Prospero
The door to Naoto's house opened and closed suddenly, the sound of it shortly followed by a slight *thump! as Prospero hit the floor, apparently having wandered in last burned out and soaked to the bone from the rain. In fact, he had been forcing himself to try and run additional laps, then gotten lost toward the end and by now he didn't seem to be able to do more than lie there like a human puddle on the floor panting heavily, at least at first.

although he seemed catatonic for a minute or so, the young masked boy managed to prop himself up and after a little while of catching his breath, mumbled something that was probably meant to be "I'm home!~" before he fell over again and started giggling to himself as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Despite having forced himself to go further than instructed and feeling completely burned out, he felt happy.

But why not feel happy? After all this time, the target I've been aiming for is probably right in front of us, and I'm getting closer and closer to achieving my goals. That's worth some happiness, right? That was a lie though. He'd become good at telling himself lies, and at the moment he didn't particularly feel like looking too closely at this one. The reality was thoughts of revenge had nothing to do with his odd feeling of happiness. If he was honest with himself, then he would probably say it had something to do with the smell of hot tea in the background. Or maybe the fact that the people vaguely nearby him were recognizable as something other than assistants and managers and mindless fans with which he never really interacted. Or maybe it was the fact that, even if he wouldn't admit it, when he'd jokingly said "I'm home!~" for just a second it had felt more true and more warm than anything had felt in a long while.

But all that was ridiculous wasn't it? Only revenge could really make him feel happy these days, right?

He perked his head up and seemed to register something for the first time. "Oi...Naoto-nii...s'that tea?...Gimme some....'m'freezing!" Regardless of whether revenge was what would make him happy, it couldn't keep him warm. It was, after all, generally served cold.

Abby snorted when she heard Artemis insult Cyril, knowing that he wouldn't be able to understand her. Then she suddenly felt her upper body get lifted off the ground. Before she knew it, she felt her back rest against something warm and Naoto's voice near her ear. Apparently the pink-haired teen was allowing her to use him as a crutch while she ate some of the food he had brought over from the dining table. Abby breath hitched and she could feel tears prick her eyes. No one outside her immediate family ever did anything nice; not even her old friends back in New York. It was so... sweet. The blond brushed away her tears, realizing her arms weren't in much pain as she thought and quickly grabbed a piece of toast from one of the plates.

"Thanks." She mumbled under her breath, too embarrassed by her sudden waterworks to say anything else. So instead, she just dug in. The rest of the group got up at their own pace and made their way to either the table or the tray of food on the floor next to Naoto and Abby to fill their empty stomachs. Even though a few arguments arose here and there, there was a sense of peace in the living area for just a few minutes and each teen cherished it, knowing that tomorrow would be filled with more chaotic training.

---

Morning came too soon for Abby who was standing in Naoto's backyard with a couple of the Guardians who decided to come early. Well, Abby was only early because she ended up crashing at Naoto's. And it was Miku who woke anyone staying there up to get to Sonya's training on time. Although she knew she meant well, Abby thought there was no reason to since the crazy woman wasn't even around yet. Her stuff was and the table of weapons was back as well as a line of wooden poles with several smaller poles sticking out of it, like the ones Abby saw in martial arts movies. The blond stifled back a yawn as she looked at her watch.

"Well there's five minutes before training actually begins," she began saying to the entirety of the group that was already there, "where do you think everybody else is?"

Jak woke up crying, holding her head tight between her arms, and she was tightly curled into the fetal position. She'd had the dream again. The one with the blue fire everywhere. It was on the curtains... the walls... and it was starting to burn her too. Through the smoke and haze she knew it to be her room, from before the fire. The fire was like water, however, and instead of feeling as though she were burning to death, she thought she might drown in the smoke.

Jak took a few deep breaths, trying to remind herself that the air here was normal, that she could breathe. After about ten minutes, her pulse returned to normal. She sat up, the blanket on her falling to the floor as she did so. It took her a moment to remember that she wasn't at home, but at Fionn's. She also remembered that she had to get home before her mother woke up. She threw the blanket on the couch and moved to check her phone for the time. Four thirty.

She had enough time to get back home and make breakfast before heading over to Naoto's. Sonya probably planned for training around seven. Hopefully that was an early estimate. Jak grabbed anything she left laying around, wrote a quick note:

Jak said
Dear Fionn,
Had to dash, my mom needs breakfast. Sorry, but thanks for letting me spend the night!
Sincerely,
Jakki

She left on the nearest table and ran out the door, quickly jogging home to try and cook breakfast in enough time to leave for Sonya's training. She'd help Cyril then leave. That was all she was going to do in the mafia. No more, no less. At least Jak hoped that she could get out, but an even smaller, tiny portion of her wanted to not be able to leave.

Jak managed to reach home and cook eggs at five. Her mother would be leaving for work at six, and Jak hoped that she had enough time to even fry up some bacon for her mother as well. Once all of the breakfast was cooked, she sat down at the couch and started to eat some breakfast herself. For a moment, she just stared blankly at the television. Then she saw it, in a plain black case and without it's stand. Her father's Wakizashi sword, barely over half a foot long, which had survived the fire with only some burns to the leather. Her mother hadn't cleaned it off, and so there was ash on the mantle, but...

