Now, you may be wondering, how do semi-humans and semi-beasts, keep their camps full of bizarre shapeshifters out of sight of humans and other annoyingly curious creatures? Well, it's quite simple, actually.
All of it had to do with portals. Although, from a human standpoint, it may seem more like the lack of portals.
Take for example Slider's River Camp. Imagine a portal circling the entire swamp, river, lake thingy. This teleported anyone who walked into the portal to a copy of the landscape. So a human comes walking along doing their humany stuff and never notices a thing. That's because they've been teleported to a copy of their surroundings.
These were called Areal Portals. To us semi-humans, we don't think of them as separate dimensions like humans would. They were our world. Layers, perhaps, of our world. Like the downstairs versus the upstairs of a house. It's all the same house, just different parts.
Located around these Areal Portals were Portal Gates. They were gaps in the portal. As a member of S.H.H.A., I thought of them as entrances to our camps, bases, headquarters, and all the other names for the exact same places.
With time, technology, and quite a bit of freaky magic-powerish stuff, semi-humans could both open and close Portal Gates. With a whole ton of magic-powerish stuff, we could even create Areal Portals. Let's just say, all of that was way beyond my level.
I was a simple cat. Trouble happened, and I burned it with my searing hot claws. No magic voodoo stuff.
Slider's River Camp had Portal Gates on either side of the "river". With years of experience, my sister and I knew exactly where they were by heart. Thank goodness, because, unlike normal, there wasn't a frog or heron semi-human out keeping watch who could help us navigate through the Portal Gate.
Look, it was hard enough going through an invisible door. Slider's River Camp and many other S.H.H.A. bases bumped it up a notch by making their "invisible doors" more like "invisible tunnels". Thanks a lot base founders.
"Not looking too good," commented Pudding, confirming my own suspicions. "I'll go through first, then."
"What?" I asked, an over-dramatic look of disbelief covering my features. "You're going first? And what happens if there's an ambush prepared for us? Are you planning on asking the fish for help?"
Yep, Pudding's power was the one thing all kids, and some adults -I don't judge-, wished for: talking to animals. Whatever, I could talk to animals too. Humans, semi-humans, and semi-beasts were technically all animals. Nothing special.
"I'm going in first because you're louder than a stampede of elephants," replied Pudding in a matter-of-fact way. "Plus, Slider's River Camp couldn't have been defeated so easily. Just because communication is out doesn't mean they've lost the battle." I grumbled a response beneath my breath including the what ifs, yeah buts, and it's stills, but Pudding had already dissapeared through the vines.
A small black fish with white poka-dots popped its face above the water, probably judging me. Before I had the chance to growl a response at it, my sister emerged from the vines again. "All clear," she said, not noticing the way I had been glaring at the water. "But I could hear shouting."
"Got it," I replied, sending one last glance towards where the stupid fish had been before flying after Pudding. What a moron, coming so close to a cat who hasn't eaten breakfast yet.
Staying up till some awful hour in the morning terroriz- *cough* interrogating a poor little raccoon semi-human only to get woken up at some other gosh awful hour in the morning by Ilene took a toll on my mental health. Somebody would pay for it, and it wasn't looking too good for the fish.
YOU ARE READING
S.H.H.A.
ActionMisha was Maxima's first and only mistake. "Boss would have killed you for what you've done." "But you won't." "What makes you say that?" "Because you're not half of what she was." This story is completely clean. Written for preteens.
