Summary: After an altercation with the Delgados, the amigos take some time to regroup, and Naomi and Mateo share the story of how they met.

Notes: Content warning again for mild injuries, of the "slightly more realistic aftermath of otherwise completely canon violence" variety, because I am not bound by Disney Jr's rules and come on, the Sister of Invention fight was rough.

Naomi had no more desire to stay in the sweltering, sulfuric air of Xotep than anyone else, but Elena's pace was unmatched as she all but sprinted back toward the coach.

"Elena, wait!" Gabe called after her. He hoisted Isabel up over a boulder and then scrambled down after Elena himself.

"Ash and Carla can't have gotten far." She clambered up into the driver's seat and fumbled for the reins one-handed, her right arm hanging limply at her side. "If we hurry, we might still be able to catch them."

"We're not going after the Delgados any more today."

The others were finally catching up with them now, with Naomi helping Isabel down the rest of the way and Mateo slowly bringing up the rear, not trusting his footing on the volcano's uneven slope.

"And why not? We know they were just here, and if they get away we'll have to track them all over again. We might not have another chance like this!"

Gabe crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow. "Lift your arm for me."

Elena rolled her eyes and raised her left arm above her head.

"Your other arm, Elena."

Biting her lip, she slowly dropped her good arm back into her lap.

They'd all heard the pop. Isabel's flip-trip might have saved Elena's life, but the sharp stop at the bottom of the crater had done her body no favors. The state of her arm hadn't been anyone's first concern over 'get Elena out of the volcano', but a dislocated shoulder, no matter how fair a price for survival, was not good to have while chasing down villains.

Gabe's face softened. "We're all injured and exhausted, and even if we weren't, we only packed supplies for four."

Behind him, Isabel squirmed, dragging her shoe against the loose gravel.

"We have to go back to the palace to regroup," he finished.

Muscles clenched in Elena's jaw, and Naomi could see the gears turning behind her eyes as she tried to think of another argument. "But they were right here," she repeated, something desperate creeping into her tone, and she turned in the seat, away from Gabe. "Mateo, what do you think?"

Gabe threw his hands up, only to wince as the motion pulled at his ribs. He wrapped an arm around his midsection with a low hiss through his teeth, and shot Elena one last disapproving look as he headed toward the back of the carriage.

Mateo straightened up against the outcropping he'd been leaning against while examining his tamborita. "Actually, I agree with Gabe."

Gabe poked his head up from where he'd begun sorting through the supplies. "Can I get that in writing?"

Mateo rolled his eyes but spared the remark no further comment, instead meeting Elena's stare with his own serious expression.

"My tamborita is broken, and I can't fix it without getting back to my workshop. Which means that right now, we don't have any magic between the five of us. And even with the numbers, going up against two malvagos without magic of our own…" He grimaced, making an uncomfortable sound. "I just don't think it's a good idea."

Elena's mouth was pulled in a taut line, her brow furrowed. "Naomi?" she tried, her voice pleading.

Naomi shook her head. "Sorry Elena, I'm with the guys on this one."

Her entire body still ached, with the worst of the pain pulsing at the back of her skull, and her heartbeat had only just dropped back to normal after its frantic racing through the fight. She would've thought she'd be used to life-threatening danger by now, but she just wasn't feeling up to charging ahead with a headache and no plan.

Isabel glanced around at the rest of the party and suddenly shot her hand up. "I'll vote with Elena!" she chimed in.

Sighing, Elena gave her a gentle smile. "Thanks, Isa, but while I hate to admit it, they're right. We need to regroup." Her smile faded into a disappointed frown. "Besides, we need to tell our abuelos where you ran off to."

Isabel let out a nervous laugh, shuffling against the stone again. "Or… we could not tell them?" she said, putting on her best puppy-dog eyes.

Elena raised an eyebrow. "Mm-hmm," she uttered, in a way that made clear the conversation wasn't over. There was a pin in it for the time being, though, and she began to carefully climb back down from the carriage. "I'm sorry I've been so pushy, it's just that we're so close to being done with all this."

