June 23rd, 12:15 pm
Selbina Street, Emerald Coast
The rain was pouring down hard on the streets of Emerald Coast that afternoon with cars getting pounded by a thousand raindrops per second and massive puddles being formed on the sides of some roads but in particular, quite a bit of water was dripping of a neon sign above what looked like a cross between a café and a 1950's diner. And at that moment, a yellow cat in a trench coat dragging a naked black armadillo by the arm arrived at the door of the coffee shop. Mighty took a look up at the neon sign above the coffee shop, which said in big purple and blue letters Sparkling Emerald. "Really, that's the best name you could come with?" Mighty asked, rather exasperatedly, although that could just be from getting his arm dragged for the last 2 blocks.
Honey replied "I wasn't the one who came up with the name, that would be my dad. And the other name involved a pun so terrible that I can't really mention it in case someone bashes their head into the wall until they start bleeding…again." as she opened the door and let the traveller and herself in. The Sparkling Emerald, despite its gaudy-looking sign, gave off a really homely feel; customers were happily talking to each other at the counter and at their own tables, the floor was coloured in a very cheerful blue and white checkerboard pattern, the rain actually provided a nice backdrop instead of just getting everyone wet and there was even some nice instrumental jazz playing in the background.
As the two walked over to the counter, Mighty asked "So it was your dad that set up this place? I'll have to give him credit; it looks like a very nice place. Oh, and I frigging love his choice of tunes," as he started tapping his feet to the tune playing in the background.
"Yeah, my dad set up the Sparkling Emerald about ten years ago, back when I was just a little girl," the cat replied as she got behind the counter and took her trench coat off, revealing a red vest and black pants. Mighty took a couple of tissues from the counter on the off-chance his nose would start bleeding. She continued to talk with a wistful, nostalgic tone in her voice "He'd always thought about setting up a place where people could eat, chat, listen to jazz…just some place where people could be happy…" before sighing wearily.
A concerned expression formed on the armadillo's face as he folded his arms on the counter and leaned towards the cat, asking "Hey. Is something up?" The clearly distraught feline ignored him as she silently grabbed an apron from a nearby rack and tied it around her waist. Rolling his eyes, Mighty shook his head as he continued "C'mon, I may be bad at taking directions but even I can detect that something's wrong with you…Get it?…'Detect' because I'm a detecti- Well, I've already ruined it…" a bitter smile creasing his lips as he admitted this.
Honey looked back at him with a vaguely solemn look in her auburn eyes and opened her mouth to say something when the piercing ringing of a phone suddenly cut in. She hurriedly picked up the sky blue phone and faux-confidently answered "This is the Sparkling Emerald; how can I help you?" A buzzing of someone's voice came through from the receiver and whoever it was, Mighty could tell it had to be someone important as the cat's pigtail-ears drooped and a soft frown formed on her fuzzy muzzle as she replied in between mumblings from the other side of the call "Hey Dad, you okay?… How're you holding up after what happened last week?…That's great to know, Dad…So when will you be out?…"
The shelled armadillo couldn't help but watch on, intrigued at the situation, as Honey continued to talk with her dad, her tone going back and forth between cheerful and weak, "…Three weeks, huh?…Well, if it means you'll be okay, I'm fine with that…Me?…I'm alright, y'know…Guess I'm still a little spooked after that car accident…Don't worry too bad 'bout me, okay?…I'll pull through…I'm just worried about you is all, especially after Mom…you know," as she took a quick break to sigh, "…Anyways, try not to run off from the doctors this time, alright?…Okay, see you later…And don't worry, those new guys you hired can take care of things here…Love you too, Dad." And on that note, she placed the phone back down onto the receiver, pausing to stare at it in contemplation for a short but silent period.
That was until she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Mighty was still staring at her. With an incredulous look on her face, she lifted her head up and glared at him in mild disbelief as she asked "How long have you been listening in on that conversation?" The shelled traveller responded by chuckling nervously and sheepishly scratching his forehead, causing the cat to sigh bitter sweetly before commenting "Y'know, you shouldn't be eavesdropping on people like that. It could kill you someday…Anyways, so you know my problem now, for better or worse. What d'ya gotta say to that?"
Rubbing the back of his neck, a soft smile crept up on Mighty's tanned muzzle and he replied "Well, sorry for listening in on you like that. But other than that, all I can really say is that things will get better; I don't know when or how but they will. Just keep your head up and everything'll be alright. It ain't much, I know, but sometimes you just need to hope that things'll turn out fine." while an embarrassed blush formed on his face. He'd gladly admit that he wasn't the greatest philosopher on Mobius but he knew that if anything could cheer up Honey, or anyone else for that matter, he'd at least try.
After a short period of silence, a small but appreciative smile formed on the feline's fuzzy face as she replied "Thanks. Anyways, you wanted something to eat for free?"
"Oh God yeah!" The armadillo eagerly affirmed as his smile became a toothy grin, ready to chomp down on just about anything at that moment, "I actually haven't eaten anything since the last bus station and even then, that was just a chilli dog! Actually, you got one of those by the way?"
