Recovery

It was Sunday afternoon with the snow appearing less frequently as Winter was over in a couple of weeks. The battle between Scott and Drake was harsh with Scott dealing with a cracked rib cage and Dwayne being unconscious since having been struck hard with a metal hook. Jim on the other hand has been taking care of both of them while being busy developing some new inventions for the foreseeable future. 

Taking a break from his ingenuity, Jim took off his goggles and checked on Scott and Dwayne.

Coming upstairs, Jim approached Scott sitting on a chair while healing his bruises with an ice pack.

"How are you feeling? You've been in my house since the battle." Jim cleaning the soot off his hands with a washcloth.

"I'm okay. Just waiting for my rib to heal." Scott using his ice pack on his left cheek.

"Don't worry about it. I read that ribs usually heal faster when you eat more calcium as well as a lot of rest. So you should be good on Tuesday." 

"Yeah. I think so as well." Scott stood up.

"However, I'm worried about Dwayne because he's the one who suffered the most from the brawl. Looking at how Drake made a crack on his helmet." Scott looking at Dwayne.

"Yeah. He hasn't woken up yet and I'm afraid that we might need to take him to the hospital." 

"Let's just hope that he can wake up before school tomorrow." Scott picks up Dwayne's broken helmet.

Suddenly, somebody has been constantly knocking on the door.

"Who could that be?" Jim goes downstairs to the door.

"Hello?" Jim slowly opened the door. 

However, the person on the other side forcefully pushed the door as she knocked over Jim and ran upstairs to see somebody. 

"What the?" Scott watched as the girl ran towards Dwayne. 

Approaching Dwayne, the girl was concerned for him touching his pale cheeks.

"Hey!" Scott shouted at the girl.

The girl looked behind.

"Who the hell are you!" Scott walks slowly to get his softball bat as he's still suffering from his bruises.

The girl didn't respond as she only gave Scott a stare.

"Whoever you are, you better back away from our friend!" Scott pointing his bat at her following Jim coming upstairs activating his stun baton.

"Don't worry guys, she's with me." Dwayne slowly starts to wake up.

Looking behind her, the girl was happy as she hugged Dwayne as hard as she could.

"But how do we know she's not working for John either trying to spy on us or maybe have something in her pockets to backstab us?" Scott not trusting the girl.

"Who do you think shot the arrow at one of Drake's teammates?" Dwayne looking at the girl.

"That's true. I saw Dwayne almost getting shot by one of Drake's men and an arrow just came out of nowhere." Jim walked towards the girl.

"Are you the one who shot that arrow?" Jim questions the girl.

The girl nodded yes. 

Jim sighs. "Scott, stand down. She's with Dwayne."

Scott put down his bat going back to sit down again.

"Oh yeah, I forgot the introductions. Her name is Isabelle. I met her in her archery club and was struggling to shoot at the target so I decided to help her confidence and it seems that it paid off." Dwayne got up from bed only wearing a white shirt and jogger pants.

"How come she doesn't like to talk that much?" Jim questions.

"She's not much of a talker. She's more of a shower." Dwayne looked at Isabelle.

"I didn't know this school had an archery club." Scott said.

"I never knew either." Jim joins Scott.

"Speaking of the archery club, I saw you were the only one in the gym. What happened to your other club members?" Dwayne questions Isabelle.

Wanting more to explain, Isabelle took a print paper and some coloring pencils from Jim's desk and started drawing. It took her a couple of minutes to draw the whole scenario until she finally finished. When she finished her drawing, she gave it to Dwayne. Looking at it, Dwayne was horrified.

"Guys, I think you should look at this." Dwayne wants Scott and Jim to see Isabelle's photo.

On the drawing, it seems to look like a cartoonish drawing where there were a bunch of girls on the ground with Xs on their eyes with blood on the floor. There was a girl on the left hiding under the bleachers, which should be Isabelle in the picture. On the right of the drawing, there was a man, who seemed to look like John with an evil smile and sharp teeth, pulling out the body skeleton and brain of a club member as he was strangling her with one hand. There were also blood tipped arrows in the picture, but maybe just a detail and not that relevant to what she's describing.

"Were you in this situation?" Dwayne looked at Isabelle.

Isabelle nodded yes.

"When did this happen?" Dwayne asked.

Isabelle then turned the paper over drawing an autumn tree.

"In the fall." Dwayne looked at the picture.

"But how is this possible? If there was blood on the floor, shouldn't it stain the wood?" Jim questions Dwayne.

"Come to think of it, I have class there everyday, but I have never seen any blood stains on the floor. Can it be that John is very quick when hiding these things?"

"Could be. But there's either two ways he could've covered this. He either replaced every wooden tile in the gym, which takes a very long time to do, or painted over the blood stains." Jim hypothesized the situation.

"Maybe tomorrow, I can investigate the gym floor to see whether what Isabelle is saying is true or not." Scott then walked away.

"Where are you going?" Jim sees Scott walk away.

"Back home. If I'm going to get to the bottom of this, then I'm gonna-" Scott then fell to the floor.

"Scott!" Jim ran towards Scott.

"I'm fine. I guess my body needs more time to heal." Scott trying to get up.

"Don't push yourself too much though. Remember, we are a team and we're all going to solve this case." Jim helps Scott get up.

"Jim's right. Just rest here a few more hours until you can go back home. I'm just surprised that Isabelle knew where we were." Dwayne looked at Isabelle.

"By the way Isabelle, how did you know where we lived?"

Isabelle suddenly blushed as she knew she did something that was inappropriate.

Meanwhile at John's mansion, not a lot has happened as John was busy in the basement with his device adding more modifications on the drone he bought a month ago.

However, things started to get more complicated with Laura.

Laura had spent almost a whole day in the bathroom as she couldn't stop the blood from coming out of her nose as well as other pains with her stomach, her skin getting pale, and her smile started to have an expression of worry. She would see herself in the mirror as she used paper towels and washcloths to stop the bleeding on her nose. But no matter how many times she tries to clean the blood on her face, more blood will keep coming down making her worry.

"Please tummy! Stop growling! I know you're hurt and all but please stop!" Laura holding her stomach.

Suddenly, Laura started coughing heavily as she tried to cover her mouth with her arms instead of her hands. She expected bits of blood to come out, but instead something worse happened.

[Laura then coughed out a chunk of blood]

She didn't know what was happening and was scared.

"It's okay Laura. It'll be over soon! Hopefully." Laura's personality started to shift from her outgoing self to starting to get worried and scared.