Savannah narrowed his eyes. "I do not trust you. If you can find Kronos unaided, why bother to capture us?" Looking around the room, he continued, "Your presence here seems odd. Why would you have your personal bathroom here, so near to where the Puppetmaster was sealed? I still do not know who you really are. You also avoided the question of how you knew the Puppetmaster had been killed so quickly."
"It took quite a while for us to track Kronos down. My personal bathroom was here long before th puppetmaster was captured. And I knew about it because this was the first time I passed by the hallway without seing the flaming pits of hell. Any other questions?" The woman replied, exasperation latent in her tone.
Hammond tapped Savannah on the shoulder. "She's told us the way out about a dozen questions ago, and I'm ready to stop wasting our time asking petty questions about small details to a woman who we have yet to even see. We're waiting for you here."
He turned away to go through the door and exit, but turned back again when he noticed Em snoring quite loudly, "Oh, you don't mind if we nick some water, do you? Blood is a nightmare to clean off without it."
"Waste your time?" he asked Hammond, giving him a dangerous look, "Waste your bloody time! You have dragged me up and down this town - if indeed we still are in it - wasting my day on your troubles! And in case it has slipped your mind, you were the one who asked about the Puppetmaster in the first place!"
"The closer the puppetmaster is to you, the stornger his illusions are, I have to pass by this hall to get to certain areas of the base, the hallways intersect up ahead." She said "Now if you enjoy your continued existence I suggest you leave."
"When I asked, it was still interesting." He turned away to Ari, completely prepared to leave Savannah behind, and started to usher her away to the exit. Pity that she didn't answer my question.
Savannah was about to respond when he heard something. Focusing, he made out a faint beeping sound. Not taking any chances, he shouted for Hammond and Aricla to run and that there was a bomb, making sure to take the bag with him.
As much as he hated it when Savannah gave him orders, Hammond also hated it when his insides were splayed into decorative shapes by exploding devices, so he quickly went along after the two of them, not forgetting to drag the still-unconscious Em with him.
Hammond half-ran, half-limped forwards as he struggled to keep up, while having several rather odd phrases uttered into his ear by his drooling baggage. "Yes waiter, I will have the blueberry pancakes..."
"What? Well I'd like to speak to your manager..."
If he had been elsewhere he would be whispering things back to try get her onto the most weird conversations that he could. As of right now he was too busy trying to keep his endless source of entertainment alive. And he supposed he could keep Em alive while he was at it. Besides, how confusing could it be to get out of a base that they had just gotten directions out of?
"I could have sworn she was 18..."
Definitely less confusing than that, in any context.
Right... Sort of rushed, and not quite enough running away rather than wondering what the hell Em is thinking in that mind of hers, but it works.
Savannah had determined they were out of any likely blast zone (if there was one). He heard an odd noise behind him, and as he turned, noticed the bag had gone. Alarmed, he whipped round completely to see Aricla being pinned down by some sort of reptilian creature. Immediately he rushed forward and held it by the neck with his left hand and by the body with his right arm so that it could not bite anyone but also was not being harmed.
"What is this thing?" he demanded.
Suddenly, the creature managed to get its head out of his grip with unexpected strength. A puff of flame shot out of its open jaws and singed Savannah's hand. He cried out and inadvertently released it. It scuttled off into a corner and growled angrily.
As he caught up with Savannah and Ari, Hammond wondered why they had stopped. He couldn't understand why they would go from running for their lives from an explosion, which he noticed had yet to happen, to gawking at a small lizard.
He gave a rather confused look to the green suited man, then to the small lizard that had bested him and then finally to the stunned woman on the ground.
"I'd ask, but I already know that it's not going to make any sense..." He would have offered a hand to Ari to lift her to her feet had he not been carrying Em already. Accursed unconsciousness. Constantly plaguing the group.
