Lugging in a haul of cargo isn't easy for anyone, especially if you're considered that cargo. Being dragged across the dirt ground doesn't sound very fun for nearly everyone, and if your carriers are very uncoordinated when it comes to pulling you may expect to find a bruise awaiting you from an unhappy tree. Plus if they also have the idea to misuse their cargo by letting the chains that bound it rust right on your body then don't expect any sympathy for you later. What a pity.
Of course, Mira was definitely not the phantom's first class cargo. The rotting chains brushed flakes of unwanted metal and buried into her grey feathers. Great. As if she wasn't any worse off as she was before. The phantoms hit her suddenly and Mira hustled ahead. She could now see an approaching village gradually coming to view. It had a hint of resemblance to something that drowned in her memories, and now it came back to resurface.
Bunny Burrow?
It was a question rather than a thought of relief. After all, if the phantoms wanted to limit contact between Jammers and herself, why march directly to one of the smallest and heart warming villages of all Jamaa?
Anyways, it didn't matter. The blush of blue slowly restored in her feathers when she saw a bunny: small like normal ones, but a bloom of adventure in his face that was goggled complete with round blue glasses. She was too weak to call out to him but luckily he saw her. And then her carriers.
Panic flooded his face. He tried to scurry away on his tiny feet but they were too fast: they knocked the glasses from his face and roughly threw him into a cage. He cried for help and were met by another bunny: a young boy in a top hat. "OLIVER!" he cried and before she could call out to him he was too trapped in the violet cage of the phantoms. He struggled before rendering it all hopeless. Oliver pushed the glasses up to his face. "Jack?"
"Yeah, bro?"
"Sorry,..."
Jack mustered all his strength to laugh weakly. "You know we're done for, right? Haha...anyways we were fails. Fails together, 'kay bro?" Oliver didn't get it. "We are fails. Admit it. We never did anything productive or epic anyways. Hey, wait, is that Mira?"
"There goes our hard work this spring..." Oliver whispered. They turned to see the phantoms dumping in piles of purple goop in the carrot patch. Immediately they shriveled and turned lifeless and mushy.
She wished she could do something, and when she saw the phantoms lugging in two more bunny girls, she shuddered in rage. They pounded them in and gruffly said, "That's all we could find. Throw away the keys and lets go. Station B, you're in charge of keeping the runts in for those adventure things. Move it."
Mira suddenly fumbled with her chains, which suddenly burst with a heavy metal clang. When they all turned their heads, she was off into the forest.
She sat exhausted gasping for air and listened to the clamor. Then a calm voice; different from other phantom voices she heard; spoke up. "I'll go."
As if it was magic a blossom of blue flame flourished in front of her. A wolf stared down at her; recognizable wherever you were. One of Zios's hired Alphas: Greely.
She gasped. This was her chance. "Greely, thank goodness you're here. Come on, lets run from this place. We'll escape from here. Wait, what will we eat? Do you have any...."
He smirked at her. "Mira, stop this foolish talk. I'm not here to rescue you."
She stopped. "Greely?"
Greely paused and glared hard into her eyes. He spoke.
"Why do you care that you ever see the Jammers again? They aren't how they were like before the first wars. Have you ever heard of scamming?"
"Scamming? Greely, what..."
"IT'S TAKING ITEMS FROM EACH OTHER. STEALING. They grew not to care about us...or you...its just what's rare or a spike or headdresses or beta or all that blubber. They are DATING each other. They ignore us. There's even a such a thing as being banned. Do you know what that is?"
She shook her head in fear.
"Exile. Never to return again." He drew in breath. "Now its a game. Not a world like Zios planned it to be. A game. Merely for amusement."
She stared in disbelief.
"And because of that, now they're being all dramatic and either going like WE LOOOOOVE MIRA OH PHOOEY LETS GO ALPHAS and all that nonsense. They draw pictures and make stories of how their animals saved the world...but...."
She spoke up. "At least I have to see them again. Even if they're that corrupted."
"NO." he growled firmly. "You see,...its the game."
"The game is what keeps the Jammers to this world. Without it its just as empty as a tomb. And if Mira ever magically came back, it would be fun...for a little while. Then expect your children to vanish as if they never existed at all. It would be boring, yawn, what kind of game is this.
You see, its better you never come back at all."
There was a silence, and then Greely turned to the direction of the phantoms.
"Its your choice," he whispered. "Stay like this, or never see the Jammers again."
He disappeared into the shadows leaving Mira slowly crying in thought.
Greely tuned back into his phantom form and quickly summoned the nearest phantom. "You." he said. "Mira is coming back in a few minutes. As soon as we leave Bunny Burrow, you are in charge of the petrification and preservation." The phantom nodded awkwardly in a peculiar way he never seen before. He didn't think it very serious, so he turned his back toward it.
Greely may have fooled the phantoms countless times, but this time he was the one fooled.
The Jammer in disguise as a phantom grinned in thought of in charge of Mira's downfall. Finally, she would get the tearing feeling out her paws and release it upon Mira, the most deserving. Not now, but soon.
Very soon.
