Lavo Standard (23) (11-26-09)

Of course Juno cared about Suzan, but she was ordered by her to prioritize rescuing Daryl. And, until then it seemed to Juno that her mother had cleared every difficulty whenever she promised success.

“I should free Daryl,” resolved Juno.

Having made a visit with Ric, Libro yet knew enough about the layout of the apartment to pilot Juno straight to Daryl. On the left side of the corridor off from Suzan and Crystal, luckily, the door which would admit a visitor into the dim zoo-like room was unlocked.

“(Here),” Libro and Juno entered the room.

The interior of the room was breathtaking: what immediately enticed Juno was a variety of animals which were kept inside compartments embedded in the walls on both sides of her view.

“(Come on),” sensing that Juno’s attention was distracted by the appeal of the animals away from the task she was dealing with, Libro forcibly pulled her into the right direction to the smaller room at the left innermost corner.

“Libro,” on his way to the compartment, Libro caught a voice he was familiar with.

“(Ric!)” as Libro turned to where the voice came from, Ric in a hawk state was lying prone on the floor. His left wing anomalously veered off the supposed position from the middle, and this condition, for Libro, was pathetic enough to vindicate his honesty and dedication.

Freeing Daryl was the priority by all accounts, including Ric’s, though.

“The door is locked and Tim has the key,” Ric wrung.

“You have to get the key first.”

Indeed, although Juno reached and tried to turn the knob of the dark-brown wooden door, each attempt fell short of opening it. “Oh,” the blockage gave Juno nothing but a bit of panic attack.

“It’s weird,” to add to the shocking news, Tim’s canter had yet settled down to be a slow confident walk as he was getting within reach of capturing Juno.

Meanwhile, Suzan was yet looking subjugated by Crystal. Crystal’s left hand kept pressing the back of Suzan’s left hand forward; Crystal’s right hand kept pressing the backside of Suzan’s elbow onto the floor. Suzan could do nothing but shamefully smell the floor’s carpet. In searching for a helpful tool, she looked around desperately from the floor level, but the plain rectangular room seemed to have only a round glass table with its thin black stand and a pair of two black wooden chairs around the table, all of them looked as if they were deriding her.

According to cumulative agony on both the wrist and the elbow, Suzan’s willpower was dwindling to allow the red slime to retrieve the supremacy over her body. Witnessing the state of her right arm revert to the human’s from the bear’s, she believed that she was fighting two enemies.

“It’s annoying!,” Suzan, while still holding the control of her body, snapped and let the red slime go, generating an intense flash.

“Augh!” exposed to the flash Crystal inadvertently parted with Suzan’s left arm, allowed her to stand up, kick away the red slime and get braced with both arms before her body; Suzan tested the function of each joint on her left arm. In response, Crystal also hastily stood up and got on guard with her hands set open and forward at waist level and said, “I’m sure you know some karate,” to the nudity of Suzan.

Juno, meanwhile, could look as if she was waiting for capture by Tim.

“Libro...,” however, Ric was speaking.

“...come to me.”

“This naughty girl,” Tim attempted to catch Juno by letting his arms fall, but Juno eluded them passing the right side of Tim.

Libro, then, dissociated himself from Juno to turn her into a naked human girl, approached and melded into Ric to get a new human state.

“!!!”

The sudden emergence of Ric who had terrified and even possibly traumatized Juno astonished her into a ball, a shock which also muzzled her.

“Don’t worry, Juno. This is not that Ric who scared you,” Ric said, according to the will of Libro.

“Libro, you may better not to expect her to understand since she saw the tragedy. Instead, we’d better focus on helping Daryl,” Ric was talking to himself while jumping at Tim who was also being taken aback by the presence of Ric.

“Crystal!” startled, Tim yelled.

But Ric unforgivingly made a full turn in the air and swung his right heel at the right side of Tim’s head and successfully knocked him down.

“These,” having made sure that Tim lost his consciousness, through rummaging around Tim’s body, Ric obtained a set of seven keys and a cell phone. After some trial and error of him to find the right key, at the fourth attempt the door finally answered by opening and showing the four cats including Daryl. “Sorry,” as soon as Ric entered the room, he slugged one of the cats and let a red slime come out.

