Chương 225: Book 4 Chapter 6.2: A Symphony of Friendship and Frogs

"Four years on and the headache still sucks," Vell groaned to himself. Though most of the loopers had managed to make it to midnight alive, they had nothing to show for it but headaches. They had not succeeded in digging Cane out of the rubble, or investigating his apparent ghost theory in any other way. That was a complication, but not a fatal one. They had some leads to work with, at least, and Vell knew where to get started on the ghost angle. Vell gladly made the call that would get them started.

"Goooooood morning Mr. Harlan," Harley chimed.

"What's happening?"

"Frog invasions, among other problems," Vell grumbled.

"Oh, that's a time loop headache if I ever heard it," Harley said. She'd run into that affliction more than a few times.

"Yeah, it's not great," Vell said.

"Listen, do you still have Garrett's number?"

"Ooh, ghost problems, eh?" Harley said.

"I'll text it to you."

"Thanks. I kind of got to get right to it, so I'll have to give you the details later, alright? Love you, Harley."

"Love you too, bud," Harley said.

"Say hi to Garret for me." Vell hung up the first call and braced himself for the second. He liked Garret, but he could also be a lot to deal with -a fact well-demonstrated by the phone call beginning with Garret's theme music blaring over the phone. Once the bombastic rock and roll stopped, Vell was disappointed to hear a mechanical beep indicate the start of an answering machine message.

"Hi, you've reached Garret Geist, Ghost Getter," the message said, in Garrett's usual southern california drawl.

"I'm currently on a long-term submersible mission to exorcise the ghosts of shipwreck victims who've been trapped undersea for centuries."

"What?" Vell knew it was a recording, but needed to voice his offense anyway. It was hard to truly be mad knowing Garrett was doing something so incredibly heroic, though.

"I should be back to the surface and ready to help in a few days, so please leave a message and I'll get to you as soon as I can!" The automated message clicked again and fell silent. Vell hung up the phone and let out a low groan of despair.

"Okay, we're not screwed yet," Vell said.

"Just need to wait a bit." Vell brushed his teeth and rushed through breakfast, and then, right on cue, heard a knock on his door. He whipped it open to find a bothersome scientist once again at his door.

"Hi, good morning," Vell said, as he opened the door.

"You here to bother me about Quenay?"

"I- uh, I have some very interesting theories."

"I'm sure you do," Vell said.

"If you can just hold on one second…" Vell paused and waited. The bothersome student also waited, at least for a few seconds.

"What exactly are we waiting for?"

"This." Cane grabbed the student by the collar and yanked them away from the door. Vell invited him in and slammed the door shut behind them to really drive the point home.

"Thank you for that," Vell said.

"Did you need something?"

"Just to talk to you," Cane said.

"I was trying to get people together to hang out tonight. Figured you'd want in, if you're not too busy."

"I could probably make it, I just have to…" Vell froze. He really should've come up with these lies in advance.

"You good, Vell?"

"I, uh, sorry, just losing track of things, mentally," Vell said.

"I've had a lot of people, uh, ask me for help with things."

"What kind of things?" Cane said.

"You need a hand?"

"Maybe." Vell contemplated how to proceed for a moment, and then figured he'd probably built up enough good will with Cane over the past four years he could just dive right in.

"You ever heard about frog ghosts?"

"Yeah," Cane said, without so much as blinking.

"Oh, cool," Vell said.

"What about them?"

"Well, hold on, are you talking about frog ghosts as in the ghost of frogs, or a ghost related to frogs?"

"Either or, I guess?"

"Okay, because I don't know anything about any ghostly frogs," Cane said.

"There is supposedly the ghost of a guy obsessed with frogs on campus, though."

"Interesting. Tell me about the frog guy."

"I don't know all the details, it was kind of an urban legend even when my brother came here about a decade back," Cane said.

"All he ever told me was the this frog-obsessed sophomore died while studying, and he haunts the basement of the sophomore dorms, I guess.

'Some say you can still hear faint croaking in the basement' and all that horror story shit."

"Interesting," Vell said, again.

"Let me look into that and we'll circle back later, alright? I gotta go, see you."

"Vell-""Sorry, kind of in a hurry, bud," Vell said, as he left and shut the door behind.

