Saten ran and ran and ran, her legs burning and her lungs screaming as they worked to pump oxygen through her labored body. She didn't care. She didn't know how much she cried, as freezing rain began to pour on her body and soak through her clothes. She didn't care about that either.
Eventually, she felt the weakness begin to overcome her and collapsed into a computer terminal booth, sliding down the glass of the wall onto the ground into a sobbing, self-loathing mess on the ground. Uiharu's words echoed in her head and the only thing she could think to do was angrily smash her head repeatedly against the side of the booth until she felt her head screaming in pain.
She let herself slump back down in the corner of the booth and just sat there motionless, trying not to think about anything, her head aching, feeling alone in the world. The cold rain poured outside, droplets singing a chorus against the plastic booth. She was cold, her nose running from crying and the frost. Her clothes were soaked and clung to her, and she was starting to shiver violently.
Despite herself, she pulled out her phone, staring at it, knowing she needed to call someone, before she got sick with hypothermia. She just didn't know who to call. She stared at the phone, minutes crawling by before she finally dialed a number, putting the phone to her ear.
After a few rings, it picked up.
"Yello?" Came a familiar, chipper voice with an ever-so-odd foreign accent.
Saten opened her mouth to say something, but found that she was not as calm as she thought she was, and a strangled sob came out instead of words. Every time she tried to say something, she just made pathetic crying noises, and the voice on the other end seemed momentarily stunned.
"Please… help... " She managed to sob out. "Frenda…" She said in a tone nothing short of begging. On the other end of the line, there was a pause, and she heard shouting, and a older male voice reply, before she got a response.
"Where are you?"
Saten sat in that booth curled up in a ball, leaned up against the transparent plastic plexiglass for longer than she cared to count. Eventually a car pulled up next to it, and the door to the booth swung open. A familiar face knelt down next to her, Frenda's blond hair swinging downward as she peeked at her.
"Hot damn, you look like absolute shit." Frenda said, frowning at her, reaching down and grabbing on to her, pulling her out of the booth. As she was pulled up, she found herself standing underneath an umbrella. Saten turned and found herself looking at a tall, older man, maybe in his late teens, or early twenties, with short, spikey blond hair. He was holding a large umbrella for the lot of them.
"Hey. Names-" He began, before Frenda cut him off.
"No one cares, geez!" Frenda waved him off, to which he sighed dramatically.
"You're so mean…" He groaned out, walking the pair of girls over to the still running car over by the side of the street, opening the door for them. Frenda guided Saten into the car, sticking her tongue out at the blonde man who just gave her a flat look. There was a sibling-like rapport between them that Saten was picking up on, but was too cold and tired to give much thought.
Before long, they were cruising along a mostly empty series of roads. The heat was blasting, though Saten was still shaking violently.
"Fuck, you're like ice…" Frenda felt at Saten as she muttered to herself quietly. "No worries. We'll get you warmed up." Frenda grinned, patting Saten's head. Saten didn't say a word, and Frenda's expression twisted into one of concern. She wasn't really sure what to say. She wasn't exactly one for… emotions or comforting others. She just wasn't good at it.
"We're here."
The car pulled in to their destination, to an indoor parking garage, mercifully heated. Frenda hopped out, tugging Saten out, who let herself get mindlessly guided, too tired to really say anything at this point.
"Go get that stuff I had on the list, OK?" She said to the blonde man, who waved her off with a grumble and took off in the car. Frenda guided Saten to an elevator in the parking garage upwards with a keycard swipe, eventually exiting out into a very long hallway with a series of doors, all marked with numbers.
A hotel hallway. Frenda swiped the keycard she had, yanking Saten into the room. She took a moment to check the hallway before closing it behind her and triple checking the lock. Saten just kind of stood several feet from the door, looking pathetic as she stared into space, depressed.
"Oh geez, girl. You're killing me." Frenda groaned, pushing Saten from behind into the bathroom.
"What the fuck even happened?" Frenda groaned as she began to unceremoniously take Saten's clothes from her, which began to become more of a struggle than she expected. Both because the clothes were sticking something terrible, and because Saten suddenly was getting bashful.
"Ruiko, I swear, I will slap the bitch out of you. You will freeze to death in these clothes." Frenda was having none of it, and after some brief wrestling and thinly veiled threats, Saten found herself grabbing at a towel and trying to hide herself behind it as Frenda was putting a hot bath on. "You're gonna soak in this so you don't get hypothermia because apparently you're stupid." Frenda said harshly.
