A/N - Hahaha, did you all like my little cliffhanger there? *ducks a Molotov cocktail* Excellent! :D Sorry that this came out so late (Jesus Christ, it's been over a month); I'm working on another fanfiction as well as this one now (hint hint: it's a Fairy Tail fic. ;3). I have the first chapter and part of the second written up, but I'm not sure if I should post it now or wait until I've built up a buffer of sorts. Let me know what you wanna see in the reviews! I do know that updates will slow from the sort of weekly schedule they've been at lately, now that I'm working on two fics concurrently. Sorry, but this FT fic has been lurking in my brain for a few months now and now it's pounding on the doors trying to get out.

Not much else to say here, this is a pretty straightforward chapter. I did upload a picture of Alecto in her date outfit on my profile, so go check that out if you need a visual reference. I'll have more to say in the after-chapter note.

Poll update: Alecto's still pulling a very close lead. Panthera and the Kishin Eggs are getting left in the dust. Nadia is still voteless. Sucks to be you, kid.

*Stares at the amount of reviews* Jesus Christ's finest wines, you turn your back for one minute...

I'd like to thank OreoNinja, DemonSessama, Midnight15, MegglesGG, shattered egress, hey-im-a-nerd, OfSoundMind, victoriaesteguy, HarukaDiamond999, animagirl, and skylover4life (TOO MANY REVIEWERS JUST SKIP DOWN TO THE CHAPTER TITLE IF YOU DON'T WANNA READ ALMOST A THOUSAND WORDS OF ANSWERING REVIEWS) for leaving lovely reviews! To OreoNinja: Yeah, I wrote the ending of last chapter fully expecting to have to dodge a few bricks here. My sister called me "Demon Narrator from Hell" when I told her where I was planning on ending this chapter. I don't think I'm that bad, though. I do like to put my characters through hell before I let them be happy, so I guess she has a bit of a point. (Heh, heh, heh.)

To DemonSessama: Thanks! I like to have most of my characters' names have some sort of meaning relevant to their characters. While this isn't always true (Nadia's name means hope, but that's not why I chose it and her character arc is about something completely different than hope, wink wink), I think that it can be safely said that Alecto Bellatore, Temperance "Tempus" Giles, and Panthera Leo all prove that I love the meaningful name trope. As for AU Anthology, if it does it started it'll probably be after everything's been explained but before the end of the fic, because once I finish Tempus Fugit I want to move on to one of my other fic ideas, and I don't want to be constantly distracted by TF.

To Midnight15: No, wait, come back with one of my main characters, I need him so I can write all the next chapters! Hah hah, all joking aside, I'm glad I've managed to give Tempus the depth of personality he deserves as a main character. Even in canon, weapon partners always got second billing to their meisters with the exception of Soul, which always rubbed me the wrong way because weapons need love, too, Ōkubo! So, I've done what I can to try and avoid that particular writing pitfall. An yesss, supportive Tempus is supportive. That's like 80% of the reason I wrote this chapter instead of skipping to the point where Kid arrives. Tempus helping Alecto with her numerous anxieties is a big part of their dynamic.

To MegglesGG: I did it because I'm evil. Also because that was the best place to end the chapter given the way this arc plays out. But mostly because I'm evil. (Oh, crap, maybe I am the Demon Narrator from Hell.)

To shattered egress: Haha, maybe a little. *hastily kicks notes for Homestuck OCs under bed* Only just a little bit. It's not like a part of the reason TF went on a three-month hiatus was because Homestuck started updating against and I got super pumped about that. That would just be silly. Aha. Heh. Heh… Okay, yeah, I'm an unabashed Homestuck. I think that's where I picked up my penchant for playing long games in my plotting. And I'm glad you like this story!

To hey-im-a-nerd: I knew I mentioned it before! I keep doing that, I mention a cool little fact, sort of forget that I mentioned it, and bring it up again. (The names are intentional; as previously mentioned above, I like choosing names with meanings appropriate to the character.) And oh, jeez, I didn't even realize I uploaded the first Date Arc chapter on Valentines day until you pointed it out. Well, at least it was good timing on my part!

