Cloe took each step with high energy, happy to finally get a move on. For what had to be a record amount of time, Cloe was actually tuned in to what her partner was saying. Despite trying her best to listen however, she did not find the subject of his rambling to be all that interesting. By the time they reached the shop's entrance, she was starting to wonder if she should have just spent the day studying instead.

"Oh wow, that's crazy," Cloe replied in the most monotone voice imaginable as Lucas came to a stop. Looking up and down the suspicious door, she raised an eyebrow. Hearing his offer to stay outside, she was very tempted to take that so she could make a run for it. Another five minutes of him talking about dust may just have been enough to kill her, assuming someone in this creepy place didn't get her first. Cloe had to remind herself that she was the one that said teammates were supposed to hang out... 'God dammit Cloe, this is on you.'

"No yeah, totally. I'm in," the faunus answered with slightly more enthusiasm, giving him a metal thumbs-up and a cheery smile. "... But only if you let me pay for it!"

Somewhere past the thirty-six hour mark was the sweet-spot of sleep deprivation. Her thought pattern would be scattered enough that any memories that bothered to resurface would just drift past like a fading dream; but she still retained enough lucidity to stay focused on the task in front of her. It got pretty hard to focus, and occasionally the world would shift a little bit underneath her boots -- but as long as she kept ingesting caffeine, she'd be fine.

That's why she's memorized the path to her favorite vending machine, the one down the hallway right past her team's room. A hundred and sixty-two steps from the common room, two left turns. Tucked into a tiny nook next to the water fountain. If she hip-checked the machine at the same moment her drink dropped from the top shelf, it'd take out a bag of fritos on the way down.

She's so preoccupied with counting steps and hallucinating the taste of fritos she doesn't notice the quiet click of a bedroom door, the sound of footsteps other than her own on crushed velvet.

Prism walks straight into Lucas, crushing her nose against his chest. It takes her a second to process the collision, but she steps back after a long moment with a rising flush. "...hey, Lucas."

Throughout the time she had been waiting for her teammates to finish introducing themselves, Cloe had been formulating a strategy. A solid plan that would get them out of here in the quickest time possible. At least she believed so. As soon as Lucas presented the opportunity to speak, Cloe immediately chimed in.

"I say we go this way! Cloe pointed vaguely in the opposite direction from which she had come from. "I can run ahead really, really fast and check if I'm right. If you hear me screaming, you know I was wrong! Easy peasy! Who's with me?"

That was about the extent of Cloe's strategy. Was it a safe plan? 'Totally.' As far as she was concerned, she could simply greet any obstacles with a solid punch in the mouth. She wasn't afraid of any of these dumb monsters, especially not with this crew tailing behind her. Was it an efficient plan? 'Yep.' After all, she was really fast. However, was it a smart plan? 'Hell yeah it is,' she told herself without much of a second thought. She seriously doubted that anyone could come up with a better idea than this.

"Last I heard, they were doing--and I quote--'hot girl stuff', end quote," Lucas responded, recalling the last thing Cloe said to him before dragging a helpless Prism out of the dorm. "I don't really know what that means, and I'm not really sure I want to. Besides, do you really want them around for this?" Lucas asked, sparing a glance towards his teammate before returning to his work.

It wasn't that Lucas thought the girls were incapable of doing this kind of work. Far from it, they both used dust and knew how it worked. It was more that the overwhelming lion's share belonged to the boys, and Lucas at least had developed his own system for organizing it all. Unfortunately, that system required taking up the entire floor of the dorm room, which would have surely offended the organizational senses of Prism, and it almost certainly would have been disturbed by Cloe's exuberance. Frankly, the only way they would get done with this fast is if they worked without them.

"Still though," Lucas mused, packing what was either the third or thirtieth vial of earth dust away, "It would be nice to have some extra hands with this. Either that, or we gotta cut back on how much we use. If the price tag doesn't kill us, we'll be crushed to death by the sheer volume."

"I'm not lame!" Lucas retorted. He figured Cloe wouldn't take the hint. His team's leader was many things--sociable, outgoing, charismatic--but "subtle" was not one of them. It wasn't that Lucas disliked Cloe, of course. As a team member, she ran the very-much-appreciated role of running interference for the team's backline, no doubt preventing some foul Grimm from taking a bite out of his blind spot on more than one occasion. As leader...well, she has a ways to go when it comes to strategy and tactics, but she does have a knack for keeping the team from bickering, which is more than anyone else in his team can say.

All that said, though, Lucas could only handle so much bubbly sunshine before he had to run to some rooftop gargoyle to brood over. Spending his day off galivanting around town with Cloe was pretty low on his list of things he'd like to do, but when Cloe invited herself along on this trip, he couldn't find a good enough reason to tell her no. After all, if he said he wanted to go by himself, she'd just call him lame. And he was not lame.

"Fine, I'll go with you," Lucas said, resigned to his assignment for the day, "But don't call dust 'rocks', unless you want a lecture from the proprietor. He's, uh, pretty passionate."