Dear Ms. Marianne, Ms. Sohee and Ms. Guardian,
I would like to invite you to my home in hopes of you helping me with a small problem I have, which I have no lack of confidence that you will solve.
It would also be an honor to have the three of you grace my home, the legendary figures in helping to stop the Invader rebellion.
I do hope that you will respond to my offer and will show up at my doorstep with due diligence.
Sincerely Angie Mackenshire
“-and she put the address of her house at the bottom of the letter. So yeah, it’s exactly the same as the last three times I read it, nothing’s changed.” Marianne told the brown haired woman sitting next to her, sounding exasperated.
“Are you sure, like, one hundred percent sure?” Sohee asked, leaning closer to Marianne to get a better look, so close Marianne could smell the chemicals on her that she worked with all the time.
“Yes, and stop leaning onto me, ever hear of personal space?” Marianne said, lifting the letter away from gray eyes.
“Nope, don’t know what that is, and that letter has to be wrong, I mean, why would the famous revolutionary scientist Angie Machenshire ask you for help, it just doesn’t make sense. Me I get, but you, ehh… I just can’t understand it.”
Marianne could already feel her right eye involuntarily twitch, “seriously, that’s your problem with the letter, because she asked for me, a well renowned inventor with just as many, maybe more, accomplishments as you.”
Sohee shook her head, and sighed, “it just doesn’t make sense.”
“I will throttle you, you sociopathic a-”
“-but what definitely doesn’t make sense is that she asked for dumb-face to come too.” Sohee interrupted, ignoring Marianne’s death threat.
“Yeah, that brawn for brains doesn’t have a single brainy cell in that body of hers.” Marianne added, distracted enough that she forgot about murdering her sociopathic friend.
Sohee just shrugged, “Maybe she has monsters that need a good bashing, dumb-face is good at that.”
“Yeah… speaking of, where is Dumb-face?” Marianne asked.
“Isn’t she sitting right ther…'' the finger Sohee was pointing with drooped as she saw what Marianne was seeing, the spop Knight had been sitting at was empty, barren of any butt that had once been sitting there. “Shoot, we lost our Guardian.”
“And Loraine asked us to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t do anything stupid,” Marianne said.
“I don’t think that’s physically possible.”
They both sighed, like parents taking care of a rambunctious child that didn’t listen.
“Well, we’re on a train, so at least we know she can’t get very far.” Marianne said.
“Unless she jumped off the train.”
They turned to look at each other, because that was a very real possibility with Knight.
And just as they were about to shoot up to go search for their missing chi- er Guardian, they heard noise coming from the train car left to them and paused.
It sounded like there was a scuffle, with grunting sounds and yelling, stuff breaking and shattering.
Then suddenly, the door burst open and a smiling blonde woman holding a sword ran into their train car, skidding to a stop in front of them.
She waved at them.
“Found her,” Sohee said.
Marianne was going to go crazy being around these two.
“What the hell happened?” Marianne asked, once again exasperated.
Knight shrugged, and then told them that as she was trying to find the bathroom, someone suddenly fell over dead. Apparently she was a wealthy entrepreneur who shrugged off a death threat that turned out to be the real deal.
And since she was in the train car that she was in when she died, she was a suspect, and wasn’t allowed to leave. Coincidentally, a detective was also on the train at the time, and offered the panicked employees to help solve the murder case.
While this was happening, she still needed to go to the bathroom, so she was looking around the car for one, and managed to find a key clue in solving the case, but this made the detective think she was also skilled in solving mysteries and so he asked for her help.
So the two of them started investigating and asking the other people in the train car questions, and everyone in there had a vendetta with this woman, she wasn’t a very good person, so it was kind of hard to figure out who did it.
Turns out, no one did it, she faked her own death because she believed the death threat. So the two of them thought it was wrapped up, and everyone was allowed to leave, which meant Knight could finally go to the bathroom, or not, because what Knight and the detective forgot to consider was that there was still the very real death threat to deal with.
In the end, the death threat actually came from the woman's enemy, the opposing businessman that the woman was constantly at odds with.
But then, they found out that the daughter of the woman was actually planning on blowing up the train because she and the opposing businessman's son…
Knight stopped, and looked at the two sitting across from her with wide eyes, then she suddenly bolted off and disappeared down the train aisle.
