Places to Chat
The Mystery of
Chatterbox: Down to Earth
The Mystery of
The Mystery of the Beast
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The land of Cricket is a lovely and beautiful place, with many lands ranging from Inkwell to Chirp, and often it is a place of peace and serenity, with its inhabitants dwelling and chatting with one another, creative and playful ideas exchanged. The sky is clear and blue at day, dark indigo and sparkling with stars in the night. All is well…
Or at least, all should be well.
Crashing waves lap up against a water-smoothened beach, the sand’s grains small and sifting. Palm trees lined the beach, their fronds spiked and green. Hanging from the branches are stage lights, their bulbs dark in the midday, but once night rolls around they will light up, as if the shoreline is center stage. But now it is noon, and the beach is not where our story begins. It starts off side of the beach, past a cluster of rocks and black sand, to a sturdily put-together house resting in a treetop, the entire structure composed out of leaves and woven vines. Inside the treehouse, in a room packed with various clutter and boxes, someone sat at a computer, his bright violet eyes bored as he flicked through digital pictures on the screen. His darker violet hair was neat and straight beneath the black fedora, which went hand-in-hand with his crisp black suit. “Eck, so blurry,” he muttered, dragging the file to the tiny bin icon in the corner. “Honestly, who takes all these pictures? With that focus on the lens, you’d think it was Vixtion with her paws tied behind her back.”
“What about Vixtion?” someone else said suddenly, entering the room with a mouth half-stuffed full of mango.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, you heathen,” the first AE said, rolling his eyes and adjusting his lavender-hued tie. “You sound like an animal.”
“Figures,” the newcomer shot back, flicking a gray dog ear as he gulped down the green-orange fruit. “Anyways, what were you saying about Vixtion?” The first AE sighed, shaking his head and opening another blurry file.
“Oh, nothing,” he said, turning slightly so his brother could look over his shoulder. “Just the poor photography skills of whoever snapped this.” The second AE’s sapphire-blue eyes narrowed, his tail curling.
“Alright, in my defense it was—uh, I mean, wow, that’s pretty bad,” he began to defend himself, only catching his words in the middle of the sentence. The first AE’s head turned suspiciously, glaring at the other.
“Oh, come on, 8-Piece!” he complained as 8-Piece’s face broke into a grin. “You wasted all that memory space for these?” 8-Piece shrugged and turned away, tossing the discarded mango peel in the trashcan next to the computer desk, the fruit shell landing atop crumpled papers. 8-Piece paused to look at it for a moment, picking one up with his fingertips as keys clicked behind him. He delicately unfolded it, leaning back against the photo-covered wall and scanned it quickly. In thin, slanting handwriting were cramped notes with scattered questions marks and frantic arrows leading to each other, notes and words smashed in between. 8-Piece looked up at the AE hunched over the computer, a bored and exhausted expression on his face as he sorted through computer files.
“Working out plots again, Mew?” he asked, tossing the scrap paper onto the keyboard. Annoyed, MewFour brushed it away and left it on the floor, snorting at the thought.
“You got it,” he muttered. “But nothing ever seems to work.” Finally he leaned back and rubbed his eyes, stretched out against the swivel. “It’s like nothing I ever think up seems to work, or it’s all just too stupid.” 8-Piece’s eyebrows creased for a moment, but just as he was about to reassure his brother, there was a quiet knock at the door.
“Oh, I’ll get it!” 8-Piece said, stumbling a bit as MewFour waved his hand distractedly at him. Crossing the woven-mat floor quickly, the half-dog AE grasped the wooden knob and pulled, expecting to see perhaps another CBer come to visit Clouded, or maybe it was the newest thread in the mail?
Standing on the slender porch of the treehouse, perched upon the vines as if it were light as a feather, was a dark and hulking shape, its body obscured in shadows. Its head scraped against the roof of the house, and two blinking white eyes glared down at 8-Piece with ferocious intensity.
