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"Mecha Cowboys" has less than a thousand hits on Google. I've never been more upset.
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RP Concept: "Screw just the plans, we're stealing the Death Star and taking that baby for a joyride!"
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The VeggieTales theme song has been stuck in my head for at least three days now. Can't decide if it a good or bad thing yet.
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Writer of schlock dressed up in some decent clothes.

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Just a heads up for y'all, but I will be tied up for much of this weekend and likely won't have a chance to post. So, uh, I'll catch up with the gang and our sweet baby God-Kid when I can.



Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room?



Rita felt miserable. She was reminded of the scene she had caused with Claire the other day, and realized that she would’ve been as cruel as Penny if she had the ammunition. She didn’t know how, but she decided then and there that she would makeup with Claire. She’d keep her Abstraction at bay, even though the demon of doubt wiggling around in her brain kept pushing her to abuse it. Now, however, she knew that there was nothing she could do without risking the ire of both of the women, and so she sat there in silence and tried to politely pretend that she didn’t notice the screaming match that was happening across the table.

Billy gave a quiet chuckle to Nate’s comment, but otherwise he kept out of it. Like himself, it was difficult to get Penny to stop once she got rolling, and right now he could tell that she wasn’t going to slow down until she ran out of breath or someone knocked it out of her. He didn’t like that she was targeting Claire, who he mistakenly took to be one of his tight friends, but he did see the silver lining in all of this. Namely, if Penny was enough of an asshole then maybe people would forget about how big of a dick he had been to Rien. Billy hadn’t meant anything by it, really, he was just trying to bring some fun to a stiff, boring meeting, but he knew he had gone too far. He had a tendency to go too far with just about anything. Still, it was better than this dragged out, long-winded character assassination that his kid sister was doing.

“You need to leave. Now,” growled Andrea.

“No thanks. But you can go. It’s not like you’re even a part of this, so stop rubbernecking,” said Penny, her voice filled with a fake chipperness.

Billy winced when Andrea demanded that Penny leave in the same voice that his mom used when she was really, really upset. He knew that his sister wouldn’t have followed what would probably have been the best course of action for everyone in this room before she even quipped back. Hell, now, thanks to Andrea, she would probably keep going until she made everyone stand up and walk out of the room one by one until she was ranting to the walls and to the bat, wherever it had gone off. Maybe he should just take the moment to slink away unnoticed. In fact, that’s what he decided to do.

The cracking of the table forced Rita’s attention back to the argument, and she stared in fear as Claire began glowing red yet again. She hadn’t stuck around to see what the woman could do last time, and Martin’s pleading convinced her that there was little point in sticking around this time. She nodded her head and, with a turn towards Rien, pointed at the door and crept out of her chair. Billy, the unfunny jokester who had given her shit weed and a hard time, also seemed to have the same idea. They nearly collided before the tall boy sort of wiggle-danced himself out of the way.

“Yeah, she ain’t stopping,” he muttered to her under his breath.

“Neither did you,” said Rita with zero inflection.

Any normal person would’ve probably felt a modicum of shame, embarrassment, or defeat by now, having successfully turned an entire room against them in less than five minutes, but Penny wasn’t normal. She was a self-admitted asshole, and like all people who called themselves assholes she was proud of being an asshole. If it got them angry, then she justified it by saying that she had hit a sore spot because it was true. Penny was practically beaming when she watched Justin struggling to hold Claire back. Fuck what Claire said, she was the only sane woman in this town. It was cowardice to want to live in peace when others weren’t given that option and you could do something about it.

Her eyes widened when Justin was forced off of Claire, but it wasn’t from fear. It was a learning opportunity. She had been honing her Abstraction since she discovered it, but she had never used it on another person before. If Claire even tried to lay a single finger on her, then Penny would have to see if she could repulse her way—in the name of self-defense, of course. And if that didn’t work, well, she had been grabbing a handful of change from her jacket since the moment Justin had jumped in.

"... fucking stop!?"

