Chapter Text
J2-1 Backstabbed in the Front!
Sociologist Umber doesn’t like being at the Investigation Institute when Irratino isn’t there. She feels unprotected and alone. Anyone could be out to get her. Bishop Azure comes across her honorary daughter moping on the couch.
AZURE: I have a letter for you. It’s from the Institute, so it’s probably one of your insane friends.
UMBER: Okay… tank you Azure.
She opens the note, expecting a guilt trip from the others begging her to stick around while Irratino’s away. But…
“Umber, I need you.
I have been hiding in the Institute for a long time. Something is wrong. When I look into the sky, I get a sensation that something bad is to come. The others don’t seem to have noticed, but I can’t show myself to them. I need you to come back and help me figure this out - you’re my only hope.
-Coral”
Umber’s eyes widen when she sees that name - she thought for sure Coral was gone for good. Now, she’s made up her mind. She has to fulfill her duty.
UMBER: Azure, I wanna go to da Institute.
AZURE: You spent all this morning complaining about it…
UMBER: Done complaining. I wanna go.
Azure has to wait to take her. She knows that soon, Astrologer Azure will emerge, and be ready for this adventure. And eventually, she is here.
UMBER: Can I be in the observatory, when you are not there?
AZURE: That’d be great.
Umber vibrates with anticipation. Once they arrive, she rushes out of the car at top speed and runs right to the observatory. She hugs Azure goodbye.
AZURE: I have to take Bishop to her work… I hope you have a good time, Umber!
UMBER: Tank you Azure. I wub you!
That night, when everyone is busy with their own studies, Coral emerges from a secret passageway.
UMBER: [gasp…] COAL!!
CORAL: Shh… no one can know I’m here. I looked at the sky… and I saw something dark.
UMBER: …o-oh.
CORAL: Take a look.
Umber presses her face to the telescope.
UMBER: Can’t see anyting.
Coral comes to look. All she sees is blackness.
CORAL: No… this can’t have-
The lens is broken!
CORAL: Someone has to have done this on purpose. Someone doesn’t want us seeing the signs.
UMBER: Signs of… wha?
Coral grabs her hand and they try to sneak downstairs. But they bump right into someone coming up! It’s not an Institute member. It’s Captain Slate. She stares at the girls, wide-eyed.
SLATE: …Excuse me.
She pushes past them, and they stare. She looks through the telescope, but realizes it’s broken too. She grumbles, pushes open a window, and floats away. Umber and Coral look out, and see an unfamiliar glowing person on the ground.
CORAL: I’ll use my secret passage - you go out through the main entrance.
Umber runs downstairs, still confused about what’s going on.
CLOUD: Umber! There you are. You seem so busy and I have no idea what you’re doing.
UMBER: Hi Cloud I have to go to da bathroom wight now.
CLOUD: There’s no need to go outside.
UMBER: It’s a numbah two.
She slams the door, and Cloud is befuddled. There are plenty of bathrooms in the Institute.
Outside, Coral calls to the figure.
CORAL: Hello? Excuse me!
PERSON: Yes?
UMBER: Hi.
CORAL: What are you doing here?
PERSON: There’s no need to be rash, dear. I’m only stargazing.
She turns to the sky. Through the trees, a million stars shine through.
PERSON: You’ll never see this in the city.
Umber and Coral sit down in the grass. The sight is enough to make them forget what they’re looking for.
UMBER: Who are you?
PERSON: I am called Stone. I was an astronomer back in the day.
The halo of stars that surrounds her slowly turns.
CORAL: You didn’t… break the Institute’s telescope, right?
STONE: Heavens no. That would be an awful thing to do. I did see the window break up top there…
CORAL: What did you see?
STONE: Witch outfit, flung a rock with a slingshot… incredible aim, but what an awful thing to do. Destroy others’ enjoyment of the sky.
UMBER: Witch outfit? AZURE??
She runs back into the building.
CORAL: Umber, WAIT!
UMBER: Azure! AZURE!
RAVEN: Chill, kid. She left a while ago.
UMBER: Azure…
There’s a note on the observatory floor in her handwriting. “Do you believe???”
J2-2 The Astrologer's Friend
Umber and Coral rush back up. Coral starts to trash the place looking for any further notes.
UMBER: Coal! You can’t do dat.
CORAL: I have to know what she saw. Maybe there’s a clue.
Instead of going through drawers, Umber looks to the sky through the open window. It all looks normal. What was so amazing that Captain Slate had to rush over?
ONYX: Umber! What’s all the noise up there?
UMBER: UHh… stubbed my toe.
ONYX: Are you alright?
UMBER: Yea yea it’s fine.
She tries to shoot Coral a look, but can’t due to her very limited face expressions. Then she sees it - a weird gray flicker by the moon. Nothing extraordinary, but certainly strange.
UMBER: I know what Azure saw.
CORAL: How??
UMBER: She saw a UFO. Azure dodn’t believe in aliens, so if she saw a alien, she would pwobably fweak out.
CORAL: UFO doesn’t automatically mean a spaceship. It means “unidentified flying object”. It could be anything.
UMBER: I’m gonna tell Stone.
