The gravel crunches as you pull into the drive way of your home. After shifting into park and activating the hand break with enough force to almost rip the handle out of it’s place you begin to unbuckle your seat belt and grab your work stuff in a very animated fashion.

You are Anon Y. Mous, and you finally, FINALLY, got home from work.

You approach the door of your humble abode fumbling with the keys. Swearing not so under your breath trying to find the right one.
You shove the correct key into the knob and push the door open, not even caring who may be in the house to hear you vocally express how you thought about your day.

“I’m home!” You scream so that all could hear. “Fuck, why doesn’t the world die!?” As you say that you could hear two voices from the couch as you pass it.

“Hey dad.”

“Hi daddy!”

Your daughter had her friend over. Fuck, and she just saw you march in cursing everything in existence. She practically lived here at this point. While the triceratops’s mother wouldn’t be thrilled with the language you were using around her daughter, you couldn’t really bring yourself to care.

Pulling off your coat and hat and throwing it haphazardly unto the dining table you make a bee line to the fridge and grab a beer.

Placing the cap on the edge of the counter you slam your fist down, removing the barrier keeping you from your sweet sweet piss flavored ambrosia.

Next stop, the master bedroom, you didn’t want to make more of a scene in front of Sera and Amber,
You throw the door open and slam it shut, causing the lime green figure in the corner to jump and spin around wondering who had just violently invaded her room while she was putting away laundry.

“Eep! Anon!?”

You kick off your shoes and collapse onto your bed. Taking a nice long sip of your cold beverage before answering your stego wife.

“Yea. You didn’t hear me enter? I practically yelled my entrance coming in.”

“Well the girls have been pretty loud on their video games in the living room so I’d just been tuning them out. You seem...tired?”

You glance over at your spouse with a pair of fed up eyes before staring back at the ceiling. You take another sip of your beer, the bottle making and audible pomf sound as you brought it away from your dry lips.

“Yea. You could say that.” You bring your fingers to your eyes and rub them, pinching the bridge of your nose.

Your wife, Stella, places down the laundry she was folding and walks over to the bed before sitting down.

“You wanna talk about it Anon-kun?”

You glance over at your wife with and exasperated look. She stares down at you with an innocent smile as she rubs your arm in comfort.
With a deep sigh you place your booze on the bed side table before sitting up.

“Anon-kun? Really? Stella I thought I told you how I feel about you using that.” Your wife flinches her hand away with a face of dejection.

“S-sorry Anon. I just thought-”

You rub your face with both your hands letting out an audible groan. “No, no. Don’t. I know what you were trying to do. I’m sorry, I was being an ass. Work was just...ugh, sometimes I wonder how I’ve been able to work with these petty clients for 19 years.”

“Aww.” Your wife coos, cautiously returning her hand to your shoulder. “Well you’re home now, AND it’s a Friday. You won’t have to think about those people for another two days, was it really that bad?”

You scoff looking back up to your wife. “Oh yea. It was, but, maybe later. Right now, I just wanna decompress.”

“It’s okay. How about I get started on dinner early hm? I’ll make your favorite tonight.”

You look back up to Stella with an appreciative smile. “Yea, that sounds great.”
You plant a kiss on her snoot before she gets up and begins to leave the room.

“Although…” Your sweet stego turns around right before opening the door. “You could go and apologize for making such a scene in front of the kids. Preferably before dinner.”

The floor got a lot more interesting all of a sudden. A few slow nods of your head you look back up to her.

“Yea...yea, you’re right. I should.”

Stella smiles at that before exiting, heading towards the kitchen to work her magic.

With yet another sigh you reach over to the beer on your night stand, chugging it down in one go and placing it back on the table. Decompression speed run complete you stand up and head into the living room to apologize to your eldest daughter and her friend.

Approaching the teens you stretch and nod your head as a greeting. “Evening Amber, and Sera, nice to see you too.”

