Chapter Two: Fortissimo
132 squinted at themself in the glass wall, trying to fluff up the tuft of fur on their head. They succeeded in making it…slightly bigger, a little more wavy, but the end result wasn't much to look at. It was the lack of any brushes in the cell that did it. Nothing that could be used as a weapon was allowed in, so 132 was stuck for the time being.
Their thoughts went back to their encounter with the experiments. That'd been several days ago by now, and 132 wondered if anything had changed since Heat and the Doomsdays had returned to Earth.
They hoped he'd kept his promise…
As if on cue, 132's thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of two officers; startled, they jumped back and placed a hand to their forehead in embarrassment.
If the officers had seen their hair, they didn't show it; one flicked the switch next to 132's cell while the other stepped inside, giving them a nod in greeting. 132 returned it, gazing at the two in confusion, "Um…"
"Right; PT-7284, you're coming with us." The officer said, "You and another prisoner have visitors."
132 squinted despite holding out their arms to be cuffed, "...Visitors?"
"Yup. You'll see when you get there."
"Alright." A new set was placed on 132's arms, and the other officer helped place them onto the platform waiting outside. Before they could descend, 132 casually glanced to their side…and widened their eyes.
The Original was accompanied by his own set of guards, expression as dour as his mood. He glanced over to them and raised a brow, tilting his head in confusion at 132. 132 copied him, shrugging as they reached the ground floor. 132 hopped off, the Original and his guard's pursuit all but confirming to them he was the other prisoner theirs had mentioned.
Neither of them spoke on the way to the visitation center, their argument echoing in 132's ears. Despite his acceptance of their resolve to dig up information on Hamsterviel, it was clear he wasn't exactly supportive, and 132 wasn't interested in more conflict between them.
A strange group was waiting for them when they arrived at the center. 132 at once felt relief and apprehension upon recognizing one, but the others…
Leroy glared at the group as they approached, giving one experiment in particular a silent snarl.
"Don't try anything, tough guy." One of his accompanying guards said, giving him a light tap on the back, "They're here to help you."
"And what's that supposed to mean." Leroy hissed, "I know who these five are."
This got the attention of the smallest member of the group; a gray saurian experiment with a hard, flat nose. He flicked his tail at Leroy and turned his head to the side, revealing small, red-tinted eyes and a gauze patch on his cheek.
"I don't believe you do." The experiment mused, "And if you did, I don't think you're accurate."
Leroy cleared his throat and spat, 132 shaking their head in embarrassment as the loogie splatted onto the floor in front of the group. A green, six-legged experiment curled his lip and took a step back before glancing up at Leroy, "Nice."
"Pleased to meet you." A pink experiment said, giving her own sneer to match Leroy's, "I did the same to Gantu when I got activated."
"If you're done, we can get down to business about why you were brought out." One of the officers said, "Mr. Jookiba, we can leave the room if you want."
The gray experiment shrugged, "Only if you feel it's necessary."
"We'll be beyond the door then. If they start anything, just call us." The guard said as the group filed out into the doorway. The experiment nodded after them before turning his attention back to Leroy and 132, "Alright, make yourselves as comfortable as you can. We need to talk."
The two Leroys exchanged glances before carefully getting into the chairs in the middle of the room. They were divided from the Earth experiments by a table, and while 132 recognized 609-Heat, they had no idea who the others were.
They assumed they were about to find out.
"Alright." The gray experiment clasped his hands together as he surveyed the two Leroys, "...First off, were you treated when you came here?"
"You." He specified, nodding to Leroy. He only continued to silently glare at him, leaving 132 to confirm for him, "Well…I guess he and the others did. When I was walked to my cell, I saw everyone patched up."
The experiment sighed, turning his gaze to 132 instead, "That's good to hear. We were worried after the Earth force's failsafe was activated."
"What is that, by the way?" 132 asked, placing their upper set of arms on the table and cocking their head, "I keep hearing about it, but the others have no idea what happened to them after it activated."
The gray experiment nodded, "We'll get to that. First however, I'm going to need your names, and we're giving you ours."
"They already know mine." Heat said, but was given a raised eyebrow from he experiment, "Don't think the original here knows it."
"Probably never bothered to learn it…" The green experiment muttered, only for Heat to elbow him on the shoulder, "Plaz, don't."
"Anyways," The gray experiment said, crossing his arms, "that aside, in order of number, I'm Hammerface, and this is Thresher, Heat, Plasmoid, and Angel."
