Indolent
Thirsty for Pink Cosmopolitans
As Emerald's words faded, Gretchen found herself in deep thought, contemplating the next steps once they actually got to the sewers. While she was no stranger to the prospect of delving into the underbelly of many places most oft shied away from, that didn't necessarily ring true for everyone else following her. Except for Maybe a couple of them but she wasn't going to make assumptions anyway.
Hazy definitely didn't go these places, but purely because he never could fit properly.
And it was abundantly clear that Emerald's words did register with Gretchen as she shook herself from her thoughts, eyes peering the direction of where the thief and company departed, remarking internally.
That bitch has the sheer audacity but y'know what, I already miss her acerbic wit. She makes for better company than Hazel and his team. In a way--
Led by the twins, the second ragtag unit proceeded in the opposite direction, deeper into the alley and towards the far exit.
Alas, her position of prominence meant it was Gretchen who found herself in the unenviable position of occupying the second popular girl’s crosshairs in as many minutes, their loose formation’s progress impaired by the duo of Coco and Velvet leading evacuations on this side of the building. The faunus was already standing in the alley, but clocked them in tandem with her team’s leader as she burst through the emergency exit and started ushering the hallway of people behind them out. Both looked battered and singed, but Coco seemed as invigorated by the prospect of further tension as Velvet shied away from it.
“Just so everything’s crystal, I still hate your group. The entire campus does. You’re ultra cliquey, you make everything about you, Salem gives you blatant special treatment; Mercury and Emerald think they’re with the popular kids but we all agree they’re shallow and lack depth and we stopped inviting them places months ago. Torchwick and Neo’s whole deal is weird and kinda ick in ways I don’t care to ponder on. Cinder’s fifteen, and—honestly you can tell her I said this—not that special in a fight, sooo… no one gets why she’s here. Watts is just objectively insufferable. Callows, you’re creepy. Hazel just stands around; guy was probably separated at birth from his actual twin, which was a plank of wood. You lack basic chemistry; honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen WTCH even try to work together as a team for all the attention you guys seem to get, you pretty much all just charge off in four directions and do your own thing, so that pisses me off. You rope Sun’s poor, mediocre ass—who’s supposed to have a team of her own to run, by the way—into every single thing you do, she might as well carry your bags. And you?”
She adjusted her remarkably well-preserved glasses, narrowing her eyes in judgment at Gretchen over the frames as she concluded her scathing review.
“I barely even know who you are. But—“
“Don’t worry, everyone! There is a but!” Velvet declared, triumph overriding the dawning look of mortification that had taken root on her face as Coco seemingly went full tilt towards reinitiating hostilities.
Coco held up a finger, Velvet’s mouth shutting as if by voodoo magic, to which she looked annoyed but not enough to do anything about it. “—But that sure as hell looks like a weasel in your scarf.”
Velvet looked visibly deflated, but quickly hurried to keep the momentum flowing. “…But…”
She immediately wilted, keenly aware of how much the second ‘but’ lacked in power compared to the first. Nevertheless, she pressed on. “…basically, we don’t think you’re criminals anymore! Yay.”
“Speak for yourself, kid. Arson’s a crime. Jacking a manta’s a crime. Displacing a building full of innocent people’s a crime. Black market drugs are a crime.” She sniffed, flapping a hand, as if genuinely harrowed by what she saw in that moment. “And if we’re counting crimes against fashion I might as well be looking at death row right now, quite frankly.”
“ALL RIGHT SO I THINK MAYBE COCO MIGHT STILL WANT TO FIGHT,” Velvet came back more forcefully, which at the very least drew a sigh of approval from Coco rather than disdain. “The point is, I think we’ve all seen for ourselves now that Penny isn’t kidnapped. They didn’t react the way bad people do to burning buildings—“
“—Which they caused—“
“—And most importantly, something just feels… so odd about all this. The whole school’s noticed it. Salem didn’t even give assembly this morning. General Ironwood seems to have taken the reins on everything…”
She frowned, but whatever further thought she felt inclined to give that would have to wait as a Manta in far better condition than the one that had recently taken off finally arrived on the scene, doing a cursory pass over the alley. Its priority was the burning building, and its spotlights only passed over them for a second; but if one was here then it meant the swarm was imminent, and Velvet was spurred by a sudden sense of urgency as she waved them over to the neighboring building’s sizeable sewer grate.
“You have to go. If you’re trying to get to Forever Fall the fastest way is by using the sewer network to get to the docks, then stowing away on one of the SDC trains.”
“Ha! Yeah, get back in the gutter you bugs.”
“You should know… within the hour your faces are going to be all over the city. We’ll do what we can to cover for you, but…”
“Again, speak for yourself—“
“COCO! WILL YOU EVER SHUSH!”
If the need to skedaddle wasn’t pressing enough already, Gretchen and company started to get the sense that this was very much the kind of zany, characterful team CFVY interaction tailor made to happen offscreen.
Howwwwwwwwwwwwwwever, this bitch on the other hand with her audacity. Gretchen slowly turned on a dime, her motion of swiveling in place eerily mechanical as she faced Coco Adel and the unrelenting stream of words she pieced together and threw her Brother and his friends way, before even addressing her in the slightest way possible, with her features fixed in incredulous askance.
Even the vibe she began to emanate gave Hazel pause, a slow growing look of concern in his features matching the same intensity as Gretchen's own.
Was this the first time he'd literally see his sister cut a bitch in live time.
"Oh holy shit, you're as if Professor Port was a mean girl but ten times as boring and rambles on twice as long. Do you ever shut up??? Is the deluge of nonsensical babbling how you managed to become the leader of your team because it was the only way to placate you into a state of quiet??? Oh my god. And also???"
Gretchen fished through the singed remnants of her scarf, bringing Brosel out to address Coco . "Yeah, you're not incorrect about him, you amateur biologist. He's specifically a stoat and he says--"
A concise squeak erupted from the stoat in question.
"Fuck you and your gaudy brown, he wears it better than you. Let's go guys, I'd rather swim in crap than deal with this conceited jerk."
And it was in that same instant Gretchen redoubled her efforts and power-walked to their destination just so they could get away from Coco, this snafu, and literally everything that happened in the span of a few hours prior. Anything to get closer to Forever Fall and maybe some semblance of peace so she could process the growing headache compounded by the stress exhaustion.
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