Chương 72: Chapter 71: And the gang is back(with a new member)

We built cities under the water partly because we were running out of space on the surface and partly because geothermal energy was a huge untapped source of energy. Also, giant bioluminescent corals look pretty darn cool. - From the memoirs of Glen Headall, 18th Head of the First Brain's Faction The staring started somewhere over the ocean. It was a twenty seat vehicle, all window, pretty much the same one he had taken out eight weeks ago, and for the first hour it had been a quiet flight. Then Pip woke up.

She had spent the first half of the journey asleep in the crook of his arm with one hand closed around the strap of his backpack. She woke over deep water, saw the water, and went up his chest and onto his shoulder to get at the window, and the entire left side of the cabin turned around. Kara had known this was coming. Bright, unapologetic pink was not a color one could just ignore. A woman two rows up leaned into the aisle. A man across from her said something to his companion without taking his eyes off Pip.

Nobody approached him. They just looked, and looked away when he turned his head, and looked back. He sighed. The mask sat near the top of his backpack. He was just starting to get used to not wearing it. Then again, it was quite fetching, if he said so himself. He put it on when the terminal came into view. The terminal nearest University 11 was built low into the coastal shelf, the last stop before the city, and it was busy at this time.

Kara came down the ramp with his backpack on one shoulder, Pip on the other, Waggy at his heel, and the war umbrella hooked through his hand. He imagined he made quite the sight, and the attention he got from the moment he stepped down proved his imagination right. Waggy pressed in against his leg and stayed there. Kara looked down and petted him. Waggy had never in his life been looked at by a hundred people at once. He walked with his shoulder against Kara's calf the whole way across.

Pip had the opposite problem. Kara had to literally hold her to keep her from bounding away. She had never seen so many people in her life. And clearly, she had been bred for attention.

"No-," Kara sighed.

"Just - just stay still alright. I know this is all new for you. You'll see more of us, promise. We're not exactly as rare as you might have been led to believe." Two children stopped dead in front of a departure board and pointed at her openly. Their mother caught up, looked at what they were pointing at, stopped and started staring herself. They weren't the only ones. He made his way to the transfer pens with the pegasus as fast as he could. The silver pegasus was already saddled.

Kara got Waggy up first, then climbed up after him, with Pip hanging on. Securing all of them together took some doing. The flight to the waste processing settlement took around twenty minutes. Waggy put his head down on Kara's thigh and left it there. Pip sat up the entire way - mouth slightly open, looking here and there, and making a continuous low sound Kara had not heard from her before, and when they came down onto the platform she was still making it.

A PfP personnel registered him, looked at his companions, nodded and took him to the waiting vehicle. The amphibious transport was the same design as the waste vessel he had ridden out in. Kara found a bench near the back and put Pip in his lap, and Waggy pushed underneath and lay across his feet. Two more workers came in over the next couple of minutes. The hull closed. The vessel got to the water, tilted and slid under. Pip went absolutely silent.

"You don't know what it looks like underwater, do you?" Kara said quietly. She had her face against the little window and both hands flat beside it. A shoal went past and she followed it the whole way with her head turning, and then a dolphin came in alongside the hull to look at them, and Pip made a noise and a gesture at it. The two workers watched quietly, soft smiles on their faces. Then the city came up and she started jumping up and down. Kara let her have it.

She had spent more than a year being carried between rooms. He was not going to be the one who told her to sit down for this. Bright, multi coloured coral towers. The lake. The orange of the Thermodynamics pyramid off to the left. It all looked just as amazing as ever as they made their way into the city. He pinged Glasses and Vixen as h e got off at the Alderton building and walked as fast as he could manage, with Pip on his shoulders, Waggy at his heels, and the war umbrella strapped across his pack.

He took the shortest possible path across the city and through the campus, trying to ignore all the gazes. Past the Council Building, across the waterway, up the residential path. Students stopped. A group outside the library went quiet as he passed and started up again behind him. Whispers followed him as he went. Waggy stayed glued to his leg the entire way and Kara kept one hand closed on Pip's ankle, not slowing down nor looking at anybody.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He exhaled as he reached the room. The interface connected, he got the door open and shut it behind him with his heel. Glasses was at his desk with his back to the room and did not turn around straight away.

"That was fast. Thought it'd take you a little longer to reach," he said.

"Yeah, well. Circumstances." Glasses turned around then, and stopped. He looked at Kara and the war umbrella. He looked down at Waggy, out in the open in the middle of the floor. He looked at the small pink animal on Kara's shoulder. He raised an eyebrow.

"Uh-huh. Circumstances indeed," he said slowly.

"Someone has had an... Eventful few weeks. Care to elaborate?"

"Well, I decided Waggy deserved more than just hiding out in this room."