The later glances over with a sly smile. “Hiya Mr. Mous!” The former returned your greeting without taking any concentration away from her game. “Hey dad. Long day at work?”

You brought your hand up to your neck and sighed. “Yea. Sorry about that by the way. I shouldn’t have screamed at you both. It was uncalled for.”

Sera giggled. “It’s okay Mr. Mous. I don’t mind being yelled at. Not at all.”

This comment was enough to break your daughter’s concentration shooting a death glare at her friend before elbowing her in the ribs. Sera shot back her own shit eating grin.
Okay then? Not to sure what that was all about but you weren’t about to question it.

“It’s okay dad. We all have bad days at work sometimes. I understand you weren’t yelling at me.” Your daughter says looking up from her still giggling friend.

“Thanks sweet tooth but there’s still no excuse. I shouldn’t be yelling period.” You take a glance behind you to see Stella smiling in approval.
The kitchen and living room could honestly be considered the same room. The only thing separating the room was an L-shaped counter between the two of you.

You turn back around and take a seat in your own recliner. “Hey, is this what I think it is?”
Amber glances over before answering your question.

“Left 4 Dead 2? Yea, it is.”

“Damn. This game is almost as old as me, why are you two playing this?”

Your daughter shrugs. “It’s fun. Besides, Sera was able to get your old Xrox into working order despite it’s age.”

You glance over at the triceratops with a look of disbelief. “You were able to...how?”

With a flick of her hair and a sense of accomplishment on her face she sticks her chest out in pride. “I have a hobby of tinkering with old electronics Mr. Mous. It started when I was bored in the back of my mom’s salon and now I make a few bucks fixing stuff for kids at school. I’ve even been able to use it to get a few days off when ever Mr. Spears has trouble with his projectors.”

Huh. You never would’ve pegged Sera as being the “handy” type. Though, she never did take after her mother in a lot of ways.

While the two of you are on good terms now, you could even say friends, you could tell you still annoyed Trish. Sera on the other hand seemed to enjoy your company. Much to Amber’s chagrin for whatever reason. Perhaps your daughter just didn’t appreciate Sera’s sense of humor, not that you understood any of it. Probably just weird teenage girl stuff.

“Anon sweet heart?” You were pulled out of your inner-monologue by Stella leaning over the counter.

“I’m almost done. Could you tell Cynthia to get ready for dinner? You know how long she likes to take.”

“Yea, sure.” You get up and head over to the small hallway on the opposite side of the room, knocking on the door on the right. An irritated voice calls out.
“Yea?”

“Cynthia? Dinner is almost ready, don’t forget to wash up.” There was a few seconds of silence before moving could be heard from inside.
“Sure dad! I’ll be out in a minute!”

Heading back to the living room you notice that Amber and Sera had put their game on pause to help your wife set the table.
You’d ask if Sera was going to be joining you tonight but at this point it wasn’t really necessary.

Trish worked late so Sera staying over for dinner was a usual occurrence. Especially on the weekends.

Taking over for Stella you finish setting out the utensils and take your seat at the round table followed by Amber and Sera. The former really quick to take a seat next to you while giving Sera the stink eye. Again, you’ll never understand those two. Stella meanwhile comes out with your “favorite”, her spaghetti. Well, it’s your favorite among the food she can cook. Ignoring how your French wife’s best dish is Italian, your actual favorite dish is a lot less...erm, appropriate in the context of dinner. You didn’t need to bring up those old memories anyways.

“Is Cynthia almost ready?” She asks, placing the parmesan in the center of the table next to the garlic bread.

“Yea, she said she’d be a minute.”

“Oh, a “minute” hm?” The stegosaurus roles her eyes.

You shrug, “Hey, she takes her time. She’ll be out before the food gets cold.”