And it did. Penny, with her hand in her jacket. Rita, with her arms up to avoid bumping in to Billy within feet from the door. Billy, with one leg side-stepping and a look of confusion on his face to avoid knocking Rita over. Then it was all gone, snapped to black, and when it faded to blue everything was different. Well, not necessarily different. It was familiar in a way; they had all been like this before. Penny withdrew her hand from her jacket, empty. Rita put her arms down and looked around the teal emptiness, wishing that she had been quicker on fleeing the scene. Billy, stumbling, was able to steady himself before he fell on his transparent, ghostly ass.

“Okay, really, it’s great you got them to stop, but I’m not in the right headspace for this soooo…” He looked around the group, searching for anyone that looked like they knew what was going on. “Uh, which one of you magic dorks did this? Just a quick hands up will be good. Just. Put it right up there.”


Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.



The look Penny gave Andrea as she chided her was particularly withering, and she scoffed when the girl insinuated that she didn’t know her. If Andrea was the kind of person who would seek friendship from Britney Williams, then Penny knew the kind of person that she was. Just another sweet, caring, and completely full of shit, backbiting bitch. Be civil like an adult? Seriously? Has she met the adults around here? Andrea was lucky they weren’t shooting at each other with guns right about now.

Of course, Britney stepped in and tried to play it off as if she was sorry. Typical move. There were too many people around for her to show her true colors, so she had to pretend to be pleasant. Penny hated people like that. Even when Claire burst in, as she was apt to do, the windbag, Penny did not take her burning, judgmental eyes off of Britney.

“Right, Claire. You aren’t helping,” echoed Penny when Britney called her out. She was about to step in and point out that it seemed like Britney knew more than she should’ve when a few of the others in her group did the job for her. Penny held her tongue, her face as smug as a snake. She couldn’t wait to see Britney try to worm her way out of this one. Yet, much to her surprise, Britney pulled out a diary and passed it around the group.

Awakened. Abstractions. Rita didn’t know what to think. She was never the kind of person to believe in superstitions or to check on her horoscopes, but she had that dream, she had seen a monster. She sat there in silence after passing on the diary, her finger picking at her cheek as she tried to handle the information. The diary said that abilities reflected the user. Well, she could see why being able to force others to tell the truth would fit her—as she was reading, Rita strongly doubted that what this diary was telling her was real. Hell, she still didn’t fully believe it, and in all honesty, it didn’t matter anyway. This wasn’t her town, it wasn’t her fight, and she didn’t know what the job Reid mentioned was but it sure as hell wasn’t one for which she had put in an application. She had other things to worry about; why was she being made to deal with this?

Billy, already sunken into himself with defeat that he had truly deserved, felt even worse after reading the journal. As someone who loved sci-fi and fantasy, he had hundreds of conversations over the years about how cool it would be for something like this to happen. Of course, he was the hero in these conversations, decked out with awesome powers and surrounded by chicks with tight bodies in even tighter spandex, but the reality of it wasn’t so appealing. For starters, despite the sigil on him as far as he knew he didn’t have any damn Abstraction. Talk about being ripped off. Still, that was fine. If great responsibility came with great power, then no power meant he didn’t have to sweat any of this craziness.

So why was he still so on edge, then?

Penny read the diary in a quiet fury. It would’ve been nice to ignore everything that it said, like it was nice to ignore all of life’s problems, but too much of it checked out. She could only imagine her younger brother, Henry, and how he could’ve possibly been attacked like the boy in their dream. Why had that boy—why had Reid—been saved and made into a Guardian if it meant that he would only fail to save Henry later? She felt hot, angry tears well up in her eyes, but she kept them back. She refused to think like that. Until she saw a body, Henry was alive. Missing, but alive. Yet, if she had known about this earlier...she wouldn’t have believed it. As much as she wanted to scream and curse at Britney, she knew she wouldn’t have believed it if the girl had told her.

"And what's this all even mean? You want us to become the Guardians of this shithole?" asked Claire. Her words were like a hammer, striking against the glass that was holding what little amount of cool Penny had left. "Sorry, not interested, and I doubt anyone else here is interested."

It shattered. Britney barely finished her sentence when Penny started spitting fire.

