Jaid jerked the microwave door open with a second left on the timer. A grin etched across her face, pleased with herself since she’d caught it before the chime, meaning her stealthy caper could continue unnoticed, not that she was sure that there was anyone else around in the general’s mansion.

Really, nothing she was doing could be considered wrong but the woman still tried to hold onto some delusion that the rest of the Fiends For Hire didn’t see her as the ravenous glutton that she was. Since a clone had just visited the old couple’s restaurant in the headquarters building less than an hour ago for lunch, she’d feel too much shame if she showed her face there again before dinner time.

But the woman was starving, and there was no way she could wait that long, especially with all her clones out and about completing missions. Phon had been running her ragged lately, even going so far as to send the knight back to the Central Peace to dig through the file rooms for evidence since she was the most accustomed and could use several hands at once.

Fortunately, there was usually a treasure trove of leftovers in the mansion's refrigerator. Mallea had a bad habit of overpreparing portions, because if someone wanted more of what she’d prepared, she’d feel she’d neglected her duty as a servant and had failed to anticipate everyone’s needs. And that day there was plenty for Jaid to feast upon.

The knight had given into her indulgence, stacking her plate high to the point that she wasn’t even sure it would heat through properly. Before she scamped off with her hefty meal, Jaid checked to make sure everything was warm enough. Now all she had to do was sneak over to the elevator and bolt to her room where she could pig out in privacy.

But even that seemed too far away now, and her stomach started to audibly rumble, so she took a couple bites as she tiptoed around to temporarily quell the beast. When she was waiting for the elevator, though, something caught her attention in the corner of her eyes. First, it was the slightly scary notion that she wasn’t alone in the mansion, but at least they weren’t looking in her direction and seemed to have no notion that she was even there.

What were they doing, though? It wasn’t where someone would normally stand, or squat, in this case, so the knight couldn’t help herself from checking things out. As she got closer, it didn’t make the answer any clearer, so when she was just a few feet away and the other two hadn’t noticed her, the woman’s curiosity overtook her shame and she had to inquire as to why the two were creeping by the window.

“So what’s going on here?” The Paladin tried to not sound two accusatory, not wanting to draw the onus of attention onto herself.

“Ah, Jaid!” Kada whirled around, clearly surprised, though not as if she felt she’d been caught doing something scandalous, but rather confused why the knight wasn’t acting like they were. “Get down here!” The Mermaid grabbed the woman’s wrist and pulled her down to join her and Xard, so that only their eyes were poking above the windowsill.

It had nearly caused Jaid’s mountain of a meal to slip out of her hands, but she fortunately managed to save it without a single crumb disturbed. “What are we looking at?” the knight asked as she threw another nibble into her mouth, unable to wait any longer since it seemed her departure would be further delayed.

“Crucion is confessing to Itsy,” Xard put it bluntly as Jaid’s eyes finally found the mentioned pair in the garden behind the mansion. The two prospective love-birds were standing together in the ornate gazebo that Drim had built with hand-grown wood and adorned with flowers.

That spurned a bit of knowledge to the front of Jaid’s mind, something she’d been wilfully ignoring since she felt it had nothing to do with her. “Tomorrow is Confession Day, though, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” The Mermaid acknowledged and then added a bit more backstory. “But he’s doing it today so that they can spend all day together tomorrow, rather than scramble to think of plans like all the other new couples on the day of.”

“Ah makes sense,” The Paladin nodded along, but another potentially concerning question came to her mind. “Wait, how old is Crucion again?”

“20,” the redhead put her mind at ease with a quick answer. “It still feels very recent when he joined us as a teen.”

“Okay, that’s good,” any issues Jaid had were quashed. “Still seems a bit odd, though. This kind of flowery environment doesn’t really feel like Itsy’s thing.”

“No no, it’s a good choice,” Kada defended it. “Crucion wants her to understand that he sees her as a girl, not just a, uhh…”

“Towering giant like everyone else does?” Xard attempted to finish the thought for her.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Kada shrugged. “I still think the mountain we built would have been a better option. Since we, well mostly I, worked so hard to make it gorgeous. But apparently Itsy doesn’t really like hiking, though, so Crucion rejected the idea.”

“Mountain?” the knight was lost again.

“You see that mountain just there to the north?” the blue-haired peeper pointed her finger, making sure not to raise her hand too high into the realm of visibility. “That didn’t originally exist, or rather just not in that spot. It used to be right to the west, but the very first training Xard and I were assigned when we got here was to move it. Entirely by hand too! No powers, just muscles. It took forever and we ached so much every day.”

“Honestly, I miss that mountain…” Xard’s eyes went distant, longing for days gone by. “I vastly prefer training with a goal. You could see our progress and how much we were getting done. It’s just not the same with machines, infinite exercise with nothing to show for it. Well, besides muscles, I guess, but those take a while.” The man’s eyes wandered to his arm that was slowly creeping back to where it had been before the accident.

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“Yeah, I’d never want to do it again,” Kada was the complete opposite. “But it had its fun bits, and once we got done moving it, I put in some extra effort to melt and reform it so it looked like a proper mountain. Before it just looked like some really weird stairs with stone slabs piled on top of each other. Then after that I did a bunch of landscaping to really make it shine. Now I want to go for a hike.”

“Oh, guess Itsy accepted,” The Artillery pointed out, cutting into their mountain talk. “Crucion looks like he’s going to get crushed by that hug.”

“Ohp, they’re kissing now too,” the knight mentioned, wondering if she should be averting her eyes from the intimate moment.

“Damn, that’s a deep kiss too,” Kada added some colorful commentary. “Those two need to get a room!” she hissed ironically, as if they weren’t the ones who were intruding on the situation. “But at the same time…” the woman began to lament longingly. “Don’t you just kind of wish you could have a bit of that too?”

