Chapter 16: A Spike In Mutuality (Part 1)

Neon City, The SNaXX Dimension, 3023

"…And that's all the time we have, folks! I've been Chick Gizzard Lips!"

"And I am, and always have been, Stew!"

"And this has been CTR TV!"

Garnet leant forward on the sofa, about to pick up the TV remote that rested on the coffee table before her when a small pile of neatly folded clothes that she recognised as her Evil Public School uniform was suddenly placed down next to the remote with notable force, Megumi standing there with a rather irritable look on her face, staring at Garnet as though waiting expectantly for something. When Garnet continued to sit there and look both confused and a little uneasy, the bandicoot woman sighed heavily and lowered her firm gaze, averting her purple eyes.

"You did not have to keep this from me, Barista Garnet," she said curtly before turning and starting slowly for the the kitchen. For a long moment, Garnet was utterly lost as to what Megumi meant by that, and then her eyes fell upon the pile of clothing before her, atop which rested a distinctly coloured rubber wristband.

A distinctly coloured rubber wristband marked with pale blue, pure white and hot pink stripes.

"Oh!" the bat girl exclaimed, realising what conclusion her roommate must've come to upon finding the little bracelet in amongst the laundry. "Megumi, wait a sec!" she called, hastily leaping to her feet, snatching up the bracelet as she went and hurrying after her roommate. "You don't think that I'm…? Oh, Ancients, no!" she exclaimed, chuckling as she caught up with her azure-haired host. "Come on, Meg, why would I keep something like that from you?"

Megumi, who had just entered the kitchen with the intent of washing the dishes, turned to face Garnet, folding her arms as she did so. "Why indeed, Barista," she said somewhat bitterly. "Why would you be trying to hide the notion that you're transgender?"

"But I'm not transgender," Garnet insisted. "That bracelet is not mine! It's—!" But Megumi was apparently in no mood to listen.

"Why would you be trying to hide that you've been selling homemade coffee without a permit? Why would you have been trying to hide the fact that you keep a literal monster magically stored in your jeans pockets? Why would you be trying to conceal all of the things that you have been getting up to behind my back? All of the things that you thought I did not know about?" Megumi asked cynically.

"I…" Garnet was a little caught off guard by both Megumi's words and tone. "I thought you were cool with me keeping North around…" she managed after a long moment of standing there with her mouth hanging open uselessly.

"It so happens that I am being 'cool' with a great many things, Barista," Megumi stated firmly. "What I am not being 'cool' with is the fact that you are continuing, even now, to try and keep things hidden from me - quite poorly, I might add."

"Even now?" Garnet repeated, frowning a little with uncertainty. "Megumi, I'm telling you, I am not transgender." She held up the bracelet. "Neil Cortex. That's the name of the kid who dropped this and left me to pick it up. I met him shortly before you came back from the Hypnotherapists' Convention. He dropped this in a moment of—"

"Anxiety-driven irrationality?" Megumi finished for her. "I am aware. He used to be one of my clients, seeing me for counselling and hypnotherapy." She sighed. "I was hoping you had not been getting involved with him; Neil is not a bad boy, but he is having an unfortunate talent for attracting trouble." She sighed again. "I know you are not transgender, Barista. When I found that bracelet in your coat pocket, I recognised it immediately."

Garnet frowned at that. "Then why did you—?"

"Because there are still many things that you are not telling me!" Megumi snapped, her voice beginning to crack now; she sounded like she was on the verge of tears. "You have been my roommate for how long, Barista? A month? Two, almost? How much longer?" she demanded. "How much longer are you going to keep being dishonest with me? How many more secrets - how many more of your troubles - are you going to try and conceal from me? Me! The one who took you into my apartment when you were having nowhere else to go! The one who has grown to love you like a little sister and…!" she turned away, letting out a sad sniff. "A-And maybe something more…"

"Megumi…" That was all Garnet could say. She didn't know what to say. What could she say?

"When I was confronting you about your anxiety issues yesterday, I was not doing so out of meddlesome intent, Barista," Megumi said tearfully, refusing to look at the bat girl. "I was doing so because I am caring most deeply about you. I am wanting you to be honest with me, my little Garnet, and I am wanting that because I care." She bit her lip. "It seems that my heartfelt compassion for you is not being mutual. If it were…" She shook her head. "Forget it," she concluded simply. On that note, she strode from the kitchen, the dishes all but forgotten, and started towards the bedroom.

