The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

“Aha,” Guise exclaimed lifting the handheld device in to the air, with just a little backlighting and a miniscule fanfare he would have been mistaken for being sucked in to part of the Zelda series. Suddenly aware of his surroundings again, Guise clamped his mouth shut and looked slightly sheepish.

“Are we done here?” Ninten asked, peering through the door as he stood outside, “Can we set it up?”.

“Eh, you can run along, kid,” Guise said as he fiddled with Dio’s highly modded Pokedex, pulling wires straight and connecting them to the main system in the room, “I only needed a guide to where Dio had been allocated dorm this year, her directions leave just a little to be desired concerning distances.”

“What about getting it running?” Ninten asked, rather grumpily.

“Oh, it’s easy enough,” Guise said with a smile, “seen it done by a buddy a while back, old…*ahem*…acquaintence of Red. Oh man, the things they used it for, and the copies going around the ‘net.” Guise sniggered as he began switching the devices on.

“Man,” he said eventually as he finished the logins from T.H.R.E.A.D. hub to PokeWeb to general internet, “the sooner we un-firewall all the messenger systems the better. If I have to go through this everytime, I’m gonna kick up.”

“Anything I can do?” Ninten asked, growing bored.

“Sure,” Guise said, a warm smile on his face, “go find Ness and Lucas, make sure Ness is staying out of trouble and, more importantly, not dragging Lucas in to it.”

Before Ninten could voice his disapproval of his duties, Guise refocused on the Pokedex and monitor. He tapped away on the small keypad and waited as the system bought up his face in a video frame and an empty black frame next to it. The monitor echoed the ringing of a telephone as the video call attempted to go through.

The ringing end and the screen shifted between different levels of brightness and contrast, before settling on a closeness to natural light. In the window besides his video, a man of disturbingly similar – yet slightly more wild and manic – features looked back.

“Yeah-llo?” Dugal Dugal replied, stroking back strands of unruly, grungy hair from his face.

“Dugs,” Guise said, leaning in towards the monitor, “it’s me I need you t…Dugs…?”

“Yeah?”

“Dugs,” Guise’s face was a mix of increduality and confusion, “what is that ungodly mess behind you?”

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(Blog Entry: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses)
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Dio slowly glided down the hallway, her three young charges in tow. “Yeah, where you at anyway…?”, she heard from the open doorway to her dorm as she neared.

Sat on the very end of her bed, Guise looked in to the monitors glow. “Well, that’s the thing,” Guise said, his tone changing to a more level manner that hid the shouting and exasperation of the rest of the call, “you ever heard of “Arcano”?”

“Is he like some kind of comic book villain,” Dugal asked, rubbing his chin with his thumb, “Cos, I don’t keep up much with Marvel or DC these days.”

“No, he’s more like,” Guise considered his words, “well, apparently, some kind of parallel universe demonic entity that may or may not be the Sabbuca-induced love child of Tim Curry’s Pennywise and Jim Carrey’s Grinch.”

“Oh,” dugal said, a slight bead of sweat forming on his forehead, “I’m going to go with ‘no’ then.”

“Dammit,” Guise moaned, “I think we might have sent Will’s crew on a wild goose hunt with a treasure map to El Dorado and by the looks of it we’ve got something worse on the horizon. Could do with as many hands on deck as we can get.”

“You want us to join you?” Dugal said, straightening up.

“Yeeeeah-no, it’s not that desperate,” Guise paused, considering, “it’s never that desperate.”

“So, what do you want from us?”

“First, see what you can find about Arcano or anything like it,” Guise said, slowly counting off on his fingers, “Try and scout out an advent calendar, see if we can get a heads up. Run a search on circuses operat…”

“Circuses?” Dugal asked, “This hardly looks the time to be taking day trips with her and her…wait, when did she get three boys?”

“Huh?” Guise said, turning to finally catch sight of Dio and the boys behind him, “Oh, hey you.”

“Hey,” Dio said, returning an offered smile, she approached Guise to be better in picture and addressed Dugal, “This isn’t really for a social outing, hon. This is purely advent-ure.”

“Can we still go to the circus, Nee-chan?” Lucas asked, looking over hopefully, “Haven’t been for so long!”

“Circuses suck,” Ninten moaned, “and all the hay, sand, dust and animal hair. Bleh.”

“But, the lions are cool,” Ness said, attempting to counter the protest, “and humman cannonball!”

“I like circuses,” the boy on the screen said, leaning in to view across Dugal, “please, onee-san, can we?”

Guise sighed, dropping his head and stifling a grin. In the event of demonic threat and potential armageddon, it was refreshing to have the naivety the circuses were innocent, pure and enjoyable experiences without knowing the sinister nature behind each and everyone of them.

“We’ll see,” Dio said, smiling at her companions and then at the young boy in the monitor, “but right now, we need to work. It seems that maybe HU or some of the others are linked to a circus, but we have no idea which or where.”

“You sure it’s not just paranoia,” Dugal smirked, “we all know about lil Guisey and the scary, scary clowns.”

Guise’s head shot up. “Hey, clowns don’t scare me,” he said loudly, then his voice dropped to a mutter, “they just make me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, right,” Dugal snickered.

“Dugal,” Dio said, shaking her head, “If you want to help, just do a search and see if you can find anything – maybe somewhere is advertising having a rabbit-boy or something as an attraction.”

“Fine,” Dugal sighed, “I’ll add it to the list. Now, if there’s nothing else…?” Dio and Guise responded to the negative. “Good, in that case…Dio, I’ve got mistletoe.”