His legs shaking, 8-Piece let out a quiet sputter, staring up at the beast with wide, seemingly hypnotized eyes, his gaze drawn to its dark head. “MewFour?” 8-Piece called, his voice pitching up in terror, but in that second the beast lunged forwards with a snap of wide jaws, closing around 8-Piece’s body, and then it vanished in a snap of silence.
MewFour’s head jerked up, and he turned, confused. He could have sworn that… but no one was there, only the gaping quiet of the room. Sighing, he turned back to his computer screen and opened a folder titled ‘Summer- 2016’. He had no idea what he’d been thinking—he had been at this chore alone for the past three hours, not even Cloud’s company to break it. Just as he said that, however, there was a loud yawn from the stairwell, and a platinum-blonde girl with a dragging tail slumped down the stairs, her turquoise eyes half-closed. “Heya, Mew,” she said, fumbling for a mug at the sink in the other room.
“Good morning, Cloud,” he said, working to keep a slightly derisive note from his tone. “Did you want something?” Clouded Leopard raised an eyebrow as she sipped from her coffee cup, crashing down in a wicker chair.
“No, why?” she replied, looking at him oddly. MewFour flushed for a moment, feeling foolish, but eventually continued.
“Someone called my name,” he explained. “But when I looked, nobody was there except me. I figured you had needed something.” Clouded Leopard shook her head, and with a sigh MewFour turned back to his computer and opened the next picture. “Hey!” he said, startling Cloud.
“What is it?” she said, wiping coffee from her lips and joining MewFour at the computer. He pointed to an image on the screen, showing three figures posing together, their faces close to the camera. One was Clouded Leopard, her spattered freckles nearly hidden against a tanned face. The one of the opposite end was MewFour, his lavender skin cool as he rolled his eyes at the photographer. But the one in the middle was unknown to either MewFour or Clouded now—a cheerful-looking AE with two floppy gray dog ears and a wide grin set against his dark blue eyes.
“Who’s that?” MewFour murmured, perplexedly staring at the screen. “I’ve never seen him before… maybe he’s a CBer you knew?” Clouded Leopard shook her head no, but she still couldn’t recall why that person was in a picture with both her and Mew.
Neither of them could.
So who could it be?
8-Piece’s eyes blinked open sleepily, staring into a great white expanse of nothingness. He sat up, his hands brushing a cool white floor. Everywhere he looked, nothing but white. White, all white, clear, calm and effervescent white…
“Hello?” he asked.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Something has gone wrong in the land of CB. Minds are changing, and a mysterious beast seems to be connected to it all. Volunteers to help solve this dilemma have never been more needed. And perhaps you are to the one to do it. So you and one of your AEs—no more than one, although either you with no AE, with one AE, or just your AE alone is permissible. This group cannot grow too large for fear of… something tracking it down. To apply, please fill out the sheet below.
Hurry. We haven’t much time.
*******
Name:
Age:
Appearance:
Personality:
Special Skills:
Friends and enemies with inhabitants of the CB (CBer or AE):
- - - - - - - - - - -
(This is a solo write, not an RP. Each new part should come out on Sunday or Saturday, but please don’t feel cheated if I can’t post one. Inspiration and motivation are tricky things to catch, but I’m very excited about this and really want to see it to completion. A note- I know that in the past I haven’t been very good at keeping up with my solo writes and RPs, except for the CB Spirit solo write, which was finally finished, to my delight. I promise I’ll try my hardest with this though! ~Clouded Leopard.)
submitted by Clouded Leopard, MewFour, and ?8-Piece?
(May 13, 2017 - 9:00 am)
(May 13, 2017 - 9:00 am)
(May 14, 2017 - 11:26 pm)
TOP! goes the weasel.
Weasels. Hehehehehehe. BAD weasels. GOOD weasels? MAybe. Maany in-between weasels.
Kilp says kazo!
He has a knack for musical instuments
(May 16, 2017 - 5:50 am)
Weasles are like ferrets, right? Sooo...YAYAYAYAYAY!!!
