Welcome to the highly anticipated chapter five! I hope you enjoy this section of the story as much as I enjoyed posting it when I should have been doing history homework, which will probably result in failure and humilation when the next report cards come around! Oh, unfathomable joy!
"So, this is it?" Asked Fliara, staring up at the abandoned warehouse. The black hedgehog grinned and nodded, holding out an arm to the beaten scenery.
Nobody's 'house' resided in an abandoned harbor on the very outer rim of town. The edge of the dome was just barely out of running distance- you could see the seam where the real hills of Station Square's outer fields met with the synthetic images of sky, ocean and a small amount of land. The building- which was what looked like a huge mechanic's garage, was nestled between a few hundred empty factories, skyscrapers an other garage-like storage buildings.
Nobody's entire complex consisted of a huge cement-paved portion of land in the steel-coated harbor, which was nearly jam-packed with all sorts of buildings. A chain-link fence, topped with barbwire, ran around the very large property, which collectively was about the size of a small school. On the western half was an assortment of storage buildings, slate blue in color and bearing large doors, which provided for mass shipping and the entry/exit of large trucks.
Fliara continued to look around the large area, taking in every detail. In the center-north side of the complex (which Fliara and Yang were standing in front of) sat a large, tall building. The paint, like on all the other constructions, was chipped and blue, but this to some extent appeared like a house. There was a smaller second story with a window, but Fliara couldn't see what was inside. To the east was a smaller storage building, next to a large pile of mechanical trash. Outside the relatively uncluttered area, the entire harbor was filed to the brim with junk, buildings and boats. There were even some old cargo ships still left in the bay, but Fliara doubted if they would ever sail again. As a matter of fact, she wasn't sure how they were still floating.
"Yeah. What were you expecting, a mansion? The authorities would get a little suspicious if someone suddenly bought a huge house and put it in an abandoned harbor." Yang explained. Fliara sighed.
"So you're telling me no one sells houses on the black market?" She raised an eyebrow at the hedgehog, and grinned smugly. "I thought you said this guy could get his hands on just about anything."
Yang shifted his wait and replied with a well-humored scowl:
"Yeah, key words being 'just about'. Now are you coming in or what?" He asked, walking up to the large garage door. Fliara again stared up at the towering building skeptically.
"...But the door's closed." She commented. Yang grinned, and wagged a finger.
"Ah, but only to those who don't know the way in." He explained, walking to the edge of the wall and knocking around a certain panel of the blue metal coating. Finally he came to an area in the metal where the sound was different. Grinning once at the dragon, he turned and hit the wall sharply with his fist, at which a hidden door popped open to reveal a communication system not uncommon from 21st century apartments. You press a button; your voice was transmitted to the according room. Currently the third button was lit up orange- Yang placed his finger on that button.
"Hey, Nob'y, It's Yang!" The hedgehog said into the microphone. There was no response for a long time, and Yang sighed, placing his finger on the button once again. "Come on, I know you're there- this is important!" The hedgehog said.
Fliara coughed lightly into the elbow of her sleeve, and afterwards rubbed her hands together for warmth. Being cold blooded could really suck when added with the right circumstances. After a few seconds, a light next to the speaker lit up, and a juvenile voice broke the silence.
"Hold your horses, buddy, I'm here... hold on a sec, I'll go open the door."
Only moments later, the large garage door slowly began to open, and Fliara was amazed at what she saw.
In front of her lied a huge gymnasium-sized enclosure, with bare concrete floors and rippled iron walls- or what was left of the walls that you could see. The entire first floor was shaped like a very thick, short T, The door Yang and Fliara entered in being at the base. On both sides of the entry, the entire 20-foot walls were covered in shelves- stacked up with all sorts of various odds and ends. On the southeast portion of the left wall, Fliara saw weaponry, while on the southeast portion of the right wall, there appeared to be parts of car engines, and some appeared to be similar to that of models that were hundreds of years old! But that was nothing compared to the wall in front of Fliara and Yang. A huge, and I mean HUGE- chalkboard (or it appeared to be chalk-) sat at the end of the hall, covering nearly all of the space in front of them, drawings and diagrams filling nearly every corner. As Fliara looked around, she saw that ladders- moving ones like you would see in libraries- were on every shelf, allowing easy access to every container and object. But they looked unused and dusty- Fliara wondered why.
