Tale #35: Encore of the Spore

Tale #35: Encore of the Spore (Part 5 to Field-Tripped) (Content Tags: Messy Pull-Ups, wet Pull-Ups, pantswetting, braindrain via mushroom, evil antagonist) Garrett felt untouchable. He'd been personally responsible for the mental destruction of two of his classmates and nobody had a clue about his involvement; not only that, but linking him to either of their states would be borderline impossible. Murphy's condition had been known to be related to the fungus from Vilestone Park, and Vince could only be assumed to have a delayed reaction from the same devastating shrooms. Garrett wasn't as happy with what he had to do to Vince, but it'd been necessary once his partner in crime had decided to grow a guilty conscience. He was down a friend, but there was no honor among thieves, or bullies in this case. The brunette had visited the pair a few times since then, seeing their diminished intellect in person; they didn't seem worse for the wear, likely because they were incapable of understanding it. If nothing else, they looked mindlessly happy to suck their thumbs and pop a squat in their oversized Huggies. Garrett was happy too, but because of the amazing power trip this experience thus far had provided for him. He still had a bag full of mushrooms and the knowledge of what he could do with them sent tingles down his spine. The smart thing to do would be to quit while he was ahead and responsibly dispose of the fungal evidence, but he couldn't let go. Every petty infraction of those around him had him mentally reaching for that baggy and wondering how to isolate them. It wasn't a healthy way to think, and in fact, it was downright sociopathic. Was Garret really anything more than that though? This wasn't some juvenile prank or adolescent bullying, this was something far more serious and far more dark. For a time, Garrett kept a lid on his impulses; it couldn't last forever, but it needed to be long enough that people wouldn't go up in an uproar. Day after day, his fingers itched to open that bag; the dark passenger had to be fed. A face kept appearing to him, a name, the person he knew must be his next victim. It wouldn't be a classmate of his own this time, but a kid from the grade under; there was no other motivation other than the fact that this kid was loud and obnoxious on the school bus. So Garrett would have to make sure he took a *different* bus from now on. Kieran. Even his name was obnoxious! And he always sat next to his best friend, blabbering the whole ride without any sense of his surroundings or how to control the volume of his voice! It was an unacceptable burden to Garrett, and he absolutely refused to carry it any longer. So the dark plot was set into motion, a conspiracy constructed against a kid whose crime was wildly inappropriate for the harsh punishment waiting in the wings. Details were important to how Garrett would actually accomplish this goal. With Murphy, they had shared a class and Vince had been there to help pin the ginger down. With Vince, the idiot had trusted him enough to keep his back turned while they were alone. For Kieran though, he didn't want another incident to happen at the school; it would be less suspicious if he spread out the locations or occurrences. So, for lack of deserving a less creepy term, Garrett began to stalk the boy. Stalk was actually fair to say too, since the older boy really was like a jaguar hunting its prey by tailing it. Kieran got on the bus around the same time every morning, and he was never alone long during his wait; once he got off the bus at the end of the day, he was about a half-block away from his house, but he often walked home with that best friend of his. It made things more difficult. One thing that Garrett had learned during his research was of particular interest though: Kieran wore some type of Pull-Up. It was obviously discreet, but after following the boy and his father into a pharmacy, he'd seen the purchase with his own eyes. This wasn't just some bedwetting garment either, because he'd heard the kid's dad quietly ask him whether or not he'd been wet while at the store. So there must be some daytime bladder issues, which made a lot of sense to Garrett with how hyperactive the brat was. Learning this was certainly a fascinating tidbit, but it didn't get him any closer to his ultimate goal here. If nothing else, it eased any small shred of guilt that Garrett might have had, knowing that the pipsqueak wasn't fully housebroken in the first place. After a couple of weeks of doing his due diligence, Garrett couldn't stand to wait any longer. Every day on that bus was a splitting headache, and Kieran's afterschool or weekend activities were too sporadic to plan around. The bully would need to change his approach here. The best friend, Dalton. The more quiet of the pair was the variable that had made this dastardly deed impossible. If Garrett wanted any chance, he needed to separate the two, just for long enough for the mushrooms to be planted. His fungal friends would take care of the rest of it. It was showtime. The day of action, he sat behind the pair on the way to school. Like always, Dalton kept his backpack on the floor beside his seat. Garrett took this opportunity to open it up and snatch the younger boy's math homework out, before zipping the bag back up. He knew math was their last subject of the day, and better, he knew Dalton was more academically motivated than his more annoying half. So Garrett waited all day, until classes had ended, and once he could be sure that Dalton had spent the last class panicking over his lost work. Then, he quietly trailed the forlorn lad toward the bus pick-up, where he would be meeting with Kieran. Garrett grabbed the stolen paper from his folder and finally reached over to tap Dalton on the shoulder. "...Hey, your name is Dalton, right? I found this in the hall earlier today and I think it belongs to you. Must have fallen out of your backpack or something." Dalton was