#extra bits

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Gonna have to skip out on dinner sorry

Julien jolts awake on the bathroom floor an hour or two or maybe even six later, when her phone buzzes in her hand. She brings it up to her face, stares at the black screen for a second, and when it doesn’t automatically show her lock screen, she clicks it on. She has a notification from an app she never uses - which must’ve been what woke her - and a grand total of ten missed messages from Lucy, the latest of which makes Julien’s heart sink. 

I’m coming over

The timestamp tells her it was sent half an hour ago, which means Lucy could be there at any second. “Fuck,” Julien grunts. She glances around the bathroom, tries to get her vision to focus on the mess she’s made. Empty beer cans and evidence of her temper tantrum litter the bathroom floor like a crime scene, and she sniffles a little as she notices the pills she’d dumped onto the floor. If Lucy finds them, she’ll never see them again. And Julien isn’t willing to let that happen. 

She’d never finished her research into the effects of combining medications, but she doesn’t have time to do any now. Not if she wants them gone before Lucy gets there. So Julien scrapes a handful into her palm and downs them with the last swig of beer from the can next to her on the floor. It’s warm and it makes her nauseous. She reaches for another can, pops the tab with trembling fingers and scoops more pills up, presses them to cracked and dry lips. Distantly, Julien can hear the beeping of the keypad being unlocked, and her heart jackhammers against her sternum. She downs another handful of pills. Lucy’s footsteps are fast on the stairs, and her voice rings out in the eerie quiet of the house. 

“Julien?”

Julien scoops up more pills as her brain urges her to hurry, but she’s still drunk and her hands don’t want to cooperate, and she can hear Lucy getting closer. She shoves the last handful of meds into her mouth a split second before the bathroom door slides open. 

Julien freezes, and the second of silence in which Lucy stares her down feels like an eternity. 

Lucy breaks it first. “What did you put in your mouth?” Her voice is low and measured, the same way it had been when she first said I need to leave all those weeks ago. 

Julien lowers her chin, hoping it’ll hide the six-or-so pills dissolving into bitter sludge against her tongue. “Nuffin-” Her face burns at the muffled nature of her words - not because she’s embarrassed at being caught in a lie; she’s not embarrassed, but because she knows that Lucy will find a way to stop the meds from dragging her into a sweet oblivion. She blushes because she’s furious. 

“Don’t lie.” Lucy looks hurt. “What the fuck did you put in your mouth, JB?” 

Julien shrugs, and Lucy takes a deep breath. She steps closer. Julien shies away. She brings the beer up to her lips, downs the remnants of the pills as Lucy’s eyes widen. 

“Stop,” she pleads, reaching for the can, and Julien doesn’t have the energy to fight as she tugs it from her grasp, sets it above her on the counter. When she looks back at Julien, Lucy’s eyes are glassy with tears. “Fuck, what did you take?”

Julien shrugs, the picture of nonchalance. “Doesn’t matter,” she slurs, blinking up at Lucy through heavy eyelids. “It probably won’t kill me anyway.” 

Her head drops back against the counter with a dull thunk that reverberates pleasantly down her spine. The pills will probably take at least ten minutes to kick in, but she’s still hazy from the alcohol and it feels nice to drift. 

Lucy’s incessant worrying interrupts the floatiness. “I’m calling poison control. Please, JB. Just tell me what you took so I can help you.” She looks dead serious. 

Julien sighs, long and low. “I dunno,” she sniffs. “A buncha things. Some Tylenol.”

Lucy nods. “Okay. That’s… Okay.” Julien lets herself drift back into the floaty space that feels so good, but she’s interrupted once more by a voice from Lucy’s phone. 

“911, what’s your emergency?” 

Lucy starts talking, fast, and Julien stops listening, tuning Lucy out by humming a song that she makes up as she goes. She tries to reach up above her head for the beer Lucy had confiscated, but Lucy notices and reaches for it too, and one of them - Julien’s not sure who - knocks into it. Amber liquid splashes across the floor as the can clatters against the tile, and Lucy glares at Julien as she tugs the two full cans out of her reach. 

Julien blinks at the wet tile, and swallows against the sour taste of grain alcohol that lingers on her tongue. She’s suddenly nauseous as fuck. 

“Julien.” Lucy manhandles her into looking her in the eye. “Are you good? Are you awake?” Julien nods, the sudden intensity of Lucy’s voice sobering her up a little. Lucy nods. “Okay. We gotta make you throw it up, okay?” 

Julien frowns. “No.” She shakes her head. 

Lucy’s eyes spark with anger, and Julien notices the shimmering tracks of tears down her cheeks. “You have to, Julien. Come on.” She lunges and they both go crashing to the floor, Lucy on top and gripping Julien’s jaw before Julien can even try to fight back. 

“Get off,” Julien grunts, trying to push her away, but Lucy holds fast. 

“You gotta throw up, JB,” she pleads, her fingers digging into Julien’s jaw as they wrestle. Julien can feel the spilled beer soaking her t-shirt, and it’s sticky. 

