PPC Mission 1: i kissed the rogue
Mission 1: i kissed the rogue
Title: i kissed the rogue
Author: bloom00011
Rating: T
Obligatory linkage: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5035998/1/i_kissed_the_rogue
Sporked by: dawnbluewings, as Agent Rose/Ross
Notes: Noting too horrific, if you don't mind the mangling of the English language...
Disclaimer: I do not own the PPC. It was created by the incomparable Jay and Acacia many, many years ago. Nor do I own this fic. Thank the gods. What I do own is Agent Rose/Ross, for whom Permission was granted on June 22nd, 2009, by Techno-Dann. Thank you.
***
The Console beeped sheepishly. It almost seemed like it didn’t want to attract the rage of the pair of siblings currently arguing at the top of their collective lungs in the middle of Response Center Sp’nüff(24).
“What is it?” snapped Ross, the male of the pair, glaring daggers at the console.
“I’ll check it out,” said Rose, his twin sister, sighing, brushing her short hair out of her bespectacled eyes, and giving the console a glare identical to the one that her brother had just produced.
It took a moment, but then her face drained all color for a full second before coming back with a vengeance. “Oh gods Ross. You’re not going to like this…”
“I rarely do,” replied her brother, acerbically, before looking down at the console. A full thirty seconds later, he raised his head to look up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and screamed.
Once that little outburst was done with, he pinched the bridge of his nose, clutching at the console so hard that Rose was afraid that either console or fingers might be damaged if she didn’t intervene. “Oh gods Beka, what has she done to you?” demanded Ross, softly.
Rebakah Cooper, Rose knew from experience, was one of her brother’s favorites, as well as one of his Lust Objects. And to see her this… Well… “Disguise?” she asked, quietly.
“Thief,” he responded, automatically, and began turning knobs and pressing buttons. “Let’s see… We have Whatthehell and Ow… The RA… The CAD… Volume ALL the way down, please… What am I not thinking of?”
“Bag of punctuation, Jar, and the Crash Dummy. First Person, remember, and we can’t afford to get caught as… That.” Rose gestured helplessly at the screen, and grabbed the Crash Dummy from under a pile of books.
“You ready?” It was a ridiculous question, but nonetheless… Ross pushed the button to open the portal, and, pushing the Dummy in front of them, the twins stepped through into…
“Gorramit she never even defined the space!” raged Rose, as she watched the Dummy run along in an ill-defined direction. The place that they now stood in looked surprisingly similar to the halls of PPC HQ, in that it was completely gray, and the only indication of space was that the direction that their head was pointed in had to be up.
“It’s a tactical retreat.” Keep telling yourself that but it dosent make it true
The first line of dialogue, for all it was worth, could have been much worse. It was the unpunctuated, italicized, misspelled speech that followed that made Rose and Ross fall to their knees and wince. “Periods,” muttered Ross, looking pained. “And commas… Please…”
“Oh please,” responded Rose, with a shake of her head. “The author probably isn’t even old enough to have periods, let alone use them in her stories…”
“Charge one. Lack of punctuation. Charge two. Lack of dialogue tags. Charge three. Lack of apostrophes.” Ross was muttering to himself as he quickly noted down the charges as they accumulated.
I cant believe that I did it finaly I Rebeka Cooper snogged and socked the king of the rogue.
Ross covered his eyes at the lack of punctuation. Rose carefully waited for him to uncover his eyes, and noted Charge four. “Creation of the Mini-Stormwing ‘Rebeka Cooper’.” Rose beckoned invitingly to the Mini-Stormwing, with a smile. “Charge five. Using the word ‘Snogged’. Charge six. Lack of capitalization. Good gods, we’re only three sentences in, aren’t we?”
“What’s a ‘nect bend’?” demanded Ross, head in hands.
“Well, charge seven, for a start,” said his sister, making a note.
At the next snatch of dialogue, Ross saw red. “Faithful? Faithful?”
“Actually,” replied his sister, “no. faithful. Come here, precious!” she called to the newly appeared second Mini, cooing in affection toward the little ball of razor-blades on legs (and wings).
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that at this point in the Canon, the Goddess’s Cat is known as Pounce. Not Faithful. Or faithful.” Ross was irate, but managed to calm himself enough to bend and pick up the newly arrived Mini, which was no small operation, considering just how sharp the creatures were.
