White box

Cupcake

Stephanie smiled and took hold of Purple's hand. Marcus would be fine. He had gotten through.

Purple's and her's smiles cracked, though, when Marcus started to get so well along with his brother that they started talking about those six easy ways to do in aether users.

Lauren then grabbed Marcus by the scruff of his neck and Marcus had to explain ways around these six ways to do them in.

All the while, the Emperor of Hades was laughing while eating pudding.

That not having gone through, Romuald and Marcus started discussing something else (not as murderous) and Stephanie noticed that the camera had popped up.

"We do need to show that all is good, right?" Purple asked with a smile.

"Is it on?" Stephanie asked.

Yet as soon as Purple nodded, Stephanie took away the camera, running over to those two.

"Stephanie--" Purple ran after her, but it wasn't like this was a live recording, so even if there were mess-ups there was no rule about sending it over.

"So, Elder brother, is all good now?" She asked.

Romuald looked stunned about being approached like that, but looking at the device, he figured what this was about. "You'd need to specify what you mean by that."

"Probably about our sibling quarrel and no war happening between Ahea and Hades," Marcus said.

"That is all good," Romuald replied. "We concluded a trade deal and realized that we had a lot of misunderstandings about each other because we had failed to spend time together."

Marcus nodded. "It's important to spend time together, even if no talking happens, you get a sense for the type of person you are around." Marcus smiled at Stephanie through the camera.

And Stephanie couldn't help but smile back. It was true that she could only accept him back when she realized who he was because there had been that time. Eating together, watching movies together, just being around, then seeing him interact with Bill, then all the other people.

"So, Marcus, what kind of person is your Brother?" She asked a sneaky question, because she felt a faint sense of superiority over having spent this time.

"Stephanie, why are you competing with Romuald?" Marcus asked, seeing through her.

"Isn't that because we've been discussing things that don't overlap with her area of expertise?" Romuald guessed. "I also felt frustrated about seeing you getting close with Father about those material experiments, so those pranks hurt."

"Sorry," Marcus said.

Romuald reached out to ruffle Marcus's hair--

Marcus was surprised, but not unpleasantly so.

Romuald was surprised at his own gesture-- "Is it a biological body thing to want to express things by physical touch?"

"Yep!" Marcus said with a smile. "It is." Then he took ahold of Romuald's hand.

Romuald looked a bit flustered.

Ah-- what was with this cute sibling relationship forming? Stephanie felt silly for trying to display her superiority over something that hadn't yet even formed.

Marcus reached out his other hand towards her and Stephenie felt the camera leave her hands.

"Go swim together or something," Purple said.

And as soon as Stephanie took Marcus's hand, their location changed to Roman baths where they all fell into (in swimming suits).

Romuald freaked out a bit before he realized he could stand--