"So," I said airily, as if I had no care in this world. "Why were you late, Rosa?"

Sitting at the table outside with our plates piled with steaming hot meat on it, Rosa blew on her bangs and swept her hair to the side. "I wasn't late."

My fork paused mid-air as I raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh really?"

She gave me a weird look. "Being late would imply that we had promised beforehand on a specific time and date. I said I'd be here before dinner, but I never specified when."

I sighed, setting down my fork, then turned to the other side of the table with a flourish. "Roly Poly of the Mystic Arts, what is your judgment?"

Roly and Poly peered at Rosa seriously as they munched on their carrots. (I'd told them they would need to finish at least half of their veggies before they could get more meat from Cook. They were rushing through them as quickly as possible.) Once they swallowed, they solemnly shook their heads. "No good," announced Roly. "She's late."

"Late. It's no good," Poly agreed, then reached out with her fork. "Confisfate two meat."

"Hey!"

"That's right, one for me and one for you," Roly nodded. She reached out with her fork. "Meat confisfated!"

"Confiscate," I corrected, "but they're right." I banged the back of my fork onto the table three times. "As punishment for her tardiness and failure to acknowledge it," I announced, "I hereby declare that Rosa's meat shall be confiscated three more times!" 

Rosa gasped. "You're taking three more?"

Scraping off three more pieces of Rosa's meat onto my plate as Roly and Poly happily watched, chewing, I said snippily, "Of course I am! We stan fairness in this house." Turning to the little ones, I distributed the newly acquired pieces onto Ruth, Ryan, and Rebecca's plates with a smile. "Here, you guys. More meat!"

"More meat! More meat!" Becca chanted, cramming the newest piece of meat into her mouth. She chewed with a look of bliss on her face. "Mo me! Mo me!"

 Ryan coughed¹corona?! and glared at Becca. "Don't talk with your mouth open."

"Don talk wiff yo mouf open," Becca mimicked in a high tone. The twins burst into giggles.

Ryan turned red, and I reached over to cuff Becca lightly on her head. "Leave Ryan alone. He's doing the best he can."

"Yeah," Ruth piped up, swallowing. "He's in puberty."

Mother Lily, who had been quietly enjoying the feast at the other end of the table, choked.

The twins were now downright chortling (did they even know what that meant?), their shoulders jumping up and down, while Mother Lily doubled over coughing²coRONA?!?!, reaching for a glass of water. Mom, right next to her (and out of the room for once! This was such a good occasion for all of us), patted her on the back a few times.

"What? What?"

I smoothed back Ruth's hair and smiled down at her. "It's nothing. Puberty is nothing to be embarrassed about, you know. What is embarrassing is if" (I raised my voice here) "you're late and you refuse to acknowledge it."

"Fine!" Rosa huffed. "I was late because I was planning for the prevention of a war, thank you very much!"

("Why's she thanking us," whispered Becca to Ryan, to which Ryan shrugged as regally as he could and replied, "Because we made dinner, probably.")

Meanwhile, I frowned. "Planning to prevent a war? What are you, the military?"

She tossed her head. "No. Just the heroine."

The age-old conversation. I sighed and returned to the meat. You know what? This was super good meat. And I was sort of done with this conversation. I was not going to ruin my good meat with a less-than-good conversation.

I looked around us now. We were out in the back by the kitchen door, enjoying our fancy meat dinner (beef tenderloins, was it possible? Just that was bringing tears to my eyes..!) while Cook stood with his arms crossed at the side, glaring at the grill. We'd invited Cook to eat with us, but when he had come, he had decided that he would only grill the meat for us and let us have the whole thing. 

I may have also seen him wiping a stray tear away, but that could've been my imagination.

Mom was enjoying her plate of vegetables and meat, laughing at something Mother Lily was saying. While I couldn't hear them over the general chaos that was this side of the table, they seemed to be having fun. The little ones, of course, were munching on the meat with a feverish enthusiasm, and I couldn't help but want to cry.

How long had it been since we'd had such a good meal? With such good meat? And enough for us to pile onto our plates like this? With Rosa's new allowance, would we really have no more lettuce dinners, no more rubbery, fatty strings of meat for lunch? That sounded like a dream, and we were about to live it.

I sniffed as I took another heavenly bite of meat with mashed potatoes. Beautiful.

"Filian."

"Hmm?" I turned to Rosa, then paused.

The quiet seriousness in her face as she put her meat into some lettuce made me stop. "Are you working today?" she asked, her voice pensive.

"Yeah. I have night shift. Why?"

"I need to tell you something." An expression of unease flitted across her face, but it passed so quickly I wasn't entirely sure.

I blinked at her, leaning in closer and lowering my voice. "Why? Is something wrong?"

