Lika heaves again over the toilet bowl.
Her mouth tastes bitter and metallic, her throat and stomach feel raw. Her head is swimming.
She eases herself back onto her knees and catches sight of the chipped china mermaid on the windowsill.
The bathroom is completely bare other than that one mermaid. A shudder ripples down her back, that poor inanimate creature had to watch her puking into a toilet.
Despite how disgusted she is with herself, Lika takes time to examine her puke.
"Oreos," she groans. "Why does everything I love hate me?"
The little mermaid gives her a blank stare, with an empty smile. It seems to be mocking her. She groans in disgust.
"Ugh! Now, I'm talking to a stupid china fricking mermaid!" Lika slowly and lightly bangs her head against the ceramic toilet seat.
"Yourself, actually." A familiar enveloped her.
Lika didn't turn around, she didn't want to see her boyfriend's disappointed look...Nor did she feel like telling herself the same lie. The lie that every time he looks at her, it's out of love; not him merely searching for traces of drugs.
But now that she thinks about it, her banging her head against the toilet really would concern him. She stops and merely rests her head against it.
"What?" She whispers.
"The mermaid isn't sentient. So, you're actually talking to yourself." He says, too matter-of-factly for her liking.
She groans again. "What do you want, Noah?"
She feels a shift in the air and a little grunt. He's squatting behind her.
"Can't I just come to check on my girlfriend?" He says it softly. Too softly. Too cautiously. It makes Lika's blood boil.
"No." She spits. She reaches out and pulls the lever of the toilet. There's a whoosh of water as it carries away the filth.
"That's wasting water, Lika. There's only a limited supply-"
"What?! You wanted me to leave my sick here for everyone to fricking see?!" Lika yells. Noah flinches. And somewhere in Lika's heart, she feels guilty.
Noah's brief moment of fear passes, and he furrows his brow. "What's your problem?"
"What's my problem?" She glares him down. "Screw you."
He frowns deeper, "are you...is it...are you PMSing?"
Lika swallows a laugh.
"Wow, you're really something, Noah." She grips the sides of the bowl and pushes herself to a wobbly stand. Noah reaches for her, but she bats his hands away.
"I'm just trying to help you!" He runs his hands through his hair, and glances at her, "why are you trying to fight me?"
She gives him a look and mutters, "I have never tried to fight you. I've always done my best to be the perfect girlfriend. But that was never enough was it?"
Noah sighs, and closes his eyes, "Lika, it was an accident."
She laughs a humourless laugh, and tries to walk past him, but he grabs her arms.
"Noah," she fights against his grip. "Let me go! Noah! Leave me alone!"
"Angelica-"
"No!" She screeches, punching his chest. Her face is completely contorted with anger. "Let. Me. Go."
Noah releases her, and she walks out only to bump into a speeding Seven and Mars.
"Watch it!" Lika growls. Then she sees their faces. "What's wrong?"
"Perry and his army are attacking the Temple!" Seven blurts.
"Shit," Noah hisses from behind Lika. "You three, get to the library. Warn Shoto and hide! I got this," he pulls out his katana.
Despite the situation, Mars laughs. "What? You think your baby katanas are going to do shit against a whole army of machinery?! No, we run."
Noah narrows his eyes, "great. The pussy option."
"Oh my god! Can we just escape?!" Seven interrupts exasperated.
Mars grabs Seven's hand and dashes forward, the other two behind them.
#######
Hannah grabs a thumbtack and places it in the center of South Africa on the atlas.
"Our destination," she murmurs.
"And depending on where we are now, we can find out how long it will take us to get there." Beth adds, leaning on the table.
"That is how time works," Lyric rolls her eyes, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
"Sorry." Beth mumbles, "stating the obvious here."
"It's okay. You're still a little woozy," Geo pats her older sister's back, while glaring daggers at Lyric. Who glares back.
Shoto signs something.
"What did he say?" Lyric nods coolly at him.
Hannah blinks and jolts, "oh, right. He said, he thinks that the global plate tectonics aren't the same anymore and that they may have shifted immensely."
"Well." Lyric crosses her arms, "I definitely wouldn't rule it out."
"Ey!" John suddenly calls from his seat. He's looking intently into the bottle Mars have him. "I've run outta booze! Where's the little fella?"
The doors burst open, exposing the other four, panting and carrying weapons and bags of supplies.
Hannah rises, "what's the matter?"
"Perry is attacking!" Mars states, "we have to leave now!
Shoto snatches up the map and some keys. He nods and they all dash out of the library.
They're running in the corridor. The loud crank and wheeze of machinery is heard.
Beth who is bringing up the rear, risks a glance outside. A large ball is swinging towards them.
"Wait!" She screams.
The ball crashes through the wall and crushes it like paper. Glass shatters and bricks go flying, dust explodes everywhere.
Seven slips, but Mars has a firm grip on her hands and pulls her back up. Together they all run back to Beth.
"Goddamnit!" Noah huffs, "that was the way to the vehicles!"
"Oh no!" Lyric is staring out the window, she turns back to them. "They have my van."
"Mars, what do we do?" Geo pleads with him, the child's eyes wide with worry.
