Consoulia Chronicles: Booting Up [~ read description]

Chapter 17: Rain

Iris stomped in rain puddles and danced underneath the droplets. It wasn't a mere drizzle, but it wasn't a harsh rainfall either. It was enough to don a raincoat, a pair of rainboots, and a rain hat in a bright yellow. "C'mon Zander! Join me!" she sang. 

He simply waved her off, choosing to stay firmly planted in his rocking chair. He chose to enjoy the windchimes hanging from the porch ceiling and the cool wind blowing against his skin. He enjoyed it while he could, as it would get humid when the sun decided to come out again. "Please, Zander?" she asked, having gotten closer to the porch. She was looking up through the railings held together by thoughts, prayers, and loads of duct tape. 

He sighed, getting up. "Fine." 
"Yippee!" she shouted, running around towards the steps, running up, and grabbing his hand. She practically dragged him down a short flight of steps. She let go of his hand once on flat ground and jumped in the puddles. Iris's energy brought to mind when he wore exactly the same outfit to play in the rain in his own youth, but his reflection was interrupted when he was splashed with summery warm rainwater. 

"You asked for it, ya little runt!" He exclaimed, jumping in a puddle of his own with his worn sneakers. He internally groaned as he was immediately reminded that he needed to get new shoes one of these days, but brushed it off as Iris returned her own puddle splashes. "Hey, wanna play a game I used to play with Clover in the rain?" 

She tilted her head slightly in curiosity. "It's a race, but the goal is to also kick up as much water as possible. Whoever gets splashed the most loses. Whaddaya say?" He asked, stretching out a hand. 
"You're on!" she shook his hand.

Lining up at the place they designated as the start, he turned his head and pointed a finger down the road. "You see that stop sign not too far up ahead? That's the finish line. May the winner be proclaimed the master of the rain!" 
"Yeah!" she cheered with him. 

The two set off, running through the raindrops down the cul-de-sac's road. Iris had a solid lead as Zander was held back by his worn sneakers. He nearly tripped a couple of times, causing him to grunt in frustration, but he found his footing and started to catch up. Although she was still a child, he had to guess that being a Consouloid and a child gave her all the energy she needed to stay ahead of him by a solid two seconds. "Hey, watch out for that hole!" he warned. 
"Hole?" she stopped. She scanned the ground to find no holes. "You cheater!" she pouted. 

It didn't take her long to catch up to him and hold a lead over him, but he did get a laugh out of tricking her like that. He remembered when he had energy like that. Him and Clover. Distracted by his memories, he tripped and fell, splashing Iris when he fell in an actual pothole big enough to fit his body with a sploosh. She was splashed head to toe with water, but rather than run to the stop sign, she stopped to check on him. "Hey, you're right! There is a hole. You were just off on your distance by several meters. You good?" 

"Yeah," his voice bubbled from the water as he sat face down in it. "Well, you won. Congrats," he spoke as he brought his head up from the water. 
"You splashed me head to toe with water when we barely even splashed each other on the way here to begin with. You're the winner here," she corrected, taking his hand and, using barely any strength, yanking him onto his feet. Aside from a few cuts and bruises, he didn't have much to complain about, but she lifted him over her head effortlessly. "Don't worry, Zander, I'll getcha patched up!" 

He didn't fight it as he was carried through the rain. He let his mind wander through the previous day's events. He couldn't believe he was having this much fun after witnessing Ken's and Stephanie's deaths. Kiran was an enemy and a Consouloid, but he looked human. Too human for comfort. The fact that he almost died himself shook him to his core throughout the night after it happened, so much so he barely got a wink of sleep. 

Before he knew it, he woke up on the porch. There was a towel wrapped around his body as Iris tended to his minor cuts with small bandages. "Wakey wakey! Did you sleep well?" 
"How long was I out?" 
"About ten minutes. Are you okay?" 
He shook off his sleepiness and yawned. "I didn't get any sleep last night. I'll try to get a nap in today." 

Before they could talk any further, the honking of a car horn and the headlights that followed caught his attention as he watched the family's car pull up into the driveway. It didn't take long for Zerrin and Sotoro to emerge from either side of the car after turning the engine off. "Any luck?" Iris asked. Sotoro gave Iris a small creature that ribbited in her hands. "A frog! Thanks guys!" 

"No dice," Zerrin approached, trudging up the stairs. "Eh.. screw it," she decided to sit on the stairs under the rain. She craned her head so she was looking upside down at Zander. "What's up with you?" 
"I got into a fight with the road and lost," he pouted. 
"Damn." 

The silence grew between the two of them, but before it could dominate for too long, Zander grunted and got up from his chair, only to sit down again at Zerrin's side. "I'm sorry about your sister." 

She was caught off guard by his condolences. She shook her head slowly. "Nah, don't worry about it. Sotoro's got her USB drive handy and once we get our hands on a Revival Choker, we'd be able to bring her back. Someday. Revival Chokers are hard to come by and unless you were either Ken or Stephanie, you couldn't get any at all."

Zander mentally kicked himself. He didn't know what those Chokers were, but he assumed they were crucial to reviving Satara just by the name alone. Now with Ken and Stephanie gone, he thought to ask about another. "What about this Agent Dolphin chick? You and her seem to have a bit of a history, yeah?" 
Zerrin was grateful for how gray the lighting was, otherwise he could've easily seen her rosy cheeks at the mention of her. "We do, but I don't know if she remembers. She seems so focused on her own mission that she forgot why we were even here to begin with." She sighed, "I'm not angry or surprised anymore. Just disappointed and confused. How long is she going to keep this up before she realizes she can't stop while she still can?" 

