pullmeoutalive | log > what is wrong with us THE SEQUEL

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log > what is wrong with us THE SEQUEL

It was hard to believe that only three hours ago, she and Jolt had been bar-hopping (with the best of intentions, of course) and now Naomi was soaring over a dense forest, zipping out of the way of a few directed lightning strikes, courtesy of one of Black Phantom's puppets.

She had bigger things to worry about, though. More specifically, she had one big thing who had somehow disappeared from the battle. It had been only a few minutes of leaving him to take down the other side's psychokinetic, but when she'd returned, Jolt had vanished. Hatsune and Akira were fighting on the ground, both too distracted to take the time to sniff him out. Sakaki was on hand in a nearby helicopter, but it had been made to land out of concern that the lightning would strike it. The Children could have helped, but they needed to stay together for Kaoru's cleansing ability to function properly.

That left a very frantic Naomi flying about in the hopes of locating one errant Autobot. The one controlling the other espers hadn't been very comforting, having glanced in the girl's direction earlier.

"Worried about your friend? You should thank me. I've taken good care of him."

She'd hardly been reassured-- if anything, Naomi's ire and worry had only tripled, until she'd not only knocked out the esper manipulating the lightning but picked up her speed. The fight was nearly over; she could see the bright light from The Children's area now, but she wouldn't be relieved until she knew her Autobot friend was safe.

"Jolt-san!!" She called now, skimming the tops of the trees and then flying a little lower. "Please, answer me!"

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Jolt was a fighter, and as he valiantly fought the fever off, the rest of the night passed without incident.

But he had always been one to sleep in, and that wasn't about to change now- especially not after the long night he'd had to endure. As B.A.B.E.L. was waking up, he was still dead to the world, contentedly lying there with his arms curled around Naomi.

The inevitable breakdown that was going to walk through that door was a distant thought.

Naomi had the tendency to snuggle against whatever was close at hand, be it her pillow, the blanket she inevitably wound up tangled in... or the nearest source of warmth, which just so happened to be one Autobot in a human body.

And so she was just as peacefully curled against Jolt, just as the doors slid open and Sakaki and Tanizaki strolled in, the former perusing his clipboard and the latter doing what he did best.

Rambling.

"Naomi is a highly-valued esper and should be resting in an undisturbed environment, safe and protected from that..." He trailed off, a warning sign that had Sakaki immediately looking up to see what had silenced the supervisor so abruptly.

Just as quickly, he looked back down, but it was too late. Tanizaki had exploded in (what he felt was righteous) rage.

"FIEND!! YOU FOUL VEHICLE WHO TRIES TO BESMIRCH MY NAOMI'S CHASTITY AND HONOR, RELEASE HER AT ONCE!!!"

Miraculously, his charge didn't stir at all.

The Autobot, however, did. He flinched and groaned, carefully cracking open one eye. The sight of Naomi curled against him caused a smile to flash across his face, but his attention was quickly drawn to the screaming supervisor, and he made a face.

Reluctantly disentangling himself from the sleeping esper, he sat up and, in a move that was oddly automatic in this new body, ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. "What crawled up your exhaust port and died?" he remarked, shooting Tanizaki a supremely annoyed look. Clearly, he was not much of a morning person.

"What-- crawled-- exhaust port-- died?!" He parroted in a yell that bordered on a screech. "Just what do you think you're doing, taking advantage of B.A.B.E.L.'s hospitality to make a move on my subordinate?! I won't have it! Naomi is elite and far above your standards so that you could not hope to even grasp her! One day, she will sparkle in her flowing white--"

Sakaki was already groaning, and his future sparkling subordinate was automatically curling into a tighter ball, as though that would drown out the screaming trying to pull her from her slumber.

"Look, Tanizaki, he's my patient right now and an important ally, so if you could for once stop yelling about Naomi-chan--"

"NAOMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII--"

Jolt was out of the bed in a second flat, two more and he was across the room. He had always been agile, no surprise when one considered his weapons of choice and the skill with which he wielded them. His body, changed though it was, seemed to remember the decades of fighting that had been drilled into it, and very suddenly he was laying Tanizaki flat with a well-aimed fist.

