Chapter Ten: Almost Discovered

Walking along the streets, Karl hadn't encountered any Sporelings as he was walking, which he found bizarre, maybe most of them had been killed by Jashuri and her now dead group of disposable bodyguards.

After he had reached the edge of the city, Karl he realized that he would probably need some kind of disguise if he doesn't want to be attacked as soon as he meets another person. Heading back into the city, he went to one of the six malls that were in the city.

It was the closest and also the largest with the size of the building being twice that of a normal mall with three floors. Observing the large building that was half collapsed, Karl saw and heard no movement, but he still entered cautiously.

Stepping through the doorway into the clothes store, Karl immediately noticed that the clothes that were supposed to be on hangers and racks were nowhere to be seen. There were barely any scraps of clothing on the first floor.

Instead of being a clothes store it was more accurate to call it a shopping mall that specialized in selling clothes. Not only were there clothing stores but also a foodcourt, gaming stores, and general stores, there was even a small gun store that was privately owned.

Wandering around a little on the first floor to see if there were any boxes of hidden clothes, Karl took the stairs to the second floor after five minutes on the first floor. On the second floor, there were clothes that were for kids aging from 6 to 13 years old, but not a lot of clothes.

Only enough for ten kids were on the second floor, so Karl started going up the stairs to the third floor, and he stopped half way up. Listening closely, Karl heard the sound of hangers being scraped against the bar the were being hung on along with voices.

"Hey Gary! I bet your girlfriend would love to wear this while you two were in the bedroom. It would fit perfectly with her personality!" A second passed before laughter could be heard from more than ten individuals, men and women, the amount of each couldn't accurately be ascertained because of the cacophony of laughter.

Running up the stairs as quietly as he could, Karl stopped just before the top and he lied down on the stairs, he then removed his skull and very carefully raised it so he could see the situation happening.

Only ten seconds had passed from the time that Karl had heard the voices to him lying down on the stairs and removing his skull to peep at the group of people, so everyone was still laughing heartily. 16 people were on the 3rd floor, 10 of them were men and 6 were women, and all of the other people were laughing at a red faced man.

With fiery red hair, brown eyes, a good looking face, and a muscular frame standing at over 2 metres tall. He was red faced at this moment with tears threatening to spill from his eyes, he can't handle being teased.

There was another man that stood out immediately as he was laughing the loudest while holding a nurse dress that had a leather harness attached to it, it was for in bedroom and not for general use. "Yeah! Well I bet your girlfriend would probably make you were this, and you would love it!" Gary, as was his name, held up what looked pretty close to a certain latex suit that starts with a 'G', it was only missing the latex mask.

When everyone realized what he was holding up, the laughter was even more uproarious as everyone knew that he was right. The man who had originally held out the nurse dress was now red in the face as well, and it was because he knew that they were right. He and his girlfriend were quite the characters.

Suddenly the ground started shaking, everyone stopped laughing, and their faces all turned pale. Whenever the ground shook like this in any city only meant one thing, there was a new Guardian that has been born, and that meant that the group of 16 had to hurry with their collecting of clothing and fabrics.

Turning back to there respective clothing racks, everyone started rushing to put as many clothes in incredibly large and stretchy bags, and only after everyone had a full bag did they huddle together to figure out what to do next.

"Should we just go and not risk being found by the new Guardian?" Gary asked this question uncertainly, he wasn't sure if they should leave or not. He didn't want to leave yet cause there were still many items of clothing still on racks, but he wanted to leave because Guardians are always stronger and more sensitive to the Mushrooms when they are born again in the same city.

Everyone was currently looking at the one who's girlfriend is quite the character, his name is Kevin, and he was the leader of this expedition to get clothes and find any extra supplies. His hair was a dyed teal, his eyes were a light yellow, he had a face that was better looking then Gary's but he was shorter then Gary by twenty centimetres.

Kevin was currently deciding wether or not to stay, but out of the corner of his eye he saw something white on the stairs descending to the second floor, turning his head towards the stairs and blinking, he noticed that whatever he had seen was no longer there.

