It isn't like Paul, Misty and Gary had not expected someone to demolish their usual place where they crash at after every task, this wasn't new to them.

They stand in front of the run-down garage opening where they used to spend their nights at, binge watching a couple of old shows on an old television box, sucking juice and milk cartons dry while biting fruits or pizza.

Their place now looked unfamiliar, the television box smashed to pieces and had dents all over it, walls broken and somehow there was a broken waterpipe through which gutter water seeped out.

Their place looked disgusting. And it hurt them no matter how much they had expected it.

"Guess we have to move on from this place too huh?" Gary mutters, scratching his neck around the keychain. He hisses at the disastrous state they had to come back to. Their happy mood for wanting to spend their money on food and some clothes and enjoy while watching some of the frat show episodes, were all ruined.

"It's a shame just how many times our places are demolished and yet not a single sign of who is doing it." Misty grumbles, spinning her rifle on her fingers.

"Mn." Paul nods, mood turning sour at the memories of their previous crashing places. "We don't even know how to track those people down..."

The three stand there in front of the ruined garage, just taking in the state of it while silently mourning of yet another place ruined.

"You know what?" Gary says after a while of silence, He puts his skateboard on the ground and mounts it, "Let's just move to another garage. Afterall, this one is beyond fixing and we can only hope someone from the municipal corporation would pass by and happen to see it's horrible state and propose to fix it."

The other two nod and then they walk away from the garage.

Late at night, the moon glows in the shimmer of the stars that are barely visible with all the street lights and pollution blurring the vision. But it is comfortable, as the three walk around the streets, sulking and bickering about whether they should just crash in a park and call it a night. Their money can be spent on food and sparkly things sometime later too, tonight just has to pass.

The three have been strolling for almost three hours before they find a rundown garage with a loosely hanging neon sign that reads "NEON QUINTET". The individual letters were working quite alright, except the 'e' and 'n' of Neon, flickering from time to time. There was a faint whirring sound fading in the background that suggested that the garage seemed to be in a decent condition.

Gary chirped at the sight of it, "This one looks real good to crash, you two!"

Misty steps inside the garage, "I'll take a look inside first and then we can decide if it's an okay place to crash or not, alright?"

"Yeah."

"Hey!" Gary yells as Misty goes inside, he mounts his skateboard and wheels behind her quickly, shouting, "I'm coming with you for the inspection!"

Paul waits outside, sitting in front of the entrance with his hands fiddling with his earphone wires. His ears are surrounded by the heavy metal song beats, blaring on each side simultaneously as it made any other noise a fading existence.

Paul finds himself rocking his head, and sometimes his whole body, to the beat, giving no care to what the world the other two were doing inside the garage.

Misty looks around the dingy yet spotless garage. There's a ceiling fan hanging alongside a lightbulb which casts a mellow light on the torn apart couch, some barrels lying in the corner, a small old radio lying atop a TV whose screen played the classic Tom & Jerry show on mute. She notices a pile of books and empty food boxes on the other corner, right beside a door that must lead somewhere.

The garage sure smells of pizza and fuzzy fruit drinks with a sharp tinge of something that is exquisitely garage-like. It makes her nose itch, she hates weird smell combos, they make her want to puke.

"Jewel, you can't puke here on someone else's property." Gary's jingle reaches her first before his voice and the hard slap he lands on her back as he comes behind her, his skateboard skidding to a stop. "Bu— woah!" Gary looks around then, letting his skateboard fall against Misty's legs, he goes ahead to trace his fingers on the couch, the radio, the books and boxes and he comes to a stop in front of the TV, his mouth agape.

"Their TV's working fine!" There's a distance note to his cheer-y voice, Misty notices, "Jewel! We really should crash here and when this garage's people come, let’s negotiate with them to let us stay here too!"

She doesn't get the chance to reply before Gary's already talking about the Tom & Jerry playing on the TV, an excited, almost curious glint in his eyes.

She sighs, turning on her heels and letting the skateboard fall, "I'll get Paul inside." She points a ringed finger at Gary, though, warning him, "You better not mess stuff up here or I won't hesitate to choke you with that precious collar of your's."

Gary waves a dismissive hand ay her, chuckling, "Yeah, very quirky of you."

***

The fantastic beat of the song is abruptly cut off and Paul looks to the side to see Misty holding his only pair of earphones as if they were some silly licorice strings and he was a sweet hungry pet.

She has her signature grin, the one where her tongue pops out to play with the lip ring on the right.

"This garage is the stash of M&Ms, Paul!" She squeals then, hopping around whenever Paul reaches out for his earphones. He is still paying attention to her words though. "Gary's glued to the couch inside because there's a tv playing tom & jerry! Can you believe that?"

She doesn't wait for an answer, just like Gary, and grabs Paul's hands to drag him inside the garage.

So what if their garage was trashed? They found a much better, cleaner garage now. And their only hope now was, was to plead (negotiate) to the people who live in this garage to let them stay with them.

This stupid cat will behave, I will make sure of it! Misty thinks, throwing a lazy glance at Gary whose eyes, mind and soul stayed glued to the muted TV.

Paul is lying on her other side, his head on her lap and legs dangling over the hand-rest as he listens to his songs.

——————————

finally! a new chapter is published !! after what, three whole years or something 🤓👍🏼

i'm sorry this took way longer that i ever thought. there was covid, then my high school finally being completed and then i went to college, struggled two years, had the largest writer's block i've ever had but yeah, throught out all this time, i have been working on pulling myself up from there.

it's difficult, i will not lie. i got too into kdramas and bls because i couldn't bring myself to write. i read tgcf, mdzs, watched a whole lot of animes. i watched haikyuu again, fell in love with tsurune and hibike euphonium (actually upset because hibike will end next week with it's s3's last episode airing).

i ended up reading a lot of bokuaka and iwaoi and daisuga ao3s. some bts poly fics and a few things here and there.

and then, i came up with the idea of writing short scenes (not stories) by picking two random words, so i used tsurune for that. getting to indulge myself into headcanoning tsurune boys had me giggling and kicking because it was all just so wholesome!

i'll probably post that on ao3 maybe, but thats for future. right now, i also have three pokemon oneshots in my draft, all long and still nowhere near ending so do look out for them!!!

i hope i get back to writing very soon!

— ANCIENT