somethingwithturquoise | MHA #3; Late, Late, LATE Wednesday Night [06/24]

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MHA #3; Late, Late, LATE Wednesday Night [06/24] - NFB.

This was probably a terrible idea and wholly unnecessary, but Summer had never let that stop her from doing things before, and even the slim possibility that their worst fears were actually right, they couldn't feel that bad about it. Besides, it would just be a real quick thing, just break in and look around for the dog, hopefully not find the dog, and then bam. Done. Mystery solved, and both she and Seivarden could sleep better that night.

Even if she had her doubts about Seivarden's motivation being about the dog. She wasn't the one who had to try to sleep thinking there might be a poor dead dog in the apartment next door to her!

So in the wee hours of the night, after her shift at Caritas, Summer made her way down the hallway of her floor in MHA, glanced down both ways of the hallway and listened carefully for sounds of stirring or midnight piano from Lucille's apartment, and then moved forward toward Rosa's door, gesturing for Seivarden to follow.

"Okay," she whispered, "coast is clear. You stand watch while I try and see what I can do about this lock."

This was a super terrible idea, but they were already here, sooooooo....

[[ for the partner in literal crime, apartment totally modded with permission, and NFB, please, not only for the hour but also because Summer totally promised Leroy another date if he kept his squirrel mouth shut ]]

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It was a terrible idea. Seivarden knew it was a terrible idea.

"Ok," she said. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Like I said," said Summer, kneeling down in front of the door and setting down a small kit of tools...pink, of course, "this ain't my first rodeo. Now be quiet before you wake someone up and just keep watch while I get this. Suprisingly, it doesn't look like it's rigged at all, so this should be a piece of cake."

Honestly, it was almost disappointingly easy after dealing with Rick's locks for so long. No spring loaded tranq darts, no complicated plasma recognition modules, no focused lasers that would likely make your head explode. She honestly expected more from you, Diaz.

But it was a good lock, she'd give her that, and complicated, so it took a little bit of work and jimmying, but she got it eventually, grinning at the sound of a satisfying click.

"Got it," she announced proudly. "We're i--"

But when she pushed at the door, it still wouldn't budge.

"Wait, no, hold on," she amended, sitting up a little higher as she noticed a second lock, "there's another one."

Which made sense, buuuut....

"This is Rosa," Seivarden said, glancing down at Summer.

And Summer looked back up at Seivarden so that she could witness every single second of her epic, massive eyeroll that that comment deserved.

"Okay, then," she said, turning her attention back to the lock, "you tell me: how many locks does she have on this thing? You're the one who should know."

"You missed two," Seivarden said, pointing them out. "She wouldn't be Rosa if she had just one."

"Wrong," said Summer, after getting the second lock done and then looking up at the third one Seivarden pointed out, scanning the door closely and finding another. "There are four." She pointed to the newly discovered one, and smirked. "Looks like she's added one. Like...paranoid much? Sheesh."

She said, as she hastily took care of dismantling the next one.

"It's Rosa," Seivarden pointed out. "And you can't expect me to keep updated on the number of her locks."

"It just makes me wonder," said Summer, who grunted slightly with her attempts to really get in there with Lock #3, "if the addition was, you know, reactionary or just sort of a natural progression."

"Who would break in? Squirrels? Raccoons?"

Seivarden snorted

"She's just... overly cautious."

"Well, definitely not neighbors and exes," Summer said brightly, "that's for sure!"

The third one was down, the easiest of them so far, but that just meant the fourth one was the hardest, like some sort of boss battle. But, thankfully, for all its complexity, it still didn't involve microscopic flesh eating alien particles to be released on contact, so Summer was still pretty confident about it, even if she needed to focus her concentation on lockpicking over banter for a moment.

"I'm not an..." Seivarden began, then decided it was better to ignore the subject.

"Is it working?"

"Hold your horses," said Summer. "So impatient! I just kill three locks in a stupid amount of time, you know. This one's a bit more complicated, and I'm hearing way more talking out of you than keeping watch..."

And then, with a quick jam of a screwdriver, a faint 'ow!', and a satisfying click (and a slightly worrisome crack, but Summer wasn't going to worry about it), the locks were picked and she pushed the door open.

After grinning up triumphantly at Seivarden.

"Ta-daah!"

And them she scrambled to her feet and slowly pushed it open a little .ore so she could slip inside and start looking around.

"At least," she said, "it doesn't look like she's moving out. All her stuff is still here..."

Then she slid a grin over to Seivardn that she hoped she could still see in the darkness of the room.

"What a relief, huh?"

Seivarden didn't reply to that, just snorted, and followed Summer.

"No smell, no dog licking out shoes, I think Rosa probably took her with her."

