The day starts out extremely hot, and Shuseki sends Proxy to inform her that she isn't going to be required to go into work today because of the heat. Mimic wonders if he really needed to send Proxy when he could've easily just sent an email, but maybe he's doing it on purpose, reminding her what'll happen if she doesn't behave. Because ProtoMan's still scared of Proxy - she seriously doubts he'll ever not be scared of the butler-Navi - and the sight of him cowering as far away from Proxy as he physically can is more than enough of a reminder.
Whatever. At least this time, Proxy doesn't bother tormenting ProtoMan, so ProtoMan isn't scared into silence again. Mimic watches Proxy carefully as he leaves after delivering his message, and maybe that's why he doesn't do anything.
Mimic narrows her eyes. She's not as spineless as Proxy seems to think she is. Against Shuseki there's not much she can do, he terrifies her - but against Proxy? Well, Chaud recently taught her how to boot unwanted NetNavis out of her PET, so she can always try that if Proxy comes after ProtoMan while he's in there. Otherwise she'll just watch Proxy like a hawk.
But, anyway. Today is stupidly hot, and she's glad the mansion apparently comes with its own air conditioning system, because now her room feels pleasantly cool in contrast to the outside world.
Stepping out onto the balcony means stepping into the stifling heat, so she doesn't do that.
Instead, she sits backwards on her chair, eyes half-lidded with her chin resting on the back, and watches ProtoMan and Arcadia try to keep ten toy balls off the ground at once. Frankly, the fact that they manage to keep six of them off the ground is impressive, but they keep trying for seven and then it gets too much even for their speed, and they lose control and the balls just go everywhere.
It's hilarious and she cackles every time they have to dodge out of the way of flying balls, earning her petulant glares from the two Navis. Chaud's laughing, too, but he can't be glared at like she can, so she's getting double the glares to make up for it.
"Perhaps if I made use of the full Proto Shield," ProtoMan suggests, frowning.
"You can't move as well with the big one," Arcadia points out. He's juggling a couple of the balls back and forth out of boredom. "What about just using the smaller one?"
"We tried that already."
"Try two," Mimic suggests, murmuring the words.
" . . . I do not know if I can make two," ProtoMan says thoughtfully. "I can certainly try."
He activates one half-sized Proto Shield easily enough, but when he tries to make the second, it comes out half-translucent. When Arcadia chucks one of the balls he's juggling at it experimentally, the ball just goes straight through it.
"Never mind," ProtoMan says, getting rid of the translucent shield. "What about your illusions?"
Arcadia shakes his head. "They vanish after one hit, remember?" he replies. "I think having a ball thrown at them counts as a hit . . ."
They continue to brainstorm ways to hit more than six toy balls between them. Mimic isn't really needed for this and she'd only been watching because it had been funny, but they're just talking now and it's kinda boring, so she gets up and wanders over to her bed, where the two Navi plushies sit on her pillow.
She sits down, cross-legged, and sets up a mock-battle between the two. It's kinda childish, sure. But she'd enjoyed doing that re-enactment with Lan. She hasn't seen him since, but they're still exchanging emails on a regular basis, and it hasn't really been that long anyway - a week, really - so she's letting herself enjoy this because it helps her remember Lan's bright smile as they played, MegaMan's embarrassed grin when he saw the plushie of himself, and Haruka's gentle look as she gave them cakes to eat.
"Avenger's Arrow!" Arcadia suddenly calls, startling her into dropping the ProtoMan plushie. "Yeah, direct hit!"
Are they fighting each other?
But when Mimic looks over, she only sees them watching her from the computer, apparently having abandoned their own game.
"We began watching a while ago," ProtoMan confesses, with a slightly embarrassed shrug. "Oh - I need to get back up, don't I?"
Mimic blinks at him incomprehensibly for a moment, and then slowly picks up the ProtoMan plushie.
"Sword!" ProtoMan quickly calls, and then it clicks.
She grins, and makes the ProtoMan plushie hit the Arcadia plushie with its hand.
After that, she shuffles around so they can see the mock-battle better, and moves the plushies when they call out attacks or directions. From her bed, she can easily see her reflection in the sliding glass doors, so sometimes Chaud will sign a suggestion and she'll follow it through - ProtoMan and Arcadia quickly realise that she's letting all three of them direct the mock-battle, so when they see her making the plushies do something they didn't call out, they assume it was Chaud who suggested it.
They spend the rest of the morning messing around with the plushies. She'd already spent a while watching ProtoMan and Arcadia try to dodge out-of-control toy balls, so it's midday by the time she puts down the plushies.
