The Wheels on the Limbus

"... it's blue."

Two figures stood in a dingy garage, grease and scrap and guttural metal jutting out at odds with the sleekness of the Limbus Company Headquarters it was located within. One of them, rouge-haired, face contorted in disgust and leaning on a cane like it was the only thing keeping him from being bowled over by the azure hue of the vehicle parked before him.

"Indeed," agreed the other figure, a svelte young woman whose hands remained clasped behind her back. "If it were red, I would have had to take the top off. Or worse yet, check it back into the Library."

"Pah! It's completely at odds with the rest of the Company!" Hyde waved his cane around in disgust, shaking his head emphatically as he ignored Mila's vague babblings. "No, no, no! Absolutely NOT! On my authority as Sinner #01, I demand to have it repainted at once!"

And with his dramatic declaration, the metal tip of Hyde's cane slammed into the ground, tap-tap-tapping as he strode his way up into the offending bus itself, Sinner #08 following behind.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't believe that the order in which the Sinners were assigned numbers has any-"

"Nonsense!" Hyde whirled around within the bus' central aisle, jabbing a finger at Mila's stoic face. "Exactly what I'd expect from someone practically at the bottom of the pile. Any organization has a hierarchy, and any one that doesn't have Edward Hyde at the top must be turned over at once."

"Well, one does what one does," Mila shrugged, hands remaining neatly in place. "Shall we?"

"Fine," Hyde waved a dismissive hand, allowing Mila to pass. "Just show me how to drive the damnable thing. It can't be that complex if you made it, and besides, I still don't see why you can't just come with in the first place."

Mila squeezed by, casually lowering herself into the driver's seat and pulling a seatbelt across herself. "Unfortunately, I shall be coming in ninth or tenth place, being as I am due for another round of Q&Q with the company's higher-ups at the scheduled rendezvous time."

As the pair cast their eyes to the odd set of controls before them, the reality of the situation began to set in.

"This," Mila began, thin fingers coming to rest on it, "is the wheel."

She turned it, and immediately Hyde's brows furrow at the freeness of the motion. Without so much as asking, his hand reached forward and smacked the wheel, sending it rattling as it freely spun around, connected to nothing at all.

"Is this a fucking joke?"

To contrast, Mila's expression was deadly serious. "Automotive safety is no joke, sir. Even children know that the wheels on the bus simply go round and round... and once any point on the wheel makes a full circumference, it simply winds up right where it started. No, we shan't be getting anywhere on wheels. I did try to remedy this by adding more, but after 21 wheels, I went bussed."

"Incredible. I've been left to drive a vehicle designed by a fucking invalid," Hyde grimaced, fingers tightening around his cane as Mila's head began to look more and more like a target. "How do you turn the idiot thing, then?"

"Well, one might turn left at any time by simply pressing the left button," to which Mila gestured at a small button with a left-facing arrow on the bus' dashboard, causing Hyde to frown further at the empty space beside it.

"There's no right button."

"Well, not in such many words. But in the correct situation, any-"

"There's no button to go right." Hyde could feel a headache coming on, and it wasn't from the Elixir for once.

"Ah. No, there doesn't seem to be."

"Then how do you turn right?!" Came Hyde's exasperated cry.

"Well, you might, sir."

That honorific could very well be the last dam holding back a flood of blunt force violence. "Not might, I will."

"You might might, then." And Mila reached down and depressed a button with a curling bicep on it, prompting a metal panel to the right of the left button to slide back, revealing a small crank (not Hyde!) with a right arrow labeled below it. "For might makes right, after all."

With a turn of the crank came the groan of rubber against cement the bus' tires began to shift towards the right.

"And what the hell is this?" Hyde's knuckle rapped against a glass-covered speedometer, though it was unlike any meter he'd ever seen in his life before. The indicator thrummed dutifully on the far right at the maximum reading of 1, and though the label next to it read MPH the bus was certainly stood completely still. If nothing else, it provided a welcome distraction from the previous idiocy. "It only goes up to one! What kind of pointless gauge...?"

"Ah... those would be the Milas Per Hour," Mila intoned, and fiddled with the label's 'H,' revealing that the final letter was set upon a dial and could be adjusted to different letters. "Of course, it can also measure Milas per minute, second, and quarter-hour, but seeing as there's only ever one of me regardless, I opted for the longest value. I shan't be adding a 2, lest the Head get cross with me..."

"But of course," he sneered, arms folded contemptuously. "And I suppose the gas pedal is floating someplace in the air above us, and the brake will break when pulled."

"That's usually what they do, sir," Mila observed, nodding at the pedal below her right foot and the lever at her side.

"Ugh. Enough of this!" And Hyde's metallic footsteps boomed against the bus' floor as he stormed down the aisle, waiting not at all for Mila to catch up.

"The manual is in the glovebox," she added, slowly unbuckling herself and rising to her feet as she nodded at a wooden box perched precariously at the edge of the dashboard.

Soon the pair found themselves standing in the aisle, looking up at a cord dangling in the center of the bus from its curved ceiling.

"I see you've found the Sinners' rooms," Mila remarked, pulling the cord and lowering a ladder down as though from a house's attic. Despite the bus clearly not being tall enough to hold such a room on its roof, nevertheless an impossible space lay over her and Hyde's heads, a corridor leading down a long and odd hallway full of doors. "It is the safest place on the bus, sir, for what goes up must always come down."

"Space compression," Hyde dryly observes, unimpressed. "Common enough to wipe my bloody shoes on. But it'll do. Got a basement to match your little attic?"

"We do indeed, but you must never go there, for what goes down must not necessarily go up," Mila intoned, shaking her head.

"Don't tell me what to do," the other snapped, scowling. "It's below your pay grade."

The odd pair descended from the bus, and as usual, Hyde was the first to speak.

"I've decided."
"Oh? It seems a-"
"Zip it." An instant interruption, though it sounded much cheerier than Hyde's usual. "I've resolved that however little I look forward to working with you, I can devise a solution. From now on, by the authority vested in me as your superior Sinner, you are to remain completely silent unless spoken to. Are we clear?"

"... the Limbus Company Clear department is-"

Hyde interrupts Mila once more with a zzzzzipping noise, miming the tossing of the zipper over his shoulder. "Very good!"

And without a single further glance at her, Hyde left Mila standing stock-still in the garage, wandering out with only one thing left on his mind:

finding someone to paint over that damnably ugly bus.