“Go screw yourself, Claire. You don’t speak for anyone. Jesus Christ, like, you shouldn’t even speak at all, the sound of your voice makes me want to put a bullet through my goddamn head. Of course you don’t want to take responsibility. Nobody was expecting the town whore to step up from her fucking knees!” Penny was shouting, pointing an accusatory finger at the other girl like a fire-and-brimstone preacher. “But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people here who would actually want to protect this shithole of a town, including all of the assholes in it like yourself.”

“I’m serious. We just gonna let dickheads like Scott Reese stroll around and murder people because, ehhhhhh, it would be so hard to try? Screw that. Screw. That. I’ll have you know that he—someone—butchered another one of the girls that was also at the camp. Could’ve been any of us,” said Penny, her focus spreading to the group before she lasered back in on Claire.

“I would ask how many more of your trailer trash friends would have to be put in a coma before you stop screwing about, putting what shit you do into your body, trying to, like, open your mind, man,,” she said, with a spot on impersonation of her brother, “and open your eyes, but that would be pointless. Because you have no friends. Because you suck. Jeez-us. Zoey really dodged a bullet by going into that coma. If I was your friend, I would’ve hated to see how much of a fucking coward you actually are.”
.... It didn't fucking go through and now I'm at work so I can't post it.

FFFDDFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFGTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK


Truly the shortest of posts. I'll go ahead and wait for you to actually post before putting out what I'm currently working on.



Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.



“Why don’t you stay out of this, bitch?” snapped Penny when Claire butted into her argument with Billy. Claire wasn’t actually in the wrong: Billy was a tool. However, Penny didn’t like the idea that Claire was talking to her brother like that. Hell, she didn’t even like the idea that Claire was talking period. And then Britney had to chime in, backing her old BFF up. Penny was almost certain that her eye had started to twitch.

Billy, in his defense, did back down slightly at the urging of the two girls. He was only trying to have a little fun and bring a bit of levity to this situation, but as usual he didn’t recognize when it was time to pump the brakes. He was about to apologize when Rien finished their drawing. Instead of saying “I’m sorry”, Billy shrieked and swatted his hands in front of his face as a bat flew at him. Penny took a few steps forward and, just as Martin hit the lights, she blasted the bat against the wall, the crack of its body drowned out by Martin shouting, “Quiet!”

When the lights came back on, Billy sunk down in his chair. Clearly, all of this was too much for the guy, and he was (thankfully) stunned into a state of silence. Rita, having experienced Martin’s abstraction before, was still caught off-guard by it but more concerned about where the bat was—she hadn’t noticed Penny repulsing it to its doom. Penny’s hands were balled into fists, and her face was set in a sneer. Now that Martin and Rien had gone ahead and shown of their abstractions, there was no point in playing things close to her chest.

In fact, she was pretty certain there was no point to this at all. It was a failure. Considering who was in charge of it all, she wasn’t surprised.

“What do you mean most of us have powers?” asked Min.

It wasn’t a question meant for Penny, but she fielded it anyway.

“She means that, like Scott Reese, most of us have turned into freaks with extremely fucking dangerous abilities. And…” She turned her head towards Britney, a look of utter disgust on her face as she registered that the rich bitch had the gall to whine at them. “And you, like, seriously want us to believe that you put any fucking effort into this at all? Anybody can get a goddamn clipboard and send out a group text. The only joke here is that you actually think that there’s someone to blame here for this little shit show besides yourself. Shit, like, are you for real?”

Penny took a step towards Britney, bumping—or more like shoving, really—Claire out of her way.

“You want us to hold our grudges at the door. You want us to talk about our feelings and emotions,” continued Penny, mockingly. “But then you spend the entire goddamn time whispering to your croney and playing favorites. Seriously, Williams, what the hell? Billy’s not allowed to talk because he’s a tool, but it’s cool for a bitch like Claire to run her fucking trash mouth just because you’re buddy-buddy?” Penny folded her hands over her chest. “Why don’t you drop that holier-than-thou act? Stop pretending that you don’t love shit like this.”


Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.



The look of befuddlement on Billy’s face grew as part of their collective admitted to having his dream as well. This was his first time hearing about any of the weird threads connecting all of the survivors from the camp together, and it was kind of blowing his mind. He hadn’t forgotten about the bizarre being that had come after them when they escaped the park, but he had assumed that he had just hallucinated the whole thing. And then Blue said that they could pull a goddamn butterfly out of a piece of paper, and Billy forgot about anything else except for that. He leaned forward and gestured towards Rien, the confusion on his face shifting into mild amusement.

