Dawn breaks over the depot, its rays quickly reaching sweltering temperatures as the desert is known for, as Archibald and Chrysander walk into C's shop. Archibald collapses into a chair behind the counter, removing his goggles and putting his spectacles on and rubbing his eyes tiredly. "I don't remember such a short night taking such a toll on me before." Chrysander stretches against the counter before taking his cloak off and setting it on a coat rack. "Well that's what happens when you don't stick to a routine run around the city... Then again someone such as yourself sure must have a difficult with all that "paperwork" you oversee." He says with a smirk and air quotes around the term 'paperwork'. Archibald sighs and lets out a looooong yawn before throwing his arm over his face, clearly too tired to fight or argue at this point.

C walks in and yawns as well as he brings in some sandwiches and cups of juice and water. "I'm glad to see your both back safe, I was afraid something would happen." Archibald lifts his arm enough to see the sandwiches and lowers it back down, slowly forcing himself to lean forward and reach for a sandwich as well as the water. "Well, something happening is a pretty accurate term for what happened last night." C turns to Archibald, then chrysander, then Archibald again. "... Are you going to keep me in suspense or tell me?" Chrysander smirks and pulls out the mask shard carefully and places it on the counter, the shard is snowy white with a bit of blue paint on the tips and as long as a full grown mammal finger yet the three of them stared at it as if it were a poisonous animal ready to strike. "That was definitely worth the suspense." C says in a serious tone, breaking his gaze from the shard and looking outside towards the street.

"Let's hurry and put the shard away before customers show up, shall we?" C says as he pulls a large feather from beneath the counter and gently dusts the various dry sundries, armors, and other antiques as chrysander and Archibald nod. Chrysander quickly ferrets away the shard and Archibald grabs the plate of sandwiches as they head to the kitchen. The suns gentle rays also reach Kohre and rob room, Kohre slowly rolling out of bed and clearly still exhausted from all the training he managed to work through. "Uuuugh I'm so worn out, I'll grab a bite to eat from the kitchen and go get some more sleep." He says to himself as he stretches and yawns wide, stumbling down the hall towards the stairs and almost bumping into Noah who was coming up the stairs.

Kohre hugs the wall in surprise as Noah takes a couple steps down the stairs. "Oh... sorry Kohre, heheh. I was heading upstairs with breakfast for you and Rob." Noah smiles as he adjusts his grip on the platter, Kohre taking the sentences in as a shock. "Wait, you mean... Rob is.... He's awake?!" Kohre says with a smile as he looks upstairs, then back to Noah. "You go on up, I'll be up there in a second." Kohre says as he rushes down the stairs towards the back storage rooms for the practice dummy, eager to show his brother what he learned.

Meanwhile Noah walks up the stairs towards Rob and Kohre's room with breakfast. Noah holds the platter as carefully as he can as he makes the last turn into the bedroom, unsure if he left anything on the floor or not that he could trip over. "Knock knock, hope you’re hungry because I brought you some breakfast." Noah says as he walks over to Rob’s bed, rob looking to Noah with a nervous expression as a very loud stomach growl answers to the word breakfast. "Th-thanks, I'd sit up a little more but C said need to stay like this till I can move again." Noah chuckles and pats Robs head softly. "Don't worry about that, C made something easy to go down for you." Noah says as he sits on the bed next to Rob, getting a spoonful together and blowing it gently before slowly putting it to his friend’s mouth. "Say aaaahh." Noah says with a chuckle, remembering how when the three of them were little Rob had more often than not been fed like this as he was the youngest and wound up sick often. Slowly but surely, the grain-like soup is devoured before Kohre makes it to the bedroom again with the training dummy and a small knife.

Rob jumps a little as his brother eagerly walks up with a knife in one hand and the other dragging the dummy in, panting softly as he sets it up. "Oh that's right; I forgot to tell you that I shared with him some of my medical training. You know, since he already mastered placing and passing energy. C wants to teach you some himself since he is better at linking your previous training to this." Noah smiles and looks to Kohre, Kohre nodding and making a cut along the abs of the dummy with the knife. "First I make the cut, next I repair it.” He says as he places his free hand over the wound, his paw glows slightly and the cut begins to shrink and fade away till nothing but a few shavings remain.

Rob smiles eagerly as he sees his brother healed the dummy, healing is such a hard skill in this harsh time. "That's amazing, Kohre!" Rob says excitedly, his tail weakly shaking a little under the blankets and a grin ear to ear on his face helping lighten the atmosphere of the room. "Easy now thumpy, your still recovering remember?" Noah says as chuckles, the excitement spreading on as he notices the Artemis and wolf at one side of Rob’s blankets, close enough to the edge to fall if the bed is rocked. "Here, let me put these on the nightstand for you." He says as he leans over rob and grabs the weapon and mask, slowly balancing himself back to his end of the bed and placing them neatly on the bottom shelf.

Rob turns his head to the nightstand, looking at the mask with worry and... A face that Kohre was only able to peg as longing, Noah taking the breakfast tray downstairs to the kitchen had not noticed the expression. "Rob.... I can't tell you how happy I am to see you’re awake... Uhm, what is on the mask?" Kohre says as he puts the blade away on the bed and out of sight of his brother, remembering the expression of fear he saw when he walked in.

"I.... I don't know how to put it in words... My mind blank and it felt like i wasn’t really the one there fighting..." Rob says as he looks away from the nightstand and towards the window above the bed to the sun shining brightly. "It was like that time I blacked out again... Forced to watch it in third person and unable to stop it." Kohre gets up and walks over to his brother's side, holding Rob's paw in his and smiling. "Fear is why we fight though, because we try to protect the innocent from feeling that way too."

story is by me
noah in the story belongs to  noahpupper
other characters belong to me

 jolijacques is the one who made this thumbnail