Wake Up Call

"Are you sure? I mean I could go. I'm sure I'll be good to go tomorrow," Riley affirmed. "Yes, Riley. I'm sure. It's okay," Sabrina assured. "Really? You know that you two aren't the best of friends. Heck, everybody can see that from a 10-mile radius," the ebony-haired girl ranted, flailing her arms around like a panicked bird.

"Jeez. Yeah, I think I know that, out of all people. But we're gonna have to try to get along if we want this team thing work, right?", Sabrina asked with a smile.

"Yeah, if you're willing to give it a shot then I'm sure he'll make an effort as well," Riley said and Sabrina laughed a little.

"What? I'm serious! He's not that bad."

They were interrupted by Archer and Cody walking into the room, ready for bed. Sabrina shot Riley a reassuring look to confirm the next day's plans.

xxx

Sabrina was rudely awakened in the early parts of the morning, not by her usual nightmares but by one with brown hair and chocolate colored eyes.

She groaned and turned away from the older boy with a dismissive hand wave.

"Five more minutes," she called out sleepily.

He scoffed in response and everything fell silent.

At least he knows when to stop.

Sabrina's thought was proved wrong when she was suddenly exposed to the chill of the early morning.

Did he just take my freaking blanket?!

Sabrina was not a morning person and this little thing that Archer just pulled sent her off the edge.

"Why, you little-", she began before she was shushed by the boy.

"Don't shush me when I'm talking to-"

And he did it again.

Sabrina was about to lose her mind, but stopped when she saw him pointing to Riley next to her.

She didn't speak and instead chose to give him the death stare. He didn't look phased by it and walked out of the room with her blanket still in his hand.

If this was a cartoon, Sabrina would have smoke coming out of her ears. She was so mad.

Since there was no going back, she got out of bed and went to freshen up. She took her own sweet time in hopes to anger the Demon and hopefully get him to fume too.

She walked out to join her raid partner for the day and found him in the kitchen, warming up some leftovers from the night before for himself.

"Took you long enough," he said slightly irritated.

She ignored him and went to get some food for herself. To her surprise, he didn't snap at her for not acknowledging him. She took it as a win, maybe she left the jerk speechless for once.

They ate in silence and cleaned up without creating WWIII. Archer took their short moment of peace to talk. "I woke you up earlier than the others because I wanted to train for a bit and discuss strategy before we go," he explained.

"Why didn't you just say that instead of pissing me off by taking my blanket?", Sabrina asked him in an irritated tone.

"Because it wasn't the fun option," he smirked.

The nerve-

She stopped. Archer wanted to get a reaction out of her, and she wasn't going to let him be satisfied. So instead of her snapping at him again, she breathed in and laughed.

He was caught off guard and looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. As if he couldn't process the sound coming out of her mouth. When Sabrina saw his expression, she laughed even harder, and she swore that she saw the corner of his mouth turn up a little. He was actually going to smile and laugh with her, but he caught himself just as it was about to happen and went back to his Stoic expression.

Sabrina's laughter faded out as she saw that fight between the emotions on his face and stared at him quizzically like a baby trying to figure out where her parents went when they covered their faces with their hands while playing peek-a-boo.

He knows that he's allowed to laugh, right? Why did he stop? He probably thinks he's gonna lose his cool dude rep if he does. Figures.

Archer saw her staring and then got up hastily and walked to the training room. "Come on, we can talk strategy while they're sleeping and train once they're awake," he said.

Sabrina watched his retreating figure disappear quickly through the door before her brain actually caught up to her, and she followed him.

She was once again met with the bright lights of the room, still not used to it. She felt like long exposure to it could give her amnesia or something. She saw Archer leaning against the wall, fiddling with a fancy little handgun. It was a translucent white colour, and she could see the inner working of various coloured wires and sensors. She grabbed a chair and carried to him and sat down in it while he did the same.

"Why do we need a strategy? This is the normal route, I don't think we'd do anything different," Sabrina inquired in a business-like tone. She didn't intend on fighting during a discussion like this even though she thoroughly enjoyed getting on the older male's nerves.

"Since we ran into sentries twice on our usual route, I think we should stay away from the area if we don't want to get caught," he elaborated.

"Good point. Where do you think we should go?", she asked.

He looked at her weirdly. He didn't think that she would be willing to go with his ideas.

Sabrina sensing his unspoken thoughts said, "Well you know the area better than me sooo..."

He nodded, and they continued arranging the journey until their companions woke up and walked in on them.

"Would you look at that? They're finally on the same page," Cody smirked while Riley looked like a proud mother.

"Don't get it twisted, we just don't want to die, so we're tolerating each other for now," Sabrina grumbled tiredly. They'd been talking for over an hour, suggesting routes and towns and then completely scrapping those ideas and opting for other towns. They had finally decided on one in the completely opposite direction of their older one.

