'They' were out shopping when she gasped. "Oh, shit." She muttered, almost to herself.
"What is it?" Her companion wondered at her as they got moving with all their stuff.
"33579."
"Oh, you can do one better than that."
"You do one better than that." She retorted.
"Holy Shit And Shove Me In It!"
She chuckled. "I like it. JOTN, right?"
"Yyyyep. Why don't we take a... porcelain cruise?"
She sighed. "Did you have to use that phrase?"
"No, but I get the feeling that we have a bar to go to. A very specific bar in southwest '-ton'."
She gasped. "You don't mean..."
"Exactly. Now go make sure our purse has all our current funds, and not just the records we made of ... of 'them'."
"While you get the car ready? Will du." She froze. "Did I just do what I think I just did?"
"Yeah, ya did. Now run along before I have to save your ass."
"I'd be saving yours!" She responded to the sarcasm with a laugh as she left.
Her companion nodded, smiling. 'Still so innocent, even after all these years. Just like me, I guess, to choose someone so forever young and innocent. One who reminds me so very strongly of my nanny...and myself.' A sigh escaped her strong, defiant, and innocent lips. It was resigned, but happy. Just like her best friend who was going off to check on the little bag they called their 'purse' that held everything they'd need to keep going in life, and maybe even finally end this charade their lives had become so long ago. She went over to the car and checked.
No bombs, no ominous packages, nothing truly out of the ordinary for them really. Some of their... 'questionable', upgrades had been inspected, but were discarded from thought as they had been designed to be. She nodded and got in to start the car when she heard gunfire.
"Oh, no." She said, a worried look genuinely plastered all over her face as she looked in the direction of the sound's source. The direction her friend had gone. "Please don't do what I think you're doing. Please please please please please Please ..." She pleaded of her friend, knowing she couldn't hear her, and started the car in case one of the two worst-case-scenarios came to be.
Then her friend turned the corner, with a filled-to-the-brim burlap sack in her hand and masked men running after her with large guns. Good thing they were only rifles and not machineguns of any classification (including snub-nosed).
"Drive!"
She nodded and put it into gear, driving it past her friend at a high speed as she tore off with girl and sack on board and a will to attempt godspeed.
A minute later, they were out of the city and on the highway. The younger-looking of the two straightened and buckled as the driver half-asked half-yelled, "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!"
She shrugged off the yell as easily as she had buckled. "What can I say? They were robbing a bank so extremely inneffectively that I just couldn't resist."
The driver forced herself calm down. It was one of the safest worst-case-scenarios they'd ever dealt with, and this wasn't the first time either had done such a stupid thing. "Hey, did you send her a napkin, a letter, or an e-mail?"
"You sent the e-mail." She paused. "Didn't you?"
She thought a moment. "Yeah, yeah I did. Text her that it needs to be sooner than we thought, and perhaps more permanently too."
"How permanently?"
"At best? A month. 2 if we're lucky. Verrry lucky."
"I agree." She pulled out her phone and wrote out the text. "Sooooo... Karoake night?"
"Yep."
Vibrations jarred her skull; raucous peals of laughter, gratingly low booms of talk, and the sharp ping of beer bottles, shot- and highball-glasses, and plastic pitchers pouring soda and alcohol. The low light made it hard for her to see, even as she wished it was darker, so that she couldn't be identified, even by the friend and family she'd brought with her.
A few words cut through the vibrations clearly, "Neighborhood of 'B'." and then she heard notes to a song she identified right off the bat. She sunk a little lower into her chair and her depression as she identified with the song, "In the Jailhouse now." Almost the whole table was filled with people who were just as trapped in depression as her, or so it seemed to them as she was in it much further than them. The depression, the despair of the whole neighborhood which was most concentrated in her house, seemingly her whole life was conspiring to cage her in what seemed to be a jailhouse. She'd been tempted to start acting like her daughter's archnemisis a few times, just to do something other than sit around the house or deal with patients. At the invitation, she'd drug her entire family to this dark and dinghy bar on a karoake night, both parts of it things she'd never do in her proper mindset on the offchance that something might happen.
