Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Hatkid was lying down on her bed with her head to the ceiling, she had been crying for hours the previous day. Now, she didn’t feel particularly sad. Well, she was sad, but most of all, she just felt… empty.

What was the point of keep going? What was the point of anything at all? She had endured so many things on that planet. She had gone through so many things since she had left her home just so she could find more timepieces in the hopes she could finally have a family!

Her parents were, in a way, heroes. Just as Tim, they went from planet to planet collecting timepieces, and they were pretty damn good at it. They would save people over and over, and would go to give their hand to someone who required their aid.

It had been that day, on that cursed day. Due to a short circuit in one of the spaceships, a captain ended up teleported too close to a black hole, and was being sucked by it little by little. He called for help and her parents ended up answering the call. They left her with Tim, a long time family friend who had met his dad in one of their adventures. She was very little and didn’t remember their faces at all, but she could swear they promised her they would go back, but they never did.

By the time they arrived, it was too late. They tried to go and rescue the lost Captain, but ended up getting absorbed themselves, and the rest was history.

Tim had taken care of her ever since. He was nice, to the point he could even be considered his grandpa, but his responsibilities always kept him busy. He was considered the CEO of time by many due to his abilities and experience with time rifts, and he had a heart of gold. Even then, Tim was most of the time absent at home. He was a good mentor, for sure, and being away for so long and so frequently made Hatkid try and learn how to sustain herself. How to wash the clothes, how to take care of her things, and how to cook…well perhaps maybe not to cook that much, but that’s because takeaway was available some of the time.

She liked Tim, but still, she couldn’t help but feel alone. At school, other kids would talk about their parents from time to time, and at holidays, she would be left alone all by herself, all she wanted to celebrate with someone else.

Tim had left her work on a ship their parents had left. It was a small ship with just one room they had as a spare for small missions, but now, it was all for her. He taught her about time based propulsion and everything she needed to know about timepieces.

“If used the right way, these pieces can be used to rewind time!” Tim said.

Hatkid showed him in a small notebook a drawing of her using timepieces right towards what seemed a black hole. Inside of them, two bigger stick figures were inside, happily waiting.

She had always been a child of very few words, at first Tim had been worried she had issues with language, but she was able to answer questions and express herself through illustrations and drawings, and written tests for her were a piece of cake.

It just seemed that Hatkid didn’t like to talk that much at all. After a while, he stopped thinking about it.

***

“Oh… do you want to use the time pieces to save your parents?” He said, grabbing the drawing she had made.

The kid nodded.

“Oh well, you would need a lot of them to do that.”

“How many?”

“Lots and lots of them.” He patted her head, trying to avoid telling her the truth. He wasn’t strong enough.

Hatkid thought for herself back then that once she could go out in space, she would go and get as many timepieces as she could to go back and save his parents.

***

The first time she left, Tim had been angry, worried something would have happened to her, but after she showed herself capable of collecting timepieces, he got her into the space cadets academy.

Her time there was short though, feeling she knew most of the time that they were teaching her already, and wanting to go and explore the universe to find more timepieces, she left and went to explore the universe. She had gotten lots of timepieces, explored so many worlds, until that day she got stranded in Mafia Town, and the rest was history.

*BEEP BEEP*

She heard the screen in the main room ring over, but she didn’t stand up to go and pick it up. She was too tired.

*BEEP BEEP*

The ring kept going for a while until finally stopping.

*Beep beep*

Now what was ringing was something else. It was a little alien device that was small enough to fit in her pocket. It was a super advanced computer with a screen that responded to tactile feedback from the fingers. Due to its hyper advanced technology, it was hard to keep it in charge, but this intricate device, when on, had the ability to receive and send internet data, play music, videos, games, and even more. It was called the tritonicprocessingnodesledxenonwarpanator. Although the cats of Nyakuza Metro had something similar called smartphones.

Normally she couldn’t get any calls from anywhere considering getting reception from far away in space was incredibly hard, but well, if someone was calling now, she might as well answer and see how it is.

“Hello! How are you? I haven’t been able to talk to you in a long while!” She checked the screen on her device, it was Bowkid, calling from their home planet.

