A Brief Respite

“Alright, that was pretty great,” Abigail admitted as the credits began to roll. “It’s like a book, but the thinking is done for you.”

“Basically, yes,” John said as Jenny hopped off him to take the (now empty) popcorn bowl into the kitchen.

“So do you have a phone? Anything you can listen to music on?” Jenny asked as she came back from the kitchen.

“Well… no. I travel light. My fighting clothes don’t even have pockets,” Abigail replied with a shrug. “I kind of want one now though.”

“They’re not that expensive,” John found himself saying, a sentiment that would’ve seemed absurd a month ago. Now, though, $900 for a device that did as much as a smartphone didn’t seem so absurd considering he had paid dozens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the clothes he had on. “You could easily get a top of the line phone with the money you make from the first bounty you do and still not make much of a dent in it.”

“So you just, like, don’t listen to music? You’ve heard music before though, right? I mean, obviously you know what it is,” Jenny was almost at a loss for words. Though John had told her the situation, being confronted by it was a whole different beast.

“It’s not something I’ve ever thought about. I’ve probably heard music before but it’s not something I was thinking about while I was doing it,” the woefully uninformed girl told them, which made Jenny go into their bedroom, coming out shortly with her bass case. After unzipping it, she retrieved an uPod that was enclosed in a red case.

“This is my fighting music. It’s what gets my blood pumping. It kinda seems like you’re an adrenaline junkie, so it’s what you’re going to like the most out of everything I have,” the bassist said, assuming the role of a teacher. “These are earbuds. You put the round parts in your ear and plug in the long part.” She held up the plug end of the earbuds before showing her plugging it into the aux port on the device.

“You hit this triangle,” Jenny said, sitting next to Abigail and showing her the button on the music player, “to play a song. You hit these two lines to pause it. These two triangles skip a song, and these will restart the one you’re listening to. Try it out.”

“O-kay,” Abigail responded, taking one of the offered earbuds and the uPod. Each of them put an earbud in an ear, and Abigail pressed play.

“Show me how to lie/you’re getting better all the time…” began playing into their ears as John went into the kitchen for a drink, trusting Abigail’s musical education to his girlfriend.

“This is so great! What is this called!?” Abigail exclaimed, looking at the screen.

Jenny’s smile grew wider, eager to introduce someone to the world of music. “This is a band called ‘The Offspring’. A band called ‘Nirvana’ is up next; if you like these guys, you’re probably going to like them.”

“I could definitely fight while listening to this,” Abigail said, shadowboxing with the device in her lap. “This is what I’ve been missing out on?”

Putting a hand on the other girl’s shoulder, Jenny said, “Trust me, it only gets better from here.”

After that, Jenny spent a few hours catching Abigail up on general pop-culture, though she focused on the 70s and 80s, as they were her specialty. John was following along quietly for a while, but decided to take a small nap before they had to return, as it seemed like Jenny and Abigail weren’t stopping any time soon.

“Alright, I’m going to get a few hours in before we have to go back,” John said, getting up from the couch. Jenny and Abigail had practically forgotten about him at this point, as Jenny was currently taking her through the best songs she had found for relaxing. Currently, “‘39’” by Queen.

“Have fun,” Abigail idly commented; very apparently neither of them had really heard him. Deciding to leave them to it, he set himself to sleep for four hours, which would leave them an hour and a half to get back to base.

To his surprise, when he woke up, they were still in the full swing of it. Jenny had taken residence at his computer, Lotify open on it, her luxury headphones on as she sat back in the desk chair. Abigail had her backup pair on, and both of their heads rocked softly to the same beat.

“Wow, you guys are still going at it,” John said, more to himself than anyone else. He didn’t expect Jenny to shoot him a panicked look upon seeing him exit their bedroom.

“Crap! I meant to join you like an hour ago! And I need to be at the Inferno in fifteen minutes!” Jenny exclaimed, ripping off her headphones. In one fluid motion, she caught the headphones that Abigail tossed to her and put them both in her bass case. Zipping it up, she ran into their bedroom and slammed the door, appearing a minute later in a different shirt. Taking her bass case, she made a dash for the door.

