Ninjas of Love

Spill The Beans

Kerian stood- a safe distance away from any expensive items, by Charlie's insistence- surveying the array of shining white bodies and unmarked, crystal-clear screens. Billy was working around the small, cramped shop clockwise from the entrance, making sure to examine each model's box for its exact specifications- ergo allowing him to make a well-informed decision about which scroll best fitted his needs. Charlie and Emily just looked at each other blankly.

"Shall we just grab one and make a beeline for the coffee shop?" Charlie asked her extremely quietly, so that the shopkeeper would not think he was being insulted. "Yeah, lets just grab two of these ones." Emily told him assertively, wheeling forward and grabbing a pair of iScroll Ws with her left hand. Charlie carefully took them from her and handed them to the shopkeeper- whose name badge simply read "Shopkeep"- who mulled over his non-verbal request momentarily before ringing up the amount on the till. Charlie handed over the displayed 1500 Lien and sneaked out of the shop, with Emily tailing behind him in her excessively wide wheelchair.

The two remained outside the shop for a minute, and listened to their other two team-mates bickering about something-or-other to do with scrolls. "This one's got a big shiny logo!" Kerian shouted drunkenly, gesticulating like a madman at the large silver tangerine-like shape stamped onto the back of the Tangerine ScrollPhone. Billy sighed. "But this one is not only a lot cheaper, but had more processing power, better graphics capabilities, five more megapixels on its camera, more memory and can even run Tangerine's operating system, TOS." He ranted about the Cuboid P10 until his normally snowy cheeks began to take on a saccharine pink colour. "But the big logo!"

After around half a minute of unintelligible screeching and rambling, Billy's final sigh was audible and very much decipherable. Not only did this mean that Kerian had clearly decided upon a statistically inferior, yet pricier phone; it also meant that Charlie and Emily would have to really dash to the coffee shop should they want to be there substantially before the two ends of Team BECK.

After roughly fourty-three seconds- that felt like millennia upon millennia- the two trainees racked onto the back of the snake-like queue. It was then they heard two familiar voices advancing ever nearer to the back of their neck, until they could practically feel the sisters' breath cooling them down. "Hey Charlie! Emmie!" Ruby shouted chirpily and cheerfully, clutching a reusable plastic bag filled with shopping. "We got your gifts!" The redhead continued, seemingly blissfully unaware that she was in public and there was a very high probability that the entire clientele gave roughly zero shits about the gifts she had bought her quasi-teammates.

"Excuse me? Sirs?" The woman behind the counter made sure to remind the pair of rookies that they had, without really noticing, found their way to the front of the queue. "I'll have a latte with three sugars please." The barista nodded to affirm she had taken his order. "And for you, sir?" She directed her question at Emily, who was trying her best not to be visibly beside herself. "Umm... well... I guess," she began, stumbling over every word as if her tongue had developed a particularly awful form of lethargy, "I'll have a mocha." Emily turned back to Yang briefly, as briny tears began to spill from her blue eyes and roll down the acne-scarred hills and valleys of her face. Charlie collected the two coffees with one hand and, with the other, lightly tapped his teammate's shoulder to inform her that they needed to find a table.

Charlie pulled out a red plastic chair for himself, whilst Emily pulled her wheelchair into one side of the shiny, plasticky table. He set down a white, ceramic mug in front of his disabled friend, and placed a glass latte cup in front of himself. A few moments later, the two daughters of Taiyang Xiao Long joined them at the table, as Billy and Kerian edged ever closer to the front of the queue. Yang sat down and peered pensively into her mug of black, bitter Java coffee, whilst her younger sister placed down a mug of coffee so creamy it was practically white. She then got to work removing eight packets of cane sugar from her pocket and pouring them, one by one, into her drink. This took her an extortionate and inordinate amount of time- so long, in fact, that, by the time she took her first sip of what was effectively sweetened cream, Billy and Kerian were walking over with catastrophically botched attempts at coffee.

"How did that happen?" Emily asked introspectively, looking at the careless yet attractive barista. "Well," Billy explained, his voice drowning in a fiery mix of sarcasm, cynicism and sheer anger, "she wasn't our coffee person. He was!" He pointed angrily at a very short man struggling to reach all of the chrome-plated machines used to make coffee nowadays. "And?" Charlie asked Billy, failing to see what the problem specifically was with a three-foot barista. "He's just too small! He shouldn't be allowed to make coffee, because he's simply too damn small!" Billy whisper-shouted, so that only his five friends could hear, but so that they were absolutely certain he was anything but happy.

Billy finished his coffee in silence, while Kerian slowly sipped at his flat white- all the while sneaking in little glugs from his stainless steel hip flask. Ruby and Yang both took their time over their coffee (Ruby because she wasn't very thirsty or hungry, and Yang because she didn't really like black coffee but drunk it to be one of those edgy cool Francophile kids who loves the film The Breakfast Club), whilst Charlie very nearly downed his, showcasing his terrible sweet tooth. Emily, however, had barely touched hers and was sat crying silently, making sure not to disrupt the other five's conversation about Valish current affairs and rumours they'd heard of certain Menagerian and Atlasian acts who may or may not participate in Faunavision.

Unsurprisingly, Yang was the first to notice her girlfriend's predicament and slipped her a folded sheet of A5 paper under the table. Ruby just looked around the table, and noticed that silence had, at long last, resigned supreme for over four femtoseconds. "Yang! Yang!" Her nagging did cause her sister to, reluctantly, turn back to her. "Give them their gifts!" Ruby smiled and chirped enthusiastically, as Yang sighed and handed out four smaller paper bags to each member of Team BECK.