Noelle - Day 121 (Full-On RMS Marathon Mode)

Ok, you've got me going now...
More RMS coming your way!  I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up though....  But first, a fall photo challenge pic.

I'm considering just quitting this now and posting the rest in one go.  Opinion?

And now....(drum roll please)...the RMS post that you really didn't want to read!  Click the link below, if you dare.

Random Marvel-based Story (Parts 69 & 70) {Running out of pre-typed parts here....}

“A kept secret is a good secret!”  Danny insisted, as they rifled through Jess’s apartment.  “I can’t believe I let  you guys talk me into this.”

“Shut up, Fortune Cookie,” Spider-man snapped, pressing against the back of her kitchen cabinets for hidden doors.  They had already discovered three guns, five knifes, and a safe that even Luke couldn’t get open, although Ava convinced them she had loosened it a little when she slide a paperclip into the rim.  She had been working so furiously at checking Jess’s walls that nobody had the courage to tell her that area had already been check.

Peter switched to the bottom cabinets, saying, “Don’t you WANT to find Jess?”

Indeed, Jess wasn’t at her apartment, even though JACKIE was in her usual spot across the street, disguised as a regular motorcycle.  They had agreed that Jess had stolen a car - how else would she be moving at 75 miles per hour? - but had given up on trying to track her.  “She’s the techie on the team,” Luke had said sadly.  “Finding stuff is not my thing.”

Danny sat down on the couch, ignoring Ava as she shook out his pillows.  His hand slid into his backpack unconsciously and brushed against a rough piece of paper, its edges sharp and fresh.  Confused, he pulled it out, dragging his fingertips over the cream paper.

“What’s that?” Nova said, almost accusingly.  He snatched the paper away with a frown, scanning over the note scrawled onto it.  “‘Golden flash, bones to smash, carnival of fun.  Help me now, before it runs foul, to carnival I run.  I could use some help, Tony, and not from SHEILD.  Please’,” He quoted, and they all knew there was only one person who could have written it.

“Wait,” Danny said suddenly, although he didn’t know why.  He pushed open the door to Jess’s room, following the weird fuzzy in the back of his mind.

Luke slid into the room behind him.  “What’s up, man?”

“I don’t know,” Danny said honestly, patting against the wall that Jess’s bed frame, muttering, “Carnival, carnival, carnival....”

“Yep, he’s finally lost it,” Nova said sarcastically, leaning against the wall next to him and nearly falling into a hidden compartment.

“Carnival!”  Danny said proudly, making Ava jump and glare at him.

“Ok, maybe Danny has lost his bonkers, but he did - kinda - find the secret compartment we’ve been looking for for over an hour.  Explanation, blondie?”  Spider-man retorted, arms crossed, from the doorway.

“I don’t know,” Danny muttered, feeling through the dark compartment.  “Something in the back of my mind about ‘carnival’ and this wall being secret.  That’s all I got.”  After a half-second of silence, he pronounced, “It’s empty.”

Ava bent down, something Danny hadn’t thought to do, and discovered that there was a key on the roof of the compartment.  Why didn’t I think of that?! The blond boy thought, cursing his luck.  Jess would have never made a dumb mistake like that.

“I can’t get it out!”  Ava said in frustration, tugging at the key with all her cat-powered strength.  Luke couldn’t get it out, and neither could the combined strength of Nova and Spider-man.

Danny peered at the tiny golden key, winking from the top of the secret safe.  “Carnival,” he whispered and pulled if off easily.  The team stared at him.

“Well that was anticlimactic and very unexpected how did you do that exactly?”  Spider-man said, his voice scaling from calm to half-panicked.

Ava snatched the key away before Danny could answer and jammed it into the safe.  It clicked open.  “Finally,” she muttered.

The only thing inside was a tiny silver gadget with a single button.  With a shrug that clearly said, ‘we’ve made it this far...’ Ava pushed the button and set the tech down.  They held their breath, hoping they hadn’t just blown something up, but instead, a tiny, metallic voice echoed out of the gadget, turning it into a mini speaker.

Danny sucked in his breath when he realised it was Jess’s voice.

“Um, hi guys.  I meant for Danny to find this at some point, but he’s to nice to search my room, so I know it was one of my other friends,” Jess said.  Her voice caught oddly on the word ‘friends’ and it seemed shattered by sorrow when she continued.  “I must have disappeared if you’ve lost this much trust in me, and I honestly...I probably not coming back.  It’s dangerous for you guys, for me, for...some other people that I really care about.”

“Still keeping secrets,” Ava spat, before Nova shushed her.

The recorded Jess sniffed, silencing them all.  “You were amazing, all of you, but now I need you to watch you backs and trust each other.  You have great friends, people that trust you -” Danny scratched his neck uncomfortably “-and that’s great.  I wish I could say the same thing,” Jess’s voice caught again and there was a crackly silence for half a moment before she continued.