“Wait, your music!” Abigail called, holding up the red-cased uPod.

“Keep it, I’ve got dozens of those,” Jenny called back, racing down the fire escape before any further conversation could be had. John heard her footsteps pounding as she sprinted to her job, nearly late on the first day.

“Well, that happened. I’m feeling breakfast before we go back to our dorms, you feeling breakfast? There’s a small diner on the way, I’m buying.” John offered, switching from his pajamas to a simple white t-shirt and shorts.

“John, you know I don’t really know what a diner is. Also, I’m in,” Abigail replied, stretching after sitting in the same position on the couch for so long. Looking up from his phone, John realized sometime while he was asleep she had changed from her fighting outfit to one of Jenny’s band shirts and a skirt with tights.

Wow, that looks out of place on her considering what I’ve seen her wear until now. Also weird that it fits. I guess they do have similar figures, John caught himself staring at the way the shirt was just a little too tight.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Abigail joked, internally high-fiving herself for already being able to use a phrase Jenny had taught her. “I look weird, right?”

“No, it looks good! It’s just weird to see someone else wearing Jenny’s clothes,” John answered. “Want me to put your brawler gear in my inventory? Better than you carrying it around.”

“Sure! Jenny mentioned that you could magically clean them?” Abigail asked. “I don’t know if it’ll work though, they’re kind of special. Made to be able to turn into fire with me.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” John said, using Clean on the pile of clothes to her left. Sniffing them, Abigail confirmed they were clean.

“We should really hurry if we’re going to hit the diner,” John said, checking his phone again. He swung the door open and walked out with Abigail, using Move to shut and lock it behind them.

Soon after they sat down, a waitress came over and placed three things in front of each of them - a menu, a glass of water, and a cup of coffee. Having come here many times over the past month, John knew what was good and so Abigail agreed to let him order for her, much more concerned with the scalding liquid placed in front of her.

“It’s hot,” Abigail said, watching steam float up and off the mug, taking a sip she continued, “and bitter.”

“Most people like drinking it hot,” John explained, taking a sip of his own coffee. A glance at his phone revealed they had about an hour to get back to their dorms. “It’s common to make it less bitter by adding sugar or milk to make it more palatable.”

“More what?” Abigail asked, eyeing the liquid suspiciously. Taking the small metal pitcher from John, she poured some milk in and watched it mingle with the near-black liquid.

“Make it taste better,” John clarified, adding a packet of sugar to his own coffee. “The white paper packets are normal sugar.” As he said this, he was horrified to watch her take five of them in her hand and rip them open, pouring all their contents into her small mug of coffee.

Mixing it with her spoon, she tasted it again and smiled, “That’s better.”

The rest of breakfast passed mostly uneventfully; she had apparently had bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, and orange juice before. The only other surprise was waffles.

“Okay, so I don’t mean to overload you with new information, but that is called a waffle,” John explained as the syrupy confection was placed in front of her.

“Tastes like a pancake,” Abigail commented, having cut off a piece of the food. “Never had this sticky stuff before though. It’s sweet like sugar, but it’s got something else.”

“So you’ve had pancakes, but not syrup?” John asked, incredibly confused. That was the moment he gave up guessing what she did and didn’t know about. “What kind of monster makes pancakes with no syrup?”

“My dad makes the best pancakes,” Abigail replied between mouthfuls of waffle, “he puts strawberry jelly on them and it tastes so good. This is different but also really good.”

After they both finished their waffles, John left a tip and paid. Getting back to the dorms took about ten minutes, which left them with about five minutes before 8:00 AM. If they were supposed to have two more roommates to fill up the other two beds, they never showed up. They made idle chit chat as they waited for whatever was going to happen to, well, happen. At exactly 8:00 AM a voice erupted over the loudspeakers in the hallway, piercing the doors to the rooms with deafening volume.