Camoflunks - S2 - Issue 1: New Season!! Whoo!

At 6:30 in the morning, Coach gets out of bed and goes to the mirror hanging on the wall to the left of his bed and combs his hair, which doesn't take very long since it's only an inch and a half long.

He puts on his Red Sox cap, covering his gray hair, which is rather thin toward the front.

Coach brushes his teeth, puts on a short-sleeved olive green shirt, camouflage pants and combat boots.  As he's walking out the door of the Manager's Cabin, he picks up his trumpet.

He walks out onto the front porch and mutters to himself, "Now... what to play today? Hmmm... oh, perfect."

Coach lifts his trumpet and begins playing When The Saints Go Marching In. And hits all the wrong notes.



Rod covers his head with his blanket and groans as soon as Coach starts playing.

Everyone else gets up and starts getting dressed and eventually Rod throws his blanket off and starts getting dressed too.

As one of the other Red Cabin team members pulls his shirt on, he says, "I didn't know you could play When The Saints Go Marching In, in C minor."

Billy, a well-muscled kid with dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent, replies, "That's because you're not supposed to!"

Everyone in Red Cabin One starts laughing uproariously.

The only dress code requirements at camp is a pair of combat boots and an armband in your team's color.  Other than that, the kids can wear whatever they want, within reason.

Rod, thirteen years old, four-foot-eight, with longish red hair and gray eyes, is wearing jeans and a red t-shirt.

Mark, a five-foot-six African-American kid of sixteen with short black hair and brown eyes, is wearing dark gray cargo pants and a red sleeveless shirt.

And Leo, four feet and one inch tall, has short brown hair, blue eyes, a mole on his chin and wears a pair of rectangular glasses, a dark green button-up shirt and red shorts.

The reason behind why each of them is wearing at least one red article of clothing, is that after spending as much time at Camp Adanarg as they have, one starts always wearing team colors whether as a conscious decision or not.  Those who have gone there the longest can be picked out easily as they wear nothing but red, blue, yellow or green respectively at all times.

As each of the Reds gets dressed, they start slowly spilling out of their cabins and going over to the obstacle course.

Rod, Leo and Mark get there, and see that the others are, rather than running it, rearranging it!

Rod quirks an eyebrow and asks Mark, "Why are they moving stuff around?"

Leo replies, "Oh yeah, the first day we got here, Coach said that the course gets rearranged every Sunday, but you were so late that day," Leo suddenly stares off into the middle distance, as he is prone to do, "that you almost got locked out."

Rod's face turns a faint shade of red and he practically growls, "It wasn't my fault that that Bus broke down like, twice, on the way here!"

Then they hear Mark say from over by the climbing wall, "If you two are about done," Mark breaks off mid-sentence with a grunt as he and a few others start tipping it on it's side and continues saying, "we could use some help here!"



At the Cafeteria, everyone from the Red is rubbing sore muscles or cradling bruised limbs.  Rod and Leo are shuffling along the line at the food counter.

The first of the three aging lunch ladies, Beatrice, with her gray hair pulled back into a bun at the back of her head so tightly it's pulling the skin of her face taught, making her wrinkles barely noticeable. Which also increases her already commanding presence.

Beatrice always wears a cold, calculating look.  When you combine that with the fact that when she talks to you she has her head inclined so that she's looking down her nose at everyone, you feel as if she is a queen in her court, rather than a cook.

She asks in her high, though still intimidating, voice, "Pancake or waffle?"

"Pancake." Rod squeaks as though he's being interrogated.

Then they get eggs from Marge, Beatrice's younger sister, whose hair still retains a little blond in it.  Though she's the younger of them, Marge is almost always falling asleep, and often forgets where her glasses are even though they are usually perched on her head.

And finally, they pass by Auntie, who is stirring soup for later.  No one really knows what her name actually is, they just call her Auntie.

As soon as they sit down, Mark tells them to finish their breakfast quickly.

"Why?" Leo asks around a bite of pancake that could easily pass for a hockey puck.

"Because us and the Yellows have to go clear out the backwoods for the battle tomorrow."

Rod's voice, muffled by scrambled eggs with strange black flecks that he has already learned to ignore, says, "What are we supposed to be clearing out of there?"

Mark, finishes swallowing a gulp of milk and replies, "You know, gathering acorns for ammo and pinecones for the Doc to make into grenades.  Also, getting rid of thorned vines and thistles."

All Rod says in response is, "Ah."

