The Morning the Walls Talked Back

Zoo Vegas never slept — not really. Even at breakfast, the city hummed and glittered beyond the tall windows of Ms. Art Sheep's School For The Creative, where neon signs blinked between skyscrapers and a taxi driven by a very serious tortoise honked at nobody in particular.

Inside Studio Seven, the biggest classroom on the third floor, twenty students were already making a wonderful mess.

Crayons rolled off desks. Paint dripped. A boy named Marco — twelve years old, dramatic about everything — held up a canvas and announced, "This is either genius or a disaster."

"Both," said his friend Priya, not looking up from her own painting.

Ms. Art Sheep stood at the front, her blue mask bright under the studio lights, colorful streaks of paint-energy flickering lazily around her hooves the way sparks circle a campfire.

"Keep going," she said warmly. "Nobody makes great art standing still."

Her phone buzzed on the desk.

She glanced at it — then looked again, slower.

A Message From Nowhere Nice

Ms. Art Sheep read the message twice.

It was from a school called the Ironclad Institute — a place on the other side of Zoo Vegas that nobody in Studio Seven had ever mentioned. The message was short and not very polite.

*Your students are invited to compete in the Grand Zoo Vegas Art Showdown. Ours will crush yours. Unless you're afraid.*

Marco had drifted over without being invited. He read it upside-down from across the desk.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Trouble," said a voice from the doorway.

Standing there was an elderly parrot — a humanoid one, brightly feathered in green and gold, wearing a patched coat covered in paint smudges. She was Ms. Cluck, the school's supply keeper, and she had been at Zoo Vegas longer than anyone cared to count.

"The Ironclad Institute," Ms. Cluck said, tapping the doorframe with one wing-tip. "They've won the Showdown four years running. And every single time, somebody walked away saying the same thing."

Priya looked up from across the room. "What thing?"

Ms. Cluck's bright eyes went flat and serious.

"That it didn't feel right."