Chapter IV: Breakfast Battlers - Saturday


AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Double update today. This is the first of two chapters.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.


I stumble out of bed - hands thankfully in no compromising positions - and pull on some pants, leaving Max in bed as I head downstairs to the kitchen. I saw a coffee machine yesterday and I wanna try that baby out.

Kate is already in the kitchen when I get there, fully ready in her day clothes and everything, just sitting on one of the stools and lightly sipping on something in an awkwardly fancy teacup.

"Morning." I mutter, heading straight for the machine.

"Good morning, Chloe." She responds simply.

"Your partners in crime not up yet?"

"Chloe!" She puts a hand to her chest, mock-offense dripping off her like the coffee pouring into my cup. "We are good Christian girls who wouldn't dream of any sort of criminal behaviour."

The impish look in her eye scares me, just a little. "Sure. Lets go with that 'til I get my coffee. What do you kids usually do for breakfast?"

"I usually have some of the croissants in the upper cupboard. Sarah likes her cereal - she picks differently depending on her mood. Lynn seems to have gained a recent fondness for honey and toast."

"Great. Nothing complicated for me and Max to do, huh?" I chuckle, picking up my now-full coffee and taking a long drink from it. Okay. This whole weekend just became worth it.

"Not for breakfast, no." Lynn says from the doorway. Unlike her sister, Lynn had come down still in her PJs. She pulls out an actual breadloaf from an actual breadbox and slices off two slices with unerring precision before sticking them in the oversized toaster. No pre-sliced wonderbread in this family. Fucking hell.

Her statement was also eerily concerning. "Implying there's something complicated later on?"

"I'm sure Max will fill you in." Lynn wafts a vague hand at me before gently urging me out of the way and getting her own cup of hot coffee. "Mom briefed her on all this when she agreed to sit for us."

"Well. She's still in bed for now." I lean back against the counter and sip my coffee again. Fuck yes. "Same with Sarah, I bet?"

Kate gives a little smile and- "Oh yes. If we let her sleep, Sarah won't be up 'til after lunch at the earliest." She laughs lightly. "And no, that's not an exaggeration."

"I..." Then it hits me. Shit. "Making sure she gets up on time is our job, right?"

"Probably." Kate eyes me over her teacup, and she is definitely laughing at me on the inside. Damn it. "Right. Gimme a sec."

I head back upstairs, stopping just outside our room and thinking- yeah, I probably should. I push open the door to find Max curled up in the massive duvet like a padded burrito. I walk over and poke her face a few times. Best way to wake someone up without the sudden fuckin' shock of a bucket of water. Not that these kids haven't tempted me to that kind of shenanigans yet. We'll call it Plan B: for Bucket. Heh.

Max eventually blinks awake. "W-wwhat?"

"Evening Maxie. It's like, 5pm, 'bout time you should get up, and-"

"5pm!" She immediately hurls herself out of bed with the force and enthusiasm of an overly energetic marine at drill call and then stops by the window. "Wait-"

"Nah, I'm just fuckin' with you. It's 'bout 8:30. A.M."

She stomps her foot. "Damnit Chloe!"

Before she can say anything else, I start backing away- "Glad you're awake. I gotta go wake up Sarah now, the other kids are in the kitchen downstairs, bye!" -and then dash for the door. I close it behind me and lean back against it, laughing as I hear Max swearing. Aww.

Sarah was... surprisingly easy to wake-up, actually. I think the other Marshes were pulling my leg. Again. I head back downstairs and we join the others, plus now Max (who is still a bit grumpy at me), at the breakfast and sit down to eat.

Max looks up from the TV as Kate steps into the living room. The two of us curled up after breakfast and put on a movie, but the kids lost interest after a while and we let them off on their own for a while. That was two hours ago. Two quiet, blissful hours of utter panic as Max was way, way too close for my terrified crushing heart to handle.

Kate just stands daintily before saying, "I just wanted to let you know we're building an obstacle course for the dog, so you may hear some clunking around. We'll call you if anything happens."

Max nods and Kate smiles, then leaves. We go back to the TV for a full few minutes before we slowly turn to each other and grin. "Dog?"

Then Max's face creases. "Dog? They don't have a- Oh no."

