AAOOOSC!: Gulls' Adventures!

Upon the hallway of the second floor, they are now face-to-face to the bathroom door.

With a deep breath, Brandon holds on tightly to the doorknob and slowly turns it. The knob easily rotates, indicating that it is still unlocked. With that, he quickly finishes turning it and pushes the door open.

Brandon and Stu peer inside the small bathroom. It is vacant once again.

“I thought Joe would be in here looking for Mooresy!” Brandon shouts into the bathroom.

“Apparently not,” Stu mutters with a slight frown.

“Okay, okay, okay--” Brandon waves his hands in front of him. “--this is not a coincidence that they BOTH went in here and disappeared!” He peers up at him. “There has to be something with this room that made them both disappear.”

Stu gazes down at him with knitted eyebrows. “How can a room make people disappear?”

“That's what we'll find out!” Brandon then steps into the bathroom.

“Okay…” Stu follows after him, gazing around the vintage-themed room.

Brandon turns around once he approaches the bathtub, taking in the ceramic-tiled room. “So first, we got to figure out HOW they got out of here.” He lands his eyes on the other side, where the opened door is located. “The only way seems to be that door, but we would've seen them get out if they went through there.”

Stu halts by the sink and peers up, catching sight of the narrow window situated above the bathtub. “There isn't another door, but there's a window up there.” He points to it. “But it's way too narrow for any of them to crawl out through. Even Mooresy.” He drops his hand and looks back at his teammate.

“Maybe there's like some secret exit route in here…” Brandon narrows his gazing eyes while rubbing his chin.

“The chances of BOTH of them finding that?” Stu lets out a mirthless chuckle. “Impossi--”

SLAM!

The two teammates whirl around, spotting the source of the loud sound.

The door is now shut.

“WHOA!” Stu exclaims.

Brandon rushes up to the wooden door and reaches out to the knob. He attempts to turn it, yet the lock tightens and holds still in his hand. “Shoot! We’re locked in!”

He shakes it in panic then retreats to banging his fists against the door’s polished surface. “HELP! SOMEONE, HELP WE'RE--I'M STUCK IN HERE!!!”

“AHHH!!!” Stu is heard screaming from behind him. “BRANDON!!!”

Brandon spins on his heels to face him. His eyes immediately fly open at the sight.

Stu’s head is only shown above the floor; his whitening hands are gripping onto the edge of a tile that makes up a hole he fell in.

Brandon gawks at the unexpected site. “What-- How’d you fall--?”

“HELP ME!” Stu hollers with alarm written all over his face.

Brandon scrambles to the edge of the hole and goes down on his knees, facing his teammate. He grabs onto his wrists and tugs at them. “Ack!” He yanks again. “Dang it, why’re you so tall?!”

“I didn't choose to be this tall!” Stu blurts out, moving his shoulders in an attempt to muster enough strength to pull himself up.

“Help me out here!” Brandon jerks at his wrists some more.

Stu drops his shoulders with a weary expression. “I'm trying, I'm suspended in air!”

“Aaaccckkk…,” Brandon grunts out as he leans back with his tight fists around Stu’s wrists.

“I can't hold it any longer--!” he cries out.

“Use that brawn, Stu!” Brandon forces out under pressure. “Don't let go, don't let--”

Stu lets go, pulling his teammate along down into the hole, opening up into a long, dark tunnel.

“AAAHHH!!!”

They slide down the smooth, metallic tunnel, their vision being tossed and turned as they tumble downward with gravity. A light then flashes at the end of the tunnel in their vision.

Immediately, they feel open air, extending their arms and feet as they free fall. Suddenly, their falling is halted as they crash land into a pile of objects.

Stu immediately sits up, his hair is disheveled with a banana peel planted on his head. He peers around what he is sitting on: boxes, cartons, half-eaten food, and other discarded matter.

He makes a disgusted expression. “Yuck! Gross! Pleh!” He wipes soot from his sleeve and tosses the banana peel from his head. He then skillfully fixes his hair.

Brandon then comes up from the pile of trash with eggshells sprinkled in his hair with a wilted flower of his shoulder. “Well, that was a clean landing.”

Stu holds up his leg in front of him, finding a beat-up wig hanging from his shoe. “Ugh…” He shakes his foot, letting the piece of garbage fly out from his foot. “We're alive?”

“Yup.” Brandon brushes the flower from his shoulders. “And still seventy years behind.” He then runs his fingers through his hair, combing out the eggshells.

Stu then rises to his feet. “Good enough.” He clamours over the large trash bin, then jumps onto the asphalt.

Brandon snatches Joseph’s fedora from a broken crate and puts it on. He then follows the taller man in a slower pace, climbing down the trash bin rather than jumping off from it.

The two peer around their surroundings: In front of them is the side of a different shaded gray brick building, feet away from them; above them is the gray sky and below them is black asphalt. Not many yards away is the opening to the alley they are in; to the left is a nearby wooden fence.

“Are we in a different place?” Stu asks with narrowed eyes.

Brandon ambles down the alleyway, catching sight of the familiar light-coloured wall of the building they entered. “Nah, it seems like we're in the alley by the building we were in.” He pats the wall.

