Sandra possessed a figure which could best be described as 'natural beauty.' She wore no makeup, nor had any plastic surgery, and she dressed like a hippie. It gave her the appearance of a Cinderella dressed like Janis Joplin.
"Please, can we keep him?"
Sandra's pleading tone assailed Dusty. Finally, he passed the buck.
"Look, I'd love to keep him. But baby, you gotta convince Juniper, not me. She's the one in charge of money, anyway."
"Fine. Where is she?"
"Don't know, I haven't seen her since we split up. Mister undercover hero, are you aware of any other places a teenager could get lost at?"
The John, feeling quite bitter about the deadly monster now acting as a shawl, responded curtly.
"We haven't even reached Block 1 yet, there's plenty of places your other friends could be."
"So let's go to block one then," Sandra butted in, controlling the flow of conversation.
"I found something else, anyway. The hunt has begun!"
"You can't mean," Dusty began to ask, but he went silent seeing the cassette tape now in her hand.
"What are you all talking about? This is an asylum, remember? It's not a playground!"
Sandra chuckled at this statement.
"Oh, mister undercover hero, you've obviously never been to a haunted house before."
He wanted to list the All-Star League's accomplishments so bad, but ultimately held it in.
"Okay, enlighten me."
"It's simple. Whenever you go into a haunted house like this, there will always be X amount of a certain thing. 5 film reels, 6 diary entries, 7 medical charts; all the legit haunted houses have something like this!"
The John had no idea what she was talking about, but the others appeared to. Dusty immediately summoned his golden bus, and mister Whiskers began searching throughout it for a particular device.
"Found it," the cat monster exclaimed while floating an old tape recorder out.
The teenagers inserted the tape, and the mystery of the Ohio Asylum began to unravel.
"Switchboard recording 2016.4.24... Time of recording, 2100 hours EST."
CLICK!
"Subsurface, reporting to command! Blocks 1 through 5 are experiencing mass patient riots! We've initiated lock down procedures, and request immediate back-up! I repeat! The patients are rioting, we need back-up fast! Please help!"
The blaring of alarms in the background marked the end of the recording.
"Isn't that a bit of trash? It's easy to tell what happened from the bodies... I mean ghost bodies, alone."
"Are you sure he's a hero," Sandra asked the other teenagers. They shrugged in response.
"Look, the first entry is always a hook to get you invested. They aren't going to spill all the juicy details on the first recording!"
"As far as I see it, you all need two more members rescued and I need a trip quick to block 6. How will these clues of yours help in any of that?"
They had to think for a while to come up with an acceptable answer. In the end, it was Sandra's idea that ultimately got proposed.
"Juniper loves finding clues, more than any of us. If finding her is part of the mission you'll assist us in, then searching for more of these clues is the best way to find her."
"...Fine, but let's hurry. I don't want my entire vacation to be spent here," the John relented.
The teenagers cheered, and everyone boarded the bus.
Dusty drove in the direction pointed out by the hero, Sandra busied herself brushing Jeff's coat, and Dmitri made small talk with mister Whiskers.
"How many pets like you and Calendar creature do these guys own?"
"Well the gregs are technically one entity, and I could never count the midnight parrots. Want to just see them for yourself?"
Checking his watch, the John nodded.
"Sure, we got time before reaching block 1."
Him and the cat monster trotted to the back of the bus. There, the hero saw some strange sights.
99 white lab rats slept in a neat line, looking like sardines without the can. In the corner, a 100th lab rat could be seen playing chess on a tiny computer. When the two approached, all 99 sleeping rats immediately awoke. The hundred rats stared at them with the same questioning eyes.
"So this is Greg. I'm not sure of the details, Sandra would know more. I think it was some kind of hive mind experiment gone wrong, if my memory is correct."
They walked further, to the very back of the bus. There, a murder of crows could be seen perching on various objects.
SQUACK! "Polly want cracker!" SQUACK!
One bird suddenly exclaimed.
"Aside from this, they have no other powers that I can see. We call them night parrots. I think that one that talked was Teddy, but they all look like dinner to me."
"We're here," Dusty's voice called from the front.
Making their way forward, Dmitri could easily tell they had reached their location from the sight outside the windshield.
There was a giant set of double doors, their immense heft due to the materials in their construction. Luckily, both massive doors were off their hinges, leaving the path below free of obstructions.
"Mister undercover hero," Sandra asked while pointing another action camera at him.
"How strong would you have to be to knock these doors down?"
"Blocks 1 through 5 are designed to house patients with ever higher threat levels. You'd have to be over threat level 20 to leave a dent on these doors."
"Threat level? Is that one of those hero terms? Can you explain it to the audience, please?"
Dmitri sighed, finding himself missing home in the face of these annoying teenagers.
"It measures how deadly you are to the general populace. A baby would be threat level 0, and captain cosmonaut would be above 60. Do I need to explain more?"
"Te he he, they should call you the grumpy hero."
"I so wish you all were super villains," Dmitri found himself thinking more and more.