A Pearl Before Swine Pt. 02 Ch. 04-06

The pinnacle of her would be embarrassment was her torn costume. It looked like a sturdy OlympiaWeave design, but even the strongest weaves can be cut with the proper tools. Bare skin and blood showed through in several places, but the most started at portion of her body was her protruding breast. Even laying on her back it stood out. Simon estimated it as a D-cup, but his experience with women was about as extensive as the legality of his work. The rubbery peak flattened somewhat but still held most of its firm shape. Killcreek's goons never let anyone near her, but sometimes Karl slapped parts of her body. Many eyes riveted on the jiggling flesh when he slapped her tits.

Her firm and curvy body would be the wet dream of many creepy perverts for the next week, but Simon had bigger fish to fry.

Chapter 6: A Search for Meaning

It was dark when Evan awoke that night. He passed it off as nervousness for graduation in the morning, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Floating in his chamber, he pulled up his messages again. The URGENT message caught his eye again. He had completely forgotten in his awkward rush to extract himself from the whole Clarisse and Sierra incident.

Now that he saw the message again, he remarked (he does do that a lot) that it was strange his mother had not answered his query. It was normal for her to be absent for extended periods of time on these business trips, but he usually got some sort of response in the morning. It had been three days since he sent the message, so he pinged her again to refresh the notification.

A flash of movement caught his eye. He only caught a glimpse of a shadow, but it almost looked like something was dashing across the rooftops. Resigning himself to a sleepless night, he flushed his chamber and paced around the room. Bringing up the mysterious note, he attempted to decipher it.

The preamble (see chapter 1 for the full transcript) seemed straightforward enough even through it was unnecessarily convoluted with water and swimming metaphors. "Swimming towards deeper waters" and "carrying dangerous cargo" were pretty basic attempts to say this man was some sort of detective. The fact that his mother was apparently the one swimming towards deeper waters sent a pang of worry through Evan's chest.

He kept reading to the first rhyming verse: "In the light where you were found, but mightier than steel." Nothing about that verse made sense to Evan. If light and might were part of some vaguely worded metaphor that apparently he should be able to solve, he thought he would be a mighty disappointment to this mysterious benefactor.

The rest of the verses were just as much of a puzzle. "From the nest upon the ground. Ten spins before the crash. In the dark of Neptune's gaze. The names spell out the seal. The soft cover through the haze, shall vanish in a flash." The only reference that made any sense to Evan was "Neptune's gaze".

"Out of the sight of water" he said to himself with his head in his hands. That could be anywhere. Sure most of the city was draped in tanks, tubes, and rivers, but there were probably thousands of indoor locations that didn't use some sort of aquarium for decoration. "Maybe the other clues are directing me to a place where there is only one spot out of the water's sight" he mused. "Or maybe its just another Neptune cursed metaphor."

Realizing he had been studying this note for over an hour, Even stretched and noticed his pet puffersquid (neither a pufferfish nor a squid, see chapter 3) named ELM had molted. The mollusk didn't have a hard shell, but over time, the calcite deposits in the spines spread out to create a hardened skin. Eventually ELM covers himself in some sort of gauzy cocoon and emerges again. Usually there is no distinguishable change whatsoever, but this time Evan remarked on the fact that his two longer feeding tentacles were considerably larger. Additionally, while his engineered spines used to permanently stick out, they now seemed to retract slightly.

"You're growing up buddy" he poked at the glass. "Hey by any chance to you make anything of this?" he said shoving the mysterious note up in front of the tank. The round eyes just stared back as the tentacles moved some leftover shrimp to the beak to be munched on.

"Speak of the depths" Evan muttered as he received a morning message from Marcus reading: "You ready to be a grown up?" Evan quickly packed his bags and headed to school early to meet his friends and make the early shift of graduation practice.