Each of the others either raised a hand-in Thresher's case, a tentacle- in greeting or spoke a hello as Hammerface named them, 132 nodding along as Angel finished hers. They couldn't help but stare at her; her antenna, her long eyelashes, her bright pink fur…they could feel an odd discomfort in their own appearance upon seeing hers.
They…weren't sure why.
"So, we've introduced ourselves, what're your names-or name, or number, actually?" Heat corrected himself a total of three times, sheepishly placing a hand to the back of his head and gesturing to 132.
"Oh, um…well, my designation's LC-132. I'm one of the earlier clones. Or…about as early as you can get, we were all made in one night." 132 said, shrugging, "It's nice to meet all of you."
Heat smiled, "It's nice to meet you too-again in my case. How are things, by the way? Not…too bad, I hope?"
132 grimaced and sat back in their seat, "Eeegh…about what you might expect with prison, I guess? Now I know how the Doomsdays felt."
Heat's face fell slightly at 132's comment, "Agh…sorry to hear about that."
"You're not sor-" 132 wheeled around and pressed their cuffs up against Leroy's cheek, "Quit it."
Heat frowned, "...We really are. You don't have to believe us, but we are, Leroy."
Leroy simply huffed and turned to the side, leaving 132 to growl and turn back to the group of five in frustration. "...Sorry."
Hammerface watched them in concern before speaking again, this time sounding almost unnecessarily cautious. "...Alright. 132, Leroy…the five of us are here because we want to talk to you. 132, I'm unsure how much you heard from Heat and Witch, but…your situation isn't new to us. We haven't just seen it before, we've lived it, and…if you'll let us, we'd like a chance to help."
132 listened to the older experiment in fascination, both ears and antenna perked as forward as they would go. This wasn't new information, but it was enough of an echo to expand the initial six identical stories they'd heard to, well, ten if Thresher, Plasmoid, and Angel were anything to go by.
Their interest was immediately noticeable to the Earth experiments; Thresher-the only one of the group who hadn't spoken, raised a tentacle to cut in, "Heat already said he told about being caught, right?"
132 nodded, "He did; he also said something about bein' lied to."
"That's good, you've…you've already got quite an introduction to that." Hammerface said, rubbing a temple in exasperation, "In our case, it was by omission. In yours, it's straight up, well…"
"Lying?" 132 asked, and Angel nodded, "Yeah."
Hammerface shared in Angel's nod, though intent on continuing the conversation, "We're here because the Federation has agreed to try something new, so to speak."
132 tilted their head, managing to catch some slight movement from Leroy. They hoped they'd get to hear this next part…
"The Federation has granted us the ability to try and rehabilitate you," Hammerface explained, "as in, we get to visit you here and take you to Earth for time away from this place, and we get to work with you to show there's more…"
He seemed to struggle with what to say, leaving Heat to take over, "What he means is that since all you've known is…Hamsterviel, we wanna show you there's better ways of being, if you get what I'm saying. Like, no galaxy-conquering or war and stuff like that, just living alongside other people and for yourself."
132 blinked as Heat's words sunk in; while they'd always thought something was strange about Hamsterviel's obsession with conquering the galaxy…even after he'd already done it, this sounded…boring.
Then again, so was prison.
"I…" They frowned and cast a glance around the center, "I…don't know. It can't be worse than this, but I'm more focused on Hamsterviel. He was great to him, sure, but…"
"But not you." Hammerface said. 132 nodded, "But not me. Not a lot of us up in space, actually."
"Right." Hammerface leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms, furrowing his brow and tilting his head up at the ceiling, "...We can give you information, 132, but at the same time, I want you to balance that, you know? We can't do this if you're too focused on uncovering information on Hamsterviel."
"I know," 132 said, "but think of it this way. Wouldn't finding out the truth about Hamsterviel help with my-and everyone else's rehab? Eh?"
Plasmoid snorted, "My gods, you're worse than Heat at that! We'll tell you about what we went through, sure, but uh…"
"Wanna tell 'em?" He asked, nodding to Hammerface. He shrugged, but a unanimous circle of flat looks told him otherwise. Hammerface sighed and turned to 132 and Leroy, "We're still recovering from our run-ins with him, and what's worse, four of us were left with illnesses from living captured so long and…from our own incident. Just be aware, this information you want 132? It might not come as quickly as you'd like."
132 nodded, though not without feeling a sense of urgency…how long was this going to go on? Wasn't their trial in a month? Was this…
Was this the only chance they had to escape?