"Megumi, wait!" Garnet pleaded, reaching forward feebly with one hand, but it was no good. The bandicoot woman entered her room and slammed the door shut behind her, the lock clicking a second later. Garnet hurried over to the door, unsure of what to do… and her heart sank as she heard the sound of her roommate softly weeping from beyond the rectangle of polished wood.

"I'm not your patient. I'm your roommate. I'll thank you to stop talking about me like I need to be psychoanalysed."

"Not helping!" Garnet muttered through gritted teeth as the cold words she had spoken to Megumi the day before echoed in her mind. Her annoyance at herself quickly turned to guilt and shame as the weight and significance of her own callous words caught up with her.

Megumi had only been trying to reach out to her previously…

…And Garnet had practically spat in her roommate's face in response.

With a sad, heavy sigh, Garnet made her way back over to the couch, slumped down onto it, grabbed the remote and changed the TV channel, soon finding herself watching an old superhero movie, having flicked over just in time to bear witness to a sickeningly apropos scene:

"I know I'm not your father—" one of the two on-screen human men told his younger cohort, the pair sitting in a parked car, engaged in something of a heated argument.

"Then stop pretending to be!" the younger man snapped in response. An uncomfortable silence followed, during which Garnet lifted the remote up once more and switched the TV off before leaning back against the couch cushions and letting out another sigh, visibly sagging as she sat there. After a long moment, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the glowing green orb of energy that was her Titan companion. She half-heartedly thrust the ball of Mojo magic onto the floor, causing North the Ratcicle to appear before her, the frosty mutant bearing his red scarf that, much like Barista's uniform, had recently come back from the dry cleaner's.

"Oh, North," Garnet mused sadly, gesturing with one hand for him to sit down. North obliged, soon seated beside his batty friend - batty in more ways than one. "I just don't know what to do. I mean, I…" She sighed again, closed her eyes and leaned up against her bulky familiar, embracing him and letting her tears start to seep forth. North returned the embrace, the Titan being remarkably gentle in spite of his size. The two sat in silence for a while, the afternoon sun setting behind the futuristic skyscrapers outside.

Bandicoot Sanctuary, Wumpa Jungle, 2008

"Psst! Hey! C'mon, you, it's time to get up!"

"Hrmmmm… Five more, minutes, Screwball…" Barista murmured, still half-asleep as she lay there on the spare bed in the small pink cottage just down the path from Crash Bandicoot's home.

"Screwball?! Who're you callin' a screwball?!" the voice of Coco Bandicoot exclaimed indignantly. Barista yelped as the bedsheet was suddenly pulled out from under her, jerking her awake.

"Huh?! What?!" the bat girl yelped cluelessly, having momentarily forgotten where she was. "Oh! Right! Sorry!" she said, catching sight of the bandicoot girl with the blonde ponytail clad in a white tank top that was partially stained with motor oil, murky yellow mechanic jeans and light brown boots, a pair of dark blue goggles positioned above her emerald green eyes. Coco was glaring at Barista expectantly and with undisguised dislike. "Thought you were someone else," Barista went on as she scrambled out of bed.

"Whatever," Coco said dismissively, the mechanic flicking a strand of her blonde hair out of her eyes and turning towards the little refrigerator in the corner of the room, striding over to it and beginning to rummage through it. While this was going on, Barista looked around, glancing out the window to see that it was practically still dark outside, the sun only just starting to rise behind the trees that made up the vast jungle of Wumpa Island. If it weren't for her experience of getting up early for training drills with Alpha and the other Brat Girls, she might've been more tired than she currently felt. Still, she wasn't sure why it was necessary for her to be up this early now that her days as a minion of evil were behind her, hopefully for good.

"So, d'you bandicoots always get up at the crack of dawn?" she asked with relative innocence, a hint of mild annoyance betraying her.

"You wanted to train in the ways of the Mojo," Coco reminded her, pulling a wrapped protein bar out of the fridge and tossing it to Barista as she spoke. The bat girl caught it, fumbling with the food item rather clumsily for a couple of seconds, almost dropping it. "That means getting up early for your morning exercise. Ooh, I was looking for that," Coco went on, pulling what appeared to be a half-eaten stick of butter out of the fridge and holding it up triumphantly before taking a generous bite.