“Well, faithful, I guess you’re ours now…” Rose says, then winces as she realizes that everything is suddenly in present tense. “Wait, how exactly does one scamper ‘cwickly’?” she asks, rubbing at her temples. Ross simply gestures helplessly as the Dummy manages to break into a hidden side street through a line of ‘launder’. The environment begins to coalesce around the twins as they follow the Dummy into the ‘kennle safehouse’, which looks something like a very large dog crate.
Rose doubled over in pain as past-tense reasserted itself long enough for the Dummy to jump onto a ‘cloth covered bunk’, then found herself on the floor as a line of colons whizzed past.
Ross, wisely, decided to stay down, just in time to avoid too much nausea from a sudden and ill-defined flashback.
The twins watched with sighs and shakes of the head as the first sentence of the Flashback whizzed by.
Walkind down the black coridores of the rouges coure people openly staired, some even stopped what they were doing to gape at the dog summoned by the rogue himself.
“It’s adorable!” squealed Rose, doing her best to ignore what a ‘coridores’ or a ‘coure’ was, or how someone could be ‘walkind’ or manage to have ‘staired’.
“What is?” demanded Ross, with another long-suffering sigh.
“ ‘the dog summoned by the rogue himself’!” cried his sister, with glee, and ran forward to grab the canine by the scruff of its neck before the Sue-Dummy showed up and ‘quickly sauntered’ - “How exactly does one quickly saunter?” demanded Rose, as the dog - a German Shepherd, by the look of it - attempted to lick her face. “I thought that sauntering implied slowness…” Nonetheless, the Dummy managed it, with an effect somewhat similar to fast-forwarding a VCR.
Rose ducked just in time to not get concussed by an in-text author’s note questioning the makeup of something, before the Dummy threw open - “No, ‘opem’,” muttered Ross, with a groan - the “doard of the main chamber”.
“What, precisely, is a ‘doard’?” demanded Rose, staring in fascination at the things that the Dummy had just thrown ‘opem’. “And how does someone throw something ‘opem’?”
“Honey, if this made any sense, we wouldn’t be here,” her twin reminded her, with another sigh, as the dog that they had snatched up succeeded in licking his face.
“you’ve no right to tell me what to do Piper im a dog not some lap gixi you can toy with” I said fuming.
Rose cocked her head to one side in fascination as the Dummy transformed into a dog very much like the one that she was still trying to control.
“Misspelling ‘gixie’… Improper capitalization… lack of any punctuation whatsoever… making Beka call Rosto - that is supposed to be Rosto, right? - ‘Piper’…” Ross was busy scribbling down charges, though he had now abandoned the notebook in favor of his left arm.
“iv no intention of doing that love I just wanted to do something with you quickly” he said with a crooked grin and a twinkle in his eye that surly ment mischief.
“Ment?” demanded Rose. “What does that even mean?”
“Badfic, dear… oh gods that’s disgusting.” The ‘he’ that probably meant Rosto the Piper had just come down from his ‘dias’ and pulled the Sue-Dummy-Dog’s lips to his. Which meant, roughly, that he was standing holding her lips to his, while the Sue-Dummy-Dog stood placidly without said lips.
After the assertion that she could hear only one ‘thaught’, whatever that was, and as ‘he’ licked the bottom of the pair of lips he held, the Sue-Dummy-Dog turned its head away, morphed back into a human-shaped Dummy, and punched ‘him’ in the jaw. After another brief mention of her ‘thaughts’, she turned and ran, and Rose and Ross found themself on the floor again as time snapped back to the present - and present tense.
It was lucky, actually, that they were on the floor, as just a moment later an author’s note barreled passed to imbed itself in the wall opposite:
AN; will continue if you give me some ideas, remember one review at least or I don’t update the story.
“No such luck,” muttered Ross, darkly. “She got four reviews, and we’ve got another chapter…”
Rose simply groaned, and stayed down, as the abrupt shift to Chapter 2 happened.
“oww” I shot up in bead to fing pidgins all around me, I must have falled asleep.
Ross was the one groaning now, at the sight of the dummy lying in a large glass bead, then ‘shooting up’ in it, an effect rather like bouncing on a trampoline, to ‘fing’ ‘pidgins’.
