Ninjas of Love

An Early Morning Wander

Yang looked around the dorm as best she could, the only source of light being the blue illumination of her phone. Most of her colleagues were fast asleep, preparing for the early start they'd need to make to be at the Amity Arena for BECK's fight, and Emily was still in the bathroom, probably cleaning her teeth obsessively or trying to scratch every last blackhead out of her skin- a habit that had left her with a lot of tiny scars to the point where her face without makeup resembled some form of bizarre Rorschach Test. Yang didn't care about the acne. She still found Emily really attractive- admittedly, more so with makeup on- and very little could change that. God, the things she'd do to Emily just as soon as she knew everyone else was asleep.

With a quiet creak, the door opened and light shone through into the room. Most of the dorm was too fast asleep to notice or care, save for Blake who moaned something about "bloody cat eyes" before turning on her other side. Emily shuffled out of the bathroom, heavy metallic braces shrouding her legs in mystery. As she lumbered into bed, her blonde lover whispered to her, "Come here, Robocop."
"It gets sexier, just wait." Emily replied, fiddling about in her drawer before fishing out a bizarre contraption of metal and fabric. She hooked the metal bow round her top row of teeth diligently, and attached to the fabric strap at the back of her neck. "Thee? Even feckfier." Her lisp made her already strongly accented speech almost unintelligible. "God yes. I have a thing for speech impediments." She tried to sound sage, but her excited arousal took center stage. "Can you two keep the kinky shit down? We need to rest!" Kerian complained, drawing simultaneous apologies from Emily, Yang, and- for reasons best and perhaps only known to himself- Charlie.

***

All of Emily's body ached. From her stiff, unresponsive neck to her ankles which made a football rattle-like click every time that they were used. She glanced over to the bedside table to check the time on her scroll. Only 5:23, she thought to herself, probably can afford ten more minutes in bed. Even better, I can get away with discarding the headgear. She silently removed it from her mouth, and placed it back in its drawer with an assortment of other items, including painkillers, her watch, and 15 Lien in coins. Despite having just reassured herself that she had time which she could spend in bed, she jumped up and off the bunk like someone had attached a spring to her spine.

"Where the fuck are you going?" Yang asked drowsily, presumably only noticing Emily was awake when the pattern of the soft, warm breath on the back of her neck change. "Gym. I'll be back by 8."
"You need to eat. Or Charlie will go mental again."
"Yeah, yeah," Emily replied, half-dismissively, half-ingeniously, "tell him I grabbed something from the 24-hour store."
"But the nearest one is in the city."
"Yeah? I'll go there. And he's stupid, he probably won't realise that."
"Fine, whatever. Have fun. If you're not back here by eight, I'm stealing your wheelchair, you lazy shit."
Emily jokingly elbowed the sleepy blonde in the thigh, as she used to other hand to replace her heavier night braces with the more streamlined, mobility-friendly models she wore during the day.

After quickly throwing her combat wear on (whatever t-shirt she could find, red and gold corset, and black combat skirt with red trim), she cued up some of her more upbeat music on her scroll, put her headphones on, and left.

On the way out of the door, she glanced over at the black and silver spectre of her wheelchair. I really should take that if I'm going into the city, she thought to herself, moving a few ringlets of muddy-brown hair out of her eyes, but, then again, I could just run and try and build up the strength in my legs. Sure, Charlie will probably try to strap me down to the wheelchair if he ever finds out, but my legs are my weakness. If I run to that store, it might help them out. Hang on, Em, that's not how logic works. Fuck it. I don't want to be seen by possible opponents, or even possible friends, rolling to the gym at six in the morning. I'm-a run and just hope that it works out. She walked quietly down the corridor, making sure she didn't wake up any other teams and, with the subtlety of a ninja, took the lift to the ground floor.

As soon as her foot touched down outside the main school building, she started sprinting to the beat of the Menageriese ethno-pop blasting through her headphones. She looked outwards and focused purely on where she was going and the rhythm of her feet, tapping the ground one after the other, like some kind of nightcoreified dance routine. Emily loved a chance to clear her mind of all the thoughts she kept inside her as best she could.

Tap-tap.
When no-one else is around, no-one can doubt you're a girl.

Tap-tap.
Running to the convenience store meant she could indulge in some crappy food and not feel bad.

Tap-tap.
Hold on a minute! Copper's Classic Corner Club? That looks like the sort of slightly overpriced always-open establishment I need. What to buy? Salad? No, too shit. Biscuits? Come on, Em, what are you, seventy? Eureka! What if they sell that Patchian staple, Ó Dubhghlas Breakfast Baps? If so, I'm buying me some of that. Yeah, it's bad for me, but you can't beat a bit of bacon, sausage, egg, hash brown, black pudding, tomato, and brown sauce all sandwiched between two slices of rye bread in some kind of unholy orgy. Weiss would have a brain aneurysm just thinking about it.

Emily came out of the shop a few minutes later, clutching a stacked breakfast sandwich- with a singular bite in it- in one hand, and checking her scroll with another. 8 minutes. Not bad. Oh, 12 missed calls from Charlie. Bugger. He can wait, I need to do some cardio this morning. Wolfing down her distressingly cheap breakfast like one would, had their last meal been Weiss Schnee's vegan abomination, and pondered entering the gym. She turned back, reasoning it was easier to use the Beacon gym- especially as she knew how long it'd take her knackered body to get back to the dorm. Twelve minutes and forty-four seconds exactly. But she was going to make it there quicker, she was sure of it.