Well, I added a second chapter to this. It's not a sequel, but close enough, right? Some of the things in this chapter were supposed to be in the first, but I put them here instead.
Also, I want to say that these five-year-olds probably don't act anything like real five-year-olds. It could be partially because people mature quicker on Bionis, with mechon attacks and even the local wildlife being threats to them unless they stay in town all the time. Also, I don't haven't had anything to do with any five-year-old since my cousin's children were five, which was ten years ago. And I was ten back then. In other words, ooc characters are ooc.
Anyway, enjoy!
Dinner time
It had been a few hours since the kids had left, and Dunban was starting to wonder where they had gone off to. It shouldn't take this long to show someone around the colony. Then again… Fiora would sometimes space out at Outlook Park, and would probably sit there for hours if someone didn't drag her off. And Shulk didn't seem to have enough confidence to do something like that.
Well, he thought looking outside. It was a nice day, all sunny and warm, with a nice breeze. Maybe they should eat out today, and save the food Dickson brought for another day. After all, he did have a few days off from training, so he might as well make use of them.
He made sure to grab some cash before setting out for Outlook Park.
Shulk was roused from his daze by footsteps heading their way. He glanced at Fiora, but she didn't seem to have noticed, so he carefully turned around to see the person approaching them. It was Dunban.
The man noticed Shulk looking at him and held a finger in front of his mouth, asking Shulk to keep quiet. Shulk looked slightly confused, but did as he was asked. He saw Dunban quietly sneak up behind Fiora, who didn't notice anything being almost half-asleep. He grinned at Shulk mischievously before scooping up his sister and slung her over his shoulder.
Fiora snapped out of her daze with a loud screech, startled and confused. It didn't take her long to realize her situation and just who had 'attacked' her.
"Dunban!" she yelled at him while squirming and trying to get out of his grip. "Put me down!" Dunban chuckled slightly, swinging her around a few times while dodging her flailing arms, before putting her down. She huffed and glared at him angrily, making him scratch the back of his head, even managing to look somewhat sheepish. He was still smiling, though.
"Sorry, Fiora" he said, not looking sorry in the slightest and still grinning. "I couldn't help it, the opportunity was just too perfect." Fiora now seemed to be thinking about it while glaring at her brother, and a few moments later she nodded, looking all serious.
"All right, I forgive you." She held up a finger, still looking at Dunban with a glare. "If you buy some Cute Parsnip for desert."
"All right" Dunban agreed "I think we can do that." He looked at the two kids and then up at the sun, before looking at the kids again. "Now, how about some food?" Two growling stomachs was all the answer he needed, as the kids blushed slightly and stared at the ground. "I thought we could eat out today, since the weather is so nice. Curry sound good?"
"Yes!" Fiora agreed instantly. Shulk just nodded, having never eaten curry, but thought it couldn't be too bad since so many people seemed to like it. Dunban motioned the two to follow him.
"Let's go then." The walk to the commercial district was fairly calm, except for Fiora who had found out Shulk had never eaten curry before, and was telling him about all the different kinds, which ones she liked the best, and which ones to avoid. Shulk listened patiently, paying close attention to what he was told, so he could decide which curry he should try for his first time.
He didn't notice he was feeling more at ease with Fiora and Dunban, and he wasn't holding on to his plush nearly as tightly as before. He had gotten the stuffed animal from his parents and had kept it with him as long as he could remember. As a habit, he would always hug it whenever he felt scared, insecure or lonely. But looking at Fioras happy smile and listening to her talk, there was no way he could feel bad. He even noticed himself smiling along with her.
Soon the group arrived at Giorgio's curry place in the Commercial district. At the curry place, Shulk managed to spot a mop of red hair. A closer look revealed the same boy they had ran into earlier that same day. Reyn, was it? Fiora hadn't noticed yet, so he nudged her slightly and pointed him out. Once Fiora spotted him, she huffed in annoyance.
"I hope he won't bother us" she mumbled to Shulk, quietly so Dunban wouldn't hear. Reyn suddenly noticed them when they got closer, and seemed to recognize them as well.
"Hey!" He greeted them, waving with both arms and grinning from ear to ear like they were best friends. Dunban looked at Reyn, then at Shulk and Fiora.
"A friend of yours?" he asked them. Shulk just shrugged, not really knowing whether the boy could be called a friend or not. Fiora shook her head.
"We just met today. We barely know him." She turned to Reyn. "Weren't you supposed to go eat like, two hours ago?"
"Well, yeah" Reyn had walked the few steps over to them. "But my parents wanted to do some shopping first, and then they started talking to people and it took forever!" he complained. "So we only got here now."