Mark finishes explaining that they do this every week the day before a battle, and that the Blue and the Green Cabins did it the last time. The Greens doing more of the work than the Blues, under the tyranny of Mo.

After finishing their breakfast, they all meet up with the Yellow team outside of the fenced off area that takes up twenty of the twenty-five acres of the camp, where they have their battles with acorn firing guns and itching powder grenades and other things like that. The rest of the time, they go hiking back there or go swimming in the lake.

Joe Spivy, leader of the bullies and hooligans which make up all of the Yellow Cabins, one through four, says in his voice as deep as an avalanche, "About time you got here.  I was starting to think we'd have to do this ourselves.  And if we did, then I'd have to give you a black eye."

Joe's face looked a lot like a looming thunderhead when he said that last part.

Mark's responds, "Yeah well, unlike you guys, we didn't inhale breakfast."

Joe stands there for a moment with a foreboding look on his face.  Some of the Red cabin boys start worrying that they're all going to get pummeled, though none of them voice their concern.  Then suddenly Joe starts shaking with laughter, a noise very similar to the sound hippos make.

"You got us there, Mark.  Especially in Glen's case." Joe says, still laughing, and pointing over his shoulder at a guy even bigger than himself, who then gets an embarrassed look on his face.

Joe continues, saying, "The way he eats, you'd think he has a black-hole in his stomach!"

Now, Joe is seventeen years old and is six and a half feet tall, weighs three hundred pounds, and can lift four hundred!  He is very well tanned, has short, spikey orange hair and likes wearing leather, denim, and his barbed golden chain necklace.

Eventually they all get to collecting acorns and pinecones and clearing out unpleasant plant life.



A few hours later, the two teams are just wrapping up, when one of the Yellow Cabiners comes running over to Joe and says, "Um, Jozer?"

"What?"

"Phil's gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Gone as in, he was there one moment, then he wasn't."

"Alright, show me where you saw him last.  Sam!  Eric!"

Two of the Yellow Cabin boys stop trying to pull a large thorn bush out of the ground and run over to stand in front of Joe.  They are completely identical in appearance, short blond hair, pale blue eyes and freckles.  Complete pretty-boys, and they're even dressed the same, denim shorts and white tank-tops.  The only way to tell them apart is that rather than wearing their armbands on their arms, they wear them like headbands, each with their name written on it.

"You're coming with me. Phil's gone."

"Yes, Joe." The twins say at the same time.



"It was here." The Yellow Cabiner says.

"Good, now you go take everyone back to the cabins. We can handle finding him."

"Got it!" He shouts over his shoulder as he runs back to where everyone's waiting.

He had led Joe and the twins to the edge of the fence surrounding the camp.  A place Sam and Eric know all too well.

Sam starts saying, "Uuuh, I don't think..."

"...this is such a good idea." Eric finishes.

Joe grunts, then climbs over the fence. Sam and Eric cast baleful looks at each other then follow Joe.

They keep walking through the forest and shouting Phil's name.  Then Joe trips on a large root and lands in a bunch of leafy plants.

Joe gets up and brushes himself off, muttering, "Stupid tree."

Then Sam says, "Hey uh, Joe..."

"Yeah?"

Eric points at the ground where Joe landed and says, "That's poison ivy."

Joe shrugs and says, "I'll be fine so long as I don't scratch."

The twins give each other quizzical looks and follow Joe as he continues walking.  They finally reach a clearing, with a small cliff rising over the trees on the other side.

Joe, already starting to look blotchy from scratching without noticing, walks into the clearing, raises his hands, cups them around his mouth and shouts, "Phil! Where are..."

Joe stops when he hears something climbing out of a horridly polluted looking pond.

"Phil?"

Camoflunks - S1 - Issue 7: Yeah, You Probably Saw It Coming.

Sullenly getting up at the usual 6:30 am, Coach gets dressed, grabs his trumpet, walks out onto the Manager's Cabin's porch, and begins to play... even, worse!



"You, go get my laundry!  You, come here!  I said, come here!  C'me-'ere c'me-'ere c'me-'ere c'me-'ere, come here!  Come, here!" Mo Shouts.

Left and right, residents of the Red cabins slave away at order, after order from Mo, including Shawn, Rod and Leo.  Unfortunately for them, Joe's lease on the twins -and his patience- has expired, so Sam and Eric had been dragged back to the Yellow Cabins.

