Chapter Five: Fears III
"...Portals." Coyle finished. Her eyes widened, as she was suddenly not in the hotel room she had stepped into. "...Ah!" She smiled. " Knew it. "
She turned around. No open door behind her, so getting back might be a problem, but then again-
Suddenly she realized where she was. The floor was a cold metal - as were the walls and most of the things in this room in general. She was back at Lab C-6 of the ARMS Lab! Well, the old ARMS Lab, before she moved things to a more secure underground facility.
How nostalgic. She used to spend a decent bit of time in here, building OHL units, drinking coffees, enjoying Brass's visits... This particular lab was always here favourite. Which made sense, of course, because this was the lab where she-
The door opened, and a young woman walked in, before jumping back slightly and putting her hand to her chest. "O-Oh! Sorry, I didn't see you there, I thought this room would be empty..."
Coyle stared wide-eyed at the woman. She found herself unable to speak, which was just as well, as she wouldn't know what to say anyway.
The woman cocked her head to one side, her hair dangling gently over her right eye. "Can I help you...?"
Coyle swallowed, backing up a bit. She was so... Young. But, no, not that young surely - she was probably mid-thirties, or so? Not... Not far off from...
"From getting my ARMS, yes." The woman shrugged, a little embarrassed.
"Wh-What...?" Coyle squinted.
"Not far off from getting my ARMS." The woman returned, uncharacteristically confident. "Then comes half a week of hell, and then... Well..." She shrugged again, a smile on her face - one not of happiness, but of frustration. "Then comes you! "
"How do you know that?" Coyle muttered quickly. "You can't know the future . Not your own future, n-not details about-"
"I have all your memories." She answered, quietly. "Or... My memories. Our memories. It was always hard to find the right words..."
"If you have all my memories th-then..." Coyle continued. "Th-then you would be me, you'd just be a duplicate of me, an exact copy of-"
" No, " She replied sternly. "That's not at all how that works, we were always vastly different in more than just our experiences." She seemed to look at Coyle with something close to... What, disgust? "I am me but I know everything that goes on to happen. Every conversation. Every experiment. Every little thought along the way."
Coyle stared at her, again finding herself with nothing to say.
The woman in front of her watched, as if waiting for a response. Her face turned sour, and she looked away. "Ah. Great. You're at a loss for words because you know what an awful person you are. I really thought you might have just been oblivious. I guess that was wishful thinking."
"A-Awful...?" Coyle repeated, somewhat surprised and... Confused.
She looked back at her again. "You do know, don't you? You sure seem like you know. Are you just lying to yourself to make it easier?"
"H-Hold on!" Coyle shook her head. "You can't speak like this, y-you never spoke like this!"
"Ohhh!" She giggled, somewhat cutely. "Yeah, I know! That's what made it so easy, right? " She smiled a smile that could only be read as 'I despise you'. "Well let's say I grew a backbone, then! I learnt to finally speak my thoughts. The bad thoughts. The ones at the back of my head that were always there, long before you came around and pretended to speak from them."
For a third time now, she was at a loss for-
"TALK, DAMN IT!" She suddenly gruffed, her chest heaving slightly. "You wiped my life from my own damn head, and now you can't even own up to it?!" Her breathing gradually calmed over a pause. "Well fine. You don't have to talk, then." She glared at her. "But then you're sure as hell gonna listen. "
"Whuh?" Max Brass muttered, stepping out into the kitchen. "M-Man, it smells great in here!"
"Brass?!" Came a voice from the end of the room, before the sound of pounding on glass.
Max Brass turned to the voice. "Mummy? So that's where you've been!" He approached the glass wall that separated them. "Whatchu doin' behind there?"
Master Mummy, pharaoh garb and all, was trapped in some sort of glass box. Brass tried the metal handle of the glass door, but it seemed firmly locked. "I've tried the door, it doesn't work."
"Hm." Max Brass folded his ARMS, putting a finger to his chin. "Y'tried SMASHIN' it?"
"Of course." Master Mummy nodded. "No such luck. Not even a crack."
"S'odd. Shame the missus - well, ex missus - ain't here to help out. She'd know what to do."
"Well, there's this thing..." Master Mummy stepped to one side, revealing a strange panel on the glass. It had ten unlit LEDs on it, each marked with a number, and a final LED at the bottom beside the symbol of a key.
"Ah-ha!" Max Brass grinned. "Light the doo-hickeys and the door opens. That makes sense, right?"
"I'd imagine so!" Master Mummy nodded. "Looks like you gotta use that. " He pointed to the kitchen counter behind Max Brass. "I'm not sure what the point of all this is, but it seems a little... Simple, right?"
Max Brass turned to the counter and his face instantly grew to one of terror. Atop the surface was a plate full of green pepper sliced - ten of them, to be exact - each with a little numbered flag stuck in them. A folded piece of paper by the plate bore a mark that looked somewhat like PAC-MAN.