Shulk could understand how he felt. When adults started talking, they could go on for hours if they were allowed. Dickson thankfully didn't, but he knew many others did.
"Well, how about we get some curry now" Dunban asked the kids.
"All right! Time to eat!" Reyn was very enthusiastic and more than ready to get his curry. But when they got to the curry place, Giorgio looked at them apologetically.
"Sorry, kids. There won't be any curry today."
"What!? No curry! Why not!?" Reyn yelled at the man, while Fiora was looking like she was thinking the exact same thing. "I've run out of Sweet Wasabi, which are an important part of the recipe. On a warm day like this, everyone want them."
"So we'll get some for you, and then you can make curry for us!" Fiora declared. Everyone else stared at her like she'd said something crazy.
"Are you sure Fiora?" Dunban asked her. "We can have curry some other day."
"No" Fiora insisted. "We're having curry today." She turned to Giorgio. "We get those Sweet Wasabi, and you make us curry, okay?" She then turned to Shulk and Reyn. "You are going to help me get them." And finally she turned back to Dunban. "And it's not too dangerous. We can find them outside the colony, and we'll be careful, and then we can finally eat."
Dunban was clearly having an inner debate on whether he should let them go or not, but then sighed in resignation. "All right then. Just be careful, alright." Before they had time to run off, he turned to Shulk "You'd probably better leave that here" he said, pointing at the plush in his hand. "Wouldn't want it getting dirty, right?" Shulk looked at the plush and hesitated a moment before nodding slightly and giving it to Dunban.
"Don't worry about us!" Fiora told him, grabbed Shulk and Reyn, and dragged them off with her.
Giorgio and Reyn's parents turned to look at Dunban.
"Think it was a good idea to let them off like that?" Giorgio asked the man, who just sighed and then shrugged.
"Yeah" he said. "It's Fiora after all. She would have gone even without permission." He looked over to where the kids had just gone off to. "It'll be good for them to get used to going outside the colony."
Meanwhile, the trio had just gotten to the main entrance. "All right." Fiora took command. "We're looking for Cool Potatoes. The best place to find them is over on Tephra hill, so let's go there." She looked at Reyn. "And we gotta be careful, so the monsters won't attack us." They both nodded, being more than ready to take on this quest. They set off to Tephra hill.
It didn't take them long to get there, with Fiora and Reyn dragging Shulk along, since he constantly wanted to stop to look at some creature or plant or something else. Fiora suddenly stopped. "All right, they should be growing around here somewhere. Because they are green, they can be difficult to see in the grass." She informed the guys, before starting to look in a patch of grass next to where she was standing.
"All right! I'm going to find the best Sweet Wasabi ever!" Reyn yelled, throwing his fist in the air in excitement. Fiora gave him an annoyed glare, while Shulk just shrugged, ignoring them both and focusing on finding these wasabi-things.
After a few minutes of searching, they had found a total of five Sweet Wasabi. Fiora had found three, Shulk one, and Reyn zero. The redhead was obviously getting annoyed at his inability to find anything.
"This stinks" he complained out loud, stalking over to the nearest tree and slumping down on the grass underneath it. "How hard can it be to find some stupid wasabi?" He looked around a bit, and his eyes fell on some green lumps in the ground, some ten feet away. He quickly jumped up in his feet with a loud "Hey!" and set off to get them.
A few seconds later, he was sprawled down on the ground, having tripped over something. "Ow" he whined, rubbing his now sore hands, which were all scraped up from breaking his fall. Two seconds later he heard an angry growl from behind him.
He turned around slowly, finding himself looking at a very angry bunnit. What he had tripped over was its tail. The bunnit, however, had not noticed him. Instead, it was looking at Shulk, who was standing right in front of it.
Shulk, paralyzed by fear, could only stand there looking back at the bunnit. The wasabi he had found fell from his grasp and fell on the ground at his feet. The bunnit growled at Shulk and took a step toward him, preparing to attack him.
Reyn sat on the ground, not knowing what to do. He knew he should help Shulk, but what could he do without any kind of weapon. He was just getting up to try to do something at least, to keep the monster away from Shulk.
A rock hit the side of the bunnits head. It shook it of quickly, looking for the source of the distraction. Fiora was holding a rock in her hand, preparing to throw it at the creature. "You leave Shulk alone, you big Meany!" she yelled at the bunnit, throwing the rock at it, hitting it between the eyes.
The bunnit seemed to just get angrier by Fioras attack. It crouched for a second, before lunching at her.
Reyn had gathered himself at seeing Fiora stand up to the enemy, and tackled it as it jumped at her, causing it to fall over the edge of the cliff and land in the lake far below. He just barely avoided falling down after it, clinging to the Cliffside to not fall. Soon Fiora and Shulk helped him up from where he was hanging halfway of the cliff, pulling him up.
