damned_institute | Day 54: Sun Room

[From here. All your top posts shall be mine.]

Peter entered the Sun Room with a dour expression. Goody, he was the first one here. Fancy that. Pick of the couches was his then. Eeeny meeny miney...moe. Peter stalked over to what he knew from experience was the fluffiest couch in the room and eased himself into its downy soft embrace. Ordinarily he would have just pounced on that sucker, but yeah. His arm was in a sling for a reason. He sighed and wormed his way into a full body sprawl. He didn't care if it was irresponsible of him. This shift's only mission was to remain as still as possible.

Of course, being the first one in here had some stipulations. With great opportunity came great responsibility. Which today, came in the form of a soft meow from below. Then the sound of puncturing fabric, advancing upwards towards him. More meows, independent of one another and even more tiny punctures.

Peter Parker was now officially the cat sitter.

"...Oh hi... lonely kittens," he said uneasily as the first scrambled over the edge of the cushion. It padded towards his face. "No no, kittens don't belong near faces." He gently picked it up and put it on his chest. Two more crawled over the edge.

He had never really had a pet growing up. And he didn't hang out with a lot of people with cats or dogs, either. So of course, he didn't have a good idea of how to properly handle most animals without ticking them off. It looked like he was going to have to make up for lost time now, as the cats' numbers swelled to four. Two were exploring his legs, another batted at a fraying string on his sling, and the first stumbled back towards his face and mewed plaintively. Peter frowned and gave it a ginger pat on the head. That seemed to to the trick. He put it back on his chest again and scratched behind its ears.

"You guys had better not start doing that claw thing on my leg. I can't reach right now, but revenge will be mine if you do."

"Meeeeew!"

"I'm still petting you! Geez."

[For Elle Bishop.]

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He could understand worrying over the ring or how it worked. He could even understand a bit of worry over what might happen to their group if anything became of one of the members, but it was hard to understand the way Kurogane's mind worked sometimes. Yuuhi had told him that he didn't want to get involved, that it was safer if he stayed away from people, yet here was Kurogane, insisting he pair off or find a group at night. What did it matter to him?

"I wasn't," he chirped just as easily. It was pointless to argue the real point, but it wasn't as if the ninja had proof one way or another of his actions. "Were you?"

Tsubaki remained silent, save for the sigh. He wanted to say more, if only to reassure her that they weren't a pair of incompetents, but the way things were going, it would be hard to convince her.

"I didn't get very far anyway. What about you two? Find anything interesting?"

Normally Kurogane would not have cared whether Fai was off alone or not. He'd seen the magician take care of himself before, but only during certain times - times when he'd had the kid and the Princess's faces to answer to if he didn't come back in one piece. It had been weeks since they'd been with those two in a group, and roughly the same amount of time since Sakura had come and gone. Things were different now, had been for a while, and Fai was an idiot to think otherwise.

"What do you think?" Kurogane snorted, then ground the backs of his teeth when Fai continued on and asked how they'd done. If he'd known they were together, then why ask if he was alone in the first place?!

Tsubaki tried to take the middle ground so at least someone wasn’t trying to attack or defend. Though she wanted to ask Fai things herself, she didn’t want an interrogation. Overall, this just wasn’t a good morning to be treading on sensitive subjects.

“Kurogane-san and I met. We didn’t go much farther past the cell blocks,” she elaborated softly, taking up the dropped thread. “What did you do?”

He was pretty well used to Kurogane's abrasive moments, so it didn't bother him as much as it should have, perhaps. He shrugged it all off with an easy smile.

"Well I haven't learned how to read minds just yet, so I can't be sure, but with how grumpy Kurogane is today, I'm guessing it didn't go so well," he shook his head. Whether or not Kurogane would act civilly was one thing, but he wasn't going to bring Tsubaki into their personal disagreements. If he wanted to act childishly, that was his choice.

"About the same. We didn't get far. I wonder if that's true for everyone or if time is just passing strangely for us."

"Shut up..." he muttered, half-caring if his words were followed or not. Reading minds had nothing to do with it - he'd known Kurogane had been planning to meet up with Tsubaki and unlike some people there, he kept his word.

While Tsubaki took over explaining what little they'd accomplished the night before, he took to watching Fai and listening silently. She was getting him to talk at least, though not about what they'd planned on speaking over. He could assume that the morning's events might have changed her mind, or else had her hesitating more than she might have. Kurogane wasn't being much help either with how he'd fared earlier.

“We mostly talked,” Tsubaki said.

Whether Fai found that fact uncomfortable or not, there was little point in hiding what they had and hadn’t done, though Fai was very good at answering questions indirectly. Or not at all, sometimes, as the case was here. She thought about what to do. She was in fine health except for a bit of lingering irritation, but with Kurogane as he was and Fai possibly no better off than her, everyone was feeling a bit strained.

“Time does seem strange a lot…” she agreed, because like it or not, time was a valuable thing and by giving them an assignment, Landel might as well have hung a clock over their heads. She didn’t believe he’d wait forever for results. The gravity of the situation brought up another question that the three of them would have to get to eventually. Unless they were going to keep skipping around what had happened last night, why not now?

“About tonight… are we meeting?”

Kurogane's comment didn't tell him much, but Tsubaki's? Either the night really had ended early, or they'd had a lot to talk about. Though he tried to avoid it, he couldn't help a glance at the ninja before he turned back to the girl.

So that was the question, wasn't it. What were they to do? To continue doing? When they went together at least they seemed to get little bits done, but he'd had the most time when he'd just gone alone. Bringing that up wasn't likely to go over well though, and right now, irritating them all was about the last thing he wanted to do.

They had to get to the bottom of this and find Marc and quick. Who knew what might happen to Sakura now that someone who outranked Landel and had military behind him to boot had showed up? He didn't like that one bit, but as usual, he didn't give voice to his thoughts.

"We can probably get more done if we go separately. And if we change around who we go with often enough, maybe we can find out more about that Marc person. See if anyone has met him. That might be a better idea than wandering around without a clue to start with, right?"

That Fai wanted to be away from them was no surprise to hear, but it was not something Kurogane liked the thought of. He'd given the man his night off from frustration already. Letting him do that again would get them nowhere.

"We'll decide that tonight," he eventually said, settling a glare to the magician, "In your room," he emphasized.

After emphasizing that, he huffed and turned his attention off around the room, spotting some of the guards. "I don't like this. Something's up, and that could change what happens tonight. Splitting up now isn't a good idea."

The three of them had to get on the same page, and at the moment, they were far from it. She saw the argument Fai was making--three people wandering around blind without a break in information could mean a lot of wasted time. But unless one of them pinpointed someone who had information on Marc, travelling with companions at random had the same disadvantages. Did Fai have others in mind, or did he have a plan of his own? Or did he just not want to work with them? The problem with involving others, too, was that it could introduce them to the same dangers, and Tsubaki definitely didn’t want that to happen.

It was hard now, and likely going to get harder, but in the long run, it might be better if just the three of them bore the burden.

Kurogane saved her from having to vocalize any of these opinions, compromising in the challenging way he had. At the same time, he was clearly trying to ensure Fai actually met them like he hadn’t before.

Either way, Kurogane wasn’t wrong. There was too much up in the air to expect an uneventful evening.

Brows drawing together, Tsubaki eventually nodded to acknowledge his observation. “Making a plan might be best when we know more about what’s happening tonight.” If Kurogane was leaning toward sticking together, and she was, too, that just left Fai. She looked over and worded her question so that she wasn’t pushing him into another one-sided response. “What do you think about checking in at first?”

Day 54: Sun Room

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