Ninjas of Love

Get Out The Kitchen If You Can't Stand The Heat

The eight of them sat around the dining room table, politely eating Kerian's half-baked mess of chicken, potatoes, herbs and ketchup. "Bone apple teeth", he had told them before eating, and- on reflection- that was a fairly accurate representation of his gastronomic aptitude. It sounded a little like it was there, but in reality it really wasn't up to scratch. Like a tent made from bubble wrap and chicken bones.

However, a dodgy dinner was the least of the worries a few dorms over, in the domicile of Team CFVY. "What do you mean you don't know why you're abandoning us tomorrow?" Velvet asked, pointing accusatively at Coco. "Look! I got a scroll call from Charlie, and I felt obliged to do it." Coco said, keeping her cool despite her semi-rabbit friend's heat-induced crankiness. And I'm not talking temperature. "The problem is," the girl in the beret continued, "I don't actually know who Charlie is particularly. But he has my number somehow. Says he's in the same dorm as Yang, who's buddies with Nora from my Armour Design class."
"So, to summarise," Velvet said, voice lowered to an inside level but nonetheless disdainful, "you're going to abandon us at 8am tomorrow to go and have some form of liaison with this person who is a friend of a friend of a- someone who does the same subject as you?"
"Yes." Coco's answer was short and sweet, much like herself. She looked up to the far taller, and almost inhumanly muscle-bound Yatsuhashi Daichi to back her up. "If she wants to go," he said stoically, "we can't really stop her. Plus you can have first choice of Pop Tarts for breakfast." Velvet's marble visage seemed to suddenly soften and erode under this revelation. "Can you go at 7?" Her smirk showed she was joking, even if her tone sounded far more grumpy than usual. Coco flipped her the bird and sat down on their own red leather sofa. Like the one belonging to the bizarre RWBY-BECK coalition three doors down, it was old and a little damaged; however, it lacked the missing leather and exposed foam that characterised the eight-person dorm so well.

Fox Alistair, meanwhile, appeared to have transported himself off to some parallel existence where he didn't have to be privy to the petty quarrels of the test of his team; Velvet could often get quite argumentative during this time of year, as her pent-up frustration and tension could not be released how it was supposed that be, and so was targeted- in a dilute form- towards her own teammates. Instead, Fox was reading a scientific journal that he obtained every month directly from his Organic Dust Chemistry teacher, Professor Mauve. As his fingers slowly took in the revelations of the page, the ridges and furrows translated into letters in his mind. This week's main feature was of particular interest to him, as it focussed on using dust as a tool to further adaptive technology for blind and partially sighted people. For example, the primary writer- who went under the name Raine S.- had suggested that a form of dust existed in ore, called hard light dust. This hard light dust, if extracted, could- according to the author- be used to create easily reusable, easily recyclable tactile images that could help the cortically blind to visualise the world around them.

***

Emily lay down her knife and fork politely after finishing a small plate of Kerian's delicacy (admittedly, I should probably have used about fifty nine million quotation marks there) and copious amounts of crusty, pate-slathered bread. The bread's primary purpose in Emily's mind was to prove that she was capable of eating and willing to eat, and that the reason she could only stomach a small portion of the Menageriese shambles was instead due to its borderline inedibility.

Before she could make this clear, though, Charlie piped up from behind a tall glass of orange juice and lemonade. "Guys, have you got lessons tomorrow?" He used no names, but the content of his question made it unabashedly and unashamedly clear that he was asking purely Team RWBY. The two sisters of the team looked at each other in a concerned confusion, before Weiss harrumphed and looked at her Stetson-wearing nemesis. "No, I don't believe so. Fight preparations historically take precedent over academic study during the Vytal Festival." Charlie tried his hardest not to roll his eyes and Weiss' almost comically heightened Received Pronunciation, and responded simply with an uttered "sick".

His sister took a sip of her water and looked up at him quizzically. "Why do you ask them?" Even when relaxing with people she'd gotten to know well, her questions still carried an air of terrified paranoia about them. "Just because we'll all need to be up early tomorrow." Before anyone else could say anything, the busty blonde Yang Xiao Long let out, as if from her autonomous nervous system, a pre-prepared "for fuck's sake", complete with teenage roll of the eyes. "Why do we have to get up early?" Her voice sounded a little whinier than usual; it was clear she really hated getting up in the morning. "Because we have to meet Coco Adel by the fountain in the courtyard by eight. Clear?" Silently, both his own teammates and the four members of Team RWBY nodded their heads- though this most certainly didn't mean they knew why they had to meet Coco, a girl they- at best- knew in passing. As Weiss dutifully began to tidy up the plates (she told everyone she'd learned to carry plates by watching her junior maid, Samirah, tidy away the table), Charlie looked down at his shorter half-sister. Their height difference was further accentuated by the fact that Emily's wheelchair sat closer to the ground than the faux-oak seats of the dining set. "By the way, Em," Charlie said, trying his best to sound nonchalant as he knew how much his sister read into intonation, "you're going to owe me a few Lien by lunch tomorrow. Hope you're ready." Emily, in truth, had no fucking clue what he was talking about, but that didn't stop her from plastering a saccharine smile across her face and hugging her brother tight.