*Might*.
Then, the words themselves cut through the noise again, before losing cohesion as she began to actually pay attention to them. She didn't notice as she began to sit straight in her seat, sip her soda good-humoredly, nod in time to the song, even smile and hum along. The others noticed, but she didn't. She was too focused on the song.
"... judge done said that he refused a fine
He's in the jailhouse now he's in the jailhouse now
I told him once or twice quit playin' cards and shootin' dice
He's in the jailhouse now
I went out last Tuesday met a gal named Susie
Told her I was the swellest guy around
We started to spend my money
Then she started to call me honey
We took in every cabaret in town
We're in the jailhouse now
We're in the jailhouse now
I told the judge right to his face
We didn't like to see this place
We're in the jailhouse now
(Yodeling)"
With a huge grin plastered all over her face, she clapped with the rest of them as the woman who'd sung hadn't lascerated it from drunkenness too badly.
And she knew her.
As she took a slightly wobbly bow in her aviator's sunglasses, old-fashioned black gloves with simple black shoes to match, dark blue cargo jeans, and a thin grey-blue-and-dark-blue plaid flannel shirt, she was patted on the back by a much taller, older looking woman who appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a nearly matching outfit (different only in how it was orange-and-blue plaid and dirty orange sweatpants with a similar number of pockets) and left to let her companion take the stage. She grabbed the mic to steady herself, before taking it out of the stand while stumbling back. Then she asked the crowd, "'Stairway to Heaven' or 'Constant Sorrow'?" a little slurredly.
The catcalls made the choice clear. 'Stairway to heaven' By Lead Zeppelin.
As the woman sang the song, the woman at the table giggled immensely at how horribly the woman at the mic was eviscerating it. She bust out laughing whenever she noticed how her family was staring at her for laughing instead of cringing, and it was infectious enough that they all had better spirits about them than they'd had in years. The twins were even smiling.
Honestly, "Constant Sorrow" would've been a better choice. A much better one. Anne thought to herself. She sighed happily when the song was over. She hadn't done that in over a year. Her face was split in a similarly unused smile.
When the song was over, the two women in plaid flannel came over and Anne stood up, beaming at them.
One of them hugged her, saying, "Oh, my little Anne, it's been a long time, hasn't it?"
"Only twenty years." Anne sighed back, blinking back tears. She let go. "How've you been?"
"We've been ok. We've moved around a bit, not really staying here nor there, listening to our music and enjoying each other's company. We've missed you honey."
"I have too. How's mom, ma?" She wasn't asking the one in the double blue plaid in front of her.
The one in the orange-and-blue plaid next to her laughed and gave Anne a hug. "Oh, we've been just fine. We've had our scrapes in the past, and always come out more or less in one piece. You know that."
"So how've you been holding up mom?" The double blue plaid asked.
Anne teared up quite a bit. "Oh, I'm okay. We're okay."
Both women snorted and said, "Liar." before holding her close. "You can lie to anyone but us, remember?"
"Yeah, it's just that, since I lost Kimmie, I- I- it- "
"Just shut up and hold us close." One admonished gently. Anne did exactly that.
After a minute, Anne broke away. "What am I thinking? Where are my manners?" She looked a little disgusted with herself. "Mom, Ma, this is my family, James, Jim, Tim, and a good friend of Kimmie's, Ron." She turned to the group at her table. "Guys, these are Kat and Shell, the two women who raised me. Kat adopted me when I was four and held on to me for twenty whole years, raising me so very well. I wouldn't be who I am today if not for them. Heh, and I wouldn't be a Possible if not for them. They knew my first husband wasn't right for me, and gave me the suggestion to come home at a certain time one day. That's what kept me from making the mistake of continuing to love him when he never loved me." She laughed a small laugh and pulled up two chairs for the two women and sat down in her own.
"You look like you're only 24." Ron said accusatorially.
The shorter one laughed. "Yeah, I know. We don't age easily. Sometimes it seems like at all. Same goes for disease. It's like we never have to deal with physical illness. Now mental illness, on the other hand," She laughed. "That's something everyone has to deal with. In fact, we're like the nerds that bullies like mental illness love the most."