Saten winced a little as she shifted uncomfortably, still shivering visibly as she hugged the towel to her chest. Frenda stood up and took a moment to look Saten over in a way that was not even a little shy, seeming to admire Saten, which just prompted a blush from her.
"Bath." She pointed, which at this point, Saten was too eager to get into to escape Frenda's invasive ogling. Somehow it felt like karma for everything she'd done to ogle Uiha-. Ending that thought. As she quickly moved past Frenda to get to the water, Frenda snatched the towel from her, and she was forced to take the last few steps to the bath squeaking in embarrassment as she dove under the water.
When she stuck her head above the surface of the water, Frenda was sitting on the sink top looking down at her with a cheshire grin. "You're so cute and sexy, Ruiko." Frenda teased, giggling. Saten made bubbles at her from under the water, just her eyes peeking out at her, her hair sticking to her scalp.
"So… wanna talk about it?" Frenda asked, tilting her head at the waterlogged teen currently thawing. Eventually, after a moment of thinking about it, Saten simply shook her head. Frenda shrugged a little. "Alright, suit yourself." She sighed a bit, hopping off of the sink top.
"Just warm up in there for a bit, OK? You could have killed yourself." She said before walking out of the bathroom, Saten watching her go. Frenda always filled her with these strange emotions that she didn't know how to process. She behaved in chaotic and free-willed manner, uncaring of what others thought of her.
Saten admired her. She never admitted it… but she really, really did. Plus, there was a part of her that kind of appreciated Frenda's aggressive flirtation and sexual attention. It made her feel attractive. And deep down, there was a part of her that…
Saten shook her head side to side, the water swaying around as she tried to banish the incredibly dark thoughts. It wasn't like Frenda was doing anything beyond teasing her anyway.
"You doing OK in there?!" Frenda shouted from the other room, the sound of a TV being heard running.
"Yeah…" Saten mumbled back, sinking into the water quietly. She hated herself so much right now.
The fact of the matter was, is that she had been the shittiest of friends to Uiharu. She had no idea what she was talking about, and she hadn't bothered to find out. And deep down, in a dark, horrible part of her soul, when she looked at Kuroko and Mikoto, and when she looked at Misaki and Uiharu now, even if she wasn't so sure Misaki wasn't controlling Uiharu… she felt envy. Horrible, dark, green envy.
She felt alone. She felt cold and alone. She felt like a lonely murderer who didn't deserve anyone, and Uiharu hitting her and saying those words felt like every insecure voice in her head being proven right.
She felt so, so alone….
"MOVE OVER!" Rather abruptly, Saten found herself shoved over as Frenda pushed her way into the bath and sighed as she soaked herself in the water, grinning as she savored the hot water, turning the flow of hot water once more to get some more heat.
"W-what are you doing?!" Saten gasped out in surprise, her face red.
"Bathing. Duh." Frenda huffed as she crossed her arms against the edge of the bath with a sigh, resting her chin on top of them smiling. Saten could only stare at her for a moment before matching her posture and deciding not to let herself get too flustered, especially since Frenda seemed to be… mostly… behaving.
"So… why a hotel?" Saten asked quietly.
"Hm?" Frenda asked as she shifted a bit in the water, Saten doing her damn best to keep her eyes forward.
"I mean… do you not have your own place?" Saten asked, glancing at her. Frenda shrugged a little in response.
"My roommates can be bitchy, it is easier this way." Was all she said, smiling and resting her cheek against her arm. Saten gave her a look before shrugging a bit and returning to sighing and relaxing in the water, and generally feeling sorry for herself.
Saten blinked a bit as she realized she was being poked in the forehead by a robe-clad Frenda.
"Wake-up sleepy head." Frenda grinned. Saten blinked as she looked around, seeing that she must have dozed off in the bath. Drowsily, she stood up in the bath, Frenda taking her hand to help her balance, though Saten snatched her hand back to cover herself when she realized Frenda's eyes had drifted far lower than her face after she'd helped her out of the water.
"You're the WORST." Saten growled at her, to which Frenda only shrugged a bit and helped Saten out regardless, handing her a towel and a fluffy warm robe. Saten took both before Frenda walked out of the bathroom. Saten noted that Frenda looked a bit red in the cheeks. After drying herself off and getting the robe on, she walked out and saw a pizza had been ordered and was on the table in front of the TV, and a stack of drinks was in front of said table.
Frenda herself seemed to have already gone through one drink and was on to the next.
"What's that?" Saten asked, to which Frenda offered her the drink. Saten took it and gulped a mouthful down, filled with almost INSTANT regret. She hacked and coughed, Frenda deftly catching the bottle as Saten dropped it, falling down as she retched.
