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Post by twigz on Oct 23, 2023 6:01:56 GMT -5
tag yourself im thomas the tank engine
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Dec 19, 2023 0:54:45 GMT -5
Chapter VIII Once Jerome got the chess set out from the shelf by the window overlooking the cityscape, set up the game on the coffee table, and explained the rules, Violet and Klaus sat down and tried their hand at this new pastime which they had always heard was the greatest game in the world but had never had the chance to test it out for themselves. After watching Violet and Klaus play amongst themselves, Sunny and Beatrice staged their own battle.
There are three ways for a chess game to end. The first is for one player to capture the other’s king and win. The second is what’s known as a stalemate, where everyone is stuck and there’s nowhere left to go. The third option is checkmate, which is derived from a Persian expression meaning “The king is dead,” and means that one player’s king is completely cornered and has no choice but to surrender. While these last two made no appearance in any of the games played by the Baudelaires that afternoon, they both hung in the air like fog. For the past ten years it had felt to the Baudelaires like their lives were in a stalemate, but the game was starting back up, and, although they were currently unaware of it, there would come a time when the four Baudelaires would find themselves thrust into a corner against an adversary in a similar situation, with one party forced to surrender.
After the siblings played a few games with each other, Klaus whispered, “I think I was able to piece together some of Ben’s notes. It appears that Ben figured out a few things he hasn’t told us yet.”
“Like what?” asked Violet.
Klaus took his commonplace book out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt, which was the dark blue notebook in which he kept all the information he’d gathered, and said, “It looks like Ben had also discovered the tunnel between this penthouse and what’s left of the Baudelaire mansion. He’s also been in contact with someone called NEAR.”
“Who’s NEAR?” asked Sunny.
“I don’t know,” replied Klaus, putting the book back in his pocket, “I don’t even know if Ben knew who he was really writing to.”
“I wonder if Jerome might know,” said Violet, looking over at Jerome, who was pulling some comforters out of a closet.
Violet stood up and walked over to the window. Crossing her arms against the windowsill, she said, “Isn’t it weird that all of a sudden we’re back to all this mystery-solving stuff? I mean, I’m kind of glad to be integrated back into society, but I had hoped that once our names were cleared we could just have normal lives.”
Violet’s reflecting was interrupted by Jerome shuffling under a mountain of comforters. Looking and sounding like he was about to collapse under the blankets, Jerome said, “I was just wondering if…if you’d like to spend the night. It’d give you a chance to relax before heading off to whatever your next destination may be.”
A bit surprised but also liking the idea of staying the night in the home of someone they knew rather than staying under a bush, in a cave, in a store or restaurant after hours, or a stranger’s living room, Violet said, “That would be nice, I guess. But could we share a room? We have to talk about some things.”
“Sounds good,” Jerome replied, setting down the mound of comforters, “I’ll go set up a room for you.”
He then picked the comforters back up and disappeared down one of the apartments many hallways.
Once Jerome was out of earshot, Beatrice glanced over at the chess board on the coffee table and then out the window, then turned to her siblings and said, “The chess pieces are black and white.”
“What does that have to do with everything that’s happened to us?” asked Sunny.
“They kind of remind me of a photograph and its negative,” said Beatrice, who had begun to develop an interest in photography, “That’s kind of like our situation. We’re the photograph and whatever we’re getting ourselves into is our negative.”
Although negative in this case means opposite, it can also mean bad. With regards to the Baudelaires, it means both. What they had gotten into ten years ago and were about to get back into was not only the opposite of the last ten years they had spent relying on themselves but in no danger or the years spent with their parents, it was much, much worse. In fact, now is a good opportunity for you to stop reading this story and clear your browsing history.
The Baudelaires, however, had no choice but to try to make sense of their experiences. But in the meantime, they might as well make themselves at home. Sunny went to the kitchen and opened a few cupboards. She pulled out a loaf of bread, a box of oats, a jar of peanut butter, another jar of huckleberry preserves, and a bottle of orange juice.
“Would oatmeal with toast and juice work?” asked Sunny, “There isn’t very much in this kitchen and I have no idea where the other kitchens are.”