"We should at least look around though, right?" asked Summer, who had already started doing just that by venturing into the living room and scoping out a shelf with books and DVDs on in. You know, for the dog and stuff...

"Man," she murmured, "Rosa's apartment is way nice than mine. I wonder if she hired a designer or something..."

"Summer," Seivarden said, following her. "You do realize what Rosa will do if she finds out you've been going through her things?"

No dog, no smell. They should probably leave.

"Ummmmmm," said Summer, looking over her shoulder at Seivarden with a snort, "that was something we should have thought of before we went gung ho on all her millions of locks. "

"Looking for her dog is a bit different from going through her things," Seivarden asked.

She looked around, saw a RoboCop DVD-case and picked it up. She looked at the image on the front, then turned it around.

"'with titanium armor, computer-assisted memory, and a lifetime of on-the-street law enforcement programming, he becomes one of OCP's biggest PR coups.'"

"Ohmygod," said Summer, "is that RoboCop? That movie sucks."

She could totally see why Rosa would have it, though.

"I'm going to check the bedroom," she decided, getting up from where she'd just checked under the sofa. She pointed toward her best guess.

"This way?"

Since Seivarden would know.

"It really does," Seivarden said. "And no."

No to checking out the bedroom, not no to that way.

Well, Summer didn't ask that, did she? She was already at the door, anyway, and opening it, poking her head in.

"We should have brought flashlights," she noted, reaching for the light switch and flipping it on. "Liar. This is totally it. Or did you, like, forget?"

And then in she went.

"Summer, wait!"

Seivarden put the DVD case down, and followed her.

"We didn't come here to go through Rosa's things."

"I'm not going through her things," Summer said, although Seivarden might not have seen her at first. She was on the other side of the bed, looking under it, and then looked her head back up to look at her from the other side, "chill. I just wanted to look under the bed. They say animals will try to find a safe hidden spot to die if they know they're about to bite the dust, and that seemed the most logical place. No doggie corpse, though, so I think we're good. Unless you can think of anywhere else."

She took a moment, though, to lean o the bed, folding her arms I front of her, and looking around. Rosa was such a private person that this was insanely fascinating to Summer, and her eyes fell toward one of the closet doors.

"Is it true," she asked, "that she has a closet just filled with weapons? I heard she has a closet filled with weapons."

"If she did I wouldn't tell you," Seivarden said, not looking at the closet door.

She glanced around the room, reluctantly looking for changes since she had last been here. Then there were the uncomfortable feelings around the memories of things that used to be good, to make her happy, and she said:

"Let's go."

"She totally does," said Summer, grinning with confidence. "One full of weapons and one full of just leather jackets."

God, Rosa, how could someone so cool ever actually...Summer just looked at Seivarden for a moment and shook her head in disappointment. Then, with a heavy sigh, she put her hands on the bed to push herself up to her feet.

"But you're right," she said. "I think it's safe to say that there's no dead do--"

It was just at that moment, of course, that there was the sound of a bark from the living room. Any color that had been in Summer's face drained away as her eyes widened.

"Oh mygod," she said. "She is dead, and now her dead dog ghost is here to haunt us because we couldn't find her body to put her properly to rest!"

"Actually, Summer..."

Seivarden looked towards the door, wishing that this was a ghost dog and not a live one.

"I don't think she's dead."

Summer was just going to stare at Seivarden for a moment. "If she's not dead," she said, "then that means she must have been here the whole time and we just missed her, because the only other explanation means that Rosa, like, literally just got back, but that's impossible, because this isn't some kind of goddamn sitcom. Who the fuck comes back in the middle of the night, just when two people who just broke into their place find themselves in the most inconvenient and difficult-to-escape-from spot in the entire apartment? Come on."

But, unfortunately, that was exactly what was happening.

Because of course it would be, Summer.

With another bark, Anna Pavlova came bounding into the bedroom with all the energy and excitement one would expect from quite possibly the worlds' dumbest forever puppy, because she could tell from the moment she came into the apartment that one of her favorite friends who she never, ever, ever got to see anymore was here, and it was the best surprise, so she went tearing after her scent with an excited bark and went right for Seivarden the moment she was in the bedroom. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do more: leap up on her for all the pets and what have you or get to licking her shoes, so what she wound up doing was some desperate and unsuccessful attempt to do both simultaniously.

Seivarden stared down at the dog.

"Oh, fuck."

You know, when Rosa got back to her apartment to find all her locks picked and the door slightly ajar, the light in her bedroom on, she was expecting some pretty messed up Fandom shit. And that ran a wide gamut of possibilities. But absolutely none of them came even close to how messed up the actual answer was.