"Shut up," he barked, glaring daggers at the other man and pointedly ignoring the pain in his hand where it had met the unfortunate supervisor's face. "You're one to talk about standards, you creep. You don't deserve her."

Poor, poor Sakaki. He didn't ask for much in life. Fine female company, a day in which Shiho didn't cheerfully one-up him, a quiet workplace... and maybe, just maybe, one peaceful morning.

But that was impossible now, given that Jolt had moved so swiftly, remarkably at ease in his new body, and now Tanizaki was on his back.

No, he amended, now he was slowly sitting up and glaring just as much as the Autobot was.

"I don't deserve her?" He snapped. "And where were you when I was the only person she could trust? Fighting your war? And where were you when she nearly died? You're just a poorly-constructed hunk of metal masquerading as human! There's no way I'll ever let you near her a--"

"That's enough."

The next instant, Tanizaki had been picked up by some invisible force and slammed into the nearest wall. This wasn't a typical psychokinetic force, either. This time, his charge was livid.

Naomi, newly awake and looking very dangerous, kept her glowing hand in front of her, locking her supervisor in place.

"Good morning," she greeted the others sweetly, even though she kept her eyes trained on the older man.

Rage flared dangerously in the Autobot-turned-human, and his powers reacted as they always had in his own body- electricity crackled in his hands, lancing between his fingers in bright blue arcs. Optimus could berate him until his vocals rusted out, he didn't care. He was going to fry this bastard-

Unless, of course, Naomi got to him first. Which she had, quite violently.

Jolt whipped around to face her, the electricity in his palms dissipating instantly. He looked shocked at first, but only because of the suddenness of her intervention, and then something like grateful.

Naomi chanced looking away from her supervisor briefly, just to give Jolt a nod of acknowledgment, while Sakaki stared at him for a little longer. So he'd already manifested his abilities, with no apparent difficulty. That was the mark of a highly skilled fighter. Nonetheless...

"Keep it contained," he warned. "You're not in your original body. Without proper practice, there's still a chance of that electricity going haywire, and you'll risk hurting others around you if that happens."

The esper half-heard this, but remained focused on Tanizaki for the most part. She had some things she wanted to address, and there was no time like the present.

"How dare you." Her voice was low, controlled, but there was barely-restrained rage in her eyes. "How dare you blame him for anything, when he's done so much for me. How dare you judge him. How the hell do you expect me to listen to you when you're preaching trust in others and accusing them in the same breath?? If I ever hear you saying anything like that again, I'll be asking for a new supervisor. And I mean it."

Tanizaki stammered something, but Naomi chose that moment to drop him and turn away.

A small nod was the only indication that he'd heard the doctor as Jolt stood there dumbly for a moment, staring at his hands. That was so incredibly stupid of him. He had, as always, acted on impulse, and, as always, that had not been wise.

"Naomi," he approached her carefully, speaking softly. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have provoked him. I--" he trailed off, unsure of what to say. This morning had quickly devolved into one big mess.

The look she gave him was still irritated, but six years of fighting for B.A.B.E.L. had given her remarkable control and discipline, and it wasn't Jolt she was furious with. After a long moment of silence, she took a deep breath. Sakaki very discreetly shoving Tanizaki outside helped.

"Maybe you shouldn't have, but he provoked you first. As far as I'm concerned, you aren't the one at fault here."

"Then I shouldn't have risen to the bait." He kept his distance- she was plainly still angry- and plopped down on the edge of the bed. He buried his face in his hands and just sat like that for a very long moment. "This," he said into his palms. "-isn't how I would have liked to start this morning."

"..." To be honest, she'd had better mornings, too, but watching Jolt slump like that made her anger slowly ebb away. It really hadn't been his fault; Tanizaki had some kind of twisted talent to infuriate anyone in his vicinity.

