Welcome to Gaia! ::

Talon's arm went around Yeande almost immediately. He wasn't going to throw things. Yet. But it was some semblance of comfort, which he needed badly at the moment. He cringed when she mentioned a sex drive increase, not sure if he was comfortable with that...and then wasn't sure whether mention of a lengthy dry spell of activity warrented another cringe or not. For the moment, anyway, it was the furthest thing from HIS mind too.

It was what had STARTED all of this...

Karma nodded. There were a depressingly-large amount of things to look out for when you were pregnant. Dr. Kamiki had given them to her in a polite black-and-white little packet to take home and study and she'd become paranoid midway through the pregnancy every time her body did something slightly off-kilter.

"Mainly, just keep an eye out for bleeding, especially if its bright red. Also if you start to get high fevers, that's not a good sign....well, it never is, but still. And when you get further along, you'll want to pay attention if you haven't felt the baby move in a few hours. Any of that, and you should get to the doctor as soon as you can. I'll warn you right now that a lot of it will just be your nerves convincing you something's wrong, but its better to assume the worst sometimes."

She smiled faintly then "....for what its worth, anyway, congratulations you two..."

His brow furrowed as he looked to her with a ragged expression after she kissed him. "You're sorry?" he said miserably. "Hell, I'M sorry..." There were any number of things he could have done to prevent it...gotten another checkup, gone the safe route and used birth control anyway, maybe not have felt quite so amorous that one afternoon a few weeks ago after they'd finished watching a movie together...

His pride having momentarily fled, he didn't care that Karma was sitting there as he held Yeande closer and rested his head on top of hers.

"What in the blue ******** am I going to do?" Talon demanded to know, still sitting at the table despite the fact Yeande had left over two hours ago and fidgeting badly as though a colony of ants had crawled under his skin and set up habitat there. He'd not been able to sit still ever since Yeande had brought him the news. Not even long enough to eat or sleep. His mind...his entire world, even, was currently encompassed by one big red flashing neon word: BABY.

"I don't suppose if I told you that you were asking entirely the wrong person, you might rethink involving me..." Marvin intoned from across the table, looking incredibly weary of this topic...then again, he looked weary about any topic. It was simply how he was built.

"I'm not any kind of a father!" he continued, as though he'd not heard the silver-haired teen.

"I thought not..." the exodus sighed, folding his arms with an air of infinite, yet resigned, patience and resting his chin on them.

"I--I mean, I'm way too impulsive..."

"Yes." Marvin agreed.

"And I have a terrible temper..."

"There is that."

"And everything I touch turns to utter s**t..."

"This I have seen."

Talon shot a glare across the table at the teenager and narrowed his eyes. "You know, you're not helping. Feel free to stop me any time." he growled.

"Excuse me, if you were hoping to curry my sympathies, I really ought to tell you that I wasn't programmed with any." he paused a beat. "And besides, why stop you? Just when you were seeing things from a wholly-correct perspective?"

Talon's head met the tabletop with a thud as he made a reminder to himself never to discuss anything with Marvin again short of suicide if he ever needed that one last nudge over the edge. This was making him feel even worse. "Ironic, isn't it?" Marvin went on. "You spent millions of years evolving because you wanted so badly to be civilized that in doing so, you've entirely forgotten the very animal instincts that would have made this a non-issue for you. But what is civilized, anyway?" the gray eyes rolled a bit in their sockets in exasperation. "It just goes to show you that at the end of the day, all of it is utterly pointless. Everything." He took a breath and let it out in a long sigh. "God, I'm so depressed..."

"For this, Meka moved out..." Talon growled. "******** wonderful..." His tail made a rhythmic dull sound as it met the leg of the chair again and again.

"I could tell you more, but you won't like it." the teen offered.

"Then shut up." the ijiuo sneered. Marvin obediantly fell into a grudging silence as Talon lapsed into thought for the umpteenth time since yesterday. What was next, he wondered? He and Yeande couldn't just sit there and wait for the baby to come. Things needed to happen...he knew that much. The question was WHAT things? And how? They'd need...stuff. Lots of stuff. There would need to be clothing, bottles, a nursery, formula, toys, a crib, and then later a bed, more clothes, more food, a college fund, books, doctor visits, medicine....

His eyes crossed at the sheer vastness of it all and his head pounded as a miserable groan issued from his throat. This...was hell, he decided. If not hell, it was closer to it than he cared to be.

"If you like, I could calculate the probability of surviving the childbirth." Marvin offered.

"Look, the last thing I need right now is to be worried that Yeande might--"

"I meant, of course, of YOUR surviving the childbirth." the exodus clarified.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean??" Talon demanded to know, lifting his head to glare at Marvin. The gray eyes stared steadfastly and unwaveringly back at him. They both knew what he meant...as soon as those mood swings picked up in full, that's when his and Yeande's relationship was really going to be tested. He liked to think they would pull through just fine, but then, anyone in his situation would like to think as such. His head sagged back to the tabletop once more.