Amber scoffs, “yea, a full sixty seconds before maybe.”
It’s your turn to role your eyes. The fact you get to have a family dinner at all is a luxury. You remember back when you still lived with your parents and how any actual family time was severely limited. Looking back you couldn’t lay all the blame on them. They weren’t negligent, but they still only gave you the bare minimum needed. Dad still lent you his old prom suit and mom still wished you Merry Christmases and Happy Birthdays. And of course life shit happens to everyone. But not being there for graduation? Your marriages? The births of your children? Yea they could go fuck themselves for that. All that to say, you could wait the few minutes for your more...”eccentric” daughter to come to dinner.

“You can call her what ever you want, Amber has a point that she should still learn how to come to dinner on time.” Your wife says, pouring her self a glass of iced tea.

Fucking mumbling. Two decades after high school and it still haunts you.

“Hello family! What goyslop are we eating tonight?” On cue, Cynthia finally decides to walk up to the table and sit down. Greeting the table with a tone as if she were trying her hardest to sound as disinterested as possible.
Stella looks at the teen for several seconds trying to decipher what ever the fuck she just called dinner before ignoring it and answering like nothing happened.

“Spaghetti sweet heart. With garlic bread.”

“Oh! That actually sounds nice!”

Dinner passes with occasional small talk. You mention the producer you’ve been working with the past two weeks being a particular pain in the ass and the primary reason for your outburst coming home. Cynthia begins discussing her new anime discoveries with you and Stella. Though mostly you.

“I mean it’s the same studio who produced Mawaru Penguindrum so I can’t imagine it being that bad. But the art style just looks almost...off if y’know what I mean.”

You nod your head and slurp up more of the spaghetti into your mouth. What ever was coming out of Cynthia’s mouth wasn’t really interesting you.
After almost two decades you’ve mostly grown out of your neet phase. Now you only ever watch anime because your wife or daughter beg you to.

“Oh and, don’t get me started on the normies online freaking out over-”

“Y’know Amby, they are holding that contest thing at school. Why don’t you enter it.” Sera interjects, cutting off Cynthia through a mouth of spaghetti.

This peaks your interest and you turn away from an annoyed Cynthia to Amber. “Volcano High is having an art contest?”

“Yea, I dunno. I don’t see the point in doing it.” Amber rolls her eyes and pokes at her spaghetti with disinterest.

After a sideways glare at Sera, Cynthia speaks up without looking from her plate, “I get it. You probably wouldn’t win anyways.”

Your eldest daughter drops her fork and glares up at your youngest. “What?”

Uh oh.

“I’m stating the truth. Every year the judges always just pick one of the popular kids. And you just aren’t that popular. Sorry to say sis that you’d probably wouldn’t be able to paint something good enough to shock them out of their nepotism.” Cynthia states matter-of-factly before going to take another bite of food.

Amber grits her teeth. “I could kick every single artist’s ass in school with just a monochromatic color palette.”

Cynthia shrugs. “Could. Yes. But like every competition it’s just a popularity contest. Don’t worry sis, Van Gogh wasn’t appreciated until he was dead either.”

It was probably about time you butt in. “Ok, Cynthia I think that-” but before you could finish your thought, Amber stands up, pushing her chair away with a loud groan and points and accusatory finger at her sister.

“I don’t need to hear shit from a talentless slob who sits in her room all day.” She grabs her barely eaten food and storms off to her room, leaving an awkward looking Sera behind her, who with a forced smile, thanked your wife for the meal before following your friend.

You glare at the remaining teenager at the table. “That, was uncalled for.”

“Wha-, but dad I-”

“No. No buts. There was no good reason for you to just insult your sister like that.”

“I didn’t insult anything about her! If anything I was insulting the favoritism that is plaguing the school!” Your daughter waves her hands in an animated fashion.

“Even if that’s true, how you did that was unnecessary and rude. After dinner I EXPECT you to go and apologize.” You say with a sterness you still weren’t used to having.

“Wha-? I…”

You only glare at her harder before she crosses her arms and harumphs. Looking away from you.

