Shadow Play, Chapter 5

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

Terra woke up rather later than she would have liked, but given what had happened last night, she would allow herself all the sleep she needed. Blynn was not in her bed, but the girls’ luggage had been brought into their room. Terra wandered groggily out of the bedroom to see her Neopets sitting at the table in the flat’s dining nook.

“Gooooood morning!” Blynn chirped. “I brought you your stuff!”

“Thanks,” Terra said with a tired grin. “I’m guessing that means the Defenders made it back okay.”

Isengrim nodded. “It took them an hour to return,” he said. “There was an… altercation at the hotel. Vile had sent more henchpets, as Tally predicted.”

Terra’s smile dropped. “Fantastic. Is everybody okay?”

“Thankfully, yes,” Hyren said. “The henchpets escaped, but the Defenders were able to protect all the civilians—and get our belongings back to us unscathed. I guess these guys really are more than just colourful costumes and corny catchphrases.”

“Of course they are!” Blynn said, pounding the table with a paw. “Don’t you read the comics?!”

 

 I drew this to call out clickbaity science news headlines; paleontology news articles in particular seem to try to shoehorn "Tyrannosaurus" or "T. rex" into every headline regardless of how irrelevant it is, because they know those key words will drive up the page views. (For astronomy articles it's usually "aliens" or "black hole".)

Can we just stop? Paleontology is cool no matter how much it does or does not have to do with T. rex.

(The dino featured here was based off Lesothosaurus, in case you were wondering. Nothing at all to do with T. rex. Just very adorable.)

 I think I actually kinda predicted Dynamaxing with this one.

 He might be overdoing things a bit.

Shadow Play, Chapter 4

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

Neopia Central at two-thirty in the morning had a bit of a different vibe. It had stopped raining, and there was still plenty of vehicle traffic, but almost no pedestrians on the sidewalks. Most of the lights in the buildings were out, save for the odd Neopet working a night shift. It was rather eerie—or peaceful, Terra supposed, depending on how one wanted to look at it. Right now, though, she was a bit on edge from a kidnapping attempt, so her mind leaned more toward seeing things as eerie.

She looked up at Isengrim as they traversed the city blocks between the hotel and the Defenders’ headquarters, and he smiled down at her, although it seemed to her to be halfhearted. Her worries grew. Had she offended him in some way? They’d had excellent rapport ever since she adopted him – well, to be exact, since about a day after she adopted him – but perhaps she was naïve for thinking nothing could ever cause tension between them. What concerned her was that he was usually so open with her about anything bothering him, and now it seemed like that wasn’t the case.

“Are you okay?” she finally asked him as Blynn made them stop for more gumballs at the restaurant. The Zafara gave a few to Tally this time, before putting another in her mouth and sticking the rest in her belt pouch.

“I’ll be just fine,” Isengrim said with another smile that did not quite reach his eyes.

 

 Couldn't leave out the Grand Duke of astrophysics himself!  I know seal point cats are native to Thailand, but as far as I'm aware there are no established cat breeds that originated in India, so I just went with a geographically close area. I also just really wanted to draw somebody as a seal point cat. <3

It's so wonderful how so many people all over the world contribute to advancing humanity's understanding of the universe around us! 

My own diabolical genius of a cat figured out the whole laser pointer thing pretty quickly. He derived much more entertainment from watching his brother Mallow fail to figure it out. I'm absolutely certain cats can experience Schadenfreude.

A running gag in this comic is how DJ Mary's face is very... unique, but I didn't want to just leave it at that. I wanted to show that just as you should never judge anybody by how they sound on the radio, you should also never judge anybody by their looks. And also just don't judge anybody.