Because as she crept up to the door with her gun drawn, ready to shoot the shit out of or at least severely damage whatever brainiac idiot thought it was a good idea to break into her apartment, she absolutely recognized that Oh, fuck.

And that didn't even take into account the fact that Rosa was about to discover that Seivarden wasn't even alone.

"Are you fucking kidding me."

It was not a question. But at least she'd slightly lowered the gun, while her brain tried to reconcile any sort of possible explanation for what was going on here.

"You two assholes better be fucking riddled with gremlin bites right now, or I swear to god..."

A number of strategies went through Seivarden's head, before she settled on the truth.

"Summer was worried your fucking dog might have starved to death in here."

It was mostly the truth, not that Seivarden actually thought Rosa would believe it.

"Why would--" Rosa started, stopped, closed her eyes as she drew in the biggest possible breath. And held it, for however long it would take to prevent her from just blasting them both in the knee caps right then and there.

Or at least their shoulders, since Anna Pavlova was too close to Seivarden's knee caps and Summer was still kneeling on the otherside of the bed looking like a deer caught in headlights since her plan to duck underneath the bed before Rosa saw her had clearly not worked.

But if she shot them, then she'd have to deal with blood on her carpet, and this was enough to deal with right now without adding that to it.

"You know what?" she said, once she let that breath go. "I don't even fucking care." She stepped aside to make room, gesturing toward the door. "Just get the fuck out."

"Don't have to tell me twice!" said Summer, almost brightly, because anything was better than being murdered, which she was one-hundred-percent sure was about to go down, and she hopped up, sprung herself over the bed. Wich didn't take into account that Rosa's bed was bigger than her own, so it started as a leap and turned into a slightly awkward scoot until she was on the other side, where she stood back up awkwardly close to Rosa, let out the most uncomfortable little sound known to mankind, shrinking into her shoulders a little.

"Totally just getting the fuck out," she assured Rosa, shrinking a little under her glare and sidling her way toward the door.

For once Seivarden did the smart thing.

"Summer! The dog is alive, let's go."

And with a few strides she was out of the room, past Rosa.

Not only did Seivarden have a very oblivious Anna Pavlova prancing after her with each of those strides, but she and Summer both had nothing but daggers from Rosa's eyes following them each and every second as they had to move past her to get through the door. And sharp as those daggers were, they had absolutely nothing on the hard set of her jaw.

As Seivarden walked past her, though, Rosa almost said something. She almost reached out to grab a hold of her shirt so she could stop her and pull her in and let her know in absolutely no uncertain terms that if she ever saw her face again in any context other than it being a very small island and it was sometimes impossible to completely avoid a person, she would end her, but...she didn't.

She'd spent the last few weeks trying to come to term with some things, and doing that would completely undo everything she had tried to work while she was gone. And she wasn't going to give Hot Leaf Water the satisfaction of screwing that all up before she could even get started.

So it was just daggers and a firm jaw and a demeanor that was colder and more frigid than the Arctic, and just wanting them gone so she could figure out what she was even feeling right now and just scream and burn this whole place down.

It's not like it would even be the first apartment she'd had to do that to...

Seivarden was quickly out of the door, not even bothering to see if Summer was following. Her face was burning, her heart was beating, and then there was this feeling of shame over something she had no idea why she had done in the first place.

It made no sense. Her instinct was to blame Summer, but even she knew that would only make things worse.

Yeaaaah, Summer could really not get out of that apartment fast enough, although she forced herself to not pretty much just run out of it so she could maybe maintain some level of dignity. Of course, for her, this was like going from one super awkward situation right into another one because she may have been able to leave Rosa and her closet full of weapons behind her, but she still had to deal with Seivarden now and the fact that this disaster had sort of all been Summer's idea in the first place.

Well, not entirely. Seivarden had planted an awful lot of seeds in her brain on Monday, to be fair...

It felt a little stupid once she did it, but as soon as they were back out into the hallway, she very quietly, carefully, closed the door. And then winced a little, her face scrunching up as if it couldn't find just the right apologetic, sheepish expression to give Seivarden now that they were clear.

"Well, heeeeeeey," she ventured, "at least the dog's not dead, right?"

And neither were they, which honestly seemed like the much bigger accomplishment right now.

All Seivarden did was glare at her, then she headed towards the stairs, keeping ahead of Summer. She just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.

And that was, like, totally fair, but also, like, ouch. Harsh. They were in this together!

Summer threw up her hands. "It's not like I could have known she'd come back, in the middle of the night, on a Wednesay!" she called out after Seivarden. "Geez."

And then her arms dropped and she looked over to her own apartment door and shook her head. At least her walk of shame would be a short one, but she was kind of worried about poison gas in the vents or something now...

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MHA #3; Late, Late, LATE Wednesday Night [06/24] - NFB.

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