Annihilators

A State of Calm

Seventeen hours, that's how long it had been since they were last attacked. Within that time-frame, Emerald tried to sleep as much as possible.
She had barely gotten any sleep in New Mexico, not to mention the beds at the motel were miserable to lie on.
All she wanted was to sleep the rest of her life away when she finally made it to a decent resting place.
They found themselves in Oakland, California.
It was a nice place to be for the time being; it was far away from their last dramatic battle, and it was much cooler.
The hotel they were staying at was called the Claremont Club & Spa. Greg suggested that they stay somewhere more populate, since it would deter any more full-scale assaults on the group. They agreed and decided that the hotel was the best place to be.
It was a an expensive place to stay, but luckily, Sanai had them covered.
Not only had Sanai gathered clothes from the laundromat, but she had also collected money from the wrecked sites. In total, she found fifty-thousand dollars. Most of this many came from the motel, in a safe that the manager had been hiding by stash of pornographic magazines.
These resulting actions of theft caused Ernest to call Sanai a kleptomaniac, which subsequently caused her to hit him upside his head.
The Claremont was a large white building, that looked more like a billionaire's mansion than a hotel.
When they first walked into the massive building, the received many stares from guests and staff alike. They were all covered in dirt, and most of them hadn't changed out of their white jumpsuits yet.
The hotel clerk glared them disapprovingly when they made it to the front desk.
It wasn't until Sanai pulled out the large sum of cash that the clerk's demeanor changed to friendly.
Everyone paired up to see who would share a room in order to preserve money.
Emerald paired up with Sanai; Lance paired up with Ronald; Ronnie paired up with Ernest; and Ahmir, Greg, and Irvin all paired up together.
The rooms they were in were beautiful. The rooms were large and filled with the most beautiful furniture. Outside of the room windows you could get a full view of the Oakland bay.
Before they turned in for the night, they each looked inside the large sack of clothing to pick out what they wanted to wear.
Once they were done, they all went to their individual rooms and slept all the night, and half of the following day away.
Emerald had sweet dreams; she dreamt about her home town- New Orleans.
She had many bad memories their, but many great memories as well. She thought about when she was smaller, and her father helped her build a coupe for a duck that he had bought her.
She missed her father's smile, and she missed being around him.
After he died two years ago, she went to visit his grave every Sunday.
Who knows how many Sundays she'd missed while being locked away.
She dreamt she was back at his grave, standing their telling his tombstone all about what happened over the past month.

"Then I took all the robots I had destroyed on the ground, and balled them into a huge basketball", Emerald said to the tombstone. "No one really saw it, but I thought it was pretty cool".

She spoke all of this to a gravestone that couldn't respond. At that moment, her dream went from cheerful to bittersweet. She was acting like a little schoolgirl who was rambling to her father about her school day.
She would've started crying if a hard knock on her door hadn't taken her out of her sleep.
She turned to the bed next to her, and saw that Sanai was still sleeping peacefully. She then looked at the clock to check the time- 2:03 pm. Emerald was slightly stunned, but not fully surprised that she slept half of the day away.
Emerald got out of the bed, and went to go answer the door.
Once she opened it, she was immediately embarrassed- it was Lance.
She wished that she'd known he was coming, otherwise she would've made herself look more presentable.
Right now she was wearing a baggy, white t-shirt that drooped over one side of her soldier, and some black shorts. Her hair was all over the place, and it looked like a lions mane.
Lance however, was dressed in a more stylish manner. He had on a purple t-shirt with grey joggers and black tennis shoes.
His beard had been more groomed, and his hair was cut shorter.
Emerald assumed that one of the other boys had cut his hair for him.