At the auditorium, making hundreds of students learn an orderly queue went about as well as expected. Evan, Leena, and Marcus were near the front, so they spent the next several hours discussing the mysterious note. Evan was walking with Leena, and Marcus was walking with some girl he knew from his internship, and when she left, Evan decided that there was no threat from revealing his secret letter to his friends.

Leena skipped out to use the restroom, so Marcus got the first shot at the cipher. It stumped him too, but eventually he had a couple suggestions. "Maybe 'mightier than steel' represents the written word. The pen is mightier than the sword or something like that." Marcus clapped Evan on the back. "Hey all I get are spam messages from people wanting free NeptuneTech stuff. At least you get the cool ones."

"You don't think this is serious?" Evan replied with a nervous wave of relaxation.

"Nah dude. You kidding me? Someone says they are desperate and out of options, but deigns to write a rhyming poem for you?" Marcus scoffed, "please".

At that point, all conversation froze as Leena walked back into the picture. Both Evan and Marcus' eyes and mouths froze in solid circles as she sauntered back in a new graduation gown. She winked at them, spread her arms, and Evan couldn't believe he was still standing at the sight.

Her traditional full body gown had lost several inches, revealing her high-heel clad ankles. The black cloth had been embroidered with a silver fluffy lining which accentuated the missing sections of the getup. She had held it closed on the walkup, but now the wide open sections fluttered in the breeze. Moving upwards, the front and back flaps struggled to meet each other. Smooth legs glanced through the narrow cut up to the hip where she surely could not have been wearing anything but a high reaching string underneath. The cut was narrow, but the subtlety ended there. The silver neck collar which looked almost like a tiny fur scarf, sloped gracefully, then fell into an abyss. Although there was enough material to cover her frontside if she held the gown together, the cut showcased more skin than both legs combined. From bare collarbone, the neckline plunged around her breasts and down to her navel. It was not form fitting, so the nearly exposed contours of her usually hidden form were not truly revealed, but the width of the gap dismissed the notion of large breasts. The one upside in Evans eyes of the lack of a form fitting gown, was the fact that you could almost get a peek at the right angle.

Leena's return in a more revealing gown was marked with decided silence as she let them stew in a mix of shock and embarrassment at being caught staring for a moment. "What?" she poked at them. "My parents can't stop me now."

Still caught in an awkward blush, they boys were bailed out by Leena asking what they were looking at. "You reading about Dr. Malcomb's recent lapse in form. Apparently he missed both a lecture AND a city council meeting before stumbling back apologizing."

Evan started to describe the mysterious note, and Leena immediately pounced. "'From the nest upon the ground.' Our little hideout in Sector 33?" Evan and Marcus stared at the note again then voiced their agreement. Just then an icy chill of realization swept through Evan.

"And 'Ten spins before the crash' ... I don't know what the crash is, but the clock tower that we stowed all those toys under always ran 10 seconds long for every minute." When no one voiced the concern he was thinking, he continued. "This isn't fake. This person knows specific details about my childhood."

Having interrupted before the explanation finished, Leena grabbed the message back, unusually silent for once. Her newfound concern did not ease Evan's fears.

"Well it is still probably just a prank from someone who knows you. Maybe in the school?" Marcus proposed hesitantly. It made sense, but now even Marcus had begun to question the note.

It took nearly an hour after the doors were open to the public for the ceremony to start. Even in further discussions about the note, Evan kept his eyes on the doors and stands. Finally, his mind was distracted when he and Leena walked down the hastily carpeted auditorium aisle. Halfway down, Leena let go of her gown and raised her arms above her head. The dean only shook his head in resignation, but Evan spotted Leena's parents frozen halfway between rage and mortification.

When it all was over, Leena and Marcus got into their usual argument about celebrating the night away, but they both noticed Evan continuing to zone out looking into the stands. When they questioned him about it, he told them of the thing that had been weighing on his mind all day. The thing that had placed an icy casket around his heart since the auditorium doors were first opened. The thing that had forced even the thoughts of the mysterious note from his mind. The one person who would never miss his big day.

His mother was missing.