They were like an army of Dugtrio, all the bodies of varying sizes and varying heights, each squirming their way up a road and through a gate that could handle a lot, but couldn’t take them all at once.
Henry swore he could taste someone’s deodorant, and he was definitely positive fifteen more minutes behind “perm-magee” would have him spending his first day in the Nurse’s Office from Pneumonia.
“Alright, file up! File up!” Shouted a guard, donned in his blue battle armour.
His demands were drowned in a sea of rabble and gossip. He gave a blow of his whistle. It tore through the crowd like a Hyper Voice. Even the Spearow back by the river could be heard complaining.
“Let’s form five lines! After a quick pat down up here with me and the four guards beside me, you’ll each file in, one person from each line, and head to the right, where you will receive instructions for your school I.D. and receive various forms to be filled out by the end of Forge Week. Once all papers have been received, head on out the back door and proceed to the Campus.”
The lines were moving pretty fast. Henry was just relieved he didn’t have to huff perm anymore.
“Oi! Let’s watch it, yeah?!”
“Well, pardon me. Maybe if you weren’t breathing down my neck!”
Some guy was whacking the dude behind him with the Omanyte shell on his back. He must have had at least fifty books in his backpack. Every fidget and peek over the shoulder in front of him sent the guy behind him into a deeper and deeper fury, until his face was as red as a Vigoroth’s bottom.
“Alroight that does it!” And so, what else is a civilified man to do but grab his irritant by the bag and toss him to the adjacent line–right into Henry.
“Ack–HEY!!!” shouted Omanyte Bag.
“Go whack the other line, ya bloody Spinda!” fumed Vigoroth Bottom, waving his fist.
Omanyte Bag waved him off. He fixed his thin-framed glasses against the bridge of his nose.
“You don’t mind if I cut, do you?” He asked Henry, to which he scooched back to give the guy–and his bag–as much room as he could.
“Thank you,” he offered Henry an off smile in return–if a Ditto attempted to replicate a human act of gratitude, it would look much like his smirk.
“Of course. No point in getting into a fight on day one. We haven’t even had breakfast yet!”
Omanyte Bag let out a wicked scoff. “That’s just what happens when you rub elbows with those here on mummy and daddy’s money. A bunch of meathead brutes looking to waste away their tuition partying and intoxicating themselves.” And his smile only grew wickeder. “But they’ll die before thirty anyways~”
“That’s…a way to put it.”
“Oh, I could think of several far more visceral choices in diction, but then we’d be here all day and my back is killing me!” Omanyte Bag bent at his lumbar until a sickening wet pop could be heard, plain as day. “Come ooooonnnn!” he shouted up the line, “Let’s move it! Some of us have places to be!”
“Plans already for once you’re on Campus?” Henry asked, for he could not even decide on the first thing he wanted to check out once he was beyond the gates.
Omanyte Bag adjusted his glasses. “Well of course~ I have to find a suitable shelf somewhere on the grounds that will satisfy my babies’~”
Henry pointed an impish finger at the bulging sack protruding from the stranger’s back like a parasitic puss. “So there are babies in there?”
Omanyte Bag gave his leatherbound womb a hearty shake, like the full thorax of a mother Venomoth. “Only my favorites~ A few tomes by Frederick Van Houndgate; an anthology collection by Vanessa Hellsing; some autobiographies from various authors. You know, the essentials.”
“You look like a Parasect.”
“I wish I was. Then I could send touchy-feelies like Mr.Testosterone over there to the ER just from touching me.”
Henry giggled. Back at home, hardly anyone ever got his sense of humor. He would mostly be met by blank stares, except his sister–she loved to mock laugh, then return with a straight face. Omanyte Bag not only knew what a Parasect was, he knew enough about them to return with a little joke of his own.
“Henry Orion Galileo,” he said, extending his hand in greeting.
Omanyte Bag sneered down at it. He curled his own into a fist and bumped it against Henry’s knuckles. “Percival Magellan Walter Drake the Eleventh. But Percy is far more efficient.”