To OfSoundMind: Ahehe, whoops? If it makes you feel better, it's not like I planned on dropping TF in favor of my Fairy Tail fic immediately after I posted a cliffhanger. I'd actually intended to get this chapter out within a couple days of the last one to make up for it. But, uh… Well. Whoops.

To victoriaesteguy, HarukaDiamond999, and animagirl: I'm glad you like it! Sorry for the wait. ^_^"

To skylover4ever (covering both reviews you left because I can): Haha, I'm glad that the development between Alecto and Kid isn't ham-handed, because I really don't like writing ham-handed romance. I'm gonna be honest: his habit of fussing with Alecto's hair and ribbon? Cribbed that from when he fixed Tsugumi's pigtails in NOT. No one can tell me that Kid isn't the sort of boy who would go fussing with people's hair, because it is something he has canonically done! (Also, the running ship names for Alecto and Kid are Kidlecto from me, Dead Language from my sis, and Timelessshipping from Drachegirl14.) I also enjoy writing other subtle plot details, some of which you all haven't picked up on yet… ;)

Notes and translations of the Latin will be at the end of the chapter.

DISCLAIMER: Soul Eater is the intellectual property Atsushi Ōkubo. I have no intention of monetizing my fanwork, and this is merely an enjoyable passer of time.


Chapter Forty-One - Peppermint and Strawberry - Is It Really A Date? Part Two


Kid was dressed in an outfit very similar to the one he'd worn at Maka's little get-together the week before, with a button-down shirt with four thin pinstripes, two on each side (though this time they were the same shade of yellow as his eyes) and a pair of black slacks. Alecto glanced down at her t-shirt and shorts and immediately felt underdressed. Which was silly; she lived with Tempus, for Iuppiter's sake. Boys dressing up all fancy for casual occasions should have been something she was used to at this point.

Maybe it's because her total jerk of a weapon partner put all sort of thoughts of romance into her head and now she was thinking that he actually looked pretty good in that outfit and maybe he should wear it more often. She promptly squashed those thoughts and shoved them into a little box in the back of her mind labelled "Non Tangere" as she jumped up off the couch. "Kid!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "Y-you're here early, aren't you? I thought you wouldn't get here for a while, I didn't even get around to boiling some water for the tea, and… why are you looking at me like that?"

Kid was giving her an odd look, his brows knitted together in faint bewilderment. "No, it's eight o'clock," he said.

Alecto snuck a peek at the clock on the wall and her brain immediately blue screened. Sure enough, the hour and minute hand now pointed at the eight and the twelve respectively, a far cry from where they had been. But it was six-thirty just ten minutes ago! she thought , trying to figure out where that extra eighty minutes had gone. That doesn't make any sense, there's no way that I would have missed that much time, unless…

The gears clicked into place. Merda! Did I inadvertently tamper with time while freaking out? She hadn't done that in over a year. As far as she knew, she'd had that little side effect completely under control, thanks to Tempus helping to temper the worst of her social problems. Well, she thought, at least it was only eighty minutes this time. The last time she'd done it, she'd missed three days worth of classes and had Tsubaki knocking on their door to make sure they were okay.

Tempus seemed to have come to the same conclusion she had, as he was now muttering, "Well, that explains why things felt a little fuzzy for a moment there. And the nausea." With his soul linked so closely with hers, he'd had a habit of getting dragged into her panic-induced desynchronizations, unlike the separate ones they usually performed when he wasn't in weapon form.

"Is something wrong?" Kid asked, casting a worried glance between the two of them.

Alecto shook her head vehemently. If she explained what she'd done, she'd have to explain her anxieties, and those were yet another thing that she wanted to keep in the Non Tangere box, at least for right now. And maybe forever, if she could help it. "Non, non, eh-werything's fine! I mean, everything's fine," she said. "We were doing a lot of training for our new technique, and time just slipped us by. It's rare, with our abilities, but even we end up losing track of how late it is sometimes." It was a weak excuse, but Kid seemed to buy it, the worry creases in his forehead disappearing. Alecto rubbed at the back of her neck underneath her hair, desperately glad that she didn't have her ribbon at that particular moment, because if she did have it she would be fiddling with it, and that would be a dead giveaway. "Sorry about this. I'd planned to have the water at least a little of the way heated up. Not fully boiled, of course, since I didn't know which flavor of tea you wanted and different teas need different water temperatures, but, you know… started."