“Okay, good.” Realization immediately crosses Stu’s face. “Wait!” He rushes up to him. “So maybe that's how Mooresy and Joe disappeared!”

Brandon’s eyes widen with understanding. He looks at him. “That's right! Great clue there…” His eyes drift away, spotting a familiar person standing at the opening of the alleyway.

He faces the person; his jaw drops.

In a dark gray double-breasted suit and tie with a fedora, Nick is leaning against the other building in a chilled manner.

“Nicky?!” Brandon cries out.

“What?” Stu peers ahead, catching sight of his teammate. He becomes slack-jawed. “He-he didn't come with us…” He looks at Brandon. “I swore we left him behind on the sofa, sleeping.”

Brandon rushes up to his friend. “Nicky!”

Nick perks up with his usual lazy expression. He then straightens up from leaning against the wall as his teammate approaches him.

Brandon lets out an anxious chuckle as he approaches him. “Nicky, wh-what are you doing here?” He adjusts Joseph’s fedora on his head.

“Uh,” Nick starts off, appearing confused, “while I was getting food for my post-nap snack, I saw the clock on the floor, so I tried to pick it up. But now I'm here.”

Brandon puts his two hands on each of Nick’s padded shoulders. “Great, we can use all the help we can, because right now, Mooresy and Joe are missing and we really need to find them.”

“Hmmm…” Nick peers up in deep thought. “Maybe they're over here…” He turns around, tearing away from his friend’s grasp, and lumbers out of the alley.

Brandon peers behind his shoulder, spotting Stu a few feet away. He waves his hand toward himself, signalling him to follow him.

Stu nods his head and begins stepping up to him.

Brandon faces frontward to begin following Nick. Yet his eyes go wide.

All that is in front of him is the empty opening to the alley, which is displaying the bustling roads of cars and sidewalks with scattered pedestrians.

“What?” Brandon gawks at the scene. “Nicky? NICKY? NICKY?!”

Stu halts next to him and narrows his eyes at the scene with the side of his hand above his eyes. “I don't see him…”

Brandon extends his hand toward the opening. “But he was just walking that way!” He swishes his head, looking at both sides of the opening. “And I don't see him over there either!” He frowns at Stu.

Stu faces him with his hand over his chin. “This is getting stranger by the minute…”

Brandon turns to his right to face the alley’s opening again. Instead of seeing Nick, he spots another teammate of his: Joseph.

Joseph storms up to them in his same outfit with his usual unamused expression.

Brandon’s eyes light up. “Joey!” He rushes up to him and pulls him into a quick one-armed hug. “Oh man, Joey, I was beginning to worry--”

“Don't ever go out for the Skyhawks,” Joseph states flatly. “They're pathetic.”

Stu steps up to them. “Really? How?”

“You expect me to skate with these?” Joseph raises his hand up. In his grasp are shoelaces, which belong to a pair of leather skates with thick blades.

Brandon peers at the antique skates with puzzlement. “Those are all the skates they have?”

“They're the newest on the market too.” Joseph rolls his eyes then tosses the skates behind him, out of sight.

Stu crosses his arms with raised eyebrows. “Yup, we are definitely NOT in the twenty-first century.”

“They're saved! They're saved!” Matt’s voice is heard shouting in jubilee.

They peer down the sidewalk, spotting Matt and Ryan striding up to them.

“The cats are saved!” Matt exclaims as the two halt with the skaters.

“So many close calls, but the cats are safe!” Ryan lets out a huff of relief. “Such comforting news to hear!”

“Well, at least you guys are back!” Brandon points out with a small smile.

“Had you guys find Mooresy?” Matt asks, fiddling his fingers against his chest.

“Nope.” Brandon shakes his head slowly. “But even worse: We lost Joe.”

Ryan drops his jaw. “WHAT?”

“Yeah, he wasn't coming back like Mooresy.” Brandon grimaces. “So Stu and I inspected the bathroom, where an undercover chute to the trash is located.” He points behind his shoulder toward the trash. “That's how we ended up here.” He ends his explanation with a shrug.

“So we're thinking that Joe and Mooresy must've fallen in that chute and wandered off,” Stu tells them.

“The question is, where to?” Brandon extends his hands out from his sides. “Because they're surely aren't out here.”

Stu peers beyond to the streets. “And I don't hear Mooresy either.”

“What if they're under the bathroom?” Ryan suggests with knitted eyebrows.

Brandon peers at him with a perplexed look. “What do you mean?”

“If there's a chute underneath the bathroom and the bathroom is on a second floor, then there HAS to be something underneath. Maybe there're different directions of the chute and you guys got the one to the trash.” Ryan shrugs. “Just a theory.”

Brandon scratches his chin with his eyes upward. “That can be true, which would explain why they aren't out here or came back inside since we're right next to the building.” He reverts his eyes on his teammates. “But whatever it is, we gotta go back inside and inspect that bathroom again. Let's go.” He then breezes by them and begins to amble back toward the entrance of the building.

The others follow him inside.

Notes

E.17 "The Icemare Decade"
Part 5/6
Episode 17/20