Her stomach . . . isn't rumbling. It doesn't feel empty at all, even though she hasn't eaten breakfast and she hasn't eaten anything since that light snack during a break between work and homework yesterday, which had been in the earlier hours of the evening.
Mimic should probably be concerned that she's apparently gotten so used to minimal amounts of food that she's not even hungry after nearly sixteen hours without eating anything. But she just isn't hungry, not yet, and she'll eat when her stomach actually needs food, not because she thinks she needs to eat.
The weather changes halfway through the afternoon, so abruptly that Mimic is utterly confused for a full minute before she remembers.
This is the thing with the robot penguins. It's supposed to be a ridiculously hot day, and everyone in the city has been using those penguin things to cool down, and now the robot penguins are bringing about a new ice age to both DenTech and Internet City.
Mimic turns off the air conditioning and puts on her hoodie, then sits on the floor in front of the sliding glass doors and glares at the outside world.
Honestly. This is stupid. How can a bunch of half-sized robot penguins do this much damage in a matter of hours? Who decided to make it so these things could blast out entire blizzards on their own?
Gospel, that's who. And the public doesn't suspect a goddamn thing.
"Internet City's access points are totally frozen," Arcadia says, coming back into her PET after checking the online city. ProtoMan and Arcadia had relocated into her PET after the snow had first started, and now she sits with it on her lap for lack of better things to do.
"This is ridiculous," ProtoMan sighs, shaking his head. "We were in the middle of a heat wave just this morning. Now there is a full-scale blizzard?" He sounds just as annoyed as Mimic feels. With a bit of total bewilderment, because unlike her, he doesn't know what's causing it.
Mimic leans back on her hands.
"I'm gonna wake up one morning, and you two are gonna be cats," she mumbles.
ProtoMan and Arcadia stare at her. So does Chaud.
"That would be impossible," ProtoMan eventually informs her.
"I'm a bird, technically, so that goes double for me," Arcadia points out, holding up his clawed hand.
Mimic doesn't bother dignifying their comments with a response.
"It is a good thing you were given the day off," ProtoMan muses, after a few minutes of watching the blizzard outside. "Otherwise you may have gotten caught up in that."
Arcadia shivers. "I hate ice," he mutters. "It freezes my wings."
"Melt it," Mimic suggests, mildly confused. He has Holy Fire, why would ice be a problem to him?
"The colder it gets, the less powerful my Holy Fire is," Arcadia tells her. "I haven't fought that many Navis who use ice, so it's not something that comes up much. But it makes my Holy Fire weaker, and it makes it harder for me to fly."
Oh. Well, that kinda does make sense. The colder it is, the harder it is for fire to burn, after all. She thinks. Mimic isn't an expert on temperature stuff.
It takes hours for the snow to finally start melting. ProtoMan is just as bemused as he'd been when the snow had first shown up, wondering what's making it melt suddenly. Mimic knows what it is, though - the day has been saved by Lan and MegaMan, again. Or was it that weird lighter Navi? HeatMan or something. Whoever had done it, the snow's melting, and all the robot penguins are out of order.
She gets an email from Lan sometime in the evening, complaining about Gospel trying to freeze the city with the penguins (which makes ProtoMan even more confused), and also an invitation for her to come check out a new curry shop that opened a few weeks ago. He says he's been there a few times already and warns her that it's run by the former members of World Three, but he has no way of knowing that she already knew. She's not really bothered, becase she knows they're not gonna be doing anything criminal after all this, even if they start posturing.
Mimic checks with ProtoMan before agreeing, just to make sure they actually can go. Apparently she's actually on top of IPC work, which is a miracle because she's usually been behind since she'd started, and she has the morning free to do whatever she pleases, until the afternoon when she needs to go in, anyway.
She emails Lan, saying she's free in the morning, and gets a prompt and cheerful response.
The next morning, after a slightly restless night - the heat had kept her from being comfortable, and she'd had a mild nightmare, so going to sleep hadn't been much of an option after a certain point - Mimic waits for Lan near the street he'd told her the curry shop is in. Number One Curry, she thinks it was. Weird name, but they do eventually start living up to it. Just not right now.
"Chaud!"
She turns to meet Lan as he jogs up to her. He's a few feet away when he slows, and he looks at her face and winces.
"Didn't sleep much again, huh?" he asks sympathetically. "I'm gonna guess it was the heat this time."
Mimic's already holding her PET, so all she needs to do is just start signing.
"You are correct. It is mildly better today," ProtoMan translates. "But still hot enough to make me question why you want to eat curry in such hot weather."
"Isn't your favourite food, like, paprika chicken noodles?" Lan asks, deadpan. "That's spicy too, you know."
