As soon as I got the go-ahead from Alyx to take the rest of the day off, I had fully committed to a simple plan: Go to my room and chill until dinner time. A nice, uneventful and non-complex, but enjoyable all the same; a perfect arrangement, as far as I'm concerned.
However, the simplicity of it also served to mess with my anxiety. Walking through the base's halls, each corner I turned brought around a momentary spike in my heart rate. "Why?" You ask?
Simple. Because I know damn well that my day is not going to be that simple! After all, we still have a whole world to get built and a plot to get rolling, right?
But, even knowing that, I still couldn't help but hope that I could make it to my room and just lock myself in there. So, as I continued on my way, I kept thinking to myself, 'Nobodygetinmyway, nobodygetinmyway, PLEASE nobody get in my way!' several times over.
"Miiiiiraaaaa!"
As you would expect, I jinxed myself... I heavily jinxed myself...
Soon as I turned another corner, I had to quickly duck behind it to avoid a blonde-haired moron flying at me at mach speed. Literally. Speaking of said blonde moron; as soon as she realized she hadn't caught anything with her tackle, she had to make a move to stop herself before she crashed into the wall.
Now, I'll let you make a guess on what she did to stop herself from becoming an extra chunky and impromptu paint job on the otherwise squeaky clean wall. So, did she:
A: Pull a barrel roll at the last minute?
B: Spin around mid-air and land on the wall like some kinda spider? Or,
C: Brace for impact and walk it off later?
The answer is...
...
None of the above.
Instead of any of that, she simply hit the brakes on herself, killing her momentum and bringing herself to a halt in the middle of the air, whiplash being a foreign concept to her for the day, apparently. With the risk of crashing into the wall subverted, she came down to the ground. "Jeez, Mira, you could have at least tried to catch me!" She huffed.
"...Why would I let myself get hit by a fast-moving object?"
However sound the logic of not wanting to get nailed in the chest by a human-sized and shaped object that normally weighs about 42 kgs coming at me at actual mach speed was, it was completely lost on her. What I got as a result of not wanting to get cannonball'd was a 4'9" gremlin feigning frustration while poking me repeatedly in the arm. "Because, that fast-moving object happens to be your bestest friend in the whole world!"
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"Uh-huh... Whatever helps you sleep at night..." She then went on to puff up her cheeks as she continued her poking. "Could you cut that out? My arm's getting numb."
"Nuh-uh! Not until you apologize!"
"For not letting you crush my rib cage???"
"Exactly!"
Eventually, I got her to quit the poking. How I managed to do that? Simple! She's basically a walking feather when she's not screwing around with her ability, and as I've learned over the years, the third easiest way to get her to chill the fuck out is to pick her up and shake the shit out of her. The end result is someone too dizzy to be anywhere close to annoying. And there goes your Sanguine Saber Fun Fact of the day.
Anyway, with Molly too busy trying to get herself steady, I took the opportunity to get back on my way to my room. But unfortunately, I failed to remember that her ability really operates however the hell it wants to at any given moment... I turned the corner, and there she was.
"Come on, Mira! I told you a million times to quit doing that. At this point, it feels like you do it on purpose..."
I looked back to the spot she had been sitting earlier, dizzy and disoriented. Yup, she teleported. At the very least, it wasn't another cloning incident...
"Jeez, all you gotta do is hear me out for a sec then I'll let you go!"
All I could do was sigh in defeat. At the end of the day, I was at the whims of Molly's strange, strange sense of humor. That's something even Malware can't take on in any comprehensible way... "Fine... But make it quick, I barely get any days off as is..."
"Awesome!" She cheered, as if she hadn't expected things to go her way, "I'll be quick. Promise! I just wanted to ask you one teensy little favor."
"And that is...?" Immediately after asking that, I knew that that "teensy little favor" she asked for, was gonna cost me the rest of my day...
"Well, the Order's scouts found a new guy out in the country, and they decided to ship him over here as a new recruit. So, I, being the ever-awesome person that I am, decided to take on the liberty of showing him around the base and all that!" I nodded along as she went, already getting a pretty good idea of where she was going, "Soo~, since Billy's still out and about, I thought I'd ask you to tag along instead! Just for the added company, ya know?"
Yup, there it is. I figured that was the direction she was taking this request, and I already had an answer prepared, "See, I'd love to, but, you see, my back is killing me after that last mission and--"
"They're serving cinnamon twists in the cafeteria and that's where we're headed first~!" She interrupted, smiling smugly, as if she had won. There was no way that something like that would be able to persuade me into spending my day off playing tour guide for some random person...
"...Goddammit..." And yet...
"Hey, Oscar, I'm back!" That's how I wound up spending my day off with Molly and the new guy. "I brought someone else to help out. He's a little rough around the edges, and way too into the edgy act..." she muttered that last part while hiding her mouth behind one of her hands, as if that would help when I was sitting right next to her, "But he's good people!"
The new guy, Oscar, smiled and waved at me, looking like he was having a surprisingly good day, despite apparently being pulled out of the wastelands not too long ago, "Nice to meet ya! I'm Oscar Breindel."