a short drabble ft. ryoali and alice being a loving mother

Nakiri Alice and Kurokiba Ryo were not the type of people to sit in a boardroom listening to the poor Elite Ten brats give presentations they'd thrown together at 3 in the morning on topics they seriously had no interest in. They knew from personal experience that the kids would much rather cook all day, to hell with paperwork and all the other shit the NTG board of directors was hellbent on extracting from them.

But when their precious only son called at four in the morning sounding like he was 593% in the promised land, they decided to dignify the next day's meeting with their gracious presence. What the hell else were they in Tokyo for, anyhow?

The meeting began at 7:30 AM sharp.

First seat Arato-Hayama Hikari had booted the sleep-deprived Auden to NTG hq to give the midyear budget report for the aesthetic quality of his voice and also because he was the only one who had any vestige of a clue what was actually on the thing. Despite reaching five feet and eleven inches into the atmosphere, he was so slumped over with fatigue that he might as well have been a lump of pudding on the floor. The dark circles under his incongruous ruby eyes were as prominent as his dad's.

"Ryo-kun," Alice whispered, "Isn't the eighth seat head of finance?"

Ryo nodded. "Yeah. Seat seven is political diplomacy."

"Then what the hell is our son doing giving budget reports?"

"Eizan's kid messed up the whole system by becoming the assistant financial director."
"Then shouldn't he be giving the presentation?"

"Probably."

During a brief interlude in which Auden invited the board members to ask him questions about what he'd presented so far, he pulled out a red cloth with flame designs from his pocket.

"Oh, fuck," Ryo said in a low voice. "That's my bandana."

"Should we get the fire extinguisher?" Alice replied with a smirk. "Or let him burn down the building? It really would speed this up."

Drily, Ryo said, "I wish I could say I didn't mind, but there's going to be associated paperwork, so let's intervene when necessary."

Auden wrapped the bandana around his head and tied it back, and his parents took a sharp breath.

Imagine their surprise when the only effect of this was Auden seemed a little less tired.

"You're joking, right?" Ryo said, as his son began presenting like he'd actually gotten sleep the previous night. "That's it?"

Alice frowned. "He was so out of it that the bandana only brought him back to normal function? That's not a good sign."

"Let's take him to Helsinki."

"Helsinki?"

"Yukihira's there for the next week with his kid."

"No, Erina said Kaede's in Osaka with Uncle Azami. Yukihira's in Gangwon-do."

"Doesn't he live in Dongdaemun?"

"He's buying a surprise vacation home for Erina."

"Don't say it—" Ryo started, but she was already on a roll.

"Let's one-up them and buy Zermatt!"

Ryo's eyes opened fractionally wider. "You mean the whole city?"

Alice shrugged. "Why the hell not?"

"City privatization is probably illegal, first of all."

"Says the person who bought the entire Toyosu fish market when we were third years. You tried to privatize the entire country."

"I was dumb back then," Ryo said flippantly. "Now let's grab our kid and go to Zermatt."

Alice's face brightened. "So we're buying Switzerland?"

"No," Ryo replied with a warning tone. "But we're buying the top two floors of Fleurs de Zermatt and spending summers there from now on. Is that a deal?"

"Yes! I love you, Ryo-kun! Now why the hell are we still here?" Alice stood up, rolling chair skidding backwards, and rushed to the front of the boardroom. "All proposals are accepted, yes, right? No questions? Hayama? I'll send you the file later. Eizan? Oh, shut up. Who cares? You're the finance guy. Do whatever you want. Asahi? I think your Noir people already figured it out. This meeting is adjourned! Ryo-kun, come on!"

With a faux apologetic glance at NTG's bewildered board, the Kurokiba-Nakiri family ran out of the building and didn't stop until they were in Ryo's chopper.

"Dad, I have work," Auden sighed, only when they were nine thousand feet in the air. "Please let me down."

"Oh, hell no," Ryo called back from the cockpit. "We are going on vacation right now."

Auden did his best to hide his grin. "Dad… the senpais are going to kill me."

"I'll throw them into my centrifuge before they do," Alice reassured him.

It would be ten days until Auden breezed back into Legislation and waved off his irate fellow Elite Ten members… because they'd all had to do their own work for the first time that semester.