"We'll get them next time," Gabe said. He'd finally retrieved the first aid kit while everyone was talking, and he popped it open on top of a nearby boulder. "For now, let's just get everyone patched up."

Nodding, Elena reached out and cupped her sister's cheek. "Isa, are you hurt at all?"

"Just some scrapes, I think." She turned her arms over, showing off a skinned elbow and lines of dimples and bruises where stones had dug into her forearms. Elena looked at Gabe over her head and raised her eyebrows with a tiny nod, and he nodded back.

"Should be an easy fix, then," he said to Isabel. "Come here, let me take a look. Then you can help me with the others." He began wiping over her scrapes with a cloth soaked in disinfectant, and without looking up, added, "I'm gonna take a look at your arm next, Elena. I want to get it in a sling before you go trying to climb anything else."

"You can't just pop it back into place?"

"Trust me, you want an actual doctor to be the one that does that."

The low murmur of their conversation faded into the background as Naomi felt the weight of the fight settle in around her. The last traces of her adrenaline had worn out, leaving her shaky and tired, and her head was still throbbing. Even the jagged terrain was starting to look like a decent bed.

Gravel crunched beside her as Mateo finally sank to the ground, sitting with his back pressed up against the stone he'd been leaning on. Honestly, he had the right idea. She settled in next to him, immediately relieved with the weight off her legs, and basked in the relative quiet. Finally, she could catch her breath.

Looking over at Mateo, she saw him using the lull to re-examine his wand, carefully running his thumb along the edge of the instrument's new scar. Burnt leather curled away from itself, and charred wood flaked off at his touch, making Mateo scowl at it like he was trying to sear another hole into it with his eyes. His head didn't look much better—singed hair was matted with drying blood against his temple, and a darkening bruise bloomed from beneath it, stretching toward the corner of his eye and down across his cheek.

The fight had happened so fast—Naomi hadn't gotten a good look at what was happening with everyone else. She'd spent half of it lying down, the wind knocked out of her by a blast that had rung in her ears long after she'd gotten herself upright. She still wasn't exactly sure how Elena had ended up on the other end of the chamber, dangling over a pit of lava, but she did sit up in time to see the flash of light that put Mateo on the ground. It hadn't been the biggest concern at the time—he'd gotten back up right away, and the lava pit was a more immediate hazard—but considering the matching wounds on his head and his wand, it wasn't hard to piece together what had happened.

Looking again at where the chunk had been ripped from the drum, she shuddered. That could've been him.

"How's your head?" she asked, giving him a gentle poke in his side.

"Not too bad," he answered, though any relief it might have brought her turned into confusion as he went on. "The magic source doesn't seem to be damaged, and that's the important part. It just can't conduct magic properly right now. I won't say it's an easy fix, but it's not the worst I've seen, either, and I have all the supplies I need back home."

She glanced between him and the wand, which he was still squinting at in concentration. "Mateo!" she said, more forcefully, and he looked up, startled. "Your head," she repeated. "I'm asking about your head. The one on your shoulders?"

He reached up and brushed his fingers against the bruise, like he'd forgotten it was there. "Oh, right! That's fine too."

Something about the moment struck an oddly familiar chord. Naomi wasn't sure if it was the bruise by his eye, or his confusion at the question, or just the way the memory seemed to hit him at the same time, judging by the way his face abruptly brightened from bemused to delighted, but she was suddenly fourteen again, dragging him out of a shrub in the school courtyard. She burst into a full-bodied cackle that Mateo heartily joined in, laughing so hard he had to fold over, holding his stomach. The sound pulsed painfully in her skull and she drew in a lungful of the noxious volcanic air with every breath, but she couldn't bring herself to stop, as emotionally frayed as her exhaustion had left her.

Their friends watched them, bewildered, from over where Gabe and Isabel were adjusting Elena's new sling.