over the moon to see it, and even if it meant missing his bus, he rushed back into the school in hopes that his math teacher was still in his classroom. Meanwhile, Kieran was looking around, unsure where his friend could be, right up until the point that last call was made for the bus. Now here was where some luck came into play. The bus made frequent stops, slowing the ride down tremendously, and the street was only a fifteen or twenty minute walk from the school. That meant that Garrett would possibly only have a small time table to work with. Margins would be everything. The bus came to a stop and Garrett checked the time. If Dalton had been quick to turn in his homework, and kept a brisk pace walking home, then he was only about five minutes behind them. That would have to be enough time. He watched Kieran get up and shuffle toward the front; Garrett got up after a moment and trailed him off the bus, thankful that his own stop wasn't far off, so it wasn't suspect. The bully couldn't have asked for better conditions. The sky was dark with clouds that threatened to open up, and the street bare of any activity. He walked behind Kieran, metaphorically poised to pounce on his prey and finish things off. There still needed to be some discretion here though, some class. "...Hey, you're Kieran, right?" The younger boy turned around and tilted his head, not really recognizing Garrett. "Uhhh, yeah, why?" The brown haired devil grinned, "Your buddy, uh, Dalton, he asked me to tell you something. Something super secret." "Super secret? Is it why he didn't go home on the bus?" Garrett slowly nodded his head, "Something like that. Its *really* secret though, like, I can't just tell you out in the open like this. We should step into this alley..." The older boy motioned toward a fenced partition between houses, that fed out into the next street. Kieran was apparently as stupid as he was loud, so without a hint of survival instinct, he followed Garrett into his own doom. While the two boys were escaping from prying eyes, unbeknownst to either of them, Dalton had caught up enough to be down the road and encroaching. "So what's the big secret?" Kieran inquired, hands lazily stuffed in his pockets as he took a few more steps into the alleyway. Garrett looked around for a moment, "I have something from him, for you...You need to close your eyes though, because I put it in a secret place in my backpack, and I don't want you knowing about it." The mark looked annoyed that the unveiling was taking so long, but he obliged the request. With his eyes now closed, he couldn't see what Garrett was *really* pulling out from his bag. "This better be good, I don't got all day!" From the bag came a couple of the mind-melting mushrooms that'd already claimed two victims and they were hungry for a third. "Oh, trust me, it'll all be worth it, potty-pants." Before Kieran could react to the insult, or more likely, before he could unconvincingly squawk about how untrue it was, the two caps had been placed right onto his head and had begun to immediately take root. "I don't have potty--potty..." Kieran's mouth hung open in a drooly stupor, and Garrett decided that he'd want a better look at the 'show' that was primed to start. He bent down and pulled the boy's shorts down, catching a look at the pull-up style training pants that the loudmouth with an excitable bladder had to wear. "Potty-pants? I think you *do*, you moron. Even Murphy started out with those dopey undies of his..." The bully snickered, seeing that the front of the trainers were beginning to stain with an unrestrained trickling. "End result is the same though...You'll be going back to real diapers, and your braindead little butt will be riding on the short bus, with all the other pantsfillers." Right on cue, Garrett heard a slow, wet crackling that crowned into an undignified THUMP! He took a look around his target and smiled devilishly at the large unsightly protrusion that had marred the backside brown with its sloppy exit. "...That'll be the only loud thing about you from now on, kid. And I won't be the one having to hear it." "What's going on? Kieran? Why are your pants down? What's on top of your head?" Garrett froze and turned around. Dalton had caught up and followed them into the alley, and now he was seeing everything! He'd have to abort the mission early, though he was pretty sure he'd done some solid damage to the stinker's brain. He quickly snatched the mushrooms back and tossed them hastily into his bag. "You didn't see *nothing*, you got that?" Garrett considered overpowering the younger boy and making him share the same fate as his mentally addled friend, but there lied the possibility that another victim would overcomplicate what was already a bungled task. "..Think I pooped.." Kieran muttered in a daze, sounding pretty out of it, though at least becoming aware of the steaming pile he'd made just moments before. Garrett stepped closer to Dalton, and the younger boy shakily took a step back. "W-what'd you do to him? Why is he like that?" "The same thing I'll do to you if you try snitching about any of this. I'll leave you picking your nose and mindlessly crapping in a diaper, locked away in the special ed hall for the rest of your schooling life." The bully hissed, prodding the boy's chest with his finger. Dalton got so scared that a dark spot began to quickly grow on the front of his jeans, before becoming a trail down his pantlegs. "I-I won't tell!" He yelped in terror. "Good, I'll be watching to make sure you don't." Garrett snarled, brushing past the boy and giving him a rough shove in the process to punctuate his threat. Dalton was glad that it started to finally rain, considering his pants were soaked in liquid fear. He rushed over to Kieran, once Garrett had left, and started to help him get his own shorts back up over his soiled training pants. He wasn't sure yet what was exactly going on, but if he didn't want to be the next victim, he'd need to figure things out.