Whisper's room was empty by the time Lanolin had reached it. The wolf was long gone along with all of her gear, the third floor window open with its curtains fluttering softly in the breeze. On the bedside table there were a few golden rings and a note that simply read:
"For the broken mirror
Don't look for me
-W"
The sheep rubbed her temples, trying to figure out which she should be more astonished at: the fact that she had screwed up yet again, or the fact that the wolf still had the presence of mind to feel bad for breaking hotel furniture before going off to get herself killed. Ultimately, she decided that there was no time for either.
She had to find Whisper as soon as possible. She could only pray that she wasn't too late.
The sun had begun to set over Metropolis when Whisper arrived at the building in the residential district where the informant she was looking for was staying. His name and location had been part of the briefing file they'd all been given at the start of this, and while Lanolin had been the only one to actually talk to him, the wolf's memory was sharp enough that she had no trouble recalling where her mark could be tracked down.
"Dashie the Tiger." Awful unassuming name for someone who apparently had spent a good deal of his adult life working in the arms trade with far less than savory individuals. He'd even worked with Eggman during the war while feeding inside info to the Resistance, though it hadn't stopped him from apparently making a tidy profit off the whole ordeal. Since then he'd worked with all sorts of shady characters that operated just out of bounds of the Restoration, unsavory but not an active threat to the peace more often than not.
That seemed to include Mimic and whoever was employing Mimic. If he had just given up said employer, they could have gone after the bigger fish. There never would have needed to be a big confrontation with Mimic at all. She grimaced, a sting of fury running through her.
She moved through a darkened entrance hallway past a few curious occupants who gawked at the weapon strapped to her back and her mask's eye glowing blue in the gloom; she wasn't exactly incognito at the moment, but she didn't need to be. Just in case she ran into trouble, she had her wispon's hammer mode ready to go at a moment's notice. She didn't expect too much of a fight from a guy who sold blasters to bad guys rather than took one up for them on the front lines, but she was quite happy to make him suffer if he put up any. When it came to scumbags like this, sometimes you had to honey your tongue and sometimes you had to liberally apply a blunt instrument to their face.
She stopped at the front desk, a nervous looking fox standing behind it and shifting from side to side fearfully. His eyes had gone saucer-sized from the moment she had walked in, and his desperate pleas to Gaia for her to not walk in his direction had clearly not been answered.
"C-can I help you?" He quavered.
"Dashie's room number," she responded quietly. The fox's eyes were darting back and forth between the menacing, faceless visage of Whisper's mask and her weapon so fast it looked like he was about to make himself dizzy enough to pass out.
"M-M..Ma'am, I'm not permitted to give information about res-," a hand slapped down onto his shoulder and she roughly tugged him forward mere inches away from her. The radiant blue haze of the mask's glow illuminated his face as all color fled his cheeks.
"Dashie's. Room. Number." Her grip tightened on him with each word. She wouldn't actually hurt him… At least, she was fairly sure that she wouldn't. But distantly she did take notice that she was currently feeling absolutely nothing from how frightened she was making this innocent employee. Maybe part of her really had died.
"406!" he spat out in short order, and Whisper turned her back on him without another word on towards the freight elevator across from reception, draped in her long cloak as she went. The poor front desk clerk shivered as he watched her go; what in the heck was that?! That was way scarier than the guys that had asked for Dashie a few minutes ago! Of course, he had given up the same info to them all the same when threatened. He was so fired when all of this got back to the building manager.
Kick the door just a little away from the knob; that was the way to go, especially for cheap doors. When you hit it right where the latch came to the door, you could generally impact it so hard the wood around the metal broke apart.
Mimic had taught Whisper that, actually. She tried not to think about that as the door to Dashie's apartment broke and swung with a crash. Several heads poked out of the other apartments on this floor but the wolf paid no mind as she strode into the room, her wispon unstrung from her back but not yet engaged.
"That's what happens when you don't answer the third knock," she called a bit louder than the usual whisper. The sound of a television set could be heard, some news program or another rambling about Sonic getting into a fight somewhere. South Island? Sounds like he was busy. Whisper's footsteps echoed sourly as she made her way through a small kitchenette and into a living room. A lone person, a white-and-black tiger, was sitting lazily on a sofa facing away from her and watching the TV. She was sure he heard her, and yet he made no effort to even look back at his current home invader.