Rod and Edward are forced to drag big, heavy logs around and neither of them know what sort of torture Mo is putting Leo or Shawn through.  Eventually Rod says, "I really don't see, *Grunts* how this is accomplishing, *Grunts* anything! *Pants*"

"That's *Growls* the idea, *Gasps* amigo." Edward says through clenched teeth.

"Faster you two!" Mo barks at them.

They pick up the pace, for about five seconds until Mo stalks off.  Leaning against Red Cabin Two, Edward's older brother Carlos, traitor to the Red Cabins, keeps watch, making sure that nobody is slacking off and quite clearly enjoying watching everyone else doing stuff he doesn't have to!

Rod, about to direct a sneer at Carlos, looks over his shoulder... and stops.  He sees Brent talking to Carlos.  Carlos gets a perplexed look on his face, then Brent starts insisting on something.  Carlos nods, though he also looks skeptical, even... wary.

Brent looks around, pulls something from his pocket and slips it into Carlos' hand.  Brent's eyes lock onto Rod in a grim, suspicious way.  Brent leaves, whispering something into Carlos' ear as he passes.  Carlos takes a quick glance at what Brent gave him, shoves the camo-bucks into his pocket, and acts as if nothing out of the ordinary has just happened.

"Hey, uh, Ed? Could you..."

"Sure." Edward says, as Rod hands him the end of his log and Edward hefts it onto his back.

"Thanks."

"Don't, *Grunt* mention it." Edward then starts dragging both of them! If Edward had his teeth clamped shut before, now you wouldn't be able to pry them apart with a crowbar.

Then Rod sneaks -more like stumbles- into the trees, trailing Brent.



Meanwhile, Leo and Shawn are digging holes and filling them back in again.

"My name is Shawn and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole..." Shawn sings while he digs, he's also wearing an over-large bathrobe, a belt and a floppy, pointy cap so he looks like one of the Seven Dwarves.

Leo, sitting on the ground next to the hole with his hands over his ears and a frustrated look on his face, says in a irritated and slightly raised voice, "Are you done now?"

Shawn answers in a gruff voice, "Aye, I be done lad."

Leo exhales in relief, grabs his shovel and hops into the hole.

When the hole reaches four feet deep, they start filling it back in. While they're doing that, Leo asks, "So, how many times were we supposed to do this?"

"Ten," Shawn replies.

Leo gets a stricken expression on his face and looks at the patches of dirt marking the fifteen other holes they had dug and filled in already.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?!"

"Digging is too much fun to just stop at ten holes!" Shawn says with a smile.

"And when were you planning on stopping?!"

"Eighteen."

Leo groans and promptly falls flat on his face.

Shawn leans over him and says, "Uh, Leo?"

He waits a moment, then shrugs and goes back to filling in the hole... and singing.



Rod ducks behind a tree just as Brent whips his head around.

Brent sweeps his gaze over the trees and undergrowth behind him and seeing nothing, closes his eyes and listens.

"I know you're back there, I can hear you breathing."

Rod realizes how hard his breathing is and slaps a hand over his mouth, thinking to himself, "He is just, plain, freaky! The guy must be like, part... dog, or, something! Hmmm, maybe if I had a Milkbone."

Rod slowly looks around the tree, Brent has disappeared.

"Oh come on, where'd he go?"

Someone taps him on the shoulder, Rod turns around to find Brent standing behind him.

Brent holds up a pair of binoculars and says, "Try these."

Rod takes them and says, "Thanks!"

Rod leans out from behind the tree again and starts looking around, saying, "Alright, where did you run off to Bre..." Rod slowly turns back around to face Brent, swallowing nervously.

"Uh, hi?"

Brent replies in an annoyed tone, "Hi Ethan Hunt."

Rod looks around for a moment, then looks back at Brent and asks, "How do you do that?"

"My Uncle takes me rabbit hunting sometimes." Brent leans against a tree. "Now tell me, what are you doing?"

"I'm... talking to you." Rod says with an innocent grin.

Brent says in a monotone voice, with a blank face, "Don't make me hurt you."

Rod's eyes snap wide open at the threat then he sighs and says, "I was trying to figure out why Mo didn't find out about me almost getting him busted," Rod's face takes on a look of suspicion, "why you didn't tell him that I tried?"

Brent slouches in a resigned manner, now it was his turn to sigh, then silence for a few moments until Brent finally says, "This is going to seem really cliche, but... I'm an undercover agent."

Rod, looking rather surprised, says, "Wow, very cliche."



