Getting Strong Now (Ch. 2: Day 9)

Admin · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 8:58 pm

"Oh. Sorry for the confusion," said the Waiter, with an apologetic smile, "have a nice night."

He left the table, somewhat relieved.

The drink fizzled gently. After a while, a patch of the fog on the surface of the glass, very slowly, began to condense a bead of water.

Greens · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:40 pm

The serval's mouth yanked itself irritably to the side. "She's messin' with us if she expects you to drink that fruity crap," he mused aloud. "Prolly slipped you a roofie, if she's anything like Jam said."

He crossed his arms, leaning against a nearby palm tree. Staring at the drink with suspicion and impatience.

"..."

"...Ah, f**k it," he finally blurted, and shoved himself on both feet. "I have a feeling I'm gonna need a drink tonight anyway."

And with that, he clutched at the glass with one gloved hand, and (not before tossing the umbrella over his shoulder,) promptly downed the entirety of the beverage in one giant gulp. The glass was plopped back on it's tray, and Ace began strolling back to his home tree.

"Hey, if I do end up drugged, an' I get lucky and I don't remember it-- lemme know."

Rouge · Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:47 pm

Ace would turn to find his path blocked. A bat stood there, caught in mid-approach from the direction of Ace's palm tree. It was, yes, the same bat that Jam had grown so quickly to know and loathe, Rouge.

For a moment, she appeared both amused and slightly nonplussed. Her eyes flitted from Ace, to the table where the two other members of the party sat with the empty glass, back to Ace. Her eyebrows were raised slightly, and a smile curled one half of her mouth.

Pausing for what seemed another fraction of a second to appraise him, she chided, without very much real annoyance:

"That wasn't very polite."

Greens · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:09 am

It seemed the short distance between the glass and the tree was not something Ace expected to be blocked off, for when he nearly bounced off the two breasts and the bat they were attached to, his first greeting was a subdued "Ng- hello!"

His feet shuffled back somewhat awkwardly for a moment or two before he remembered how to stand himself upright. He blinked.

"...Ma'am."

psikeout · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:30 am

"Don't mind Ace," Rock interjected, wryness in his tone and on his face. "His girlfriend doesn't let him outside very often."

Mie · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:41 am

Jam couldn't help but snort at the bat's reprimand, and before she knew it, one of her own slipped out under her breath, "Neither is being late for matters of global security -- no matter how fashionable it is."

Leaning back in her seat and crossing one leg over the other, while the foot attached to it began to bounce impatiently, the less than cordial monkey blew a puff of air out her nostrils, and pretended to be interested in that-thing-in-the-opposite-direction-of-Rouge.

Rouge · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:13 am

Rouge glanced at Rock as he spoke.

"Well," she said, "it's nice to see a man who can commit to something." With that, she stepped past Ace to the umbrella, where it lay discarded. She picked it up, idly twirling it between her thumb and forefinger, and stepped over to the table.

She deposited the umbrella back in its glass, with a gentle tap on the rim, and leaned against the table on the heels of her hands. She turned a warm smile towards Rock, and then Jam. The smile did not diminish at the sight of the surly pink primate's expression, but might have gotten even warmer, turning into a full-fledged beaming smile.

"So!" Rouge said, brightly, as if giving away a piece of juicy gossip "I don't know what the problem is with your friend, 'Cooper Coopmore,' but if his friends are even close to being as crazy as he is, then I don't know if you two will be able to stop them without a little help."

psikeout · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 1:31 am

Of his friends, Rock seemed to be the least psyched out by Rouge's presence. While Jam was steaming and Ace was stumbling, he was steady and on point. (As questionable as some may have found her styling, perhaps Rock's unique life experiences found his sensibilities less offended.)

"Cooper Coopmore," repeated the white simian thoughtfully. "At least his parents had a sense of humor."

Well, maybe not too on-point. He laid his hands flat on the tabletop and digressed, however. "So what's got you concerned enough about him, or them, or whatever to call us out here?"

Rouge · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:14 pm

Rouge leaned up from the table, and stretched.

"Who said I was calling you out here for anything?" she asked, "It's a beautiful night for a chat."

She waved to one of the waiters.

"But," she added, "while we're on the subject, he was making a mess of his cell. He kicked his cot across the room, and he ripped some of the plumbing right out of the wall." She glanced back at Ace as she said this, apparently to include the distanced cat into the conversation.

Rouge's face wore a coy smile, but at the same time there might've seemed, to anyone watching her closely, something extremely sardonic about it. She seemed to find what she was saying incredibly funny, but the smile was ultimately no different from the one that she wore during their last meeting.

She hopped up onto the side of the booth, sitting right on top of the bench that Jam occupied.

"He was moved to an isolation cell after that. Of course," she sniffed, "if he's going to wreck everything."

The waiter arrived, and she reached one arm over Jam's head to gesture to the empty glass. She held two fingers level with the top of the glass, and raised them parallel to the glass, in a 'fill-it-up-please' motion. The waiter took the tray and departed.

"But," she said, turning to Rock and Jam again, "this all happened before I arrived. I thought, when I got there," she went on, affecting sudden boredom, "he was just making a scene, being the big angry man in jail, but something about him got the warden all worked up, and suddenly, they escorted me out of the viewing room."