“Well, now we’ve seen fingers fing,” said Rose, with the air of one who is morbidly fascinated by a trainwreck.
“I hope we never have to see it ever again…” murmured Ross, looking at the ‘pidgins’, which were something like pigeons, only large, black, and leathery. They were also covered with broken spelling and grammar in silvery cursive letters. “Can we have one?” he asked, finally, as the Dummy proceeded to talk to the pidgins.
“Sure, grab one, I guess, but I think I’m ending this before she let’s Rosto sneak up behind her.” Rose followed the Sue-Dummy as it ‘wondered’ into the kitchen, and wrestled out the CAD, making sure the volume was muted (It was always muted, Ross had welded it muted a few missions prior) before pointing it at the Sue.
[Beka Cooper. Canon/uncanon/canon… UNCANON. Replacement Sue. Kill it!]
“Well then,” said Ross, and, putting the pidgin he had just grabbed on top of the head of the dog from earlier, pulled out his fountain pen, Whatthehell, as Rose grabbed her modified fencing sabre Ow. With these two instruments, the twins backed the Sue-Dummy up against a wall, and glared.
Rose took a deep breath, and the twins said, in unison, “You, the entity claiming to be Rebakah Cooper, are hereby charged with the following crimes: Lack of punctuation, lack of dialogue tags, lack of apostrophes, creation of Mini-Stormwings, to whit, ‘Rebeka Cooper’ and ‘faithful’, calling the Goddess’s Cat ‘faithful’ at a time when he would have been known as ‘Pounce’, using the word ‘Snogged’ in a continuum in which this is inappropriate, lack of capitalization, using present tense narrative - inconsistently, no less! -, creating various grammatical and linguistic impossibilities, including but not limited to, the ‘nect bend’, ‘coridores’, the ‘coure’, the ‘doard’, which is apparently plural, the ‘dias’, ‘thaughts’, which I suppose are something similar to ‘thoughts’, causing people to ‘stair’, somehow managing to be ‘walkind’, throwing the ‘doard’ ‘opem’, ‘ment’, ‘finging’… The creation of an extraneous dog that has been summoned by the rogue, creating ‘pidgins’, managing to wake up in ‘bead’, managing to ‘wonder oveer’, being unsure of the makeup of your own ‘doard’, using an in-text author’s note to prove this, failing to properly identify the ‘he’ that you are talking about, making Beka call Rosto ‘Piper’, having ‘falled’ asleep, yet more wondering, scampering ‘cwickly’, managing to saunter quickly, basic cruelty to the common comma, consistent lack of apostrophes, consistent lack of capitalization, consistent lack of ANY punctuation, for that matter, causing Agents of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum to have sever headaches, just plain pissing off said Agents, and, last but not least, being a Replacement Sue for Rebakah Cooper. For these crimes, as well as many more, by the power vested in us by the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, we sentence you to die.”
With that, Ross tapped the dummy on the head with his fountain pen, and hustled the Sueish spirit into his Jar, before quickly capping the jar and grinning. “Good. Now. What to do with this one?”
“Dump her in the Crack of Doom,” replied his sister, instantly, and opened a portal there, dropping the Sue through it and sealing it up. “Okay… let’s send these Minis and the dog and your Pidgin back to the RC and go find the real Beka?”
“Agreed,” said Ross, opening the portal and shooing the aforementioned creatures through, before fidgeting the RA, and opening a portal to the likeliest possible place that Beka might be. Sure enough, back in the undefined alleyway space, Beka sat, trussed up and looking furious. “Hello, miss Cooper,” said Ross, carefully untying the Dog before grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back through a portal to her own apartment. “Please look here,” he said, producing a neuralyzer and popping on sunglasses.
[Flash!]
“Thank you, miss Cooper. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened today. Carry on.” With that, Ross opened a portal back to their RC, and the twins stepped through, to face the two Minis, dog, and Pidgin that awaited them. Actaully, Pidgins. There were several, all glaring balefully with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m… not going to ask,” said Rose, and shook her head.
“I am so glad that’s over,’ muttered Ross, fishing their pet rat out from behind the Console, and slumping down in the RC’s one chair.
“You’re telling me,” agreed his sister, slipping back into control of their shared body and stretching their arms above their head with a wide yawn, as the dog jumped into their lap. “Hello there,” she murmured, scratching it behind its ears. “What are we going to call you, hmmm?”