"This is your dorm, dude," Cane said.

"You were not exaggerating about this headache," Alex said.

"We warned you," Kim said.

"Man, it's almost better to die." The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"How do you have a headache, you're made of metal!"

"It's complicated," Kim said. Her synthetic body did not spare her from the time loop headache, no matter how she rebuilt herself.

"Good morning everyone," Helena said, as she whacked the door open with a crutch.

"What did I miss?"

"Quiet down a little, please" Hawke said.

"Why?"

"Do you not have a headache too?"

"No, I died pretty early," Helena said.

"Got a frog on me."

"You died from a frog touching you? What condition do you have that causes that?"

"Well it was a poison dart frog, so I guess 'being alive'," Helena said. Samson pursed his lips and said nothing.

"What did you all get up to while I was busy being dead?"

"Vell found out the frogs were summoned by a weird frog-obsessed ghost," Hawke said.

"He apparently knows a guy who might be able to help." The loopers then proceeded to relax and chat about frogs, ghosts, and other miscellaneous topics for about seven minutes, which made it a lot less dramatic when Vell barged in and announced Garret would be unable to help.

"Oh come on," Kim snapped.

"What's the point of knowing a ghost hunter if he never helps hunt ghosts?"

"He's on some undersea mission to rescue lost souls," Vell said.

"Which makes it really hard to be mad at him."

"And yet I manage," Kim said. She didn't begrudge Garret personally, but she had been hoping for their first easy win of the year. All the apocalypses thus far had been a major pain in the ass.

"Aren't you people supposed to be able to handle things like this?"

"Yes, Alex, and we will," Vell said.

"Just would've been nice to have a professional on the job."

"I'll get the ghostbusting stuff ready," Hawke sighed. He would've loved a chance to outsource their daily nonsense.

"Keep it on standby for now," Vell said.

"Ghosts have unfinished business or regrets. If we can help our ghost deal with whatever frog-related business he's got going on, maybe we can fix this without having to bust anyone."

"That's your plan?" Alex said.

"Be nice to the ghost that crushed a building and hope it goes away?"

"Yes," Vell said, with a completely straight face.

"And busting is plan B."

"Bustin' makes me feel good," Hawke sang, as he grabbed all their various ghostbusting gear.

"True professionals at work," Alex scoffed. Everyone else rolled their eyes and got back to work.

"Vell is an old pro at being nice to people," Kim said.

"Just ask Helena's sister."

"Don't pat yourself on the back, Joan's incredibly susceptible to manipulation," Helena said. It was disturbing she'd say that, and even more disturbing she knew that.

"That said, anyone dumb enough to get stuck as a ghost for decades will probably buy into your routine just as easily."

"Thanks for your input," Vell said.

"I'm just going to go ahead and get started." He said that both because it was important and because it was an excuse to get away from Alex and Helena faster.

"Need any backup?" Samson asked, for similar reasons.

"I'll check it out solo first," Vell said. Historically speaking, he was the best people-pleaser, a dubious honor at best, but one that came in handy when dealing with a frog-summoning ghost.

"I'll let you know if I need backup."

"Or busting," Hawke said.

"Or busting," Vell agreed.

"I have to find out where the ghost is, for starters. I'll be in touch soon." Finding the lair of the ghost was the first hurdle. As it turned out, the sophomore dorms had a lot of basements. Every building on campus had a lot of basements, so Vell was not all that surprised. At least these basements didn't have booby traps or old experiment equipment in them. They mostly just had a lot of junk. Vell kicked aside some old food wrappers and scanned the room.

"Why do people treat these empty rooms like dumping grounds?"

"People are usually different when they think no one is watching." Vell whipped around and saw a transparent head poking through one of the nearby walls. A ghost if Vell had ever seen one.

"Oh, hi," Vell said.

"Uh, weird question, how do you feel about frogs?"

"I'm ambivalent at best," the ghost said.

"Are you looking for the frog guy? Because he haunts two rooms over." The ghost pointed to the right, down the hall, and Vell looked that way.

"Thanks," Vell said. He took a few steps towards the door before spinning around to face the other ghost again.

"Uh, do you need any help like, moving on? Finishing unfinished business?"

"Nah, we get wifi down here, so I don't mind just chilling," the ghost said.