"Hey! Kevin!" An urgent whisper could be heard as this was no time to be getting distracted. Returning his gaze back to the group, Kevin decided that it would be better to leave and not chance being found by the new Guardian, but he needed to take a vote.

"All those in favour of leaving raise your right hand, all those in favour or staying raise your left hand." A second or two after he finished, hands were raised, some were reluctant and some weren't, but it was immediately obvious what the decision was.

Kevin, Gary, all six of the women, and four more of the men wanted to get out of there immediately, only four wanted to stay. Hauling the bags onto their shoulders, everyone started heading down the stairs towards the second and first floor, they were going to leave the city and take all of the clothes that they had found back to Great Haven.

Walking down the stairs, Gary was leading the group since he was the vice captain and Kevin was guarding the back of the group, but Kevin noticed something when he was walking down the stairs. Looking down, Kevin saw that there were slight scrape marks located on the stone stairs, including some that looked like something was dragged away.

Following the direction of the scrape marks, Kevin saw that it lead to a dark hallway that only had a few mushrooms located in it. Inside the hallway was a skull that had it's head turned away from him, Kevin couldn't see the rest of the body, so he just offered a prayer to the dead and he continued following the group.

Observing the group of 16 people leaving, Karl waited until he couldn't hear their footsteps anymore before he got up and out of the dark hallway and started rummaging through the clothes on the racks. Searching for a while, Karl was looking for a specific type and colour of clothes, the type of clothes he was looking for were very baggy ones that could hide the fact that he was made of bones.

The colour of clothing that he was looking for were black, purple, dark green, and dark blue, but he wasn't having much luck finding the last two colours. Picking out an extremely baggy sweater that was black with a large skull on it and a pair of dark purple sweatpants that had stripes running up and down the pant legs, Karl put on the clothes and made sure that they fit properly.

While he was putting on his pants he remembered that his tail would get in the way, so he decided to wind it around his body like a rope, and he made the tip come up near his neck. Pulling up his pants, Karl walked around a little more until he found a pair of socks, shoes, leather gloves, a ski mask, and a pair of ski goggles that could hide the flames in his eye sockets.

Examining himself in a cracked mirror, Karl shook his head while chuckling, he looked like a person who was going to commit robbery or something. Grabbing a few large plastic bags from one of the counters, he filled it with spare clothes that were of the same kind as his current getup, and he exited the clothing store.

Looking left and right, Karl saw no sign of the group of sixteen people, and he was about to go in the general direction of Great Bear Lake, but he didn't know which direction to go. Turning back around, Karl headed into the "clothing store" again to see if he could find a general map of Canada, or even British Columbia.

Searching around the first, second, and third floor again, Karl didn't find any maps and he knew he would need one if he wanted to get the Great Bear Lake. Shifting his gaze to the collapsed part of the building, Karl thought hard and remembered that all of the general stores along with the foodcourt, gaming stores, and gun store were all conveniently on the side of the building that was collapsed.

Retracing his steps, he found a small map of the building with all of the different stores and all of the bathrooms and medical facilities. Wiping away the dust, Karl looked at the red dot with the words 'You are here' written in large black letters.

He was in the bottom left corner of the building while the store he was looking for was on the second floor, on the righthand side. Scratching his skull, Karl went up to the second floor, found another small map, and headed in the direction of the general store with the maps.

(P.S. Hello hello hello, it's been a very long time, I know, my excuse is that I didn't really get the motivation to write and I, well I can't really say that I don't have a lot of time to write, I do, but I'm a chronic YouTube watcher, and I usually spend at least an hour or two watching videos daily, just like memes and stuff, and then I need to watch my nephew since he and his mom, my sister, live with us. Children take up a lot of time, I also have to do chores in the morning, clean the house, and go to work. I need to butcher animals so the amount of money we spend on food for them can be greatly reduced, I need to study more, and finally, I need to write. So I don't have a lot of free time other then at night or the time spent watching YouTube videos, which I'm trying to stop watching, but I'm tired at night and have trouble staying awake... I should probably stop here, you don't want to hear about my life, you just wanna read an interesting story. I'm sorry that I can't get chapters out faster, I'll try.)