“I wish it didn’t have to turn out like this, but I got things to do and places to go, y'know?”  She sniffed again.  “Whatever happens, stay out of it. Stay away from me.  Things get, um, dangerous around me, in a bad way.  Please, I don’t want you guys to get hurt.”  The recording ended and the button popped back up.

Danny sank down onto his bed, his brain refusing to come to peace with this.  It was too much.  No.  Jess couldn’t just up and leave like that.  No.  I will find you, he thought furiously.  And you’ll have so much to pay for when I do.

********

“I still don’t understand this riddle,” Ava said for the hundredth time, staring at the cream-colored paper Jess had left in Danny’s bag and twiddling with a pen.  They had written down all their ideas and worked through every verse to no availe, and pretty much all of them were sick of it.

“Golden flash - maybe the bomb?  Could she have made it here before us?” Spider-man wondered.  “I’m not even going to start on ‘bones to smash’.  Carnival of fun - Circus of Crime maybe?”

Ava glanced at her SHIELD watch, muttering, “No, Hawkeye captured the Circus of Crime like two months ago.  Unless the deal was to break the Circus of Crime out of SHIELD jail, though I can’t imagine why.  Maybe Jess’s date was a mercenary?”

“Um...what does ‘foul’ mean?” Nova said, scratching his head and reminding Spider-man very much of a confused baboon.

“Your intelligence,” Ava snapped and moved onto the next verse.  “Help me now isn’t a very villainous way to say something, unless it has some kind of hidden meaning.  Neither is ‘to carnival I run’, unless we’re counting Carnival as Circus of Crime.  This riddle makes no sense!”  She leaned back and glared at Danny as if he should know the answers.  He didn’t move.

“It’s not Jess’s handwriting,” Luke said triumphantly like that was progress.  He pulled a paper out of the missing girl’s backpack and slapped it down on the table next to the note.

“Jess changed her handwriting every homework assignment.  She liked seeing her teacher’s faces when she turned them in,” Danny said flatly from the couch, refusing to look up.

“Ok, that changes things up,” Spider-man said, his voice dripping in sarcasm.

Nova stood up and jammed his helmet on over his chocolate brown hair.  “Who cares?”  He said abruptly.  “Whether or not it’s Jess’s handwriting, this is all she gave us to go on.  I’m going to the helicarrier and see what I can find on the computer.”

“No!”  Peter snapped.  “She said NOT to go to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Luke snatched the note away and glanced over it for half-a-second before saying, “Guys, this note isn’t even for us.  See?  It’s addressed to Tony.  Do we know a Tony?”

“Yes,” Danny said in the same flat, unhappy voice.  “Jess always calls Iron Man by his first name - Tony.  They know each other really well.  She was never asking for our help.”  He could feel all of his team member’s eyes on him, but he didn’t move.

“Whatever.  We’re supposed to stay out of it, remember?”  Luke said.

“Well that makes absolutely NONE of this riddle make sense!”  Ava groaned, crossing off their theories with a pen.  There were none left when she was done.

“Look at us!  We’re already falling apart.  Jess said to trust each other, not turn into an arguing mess!”  Spider-man angrily, pointing at the recording.

“Who cares?!”  Nova yelled, cutting across Spider-man’s tirade.  “Jess is gone.  She never told us the truth and she still hasn’t.  She lied to us.  She lied to all of us!”

“When did she actually lie to our face?”  Ava whispered, reminding Sam that there were other people in the building.

“Luke, she promised she would never disappear.  Remember?  You remember that?  She promised, and you can see how much that means to her.  She’s disappeared twice now since then - once after the Art Gallery and now.  She lied to us.”

Danny stood up, silencing all of the quarreling teens.  “Enough.  Jess is gone, but we are together and we’re still a team.  If you see no hope, then there is none to see.”  He carefully folded the cream paper and slid it back into his bag.  “Arguing will only rip us from the inside out.  Please, get out of my apartment now.”

Nova nodded briskly, a tiny agreement, and flew out the window, disappearing into the cloudless sky.  Ava gathered up her evidence, scowling, and Luke slammed his glasses on so hard they nearly shattered.  “Whatever,” Spider-man said, webbing the door open.

“What is that?” White Tiger said with a gasp.  On the door, sizzling red against the wood, was scrawled the words ‘Shadow was here’.  Spider-man dragged his bare fingers against the curve of the O and quickly pulled them back.

“Ouch!”  He snapped, forgetting all grace and jamming his burnt fingers in his mouth.  “Don’t touch those,” Peter added unnecessarily, pointing with his non-injured hand.

Silently, Danny pulled the note out of his backpack and held it up against the burning-hot words.  “It’s the same handwriting,” He said quietly, and nobody knew how to answer.

And you know I'll be back later today with even more story parts. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!