by TheTimeTrust
Pete "the Chimp" Glover was awakened by the noise of thousands of chopsticks meeting the pavement. He groaned and realized that he was sleeping outside across the street from the apartment building in a doorway again. Old habits die hard, he guessed.
Part of him thought he should go back to check out what was going on, but another part of him accepted the craziness and figured M'xy had been set loose again.
He scratched himself for a full minute as he breathed in the fresh, salty Caribbean air and thought about absolutely nothing.
An ample shadow passed over him, and he looked up to see who was blocking his sun.
"Hey, Pete. What's up, buddy?" said Kit Piper. "Sleeping on the street again, I see. I dunno about you, kid. I really don't know..."
"Kit! 'Ow she gettin' on, b'y?" Pete replied with his typical toothy grin.
"Hah? Oh... uh... oh, I'm doing just fine, Pete. Just fine. Been really busy, though. As you know, I've had meetings with potential clients and investors all week, with more to come; I haven't even met your new recruits yet. Hope you fellas don't mind, though, if I take this afternoon off to visit with my girls? My ex let me have 'em for a week. Hell, I'd never have believed that could happen. Thanks to you and the boys, though, I've got some gainful employment. Maybe some of that luck of yours rubbed off on me. Heh heh heh... So, are you heading over to the apartments?"
"Ahh... I'll be over now, d'once."
"Okay, I'll walk with you, then."
"Nah, I've got a bitta things ta figger out, mate. Be there in a while, chief."
"No problemo, Pete. See you later, then."
"Yah."
Kit Piper crossed the quiet morning street and headed over to the MBL Consulting office. "Hey, what're all these -- chopsticks?"
North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The home of Dr. Henry Quantos:
Henry "Doc" Quantos woke up an hour before dawn, Pacific time, at the sound of security alarms. It took him a moment to clear his head before he realized that there had been some kind of breach at MBL Consulting.
He went to his computer room dressed in nothing but a bathrobe and slippers and checked the multiple windows that had popped up.
"Well, what do we have here?" he mumbled to no one in particular as he looked at the video playback. He saw what appeared to be goblin-like creatures with slick, black, oily skin swarming into each of the inhabited rooms and attacking the team with frightening ferocity, before first Turkish Stringfellow then M'xy got rid of them in their own unique ways.
"Let's just do a bio-scan on you little critters," Quantos mumbled as he hit a few keys and started up a program he designed himself. The readings weren't quite what he expected, though.
"Strange," he said, speaking into his voice log. "There is a semblance of bone and tissue structure, but their organs don't appear to even be connected to anything. The spinal structure is primitive at best; and I can't see how those muscles work at all. If I were to make my best guess, I'd say that they don't appear to be living organisms at all, but merely puppetlike bodies manipulated from afar.
"It's also possible that they originated on the island or were released there through some unconventional method. Otherwise the Psi-Unit would've intercepted them on the way in. La Perdita's psychic security team is always on the alert for any threats from without, but they can do little to prevent a threat from within.
"I'd better alert the team about my findings," Quantos said, turning to his communications panel.