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Post by belnoah on Nov 22, 2009 12:01:05 GMT -5
Jeremy was bored. It had been two weeks since the interesting events in the gulf, and SPECTER had not rewarded him with information as he'd hoped they would. They'd had no missions, not even the little crime fighting jobs they'd had leading up to the gulf mission. Life starting to seem, dare he say it, normal. But Jeremy wasn't ready for normal life yet. He needed to find out who killed his family and get rid of them before he could go back to normal life.
And then there was the fact that he could turn into any animal he touched for two hours at a time. That made normal life a little difficult.
He opened up the closet in his room. Just to look around. He'd filled it, so nothing in there would surprise him, but he just needed a sense of home for a second.
On the top shelf was Scrabble, which he'd grabbed almost as an afterthought when he was rushing to pack and leave with the SPECTER agents who'd picked him up in Washington. He took it down and took it to the living room.
He loved this game, and he loved the board in his version, since it had raised edges so the letters wouldn't go everywhere every time someone so much as brushed against the board. It could also spin, so gameplay was much easier.
He started setting out the tiles and tile holders like he was going to start a game. Just to see it being used again.
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Post by Leroy on Nov 23, 2009 1:28:38 GMT -5
Leroy walked through the apartment with a small stack of letters in his hand. He stared disappointedly at the letter on top. It was addressed to his parents' house. He already knew what was inside it though. It was an anonymous letter that he had sent to his parents. He had put it in a public mailbox across town a week ago, and now it was in his hand. The strangest part was, there was no return address written on the envelope.
"So much for that idea," Leroy said as he threw the letter in the trash in the kitchen. "Stupid SPECTER."
After sorting through a generous heap of junk mail, Leroy finally got to the big item that had arrived. It was a manilla envelope addressed to Jeremy. "Hmm." Leroy shrugged to himself and headed towards Jeremy's room. He wondered if there was something interesting inside or if it was just a well disguised credit card offer. Unfortunately holding it up to the light failed to produce any helpful clues.
"You got something in the mail," Leroy said as he knocked on the door frame. "Oh, playing Scrabble?" Leroy casually tossed the envelope on Jeremy's bed as the board game captured his attention. "You know, back home the used to call me the Triple Word Champ. Or maybe it was just me who called me that." A grin etched itself across Leroy's face.
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Post by belnoah on Nov 23, 2009 1:48:53 GMT -5
Jeremy glanced up when he heard Leroy's voice. "Triple word champ? I laugh at your supposed might," Jeremy returned, a playful grin beginning to cross his face. Normally, he wouldn't want to show this much emotion, but he was getting to know the others, and getting to trust them. Besides, he could never turn down a Scrabble challenge. "Anyone can put a tile on a triple word score space. The real question is, how many words can you put down at once?" He smiled triumphantly. "My record is five." He gestured to the board. "But you are welcome to prove your might."
He suddenly noticed the envelope in Leroy's hand. "What's that?" he asked. A large manilla envelope, and it had Jeremy's name on it. His heartbeat quickened. Had SPECTER actually kept its promise? Was there information about his family's murderers in it?
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Post by Leroy on Nov 23, 2009 2:06:46 GMT -5
Leroy just shrugged when asked about the envelope. He sat down on the bed and pushed it over toward Jeremy. "I guess you better find out. Open 'er up!"
Leroy began setting up the board so that the two of them could play. "And while you're busy reading your love letter from your stalker, I'll be planning my winning strategy. There's no way I'm going to lose." But if Jeremy wasn't lying about putting down five words in one turn, Leroy had his doubt that he would win. However, there was only one way to find out.
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Post by belnoah on Nov 23, 2009 10:46:22 GMT -5
Jeremy took the envelope. He tried to put up a cool, calm facade, but his hands were shaking. He was excited. In hindsight, he hadn't been waiting that long, but he was more than ready to hunt down these killers. He opened up the envelope and stuck his hand inside.
There were two sheets of paper inside. Jeremy's face fell. Only two sheets of paper? That wasn't very much information. The first one was blank, except on one side in large, bold letters was written two words: "Erde Premier". He muttered them out loud to himself. Then he picked up the other sheet. This one was almost as simple, prompting Jeremy to mutter something about the environment and wasting paper. This second sheet of paper said, "They've come to Mariposa. Jam."
Jam? What did that mean? Did it matter? They were here. They were in the same city as he was. Maybe even in the same building. Erde Premier. He recognized the German word for 'Earth' and the French word for 'first'. He took several breaths to calm himself. It was a pretty clear message. They were human terrorists, probably out to keep aliens away from Earth. That was why they'd targeted his family, or, more specifically, his father. His father, who had devoted his life after the war against the yeerks to studying the andalite language.
