Allison walked down the stairs into the kitchen, to find Five rifling through things in a shelf and Klaus and Lara sitting at the kitchen table.
"Where's Vanya?"
Klaus answered, "Oh. She's gone."
"That's unfortunate."
"Yeah" Allison added.
Five started talking again. "An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, Nine-teen bathrooms, but not a single cup of coffee."
"Dad hated caffeine."
"Well, he hated children too, and he had plenty of us." Lara snickered, but continued, "here, if you want a decent cup of coffee, there's a diner just down the road. Can you drive?"
"I know how to do everything."
Once they had left, Klaus looked over at Allison. "I feel like we should try and stop them, but then again, I also just kinda want to see what happens."
The car was an old, beaten down black town car. It was relatively long, but not long enough to be a limousine. "Kinda cool how you can drive," Lara started, earning a snicker from Five. "Take a left here."
After a couple minutes, the two children stopped in front of the brightly-lit diner called 'Griddy's Donuts'. There was a massive neon sign above the entrance, letting off a yellow-tinted light on their faces. "Here we are. Wanna go in?"
"There's something I need to tell you, L- something else."
"Yeah , sure. Shoot." Five opened his mouth, as if to speak, but closed it again.
"Never mind. I'm sure it can wait."
The door opened, making a tingling sound, and they went and sat down on the counter. The entire diner was empty, apart from a man next to them. Lara looked over towards Five, then to her right, and gave the man a warm smile. "Hi. Nice night, huh?"
A middle-aged lady in a hot pink uniform came out and smiled. "Sorry, sink was clogged." She laughed a little. "So, What'll it be?" The man next to Lara took a second to think.
"Uh, give me a chocolate éclair."
"Mm-hm, sure." She wrote something down in her notebook. "Can I get the kids a glass of milk or something?" Five scoffed. "The kids want coffee. Black." The lady looked slightly taken aback. Lara smiled. "Please." The lady smiled and looked at the man. "Cute kids." Then, she went and started to prepare the coffees, and éclair. Five sighed and looked first behind him, and then at Lara, admiring her features. Lara, however, didn't notice this, and turned to talk to the man. "Don't remember this place being such a shithole. We used to come her as kids. We used to sneak out with our brothers and sisters and eat donuts until we puked."
"Simpler times, huh?" Five spoke in a low voice. The man looked slightly confused.
"Uh, I suppose." The waitress came back, and handed them their food.
"Here." The woman looked at the three of them, waiting for one of them to pay.
"I got their's." The man handed over a 5$ bill, and smiled at the two.
"Thanks." Lara smiled. Five simply gave him a small smirk. Five looked down to his badge.
"You must know your way around the city."
"Hope so, I've been driving around for 20 years."
"Good. I need an address." Lara gave Five a puzzled look. They talked, and finally the man left.
"Are we waiting for someone?" Lara asked as Five stayed sitting.
"Nothing. Just for us to finish our coffee. Why?"
"Because there's a purple people out there who look like they're waiting for us..." Five looked behind him, and sure enough, a group of grown men was standing by a car outside. "Just pretend we haven't seen them." Five spoke reassuringly. "If you say so," Lara muttered, staring down at her coffee.
"Listen. These men, they're after me. So, you need to be prepared to leave me if they get me. Leave me and get help, ok?"
Before Lara could answer, the door opened. A group of men with rifles walked in. "Hmm, that was fast. I thought I'd have more time before they found me." He put down his mug. A tall man walked up to the two of them.
"Ok, so let's all be professional about this, yeah?" He pointed the gun at Five's head, and Lara inhaled sharply. Five grabbed her hand under the table, and gave it a quick squeeze to reassure her, then took it back. "On your feet and come with us. They want to talk."
"I've got nothing to say."
"It doesn't have to go this way. You think I wanna shoot a kid? Go home with that on my conscience?"
"Well, I wouldn't worry about that." He turned around and looked at the man. "You won't be going home." In a split-second, Five grabbed the knife in front of him, and teleported behind the man, stabbing him in the neck. Lara sprung to her feet, and ran away from the confusion. She took a millisecond to assess the situation as gunfire started, and then jumped into the action. Immediately, her eyes flared black, and she jumped forward, punching a guy in the face. As he tried to shoot her, she mad a force field and walked up to him, tapping his temple. Less then 2 seconds later, his eyes filled with black liquid and he collapsed, black ink coming out of his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. She spun around, and before a shooter could shoot at her, she duplicated herself multiple times, running around the shooters. Unsure which one to shoot, the shooters started shooting all of them, and Lara stepped in and tackled the man, getting his gun off of him. Then, she reached out with one hand, and when he tried to punch her, slamming it down into the ground as she dodged it. A wave of an uncertain black substance shot out beneath their feet, sending all of the soldiers flying. Then, she reached onto the counter, grabbing a couple knives and throwing two to Five. He teleported a
Me stabbed a couple, whereas Lara threw them, all of them hitting the men directly in the forehead. "Come on, let's get out of here, Five." She beckoned him towards the door, but Five remained. "No. How did they find us?" Lara reached down and grabbed the tracker device in one of the men's hands. "Here."
"Shit. They put a tracker on me." Five grabbed a knife.
"No. Wait. Let me do it." Five gaped at her. "What? I wasn't gonna make you cut yourself open, was I?"
"I can do it-"
"I know you can, but I'm not gonna let you do it yourself. Give me the knife." He reluctantly handed her the knife. "Where is it?" He pointed to his forearm. "Focus on something else." Five stared at her, admiring her now-normal eyes, and how they looked so sparkly under the fluorescent diner lights. He grimaced as she slit his forearm open. "Oh my god, I'm sorry. It'll be over soon." She smiled at him and he stared back. She looked back down and looked for a couple of seconds, then muttered a quite "There it is!" And reached in with dainty hands, making Five let out a pained groan. Pulling the tiny tracker out of his arm. She threw it in the ground and stamped on it, crushing the beeping machine. "Thanks." Five said quietly, giving Lara a small one-sided smile.