"Okay... That partially explains one out of three things I'm seeing here." Kara dropped the backpack.

"Let's just wait for Vixen. I don't want to repeat the same thing again."

"It's going to be a long conversation," Glasses said, and then Waggy walked past him. Waggy went straight down the middle of the room, sniffed once at the foot of Kara's bed, and then turned and went along Glasses' side instead, nose to the floor, working the base of the wardrobe and the leg of the desk and the pile of Glasses' shoes with total absorption.

"Sure," said Glasses.

"Make yourself comfortable." Kara set Pip down. He should probably have thought about that first. Pip hit the floor, went up the side of Glasses' desk in one movement, and was among his things before Glasses had finished turning his head.

"Hey-" She picked up a small dark cylinder, turned it over, and put it down somewhere else.

"No, don't touch that." She went for another small device next.

"Stay still. Stay - no. Not there." She went from the desk to the shelf above it, hung off the bracket by one arm to consider a sealed component tray, and reached for it with the other hand. Glasses got both hands around her middle and lifted her off the shelf, and held her out at arm's length, and glared at her. Pip looked back at him. Her ears went down. Her eyes were enormous and she was looking up at him with a picture perfect rendition of puppy eyes. Glasses held the glare for perhaps two seconds.

"... that's not going to work on me," he said, looking away and brought her in against his chest, and adjusted his grip so she was properly supported. Kara watched all this play out quietly and allowed himself a small smile.

"Where did you even get her," Glasses asked, setting Pip down on the bed.

"Oh, wait." The wheels started turning. Kara waited.

"You were in Area 5." Glasses said.

"Tomas was arrested just a day ago. Him and his whole family, for exotic animals trafficking, and the reports said their partners were confiscated." His eyes came up.

"Don't tell me."

"I sometimes forget how smart you are." Glasses exhaled.

"Okay. We are definitely having a separate conversation about that. But before that - how did you even bring a bonded animal along? You didn't like, steal her, did you?"

"She's not bonded anymore. She is in the custody of PfP, temporarily, until she finds another partner. Or chooses not to. Up to her really. For now, PfP have no problem in her being with me. I've got all the necessary documents in my backpack." Glasses stopped again.

"Oh," he said. Then, more quietly, "Oh. That must have been painful."

"It was." Glasses looked down at Pip, who was playing with his hand. He did not stop her.

"So," he said.

"What do you intend to do with her?"

"Yeah," Kara said.

"About that-" The door banged open. He probably shouldn't have given her free access.

"WHERE IS MY CUTEST, DEAREST LITTLE WAGGY!!!" Vixen rushed in, and Vitaly came through the gap and hit Waggy at full speed. The two of them went into the side of Kara's bed and out the other side of it. Then Vixen saw Pip.

"OH MY GAWD." She was across the room in two steps.

"Oh my god, she's so cute, look at her, look at her ears, they're bigger than her head - Kara, where did you get her?"

"Well, technically from the Sanctuary of Hope..."

"That's not an answer, that's a location." Kara sighed.

"She wasn't in a great situation. I mean physically she was fine, healthy enough, well taken care of. But she was always inside a room. No enrichment, no contact, brought out when there were guests and put away after." He shrugged, once.

"I saw the conditions and I reported it to PfP. Luckily someone found out about their illegal trafficking around the same time. She ended up at the Sanctuary and I came back through it on my way home." The room was quiet for a second. Glasses looked at Vixen. Vixen looked at Glasses. They both knew it wasn't the whole story.

"Fine," Vixen said.

"For now." She reached out and Pip transferred to her without being asked, straight up onto her shoulder, tail round the back of her neck.

"So what happens to her? She can't stay in a hostel room without a-""She's going to be Glasses' partner."

"Wait." Glasses' head came up.

"What? When did that discussion happen? I was here for the whole conversation and I don't remember saying that." Pip turned round on Vixen's shoulder to look at him. Her ears came down again. She did the eyes. Glasses tried to avoid looking at her. He gave it his best shot, he really did, but his eyes kept going her way.

"... Well," he said.

"It might be under consideration. But I - look, I don't know if I can handle her. Or do it right. I've never had an animal. I've never even had a plant."

"You won't be doing it alone," Kara said.

"You'll be doing it with me," said Vixen, "which means you'll be doing it correctly, because I'm not letting you improvise. I've got eleven years of notes and a vet pass and a very low tolerance for people who guess about animal care." Glasses opened his mouth and shut it again. Vixen looked around the room. Vitaly and Waggy had come to rest in a single pile against the wardrobe. Pip was on her shoulder, upside down now, reaching for her hair.

"Right," she said.

"Now with that out of the way, onto the larger problem... We've got about a quarter of this planet's exotic animals sitting right in this one hostel room." She looked both of them in the eye.

"How exactly are we planning to manage that?"