Project: Titans -- Phase 2

Chapter 2

"Girls...it's time to wake up~" I whisper-sang softly, cracking open the doorknob to their bedroom, which was formerly Marnie's. She'd moved out a few years after the girls had been born and now lived in an apartment with her long-term boyfriend, Hop, who happened to be Sonia's right-hand man and Leon's younger brother.

The three were curled up in their respective beds—Larkspur spread out like an octopus with an arm and leg thrown out from under her blankets and snoring, Wisteria curled into a ball like a Meowth and Iris flat on her back like a board. I'd seen the sight every day for the past ten years, but I doubted I'd ever get over the marvel of human beings that had once been part of me existing in reality. Motherhood really did change people, I had to begrudgingly admit.

"Rise and shine, ladies!!!!" Meowsie yelled from her perch on my shoulder, jumping and slamming the light on in midair, and all three groaned in unison. "Turn 'em off!" Larkspur wailed, cocooning herself in her blankets and shoving her pillow on her head. I laughed at her antics. "It's sooooo briiiiiight!"

"Five more minutes?" Iris mumbled, rolling over and squinting. "Pretty pretty please, wi' an Alcremie on top?"
"That's what you girls said last time, and you were late to school," I told her, before unrolling Larkspur from her blanket burrito. "The boss'll let you have it if she's late to work again."

"A'right, a'right, we're gettin' up," she groaned, trudging from her bedroom into the bathroom across the way. Slowly but surely, all three made their way from their room to get dressed, and I walked back up the stairs to help make breakfast, Meowsie jumping up to join me.

The apartment had changed significantly over the years I'd been here. Piers was working on a new song at the new dining room table, the couch had been replaced and currently housed a pile of Zigzagoons and Salazzle, and Toxie was snoozing next to Piers' Toxtricity and their little Toxel. With the renewed source of income in Spikemuth, people could afford better housing, which accounted for the new furniture and the separate space for the girls, not accounting for a certainly unplanned house-flipping.

Years ago, Meowsie accidentally found an abandoned, sealed-off apartment beneath the floor in Marnie's old room during a heated match of Who-Can-Jump-And-Touch-The-Ceiling with her (which Piers had explicitly forbidden doing ever again after the incident), and we now had a downstairs space. After repairing the extensive damage and adding a particularly spicy Linoone to the flock, Marnie had taken the space as a bigger room until she moved out, and now it was for the girls. Her old room was now Salamence's.

I smiled, watching my dearest compatriot (next to Meowsie) rumble in sleep, snores deep enough to make the room tremble. I walked out to see Piers, still bleary-eyed from pulling late nights but awake through sheer determination and a healthy dose of coffee. Meowsie hopped off my shoulder immediately to start grabbing lunches and packing notecards from last night's study session back into backpacks. He smiled as I walked in, only turning when I walked behind his seat at the table to get to the kitchen.

"Hey, love," he greeted me as I kissed him good morning. "Sleep well?"
"Well enough with Toxel crying at 2:15 in the morning," I smiled, and he chuckled.
"Definitely feels like deja-vu, don't it?" he asked.
"Absolutely," I smiled, kissing him one more time before walking into the kitchen to start breakfast.

Dragalge, evolved from Skrelp, poked his head out of the kiddie pool lying in the kitchen to see what I was doing. He was much bigger now; almost five times his former size with brown, kelp-like appendages and a purple underbelly. He was almost too big to keep inside the house, but he hated to be away from people for too long. As it was, I was considering asking Nessa about a housing tank the next time she battled Marnie.

"Hello, Dragalge," I smiled, and he nuzzled the hand I offered. "Did you sleep well?" His snout wrinkled; I laughed. Since he slept out here, he had a first-row seat for listening to the crying baby. "I guess not, then. Can you put out the stove when the eggs are done?" A small splash confirmed, and I walked out of the kitchen to the other mother in the house.