Last Night - (A Kindergarten AU)

Chapter 11 - Over a wire

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The three of them sat in the underground lab of their old kindergarten, watching Monty hastily move wires and microchips around in Penny's back. After drinking a few too many "fruit punches" unknowingly she managed to knock herself out, then have a nightmare about the bear incident and then cause herself to malfunction.

"God, it feels weird being back here." Carla was the first to break the silence out of the three, they were all fixated on the gate Nugget got himself trapped into, one too many times, 14 years ago. The place where they had experienced so much trauma at such a young age, and a lot of them still hadn't even begun to unpack it.

The school was now abandoned, after the disappearance of the principal the authorities did some deep diving and they did not like what they found, so instead of dealing with all the court trials and legal matters they simply shut the school down and planned for it to be demolished, although that never happened, so now the school sits only to be eaten away by time and weather.

The roof was pretty much caved in and the walls were covered in various plants and vines; the paint was hanging on by a thread and the windows had been broken severely due to little kids thinking it would be funny to throw rocks or tennis balls or whatever they could find to smash them. It had never looked worse, and that brought so much satisfaction for the young adults.

"Well, all of Penny's tech is too heavy to transport out the old lab so we've got to make do." Monty sighed and began removing the grate cover with one of his many screwdrivers before chucking it to the side and manoeuvring his way down with Buggs and Carla following after him, being careful not to break Penny any further as they gently finessed her through as carefully as they could, treating her like she could crack if they slipped up.

The lab gave off an untouchable aura: No matter the corrosion the weather tried to inflict, or how many failed experiments Monty conducted, or how much time had passed; nothing could change or affect the lab in anyway. It seemed to be immune to anything connected to this world.

They had covered up the goo pit, understandably, but there was still traces of the hole where Nugget had drilled through to save Lily, Billy, and Adam just as a little reminder of his heroic deed. The glass chambers had been fixed countless times, but they always seemed to end up broken again somehow, everyone just declared it was due to the fragile glass they were made out of, no one had the time to willingly investigate further.

Monty also added his own touches to the lab, a lot of which was the Principals old equipment he found when the Kindersquad did their own search of the school for anything useful way back to just before it shut down. He figured it would work better for Penny since it was made with her in mind and the Prinicpal couldn't really protest, so he just took what he thought was useful. Now he has a nice little 'Penny Tools' section in his toolkit.

Carla sat Penny down back-to-front on a chair so Monty had full access to the door in the middle of her back where majority of her tech was, she sighed and backed away.

Buggs was sat near the operating table just staring at Penny. It must've been quite a shock to himto find out one of his good friends is still struggling with her flashbacks. I mean, Carla and Monty were both used to it by now so it didn't really come as a surprise to them, but it obviously took him by surprise.

She felt bad for Buggs, this isn't the way anyone had expected him to find out she wasn't healed. He didn't seem to be taking it well, he hadn't spoken a word since they got into the lab, he wasn't even looking anywhere remotely near Penny anymore.

"..How's she doing?" Carla peered over the fingers shoulder, looking to see how far along Monty was getting.

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