Commander's Rounds

Gaiden Entry 76.5

Melissa Cartwright blinked as she woke up. She knew she'd heard the sound of someone opening and closing the door to her room, and she checked her clock. It was the right time, but no one (meaning her) had set the alarm. She didn't quite know who to thank for waking her up until she rolled over. Standing there in her blue pajamas was Lena, the little version of Helena, who was looking at her with her wide, purple eyes. Melissa smiled. "Hey there... Thanks for stopping by."

"Mm! Auntie Lulu said that I should come by if you weren't up yet by now, so..."

"Well, you did a good job." She reached out, and rubbed the top of Lena's head, causing the girl to giggle and smile.

"H-Hey..." Lena responded. "J-just don't do that right after the others do my hair..."

"Sure thing, I'll be out in a moment." Lena ran off, and Melissa got up to clean herself up. She threw off her covers, showing her own set of blue pajamas- She found out where Helena had gotten hers and so got some for herself. The next stop was the shower, and while there were a few bathrooms, they were all shared. As soon as she stepped into the one attached to her room, St. Louis, still in her relatively minimal bedclothes, stepped in through the opposite door.

"Oh!" St. Louis began. Though the two of them didn't live in the same room, they did live in adjoining rooms that shared the same bathroom. St. Louis smiled. "...Looks like we had the same idea at the same time."

Melissa gave a nod. "...Yeah, I guess so."

St. Louis looked over at the shower, and then back to Melissa. "You know, if you're in a hurry, there is room for two in there. Nothing to worry about since it's just us girls, right?"

"R-Right." She looked over at the shower, and back to St. Louis. "Yeah, I think that'll work out."

Melissa was really at the following level of comfort with St. Louis- she wouldn't say no to taking a shower with her, but she still reserved the right to blush while doing it. Still, St. Louis was a considerate partner and didn't do or say anything strange, she just hummed pleasantly as they both got clean.

With that over and done with, she changed into her work clothes. She didn't need to head over there immediately, though, so there was still time for breakfast, and she started to smell it through the door of her room. And given that she was living with six sisters, their alternate universe sister, and little Lena, it took a few members of the family to get that sort of thing done in good time for everyone. It was usually handled by Honolulu, Helena (or St. Louis), and Helena-Meta, and the elder Brooklyns used that time to get their things together for the day.

Brooklyn needed her own papers, of which there were many- she did all the research on how the commander should be talking to the various founding nations.

Boise needed to set up her own equipment, such as her mask, her tank, and everything associated with all of the above. Underwater was her happy place in case she got too stressed by anywhere else on the port that wasn't her sisters.

Phoenix would basically volunteer for every exercise, even ones that hadn't planned to include her, so she was doing her warm-up stretches.

There were some days where cooking switched off just to give those younger three a break.

Today was also one of the days of the week that Helena took Lena over to the classes that Langley had started teaching the little ships, seeing as they didn't have the same ingrained knowledge of the world at large that their "older" selves did, which is what Melissa had managed to gather so far.

Breakfast was never something she could call lavish, but it was certainly something for those who lived an active lifestyle like the ships in port. She had actually come to appreciate the smell of eggs and whatever else was being cooked up beside them, because a big breakfast kept her from being tempted by less savory snacks throughout the day- Even though she was sure she was eating bigger meals two out of three times in the day, it hadn't impacted her weight because she hadn't been tempted by other things in-between.