Ideas/Drunken Rants Book

Grimmore's Valentine, Part One

Yin's eyes shot open when he heard someone pounding on the front door to his house, the healer immediately leaping from his bed and throwing on his usual healer robes, grabbing his staff and katana before racing down the stairs in a panic.

He threw the door open to see his friends standing there waiting for him, Vao having been the one who knocked.

"W-what's wrong?" Yin asked worriedly. "Is there some sort of emergency?"

"No," Vao replied. "I figured I could knock quieter since it's seven in the morning, but I thought it would be a lot funnier to just beat on your door and make you panic-"

SMACK!

"OW!"

"Don't do that!" Yin snapped. "Why are you even here at seven!?"

His sister-in-law, Verde Branwen, held up an envelope. "We received another letter from Grimmore," she informed.

"Y-yeah," Vao said. "Here's yours."

Yin snatched the envelope away from his femboy brother, glaring at him angrily. "... Did you go through my mailbox to get this?" He growled.

"Yeah, I always go through your mail."

"How many times do I need to tell you not to go through my mail!?"

"You know he doesn't listen," Sasha groaned. "Besides, it's another invite for some sort of holiday they have planned. Like that Christmas thing they did a couple months back."

Yin vividly recalled going to Grimmore for the holiday. He distinctly remembered the sight of the First Yin battling a threat atop a nuclear bomb. "It... It isn't going to be anything crazy again, is it?" He asked.

His friends shrugged, Verde being the one to respond. "We do not believe so. They are calling it 'Valentine's Day', and it's apparently a day you spend with people you love. It's scheduled for tomorrow, but they want us there a day early."

"... So why the hell is Grimmore inviting us?"

"First Vao's orders, from what this letter says," came another voice. They turned to see Chuck and Tim approaching with Alice following. "Looks like they invited everybody from Christmas," Tim was saying.

Yin sighed. "And let me guess, they'll kidnap us if we don't go?"

"Yep!" Tim confirmed.

Yin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "... Frick. Let's just go then... Salem not invited again?"

"Nope," Poppy replied. The harpy was jogging up to them with Pip following close behind; he had been spending the week with his mother. Poppy and Vao took turns with him while regularly planning events together so he could play with his sisters.

Yin furrowed his brow. "So did they say anything else about this... Valentine's Day thing? Spending a day with someone you love doesn't exactly require a group effort."

Verde glanced back at her invitation. "... Erm. The handwriting in the first half was beautiful and graceful, but past that point is, for lack of a better word, utterly abhorrent. I am willing to bet all of my ten fingers that Mono wrote the first half herself, and then the First Vao tried to write the second half."

"My handwriting isn't that bad," Vao chuckled.

"You... You can't write at all," Chuck pointed out. "I mean sure, you can read a few words now... Come to think of it, how did you even manage to read those books so you could make that potion that turned you into a nonhuman."