Good News and More Lies
Rina sat in her cell watching Pura Pupuran get directed out once more. Pura sent back one more hateful glance at Rina before finally being escorted out. Rina sat there dabbing her blood up with a napkin that Reggie had given her. Rina was all alone in the cell, with Pura Pupuran being escorted out to restart her torture and Reggie was still out verbally assaulting Dante, who had a very nonchalant disinterest in her. Rina was surprised that a Marine would jump at the opportunity like that to protect a possible criminal/murderer. She was resting in her cell trying to make sense of it, when the door to the prison slammed open. Rina jumped and Specter let loose some weird inhuman saying like 'ooyah' and a soft thud as he probably fell out of his bed.
Reggie walked in. If it was possible for a human to be visible fuming she was. It was possible that she had just spent too much time in the kitchen, but Rina could swear she saw smoke coming off of her body as she pulled a chair over and sat outside of her cell. Reggie sighed as she tried to think of a calm thing to say, but whenever she opened her mouth she made another inhuman sound that could be mistaken for any animal sound. She finally sighed and leaned back breathing heavily. Rina stared at her for a couple of seconds unaware of how the 'wrongfully convicted' was supposed to act. Offer her shoulder to cry on? An ear to listen to her? Maybe give her one of her chakrams for her to go beat Dante up with? For some reason as a 'convicted felon' none of them seemed like a good choice of action.
Finally, Reggie calmed down and stood up. She walked over to the cameras that was stationed in the prisoner's cell. She waved at them. She moved her hand over her neck, mimicking the ever-popular threat of killing someone, but in this case it meant to turn off the recording Den-Den Mushi. Reggie stood there for a few more second watching the Den-Den Mushi until its eye closed tight. Reggie sighed as she walked back over to the chair and plopped down. "I'm going to kill DANTE!" with a heavy breath she exhaled all of her remaining breath.
Rina blinked for a couple of seconds. She was slowly becoming more and more confused at Reggie's action of both saving her and admitting to the fact that she wanted to kill the man in charge of this Marine Base. Her mind wandered over to the Den-Den Mushi on the wall, whose eyes were shut tight. Why did she turn it off? Did she come here to ask Rina for help, since she apparently had killed another Marine...since she apparently killed herself. She looked up at Reggie who was staring at her, studying her expecting her to make some sort of grand gesture. "You w-want to b-borrow my chakram?" offered Rina finally opting for the third option.
Reggie paused for a second, surprised at the offer. Her mind then drifted to the thought of accepting said offer and taking her anger out on Dante. She closed her eyes as she drifted off to that land which all employees sometimes go to, the one where there bosses suddenly disappeared due to an 'unfortunate accident'. Reggie opened her eyes as she realized that this was neither the time nor the place to be thinking about such things. "I'm here because of Alexander."
Rina perked up and turned her head away from Reggie, "I'm not telling you where he is!" she said defiantly. Despite all of Alexander's shortcomings, Rina was sure Alexander would never sell out his companions...on purpose. She could imagine Alexander accidentally blurting out her hiding spot due to a complete accident, but anything short of that and she felt confident that Alexander would keep her safe.
"I know," pointed out Reggie. She nodded to the Den-Den Mushi, "as a basic rule of the Marine Base the Den-Den Mushi's in the jail are only turned off for five minutes at a time. So, I'm going to try to make this quick. I found Alexander, but don't worry. I'm..." Reggie made another quick glance at the Den-Den Mushi making sure it was turned off, "I'm working with him. We are trying to figure out a way to clean your guys' names. Since neither one of us has the clearance to get into the records. However, I feel like I'm trying to conspire with a rock, so I want you guys' to help me out. That includes you, Carambole!" shouted Reggie as she pounded on the wall. Once more Specter thudded to the ground.
"Damn broad is going to be the death," muttered Specter as he joined in on the conversation. He moved up to the bars and pressed himself up against it looking out and into the hallway. "So, do we have a plan here or are we just supposed to wing it? I vote for winging it. Just get me my gun and I'd be more than happy to blow stuff up until people listen to us."
"I vote against letting Specter have any say in the process," offered Rina. Reggie nodded in agreement. Even though, nobody could see him Specter shrugged and walked back to his bed and laid down. If they were going to break out, he needed his beauty rest. "We have Hayate trailing the suspects," mentioned Rina. Reggie gave her an odd glance. Reggie had never met Hayate and she never heard of a Marine called Hayate coming to their Marine Base. "Hayate is my dog."
There was a quiet beep as the Den-Den Mushi opened its eyes again. Reggie turned back to it and realized her time with the two of them had come to a close. So far, the only merit this visit had was that know Rina knew that Reggie was on their side, Reggie knew that they had a dog assisting them, and both of them knew that they this was truly a hopeless effort. Reggie stood up and sighed.
Most girls had a desire to become an actress when they were younger, Reggie simply wanted to be a Marine like her father. And now she found herself putting on an act for the Marines as she verbally berated Rina and put on a very good show for whoever was watching from the guard room. She imagined they were wide-eyed with her very unfeminine use of the English language. With one finally disgusting word she turned around, putting her back to the camera. She gave Rina a wink like they do in horrible books and in young child's fantasies when they plan something and she left.