"I've got questions for you, Dashie," Whisper was having to raise her voice over the sound of the TV as she began to approach him. While she walked, however, she was beginning to notice things off about the whole scene. The place was a mess; not just well-lived-in, but all of the kitchen cabinets were open. Several drawers and a large armoir in the living room were opened and appeared to be tossed through as well, things laying on the floor in scattered piles like someone had very hastily been looking for something.
She had a feeling about what she was going to find even before she rounded the sofa; the tiger hadn't looked at her because he wasn't capable of looking at anything anymore. He sat half-slumped, eyes wide and mouth hanging open with two blackened holes gouged into his chest. He'd been shot twice, the wounds hot enough that they had blackened and cauterized them instantly.
"Lasers," Whisper muttered. Her wispon had now engaged, the blue hammerhead made of shimmering light materializing on the end as she very slowly scanned her surroundings. Three doors were open; a bathroom, a bedroom, and.. Something else? She wasn't hearing any movement from inside of them. Was this just a random incident? No, no such thing as coincidences. Someone must have caught word he was ratting on the wrong people, and-
A hand snatched her wrist. Whisper recoiled on instinct, but Dashie's hand squeezed her arm with a shocking intensity. His eyes were struggling to focus on her face as his other hand pawed at the wounds in his chest. Words tried to squirm their way out of his mouth, but it was just a soup of barely related syllables.
"Who?" Whisper asked the question as she knelt down so that they were eye to eye, fully knowing that he was well beyond any sort of medical aid she was prepared to render. A different, recent version of the wolf would have probably tried to assure him that she would try to save him regardless, but right now she was only watching her only lead to get at Tangle's killer slipping away from this mortal coil, "Tell me. I'll find them. I'll make them pay."
"C...Cl...Clean… S…S…"
The tiger stammered weakly, his hand falling away from her wrist as weakness increased and then surmounted him. The tiger's head lolled to the side limply and he went still. The wolf shook her head as she pressed to index fingers to his wrist and felt nothing.
She felt nothing inside her heart, either. He was dead. That was that.
She shut his eyes and stood up, thinking about her next move. She had… A word. And the beginning of a next one. Strangely enough, that word was making her brain tingle a little but she couldn't piece together exactly why. She was fairly sure it had nothing to do with the mission up until this point, but all the same there was a certain recency to the word that she could not place in the moment.
Thud. The sound of metal coming down on wood. It was all the warning Whisper got, but she took it for granted as she immediately went down to the floor, shoulder pressed against the side of the sofa as the deadly yellow trail of a laser bolt sliced through the air where her head had been about a second ago. Hastily, she disengaged Blue and brought out Pink, the eye of her mask turning a deep rose to match. Footsteps were now beginning to approach her on the other side of the piece of furniture (and poor Dashie's body). Each one a heavy mechanical thud.
Whisper swept to the side out of cover, cloak fluttering as she went, weapon held steady.
There was a thrill to being shot at that never went away. It lessened with time, but there was always a tiny dirty part of you always insisted you were surviving something that you probably shouldn't be. It gave you adrenaline and drove you forward. And, most importantly, it gave you advantage over things that were not alive like the Egg Pawn that was currently clomping towards her with a laser pistol aimed at her. By all estimations, the brain of a machine should have completed the calculation to pull the trigger on its target far faster than Whisper did, but it failed as many had before.
There was a burst of energy as Pink exploded from the barrel of the Variable Wispon in the form of a saw blade, searing through the air in the direction of the badnik and taking it right in center mass. The wisp hit it diagonally and punched through like a blade through a cloud, hewing the aggressive automaton in two. The top half went spinning backwards and hit the ground with a crash, the lower half collapsing afterwords in short order.
Whisper stood, looking down at her fallen foe which sparked and grinded uselessly on the ground as it circuits died. Her mind was running a mile a minute. A badnik? That didn't make sense. Badniks could carry out complex orders sometimes, but Egg Pawns were not among those higher functioning models. They attacked, they protected, they pointed and they shot. They did not toss a room looking for evidence that could incriminate you after carrying out your assassination.
And it wasn't Eggman's style, either. Someone unfamiliar with the mad scientist might have jumped to that conclusion, but not Whisper. Eggman didn't quietly send a robot into your house and put two in your chest, he blew the side of your building off and projected an image of his face laughing at you as half an army emptied all their firepower in your direction. And a scummy arms dealer double agent doesn't just open a door to let one in either; someone he was familiar with must have come in with the thing and left after searching the house while it carried out the dirty work.