"You eat butter for breakfast?" Barista asked raising an eyebrow.

Coco froze in mid-chew, her cheeks visibly reddening slightly underneath her orange facial fur. "…No," she said at last, her tone making it clear that she was lying. "Look, just shut up and get ready, alright? We've got a long morning ahead of us and I'm not in the mood for any… stuff!"

"Stuff?" Barista repeated, cocking an eyebrow once more, a small, knowing smirk playing at the corners of her muzzle; Coco, for as much of a mechanical genius as she apparently aspired to be, didn't necessarily seem to be the most articulate in terms of vocabulary.

"I said zip it!" Coco barked, brandishing a finger in Barista's direction warningly. "Eat your protein bar. You'll need the energy boost, if your scrawny little body is anything to go by."

"Scrawny?!" Barista exclaimed indignantly, looking down at herself briefly before glaring at Coco. "You're not exactly built like a house of bricks yourself!"

"And thank the Mojo for that," Coco muttered to herself before proceeding to take another bite out of her stick of butter, closing her eyes and seeming to utterly relish in savouring the fattening calorie rectangle. It was all Barista could do to refrain from shuddering; clearly, Coco got some sort of misplaced, hedonistic thrill and/or pleasure from the taste of butter on her tongue.

'A long morning ahead of us indeed…' the bat girl thought to herself pessimistically.

"Keep up, will you?" Coco said as she and her bat cohort made their way along the path through the jungle, the bandicoot in the lead and the former minion of Cortex bringing up the rear, the latter already sweating profusely due to the jungle's heavy humidity.

"I'm trying!" Barista insisted, straightening the straps of her backpack, which Coco had loaded with all manner of supplies, which did not include Barista's megaphone, which Crunch had taken possession of as a 'safety precaution', which was just a fancy way of the Bandicoots saying that they still didn't trust Barista. "How come I'm carrying all the goods while you don't have so much as a hat weighing you down?"

"Because I'm used to hiking through the wilderness like it's no big deal," Coco stated without looking back at Barista. "You, on the other hand, probably hadn't even seen the outside of your little school before you showed up on our doorstep."

"Excuse me?!" Barista exclaimed, her light brown fur bristling in outrage. "I've gone on expeditions through the frozen tundra! I've patrolled the school grounds from dusk to dawn in sub-zero temperatures! I'd get up every morning and do twenty… Well, ten push-ups before breakfast!"

Coco snorted. "More like tried to do push-ups. Crash and I have seen your kind's little patrols out and about. We've watched a few of your morning drills from afar. It's like watching a bunch of grasshoppers trying to bend their legs in ways they're not supposed to. None of you have a clue!"

"H-Hey, don't you dare make assumptions about the Brat Girl clan as a whole based on one or two of the less coordinated patrol groups!" Barista snapped. "It may come as a surprise to you, but they're not all like that! Some of us do indeed 'have a clue', thank you very much!"

"Sure, sure," Coco said dismissively, having stopped to pluck a round fruit with red and yellow skin from a nearby tree - a Wumpa fruit. She lifted it to her mouth and bit into it, purple juice positively oozing from the natural produce, seeping all over the bandicoot's fur-covered fingers, which she licked gratuitously. Barista could only look on with revulsion, pulling a face as she stood there.

"Ugh! Don't lick it off your fingers! That's disgusting!" the bat girl exclaimed, her tongue poking out of her mouth to emphasise just how repulsed she felt.

"Spoken like a true minion of evil," Coco said, rolling her eyes as she turned to face Barista. "Why is it that all of you Cortex goons are determined to hate Wumpa fruit? I'll bet you've never even tried it!"

"Why would I want to eat something that'll most likely spray purple goop in my eye the moment I bite into it?" Barista demanded. "Besides, that goop looks all sticky and gross. I bet it gets in your fur and stains it for hours! It's icky!"

"Icky? What're you, three years old?" Coco exclaimed, again rolling her eyes, an amused smirk on her face. "And it's not goop - it's juice. Fruit juice, and it's good for what ails ya." She crammed the last of her Wumpa fruit into her mouth, chewed the pulpy flesh greedily and swallowed it before reaching up to pluck another fruit from the same tree. "Here," she said, holding it out towards Barista. "Try one. You might like it."

"Ugh! No! Keep that away from me!" Barista complained, taking a step back as though she were afraid of having the Wumpa fruit anywhere near her. "I'll persist on that protein bar you gave me before."

