Avilien

Missing

For three hours, Luke raced across the entire town searching for Brit. He looked inside the few stores he could go in, like Amazing Comics, the comic book store on the highstreet filled with tall shelves and long lines of plastic-wrapped comics and manga. He even checked the local restaurants, as Brit loved food. Back alleys proved to be nothing more than empty brick and concrete mazes with trash bags and bins everywhere, and the market over on south street had hundreds of people looking around the stalls as deals were coming up left and right with 5:00 p.m. approaching. No matter where he looked, he couldn't find Brit anywhere. Out of options and almost out of time, Luke had to call it a day.

Defeated, with no options left, he headed back home with an ecstatic Nebs. In South street market, there were more than forty different multicoloured stalls with plastic canopies. The stalls were outside in a plaza-like area with an even bigger white-walled building behind the plaza that had more market stalls inside and an arcade. Luke couldn't go in there because of the security guards. He had seen the inside of it once, before being chased out by huge men waving batons. Managing to purchase four bags of baking potatoes and a small bag of baby potatoes from a small round woman who gave Luke strange looks, Nebs sang his master's praises. Refusing to stay inside of the phone, Nebs climbed out at first chance and clambered into Luke's backpack so that he could be with his "snackies," as he'd begun to call them. His love for spuds bordered on a thin line of insanity.

Passing by the bench as the sun started to set, Luke had hoped to see Brit there. She wasn't and this made him worry even more. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind as he walked through the forest and into his cul-de-sac. Streetlights began to flicker on as he thought of various disasters that could have befallen Brit. So deep in thought he was that he hadn't realised that Jayce, Bart, and Drew were waiting for him outside the forest on their bikes.

"And the loser finally returns. Won't outrun us now, chicken legs," shouted Drew, which made Bart snort like a pig.

Jayce climbed off his bike, as did his two stooges. The bikes fell to the pavement as Jayce punched his hand and gave Luke a huge smile. Luke didn't know how long they had waited, but they still had their school uniforms on so it must have been awhile.

"Where's your girlfriend?" asked Jayce.

"Did she dump you because you're so poor?" asked Bart. He snorted most of his words as he struggled not to laugh.

Nebs, hearing the commotion, opened the backpack he had climbed into and climbed on Luke's shoulder. Luke, who was too worried about Brit, didn't care about his three bullies, yet all three of them couldn't believe their luck when they saw Nebs perched on Luke's shoulder.

"Is that the fifty XP from the other day?" shouted Drew as he stumbled forward a little.

"Oh...it's these three morons that tried to delete me," said Nebs as he licked his paw.

"It talks!" exclaimed Jayce in shock.

"I do more than talk, you pathetic no-good thug," raged Nebs. He started to grow bigger as he hopped off Luke and onto the pavement. He allowed himself to get so mad that he grew bigger than Luke.

Bart and Drew fell backwards at the sight of the massive cat, bigger than a lion and somewhere close to the size of a horse. The two of them were sweating and shaking.

"My master is a little busy so either go away or..." Nebs showed off a single set of claws and smirked.

"Think I'll run from an augmented Avilien creature?" Jayce laughed, "You're not even real; you can't hurt me," he said.

Smug and arrogant Jayce wanted nothing more than to delete Nebs and could do so with no effort, yet he didn't know that. Within the space of two seconds, he went from overconfident to a whimpering baby. Nebs roared so loud in his face that spit went all over his school clothes and face. As soon as he felt the sticky clear liquid, he shook with fear.