(May 16, 2017 - 3:09 pm)
Part 1: Where Matters Begin
~~
Cheerfully a girl with long pale-brown hair that swished behind her back and a long black shirt skipped through the jungle, the bag against her hip bouncing in time with her stride. She paused for a moment, recalibrating where she was, then decided to head westwards. What had she said last time she’d seen Cloud?... right, right, a treehouse. And there it was up ahead, a leaf-woven structure made from knotted ropes of vines. The girl shouldered the satchel, the papers inside rustling, and grabbed onto the ladder. Quickly she scaled it, though once a blast of breeze made the whole house sway precariously. Eventually, though, she clambered onto the porch and knocked on the door, jumping back as it creaked open.
“CL?” Ashlee called, glancing around the seemingly empty house, before noticing her friend spread-eagled in the middle of the floor, her eyes pressed shut and her arms stretched as far as they could. “Cloud!” Ashlee called, amused, as the leopard-girl’s optics snapped open and she stumbled upwards, ears flattened back.
“Ashlee!” she exclaimed, stuttering for a moment. “I was uh… just, uh…” Ashlee waited for moment as Cloud hemmed and hawed. “Ah, nevermind. It’s nothing. What do you need?” Ashlee started as she remembered her reason for coming here, and fumbled inside her bag before pulling out a slip of paper.
“Here!” she said, handing it over to Cloud. “Newest thread delivery!” Cloud flicked out a claw and ran it along the envelope, pulling out the first paper she saw.
“New CBer… poetry contest… second time capsule, oh cool!” she said, looking up at Ashlee. “You made that one, didn’t you?” Ashlee nodded happily as Cloud tossed the envelope of threads on the table, then peered back at Ashlee. “Have you had breakfast yet? We’ve got plenty of stuff here.” Ashlee protested for moment, but a snarl from her stomach gave it away. Cloud chuckled and led her into the kitchen, where a lavender-skinned AE was leaning besides a sink, purple energy humming around his hand as dishes splashed themselves with water. He looked up as Ashlee and Cloud entered the kitchen, a bored expression on his face.
“Oh, you brought a guest?” he said a slightly pessimistic tone, pricking at Ashlee. “It’s like, 8 AM, Cloud.”
“I didn’t bring her along, Mew,” Clouded said, reprimanding him. “She came to give me the newest threads. Be nice!” MewFour rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything more. Ashlee felt a bit awkward standing in the middle of the kitchen as MewFour determinedly looked away, but the next second Cloud turned back and handed her a bagel, already biting into one herself.
“Thank you!” Ashlee said, relieved. She hadn’t been able to get anything herself, as she’d been delivering threads all morning. It was a tiring job, sure, but everyone had to do it once in awhile. As she tore off a piece of the bagel, a sudden thought came to her mind.
“Hey, Clouded,” she said as she wiped away crumbs. “Where’s 8-Piece today? I didn’t think he was the type to sleep in past 7, or something.” Yet all she recieved as a confused look as Clouded raised an eyebrow.
“Who?” she asked, her tone clearly indicating hesitant doubt in Ashlee’s memory. Ashlee was taken aback by that statement, and she repeated again.
“You know… 8-Piece. Your second AE. Where is he?” she said slowly, as Cloud shared a perplexed look with MewFour.
“Ashlee, I’ve never had any other AEs than Mew, Nougat, and Veranda. Who on Earth are you talking about?” Ashlee gaped at her, unable to process what words were coming out of her mouth.
“But he…” she started, only to realize that her friend really had no idea who she was referring to. Something was very clearly not right here… “Come on,” she said suddenly, grabbing Cloud’s arm and dragging her with a squawk towards the door.
“Hey!” Clouded said, choking down the rest of her meal. “Where are we going?”
“To the Theatre Beach,” Ashlee said, her voice hardened. “I need to call everyone there.”