Title: i kissed the rogue
Author: bloom00011
Rating: T
Obligatory linkage: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5035998/1/i_kissed_the_rogue
Sporked by: dawnbluewings, as Agent Rose/Ross
Notes: Noting too horrific, if you don't mind the mangling of the English language...
Disclaimer: I do not own the PPC. It was created by the incomparable Jay and Acacia many, many years ago. Nor do I own this fic. Thank the gods. What I do own is Agent Rose/Ross, for whom Permission was granted on June 22nd, 2009, by Techno-Dann. Thank you.
***
The Console beeped sheepishly. It almost seemed like it didn’t want to attract the rage of the pair of siblings currently arguing at the top of their collective lungs in the middle of Response Center Sp’nüff(24).
“What is it?” snapped Ross, the male of the pair, glaring daggers at the console.
“I’ll check it out,” said Rose, his twin sister, sighing, brushing her short hair out of her bespectacled eyes, and giving the console a glare identical to the one that her brother had just produced.
It took a moment, but then her face drained all color for a full second before coming back with a vengeance. “Oh gods Ross. You’re not going to like this…”
“I rarely do,” replied her brother, acerbically, before looking down at the console. A full thirty seconds later, he raised his head to look up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, and screamed.
Once that little outburst was done with, he pinched the bridge of his nose, clutching at the console so hard that Rose was afraid that either console or fingers might be damaged if she didn’t intervene. “Oh gods Beka, what has she done to you?” demanded Ross, softly.
Rebakah Cooper, Rose knew from experience, was one of her brother’s favorites, as well as one of his Lust Objects. And to see her this… Well… “Disguise?” she asked, quietly.
“Thief,” he responded, automatically, and began turning knobs and pressing buttons. “Let’s see… We have Whatthehell and Ow… The RA… The CAD… Volume ALL the way down, please… What am I not thinking of?”
“Bag of punctuation, Jar, and the Crash Dummy. First Person, remember, and we can’t afford to get caught as… That.” Rose gestured helplessly at the screen, and grabbed the Crash Dummy from under a pile of books.
“You ready?” It was a ridiculous question, but nonetheless… Ross pushed the button to open the portal, and, pushing the Dummy in front of them, the twins stepped through into…
“Gorramit she never even defined the space!” raged Rose, as she watched the Dummy run along in an ill-defined direction. The place that they now stood in looked surprisingly similar to the halls of PPC HQ, in that it was completely gray, and the only indication of space was that the direction that their head was pointed in had to be up.
“It’s a tactical retreat.” Keep telling yourself that but it dosent make it true
The first line of dialogue, for all it was worth, could have been much worse. It was the unpunctuated, italicized, misspelled speech that followed that made Rose and Ross fall to their knees and wince. “Periods,” muttered Ross, looking pained. “And commas… Please…”
“Oh please,” responded Rose, with a shake of her head. “The author probably isn’t even old enough to have periods, let alone use them in her stories…”
“Charge one. Lack of punctuation. Charge two. Lack of dialogue tags. Charge three. Lack of apostrophes.” Ross was muttering to himself as he quickly noted down the charges as they accumulated.
I cant believe that I did it finaly I Rebeka Cooper snogged and socked the king of the rogue.
Ross covered his eyes at the lack of punctuation. Rose carefully waited for him to uncover his eyes, and noted Charge four. “Creation of the Mini-Stormwing ‘Rebeka Cooper’.” Rose beckoned invitingly to the Mini-Stormwing, with a smile. “Charge five. Using the word ‘Snogged’. Charge six. Lack of capitalization. Good gods, we’re only three sentences in, aren’t we?”
“What’s a ‘nect bend’?” demanded Ross, head in hands.
“Well, charge seven, for a start,” said his sister, making a note.
At the next snatch of dialogue, Ross saw red. “Faithful? Faithful?”
“Actually,” replied his sister, “no. faithful. Come here, precious!” she called to the newly appeared second Mini, cooing in affection toward the little ball of razor-blades on legs (and wings).
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that at this point in the Canon, the Goddess’s Cat is known as Pounce. Not Faithful. Or faithful.” Ross was irate, but managed to calm himself enough to bend and pick up the newly arrived Mini, which was no small operation, considering just how sharp the creatures were.