"I have not had noodles for weeks."
Lan blinks. "Oh," he says. "In that case, maybe we can check and see if the curry shop has a noodle dish or something. And!" He suddenly looks determined. "Since I'm the one who invited you, I'm paying for the food. No arguments!"
Mimic doesn't even bother protesting. The last time he'd insisted on paying for her food, he'd talked her down until she agreed anyway.
Lan leads her down the street, until they get to the odd-looking Number One Curry shop. There's a statue of Yahoot outside, holding a plate of curry, and it's a small place - about the same size as Higsby's former Chip Shop, actually, just structured a little differently on the inside.
Lan walks in confidently, and Mimic follows, fighting the sudden urge to hide when all four former members of World Three look up as they enter.
"You again." Maddy scowls when she sees Lan.
"Hi!" Lan exclaims, either totally oblivious to the look or just ignoring it on purpose. "Hey, Yahoot, do you guys do any noodle dishes?"
"We have one noodle dish," Yahoot says cautiously, "but we are primarily a curry shop, not a noodle shop. Why?"
"'Cus Chaud likes noodles," Lan replies, jabbing his thumb at Mimic. Yahoot peers at her, as if he hadn't expected to see her here of all places.
"You."
That's Count Zap, who had been cleaning a table when they'd come in. Now he looks at Mimic with a glare that would have been impressive, if she didn't remember happily messing up his battle tactics with her mimicry in their battle in the N1, and then making him practically wet himself when she smiled her puppy-eating smile.
Mimic decides to give it a go, just to see if she can do it again.
She smiles at him, and he backs off, looking unsettled.
"Damn kid," he mutters. "One-eyed was bad enough, now he's got that weird eye, and that smile is still creepy as hell . . ."
"I have been wondering something," Yahoot says, ignoring Count Zap's muttering. "Chaud, is it? You were able to uncover my identity while I was in disguise, back in the N1. No one I know of has ever been able to do that, until you came along. I wondered if it was due to being a fellow user of the mimicry, but even that would not be enough to see through a perfect disguise like mine. So. How did you know it was me?"
Ah. She'd . . sort of almost forgotten about that. Mimic hadn't bothered hiding that she knew, at least not to Yahoot (and then her friends, when they found out she knew the whole time and said nothing), and of course he'd be curious about how she 'figured it out'. He's not a criminal anymore, so it's not like there's any danger in pissing him off like there was back then, but she can't really tell the truth here.
Hell, she hadn't even told Lan and the others how she knew, just her reasons for not saying anything. Which was technically not a lie.
So, Mimic does the next best thing, and gives him an answer that tells him nothing.
"Trade secret," ProtoMan says for her. "I cannot tell you."
Yahoot looks at her, quiet and thoughtful, but apparently the noncommittal answer annoys Count Zap and Maddy. They come up either side of Yahoot and scowl at her.
"What kind of dumb answer is that?" Maddy demands.
"Tell us how you knew!" Count Zap adds.
Mimic shakes her head.
Count Zap makes a low, threatening noise. He steps forward, clearly ready to fight, and is only stopped by Yahoot planting a hand on his chest.
"They are customers, even if they were our enemies at one point," Yahoot reminds him. "We will not attack them."
"At one point?" Count Zap levels a glower at Mimic. "That brat's still my enemy."
Yahoot shakes his head and turns back to Mimic. "Apologies for my co-worker," he says. "But I must ask again, how did you know it was me?"
Mimic looks at him for a moment, and then raises her free hand.
"Give me a free meal," ProtoMan translates. His incredulous tone makes his disbelief even more apparent.
"Wh- no!" Count Zap is back to looking outraged. "Why would we even-"
"If we give you a free meal, will you tell us what we want to know?" Yahoot asks calmly.
"Chaud," Lan hisses, "what are you doing?"
Mimic spares him a glance. He looks in equal parts impressed and stupefied. Mimic motions for him to back off a little, before turning back to the former World Three members.
"Give me a free meal," ProtoMan says for her.
"Fine," Yahoot agrees. "What would you like?"
"You can't be serious," Count Zap says, gaping at him. Maddy is apparently speechless, looking between Yahoot and Mimic like she expects them to tell her it's a joke any second.
"If this is the only way the boy will talk," Yahoot says, "then I do not mind giving up one free meal."
Mimic stifles another of puppy-eating smile. Oh, they are so gonna regret doing this.
