'd actually been caught grabbing unsteady ladders or yanking staff out of a stampeding anthro's way, so her petty thieving was long repaid.
But either way, she'd been a thorn in our ass for too long. Miss Holmes' ass, mostly, but she was generous in passing on the pain. She'd demanded our best in weeding her out, even if she had a freeloading lifesaver on her hands.
"Wait a minute." I spoke. "Lifesaver..."
.....
"Gregory, are you sure about this? You could get killed!"
"I'm sure, but I'm also sure that I'm not gonna get killed, because that's where you'll come in."
"I don't know..." Gertrude's face craned against her blobby neck as she scanned her gaze around the beach, observing the anthros we'd distanced ourselves from. "I mean, Miss Holmes already freaks out at anyone accidentally messing up on the job. What'll she do if it's intentional?"
"Well, it's to catch Raine, so I'm sure she'd understand. Hell, if everything goes well, I bet she'd give me the day off!"
"You're absolutely sure about this?"
"Positive. Besides, even if it got too worse, I'm sure Raine'd just show up!"
Gertrude gave me a long, concerned look before letting out a resigned sigh. "Alright. What do you need me to do?"
"Just keep at the sidelines. I'll approach somebody, ask if they need something, then mess up to see how they'll react. If it gets too bad and Raine doesn't show up, I'll yell 'Santa's got a brand new bag!', and then you'll intervene."
"Santa's got a brand new bag. Got it."
"Perfect. Now..." I shielded my eyes from the Glass Tornado's false sunlight, trying to weed out any of the beach's potential berserk buttons. "Choices, choices..."  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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