She was surprised as something whizzed through the air from the hall to the left, and buzzed past Fliara and Yang with a brief. "'Scuse me!" She turned quickly to look at it.
It was a tiny robot, shaped disturbingly like a Mentos candy- except for a pair of buzzing mechanoid wings, and obvious weld and hatch marks running down it's bright blue hull. A black ring circled around the top of its head, and on the opposite side of its wings, small round 'eyes' protruded from the otherwise smooth contraption. Fliara expected that the wings were for show, for also small and quiet jets circled the symmetrical base of the droid.
It 'fluttered' over to a portion of the shelve-covered wall, and before Fliara's eyes, a small robotic arm emerged from a compartment on the robot's side and grabbed a book. Afterwards, the arm gripped the book tightly and flew off in the direction that it had come, humming a small tune as it left.
She stared, allowing herself to grin slightly. Mighty impressive.
Her thoughts were interrupted when footsteps came from the hall where the droid had appeared. As she looked up, she was surprised.
A young platypus- looking barely over 20 in age- stood before them, oil stains splotched over his torn jeans and gray shirt, with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Large rubber gloves covered his forearms, and a baseball cap sat crooked on his head. His fur (or was it feathers?) was a musky, pine green, in great contrast with his bright, yellow-orange bill and blue eyes.
"Hi, Yang!" Nobody exclaimed, eagerly jogging up to the two. When he finally arrived next to them, Fliara realized that he was very short in comparison with herself and Yang. His forehead came about to her eye level. But in spirit, Noby gave the impression of being very, very tall. Fliara had to suppress a laugh. He was quite funny looking, all in all.
A series of small blips came from the hall to the left, and the small blue robot buzzed once again into the room, this time floating over to the three mobians standing by the door. Nobody laughed and held out his arm, allowing the robot to perch on it.
"Yang, I assume you remember Nadia." He elaborated, gesturing to the robot. Fliara raised an eyebrow.
"It has a name?" She asked, claws buried inside her pockets. Nobody, at first, stared at her with a slightly distraught expression.
"Of course she has a name! She's my pride and joy." The platypus explained. Suddenly, the blue robot buzzed away from his arm and floated in front of Fliara's face.
"Yeah! I'm his right-hand robot around here and don't you forget it!" It snapped, obviously with high spirits. The robot then made a form of raspberry noise in Fliara's general direction, then buzzed back over to Noby's head. Noby chuckled nervously, and blushed as the robot continued to glare at Fliara.
"Heh, heh... That's A.I.s for ya, eh? ...She's not so bad once you warm up to her." The young platypus offered nervously. Fliara looked from the robot, to the platypus in front of it, and then to Yang. She grabbed the hedgehog by the arm and pulled him to the side for a moment, out of earshot of the platypus- or more importantly- the robot.
"Yang, I thought you said this guy had been in the business for four years. He barely looks 21!" The dragon exclaimed. Yang laughed and nodded, folding his arms in front of him.
"Yeah. Nobody got into the business when he was 17- and believe me, nobody, and I mean nobody does it better than Noby." The hedgehog explained. The dragon raised an eyebrow, feeling like she needed to douse herself in cold water after that little analogy. She shook her head, and looked back up at Yang with a sigh.
"I'm just a little uncomfortable with leaving my health in the hands of a kid like him." She admitted, looking quickly over to Noby and Nadia, who were both staring at the two. Nobody waved, and Fliara half-heartedly waved back, turning back to Yang. She was surprised to find him slightly disgruntled.
"Just a kid? He's plenty old, Fliara- and for your information you don't look that much older yourself." The hedgehog argued, poking the dragon in the arm. Fliara opened her mouth to protest, but paused, and then hung her head, placing her hand over her face.
"I'm almost 100 years old, Yang, and you know that."