She finishes eating her noodles. It's a smaller portion than what was on the menu, because she's not sure whether or not she's able to eat that much at once, but Lan - who's sitting next to her - has evidently decided that bigger is better and asked for a larger portion in his meal. He still had to pay for his, though, but he seems to think it's worth it to see whatever comes out of Mimic's plan.
Count Zap, Yahoot, and Maddy sit opposite them in the booth, waiting. Count Zap and Maddy are fidgeting in annoyance, but Yahoot is the picture of patience.
"Okay, we gave you the meal for free," Count Zap growls. "Now tell us, how the hell did you know it was Yahoot?"
Mimic looks at him blankly.
"I did not agree to tell you anything," ProtoMan says for her.
Count Zap and Maddy's expressions darken, while Yahoot leans back in his seat and looks at her curiously. Mr. Match, who's standing behind the counter and had been ignoring the conversation up until this point, suddenly starts paying attention.
"Yes, you did!" Maddy exclaims. "You told us to give you one free meal, and in exchange you'd tell us how you knew it was Yahoot at the N1."
"I did no such thing. I asked for a free meal, and you said 'fine'."
"Stop lying, you brat," Count Zap hisses, leaning forward over the table. Mimic just looks back at him steadily, thoroughly enjoying this. "We asked you how you knew it was Yahoot, then you told us to give you a free meal. We said we'd give you a free meal if you told us after you finished eating, and you asked for a free meal again. Then we said fine. You agreed to it!"
"No, you agreed to give me a free meal." ProtoMan's voice shakes a little when he translates, like he's barely keeping himself from laughing. "At no point did I ever agree to tell you anything - all I did was ask for a free meal."
"He is correct," Yahoot says mildly, before Count Zap and Maddy can protest. His co-workers turn to gape at him, but Yahoot remains calm. "He did not actually agree to tell us anything, we only assumed he did. The fault, in this case, is ours entirely."
"Wait, so you're telling me we just gave this kid a free meal for nothing?" Count Zap looks outraged.
Beside her, Lan is choking on his laughter.
"This isn't funny, kid," Maddy hisses. "We're losing business here, when we hardly get any to start off with!"
"You should not have been dumb enough to fall for the 'exact words' trick, then," ProtoMan says for Mimic.
"We're barely even making enough money to pay our bills!" Maddy snaps at them.
Not my fucking problem.
It's not until she notices the shocked looks she's getting from the former World Three members - not to mention Lan and their three Navis - that Mimic realises she'd said that out loud.
She taps her fingertips together awkwardly. Oops.
"This kid's got a mouth." Mr. Match looks absolutely delighted. "And he's a total trickster! I love it! Can we make him our mascot?"
"I thought I was the mascot!" Maddy whines, looking hurt. "What's better to use as a mascot than this beautiful face?"
"Mascots are generally known for being cute, rather than beautiful," Yahoot says with a straight face.
"What!?"
"Hey, trickster," Mr. Match says, looking at Mimic. "Forget telling us how you knew it was Yahoot."
"Wait-" Count Zap begins, but Mr. Match talks over him.
"That meal? On me, for tricking these guys into giving it to you," Mr. Match tells her. "If you can trick Yahoot, of all people, then you're pretty damn good."
"Mr. Match's respect does not come easily," Yahoot observes, while Count Zap and Maddy seethe. "I believe you have won this round, young Chaud. I look forward to crossing paths with you again."
Mimic grins at him. It's not her puppy-eating one, this time, it's just a normal grin - because this was probably one of the funniest things that's happened so far.
It's only when she and Lan are about to leave, and she turns for one last look at the people she'd just tricked into giving her free food, that Yahoot decides to drop a bombshell on her.
[come back soon] Yahoot signs to her.
Mimic gapes at him, and he smiles triumphantly.
After a moment, she returns the smile. Looks like these guys are going to be more fun than she'd thought they'd be.
"That was awesome!" Lan cheers, as they walk down the street. "You- you tricked them into giving you free food! That was the best thing I've seen you do, ever!"
"It was also quite reckless," ProtoMan points out, though he's still struggling to contain his own laughter so Mimic doesn't take him too seriously.
"ProtoMan's right," MegaMan says, "but it was pretty funny. Did you see Count Zap and Maddy's faces when they realised what happened?" He snickers.
"I don't think it'll work twice, though," Arcadia speaks up. "Which is a shame, I-I think, because that was the funniest thing I've ever seen!"
Mimic happily lets their comments and praise wash over her. This has to have been one of her better moments, so she doesn't feel bad about being just a little bit smug about it.
Was pretty damn funny, she hears. She's confused for a moment, but then realises that had come from Chaud - along with a faint sense of amusement.
Mimic grins to herself. Yep, this is definitely one of her better moments.