The Photo Hut; Saturday Morning [04/02].

[hashtag_chocobro]

It was early, and it was a good thing Prompto was enjoying the quiet, enjoying feeling actually nice and relaxed, because it was just about the only moment of peace he was going to get that weekend. Liz was still asleep next to him, and he didn't want to disturb her, but he was comfortable and reminding himself that there'd been plenty of...exercise this week, so he could probably skip the jog this morning. He was idly scrolling through his phone, quietly, contemplating slipping out of bed and trying to make breakfast or something for them when he thought he heard something coming from downstairs.

He frowned a little, thinking at first it might have been Rain getting into something, but he craned his neck to look down and see that she was also still sleeping, curled up at the foot of the bed. Then he heard more, almost like a scuffling, things moving around, and voices. Quiet, but there was definitely some sort of conversation. Prompto's frown deepened. Fandom? On a Saturday? Could be anything...

Still not wanting to wake up Liz and have her start worrying or getting her upset if he didn't have to, Prompto very carefully slipped out of bed, found his clothes, found his gun, and carefully slipped downstairs to the shop to see what in the hell was going on.

And was met almost instantly with a girl calling out "Say 'Wookiee!'", the light of a flash from a camera, and then the girl lowering the camera to look over to the boy next to her and saying, "See? I told you."

The boy was holding up his hands as if to prove his innocence. "I didn't touch anything," he declared. "This was all her idea..." He seemed to trail off a little as he looked over at Prompto, his eyes widening a little. "Whoa. This is trippy."

"Told you," the girl said again, this time with more emphasis and more of a smirk.

And Prompto was....right. Right. Pollen week. Prom. And then the kids. You'd think he'd have remembered, having been through this...a few times before, but this was always the sort of thing to catch him by surprise. But if that were the case, then these two were...

"So this is really it, huh?" asked the boy, looking around curiously while the girl continued to snap photo of everything around them. "We went through time and space and now we're at the shop where it alllll began."

"It's too bright here," murmured the girl idly.

"I kind of like it," the boy added with a shrug.

And Prompto....couldn't help grinning a little, shaking his head. Having two was kind of new (and, boy, wouldn't he soon be looking back on those halcyon moments when it was only two!), but it was impossible for him to not feel a little thrill of excitement for what this all seeemded to suggest. He should probably go wake up their mom, she'd probably want to see this, she'd...

"Wait a sec," he realized, "how did you even get in here?"

Truly, a continued, unanswerable mystery for ages upon ages of these weekends.

[[ for that lady, their kids, and one little extra nugget along the way ]]

Comments

[flamesburned]

Liz was enjoying the sleep in and while the past week had been nice, it was also nice to be able to be more comfortable and relax and so she was taking the opportunity to sleep a bit longer. She hadn’t felt Prompto leave so when she did wake up, she didn’t think anything too unusual about it but she headed out the bedroom and that was when she thought she could hear noises coming from downstairs.

She hadn’t made the connection that it was the weekend that possible future children tended to visit … for her the last such visit had been over ten years ago.

“Prompto?” she called as she headed down the stairs to the store, “what’s going on?”

[silver_flames]

It was nice of Liz to give Noctra a little bit of a warning that she was coming, which meant she was even more ready to snap a picture of her mom when she showed up, with another call of "Say 'Wookiee!'" before snagging the hopefully bewildered look on her face.

Lucius, though, was still boggling, shaking his head. "So freaky."

[hashtag_chocobro]

And Prompto just tilted his head back to look at Liz, his grin somewhat apologetic, but only just a bit. "Congratulations," he told her, with a small, bewildered, kind of amused laugh. "They're twins."

[flamesburned]

Liz’s expression was definitely bewildered as her photo was taken, she blinked and looked from Noctra to Lucious and then to Prompto.

“Twins?” she repeated in confusion and then it began to dawn on her and she let out a laugh as well, “oh wow,” she said as she smiled back at the twins, “I’d nearly forgotten, it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of these weekends,”

[hashtag_chocobro]

Prompto was just going to snort a little at that, wondering if it was probably best he didn't mention that his last one was just last year, and the kid had been with Ignis (definitely not going to think about the one before that, with Yang...that was clearly ancient history never to be dredged up again), but that was easily chased away looking at the kids.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Always seems to sneak up on you, what with..." His hand made a little twirling gesture in the air, "...everything else going on."

[flamesburned]

Liz smiled, “wow, it sure brings back memories,” she said, remembering one of these weekends when she’d had twins with somebody named John, who she still hadn’t met yet even after all these years and she looked at Noctra holding her camera, “do you both like photography?” she asked.

[silver_flames]

Boy, Prompto was going to feel all sorts of awkward about the small pang of unfounded jealousy he felt in his chest at Liz mentioning memories about this sort of thing in a little while, wasn't he?

