◤𝕊𝕙𝕒𝕕𝕒𝕞𝕪◢ - It Started With Vomit!

Chapter 21: Unrequited Love

* * *

Unable to find Rouge Bat at her apartment building—nor around its outstretched proximity—Sticks resigned from the search, seating desolate in her flaring red vehicle when, suddenly, "Alright!" a brilliant alternative lit up in her brain.

Favouring instead joining an equally unsuccessful group of three individuals down at a more exciting location—in contrast to roaming about, scatter-brained with no logical sense of destination—a calculated minutes jaunt to Cacophonous Chaos would instantaneously perk her up with giddy elation. 

As she alighted from her vehicle and entered the jam-packed sinner's den, Sticks spotted then approached her friends, Blaze and Cream, within very short seconds. Making her way to a busy bar, Cream immediately caught her attention, evidently not-so-metaphorically trying to stomach an all-too-familiar kind of panic—the worst kind of all—fumbling with her mental health... by consuming several pervasive concoctions of stuff nothing short of alien, perpetually mutating in hues, shades, and colours.

"That thing... that thing's changing colours!"

"Trust me," Blaze stood erect from her bar stool after taking a sip of the mysterious substance, "I told her the exact thing."

"And yet you've ordered one for yourself."

Stick's expression, more than her words, perfectly encapsulated Blaze's reaction to the drink. Embodying an authentic reaction more powerful than any expansive phrase could ever accomplish, surely, saying "It's disgusting but interesting" with only muscle movements had to be some kind of achievement.

"It wouldn't even be far-fetched to say it is changing its very content," Blaze soldiered on, chaperoning the conversation as to appear dismissive of the chit's antagonistic comment.

"That's so bloody cool!" Sticks lit up, unwittingly falling in line. "But wait. Wait. How does it taste?" She paused in her tracks, staring into nothing in particular—space. "That's the important part."

"It's okay..." Blaze, too, who had also succumbed to culminations of fascination, knew that resistance was futile, and therefore needn't ask to know Stick's unspoken apprehensive ruminations about the odd recreational refreshment—and her subsequent actions about it. However—

"How"—she promptly interrupted the badger's hysterics, settling an arm between Sticks and the nearest plethora of alcoholic beverages idle on the extensive bar counter—"went your search and rescue mission?"

"Pardon?"

"That should come first," Blaze gruntled, and Sticks shot the officious cat a disarming sly smirk. "At least give us an update before settling into any other spirited activity." 

"I could ask you the same question," Sticks fired an outwardly innocent rejoinder, discarding her bag to dangle behind an adjacent (occupied) bar stool which, consequently, Blaze reached out to steady. The endangered accessory that conscientiously housed its imprudent owner's private information, personal exigencies, and essential necessities deserved more respect than this. 

"Plus, trust me," Sticks blabbered on some more, "no amount of cocktail parties will come close to dethroning the upheaval that's transpired tonight." 

Yet another contentious comment, Blaze thought inwardly. Nobody dared to get combative with her, the indisputable mother figure, president, and realized Holy Trinity that held their steadfast friend group together since forever.

"This isn't a cocktail party," she later commented, trying to uphold a be-all-and-end-all denunciation as to still assert some type of authoritative presence.