"It's quite all right," Kid said with a small, reassuring smile. "How is your training going, by the way? Did that book you got from the library help you any?"

Alecto was confused for a brief moment before she remembered the ladder incident in the library that led up to this hangout in the first place. "Oh, right. Not really; all it really did was talk about what time meisters over the years did, not how they did it. It was still pretty interesting. Did you know that there was a Vietnamese time meister five hundred years ago with limited precognition?"

Kid raised an eyebrow, interested. "Really?"

Alecto nodded, now very glad to move away from the increasingly-embarrassing topic of her little temporal blunder. "His name was Thanh Ngo, and he was notorious for his ability to predict and dodge his enemy's attacks before they even made a move. The book doesn't mention how he did it. I think it might have been a wholly unique manifestation of his wavelength. The book doesn't mention his weapon, either. Actually, it doesn't mention any weapons at all, which is weird."

"Seriously?" Tempus asked. "Man, what a raw deal. Would've liked to read about time weapons." He sighed. "Ah, whatever. Who knows how accurate that book is, anyway. I mean, precognition? Seeing the future? Seems kind of outlandish."

"I doubt it's as simple as just seeing the future," Kid said. "Time meisters are attune to the flow of time, right? That's how they control it. Perhaps he was simply more attune to that flow than others, to the point where he could sense time before and after the present moment."

"Right," Alecto said. "Apparently, he was pretty strong; he was what's known as a 'first-generation' time meister, while most time meisters in the book were referred to as 'second-generation.' The book doesn't really explain what the difference is between the two; I guess it assumes that the reader would already know." Perhaps she'd ask Dr. Stein about it at some point later. "It really doesn't matter, I suppose; the point of checking out that book in the first place was to see if I could find a technique in there that I could replicate. If I could replicate precognition, I'd have done it by now. A-anyway, I should probably put the water on the stove. What sort of tea do you like, Kid?"

A thoughtful expression crossed Kid's pale features. "Peppermint," he decided. "No milk, two sugars."

"A-ah…" Alecto rubbed at the back of her neck, a faint flush on her cheeks. "I don't actually keep any sugar around for tea…"

Tempus cut in. "Second cabinet to the left of the stove, top shelf. You'll have to climb on the counter to reach it, but it's there." At Alecto's blank stare, he shrugged. "Hey, don't look at me like that. Sometimes I need a little C-six, H-twelve, O-six to get me through the day."

"Nerd."

"Why, boy howdy, Miss Pot, I didn't know you thought such things about a humble old kettle like myself." Tempus made his way to the door. "Anyways, I'm going to go do something. Have some pizza, hit the arcade for some DDR, maybe not necessarily in that order. See ya."

Quid?! "W-wait!" Alecto exclaimed. Tick. She lunged forward, grabbing Tempus by the shoulder and dragging him into her desynchronization. "What do you mean, you're going to go do something?" she said. "You're not going to stay?"

Tempus looked down at her. "Ally, you really want me to be the third wheel, here? This is your date, not mine," he said.

"It's not a… Tempus, what if I say something? O-or if I freak out and you're not there to help me calm down?"

"What's the big deal? You've had one-on-one conversations with people before."

"Ita, but those were completely different situations!" Alecto said. "I've never invited someone over for tea like this before, not even Tsubaki! And it's a lot easier to talk with Tsubaki than it is with… well, anyone! This isn't like a mission or Nadia just inviting herself over, I'm expected to be a good host as well as good company, I don't know how to do any of that, I was banking on you being there to help me out!"

Realization flashed across Tempus's face. "Okay, yeah, I can see why this all would be new to you. Welp, perfect time to acclimatize yourself to this sort of thing. And for you to admit to yourself the real reason you're nervous about all this."

