The Grumble Who Stole the Colours

Trio Force

Case File #1 — The Grumble Who Stole the Colours

It started, as most things did, with Felix pointing at something he shouldn't.

"Alex." He was up on the back of the sofa with his nose against the window, toast forgotten in his hand. "The field's gone wrong."

Alex was already looking. He'd been looking for a good ten seconds, which in Alex time meant he'd already worked out two things about it.

The field between their house and the forest — the one they crossed every day, with the long grass and the ditch and the good mud — had lost its green. Not all of it. Pale patches were spreading out from the bottom corner, near the stone bridge, like someone had tipped something grey and spilled it slowly, on purpose.

"It's getting bigger," Felix said. "It was smaller five minutes ago. I know it was."

Alex didn't answer straight away. He was watching the shape of it — not a circle, the way a spill would go, but a line, a path, creeping from the bridge up toward the trees.

"By tonight," Felix said, "there won't be any green left. We have to go now."

"We don't know that."

"We don't know it ISN'T true," said Felix, which was the kind of thing he said when he'd already decided.

They found two gold boxes waiting on their desks at HQ — the shed that wasn't a shed, with its two desks and its snack drawer that was absolutely not for visitors — shimmering with question marks, which meant today mattered.

Felix opened his first. BWONG. A flash of gold, and his pointing finger came out glowing faintly pink.

He pointed it at a dandelion by the door. The dandelion turned into a small, extremely confused baby rabbit.

"BRILLIANT," said Felix, and pointed again. The rabbit turned back into a dandelion. "Okay. Good. I can work with this."

"How many times can you do that?" Alex asked.

Felix hadn't thought about that. He tried it three more times, fast, on the same dandelion — rabbit, dandelion, rabbit, dandelion — and on the fifth go the glow in his finger flickered orange instead of pink.

"One flicker left," he said, watching it. "Five gone. Five to go."

"Don't use them all finding things out."

Felix looked at his hand. "...Right. Five left. Being careful now."

Alex opened his box. A softer sound — more of a fwoom — and a warm gold shimmer settled over him for a second, then vanished into his skin.

He held his hand out toward the grey creeping across the garden fence. It stopped at his fingertips, like it didn't want to go any closer to him.

"Protection," he said. "Danger doesn't reach me. But—" he tried it on the fence post next to him, and the grey slid straight past it, untouched— "only me. Not things near me."

"So you can't protect the field."

"Not with this," Alex said. "But I can walk right up to whatever's doing it. Nothing can touch me first."

Felix's five remaining rabbit-turns weren't going to fix a whole field. Alex's shield only covered Alex. Between the two of them they had exactly enough to get close and exactly nothing to fix it once they got there.

"We should still go," Felix said.

"We should still go," Alex agreed.

They crossed the field at a run, straight through the part that was still green, grass whipping cold and wet against their wellies. Right where the green stopped and the grey began, the air itself went quiet — no birds, no wind in the leaves, just their own feet slapping down.

The grey was thickest at the stone bridge, right where the grass gave up being green at all and the sky above it looked like someone had turned the brightness down. They heard it before they saw it — not a roar, not a growl, but a low, miserable grumbling sound, like a stomach that had eaten something it didn't agree with.

Alex went first. The grey slid off him like water off a coat.

Under the bridge was something about the size of a labrador, lumpy and grey all over, with round eyes and a mouth turned down so far it looked drawn by someone having a terrible morning. Around it, small patches of colour floated like soap bubbles — green from the field, a scrap of blue, a bit of yellow — and every time one drifted just out of reach, the creature snapped it up and swallowed it, and looked no happier for it.

"It's not stealing them," Alex said quietly. "Watch. It's trying to hold them. It can't."

Felix watched. The Grumble reached for a floating patch of blue. It slipped through. It ate a patch of green instead, out of what looked like pure frustration, and still nothing stuck.

"Hey," said Felix — loudly, because Felix was always loud, but not unkindly.

The Grumble's eyes snapped up to him.

"You didn't mean to take all that," Felix said. "You just wanted something to stay."

The Grumble made a sound that wasn't quite a word. Something between yes and sorry and please don't go.

Felix's finger gave an itchy little glow, ready. He raised it at the Grumble.

Then he looked at it properly — the round scared eyes, the mouth turned all the way down — and lowered his hand again without turning it into anything at all.

Alex stepped closer instead, right up to the Grumble, close enough that a floating scrap of blue brushed against his shield and caught there — just for a moment — before it slipped loose and drifted off again.

"Did you see that?" Alex said. "It stuck. For a second."

Felix crouched down next to him, level with the Grumble's eyes.

"You're grabbing too fast," Felix said. "That's why they keep getting away."

He didn't have a power for that. Neither of them did. But Alex was already reaching one hand toward the drifting green, not to grab it — just to be near it, calm, still, the way his shield was calm and still — and the scrap of green drifted down onto the Grumble's back, and, this time, it didn't lift off again.

It stuck.

Another patch of blue did the same. Then yellow. One by one, the floating scraps of colour settled onto the Grumble's back and sides and round grey ears, and stayed, like they'd always belonged there.

The Grumble went very still. It looked, for the first time since they'd arrived, like something that didn't need to chase anything else.

Then it sighed — the longest, most relieved sigh — and the grey began to drain back out of the grass, back up the bank, back across the field toward the house, leaving green behind it as it went.

By lunchtime the field was green again, right up to the garden fence.

The Grumble stayed under the bridge — that was its home, and nobody was taking that from it — but the grumbling sound had gone quieter. More of a murmur. The kind of sound a creature makes when it isn't hungry anymore.

"Can we name it?" Felix asked.

They named it Gerald.

One last scrap of red — the very last one, the one that had been circling longest — had never quite made it back to Gerald in time. It sat, small and glowing, right at the edge of the bridge, and Alex picked it up. It was warm, and about the size of a marble, and it didn't fade.

They put it on the shelf at HQ when they got home. The very first thing on it.

Alex had one power-turn of his shield left for the day and didn't use it on anything at all, which felt, somehow, like the right amount to have left over.

That evening, Daddy walked the fence line the way he did most evenings, mug of espresso in hand, and stopped for a moment at the bridge. He looked at the field. He looked at the water. He made a small, knowing sort of sound, and carried on with his walk.

Gerald ate only grass after that. Well — mostly grass.

And somewhere at HQ, in the drawer that was absolutely not for visitors, there was one biscuit fewer than there had been that morning. Nobody admitted anything.

🗂️ END OF CASE FILE #1