Ninjas of Love

Hope You Didn't Have Your Hopes Up, Billy

Billy quickly unsheathed his gift, tearing the paper bag into numerous little pieces that the coffee shop's cleaning staff would no doubt have to pick up later, as part of their mind-numbing, menial occupation. He held aloft the sisters' thoughtful gift of a board book- a form of literature ostensibly designed for toddlers- whilst his teammates giggled like hyenas high on nitrous oxide. "May I ask why?" Billy asked, befuddled as to why Ruby and Yang would spend Lien on a gift so blatantly unsuited to him. "Well, we thought that it was probably time you learned how to read, you dumb meathead!" Yang quipped, jokingly punching him- though admittedly without holding any of her (non insignificant) strength back- in the upper arm.

Kerian politely pulled his gift out of the bag; he presented himself with a standard deck of fifty-two playing cards. The deck included no jokers as, according to Ruby, they "ruined the game", regardless of what this nondescript game may actually happen to be. "You see," Ruby explained, without any clear prompt for her to do any such thing, "you seem to have some insane levels of luck. Therefore," she paused to chug down the last of her abhorrently sickly coffee, "we got you something to get you into gambling- especially as someone doesn't seem to think you have an addictive personality at all." She slid a snide look at her older, bustier sister.

Charlie looked around for an unsettlingly long time before realising it was his turn to open his gift and everyone else was waiting for him patiently- if just a tad awkwardly. He picked up his paper bag carefully and then flipped it, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees exactly, so that his present dropped onto the table with a plasticky clatter. "It's... a dodgy-looking  DVD." Charlie's attempts to hide his disappointment (yes, he was disappointed even after seeing Billy receive his firmly tongue-in-cheek gift) were, quite frankly, pathetically weak- but Ruby and Yang acted as if they were completely oblivious to them. The blonde told him, "this is The Complete History of Beacon Academy. Since you're the leader of a team who are with us for the moment, it's your duty- as decreed by yours truly- to know our history."
"We can watch it together, if you like." Charlie muttered, making sure the easily-angered girl with the gauntlets couldn't hear him.

"So, Emily." Ruby faced toward the girl in the oversized wheelchair, whose usually white face was streaked scarlet where tears had torn down her cheeks, and whose lower lip trembled at any mention of her name or when any attention was presently given to her. "Y...yes, Miss Rose?" Emily asked apprehensively, terrified she'd done something to annoy the young and tiny, yet still somehow intimidating and imposing Ruby. "Please, call me Ruby. Anyway, go ahead and open your present." Emily nodded slowly, as if she was mulling over the idea of opening her gift in her head. Slowly, she put one  shaking hand inside the bag, and pulled out its contents. "Th..th..thank you, Ruby and Yang."

She could barely string her words together, but was nevertheless very taken with the small, silvery pendant Yang had bought her (which consisted of a chain- as is common in these kinds of things- and a small, moulded heart charm attached to the chain. Emily looked at it, coiled up like a snake ready to attack, in the sweaty, trembling palm of her hand. Yang slowly got out of her chair and pinched the necklace from her girlfriend's hand. Without uttering a word- and quickly enough that Emily did not have time to say anything either- she placed the chain and charm around the cripple's neck, so that the heart rested against her flat sternum, and clasped it together at the back. "You look stunning." Yang whispered to her girlfriend, eliciting a smile from her very emotional (in fact probably overemotional) lover. "Now, let's go and get us some clothes to match it." Charlie decided, rising from the table and almost knocking over his empty glass cup.