Chapter Text
Jamie shuffled into camp in search of something to clean up. However, it was already mostly spotless. None of them were particularly messy in the first place, aside from Jamie’s marshmallow mishap last night, so clean-up ended up being a breeze. They were okay with this outcome. Cleaning was boring, so the less they had to do, the better.
Speaking of the marshmallow, Jamie nearly stepped on it as they were passing by the fire. They weren’t sure how they, or anyone else for that matter, failed to notice it sooner. Though, once they crouched down, they realized why. It was almost entirely covered by ants, so it was probably better to just leave it be and let the ants take care of it.
They recalled the statue from the night before and how it was untouched. However, it seemed like someone had messed with it when they weren’t paying attention. Its head was completely missing and there were no pages like the last one had. There were some signs of tampering near the hands of it, given the imprints in the dust.
They stared at it in discontent and wondered who could’ve messed with it. It was unlikely to be Jade knowing how Riley got cursed, and Luna was too scared to do anything on their own, so the only other person who could’ve done it was Riley.
Since the statue would no longer provide them anything of value, they gave up on it and instead sought out Riley. They wouldn’t have to worry about that for long though, since Riley was already approaching them by the time they turned around.
The two of them greeted each other with a small nod. Jamie then pointed towards the statue. “I’m guessing you’re the one that messed with this?”
Riley nodded in response. “That would be the case, yes. I would’ve done it the night before, but…”
“It’s because you’re old!”
“You’re not gonna let that one go, are you?”
Jamie couldn’t help but laugh. “Nope!” They dropped the teasing not long after though. “Meh. Yesterday sucked anyways. I feel better after getting some sleep.”
Riley let out a long sigh. “I didn’t even deal with the worst of it, but… yeah. I’ve got a feeling that everything that went on in that forest left all of us drained.”
Jamie wasn’t particularly interested in thinking about that again, so they chose to steer the conversation back on track. “Anyways, enough chit chat. You messed with the statue, right? What’d you get from it?”
“Oh! Right.” Riley pulled some pages from the inside of their coat. “So, I got three more pages and… something else.”
That last thing definitely piqued Jamie’s interest. “Something else?”
“I’ll show you in a second. But, uh, the pages. The first one said something about the statue reviving dead scouts, or it doing something else if everyone was alive.”
Reviving… dead scouts…? What if they had that when… No. It’s not worth thinking about that now. Not like they could do anything about it anyways. They’d just have to accept that they’re gone for good.
Riley continued, unaware of Jamie’s thoughts. “The second page talked about huddling together when we get cold, but…” They looked over at the desert for a moment. “That’s probably not useful to us right now. The final page talked about some moon-shaped fruit and I can only assume that Scoutmaster Myres ate it and went to sleep. So, maybe we should watch out for that.”
“Okay… and what about this ‘something else’ you mentioned?”
“Right. So, when I touched the statue’s hands…” Riley once again dug around in the inside of their coat, before pulling out a rope spool. However, this one was blue and floated up, rather than hanging down. “It gave me this! Seems to be some kind of… anti-gravity rope spool? Strange, but it might be useful later.”
Jamie couldn’t quite draw their attention away from the first page. Why were they so focused on the possibility that this statue could bring back the dead? What were the limits? Who could they revive? How does that even—
Riley waved a hand in front of Jamie, snapping them out of their thoughts. “Hellooooo? Are you there, Jamie?”
“Huh? Uh, what’s up?”
“I asked if you wanted to take a look at all of this yourself. Maybe you’ll have a better idea of what to do with this rope.”
“Oh, uh… sure, I guess?”
They probably shouldn’t answer any of those questions anyways. As fascinating as this discovery was, they weren’t really keen on seeing anyone, especially Jade, dying. They’d already been there with their parents. They weren’t ready for that again, not even with the guarantee that they could just magically come back after touching a statue.
Jamie first took the rope from Riley’s hands. Upon closer examination, it made a very faint humming noise. They gave it a little bit of slack and watched as it raised into the air. They weren’t entirely sure how rope would be useful if it went up instead of down, but maybe they could use it if they got stuck in a pit somewhere. They reeled it back in and gave it to Riley in exchange for the pages.
The first page was… quite ominous, to say the least.
BONUS RULE 3
EMBRACE THE OCCULT
Wuh woh! One of our scouts stepped on a sea urchin and died!!! I was about to get really sad… but one of the other kids touched a weird statue, and brought their friend back to life!
