Unrecognizable

~Chapter Twenty-Two~

But He froze as the cat called out, "And what about Jrumbot?" She could tell she had hit a nerve when Grumbot slowly turned back around, with clear anger on his electronic face. Oh, boy, that worked. 

"What about him?" Each word was drawn out and laced with contempt for Citrus. Jrumbot wasn't an easy subject for Him, and Citrus knew exactly how to milk that.

"Well," she began in the most casual tone she could muster. Grumbot began to walk back over to her, and she wrapped her tail around her paws, continuing. "You did just abandon him, did you not? Not even a goodbye." The cat pouted overdramatically. "I wonder how he feels, now that you're moving around and he's stuck, all alone." Her last two words were made of ice, and her amber eyes burned into Grumbot's cyan ones. His had opened wide and shook slightly. 

But He didn't say anything. Instead, he just turned around, seemingly hurt, and stalked back to the others. Citrus grinned. Interesting.

She needed to get to Sage and Void even more now. 

Or, apparently, Void would get to her. 

For who should suddenly appear behind her but the admin himself. Citrus jumped back, suddenly sensing a presence behind her. Her tail fluffed up as she twisted around, her whiskers twitching. "V-Void! Hi!" She smoothed down some chest fur as Void crossed his arms.

"Citrus, where have you been?" This sounded more of an accusation than a question, and Citrus suddenly felt quite warm. Void glanced around at the biome, raising his eyebrows. "What are you doing here?" He sounded a bit nervous. Why was that?

"I was simply doing as I said I would," the cat defended herself. "I found a new Hermit to spy on." She gestured in the direction of the others with her tail. "Stress took me over here last night, if it matters." She huffed, poking at the snow with a claw. 

The bee-suited person sighed, placing a hand to his helmet in the way a normal person would put a hand to their forehead. It looked quite weird. "We're going back to the base. Sage has been worried about you." 

Citrus dug her claw deeper into the snow, poking at the dirt beneath it. Great, now she felt bad. Had he really worried that much? She hadn't been gone for that long of a time, had she? Her tail lashed as her feelings conflicted with one another. She was just being helpful. "Okay, great." The cat scowled, deep in conflict, as she moved to stand next to the admin, touching his leg with her tail. She wasn't a fan of teleporting; she had done it once before and hated it. 

After a moment, Citrus felt a sickening shift of the world around her and suddenly her surroundings changed. She was now standing right in the middle of the base. Void walked over to the button that would let the two into the secret rooms. "Remind me again why we can't just go right into the room," she said as the floor opened up and the two began to descent. 

"Special ward," V sighed, clearly rather annoyed. "Blocks all admin magic other than the communicator chats." Oh, right. Void had set this up as a precaution for Scar-- and Iskall, should he ever learn any magic himself. But it just made it all the more annoying for her.

"It's an annoyance," she huffed. 

"But it proved useful yesterday, no?" Countered Void. "It's annoying, but we just have to deal with it. Just for another week or two." Right, when all the plans would go down. Sage and Void would take over the world or something. Citrus wasn't all that sure, actually. And she didn't think that anyone else was either. What about when it was all over? Everything had fallen into place, their team had won, hooray. What then? What would Sage and Citrus do? She wasn't sure. She didn't like not knowing things. It was very disorienting.