The Weight of Jade

Meet the Press

"Nino?" Wayzz asked tentatively, hovering over the face of his sleeping charge. Nino's alarm continued to drone on and on but the boy showed no signs of stirring, and Wayzz deliberated for a moment more before sighing and flying back across the room.

Wayzz flew over to his now fully functioning turtle tank, the whole thing so delightful that he had been in it almost exclusively since Nino finished assembling it. The small kwami flew down towards the surface of the water, passing by a floating wooden log with a frog sat squarely on top.

"Good morning Will," Wayzz said kindly, waving to the frog. "You'll be alright here won't you? It's very comfortable. I have to wake Nino now though, I'll see you when school is over. It's been a long time since I've been to school! It will be interesting to see what humans are learning these days."

With that Wayzz quickly dunked himself in the water before flying back towards Nino, flying right up to his face and dripping cold water all over him.

"Eh, AH," Nino said as he was startled awake, sitting up and rubbing at his face before looking around in a disoriented fashion. "Ugh... don't do that, come on bro," Nino grumbled, reaching out for his phone to get it to shut up.

"You'll be late if you waited any longer," Wayzz stated matter-of-factly, not very sorry at all as he flew over to take care of his own things. "Let me know when you are ready to leave, I have to feed Will."

Nino blinked, scratching at his head and fumbling around with one hand for his glasses as he mumbled, "Will? Oh, your frog yeah? Why Will?"

"Because!" Wayzz laughed, rooting through the pet store bag on Nino's desk. "Where there's a Will there's a Wayzz! Clever isn't it?"

Nino paused for a full second before he snorted once, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. "Wow. Yeah, got to tell that one to Adrien, he'll love that."

The turtle duo went through their separate routines, Nino getting ready for school while Wayzz tidied up his tank and enjoyed a few swims while he could. After Nino had showered and thrown on his go to shirt and jeans he multi-tasked, making some soup for his buddy while he just ate whatever he could find. Once Wayzz was all done and Nino was actually sort of awake Wayzz situated himself in Nino's hat and they headed out the door.

Nino found he couldn't actually listen to music while Wayzz was in his hat, he had over the ear headphones and didn't want to squish him. It was definitely outside of the usual for him to walk to school silently, but he couldn't say it was totally bad. It was just quiet. Well, actually, it wasn't even that, it was just different. He could hear people talking as they passed him, car's driving passed, the ringing of storefront doors and general noise of early morning Paris. He loved music, but he found that silence had a calming effect as well. It gave him time to think.

Nino's gaze dropped to the jade bracelet on his left wrist, subtle and unassuming but probably the biggest turn around in his life so far. Just... fell out of the sky. Well actually it came in the mail, but it had been unexpected. He was getting better at it, he still hadn't used his big power yet though or actually had to fight anything. But if skating around on a turtle shell counted as being super awesome then, yeah he had that down. According to Wayzz there was still other stuff he could try, but they were taking their time. No akuma sightings or attacks, no rush or bad news. He could afford to relax a little.

The night before had been the first night where he had company through the whole thing, Ladybug sacrificing a full night's rest to hang out with him a little. They hadn't done way too much, but they essentially did patrol. She showed him where her and Cat usually started and their system for looping around. It had been cool but...