Someone who could control badniks that wasn't Eggman. It had still been there, and Dashie hadn't even died from his wounds yet. The controller probably came and left just before she got here.
A good chance they were still close by!
Whisper ran into the hallway. People were peeking in confusion and fear out of their doors and standing outside of their apartments to see what the commotion of combat they just heard was but she paid no heed as she bolted for the freight elevator at the end of the hallway that now served as a means for getting residents between floors. To her dismay, it seemed to be between floors at the moment. The door to the stairwell was nearby; she weighed how much time she had quickly, the math crunching in her head as she tried to discern which path to take.
At least, until the elevator unceremoniously arrived to the fourth floor with a ding. The metallic double doors slid open to reveal four more Egg Pawns in a cluster within, all aiming laser pistols into the hallway in unison. The rubberneckers behind Whisper screamed and began to duck into their rooms as automatic fire drilled in her direction; she herself shoved her way into the stairwell at the very last moment. The call had been so close that the end of her cloak, which had fluttered upwards with the movement, was tattered by blasts, embers sizzling on the fabric.
"They know I'm here," the wolf thought and began to jog her way down the downward spiral access way, "And they're probably not done." She felt like she was running blind, making guesses as she went. As she had feared, working on a team had made operating lone wolf (no pun intended) feel unnatural to her despite how long she had been doing it now. No Lanolin or Tangle in her ear giving her enemy positions or heads up made things feel much more stark and dangerous than combat had in quite a long time.
As she had feared, down below her she heard a door fling itself open at the base of the stairwell as more badnik reinforcements began to surge in. Above her, she heard the way she had come noisy with pursuing enemies as well. The two parties were now charging in and she was between the both of them. Bad spot to be in; very bad spot. Time to improvise.
No hover mode still, though. The timing would be tight on what she was planning to do. As she came to the placard marked 2F on the wall behind her, rather than continuing down the stairs the wolf proceeded to jump over the center railing of the spiral stairway, the squared shaft it was build into open as she fell. The Egg Pawns completely missed her, their targeting systems aiming dead ahead for an enemy they all expected to engage on the stairs themselves; as such, none of them noticed her catching her hand on the railing behind them. For a moment she hung there, suspended in between the first and ground floor by one arm, her other holding tight to her wispon. And then, she pulled herself up and fired.
The robots were moving in an orderly line; perfect for Pink. The wisp's energy exploded from the gun, that whirring saw smashing into the first and shearing right through it as the other three turned to face her in unison. One by one the blast ripped them apart, the sound of electricity and metal clattering to the floor echoing through the stairwell.
A spattering of blasts came from above and Whisper quickly ducked back out of sight from the raised metallic arms she could see aiming down at her from one floor up. She didn't have time for this; whoever had brought these things in the city was using it to cover an escape knowing she was in here judging by how they were all gunning for her. But at the same time, she knew she couldn't leave badniks in the middle of a heavily populated area like this. When they lost their initial target, they'd just start going after people at random. She'd have to take her frustrations out on them before whoever was guiding them, for better or for worse.
She rose her weapon up and fired Pink for a third time. Then, a fourth. The blasts took a few moments to charge before they struck into the overhanging underside of the stairwell quite neatly, severing stone and metal and crisscrossing iron beams like butter. The second floor level creaked gutterally as metal began to bend in varying places, no longer supported by the area she had severed, and then it finally fell. The Egg Pawns pursuing her spilled downwards like discarded toys, smashing into the ground floor with catastrophic force.
She had no time to admire her handiwork. Before the dust of the crash had even settled, she was already barreling her way out the door.
"Is it working, bro?"
Tumble looked over the shoulder of his shorter companion curiously. The two skunks were standing out on the sidewalk rather conspicuously across from the apartment building they'd been sent to "clean up a mess" at, the pair of them looking at a device that for the most part neither could make heads nor tails of. The way they stared at the tablet with the radar-like view screen and the big red button on it, it could hardly be questioned by anyone actually paying attention that they were up to no good.
Thankfully for them, due to the ridiculous amount of commotion that badniks airdropping in every time they pressed that button made, no one was really paying attention. The first four dropping in had caused a total panic. The second four had gone mostly unnoticed as all the bystanders had either fled or were in the process of fleeing, the rampaging robots scaring the living daylights out of them.