"You act that old sometimes too."
Fliara quickly looked up and glared at the hedgehog, at which Yang laughed loudly, playfully punching the dragon in the shoulder.
"I was kidding- I was kidding! Now come on, give Nobody a chance... " the hedgehog pleaded. Fliara sighed and looked between the platypus and his robot.
"And his little robot, too?" She asked disdainfully, looking almost anxiously at the blue, buzzing oval. Yang once again laughed audibly.
"And Nadia too." He added. Fliara moaned and turned back towards the two standing a few meters away.
"Okay," She sighed; giving in. "but if anything goes wrong; I'm blaming you."
"I wouldn't expect it any other way."
"Okay, so according to the directions you should take it once every two days with a meal. Oh, and don't take this medicine if you have liver problems." Nobody recited, reading the back of the pirated box with care. He then held it out to Fliara, who quickly snatched it up into her scaly claw.
"As far as I'm aware my liver is fine. Come to think of it, I haven't spent that much time around liquor since I was 50- can't say I miss the stuff that much." The dragon responded, pocketing the medicine in one of the many compartments on the inside of her large and noisy coat.
"Good- cause you can't drink any as long as you're on that stuff, either." The platypus answered, closing the file-cabinet like container that held the large amounts of medicine. Right now they were in the smaller storage compartment/garage of Noby's house. It had the same blue, metal walls and bare concrete floor, but unlike the rest of the fairly tidy enclosure a large, wooden desk and a huge metal skeleton of some form of robot filled the room- papers and blueprints scattered everywhere- even on the floor! After he locked up the container, he turned back to Fliara and Yang, grinning as Nadia landed on his shoulder. "So, Yang... is she really 100 years old?" He asked. The dragon's gaze hardened.
"If you have a question about me, I suggest you ask me. And yeah- I'm 112, 1-1-3 this April." Fliara answered, folding her arms in front of her. Noby grinned.
"Aww, don't take offense- I never believed any of the crap the media was spewing about you anyway. I always thought of you as some kind of political ghost story to get the children to behave. But you gained some pretty powerful non-political influence too. Actually, I think my mother once told me 'be good, or Fliara will come get you!'" Nobody laughed, and shook his head, turning back to the blueprints. Fliara allowed herself to smile slightly. Whether she liked it or not; she was warming up to this guy.
"So how did you decide to get into this business? I would have thought it'd be pretty hard, what with that weird underground monopoly Friday was doing a few years back." Fliara asked, unbuckling her trench coat and setting it on a coat rack by Noby's desk. The platypus chuckled slightly, and picked up a few blueprints, turning back to Yang and the dragon as he walked over to another file cabinet- this one with actual files in it.
"I got started before Friday did- and by then I had more than enough patron customers. But I'm getting ahead of myself- I guess it all started when I was younger." The platypus began. "My family wasn't the wealthiest bunch on the block- I mean we made it bye, but barely. So my mom and dad got the idea into our heads- that's me and my two sisters- to gather whatever we could find to sell later on when we got in a tight spot. It was kind of like a game, and fairly soon I got pretty good at it- you wouldn't believe the kind of stuff people just let sit around- and I'd know exactly what it was worth." He explained, placing the blueprints inside the cabinet and closing the door after them. "I guess you could say I became a genuine pack rat; nothing was too hard for me to find." He paused as a look of loss found his face. "...Then, my little sisters came down with... something... some sort of disease. My mom got it too- but before I got to see if they made it, I was arrested for ignoring the 'not for retail sale' label... by the time I was let out- they just weren't there anymore- not even dad. I looked everywhere for them- I even checked law enforcement records... but it's like they just vanished. It's been almost five years now, and I still have no idea what happened to them." He explained sadly. "Afterwards, I started doing what I did best- underground trade, and car repair. After a while I had made quite a name for myself- people started recognizing I had the ability to find almost anything in a matter of days. I built up a lot of connections- and even more patron customers. The business got bigger and bigger, I got a few maintenance bots to help me out- you can't trust human employees in this kind of business- and I even found a cheap lot in the abandoned harbor. Ever since, things have been going well; I've even found the time to program Nadia and start on a few other projects." Noby pointed to the large metal skeleton of what looked like some sort of tank. "That's going to be an expansion with Nadia- it's compatible with her hard-drive, and once it's finished she'll be able to link up with it an become a one- A.I. wrecking crew! It's gonna have machine guns and grenades and five-inch titanium armor- you know, the works."
