Disclaimer/Notes: This is fan fiction on fan fiction (because my creative bones are being shaken elsewhere and must not be disturbed this time around), so see Wayward’s FFtheO:RC story for any further background information. Takes place between picking me up and getting to Elves’s place… and yeah. Finished in a rush, which was when I realized I cannot write James AT ALL. >>’

The Gauntlet Gaffe

or

The Trial of the Missing Weapons

NightBeck got out of the car and stretched out sleepily. She had been driving all night and her tiring body was beginning to wear down. After all the travelling she had been doing lately though, she was surprised she hadn’t pulled over sooner. This place was as good as any, however, being on a desolate stretch of country road, having steered clear from the main turnpikes for the majority of the trip. The further away from the traffic cameras they were, the less likely it would be that Animu+Adam could track
them and send out his n00bs to bother them.

“Oh… ‘lo there,” came SomeGuy’s voice as he rolled down the window. Becky turned and saw the man blinking at her sleepily from the back seat. “Ready to switch off?”

“In a bit. I’d kind of like for both of you to be awake before I let you take over.” Becky nodded her head in the direction of Nehszriah, who was reclined in the front passenger seat and using her red sweatshirt and jean jacket as a makeshift blanket while she slept.

“What… don’t you trust me?” James smirked.

“You, yes; Animu, not so much,” Becky smiled. James shrugged nonchalantly and shoved Nehs’s shoulder a few times.

“Rise and shine, Nezzers! You and I gotta find us some coffee!” he said. All Nehs did was roll over and mutter.

“You’re too young to be drinking coffee, Trip-chan.”

James and Becky looked at one another and laughed. Curious, James decided to go a bit further.

“Nehs?”

“What?”

“What are we doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“Uhh…”

“La… la… la…”

“Oh, great…” Becky groaned. She threw her arms up in the air and rolled her eyes. James went and rolled down Nehs’s window and fired a blank round next to her ear. The sleeping girl jumped into consciousness, sitting straight up and cussing while barely missing being smacked in the face by the residue from the blank that popped out of the window.

“Gah! What’s going on?!” she gasped. “Why aren’t we moving?! Is everything okay?!”

“Everything’s fine, Nehs,” Becky chuckled. “It’s just time for us to switch shifts.”

“Oh, okay then.” Nehs stretched out her arms and yawned before repositioning the sword right next to her. “Any idea as to where we are?”

“Western Pennsylvania,” Becky said as she and James switched places. “We’d be farther if someone didn’t need to stop for two whole hours last night…” She shot James a glare and he chuckled in return.

“That restroom had a very informative display of brochures for the local businesses in the lobby; I couldn’t resist,” James grinned. He held up a brochure for a local farm tour and nodded before turning the car back on and driving off.

“So, we pass Pittsburg already?”

“Yes. You are safe.”

“Good, now let’s get this show on the road!” Nehs cheered. “How ‘bout some breakfast first?”

“Sounds alright to me; where to?”

“There’s gotta be some place around here. I mean, even if we are off the main road.”

“Being off the main road only means that the good food potential is even greater,” the Canadian grinned as he revved up the vehicle. Becky only made a semi-approving groan as she laid down in the back and allowed the other two full control of where they went; they had a little bit of time anyways. How could they possibly screw this up?

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“So… uh… does this look edible to you?” James asked, holding up a packaged sandwich. Nehs took one look at it and her nose scrunched up.

“Put it down before it eats away at your hand, man,” Nehs said. She poked at a piece of fruit that was sitting on the counter with a critical eye. “It’s a shame that all those diners were closed; just our luck, eh? Truck-stop-in-the-sticks food just isn’t right.”

“It would help if you didn’t wear your sword in the store.”

“Just being prepared.” Nehs shifted her sword, which was slung across her back. “You’ve got your gun.”

“Not in plain sight,” the Canadian sighed. He nervously glanced around, getting the full blast of the glares the sword was getting from other patrons and workers (which was only three people total, but three people are still more than no one). It was true that he had The Punisher hidden in his jacket, but at least it did not stand out like Nehs’s much-more-noticeable sword. “Don’t you think other people will be nervous?”

“Guns make people nervous; they don’t know what to think about swords anymore.”

“Yeah, well…” James started. His sentence drifted off into nothingness as he stared over his friend’s shoulder. He slowly placed the sandwich in his hand down on the shelf, refusing to break his gaze.

“Animu…?”

A nod.

“By the car?”

“Oh yeah.”

Nehs and James dashed towards the door, dropping what they were holding and drawing their weapons. The n00b dashed off as soon as they entered the parking lot, tan coat billowing behind it. Upon a quick examination of the vehicle, it was clear that it had gotten inside and had made way for Becky. Instead of her being gone, however, her silver-colored bangles were missing, causing the two friends’ faces to fall.

“Screw finding breakfast, we gotta tail that n00b and get Becky’s gauntlets back,” Nehs said, hopping in the driver’s seat. She shoved her sword towards SomeGuy as he got in the passenger’s side.

“When Beck and I picked you up, you said you only had your permit,” James noted as the car revved into gear. Nehszriah backed the car out of the dirt lot that butted up against the equally gravelly road and gave her friend a blank stare.

“If you’re driving, who’s gonna shoot at it?”

“Got a poin—” James started, but was cut off by Nehs slamming on the gas. Everything in the vehicle seemed to jerk backwards as the car rocketed forward. Before the two operatives knew it, they were within sight of the quick-moving n00b.

“Thank God we’re in the countryside!” Nehs said as she watched the odometer climb higher and higher. “I so could not do there is if there was traffic!”