“Well, faithful, I guess you’re ours now…” Rose says, then winces as she realizes that everything is suddenly in present tense. “Wait, how exactly does one scamper ‘cwickly’?” she asks, rubbing at her temples. Ross simply gestures helplessly as the Dummy manages to break into a hidden side street through a line of ‘launder’. The environment begins to coalesce around the twins as they follow the Dummy into the ‘kennle safehouse’, which looks something like a very large dog crate.
Rose doubled over in pain as past-tense reasserted itself long enough for the Dummy to jump onto a ‘cloth covered bunk’, then found herself on the floor as a line of colons whizzed past.
Ross, wisely, decided to stay down, just in time to avoid too much nausea from a sudden and ill-defined flashback.
The twins watched with sighs and shakes of the head as the first sentence of the Flashback whizzed by.
Walkind down the black coridores of the rouges coure people openly staired, some even stopped what they were doing to gape at the dog summoned by the rogue himself.
“It’s adorable!” squealed Rose, doing her best to ignore what a ‘coridores’ or a ‘coure’ was, or how someone could be ‘walkind’ or manage to have ‘staired’.
“What is?” demanded Ross, with another long-suffering sigh.
“ ‘the dog summoned by the rogue himself’!” cried his sister, with glee, and ran forward to grab the canine by the scruff of its neck before the Sue-Dummy showed up and ‘quickly sauntered’ - “How exactly does one quickly saunter?” demanded Rose, as the dog - a German Shepherd, by the look of it - attempted to lick her face. “I thought that sauntering implied slowness…” Nonetheless, the Dummy managed it, with an effect somewhat similar to fast-forwarding a VCR.
Rose ducked just in time to not get concussed by an in-text author’s note questioning the makeup of something, before the Dummy threw open - “No, ‘opem’,” muttered Ross, with a groan - the “doard of the main chamber”.
“What, precisely, is a ‘doard’?” demanded Rose, staring in fascination at the things that the Dummy had just thrown ‘opem’. “And how does someone throw something ‘opem’?”
“Honey, if this made any sense, we wouldn’t be here,” her twin reminded her, with another sigh, as the dog that they had snatched up succeeded in licking his face.
“you’ve no right to tell me what to do Piper im a dog not some lap gixi you can toy with” I said fuming.
Rose cocked her head to one side in fascination as the Dummy transformed into a dog very much like the one that she was still trying to control.
“Misspelling ‘gixie’… Improper capitalization… lack of any punctuation whatsoever… making Beka call Rosto - that is supposed to be Rosto, right? - ‘Piper’…” Ross was busy scribbling down charges, though he had now abandoned the notebook in favor of his left arm.
“iv no intention of doing that love I just wanted to do something with you quickly” he said with a crooked grin and a twinkle in his eye that surly ment mischief.
“Ment?” demanded Rose. “What does that even mean?”
“Badfic, dear… oh gods that’s disgusting.” The ‘he’ that probably meant Rosto the Piper had just come down from his ‘dias’ and pulled the Sue-Dummy-Dog’s lips to his. Which meant, roughly, that he was standing holding her lips to his, while the Sue-Dummy-Dog stood placidly without said lips.
After the assertion that she could hear only one ‘thaught’, whatever that was, and as ‘he’ licked the bottom of the pair of lips he held, the Sue-Dummy-Dog turned its head away, morphed back into a human-shaped Dummy, and punched ‘him’ in the jaw. After another brief mention of her ‘thaughts’, she turned and ran, and Rose and Ross found themself on the floor again as time snapped back to the present - and present tense.
It was lucky, actually, that they were on the floor, as just a moment later an author’s note barreled passed to imbed itself in the wall opposite:
AN; will continue if you give me some ideas, remember one review at least or I don’t update the story.
“No such luck,” muttered Ross, darkly. “She got four reviews, and we’ve got another chapter…”
Rose simply groaned, and stayed down, as the abrupt shift to Chapter 2 happened.
“oww” I shot up in bead to fing pidgins all around me, I must have falled asleep.
Ross was the one groaning now, at the sight of the dummy lying in a large glass bead, then ‘shooting up’ in it, an effect rather like bouncing on a trampoline, to ‘fing’ ‘pidgins’.
“Well, now we’ve seen fingers fing,” said Rose, with the air of one who is morbidly fascinated by a trainwreck.