She launches to her feet and out the door, and I'm close on her heels. Sitting in the upper hallway is a giant Newfoundland, looking like the biggest, dopiest good dog ever. "Where did you get-"

"Oh. This is Boris. He belongs to next door. He comes to visit sometimes." Lynn says offhandedly, building another hurdle in the doggy obstacle course. Boris huffs an odd grumbly sound and lies down, big-ass head on his paws.

Sarah looks at us, more severe than anything before. "There's a hole in the side fence. Don't tell our parents." She stares until we promise not to tell.

Max mutters something I'm pretty sure only I catch - "This was not in the briefing."

I grin.

"You want a hand?" I ask as I walk over to survey their creation. It's kinda fucking impressive. They've got almost every blanket, pillow, and cushion in the house and Kate is directing construction with all the efficient anger of a New York Foreman that's gone past 'too old for this shit' years before.

"Depends." Kate smirks. "Are yours steady, or are you too old to keep up?"

"Old? I- hey!" I blurt back. The sisters giggle. Damn them. Damn them to the fiery pits of goddang stinktown. "I can keep up just fine!" I roll up my non-existent sleeves and wade in. "Come on Max, lets show these kids how we do it."

Together, we build the greatest obstacle course known to humanity. The dog navigates it with indulgent patience, but he seems happy enough. Along the corridor, down the stairs, across the sofa, the big dude makes his way like Frodo and the Fellowship across Middle Earth - a whole bunch of roaming, hiking, strolling, striding, and meandering. The Marsh sisters follow him along and chatter and cheer as he dodges their various obstacles.

I let Max drag me away for another cup of the fucking dope-ass coffee. The kids can take care of themselves for a while. A while turns into nearly two hours as Max drags me back to the couch to finish off one of her weird artsy animated movies - and boy does she grumble hilariously when I call it that.

Then, twenty minutes after the movie finishes, one of the girls squealed in pain and we rushed out after them. Immediately, something drops over our heads and two of the Marshes appear at our sides to adjust the fit of our new... harnesses? The fuck?

Once they're satisfied, both of them hand us some sort of complicated looking plastic tube. It takes me a second to realise what this is. "Lasertag?"

"Last team to five loses!" Lynn yells, rushing off.

Kate takes a second to actually explain how the guns work. Apparently if you link them, you can create teams, and little lights on the vest show how many points out of five you had. The sensors were all on your torso, so limb shots didn't count.

Max and I exchange looks and sync our vests. "Eat Laserbeams, Marshes."

They don't respond, just smile creepily and fade out into the other rooms, instructing me and Max to our 'starting spot' downstairs. Then, it's war.

Like all war, it starts out quiet. Max and I venture out of the back room and into what I think was some kind of sitting room. She walks in, and I combat roll to behind the couch. The silence is ominous, looming over us like the fancy standing lamps lighting this room. "It's quiet. Too quiet."

There's a pause.

"Why are we whispering?"

"Because it's War, Max. Nobody yells in War." She elbows me with a giggle, and I grin rakishly back at her.

We walk along in the main hall, keeping our eyes out. Max laughs. "You seem to have had no trouble getting into this, Chloe."

"Heh. Nah. All those Rambo movies taught me well. But speaking of trouble, we should've run into the Marshes now. You know, a trap, or some sort of-" My harness flashed and made a weird whirring sound. "-Yep. Trap."

I look up to see the sisters have burst out of nowhere to blast us from the top of the staircase, grins across their faces - Kate whoops like a military ranger. I raise my gun to blast her back and- nothing. "Shit!"

Kate grins. "I didn't tell you everything about how they work - when you get shot the gun shuts down for a minute to mimic death."

"Fuck!"

"Language, Chloe!" The other Marshes singsong as they vanish off into the side rooms again.

Max and I share a look. Damn them. Damn them all to heck. We wait for the minute, and then we follow them up. Out the corner of my eye, I catch an open door. I wave over to Max, and we head that way, then- Wait. "Trap."

I whirl just in time for the Marshes to burst out of a door behind us and managed to blast them all. They blink at me in open surprise, which, wow, fuckin' rude. I just shrug and grin, and Lynn actually laughs. "Touche, Chloe."

