Thinking back, Jason says, “For him to come up with that idea was pretty smart, so I couldn’t blame him, and I’m glad I could help keep his family safe.  Unfortunately, Miss Springs was already in the area and did not feel the same about the situation.  My friend, Edison Clark, was taken away and I was left with the sad job of relaying this fact to Georgia.  As she and I talked, I reached into my pocket and realized I had picked up important evidence from the scene of the crime.  While we were fighting, Eddie tried to hit me with a flashlight to save my life by preventing me from seeing too much.  I had to turn this into the police before my accidental possession of the item got me thrown in the slammer, too.”

    “I thought for sure I’d lose both my friends in less than an hour,” says Georgia.

    “We called Miss Springs and arranged to meet with her, but never made it.  We were both abducted by a strange van and soon found ourselves in a cell ourselves.  Our stuff was taken, so we couldn’t call Miss Bailey.  We were dead.”

    Georgia leans in dramatically, “But that’s when we heard Eddie speaking to us.”  Imitating her pal, Georgia goes on, “‘I’m in here for doing something noble.  What’d you do, rob a fourth grader?’  That dork.  A minute later and he’s opening our cell door, shoving flashlights in our hands, explaining they are laser weapons, like in the old secret agent documentaries.  With those, we were able to take out the entire facility, without killing anyone, of course.  It turned out we were in one of the buildings of the Patterson Corporation, the brick building between Susie’s and the drug store.”

    “Uh, Georgia,” Blue reminds her, “they don’t know where any of those places are.”

    “Oh, yeah.” She giggles, almost snorting.

    “She’s extremely wise, but even she has her moments,” says Jason as he shakes his head, smiling.

    Georgia resumes, “Like I was saying, how Eddie ended up going from Miss Bailey’s custody to the enemy territory is obvious.  We prepared for our impending betrayal, and when Miss Springs arrived, we handed over the flashlights and played dumb as best we could.  We were brought to the Fairmont branch of the Ringers and introduced to the top commander of the facility, General Ted Frostfeather.”

    “Frostfeather?” Kammy butts in.  “I remember reading about the Frostfeather dynasty that ruled one of Raz’s ally nations during Georgia’s day.  The same people?”

    “Most likely,” Georgia guesses, with the Asteroid Trio confirming the link.  “It doesn’t really matter, though, since this general was anything but regal.  From the moment he saw us, he did nothing but accuse us of working with the thugs so we could pay for college.”  Then in a deep, dopey male voice, she mocks, “‘We have ears everywhere.  We even have ears in our ears.’  He actually said that.  Oh, but when I voiced my innocent confusion at how a fifteen-year-old boy could go from the security of the general’s best officers to the clutches of the black-market thugs, his face had ‘guilty’ written all over his goofy mustache.  ‘Are you accusing me of being in cahoots…blah blah blah,” and I say back, ‘Jane Michelle Patterson of the Patterson Corporation seems to think so.  Shall we rehearse the two ways of doing things you mentioned, Mr. Frostfeather?’”

    The girls are all fired up at the sound of Georgia putting the villain in his place.  I think I even see Faye and Gi exchanging a high five.

    Jason takes over.  “There’s a big fight, the general says he only let me chase Eddie to see how much I knew, and that both me and my family would’ve been arrested if we had been suspected of anything.  Even so, we kids were the humble recipients of a miracle.  We managed to take everyone out except the frosty general.  He held his flashlight to his chest and pressed a special button.  We thought for sure he was getting desperate, but Eddie and I soon learned, the hard way, that he was using an untested feature that allows the user to absorb the lunar energy, giving them superhuman strength and some beam-firing power.  After Eddie was knocked unconscious, I thought I’d give this new trick a go and shot myself with my own flashlight, having hit the special button, because I’m not a doofus.  And you know what?  I was able to do it.  I was able to beat General Frostfeather.  That day, we were truly blessed.”

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