"W-what?" Alecto was pretty sure that a lack of experience with this sort of one-on-one interaction and the slow, choking cloud of anxiety creeping up around her was the main reason she was nervous.

Tempus grinned. "You're nervous because this is a date and you don't wanna screw it up," he teased.

All the anxiety filling Alecto was immediately replaced with disbelief. "Ehhh…? You seriously had to get in one last date joke?"

"Yep!"

"Maybe you should go, then…" Alecto definitely wouldn't be able to handle this if he was going to be making jabs like that. Her face would go so red, it would downright explode, and that had the potential to be worse than any panic-induced meltdown. These least she could do on her own is say something really stupid or completely ruin a perfectly good friendship and shove those thoughts in the Non Tangere box right now you can do this you are a time meister you are better than some stupid lack of social experience. She released the desynchronization with a tock. "Just be careful out there," she said. "It's pretty late outside, and dark to boot."

Tempus grinned. "Yeah, I know, stranger danger. Don't worry, no one's stupid enough to try and much a DWMA student. And if they are, well, I'll partial transform and pummel them into next week. Literally, maybe. You know, time weapon and all." He turned towards Kid. "Before I go, though, there's something I need to talk to you about, pipsqueak."

If Kid was offended by the height-based epithet, he didn't comment on it. "Yes?"

Tempus reached out and slung an arm around the shorter boy's shoulders, pulling him close. "Listen up, because this is of the utmost importance. Do you see that chair?" he asked, pointing in the direction of his living room and, more importantly, his chair. "The marvelous, genuine leather chair, with the fine scrollwork on the back and arms?"

"I… yes. It's quite lovely," Kid answered, shooting a concerned glance in Alecto's direction. She merely shrugged and responded with a let-him-do-his-thing look.

"I'm glad you think so!" Tempus said. "That happens to be my chair, and I am most fond of it. And you may be a weird skateboarding pipsqueak with a stick shoved where sticks shouldn't be, but you're pretty much all right as a person, so I feel obligated to inform you that…" Here, his voice dropped dangerously, and he went from merely standing to outright looming. "If your butt goes anywhere near that chair, you won't be leaving this apartment in one piece, you got me?"

Now Kid looked thoroughly disturbed. "I'll… I'll keep that in mind," he said.

"Excellent!" Tempus released Kid and swung the door open. "Have fun on your date, don't do anything I wouldn't do, ta ta!" And with that, he was gone, leaving behind a baffled Kid and a horrified Alecto.

"W-well," she stammered, wringing her hands together. "I'm… going to get… that… water started… I-I'm so sorry about that, he's a sweetie, really, but he can be kind of an ass sometimes." Cheeks burning, she rushed into the kitchen, with Kid lingering in the adjacent dining room. As she dug out her rusty old tea kettle, she couldn't help but consider the pros and cons of chaotically rearranging Tempus's bookshelves out of some sense of petty spite. She decided against it; there were some lines that she wouldn't cross, and Tempus's books were one of them.

Kid smiled. "Don't worry about it. I take it that your partner's been teasing you about today, too?"

"Yeah, he's been on my case about it all week." Alecto began to fill the kettle with water and decided that now was a very good time to change the subject. "It's a good thing you like peppermint, because I was planning on having strawberry tea, and those two have the same steeping temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees." Having filled the kettle to the appropriate point, Alecto set it down on the stove. "Yours will have to steep for longer, so that more of the flavor comes out of the leaves; Montalvo, the guy I get my tea from, uses a black tea for the base of the strawberry tea, and that's pretty strong and if you leave it in too long it gets to be overwhelming and the strawberry kind of gets drowned out and…" Alecto trailed off when she realized that she was rambling. "Mē miseret, I'm probably boring you terribly, aren't I?

"Not at all," Kid said. "You're a very interesting person, Alecto."