Naomi waited until she'd fully calmed down before she sat beside him, one hand resting lightly on his back. "You've got a whole day to go to make up for it," she reminded him gently. "Try not to let this get to you."

"As sage as ever, Naomi-chan." Sakaki grinned affably, dropping a hand onto Jolt's other shoulder to glimpse his patient's health before he removed it and returned to his desk to type some things in. "You've still got that fever, Jolt, lowered as it is, so the order still stands to take it easy today. There may be some electrical discharge too; you'll want to watch out for that."

Oh, lovely. Not only did he still have a fever, but apparently he might just randomly shock people if he wasn't careful? Briefly, he was tempted to give Tanizaki a nice handshake, but he discarded the thought immediately. He didn't want to see that man again for a very, very long time.

With a sigh he flopped back onto the bed and pulled the covers over his head. "Wake me up when this gets less complicated."

"Oh, lovely," Sakaki said dryly. "He's picked up Kaoru's sulking habits. Naomi-chan--"

She smiled up at him in perfect understanding, looking for all the world as though she hadn't exploded five minutes ago. "I know. I'll stay with him. You've got reports to finish-- and that date with the Little Mice's sister, right?"

"... You're a good kid."

With a few more medical orders given, the doctor went on his way, leaving Naomi with a grumpy Autobot.

Well, she'd dealt with worse. With a little smile, she let her hand hover over the blanket-clad human, then lowered it to trail her fingers along the stomach area. "This is B.A.B.E.L. It only gets more complicated by the day."

What the- that tickled. "Hey!" He squirmed under the covers, attempting to escape from her exploring digits. "That's not exactly reassuring-" A laugh. "And stop that!"

So he reacted to that? That opened up a whole new realm of possibilities, most of which made Naomi display a smile that Jolt was probably better off not seeing. There were more complicated ways to cheer him up, and there were much easier ways. This just so happened to be one of them. "Hm?" She asked innocently, stilling her hand for a moment. "Stop what? This?"

And now this time she used both hands.

"Naomi!" The squirming increased, he was very steadily getting himself tangled up in the covers, but so did the laughter. For the life in him he couldn't figure out why he was laughing, but it seemed his body just reacted to some things on its own.

"This is not 'taking it easy'!"

"It's easier to 'take it easy' when you're not hiding under the covers-- in other words, when you're in a better mood." She grinned triumphantly, finding her own sense of enjoyment in his laughter. Had she known she could have gotten this much of a response from him, she might have tried this sooner. "And it's hard to be a grouch when you're laughing, isn't it?"

This was supremely unfair- he'd never been ticklish before. At least, not that he knew of, because really, who in their right mind tried to tickle a giant robot?

"You little- wait until I get my hands on you!" It took quite a bit of flailing, but he finally managed to free himself from the covers, only to pounce on the esper with a triumphant smile of his own.

"Wha--!" Not having expected him to retaliate so swiftly, Naomi wasn't prepared to brace herself, and instead fell backwards with a yelp, landing flat on her back-- still, thankfully, on the bed. "Jolt-san!!"

Oh, this was a little awkward. He had been expecting some form of resistance, and now that he suddenly found himself on top of her, he was a little lost.

Naomi was less lost, and more red, but managed to quirk an eyebrow at the one pinning her down. If she was lucky, she could get out of this before he got any mischievous ideas. "You're not planning to sit on me all day, are you?"

Now it was Jolt who turned red. "No."

For lack of a better plan, he settled for mussing her hair before rolling off of her and back onto the mattress.

The hair mussing earned him a half-hearted swat as the esper sat up, giving her head a shake and attempting to finger-comb her hair to the best of her ability.

"So," she began conversationally, wincing as she hit a tangle, "are you feeling any better?"

Jolt watched her out of the corner of his eye for a moment and gave a shrug as best he could lying down. "Little bit. Less like I'm baking to death, anyway."

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