“Everyone?” Cloud asked dubiously, tripping as she and Ashlee dashed across the jungle, MewFour close behind them. Ashlee nodded, but she didn’t respond. All she could think of was what had happened when Zeon had came to her yesterday, telling of a hulking black shape he’d seen stalking the Inkwell desert, a massive and bulky shape that stared at him with blank, white eyes. He’d said that he had only seen it from far away and got out as fast as he could, but the more he stared at it the more he felt like there was something he couldn’t remember, something he should have known. If it was really… there was no way she could prove it, but often clues linked themselves together.
The second Ashlee reached the beach, Clouded Leopard and her surly AE in tow, she whipped out a pen and a piece of paper, scrawling down the notes of the meeting, and hurled it into the air, watching as it disappeared with a snap. That had been her fast-acting thread for the week, but this was of utmost importance—she knew it. And just like, CBers began to emerge from the trees, confused murmurs exchanged between CBer and AE as they grouped around Ashlee, CL, and MewFour. Immediately the violet AE backed away, looking uncomfortable, but Ashlee and Clouded Leopard remained in the middle of the circle. Ashlee spared a glance back at her friend, feeling a pang of guilt at how she was about to expose the gap in a moment. But, it had to be done. This wasn’t something that could go on forever—who knows what might happen if she let it go?
“Everyone?” she called, swallowing. “Who knows about the AE 8-Piece?” Just as she had feared, only about a fourth of the hands went up. Some people were privately looking at each other, wondering if Ashlee was really off her rocker. “Well, he is—was—CL’s AE, but for some reason no… only some people remember him. And… and a day before, Zeon saw some kind of creature that made him forgot something. They may linked, and, um... there might be a new monster in CB.” Cries broke out among the CBers, a wave of noise rolling towards Ashlee.
“What? Who’s 8-Piece, and what’s the creature?”
“What if I see it? What should I do?”
“Ashlee, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know!” Ashlee admitted, her hands thrown up in the air. “But I do know it’s nothing good. Please, for the sake of all of us… we have to find a way to do—something.”
“How?” Mei piped up from the back of the crowd, raising an eyebrow.
“Well… first we should find the thing,” Ashlee mused. “Whatever it is. And then, we can find out a way to destroy it. We’d have to have people to go on some kind of—some kind of mission. Is anybody willing?” Strained silence greeted her words, and Ashlee saw fear reflected in Zeon’s eyes, his memory undoubtedly searching back to the hulking beast that filled your mind with white.
“We can draw lots,” someone suddenly said, and Ashlee turned to see a new CBer, one by the name of Lupin, holding up a piece of paper that had a dark black circle in its center, and another that was completely white. “Someone marks the sheets and shuffles them, and then whoever draws a marked sheet is chosen.”
“How many people would go?” Sib asked, her tone skeptical. “Shouldn’t the whole CB be on the search?”
“I dunno…” Zeon said, his visage worried. “It looked like… I think large groups attract monsters. I never want to know what would happen with that thing and a bunch of people.” A shiver ran over Ashlee’s back, but she had to shove it away.
“What about seventeen?” Cloud suggested, her dappled tail twitching. “That’s enough, isn’t it?” Zeon slowly nodded, though the look of worry didn’t leave him. So, with every eye in the CB on her, Clouded Leopard swiftly strode to everyone person in CB, collecting a piece of paper from each of them. Then she sorted out seventeen, marked them with a stick of charcoal, folded them in half to obscure the identity of the paper, and dumped them into an old props crate that had washed ashore. Standing beside it with slitted turquoise eyes, she pointed at the box without a word. Jostling and murmuring uncomfortably, all AEs and CBers snatched a sheet from the box and backed away, waiting in trepidation for a signal. Clouded Leopard bent down and took the last one with slightly shaking fingers.
“Now everyone look,” she declared, her voice ringing through the group. There was a swelling of rustles as everyone unfolded their paper, eyes flicking to their neighbors’ to see their result. “Who has a mark?” Slowly but surely, seventeen figures stepped forwards, nervousness glimmering in their eyes.
