hashtag_chocobro | Room 303; Thursday Afternoon [12/12].

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Room 303; Thursday Afternoon [12/12].

Oh, man! What a week! Prompto was definitely feeling like he'd been through the wringer a few times and then some, but it was all sort of an oddly good feeling, too, because the training had been tough, and the subesequent mission that followed had been nerve-wracking and stressful, but they did it, and they'd done it well, and it was hard not to feel totally accomplished and maybe, just maybe...feeling like this all wasn't just some big mistake and he really was on the right path, he really would make an excellent Crownsguard, even if he was miles and miles behind Noctis and Ignis and Gladio and everyone else. Maybe he actually did belong there after all.

He was riding that high a little bit once he finally got back to Fandom, relieved to finally get a little bit of R&R after all that rigerous training. At least, he hoped so, because, knowing Fandom, he'd probably tumble straight out of training and into chaos, though he hoped whatever he did find was just more of the holiday silliness that Nina had ~~oh-so-handwavily~~ kept him updated on through multiple texts and messages and videos. He was almost a little disappointed to not run into any cute beverage-distributing bears or squirrels in santa hats on his way back to the dorms, but, at the same time, he felt a little too tired to have truly appreciated it, anyway.

"Ahhh," he sighed as he burst into his room, threw aside his bags to take care of later, and then just headed straight for his bed, where he did a little turn before plopping down onto it with an even deeper, more content sort of sigh. "Dorm sweet dorm..."

And he was just going to revel in that moment for a bit, before pulling out his phone and shooting off a few texts to interested parties to let them know that he was back, and then he tucked his phone away and just stared at the ceiling and enjoyed not moving for the very brief amount of time he suspected he'd have before a certain sister came bursting through the door. He had to cherish this little blip of peace and quiet while he could.

[[ because I'm ready to have at least someone back! Door and post are open! Feel free to mod getting a text if'n you like! I may be a bit slow here and there but I've missed you guuuys ]]

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"That kind of trip, huh?" Sabine said from the doorway.

What emerged from Prompto at that moment was half groan, half whimper, half chuckle (yes, he knew how many halves that was!), which should have been more than enough to confirm Sabine's guess, but he still added, for good measure, "Definitely that kind of trip, yeah..."

There was a sigh that followed, though, that was complete contentment, no halves about it, and he lifted his head enough to look at her, grin crookedly, and then, somewhat reluctantly, push himself up so that he was sitting up a bit on his elbows. "Hey, Sabine," he greeted. "How's it going?"

He'd ask if he missed anything really good, but he knew that he didn't, because Nina would have assaulted his phone with all caps and punctuation if he had.

"Decent enough. You got back on one of our actual normal days, which is a little unfair," she said lightly.

It wasn't normal, but she probably wasn't going to figure out the bread thing for a while.

"Unfair?" Prompto asked. "Or just really good timing? Honestly, though, I think I might be a little disappointed. I've already missed some pretty good ones, if Nina's texts are anything to by. Like, this more than makes up for missing free soda from adorable bears that don't actually want to eat your face. I mean, come on. Bear hugs, Sabine. Literal ones!"

And don't get him started about the tiny horses!

Sabine would be kind, and nit bring up penguins that did tricks,

"Okay, but there were wine showers."

"I meeaaaannnn....." Prompto said, shrugging his shoulders a little as he held up his hands, shifting them in the air to imitate the great balance that was Life at Fandom. "That's not too bad, in the grand scheme of things, right?"

And none of it seemed like it even got close to the hellish nightmare that had been the summer, too, so honestly, he'd take wine showers any day of the week if that was all it was.

"Was it at least good wine?"

Asking the important questions!

Sabine turned her hand over in the so-so gesture. "Not my taste, personally, and it made things like hand washing sticky. Thus defeating the purpose of hand washing."

She wore gloves, but still.

Prompto gave his own gloved hands a speculative look and then shrugged, settling them back behind him on the bed. "I guess that could get annoying," he allowed. "But at least it's just for one day. We were in the field for a couple days and good luck washing anything at all!"

Which wasn't true. Ignis had insisted they could wash things just fine, but Prompto had been pretty skeptical and/or conveniently deaf to these details.