It made him sick to his stomach with hate. These people were so deluded with their goal of ridding Earth of its visitors that they didn't mind also killing humans to achieve it. And now here they were, in Mariposa. What should he tell the others?
He put the papers down and sat across from Leroy. "Nothing special," he lied. He drew out his letter to decide who went first. "L," he announced. Then he drew out his letters: A, R, S, R, H, S, I.
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Post by Leroy on Nov 23, 2009 13:46:36 GMT -5
"Bummer," was all Leroy said in reply. Must have been a credit card offer, or something similar, after all. At any rate, he had more important things to worry about right now anyway. Scrabble.
"I picked P," he said a bit disappointed. That meant he had to wait to put down a word. But it was just as well since the letters he picked weren't especially good anyway. K, N, J, U, Y, F, E. "Hope you can lay down something helpful."
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Post by belnoah on Nov 24, 2009 0:40:56 GMT -5
"Okay," said Jeremy. He had really been hoping for Leroy to go first. He wasn't too much of a fan of his letters. After a moment of thought, he put down "hairs." Not his best work, but it was still good for nine points. He reached into the letter bag and pulled out S, M, E, I, D. "Say, Leroy," he said suddenly. "How much do you know about.... terrorist groups?" Leroy had been here longer than he had, so maybe he had some experience dealing with them. "Have you ever had to fight against them since getting here?" He knew he was probably giving things away, he just had to hope that Leroy wouldn't guess. (ooc: for reference, www.askoxford.com/wordgames/scrabble/scrabblerules/ and prawfsblawg.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/01/scrabble_board.jpg)
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Post by Leroy on Nov 24, 2009 3:01:51 GMT -5
Leroy studied the board as Jeremy asked his questions, but couldn't help but look up after the questions were asked. It was kind of a strange thing to wonder. "I've never fought any terrorist groups," he answered a bit awkwardly. "The only thing I know about them is the stuff I hear about in the news."
"Although, I did once help bring some poachers to justice... Does that count? That was when I first met Jamilan. Heh. We used him as bait. Probably not the best strategy now that I look back on it."
Leroy shrugged and laid down some letters. He put his F, U, and N down around the A to spell 'faun.' "That's a word, right?" He was thinking of fawn as in a baby deer, but now that it was on the board it didn't look quite right. Yet it didn't look wrong either. "Oh, it's one of those half-goat people, I think. I knew faun spelled like that meant something."
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Post by belnoah on Nov 24, 2009 11:14:19 GMT -5
Jeremy frowned a little as he jotted down 12 for Leroy. It wasn't too high of a score, but if he didn't have a better word this turn, Leroy was just going to pull ahead after Jeremy did. Leroy also didn't seem to suspect anything from Jeremy's answer, which was good, but Jeremy didn't like the lack of experience. Jeremy put down "rides" on the R of "hairs" for 12 points of his own. Then he drew out D, U, F, and G. DUFGRSM sounded funny in his head, but wasn't too appealing as a set of letters for Scrabble.
Then Leroy told the story of the poachers. "Poachers aren't exactly terrorists," Jeremy said. Poachers didn't blow up an entire room of people just because some of those people were researching something. Then Leroy mentioned how Jamilan had been the bait in their epic plan and everything clicked in Jeremy's head.
Anti-alien terrorists. Jam. JAMILAN. If they were in Mariposa, they'd go after him. Jeremy's heart just about stopped.
No, that was impossible. They'd have to know which random human on the street was actually an andalite in morph. That couldn't happen.... Still... maybe he should warn Jamilan.... and.... maybe..... Maybe he should warn everyone...... No.... nothing would happen.... there was no way they'd recognize an andalite if it was in morph.
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Post by Leroy on Nov 24, 2009 16:06:21 GMT -5
Leroy drew his replacement letters as Jeremy put down his word. He drew an R, an O, and a T and added them to his K, J, Y, E. "I suppose not," Leroy replied almost automatically as he examined his letters and the board.
"So what's with you and terrorists? Did you hear something about them on TV recently? I doubt SPECTER would send us out against something like that." He let out a little laugh that ended quickly. Then more solemnly he said, "Although I suppose they didn't give us the ability to morph so we could sit around and play Scrabble..."
Leroy attached his word to the E in 'rides.' Y, E, E, R, K spelled yeerk. A word that only entered human vocabulary since after he had started high school. Leroy reached over and grabbed some more replacement letters. He added M, A, Blank, V to his J, O, T.