"I dunno! For like the fifth time, I'm just following instructions! Boss said to look at this after we leave, and if the lights go out we press a button." Rough scratched his head, looking at the screen where yet another cluster of lights had gone out. Clutch's instructions had been simple enough (after, admittedly, having had to go back over them about a dozen times) to follow: go to the stool pigeon of a tiger's place with a badnik in tow. Act all shmoozy until you get in and let the robot rub him out, then search the place for any papers or pictures that had a certain list of names on them and get rid of them. Then leave the badnik in there and do this button thing to ensure they weren't followed. Truth be told, neither of the skunks had been expecting the button to send even more foot soldiers in, but it it had been kind of fun to watch.
True to his instructions, Rough pressed the button again, looking up at the sky for the telltale jets of the heavily armed robots flying in out of nowhere as they had before. Both of the skunks looked up at the sky in confusion as people ran screaming past them. They waited a good twenty seconds or so.
"Uh... Bro? Nothing's comin'," pointed out Tumble unhelpfully. The shorter skunk snarled.
"I can see that! I, uh… Maybe I'll just…" He mashed it again. Absolutely nothing. He began to repeatedly push his index finger against it, staring up at the sky for his promised reinforcements.
"Uh… I think that's bad."
"Maybe it's broken or someth-"
"No, no," the taller skunk pointed ahead of them, "That."
Stalking out of the front door with a long-barreled wispon pointed at both of them, the wolf in the mask and white cloak passed between people fleeing from the entrance of the apartments without moving that glowing blue eye from the pair. The tip of the gun was beginning to accumulate brightness steadily, a humming noise accompanying it. Rough's jaw dropped and the rapidity of his button presses increased twofold.
"C'mon c'mon c'mon c'mon-!"
There was a sharp snap of jet engines in the sky as something flew in from the east at high speeds, and then the thundering crash of several tons of metal slamming down in the middle of the street in between Whisper and the two skunks. The pair looked up in astonishment at the enormous armor plated behemoth easily five times their size and nearly as broad, holding an enormous metal hammer in two fingerless mitts. And then, they turned to each other with snide grins.
"Now we split while that thing makes you crumble!"
"You should have never messed with Rough and Tumble!"
The pair gave themselves perhaps the most undeserved high five in history, and beelined their way out of there as Whisper began to take steps backwards away from the badnik. She watched them go, furious; she hadn't shot when she first emerged because she needed to interrogate them but now she was wishing her trigger finger had been more itchy.
The Heavy Egg-Hammer lifted that truck-sized bludgeon up in the air and Tangle fired Cyan as she fled backwards; it had been a snap motion with little time to aim, but the badnik was so massive that it was difficult to miss. A sparking pockmark was torn into the robot's torso, but seemed to have little to no effect on its actual function as it followed through with the hammer blow. Massive cracks spread through the impact zone and the ground shook so heavily that Whisper almost stumbled and fell despite evading the blow.
Normally, she would have been using Green right about now to get some distance from this monstrous thing, but despite her best efforts on the way here she had failed to get that function on the wispon working again. Instead she was going to have to rely on her own two feet, which was a dicey proposition. There wasn't really a way that she could take a hit here that would not have been instantly fatal.
Her mask's eye changed colors with a flash as she brought Orange into the Variable Wispon, firing a volley of explosive blasts in the direction of the Egg Hammer. The effect was much more marked than what Cyan had produced, the flame-drenched projectiles crashing into the robot's chassis with loud thumps that actually gave it's stride a bit of pause even if it did not stop it outright from hefting back up its hammer and following her. These things were made to fight people on the level of Sonic, at least theoretically; she had seen the hedgehog make mincemeat out of more than one, but all the same, she had seen them plow into entire units back in the war with grisly results.
Whisper ran for an alleyway to the north of her, shooting as she went; bits and pieces of armor were beginning to spill onto the ground from the smaller explosive rounds. Once again she wished she could get in the air; from up high, she could have used Orange at their full potency, but down here if she didn't want to blow herself up she had to keep it limited.
She passed into the narrow alleyway between buildings, swiveling around and taking a knee to aim more properly. As the Egg Hammer stormed forward, it tried to shove its bulky body between the two tall buildings only to find its shoulders smashing against the metal exterior. Metropolis architecture was unsightly, but it was sturdy. As it continued to try to mash its way in, Whisper relentlessly battered its spherical bug-eyed grinning head with as much firepower as possible. Metal accents tore away, armor dented, and the durability of the badnik continued to weaken but not quite break. That was okay; Whisper knew what it would take to pop this thing open as she was now, and her risky chance at it was now coming up.