“Bro, are you sure you didn’t just get stoned watching the Reading Rainbow?” asked Billy, chuckling to himself. “Did you turn into an astronaut and blast off into space afterwards? Pull a ship in from the ocean?”

“Billy, shut up,” growled Penny. So Rien was one of...whatever they were, and judging by the way Martin had said weird things she could assume that he also had something up his sleeve. Penny’s eyes began to roll when Claire partially pulled up her shirt—Seriously? Nobody wants to see your gross body—but they stopped and stared when she was momentarily glowed like a neon light. Great, so even pond scum had been given freak abilities. Penny frowned; she hated always being right, but she knew that someone like Claire O’Sullivan having powers would only be a catastrophe.

“Does it only have to be something lame like a butterfly?” continued Billy, still joking. “Could you do a bat, man? Oh, oh, could you do a really tiny Batman?”

“Billy. Shut. Up.”

Rita felt herself ease when Martin put his hand on her own, and there was a slight comfort in knowing that he also had the same dream—a comfort that went away when Claire reminded them all of the final moments of Camp Nightmare. The girl that had been put into a coma had prevented Claire from kicking Rita’s teeth in. Rita didn’t know her, but she felt bad for her regardless. However, she doubted Claire would want to hear her express sympathies towards her friend. Hell, she doubted Claire would want to hear her speak at all, considering what had happened yesterday.

“Why should I shut up? I was invited along to talk about my feelings, and right now I feel like I’m on a hidden camera show. Is Kimberly secretly filming this? Was I supposed to get a script? I didn’t get my script, man,” said Billy, smiling at the ridiculousness of this entire thing.

“C’mon asshole, you know this isn’t a joke,” hissed Penny. It was impossible for her not to be drawn into a fight with her brother.

“Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, sorry, sorry. I was just playing. I got powers too. I can totally shoot laser beams out of my dick.” He laughed. “Seriously, y’all must be high. Gotta hook me up with your supplier, man. Listen, I get that some of you kids got PTSD, and I’m no psychiatrist, but I think playing make believe is a little unhealthy.”

“Billy, I’m fucking serious, you need to stop,” said Penny, her voice raising. It was taking every ounce of her will to not completely go off on her brother like an atomic bomb. She shot a look over at Britney, whispering away to her new friend, and she could feel the rage in herself continue to boil up. Wasn’t that bitch supposed to be leading this? Things were spiraling out of control. If things kept up like this, Penny would blow.

Rita leaned over Martin so that she could speak to Rien as the siblings continued to bicker, “Please tell me you’re drawing something to shut them up. I think this is actually killing me.”


Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.



Rita watched and stewed in vicarious embarrassment as Penny, the one and only girl who had pulled her out of the cabin where Rita would otherwise had been turned into firewood by Scott Reese, drew contention from her peers for her little outburst. The blonde seemed to only be pleased by the feathers that she had ruffled and, with a sneer, turned to look out the window, as if anything was more interesting than this little gathering. When the blue-haired person (Rita could not tell if they were a boy or girl, nor could she tell if that was necessarily what they were going for) sat down next to her and Martin she gave a small smile of acknowledgment, trying to hide the fact that Martin introducing her mildly peeved her. She could talk for herself. It wasn’t like she was going to start ripping Rien’s secrets right out of them—way too many people around to play that game.

Penny was pretending to ignore what Claire had said. She was also pretending that it hadn’t struck a nerve. It didn’t last long. When she looked away from the group her face had immediately soured, and insults were flooding into her mouth and trying to break through her lips. Making fun of Britney was the only possible thing that would make this little get together bearable. They didn’t have to talk about their little high school drama bullshit, but she refused to act like it didn’t exist. Neutral territory? More like coward territory. She fumed silently as Edward Scissorhands broke down his experience at the camp. She would’ve said something herself, but, well, most of it was now lost in a haze.