“Stop,” she begs, tears pricking in her own eyes as panic rises like bile in her throat. “Just let me die!” She twists her head as Lucy presses, and she feels her mouth open against her will. “Stop, please, Luce-” she’s cut off by Lucy’s fingers jabbing into her throat. 

Lucy presses hard against the back of Julien’s tongue, and Julien gags. “Come on,” Lucy grunts, pressing again, and this time she’s rewarded with a thin jet of bile spraying up from around her fingers and splattering onto her shirt. Julien whimpers, tears flowing steadily as relief colours Lucy’s expression. 

“Okay,” she says shakily, “Okay, good.” Her voice is muffled by the ringing in Julien’s ears and the guttural noises drawn from her throat as she retches again. Lucy pulls her hand away, nose wrinkling, but her fingers have done more than their job, and Julien twists towards the toilet, gagging up more bitter fluid. She manages to pant a raspy, “fuck you” as Lucy updates the 911 dispatcher before her stomach contracts again and she’s forced back over the porcelain. 

-

The three of them shared gazes only on the rarest of instances. Each time had never grown less uncomfortable and awkward. They had hoped (well, two of the three, at least) that it would after long enough, but no such luck. Not out of any sort of malice, or hatred, or anything of the sort. Joe, Blue, and Baiken simply didn’t talk to one another very much. None of them were friends. They didn’t really consider themselves as such. Why would they? Sure, they all knew Phoenix, but they had never met one another until recently, Baiken especially. 

It was a thought she’d had running through her head quite clearly, especially when Joe decided the first time to lay his hands on her would be to shove her forward until they both nearly landed on their faces.

In any other scenario, that would’ve been a death sentence- or, at least, cause for a severe mauling- if it weren’t for the fact that he had just saved her skull from being stomped in.

“What the hell are in those things??” She shouted, stumbling out of the way immediately after the last push. Hooves thundered past, right where she had been standing. Fluttershy was being driven in mad circles, her reins being tugged without any kind of care or sense. The human perched upon her saddle looked no more certain of where she was going, and was quite happy about it.

Even Jirachi looked befuddled. “I- I’ve never heard of a guardian’s boon like this!”

Their party had made plenty of use from the strange, sparkling fragments their guild leader would procure from seemingly nowhere. ‘Boons from a guardian spirit,’ he’d called them, or ‘magic sprinkles.’ Truthfully, everyone had though the name was stupid, but they’d kept it to themselves. Quite powerful things, though, restoring their health and mana in dire situations.

Those had been the only two they’d known about. Phoenix had never mentioned anything else. Not five minutes ago, though, he had started staring off into space and talking to nobody. Upon turning around, there was a new vial in his hands, a different color than health and mana. ‘Hyper sprinkles.’ The supposed spirit hadn’t explained in full what they did, only that it would help them deal more damage.

“I’ll try it,” he had said. “I don’t know what they do, so I don’t want anything bad to happen to you guys.”

Nobody had the time to interrupt. The moment it had dissolved against his skin, Phoenix had taken on a distant look in his eyes. Then came the smiling. And the smiling had not stopped.

“YEEEEEEE-HAW!” Was the closest he had gotten to a coherent sentence. The guy was completely out of his mind. Even if the sprinkles *were* helpful, he couldn’t muster up enough focus to actually try for an attack. Unless trying to trample his own teammates counted. Right now, their leader was almost as much of a hazard as the boss that they were actually supposed to be fighting!

…Ah. Somehow they’d forgotten that.

Cerberus roared, knocking Joe over from the force of the sound. It appeared as though Jirachi had been the one holding the beat back for the time being, but his hold was faltering. Baiken instinctively flung a shot in the thing’s direction, but at such a distance, the wind drag pulled the shell off of its target and into the nearby wall.

“Shit! Were any of us this goddamn huge?”

“Non, nowhere near this!” Joe replied, before being pulled out of horse-harm’s way again by Blue.

Baiken grit her teeth. She raised her weapon toward the monster, only to have a horse dart in her path. “Sonuva- forget the damn dog, we’re gonna kill *each other* at this rate!” She sent the mage a sharp scowl. “Wizard! Make sure the idiot doesn’t go running into a lava lake, capische? The rest of us’ll juggle this, just keep him under control!”

Jirachi appeared to object to the idea, but knew better than to argue with that glare. His feet left the ground as he zipped after their runaway leader, coaxing the horse away with a few well-placed flashes of magic.

With one problem closer to managed, the three could focus more on not being eviscerated by a giant dog. They darted back and forth with no real rhythm, no real sense of coordination. At several points, they nearly crashed into each other or struck one another with their weapons. Baiken fired off several more shots, but most were too distant and fell, and the few that were close enough were dodged.

“Goddamn thing’s got almost as many heads as legs, and it’s still better at dodging!” She covered her ears with a hand, sending a glare at Blue for her ill-timed feedback screech. 

“Oh- ! Oh, sorry, so sorry- !” Amid her apologies, the woman nearly tripped over Joe like he was a rock underfoot. All three were forced to jump back in different directions as the center head released a gout of fire.

“Shit! Shooting one at a time isn’t enough, we have to overwhelm it so the damn thing so it can’t fight back!”

