St. Canard's Catalogue of Colorful Criminals

On the Outskirts

On the outskirts of St. Canard, bordering the country side but not straying too far from civilization, lived a girl in her late teens. Steadily she was working her way to her final year in high school and looked to being an investigative writer, if that was even an option for her. She didn't have her license, she failed every test due her anxiety behind the wheel, but that didn't stop her from adventuring where she could. Just within a less of a mile of her home was a long patch of woods that her parents had let her go in every so often. She enjoyed walking through the woods and fantasizing about all the unnatural things she could find or run into, but in all her 17 years, she had never had such a miracle happen to her before.

Niamh Featherfoot has always had a liking for the creepy and the criminal. Though she knew it was unlikely she would ever actually get to meet any of the colorful criminals in St. Canard, she still thought of how her interactions would go if she were to ever run into one of them on the streets. She sympathized with the majority of the criminals she read up on, though there were a few she had a strong distaste for. But still, she knew that if she were actually able to face any one of them that she would be dead within seconds.

   This story opens with our young writer-to-be sitting at her desk, typing away on her old laptop to try and see if she could dig a bit deeper for any information she didn't already know on the most dastardly villain to ever live: Negaduck. He was the only one who she didn't know anything about, other than the fact that he was always fluctuating between being the top two public threats of the city he loved to terrorize.

   Niamh refused to tear her focus away from scrolling through the many links she had already visited previously and scanned over the articles she had already read thousands of times before. Being zoned into what she doing, she jumped a foot off her seat as she heard a knock at her bedroom door.

   Annoyed by her own reaction, and having been pried away from her focus, she sighed and begrudgingly stood up to go see who it was. "Yes?" She said in her blunt tone.

   "Hey, sweetie! One of my coworkers found this while she was reading her paper and thought you'd like to have it!" Niamh's mother handed her a cut out of an article from a newspaper. The mugshot was one she had already seen two days ago on the internet.

   "Oh, cool! Tell her I said thanks!" Though it was completely useless to her, Niamh always appreciated the thought.

   "I will!" Her mom paused to glance at the article. "So, have a good day?"

   "Uh, yeah, still struggling to find some key information, though." Niamh shrugged.

   "Aw, that's too bad, maybe you should try finding some witnesses who have seen those criminals up close!" Niamh's mother leaned nonchalantly against her door frame.

   "Yeah, maybe I should post something and see who would be willing to get interviewed." Niamh shrugged and smirked. "Anyways, enough about that, how was your day?"

   "Pretty good! It was a normal Tuesday." Niamh nodded.

   "Ah, yeah." Niamh shot back to life for a moment as she thought of what she could do to help her wake up a bit. "Hey, would it be alright for me to go take a walk in the woods?"

   "Right now?" Her mom raised a brow at her in unamused surprise.

   "Yeah! I think a walk in nature would help me out with, well, feeling better about not being able to find anything today."

   Niamh's mom thought for a quick minute and then stood herself back up straight with her arms crossed. "Let me ask your father, but I think that as long as you come back before the sun sets that you'll be fine."