The KLS Apocalypse: Part 2
Prologue
In a hole in the ground lived a badger. Not a particular nasty hole covered in sticky mud, nor a dry, perfect one. It was a sett, the home of a badger, passed down for generations.
It was hidden from view from a regular passerby underneath a white cylindrical box in Rengstorff park. Back in the day, the badger had heard screeching metal and clunks of frisbees hitting its home, but now the room stayed quiet with only a table and whiteboard on the ground.
This badger used to be the mascot of a small private school. People considered his family very respectable, not only because they served as a mascot for the famous Hufflepuffs and the University of Wisconsin Madison, but also because they never betrayed their loyalty to their organization.
This is a story of how a Badger betrayed his loyalty and found himself plotting revenge on his own school.
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Part 2
“While we communicate with the police and search for the missing people, you all can go anywhere in this playground area. Do NOT leave the playground. We already lost Peter, Murphy, and Tamantha. We don’t want to lose more people,” Chief Guy announced.
The students dispersed in various directions.
Kate walked over to the fence and gazed at the road where the paw print was. “What animal do you think that was?”
“I don’t know. A Tyrannosaurus Rex? But more importantly, there’s a hole in the lobby!” Zoey announced.
“What about it?” Kate asked.
Zoey stared at her like the meaning was extremely obvious. “The basement!”
“We already tried visiting the basement, remember. It doesn’t work, you can’t go down in the elevator.”
“You, Sam, and Wyatt went for fifteen minutes and came out and told me you couldn’t go down. A whole fifteen minutes!”
For a second Kate remembered the doors of the elevator opening to reveal…something, but the memory went away.
“The elevator doesn’t go anywhere,” Sam corroborated with Kate. “But the hole might.”
After a few minutes of discussion, they decided to go back to the school completely disregarding Chief Guy’s instructions.
Sneaking back into the school without anyone noticing wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, because the teachers had gathered together in a circle, entirely distracted from what the students were doing.
Looking oddly close to rats scurrying around, Kate, Zoey, and Sam pushed open the fence and started walking towards the back door.
CLANGGGG! The fence shuddered as it slammed back closed; it sounded like metal screeching against a guitar.
The trio turned around in comical unison.
“Oops?” Kate whispered.
Shiny had been in the process of throwing something into the trash, when she heard the loud CLANGGG. She jumped and looked at the trio, confusion evident on her face.
“We are going to investigate the basement!” Zoey called out cheerfully. “Would you like to come?”
Sam face-palmed.
“The basement?” Shiny questioned.
“We think the hole in the lobby could lead us to the basement,” Kate clarified.
“Didn’t the teachers say to stay here?” Shiny asked.
“Rules are meant to be broken,” Sam said.
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Meanwhile, in the badger’s sett…
“Those children will soon find out I escaped,” the Badger murmured from its position on a giant version of a standard dark blue school chair. The chair almost looked like a throne; a very uncomfortable throne. “That might be a problem.”
“All problems can be solved with duct tape,” Peter said. He was wearing a bright yellow rain jacket with a khan lab school t-shirt underneath. He had laid out a scarf on the floor and sat on it.
“Ehh duct tape, that sticky thing that pulls off fur. What will we do with that?” the Badger asked.
The response came from Murphy, who was normally shy, but sometimes had some truly evil ideas. “Uh..we can duct tape a dome around the school?”
“How on Earth will we create a duct tape dome?” Peter asked.
The Badger winked, revealing a spiraling, hypnotic eye. “Have you ever heard of the badger call?”
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Back at school…
The newly-formed quartet of Kate, Sam, Zoey, and Shiny had spent thirteen minutes searching for a rope that wasn’t bright pink yarn, before giving up and tying together jackets from the lost and found.
Now, the quartet was attempting to tie the jacket-rope to the sofa’s leg in the lobby.
The ground next to the sofa was unstable, because there was a gaping hole that stretched from the front door to the desk. The edges of the hole were supported by crumbling tiles that looked as if they would collapse if anybody stepped on them.
“Do you think the knot’s tight enough?” Zoey asked.
Her question was directed to Sam who was laid out on the floor tying a knot to the sofa. He was chosen for the job mostly because he was the tallest and therefore could be the farthest from the hole when tying the knot.
“How would I know?” Sam asked.
“You’re the boy scout!”
Each of the four of them attempted tugging on the jacket-rope and determined it was vaguely stable.
“Okay, who’s going down first?” Zoey asked. None of the four volunteered. “Fine, I’ll go.”
“Wait–”
Zoey grabbed onto the rope and jumped down into the hole. For the first five feet, Sam, Shiny, and Kate could see her descend, but then she disappeared from view.
“Zoey?” Kate called. “Zoey?”
In the hole, Zoey could hear the words of a gravelly voice that she instinctively felt was the Badger’s. The words had an odd tone behind them. They sounded ancient like a spell.
“What happens in the basement, stays in the basement.”
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Back outside…
“We should take a look at that paw print,” Ant, a fellow gardening-obsessed student with a beard, commented. “We can try using Google Lens at least or maybe a more specialized software to figure out what animal that is.”
“Do you want to go?” Tom asked, pushing himself up on the fence, halfway to jumping to the other side.
“We should inform the teachers first.” Ant said with a small laugh.
The two of them walked over to where the teachers were standing and dragged Debby to join them out by the road. A few people had gotten out of their cars and were shouting loudly.
“There was a big giant blur. An animal just flew past me!”
One of them was on a phone.
Ant pulled out his phone in a clear violation of the phone rules and took a picture of the paw print. “That’s a skunk? Or maybe an otter?” He said as he looked at the results. “Or possibly even a weasel.”
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Choose what happens next:
Yup! They should all go into the hole on the *very* stable jacket rope that definitely won't break when they try to climb on it.
Ehh...they should split up. Nobody knows they are in the school building yet, so if anything happens to them, nobody will be able to help. One or two of them can go tell the people outside, while the other(s) can go down the hole!
No! We don't know what happened to Zoey, and have no idea what's in the hole. We can't sacrifice more characters to that bottomless chasm.
