Ninjas of Love

The One With The Plot

Emily ambled listlessly through the doorless frame that opened into the training room a good ten minutes after everyone else, a protein bar and shake enveloped in one hand and her sleek cane-sword clutched in the other. She sat herself down on a veneered bench and opened up the protein bar hurriedly, before stuffing the entire thing into her crimson-tinted mouth (Yang insisted she wore makeup for her "first day of school").

"Look who finally decided to join us." Charlie reprimanded his teammate for her lateness- something that was highly uncharacteristic for her- with a slightly jokey tone in his voice, drowned out under annoyance. Emily held her hand up as she struggled to swallow the last vestiges of caramel-flavoured bar and opened up the shake, which claimed to taste of strawberry and meringue. She took a sip and grimaced, before placing it down beside her. "I'm sorry, Charlie, but we've got a festival, and I absolutely cannot miss leg day." Charlie looked at Emily, his face contorting into a look of confusion. "Emily, I'm not sure working out your knees is a goo..."
"I said, I cannot afford to miss leg day." Emily complained to her team leader through firmly gritted teeth, picking the protein shake back up. She took another sip of the saccharine-sweet liquid. "You three can practise fighting or aim or your entrances or something, I don't know. Fuck it, I'm taking this sugar water to the gym with me. She dragged herself up to a standing position, putting her weight through her cane, and trudged back out of the door-shaped hole, turning right toward the door that read "Gymnasium".

"So, what do we do now? We can't exactly spar two-on-two with three of us." Billy pointed out to his remaining colleagues, both of whom were half-focusing while preparing their weapons for training. "Oh shit, yeah, that's a bit of a problem. Fucking cripples, you can never depend on them when you need them." Charlie bemoaned Emily's inconvenient exit, with more than a little bit of non-serious ableism permeating through his words. Kerian kicked at some dust on the wooden floor, and muttered something about "unpredictable women".

As valuable minutes passed- time Emily was using to build up her hamstring muscles with Bulgarian split squats and leg curls- the argument about just how three of them could spar or train together wore on; in fact, it was only interrupted by a tall, slender girl with carmine-red hair- who wore gold and red armour plating all over her- but somehow still showing ample cleavage to get Kerian to look up. "Heya there!" The girl called out to the threesome she had approached, the high pitch and kind tone to her voice making her sound almost like she was singing. "Hullo there yourself." Charlie's response showed much more heightened RP than he would usually use- to consolidate his position as a professional team leader. "Hang on," Kerian interrupted, his face contorted as if he were thinking of some elaborate theory or equation, "aren't you the girl off the box of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Crunch?"

"God damn it, Kerian." Charlie mumbled under his breath, his soft palm pressed firmly against the creased surface of his forehead. "Heck yeah, I am! Pyrrha Nikos, at your service!"
"Well, you know what? You could actually be of some use to us." Billy said, eyes firmly focused on the snow-skinned girl's ample cleavage. Charlie looked puzzled as to just what Billy had in store when the faint sound of screeching guitar licks and thunderous drumming from the gym reminded him.

"Oh right. Missing a hunter. Could you spar with us, m'lady?" Charlie extended his right hand toward the armoured huntress-in-training, whilst he used the left to tip his Stetson to her. "Sure as heck!" Her response was short and sweet, as she unsheathed her spear from its pouch on the back of her tanned, leather armour.

While the three boys made temporarily replaced her with a redhead, who performed far better in the chest department, Emily had made the gym her home. She had plugged her new scroll into the gym's speaker system- it was entirely empty except for herself, so she may as well- and had begun to play her playlist marked Cleachtadh; Emily always marked things that she didn't need her teammates to see in Patchian, as she knew full well none of her teammates had listened in their lessons with Professor Burrito. As her current song- a heavy pop-punk number- switched over to a Patchian-language folk-pop piece named Tir na nÓg, she finished her fifth set of leg curls.