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Rifts (12) : Maybe it’s a trick of the eye. Maybe it’s a firework, or it’s too hot and you’re seeing things. Maybe something is actually just wrong. Strange tears are appearing throughout the city, as though something has clawed right through reality. Maybe you can’t exactly see it, but you definitely feel it. There are strange, cold pockets, and random air currents even in closed rooms. These strange rifts either appear transparent or, if you are close enough, you might see a strange blackness inside. Sometimes you can make out a strange sound, like a croak or a wail, but nothing ever comes out. There’s something magnetic about these weird rifts and it’s almost as if they’re trying to suck you up. They appear and disappear randomly, and quickly, and never show up on film.
“You’re getting cheap,” Gremlin snooted as he stared at the gallon of ice cream that was supposed to be his ‘bribe’ for helping Rakovanite on his mission tonight. The mauvian was pretty sure he’d made it clear at the beginning of their partnership: hot restaurant food only! He could have ice cream any time. It was hardly a treat! It wasn’t even warm. What good would that do him?
Rakovanite had expected as much, but he could hardly afford to buy Gremlin three separate meals from Cheddar’s any time he wanted the guardian’s services. He’d done his best to placate Gremlin at first, but it was becoming more and more apparent that whenever he bent to the cat’s whims, Gremlin just walked on him more and more. There had to be a stopping point. Rakovanite couldn’t afford for there to not be. “Blue Bell is not cheap,” he retorted stiffly. “And it has strawberries in it. You like strawberries. I thought you would enjoy it because of how warm it is outside.”
“It’s not warm to me!” Gremlin snapped back as he hooked a claw over the gold-rimmed lid and peeled it back to reveal a bucket of strawberries and cream ice cream that was practically bursting at the seams. “This weather is temperate to me. Especially when the sun’s not out like this. I’m practically freezing already! Just admit that you want me dead!”
“I would never,” Rakovanite murmured. Admit it. He would never admit it.
Gremlin leaned over the top of the container to sniff at a frozen strawberry. “What’s the point in being out here, anyway? I don’t feel any signatures, and no one we know even lives out here. Where the hell are we and why?” His tail gave a telling sway as he took an experimental lick of his treat.
Rakovanite exhaled stiffly. He took up a seat on the rooftop of the apartment complex he’d chosen for his surveying ground, one leg crossed before him, and the other bent up at the knee. He expected they would be here for a while. As long as it took. “Vauxite’s sister lives in that house down there,” he replied, notching his head toward the indicated building. “He claims she is looking for him, and he lacks even an ounce of self restraint. …I think he is still unaware that he never chose to corrupt,” Rakovanite admitted, voice lowering. “And if they meet again, and she knows who he was, she could convince him to defect. Defect and spill secrets about our team.”
Gremlin stared large blue eyes up at the agent. He didn’t know Vauxite particularly well, but he did know Diesel, Weissite, Narcissus… They were human so god-awful abominations that Gremlin didn’t care if died, but… He still thought maybe they should die last.
He huffed, turned from the ice cream to prowl up Rakovanite’s leg and take up a post seated on his hips, good for absorbing the warmth afforded by his many stupid layers. He hooked the rim of the ice cream in an outstretched claw and dragged it close enough that he could crane his neck down and still lick the top of it. “Sounds like you probably shouldn’t have let someone you force-corrupted know all about your friends’ identities. …You don’t wanna just kill this girl and be done with her? It’d be easier.”
That was what Rakovanite wanted to do.
…But it wasn’t reasonable. He acknowledged that. “If I did that and Vauxite found out, it would ruin everything. For now it is better to ascertain how involved she is in this war, if at all. I just have to keep my eye on them until I know she can be trusted, or when Vauxite grows out of her.” That, around his job, and his life, and anything else the Negaverse wanted from him.
“How long you think it’ll take?” Gremlin grumbled as he settled in.
“Until I am satisfied.”