Leo and Shawn are just about finished filling in the sixteenth hole, Leo pauses for a moment to wipe the sweat from his face and notices that Rod is no longer helping Edward drag logs around.

"Hey Shawn, where's Rod?"

Shawn stops shoveling dirt and looks at where Rod and Edward were dragging the logs in circles in front of the cabins.  He and Leo are around the far end of Red Cabin four, where the other two can't see them.

"Beats me." Shawn says with a shrug.

"I think we should go find him."

"Eh, I guess." Shawn sticks his shovel in the ground and takes off his Dopey costume.

They try their best to slip away quietly, not an easy feat considering that between the two of them, they have all the stealth of a drunken rhinoceros!

They start their search at the Yellow Cabins, where after being noticed, they have to pay some of the Yellow Cabin's brutes twenty camo-bucks each, else the Yellows threatened to go tell some of the Blue Cabin gangsters that they had some escapees.

Next, they check by the Green Cabins, where they ask the first person whose attention they can get whether they had seen Rod around.

"Rod? You mean... Rod... Thomson?"

They can barely hear what the guy says over the sounds of hammers, saws and electric drills. The Green Cabiners, all naturally-born carpenters and handymen, are working on their bi-monthly repairs of their cabins.

"Yeah, have you seen him?" Leo shouts over the racket.

The Green ponders for a moment, then finally answers, "Not since breakfast. Why do you ask?"

"Nevermind."

"What?" The Green Cabiner asks.

Leo says, "I said, never mind."

"A little louder."

"I said... NEVER MIND!" Leo shouts at the top of his lungs... just as the noise stops.

Every boy in the Green Cabins stares at him like he's a rabid bear.

Leo's face starts turning red, and he says, "Uh, sorry. We'll, just be... going... now."

Leo and Shawn walk away at a quick pace and the noise soon resumes.  Finally, they come to the Blue Cabins and it seems that everyone from the Blue Cabins is off occupying themselves elsewhere.

Leo, stamping impatiently, says, "Where is he?!"

Shawn clears his throat and says, "Um, Leo,"

"What?!"

"Brent's coming." Shawn says, pointing in Brent's direction.

Leo lets out a strangled yelp and runs into the nearest cabin.  Shawn follows Leo in and closes the door behind him.

After regaining his composure, Leo kneels under one of the screen windows to listen and Shawn joins him.

They can hear someone saying something to Brent, but they can't make anything out until they've stopped right out front of the cabin Shawn and Leo are hiding in.

"...you sure the evidence against Mo is safe?"

Brent replies, "Yes Thomson, every bit I've found is hidden. No one who shouldn't lay their hands on it is going to find it."

Leo's face freezes in shock, "Rod is helping the Blue Cabins?!"

Shawn says in his best Yoda voice, "Crossed to the Dark-Side, he has. Nothing now to do, but bring to the Manager's Cabin, that evidence."

Suddenly, they hear Brent and Rod coming up the stairs, they quickly hide under two of the bunkbeds.

Brent's hand closes on the door knob and he starts to turn it, then stops.  He starts jiggling the knob.

"Stupid door knob's stuck again!  It's about time this thing gets fixed!"

Leo backs further under the bunk he chose, and feels something brush against his back.  He turns over and sees the corner of a piece of paper.  He pulls it out from between a board and the mattress, unfolds it and sees that it's the list of weapons Mo stole and sold to some kids outside of the camp.  Leo also finds several photos of Mo and his goons robbing kids.

Leo urgently whispers to Shawn, "Shawn, I found the stuff.  Let's get out of here!"

They just manage to open one of the windows and jump out before Brent gets the knob to work.  They run as fast as they can toward the Manager's Cabin to bring Mark the good news.



Brent and Rod stride toward the Blue Cabins to retrieve the evidence, while Brent finishes explaining the situation.

Rod asks, "So you have agents in all the camp factions?"

"Yep.  Our little organization was started not long after Mo became leader of the Blue Cabins"

"Does this spy, group, thingy of yours have a name?"

With a deep sigh Brent says, "Yes, we are the Secret Intelligence, Surveillance and Security In Emergency Situations."

"So you're the S, I, S, S, I, E, S?" Rod says, barely containing a smirk.

"Unfortunately... yes.  It was our leader's idea."

"And who is your leader?" Rod says with a giggle.

"Secret."

"Oh, *Teehee,* of course... Hahahahaha! Sissies! Heeheehee..."

"I will give you a black eye if you don't start acting seriously."

"...Eep!"

