The Smartest Kids Alive (IN NEED OF REVISING)

Chapter XVII

ELLE

Music: Outside Castle Blaudia from Star Revenge 0.5: Unused Levels

After the others' ordeal in the electronics store, we decide to take a walk through downtown as a group, just to see what we can find. What we do find: Nothing you wouldn't see while walking through any normal downtown. Anytime we walk past the windows of some restaurant or store and somebody notices us, the expression on their face becomes kind of confused. Guess they've never seen nine teenagers without an adult walking through downtown before.

Throughout the walk, I'm next to Sam, and I hold his hand a bit less tightly than normal. My "irrational" fears are finally starting to die down a bit, although I still dread the worst to come. Sam notices this, because he nudges me with his elbow to make me look at him, and gives me a small smile of reassurance. I give him one back.

Then Sam turns his attention to Mackenzie and tells her, "Y'know, you really shouldn't wear leggings on these trips. Makes your ass stick out and it distracts me."

Mackenzie doesn't even bat him an eye. Skylar, however, turns to him and hisses, "Sam!"

"What? She does it all the time, and besides, you know it's true."

"Doesn't mean you need to point it out. That's rude and perverted, Sam," I tell him.

"It's fine, guys. He can say whatever he wants to me and I won't care," Mackenzie laughs. Sam gives us all a smirk in response.

"It just reminds him of that one time when we were stranded on that island," Heath smirks, and Sam sighs.

"That's an image I didn't want in my head ever again," Sam grimaces.

"Mission accomplished," Heath laughs.

Sam glares at him. "Please die, kind sir."

"You still have yet to tell me what happened to you guys on that trip," Avery says, "because I was NOT there for that one."

"You guys, there's a random old shack over there," Eghosa tells us, pointing between two of the buildings. Sure enough, an old-looking wooden house is in there. Without saying a word about our decision, the nine of us begin walking over there.

"Last time we went inside one of these things, a bear attacked us," I mumble to myself.

SAM

Music: Haunted House from Super Mario 64

"Are we seriously gonna go inside?" Elle complains once we reach the front doors of the shack.

"Elle, relax. We'll be more careful this time," I tell her softly. Luke opens the door for us, and our team slowly walks inside.

The interior of the shack is not any more impressive than the outside. In fact, it's worse. There's some old, dusty couches lying around and even an old TV (that probably hasn't been used in at least a few months) sitting in a corner. The floor creaks with every footstep, and the amount of dust flying around causes a high amount of coughing.

"Those bowler dudes sure had the right idea when trying to kill us with dust," Heath mutters.

"Why are we even in here, anyways?" Avery asks. "What could possibly be accomplished by being in here?"

"Yeah," Eghosa adds. "Sam, are you even aware that this might be a-"

"Trap? Yeah, I thought about that. And we're here because we need Dr. Wersaw's assets out of the picture, and this seems like the perfect place for one of them to hide so they can try and kill us," I answer, taking a walk through the kitchen.