Coral sighs, and tucks into her secret passage. Umber tries to head downstairs as quietly as possible, but immediately runs into Irratino.
IRRATINO: Heyy, Umber! How’ve you been?
UMBER: OH MY GOD IWWATINO.
IRRATINO: …
UMBER: I meant hi.
NIGHT: It is past midnight. She should be home by now.
Umber has a dark realization that Azure never came back to pick her up.
NIGHT: Come dear, I will drive you home.
UMBER: NO
NIGHT: ??
UMBER: Uh uhhh dat’s okay, I will just walk.
IRRATINO: You’re not walking home this late. Come on, Umber.
UMBER: Okay… I just want to pee first.
She waddles away. But she’s not heading to the bathroom. She hears footsteps in the library, and has to follow them. Captain Slate is back!
UMBER: Swate! Do you know Stone??
SLATE: No.
UMBER: What do you know?!?
SLATE: There was a woman here, but she’s gone now.
UMBER: Oh no… STONEE
J2-3 The Crash in New Aegis: Do You Believe?
Coral pops out from behind a bookshelf. She must have made herself a whole tunnel system throughout the Institute.
UMBER: Oh there is you. Der is a book on da floh. Is called, “Da Cwash in New Aegis”. And when I open da book, it says, “Do you believe”! We have to wead.
CORAL: Good job, Umber. You’re becoming a great detective.
Umber smiles and blushes! The two put their heads together as Umber flips open the book. They will use Irratino’s incomprehensible method of seeing into the past.
This story took place only a few years ago, perhaps when Logico and Irratino were trapped in Drakonian battles. The citizens of New Aegis were relaxing, unaware of the destruction that would come in the future. Diligent Actuary Apricot was wandering, looking for something to overanalyze. His ears turned to the night sky, and there it was - a magnificent paranormal orb! He ran to the mountain, following its trail. But when the orb touched the ground, there was a mesmerizing bang. The whole town awoke. Mayor Honey grabbed his megaphone and screamed at the citizens.
HONEY: DO NOT PANIC! THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO PANIC! Now, let’s all get over there right now before something awful happens.
The citizens were hesitant. The crash sounded radioactive.
HONEY: The first person to make it there gets naming rights.
They all swarmed! But when they arrived, all they saw was a human body… and a damaged UFO! Everyone was screaming overtop of each other. Then, a tiny gray man crawled out from the rubble. It pointed a glowing finger.
GRAYMAN: ♐︎︎☼︎︎♏︎︎✌︎︎🙵💧︎︎??? ⬥︎︎☟︎︎♋︎︎❄︎︎ ⧫︎︎☟︎︎♏︎︎ ☟︎︎♏︎︎👍︎🙵 ✋︎︎⬧︎︎ ❄︎︎♒︎︎✋︎︎⬧︎︎?
PERSON: It’s already a murderer!
PERSON: GET IT!!!
The townspeople lunged! A hiding Apricot suddenly felt horrible - he was the one who killed the human, not the alien! But it was too late to reveal himself. The Grayman scrambled up the mountain at inhuman speeds. No one could catch up. When it reached the top, rockets came out of its feet and it launched itself back into the sky.
UMBER: Oh my god. It was a weal alien!
CORAL: We can’t be so sure. It’s just a book - they could have made up anything. Who is the author of this, anyway?
Conveniently, there is no name anywhere. Umber needs to know more, and so does Coral, but for different reasons. She’s skeptical about all this. But who to go to for information, now that Stone is mysteriously missing?
J2-4 An Ambush in the Library
Coral charges ahead. Umber is not so fast.
UMBER: Coal wai… I can’ do dat much with my dumb legs.
A horrendous shadow rises behind her, carrying something big. The baby fish is knocked clean out.
After running for a while, Coral finally realizes Umber isn’t with her. When she runs back, she sees her on the ground. She is stunned - the wound clearly suggests a bonk on the head, but who would be so vile as to harm this child? It’s time for immediate assumptions - it was an inside enemy, someone Umber trusts dearly, a complete, heartless betrayal. Coral hides Umber under a bookshelf and sneaks downstairs. Numerologist Night is just logging into their computer. Can Coral crack the password by watching them type? It includes only number keys… big surprise. Only eight characters… this should be a piece of cake. She rushes to find another computer, and inputs the text: username w3tzel, password… She tries “23571113” to start, and immediately gets in. She’s sure she can access Night’s bank account with this too, but as fun as hacking is, it’s also pretty criminal. They both receive popups alerting of suspicious activity.
NIGHT: What the heck?
Coral overestimated Irratino’s naivety with this one. Night comes storming around looking for computers. Coral shuts down the whole system and leaps out the window before she’s caught. Night is in a panic checking every computer in the Institute… but they just know one of their coworkers is getting into their private business.
Astrologer Azure is finally back! But Coral misses this revelation, because she jumped out of a second-story window and is having trouble standing up again.
AZURE: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave for so long…
NIGHT: Someone broke into my account again!
AZURE: Yeah, hi…
NIGHT: It’s Cloud or Raven, and I’ll skin them if I catch them again…
Umber is finally waking up, and bonks her head again on the bottom of the bookshelf.