"Hey Marvin?" a female voice piped up with a sort of forced cheeriness to it. "Do me a favor and see if you can help Kendall a little with his homework? I was never good at math." Marvin heaved such a sigh in response, one would think she'd just asked him to move a mountain one grain at a time.

"That's all this massive brain is to you, then? A glorified calculator?"

"For the time being." Karma told him, patting the exodus's shoulder as she grabbed an apple out of the fruit dish as long a she was there.

"I suppose you'd like me to enjoy it too." Marvin snarked, rising from the table. "And explain it in a fun and educational manner that he's sure to remember as an enriching experience for the rest of his life."

"No, I'm not asking you to enjoy it. Just do it, please." she said, making a shooing motion with one hand. "You've poked at the monkey enough for one afternoon." Marvin was tempted for a moment to inform her that he had been poking at no such thing and that the "monkey" in question had been the one who'd cornered him and not allowed him to leave the kitchen because he wouldn't stop complaining about his situation. Never the less, he shuffled dolefully out of the kitchen, leaving the foxcoon and ijiuo alone. "Talon?" Karma asked, moving to sit down at the table with him. "How are you doing?"

"Ohhhh, beautiful. I feel great." he snarled, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "In fact, move the ******** coffee table, I think I'll do a cartwheel."

"You don't have to be that way..." she sighed. "You know I'll do whatever I can to help, right?" The response was a mutter she couldn't make out. "And you'd better start looking into things to help yourself too. I'll start bringing home job applications for you when I go out."

Another growl.

"Well, SORRY, but that's what happens when you have a baby." she sighed, rolling her eyes.

"I don't even have a last name, not to mention no social security card or birth certificate. How the hell am I supposed to find a job?"

"We'll get it taken care of." she assured him. "Gaia's a leniant place, I'm sure someone appearing in a fit of chaotic magic one night is not the strangest thing to ever happen here. Start ferreting around for a last name you can live with and we'll see about making it official." She gave him a calculating look. "This isn't the end of the world, Talon..."

"Feels like it." he muttered, still pissed out of his mind about the whole ordeal but finally starting to calm himself a bit after ranting and raving about it constantly since Yeande had gone.

"No, trust me, things could be MUCH worse. Like I said, you won't be doing this on your own, okay? In the meantime, I want you to work on calming yourself down. Yeande's going to be having a much worse time of this than you are and she's going to need you to be strong for her."

"And who's going to be strong for me?" he demanded to know, throwing his hands up in the air. Karma's eyes narrowed as she reached across the table and swatted him over the head.

"I am." she told him, taking a bite of her apple. "Just like always. So take another couple of days to freak out if you need them, but then I expect you to pull your head out of your tailpipe and start flying right. Lesser men than you have made this work before. In the meantime, you should start keeping a diary."

"A diary..." he parroted, annoyed. She nodded.

"Its something for you to take out your aggression on, and you'll look back on it after the baby's born and have all sorts of memories. I know you aren't too crazy about any of this now, but trust me...this is stuff that will be precious to you later."

He snorted in response and buried his head in his arms. He felt he'd thought about all of this quite enough for one day and was now opting to shut everybody out for awhile while he decided on his own how he was going to handle things. Karma opened her mouth to press the issue further but then decided against it. He'd come around eventually.

He kind of had no choice in the matter...

Yeande was pacing in the kitchen... NOT a very common occurance for the normally-composed woman. Now, however, she was walking back and forth, her fingers toying with a few strands of her hair as she tried to figure out the best way to break this to the fox demon she currently was co-habitating with. She had a feeling that he already knew... after all, he WAS there for the second test.

Still, she had the obligation to tell him officially.

She got her chance when he walked by with another load of clothes. Laundry seemed to be a daily chore when there were four people in the house. He said that doing it often kept him from getting buried by dirty clothes on the weekend. "Youko?" she called, leaning into the hall when he went by. When the silver-haired man paused to look at her, she cleared her throat and thumbed towards the kitchen. "Can I talk to you when you're done?"

Youko thought it odd that she would ask like that... normally she just tackled him wherever he happened to be. "Yeah," he answered, moving into Nozomi's former room to put the sheets on the crib. Granted, it wouldn't be used for a while, but there was no telling just how long an ijiuo pregnancy took. It was better to be safe than sorry.

When he emerged once more, he found her in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest as her hips braced against the counter.

"What did you want to talk about?" he asked, sliding into a seat and reaching for the glass of iced tea that she'd set out for him.

"I..." she began, sighing faintly. "I went to the clinic today," she said, taking the slip of paper from her pocket and sliding it across the table towards him. "The test I took here was right... we're going to have a baby."

Youko sighed, taking up the paper and reading it over a few times. WHY did he feel like he had when Karma had told him about her pregnancy?? This one wasn't his... it was someone else's.

But in the short amount of time since Yeande had been staying with them, he'd come to care fo her as if she were one of his daughters. This was like Raven or Omi coming up to him and telling him that they were going to have a baby. Still... he'd already known, hadn't he? He glanced towards the hall where he'd just recently put the sheets back on the crib.