“She forgot she was stopping the daughter didn’t she?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.”
“I’m not even surprised about what she just told us anymore, “ Marianne shook her head, “trouble just always seems to find her, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s a trouble magnet alright.” Sohee nodded in agreement. Then she got a thoughtful look on her face, “I wonder if I can create a machine that can suck all her trouble magnet juice out of her?”
“Please don’t experiment on our…” Marianne paused, “...though if we could harness her natural occurrence for trouble, we could possibly-”
“Turn it on our enemies!” Sohee finished excitedly, grinning maliciously.
“Exactly!” Marianne replied, grinning just as maliciously.
This turned into a conversation about how exactly they would harness Knight’s trouble juices, until Knight came back, wiping sweat off her face.
“So, why’d you run off so suddenly?”
“I forgot about the bomb the daughter set up” Knight said while throwing her arms around in the strange way she does while explaining things. “I had to choose either the red wire or the blue one, and one either automatically set it off, or diffused it, I picked the blue one, turns out I was right.”
“Why’d you pick the blue one?”
“Because it reminded me of Blue Gems, and I love Blue Gems.”
“I just realized our lives were in the hands of an idiot.” Marianne said.
“You realized that just now?” Sohee.
The moment Knight sat down, she immediately stood up again.
“What is it this time?” Marianne asked, sighing.
“I didn’t have the chance to go to the bathroom.”
And just as she took a step, the train whistled, signifying they were reaching their destination. The outskirts of Rah Empired, the last stop that the train had, in a small town where the famous Angie Mackenshire lived.
“Well dumb-face, looks like you’re gonna have to hold it.” Sohee said.
Knight looked like she was about to cry.
When they got off the train, they saw that a car down, some Rah Empire soldiers were apprehending a black haired girl yelling something about this won’t stop their love.
“Wait, are those soldiers… made of metal?” Marianne said as she noticed the sun glinting off their faces.
Sohee squinted at the soldiers, “woah, yeah, that’s weird.”
As the train employee handed them their luggage, Marianne asked, “do you know why the soldiers are automated?”
The employee just shrugged, “sorry ma’am, don’t come down here too often, so I have no idea, bit unnerving though.”
“Yeah… kind of,” but as Marianne said this, she knew that she was also feeling excitement, as a mech engineer and inventor, the mechanical Rah Soldiers were really tugging at that part of her that wanted to break them down and study their inner workings, see how they ticked.
As they walked, well Sohee and Marianne walked, Knight was doing the bathroom dance, past the train station and into the village, the sun was starting to set in the distance, casting an eerie shadow on the empty street they were walking down, it was giving Marianne the chills, not that she would ever admit the outloud, Promethia forbid, Sohee would tease her relentlessly.
“It’s getting kind of late, huh?” Sohee said, also noticing the setting sun, “it’d probably be rude to knock at Angie’s door this late.”
“I didn’t know you knew what manners and common decency were, Sohee.” Marianne said sarcastically.
“I do, thank you very much, I just use them on people who deserve it.” Sohee replied matter-of-factly.
“Oh, you think I don’t deserve it huh, well I’ll show you who deserves wha…” Marianne took a deep breath and started muttering under her breath, “we don’t hit teammates with wrenches, even if they are annoying teammates that think they’re better than you.”
And let’s not forget, while this whole exchange is happening, Knight is still doing the potty dance.
“We should probably find some place to stay tonight and head to Machenshire’s place tomorrow morning.” Marianne said as she started to look around for an Inn or a Hotel of the sort they could stay in.
A ways away, Sohee spotted what looked like a hotel, which made Knight sprint ahead of them, throw open the door and run inside to hopefully finally be able to answer nature’s call.
A minute later Sohee and Marianne also walked inside. The interior is what you would expect from a hotel, couches and tables with chairs were strewn about a patterned carpet that shifted to tile for a counter space with a microwave, coffee machine with coffee products and numerous other things, and in the middle of all stood a reception desk with a little bell sitting on it, the little bell really stood out because there, ringing it, was a very desperate Knight, because the desk was empty.
Marianne looked around for an employee or someone they could talk to, but other than them, it was empty.
