"Don't be lame," Cloe said plainly, cracking a smile at Lucas as she stepped out into the sunlight. "We're on a team. We're supposed to hang out!"

Dust was cool, but it wasn't exactly Cloe's top priority today. Her shoes were dirty, so she needed to buy new ones. She was also kind of craving a snack. Heck, it was never a bad time to hunt for a new fit. As for today's look, she wore a simple crop top and gym shorts, perfect for fun on a sunny day. Tragically, she was going to have to wait until they were done running this dust errand before they could do anything good. Lucas didn't strike Cloe as the kind of guy to enjoy all of the same activities as her, but she knew she'd find a way to make him have fun anyway.

"And besides, after we get our ammo and rocks and stuff, I wanna go to the mall. You should come with!" After all, she couldn't be caught going there by herself. That would be incredibly lame.

"Because winning requires burning a ton of it." Juno replied, attempting to organize a mess of crystals laid out on his desk. Their repeated victories were never without a cost, and at about 10 lien for a tube of powder, bills would be racking up if they weren't sponsored by Beacon. Even so, their dust use was kind of obscene. Their last mission had almost exhausted their field supply... over the course of a six hour deployment. Whoever was managing supply drops probably threw a fit.

The wolf leaned back in his chair, having carefully individually wrapped a nice pyramid of crystals for storage. There was still much more work to be done, ideally before everyone had to sleep, but with the amount of work left, they could be working well into dinner. "Where did the others say they were going again?"

It was a bright and sunny day in Vale, bright enough that Lucas had to shield his eyes as he stepped down the Bullhead's loading ramp, setting out into the city of Vale. It was an off-day for Beacon, so he wasn't wearing his uniform, and he wasn't on a mission, so he wasn't wearing his combat attire either. Instead, he was wearing a more casual outfit, tennis shoes with jeans and a black t-shirt underneath a red, zipped-up jacket.

That was all he should have needed for an errand run, after all. His team consumed a massive amount of dust on their missions and training, so restocking on supplies has become a commonplace activity on weekends and holidays. Of course, Lucas could have done all the necessary shopping online and had it delivered to Beacon, but even he needed to get away every once in a while, and this errand run was the perfect excuse to stretch his legs. Besides, his family owned a dust shop, so he knew the little tricks that shops liked to pull to make more money. That combined with his own experience judging dust purity made him the perfect person to handle this.

That was why when the person behind him stepped off the loading ramp, Lucas sighed and said, "I can handle this by myself, ya know? You don't have to stick around if you don't want to..."

Yes. We're just pointedly ignoring you.

Lucas was staring at his screen, doing his best to resist the urge to drum his fingers on his desk. It was already past midnight, and his room was already filled with the sounds of his sleeping teammates. He was sure the glare from the backlight of his monitor was already enough to disturb their sleep, seeing as how it was enough to keep his own night vision from coming into focus. Anything beyond that and the typing of his keyboard was sure to earn a pillow thrown at him...or perhaps even a fist. Yeah, it was probably best to keep extraneous noise to a minimum.

Still, he was getting nowhere on his assignment, and the more he stared at the screen, the more he wanted to shout at himself for not getting started on it sooner. Sure, he has until the next evening to finish, but he had entire week to do it. Despite that, he's only managed to write a single word:

"The"

It's not that he has writer's block, per se. He knows what he wants to write, to the point that he knows the direction his entire assignment will take, including which citations he'll need. Unfortunately, since the work is done already in his head, his body is refusing to take the next step and put the words to paper. Hence, Lucas isn't staring at a blank screen because he doesn't know what to write, but because he's too bored to actually write. And yet, if he doesn't, his grade will tank, and that's something he can't afford to have happen. Thus, Lucas chains himself to his seat in a vain effort to sit down and actually do the thing he's supposed to have done ages ago.

The drive to procrastinate is strong, though, and in a matter of minutes Lucas is back up, grabbing a book out of his bag to "review" (at this point, he's practically memorized the passage that he needs, save for the page number, and he's really just trying to get his mind to focus). He steps towards the room door to "study" in peace when he spies an empty bed. Since he's up and about still, it would be practical to assume it's his, but it's not. Lucas's bed sheets are tossed all about, almost as disheveled as he currently is. This bed belongs to Prism, the crisp, tucked-in bed sheets almost as strong a tell as the nameplate.

Where could she be at such a late hour? Well, it's not really any of Lucas's business what she did in her free time. So long as she kept up her part of the team's assignments, he had no complaints. With that in mind, Lucas stepped out of his team's dormitory and started wondering down the halls, trying to force his mind to focus on more important things.