They were interrupted from their thoughts by Thresher, who tentatively reached over and placed the tip of his tentacle on their shoulder, "It's gonna be fine-we will tell you; we might just need a moment to do it."
"I get that," 132 said, "I dunno about him, but I'd be happy to try this. I know a few of my grunts would be interested too."
Hammerface started, "Agh-right! We still have to figure out how many of you are going to come to Earth. There's 2000 of you, right?"
"Yup." 132 smiled sheepishly, "Only a few hundred of us in space though; I headed this prison-I know my grunts enough to pick some."
Hammerface returned the smile, "I trust you'll find some just as curious to find out more."
"What about you?" He asked the Original, his smile dissipating into a frown upon seeing he'd been staring, or rather- glaring at them as the conversation went on, "You've been staring the whole time. You know you don't have to come with, right?"
Leroy said nothing, but did momentarily shift his gaze to 132 before turning it back to them, "Why am I here? And why do you care?"
"You're here because you had the most exposure to Hamsterviel." Hammerface explained, a twinge of harshness creeping into his voice, "We knew about your difficulty going in Leroy. You don't need to come, and if you aim to try and screw things up for the ones that are, we don't want you there."
"But we called for you, specifically." He continued, "We wanted to give you a chance to see something different."
"Something that doesn't involve gerbil screeching." Plasmoid cut in, causing a small smirk to play on Leroy's face, "Agh, see? That was the worst thing about him!"
Leroy snickered, "It was…"
132 began to share in his smile, but didn't get to; they watched it immediately fade from Leroy's face as he cleared his throat, turning his face away from them and staring back at the floor. The other five watched this in dismay, Heat even taking a small step forward and biting his lip.
"I…" Leroy seemed to search the room for answers, his eyes narrowing as they came rest on the floor. It was then that 132 noticed a change had come over him-they weren't sure if it was just them, but he seemed…less angry?
Maybe he was tired, but…they weren't sure…
After a few moments of silence, Leroy sighed, practically snarling his answer through gritted teeth. "Fine."
His tone had returned to the hardened, bitter one 132 had grown to know him for. Despite its clear anger, the group of five seemed satisfied with his answer, Heat even exchanging relieved glances with Thresher and Angel.
Hammerface nodded to Leroy, "I know this is hard. We'll give you space to work things out, alright?"
"Whatever." Leroy muttered, turning his back to the group. 132 rolled their eyes, but stood up and-awkwardly- bowed to the group, "Sorry-I'm cuffed; this is all I can think of."
Hammerface smiled in understanding, "We'll take it 132; thank you for hearing us out."
"And agreeing." Plasmoid added, "Plus, you do get time away from this place, right?"
"That we will. Would be nice to get out of these while we're there too-if they'll allow that." 132 said, holding out their arms to show off the bulky cuffs holding them in place, "But with all that said, when's our first visit?"
"We're going to have to set one up, but expect us to come get you by the end of the week." Hammerface explained, "We couldn't move forward without your permission."
132 flushed, "Agh, right."
"Thanks though-we really appreciate it." They said, Leroy standing up beside them, "We'll see you then."
132 shifted from one foot to the other as the two waited at the desk to receive their dates; they already had three grunts in mind- they weren't sure about Leroy, but on their end, they could see 1061 and 1610-and 1610.5 being curious enough to investigate with them. Of course, they'd have to talk to them about going, but 132 had a feeling they'd jump at the opportunity.
They suddenly felt a pair of irritated eyes on them and turned to return Leroy's glare, "What."
He only continued to stare at them, so 132 took a step forward in anger; he'd almost ruined the meeting for them, they'd been lucky the five had been as understanding as they were, and from that look, 132 got the feeling he intended to be-
"800 and 479. Yours?"
132 squinted in suspicion. They didn't know those two-they'd been among the Earth force, so that'd been why. Both 800 and 479 were unknowns to them, so 132 couldn't help but feel deeply cautious about them.
Leroy held their gaze, "I'm serious 132."
"Are you? 'Cause I want that information."
"So do I." He countered, "Only, I want it for a different reason."
"And what would that be?"
"To prove you wrong."
132 curled their lip in disgust. Of course; this meant cooperation, sure, but it was clearly for his own ends and not anyone else's…
Their gazes bored into each other so hard 132 swore both their eyes would melt in the sockets.
"You go and try then." 132 said, their voice hissing underneath the call of "Next!" from the desk, "But if you're right, then you don't get to gloat at me. How about that?"
"Fine."
"Deal." 132 spat, stepping up to the receptionist's desk.