“Leafpool and Jarnen, Ashlee and Quill—” Clouded looked up at her friend, who both looked just as hesitant as many. “—Rae, Starseeker and Zoey, General Waffleson and Jamie, Danie and Squeak, Elementgirl and Anna, Spyro, Secret and Cilantro, and… MewFour.” The crowd of CB inhabitants cleared a path as the chosen ones stepped forwards, sticking close to their companion if they had one. “Well…” Clouded Leopard said awkwardly, her eyes darting to her own AE as he hung to the back of the group. “I don’t really know what to say here, but… we’re all trusting in you guys, yeah? Whatever that monster-thing is, I know that it’s no match against all of us. So… yeah.” She finished, smiling at Ashlee. “Good luck, then.”
“Thank you,” Ashlee said back, before she turned to the other sixteen. Seeming to sense the issue met, the other CBers and AEs who hadn’t been chosen backed away, returning with an itching worry to wherever they were prior to the meeting. “Where do you think we should look first?” Ashlee asked, addressing the group. An AE standing besides a black-scaled dragon pushed her way to Ashlee, standing confidently besides her.
“Well, shouldn’t we explore Pudding first?” she said, her wings fluttering behind her back. “It’s quite literally right here.”
“Oh, yeah—good idea, er—”
“Zoey,” the AE said, rolling her eyes. “I swear, being new here is just awful.” Ashlee looked at her for a moment, then nodded.
“Right, Zoey. Well, anyways, the Pudding Jungle is a good place to start. Monsters might go there for cover, yeah?” There were a few nods of consent, and with that meager hope to hang on to Ashlee set off, Zoey by her side. She was still anxious about leaving Zeon at home, so close with his encounter of the beast, but she had to agree that a bigger group might do more harm than good. Seventeen was the best they could hope for, so do it they would have to…
“Quests,” MewFour muttered as he brushed a leaf off his face. “Never in my life thought I’d have to be on one.” A pale-haired AE next to him nudged his shoulder, sending him stumbling slightly.
“Oh, come on!” she said, smirking. “At least I’m here to lessen the boredom chasing a giant black monster?” MewFour’s face reluctantly broke out in a grin at Quill as they backed the group that was disappearing into the thick forest, vines hanging down and insects humming from the bracken.
“Yeah,” he said as he stepped inside the jungle. “Thanks.”
(May 17, 2017 - 9:24 am)
YAAAAAAY!!! It's awesome! Creepy moOoOnstersssss...
(May 17, 2017 - 3:00 pm)
Great part!
8-Piece? GONE?!? Like he was never there? *starts sobbing*
Oh, Anna. My apologies, everyone, especially CL.
By the way, great part.
You said that already.
Oh, did I?*looks*
Haha, silly me!
(But it was a great part)
(May 17, 2017 - 6:25 pm)
This is super awesome Clouded! I can't wait for the next part! You captured Zoey perfectly by the way! :)
~Starseeker and Zoey
(May 18, 2017 - 7:28 am)
Oooh *starts dancing frantically* I love this so much already!! And Quill... *cough cough*
Ashlee, please don't. Let us focus on the goal. It is for Zeon.8-Piece. For the entire collaboration of the CB, Ashlee. Not-
Haha, Quill, you'll do fine! Good luck, dudes! I just hope... What, what did it look like again?
It's okay, Zeon, don't worry. CL, amazing story so far!
(May 18, 2017 - 1:11 am)
Awesome! Can't wait for more!
(May 18, 2017 - 6:14 pm)
Arh! Sorry, I didn' see the part about one AE! I'll get rid of Cilantro, I hope this didn't mess anything up..
(May 18, 2017 - 6:21 am)
That was SO AWESOME! You are an amazing writer, Cloud.
Yes! That was really cool! Can't wait for Part 2!
(May 18, 2017 - 5:30 pm)
Great job, Clouded! I can't wait for the next part.
(May 18, 2017 - 4:53 pm)
(May 18, 2017 - 6:25 pm)
Toppity tophats!
(May 21, 2017 - 12:10 pm)
(May 23, 2017 - 7:15 pm)