"WHAT is that poison!?" She wheezed out, pointing at the bottle that Frenda was now casually drinking from.
"Pilsner." She said, smiling at Saten, giggling. "It's a Norwegian lager."
"BEER?!" Saten coughed, rolling around on the ground, to Frenda's great amusement.
"Oh, yeah. I had Shiage grab some. He was the blonde idiot you met earlier. You definitely could use some." She grinned, grabbing another bottle and offering her some. Saten sat up and stared at the bottle like it was a dark murderer plotting her demise.
"I promise- it'll make the pain feel very far away. It's like borrowing happiness from tomorrow." Frenda grinned widely.
"You… You realize we're like… minors, right?" Saten said, pointing out the obvious, staring at Frenda with an incredulous look. Frenda just scoffed at her.
"Oh please, Ruiko. I'm Norwegian. Live a little. We don't worry as much as you stuffy folk here in Academy City do. Have a few beers, it'll be fine." She says, shoving the beer into Saten's hand.
Saten stared down at the brown glass bottle with a strained contemplative look, wincing a little before popping the cap off.
Saten was learning so much today. The first she was learning was that she could not stop giggling when she got drunk. Frenda wasn't much better. She mostly kept grabbing at Saten's robe and tugging at it, and Saten kept having to wrestle it back while giggling and falling over.
"S-stoooop!" She giggled out while falling over. This had been par for the course. Saten had learned that drinking games were a thing. She learned that Frenda cheated, both for and against her own favor. And she learned that holy shit could they both drink a lot. Both of them were absolutely hammered. Poor Shiage had come up to check on them at one point and nearly gotten beaned by a beer bottle.
"Only if you ffffinally tell me whash bothering you." Frenda said with a slight slur to her words as she sat back up, leaning against the table and nibbling on some pizza crust. Saten sat back up, frowning as she leaned against the table, her giggling subdued as her mood swung from happy to sad.
"My friends hate me… cause I'm shitty…. I'm a shitty friend…" Saten grumbled as she slid down to lay her face on the table. Frenda looked at her with some confusion, her eyebrow raised.
"I'm a jealous, envious bitch… My friends are getting happier, and I'm just getting more and more bitter. No one loves me… They're all just going to leave me behind…" Saten began to cry into the table in a way that only someone who has had far too many drinks could, and Frenda frowned, crawling around the table and almost falling over as she did, using the nearby bed that was next to the table for balance.
"Yer not shitty, stoppit. Come on." Frenda tugged at Saten's fuzzy sleeve, though Saten responded poorly, tugging the sleeve away angrily.
"No! It's true! I suck!" She yelled. "I'm just an angry bitter person, leeching off other people's happiness! I don't even care anymore… No one would wanna love me…" Saten buried her face into her sleeves as she flopped herself down onto the table again, sniffling and sobbing.
Frenda frowned as she watched Saten just spiraled down into a pit of depression and self-hatred, her scowl deepening. "Ruikoooo." She poked at Saten. "Ruikoooooooo." She poked relentlessly, unwilling to stop.
"WHAT!?" Saten looked up, snapping at Frenda, her eyes burning at the older blonde teen, and was shocked when the flushed drunk girl jumped on her and pinned her to the ground by both her wrists and her lips.
Saten made several squealing sounds of alarmed protest and surprise as Frenda gave her a rather sloppy kiss. The grips on her wrists released almost instantly, smooth palms sliding down Saten's arms in a way that made her shiver.
"See?" Frenda whispered to her, Saten's eyes wide and her face burning in a way that made her feel alive. Saten was panting for air as she was finally given the chance to breathe, her expression one of wild flustered panic as she stared up at Frenda.
"I like you, Ruiko. I like you, a lot. " Frenda purred out in an aggressive fashion, her cheeks burning with a blush that was almost cute if she wasn't so intimidating, that Saten was not sure how to respond to. She felt Frenda's weight on her stomach, felt skin against skin that she'd never felt, a stark reminder that neither of them were wearing anything under those fuzzy robes, as Frenda reached over and took a mouthful of some of the harder liquor from a scary looking bottle that Saten had only briefly sampled, leaning down and kissing Saten again, slipping a small amount, bit by bit, into Saten's mouth until Frenda's own was empty.
Saten found herself lying motionless under Frenda, paralyzed from shock, her head swimming. Frenda was clearly beyond drunk, and Saten knew she was as well. Saten felt Frenda's hands that had paused in their roaming at her shoulders begin to drift once more, pausing momentarily at the folds of her robes to flick them open with her wrists, and find new homes on a pair of almost fully developed orbs that had never been touched by someone besides Saten, prompting Saten to let out a loud cry of surprise as her back arched, but was kept firmly from leaving the floor by a surprisingly strong pair of arms.
