Once more, best wishes to Monty Oum and his loved ones; I wanted to reiterate that here, as I have to pull my previous message to keep with compliance with site rules. Still, I think we can all agree that we owe him a thank-you for the world and characters which we've come to enjoy. Once more, let's all keep the man and his loved ones in our thoughts - and if you are so inclined, prayers.

"Screw you Pumpkin Pete!" Clara cheered, tossing another unopened box of the cereal into the fireplace.

Mina couldn't help but chuckle; perhaps burning dozens of cereal boxes as "retribution" for what amounted to five pounds – seven at the outside – that Clara had put on binging on the stuff was childish and a mite wasteful besides, but her friend was clearly enjoying it, so Mina happily handed her another box from the dwindling pile next to one of the armchairs in the common room of Clara's apartment complex.

"How many of these did you buy?" Mina asked with a raised eyebrow, "that last one you threw in must make at least eleven now… and we have yet more to be rid of…"

"Way too many…" Clara replied, taking the next box from Mina's hands without caring to specifically identify a number, "besides, I'd say it was worth it – not the putting on weight thing, mind you, but this stuff makes surprisingly goodkindling."

"Somehow I do not envision that to be what the poor Pumpkin Pete had in mind…" Mina remarked with a dry smirk, "ah, but such is life~"

"I bet you didn't think I'd actually burn the stuff, did you?" Clara tossed what was thus far the twelfth box of sugary cereal onto the fire.

Mina shrugged. "No, I didn't – but then I must also confess that I thought you were exaggerating when you said dozens…"

"Ah! I'm hurt!" Clara laid a hand over her heart in mock offense. "We've known each other for how long now and you still don't take me seriously?" There was a beat, and then both of them burst out laughing at Clara's ironic little outburst and, after Clara recovered, she continued. "Anyway, now that we've established how serious I am…" She grabbed another box off the pile and tossed it into the fireplace, as though to emphasize her words. "I really do need to diet for a bit… Won't do if I can't fit into my corset now, will it?"

"I am here for moral support whenever you need it," Mina offered with a smirk.

"You know, coming from a girl who's obviously never had to diet a day in her life, that somehow seems less encouraging…" Clara quipped, "I mean, I know 'good genes' is your explanation for how you're so freaking stacked – seriously, it ain't fair, between you, that blonde friend of yours, and Pyrrha Nikos – Do all the hot people in the world go to your school?"

"I would not know…"

"No, no, I suppose you're right… But anyway, I was getting off topic-,"

"Robert finds you attractive, does he not?" Mina interrupted, concerned.

"Well yes…" Clara conceded, though it did nothing to keep the slight note of bitterness from her voice, "just… I hear about you and Blake all the time and… sometimes I get… God this is so immature…"

"Yes?" Mina pressed reaching out to place a hand on Clara's shoulder.

"I don't know, I guess I just get jealous of all the attention she gives you," Clara finally admitted at length, slumping into a seat on one of the couches. "It's stupid, I know, and I'm just being clingy but… I don't know, sometimes I just catch myself wondering if maybe he'd look my way a little more often if I was as pretty as you…"

"Clara…" Mina sat down beside her. "It is not as though he seeks someone else when he does look, is it?"

Clara shook her head. "No… It's not… but still, it would be nice to get some more attention."

Mina smiled. "That I understand…"

"Oh don't pity me!" Clara gave Mina a gentle shove. "You don't have to worry about this." She smiled sadly. "You've got Blake wrapped right around your finger."

"It is much the opposite actually…" Mina shook her head, folding her hands in her lap. "In truth, I am very much happily wrapped about hers, so to speak." Mina gave a slight smile. "I am… nothing without her- figuratively and literally, as I'd not be here today otherwise. It has only been recently, however, what with the consequences of my encounter with Undine that I have come to realized that I mean so much to her…"

"That so?" Clara sighed. "And I suppose that you think…?"

"Blake did everything she could to help me recover my memory, but when it wasn't enough, she did the next best thing; she read me a story, but no matter what she did what she could to show that she loved me… Perhaps Robert works so hard because he wants better for you – perhaps he feels that he must achieve great things so that you do not have to spend all of your best years playing at being a maid for the amusement of strangers."

"You think so?" Clara asked, briefly contemplative before pulling Mina into a hug with one arm and declaring, "well then joke's on him isn't it? I love this job!"