Honey hummed in curiosity before she commented "We don't do chilli dogs actually; I heard they up and ruin people's bowels when they eat 'em."
"Eh, that's just for the chilli dog virgins," Mighty cockily dismissed with a wave of his hand, "But me? I've had so many I can gulp 'em down like a pro!"
"Oh really?" The yellow cat teased with a cruel smirk on her muzzle. As Mighty realized exactly just what he'd accidentally said, his face turned a very bright shade of red yet again and he looked down at the floor in embarrassment. Meanwhile, Honey pulled out a small packet from underneath the counter and gave it to him. He picked it up and observed the wrapper, noticing that it was just a small packet of bacon fries. A disappointed look crept up on his face as he lowered it to find the feline looking back at him, saying "I know it's not much but I've gotta lot of work to take care of so you'll have to make do. Sorry."
(Mood Music - Easy, Bruno, Easy - Benoit Charest)
Rolling his eyes, the armadillo opened up the packet and dipped his hand into it to pull out a few small bacon fries that he casually tossed into his mouth. The taste was pretty bland but hey, he was eager to eat just about anything, even a piece of custard covered cardboard, at this point. As he chewed on them, Honey leaned on the counter and inquired "So about that detective agency you've been looking for, do you know where they are?"
The shelled traveller picked up a single bacon fry and licked it up and down out of habit as he replied "Not really; their landlord said they were probably out a case but they could be hanging around some café by the seaside. But there could be a million cafés like that around here." as he shrugged in defeat.
The yellow feline glanced to her left to see the harbour just about 50 yards away from the Sparkling Emerald and sarcastically commented "Yeah, it could be anywhere…" Mighty raised an eyebrow at this and stopped giving that bacon fry the Magnum Ice-Cream treatment before she looked back and asked "…Just curious, does this team of detectives happen to be called the Chaotix?" The armadillo nodded, a hopeful gleam shining in his eyes, as she replied with a cheerful grin on her face "Then you've come to the right place, Chicky! They come here pretty much every day."
Tilting his head, Mighty finally tossed the tortured chip into his mouth and quickly swallowed it, asking "How come? Don't detectives usually meet up in a smoke-filled bar in a crime-ridden alley or something?"
Honey smiled bemusedly as she pointed out "This isn't LA Noire, Chicky. Besides, this is the only place in town that sells pretty big meals for about ten Mobucks so who can blame them?…Still," as she quickly glanced over the café and found only the customers, along with the interns her dad had hired, "It looks like they aren't here. Sorry."
"Hey, don't worry," the shelled Mobian explained while finishing off the last of the bland bacon fries, "I'll find 'em somehow. They might've been here earlier so who knows? Maybe one of the customers know where they went off to. Anyway," as he eagerly stood up from the counter and turned to face the rest of the checker-boarded café, "if I'm gonna be a proper detective, I better start doing some investigation work!"
With his hands on his hips and a proud stance, Mighty looked ready to take on the world, and yes, that evens includes the rabid shippers in this silly fan base. That expectation, though, ended up tumbling down to the ground when Honey remarked "Well, good luck with that."
As his eyes widened out slightly in surprise, he turned back round and asked "Wait, what? Aren't you gonna help me find them?"
"I wish I could," Honey admitted with a guilty look on her face, "but I've gotta lot of work to take care of. Especially with those interns; I'm not letting them run the place on their own…Look, if it'll help, you can come to me for any favor today. Any one thing and I'll do it for you…" and as she noticed a particularly devilish grin on Mighty's face, she quickly added "Within reason, you dolt. It's the least I can do after you saved me earlier. Anyway, good luck on finding the Chaotix, Chicky." And with that, she rushed to the room behind the counter to take care of those incompetent interns of hers.
While disappointed that he wouldn't be getting Honey's help when it came to finding out who to talk to about the Chaotix, Mighty decided to keep his head up and got on with his quest to find the ever-elusive Chaotix, asking as many of the customers as he possibly could.
The results were…less than desirable.
An old man, strangely enough wearing a bowl of noodles on his head that dangled down in front of his eyes, glared at the armadillo irritably as he said "Stupid buncha detectives. All I wanted that lot to do was to find my damn noodle cart and they brought back a frigging hot dog vendor! Can you believe it?!" He then pulled a harmonica seemingly out of his arse and played the blues with it, much to Mighty's utter confusion.
A middle-aged couple and their little kid were the next to interview; the parents collectively raised a clueless eyebrow while the young boy asked with oblivious cheerfulness "What's a Chaotix?"
"So have you guys seen the Chaotix?" the traveller asked with a faint hint of weariness in his nasally voice. In response, the biker gang glanced at each other for a silently awkward period before promptly getting up from their table and leaving the establishment altogether.
As loud engines roared from outside and five motorbikes drove off into the distance, the shelled detective-in-training groaned irritably before he walked over to the next table and asked the two cats sitting there "Excuse me, have either of you two a trio of detective called the Chaotix? One's a purple chameleon, there's this small bee and this giant…alligator, I think?"