"I'm going to do things now, fun things, and I'm not going to stop until you say no, stop, or some variation." Frenda purred quietly into Saten's ear, her hands squeezing down on their new prizes, Saten feeling her eyes go wider as her body shivered, gasps of air escaping from her mouth in quick, confused, excited gasps. "Kay, Ruiko-chan?"
Saten… didn't know how to respond, before Frenda mashed their lips together once again.
Light peeked through the hotel balcony window, forcing Saten from her sleep, and unfortunately, that wakefulness was quickly joined by a truly MIND SHATTERING PAIN. Oh by all that was unholy and cruel, this was what a hangover was? It felt like a jackhammer was being taken to the very core of her brain.
What had happened last night? Everything was kind of blurry. She vaguely remembered having a breakdown when talking to Frenda after drinking way, way too much. Frenda was right, it was like borrowing happiness from tomorrow. It felt like she had a giant weight on top of her. A heavy, wiggling weight. With a groan, she dared to crack an eye open, the room mercifully dark except for that slight amount of sunlight peeking through the gap in the curtains. She had somehow found her way onto the bed, buried under the warm comforter, and with great effort, managed to crane her head downward. Her eyes widening as far as they could go with the eye strain, she found that the wiggling weight was the still sleeping Frenda that was sprawled out on top of her.
The sleeping, naked, cuddling Frenda. Oh god, what had happened last night? Oh god, she was naked too. And she was so, so sore. Everything was so blurry and hazy. She didn't have long to really to ponder on it before Frenda yawned and stirred from sleep, pushing herself up, the comforter sliding over her back a bit, the cold leaving just a bit too little to the imagination than Saten was comfortable at the moment.
"Morning, Ruiko." Frenda grinned down at her, Saten just lying down there staring up at her with a blushing face.
"M-morning…" She said in barely a whisper. Frenda just giggled before sliding off of her, stretching as she sat at the edge of the bed, Saten turning her head to watch her as the younger teenager laid sprawled out naked in the bed. At the moment, Saten felt like one of those delinquent teens that more well-behaved students gossiped and whispered about at school- getting wasted and having sex at hotels. Because that… was… literally what just happened.
"Oh my god, that is literally what just happened." Saten suddenly said aloud, covering her face suddenly. Frenda turned and gave her a questioning look, eyebrow raised. No explanation forthcoming, she just shrugged and got up and walked over to the bathroom to take a shower.
"You seem like you're doing a bit better, so how about we go out shopping today? We can go looking for more of those Indian Poker cards you've been getting all into lately!" She shouted, seeming far, far more at ease than Saten was, and Saten was unsure whether that made her more or less anxious. "I saw you actually had a couple in your bag already. Something about chopsticks, or something?"
"Um, I… Yeah, that sounds… Oh my head…" Saten grabbed at her temple, the pain throbbing like a sledgehammer kept cracking at it repeatedly.
"Oh, yeah, you're not a drinker, are ya? We'll have errand boy grab you something and help you ride that out for a few hours first." She shouted from the bathroom.
"Don't worry, hot stuff... " Frenda peeked her head out of the bathroom, tossing Saten a mischievous and affectionate grin. "I'll take care of ya, in my own way. You can go have a chat with yer friends when yer ready." She grinned.
Saten really could not place why, but for some reason, Saten did find that… oddly comforting. And did find Frenda herself, just as comforting, again, quite, quite oddly.
Because if Frenda was anything. It was odd.
"Is that info from a reliable source?" Said the man in the chair with the strange headgear, circular in design, wires emanating from it and attached to dozens of server towers around him. He was a gaunt, sloppily dressed man.
"Who knows?" Said the voice over the phone, a seductive voice that cried one of temptation. The gaunt man groaned.
"But if there is even the SLIGHTEST chance, we have to investigate. You know how he gets. We wouldn't want to make him upset." She added, the gaunt man grimacing. He knew how true that was, shivering at the memory of the one time he challenged his now-master. "I'll leave that to you. Now get on it, would you?" And without another word, she clicked the phone.
With another annoyed groan, he slouched over in his chair, folding his hands in his lap.
"Search all information with security ranks A through D out there… and extract all conversations with suspected connection to Indian Poker and the subject matter at hand…"
He felt trillions of bytes of data flowing through his server towers, before he finally felt a few instances of relevant bits fly past him grasping at what he wanted. As he forwarded those bits toward his boss, he got a reply back almost instantly.
Don't disappoint me again.