Alecto's face went so red she was almost a little bit surprised that steam didn't start shooting out of her ears. "M-multum gratias tibi!" she exclaimed, pretending to be very interested in the stove's temperature knob. "T-that's wery kind of you to say. I mean, very. I don't think it's very accurate, though, I mean, o-once you get past the tea thing and the time meister thing and the 'inexplicably fluent in a dead language' thing, I'm not really all that exciting. I tend to ramble a lot, I never really learned how to do laundry without ruining at least one article of clothing, I like dystopian novels…"

"Ah, yes, I remember your disagreement with Tempus the other day," Kid said, settling himself into the nearest dining room chair. "I must say, you haven't really struck me as the apocalyptic type."

"W-well…" Oh, how to explain this without making herself seem like a childish fool. "I suppose it's because… they make me feel optimistic? Wait, that didn't make sense… what I mean is…" Alecto took a deep breath. "There are bad things in this world, bad people. Of course there are; that's why there are people like you and me around, to stop those bad things and bad people from taking over. Naturally, it can get a little disheartening sometimes. But when I read stories like Children of Men or 1984 or something else along those lines… it reminds me that there are good things to fight for. It's a good way to strengthen my resolve, because I can remind myself that while there are bad people in this world who want to hurt people in the name of greed and gluttony, this world is still so much better than it could be, and it's important that we keep fighting to keep it from being like all those dystopian novels. I-if that makes any sense, I mean." Alecto stared at the kettle, willing it to boil so that she could find an excuse to shut down the express route that the words tumbling out of her mouth were taking.

"I see," Kid said. "I think I understand it now. That certainly seems more like you."

Alecto took a chance and sneaked a peek at him, and saw that he was giving her a small, strange smile, almost tender in nature. It was certainly a far cry from the looks of boredom or bemusement that she had gotten when she had tried to explain her love for catastrophe in fiction back in middle school up in Maine.

It was really weird, and Alecto had no idea to do with this small, subtle gesture of total acceptance. She could really do from a playful jab or lame one-liner from Tempus right about now. "W-well, wanting to do good and preserve the good in the world is why I joined Academy after all… why I became Tempus's partner… I-I mean, I suppose my time meister soul probably factored into it a little bit, too, I mean, it's certainly why I was put in the EAT classes so quickly, I was rubbish at fighting back then… still kind of rubbish, really, that's why I work so hard, to not be rubbish…" Oh God oh God shut up you idiot!

Before Alecto could further embarrass herself, however, the kettle let out a loud whistle, catching the attention of both the young teens, much to Alecto's relief. "Tea's done!" she exclaimed. "Laudō di immortales, I thought it'd ne-wer finish. That saying about watched pots and boiling applies to kettles just as well, I suppose! N-now, where did Tempus say the sugar was? Second cabinet to the left?" She pulled the kettle off of the stove and turned down the burner before scrambling onto the countertop and pulling the cupboard door open. She was careful not to lose her balance; the last thing she needed was to fall off the country without Tempus there to catch her and berate her for being an idiot. "Lanky son of a bitch always puts things up too high," she muttered as she felt around on the top shelf. "He knows he lives with a werti-vertically challenged person, why does he keep doing this…" Eventually, her hand brushed against a small box, which when she pulled it down revealed itself to be a box of sugar cubes. "Got it!" she said a little too loudly as she climbed back down. "Now, like I said, your tea will take a few minutes longer because of the type it is, but not too much longer. I just need to get the tea bag down a-and then-"

"Alecto?"

Alecto jumped as Kid cut through her hopeless babbling. "Yes?" she said, shooting a charcoal glance in his direction. A slightly concerned expression had settled itself upon his face, his brows furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down in a small frown. "You need something?"