Reggie tried to think of something as she walked through the Marine Base. Her eyes up on the ceiling, paying no attention to whatever was in front of her. It wouldn't have done her any good with the darkened halls and the torches on the walls throwing plenty of shadows to throw her off. After all, a dark hallway looked exactly dark wall. No matter how many minutes she put into her thought process she couldn't come up with any good ways out of this. Alexander was still waiting outside for her, probably having some sort of mental breakdown from thinking so hard and Rina and Specter were trapped in their cells, placing bets on which would arrive first, a stroke of inspiration for their escape or Dante, happily swinging his scalpel.
Reggie soon found her two feet planted in front of the kitchen. She was just standing out there. Her feet had brought her here automatically. So many years wandering through this god forsaken place and this was the place she always came back to. The kitchen. If her hands were on autopilot as well, she supposed she probably would've opened the door wandered in and started making spaghetti for Dante's dinner. Dinner sounded pretty good actually.
Reggie's hand twisted the doorknob and she walked in. She had had a good case of exercise hunting down and trying to kill Alexander, the fear from the fall probably aided in the development of her appetite. She had forgotten all about it in the thrill and excitement of being a real Marine officer for the day. Her hands were still clammy with sweat as she recalled the moments of her day. As soon as she had left this kitchen, she was out of the frying pan and into the fire. She breathed out as she tried to calm herself down. A good dinner was probably exactly what she needed, plus she could take the leftovers out to Alexander who was probably growing hungrier by the second.
She wandered over to the stove and turned it on. She had to admit that one of the greatest things in the past century was when the Blue Seas finally established trade with Skypiea and both of them flourished from such a partnership. One of the great inventions that the Blue Sea had obtained from Skypiea was a Heat Dial, which supplied a near endless amount of heat in an invention and allowed for quicker fire rather then her having to build up a fire with sticks and logs. In seconds the stove was warm enough for her to move a pot over to it, pour water into it, and begin preparing dinner.
Reggie had shifted over effortlessly into a more relaxed state of being. She had previously been in such a nervous and anxious mood. Her hands had been shaking and she had been chewing her tongue and now...now it was all gone. It just took a couple of simple deep breaths and a task she had done numerous times before and she was back to a tranquil state of being. The kitchen was empty as it was a little early for dinner to be being prepared, but every so often a guard would wander in, say 'hello, Reggie', grab an apple or other common snack and be out of her kitchen in no time.
Reggie slowly drifted back off into her melancholy monotony. The only thing that became capable of snapping out of such a happy state was the sound of the water starting to reach the top of the pot, luckily she had remembered the wooden spoon on the top of the pot, which prevented it from overflowing. In the next few seconds Reggie had brought over a bundle of pre-made noodles and dropped them in. She went off and started on the sauce.
"Come on, a quick bite to eat won't hurt ya," said a familiar voice. Reggie grimace and grabbed her frying pan picking it up and holding it in front of her face to block the view of the man who entered the room. Satoshi sauntered into the room as if he owned the entire Marine Base followed by him was the stoic Seth. "Oh, hey, uh...girl," greeted Satoshi, forgetting Reggie's name. He looked at her for a second and who wouldn't. She was standing there holding the frying pan in front of her face as if...why Satoshi had no idea what had compelled her to strike up such an unreasonable pose.
"Hey, hey...Alexander." Reggie stumbled over the words. It was like a sharp knife had been driven into her vocal cords as she had to use that name to greet such a monstrous liar. Reggie lowered her frying pan back down and let out a brief sigh, "any luck on catching the criminal?" asked Reggie.
Something was wrong. Something beeped across Satoshi's carefully constructed lie detector. He had no idea what it was cause as far as lying goes he was the most convincing person in the world. He could even fool himself! That was his gift, the gift of the Uso-Uso no mi.* He could lie his way out of anything. It gave him the ultimate power of persuasion and on top of that a small minor side-effect was his very own built in lie detector, which as previously mentioned had gone off for some reason. "Yeah, the criminal..." the words slivered out of Satoshi's mouth, "yeah...the fake 'Alexander'. Yeah, no I haven't found him...yet! But I'm fairly certain I will soon. You?"
"Uh, no," said Reggie as she let out a breath, she didn't even knew she was holding in. He was apparently not interested in her. "I've only been out like once or twice, you know, helping my brother patch the store and I haven't seen him."
There was a sudden siren in Satoshi's head. Something was very, very wrong. Satoshi swiveled his head to face Reggie. His eyes dodged from part to part of her. Her forehead where a light glisten of sweat could be seen. Her knuckles, which were turned white from how hard she had been clutching her frying pan. Her feet, nervously tapping out a rhythm. Satoshi was positive, she was lying. His eyes went wide with a momentary glance at someone who knew the truth. Reggie had someone figured out his lie...had she met with Alexander and believed him? It wasn't possible! His lies should've convinced her very core, no amount of talking should've been able to break the spell.
Satoshi looked around. Seth was still unaware of the situation like the lumox he was had taken to an apple and had just taken a bite out of it. Satoshi's eyes fell onto a nice blade that laid out on the table. He picked it up and felt the cold metal in his hand, it would make a nice piece of evidence to add to Alexander's downfall...the DEATH of another Marine!
Uso-Uso no mi=lie-lie fruit
The news has been carried out and to Rina and Specter, who could seem a little bit more thrilled, but, hey, who has the time when you have impending torture hanging over your head. Not to mention that now Reggie is in hot water! God...I think I like puns a little bit too much sometimes!
I am also returning to school, which means I'm going to have less time to devote to writing, which means my stories are gonna slow down. Probably back down to once every two weeks...yeah, sorry, but school comes first! At least until I start making money off of my writing!