Ignoring Ari's predicament entirely, which may have been slightly unlike Hammond, he went into the building and took in a lungful of air. Sickly, disgusting, putrid air that smelled not-so-faintly of sweat, tears and vomit. He kinda wished he hadn't breathed at all, instead dying an awful death right there and then so that he didn't have to put up with the smell.
But it felt like it had been weeks since the last time that Hammond was greeted to the inside of an inn, and it was a refreshing feeling that almost balanced out against the awful air. Knowing that in only a short time he would be able to leave Em with someone else and drift away to sleep to figure out what the hell was happening, it almost made today worth it.
He'd forgotten half of today though, since it felt like an absolutely colossal amount of time that he had spent running out of imploding buildings, back to hospitals and through marketplaces after Ari, so he actually had no idea if it was worth it... Did he do those things today? Did he ever do them or did he just make them up now due to his state of sleep deprivation?
He shook his head to clear his addled mind, warranting a confused grunt from the still-unconscious Em, and then he dragged her along with him inside and toward a shabby looking man that he assumed to be the innkeeper.
"Innkeeping man..." He began, his mind not quite used to using words that made sense after listening to Em's half conversations for so long, "The furniture, for sleeping, you have them?" No... That didn't make sense... He knew that didn't make sense and yet he continued on in the same fashion. The fuck was that word? He'd used it just a moment ago in his mind-thinking word-maker thing... brain?
"You mean a bed, you jackarse..." Em mumbled quietly. It's, like, brain osmosis or something... Em was acting rather like Hammond had before, and Hammond was completely unable to make any thought that made any sense, which is exactly what he thought Em's mind would previously have been like.
"Yeh, what she said. A bed." He didn't wonder how Em had said something that fit into his conversation so well, rather adamant on getting the opportunity to go to sleep without then waking up in a dungeon with a clone of one of your friends trying to murder you for once. That isn't much to ask, right?
The innkeeper, though somewhat confused, gave his price for the rooms. 60 llum. A highly unfair price of 30 each, when Em would most likely be able to fit into a closet and be completely unaffected by such an accommodation.
Well, he was far too sleepy and apathetic right now to complain, so Hammond handed over the money (after swiping it from his little unconscious tag-along's pocket, of course) and took the two keys for his own.
He turned back to his last two conscious 'friends'. "Ari, you mind helping me carry Em to the room?"
The mand's eyes were wide and he nodded his head rapidly "Sure, sure. Let's have a civilized chat...uhmm...could you get this thing off of me?" He queried, sounding just a bit panicked
The warrior stirred from dream-filled sleep, cursing quietly as he did so and found that nothing he had dreamed was real. Apparently he has been woken by some loud noises from a room away, and was not in the mood to find out what they were.
"...the hell?" He flipped the covers and pillow on the bed over, in an attempt to get rid of the noises that did seek so bitterly to plague his early morning. But, as annoying as these noises from the next room were, he admitted that they were better than Judges. No such luck was brought by the additional sound barrier of a pillow, as he heard a grunt and the ripping of fabric through it.
He sat up in the bed, a quizzical look in his eye. He was almost glad that he heard these noises. They gave rise to an interesting number of scenarios in his twisted mind, many of which he would want to walk in to see and others which he would just like to know about. Suffice to say that ripping and grunting featured heavily in each and every one of his ideas.
He grabbed his weapons, in case these noises were not nearly as good as he hoped they were, and set off towards the girl's shared room. If he was lucky, he would find them to be fine. If he was very lucky, he might just get an up close and personal view of Ari and Em's coming out party.
And if he wasn't lucky at all, Judges would be in that room making Ari and Em shaped puppets out of some conveniently placed corpses. He did not like that scenario.
Hammond reached the room, hearing a whistle and several fast-paced steps before he managed to kick open to door. As the door swung open forcefully, he saw Ari's lizard sitting on the windowsill, it's head gesturing away towards the ground a good ways away.