"Are you… feeling alright?" Kid asked. "You look a little pale. If you're feeling ill, I can come back later-"

Alecto's heart skipped about a dozen or so heartbeats, and then skipped half a dozen more for good measure. "Non non non, I'm fine, honest!" she exclaimed, her words tumbling out of her mouth a little too quickly and a little too nervously to be believable. "Totum bonum, totum bonum! I-it's just.. It was a long day of training, you know how it is, new Resonance Technique, always need to make sure those are something you can do when you need to and not just a fluuuuuke..." Alecto's voice trailed off when she realized that her attempts to get herself out of the hole she had were only landing her deeper in the dirt, to borrow a convoluted metaphor she'd once heard from Tempus. She let out a sigh, leaning against the counter. Well, as long as I'm in my grave, I might as well make myself comfortable. Qui audet adipiscitur... Fac fortia et patere… "Well, the truth is, I suppose I'm a little nervous," she admitted. "A lot nervous, really. I don't know if you've noticed, but social situations aren't… exactly my area of expertise."

Kid hesitated for a moment before nodding. "I had noticed, yes," he said. "I didn't want to say anything because I didn't want to embarrass you or make you uncomfortable, but you did seem a little shy at Maka's party last week."

Alecto let out a sharp chuckle, a wry smirk pushing at the corner of one cheek. "'Shy'... that's a nice word. Wish it were more accurate," she said. "Complete trainwreck is more like it. And, believe it or not, I was even worse when I was younger. Could barely function in public. I was always scared that I'd slip up and say something in Latin and people would look at me like I was a freak. I'd probably still feel like that, if it weren't for Tempus. He helped me out a lot with it." She pushed herself away from the countertop and moved to fetch the teacups and tea bags. Strawberry for her, peppermint with two sugars for him. "You know, the worst part is I actually know how silly it is to get stressed out and I'm just making myself seem like an idiot, but that just makes it worse. I'm getting anxiety over my anxieties, it's a vitiosus circulus."

"Now that's something I can sympathize with," Kid said with a smile, and Alecto remembered his fretting over symmetry. Self-awareness was a tricky spurious, wasn't it? "If it helps," Kid continued, "you can take all the time you need to get adjusted."

"That… yeah, that actually does kind of help." Alecto hadn't realized it as she was saying it, but admitting that she was worried had actually calmed her down some. Maybe it was just the relief of getting it off her chest, maybe it was how accepting Kid had been. Or both, who knew. "It's generally easier with Tempus around to keep me calm," she said. "His wavelength is so relaxed when we're not in a combat scenario, it keeps my wavelength grounded. That's basically what helped me get through freshman year at the Academy."

"Sounds like you two are a perfect match."

"Would you believe we used to hate each other?"

"Really?"

"Mm-hm." Alecto began to pour the water into the teacups, watching as the scalding liquid engulfed the tea bags and immediately began to grow yellow as the leaves inside the small paper bags did their work. "We were at each others' throats night and day. Tempus wasn't kidding when he said I threw a teacup at him, though he did exaggerate the severity of the injuries. He mostly got a wounded pride and a stained vest."

"And you two remained partners despite that?" Kid said, leaning forward slightly with interest. "Not that I'm doubting the strength of your friendship now, but if you two were like that before…"

"Well, I couldn't just abandon him," Alecto replied. "Leaving him all alone again seemed like just a terrible thing to do, and he needed my help as much as I needed his."

"You don't think he could have found another partner?"

"It's… complicated." Alecto thought for a minute, staring down at the little cups of tea sitting on the counter in front of her. Should she tell him? Tempus was far more sociable, but that didn't make him more open; in fact, he was far less prone to talking about himself than one might think, beyond the superficial level of "oooh I'm Temperance Giles and I think I'm so pretty and nerdy even though I don't actually read that much and my suit really does kind of make me look like an unbent banana." Then again, he'd never kept his condition an outright secret, and there was a chance… "Hey, Kid, you can read soul wavelengths, right? Because your a Grim Reaper?" The ability to so thoroughly analyze a soul like Stein or Maka could do was rare amongst humans, but it seemed ludicrous for the same to be true of a death god.

"Yes, I can," Kid said. "Why do you ask?"

"Then you've seen Tempus's soul, right? Its wavelength is a little… unique. Probably because he can distort time like myself. Or maybe it's something completely different. Whatever the case was, however, it makes it impossible for him to synchronize and resonate his wavelength with that of any meister… except for me."


Oh, quit your worrying, you big baby. See? She's calm now.

