Chapter Text
Our story begins as many good stories do. With an impulsive decision made at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Roxanne stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. The lights were off. Her whole flat was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. And she'd just buzzed all her hair off.
She couldn't tell you what made her do such a thing. She didn't even know if she knew. If she had to guess, her distinct lack of sleep probably had something to do with it. Just as well could the amount of thoughts swarming her mind just before she picked up the clippers.
You probably wouldn't be able to tell that she had no idea what she was doing, though. Despite how little thought she put into the act as a whole, the sudden haircut was executed nicely enough. It was even, smooth, and the guard she'd more or less slapped onto the electric razor in a brief moment of clarity (the kind that said 'just in case' like it meant anything) left enough fuzzy, short hair that she could still see the lighter silvery-blonde color amidst the low light. It felt nice to run her hand over. It felt a bit like velvet— kind of prickly in one direction and smooth in the other.
It's important to note that Roxanne was much more a person of thought than action. Everything she did required a strict routine of preliminary mental tangents before it finally manifested. It hadn't always been that way, she'd note, and part of her felt as though that was what motivated her to do something so...unplanned. Maybe.
And before she knew it, she'd made a bed to lie in. In this case, the bed was having to stare at herself without the clean-cut bob that, at some point, stopped feeling like her's— and wrestle with the mixed feelings that went along with that. One part of her was excited at the change. Another dreaded it. Another wondered what people would say about it. Another came up with a scenario of being recognized again; what that might feel like. And another, and another, etcetera etcetera. There was a part of her, the littlest part in the back of her mind, that declared she'd made a stupid mistake. That it was too unexpected. That her choice was surely going to bite her.
Just like every decision she'd made in recent memory before it.
Roxanne wanted to deny how that thought stuck with her. She wanted to remind that piece of her that there was more good that'd come recently than bad. But..she couldn't bring herself to commit to what felt just as much like a lie.
The problem, she decided, was that 'recent memory' didn't correlate at all with recent events.
She didn't remember anything from when she was.. absent.. in her own life. She recalled brief glimpses of something— and something she couldn't quite place; perhaps a sensation or a memory that felt as muffled and ineffective as she did whenever she looked back. Anything she tried to rustle up from.... however long she was out of control was useless. Like trying to recall a dream in perfect detail.
It made everything frustrating. She was grateful that no one wanted to talk about it whenever she was around— she suspected that no one wanted to talk about it at all— but the beating around a bush came to a point. A point she'd take note of before she shuffled off to do something else and save the people around her from having to make awkward small talk.
A point Roxanne wasn't ready to confront. Not yet.
She sighed, pulling herself from her wildly spinning rabbit hole of thought. Just as she pulled herself a step back from the sink. It was almost as if she could hear her heart beating in her ears. Her gaze raked over herself in the mirror again, though she resolved herself to one final once-over. Roxanne took another sharp breath in, and walked back toward her bedroom.
She lifted a hand to her face as she released the air in her lungs. Why was she shaking? When did her throat start feeling so tight? Why did she feel so…
The exact word for it didn't never sprung to mind.
Roxanne let herself collapse back into bed. The pillows felt odd without all her hair. A good kind of odd. Roxanne felt her doubts hush for a moment in favor of an unsteady excitement.
She didn't sleep. She usually didn't.
Chai didn't sleep. Not when he wanted to, anyway. Something was always wrong whenever he tried. Or...maybe not wrong, per se, but preventing him from catching a full eight hours nonetheless. He didn't always have a bed (or couch, in this case) to sleep on, his brain wouldn't shut up, or maybe he just couldn't sleep through the entire night. Hell, he'd find himself staring at the ceiling, eyes stuck open.
Which is where he was at now. It was starting to make his brain buzz and his head ache.
It was so weird to him. In recent memory, the only times he had been unconscious was either against his will or because he was too exhausted to keep his eyes open. And as soon as he stopped needing to be up and alert, he was. How ironic was that? 808 purred ambiently, sprawled out on Chai's chest, effectively trapping him in place. She was probably the only reason our plucky hero hadn't gotten up and snuck out of the hideout to do something wildly irresponsible.
It's important to note that Chai was much more a person of action than thought. His tendency to leap first and ask questions later had proved to be one of his most consistent traits. Anything he did, he did based on a sudden intuition. Like an itch he couldn't quite scratch if he just stood around. It had been that way for as long as he could remember.
He wasn't used to having to skid to a halt and ponder.
A part of him was sick of thinking. Another made his hand fidget with the neckline of his shirt. Another part wondered if he could shift 808 off of himself without disturbing her— which was quickly brushed off as an ultimately pointless task. What would he even do if he could get off that couch? He didn't feel like doing any insane parkour, it would probably be really creepy if he just paced back and forth, there wasn't anything that needed doing right now, so on and so forth.
Chai wondered if 808 was really asleep. Or if it was some weird robot equivalent. Did CNMN do something like this? He knew it wasn't a robot-cat-exclusive kind of thing (the various TEC units he spotted napping on the job was enough proof of that). Maybe he could ask when it was more than just him who was conscious. Chai wondered what time it was, then mulled over waking up the cat on his chest to ask.
He decided to forgo the idea— and keep staring at the ceiling of the hideout instead.
It was at times like these where Chai wasn't sure what he wanted; or if he even wanted anything at all. He was used to wanting something. In the same way he was used to constantly being on the move. Whenever he did want, he'd be able to focus on it in such a way that everything else suddenly became irrelevant. It didn't matter how he got what he wanted or achieved whatever he had his heart set on as long as he did. But he didn't have anything like that right now.
He had the new arm thing, the Rockstar thing (kinda), all wrapped up in the Project Armstrong Ambassador thing. But what did that mean for him now? There wasn't anything immediate to latch onto. At least, not in any way he could think of.
Maybe he just had to wait for 'the next thing' to fall into his lap.
....Chai hated waiting.
He hated waiting for his brain to finally decide 'hey, now seems like a good time to conk out!' He hated waiting for opportunities that might pass him by, waiting for the next step of the plan, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
808 stirred. A tiny, adorable half-mew-half-whine made its way out of her as she scrunched up with her face in her paws. Chai worried, for a moment, that his hate train had gotten to her through their weird unexplainable connection. He decided to think about something else with a sigh. He wondered what teleportation— Temporal Whatchamacallit— felt like.
He didn't remember falling asleep. He usually never did.