#tl:tending

Mercury was being a pest. A delightful pest at that. He had all flavours of gremlin down pat and she couldn’t hide her little bit of amusement. She leaned over to where his voice was coming from, hopefully looking at him with the hazy smile.

“I care about your sleeping routine.” She mumbled, hands feeling around for where her persistent cyborg was.

Once she had figured out where he was, she leaned as close as she could without falling off of the bed she was laying on. “I think you just want to hear the sound of my voice because you like it so much. Gets you out of talking about you.”

Chroma waited patiently outside the family home for Libra to finally make her way out. Luckily for her there was slight cloud cover to save her from the persistent Vacuo heat. Even in the mountains, it was hot enough for the older woman to complain. Chroma on the other hand, despite still wearing her cowl, was in short sleeves, a cropped tee and vest.

Her disability wasn’t an issue as Chroma lead Libra from the effective edge of town to the center. It was one of the details her memory had never forgotten, and in Nowhere, if it wasn’t broke, it wasn’t fixed. It was a long walk, but that left ample time for chit chat.

The concept of potentially having siblings to an only child was a new concept for Chroma to understand. However the one she clung to so swiftly, was to bother the ever living hell out of the new potential family members. Sibling squabbles was something the faunus was on board with, especially when they all knew how to fight.

She couldn’t open with a brawl though, no, Chroma had to confirm some details first. That detail was to find Hunter, and badger him until he either relented, or started to kick up a fight. Luckily fate seemed to be in her hands when she finally tracked down said individual in the yard outside; a space with some grass and bare dirt patches, lined with a wall of trees.

And he seemed to be minding his own business.

There was always something to be done in the nearly isolated fortress home of Cathawl. There was always something pleasantly peaceful about waking up with the morning crew and shuffling between sleepy faunus and humans in the kitchen. The kitchen staff had to eat before the rest of the place was fed properly, and unfortunately Olivine had no time to help them out. There was an important item that had gone missing.

To say it was missing wasn’t entirely accurate. Once Olivine had figured out the breakfast situation - Waffles and the Works as they called it - she brought it upstairs back to her room, setting it down on the table in front of the couch. There was one mug of coffee and one mug of tea as well that began to fill the room with pleasant aromas.

Olivine looked at her now permanent guest when she came in from one of the adjacent rooms. “Weiss, we’ve had this talk for a day now. There’s a very important Dust field test I need to perform today and I need all my equipment. It’s not going to be as safe if I don’t have it all.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

Bitterness stained her tone and she felt patronized. She was feeling the burn of anger, like a wounded animal who didn’t know the difference between affection and aggression. Chrom’s phrasing was well intended, but one of the worst possible combinations of words he could have chosen.

How bold of Yang. Would this have been her favourite motorcycle, he could understand completely. However, this was someone else’s vehicle.

“My truck, Sunburst.” He chuckled, giving her side a playful jab. “Y’don’t here me tellin’ you the rules about your bike. You sayin’ you got a problem with classic rock?”

It was a baited question. Delaney very much knew she didn’t, but he so desperately wanted to see how she would respond. For once, he had a bit of energy to spare and Yang was going to be on the receiving end of it.

Delaney cheated with hugs. He could abuse his semblance to make himself heavier so Cherry couldn’t escape, even if she could lift as well, if not better than he could. However Cherry’s usual effort wasn’t there. She was upset and intrusive thoughts had made themselves vocal. Time and time again Delaney would remind Cherry of his stalwart decision to stick with her, no matter what she had said.

He didn’t mind. He would never mind.

“You’re stuck with me.” He murmured quietly in her ear. Arms wrapped around her, keeping the other faunus in his lap, gently rocking her back and forth on the bed. A blanket keeping the both of them warm.

“Congratulations, drugs exist!”

The instinct to make a jab at Hunter was nearly natural at this point. It was either too easy or too fun to torment her stepbrother. Such as the temptation to push him off the roof, but he had to say something really stupid to earn that privilege.