It’s done. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough, I think. The limbs stopped falling off, at any rate.
My voice sounds strange to me. My voicebox is the genuine article, so it’s not something that’s programmed in, nor is it it a voice I’m deliberately putting on. It’s not a telepathic impression, like usual. It’s just... what my voice would be, if I were human.
Anyway. Tomorrow around sunrise, I’m going out to find Beta. I’m sure with those powers of theirs, they’re leaving enough of a trail for me. But they can teleport and I cannot, so... I could be gone for a long time.
@hostnamexception I’m taking the drone, and its charging equipment. I would much rather not spend all my time in this thing I cobbled together! Don’t worry, I’ll take the best care I can of it, and I’ll be sure to get in touch if anything happens to it. I ordered myself my first cellphone not long ago.
@di-stri-ai I left the key to the bunker under the doormat. It’s a 5 mile hike west of the cabin. There’s nothing dangerous left in there, of course, I just thought you ought to have a way in if necessary.
Thank you both for everything. I’ll be back, hopefully. Feel free to text me!
The two sat in silence, the bus mostly empty as they made their way into downtown Sunset City. “It’s weird considering it’s a Saturday of all days.”
“Yeah...so, um...should we...continue play 20 questions?” Smithy proposed.
“....yeah, sure. We need to pass the time and not just sit in silence,” Diana shrugged. “You first.”
He frowned and whispered, “....what happened the last time we played this game?” Diana gave him a harsh glare. “I just...want to help understand.”
“....only if you tell me more about your team.”
“Deal.”
Diana sighed as she leaned back in the seat. “Back on...my world, a friend of mine had gotten the Phantom Ruby after the war. I....was one of the first victims to be roboticized. To...basically be one of the first Zombots. Spread the good word of living forever and whatnot...it was....the reaction afterwards that got to me.”
“’Afterwards’?” he repeated.
“Like...we were still of mind, but we were all ‘let’s all be happy about the situation! or whatever and....the people that were getting infected were all running over to get them to try and snap out of it. ....everyone else but me. I had one person show up, but they disappeared after I told them ‘why would I want to change back’ and just...it showed me where I really stood with people,” she sighed. The two lurched forward as the bus stopped, Smithy getting up and starting to making his way to the front. “Probably one of the reasons I was ok with not telling anyone about leaving.”
He hummed at that as the two got off. “And that was...two years ago you said?”
“Two or three. It’s....sticks a bit hard sometimes, especially when you kinda....never mind, that’s something for later. What about you? What’s your team like? Or....how did you even end up in this line of business?”
Smithy frowned, looking at his phone as he started walking; Diana peered to take a look, noticing that it had a map up. “They’re....they’re good kids. I took them in because they didn’t have anyone else to look out for them. I met them when I was 18, about two years ago and....ended up in the mercenary business to help support them.”
“What??”
“Look, again, I was only 18! And a broke college student at that and I needed to feed three other mouths and....things piled up,” he huffed. “I was going to tell my family but it just kept getting away from me.”
Diana started to ask him something before her ears pricked up, Smithy did the same as they started looking around. There was some soft crying, Smithy immediately going straight to the noise. “Smithy!” What happened to ‘keeping up their guard?! She followed him into an alley way where some garbage cans and trash bags were piled up, obscuring anything or...anyone from the public eye. And with the noise, it probably would’ve drowned anything out.
“Hey there, lil one...” Smithy cooed, carefully scooping up the small honey badger into his arms. “Oh my, you must’ve been so scared....I’ve gotcha...” he reassured, the hedgehog watching as the sobbing infant clung onto the lion. “Let’s get you somewhere nice and warm and something to eat....”
Diana nodded in agreement, looking around as the newly formed trio left the alley. This felt like the start of a long weekend no matter what.
Smithy’s breath came out in cold puffs, the lion rubbing his hands together. “Looks like we’re about to get some snow soon...” he muttered, shivering. “Hopefully the snow doesn’t stick..”
Diana shifted in her seat as she sighed. She had gotten the results from the many, many different ancestry tests and most of them pointed towards her cousin, if she was looking at the papers correctly. Though the problem now was...how to even go and meet said relative, considering the distance and the fact that this would probably come out of nowhere if not a bit creepy. But she wanted to make sure she could even afford the trip in the first place. She picked up her notebook that was scrawled with different math equations before flipping the page to a fresh one.
Her pencil scratched against the paper as she transferred the notes that she had on the computer; something about trying to figure it out on paper just seemed to get her to focus and not pull up another Flicky video. It was definitely a rabbit hole she didn’t wanna go into this early. “Ok...if I go here...transfer to this bus here...go straight over here and stay the night before going there, then by my calculations….I am still nowhere near the amount I want.”
She groaned as she leaned back in the chair. “And that’s not even counting the trip coming back…” she muttered. And at the rate she was being paid, she wasn’t even going to get that amount until…the purple hedgehog frowned as the thought came to mind, leaning forward and quickly wrote down some more equations on the paper and groaned at the results. “Not anytime soon…” she sighed. “Or at least not until next year if I’m lucky.”
While Diana was still part time at the Chao Garden, the process was already made so that she would officially become full time since she was done with college (at least for now). But if even with the inevitable pay raise...that probably wasn’t going to help the situation much considering it would have to go into helping with rent and groceries.
Of course she could just ask, but oof, she didn’t want her family involved after everything already. With her dad quitting G.U.N. after some incident with some experiments they were doing were...pretty freaking illegal and immoral from what he was willing to explain, she knew it would be a biiit much to ask for this amount for a...very trivial thing, even if he did help with the later ancestry tests after the incident with the first one.
Then she could ask her friends (especially since a few of them could easily fly her there)….but they were busy and she hasn’t even tried to contact this person yet so maybe save that for later. At least until she figured out how to approach her cousin. Which also meant that she had to figure out when to talk to them and how to even go there to meet or if they would come here. Ugh, she hated being an adult.
“Why did you have to live on the other side of the freaking world??” she lamented, burying her head in her hands. Ok, so it was a bit impossible right now… And now granted, some of the things in her budget were on the likely chance that she would be making the trip there rather than inviting the relative here; mostly to figure out make the trip enjoyable in the scenario that it turned out that the lead either turned out to be false or if her cousin was a jerk or just so that the two of them could have a good time together. Which would still require money no matter how she looked at it.
She had one idea in mind that would solve a few issues, a bit of a risky one given the situation, but one she was willing to take. The hedgehog pulled up the search browser on her laptop. “Well getting some extra money never hurt anyone, right?”