"What did you have to do?" Sabine asked, since they hadn't really talked about this. "In the field, not about washing."

Prompto's lopsided grin went a little wistful, despite the relief to be back for a bit and probably having a good while before he wound up going on another training bout like that again. Exhausted as he was, mentally and physically, it had really been something special.

For him, anyway, though he figured it was pretty much just another drill for everyone else in the Kingsglaive.

"Recon mission to an enemy base," he said. "It was just a dinky little one, but it was the first time I've ever been to one. That was kind of the point, to get all us newbs to get our toes wet a little, y'know? It was really weird, but...really cool, too. Got to get in a few good sniper shots, too."

Even if it had felt a little...strange, really, if he thought about it too much. In a different dimension, that would have been him getting shot at by Lucan soldiers, probably.

Which is why he wasn't going to let himself think about it.

"That actually sounds like a really interesting trip," Sabine said approvingly.

Kind of like the trips she wasn't going to be going on at all anymore but she wasn't thinking about that either.

"It was," Prompto agreed, feeling oddly encouraged and pleased by that approving tone in Sabine's voice. "First part of it was all training. A lot of training. Like...eat, sleep, and breathe training. And then we headed out and got down to business. We weren't sure how long it was going to take, either, but I guess we nailed the timing pretty much perfectly so it was a real wham bam thank you ma'am in-and-out thing. Couldn't have gone better, really."

"Congratulations," she smiled. "And now you get a break from training?"

"And now I get a break," Prompto agreed, with a relieved laugh. "Just in time to catch, what? The last week of classes before we get a break here? I'll take it. You really can't have too many breaks, right? I just hope we don't end up needed it before the next semester or something."

Look. The summer had made him paranoid and it was his last semester, which just made him feel like if something awful was going to still happen, it was definitely going to happen before he graduated.

"We did have the snowmen last year," Sabine agreed, frowning. "Maybe we'll get off easy this time. The summer was terrible."

The end of the summer should have required therapy.

But, instead, it just lead to everyone just shoving it back into the dark recesses of their brain, which was a totally healthy alternative, right?

Prompto snorted faintly. "Oh, maaan," he said, "I almost forgot about those snowmen!" It had been a long, long, loooooong year. "I guess we'd better build up the protections around our generators now and start practicing our dance moves again, right? But I would not be opposed to easy, like, at all. I mean, we kind of earned it, right?"

Because it totally worked that way, too, Prompto.

"We did. Though I'd rather not dance to defeat anything this time," she sighed. "I have a lot of bombs and not enough reasons to use them."

"Well, then," Prompto chuckled a little, "I hope whatever it is gives you more than enough chances to use all those bombs. And that, like, that's all it takes, too, because anything more complicated than that and I am so over it."

"That's going to jinx it," Sabine warned.

"But does it really work like that, Sabine?" Prompto narrowed his eyes at her a little skeptically. "Really? Or is that just a Fandom way of telling someone else to quit complaining?"

"Honestly, in this town, I believe the jinx is real," Sabine admitted. "But it could also be self-fulfilling because there come times of year when things usually happen where we all start talking about it."

"Exactly," said Prompto, snapping his fingers and finishing it with a point of his finger her way. "It's not a jinx so much as it's just, like, you know, an inevitability. It's, like...."

He bit his lip a little, trying to think of a good explanation and felt he landed on something they could both easily get.

"...even if you're, like, the worst shot in the world," which neither of them were, of course, but that was kind of the point, "give a person a gun and a million shots, they're gonna hit something, right?"

"You've never seen a stormtrooper fire," said Sabine, who was biased against stormtroopers.

Prompto....could not contend with that fact, as he never had seen a stormtrooper fire, and, for the most part, he was feeling fine with that fact, considering the only stormtroopers he even knew about were the ones at the station.

"Okay," he amended, "most people, even if they're a terrible shot, will still probably hit something, unless they're stormtroopers, apparently. Either way, you get the point. Not a jinx. Just inevitable."

"There has to be a way to test this."

Sabine no.

SABINE.

"Why would you want to test that?"

