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The ball sailed past the half-a-million dollars’ worth vase and hit the mirror, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces with a sharp crash.
Daizzi tucked the bat behind them and cringed. “Oops…”
“Oh no! What are we going to do?” Mullo squeaked, hovering above the pile of glass and wringing their paws nervously.
Footsteps sounded and Marinette came running around the corner. “What happened?”
Ziggy sheepishly faced their Guardian. “We were playing cricket…and Daizzi missed Mullo’s ball.”
Marinette surveyed the scene and sighed. “Please tell me you learned from your lesson and now know why I told you not to play in here? At least it was only the mirror. We can replace that a lot easier than Bruce’s great-great-aunt’s vase.”
It was a hideous thing, painted with a replica of Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and oysters and pearls covered the sides as decoration.
Longg, who had been acting as umpire, fetched a broom and dustpan to start cleaning up the mess.
The large pieces were dumped into a bag and the kwami zoomed over the area, making sure no small pieces of glass would be left to shred the foot of an unsuspecting passer-by.
Tim rounded the corner, mug pointed at the sky as he drained the dregs of his coffee mug.
Crnch !
Tim moved his foot. “What was that?” he asked.
“Cricket,” Mari replied, tying the garbage bag tightly. “The kwa-”
“I squished a cricket?!” Tim yelped, looking around for more. “Where are they? You know I hate locusts and anything related to them after I had to eat them in the desert!”
His flailing mug knocked the vase off the table and Mari watched in slow-mo, horrified, as $500,000 worth of gaudy porcelain splintered into a million shards.
The crash was louder and sharper than the mirror’s, but this time the shocked silence was broken by a wail as Tim fell to his knees in front of the pieces of his mug.
“My coffffffeeeeeeee!!!!!”
Marinette was torn between horror at the accident, relief that it wasn’t her or the kwami who broke the vase so she wouldnt have to reimburse Bruce, and stunned bemusement at her overtired and overcaffeinated boyfriend’s antics.
“Tim, you finished your coffee,” she pointed out. “I think you need sleep more than you need coffee.”
“But it was my favourite mug! You painted it!” He protested, letting her pull him to his feet and head towards the stairs.
“You have like five favourite mugs. You’ll survive. Come on,” she tugged at him again. “Aren’t you at all worried about the vase you broke?”
“Nah, Alfred leaves out heirlooms Bruce hates so they’ll be a casualty of our shenamingiaminans.” Tim’s head lolled onto her shoulder as he robotically climbed the stairs.
“You mean shenanigans?” Mari asked, her eyes dancing in amusement at her boyfriend’s slurring and the Wayne butler’s scheming.
“Yeah. That. Shemangans.” He lifted his arm to emphasize his carefreeness and lightly hit her cheek. “Sorry. Bruce hates the heirlooms but his extended relatives would give him no end of trouble if he got rid of them, so Alfred came up with the plan to put out only the things that Bruce doesn’t care about or wants broken, so he has a perfectly good excuse as to why they disappear.” He told her all the antics Bruce and Wayne extended relatives got up to as the caffeine delirium set in.
They reached the top of the stairs and Mari dragged him down the hall, then tucked him into bed. “I’ll make you another mug tomorrow, okay?”
A soft snore sounded from Tim’s pillow and she smiled. “Sleep well, mon canard.”