It checked all their boxes even if it was a bit of a long walk. It was a town with various technology centered shops. They felt that it was their best bet, so they decided on that just before Riley and Cody came in.

"You guys want anything to eat?", Riley offered. "We're good, we ate earlier," Archer said dismissively. "Oh no," Cody said horrified.

Everyone looked at him with confused expressions.

"Did you wake Lia up at your inhumanly time?" he asked while putting both hands on his face.

Archer scoffed, "5 a.m is a completely reasonable time to get up."

"No, it's not," Riley agreed with Cody.

"You woke me up at 5?!", Sabrina yelled while standing up.

"Yes," he simply said.

There were mumbles of 'Ughs' and 'okays' from around the room.

"Wait, what's the time now?"

"7:30."

"Oh damn."

Cody being the thoughtful person that he is made the two some sandwiches to eat before they train and for after the session.

Sabrina was surprised to see Archer standing with a gun at a console panel that appeared out of nowhere.

"When you said 'training', I thought we were going to be fighting each other and not playing on consoles and with guns," she said announcing her presence.

"These are sentries. Do you expect to beat them with hand-to-hand combat? And as for the console, I'm setting up a holographic shooting-range," he articulated.

"Oh okay then. So we're using laser guns?"

"Yup," he said popping the 'p'.

Once he was done setting up the training sequence, he pulled out another gun from a pristine white cabinet and tossed it to Sabrina who caught it with ease.

I almost missed that, but he doesn't need to know...

They both took their places next to each other and Archer handed her some goggles as well which they put on at the same time.

"Training Sequence: Level 3 initiated. Beginning in 3," a computerized voice spoke.

Sabrina and Archer readied their guns.

"2."

They focused in front of them. Sabrina risked a glance to her side and saw Archer smirking.

Why would he?

"1."

Holograms of sentries started popping up in front of them. Sabrina focused and shot, Archer doing the same thing but faster. She took that as a challenge and picked up her pace. Soon the holograms started firing back. Sabrina felt a shocking sensation go through her body.

"Ow! What the heck was that?", she screamed.

"You got shot. The goggles shock you when you get shot," he explained while keeping his focus and dodging swiftly out of the way from several lasers.

"Thanks for telling me that beforehand," she said sarcastically, resuming her shooting and concentrating more on the projectiles of the holograms.

"You're welcome," he shot back equally sarcastic.

This went on for a while and the level kept getting progressively harder.

"Are you sure this is level 3?", she yelled at him.

"It was when we started. It goes up as the time goes. I set it lower so that you could get used to it."

"How thoughtful."

They were soon back-to-back, fending off multiple waves of bots. Drones now came in, circling them like vultures but were shot down quickly by them.

It was intense but as soon as it came, it ended.

They were both left winded.

"That.. Was... A workout," Sabrina panted.

"Too much for you?", he asked smugly, but she could see that he was also tired.

Her retort was cut short when the computerized voice spoke again.

"Commencing advanced bot battle."

"What?", Archer asked nobody in particular.

"What's happening?", Sabrina asked worried.

Without any explanation Archer pushed her out of the way as a huge beam of light shot through where she was standing.

She got up quickly and turned just in time to see a huge sentry charge towards them. It was 4 times their size and could probably crush them easily. She leapt out of the way of another attack and Archer ran to get an SMG for Sabrina and himself. She bounded back towards him and took the gun. They began to unleash hell on the robot, drilling it with bullets. But it didn't seem to affect it in the slightest.

"It's not doing anything!", Archer yelled amongst the chaos.

"I think I can see that too!", Sabrina yelled back.

"What should we do?"

"I don't know...yet," Sabrina said as she scanned the robot looking for a weak point.

They ran around the room trying to dodge its blasts.

"I got it!", she yelled while ducking its rapid fire shot

"Now would be a good time to let me know!" he screamed jumping out of the way of its fists.

"The joints! Its armor is weaker there to allow for movement! Shoot the joints and dismember it!", she instructed. Archer did as told and soon sparks were flying out of the robot. After a couple more rounds of shooting, the robot's hologram started to smoke and flicker until it was finally down and it disappeared in a flurry of pixels.

The rivals collapsed to the floor in exhaustion.

"We actually did it," Sabrina said exasperated.

"Yeah, we did," Archer agreed, smiling giddily.

It was quiet for a while, both of them grateful for it.

"We actually make a good team," Archer said without thinking.

Sabrina looked at him shocked and then saw his face that gave away that he had no intention to say that out loud. She didn't want to make him feel more awkward than he already was, so she kept quiet and closed her eyes.

Yeah, we do.