Seriously, it was bad when Prompto was being your Voice of Reason, Sabine!

"I didn't say I want to, it's just an idea," she lied.

This was nowhere near the worst idea she'd ever had.

"An idea that sounds like it's just inviting trouble," Prompto noted. "You think me jinxing it bad, just wait until you try actually quanitifying this sort of thing."

"I posed a hypothetical!" she protested.

"As did I," Prompto countered, with maybe a bit more confidence in that sweet little turn-around than it really warranted. "A hypothetical. Not a jinx."

"We'll see about that," Sabine said, vaguely.

"Uh-huh." Prompto gave Sabine a wry look. "My bet's still on it being the island's fault when something goes weird or wrong, not the last person who complained about it."

"And how do we know it's the island's fault?" See! This was why she wanted tests!

Hypothetically!

"How about this?" Prompto proposed. "In the slim chance that I actually do manage to cause something crazy to happen around here, I'll totally fess up to it. I mean, geez, the whole thing with the vampires mostly happened because me and Norman took down that force field, but, I'll bet you anything, nine out of ten times, it's probably something to do with the island."

"That does work if it was your jinxing that did it," Sabine agreed.

She might start a chart.

"You're the one who said it was a jinx in the first place," said Prompto. "Before then, it was just a complaint. So how do we know it's not your fault for calling it a jinx, then? That makes just about as much sense, you know."

And a chart would be, like, organized jinxing, by her own logic!

"I'm calling your jinx a jinx. That's blaming me for calling something what it potentially is," she reasoned.

"But it's not a jinx!" At this point, Prompto just sort of had to laugh that this was even a conversation. "Me saying something weird is going to happen around here is about as much a jinx as saying 'there's going to be weather tomorrow' is a forecast."

Sabine sighed, and stuck her hands on her hips.

"I don't even remember what the jinx was now," she admitted.

"Neither do I," said Prompto, his grin particularly crooked now, "especially since there wasn't one."

It probably had to do with the snowmen, though, but he wasn't about to say that.

Just in case it actually was snowmen again.

Nina was super not even going to try to subvert the narrative today, no, as she, rather predictably, burst into the room with a shriek of glee and clutching his liberated kitty pillow.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And then she was going to fling herself at him.

Because that was what one did when they were happy to see someone was back!

The kitty pillow would, at least, cushion the blow?

Well, thank the gods for high-pitched warning and very soft pillows, because Prompto had just enough time to brace himself for the impact. Not that it did any good with how sore he was, but he took the flying sister missle as well as he could, with only a little bit of grunting and complaint in his groaning laugh.

And a bit of a hug back, too, of course, only a light one, because aaarrrmmmmssss.

"If I didn't know any better," he teased, "I'd think you might have actually missed me!"

Which would have normally been silly, but it was Nina, she was allowed, even if she at least had the courtesy of knowing where he was going and what he was doing, a courtesy she didn't bother paying back on her trips, a-hem.

Well, she was trying to get better about that… at least she'd remembered to tell him she was leaving last time!

Nina laughed.

"Of course I missed you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she protested, her beaming smile not going anywhere. "Why wouldn't I?????????????! How'd it go????????????????? Are you okay???????????????????"

"It went...well," Prompto said, after a moment, that faintly wistful grin flooding back to his face. It was honestly going to be a while before that whole warm fuzzy feeling in his chest about it all faded...unless Fandom decided to hit him with one of those horrible things that always sucked any sort of good feeling at all out of him so effectively. But he was trying not to think anything like that if he could help it. "Really good, actually. And I'm fine, definitely okay, just really sore. And exhausted, Nina, you have no idea, I could probably sleep until Christmas at this point."

He wasn't going to. It was tempting, but this was good too.

On the bright side, he was much more likely to be sabotaged by mistletoe or tangled in lights this time of year than anything truly bad…

"You just came in and collapsed, didn't you?????????????????" she asked, making no move to, you know, abandon her position here. "You need a hot shower and food!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sleep, sure, but you can't sleep now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or, well, he could but she'd pout about it.

"I don't need a shower," Prompto said with a faint chuckle, shaking his head, "unless you're trying to tell me something, but I swear, I took one before I left!"