“I hope we never have to see it ever again…” murmured Ross, looking at the ‘pidgins’, which were something like pigeons, only large, black, and leathery. They were also covered with broken spelling and grammar in silvery cursive letters. “Can we have one?” he asked, finally, as the Dummy proceeded to talk to the pidgins.
“Sure, grab one, I guess, but I think I’m ending this before she let’s Rosto sneak up behind her.” Rose followed the Sue-Dummy as it ‘wondered’ into the kitchen, and wrestled out the CAD, making sure the volume was muted (It was always muted, Ross had welded it muted a few missions prior) before pointing it at the Sue.
[Beka Cooper. Canon/uncanon/canon… UNCANON. Replacement Sue. Kill it!]
“Well then,” said Ross, and, putting the pidgin he had just grabbed on top of the head of the dog from earlier, pulled out his fountain pen, Whatthehell, as Rose grabbed her modified fencing sabre Ow. With these two instruments, the twins backed the Sue-Dummy up against a wall, and glared.
Rose took a deep breath, and the twins said, in unison, “You, the entity claiming to be Rebakah Cooper, are hereby charged with the following crimes: Lack of punctuation, lack of dialogue tags, lack of apostrophes, creation of Mini-Stormwings, to whit, ‘Rebeka Cooper’ and ‘faithful’, calling the Goddess’s Cat ‘faithful’ at a time when he would have been known as ‘Pounce’, using the word ‘Snogged’ in a continuum in which this is inappropriate, lack of capitalization, using present tense narrative - inconsistently, no less! -, creating various grammatical and linguistic impossibilities, including but not limited to, the ‘nect bend’, ‘coridores’, the ‘coure’, the ‘doard’, which is apparently plural, the ‘dias’, ‘thaughts’, which I suppose are something similar to ‘thoughts’, causing people to ‘stair’, somehow managing to be ‘walkind’, throwing the ‘doard’ ‘opem’, ‘ment’, ‘finging’… The creation of an extraneous dog that has been summoned by the rogue, creating ‘pidgins’, managing to wake up in ‘bead’, managing to ‘wonder oveer’, being unsure of the makeup of your own ‘doard’, using an in-text author’s note to prove this, failing to properly identify the ‘he’ that you are talking about, making Beka call Rosto ‘Piper’, having ‘falled’ asleep, yet more wondering, scampering ‘cwickly’, managing to saunter quickly, basic cruelty to the common comma, consistent lack of apostrophes, consistent lack of capitalization, consistent lack of ANY punctuation, for that matter, causing Agents of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum to have sever headaches, just plain pissing off said Agents, and, last but not least, being a Replacement Sue for Rebakah Cooper. For these crimes, as well as many more, by the power vested in us by the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, we sentence you to die.”
With that, Ross tapped the dummy on the head with his fountain pen, and hustled the Sueish spirit into his Jar, before quickly capping the jar and grinning. “Good. Now. What to do with this one?”
“Dump her in the Crack of Doom,” replied his sister, instantly, and opened a portal there, dropping the Sue through it and sealing it up. “Okay… let’s send these Minis and the dog and your Pidgin back to the RC and go find the real Beka?”
“Agreed,” said Ross, opening the portal and shooing the aforementioned creatures through, before fidgeting the RA, and opening a portal to the likeliest possible place that Beka might be. Sure enough, back in the undefined alleyway space, Beka sat, trussed up and looking furious. “Hello, miss Cooper,” said Ross, carefully untying the Dog before grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back through a portal to her own apartment. “Please look here,” he said, producing a neuralyzer and popping on sunglasses.
[Flash!]
“Thank you, miss Cooper. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened today. Carry on.” With that, Ross opened a portal back to their RC, and the twins stepped through, to face the two Minis, dog, and Pidgin that awaited them. Actaully, Pidgins. There were several, all glaring balefully with red-rimmed eyes. “I’m… not going to ask,” said Rose, and shook her head.
“I am so glad that’s over,’ muttered Ross, fishing their pet rat out from behind the Console, and slumping down in the RC’s one chair.
“You’re telling me,” agreed his sister, slipping back into control of their shared body and stretching their arms above their head with a wide yawn, as the dog jumped into their lap. “Hello there,” she murmured, scratching it behind its ears. “What are we going to call you, hmmm?”