Pit stops and pretty parties.

Robyn's house... actually turned out to be smaller than he thought it would be. The Gamer wasn't sure what it was exactly that he had been expecting when they pulled up into the driveway of a cozy, little, one-story house hidden in the middle of a suburban neighborhood that was filled with dozens of houses that looked almost exactly like it. A double-door garage opened upon their approach as Robyn pulled up to the comely abode, and with a gentle smile, she waved ever-so-casually at one of her neighbors as the elderly woman went through and mowed her front lawn. As far as John could tell, there wasn't even the slightest bit of change between the grass that the neighbor cut and the spots that hadn't been mowed over yet, she was just going over it again.

On the outside of Robyn's home, a makeshift fence of well-trimmed bushes surrounded the perimeter of her property, partly obscuring the visual of her home behind tall walls of green shrubbery while the inside was blocked off at the windows with great, thick, white curtains. Robyn pulled her deuce up into the building itself for a moment, letting the car come to a complete stop while John and Mary looked around at all the simple tools and gym equipment that had been placed on the other side of the garage, and then she got out of the car. John quickly followed suit, if not to see the interior of her house, then at least so he could let Mary out of the backseat. Once again, the cheerleader had to climb her way around the backseat, pushing forward through the gap between the passenger's door at the rest of the leather upholstery before she had to squeeze past John while he tried to hold the car door open for her. The cheerleader brushed against him ever-so-slightly as she followed Robyn up to the door that connected the garage to the rest of the house and then stood behind her as Robyn unlocked and opened it for the cheerleader.

Robyn didn't lead the way inside for her, or even gesture for the two of them to go in, she just stepped out of the way and waited for Mary to go on her own. Mary, on the other hand, simply froze. A couple of silent seconds passed before Robyn started walking back to the car.

"Help yourself to anything you can find inside, just try to stay out of the basement. I've got some delicate projects I'm in the middle of working on down there that can't be disturbed." Again, Mary didn't move, even after Robyn had finished giving the younger woman the go ahead. The two of them seemed to be about the same age, or at least close enough that John couldn't visibly identify the number of years that Robyn had on the cheerleader, but the way they still acted seemed so different from one another. In a way, it reminded him of Robyn and Eddie, the redheaded engineer that worked for the Frozen Flame. He thought about what she said about how a childhood friend had made the arm for her and then wondered how long the two girls had known each other. Eddie seemed like she was smart enough to do it and it would have made sense for her to be the one to have made the robotic limb for Robyn, but like Mary, Eddie seemed so different compared to the hardened veteran that had saved John from the police station and somehow won in her fight against the Cabalists. He followed her readily back to the car, waiting to ask the blonde woman about how she had even managed to succeed where the Warden and the wielder of the Frozen Flame hadn't... and then he was stopped halfway there when he felt Mary's hand latch on to his arm.

The cheerleader pulled John to a stop before he got too far away from her, and with a slight sniffle, she turned him back to face her. Hearing that noise come from Mary was enough to prepare John for the possibility of welling eyes and other half-sobbed noises, he had heard enough of them over the past week to recognize it by that point, but when he turned, he already found the cheerleader crying. She was trying to hide it as she wiped her cheeks clean of her own tears with one hand and the bunched up sleeve of John's stolen jacket, but he had already seen the glistening drops before she could have stopped them. Her attempts at seeming prim and proper on the outside kept her face largely hidden behind her hands and the bunched up sleeve as she held John in place for a long moment, and then, with a weak crack in her voice, she barely managed to tell him why she had stopped him from leaving yet.

"Th-thank you, John." Her voice wasn't shrill or high-pitched like he was used to. It was soft and... almost noiseless, like a whisper. It stunned him for a moment as she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his chest for a second... and then Robyn's car door slammed shut behind her. Mary jumped again at the loud noise before John could shake himself out of his stupor to hug her or anything, and he watched as the cheerleader darted inside before he could call after her and watched the garage door also slamming shut when she left. A couple of seconds passed with him debating on following after her and trying to talk to the cheerleader again before Robyn honked the car's horn at him and made John jump this time, shocking him back into the moment so he could climb back into the Deuce.

"You- you could have given me a moment..." he muttered when the two of them were finally pulling back out of the driveway. The car purred again as she turned back down the street and took off with a loud revving noise from the engine. The car shook so much as she blasted down the street with the vehicle that John could feel the engine rumbling in his bones.

"I've already given you more than enough today. Otrov could have already left town while you were off 'resting' and 'going to school'." Robyn's arms tensed again as she spoke... but this time, she didn't **** herself to relax.

"You've given it to me?" John blinked, his head turning to stare at her incredulously as Robyn roughly jerked the vehicle back in the direction they came and then began moving off towards the home base for the Frozen Flame. "You haven't given me anything. You didn't pay me for the help that I gave you, you didn't save me from the Cabalists when they came to kidnap me. You barely escaped on your own! Your-"

"Are you seriously still talking about payment right now?!" Robyn snapped and interrupted John. His eyes widened slightly as Robyn took his statement in... perhaps the worst possible way, and he watched as her arms tensed up more. She grit her teeth together as she tried to remain focused on the road, but that focus didn't help to stop her from grinding her hands into the steering wheel again as she drove and audibly bending it out of place with a horrible, metallic whining sound. When she saw what she had done, it only made Robyn even more pissed as she swore at the 'wound' that her vehicle had taken.

"What else would I be talking about? I-" John didn't get to finish talking again.