She caught Aliana’s glance as Martin wrapped up his story. If this punk had the mark, she could imagine what he meant by weird things. Still, right now it was better to have deniability than to put themselves right out. She mouthed a “no” to Aliana, but she did not turn to look back out the window. Instead, she was observing everyone, looking for marks or reactions to Martin’s spiel.

“I got one of those,” said Billy, rolling up his sleeve to show the spiral at the top of his skinny arm. “Buddy of mine said he couldn’t see it. Like, I thought he was just trying to pull a goof on me or something.”

“Oh, right, um, hello people. I’m Billy, I was at the camp, I saw Scott Reese be a total dick, and I’m pretty sure your girlfriend there stole my pipe.” Rita’s eyes went wide and she gripped Martin’s knee, avoiding Billy’s gaze. “Um, that was all you needed right Britney? Cool, man, cool. Anyway, I don’t know where I got that tat from, but things haven’t really been that weird since the camp. I mean, besides—”

Penny coughed loudly, worried that he was about to spill the beans about Karma. Billy caught on and shut his mouth. Rita did not.

“Um, besides what?” Rita asked, catching Billy’s eyes.

“I have had some really weird dreams lately. Super bizarre. Like, let’s see, the other night I dreamed that I was watching these kids in the woods and…” Billy, as if in a trance, proceeded to describe a dream that would sound familiar to all of those in the room. Rita looked away as he talked; Penny stared at him in shock. “And then the Illuminati dude was like ‘He’s an Awakened’ and then I woke up, which is pretty crazy timing, if you think about it, right?”

“I had the same nightmare,” muttered Rita, staring at the table.

Penny frowned. She had too; what the fuck was going on?


Grand Ridge Academy - Conference Room.



The questioning had been long but relatively painless. Between his parents and the waitress at the diner, Billy’s time frame did not match up with the estimated time of death, no DNA evidence pointed his way, and it really seemed like the detective questioning him did not want to be there super long. He was commended for calling the cops, given a firm handshake, told not to mention anything about this as it might hinder the investigation, given a small snack and a cup of joe, and then sent merrily on his way. Overall, not a bad experience outside of the mental image of Karma’s twisted body burned on to the inside of his eyelids. Still, he had managed to keep the details under wraps for an entire twenty four hours before he had ran into Penny outside of Grand Ridge Academy.

Penny had taken to staying in the dorms, even though they only lived a few minutes away. Physically, she looked healthier than yesterday, but the scowl on her face offset the warmness of her orange dress and Billy knew that she was glaring at him from beneath her sunglasses. Possibly she was judging him for still wearing cargo shorts—not just because it was fall, but because he even owned them at all—or, also very likely, she was just upset that he was approaching her in public. Although, she would’ve been just as upset if he had approached her in private.

“Penny, am I glad to see you,” said Billy.

“Really?” she said, the word dragging its way out of her mouth as if even acknowledging him was a great struggle.

“Well, maybe not glad. You’re going to the meeting right?”

Penny sighed. She was, thanks to Lynette and Aliana, although she had been mulling over the idea of ditching the thing entirely. Yes, she needed to know more about these bizarre, terrifying abilities, but the idea that they would all be gathered together in one place filled her with trepidation. She just knew things would turn rotten. Or, even worse, maybe it would turn into an actual support group, and they would sit around and talk about their feelings for an hour and cry together and then go get ice cream afterwards and—Penny shook her head. No way was she going to have a bonding session with a bunch of assholes.

“I think I’m gonna…” She didn’t get a chance to finish before Billy cut her off.

“That one chick, Carmen? Camilla? Karma? Karma. She was at the camp, right? Somebody totally Jack the Rippered her yesterday. It was nuts, dude. Maybe it’s just coincidence, but—”

It was Penny’s turn to interrupt. “It’s not.” She bit her lip. As far as she knew, there had been no reports or even rumors about Karma’s death at all. Looks like she was going to the meeting after all. “Do you know who did it?”

“My first guess would be Scott Reese.”

“Yeah.” Penny’s eyes narrowed. Maybe. Maybe not. “Don’t say anything about this, okay? At least not right away. We don’t want to...start a panic,” she said, changing what she was going to say halfway through the sentence.

“Sure, I get that, man, but maybe we should warn people that that asshole is out picking off survivors.”

