Fleo Plector – Guild Hall
At the new guild master's words, Fleo grinned. “Awesome! Thank you, sir!” Filled with pride, she rushed toward her group members, fit to gush out the news. Seeing Amaya asleep, not yet fully roused by Lucas's promise of delectable ice cream, she forced herself to swallow her excitement and instead whispered, “Mr. Jarvis is taking care of our completed job. He'll send out to the client that it's finished, and we'll get our reward in no time!” The dusty woman pumped her fist. “Team Powder Keg is off to a great start! Let's do more missions sometime!”
The next instant, Fleo almost hit the ground. All at once, the fatigue that she'd been holding off all during the ride back to Magnolia hit her like a sack of bricks. She steadied herself on Amaya's table and gave a stupid grin, not noticing that her purple headrag had fluttered to the floor. “Zombie mode engaged! Gon' sleep now.” She tottered off upstairs to her little room in the under-construction section, leaving her friends and a dusty trail of footprints behind her. After throwing aside her coat and removing her blouse, leaving just her black shorts and tank top on, she collapsed into bed.
Nero – Guild Hall
Despite Penny's rather threatening manner, Nero focused totally on her last couple of sentences. “Hell yeah! Nero LeMure,” he bubbled, not fully recognizing that he'd just betrayed his last name, “Phoenix Freelancer. Principle Lake must be turning over in his grave to see how much of a good person I'm becoming!” After that, he happily let Penny's attention slide elsewhere, not even noticing her leave. He didn't need the fire-spitter to rain on his parade any more.
Trinity's momentary presence earned her a withering glance. “The Time Man froze Ginger before she could wreck anything. Sure, she left a few spikes around, but that's hardly on me, is it? If she were a better person she wouldn't have become something with spikes.” It was fairly clear, however, that he bore no ill will toward Trinity. Apparently, he wouldn't second-guess his decision that she was his friend.
As it turned out, though, a far better friend was on hand. When poked in the side, Nero pivoted on the school to find the adorably pouting face of Ayame. “Aw, I'm sorry!” He waited for her to ready herself in her chair and voice her question. The early afternoon's events were only too happily related. “Well, we took a big honkin' train to a little town called Balsam. On the train, we met the pretty ice lady's long-lost buttface brother, Shoe Chin. It was utterly fascinating.” At this point, Nero warily glanced around, checking all possible hiding spots. The last thing he needed was for Shujin to get mad again. After making sure that the metal moulder was far away, crouching by Lazarus with his back facing Nero, he continued. “In the town, me, Trinity, and the huge cat manster went to get our pictures taken, but Sasha and Lazarus got in trouble. I didn't see much of anything, but the others got involved, and after the scary darkness faded, bam!” Nero clapped his hands dramatically. “Lazarus was stricken with poison! I made some harmless speculation and Shoe Chin got butthurt, but he didn't fancy havin' a go at me, so we all came home on the train.” He stroked his chin pensively. “Now that I think about it, we didn't do much of anything, really. Sorry for leavin' ya behind. When someone wishes for my help, I can't say no. Anything interesting happen over here, li'l lady?”