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Post by belnoah on Nov 26, 2009 13:55:41 GMT -5
Jeremy considered challenging the word, especially since he knew it wouldn't be in the Scrabble Dictionary yet. The people making the dictionary had encountered some resistance to adding alien names to the book. Before, Jeremy would have just rolled his eyes when he heard about it. Now it made him sick to his stomach. He wrote down the 12 points that Leroy had gotten. He wasn't going to sink to their level.
Besides......
He put down "DRUMS," transforming the "YEERK" into "YEERKS." Not only that, but the R in drums was on a triple word score. "So, Drums is 8, times 3, 24. Plus Yeerks is 13, so 37." He smiled, until Leroy asked his question about why Jeremy was suddenly so interested in terrorists. "Well..." He closed his eyes. "It's nothing. Just..... just a feeling." He drew out D, U, S, I, and a blank. DUFGSI and a blank.
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Post by Leroy on Nov 28, 2009 20:36:17 GMT -5
Leroy's extreme frustration over Jeremy's tricky 'drums' placement was almost enough to overshadow Jeremy's response to Leroy's terrorist question. Almost. But as it was, Leroy became slightly suspicious about the way Jeremy responded. Not suspicious of Jeremy, really. Not directly. But the way he answered that question made it sound like there was more to it.
"Wait, what? Just a feeling? That's- huh." Leroy looked at the board for a moment, but wasn't really thinking about Scrabble as he did so. Finally, after what seemed like a long while, Leroy asked, "Jeremy, do know something? Because I don't want to wake up dead tomorrow because I should have known about something I was never told." Just the thought of possible terrorists in his city kind of freaked Leroy out.
As he waited for an answer, Leroy put down the first word he saw. He connected M and A to the D on DRUMS to spell MAD. then drew a P and an I. He now had P, H, V, J, O, T, Blank.
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Post by belnoah on Nov 28, 2009 22:25:31 GMT -5
Leroy's "MAD" was good for 9 points, maintaining Jeremy's easy lead in the game, 58 to 33. But Leroy wasn't buying his "feeling" excuse. Not that Jeremy had expected him to. You'd have to be some kind of extreme idiot to buy an excuse like that.
"You won't wake up dead," said Jeremy. He put down GUSH on the H in HAIRS for 8 points. 66. Double Leroy's score. He would have smiled if he wasn't so busy trying to think of an explanation that would satisfy without really saying to much. In the end, he sighed, and pushed the papers over to Leroy. "SPECTER sent me this." Hopefully, Leroy wouldn't be able to deduce as much as he had.
He drew D,F, and I. DIDIF and blank.
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Post by Leroy on Nov 30, 2009 2:36:10 GMT -5
Leroy took the papers in hand that Jeremy pushed over to him. Leroy shot Jeremy a confused sideways look before inspecting what was on the papers. Even with Jeremy acting slightly weird when Leroy had asked him questions, Leroy still hadn't expected the papers that had just arrived in the mail to have any significance. He was still under the impression that it was junk mail until Jeremy said it was from SPECTER.
"SPECTER sent you these?" One said 'Erde Premier' and the other said 'They've come to Mariposa. Jam.' Leroy was as confused as ever! "Do you have any idea what they mean? I men, why would SPECTER be sending you cryptic messages like this?" Leroy was still a bit upset with Jeremy for keeping anything from SPECTER a secret, but mostly he was just frustrated with SPECTER for keeping up with their usual level of ambiguity.
Leroy sat up straighter on Jeremy's bed, ignoring the game board, and reread what was on the pieces of paper a few more times in an attempt to somehow pull information out of thin air.
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Post by belnoah on Nov 30, 2009 10:31:20 GMT -5
Jeremy could see his secret coming apart like a piece of paper in a shredder. Human shredder, that is. Though andalite shredder would work just as well for the image he had. He didn't want to explain. But he was just good enough at lying to see that if he tried to tell Leroy that he didn't know what SPECTER was talking about, Leroy wouldn't buy it. And... why was he hiding it anyway?
This is my battle. They killed my family, and I want to make them pay. But that wasn't all, was it? There was also the issue of privacy. He didn't know why Leroy was here, and he didn't expect Leroy to tell him. In the same vein, he didn't want to announce why he was here. It just seemed like one of the few things he had left to himself. And it was his battle.
"It's.... complicated," Jeremy said slowly. "They're an anti-alien terrorist movement. And I think the 'Jam' means Jamilan. Anyway, it looks like they're here."
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