Chapter Text
“It’s Beastly’s fault,” Shreeky snapped, the words instinctively rising to her mouth.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Beastly open his mouth as he stuttered out what sounded like a mixture of either an excuse or accusation again her. Instead of letting him speak, No Heart grabbed his scarf and hoisted him up to eye-level, from where her uncle loomed above.
“ Beastly ,” the evil presence thundered, shaking him.
Truthfully, the vial had been knocked into No Heart’s cauldron while she and Beastly had been squabbling over an image that her magic mirror had produced of the Care Bears. Shreeky had no idea who had actually bumped into it, but what was Beastly there for, if not to take the fall?
Part of her was sure that No Heart, as knowledgeable and all-powerful as he was, knew that she was redirecting the blame. That he was simply looking for an excuse to be irate with one of them since his latest plan had been foiled by the bears. Since he never called her out on her lies, even when she was sure that he knew otherwise, she decided that he must be encouraging the behavior.
“And you let him?” No Heart turned towards her, dropping Beastly. Him clattering to the floor beside her, in a jumbled mess of gangly limbs and frantic muttering, startled Shreeky out of her musings. It took a moment for her to register the words, and another few seconds for the sneer to drop from her face as she recognized that she had made a miscalculation somewhere. Nevermind her earlier train of thought. Why was she responsible, all of a sudden? Maybe the vial had been more important than she had thought? Beastly stooped down and shuffled behind No Heart, snickering at her once he was out of the way. “You should know better than that .”
She huffed and scowled at Beastly as the furball made gestures at her from behind the safety of No Heart’s cloak. “But he-”
“Bring me back a Care Bear,” the entity interrupted, seething. He grabbed the arm of her shirt, and Beastly by the arm. The two were dragged from the room, and shoved through the doorway of No Heart’s spell room. “Or don’t come back at all.”
Beastly stuttered out his assurances before he bolted down the hall in a panic. Shreeky crossed her arms, tucking her mirror under her arm, and followed behind him more slowly. Once they were what Shreeky judged to be a safe distance away, she slowed and scowled, waiting for Beastly to follow her lead and rejoin her before she began talking.
“ Bring back a Care Bear ,” she mocked, pitching up her voice shrilly.
To her side, Beastly winced and glanced back down the hall before he grabbed at the loose folds of her shirt and tugged on them lightly. “We should just go capture a Care Bear then.”
Annoyed, Shreeky pulled away and grabbed a loose stone from the floor. She turned it over in her hand before chucking it in his general direction. In the same movement, she unfurled her arm and revealed the surface of her mirror, aiming to see what the idiot next to her had failed to let her look at earlier. “But they aren’t even doing anything interesting right now!”
“They’re Care Bears . They’re never doing anything interesting,” Beastly dismissed, and moved to get a look at the image she had conjured. She held it away from him.
“Still,” continuing to hold the mirror away, she stomped past him. “Catch a Care Bear this, spread evil and hate that. He makes me so mad!”
“A,” Beastly worried his hands, crouching lower to the ground as he glanced between her and the darkened hallway. “A Care Bear does?”
“No,” Shreeky stamped her foot. She raised her voice until it became piercing even to her own ears. “ Uncle No Heart does !”
A frustrated yell sounded from down the hall, coupled with the crash of thunder, and then something akin to a small explosion. Alarmed, she turned and hurriedly followed Beastly as he raced to jump onto his Beastly Mobile . (The bike had been cobbled together long before she had been sent to stay with No Heart, and it showed. She wasn’t sure how it stayed together, much less continued to fly, but it was serviceable. As for the name… Shreeky was working on that).
Beastly pedaled frantically, and Shreeky stared back at the castle until it disappeared behind the murky clouds that permanently darkened the surrounding skies. Beastly grumbled under his breath and between harsh pants. When she leaned a bit closer, holding onto the side of her seat, she managed to catch a few snippets over the sound of the wind thanks to the added proximity. Something like ‘ just see how he likes it if he had to clean up on his own ,’ which sparked the beginnings of an idea.
Shreeky glanced back at her mirror and the scrying spell that she had yet to dismiss. The Care Bears appeared to be arranging some sort of festival, and were ugh , working together to put up some decorations. While she usually would have jumped at the opportunity to ruin something like that, other priorities took precedence over ruining something that the bears would probably mess up by themselves. Priorities such as herself.
Once they reached a break in the clouds that Shreeky had at some point dubbed the halfway point between her Uncle’s castle and Care-A-Lot, she directed Beastly towards a nearby mountain range.
He perked up at the orders and changed course as directed. “Is - are the Care Bears there?”
“No,” she sniffed haughtily, raising her head, and crossing her arms before she grabbed his arm to rebalance herself in the seat. “We’re running away.”
“What?” Beastly yelped, stuttering in his otherwise steady pedaling. Shreeky shrieked and slapped at his side urgently as the aircraft stalled and began to descend rapidly. Once he regained control over it, raising them back into the air, he continued. “We’re what ? We can’t run away.”
She considered another way to phrase the statement, irked with his apparent horror. Still, he was the one pedaling it, and she needed to convince him not to just go on to Care-A-Lot like usual. “ Fine . We’re going on strike.”
“But why?” he asked, sounding incredulous.
“Why do you think?” She rolled her eyes. “He yelled at me.”
Beastly muttered under his breath and steered back towards Care-A-Lot. In response, Shreeky grabbed the edges of her seat and rocked them violently.
“Okay!” Came the rattled response. She stopped the movement and frowned at him.
“Okay, what .”
“Okay,” he repeated. Then, with more enthusiasm, he turned back the way she had directed him. “We’re on strike. Take that No Heart!”