The furious robot, realizing it was making no headway into the alley, began to take a few steps back. Whisper had very carefully gauged how far back she had gone in the alley; not too far that it wouldn't risk a swing at her just standing there, but far enough back that she should have been just out of range she watched the hammer slowly raise into the air as the massive badnik adjusted its body and then finally brought it careening down to earth once more into the alley.
The wolf wasted no time as the enormous weapon buried itself temporarily into the asphalt beneath her feet; she hopped nimbly forward, kicking off of the top of the hammer with her heel. Her wispon, bouncing in both hands, flashed with the addition of Pink once more and even as she scrambled up the long metal pole beneath the hammerhead, she fired two blades at the already dented and crumpled face of her enemy. They hit true, not enough to dig into the sensitive electronics below the plating but enough to cut the plating itself clean off.
Its face now bare and realizing the Wolf was almost at the point of running up its arms, the badnik tore the weapon free at last. Concrete was flung upwards with the movement and Whisper with it, the wolf kicking off of the metal pole under her heels and using it for a little bit of extra height as she went flying clear over the badnik's head.
Wait for it… Wait for it… Now!
Its focus had not corrected by the time that she had passed over it, but her wispon had been properly returned back to orange as one last volley of explosive rounds rained down on the robot's now exposed weak spot. Its arms seized upwards, losing grip of the hammer to reach at the smoking crater that had replaced where its head had once been, vital computing parts within and all.
Whisper's landing was a far bit less graceful than her leap had been; she fell on her shoulder with a pained grunt, a mess of fluttering cloak that enwrapped her as she rolled a short distance and came to a stop. Throbbing pain enveloped her arm and upper body as she groaned, woozily acknowledging that she was absolutely going to be feeling that one in the morning. Her eyes, cast upwards, got a view of the Egg Hammer stumbling backwards and finally losing it's footing, one final gigantic pratfall its last act as its legs came out from beneath it and it fell unmoving to ground.
The wolf didn't want to move at first, but eventually she forced herself into a sitting position to look at her surroundings. Busted badnik lying inert on the ground, damage to the street from hammer blows and stomping footsteps all around her. Little fires here and there, remnants of her explosive shots, burning themselves out steadily. Multiple frightened people peering out windows and through doorways at her. The pair of skunks she had seen nowhere in sight now, of course.
The wolf picked herself off the ground, dusting herself off. A small crowd of people was already beginning to leave the safety of their homes to come look at the aftermath of the fallen badnik. She didn't want to be around for that, particularly. Local authorities asking questions would just waste her time. Or, worse, if someone else were to show up-
The sound of boots scraping along pavement behind her made her freeze as she heard the exact voice she was dreading at the moment: "For someone who's so quiet usually, you sure are making a lot of noise."
Her shoulders sagged. She could already imagine the look on Lanolin's face without even turning around to face her; that scowl of irritable disapproval aimed right at her, a deadly shaming weapon wielded by an agent with a license to guilt. She was really good at that, it was a little troubling.
"It looks like I missed a fight. But then again, I think that was by design." Lanolin crouched down and scooped the Variable Wispon off the ground from where it had spilled from the wolf's hands after that last fall, "Restoration comms were getting about a hundred calls all at once about badniks fighting in the middle of the city, though. All the explosions also made it pretty easy to find you."
Whisper finally turned and took her wispon from Lanolin's outstretched hand, ready to bear the scolding from the team leader and possibly even give some back in turn. What she found was not that grumpy scowl that she had envisioned but rather someone who looked to be in the liminal boundary between scared and relieved. Lanolin glanced at the slowly accumulating crowd behind them, and then back to Whisper: "We need to talk."
Night had fallen. The quiet little cafe the sheep had found to duck into with her to talk was nearly deserted, and the handful of other patrons had decided to sit well away from the pair of Diamond Cutters when they saw that one of them was using their table to tinker with a wispon rather than actually eat anything. Whisper believed she had finally figured out what Mimic had knocked loose in the hover module and was busy working while Lanolin mulled over the truncated version of today's events that she gave her.
"Dashie's reputation must have caught up with him after all this time if they decided to just take him out like that, but I'm the most worried about the badniks. If someone's full on reprogramming Eggman's stuff, that's no laughing matter."