It had almost been one of the longest showers ever, but, honestly, this summer had given him more than enough of those...and half the reason it was so long was because he got to singing while he was in there and really got into a groove.

"But I could go for some food..."

Were the softened puppy dog eyes he was throwing at Nina even necessary? Probably not, and he knew it, but he just liked to throw them at her anyway, since he couldn't really get his stomach to grumble on command in an attempt for food-related pity.

And she did appreciate them, she really did, her beaming smile melting into something softer.

"I guuuuuuuuuuuuuuesss I could find you something," she said, heaving a put-upon sigh that was totally fake. "Anything in particularly you wanted??????????????????????? I can check the common room or we can order in?????????????????"

Prompto took a second to calculate what the probability of getting smacked would be if he suggested she go and see if any of his Cup Noodles^TM were still in the common room, and had clearly determined it was too high to risk it.

"Pizza, maybe?" he suggested. "I'm coming off of a week and change of some primo Iggy cooking, remember, so I feel like anything else is going to be disappointing. But pizza around here rarely disappoints."

Which was good, because then you'd also be eating it for about a full week afterwards, too.

At least they didn't charge for all the extra pizzas………..

"I'm pretty sure, like, I can feel Ignis' disapproval of this life choice from here, but…………."

Well, that wasn't going to stop her from digging out her phone and calling in to place an order. She didn't bother to actually ask what kind of pizza her brother wanted, just rattling off the order (which included garlic cheese sticks, salad, soda, and dessert in addition to the pizza he'd wanted because, like, if you were ordering pizza it was best to do it right).

Once she'd hung up, with a chirped thanks, she finished her thought to Prompto with, "Really, what Ignis doesn't know won't hurt him, right?????????????"

"Especially not when Ignis is known for the occasional pizza himself," Prompto pointed out, shifting a little to scoot forward and sit up on the edge of the bed. "Plus, I did hear a salad in there," he may have clung to the idea of it a little once he'd heard garlic cheese sticks leave Nina's mouth, "so I think we're good. A salad is always an effective Ignis defense."

If he didn't want them, she'd eat them! Or maybe she'd gotten them just for her!

Nina laughed, shifting back instead, to collapse properly on his bed, smishing the kitty pillow. "And, like, really……… pizza isn't that bad for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Not the way Nina made it, anyway. She chose not to find out how they did it here so she could live in denial.

"Especially not with a salad involved too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina considered that. "Though, like, maybe not with the salad on the pizza………… that would either be terrible or great………."

And really depended on both the pizza and the salad involved.

"We could always try it," said Prompto, who figured that was a good compromise.

And then, after a moment, brilliant struck.

"And then send pictures to Ignis!"

Lest he already start to miss the poor clone.

Nina hesitated.

On one hand, that sounded hilariously great. On the other hand a) that was a total potential waste of food and b) poor Ignis.

Which really meant she was considering three hands, all told, but shh.

"One slice?????????????" she suggested. "Like, that way we're not stuck picking croutons off our pizza if it's terrible???????????????"

"One slice," said Prompto, "unless it's actually not terrible, in which case we need to just dump a whole salad on a whole pizza and make him cry."

It wouldn't be terrible, really, but...it wouldn't be great, either.

"Deal," she said, happy that at least propriety would be taken care of.

… what, Nina?

"While we're waiting, then, like, can you tell me what you guys did???????????" she asked. "Or, like, should I just find another way to find out?????????????"

Because she would. Especially since she was now officially in the process of becoming a spy for the crown.

[I have had ONE really good pizza-salad and it was with an alfredo-sauce and a Caesar salad on top. Anything else… eh… your narrative is accurate.]

Prompto might have been secretly hoping it was amazing, though, just because he wanted to just dump a whole ass salad onto a pizza.

And not just because it was dumb and stupidly amusing. A part of him felt like it was some sort of rebellion against the Year of Salads before he finally built himself up enough confidence to actually talk to Noctis, way back when.

"See, now," he said, "that's not fair. Because, on the one hand, you know I can't say that much because of state secrets and all that, but maybe I should because I know you'll find out anyway, BUUUUT...it'll be good practice for you to find out yourself, right?"

