Rosile

Part 4: Embark (9)

Published on site: September 10, 2011

-

Chapter 39

Final Mission: Search and Rescue

     It was raining when Shinta left the shack. It started out as a light drizzle, but gradually became a heavy downpour as he walked to the gate. The dark and foreboding clouds matched the situation Shinta found himself in when he came to an unexpected halt. There in front of the gate, on the ground and dirtied up by the wet mud, was an unconscious Daisy with a metal tranquilizer tick leeching off her arm. What made this worse was the fact that Honey was missing.

     “Shit!” Shinta cursed, quickly kneeling down to pull the tranquilizer off of Daisy and shaking her awake. “Oi! You still alive?”

     Daisy’s eyelids gently fluttered before fully opening, but the effects of the tranquilizer had left her drowsy. “…Shinta? Oh… sorry. I really tried to stop them but…”

     “For once it’s not your fault,” Shinta said, though his nervous tone made it somewhat hard to believe. “Didn’t think the bastards would play dirty.”

     Shinta gave Daisy time to get back on her feet, and pulled out his cell phone to see if he could contact Lenny. Unfortunately, when he dialed the number from his text messages, he immediately had a machine notify him that the number was no longer in service. He threw his cell phone onto the softened earth in his frustration, causing it to land with a big splash. He probably didn’t want to seek my guidance with everything that’s happened, so he was in quite the predicament.

     Daisy was just as upset as Shinta, gazing solemnly at her soiled clothes, and after much thinking, she took off her white jacket and held it over her head like an umbrella. “Let’s get outta here. It’s not like they’re gonna do anything bad to him right away, which means we can go save him later, right?”

     “Yeah,” Shinta replied with a sigh, pushing back a damp lock of hair that stuck to his face. “We’ve got no leads anyway, so it’d be stupid to run around blindly. I think we got enough leftover to book a night someplace, so we’ll start with that.”

     Now that was decided, Shinta picked up his phone from the ground, ignoring the fact that it was filthy at the moment since it was still functioning normally, and managed to call up a cab to take them to the nearest hotel. While they were waiting, Shinta filled Daisy in on everything that had occurred between him and myself, but she merely stood there and listened, too guilty about the situation to talk that much. It didn’t take long for one to arrive, so they were able to get out of the rain right away, though Shinta was already soaked to the bone.

     It’s a good thing the auto pilot works well under harsh weather, because the rain made the road virtually invisible under the cool gray sky.

<INTERMISSION>

     Sometime after they settled in a hotel, Shinta emerged from the shower with only his pants on, a white towel on top of his head as he approached his side of the bed. The room was velvet blue and much smaller than what Shinta was accustomed to, but it would have to do. Daisy had been sitting on her bed the entire time, hugging her pillow like a plush doll as she blankly stared down the gun at her feet. She raised her head when she saw Shinta, but only her eyes followed him.

     She noticed that he gazed at the blue ribbon that was left on the desk with an unknown emotion before tying it on. “Why don’t ya get a scrunchie?”

     Shinta didn’t look at her, lying down on his bed as he checked his clean phone. “You mean the ribbon? Nah, it’s not like I need it.”