Voyage Dog Chapter 5: Touring through a Scummy Mall, Part 1
Copper and his teammates along with a new companion named Jasper and Betsy, a friend of Hazel’s, go to a seemingly normal mall…
Copper, Hazel and Skye come back to Scumberg after returning from Eskitty (a village inhabited by Eskimo cats) and go back to the Crow Twins map store to talk to Talon about the next location of the 4th crystal sun.
“The 4th crystal sun is located at a hidden pyramid that contains minigame trials in a desert far away from this city. The 3 of you will have to use the Scumberg Express to get there, but it’ll take about two days to arrive there”. Talon explained to them.
After that, they decide to take a break from their adventure and look at the sights of Scumberg.
Copper accidentally bumps into a light green cat dude with a dark green hoodie and he thinks Copper’s trying to mug him.
“My bad! I accidentally bumped into you after we got out of that map store. We are on a mission to find these legendary collectibles called the crystal suns and we’re trying to keep them away from some hooded figure group called the Explosio Trio.” Copper explained to him.
Copper along with Hazel and Skye introduce themselves to him. After that, the cat dude introduces his name.
“My name’s Jasper and I’m on a quest to save the world, but only using my baseball bat as a weapon because of a bet that my friend dared me to do.”
“Thankfully, my mom’s out on vacation, because if she ever knew that I was out of the house, she would’ve used her creepy and intense stare on me as punishment.” Jasper shuttered in fear as he starts having a flashback to when he accidentally broke his mom’s vase.
In the flashback, Jasper’s mom sees the broken vase and sees Jasper running upstairs.
“Challenge accepted.” She said to herself as she knew that Jasper broke her clay vase and would need him to scare him so he’d fess up the truth.
When Jasper wakes up the next day, his mom is standing next to his bed with an intense stare at him and he screams in horror.
Later that day, he goes to the fridge for a snack and when he closes the fridge door his mom is standing near him with the same intense stare.
Later at night, Jasper takes a shower and turns off the water. He pulls the shower curtain to the right and his mom is standing there with the same intense stare.
“Alright! Alright! I accidentally broke your vase!” Jasper finally admitted.
“That’s all I needed to hear.” She said with a smug smirk.
“If the both of us along with the rest of our family weren’t basically already naked or half naked, I would’ve called the cops or CPS on you for harassment!” He yelled at her in frustration.
After the flashback, Copper asks him how’d he leave his house without his mom knowing.
“My mom got me a babysitter to keep me in check despite me being a teenager. All I did to prevent my babysitter from ever finding out that I wasn’t in the house was spiking her coffee.”
“Wait a minute, you did what?!” Hazel replied shockingly.
“Nah, I’m just playing. I only added one of my mom’s sleeping pills to the coffee.” Jasper assured her.
“(I do not trust this dude.”) Skye thought to herself while silently judging Jasper.
He decides to join them out of curiosity and after that, they run into a friend of Hazel named Betsy who is a Scottish human girl.
They both do a secret handshake and Hazel introduces Copper, Skye and Jasper to her. Betsy asks if they all would like to go to Scumberg Mall with her. Copper, Hazel and Jasper agree to go.
“Eh.” Skye says while shrugging.
When they get there, the front of the mall looks normal at first, but when they all get inside they find the place all scummy and rundown with cracked floors, broken windows, and broken lights.
“Guess I should’ve expected this mall to be rundown because of the name.” Copper said.
“This is one of my favorite places in this city! Sure it’s rundown and mostly shady, but it has a pretty good fashion store called Go Kilt Yourself which has some pretty cool kilt designs.” Betsy said.
“Have you ever stolen anything at a store?” Skye asked Betsy out of curiosity.
“I kinda did when I was younger. If I remember, I was at a fashion store with my mom and I saw a table with a plate of cookies. I grabbed one since no one was around, but as soon as I grabbed one, the fashion store’s fire alarm started blaring. I remember I started crying because I thought the fire alarm detected me grabbing the cookie, but it turned out some kid shut on the alarm as a prank.” Betsy told Skye.
After Betsy tells her flashback, Skye decides to tell a story about stealing something from a store.
“I actually have a story that’s kinda similar where I’ve stolen something from a store.” Skye exclaimed.
“Is she for real?” Hazel thought to herself.
Skye tells her story about when she was also younger she just casually walked into a candy store and said casually said “Hi” to the cashier, grabbed a piece of candy and snuck it in her pocket and said bye to the cashier while walking out.
“That’s it?” Copper replied.
“That really isn’t that impressive.” Jasper also replied.
The first store Copper and the others go to is a store called The Penny Store where they sell crappy stuff for a penny. Skye looks through a bin full of DVDs called The Penny Bin and sees that all of the DVDS are from a series called Birdy Durdy.
Skye looks at one of the DVDs and says the first few movies of the series was good but they keep releasing them every year and then it got samey. Skye also finds another movie called Sumocide Squad which is considered one of the worst movies ever made.
The second and final store Copper and the others go to is a music store that sells randomly named CDs form obscure bands, musicians and albums like Killer in the Riller, Keebo Eblow, Death Meth, I Don’t Wanna Diet, Wyatt and from a human pop star who has albums ranging from genres like pop and emo music. The pop album has the popstar doing a peace sign on the cover while the emo album cover has her hair dyed purple, wearing dark blue eyeliner and wearing purple lipstick while looking upset. Betsy notices the pop star’s albums and says that she remembers listening to these in middle school and loved these albums but by the time the third album was released, she lost interest because it was an album full of country songs.
The five of them are about to leave the mall, but are noticed by a monkey named Mallers who’s a mall cop and hates teenagers. He starts to chase them because he accuses Copper and his friends of stealing his lunch of bananas. It turns out he was kinda right because while the 5 of them were walking to the music store, Copper saw the bananas on a food court table that was left unattended and he took them because he thought no one wanted them.
When Mallers finally catches up to Copper and his teammates he threatens to have all of them arrested but Skye snatches his bananas from Copper and threatens to squish them unless Mallers calls off the arrest. Mallers quickly agrees in fear and Skye is about to give him back his bananas but trips on a floor crack and accidentally throws the bananas all the way down to the bottom floor of the mall. Mallers screams “NOOO!!” and jumps down to grab his bananas while Copper and his teammates along with Betsy gasp in shock and hear all the bones of Mallers crack.
An ambulance arrives at the front entrance of the mall with Mallers being wheeled into the ambulance car. A pink cat nurse asks one of the characters how Mallers fell down and if was a regular suicide or did they assist in his suicide, because if they did then they’d be arrested. Copper, Hazel, Jasper and Betsy act pretty nervous and didn’t know what to say because if they told the nurse what actually happened they could all end up in jail. Fortunately for them, Skye quickly makes up a lie and says that Mallers accidentally tripped on a crack that caused him to fall down and shattered all his bones.
The pink cat nurse says that she’ll classify what happened as an accidental monkeycide, but immediately corrects herself. After the ordeal, Betsy says bye to Hazel and the others and that she hopes to see them again soon. After she leaves, Skye goes back into the mall to “use the bathroom” but is actually trying to buy a diary she wanted.
While Skye’s gone, Jasper tells Copper and Hazel to hide behind the mall because he wants to play a prank on Skye by pretending he and the others left her at Scumberg Mall. Copper asks if this is necessary while Hazel is mostly curious about this prank. The two of them along with Jasper hide somewhere to see her reaction. Skye walks out of the mall and believes they actually left her at the mall and goes on a rant. Hazel and Japser laugh at her reaction while Copper snickers a little.
Written and Cut Out Artwork by John