"Thanks for offering though." The ghost drew back into the wall and vanished from sight. While Vell was painfully curious as to how a ghost accessed wifi, he decided it was time to move on. The frog ghost was apparently close by, after all. Vell followed the wifi ghost's directions and hopped two doors down, barging into a subterranean room that was uncomfortably moist and smelled of mud and rainwater. Condensation dripped from the ceiling and onto Vell's back, sending an unpleasant shiver down his spine.

Unlike other rooms, this one was completely free of any garbage, but Vell took no comfort in that.

"Hello? Anybody home?" A chill ran down Vell's spine that definitely was not another drop of water. He waited two seconds, took a deep breath, and turned around.

"Hello." Vell was just inches away from another transparent face. This one had a slight green tint, with wide set eyes and a broad, flat mouth. Vell wondered if the similarities to a frog had been there during this person's life, or if they just liked frogs so much their ghost had slowly shifted to reflect their passion.

"Hey! Hi, uh, nice to meet you," Vell mumbled.

"I'm Vell."

"I'm Raine."

"Neat, nice name," Vell said. If Raine noticed the awkward hesitation in the compliment, he didn't show it.

"So, uh, I was wondering, well, I heard you were the guy to ask about frogs." The already wide eyes of the ghost got even wider, and visible excitement trembled through their spectral form. Vell began to think he may have made a mistake.

"So even though it's the biggest frog in the America's, the helmeted water toad is still only half the size of the Goliath frog," Raine said.

"Which must be wild for the helmeted water toad. Could you imagine crossing an ocean and finding out the people who live there are literally twice your size?"

"Must be pretty mindblowing, yeah," Vell said.

"And that's not even going into the real extremes," Raine said.

"Do you remember our pal P. Amauensis?"

"How could I forget," Vell said, about something he had definitely forgotten.

"Not just the world's smallest frog, but maybe the world's smallest vertebrate," Raine said.

"Only seven point seven millimeters long, a literal fraction of the Goliath frog! Could you imagine meeting someone who's only as big as your toe?"

"I actually did, once," Vell said.

"Shrink ray."

"Oh. Was... was it weird?"

"A little," Vell said.

"Wow. You almost know what it's like to be a Goliath frog meeting a P. Amauensis," Raine said.

"I'm so jealous."

"Yeah, I've done a lot of interesting stuff," Vell said.

"What about you, what'd you get up to when you weren't studying frogs?" Raine tilted his spectral head and stared blankly at Vell.

"You did do things other than study frogs, right?"

"Not if I could help it," Raine said.

"Okay, uh... what did you like to eat?"

"Oh, I just ate food whenever I was hungry," Raine said.

"What I really liked to do was gather samples of different bugs and other frog dietary staples, so I could try to get a sense of their diet for myself."

"Like, cooked bugs, or just raw, living bugs," Vell said. He'd eaten a few different varieties of cooked bugs, just for the experience, but couldn't imagine eating raw insects.

"If I could find them, yeah, live ones," Raine said.

"It got pretty hard after I got banned from the entomology department."

"That'd do it," Vell said.

"So, did you, uh, go swimming a lot?"

"Oh yeah, all the time," Raine said.

"Until I got banned from the pools too. Trying to swim like a frog doesn't work very well, and they got sick of having to rescue me, I guess."

"You could've just swam like a person."

"Why would I do that?"

"To... I don't know," Vell said. He was starting to feel like Raine's entire life and unlife revolved around frogs.

"Did you ever do anything, I don't know, human?"

"Oh, I studied frogs," Raine said.

"Frogs lack the self-awareness to understand frogs. It's their only flaw, really."

"I see. So what's your favorite frog?" As expected, this set off a long rant, as Raine found it hard to pick a favorite and had to start listing pros and cons of various frog species. It was not exactly scintillating conversation, but it kept Raine talking instead of somehow summoning frogs. Vell kept reminding himself that was the real goal. He was not here to have a pleasant chat, he was here to prevent the frogpocalypse. Anything that kept Raine ranting was good. He was saving the world.

As Raine started ranking every existing frog species by maximum jump distance, Vell kept repeating that to himself. Saving the world, one frog jump strength factoid at a time.