"You just gotta eat 'em, right? I don't see what else you'd need to do..."
He turned back to Mummy, his mouth curved in a sulk. "I-I DON'T THINK I CAN DO THIS, PAL!"
"What...?" Master Mummy leant forward toward the glass. "I'm pretty sure they're just green peppers!"
"I-I KNOW!" Max Brass cried, his hands put to the sides of his head in distress.
After about twenty minutes of coaxing, Max Brass pinched a green pepper between his thumb and index finger, and picked it up. He then immediately put it down again and required a further eight minutes of coaxing to pick it back up.
He leant in for a tiny bit, trying to just barely graze it with his teeth, desperately thinking of anything but what he was about to do.
"N-No, Max!" Master Mummy sighed, exhausted. "Just eat the whole thing at once! Don't take small bites! "
Another thirty minutes passed. "G-Gu-ahh!" Max Brass cringed, shuddering slightly. He had managed to finish one whole pepper slice, doing his best to just let it fall down his throat without chewing or tasting it, though it still brushed against his tongue somewhat - yuck!
One of the lights on the panel board beside Master Mummy lit up. "O-Okay, great!" He sighed. "...Nine more to go. Can you just gulp them down quickly? Please? "
A further two hours passed and four lights were lit on the board. Max Brass was now curled into a ball on the floor, sobbing wildly and dramatically.
"Just... Please... Take... Another..." Master Mummy tiredly begged.
"TH-TH-THEY'RE S-SO-SOOOO BAAAAAAD!" He wailed, his massive chest heaving.
Master Mummy had miraculously managed to coax Brass into choking down another four of them in the next hour alone. What a roll! ...Except that it took another three hours to get him to do one of the last two.
"Y'know..." Max nodded, his back against the counter. "I'm sure we could work stuff out if we could just talk t'each other, but she gets angry so quick! And then I can't help but get angry m'self..."
"You gotta get through it, man." Master Mummy shook his head, also now sat on the floor, with his back against the glass wall. "Communication is key. I spent a whole two months wishin' the missus would stop clippin' her toenails in the bed. I asked her one night, and y'know? She never did it again."
"Heh." Brass shrugged. "It ain't so easy with Coyle. She doesn't like makin' much change 'less it's for her own reasons."
Master Mummy nodded. "She's gotta be making sacrifices too. It's a team effort."
Another two hours passed and Max Brass finally gulped down the last green pepper, swearing - quite vocally - to never go near another one ever again in his life.
The light by the key symbol shined on and the door unlocked. Master Mummy came out and the two gave each other a great big fatherly hug - the kind between two kindred fathers who bond over a good bowling match, or something.
Together, they opened the kitchen's door and finally left it all behind.
"And so, finally, just so we're very clear:" The woman heaved, sweating greatly. Her voice was dry from the long filibuster she had been on. "What you did was akin to murder. You robbed me of any hope or dream I ever had, and however you may choose to justify it yourself you know , deep down, it was wrong. And you will never deserve forgiveness for that."
Coyle stood right where she had been when she had first arrived, one ARM now gripping the other by her upper ARM uncomfortably. Her face was streaked with silent tears that had run down over the course of her other's monologue, but her eyes were firmly angled to the floor.
"...Right." She panted. "Well, I think that just about does it. Any comments?"
Part of Coyle - the part that proved her prior self so right - wanted to simply reply with 'I like you better when you talked less', but Coyle didn't say it. And the woman, seemingly able to read her mind, didn't seem to react to that thought at all. It was clear Coyle understood her point, and that's all that mattered. It didn't mean she was going to change .
The woman took Coyle's silence and nodded. "Well. I'm off, then. I still have a life for a few more months, so I better go make the best use of it - even if it's one being stepped all over by my subordinates." She walked over to the door, turned back for one last look at Coyle, and then walked out.
Coyle slowly and quietly walked to the large operating table in the center of the room and sat herself onto it. She looked down at the floor still, tears quietly dripping from her face, and she hunched over herself for comfort.
After a minute or so, the sound of wet footsteps steadily grew closer, until a golden blobby face peeked in from the open door.
Coyle turned to her new visitor and gave a soft smile. "...Th-There you are." She laughed slightly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "Come to mommy~"
Helix slowly wobbled over and leaned up against Coyle, and Coyle put her ARMS around him - an admittedly uncommon move for her, given how she usually hated how sticky he was.
"She would never have made you , y'know..." She smiled. "...So I reckon it was worth it." She wondered how much she really meant that, in honesty - he was pretty gross to hug - but she shrugged off the thought. It may have been just another way to justify it all, but that's all she needed.
After a moment, she gently pushed Helix aside, got to her feet, and wiped off some of the gunk left on her Ribbon Girl outfit.
"C'mon, Helix." She smiled softly to her Minion-dressed approximation of a son. "Let's go home."
She took his hand and lead him out of Lab C-6.