"You know what was in that protein bar, among other things?" Coco asked, giving Barista a sly look as she continued to hold out the round fruit. Barista's face fell. "You're just being a baby. A big, fussy, highly irrational baby."

Barista scowled, turning away and folding her arms. "If you think a bunch of childish name-calling is gonna convince me to eat that revolting thing, then you've got another thing coming," she declared.

"Come on, it's good! I promise! Just one bite," Coco insisted, stepping up and holding the fruit within two inches of Barista's face. The bat girl started to protest, but her words failed her as some primal instinct caused her to sniff at the fruit, and quite fervently at that. Something deep inside of her made her want to put her snout all over that fruit, and when she did, something she wasn't expecting happened:

Her nostrils were met with a scent that was positively heavenly.

"Ooooh," the bat girl murmured before she could stop herself, and it was all Coco could do to refrain from giggling as Barista continued to fawn over the Wumpa fruit with her snout, seeming to have momentarily lost control of herself.

"You know, they say that bats, in nature, love fresh fruit," the tech-savvy bandicoot pointed out, withdrawing her hand slightly, forcing Barista to step forward in order to continue sniffing the fruit like a curious dog that had discovered some fascinating new scent. "I think that's the part of you coming out now. You want to savour this fruit more dearly than anything right now."

Barista's eyes appeared to be starting to glaze over, the former minion of evil seeming utterly enraptured by the fruit. Then she suddenly reached up and batted the fruit from Coco's hand, causing it to land on the grass nearby and roll several paces. "No!" she cried, looking appalled at herself. "I'm not some primal creature! I… I won't be befuddled by a piece of…! A piece of…!" Her eyes kept wandering to the Wumpa fruit as it lay there innocently on the grass. Her stomach rumbled. She instinctively licked her muzzle, and then—

"Whoa!" Coco exclaimed as Barista suddenly flung her backpack from around her shoulders, the bat girl then leaping forward and positively tackling the fruit in her outstretched hands, rolling for a moment after she landed. She sat up, clutching the fruit triumphantly in both hands, a look of primal excitement in her eye. Then she blinked, seeming to realise what she was doing. She let out an awkward chuckle, blushing slightly.

"I, uh… I was just…" She struggled to form the words. Coco, on her part, came over and sat down bedside her, placing a hand on the bat girl's shoulder.

"Cool it," the bandicoot girl told her cohort calmly. "Don't think - just do."

Barista nodded somewhat offhandedly, letting out her breath in a long and very deliberate exhale, feeling herself start to relax as she sat there. She then closed her eyes, lifted the Wumpa fruit to her mouth with one hand, allowed herself one final, more tentative sniff… and then she slowly sank her canines into the fruit's tender flesh.

The juices immediately seeped forth, filling Barista's mouth and smearing on her fingers, the latter causing her to let out a little moan of discomfort, knowing that her hands were being dirtied, but Coco gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and her unease subsided somewhat. She chewed the pulpy flesh of the fruit with utmost meticulousness, feeling both it and the juice against her tongue, the latter especially being… Oh, she couldn't even describe it; it was like nothing she had ever tasted before.

No, scratch that - it was like nothing she had ever experienced before…

Barista let out a little moan of utmost satisfaction as she finally swallowed, her eyes still closed. She opened them after a moment… and grinned broadly, the edges of her mouth stained with purple.

"Where… has this stuff… BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!" she shouted, causing Coco to flinch slightly. "Oh, that was wonderful! I've never tasted anything so good! Is there more? Tell me there's more!" She put her hands on Coco's shoulders and started to shake the bandicoot girl almost aggressively. "Tell me there's more, girl!" she positively shrieked.

"Okay, okay!" Coco exclaimed, laughing in spite of how alarmed she was at Barista's overenthusiastic display. She started to get to her feet. "Come on. I'll show you how to tell which ones are the ripest… and the juiciest."

"Ooooh, boy!" Barista rasped with misplaced eagerness, again licking her muzzle, tasting the juice around the edges of her mouth, which only spurred her on as she got to her feet, soon snatching up the backpack and hurrying after Coco, not missing a beat…

Sorry this chapter's not much; I just wanted to give you all a TASTE of a new instalment.

...See what I did there?

On another topic, I think it's safe to say that the word of the day is 'Rumble', if you know what I'm talking about. Heh.