He is pale, his eyes dead. He slowly shakes his head, "I....I don't know."
Hannah looks at all of them, it's her job to protect the residents of the Temple. "We take the tunnels."
They turn to her, waiting for an explanation. But she simply runs, they follow. And so does the metallic ball of destruction, eating up the ground behind them edging closer and closer.
Hannah dives into the bathroom and fights away a loose floorboard. She turns to them, "inside."
They don't need to be told twice, they scuttle into the floor. Hannah wriggling in after them and closing the floor after herself.
When she does so, the tunnel under the bathroom floor is plunged in darkness.
"This will take us quite a ways from here," Hannah's disembodied voice sparks. "But for now, we have to keep moving. We're still under the Temple and if it falls, we fall with it."
And then they run off together, fumbling in the darkness. The loud sounds of machinery and destruction rattle through the tunnels.
"Ow!" Geo whimpers, "stop stepping on my feet!"
"I can't see ya!" John says indignantly.
"Suck it up! We have to preserve the batteries!" Noah growls.
"Of course that's what you're gonna say," Lika grumbles.
"Do you really wanna do this now?" He sighs. Then he crashes into a body. "Wha-?"
"Shut the hell up!" Mars hisses. "There's company!" He gestures up above.
The thundering of footsteps is heard above them. And a dangerous hum of voices. Raising and rising like boiling water.
"Where'd those rats get off to?" A voice rumbles.
Hannah starts pushing whoever she could get her hands on forward, until they get the idea.
They move, hurriedly and quietly, like little rats scuttling in the catacombs.
Every elbow to the chest and step on the foot is forgotten about with the swallowing of pain.
"How much further?" John wheezes.
"Soon, very soon." Hannah huffs out.
"Oof!" There's a hollow thump. "The hell?"
"Are you okay?" Hannah whispers to Lika, blindly reaching out for her.
Mars pats down the wall in front. It's cool and metallic and rusted. He feels around for some kind of handle. His hands cusp a wheel.
"I found an opening gear," Mars calls.
"Oh yeah?" Noah challenges, "you use your future powers to do so?"
"Noah, stop." Lika snaps.
Noah's eyes narrow in the darkness. Angers burns in his chest. "No, no, I'd like to know, Future Boy, if you know the future how come you didn't warn us about Perry's attack?"
Silence falls upon the group. A heavy and dense kind of silence. Mars can almost feel the sharp blades of the daggers everyone is staring at him.
Until Seven shatters it. "Can you stop, Noah? We have to get out now! You can kill each other when we're far from here!"
"She's right," Hannah says. "Let's leave this place."
She bumps past them and cranks the wheel, it creaks open. Light streams through and stings their eyes.
"Let's go!" Geo grins.
They bolt out of the tunnels, shutting the door behind them. They haven't even walked a metre when Noah turns on Mars.
"So, tell me...why didn't you warn us?" Noah growls, shoving Mars into the cracked earth.
"Noah, enough!" Hannah slams her foot down.
"Don't tell me you aren't suspicious as to why he lied!" He frowns at her, Hannah does not flinch but she says nothing.
"I didn't fucking lie about anything!" Mars scowls.
"Oh yeah?" Noah hisses, hovering above him. "So then talk, old man!"
"I didn't know Perry was coming so soon." Mars wobbles back up.
"So soon?" Lyric barks, "so you knew he was coming then?"
"Yes, but in my timeline he came after a few days." Mars sighs, "I guess I changed more than I thought when I came back here."
Lyric aims a pistol out of nowhere at his chest. "You're the problem, then. Might as well kill you now!"
"Lyric, stop! Put the gun away!" Hannah commands.
"No can do, princess." Lyric clicks off the safety.
"Kill him then, I'm bored." John spits into the dirt, the liquid is immediately absorbed.
"No!" Seven darts in front of Mars. "He is the only key to our survival. You can't kill him."
"He said it himself," Lyric groans, annoyed. "His time leaping screwed us over!"
"And without his time leaping, Beth and her baby would be left for dead!" Geo stands next to Seven, staring down the gun.
Lyric still keeps the gun trained on them.
Lika and Shoto wordlessly take their place in front of Mars. Hannah joins too.
They all turn to John, who is picking at a scab on his elbow.
Mars holds up another flask, and wiggles it teasingly, the dark liquid shloshes enticingly.
"Hell yeah!" John races over to them and cradles the flask.
Lyric and Noah exchange glances, before she puts the safety back on and stashes it in her boot.
"Let's keep moving then." She walks ahead, Noah tailing her.
The rest follow, with Seven and Mars bringing up the rear.
"Seven." Mars starts, he glances into her eyes before looking away. "Thanks....Thanks for sticking up for me."
She laughs, and shrugs. "Anytime. Just try not to get into a lot of fights with the trigger happy hippies, okay?"
He chuckles. "Got it." He gently nudges her side, "you didn't have to stand in front of me, y'know?"
Seven gives a confused smile, "of course I did-"
"No, I mean...I can teleport. They wouldn't have got me if they tried." Mars smirks.
Seven laughs out loud, his eyes trail over her. He missed her a hell of a lot.