"Thanks guys" he told them once they all were sitting on the grass, catching their breath. "Wouldn't have been too awesome to fall down with that thing." Fiora looked like she wanted to hit him.
"That was really stupid, Reyn!" She almost yelled at him. "You could have died!" She seemed to calm down a little and even gave him a small smile. "But thanks anyway, for saving us. I guess your tackling things can be useful sometimes."
"Apparently" Reyn agreed, managing to look somewhat sheepish. "But if you hadn't distracted it, I wouldn't have had a chance to do it."
Shulk looked back and forth between the two "I couldn't really do anything, I guess I'm not really useful in battles. Anyway, Thanks for saving me" he said to both of them.
"Well, that wasn't really a battle" Fiora said, hugging Shulk since he looked so down. "And it's not like we're supposed to be able to fight until we're older" She paused slightly to think. "Speaking of fighting, we better not tell about it to the adults. Dunban would never let me out again"
"Yeah, probably" Shulk agreed with her. He shifted slightly as Fiora was still hugging him. "Adults get worried easily. They wouldn't like us fighting something without any weapons or anything" He remembered Dickson telling him he should stay safe until he learned to protect himself.
"All right!" Reyn agreed enthusiastically. "My parents are always going on how I need training before trying to fight anything" He grinned at the other two. "This will be our secret, something just between the three of us"
"Yeah" Fiora and Shulk both agreed. All three of them looked at each other and then out over the Cliff Lake and the slowly setting sun. The moment was suddenly interrupted by Reyns stomach loudly growling.
"Well," he started, turning around so the others wouldn't see him blushing "Since we have these wasabi-things" he walked over to where he saw the wasabis before the accident with the bunnit. "How about we go get that curry now?"
"All right" Fiora agreed while Shulk just nodded. They all grabbed some wasabi in their hands. "I'm hungry too." She grabbed Shulks hand and dragged him along with her. "Come on Shulk. You're about to have the best curry ever!" She turned to Reyn, who was still standing in place, staring out over the lake. "Hurry up Reyn. Or we eat all the curry!"
"Hey, wait for me!" Reyn yelled back at her, arms full of wasabi. "I want curry, too! I'll die if I don't get to eat curry!"
He ran after them as fast as he could, and caught up quickly. The three of them raced to the colony, eager for some food after their efforts to get the Sweet Wasabi. They arrived at the curry stand in no time, to find Dunban, Reyns parents and Giorgio still waiting for them. There were also some other people around, just chatting and having a drink.
Fiora was the first to reach the stand, waving her arms as well as she could and yelled for her brother to get his attention.
"Dunban!" She stopped in front of him, catching her breath before looking up at him with a big smile on her face. "Look, we found a ton of Sweet Wasabi!" She proudly showed him the ones in her hands, and then pointed to Shulk and Reyn to show they were also carrying a bunch of them.
"Nice job" Dunban told her. "Took you a while, though."
"Well, they were kinda not so easy to find" Fiora told him in defense of their late arrival.
Meanwhile, Reyn and Shulk had gone over to Giorgio and handed over the wasabis to the man.
"Thanks, kids!" Giorgio told them happily. "Now I can make some curry for you guys." He bent down and whispered to them, so no one else could hear him "And since you helped me out by getting the ingredients, I'll give you a nice discount. How's that sound?"
"Sounds awesome!" Reyn yelled in excitement. His parents quickly shushed him to calm him down. They took in his dirty clothes, the tear in his jeans and scraped palms.
"What happened to you out there?" his mother asked.
"Huh?" Reyn looked down on himself and only now noticed the damage from their confrontation with the bunnit. "Nothing, I just tripped." He casually, scratching the back of his head. "I got so excited when I saw some radishes I wasn't looking where I was going."
Thankfully, his parents seemed to accept this, just nodding and carrying on with their conversation. He sat down next to Fiora to wait for his curry, already smelling the delicious scent of it. It would be ready in just a few more minutes. He was absentmindedly listening to Fiora blabbering on about something to Shulk, making out something about Outlook Park and the beach and fishing. She suddenly turned to him, looking somewhat hesitant. Reyn quickly looked over at the curry pot, trying to pretend like he hadn't been listening to their conversation.
"Hey, Reyn" Fiora started, stopping to look over her shoulder at Shulk, before continuing to address Reyn "Me and Shulk are going to go fishing tomorrow. You can come too, if you want to."
Reyn blinked, taken aback by the offer, but in a good way. Then he grinned happily "Yeah, sure. Sounds awesome!"
Once again, like it? Don't like it? Please tell me in a review. Thanks for reading!
