Ninjas of Love

Take A Bow, Kerian

"Right then, I guess we ought to go and find something for Blake, oughtn't we, Kerian?" Emily asked, stressing the final part of her rhetorical question as if to drum the fox's responsibilities into his head, so that he absolutely could not forget within the maximum forty-five minutes it would take to find and buy a gift for Team RWBY's resident Fall Out Boy fan. "Yes, fine, I suppose we probably should. Where's the tinned tu..." The out-of-it Faunus responded. "For the second, and I sincerely hope final, time, tinned tuna does not constitute an appropriate gift for a new friend." Emily reprimanded him, through gritted teeth. "But Charlie bought meat for Weiss!" Kerian bemoaned Emily's ruling like a child thinking they'd been hard done by as a result of their mother simply saying no to something. "I said new friend, Kerian. Charlie bought those pork steaks for Weiss. You see the difference?"
"No, not really." Kerian answered, bemused by the perceived double standards. "Let me explain to you in terms you might understand then." Emily told him, sounding ironically like Weiss Schnee. "Weiss. Vegan. Annoying. Slag." Kerian nodded, and wore a look on his face which suggested he'd just had some kind of heiress- and bitchiness-related epiphany.

"Ok then." Kerian mused, thinking aloud as he glanced. "We should just walk in that direction," he pointed along the path his friend and himself had had to follow to reach Rosie's Inhumane Butchers, "at least until we reach Mistral Goth Emporium Shoppe."
"I swear to God, Kerian," Charlie bemoaned Kerian's choice of vendor, "you can't do anything normal, or sensible, can you?"
"Says the man responsible for what we just experienced." Emily reminded Charlie of his position in his sister's mind. What was that position exactly? Somewhere between in the doghouse and a perverse respect for the way he'd become team leader and a paragon of sensibility through absolute shithousery.

After a walk significantly shorter than the one on which Charlie had coerced his team into embarking on to get some meat from the strange Rosie, Kerian drew up- flanked by Emily, Billy, and Charlie- to the black-and-silver market stall bearing the name "Mistral Goth Emporium Shoppe". Nervously, he stepped over to the very young-looking, evidently ethnically Mistralian saleswoman. "H-he-hi-hell-hello." Kerian stuttered, drawing a sweet smile from the aforementioned saleswoman. "Hi! My name is Tam Nakano! I'm here to service you today!" Her broken English and overly chirpy demeanour drew the ire of Charlie, who managed to keep his feelings a lot quieter than Kerian, who giggled aloud until Tam pulled out a baseball bat from her side of the counter. "Oh you've got a- ok. I'd like to buy a black bow. That is- if you have any. Sorry if you don't." Kerian told Tam sheepishly, playing with his fingers with his other hand. "We do have black bows! Just give me a minute. Sayonara!" Tam called out, obnoxiously loud and happy-sounding as ever, before disappearing through the curtain to what was hopefully a stockroom, and not some kind of strange abattoir like Rosie had had.

"Strange girl, she is." Charlie said to no-one in particular, before focusing his statement. "Right, Em?"
"Oh- uh, what?" Emily was snapped out of a trance. She had been staring at Tam, and felt two main thoughts pop into her head. Firstly, I'm sure I've seen her before somewhere. I'm not sure where though. Secondly, hot damn. She's pretty as fu—.

"I'm back!" Tam yelled, interrupting what likely would have been another ceaselessly emotionally-charged diatribe from Charlie about the weird Mistralians and how he much preferred Valishmen, and even Patchians. "I got three different black hair bows, take a look." One of the bows was a simple silk bow, very similar to the one Kerian had already seen the edgy RWBY member wear. The second was a much cheaper, tackier-looking now, covering in scratched sequins whose black paint job gave way to show their true cheap greyness. The third, and final, bow was by far the most beautiful looking- taking the form of a black, silky-feeling material, with an ornate Mistralian pattern of blossom and geometric shapes hand-stitched upon it in a dazzlingly white thread, with no loose threads or raggedy ends, as Kerian had looked for. "That one, please." Kerian requested the third bow from Tam, pointing towards it with the index finger of his right hand.

As Tam bagged it up, Kerian readied the 5 Lien that he would need to pay for it with his left hand, desperate to leave the unnervingly happy saleswoman as quickly as he could. Wordlessly, the two exchanged the plastic 5 Lien card for the bow, before Tam bowed before Kerian. "Before you go," Tam said inquisitively, "I want to remind Emily of something." Tam rummaged below the counter on her side, and eventually placed a old, threadbare-looking plush panda on the counter itself. "Hold on," Emily reminisced, "that's..."
"Producer-chan." Tam completed her sentence. "Give me your scroll." She turned immediately from being a jovial old friend to a demanding woman with an evil look in her eyes. Emily complied, much to the chagrin of her teammates, and soon received the scroll back, with Tam's own Scroll ID Number in the contacts list, meaning she was available for calls- be they audio or video- and instant messaging. In other words, she was now reachable from Emily's scroll.

"How do you know her?" Billy asked, as Emily wondered if he was more confused as to the backstory of Emily's new friend, or to the concept of friends outside his own team. "Oh, she took Patchian as an elective subject in our last couple years at Lullaby School. Hence why Charlie never knew her. He never took Patchian after he was told he could stop, and take something else instead."
"Yeah, I did a useful subject instead. Health and Social Care." His sister gave him a look of betrayed disgust. "You said a useful subject."