Both halves of the page were separated by imagery of… some weird flames? They didn’t really seem like they were from a fire… so what…? They kept reading, more confused than when they started.
Seems like this island bends the rules of mortality itself… how wacky! Perhaps something else interesting might happen if we use a statue when everyone is still alive…
They drew their attention back to the graphic in the middle… and the mention of some “occult,” whatever that meant. It probably didn’t mean anything good if messing with the statue was truly the cause for Riley being cursed. Now they really didn’t want to test if the statue actually revived scouts in the off-chance that it’d either curse Jade or Luna or somehow make theirs or Riley’s curse worse.
Riley took Jamie’s pause as an opportunity to provide commentary. “It’s a lot to take in. Not only the fact that the statue can somehow revive people… but also give some… magical item, as we saw. Not to mention that it mentioned some kind of occult, as well as the fact that Scoutmaster Myres has been haunting us and that statue cursing me in the first place… gah.” They sighed. “We’re really playing with fire here, Jamie. Seriously. We cannot let Jade or Luna get involved in this.”
Jamie nodded, though they didn’t really understand a lot of it. “Yeah. I’m gonna be honest, I wasn’t really following any of that or whatever the page said… but… yeah.” They then tucked away the first page behind the others and proceeded to the second.
BONUS RULE 4
HUDDLE UP!
As we approach the PEAK, the temperature has begun dropping dramatically. Seeking constant cover is a must, and getting caught out in the open when the wind is strong can be a death sentence.
As if the text and massive rule text weren’t descriptive enough, whoever wrote the page was gracious enough to depict two scouts huddling together while freezing to death. But… it did mention some kind of “peak.” Did that mean that there was really some end goal here…?
If all else fails, huddling with your friends to share body heat might just save you from an icy grave.
“Well, that’s kinda useless considering we’re about to head into a desert.”
Riley shrugged. “Maybe it’ll get colder as we get closer to the top?”
Jamie rolled their eyes. “Really? Because it just seems to be getting hotter the higher we go.” They shook their head. “Whatever. It mentioned some kind of peak, so does that mean we really have a chance at going back home?”
“Assuming we survive what it throws at us, sounds like it.”
Satisfied with Riley’s answer, Jamie continued to read the final page.
BONUS RULE 5
I JUST NEED A NAP…
There was a drawing of a moon-shaped berry surrounded by sparkles. However, the artist appeared to fall asleep before they could finish the drawing, considering a line strayed away from the berry and went through the text beneath it.
I saw such a pretty sight… a beautiful moon-shaped fruit surrounded by fireflies…
I feel so relaxed now… maybe a nap wouldn’t be so bad…
They thought it was a bit funny that the line strayed away, as if it was trying to drive home the point that this berry would put them to sleep if they ate it. It was nowhere near as interesting as the first page, but if it gave them information to help them out… well, they weren’t really going to say no, were they?
“That first page kinda made the other two boring, but… cool, I guess.” They re-organized the pages and handed them back to Riley. “Thanks for showing me.” They considered returning the rope, but decided to keep it for themselves.
Riley tucked the pages back into the inside of their coat, but suddenly appeared to be reminded of something. They then pulled out that little slip of paper that they found on Romero’s body and sighed at the sight of it. Jamie felt a bit uneasy about being reminded of that again.
“I know that look on your face.” Was I making a face…? “I’m not happy about it myself. I’ve been giving it some thought though, and I think I have a theory.”
“Well?”
“Upon closer examination, the handwriting looked oddly familiar. I didn’t identify it at first… but it looked an awful lot like Scoutmaster Edmond’s writing.” Riley chuckled under their breath. “And if that’s the case… he did a terrible job at covering his tracks. But… like I said, that’s just a theory.”
They vaguely recall hearing that name before. They never actually saw the guy, but they did hear about him through other scouts. A majority of those scouts were ones that transferred out of his troop and to theirs, mostly with negative experiences. However, there was one conversation they overheard before that stuck in their mind…
…
A blue scout was sitting beside a green scout on a bench outside. They were both Rabbit scouts and were just wearing their own casual clothing. They were just two of a handful of scouts that left Scoutmaster Edmond’s troop for something better.
Jamie had strategically placed themselves behind a nearby hedge to eavesdrop on them. They likely had some rumors of their own since they came from Scoutmaster Edmond’s troop, and Jamie needed to hear about these.
