Chapter Twenty-One – Fuzzies, Fries, Flaking

Chapter Twenty-One – Fuzzies, Fries, Flaking

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***

The elevator dinged as it came to a stop on our floor. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. I was tired. Not stupidly-tired, I’d woken up late after all, but still, it had been a long day. I was itchy, I had been running around for hours, and I was sore in a few places that I wasn’t used to being sore in.

That last bit was probably from riding my mech around so much, it had me sitting in a weird way and tensing some of the muscles in my core for a while.

Well, whatever. The door opened onto my floor, and I started to push in only to stop as someone was standing in my path.

Lucy, and she was wearing the furriest outfit I’d ever seen. She was wearing a sort of jumpsuit made of fuzzy material, with a large hoodie tugged up and over her head. It had large, floppy cat ears, and a string of bedazzled text across her chest that read “The Fuzziest.”

“Oh, wow,” I said.

Lucy grinned from ear to ear, the cat who’d caught… the other Cat? I was too tired for analogies. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“I really want to hug you,” I admitted.

“Good! Come.” Lucy reached out and grabbed my hand, my real one, in hers. She tugged me along after her, and I finally noticed that the pyjamas had a foot-long tail at the back. It was stumpy, and very cute. “I have food for you!”

“Oh god, food,” I murmured. As Lucy escorted me to the kitchen and I discovered four bags from four different fast food places, I discovered that I could not be any more in love. “You’re beautiful,” I said.

Lucy’s smile, somehow, turned even more smug. “Damn right,” she murmured. “Want to know what I’m wearing under here?”

I thought I was too tired to be horny, but as it turned out, I was very wrong. Maybe I was more thirsty than hungry after all.

The food was junk. Burgers and fries and pseudo-chicken sticks with little plastic sachets of dipping sauce across seventeen flavours. I stuffed my face while Lucy relocated herself across from me. She stole the longest fry from one of the packets and started nibbling on the end.

“Not eating?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I sat at home all day, I don’t want to get fat eating all… seven thousand calories here. You at least have the excuse that you’re moving around a lot.”

“Hmm,” I said. Lucy had always been good about that kind of stuff; dieting and the like. I was just blessed with a good metabolism and the jitters that kept me moving all the time. “This is so bad for me, isn’t it?” I asked as I chewed on what I was pretty sure was a fried stick of fried cheese. Double-fried. I could taste the cholesterol and it was beautiful.

“Busy day, then? You mentioned newbies?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I think… one of them’s like, off her rocker. Girl by the name of Princess.”

“That’s cute, at least,” Lucy said.

“Yeah. She’s cute too, I guess. A bit gangly, but growing into it. She’s also got crazy eyes.”

“Ohhh, crazy eyes,” Lucy said. “Hot but dangerous.”

I nodded. “Exactly. She’s got this weird obsession with me.”

“She’s the one who’s sister’s father you shot?” Lucy asked. She’d been paying attention to our call earlier, then.

I hummed. “The mayor’s daughters,” I said.

Lucy gasped. “No! That’s… no way! That’s some soap opera shit, Cat.”

“I know!” I said before shoving a burger into my mouth. It took some chewing before I could continue. “If there’s any amount of clones, or resurrections, or… people getting pregnant after cucking someone, I’m quitting this business.”

Noted.

I blinked. What did that mean? But Myalis didn’t seem ready to explain. I finished my burger while going over my day. I hadn’t realized that it was this stressful until I could literally feel the weight lifting off of my back. All Lucy had to do was smile, steal a few more fries, and ask a few probing questions.

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She was too good for me.

“Shower next?” she asked. She fluttered her eyes in a way that made my heart flutter too.