“She wouldn’t even listen to me any ways.”

Before you could respond to that comment Stella, who has since been silent spoke up. “Cynthia…”

Cynthia flinches at her mother’s tone. You knew what was coming. Stella draws in a staggered breath, attempting with all her might not to yell at the young Stego in front of her.

“Tu as interrompu ce qui devait être un bon dîner en insultant ta sœur.”

Cynthia looks down at the floor, wrapping a tail around her leg.

“Tu vas écouter ton père et t'excuser auprès d'Amber. Vous nettoyerez ensuite toute la vaisselle ce soir. Comprendre?”

“B-but-” Cynthia started to stutter before Stella quickly put an end to it.

“Comprendre?”

With a pause, and an aura of irritation, she gets up and begins to walk towards her sister’s room without looking up to meet her mother’s gaze. “O-oui mama.”

Once out of view you glance over towards your wife with a shocked expression. “Man...I don’t know how you do it.”

She sighs before plunging her fork into the food in front of her. “It’s not something I enjoy doing. I’m sorry dinner went so horribly Anon, especially after the day you just had.”

You shake your head and wave your hand. “Nah, it’s fine I’m over work now. Plus, your cooking was great as always.”

Stella brings some food to her mouth before cringing and pushing the plate away from her. “It just never used to be like this.”

You let out a sigh of your own and place a hand on her shoulder. “Well, they’re sisters. I mean, this is supposed to be somewhat normal right? Sibling rivalry?”

You had no idea. You were an only child growing up and the only reference you had were the Aaron’s and they weren’t necessarily the most “normal” family. Plus, Naser’s a dude and that may change the particulars.

Your wife shakes her head and places her face into her palms. “I dunno. This just feels worse Anon. It doesn’t feel like sibling rivalry. I didn’t have a sister growing up but...they were never usually so quick to be at each other’s throats like this.”

“Look, they’ll get past this. Do you remember how Naser and Lucy used to treat each other?” Stella cringes at the mentioning of Lucy. Not that you blamed her, it wasn’t really something you liked to bring up to much either.

“Yea, I do but...*sigh* I don’t know Anon.”

You rub her back, making sure to avoid her spines. “Hey, one day at a time huh?”

She didn’t say anything back. She just leaned into your shoulder and closed her eyes. You decided to end it there and just enjoy the quiet for a moment.

“Alright, I apologized. But she wouldn’t give me her plate back to clean.” You looked up at your returning daughter.

“That’s fine. Just uh, clean up everything else and go back to get it when your done if she doesn’t bring it back her self. If she does, DON’T talk to her.”

Cynthia snorted before she started to collect the used dishes and bring them into the kitchen. Once gone Stella finally removes her self. “I need to finish the laundry before it gets too late.”

“I’ll help you out.” You follow her into the master bedroom.

The rest of the evening was quiet. After helping Stella put away your clothing you stay in the living room to make sure Cynthia finishes her chores and that she doesn’t say anything to Amber or Sera if they were to come out of their room.

Cynthia attempts a few times to make small talk with you but you reject every attempt, wanting to make the point that she was in trouble and that her doing the dishes was a part of the punishment. She continues her work in silence and no one says anything to anyone else for the rest of the night.

[POST-NOTES]
    I hope you guys enjoyed the first chapter. I'm going to try, TRY!, to roll these out on a weekly basis. But we will see. Real life and all of that gets us down but I've already written first drafts for the majority of the story. Original plan was to write it all before posting but I've been slacking and hopefully rolling out the chapters now will assist in giving me the kick in the ass I need to sit down and shit this out.

    Also, PLEASE leave your comments and critiques if you have any. I'm rusty at this and even if I have most of the story written down they are only drafts at the moment so if there's anything I can improve on lemme know. Or, if there's anything you like or sticks out to you lemme know too and I can add more. Or just leave some encouraging words. Those go a long way in fueling my fire.