For Juno, who was fearfully seeing what was going on inside the smaller room, staying away after Ric turned up, the thing hard to comprehend was a gap found in his behavior: he had been probably going to mistreat her and indeed victimized those people, but now he was engaging in freeing Daryl.

Irrelevant to her confusion, yet, the awaited outcome came true: A naked boy was present in the corner room, as were three other kids following him, who was staring at Juno.

“Daryl!,” Juno rushed to Daryl and hugged him. He replied in the same way.

Tim’s voice reached Crystal, to whose eye Suzan’s eyes were filled with umbrage. If her anger is an indicator of affection toward Daryl as well as hatred to me, mine toward him excels hers, thought Crystal whose stare was icy at Suzan. During the face-off moving into a more heated phase, Crystal hated to leave, yet Tim’s signal partook of a sense of emergency so Crystal needed to check the situation. Tutting, Crystal turned her back to Suzan.

Even though the situation was urgent, staying naked was embarrassing in the presence of an adult man, Tim. Suzan wildly snatched a large cream curtain which had been hanging before the pane, got herself swaddled in it and cantered after Crystal.

Having entered the room whose ceiling lights were unlit, which had showcases with animals on both sides from an angle at the entrance, ahead of Crystal who was quietly trying to swallow the scene about the innermost, Suzan found him there: Daryl and Juno were together yet outside the detention room.

“Daryl!,” flooded with ineffable pleasure, Suzan dashed past Crystal whose movements were paralyzed by the scene with Tim sprawling out on the floor, joined the children of hers and shared the curtain, covering all of their bodies.

“Mom!” Daryl and Juno replied in harmony.

Suzan did not make any verbal response for a while, since her warm embrace was the irreplaceable, optimum expression.

Daryl was showing a smile to Suzan, something he never did to Crystal.

“Daryl,” leaving a feeble-sounding word, Crystal made a step toward the family. To her surprise, yet, a feathered man who had been forsaken by her came out of the room and raised a cell phone to her.

“Ric! Why!?”

“Mom, I’ve videoed every scene around here and…”

“...forwarded them to the police and media companies,” Ric said as he completed the transmission, ostentatiously showing the process to Crystal.

“I’m not supposed to be called mom by you!,” exasperated, Crystal went to Ric, slapped his left cheek into the hawk and Libro, turned to Suzan and said, “I must kill you.” While proceeding to Suzan, Crystal was dissolving into something looking like a human-shaped jellyfish.

Concurrently, those four red slimes came out of the room and were yet rubbing the floor toward Crystal.

“!” Crystal was inadvertently shocked by these slimes.

Not to miss out on the chance, Suzan began charging at Crystal.

She is gonna punch me, Crystal, seeing Suzan coming out of the corner of her eye, speculated.

“Crystal!,” however, eluding such her assumption, Suzan jumped high, horizontally turned around counterclockwise--when a higher viewpoint was taken--in the air and swung her left heel at Crystal’s face to eject a clear slime out of the body. After the separation, the remainder was a lean lady incapable of moving on her own, with her crippled limbs.

“Darryl,” hardly enunciating, Crystal was looking at Daryl.

“Darryl,” she repeated.

In the face of such a pathetic state of Crystal, understanding her affection toward Daryl and the cause of it even partly and abstractly, savoring the aftertaste of the very recent mutual hostility, Suzan could not find a word but a sigh.

“Daryl, Juno, come on,” having channeled her frustration into kicking away the red slimes and brought her children in the curtain, Suzan, yet, allowed Crystal in too.

“Crystal, it’s sad to say that what you’ve done were crimes indisputably,” while holding her body with her arms, Suzan said.

“You should come back to our society when your apology is truly warranted.”

“Libro,” Libro was called over by Juno and also allowed in the party.

“You are our family member as well,” Juno said while holding Libro.

A minute later, he jumped at and melded into Crystal, and gave her the normal state of a human again.

“Please excuse me for everything I’ve committed,” showing tears, Crystal said and embraced Suzan back.

Meanwhile, a short distance from the party, those four red slimes cohered together, became a large red hydra-like creature, and were nearing them, having absorbed Tim in the middle of its way.

But as Crystal noticed the ugly creature, stood up and said, “It’s over,” it stopped and vanished into the air.

Shortly later, the police and the media personnel arrived at the site.