“But we have so little range!” Replied Joe. If he wasn’t already red and sweating from the heat, the exertion would have had the same result. “*You* can aim at a distance, but Mademoiselle Blue and I have nothing of the sort!”

“Aiming at a distance…” She thought. “Hey Frenchie.” Baiken said, looking up at the beast’s three heads. “You got baseball where you’re from?”

“We do, yes? Why…” His eyes fell to the pan in his grasp. “Ohhh, I think I see where you are going.”

“Gotta make sure we can get a steady shot first. We could try ‘n get closer, but that means the damn dog’ll be able to- “ A realization struck her, and she grinned. “Three heads means three times the amount of ears.” She snapped her fingers. “How’s about we put on a concert for this mutt?”

Blue cast a wave of noise that made the cavern shake. The pitch made everyone wince, but the dog in particular shied back with a still-vicious whine. They bared their teeth, but the sound had disoriented them, making their six stolen eyes fall out of focus.

Baiken grinned in approval, ducking ahead for a better shot. “Heh. Not bad, princess.”

“I do my best,” Blue curtsied.

“Alright, hold off on the noise until the dog starts acting up again.” She gestured to the chef on her other side. “Alright, gingersnap, here’s hoping you got decent aim!”

While Cerberus attempted to reorient itself, Joe held his frying pan like a bat. Baiken fired a shell in his direction. The moment she heard the sound of metal slamming against metal, she twisted her turret to fire straight ahead. With two shots simultaneously, the dog couldn’t react as quickly. One missed, but the other struck the I-no head squarely in the cheek.

“That’s a hit!” She barked. “Keep your swinging arm loose!”

Joe managed to hit most of the shells she fired at him. Blackened patches already decorated the back of his pan. Her plan was doing the job though, as their opponent struggled to get its bearings and offer a counterattack.

“You know- “ he panted “perhaps- I should have- rethought my career-” another swing nearly singed his hair “-and pursed this sport instead-”

He missed its head, but the shell still managed to find a landing spot between the dog’s necks, making it yowl in pain. With the moment of respite, he slouched forward, trying to catch his breath.

“It’s gonna get up soon! We need to throw it off again!” The tank yelled. 

Blue stumbled, putting a hand to her neck. “My- my throat’s dry- the heat- I can’t scream anymore, not right now…”

Cerberus was reorienting itself, still with vicious snarls on all of its heads.

“Shit- “ Baiken growled. “We got anything else shiny?!”

The two looked at her strangely. “What?” 

“That fruity twit loves shiny crap, find something that’ll distract him!”

They weren’t quite sure where the idea was going, but any plan was a good plan right now. Blue thrust her microphone skyward. Though the cave was enclosed, the light of magic and the nearby lava made the starlike head of the device twinkle and gleam.

“Come ‘ere, puppy,” she goaded, though audibly rattled. “Puppy, puppy, over ‘ere!”

Just as planned, Amane’s head began to pull away from the others. The remaining pair yanked it back, with the Romeo head snarling something to it. The Amane head snarled back, and within moments, the two had begun to argue with one another, while I-no was pulled along for the ride.

With the monster distracted again, Baiken rolled even closer. “A few more shots, just a few more shots should- “

Her weapon clicked to the sound of an empty chamber.

“Are you *serious??”*

“Miss Baiken?!” A frantic Jirachi interrupted. “Ah, M- miss Baiken, I’m afraid I couldn’t- “

The end to that sentence was interrupted, but that didn’t matter. The hoofbeats told her what she needed to know. She dove out of the way to avoid a trampling, and a shout from Joe said that he’d done the same. 

Fluttershy was driven straight toward the monster they’d been fighting, still driven by a drug-addled lunatic. At the last moment before crashing headfirst into Cerbus’ ribs, Phoenix yanked the reins and guided Fluttershy into a sharp turn. The poor horse, miraculously, kept up with the maneuver, swerving around almost perfectly backwards in one long drag. Her back hooves left the ground and smashed directly into the center head’s jaw.

“PHOENIX! Are you absolutely…in…sane…?”

As Baiken looked on, Cerberus tottered forward, then crashed to the ground, miraculously missing crushing any of them underfoot. The force of its landing was enough to throw Phoenix from the saddle, though, and he was sent head-over-heels to the stone as well.

“Wheeeee~” He trilled, rolling to a stop several feet away.

The man’s exhausted, bedraggled party stumbled to his side. Even Jirachi was winded. They converged over his supine body, and watched how his spinning eyes started to slow.

“Phoenix?” Joe asked.

As soon as any lucidity came back to his face, the man pinched his eyes shut and covered his face. “Ugh…” He moaned. “I feel awful.”

“Don’t doubt it.” ‘And I’m gonna make you feel worse’ was Baiken’s unspoken addition, though she’d at least make sure he wasn’t dying first. It’d be a shame if he died before she could properly kill him for what they’d just been put through.

Barely mustering the ability to sit up, Phoenix put a hand to his head and winced. “Ah- I don’t- nh- remember everything hurting.” He paused. “Actually, I don’t remember much of anything…what exactly did I miss? How long have we been here?”