"I'll hold your kitty farm hostage," she threatened, laughing.

She probably would not.

For one, how?

Well, Prompto figured Nina could hack into it pretty easily, but he also knew that he could hack her hacks right back.

But, still, for show, because he'd had a very serious week and he missed being dramatic with Nina, he gasped, clearly shocked, jaw dropping, hand to his poor injured heart at such a threat.

"Not my kitty farm! You fiend!"

Honestly, though, he would be a little hurt if she went and rmpaged all over that kitty farm, he put a lot of heart and soul into that farm!

And that would be why she wouldn't rampage all over his kitty farm.

It was the most hollow of threats, really, since she'd taken care of it in his absence, after all, and kept it the way he'd wanted it. Nina knew where the line was!

… and actually paid attention to this particular line. Unlike others.

"I'm the fiendiest!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she declared, just as dramatically, if not more. "Surrender to my fiendom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Never!" Prompto declared, and then he laughed, shaking his head.

"Especially since, you know, I was mostly going to tell you anyway, so this is not a surrender, got it? It wasn't even that exciting, really. It was mostly just a ton of training and drills and then sending a group of us out to go scope out some new Nif base that popped up in Duscae ~~in defiance of canon, whatever, I'm not waiting two more years lol~~. Small potatoes, you know? Good thing to sic the newbs into to see if they crash and burn."

Which they didn't, thank you very much.

"And you didn't," she said, delighted with his total surrender. "Oh my gosh, though, like, that sounds fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The worst part was that she meant that.

"And good training," she agreed, "like, the actual in-action bit???????????? There's only so much you can learn before you really need to be in the field to work………."

"Yeah, exactly," Prompto agreed with a faint grin. "So it was, you know, really good experience. Got in a few really good shots, too. They didn't even know what hit 'em until it was too late."

"I think my training here has really been paying off." His face might have gone a little pink there, and he ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "I think I might have kind of surprised everyone, really. Well, except Ignis and Gladio, anyway, since they've been working with me, but, you know, everyone else..."

After class, Grog came back to the room, and was pleasantly surprised to find it not empty. "Hey, you're back! How was home?"

"Exhausting!" said Prompto, but he said it almost triumphantly, with a laugh, clearly feeling accomplished about the whole thing and also feeling like that answer would never get old...or never cease to be applicable, either. He grinned a little before pushing himself to look up (and up) at Grog.

"But it's nice to be back," he admitted. "How were things here while I was gone?"

Of course, he had a pretty good idea thanks to Nina's endless stream of texts and pictures and video, but it would be good to get different perspective on it, too.

"It's been really weird, but people keep saying things get like this every winter so..." Grog said, shrugging. "There's been a lot of animals running around and--oh!" He perked up considerably and reached under his bed. When he came back up, he was wearing a somehow goliath-sized Santa hat, and had another one in his hand. "There were fancy hats! You can have this one if you want."

"I like fancy hats!"

As long as he had a chance to style his hair to suit it, anyway. Prompto's grin grew.

"That's awesome, Grog, thanks! And, yeah, this month gets a little crazy. Honestly, I sort of forgot about it, so much has happened since last year, but...I don't think I missed the crazy mistletoe. Nina would have definitely told me about the mistletoe, but that one's a doozy. I'm sad I missed the bears with the cola, though!"

"The bears were pretty adorable. I wanted to try to ride one, but I got talked out of it," Grog said. "What does the mistletoe do?"

Prompto thought, for a second, about Grog riding one of those bears, opened his mouth to make a comment, and then closed it again, thinking better of it. And feeling tempted to find whoever talked him out of it and give them a medal on behalf of all bears everywhere.

"It pesters you until you kiss someone," Prompto shook his head a little. "Apparently, it's a tradition here that if you get caught underneath mistletoe with someone around this time of year, you're supposed to kiss them, but, of course, the Fandom version makes sure you get caught under it with someone. I got stuck kissing two people last year..."

One of which was much more pleasant than the other, with all due respect to his best shark prince bro, of course.

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Room 303; Thursday Afternoon [12/12].

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