"The Warden, John! Or Cassandra!" she said, and John almost sighed before deciding against it. She was already too pissed off and he didn't want to antagonize her like that. "You know, the people who were actually taken when those 'Cabalists' came to kidnap you!"

"What do you expect me to do about that?! If your 'Warden police' or the crazy army lady with the red eye couldn't beat them, what makes you think I can?!" The steering wheel began whining even louder as Robyn bent it even further out of shape. Her hands squeezed so tightly that it was getting smaller and smaller with each passing second. If the shouting match kept up, John realized that she would be trying to drive with a metal ball at some point instead of a wheel. "If I go up against them, I'm going to be captured. I almost was captured when Otrov attacked me!"

Robyn's foot slammed into car floor. The vehicle came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street while other vehicles began swerving and honking erratically just to try and keep from crashing into them.

"You are already captured, John!" Another car honked at the two of them, but Robyn didn't pay it any mind. A part of John felt worried when she said that, like at any moment he might find himself waking up in a Mana tank, like he did in his nightmare. Thankfully, that didn't happen. "If the Warden is the police here and Cassandra was supposed to be the army, then who is in charge, John? Who is keeping the Cabal at bay while the Warden is gone?!"

"The Golden Rose. That's what they do, isn't it? If one Templar is killed, then you just send anothe-" It seemed like an easy question to answer.

"Templars?! John, we aren’t talking about Templars here! There are only three Wardens!" The whole street started honking at them. "If they kill one, then the next person in line just becomes the new Warden..." John blinked. That was basically what he said, right? "... but they don't have to kill her! If she's being held by the Cabal and just drained for Mana, then the Lady's Blessing stays with Moira! That means that Springfield has no Warden to protect it! There are no legends, no warriors here left to try and keep the peace. Springfield is about to become a battlefield, a place for armies and unmarked graves. Anyone can try to move in on this territory.

"There can't be any sides or petty squabbles anymore. The biggest **** against keeping the whole Cabal organization back has had a third of it's holy power cut away from it! Like it or not, the Cabal is still coming for you, and if you aren't ready to fight back against them... then you are already captured." The argument ended there. As much as John wanted to try and give a rebuttal, this sounded like something he should probably hear. "If you think a group of five Cabalists is going to seriously be the biggest problem that you're going to have from here on out, you're fooling yourself! The Cabal has it's claws in everything from here to the corners of every Abyssal kingdom that you can think of! They-"

"I get it." It took a while before John finally stopped her. Once John relented, Robyn **** herself to calm down. She sighed heavily as the two of them stared at one another, and when another car finally honked at them again, she resumed driving. The car ride got increasingly quiet as the two of them passed the argument in silence... and then something about what Robyn had said to him stuck out. He glanced over at the blonde, as she grimaced at the shape her steering wheel was in now, and then shook his head lightly and laughed.

Robyn gave him a weird look.

"You said the Cabal is still coming for me, right?" John asked, and Robyn slowly nodded. Again, the Gamer laughed... and kept laughing until Robyn had to ask him what he thought was so funny... so he explained it to her. "If the Cabal is still coming for me... then why would Otrov leave? Why would any of them leave? Why not just wait for backup to arrive?" Robyn simply stared at him with a blank face. Her expression didn't change even as John continued talking. "The only reason I can think of for any of them leaving is so that they could move the Warden and Cassandra out to a more secure location. If they're taking Springfield... then there's no reason for all of them to leave. Certainly not the people who have already won a fight against the Warden and the Frozen Flame."

Robyn's mouth fell open slightly. She looked back and forth between him and the road as John finished explaining his thought process to her... and then with a slight shake of her head, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone.

"Son of a bitch," she murmured as she pushed down on the brakes again just as the car came to a stoplight. Without having to worry about going anywhere, she started messaging someone on her phone as quickly as she could possibly manage.

"Stop by my house first before we head back; I want to make sure my mom's okay," he told her. Robyn didn't even hesitate. She just flipped a switch on her dashboard to engage her vehicles lights so she could start to turn towards John's house. The ride there was a lot shorter than the rides he had taken with Robyn in the past. Her impatient attitude that she had been restraining since she had picked up Mary was out in the open now and her attention was entirely focused on rushing the two of them through the things that they needed to do so that they could get right back to searching for Otrov. He tried to prepare Robyn for the idea that checking on his mother might take a while, but Robyn was barely listening. He couldn't exactly explain to her that he might need to feed his mother's cum addiction before he went back to work with her.

There was no way for him to tell how she might react to something like that.

Eventually, it didn't matter though. When they started to get close to John's house, his heart almost stopped when he began to notice that something was wrong. Smoke was in the air and the sky was dark above his neighborhood because of the amount of it. The two of them slowed their pace as they came up to the sight of flashing police lights and the sound of spraying water while firefighters tried to subdue and douse the inferno that had started on his street. His heart beat pounded harder and faster in his chest than he could ever remember it happening like that before, so hard that he could hear and feel his pulse throbbing up to his ears. He passed by home after home, each one devoured by flame until there was nothing but a charred black skeleton made from the house’s foundations. He passed his childhood friends, people who had long since separated from him when Vanessa and Frank started abusing him to try and avoid their wrath, and passed by neighbors like the elderly woman that John had seen out power-walking in the street one morning when he had teleported back from his kingdom. More than all of that though... he saw the place where the fire began. He saw his home... and silently stared at the pile of ash and timber that it was now while Robyn pulled the car to a stop.

It was still burning as John walked up to it.