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Surge the Tenrec didn't consider herself patient at the best of times.
It was a little more like she would start her day and imagine her patience like a battery that gradually wore down - way quicker than the electricity she generated herself ever would - and every interaction, every shared word or meeting-and-greeting with the general public or anyone else would sap that down until some poor sap drew the unlucky straw and got to be on the receiving end of when that battery hit zero.
So to say that today had been a long, trying day for the would-be-heroine-of-Westopolis-City was one thing. To then say that she knew someone was standing outside her door and had yet to knock for a full minute without her having punched her fist through the wooden obstacle and dragged them inside was what she considered to be no less than a miracle of untold restraint on her part.
She had her face right up next to the peephole - she really had to get someone to replace it for one of those mafia-style sliding hatch things, at least she'd get to yell at people and then slam it afterwards without having to open the whole door - watching as all she could see was a timid fist getting closer and closer to the door.
"C'mon already..." she hissed, a jolt of electricity escaping as her foot ground into the burnt carpetry.
Then the fist pulled back, second-guessing as if it had heard her. Finally, the Tenrec could take no more as she yanked the door and slammed it into the already-indented wall, "Sunnuva-
"It's about damn time!" She thrust herself out into the hallway, a half-dozen noise warnings and other ignored violations that had been taped to her door fluttering up, "Swear to Gaia, if you brought me Kit's burger with pickles again, forget a doordash, I'm showing you a spindash!"
"I-"
A murmured whisper over Surge's shoulder made her glance back into the ill-lit abode, before she whipped her quilled head right back round into her tirade, "And you better have brought us the damn straws this time too!"
"I'm-"
"A zero-skill, no redeeming quality waste of space overqualified foodtray dispenser?! Totally! Now spit it out!"
"I'm not the delivery person!!!!" The weedy voice finally managed, before daring further, "Is- Is that why there's a whole courier bag of food spilled down the hall?"
Surge blinked and as if a filter had been lifted from her vision actually saw who was standing - or currently cowering - in front of her: a small, reedy orange feline with some black accents tipping his ears and paws, one of which was now currently incapacitated with his arm covered in plaster from elbow to knuckle and tucked in a sling.
It took a moment or two of recollection to return her focus from being thrown off, but if there was one thing Surge didn't forget, it was the face of anyone who personally ticked her off. "Oh.
"It's you," Surge let the doorframe catch herself as she slumped, leaning against it and folding her arms, narrowing eyes, "Wrong address, you won't find any 'Sonics' here, Bubsy."
"Uh... my name's-"
"Nah," she shoved her face forward with a hiss that sounded like popping static, "You're Bubsy now."
The cat recoiled, cradling his casted limb against his chest further as the lights in the hallway quickly began to flicker with the crackle of energy that was building in the Tenrec. Oh, he was afraid and he had good reason to be. Only several hours prior she'd seen this exact same wimp limp out of the runaway tram she stopped before it could pancake a bunch of pedestrians and everyone inside, complaining the whole time: about her, about crashing the trolley to save every ungrateful meatball inside, about his stupid wrist, and especially how she was not an unmentionable lookalike in a detestable primary color.
She'd been through a whole system of sulking, adding new dents to the wall as she smashed a rubber ball back and forth, processing and going through more dealing with emotions than she cared to put effort into about trying the whole hero schtick. And now standing right back in front of her just brought all of that right back up to the surface. And Surge wasn't about to be subtle with her rebuttal to anything this fleabag had to say to her.
"Well?" She spat, looming up and over the feline who only shrank further and further back as an even larger shadow of multiple tails began to emerge from the doorway behind her, all focused upon the target of Surge's current ire, "You had plenty to say earlier today, you got something else on your mind you just had to come back and share?!"
"I wanted to say sorry!" The cat cried out as if he had to empty his lungs all at once just to reply, falling right back on his rear beneath the impending electrical disaster ready to erupt.
Surge ground her fangs together, frown fixed on the feline as her arcs of electricity began to fizzle out, even as her fist remained clenched. She certainly had a voice telling her how good it would be to smack this smacktalker into paste, but at the same time, she knew there just wasn't any sport she'd get out of someone this pathetic. She turned her head and swore under her breath, just wanting to not even look at 'Bubsy', before staring down the hall indeed confirmed the cat's earlier statement on an abandoned food delivery bag, with multiple different orders that certainly weren't going to find their way after she'd apparently given someone enough cause to rethink their career choices.
"Drippy," she nodded her head at the bag, vaguely aware of the two dangerously glimmering irises that were about the only thing visible in the gloom of the apartment, making sure Kit took the hint as those watery appendages turned from their cowardly cat visitor and snaked their way down the hall, dutifully scooping the items back into the bag and scraping it towards them. No sense in letting a free meal go to waste.
All the while mister Bubsy watched in some mix of relief and apprehension as the tendrils pulled their prize into the doorway, wondering likely with good reason if he was about to be the next course on the menu. But finally the pause seemed to have given him breath enough back to continue talking, "You- You were right."
"'Course I am," Surge snorted while still keeping her gaze elsewhere, before she'd finally offer him a glance, "But go on."
