On the other side of the barrier, the people were formed in crowds just outside Clockwork town, wondering why in God’s name was there an evacuation. They all had some knowledge that a Wonderland beast had somehow made its way within, but on what scale, they had no idea. Some believed it was a farce, or that this was simply a training program, mainly because the students of Luxsforth Academy were the ones handling the situation instead of actual competent authorities. Imagine trusting your home and life in the care of young students, the thought would make one shiver. Most civilians there started to oppose the authorities and demand they be back inside their houses. That was mostly true with the people from the marketplace after they were instructed, rather aggressively, to evacuate by Emiya, who was to them the unseemly odd nuisance at the bakery shop.
There were others who believed the beast on a rampage was a very dangerous one, especially the old woman sitting with her family near the sidewalk away from the crowds. Like any senile elder, she believed the end was upon them. The mystery of the Great Ones hiding beneath the surface. The Great Ones, as their name implied, were said to be great creatures that lived long before humans, that they controlled nature itself, and that they brought about Neverland and Wonderland.
“Settle down with those fantasies, Ivy!” Her husband, who was no better than her, shouted, “Those night riders are the true terror we should be afraid of.”
“The Nyarlamancers?!” The woman spoke back in utter disbelief, “Gustav, you better shush your father before someone dumps him into the ocean!”
“I will not be shushed, woman! Y’know damn well that is true, or you’re not the woman I married thirty years ago.”
“Thirty years?! God, when you remember how long we’ve been married, you can come talk to me about those mythical riders.”
“Ey, quiet!” The man sitting beside the old man said, “I wanna hear the story. Why don’t you tell us about ‘em? The night riders.”
“My cousin says he seen ‘em,” the old man recounted, “Crawling from the east with the chaos behind ‘em. Any village they touch become dust and bones. They attacked his village, and it was only God’s miracle that he and a few others survived. Those riders’ leader ain’t that merciful.”
“But don’t they roam Wonderland? What brings them to the real?” A man, interested in the story, asked.
“Oh, bullocks, don’t tell me you believe this hearsay, Mycroft…’ There was another man accompanying him, a rather important fellow from the way he dressed.
“I’m rather fond of folktales, if I’m being honest,” the other man replied, “And it’s the best way to kill time, don’t you think?”
“I’d agree with you if it wasn’t about killing my own career first.”
The man was to become a government official quite soon. He was supposed to be done here that morning and on the first train to Scotland to conduct his first assignment as an official. That was if the town hadn’t been evacuated so quickly and without warning. Unlike normal writers, who used their own special portal to transport from each realm, average people like him were to commute by Neverland’s train normally, which had its own technology to transport one from here to reality.
“I mean, look at the commoners. They are going completely mental.” He commented, “That over there,” he pointed at the overweight man arguing with authorities at the front of the crowd, “That’s Stanley Hover! A big merchant with an even bigger name in this town. I’ve known him almost my entire life.” He grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and pulled one before lighting it up, “He may have had his wits back when I was an ankle-biter, but now, he’s nothing but a senile geezer with a lust for greed. If I was like him, I’d beat every single of those damn coppers… but what can I say, I work with those damn inglorious bastards now.”
“You seem to know him quite well,” his friend snatched the pack of cigarettes and took one for himself.
“Like I told you, I’ve known him for a long time. I know every nook and cranny of this damned dead town, down its people. Oh, watch this…”
Among the crowd, sticking out like a sore thumb, was a young girl dressed in the academy’s basic green garment — there was no mistaking the bright crest on the back of her uniform. From the man’s deduction, she looked about fifteen, or sixteen years old, making her either a pre-grade or a first-year student at the academy. Her standing on the sidelines meant that she had nothing to do with what was going on, another team was handling the incident. The man understood the academy’s systems well enough to know that. He believed that her standing by her lonesome was trouble waiting to be ignited.
“Ol’ Stanley’s gonna get bored of the authorities and latch himself onto the poor girl, I’m telling you. He hates the academy the most, their practices have cost him fortunes as you know.”
“But they pay handsomely, I hear.”
“Still not enough to keep him quiet.”
And so what the man said became a reality. The geezer spotted the young girl easily and started walking up to her.
“You… You! Over there!!” He shouted, “I know the likes of you. The scum of the academy. Why are you standing over there doing nothing? I don’t pay my taxes for those knuckleheads to stand by idly and leave spoiled children like you to their jobs.”
“I-I…” The girl was completely startled. She had no words to defend herself with. If she would, she could very well mop the floor with him considering she was on a different level physically than an average human being, but that wasn’t how writers did things, and that certainly wasn’t how she did things.
“I-I What?!!” He mocked the girl’s stuttering, “You're going to cry to your mummy and daddy? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have joined this damn academy… and you call yourself a writer?”
Both men chuckled at the scene they witnessed. Hover did not fail to entertain them by one bit, even if it was the cost of the poor girl’s tears. It wasn’t just them, however. None of the people in the crowd offered to help the girl. In fact, they were as angry as Hover but weren’t as impudent. The geezer doing the job for them was enough to suffice. As for the authorities, they just followed their instructions like dogs — robots, even, dogs had emotions at least — no more, no less.
And then, he showed up.