“Mr. Tim told me about what happened. I’m just really sorry to hear that, I was going to call you sooner but I just didn’t know what to say and I wanted to cheer you up but then I thought that perhaps you would like some alone time first but then I tried to call and the signal didn’t go through at all and I said oh god I will never get to talk to her and I thought that maybe I could send her a message but still I wanted to see you and oh god I just couldn’t decide! I’m sorry!”

Hatkid looked at her tired expression and the mouth opened.

“Look I know I have been a bit busy myself but well you know my parents have been pushing me a bit with the notes in the academy and we can’t lose scholarship if we did that it would be like oh so bad but it is fine I mean we worked so hard for it oh and there is this magazine that has been pushing me since it is going to be their anniversary edition soon and I was doing a photo-shoot and you can’t imagine how long that takes but I still want to see you maybe one day so I just hope by now you can hang on in there okay?”

“Ehh.” Hatkid groaned.

“If you can, you can write me a message or something. I mean I know the signal there is pretty bad but still I will do my best or maybe you can come home? I mean if you don’t want to that's okay you can take your time just remember that I still care about you I just hope everything goes well for you.”

Bowkid hung up, but immediately afterwards she sent the girl a text.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know, not now.” Hatkid wrote her back.

“Okay, I don’t know for how long I will be able to contact you but if you come back remember where you can find me, okay? You can still write to me here and maybe just maybe it will reach me on time, okay? Okay! See ya later alligator!”

Hatkid left her tritonicprocessingnodesledxenonwarpanator on the bed, that with just the call had lost its charge.

Bowkid was a good friend, and Hatkid was aware of that. They had met back at school and they had become inseparable ever since. Hatkid sometimes would go and spend time at her home and would wish she would get adopted by her parents so they could finally become sisters, but the thing was that Bowkid’s parents suffered a lot of hardships in their lifetime, they couldn’t allow themselves to take care of another kid, even if they thought Hatkid was a good child. This also pushed Bow Kid to continue with her scholarship further, when she got into modeling as very young, which caused them to drift apart not because Bowkid now didn’t have as much time as before to spend with Hakid in the end.

The sound of a small thump in the bed pulled Hatkid away from her thoughts. She turned around and looking at the floor, she saw Rumbi.

She picked them up and hugged them tightly. Rumbi was, in a way, just like her. Rumbi would speak if she ever needed help (or when she wanted Hatkid to stop bothering her), but otherwise, they liked to be quiet, more of action rather than words, and somehow, the two of them had quickly become great friends.

Even when Rumbi was a friend, her spot was more of a pet. She was designed to clean and be efficient, and she had gone way further than that. She would give her emotional support, and give her company with her presence, aside from Tim, it was the only family Hatkid really had.

Aside from Rumbi, Hatkid wanted a guardian, a parent, somebody who can teach her things, somebody who would accompany and show her the way, Hatkid was a really strong girl, but she still could feel weak at times, and she wanted someone to support her when she needed, somebody who could leave the house and go on with her on adventures.

Hatkid petted Rumbi slightly. She wasn’t going to find someone else to take care of her, right? It was just her and her pet, it wasn’t like she knew any other kids without parents, like her and… and Mustache Girl.

Mustache Girl?

Egad! That was right! Mustache Girl was all by herself, right? She used to live in Mustache Town before it was taken by the Mafia and became Mafia Town. She was older than Hatkid so maybe… maybe she could become sort of her older sister? Like an older sister that helped her out. That’s right, she had gone way out of hand last time she got her timepieces, but she learned her lesson, right? It was also the duty of younger sisters to help their older sisters when they needed or something? Right? Right? It had to be.

That could totally work! They could probably live on her ship… oh but she just had one room, maybe she could make the lab into a second room… no, no way, okay maybe it would take a lot of time adding a second room.

But wait, wait, she was taken ahead of herself, first, she had to befriend her again, Mustache Girl had been a bit of a meanie in the past. But perhaps, she had grown as a person, and she was strong, she could go along with her and teach her about things!

Without thinking it twice, Hatkid picked up her hat from the floor and teleported over to the Subcon Forest, maybe she could finally start and create a family, a real family!

