“It should be here in another five minutes” Lois said, pulling the hood of her neon orange poncho tighter over her head. Over the course of time, they had taken to clean up the shrapnel and pieces of ceramic, it had started to rain. However, that didn’t mean it was going to stop them from getting to Homes4U and buying another vase…with the charity money she could bribe out of everyone else of course. A relatively simple task, considering everyone was very eager to not encounter death anytime soon.

“I curse you with periods! And they shall hurt!” Lane spat at Timothy who kept bothering him

“Could you two please quit it and move on?” she snapped at Tim who kept having spasms of giggles and snickered as he revisited the humour of the situation that had passed.

“Lois, we’ll only get in more trouble” Lane groaned. He didn’t look too good- the colour from his already pale face gone with the chill wind and his lower lip chapped and split in areas from having chewed on it for too long to keep his teeth from chattering in the cold. He paced quietly back and forth as they waited, groaning or whining loudly every time his shoe shattered a puddle, sending droplets of mud all over his clothing. Lois rolled her eyes, sometimes Lane cared a bit too much and thus complained almost all the time.

“Aren’t you the same person who said that vase had to go anyways?” Lois smirked.

“Yeah” Lane huffed using the ball of his wrist to try and rub off a stain on the knee of his trousers, “it did NOT do justice to the rest of the house” he said, his voice spiking up with a critique’s edge. He sighed, “but still, they’d ground us for life if they found out we went roaming around in the city at night”

“You know,” Kenny piped in. He had been quiet for some time now after Lois had shooed him away for tickling her with wet leaves he found around the place, preoccupied with swishing his shoe gently in the slowly forming puddles and relocating earthworms that had gone exploring in the rain. “Maybe they might as well ground you less because they saw you try fix the issue?” he looked up at everyone’s faces for affirmation but all he got were glares that would rather have swallowed the frogs hopping about the street than believe in that possibility. “Just saying” Kenny mumbled and went back to doing whatever it was he was doing.

“Kenny, have you met my father?” Lane asked, raising an eyebrow.

Kenny gulped. Lois just had to sneer at how spooked he looked-an appropriate emotion for the subject at hand. Kenny had reason to worry – Vice Admiral Timur Kalchik was a character. He was terrifying and not because he was part of the Navy. However, anyone who knew him well, knew that he was a Superman of a father and Lois looked up to him for every step she took. And Kenny knew that, yet he still cowered away from Timur Kalchik nonetheless. She had also found the slight ripple of Kenny most certainly trying to shoot for her brother. She had no idea how her parents would act on the instance that either of them dated.

“As you should” she nodded, careful not to give anything away but enough to hint Kenny that maybe she wasn’t all that blind either and walked towards the edge of the sidewalk as the cab’s blinding headlights slowed to a stop.

Homes4U sat inside a mall, as it traditionally always does, linking hands with several other furniture stores that more or less contained the same line of household pieces. And it being inside the mall and the fact that they were ‘impressionable young adults’ as Kenny put it, obviously meant that they were going to head out of track a couple of times before they actually reached the store-especially if they didn’t remember exactly where it was. Despite the clock striking an outlandish ten at night, the place was still bustling with all sorts of people in and out of every store and restaurant still working at full speed.

“Right” Timothy straightened his back and dusted his finger off the last crumbs of chips, “lets get that vase and head on over to the arcade” He looked in boredom all over the aesthetically arranged store for something even minutely interesting.

“Ooo, yess” Kenny agreed. Maybe he wasn’t so much of an ‘anchor’ after all..

“Whoa” Lane put his hands up, “we’re not getting the SAME vase are we?”

“We aren’t?” Lois arched her eyebrow. All this time, she had been expecting to get an identical copy and place it at home in a way that their parents won’t notice it broke in the first place, regardless of how horrid Lane called it out to be. Her confusion was interrupted by Kenny loudly slurping his Oreo Milkshake.

“No way” Lane squeaked. “Kenny, you’ll help me choose one?” he gave Kenny eyes that were meant to be locked behind a bedroom door and bit the side of his lip in a coquettish way as he waited for a response. Lois scrunched her face- because ‘what exactly was going on??’ and nudged her brother hard on the side with her elbow.

“Hey yeah” Kenny agreed, swirling his cup to get the last bit of shake at the bottom, “good idea. If we all look and gather some options, we can get done in no time.” He jumped, “Then we can head to the arcade!”. He delivered this in the tone that one would use in hopes of giving a person a hand to get a job done properly- clearly having missed Lane’s…body language, OR he was just so good at hiding his true emotions. It was enough to make Lois snort with laughter. She didn’t have to look at her brother to know that he had gone pink.

She waited till he disappeared behind the shelves to explain the gist of it to Timothy. She had to tell somebody before she explodes.