But Lucius was shaking his head. "Naw," he said, shrugging and rubbing the back of his neck a little sheepishly, a move taken right from the Prompto Playbook, "that's mostly just Noctra's thing....I kind of mostly just focus on weapons and stuff."

He wasn't about to say so outloud or anything, but he had wanted to be different and be the odd-man out in that respect. Plus, he thought it was kind of dumb, trying to take photographs in a world full of darkness, even if he was pretty proud of some of the upgrades he made to make Noctra's flash bright enough sometimes to scare off the daemons.

Temporarily, anyway.

[flamesburned]

Liz would feel rather bad if she knew how her remark had impacted Prompto, “weapons?” she was a bit surprised at that reveal, “like training?”

She wondered if they had ended up back at the BPRD after all.

[silver_flames]

"Training," Noctra supplied with a roll of her eyes, before focusing in on taking a nice artistic shot of the corner of a shelf, "is practically all we do."

Lucius' grin went a little crooked. "That's practically all there is to do."

And Prompto shifted, just a little bit, almost started to rub the back of his neck but seemed to catch himself as he realized that he was pretty much doing the exact same thing Lucius had done, dropping his hand and shoving it into his pocket.

"Daemons?" he asked, tentatively.

"What else?" Noctra replied with a sigh.

[flamesburned]

"Oh," Liz glanced over at Prompto, "not with the BPRD then?" she asked, rather curious at the remark Lucius had made about training.

It didn't sound like training with the BPRD, even though she wouldn't have thought they'd have started training them so young.

[silver_flames]

"We're Hunters," Lucius supplied.

"Hunters in training," Noctra corrected importantly, and then looked to her mother with a lift of her brows. "The BPRD was the group you were with before you came to Eos, right?"

She knew she was right, of course, and was already getting ready to preen importantly once it was confirmed.

[flamesburned]

“That’s right, I was a BPRD agent …” Liz hesitated, now she was almost afraid to ask her next question, if her children had inherited her powers or not, she wasn’t sure, “um … did … do … I mean, well do you have …uh … “ her voice trailed off as she tried to find a way to word her question.

The children who had shown up for her during these weekends in the past all had her powers, she wondered if this was the case as well.

“Do you have powers?” she finally managed to ask.

[silver_flames]

The twins took a moment to exchange a glance and the most subtle of smirks, before, almost simultaniously, they lifted their hands and, moments later, those hands were engulfed in a burst of flame, which went out just as quickly as they had been manifested.

"Powers?" Noctra's eyes were wide and oh-so-innocent.

"What powers?" Lucius didn't pull off the innocence nearly half as well.

[flamesburned]

Despite how she was feeling at the idea that even more children had her powers, Liz couldn't stop the smile that started forming, “that’s what I thought,” and then she raised her hand, quickly summoning her own flames, holding them briefly and then made them disappear.

It was the first time she’d actively used her powers since the whole thing with Travis and it felt rather weird to be openly displaying her powers again.

[hashtag_chocobro]

"I," Prompto declared, looking from the twins to Liz and then back again, with a shake of his head and an odd sort of smile, an almost worried one, for how Liz might be taking this information, but they seemed to know what they were doing, right? And the fact that she responded in kind, actually...that...that felt like a really good sign, that she was at least comfortable enough to join in, "am feeling completely left out now."

Maybe he should just start carrying around a lighter; they could be kind of funny, actually.

[silver_and_gold]

It was just a bit later, after perhaps some of the excitement about some of the first arrivals had started to settle, that the door of the Photo Hut opened and a small head of unruly blonde hair peeked itself in.

Almost automatically, Prompto said, "Oh, sorry! We're closed on weekends..." But then he lifted his head and turned toward whoever had come in, and stopped to see that it was a very blonde, very freckled boy with an excited look in his big, blue-green eyes, who came rushing in to throw his arms around Prompto excited.

"There you are, Pa!" he declared in triumph, a slight twang in his voice. "Wasn't sure I'd find you, but I guess it'd make sense, you bein' in a camera store!"

There was a long, awkward pause before his hand went down to the boy's shoulder and he had to ask, "There's....another one?"

[silver_flames]

The twins exchanged a bit of a brow-lifted look at this new addition to their little party, frowning slightly.

"Are you sure you're not confusing him with someone else?" Lucius asked, eyeing this other kid clinging to his dad with suspicion. Because, yes, they had a brother, but he was younger, so they'd left Trevor back on Eos with their dad's team.

He'd never seen this guy before in his life.

[silver_and_gold]

Cid looked back at the other boy for a moment, then looked up at the Prompto he still had in his tight embrace, and squinted with consideration.

"He's a bit less....beardy than my pa," he admitted, "and kinda scrawny....but, nah, it's definitely him."

[hashtag_chocobro]

Don't anyone pay any mind to the mildly offended squawk that seemed to emerge out of Prompto just then.

"Scrawny?? Hey, now, come on...!"