He went over to it, following it's line of sight down to Ari, another of her pets and a man that looked to be incredibly close to being run through with a combination of teeth and claws. "Looks like she's got things under control, eh?"
Chuckling softly, Hammond looked over to Em's bed, "Hey, Em. You're missing Ari's wild ride down the path of homicide. You might want to get a front row seat for this one while you still can."
Savannah woke with a start to the sound of a crash next door. He raised his head up, inch by inch, from behind the bed he was sleeping beside. Over the mound of spare pillows he had commandeered from other empty rooms and placed under the quilt, he saw the door open and Hammond missing. Taking hold of his gun, which was next to him, he rose to his feet and continued to the doorway, leaning to look down the hallway. It was empty, but the door to Aricla and Em's room had been broken down.
What now?
Gradually, he proceeded to the other room and heard Hammond speak. Dropping his guard - but only a little - Savannah went in to see Hammond, the Jiryu, Em in her bed, Aricla's empty bed, an open window, and the room's drawers in a state of disarray.
Boredom was the work of the day today it seemed, as Hammond lazily kept one eye on their captive and another toward the skies, hoping for a glimpse of something that suggested that he might one day get away from these Neanderthals. Or maybe that he might get to enjoy a single moment of happiness as her heard Savannah fall over. He would settle for the second one.
Their unnamed thief companion spoke up, pointing and drawing Hammond's gaze to an unassuming house. "We're here."
"This is it? We walked for hours to get to a house that's exactly the same as the ones we've been walking past the entire way here?" A sigh could be heard from Hammond as his head dropped.
"You think we're stupid, don't you." He made a few steps to the thief, taking the collar of his coat and pulling him up by it. Ignoring the thief's protestations, Hammond made a sweeping gesture with one hand. "You see, it's obvious as daylight that you brought us here to fuck with us. There's traps in there, isn't there?"
The thief shook his head rapidly, "No, nono!" Hammond smiled, ignoring the thief once again. His mind was already made up about how to check more quickly for traps. He took hold of the thief with both hands, taking a running start. As he neared the house, the thief's screams growing louder and louder, Hammond threw the man with enough strength to send him gliding painfully through a window, shattering it with the force of his impact.
A few seconds passed, in which no sounds could be heard save for the pained moans of a certain projectile.
Hammond smiled, wandered back to his allies and clapped his hands together. "Well, at least we know there's no traps." He started sauntering back toward the house, "Now let's go see the dama-"
A vivid spark shot into him through a dart from the window, causing his muscles to spasm slightly before he dropped to the ground, completely limp. He looked up from the dirty pathway, complaining inwardly as pain still shot through every nerve. And then a blurry shadow fell over him, spitting angry words to Hammond.
"I take you... to take down my boss, saving your lives and the lives of hundreds of people... AND YOU FREAKING THROW ME THROUGH A WINDOW!?"
You've got more to fucking worry about now. He tried to reach for his sword, but his limbs still screamed in quiet agony over their shock and he was unable to move. Oh... er... Little help? He felt arms wrap around him, pulling him to his feet and then he was leaning against a shoulder, though he could barely make an image of who it was. In his free hand he had been handed his sword and was uneasily using it as a makeshift cane to help keep his balance.
Well, it may actually be entertaining to be on the 'Getting carried everywhere' side of things for once.
He stumbled uneasily along with Ari, applying as little pressure to the ground as he possibly could as she led him toward the house. They entered and, with the exception for some broken glass that had nothing to do with Hammond at all, found the house to be rather unremarkable. Ari seated him upon a less-than-comfortable dining chair, leaving him to his own devices. He looked around. Okay, at least we won't be here too long.
Several hours of irony later
He would be kicking himself right now, but his muscles still hurt from their not-at-all therapeutic electroshock. Well, at least he could move slightly. He turned his head to their 'partner', the thief.
"Well, we've been waiting and waiting and waiting. Where is your boss?"
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