There was a bit of a strong silence as the faces of the trio crinkled. Finally, the redhead stated the hard truth. “Well, I doubt that would happen for any of us anytime soon.”

“Man, it’s just not fair!” The Mermaid went into a full rant. “Even if any of us wanted to make a move on Drim, it just feels impossible. The man himself is a bit of a blockhead, sure, but it’s impossible to even try with his sister always somewhere nearby. And it’s only gotten worse. She could be watching from anywhere in the world, and you just know Phon constantly has an eye on her brother.”

“If you try to get too close for even just a hug, or if you wanted to confess, or even just playfully flirt, she’s always there, always watching, judging, making it awkward and killing any mood and drive. She’s way too obsessive and needs to learn to let go. Drim’s his own man now and he can make his own choices.”

“Sure, go ahead and say that to her face,” Xard grew a cheeky smirk as he offered the impractical solution. “I think we need to face facts that it’s just not something that can happen right now. It’s probably for the best anyways, since if Drim did start dating someone, it might cause some turmoil in the group.”

“No, I refuse to accept that!” Kada’s voice raised a little high for someone who was supposed to be in hiding. “We’re all adults here too. And we’re all respectful and understanding of each other's feelings. At the very least we owe it to ourselves to all try. Otherwise we’ll regret it forever.”

“Tomorrow is Confession Day, yeah? So there’s no better time to do this! We’ll figure out some excuse to get Phon out of here with something so distracting that even if she finds out what’s going on, she can’t just jump back here and abandon it. Then, three of us will ambush Drim and lay out our feelings. Given the day and our seriousness, he won’t be able to brush it off as a joke and have to accept that we’re being genuine. Then whatever happens next, happens. Sound fair?”

“Wait, why am I included in this?” Jaid deflected by acting offended.

“You know why.” Kada stated as fact, locking eyes with the woman.

“Yeah…” the knight immediately folded. “I know why.”

“I can’t say I’m against it,” Xard was surprisingly on board. “It does put Drim in an awkward position, which is less than optimal and I feel for him in that situation. But at the same time, while I can’t say he’s been stringing us along, it does feel like he’s been willfully ignoring the issue for too long.”

“Not to be too opposed, but is now really the right time for this?” Jaid had to bring up the issue. “There’s so much going on, and it all seems like it’s going to come to a head very soon. Wouldn’t it be best to wait until afterwards when things slow down?”

“And that line of thinking is why you’ve gotten nowhere, Jaid,” The Mermaid didn’t even remotely hold back. “There will always be a reason not to, and if you really think about it, now is the best chance we’ll ever get. Drim really has nothing going on right now and would likely be more open to the idea. After all, the dude was so bored and lonely that he went and became a teacher for a month.”

“It’s all kind of our faults, honestly,” Kada openly admitted. “We were neglectful as his friends and coworkers, which I hope we’re all working to remedy in our own ways. But now’s the best time to offer some next-level companionship! And it won’t get better down the line. Do you really think that it will become easier to try and inject yourself into his life when he’s president of the entire mawhging planet?!”

“I agree that Drim would certainly be more receptive now,” Xard couldn’t argue. “But the bigger problem is Phon. How exactly do you propose distracting her to such a point?”

“Erm, I’m still working on that part,” The Mermaid confessed. “Oh, do there happen to be any major cooking competitions tomorrow? If it’s prestigious enough, that’d catch her attention.”

“Probably only ones that are Confession Day themed,” The Paladin speculated. “If anything, I doubt it’s the best idea to point Phon in the direction of anything pertaining to it. I doubt the holiday is really on her radar otherwise, so if it becomes a focal point, she’ll be even more attentive. That, or she’d try to drag Drim along with her.”

“Yeah, I could see that backfiring,” the redhead agreed. “It’d need to be something that Phon would want to be alone for or keep secret, kind of like when you failed to keep the cult hidden, Kada. Any ideas along those lines?”

“Hrrm…” the blue-haired woman pondered deeply for a minute, straining herself from thinking so hard. “Nah, I got nothing. Damn, maybe this isn’t the best plan after all. Oh well, we’ll try again next year.” She gave up so easily.

“Well you don’t you let me take care of it,” a new voice entered the fray. The three voyeurs whirled around to find themselves the subject of someone else’s spotlight.

“C-Chorus, what are you doing here?!” Kada immediately went on the defensive, as if they were someone they had to justify their actions to.

“The same thing you all are, of course,” the producer didn’t even try to hide their scandalous schemes. “I was witnessing pure love and documenting it for time immemorial. But then I saw some peeping eyes and wanted to get a close up of their reactions. Yet even I couldn’t have anticipated this juicy conversation I walked into. If I reported your heretical actions now, well I’m sure that woman would grant me anything I wanted. Though I’d love to just record the fallout.”

“But now I have a more entertaining idea. Leave Phon to me. I have just the thing I’ve been saving to make her scurry away and not look back. But in exchange, you’ll do things my way. It may be a bit more performative than you’d wish for during an intimate, vulnerable moment, though it sounds like you’ve already abandoned the usual rhetoric. And I’ll make sure that boy will hear you out, that your love won’t go ignored.”

“Uhh, I dunno…” Kada was rightfully wary, knowing what it meant to go along with Chorus’ machinations.

““Deal”” The other two sprung forward to shake The Quick Changer’s waiting hands, not sharing the same reservations.

“Wonderful, wonderful!” the devilish smirk that appeared on Chorus’ face was one that would surely haunt them later. “We’ll meet in the throne room tomorrow morning. Spend today working on what you want to say, and more importantly, how you think you can convince Drim to pick you. Come ready to openly bear your hearts!”