She hesitated as she folded her lettuce over her meat. It was a strange way to eat meat, but she had always insisted that meat should be matched with lettuce, and ate it like this so much that I'd gotten kind of used to it. I watched her do so silently, waiting for her response. She then turned to me, and I inhaled at the solid determination glittering in her golden eyes. The sudden somber mood reminded me of the time I'd been in the Academy cafeteria, with Lady Mildred, when the same kind of determination had lit sparks in the air.

"I'll tell you later today. I'll come by maybe some time before your shift ends. I should be done planning by then."

---

Turnabout is fair play, I thought morosely, as I crouched on the floor picking up money. Yes, exactly as Rosa and I had made the loan sharks do just two days ago.

"Pick it up!" hooted Simon, his gangly arms crossed over his chest. "Pick it up, you dog!"

"I'm not a dog, you copycats," I mumbled, but they didn't hear me over their own hoots. Seriously, who hooted like that?

Well, Gair wasn't hooting. He was chortling. Chortling! And he was probably doing the best he could, too-- his face was red from the effort. Yeah, bro. You needed to practice the evil cackle to get it just right. It didn't come naturally to just anyone-- you had to be Rosa, or you had to practice it, like I had. It was a skill you needed to acquire.

"Why are you even trying so hard?" I complained, but I did it super small because, well, it probably wasn't a good idea to anger them while they were in the middle of a revenge. 

It was currently five minutes from closing, and the loan shark pair whom we had humiliated just the other day had come in order to get their revenge. On our revenge.³Revenge-ception And this was grossly unfair, because you know what? Rosa wasn't here.

She should be getting the same treatment too! Why were they targeting me for?

Gair started hacking his lungs out⁴CORONNAAAAA!??!?!?!?!?!?, and I hid a knowing smirk. Yeah, Gair, cough it out. You're not villain material anyway.

Ten minutes before closing, the two of them had come in wearing flimsy glasses with their elbows sticking out in weird angles. "Give me all your beer!" they'd barked.

"Sorry?" I'd asked, my customer service smile slipping off for a second. "Did you just ask for all our beer?" We had, like, ten barrels of it in the back.

"Yeah. How much is it?!"

I blinked. "Uhh. I'll just charge you for ten drinks, because I doubt you really want all our beer--"

"The price!"

And then they'd begun throwing fistfuls of Vels and Wins on the air. For me to pick up, of course, because that was obviously what their intention was. 

Again, not fair, because (1) I hadn't thrown Wins at them, actual coins, and (2) Rosa was absent from this revenge.

And now, what would you know, one was dying from trying to laugh too much and the other was turning into an owl. And I just couldn't pick up that one coin in the corner because my fingernails were too short.

You know what's worse? That Rosa was late, again, to my own expense. "For someone so in love with numbers, you just love to be late, don't you," I bit out quietly, to myself. Giving up on the coin, I flicked it away and moved to collect the other bills. "You're disgusting," I told the coin, then pictured Rosa in my mind. "And you're an imbecile."

At that exact moment, the doors of the restaurant swung open so quickly and so strongly that they banged against the walls. "Hey!" yelled a familiar voice. "What are you doing!"

I popped my head up over the counter. "Rosa!"

A drunk regular that was nearest to the door began to cry, sniffling into his napkin, probably because of the loud noise? I wasn't sure. Simon and Gair took steps back, holding their hands up to shield themselves from the light.

What light, you ask? The light that was behind Rosa, of course, casting a shadow on her silhouette. I peered behind her carefully-- was that her footman holding a lamp behind her? Huh, that was actually pretty smart.

Rosa sauntered right in. She glared at the two, letting the doors (and the light) swing close behind her. "What do you think you're doing," she hissed, a menacing aura radiating off her tense figure.

Gair whimpered, then clapped a hand over his hand.

She sighed, irritation evident in her furrowed brow, and she folded her arms. "To think I walk in five minutes before closing to this very bar, just to face this abomination."

My heart welled up with gratefulness. I took it back. Rosa was not an imbecile, she was my savior.

"Simon! Gair!" she barked, her chin held up high. "You two better listen to me!"

"You go, Rosa," I cheered quietly. "You tell them what's up."

"That's not how you cackle! You have to use your diaphragm, not your throat!"

"That's right! That's not how you--" I stopped. Did she, did she just say diaphragm?

Rosa tossed her hair back, and glared at the two of them. "Cackle like that for one more hour and you're as good as done in this area. Do I make myself clear?"

"I take it back!" I shouted, then leapt clear over the counter and threw the bills at her face. "I take back my take back, you imbecile!"

"Filly! Just the person I was looking for." Rosa smiled at me. "But not now. Go back to hiding behind the counter, please."

"I was not hiding behind the counter, I was--"

"I need to teach them a lesson."

And so she did, for the next hour and a half, complete with a graph apparently depicting the relationship between the amount of air squeezing through your lungs on each enunciated syllable and the approximate usage of your diaphragm, and which levels are most ideal for the best villainous cackles.

---

A/N: I don't even know what happened in this chapter. Haha enjoy! :D