That is, until someone wearing a bathrobe came bursting through a door she hadn’t noticed before and frantically ran and skidded to a stop in front of them.
It was a woman who looked a little older than them, who had thick frizzy red hair, green eyes that Marianne had trouble seeing because of her round glasses, and fair skin that could make you easily see her numerous freckles that dotted her face.
She was on the shorter and stouter side, Marianne could relate to the shorter part, because while she was on the taller side for a Teatan, she was still a Teatan after all. And when she had left the Teatan Kingdom, she had realized that Knight wasn’t actually that tall for a human as she had once thought.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry, we almost never get people sides’ the townsfolk, so I-” She was interrupted by Knight grabbing her shoulders, looking her in the eyes, and just saying one word.
“Bathroom.”
The woman, clearly surprised, said “uh- there’s a bathroom down the hall and to the left.” She pointed in the direction she was talking about, and then Knight was gone, running full speed in the direction the woman pointed too.
“Is she okay?” the woman asked, rightfully concerned.
“No.” Sohee replied simply.
“Yes, she's fine,” Marianne said while giving Sohee a look, then she looked back at the woman, “Ma’am, we’d like to rent two hotel rooms for the night, how much would it cost?”
While she asked this, the woman, still in her bathrobe, walked over to stand behind the desk, “oh dear, you don’t have to use Ma’am with me, you can just call me Molly. Though I am sorry to say we only have one room left, all the others are occupied.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Marianne, “are there any other hotels around here we could go to around here?”
“Fraid this is the only hotel in this small little town, never needed another.”
Sohee shrugged, “eh, we can share a room, it’s one hundred percent better than sleeping outside, which we’ve had to do on multiple occasions.”
Marianne nodded, “yeah, a bed will always be better than the cold, hard ground.”
Knight came back just as they were finalizing the cost and stay of the room, drying her hands on her sleeves.
“Feeling better?” Sohee asked while smirking.
Knight gave her a thumbs up.
The smirk on Sohee’s face fell, “man, why do you have to ruin everything.”
Molly gave them their key and directions to their room and waved them off.
Marianne, entrusted with the key, unlocked the door to their hotel room and headed inside, only to stop when she saw what was in there, or more accurately what wasn’t in there.
“I thought there would be two twin beds, not one full-sized bed,” Marianne said as Knight and Sohee stood beside her.
“I didn’t really think about it honestly, and it’s fine, ther's a couch, so one of us can sleep on it, and the other two can share the bed.” Sohee set her stuff down beside the tv stand, “We can do a vote, or draw straws or somethin… nevermind Knight’s already asleep on the couch.”
Marianne looked at the couch to see that Sohee was right, Knight was totally conked out on the couch, already snoring, she hadn’t even taken her armor off.
“I guess me and you are taking the bed then, huh Mari?” Sohee said while she took out some Pajamas from her luggage. “I’m using the bathroom to change, you can use it after me.” Then she headed into the bathroom and Marianne heard the door lock.
A couple minutes later Sohee came out of the bathroom wearing a matching blue pajama suit that had telescopes on it.
It made Marianne smile unconsciously.
“What?” Sohee asked, raising an eyebrow when she noticed the look Marianne was giving her, “why are you smiling at me like that, it’s creeping me out.”
Marianne shook her head and grabbed her clothes, “nothing you sociopath.” She said as she closed and locked the bathroom door.
When she came out wearing black shorts and a plain white tank top, she found Sohee sitting in bed scrolling through the channels on the hotel tv.
When she passed Knight asleep on the couch, she noticed that she somehow now had a blanket draped over her.
Sohee stopped on a channel as Marianne got under the covers and leaned against the numerous pillows the bed had.
She stopped on what looked to be a Sit-com about a family of martial artists and their talking tiger.
“What, it's funny.” Sohee said when she saw the face Marianne had.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said it all,” Sohee muttered loud enough that Marianne could hear.
And that was how Marianne fell asleep, Knight’s snoring on the couch with a blanket Sohee put on her but would ever deny doing, the sit-coms laugh track breaking the mindless chatter on the tv screen every once in a while. The memory of Sohee calling her Mari and wearing telescope Pajamas replaying in her mind, and her last thought before she drifted off into dream land was about how she was in love with Sohee.
Then her eyes flew wide open.
What?