The blue scout was the first to speak. “It’s crazy how much different Scoutmaster Tina is from Scoutmaster Edmond…”
“Right, like she actually wants to be here?”
“Mhm. And she’s not a complete jerk, too.”
“Like he was to that poor orange kid. I swear, he really seemed to enjoy picking on them in particular, and allowing other scouts to bully them too. I heard he’d often yell at them or tell them they’re worthless if they did something even remotely close to being ‘bad’…”
He was mean to this one scout in particular and let others gang up on them? Interesting…
“I don’t wanna judge or anything but… they seemed kinda poor. Or homeless. I dunno. Maybe he’s taking advantage of that? Doesn’t help that they’re also new to scouting too. They’ve got the standard turtle-colored outfit and all.”
“…I kinda got that impression myself. If so…” The green scout shook their head. “I don’t know how to feel. I kinda regret not dragging them along with me. They seemed nice.”
“Yeah… I told my mom, she said she’s gonna tell the headmasters. Hopefully they’ll check it out or something soon.”
The two of them fell into a silence, which Jamie assumed meant that the conversation was over. How unfortunate.
Jamie wasn’t particularly interested in the scout themselves, but… a scoutmaster allegedly harming a scout behind closed doors left an uneasy feeling in their chest. Scoutmasters were supposed to help scouts, but… adults were crummy, as usual. This wouldn’t be too surprising if it were true…
…
“I… heard about him a while ago.”
Riley cocked their head in curiosity. “You did?”
“Yeah. Some new scouts were talking about him, and how he was cruel towards an orange scout.”
Perplexion swept across Riley’s face. “An… orange scout?”
“Yeah, that scout was pretty new, too.”
“New…?” Riley’s perplexion slowly morphed into horror.
“And they were wearing… a turtle-colored outfit…” Jamie started to understand why. “Which is what Luna’s… wearing… wait.”
“Could Luna be…?”
Suddenly, Luna’s voice popped up from behind. “Y-Yeah. T-That’s me…” Jamie nearly jumped out of their skin in response. It seemed that both Luna and Jade were eavesdropping, though Jamie couldn’t pinpoint when that happened.
“S-Since when were you two…?!”
Jade’s face was… indescribable, to say the least. “We got curious.” Their frown deepened. “We probably shouldn’t have come over here. For several reasons.”
Luna interjected. “W-Why are you two t-talking about my scoutmaster…?”
Jamie and Riley looked at each other with deep concern. “Riley… maybe you should…”
Riley looked at Jamie in shock. “But… won’t they…?”
“Look. It’s too late to turn back now. They’re not gonna get off of our backs until they know why we’re gossiping about them and their scoutmaster.” Jamie paused to figure out what they were going to say next. “And honestly? It’s just gonna hurt more if we keep hiding it from them.”
Luna tilted their head in confusion at Jamie’s mention of “hiding” something, though they said nothing about it.
Riley whispered something under their breath that only Jamie could hear. “Fuck me…” They groaned, then spoke up to where everyone could hear them. “Just, uh… here. Take a look at this. Maybe that’ll… give you the answer you’re looking for.” They then hesitantly offered the note to Luna, who took it after a brief pause.
As Luna’s eyes scanned the note, Jamie’s anxiety skyrocketed through the roof. How were they going to react? Were they going to cry? Run away? Deny it? Were they going to say anything about it? Luna’s unpredictability was scary in the moment.
Instead, Luna only responded with an “oh” and shoved the note back into Riley’s hands.
“H-He wants me…” Luna scoffed. “A-And I was s-stupid enough to think he’d… he’d…”
Jamie frowned at the ‘stupid’ comment. “You’re not stu—”
“Shut up. Leave me alone.” That was the coldest that Luna had ever sounded. Jamie dared not to push them any farther. “I deserve this.”
Luna clenched their fists for a moment. Their scowl was replaced by an incredibly forced smile, their tone matching it. “Let’s go! We have a lot of climbing to do!” They then headed towards the desert without waiting for anyone.
The three of them scrambled to their feet and chased after Luna. As much as they wanted to comfort them, it was abundantly clear that they were closing everyone out for now. That really was a terrible time for Luna to find out, given how harsh the desert seemed. Jamie was really hoping that everyone would be feeling great so it’d go smoothly… but they’d have to live with the consequences of this now.
They’d have plenty to think about between the pages and the confirmation that SME is, in fact, Luna’s scoutmaster.