***

Meanwhile in the Subcon Forest, Snatcher was spending his time reading under the big tree. It felt like such a nice day overall. The whole mood in the forest was spooky, there was a certain air of desperation and he just had another soul of a while ago!

A tourist called Steve had gone through the forest looking for places to take pictures on, a real adventurer Steve was. He seemed useless, so he just took his soul right on the spot! Oh, it was so delicious! He had felt a bit down the day before when he had been in Hatkid’s spaceship, but he had stopped thinking about it, the whole energy from the ship the kid had been living in was just getting into him as a spirit, yeah, it was just that and nothing else, but now he was back into business.

Overall, everything was calm enough for him to read, his minions were doing other things, not bothering him, and the brat with the whiskers was getting some work done. There was just nothing that could go wrong on that day at all.

At the other side of the forest, Mustache Girl was working along with a shovel digging up bodies and receiving some orders from a Subcondite.

“So you say you want to move this… where?” She wiped the sweat from her front. With all the work that she was doing the heat had become unbearable, but she didn’t want to take off her hood just yet, she felt that if she did it could get lost forever, and she didn’t have that many clothes to replace it with.

“Uh… boss said I could put it anywhere, so maybe close to his grave?”

“Where is his grave?”

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“I think… north east over here, I think 2 or 3 kilometers?”

“What? 3 kilometers? You want me to carry around your corpse for 3 kilometers into the forest?”

“I mean… yeah, but maybe I could help!”

“You can’t even help! Your arms are miniscule!”

That was another of the tasks Snatcher had given her to him, move the graves of the subcondites to places they wanted. Perhaps they couldn’t remember what their previous life was, but having their grave helped them to remember they had been alive.

“Why do you even want to move it that far? It is the same thing if it is here or if it is there, it is all going to be eaten by bugs!” The girl complained.

“Sorry.” The Subcondite scratched his head. “I guess, I just wanted to feel closer to the boss in a way, that’s all. He’s really important for some of us, in a way.” Even when Mustache Girl couldn’t see their faces, she noticed they sounded… sad?

“Alright, fine, let’s just get over with it and… wait a minute, this is just a skeleton.” Inside the coffin only the bones and its clothes remained.

“Oh look at me! I used to be quite handsome if I say so myself.”

Mustache Girl looked at the skeleton, a bit confused. The corpse had a green flower dress, a corset and shoulder pads.

“Those are women's clothes.”

“Oh, I guess I used to be very pretty then.”

“You don’t remember if you were a guy or a girl?”

“Well, now that you ask, not really.”

“Is this even your corpse?”

“I dunno, could be.”

When Hatkid finally found Mustache Girl, she saw her with a deadpanning tired expression that was almost worrying, had she lost her life completely after Snatcher took her soul? She walked closer to investigate.

“What is even the point of this if you don’t know if this is your corpse or not?” She finally snapped. That was the Mustache Girl Hatkid always knew.

“Well, you know, it’s just–”

“If you want to make me move bones at random through the whole forest, just do it yourself!” She threw out the shovel in the subcondite’s face, who ended up falling backwards.

“No wait, let me explain, this might be or might not be my corpse of when I was alive, but it is still the corpse the boss did let me choose to represent my past life, it is the grave I have been looking at since I started working for the boss and the one that has accompanied me all this time! I know it might not mean just to you, but it still means a lot to me.” The Subcondite stood up, slowly and rubbing his forehead where the shovel had hit them.

Mustache Girl sighed.

“Alright, I guess, we can– wait, what are you doing here?” Mustache Girl finally saw Hatkid arrive. Hatkid did a captain salute just like when she had done back in the ship. She was now ready to hear the girl out, and maybe later they could talk about being sisters!

The girl took the coffin and closed it, slowly getting it out of the hole it was in.

“What, what are you doing?!” Mustache Girl exclaimed, was she going to take it to Snatcher or something? “Give me that!”

Hatkid jumped over her, dodging her.

“Give me that back!” She stood up after falling on the floor and chase Hatkid over and over, who still had the coffin on her back, if one thing Hatkid was god for was carrying things, aliens just seemed to have a lot of strength.

“I wanna help!” Hatkid finally said, making Mustache Girl stop on her tracks.