“Oatmeal for dinner is a bit strange,” said Klaus, “but you had to improvise, just like you did when you made dinner for Count Olaf’s troupe on Mount Fraught.”
Sunny put on the water and as she waited for it to boil, she sliced the bread and put two slices in a toaster and another two slices in another toaster. Then she pulled out four spoons, four plates, four bowls, and four glasses, brought the glasses over to the coffee table where she poured the juice into them, and went back to check on the toast and oatmeal. Sunny put the toast on the plates, spread the jam over the pieces of toast, and poured the oats into the hot water and stirred it until the oats were completely wet.
Then she brought the plates of toast to the coffee table and said, “The oatmeal should be done soon. If Jerome wants any after he finishes setting up our room, I can also make him another piece of toast or some more juice.”
The Baudelaires nibbled their toast and sipped their drinks to make them last longer, while Sunny occasionally got up to stir the oatmeal some more. Soon enough, Sunny went to the kitchen and came back balancing four bowls of oatmeal with peanut butter in her arms. Setting the bowls down, she said, “Sorry I couldn’t make a more traditional dinner, but I hope you enjoy it.”
Enjoy it they did, but the question of NEAR, Ben’s notes, and the revelation that at least one villain was still out in the world hung over them like a dark cloud. Maybe they should ask Jerome if he knew anything about Ben or NEAR; even if he didn’t know anything, he might know where they might find more information.
Sure enough, Jerome emerged from the hallway and said, “Your room is ready for after you’re done eating.”
“Sure,” said Violet, “But afterward we want to ask you a few questions.”
The Baudelaires then continued eating, hoping they would get at least some answers and appreciating what for them was a rare moment of tranquility.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Mar 11, 2024 0:55:06 GMT -5
Chapter IX
“A spoon?!” cried Esme, “You want me to dig my way out of here with a spoon?!”
“On TV everyone who’s ever gone to prison digs themselves out with a spoon,” replied Mrs Bass, “I’ve tried it myself, but I get distracted measuring the spoon.”
“Okay fine,” said Esme, strutting over to the stone wall and jabbing the spoon against it. When the spoon made no dent, Esme threw it to the ground and sat down with her head in her palms, muttering, “I knew this stupid spoon wouldn’t work.”
“Well maybe you should dig into the wall rather than try to stab it,” suggested Mr Remora, throwing an empty cup of banana pudding at the wall, “A spoon isn’t a dagger.”
Sighing, Esme pulled herself back up and scraped the spoon against the wall, but other than dislodging a few loose bits of stone, it had no effect. Perhaps if she kept at it, she’d be able to break out of the cage which now held her and continue to wreak fashionable havoc on the outside world.
The Baudelaires, meanwhile, were just finishing up their meal. After eating, each of them in turn washed their dishes and put them away before going into the hall to find Jerome emerging from one of the bedrooms and said, “I just finished setting up your room, I hope you like it.”
“Thanks,” said Violet, “but we have to ask you a few questions first.”
“Our friend Ben has been writing to someone called NEAR,” said Klaus, holding up Ben’s notebook.
“NEAR isn’t a who, it’s a where,” said Jerome, flipping through Ben’s notes, “It stands for the Northeastern Aerial Reserve, where VFD once kept its trained birds as well as its various flying devices. But NEAR has been abandoned for quite some time. I fear that anyone who might be lurking there today would most likely be an enemy, or at best someone so ignorant that they might as well be an enemy.”
“I wonder if Ben knows that,” said Sunny, “If he doesn’t, then he gave out our whereabouts to a possible villain without knowing it, and if he does, then he betrayed us.”
“But let’s not talk about that right now,” Jerome said, “You’re perfectly safe here. Now why don’t you go check out your room while I fix myself some dinner.”
Admittedly, the Baudelaires were a bit curious about the room that Jerome had set up for them. So once Jerome went to the kitchen, the four Baudelaires nodded to each other and entered the room to find that Jerome had gone out of his way to make it comfortable for them. Sure, there were no tools, books, or cooking utensils in sight, but the mattresses that lay strewn on the floor stood in contrast to all the different uncomfortable sleeping areas they had been treated to, and even the ones that had been relatively comfortable hadn’t looked quite this good. But the Baudelaires were too preoccupied to dwell much on their surroundings. The knowledge of what NEAR was and that it could mean that they would shortly be in the path of dangers that they couldn’t even imagine.