Rouge rolled her eyes. "They were talking about my safety, as if I'm too delicate to be exposed to a big angry brute like that."

"I'm a big girl," she added, as if she was insulted by the thought, "I can take care of myself."

Greens · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 9:01 pm

While a small, stifled, somewhat disbelieving smile crawled along Ace's face, his tall-eared head rotated slightly in Jam's direction, as if to silently say, 'Wow, you weren't kiddin'.' It was quickly dropped, however. Ms. Rouge seemed like the type who loved to catch people (especially guys) with their pants down (so to speak).

"Okay, so," he inquired. "What's the problem? Is he too much man for one GUN to handle?"

Rouge · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:10 pm

"Mm, well," Rouge looked over at Ace, "GUN certainly doesn't seem to think so, but a girl knows when she's being blown off, and—"

She looked back over the table, her smile growing, "I'm not used to not being allowed things. I'm an aide to the president, after all. So next time I tried to get in, I didn't ask."

"Annnnd it wasn't very hard," she added, popping a heel in delight, "not for me, anyway."

"So, I decided to settle down a bit, and listen, and Cooper went on and on, yelling about—" she stopped, and thought for a bit.

"Ohh," she said, "all sorts of things. Talking about how 'they were crazy if they thought they could keep it a secret,' and how 'they were lying.'"

"'They were lying,' he said," said Rouge, quietly, the smile still clinging to her face, "over and over—and something about a prophecy."

Rouge trailed off.

Then, suddenly, she came to life again. Rouge kicked up her heels and hopped off the back of the booth.

"Which I thought was very strange!" she said, "prophecies; that sounds a bit mystical for me. The last time I heard anything about a prophecy was on Angel Island. Distant history involving… well, a blue hedgehog, of all people, and the end of the world, and I haven't had a sight or a sound of a prophecy since, hm?"

She stood, arms akimbo, and looked around at the three of them.

Mie · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:21 pm

As little as she enjoyed proximity with Rouge and her ilk, when at last the bat started talking business, Jam's aversion to her company lessened as she listened, though not without scrutiny. A sort of sour expression of mild disbelief befell her by the time the bat had finished her briefing, but Ace was quicker with his commentary.

With a short, surreptitiously appreciative smirk to the serval, the monkey turned in her seat to watch their ... decidedly fidgety informant, her brow creasing as the explanation went on.

"So," began Jam, looking distantly pensive, as she chewed idly at the tip of her thumb. "Assuming you've already checked that the guy's not totally schitzo, and he's got all his marbles, did you manage to get any intel on who's lying, or what exactly was... prophecy-ed?"

psikeout · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:35 pm

"I'd like to know the answer to that, too," Rock very nearly interrupted, jumping in on the end of Jam's sentence with a quick look to her, before looking back to the bat, "but first, we need to cut the crap, here. I need to know why you give a damn to tell us."

He appeared and sounded suspicious, but not hostile. "'Cooper' is finished business. He's barely even a GUN housekeeping problem now—below your notice. Below our notice."

The primate shifted around in his seat, folding his hands and flexing his knuckles idly over the table. "I don't see why you'd care about hearing anything he has to say, or tellin' us about it, unless there's something very specific you think we might know that would make it..."

He wetted his bottom lip quickly in thought as he searched for the best-fitting word.

"Pertinent."

Rouge · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 1:37 am

"GUN was lying. He was talking about GUN," said Rouge, "and he was pretty upset. When you've seen one of Eggman's plans go wrong, close up, you get to see the difference between a sore loser, and upset, and he was upset."

She straightened up, hands still on her hips.

"And now, they won't let me near him. Something's gone wrong, somewhere," she said, matter-of-factly, "criminals almost never get lied to about prophecies when they're being transported to jail in a helicopter. It's just silly. Even sillier is the fact that between the raid on Chemical Plant and now, the emerald—the chaosol emerald that everyone seems so desperate to get their hands on—has vanished, and not a single person wants to talk to me about what happened to it. Me—!" she huffed, as if the idea staggered the imagination, "a president's agent."

"Anyway, you didn't take it, did you?" she suggested with a wry smile, "you two were the only people supposed to have been around the plant at the time. That's what the report says, anyway, although I hardly believe that. It doesn't explain the drop-ship I found, sunk outside the building. I decided to go looking around," she added, cryptically, "seeing as this is my last day here."

psikeout · Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:32 am

Rock's eyes narrowed knowingly, and his head dipped down a little. "How convenient," he mused, "—that you'd be reassigned a couple days after this."

A huff went out his nose. "I'll go ahead and tell you. We never got to touch any emeralds. A human and some sort team of... synthetics made off with it—a kid and bunch of freaky-dekes in jumpsuits and helmets. I'm guessing Coopmore shot down their transportation, so they had to escape on foot."

He paused a second, looking Rouge dead in the eyes.

"Escape on foot. Think about that. With her chasing," he added with sideways nod toward Jam and a strong tone of suggestion, each sentence uttered abruptly. "She's faster than me."

Getting Strong Now (Ch. 2: Day 9)

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