Saturday, June 12, 2004

   Cream Filling & Nougat: Third Helping (Chapter XV)
Cream looked around the small, spartan room. It was maybe the size of a small bedroom with a round table in the middle and a desk or two along the walls. The one small window to the outside was heavily barred and screened, and the rest of the walls were noticeably bare. A heavy cloud of smoke also hung high in the air around the lone ceiling light, irritating the detective slightly. Once he took in his surroundings, he focused his attention back to his cel phone.
"I'm just gonna guess that I'm gonna be assassinated in about two, maybe three minutes . . ." he said to his partner back at the precinct, ". . . what am I looking for and how can I get out of here?"

"Alright," Nougat started, "check the desks and just tell me what you find." Cream started checking the nearest desk. Unfortunately, he had surprised the room's occupants while they still had the drawers locked. Seeing no other way, Cream figured he had to risk the time to try to pick the locks. Meanwhile, he could already hear heavy footsteps coming back to the door. The detective wiped his hands off on his pants one more time before reinserting the small probes into the lock. After about fifteen seconds of trying, the lock still wouldn't turn. The phone pinned between his head and shoulder spoke to him again.

"Yo, Whip', you find anything yet?" Nougat asked.
"Not yet," Cream replied, "I think I just failed my pick locks roll and sadly my Transmuter is on vacation right now." Nougat paused briefly.
". . . what the suck are you talking about?"
"Forget it!" Cream said back quickly. "Lock's not opening!"
"Dude! It's a desk lock! Just hit it!" Upon hearing the words, Cream almost wanted to kick himself. Immediately, he drew his pistol from its holster, flipped it around, and hammered at the jutting-out lock with the butt end.

Cream finally knocked the small lock in enough to allow the drawer to open enough for him to put a hand in and grab what he could. To his offense, the first layer of papers he pulled out happened to be food wrappers . . . luckily, less disgusting materials were underneath, and he pulled out as many of the small notebooks and clipboards as he could.
"Hmm," Cream said outloud to himself, "guess I'm more Fighter than Rogue after all . . ."
". . . . . what the suck are you talking about?!" Nougat shouted.
"Nothing! Forget it!"

Feeling that too much time had already passed, Cream's breath began to quicken.
"Uh, Noug'?" he said, readjusting his phone under his ear, "I don't think I'm gonna have enough time to check these out just yet . . ." Nougat quickly answered,
"Alright, just take them with you and grab the stuff in the other desks." The banging against the door told Cream otherwise.
"Don't know if I'll have the time, Noug' . . ."
"Make some time!"

Thinking of a quick way to simplify his worries, Cream dragged the still-locked desk away from the wall and behind the chair he already had propped against the door handle. Feeling that there was at least a little more security against the door, he braced his hand against the handle of the drawer and pulled back his body, ready to hammer down with his gun . . . . . his motion in turn caused the unlocked drawer to slide out, dropping Cream into a sitting position.

Shaking off his sense if idiocy, Cream quickly snatched all the documents he could and spoke back into his phone while the door began to shake heavily.
"Okay Wizard, I've got the papers, now get me back to Kansas before the flying monkeys kill me!"
"Alright, Whip'," Nougat responded, a great sense of urgency in his voice as well, "go to the wall where the window is and feel around the ground. There should still be a trapdoor around there . . . I mean, unless they got wise to us and got rid of it . . ."
"Yo! Wizard!" Cream shouted into his small cel, searching the ground all the while, "don't tell me these things!"
"Just look, damn it!"

After another quick search, Cream finally found the trapdoor that was cleverly camoflauged into the rest of the floor tiles.
"Haha! I found it!" Cream exclaimed. "Detect Secret Passages, baby! Ah . . . um, never mind that, Noug'."
"Will you just get out of there already, man?!" Noug ordered.
"As good as gone!" Cream answered back as he found the latch and lifted the trapdoor . . . . . and found two men underneath him with guns.

With no hesitation, the young detective reached down and grabbed the first gun hand he saw. He pulled up, partially dragging the man through the passage and twisted sharply, disarming the one man with an audible pop before soccer-kicking the assailant in the side of the head - his torso slumped across the floor of the room harshly. While the other man tried to free his gun from the tangle of bodies in the hole, Cream jumped in on top of him and knocked them both to sitting positions at the bottom of the tunnel. catching the gangster's weapon under both of them.

Unfortunately for Cream, he had landed with his back towards the other sitting man, and suddenly found himself guarding against a choke from behind. As an arm snaked across his throat, Cream began throwing his elbows back as hard as he could. The choke continued to tighten, and Cream could feel his head getting lighter. Out of desparation, Cream yelled out as he raised his body out from the gangster's lap, the lack of oxygen to his brain making it a huge task. After a final push, Cream was able to lift himself off the other man, immediately drew his gun with his right hand, and shoved the barrel back behind his tailbone. Hearing the uncomfortable grunt from the man underneath him, he knew he had found his target.
"Let go of me now . . ." Cream said coldly between breaths as he continued to push the barrel of his pistol into the man's groin.

The gangster eased up on his hold until he let go completely. Cream immediately got onto his feet into as high a crouch as the tunnel would allow and turned to face the still sitting man whose hands were now raised up. Again, with little hesitation in his body, Cream swung both arms across in a wide horizontal arc - his left knuckles cracked hard against the man's chin while the pistol in his right hand whipped him in the temple shortly afterwards. The gangster fell unconscious, and Cream quickly turned to find his way out of the tunnel.

He had taken about ten steps before stopping abruptly to run back to the start of the tunnel. Quickly fumbling under the downed man, Cream found what he was looking for and headed back out.
"Hey, Noug'? You there?" he said into his recovered cel phone. "Yeah, there was a bit of static there, so I lost ya for a sec . . . . . in any case, where does this tunnel lead?"


[Hmm . . . you ever find it funny that the shortest bits of story-time always seem to be the longest bits of reading-time with me? Hehe . . . . . well, if the last chapter was indeed short, I'm sure this'll make up for it. For extra bits of info, I thought this chapter was kinda fun to write (all off the top of my head, of course). And, if anyone here knows what the hell Cream was talking about, well . . . I feel especially happy for ya! Teh heh heh . . .]
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