"How was school today, Bugler?" Fixit chirped as Bugler hopped into the truck.
"Drive," Bugler said monotonously.
"What?" Fixit blurted.
"Drive!" he said again, pulling the door closed.
"Excuse me!" a voice rang from a few feet away. Fixit turned around to see a woman, tall and probably in her early forties, approaching the old truck. Bugler turned to Fixit, the fear evident in his eyes as Fixit got out of the truck.
"Yes?" she asked.
"I am Mrs. Revaldi, Brian's teacher," the woman said. "You must be Brian's..." she trailed off.
"S-sister," Fixit stuttered. "I'm his sister...uh... Jane," she said, hoping the teacher wouldn't realize she'd made the name up one the spot.
"I was wondering if I would be able to talk to his mother?" Mrs. Revaldi asked. "I sent a note with Brian about a month ago for a parent-teacher conference but I never got any reply."
"Oh, really?" Fixit said, looking over her shoulder towards Bugler. "Well, our mother's sort of... out of the country a lot," she said, returning her gaze to the teacher. "She's a businesswoman."
"Well, is there any way I could contact..." the teacher glanced at the application in her hand that Fixit had just noticed, "Mrs. Monta Cora?"
Monta Cora? Where the hell did Zero get that name from? Well, it was obvious where he got it, but still!
"She calls every once in a while," Fixit said. "I'll tell her you want to talk to her." Before Mrs. Revaldi could say anything else, Fixit ran to the truck and hopped in the driver's seat.
"What'd she say?" Bugler asked, once Fixit had started the truck and driven a safe distance away from the school.
"She wants to meet our mom," Fixit said, the word 'mom' sounding like a foreign word to her. She looked towards Bugler briefly. "Why?" Bugler shrugged.
"She just started talking about advanced logistical thinking, high intelligence quotient, and good baseball throwing arm and I got out of there," Bugler said. "Oh, and I broke a kid's arm, but he was trying to get my lunch money! I got an A+ on my spelling test!" he said quickly.
A/N: Basically, the Blending In series is a bunch of stories that can be considered standalones, but when read together form a somewhat cohesive story... I hope.