The Cover Says It (Shifty X Handy)

Chapter Nine

" I don't think he's waking up any time soon..."

" Yeah, i mean hearing from what happened at the museum.."

" Right? Like how did that even happened?"

He was semiconscious listening to the voices speaking around him. Majority of it were just mutterings, yet he could figured out few of their sentences. And most of them were something he shouldn't be hearing as he was the topic they were discussing about. Eventually, he started to feel the familiarity of his senses.

He felt his finger twitching up until his arm and it later began to move his hand up to his face. He was finally awake with the voices quickly faded the moment he show signs of movement. Feeling the touch of his palm, he slowly opened his eyes to meet two residents he recognized before. His back was resting against something rough and there was a feeling of lightness in his head.

It took him a while to finally apprehended what was going on or what had happened to him. One of the resident, Cuddles, decided to get close to check on him, " Woah man, you good there?" His eyes blinked before speaking, " Not at all.." the hand slowly reaching to his hat, " Fuck.. how long was i out?"

Toothy tilted his head to see the dark night sky, " Probably at least ten minutes before i woke up. Right now, it's nearly twelve thirty." Cuddles nodded to his friend, " I was here to pick up Toothy until we saw you lying there out of all people." He explained as he stood up and head over to his friend again, " Speaking of people, there are quite a lot of them than usual tonight.. it's unfortunate.." he added when he realized the amount of strangers scattering around the area right now.

Cuddles and Toothy were now staring at him with slight curiosity written on their faces. At last, one of them had the courage to asked, " So.. uh, how did you die Shifty?"

He watched other citizens slowly walking away from the area. Some appeared exhausted while others seemed gloomy than ever. He could hardly identified few of them from the museum and Shifty assumed they were the ones that got caught in between the pillars. Regardless, tonight were many than usual. Tonight, the deaths rate had doubled from yesterday's event. Once his eyes flickered at his hands, he began to struggle to recall his very own death...

-

He knew he would later met with demise the moment he was dragged through the air unexpectedly. Shifty got picked up by the back collar of his shirt, similarly to a cat being picked up by the scruff. He battled himself not to show any dread in his situation here. Showing vulnerability would make the problem worsen as well as his pride. So Shifty pushed forward to his facade of composure towards his rival, " Can't we just settle this on the ground rather than midair?"

They reached at the very top of the building with Splendid still grabbing him by the collar, " You got some nerve to involve an innocent citizen into your heists." Splendid spoke as he ignored his suggestion a second ago. Shifty's eyes leveled with his rival with an expression of immense hatred, " Didn't Handy told you he wasn't involve?" He glanced down to see how high up they were currently. " Well he only told me he wasn't just some lackey." Splendid defended his statement.

The longer Shifty stare below them, the more it made his heart sank just seeing the fountain at the very bottom of the museum. Shifty was terribly strained from everything that's been going on. His handcuffs were no where near to being broken. There were merely scratches visible to the chains as well as the lack of sleep he had. This had been the worst week this month. And don't get him started with the hand injury he got from that melted butter incident.

He felt his confidence gradually slipping with his panic emerging from the surface of his face. At that point in time, the back of his mind, he knew he would be thrown back into prison any sooner. Shifty swallowed by the thought of it, "  Splendid, buddy. Handy just happened to bumped into me when you made your unnecessary grand entrance." He invented, discreetly reaching into his pocket, " So it would be nice if you don't charge more days into my sentence."