Otto, the group's spidery guide led them through a short tunnel into a fairly barebones-looking set of windowless, subterranean corridors and rooms. Nothing big or fancy, nor dirty or slummy—just plain, a little dank, spartan, but quaint, decorated with Christmas string lights, posters, and a lot of personalization from the residents. The heavy thud of a kickdrum thumped in the background, reverberating through the walls, while in some places, the thrum of a bass and metallic twang of electric guitars could just so faintly be heard.

"This is The Underground," he stated. "Used to be a club. I mean, it still is," he corrected himself, "but now the 'club' part's just sort of a front for what we do here."

Though Midian still didn't feel too hot, he felt well enough to pipe up and ask, "And that's what?"

"Aaaahhh, well," hesitated Otto, before answering finally, "whatever we can. Help people... hide people... Folks like you, y'know?"

Most of the people meandering the walls looked... average, young, maybe a little rough around the edges. Some sported their own bandages and battle damage, but there seemed to be a lot of camaraderie and playful banter flying around. People here seemed comfortable, at least for the moment.

"We don't have much, but what we do have, you're welcome to. Clean up, patch up... Step out front, relax, just do whatever you wanna do until the dust settles and they stop searching the area. Oh—and don't wig out if you see some red uniforms out there. They're cool with us. You'll know when somebody unwelcome tries to come in."



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Nurse Tabitha feigned indifference to Ace's little word-play as best she could, but neither the poorly lit ambience nor her pale fur really sufficiently masked her burning cheeks. Even barring that, though, she'd simply been fussing with a single tool of tape far longer than was justified. She eagerly jumped on a change of subject at the first opportunity.

"Believe it or not," she began, with an extremely contrived air of casual banter. "It doesn't take four years of med school to clean a wound."

She grinned somewhat impishly, and added, "But if it makes you feel any better, I got an A in first aid."


OOC: First Android post FTW!

Coop, by bits and pieces, made his way over to what eventually was identifiable as the bar for the club.

“Hey,” he said to the nearest person who looked like a bartender, “do you have any drinks. Like, real, actual drinks,” he asked, in the face of the vast menu before him.

The bartender, some unidentifiable blue lizard gent in a rolled-sleeved black jacket, with what would have been called a mohawk (were it not an actual spiny part of his head), turned with authentic reptilian slowness and stared at Coop with one beady, unblinking decimal-dot of an eye.

"Excuuuse me," said the lizard in the most dry, rattling, baritone monotone physically possible.

“Like,” Coop went on, “just a regular...”

He spaced out his hands as if to denote the exact boundaries within which a drink could be called ‘real’.

“Drink. Just one thing, in a glass, that you drink. One thing. Like a scotch. Do you have scotch?”

“Neat,” he added.

The bartender stared at him as if he had asked for strawberry milk with a bendy straw.

"Of course we have it," he said with stinging tone that somehow rolled its own nonexistent eyes. "How else would we mix a Purple Heather Morning."

The clearly offended employee then proceeded to begrudgingly clink a small, squat glass onto the counter and pour from a big, overly fancy amber bottle. Somehow, it even made Coop's no-nonsense drink look a little froofy.

"Happy? Or did you want it in a dirty glass, too?"

Coop snorted, and put down six entire dollars and seventy-nine cents in pocket change that he had retrieved from somewhere on his person.

“I hope that’s what this costs, because it’s all the money you’re getting,” he said. He took the glass anyway, and began to walk off—it was clear that the announcement he made towards the bar-tender was going to be his only concession to good manners in the exchange.

The bartender looked at the money, again, like it was completely alien.

"What a weirdo," he muttered as he picked up a small wastebin and proceeded to scrape the cash into it with his arm. The UF dollar had been demonetized for three weeks owing to Dr. Eggman.

Considering the club's intended low profile, it was actually pretty large. The long, cool-lit bar had a good amount of dark, starry-patterned purple carpet between it and the the stage area, which itself had a decent-sized dance floor. Said stage and floor were not really in use at the moment; with no live act, most folks seemed to just be sitting around, milling about, or talking. The sheer number of guests who weren't drinking or looking like they were having much fun might have been telling of the place's true nature. None of the Eggman Empire troops scattered about seemed to care, though. As Otto had hinted earlier, they were Eggman supporters in uniform only.

As Coop trundled off from his sour exchange, he'd find Midian ahead, located a couple tables back from the dance floor, eating by himself. He was slouched over some sort of beef-and-peppers plate—nothing fancy, just meat and vegetables. He looked a little tired, but that was probably to be expected.

The jackal looked up and, upon noticing Coop, waved once in a sort of offhand, off-the-brow salute-wave.

Coop jerked his chin up in a nod of recognition. He trundled over to the table, a very, very, faint, dry smile on the parts of his face that didn’t look angry almost 100% of the time.

He plonked the drink down on the table. The liquid inside slide back and forth on the glass, slightly thicker than water, slightly more caramel-coloured than ginger-ale, and with a slightly more sinus-burning scent than ammonia.

“Dunno if you drink this,” he said, “can’t tell much from a flask."

Midian looked at Coop as if in wonder for a moment at the gesture. His head bobbed back in a sort of impressed, gracious half-nod.

"Sparingly," he confirmed, lifting the glass from the tabletop. In a tone most principled, he decreed: "Never more than three before breakfast."

He downed half in a nostril-searing gulp, puffed an exhalation, and nodded again, gesturing toward the big guy with a lift of the glass. "Cheers, bru. Y'a good man."

“Mmnahahuh,” the eagle laughed. He sat down heavily in a nearby seat, taking care not to lean against the back-rest. He sat and stared into the club, and then very slowly leaned forward and put his head on the table with a quiet, hollow thonk.

He sat up again.

“Urrrggh,” he proclaimed to the world at large.

“So,” he said, “who are you and what are you doing here, huh?”

“How’d you get into all this mess."