"Pssh, heck no!" said one of the two sitting at the table; a grey tabby cat with some scruffy hair and a blue jumper. As he put his feet on the table and put his arms behind his head, the cat said "I haven't seen those losers all morning and hopefully you won't either; this one time, they tried getting my pet Chao out of a tree and ended up setting fire to my house. Seriously, those guys fail pretty hard…though not as hard as your MOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!"
Mighty just stood there with his eyes bugged out in unfettered bewilderment and disgust at that remark but just then, the other customer at the table, a pink cat with longish, similarly scruffy hair, stepped in to explain "I'm sorry, you'll have to excuse my friend here. He's a bit of an idiot," as she glared angrily at the tabby cat. Then suddenly she stood up and pointed straight at the armadillo's chest, asking "And speaking of idiots, why did you just call us a couple?!"
Stepping back in shock, the black Mobian raised a confused eyebrow as he asked "W-what are you on about?"
"Just a few paragraphs ago, you called me and this dumbass," she said as she was pointing at the tabby cat, who had a cocky smile on his muzzle "a freaking couple?! We're not even thinking about it; let alone dating! Why would you do that?!"
"Because I thought you were a couple," Mighty pointed out, holding his hands up defensively as he did so, "It was easier than calling you and that guy 'the two random cats at Table No. 9' or something like tha-"
"Don't change the subject, bucko!" the cat harshly interrupted as the frown on her muzzle grew into a fang-bearing frown of rage, "There's enough trouble as it is with people thinking we're dating but when we've only been in this fanfic for about a page and someone's already shipping us, something has gone dead wrong!" she screamed out as everyone else stared at her, completely and utterly stumped. After a few seconds of silence, she yelled "Screw it! I'm outta here!" before she and the tabby cat got up and walked away, mumbling something along the lines of "I'm never doing a stupid cameo in this fanfic ever again!"
Mighty stood there, staring at the now empty table, trying to comprehend what the hell just happened when a strange brown weasel in a jumpsuit came from behind him to clean up the table, taking Mighty by surprise. "Aaagh! What the hell was that all about?!" he yelped with a small jump in the air at the jump suited stranger.
While he rubbed a cleaning cloth against the table, covering it in a gnat-thin sheet of water, the mysterious man replied "Well, that's my job. I'm the janitor: I clean up empty tables, clean up any errors in grammar and spelling made by the author and try move the plot along as best as I can, bud! By the way, my name's Gordy…not that anyone cares." as he picked up the plates from the table and put them on a cleaning cart littered with mops, dish rags and notes on mistakes the author was making as this story goes along. "Anyway," Gordy said. "I saw you trying to look for the Chaotix and I thought I'd help with that."
Mighty's eyes lit up at the chance to find out where the Chaotix went and asked in the most subtle of ways, "You can?! Tell me where the Chaotix are! Please, please, please, please, PLEASE!" as he knelt down, tugging on the weasel's jumpsuit with all the energy of a teenage boy dating Rosie Palms for the first time.
Gordy looked down and told him "They were here this morning but they already left to go on this big case they had." Mighty stopped tugging and got up slowly, feeling let down at the fact that he was without any kind of lead…again. "Hey kid, calm down, I ain't finished yet!" Gordy said, as he sat down on the table next to him. Mighty tilted his head upwards, looking at the weasel janitor, who said "Well, what're staring at me for? Pull up a chair and I'll tell you about what happened." So Mighty sat down in front of the track suited Gary Stu, who took out a can of cola to drink as he started to tell his story.
"It was early this morning; it was still raining, although it wasn't as bad as it was now but anyways, the main guy Vector was boasting that this case was the thing that was gonna catapult them into fame…"
To be continued…
Message from the Author - 21/Dec/2012
(And that's another chapter finished. Sorry about the delay, it's just I've been a bit lazy over the last few days so hopefully the next chapter won't take as long to make. You may also notice that I'm extending this episode by another chapter, mainly because I felt this was a bit too long with the flashback originally featured in this chapter (the flashback will form part of the next chapter). As well as that, I've popped in a couple of extra cameos and shout-outs more bizarre than before and hopefully, some of you will get them.
In any case, that's all I have to say for today. As usual, tell me what you think and what improvements I can make in future and I'll see y'all next time! -FrDougal9000
NOTE: 23/Sep/2013 - I finally decide to actually finish off this bloody thing. Though that was mainly because I had some major dialogue rewriting to tackle this time, mainly for about half of it just to make sure it felt less amateurish. Aside from that, I cleaned up my usual problems like paragraph speaking, spelling and grammar and the like…Though I wouldn't be surprised if there's another error or two I completely missed out on. Sorry Gordy, you've got more work to take care of. Anyways, tell me what you think of the rewrite so far and if I can make any kind of improvements to later chapters. And with that, I leave you to take on a few other things. I hope you enjoyed reading this and until we meet again next time, have a great day y'all! -FrDougal9000)