"Sometimes you have to have faith in your allies. If Agent Dolphin's really on our side, we have to trust that she's got some grand plan up her sleeve or something, right?" Zander reassured. 
His reassurance was only met with a single answer. "Larkspur."  
"Oh," he muttered, connecting the dots. "Oh. That explains a lot." 

On the other side of a rainy Arcadia, a lady with black hair with a purple highlights only seen on an otherwise sunny day stepped into a building, a soft ringing announcing her arrival. She sat down at a faraway booth in a coffee shop that had only been open for about five minutes. She put in her order, and once she received it, she dug into her papers.

"I don't think I'll ever know what goes through her mind." 

 "Ma'am, we have a private study room," the waiter said, mistaking her for a college student. Wordlessly, she accepted his offer, gathered her papers, and followed him. Unbeknownst to her and the water, a slip of paper escaped her grasp and slid across the floor like it was made of ice. 

It was picked up by another pair of hands. The person who grabbed it hummed at it and backed off, taking the paper with them. 

"I think I can understand. Life would be so much easier if I could read Clover's mind," Zander lamented. 
Zerrin gave him a sly smile and said, "well, at least you can talk to her any time, right? Right? Riiiight?" He was met with a set of light punches to his left arm as he chuckled. 

Speaking of Clover, "hey, the package is here." Right as she announced it, Zerrin almost slipped from the steps she was just sitting on in pure excitement as she begged to let her open it up. Zander calmly followed her in and closed the door behind him, right as Iris was coming downstairs. "Easy, Zerrin, let me at least put it in your hands. Crazy girl," she teased. 

As Zerrin tore into the box thanks to Clover's pocket knife, she unveiled a few more sticks of RAM. If the siblings didn't know any better, they'd think it was Christmas or a birthday present the way her eyes figuratively and literally lit up at the sight of them. "Thank you so much Clover! You're so cool for this! I owe you big time!" 
"That's- fine! It's not a big deal!" Clover struggled to talk as she was crushed by Zerrin's arms. Zerrin giggled sheepishly as she watched Clover stumble away, limp and breathless. 

"Hey, guys," Sotoro emerged from the basement. "It's ready for ya." 

Satara's USB was firmly placed in Clover's CPU tower as Zerrin wiled away at the keyboard, her typing speed surpassing 100 words per minute as she typed in code as though it was as second nature as riding a bicycle. The others watched over and around her shoulders at the code that was being executed, as though they could understand what all of the strings meant in English. 

Zerrin had dumped the whole USB into Clover's CPU, erasing the data from the entire thumb drive. While a standard console OS like the one Satara was just took up thirty-two kilobytes when initialized, Consouloids in general had Terabytes worth of data. Maybe Petabytes. This was something Clover kept in mind when she lamented over how expensive the RAM was even now, but when asked why the USB had to be dumped out, Zerrin only muttered that she "had a feeling" she needed to do that, whatever that meant. 

She sat back in her chair, sliding across the floor with a heavy, drawn out sigh as the last of that task was complete. She put her arms behind her head as she leaned back. As the chairs legs tapped the wall, she leaned forward, her feet landing on the floor with a thud. A sigh became a drawn out groan. "I did it, but." 

The others looked to each other with slight worry. Her groans became enraged ranting. "I don't have a fucking Revival Choker to finish this shit!" 

As Spire was checking his hearing, Iris asked, "but where can we find one? Only Stephanie and Ken could've have access to 'em, right?" 
"Well, duh!" Zerrin shouted. "But Little Miss I-Want-Revenge-On-My-Sister killed them," she ranted, referring over to the USB that held her sister. She got out of her chair and paced around, punching the air as the others backed off. She gestured with her arms and chest the whole time. "Lady Ari's just- somewhere! and Larkspur's just.." 

"Hey," she looked back to see Zander gripping her arm. "I don't know what your story is, but those Revival Chokers sound important." 

"Well, yeah," she nearly ripped herself away from his grip. "They're super important. Can't revive one of us without a Revival Choker, but they weren't even invented before Corporate Greed and his cronies showed up, so there's no way in a million years anyone in this house would know where to grab one." 

A clearing throat interrupted. "Actually, we used to face death frequently when running with Satara. She kept us on backups and could revive us using those Chokers. I know where to find them." 

"Perfect!" Just like that, Zerrin's mood swung from hopeless and angry to hopeful and cheerful on a dime. She grabbed Myrtle by the shoulders with a grin stretching ear to ear. "Then you've gotta show me, please! I want to save my sister. Please, Myrtle, let me come with you," she dropped to her hands and knees. 

"Okay, fine. Quit being so dramatic," Myrtle carried herself up the stairs, but was nearly knocked down by Zerrin racing up the steps. "Hey! Watch it!" Myrtle's outburst was the first that Sotoro had seen much emotion come out from the Consouloid. 

He sighed. "I'll go with them." He followed them up. He popped his head down from where the stairs could no longer be seen by the ceiling. "Hey, you do have an extra USB, right?" 
"Right here," Mia confirmed. It was another special USB able to hold a Consouloid's neural network. With that, Sotoro disappeared up the stairs again. "I've got so much to ask Myrtle."

"I need a nap. Wake me when they're back." Zander took his place on Clover's chair and fell asleep, much to her chagrin.