“You want to help? Why? She looked at her confused.

Hatkid just smiled in return.

“Look, if you try anything funny or try to get me killed. I swear I’m not going to hold back.” She crossed her arms. She then looked back towards the subcondite. “Okay so, where now?”

“Follow me, newbies! We have a long way to go!”

And so the two girls walked through the forest. Mustache Girl looked around and she felt shivers down her spine. There was just something inherently evil about the forest that disturbed her. There were Subcondites hanging up by the neck over several trees. Was that how they finally found their existence? Mustache Girl remembered hearing Snatcher that the Subcondites could not die, perhaps that's the way they slept? It was hard to tell. Mustache Girl felt she was going to end up finding something she wasn’t going to like, something inexplicable and messed up, something horrible, something….

“Bush dog!” Hatkid exclaimed, looking at what seemed to be an animal covered in bush leafs running in four legs. She started chasing them over, until they finally jumped to a branch of a tree.

“Bush… cat?” She asked, and jumped over towards the branch of the tree.

“Hatkid! Come on! We don’t have all day!” Mustache Girl scolded her. It seemed the coffin was about to fall at any time, but Hatkid had surprisingly good equilibrium.

The girl finally patted the cat covered in bush leaves and smiled. There were some things of the forest she really liked, outside of the all spooky scary stuff.

She jumped back down, and the three of them continued their walk.

“We are here, newbies!” The Subcondite exclaimed, already excited. “The grave of the boss should be around here.” They pointed out.

“What isn't marked?” Mustache Girl asked.

“The boss is very reserved about where his corpse was buried. But trust me, I know all about it, I was here when he buried it himself.”

Mustache Girl and Hatkid shrugged.

“So if his grave is here, I guess you want us to bury your corpse… here?” Mustache Girl moved a few inches towards the left, guessing how much space would be necessary to separate the two graves.

“Uh… that’s right, or wait… No yes, that’s it! You should bury me here.”

“Okay…” Mustache Girl was going to start shoveling but she then noticed Hatkid had started shoveling before her.

“Hey… I was going to… alright, fine.” She took another shovel and started digging as well close to where Hatkid was. “Hey! Don’t throw what you shovel towards here! It is falling on me!” She exclaimed, but Hatkid apparently didn’t listen, because she was still throwing all the mud and dirt towards her, so Mustache Girl started doing the same in retaliation.

“Hey!” Hatkid exclaimed back, at the end the shoveling ended up in a battle to see who would throw more dirt to the other girl, until both girls noticed they had reached a both buried deep underneath.

“Is that… a corpse?” Mustache Girl tried hitting it with the shovel, when the corpse had started moving.

“What the…” Both girls tried to step back and ended up falling over as they saw the corpse rising from the earth and started to float. The corpse had long arms and its skin was light blue. It was dressed with blue pants and a red jacket with wrists around his wrists. His eyes were of a deep black and his grin was horribly long.

“Oh, how good it is to finally be out!” The corpse stretched his arms as if it had woken up from a long sleep.”

“AAAH!” Hatkid threw the shovel towards it, but still failed her shot.

“It… it talks!” Mustache Girl pointed out at the corpse that was slowly getting close to them. She noticed the Subcondite had hidden behind them.

“I think the boss is going to be pretty mad!”

“Mad? About what?” She turned around, looking for the Subcondite, when she turned back to the corpse she noticed it was offering its arms to both girls to help them stand up.

“Oh please! A corpse that speaks? I am pretty sure that is not the first weird thing you have seen in this forest! And it for sure will not be the last.” The voice of the corpse sounded familiar to the girls, it was almost like Snatcher's, but a lot more gentle, suave, and without any of its ghostly echo.

“Who are you? What even are you?” Mustache Girl finally decided to accept its hand and Hatkid followed, slowly standing up with the help of the corpse. The girl with the mustache looked at him, slightly disgusted and scared. Hatkid on the other hand now just looked confused.

“Oh, excuse me that I haven’t presented myself, girls! I used to be the prince of this forest, the legitimate king and soon to be leader of this place.” The corpse bowed to the girls and waved his hand over. “But now, you can call me Moonjumper.”

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