Jak looked around quickly before grabbing it and stuffing it into her duffle bag for softball. Today it would be used for appearances only, but it would be carrying something important. The last thing of her father's that survived. She moved quickly as her mother's bedroom door opened with a loud thunk and she started to move downstairs. Jak looked back at the eggs quickly, noticing that one could see the heat rising off them still.

With that she would out the door again to Naoto's house, arriving at six ten. A bit earlier than she'd expected, but...

"I'm late...." she said between breaths, her run was more tiring than she'd thought, "aren't I?"

Prospero yawned as he stood out in the backyard with the other Guardians who had stayed over at Naoto's house. Being a world famous stage magician hadn't exactly prepared him for early morning wakeups, although he was already having flashbacks to training with his father. Of course if his father was running the show his 'early morning wakeup' would have happened when he was already handcuffed and blindfolded inside a slowly closing deathtrap buried underneath the cement foundation of an empty warehouse, but the nostalgia was there all the same.

He looked over at Abby as she questioned where everybody else was by now. "Probably just heading over. I don't think Miss Naoto's Mom was over their houses waking all of them up, so maybe they got more sleep than we did. I wonder how Sonya's gonna punish the people who show up late though?" Out of force of a long established habit Prospero began looking around the backyard for signs of hidden deathtraps or sensory and oxygen deprivation tanks. The fact that he failed to find any only wound up increasing his feeling of dread more and more and he started shaking a little at what was to him a final confirmation that Sonya was one of the scariest people he'd ever met. She'd obviously hidden the punishment traps so well that even he couldn't detect them. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod the whole yard is secretly a minefield!

"I..I'm gonna go inside for a minute, just remembered that I forgot something!

made illusion-based confetti and streamers drop down over Jakki as she walked through the door and asked if she was late. It was a pretty simple effect which normally meant he would've set it up as an actual magic trick out of pride, but he was already almost more terrified of what Naoto's mom would do if he made the kind of mess that exploding confetti all over the house would create this early in the morning. In fact after staying here for more than a while, the masked magician had already decided he'd limit himself to self-cleaning tricks in the house. Still if Sonya's training was anything like Prospero's father's training had been, he had to do something to distract from the inevitable traumatizing pain.

"Tah-dah! You've managed to not be the last person to arrive and that means you win the fabulous prize of not being killed and eaten by the terrifying Baba-Yaga woman! What are you going to do next? If the answer is anything but train, then we're all in for suffering and disappointment! Yaaaaaay!~" As a little bonus he made an invisible crowd cheer while the confetti and streamers swirled up to spell "Conglaturations!" and...wait that wasn't right. he sighed and let the illusions go "Darnit. Lost focus. Anyways pretty sure the others are out in the yard so let's go go go before the red-headed demon of suffering shows up!"

Prospero walked out into the yard without waiting to see if Jakki followed, though he made sure to walk over to the exact same spot he'd been standing in before so as not to trigger any of the obviously well-hidden landmines.

It was way too early for Cyril. He was used to sleeping in late, but then again, he hardly got any sleep. His nights were spent laying on his side, waiting for the light of dawn to peek over the ocean. Cyril supposed that he should be grateful that Sonya had made them group together so early in the morning; he had been growing bored of lying in bed all night, waiting for sleep to take him. He would have gone out for a brief walk around the town before he tried to sleep again, but Cyril didn’t think it was safe. That bastard could be lurking anywhere. Vincente was making him extremely paranoid. Hardly anyone could approach him from behind these days—Cyril jumped at any sort of interaction that he didn’t expect or couldn’t see.

A yawn escaped Cyril’s lips as he walked from Daisuke’s house and toward Naoto’s. He didn’t bother to wait for Daisuke. He had told Ottavio to tell the other teenager that he had gone ahead on his lonesome. The dark-haired boy didn’t want to get in trouble with Sonya again just because he was late. It was different being late to training than being late to class. If you were late to class, the teacher would only scold you. However, if you were late to Sonya’s training… you wouldn’t get scolded, you would get beat. That was why Cyril was slightly anxious because he arrived to Naoto’s place a little bit later than six in the morning.

Many of the Guardians had already gathered. Naoto’s garden was littered with something that seemed to have been pulled out of a movie with angry Asian men who beat the crap out of each other. That alone made Cyril shudder. What is she planning? he wondered as he approached Abby and Jak. Fionn was there as well, looking nervous. Then again, he always looked nervous for no real reason. Cyril walked up to the wall and pressed his back against it, sliding down until he sat on the ground. He crossed his legs and waited for Sonya to tell them what to do.

”Oh man,” Fionn piped up, his voice trembling slightly. He wasn’t looking forward to Sonya’s training. His eyes flicked over the “training grounds” and trembled. ”This looks much more intense than our hanging upside down thing, doesn’t it?”