"I- I, um, said a lot... a lot of things I shouldn't have..." He spoke, struggling with his good hand for some grip on the wall to stumble back to his feet, "Just, I was really scared and angry and hurt and... and no excuse, but, I just lashed out... and I'm not really sure what else to say because I didn't practise this apology much past this part... does- does any of this sound right?"
Surge didn't answer, she just raised a brow. Not getting any insult or snark back must have given him some fuel enough to keep going.
"Just... you saved me, and everyone else on the tram, and, and Sonic certainly wasn't here to do it, but you both were..."
That got Surge to at least uncross her arms, putting them to a more neutral stance in her pockets.
"And... however upset I was, I shouldn't have said that stuff at you like that. I just wanted to apologize, and- and-" he stumbled again, clearing his throat, before finally finding the words even if they came out cracked, "Thank you."
Surge laughed. She couldn't help it as she relaxed just enough there, her scowl turned to a smirk bit by bit as she glanced back into the apartment, seeing a pair of very large fox ears perk up before turning back to the cat with a shrug, "Ehh, skip it. Ain't like I never ran my mouth faster than my legs, Bubsy."
With the threat of electrocuting doom slowly being lifted, the cat relaxed just a bit more there, a nervous smile creeping onto his own features there, daring to even let his ears back up from where they'd folded flat against his head, "Yeah, um, okay. Still, just, wanted to make sure and say, lot of folks on the tram and on the street got to go home tonight that might not have, I guess that was one way to solve the trolley problem."
"Yeah! I keep hearing about those, who's this sick sucker tying folks onto tracks and making people choose who gets splatted?"
"Um-"
"Seriously, that's like B-Movie level bad guy, y'know? Like bowler hats and way-too-twirly moustaches," the tenrec considered before turning back to the fennec fox still hiding in the apartment, "Hey Kit, remind me to punch the next guy we see with a bowling hat and a moustache, alright?"
"I, uh-"
"Yes, ma'am." Came the quick and curt reply as the blue fennec fox dared come a little closer to the doorway and into view, the watery tendrils withdrawing into the container on his back.
"I was gonna ask!" 'Bubsy' spoke up a little too loudly trying to force himself to be heard, recoiling again as both Surge and Kit turned back to him, the cat indicating towards the plaster-clad wrist he tried to lift, "I... was gonna ask, just, if no hard feelings, if you'd sign my cast?"
The pause that filled the air could have made hyper-active hedgehogs leap to their death. It could have made Eggmen crack. It made the entire hall fill with a new level of apprehension that didn't belong to the feline this time at all as both Surge and Kit exchanged puzzled looks, before the Tenrec finally returned her look back to the cat.
"Waitasec," she started, just about resisting using a finger to dig out her ear to ensure she wasn't hearing things, "Do you mean... you want our autographs?"
'Bubsy' blinked, the cat not sure what to reply immediately, but feeling his own new levels of anxiety at seeing the two sort-of-heroes waiting fixed on his reply, "I- I mean, you could say that, maybe?"
Anything further was immediately silenced beyond the cry of pain that came out so high-pitched only the most sensitive ears among the various species living in the apartment blocks would hear it, as the cat was yanked forward broken-wrist-first, Surge pulling the casted limb right out of the sling as she cackled, "Why didn't you say so!?"
The cat blinked tears out of his eyes as the injured limb was yanked back and forth, trying to ignore any of the sounds he was sure were coming from inside the cast as Surge manipulated the limb into the best possible position.
"Um, ma'am, I-I can sign it too, right?"
"Yeahyeah, just a sec, drippy," Surge kept going, a jolt of energy arcing between her ringed fingers before she took aim and let loose a burst of energy that immediately made the feline's fur stand on end, whiskers frayed and eyes crossed before he all but passed out from the pain.
"-ou know, you should feel pretty damn lucky, kid, first one to get our autographs and all," Surge's voice kept going as the ringing began to leave the feline's ears, but the stinging sensation all through his body remained, as well as the smell of singed fur, "Make sure you let everyone else know we're charging for the next ones!"
The cat must have took too long to reply, or maybe Surge had just entirely dismissed him now as she slammed the door of the apartment as she headed back inside, still audible as more penalty notices fluttered into the air, "Get it? Charging- ah, forget it, let's eat-"
Anything further the cat let drone out, looking instead down to his cast where two new signatures were now displayed. One was very small and very thinly scrawled, as if the writer had barely dared touch a marker pen to the plaster, afraid to make a mistake, reading 'Kitsunami', whilst the other showed absolutely no such care, almost the entirety of the rest of the injured limb was taken up by a set of letters that had been straight up carved into the cast and just about avoided going through the plaster with electricity that still lightly smoked: Surge the Tenrec.
"Huh," the feline finally observed in a dazed manner, as much as it stung, he had to admit it looked pretty cool. Up he plucked himself, a half-smile at the door where a new ruckus was being started, using the wall to guide himself and dazedly make his way towards the exit, looking at Surge's signature again.
"Should have guessed she does the whole pointy notebook 'S' thing too?"