"Okay, I don't get it," Elena finally said.

"What I'm getting is that they both hit their heads a lot harder than we thought," Gabe said. He gave a small tug on the sling. "How's this feel?"

"It's great, Gabe. Go help them out."

Mateo couldn't seem to get any words out, still wheezing with laughter, so it fell to Naomi to explain. "It just reminded us of how we met," she said between laughs, wiping away a tear. "I guess you had to be there."

Elena perked up. "Oh, that's right! I always forget that you two knew each other before the rest of us met."

"Move apart a little," Gabe said as he approached. "I need some space to work." Naomi dutifully scooted aside, and he crouched down between them and balanced the first aid kit on a rock. With a quick look between their heads to assess severity, he turned toward Mateo and started prepping a fresh cloth for cleaning.

"Wait, so how did you guys meet?" Isabel asked in the pause.

Naomi hesitated. That day hadn't been one of her finer moments. "Well, we went to school together, so—"

"Naomi hit me in the head with an olaball."

Elena let out a scandalized gasp, raising a hand to cover her smile, and Gabe snorted, shaking his head.

"Yeah, sounds about right. Now try to hold still, Mateo."

"It was an accident," Naomi insisted, meeting Elena's look of amused judgment.

Mateo leaned forward to look at her around Gabe, his mouth curling up into a smug grin. "The first time."

Gabe hauled him back by his shoulder.

Elena laughed. "Naomi! You hit him twice?"

"It's—I—" Her voice squeaked out, and her face was burning. Leaning around Gabe, she jabbed a finger toward Mateo. "You swore you wouldn't tell!"

"Well, that was back when we were still in school, and you could actually get in trouble for it. It's not like Elena's going to kick you off the Council or any—aah, ah, ow!" Hissing, he recoiled as Gabe finally got the disinfectant to connect. "Gabe, that stings!"

"Then stop moving."

Elena propped her good arm against her hip. "I don't know, Naomi," she teased, "Hitting poor Mateo is a pretty serious offense."

"Ow, ow—hear that, Gabe? Hitting 'poor Mateo' is serious!"

"I'm not hitting you; I'm treating you. And it wouldn't hurt as much if you stopped squirming." Gabe dabbed the cloth against Mateo's head again. "You didn't see Isabel complaining."

"You were gentle with her!"

"Because she knew not to move!"

Naomi crossed her arms, still feeling put out. Two could play at the secret spilling game. "Yeah, well, Mateo's a nerd that likes fairytales!"

Isabel giggled. "I think we already knew that."

But Mateo gasped anyway, straightening up (and drawing another annoyed sound from Gabe) and pressing a hand to his chest in mock offense. "Well thanks, Naomi, now I'm going to be exiled!"

"Yep, off to Cordoba with you!" Elena said, waving a dismissive hand. "We can't have a Royal Wizard that likes magic!"

They all had a good laugh, with even Gabe sparing a second from his work to snicker at his friends. He sobered suddenly, though, as he parted more of Mateo's hair back from the wound, and he let out a low whistle. "You're lucky she didn't take your head off."

Mateo frowned. "Naomi doesn't throw that hard." And then he saw the unamused look on Gabe's face and blurted, "Ash! You meant Ash! I'm paying attention. I'll stop talking now."

He crossed his legs and pressed his lips together, staring at the ground ahead of him and finally waiting patiently for Gabe to finish dressing his wound and move on to Naomi.

Naomi dragged herself a few feet forward so he could reach the back of her head.

"So… are you gonna give us the details?" Elena asked, sitting down on the stone herself.

"There's not much to tell," Naomi said, tilting her head forward as Gabe began to gently prod around under her hair. "I was practicing olaball in the school courtyard, I didn't see him sitting there, and I kicked the ball into his face by mistake."

Elena smiled. "And it was fast friends after that?"

"Oh no, not even close. We got in a fight, and that's when I threw the olaball at him on purpose."

