Lewis gently closed the door to his apartment, treading in with a heavy sigh. Immediately he was greeted by an excitable blue creature, similar to Chief in appearance, but with a small pair of goggles instead of a headband. It swiftly began to babble excitedly and tug on Lewis’s pant leg for several seconds before producing something coherent.
“Boka maka zwio! Boka maka zwio!”
Lewis smiled. He had some important news to share with the other gremlins, but it could wait a bit. “Alright, alright, show me what you made…”
The creature grinned, bouncing about excitedly and shouting. “Pai! Pai!” Suddenly, the creature fell silent, the grin still lingering on its face. A moment later it had bolted off, and was shouting at Lewis from around the corner. “Patta-patto! Patta-patto!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Lewis finally caught up to the gremlin in the kitchen, where it was standing proudly next to the microwave. Well, it was really only half microwave at this point, with half its plating removed, a whole pack of batteries taped to the side, several old computer parts attached to various places, a paper clip strapped to the ceiling of the inner compartment, and an electrical wire connecting all the jury rigged bits together.
Next to the scrapped together machination was the gremlin who had greeted him, and two more goggled gremlins. This was not a good sign. Widget, Tinker, and Gears were the only three thinkers Lewis had, and trouble always followed whenever they all worked together.
Widget, the group’s leader, and the one who had greeted Lewis at the door, cleared his throat briefly before shouting to the other two. “Powao!”
Immediately, Gears grabbed a bag of microwave popcorn, struggling to drag it into the strange device the three of them had made. Unfortunately however, they made the lethal mistake of stepping inside the microwave to place the bag. This presented an opportunity, an opportunity which Tinker responded to with such speed, that you could have sworn the whole thing had been preplanned.
The microwave’s door swung shut with a quiet but menacing “thud”, to which Gears responded with a face of expected surprise, and Lewis with a disapproving sigh. He had never understood the humor of the non-king gremlins. Even though they could easily be revived by their king, and even though they didn’t feel physical pain, it still seemed a bit cruel. His followers continued to insist it was all in good fun though, and that there were no hard feelings, so he had decided to let it go.
He still winced as lightning spiked through the popcorn and into poor Gears though, the almost sarcastically cheerful popping sound echoing throughout his mind for a few seconds.
Once he was sure it was over, Lewis slowly opened his eyes. There was nothing left but a clean blue goo coating the inside of the microwave; a telltale sign of a dead gremlin, as well as the only trace ever left. “You guys are gonna clean that up, right?”
Tinker was laughing too hard to respond, but Widget barely managed to squeeze out a thumbs up and a short “Yoi!”
Lewis raised an eyebrow skeptically. “And you aren’t going to make Gears help you, right?”
Tinker and Widget instantly stopped laughing. “Na! Gaka?”
“Death may only be a minor inconvenience to you guys, but that doesn’t mean anyone should have to clean up their own corpse.”
Tinker was about to protest, but was interrupted when Gears, freshly revived from the preprepared gremessence pool, scampered into the room, carrying tiny mops.
“Thank you Gears, but you didn’t need to bring three…” Lewis stopped himself. He had almost forgotten about the announcement! He needed to make it quick, before he got distracted again. “On second thought, we’re going to need a lot more than three…”
Gears looked up at Lewis quizzically.
“I’ll explain in a bit…” Lewis turned out to face the rest of the house, echoing his voice throughout the many passageways that had been built into his home. “Clan meeting! Kitchen! Now!”
In a flash, hundreds of gremlins were lined up on the kitchen floor. Most were short and pudgy, but there were two that were large and bulky, and one small sleek one in the back wearing a ninja mask. In front of them all was Chief, barking at the rest to be silent, then turning to face Lewis expectantly.
Lewis cleared his throat. “Right, as you all know, your existence, and my true species must be kept a secret from the humans at all costs. However, today, Pandora insisted quite strongly on visiting us here. Of course, I normally would have refused, but she listed several confusing reasons for coming over. I didn’t know how to respond, and was worried that saying no would give us away, so I panicked and said yes.”
The gremlins collectively gasped.
“Yes, yes, I know. I not only allowed someone to come into our sanctuary, but Pandora of all people! Possibly the most troublesome human of them all. We have three hours. Failure is not an option.”
The gremlins nodded, then scrambled off to clear away anything suspicious, leaving Lewis behind to mentally prepare himself.
Now, gremlins weren’t exactly religious. Hell, not only were they the only species aside from humans that didn’t worship the nine, but they were primarily atheists. In times like these however, Lewis couldn’t help but find himself praying to Kigre that everything would work out.
A note from the
authorninja:Well, now we know where the rest of chapter 2 went…
Hopefully you’ve all started to get an idea of what exactly a gremlin is at this point, but don’t worry if you still have questions. There are still plenty more chapters to get to know them.