The dragon took a look at the blue buzzing oval and then at the tank, raising an eyebrow.
"Are you sure that's a smart thing to do? She's dangerous enough as it is already." Yang commented, grinning at the robot. Nadia bopped him purposefully on the head and Noby gave out a small laugh.
"Oh, no, trust me- I'll need the security the way times are moving these days. Even the thieves have to keep locks, you know." He reassured. Fliara allowed herself a fanged grin, and stuck out a claw to the young platypus.
"Well, it was nice to meet you, Nobody." The dragon offered. Noby smiled and accepted the gesture, shaking Fliara's hand in return.
"It was nice to meet you too, 'curse of the skies'." He replied, using the media's all-too-popular nickname for her. She shuddered lightly, but decided to take it as a compliment, and forced a smile as she reached for her coat once again. "Come back if you need a refill for that- I doubt you'll still have whatever it is after a week of that stuff- but just in case, feel free to drop bye." He offered. The dragon's eyes widened as she plucked her trench coat off the hanger and draped it onto her shoulders.
"I... I don't think I'd be able to pay you." She answered, hastily fastening the many buckles around her waist. Noby chuckled, and playfully punched Yang in the shoulder.
"Don't worry about it- a friend of Yang's is a friend of mine."
"In other words," Began the wolf gloomily, "you'll be putting it on my tab?"
"You betcha!"
Nobody and Fliara shared a laugh (while Yang rolled his eyes and shook his head, but allowed himself a grin) and then the dragon sighed and looked towards the door.
"I should be heading back... I mean you guys have done enough as it is, I wouldn't want to give any more opportunities for you guys to be associated with me- can you imagine what that would mean for you?" She pointed out, eying the door. Noby gave out a hearty laugh.
"For Yang- yeah, he'd be in some hot water, but for me, knowing you is only going to do good things! I'm in the black market! When people hear that I've done a favor for the 'infamous Fliara' sales are going to skyrocket!" The platypus grinned and turned back to his work. "But you have a point- you guys probably have places to be; I mean I know I do. And besides, Yang, It's getting late- Isn't Cel expecting you home-"
Noby went completely silent as the hedgehog suddenly went deathly pale at his last statement, and immediately the platypus' eyes widened, and he hung his head, stammering:
"Oh god, Yang- I... I'm sorry, I just forgot... it's... It all happened so fast. I ...I guess I still haven't gotten used to the fact-"
"Don't worry about it." Mumbled Yang, turning to the door. "Bye, Noby. Bye, Nadia." He said, walking briskly across the ground.
"Bye!" Replied the robot cheerfully, oblivious to the hedgehog's distress. Fliara glanced uncomfortably between the two- what was going on?
"Who's ...Cel?" Asked Fliara quietly to Nobody, staring as Yang turned right- into the main hall.
Nobody sighed and sat down at his desk, placing his head in a gloved hand.
"Yang's not real comfortable talking about what happened. If there's something you don't know, it's because he doesn't want to tell you." He picked up a pencil, and started sketching on an elaborate blueprint, matching the metal skeleton in the center of the room. "And believe me; if he doesn't want to tell you, it's unlikely enough that he'll change his mind on his own- don't go pressing for information from that guy." He set the pencil down momentarily, and stared at the drawing, before nodding, seeing it was satisfactory. "And one last thing," He said, rolling up the paper and placing it in a small pile of other completed blueprints.
"Never try and cheer him up."
Sorry for the update delay- I just haven't had the opportunity to go online lately. But expect chapter six soon- it's already halfway typed. This chapter didn't have a song becasue it didn't really have any action- just in case you were wondering.
Well, good-bye, and I'll see you in chapter six!