“We will, we will,” said Penny, frowning. “Just let’s be thoughtful about it, okay? I know it’s tough for you to use your brain, but trust me, this is the best way to go about it.”

They continued to bicker back and forth as they walked together to the meeting room, their voices hushed and hurried. Their conversation faded away when they made it to the door, Penny feeling as if she had won the argument, and the siblings split apart. Billy seized the moment to take the chair at the end opposite of the table from Britney, giving her a wink before he kicked up his feet and leaned back, balancing the chair on two legs. There was something powerful about sitting at the head of a big table. Maybe he should grab a clipboard, make himself look official as well.

Penny had planned to grab three seats for Lynette, Aliana, and herself, but the sight of Britney boiled her blood so much that she refused to even sit at the same table as that woman. She stood away from the table, her arms folded across her chest as she leaned on the ledge of a window sill. Her sunglasses were pushed up, and anyone who looked her way would see the daggers she was shooting at Britney.

Seated near the middle of the table was Rita, her head hung and her phone out as she pretended to text someone that wasn’t there. She wore a crisp, collared shirt with the sleeves completely buttoned down, and her left hand was sandwiched between her overlapped knees. It was clear that she was uncomfortable being in that room, and she sunk even further into her chair as their host began to speak. She didn’t even notice that the girl who had rescued her from Scott Reese or the guy she had stolen skunk weed from had entered the room. Billy, however, had noticed her; an amused smirk appeared on his face.

"Let's give everyone a bit of time to get here," Britney said, "Then... I guess we'll start?"

“Oh, really?” said Penny with a snip. “Shit! That’s a brilliant plan. I’m really glad you’re running this. Seriously, like, I thought for sure we were all just gonna hang around looking at each other like a bunch of assholes for an hour and then go home. Gosh, clearly you put a lot of thought into this. I cannot wait to see how it goes.”

Market Square - Diner


Pancake heaven. That was where he was, resting on a fluffy cloud of fried batter and being smothered with sweet, sticky syrup. Billy had must’ve eaten over a dozen pancakes at this point, and the only thing that would slow him down was the increasingly irritated state the waitress appeared to be in when he demanded another round. Between inhalations, the boy scrolled through his phone, skimming over various local new stories that were interlaced with overused memes. Earlier that morning he had gotten a text from his buddy Chris, who worked security at Grand Ridge and had turned a blind eye to Billy’s dealings in favor of a hefty discount, about how his sister had been a mighty bitch. Billy had ultimately ignored the text. He had known that about Penny since she was a toddler; it wasn’t his fault that it took Chris that long to realize the simple truth.

The follow-up text was hard to ignore. The rent-a-cop wanted something to take off the edge of dealing with his kid sister, which added yet another person that he was going to have to kindly pretend to forget about. See, Billy’s supply had run a bit dry, and he wasn’t about to give up his own personal cache. His prescription only allowed him to get so much a month, but there were other means of obtaining more. They just were, well, a bit of a hassle, and pretty much a headache that Billy didn’t want to put up with. Alternatively, he could just ghost everyone, which ultimately seemed like the best plan because it was the simplest one. It wouldn’t be the first time he had let them all down, anyway.

So, he pretty much had an entire day free to do nothing which...was pretty much all of his days, really, excluding the ones where he had to go into his dad’s shop. He figured he would hit up the arcade, maybe work on the car a bit, go catch a flick, and then spend the rest of the day playing video games at home. All in all, a pretty good day. After killing another stack of flapjacks Billy bopped out of the diner, deciding to stretch his legs and walk the two blocks to the arcade instead of jumping in his car. Plus, he knew a shortcut. Billy turned a corner and cut through an alleyway.

Generally, Billy was pretty stoked when he saw a topless chick, especially one that he wasn’t viewing through the screen of his computer. Yet when he stumbled upon the burnt, battered, and slashed corpse of Karma Song, the only thing he felt were the pancakes in his stomach fighting to get out. Emptying the contents of his stomach, Billy managed to stumble out of the alley and grab his phone. The call was a blur, and the next thing he knew he was riding in a police cruiser on his way to the station to be questioned.

So much for having a free day.
@Surtr IncWe gotta Rita & Martin collab in the shop right now.
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