“It turned!” James hissed as he rolled down his window. Nehs bit her lip as she took the turn, braking hard and sliding in the gravel. James hugged the door tightly, attempting to keep himself from flying out the window. Jettisoning out of the subsequent dust cloud, they started down a road that had many more turns and elevation changes than the straightaway they started on.

“Hold it steady!” James said as he leaned out the window.

“This is NOT like navigating an empty parking lot! I can feel this thing catching air when we go over hills!”

“Just try!” James took a quick glance back at Becky, who was still asleep despite being jostled all over the place. You must be either really sleepy or you’re dead. Please don’t be the latter.

“There it is!” Nehs said, pointing towards a grove of trees. The n00b was running straight into them, as if to lose the operatives in the thick forest with openings clearly too narrow for the car to follow.

“I’m gonna take a shortcut through the field!”

“Stay on the road!”

“The field’ll be quicker!”

“Excellent—” James sighed right before Nehs veered off the road and into the field. It was extremely bumpy though, more rough than the dirt road, and it all ended with a resounding crash as the car became lodged on top of a fallen log towards the very edge of the outcrop of trees.

“That was either really awesome or really stupid,” James said, his voice quiet from shouting.

“They tend to go hand-in-hand,” Nehs replied, her voice high-pitched and faint. She had to force her fingers to let go of the steering wheel. “I’ve been through worse.” The look on her face told James that it was a total lie.

“Well, it looks like Becky’s still asleep, so let’s go get that n00b before she wakes up,” James said. He gave Nehs her sword back and got out of the car. Once the two were able to properly stand on their shaky feet, they ran off in the direction of Animu.

“Hey, Nezzers, you hear something?”

“No… why do you ask?”

“I just have a bad feeling about this.”

Once they reached the other side of the trees, the two cursed. There, of all places, had to be a Renaissance fair. Why there was such an event going on in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, neither operative could say. Dwelling on such a matter would only allow Animu to go farther and the longer they waited, the less likely it would be that the n00b was going to be caught.

“Hmm, never been to one of these before,” Nehs said. She was looking all around in a fashion that suggested that the n00b was becoming less and less interesting compared to her surroundings.

“Hurry up now before you start quoting ‘Holy Grail’,” James said as he pulled his friend along.

“…but—but—but—!”

Suddenly, Nehs found herself down on the ground, pulled behind a stand. James peeked around said stand, which was selling traditional blood sausage, and stared.

“The n00b’s here?” Nehs asked, trying to keep low. “With that speed, it could have been long gone by now.”

“This one obviously knows how to blend in with the crowd,” SomeGuy said. “I bet he looks like an ordinary participant to everyone else.”

“What do you propose we do? It won’t leave until it knows we’re not following it anymore. Becky’s bound to wake up soon and she will freak if we aren’t there and her bracelets on her wrists.”

“You take the right,” James nodded. He hopped up and vanished into the crowd. Nehs slipped into the crowd as well as they made way to corner the n00b. It was unsuspecting and ordinary; no one else aside from the operatives were able to see the ferocity of its eyes and the blankness of its stare.

The n00b turned around to return to the crowd and was immediately cornered. Nehs put her drawn sword up to its neck, while James covered the back of its head with his gun.

“Don’t… move…” SomeGuy said. “Hand over the gauntlets.” Silently, the n00b raised its hands, revealing that it carried nothing. Nehs and James each checked a trench coat pocket, finding nothing. The n00b did not have NightBeck’s gauntlets.

“Now what…?” she asked. Shooting a quick glance at James, she clearly had not thought ahead, or at least past this point, no matter the circumstance.

“What are you doing?!” shouted a voice. Nehs and James both snapped their heads around to find that a rather large man in full nobles’ regalia was coming towards them. By the time they looked back at each other, the n00b was gone.

“Run!” James and Nehs panicked simultaneously. They did not get very far, however, before they were stopped by a large wall of a man who was able to lift them by the scruffs of their necks. He chuckled at them, which was agreeably more frightening than having to fight an entire army of n00bs.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Cries of “Witch! Witch!” rose over the general din of the festival. People were throwing vegetables and insults at the duo stuck in the stocks. It sounded like a rehearsal for a Monty Python play, but with flying vegetables.

“Oh, come on! You wouldn’t pelt me like that if I had my sword!”

“Give it a rest, Nehs.”

“I got rotten tomato in my eye; it’s impossible.”

“Where do you think that n00b is by now?”

“Probably back at the base. All we gotta wait until we can break out of here and then we’ll track it.”

“How are we going to do that without our weapons? Neither of us are that strong and your wrists are bleeding from trying to wriggle out.”

“What are you two doing here?!”

The two prisoners looked down to see NightBeck, looking rather rested yet irate. “Do you two even know the meaning of the word ‘urgency’?”

“Oh, man, Becky, get us out of here! A n00b came and stole your gauntlets and James and I went to get them back so we had to track it here and it got away, and…”

“What are you talking about?” Becky asked, flashing her wrists. There were her modified gauntlets, shimmering in the light. Nehs took another squash to the face while James gaped at it.

“You—you—what…?” he stammered.

“I take them off when I’m sleeping, so that might be why you thought a n00b stole them. Is that why the car is run up on a log?”

“Never let Nehs drive again. Ever.”

“I second that! Hey! That carrot was still crisp; it hurt!”

“Well, that explains my dream,” Becky said. She turned around and started walking.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to get us out of here?!” James shouted at her.

“You got yourselves into this mess and now you witches have to pay the consequences,” she chuckled before disappearing into the crowd. James and Nehs attempted to retort, they truly did, but their shouts were drowned out by the growing crescendo of taunters, all armed with what felt like an unending supply of things to throw.