fandomhigh | Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday, June 10, 2020

"Good morning, everyone!" Anakin called through his bullhorn. "Welcome to another fun-filled team-building activity!"

Is everyone excited? No? Ahhh, you're learning.

There were laundry baskets out, along with scooters, and roughly 3,000 plastic balls in the center of the blacktop ~~that totally existed, shhh~~.

"Today we're playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos," Anakin announced. "Without actual hippos."

Which needed to be pointed out around here. "Because they are mean and not into team sports."

Because he'd called a few zoos to find out.

"We'll have three teams today, of six members each. One member each round will lay stomach down, clutching the laundry basket. The second team member will use their legs to push them into the balls at the center of the arena."

Blacktop. Whatever.

"The team with the most number of balls at the end of six rounds win."

"Listen for your names and retrieve your shirts:

TEAM CINNAMON SMELL
Wayne
Alara
Amaya
Stark
Astrid
Mae

TEAM WHAMP
Sidon
Shuri
Danny
Tahani
Shunsui
Alexis

TEAM RED DRESS
Steve
Duke
Beaker
Sabine
Kitty
Tony"

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Good thinking, Prompto! Liam did, in fact, know the particular something Prompto was wondering about.

More due to convenient timing than anything else, but still.

"Prompto," he greeted with a nod. "I'm okay," he said. And then, after a second, he reconsidered, his lips twisted into a bit of a sardonic smile. "A little worried." Casually assuming Prompto would know why and all.

It was funny how those things worked out sometimes, wasn't it?

But there was nothing funny about a cryptic little addedum like that, any attempt at pretense washed away immediately by the concern that furrowed his brow, by the deep frown on his face. He definitely didn't want to assume anything, buuuuuut....

"About...." he ventured, because even if he was taking a leap here, at least it would introduce what he was worried about into the conversation, and he dropped his voice to a whisper, as if it was some secret, as if speaking his worries too loudly would only make them worse, or that he'd say it and then she'd pop up out from behind the bleachers with an accusing ah-ha! as if catching him in the act of something so terrible as caring about her,"....Nina?"

Ah yes the utter deviousness that was caring about someone!

(Who maybe didn't entirely believe they were worth caring about, a perspective that Liam actually understood quite well.)

"Yeah," he nodded. "You too, huh?" STILL ASSUMING SHE'D TEXTED HIM ON HER WAY TO THE PORTAL.

There was certainly a type, and they did tend to just gravitate toward each other, it would seem.

Prompto had somehow known that this what was Liam had meant and yet the confirmation still felt like a punch to his gut. "Yeahhhh...." he said, letting out a slow breath because even though he'd played this out in his head a few times already, he still didn't know what to do with it.

"I mean..." he said, after a moment, "is she okay? Did she, like, just lock herself in her room all week? She's not answering any of my texts or calls. Like, I know this is probably a huge devistating deal for her, but still! This is a little much, don't you think, even for Nina?"

They really, really did.

Though now it was Liam's turn to frown. Not that it looked all that different from his typical expression, honestly, but it was definitely a frown. Because yes, when he'd run into her last week Nina had absolutely been in the midst of eating her feelings, and that's what they'd started out discussing, but it had ended rather abruptly when-

"Did she not tell you?"

If an expression could be the complete and total essence of a disparaging duuuuuude, that was exactly the expression Prompto was giving Liam right then.

Because nothing good ever followed a 'did she not tell you'.

"...not tell me what?" he eventually managed, in the very small voice of someone who had just lost some sort of gut-wrenching internal battle with themselves.

Liam sighed.

"How much do you know about the kind of... work... she does?" he asked. Yes, they were siblings, but the whole adoption thing had been fairly recent, relatively speaking. And he talked to Nina far more than he talked to Prompto, so he didn't actually know what he knew.

Ha. Relatively.

Prompto blinked. He frowned. His frown deepened, especially in his brow.

"Did...something happen back home?" he asked. "She said everything was okay back home. She said they finally signed, like, peace treaties and stuff..."

And it was still another two years before he was supposed to be exposed to the idea that peace treaties could be totally broken and messed up!

Sorry to be bursting that particular bubble, Prompto!

Liam nodded. "It appears that there's at least one group that's dissatisfied with the treaty," he shared. "She got word that a group of cadets was murdered."

Edited 2020-06-10 19:37 (UTC)

The color drained a little from Prompto's face as he processed this, his lips pressed together, that pit in his stomach twisting into a knot.

"So she had to go to work," he said, which he understood, of course, especially now. He understood, but....

She didn't even tell him? He knew he could receive messages from her world, she had bombarded him with pictures that one time she took a 'vacation' with everyone there. Maybe something else had messed with the phones? Some weird Fandom blip? Some glitch in the multiverse?

His shoulders sagged for a moment, and he looked at Liam, with an almost hopeful lift of his brows, as if there might be sometime to confirm that Nina had tried to tell him, but it just didn't get through, although he wasn't going to ask, because he didn't know if he could handle the possibility that this wasn't the case at all.

"When did she leave?"

"Last Wednesday morning," Liam told him. "Before the-" he waved a hand at the, well. General shenanigans and goings-on. "She said she'd have her phone off most of the time, because she couldn't afford it making noise at the wrong moment," he continued. "But I figured she would've at least texted you while she waited for the portal."

Though to be fair to Nina, finding out a bunch of kids had been murdered was enough to throw anyone for a loop.

"If I'd known she hadn't," he grimaced, "I would've at least given you the heads-up last week. Sorry."

Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday, June 10, 2020

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