"It'll be alright," he whispered, standing up and moving towards Yeande. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as she trembled. "I'll help you, you know that... and it's not like we don't have plenty of things for a baby around here, right?"

At that, Yeande relaxed, a faint smile of relief coming to her face. "Thank you," she whispered, letting her head rest against his shoulder as the fox comforted her. Now all that remained was for Talon to accept this...

"Another cherry win....what's with you and all of these cheapass cherries?" Talon snorted as Meka's fighter onscreen handed him his pixellated a** as an obnoxious "Flawless Victory!" message flashed.

"Not my fault you're playing like hell today." Meka smirked, leaning back on the couch to wait for the next round to begin.

"I'm not playing like hell, you're cheating." the ijiuo retorted petulantly. The second round began and Meka's player immediately pounced him, trapping him up against the wall and kicking him into oblivion. "See?? You're cheating!" Talon complained.

"That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been so slow on the draw. What's your problem? Usually you give me a run for my money on these things..."

"Flawless Victory!" the screen boasted again.

"Will you stop humiliating me?" Talon growled, his hands clenching on the controller as a new round started. "If you'd just...god dammit, Meka..." he cursed as the raccoon moved in for a third flawless kill. Finally, he'd had enough, and in a fit of rage, dropped the controller and seized the raccoon by the front of his shirt. "I am NOT your b***h!!"

For a moment, the two men were frozen that way, Meka sitting there stunned and Talon nose-to-nose with him with his face frozen in an expression of utter hatred.

"....you know what?" Meka said at length, reaching up to pry the ijiuo's fingers off of his shirt front. "If you're going to freak the ******** out like that, I think that's enough video games for one day." The angered expression wavered and then fell away entirely as Talon exhaled a sigh and released Meka, sinking back to the couch.

"Sorry..." he muttered. "I just....I've got a lot on my mind, that's all."

"You've always got a lot on your mind." Mekakushi replied offhandedly, his ringed tail giving a dismissive flick. "So what is it? Who's pissing you off today, or do I want to know?" he asked, getting up to turn off the playstation.

"Not really who, moreso a what." he corrected.

"Don't tell me I need to explain to you that the miller moths flying in through your window aren't doing it as a personal attack again...." Meka groaned. Talon bit his lip thoughtfully, really not sure he wanted to get into this with Meka. He'd not told him anything about Yeande's pregnancy when he'd arrived and had been happy, instead, to spend the raccoonshounen's visit playing video games.

"No, nothing like that."

"Then what?" Meka pressed, putting the game back in its case. "And don't say 'nothing', either. I -hate- it when you do that...you make it a point to let everybody around you know that something's amiss in your world and when they ask, you clam up and say--"

"Yeande's pregnant." Talon immediately wanted to kick his own a** for just blurting it out the way he had. There could have been any number of more graceful ways to say it, but no. ....oh well, at least Meka couldn't accuse him of mincing words.

There was an audible crack as Meka had attempted to press the CD back into its niche a little too hard and ended up hyperextending the hinge of the case, breaking one corner and looking reproachfully over his shoulder at the raven-haired man behind him.

"Funny." he grumbled, rolling his eyes as he bent over to retrieve the broken bit of plastic.

"I'm serious."

"You're shitting me..." his china blue eyes widened. "You have to be."

"I wish." Meka whipped his head over his shoulder to regard Talon in silence for a moment, studying his expression. There was no way anyone could fake that sort of soulless upset, he realized...the ijuo was telling the truth. "I--jesus, when did you--"

"A few days ago..." he replied, squirming and suddenly finding his left pantleg very interesting to stare at. "We don't know how it happened, but...but there it is." He made a helpless dismissing motion with one hand and let it slap back against his thigh.

"All right..." the raccoon seemed clearly flustered by the news, but was doing his best to take it in stride. "You know, don't take this the wrong way, but you're the last people in the world I'd peg for parents."

"That makes two of us." Talon sighed.

"So what are you doing about it?"

"Getting a job, I guess. I'm supposed to sit down with Karma tomorrow and decide on a last name so I can get registered and all of that."

"No, I mean what are you DOING about it?" Meka tried again, making Talon cast cluelessly irritated eyes on him.

"What CAN we do??" he demanded to know. "Have it and raise it are really our only options at this point!" Meka set his jaw and shook his head.

"That isn't what I mean and you know it."

"What DO you mean, then? Enlighten me." Talon said impatiently.

"About you and Yeande?" he tried, recieving only a quirked brow. "Together? For the baby?" Still nothing. "Dear god, you really haven't given it any thought at all, have you?" the raccoon sighed, seeming disgusted.

"Given what any thought?"

"Come on." Meka ordered, rising from the couch and grabbing Talon by the arm to drag him off with him. "We're going for a drive."

"Where?" Talon demanded to know, yanking his arm out of Meka's hold, but still following after him.

"You'll see. You'll like where we're going, its full of shinies." Meka replied in a somewhat-condescending manner that would have made Talon's hackles raise if he had any. "Maybe you'll even find one to bring home."