Mina couldn't resist a fit of giggles as she returned the embrace, happy that Clara was back in better spirits. "As do I–" Mina's scroll rang. "Oh dear… a moment if you don't mind, Clara?" Disentangling herself from the awkward sideways embrace, Mina pulled the device from her pocket. "Identify."

"Blake Belladonna."

Mina reacted with a start, not having been expecting a call; Blake knew her whereabouts after all, as Mina had taken care to inform Blake that she'd be home late after work tonight. It was a weekend and, unless Mina had recalled incorrectly, some arrangements had been made for a study session with Team JNPR which she would have thought would occupy Blake's attention. Still, she pressed the 'accept' button, answering. "Hello Dearest, is everything alright?"

"H-hi Mina…"

"Dearest?" Mina cocked an eyebrow at Blake's nervous tone, her own voiced incredulity provoking a curious look from Clara.

"Come on… Say it!"

"Oh, shut up Yang!"

"Hey! You picked 'dare'! Now hurry up so we can get to the Princess's turn!"

"Dearest, what is going on…?" Mina asked, baffled.

"I… Dammit Yang! I hate you so much right now!"

"Say it…"

"Are they playing Truth or Dare over there?" Clara asked incredulously, "God that must be a nightmare for Blake…"

Mina smiled though. "Perhaps, but it means that things are well again… And come what may, we can stand and face it together."

"That's a… surprisingly deep thought to read into a game of Truth or Dare…" Clara mused, "ah, but what the hell! Bring that over here! I want to hear what they made her call and tell you!"

"Come on Blake~" Miss Xiao Long's voice could be heard over the line. "Either the words come out or the top comes off~"

Both Mina and Clara started, and Clara gave voice to their mutual perplexity. "Since when is strip Truth or Dare a thing?"

"I suppose it could work to ensure compliance with the rules…" Mina offered, shock undercutting the certainty of her explanation as she made to speak to her device again, "Dearest, what is going-?"

"Oh come on Yang! It doesn't even make sense! We're both-,"

"It's the thought that counts~ Now say it!"

To Mina's mounting puzzlement, Blake could be heard letting out a defeated sigh on the other end, before all was made clear when Blake cleared her throat and – in a haltingly embarrassed voice, it must be said – spoke once more to Mina, "I… I love you Mina… and… I… Ithinkthatyou'rethesexiestwomanaliveandIwantyoutobethemotherofmychildren!"

Mina and Clara blinked.

"How many?"

"Dammit Yang!"

"How. Many?"

"Dammit! All five!"

Raucous laughter could be heard from the other end for a brief moment – Miss Rose, Miss Xiao Long, and Miss Valkyrie specifically – but after an instant, the storm of giggles from Beacon was drowned out by the cacophonous guffaws Mina and Clara supplied themselves. Mina couldn't rightly remember ever having laughed quite so hard in her life. She actually felt tears well up as she tried to control her giggles long enough to respond. "O-oh really Dearest?" she choked out past another fit of chuckles, "I am glad you see things my way~"

A renewed burst of laughter erupted over the line before Blake whispered, "Mina… not helping…"

But Mina wasn't quite finished. "I'd like to name one after my mother of course, but I'd be happy with whatever else you may see fit…"

Blake sighed on the other end, and presumably turned away from her scroll, because her voice came in slightly fainter now. "Are you happy now, Yang?"

"Yes indeed~" There was an instant's pause before she spoke again. "Cause now it's Weiss's turn-,"

"Dare. I'll not have you asking my measurements or something of another God-awful lewd nature!"

Mina raised an eyebrow, unable to help herself from listening in, at least, until Blake spoke to her again, apologizing. "I'm… sorry to have bothered you with something so stupid…"

"No, no; I thought that it was cute," Mina assured, "I'll be back in an hour or so."

"Right… Love you…"

"I love you too Blake," Mina replied fondly before the line went dead.

Meanwhile, Clara was still struggling to get a hold of herself. "Oh my God! Five? Well aren't you two gonna be busy~?" she joked with a wink, before taking a deep breath and forcing herself to calm down, "but seriously though – and maybe this sounds a little disingenuous after laughing about it – but I feel so sorry for Blake right now… Truth or Dare can get rough… and it sounds like they're playing for keeps over there."