Before we can say anything else, they disappear off downstairs, fading out like rangers in the jungle. Max and I exchange more of that same look. Very adorable little nightmare Rambos.

We both score another point each - us when we caught Lynn and Sarah visiting the Kitchen and them when I tried to re-enact one of the greatest scenes in cinema today.

The Marshes were spread out at the bottom of the stairs, watchful and waiting. The upstairs landing lights had been off for a while, so most of the upstairs was dark and shadowy. I step forward out of that dark and grin. "It's over, Marshes. I have the high ground."

They all stare at me for a long second, then all three raise their guns and shoot me dead.

So, that didn't work. Max laughed for a full minute though, so it was worth it.

They have two. We have two. It's best out of five. We know what that means. Max and I have hunkered down in the kitchen to strategise, listening out for the movement of the doors in. I'm pretty sure we're concealed, so we've got time as they check the other rooms and start to learn where we're not.

They'd chased us down here a few minutes before, but we'd managed to lose them.

The Kitchen had three doors - one to the dining room, one to the corridor, and one to the back garden. We'd agreed - unspoken, obviously - to keep it to the house, so the back garden wasn't an option. But I had a plan. I told it to Max and she beamed with approval. So, plan M (for Max) was a go.

I could hear them outside. I wait for the sound of another door going, then kick open the kitchen door and scream something badass and try to shoot them before running off down the corridor. Kate immediately starts to track me, her gun blasting behind me, but no sound of a hit. Then Lynn says "After her!" and they start to trail me down the corridor.

As they all move into position, I yell "Now!" and then Max flanks them just as they blast me. Three to three. Our vests all flash with the same colour and Kate looks down, disappointed.

"Draw." I say - it wasn't a question, but Kate nods anyway.

That was actually fun.

"Riiiiight." I look down at the shopping list. "Max, you sure you got the cash? If we get all this shit and find we can't pay, that's gonna be fucking ridiculous."

"Yep. I have it." She makes an aborted motion down like she's gonna tap her bag, then thinks better of it. Not really many pickpockets in Arcadia Bay, we're too small and boring for anything but the pettiest of crimes, but still.

"Cool." I look back down at the list. "Should we start at the top or is there some system to make this quicker?"

"If there is, we were never taught it," Sarah chimes in. "-probably easiest just to go from the top, I think."

"Great. What even is an avocado anyway?"

"I think it's some sort of bird."

"...what?"

It's quick and really sneaky, but out the corner of my eye while I'm not really paying attention, I just catch it - Sarah, sneaking a few things into her pockets. Fuck, that girl is faster than a street magician. And also a criminal now.

Fuck.

Do I tell Max? She's got enough to be stressed about, and even more when we get back.

I follow the group, thinking it over, until I notice Sarah sneak those same things onto another shelf. Oh. Right. She's not a criminal, just an asshole. Obviously.

As we head around, I notice all three Marshes doing the same, rearranging shelves, taking shit and moving it around - Lynn even turned all the juice around on the entire aisle somehow. Oh shit. This is gonna go poorly. As I lean in to murmur it to Max, I notice it immediately. An angry looking manager-type striding down the aisle towards us. Just as he's about to reach us, I also notice Kate fiddling with one of the shelves.

The entire thing buckles and goes down, spreading bagels and breadstuff everywhere.

The hapless redshirt approaching leaps back with a scream, and the chaos only grows from there. Honestly, it was kind of beautiful.

Then Max grabs my hand and swears lightly, and my heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest - fucking goddamn piece of shit crush.

The employee looks over the pile of bread all over everywhere and then over to us. "Ugh, I- I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to pay for your shopping and leave. Our cameras have shown your three... children? causing major disruption to the store. It will not be a ban, this time, but consider this a warning to control them better in the future."

Both of us, and several random bystanders, stare at the employee for long second because... 'our' children? Seriously? Do either of us look old enough to have kids?

But another cadre of redshirts came over and started to clean up, and two of them (fuckin' two!) came to guide us to the check-out and got us out of there. Standing shell-shocked in the parking lot, Max looks down at the shopping list. "That... at least we got most of it? The pasta is going to be plain though."

The Marshes exchange looks and shrug. "Plain pasta is fine."

I sigh. Right. Back to the house. Thank fuck this town is tiny.