"Thank you."

After that neither of them says anything until the cabins are in sight, then Rod breaks the silence by asking, "How much evidence do you have exactly?"

"Enough."

"Okay, fine.  Are you sure the evidence against Mo is safe?"

"Yes Thomson, every bit I've found is hidden.  No one who shouldn't lay their hands on it is going to find it."

They start climbing the stairs of Blue Cabin one and when they reach the top, Brent turns the door knob, only to find that it won't go all the way.

Brent starts jiggling the knob while saying, "Stupid door knob's stuck again! It's about time this thing gets fixed!"

After assaulting the knob for half a minute, the door finally swings open.  Brent rushes over to one of the bunks and reaches underneath, after a moment his eyes go wide and his mouth hangs open.

Rod asks, "What?  What is it?"

"It's gone!  It's all gone!"

"Do you think it might have something to do with that window hanging open?" Rod asks, pointing toward the back of the cabin.

"C'mon Thomson, whoever took it can't have gotten far yet." Brent says, dashing out of the cabin.



Mo smiles.  It's his favorite time of the day, the part where he gets to make fun of Mark.  He opens the door to the prison room at the back of the Manager's Cabin.  Inside are the three cells where troublemakers are kept until they've learned their lesson, and in the one on the left is Mark, in need of a shave... and a shower!

Mark bounces a tennis ball against the wall and catches it again and again.  Mo leaves the door hanging open and walks into the prison room.  He need not close it, Coach is reading down by the lake and no-one else is there to overhear.

"Ahhhh," Mo sighs in amusement.  "Somehow, I don't think I'll ever get tired of this picture."

"Haven't you gloated enough for one lifetime?"

"No, not really, no.  I'm out here doing as I please, and you, the innocent one, are in here, doing nothing."

"Nah, I'm just waiting is all." Mark says in a bored tone.

"Waiting for what, exactly?"

Mark taps the side of his nose with his finger and says, "Ohhh, you'll see."

"Yeah, sure, if you say so." Mo says dismissively.

Outside the Manager's Cabin, Leo and Shawn arrive both out of breath.  They walk up the steps and through the door, they both freeze in place when they see Mo inside talking to Mark.

Leo whispers, "Alright Shawn, hand me the stuff."

"You mean the evidence?"

"Yeah.  What else would I mean?"

"I thought you had it."

"And I thought you had it!"

Leo starts grumbling to himself, then he notices the microphone on Coach's desk.

"Hey Shawn, I have an idea."

Mo is now crouching in front of Mark's cell, a foot from the bars.  On the other side, Mark is sitting on the floor the same distance away.

For a moment, Marks eyes seem to drift lazily looking over Mo's shoulder, then he looks back at Mo and asks, "So what have you been up to lately?"

"Oh, just the usual, robbing unsuspecting kids..."

All over the camp, everyone can hear Mo's voice over the P.A. system, "...causing general misery all around and, oh, you don't know this, but before you even knew I was up to no good, I was selling weapons to some homeless kids who roam around outside the camp.  There's a surprising amount of them out there and they're almost always arguing amongst themselves."

Mo stands up and turns to leave, but standing right behind him are Coach, Billy, the stranger with the black coat with the hood pulled up as usual, and Leo holding the microphone.

Mo clears his throat and says, "Ummm, I can explain?"

Coach with a sour look on his face says, "Oh, I'm sure it'll be an interesting story Mo.  Billy?"

"Ya, Coach-mon?"

"Let Mark out of there, will ya?"

Outside the Manager's Cabin, all the occupants of the Red Cabins are there.  Mark starts giving them all high-fives, then the stranger in the black coat walks out and meets up with Brent.

Brent salutes and says, "Well Boss, it seems you where right.  Mo didn't realize what hit him 'til it was too late.  Heck, we didn't see this coming."

The strangers says in their voice of indeterminate gender, "All that matters is it's over now."

The stranger turns to leave, but Rod blocks their path and asks, "So,who are you anyway?"

The stranger hesitates for a moment and then says, while trying to get past him, "I... I'm no one you need to know."

The stranger dashes around Rod, but he manages to grab them by the coat.  The stranger starts trying to pull it out of his grip and then in a desperate tone says in an absolute girl's voice, "Let go, Rod, honey, *Gasps.*"

As soon as Rod heard her say, "honey," he let go of the coat.  Everyone is staring her.  If their jaws went any lower, they'd fall off.

Maggie pulls off the hood and says, "Surprise?"