"Suffice it to say, we may get off easy on sickdays, but we don't get off any easier than anyone else, anywhere else." The taller one said. "I'm Shell, she's Kat, and you, my friend to be, are Ronald Stoppable." She smiled widely at his reaction. "Yeah, I do my homework. We saw plenty of our Anne's daughter, Kim, on the TV as we traveled and saw just how underapreciated by the public you are."
"I don't care how underapreciated by the public I am." Ron retorted.
"Because you're just that kinda guy. And we could see that. It's just, we have two, maybe three, pretty acurate viewpoints on this matter. Few people really apreciate what kind of man you are. You're the good kind who's affectionate, totally focused on simple priorities without getting obsessive, completely uncaring of public opinion of you, and have the potential for just about anything. Anything covers a lot. Trust me, we know. We've been there before, a lot. How've you been taking the loss of Kim in your life?"
"She's not dead." Ron said beligerently.
"I struck a nerve with that one." She murmered good-naturedly. To Ron she said, "I wasn't implying she was. I just meant that with her not in the public view anymore, she's missing, isn't she?"
Ron looked down. "Yeah, she is."
"And with her missing, how are you handling life?"
"Ok, I guess."
"Now that is the stupidest generic lie in the world that has a surprisingly high success rate. Now, tell us the truth. Unless you'd rather tell it to us in private..."
"I'm doing just fine."
"Yeah, I'll just bet you are."
"Sheeellll." Kat said in a sing-songy voice.
"What?"
"Don't go there. He'll get violent."
"Honestly, after spending the past, what, thousand years together you still don't realize that I know people just as well as you do?"
Kat laughed. "Oh, don't be such a kidder Shell. It's only been, what, a hundred?"
"Or was it two?"
"Hundred or thousand?"
"Thousand of course."
"Why don't we ask mom?"
"'Cause she wouldn't know a thing about what we're talkin' 'bout."
"Au contrere, I do know what you're talking about."
The two women looked at the green-eyed redhead expectantly.
"You're playing that 'How long we've been together with our sanity?' game again."
"How's that?" Shell asked.
"Oh, don't play dumb. I watched you two play it over a thousand times during my first decade with you two. And I've found that it can be pretty darn fun."
Shell laughed. "Yep, that's our Anne alright."
"Only thing is, what do we do now?" Kat wondered aloud to Shell. "I mean, we couldn't just impose on her and her family by taking a guest room that is probably filled and our house that we raised her in is... Where'd we leave it again?"
"3 miles away from my house in the country." Anne replied for her.
"You sure?"
"To the inch."
"Is it just me, or is she really smug?" Kat asked no one in particular.
"Nah, it's just us three." Shell said, trying to stifle a giggle.
A/N: Here's the full lyrics for that song, 'In The Jailhouse Now' (the one in the 'neighborhood of B').
"I had a friend named Ramblin' Bob
Who used to steal gamble and rob
He thought he was the smartest guy in town
But I found out last Monday
That Bob got locked up Sunday
They've got him in the jailhouse way down town
He's in the jailhouse now he's in the jailhouse now
I told him once or twice quit playin' cards and shootin' dice
He's in the jailhouse now
Yodeling
He played a game called poker pinoccle with Dan Yoker
But shooting dice was his greatest game
Now he's downtown in jail nobody to go his bail
The judge done said that he refused a fine
He's in the jailhouse now he's in the jailhouse now
I told him once or twice quit playin' cards and shootin' dice
He's in the jailhouse now
I went out last Tuesday met a gal named Susie
Told her I was the swellest guy around
We started to spend my money
Then she started to call me honey
We took in every cabaret in town
We're in the jailhouse now
We're in the jailhouse now
I told the judge right to his face
We didn't like to see this place
We're in the jailhouse now
Yodeling"
And don't you dare worry. There's a lot more where that came from!
Oh, and the reference to JOTN, was a reference to a movie called Jewel Of The Nile.