UMBER: Owowwow… why people storing me like old clothes…
Spider-like footsteps patter on the ground. Umber is frightened and backs up further. But this is the time to investigate what hurt her. She slowly creeps out, without making a sound… It’s the Grayman, the real Grayman! It's clutching a crystal ball, probably to extract fuel out of it somehow.
UMBER: Hewwo.
The alien screams! It too jumps through the window, shattering the glass. Its built in rockets propel it weakly into the night sky.
UMBER: I wondah where Coal is. Oh I know. I think I know the answer to this whole thing, and what happened.
J2-5 The Big Reveal (According to Umber)
Umber waddles outside and finds an injured Coral in a bush.
UMBER: Hewwo. Why are you in a bush?
CORAL: My hacking… didn’t work.
UMBER: Uh oh. Anyway, I figured out da whole thing.
When they return to her room, she’s set up a whole conspiracy corkboard.
CORAL: Oh… no.
UMBER: Da first thing dat I wemembered was Stone. She was here, and den she was gone. But why? She is weally into space wight? So maybe she wanted to go to da alien planet and follow da alien!
She draws a picture to demonstrate.
CORAL: Umber wait-
UMBER: Da alien was in da workplace, so when she saw it go in, she followed it to find da spaceship. Now I wanna talk about da book, da book says dat da alien was first in New Aegis. But dat’s kinda far away.
Coral looks out the window and finds that the Grayman is still creeping around outside.
CORAL: Umber!
UMBER: Hang on a sec Apwicot was also in New Aegis and he twied to kill us dat one time oh you weren’t dere. Ohkay so anyway he twied to kill us one time
CORAL: UMBER.
UMBER: And I tink Apwicot was dere to steal gold. Da alien had gold and Apwicot wanted to steal it because he pwobably likes money. Also Mayor Honey was fweaked out because da day befoh he went to Hollywood and saw a scawy movie.
CORAL: The alien is RIGHT. THERE!
UMBER: Oh yeah! When I looked at da stars again, dey were kinda in da shape of da alien head. So da sky itself was warning us and dat is why Azure panicked.
Coral takes Umber’s hand and runs.
UMBER: Oh-h-h-h-h!
Once they’re outside, the Grayman retreats into the hedge maze. Coral charges after it.
UMBER: Wai!!! I don’t wanna go back in dere!
Coral doesn’t listen - she has to catch this alien. So Umber doesn’t have a choice but to follow.
J2-6 The Big Reveal (According to the Facts)
Umber holds onto Coral’s tail as she runs through the maze. Eventually she has to leap onto her back to keep up.
UMBER: Co-o-o-oal… wha is happening-ing-ing
CORAL: I’m convinced that alien isn’t even real. This is all a hoax!
UMBER: But why?
CORAL: No creature would come to the Murder Kingdom on its own. What’s the purpose of an alien invasion without an army? This is just a regular person playing tricks!
Umber thinks of potential tricksters, and recalls Logico and Irratino’s adventures. Midnight III pulls stunts like this all over the world. TekCo is the most dangerous corporation there is, and no one can know their next move. Or worst of all, Irratino was luring them on a wild goose chase! Coral can run for a long time, but her legs are starting to give out.
CORAL: Jump. Catch them!
UMBER: I don’t want to hurt them…
CORAL: Sometimes you have to hurt people to save the world.
Umber hates those words so much. She leaps and tackles the Grayman.
UMBER: I’m so sowwy alien…
Coral is less apologetic, and rips off its head. Umber gasps and nearly passes out. Thankfully, the platypus was right, and it was only a rubber suit. It’s Stargazer Stone!
STONE: You found me… how charming…
UMBER: What da… a… awe you evil?
STONE: Evil? No. Do you know who is evil? THE GRAYMAN IS EVIL.
The stars that float around her spin faster and faster. Coral stands in front of Umber, ready to attack.
STONE: It left me… It left us all… ❄︎♒︎☜︎ ♑︎☼︎♋︎✡︎❍︎✌︎■︎ 🕈︎♓︎☹︎●︎ 👌︎♏︎ 👎︎♏︎💧︎⧫︎☼︎□︎✡︎♏︎👎︎!!!
She blasts off into space at light speed.
UMBER: Wh… wh… was she da alien??? Owh was she pwetending to be da alien but she’s still a alien???
CORAL: Whatever it may be, we have a new enemy upon us. We have to watch the sky. No one is safe until she is brought to justice.
Umber slumps down, depressed. To think she was so excited to see Coral again, only to be dragged into this mess and make a new enemy. Coral sees this, and feels guilty. The world is so cruel, and Umber is too pure to suffer through it all.
CORAL: Would you like to watch the sky… with me?
Umber looks back at her with surprise. Watching the sky for danger sounds horrible, but stargazing with Coral sounds like a dream.
UMBER: Yea, yea I do!!
So they lie down in the grass, and stare into the universe above. What a magical moment, Umber thinks, until it’s interrupted by what sounds like a gunshot. They’re both frozen. Then Umber transforms into pure energy and launches into the sky.
CORAL: WHAT THE HECK?!!?!