“I wish we knew where Ben was so we could tell him what we just found out about NEAR,” said Violet, sitting down on her bed.
“That’s assuming he doesn’t know already,” Klaus said worriedly.
But the question of whether Ben knew about NEAR being abandoned and that contacting anyone who might be there wasn’t a good idea opened up a whole new rabbit hole, which here means presented a whole new problem. The Baudelaires genuinely believed that Ben hadn’t knowingly sold them out to whoever had been living at NEAR, but the correspondence had been a risk regardless of his intentions. Trying not to think about NEAR, Klaus flipped through Ben’s notebook before shutting it and saying, “We haven’t even begun to try to decipher these notes and now we’ve got to figure out something else on top of them.”
It turns out that Klaus was right to be suspicious about Ben’s correspondence with NEAR. Although Ben was unaware of who was writing back to him, the person who’d been lodging at NEAR had managed to gain Ben’s trust and convinced him to write everything he knew about the whereabouts of the Baudelaires. Although it wasn’t Ben’s fault, it was through him that a new enemy had been able to track his old friends down. For far off in the Mortmain Mountains was a long light grey metal building with a white roof and a garage-style door that required a code to be opened. Inside, a mysterious man stalked the barren stone hallways. Darting behind a metal shelf, he pulled out a pen and notepad and wrote:
Ben,
Last time you wrote me you said that you found the Baudelaires and were planning to take them to your treehouse. Do you have any updates on them? If so, let me know so I can find them and take care of them. I’m completely alone up here and I can imagine they’re pretty lonely themselves, so we’d be the perfect match for each other. Thanks for your correspondence and again, keep me updated.
Josh
The man then tore the letter off the notepad and stuffed the letter in an envelope. Hiding the envelope in his dark purple robe, the man emerged from his hiding place, allowing you, dear reader, to get a better look at him. Besides his purple robe, he wore alternating ruby, emerald, and sapphire rings on each finger. He had a pair of high-heeled leather boots, fingerless leather gloves, and green-tinted glasses.
He strode through the hall until he reached an iron door with a tiny rectangular window covered with bars. The man pulled a ring of keys out of his robe, unlocked the door, and stepped into the room. Straw covered the floor, a single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, manifesting strange shadows that seemed to move if you looked at them. But the strangest thing in the room was the two creatures sleeping in one corner. They resembled a cross between a cat and weasel but were around the same size as the man and had rippling muscles. The man approached the creatures and pulled out a silver bell and a small cloth bag from his robe.
“Wake up my pretties,” he said, ringing the bell gently, “I have a job for you.”
One of the creatures pricked its ears, lifted its head, and nudged its companion. The other beast lifted its head and yawned. The man said, “Get up and patrol the building and outside area while I deliver this letter to Ben.”
Then he knelt down and whispered, “Kill any intruders.”
Back at the penthouse, Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and Beatrice hadn’t been able to make heads or tails, which here means hadn’t been able to figure out, any of Ben’s notes nor what Jerome had told them about NEAR. Violet sighed and said, “I was excited to see Ben again, especially since we had been so alone. But now I’m not sure it was such a good idea to go with him if he was in contact with someone of uncertain alignment staying at NEAR.”
Klaus and Sunny both touched Violet on the shoulder and Beatrice said, “I think it’ll be ok. Maybe whoever Ben was writing to isn’t so bad and is just trying to help us from afar.”
“Or doesn’t even know about us,” Sunny added.
As much as I would like to tell you that the Baudelaires were perfectly safe and would continue to be perfectly safe, you have just seen what has been going on at NEAR and who Ben has been conversing with. While rest assured, Ben was unaware the consequences of his actions, his actions still had consequences.
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Post by Hego T. Tablespoon on Mar 11, 2024 20:02:17 GMT -5
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Post by twigz on Mar 12, 2024 1:54:29 GMT -5
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