"It is probably best that I am not there to play then…" Mina thought aloud, "somehow I do not think I'd get away merely divulging that my blood-type is AB positive… and I fear that Blake might die of embarrassment…"

"What, not you?" Clara queried with a raised eyebrow.

Mina just shrugged. "I have little shame to speak of,"

"Now that I believe," Clara remarked, "God knows I'd love to see you blush – just once – because it's probably adorable,"

"I am afraid that you've missed that opportunity by a few years." Mina picked up the first box of the cereal to be dealt with in a fair few minutes and tossed it onto the fire. "I used to be a very timid girl."

"What changed?"

"I grew up." Mina smirked.

"In more ways than one, I guess." Clara elbowed her meaningfully.

"You could say that~"

Mina made her way down Clara's street in the direction of the airship station just shy of an hour later. She'd tried to drink a cup of coffee that Clara had offered, but found herself repulsed by the stuff, as with so much else, and after finally finishing with the task of burning all that breakfast cereal, she really needed to be heading back to Beacon. A good night, all in all, but it was time for it to come to an end.

For convenience's sake she activated her Semblance to assist in navigating the bustling nighttime streets; near the airship station was one thing, but Clara's neighborhood was not usually so busy as it was now, presumably on account of the upcoming Vytal Festival. Whatever the case, there were still plenty of people going about business of one description or another, even as the hour approached nine, but that was of little consequence for Mina personally. What was of potentially much greater personal consequence was the relatively small girl with the parasol that Mina could sense following her at a distance just shy of twenty yards.

Mina hadn't been sure at first; it was entirely possible that someone walking at the same pace would take the same left off of Clara's street, after all, but that hadn't been the end of it. The girl with the parasol proceeded to follow her around several of the same turns, crossed the streets in all the same places, and halted when Mina had stepped into a coffee shop briefly to buy a cup of tea – that she wasn't going to drink – just to confirm her suspicion. When the girl resumed walking as she did, there was little room left for doubt – she was being tailed.

It was fairly plain that her pursuer was not with Vale's law enforcement, unless parasols had recently become standard issue, and in any event, Mina hadn't done anything to provoke police attention. Whomever was following her likely already knew anything they needed to about her and the route that she would take, so it wouldn't do to tip her adversary off that she had realized that she was being followed by deviating from the most direct route to the airship station. Not yet anyway. She needed a suitably confined space to take advantage of – somewhere out of view and preferably earshot as well… Mina reached into one of the larger pockets of her fatigues and let her fingers close around the grips of two of her stakes, but she didn't draw them out – if this girl wanted a fight, she would get one, but Mina would not be the one to start it.

Unfortunately, it seemed that even this small cautious gesture was enough to tip Mina's hand to her pursuer though, as the three-dimensional silhouette which Mina could observe had folded her parasol down from her shoulder and broken into a run. Mina didn't need further prompting to do so herself. The other girl was faster, despite Mina's longer legs, and weaved more smoothly between and around the occasional surprised passerby that much more easily thanks to her smaller size. Mina rapidly found herself losing ground and thus came to the conclusion that she didn't have the time to be selective about the particular alley in which she chose to make her confrontation. Making a snap decision, Mina bolted down the next alley on the right, drawing out her stakes and sliding them each to one of the fittings on the end of the first spool of razor wire on each of her bracers. She had turned down a dead end, not that it would have mattered had it been otherwise, so a fight was inevitable.

As her pursuer rounded the corner, Mina pitched first one stake, then the other at her adversary, only to have them deflected with the twirl of a parasol as the persistent girl kept coming. Drawing the thwarted projectiles back with a pull and the reels built into her gauntlets, she reclaimed her weapons just in time for the hitherto passive pursuer to launch a counter-attack, in the form of a series of light, but quick blows with her parasol. Mina parried the first and second, pivoted to sidestep the third, and taking advantage of the instant she'd bought herself when that third attempt cleanly missed, she reversed her grip on the stake in her right hand and brought it down at the back of her foe's neck to strike… nothing. One instant she was there, the second, the parasol-wielding girl was there no longer, having tucked into a roll and sprung back to her feet behind Mina, the pointed tip of her parasol aimed squarely on Mina where Mina had meant to strike the assailant and end the fight in one stroke. She's playing with me…