"I thought it was pretty rude in the moment," Mateo chimed in, "but it's kind of funny now."

"It was rude," Naomi replied, "but yeah, I'm glad we can actually look back on it and laugh."

From the corner of her eye, she could see him staring at her with a nostalgic smile on his face.

"What?" she prompted.

"Your hair was longer back then."

She blinked. She supposed it had been. She'd gotten it cut at the end of the school year—Avaloran summers were hot enough without hair plastered to the back of her neck—and had gone back to the bob of her early childhood. It had been so long since she'd had long hair that she'd forgotten what it felt like, and the strange realization occurred to her that Mateo was the only one of her friends who had ever seen her that way.

"I guess it was. Yours was shorter." She looked up, grinning. "And you were shorter, too."

"Please don't move," Gabe said, still exasperated from his ordeal with Mateo.

"I wasn't that short," Mateo scoffed.

"You were shorter than me!" Naomi glanced over at Elena, trying to keep her head steady. "It's so unfair—he must have sprouted half a foot in a year."

"Half a foot, huh?" Mateo stretched his legs out in front of him, wiggling the toes of his boots. "Pretty sure I still only have two of those."

Naomi and Isabel groaned, and Naomi felt Gabe's hands leave her head as he clapped one of them against his face. Elena, meanwhile, burst into a knee-slapping guffaw that Mateo was quick to echo.

"Two—two of them!" she managed between laughs.

"See what we have to deal with, Isa?" Naomi asked.

"See what I have to live with?" Isabel retorted.

"Ha! Okay, you win."

Gabe finally stood back up and rounded to her front.

"So what's the damage, Doctor Gabe?" Naomi asked. "Will I ever waltz again?"

He chuckled. "Your dancing career will probably be fine. Nothing broke skin, but there is a small lump back there. I'm mostly worried about the possibility of a concussion, but that's something a doctor will have to check to know for sure, so try to take it easy until we get back to the palace."

"Aye aye, Captain!" she said with a salute, and then accepted the hand that he extended to help her up.

"That goes for you, too, Mateo," he said more loudly as he helped Elena back up. Mateo gave a thumbs-up from where he'd flopped onto the ground while laughing, and Naomi grabbed his wrist to start pulling him to his feet.

"So how's your head?" he asked once he was upright.

"Well apparently, it might be concussed." It still throbbed with every motion, and all the raucous laughter hadn't helped, but humor had fought off the last dregs of mortal terror and worry. She was still tired, too, but the bone-deep weariness had lightened to something more manageable. "But I think it's gonna be fine."

At the coach, Elena had gotten back into the driver's seat and was already climbing back out, sheepishly admitting that she probably shouldn't drive. Gabe had packed up the first aid kit, with Isabel fretting at his elbow about whether he needed medical attention as well, and he was quietly reassuring her. Mateo gestured toward the carriage with a dramatic bow and an 'After you,' and laughing, Naomi vaulted up into it before turning back to help pull him inside as well. Gabe shot them a look, and to be fair, he had just told them to take it easy, but he didn't scold them, instead just telling Isabel that she had the job of making sure they didn't fall asleep on the way back. Everyone clambered back into their seats, and with that, they headed for home.

Delighted to report: my beta actually booed me for Mateo's two feet joke, which is how I know it's quality.

In his defense this chapter, the part of a drum you hit actually is called a drumhead, so he's not totally off the mark for assuming that's what Naomi meant. Also in his defense, head wounds do tend to hurt a lot due to just how many nerve endings there are around there and just how close they are to the brain.

Anyway, Sister of Invention is one of those episodes where every time I watch it I find myself thinking "oh you guys are so lucky this is a children's cartoon." Like man that fight could've ended badly. I obviously wasn't gonna do a Bad End in this fic though, so here's some vibes instead. For once we get through a chapter without any heavy emotional baggage! I'll leave it up to your discretion on whether or not this actually counts as a break for the amigos.