Down the Twilight Path

Bridges Burning

A/N: And now for some more of our hero and our heroine getting along. Bonding over scheming the most terrible acts. Meanwhile, a group gets together to investigate a matter they care about. So enjoy, my readers!

Scene 13: Bridges Burning

"No matter how I look at it, this doesn't make sense."

"So you're saying you don't have a clue? Is that it?" Reika said to Pence with a glare.

"Hey, lay off my friend!" Hayner shouted, advancing on Reika.

"Both of you, calm down," Olette said, restraining Hayner while Mika grabbed Reika. "We won't get anywhere in our investigation if we keep fighting like this."

"Reika, you know the moment Jason hears of this he will bop you on the head with his staff," Mika added. "So I'd cut it out, if I were you."

Begrudgingly, Reika and Hayner cooled down and offered each other apologies, while their friends could only sigh. It was about two weeks since Jason disappeared. The adults were still looking for him, but hope was starting to dim that he would be found.

While the teenagers were also still searching for their friend, they hadn't made any significant progress. It didn't help that Hayner and Reika, due to their respective personalities, had a tendency of clashing with each other often.

Today they were retracing Jason's steps on the day he disappeared, strung together from their separate accounts of that day. Yet no matter how hard the teenagers tried, they could not figure out where Jason could have gone.

"What were you going to say before, Pence?" Olette asked.

"Let's walk through what we know so far." Pence paced the sandbox as he recounted the events. "Two weeks ago, Jason was on his way to school but he had a fainting spell on the tram, and went back home to rest."

"That was bad enough for him to be out until the next day," Hayner noted.

"But Jason was well enough that day to go sparring with me and Mika," Reika said. "And when he finished that he told us he was going back home."

"And that's when he slipped into a crack somewhere and just fell off the face of the earth," Mika concluded.

"That's what doesn't make sense. Twilight Town is a pretty small place," Pence said. "It only takes a few minutes to run from here to where Jason and Eileen live. According to Eileen, Jason never made it back home. So what could have happened to him in such a short distance?"

In a town where most people knew each other, this was an unusual situation. The best answer they could come up with was...

"Could.... could Jason have been kidnapped?" Reika asked. "That's the only possibility I can think of that would explain everything."

"It does seem like the most logical conclusion," Pence said thoughtfully. "But who would do this?"

"Isn't it obvious? The same people that attacked the Darnell family over a year ago," Hayner said. "I don't know how we didn't see this before!"

"So then....what do we do?" Olette asked. "Whoever was behind the attack was never caught. Maybe we should go to..." Olette was about to suggest they go to their parents for help.

"Go to the haunted house," Mika cut in, staring off in the direction of the abandoned mansion. The rest of his friends looked in the same direction and instantly understood. Whenever something spooky or mysterious happened in Twilight Town, it always seemed to be connected to that abandoned mansion.

The ragtag group of teenagers headed in the direction of the mansion, determined to make a lead in their investigation. Olette completely forgot about going to the adults for help.