Rapidly pivoting again to turn one-hundred eighty degrees in one quick motion, Mina released her hold on the stake in her left hand, letting it wrap about and bind the as-yet closed parasol before catching it again, most of her forearm pressed up against her foe's now restrained weapon and, perceiving an advantage, Mina followed that maneuver up with a closed-fist blow meant for her opponent's solar-plexus, only to have that too come to nothing as the girl abruptly dropped, pulling Mina off balance and tripping her up. Mina felt herself toppling forward and threw up her hands to break the tumble, but the parasol-wielding girl proved herself a remarkably shrewd fighter, as, while rising again to her feet, she pulled her weapon free of its loosened bindings and struck Mina across the stomach, winding her and knocking her on her back. Mina winced at the impact, but was back on her feet and facing her adversary in the space of a heartbeat, her mind racing to process what she could from the brief exchange of blows and dodging.

She is certainly good at counter-attack… Quick, yet patient… and very nimble… Mina's eyes narrowed; the girl appeared to be twirling her parasol on one finger as she waited for Mina to make a move. Best to keep her beyond arm's length…

Changing tack, Mina lunged backward to gain just an instant's room to breathe and pulled four more of her eight stakes, slotting them likewise into the fittings of her other lengths of wire with a flourish, just in time to translate the momentum into a swinging spin, letting the stakes act as flails at the ends of their biting cords. This gave Mina's opponent pause when she moved to attack again, and doubly so when Mina let the line pull longer and channeled her Aura through the Burn crystals embedded in her gauntlets, causing the wires themselves to ignite like the grasping tendrils of a smoldering ivy reaching out to claim anything in the name of burning ruin.

The spry parasol-fighter back-peddled to avoid the searing reach of Mina's razor wire – if only just so – forcing Mina to tease out more and more of it with each attack, until the stakes at the end of her left set of wires clattered against the wall of the fairly broad alley space, causing them to fall limp. It was then, even despite the sudden discomfort brought on by the noisy clattering of steel against brick, that Mina realized her error in judgment – this particular foe needed to be fought in an open space.

Seeking to capitalize on Mina's sudden vulnerability, her attacker dashed forth, readying her seemingly innocuous weapon for a swing as Mina flicked her wrist to reel the limp wires back and attempted to avoid the same problem with her other hand by swinging down from overhead in an attempt to strike her target. When that single frenetic moment had passed and all was still again, Mina held the honed edge of one of her stakes to her smaller assailant's throat, but the girl had thwarted her attempt to catch her in the scorching array of blade wire by once more catching it with her parasol, and Mina could feel just the slightest prickling sensation under her chin.

"Ladies, ladies, calm down; you're both beautiful…" A familiar, sarcastic voice cut through the tension of the moment. "And for God's sake Neo, I asked you to pull her aside somewhere for me – not kill her… Blue Eyes and I have a few things to talk about."

When she was confident that she was in fact, if only for the moment, out of danger, as evidenced by the removal of the hidden stiletto blade from her chin, Mina in turn removed her own weapons, albeit not putting them away. "Roman Torchwick…"

"That's my name, now don't wear it out," he answered dryly. "See Neo? I told you that we go back,"

In Mina's estimation, the short parasol wielder did not seem impressed, but she put the parasol up like she had before the fight had begun, and seemed happy enough to stay her hand, shrugging innocently.

"You have a strange way of greeting old friends, Mister Torchwick..." Mina remained at the ready, eyes narrowed. "Surely it could have been less trouble to find my scroll number in a directory."

"True," he said, holding his hands wide, "but wasn't this way so much more fun?"

"What do you want?" Mina pressed, "here to make good on my offer all those months ago?"

Roman chuckled. "Not quite, but let's just say I've come to make a show of good faith – you know, to keep my options open…"

Author's Note: Hello all, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and once again I'd like to wish Mr. Oum a smooth recovery before we continue.

That aside, This chapter was originally going to feature Mina trying to console Clara a bit more, and come clean about the whole Blood-drinking thing (if you recall, Clara isn't actually privy to that one) but then I remembered that I promised a bit less angst for this chapter, so I figured I'd replace it with humor – and besides, it fit's better with what I've got in mind going forward, so here we are, I guess. Again, I hope you all enjoyed it, and no worries; we're not diving back into long stretches of meaningless fluff – there will be plot! Or at the very least, some character-driven fluff to set things up…

P.S. Shame on me - I owe a huge thank-you to KilamriX88 for edits! Alas, I forgot when I first posted this... Sorry!