Tempus wasn't an idiot; leaving his meister alone in a new and terrifying situation without even at least keeping track of her wavelength a little would be classified by most to be a Dick Move with a capital D and a capital M. Alecto's anxiety had spiked for a few seconds before taking a sudden nosedive. She wasn't perfectly calm, with her soul still acting a little jittery, but she had relaxed enough where Tempus didn't feel the overwhelming urge to go running all the way back to their apartment to make sure she wasn't having a full-blown meltdown.

He did wish he knew how Kid was reacting to everything. He swore, if that stripey little shit made his meister feel bad about herself in any way, well… Surely even a god could feel pain, right?

Now that Alecto's soul had composed itself enough to assuage Tempus's own worries, he turned his attention back on his walk. It was very dark outside, with the laughing moon above being partially obscured by a faint fog that lingered overhead like a bad thought. Perhaps he should have thought this whole "spontaneous walk late at night" thing through, he figured. After all, most of the places he usually liked to visit would be closed at this time of night, with the exception of the arcade, the library, and maybe…

Maybe the Plenitude was open to late-night guests?

Before he could decide on a course of action, however, a familiar voice piped up from behind him. "Hey, clockboy!"

Tempus turned around to see Liz and Patti walking up to him, each carrying at least six incredibly large plastic bags. "Ladies," he said. "Fancy meeting you here. Let me guess: your meister went out on a social venture this evening and you decided to pass the time by going on a shopping spree?"

"Eyup," Liz said. The taller Thompson raised a questioning brow. "And what about you? Wait, let me guess: your meister is playing host tonight, and you didn't want to be the third wheel so you went out on a walk?"

Tempus grinned. "Bingo. So, since both of our meisters are busy and there's not much to do this late at night… you ladies interested in some pizza? I'm buying."


A/N - This arc was always meant to focus on strong characterization, helping to explain where my characters come from and why they do what they do. So you won't be seeing Alecto and Kid go up against some big evil monster or anything in this arc, but you will see a lot of talking. A lot. A looooooot. Be ye prepared.

So. About those tea choices!

My sister, being the brilliant mastermind she is, helped me figure Kid's out. I'd figured out strawberries for Alecto because she's all about sweet, fruit-like teas like that, but I was stumped on Kid's tea because, well, it's not like he's really given an indication for preference towards what kind of herbal plant water he likes. My sister suggested peppermint, because in her logic "a mint is stripey and sharp, just like Kid." Ignoring the fact that peppermint plants don't have those stripes, only the mint candies, that's actually some pretty good reasoning, and I can see Kid being into peppermint tea.

I've actually had peppermint tea. It's not quite as good as you'd think, but it's okay.

Also, the "subconsciously tampering with her timesphere when her anxieties get out of control" was something I made up on the spot to explain away the plot hole of why Kid would be there an hour and twenty minutes early, but it really does feel like something that would happen with Alecto? I mean, you worry, your soul wavelength starts acting up, next thing you know an hour has passed and you're still standing there in the middle of the hallway like a doof.

Also, since I know I'm going to get questions about it and there's no real spoiler in saying this, I'm going to come out and say it: no, Alecto isn't going to get precognition. The important details of that back-and-forth were something entirely different.

The "vicious circle of anxiety" thing is actually something I've experienced in real life. Fun times.

Latin for everyone! You get some Latin, and you get some Latin! Everybody gets some Latin!

Non Tangere: "Do not touch."

Merda!: "Shit!" Language, Alecto.

Multum gratias tibi: "Thank you very much."

Laudō di immortales: "Praise the gods." or "Thank the gods."

Totum bonum: Is supposed to mean "all is well" or "all is good," but is at its core basically just an affirmation of the okayness of everything, even though everything is not okay.

Qui audet adipiscitur... Fac fortia et patere…: "Who dares, wins... Do brave deeds and endure..." Basically Alecto telling herself to buck up and chill out, kiddo.

Vitiosus circulus: "vicious circle."

Chapter forty-two (forty-two five-sixty-four) will be out soon. In the meantime, feel free to favorite and leave a review!

-Diana "Nocte"