"Mmm." Whisper grunted in affirmation as she tweaked another wire, and flipped the switch to engage Green; nothing happened yet again, to her disappointment. She re-opened the circuit compartment once again and went back to carefully fiddling with wires. Lanolin frowned, and decided to pique Whisper's interest in a different way.
"With that in mind, I think I know what the name he was trying to tell you was."
Whisper stopped fiddling with her gun and looked up, surprised. Her eyes even opened into bright blue slits. Normally the reaction of getting around the wolf's wall brought Lanolin a smug grin of satisfaction but right now, the entire world seemed dreary and gray, "I'll even tell you. But you need to promise that you'll stick with me instead of running off recklessly like.. Well, a lone wolf."
Whisper averted her eyes downwards, and she squeezed the wispon on the table.
"Jewel wants us to pull back. I can already tell you aren't going to do that. Orders from her are are important, but so are my orders to keep everyone on my team as safe as possible. I've already failed once, and I'm not failing again."
"You didn't fail. I did." Whisper finally broke her silence. That quiet-yet-harsh voice sounded so tired.
"Whisper, I know you're going through a lot. I know you've been through a lot. But what happened to Tangle wasn't your fault." Lanolin consoled her. Whisper shrunk away from her and pulled the Variable Wispon with her, beginning to tinker with it. Her eyes focused once more on those wires, trying to drown out the sheep's sad expression.
"It's fine to say that. Not true, though." Whisper said, "There's no point in anyone else dying."
"You keep saying that like you don't count." The sheep said, growing increasingly concerned about her partner's mental state. What she got in return just made it worse.
"I don't. I'm not like you are. I'm not like Tangle was."
"Whisper-"
"I should have died in that bunker, Lanolin. All of us should have. The original Diamond Cutters. Sometimes I wonder if Mimic feels the same way, because neither of us have really been living since that day."
The words just sort of… Poured forth. Lanolin was shocked; as long as she had known Whisper, even when the wolf was in a good mood, she didn't think she had ever heard her talk this much. But while she had always imagined the walls coming down fully and her opening up would have made her happy, instead she felt her heart breaking bit by bit.
"Every time I've tried to find peace, he's come and taken it from me. And I just keep lying to myself that I can live a normal life, for what? What has me being around done for any of you? What did it do for Tangle?" Her voice cracked; her hands were beginning to tremble a little bit, "Mimic will never stop hurting me or the people around me, because as long as one of us is alive, the other can never be happy. If I put a stop to it now, one of will die and everyone else can at least stop getting caught in the crossfire."
Dead silence. Whisper stared down at her shaking hands, both furious and sad that she couldn't prevent them from trembling even this deep into things. What finally snapped her out of it, though, was one of Lanolin's crossing the table and gently coming down atop hers. In that instant, she remembered doing the same for Tangle that lazy summer day some time back. The warmth of having someone close who cared.
"You know as well as I do how much it would hurt Tangle to hear you thinking like that. And I know she's not the only one."
Ribbons of light burst from beneath her cloak as her five wisps came free of their canisters. They all crowded about her shoulders, casting sad and worried eyes in her direction as they all pressed to her. Whisper was stunned; she didn't have her mask on at the moment to hear them, but they didn't need to speak for her to know that they were echoing Lanolin. They would go with her no matter what she did, just as Cyan said; they were as tied to all of this as she was. But that didn't mean they had to agree with her reasoning.
"You want revenge? Sure. I don't blame you. In fact, I do too. But no more talking like you're halfway in the grave. You're going to figure out what Mimic and the person that hired him are doing, and I'm coming with you. And whatever happens to him at the end of all that? Well, I'm not going to stop you, whatever you decide. But we're going to do it together, and we're both coming out the other end alive. Because that's what Tangle would have wanted."
When Lanolin pulled her hand away, Whisper pinched onto the wire she had been struggling to steady her hand over. The severed bits connected with a twist, and with a small spark, Green flew from her shoulder and into the wispon. A hazy green glow began to radiate around the orb near the end of the barrel. When she managed to meet the sheep's eyes, her own were wide open and brimming with tears. She managed to get out a hoarse, "Thank you."
"Anytime." Lanolin gave a smile in return. Okay, she still wasn't a people person, but maybe dealing with people wasn't all that bad when you really buckled down and took the time, "Now… Back to business. Have you ever heard the name 'Clean Sweep Incorporated'?"