“Excuse me… S-Sorry…”
A young man dressed in a rather casual variation of the academy’s uniform. The patterns in the basic uniform were long gone and instead, were on the extra hood he had attached to his jacket. Instead of the plain dark school shoes, he donned green sneakers to match the colour of his jacket. The only thing that could make one tell he was from the academy was the crest plastered on his jacket's back, just like every single uniform in that school.
He pushed through the crowd as fast as he could, like a fellow who was late to work.
“Well, look at that. He’s about to receive the short end of the stick…,” the man’s friend, who was still smoking, laughed.
“Hmm…,” the man wondered, “I don’t know about that, friend.”
“What do you mean? He is a student, is he not?”
“Yes he is, but… I’ve seen him before…” he threw his cigarette on the floor before putting it off with his leg, “You wouldn’t want to know who accompanies him.”
That sentence made his friend intrigued over the matter more.
The young man, oblivious as he was, almost passed the geezer and the girl if it weren’t for the geezer’s sharp eye in spotting youth like him.
“You there! Don’t think I don’t see you, eh…” the geezer snickered.
The young man looked at him with the most surprised look. He pointed at himself to make sure that he was the one the geezer was calling. That was when he noticed the girl, whom he recognized, and decided to approach them. It didn’t take him a minute to read the situation, but he pretended to still be ignorant of what was going on.
“Oh sorry, gramps,” He wore a friendly smile, “But I’m just la—”
“Who the hell are you calling “gramps,” you insignificant child?” He grabbed the young man by the collar, while still holding the girl from her blazer by his other hand, “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Huh?! Should I?” The young man asked with the most genuine tone.
The geezer was at the end of his rope, “This insolent child. I don’t pay my taxes to your academy’s fees just so you can—”
“Fees?” The young man pushed the man’s hand with ease, which shocked the geezer. Stanley Hover was quite strong, even for his age. So for a boy to have no trouble getting rid of his grasp was preposterous. “Last I checked, my parents, paid my school fees…,” he scratched the back of his head in thought, “And the academy’s a private school, I don’t think it requires money from the public, does it? Ugh… I shoulda paid attention to Economics class.”
There was not an ounce of sarcasm in his tone. It seemed the young man was genuine about his words and questions. And it all left the geezer speechless, he couldn’t believe a boy like him would have the audacity to counter everything he said.
“Oh, Hannah…,” the young man looked at the girl, “They need you down the block for um… reading?”
“But I’m not—” The girl, who still hasn’t caught on, was about to answer.
“Yeah yeah yeah, they need you right now for the perusal circle… They’re about to start, you better hurry.”
The young man grabbed the geezer’s other hand away from the girl’s jacket and then waved for her to move along.
Hesitant, the girl walked to the other side of the crowd, away from the barrier, and looked behind her occasionally to check if something was wrong.
The young man then reached his hand with the man’s hand and shook it. “So sorry for the ruckus, gramps. But I have to leave now, duty calls after all. It was nice meeting you though.”
Just like that, the young man pushed through the crowds once more, leaving the geezer stunned in his place. Never, in all his life, did Stanley Hover ever get humiliated the way he had that day. Yet, he couldn’t do anything about it. The two men who watched the whole scene unfold with intrigue were on the verge of applauding the young man for his swift solution and quick wits.
The young man finally escaped the crowd and faced the barrier. Filled with determination, he took a step forward to proceed but was immediately held back by one of the men from the authorities.
“I’m sorry, kid,” the man said, “You can’t pass, the barrier’s up!”
“Wait!” The young man pulled out his identification card, “I should be inside right now.”
But the men didn’t bother. They were all covered in dark suits and dark sunglasses, the young man couldn’t tell where they were looking. What’s the deal with these “Men in Black” dudes?
He had heard of how strict the authorities were but he never imagined they would be this bad. If they weren’t going to let him, then he needed to take matters into his own hand. Breaking through the barrier was something easy for him. After all, he possessed the power to build scenarios of his own, anything to fit his mindset.
With a swift motion, he grabbed his ballpoint red pen, clicked on it, and started writing quickly in thin air. There was this one trick he watched in a superhero movie that enabled the sorcerer to create world-bending portals. He always wondered if he could try it in real life. Of course, with enough imagination, anything was possible with his power.
True to his imagination, a sparkling portal formed right through the barrier. Yes, let’s go!!
“Hey wait—” One of the men tried stopping him.
But the young man quickly jumped through and wrote a few sentences on his way to close the portal. With that, he was inside and the authorities had no way of catching him unless they tore down the entire barrier.
“Catch ya later, Totally-Not-Agent-K-Looking-Man!”
Lloyd Ashford finally made it.
The two men, who were still having a smoke, were both impressed by Lloyd’s actions. The one who was to become a government official finished his second smoke and placed the pack in his pocket, deciding to stop for now.
“He’s got guts, that kid.”
“Well, yeah, he’s no less of a troublemaker (than Zen.)”
“You said something?” His friend couldn’t quite hear him from how noisy the crowd had become after witnessing what Lloyd had done.
“I was thinking of taking the day off today.”
“What? It’s your first day—”
“With how things are right now, I doubt it’ll let up soon. Just present our case tomorrow, and the media will be our excuse. We can’t do anything about it.”
The man walked out of the street and to the intersection ahead, followed by his friend. As much as he wanted to watch the show that was about to unfold, he valued his life above all else.
Besides, it wouldn’t be the first or last show for the Disaster Artist.
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