Description: Still on the search for any information that will prove things aboard the Suiryuu aren't all that they seem, Arika decides it's high time she went to sneak a little peek at the books the red witch pilfered from the ship's library. But a botched 'burglary' has the punk rock princess making herself right at home in Naerose's cabin... and as odd as that actually is, sometimes an unorthodox approach yields results.
Another late night on the boat and whomever was the witch's bunk mate was not there. Some might question if he was avoiding her, but the truth was she had been slowly taking of the room with a great deal of loot. Or at least so she thought. Probably he was just avoiding her. Speaking of the red clad witch, she was, it would seem, in the process of packing her bags. This consisted of an obscene amount of luggage, overflowing from the amount of stuff she somehow managed to shove into it, this included books, bits of cargo and other stolen goods. You can tell the difference between stolen and non-stolen goods easily enough by the simple fact that almost everything belonging to the witch is red.
After a while of this she seems to have grown tired and just sort of slumps over on the suitcase, her hat falling over her shades, her arms making a rather nice pillow for them.
Cover of night? Check.
Dark clothing? Check.
Dread Pirate Roberts style facemask? Check.
No noises from in the cabin? Check.
This is so very, very wrong. Though the deck outside the cabins was completely empty, there's still an air of wrongness about what the diva is doing. Tough punk chick she may seem to be, but breaking and entering?
Drake's going to kill her.
Certain that she saw the witch's roommate elsewhere a little earlier, she lets her deep blue eyes scan the area quickly before sidling up quietly to the door. A gloved hand presses against the frame before she slowly begins to turn the handle and give the door a small push. It's holding solid, so she does what any self-respecting pop-culture addict does - she reaches into her pants pocket and slides out a plastic credit card. Arika turns it over and over again in her gloved hands, takes a deep breath and then wedges the card between door and frame before attempting to jimmy the lock.
Eventually Arika was going to come to the conclusion that the door wasn't really locked. Well, not exactly anyway. Sure the witch felt she was doing something moderately wrong and therefore had locked the door in a sense. . That sense being sticking a chair in front of it like they do in the movies. Of course it won't work once Arika tries to actually open the door. The room is dark, safe for a flashlight the witch has to illuminate just her own work and the amount of clutter is legendary. It's amazing she got so much to fit into that tiny space, so incredible a feet that you literally can't see the floor. Her bed meanwhile is taken apart, as though she were using it to hide things ineffectively, but now that she was apparently preparing to pack it all up, it was laying amongst the clutter.
When the credit card slides right past the lock, Arika stops and blinks. Either that idiotic trick actually managed to work (without breaking the card) or the door has been jammed in another way. Twisting the knob and pushing the door forward a little more causes the sounds of a chair scraping against the floor.
"Bugger this."
Thinking that no one is in the room, she gives the door a solid shove and causes the chair to crash to the ground. Instead of making an extremely loud clattering noise though, it lands with a much softer thump atop a pile of clutter.
This gets another blink from the diva.
"Wot a bloody mess," she mutters under her breath as she tries to slip through the small opening she's managed to make.
Somehow. . The witch hasn't woken up yet, somehow she's still curled up and dreaming of sugar plums. . literally. I mean come on, it sounds like a great desert, of course you need to chill them first and probably serve with a spoon. This was the sort of things the witch thought about. The boat did not have sugar plums. It did have some nice luxuries but lets face it, it wasn't designed to be a great food place.
There was however one more surprise for Arika. The Punk rock Princess probably forgot that the witch had a 'pet' rabbit. Okay, maybe she didn't, but this was a good time to remember as Sylvester the rabbit, seeing the door opened, makes a break across the clutter toward said door. And he would of gotten away from it too if not for a pesky string the witch had attached to his neck with the other end attached to an anvil. Where did she get an anvil?
Wait, wait... didn't Naerose lose Sylvester? How many of those things does the witch have?
Spotting the poor little rabbit she tries to coax it toward her, but it makes a break for it on its own. When it's suddenly yanked back into the room, the diva stops moving. Breath caught in her lungs, and she waits.
But there are no other sounds coming from within, so she figures it's safe enough.
Sneaking around the chair, she lets her eyes adjust to the darkness within the room and then spots a string, and an anvil.
Where did Naerose get an anvil?
Feeling sorry for the rabbit, she leans down and quietly unties the string from its neck and then nudges it out the door. "Find freedom where you can on 'ere, mate. Go 'ide in the crates down below. No way you'll get free otherwise," she whispers, watching him hop out the door before she nudges it closed.
"Right, then. Where in all o' this mess am I goin' to find those books...?"
Freedom! Sylvester thankfully bolts for it and by thankfully we mean without looking back. Meanwhile the witch snores and dreams of roast rabbit. You can tell because there is one of those . o O (Roasted Rabbit) thought bubbles over her head. Meanwhile it might become apparent where the books ended up if Arika looks very hard. They are packed in the over loaded suitcase the witch is currently curled up on, the suitcase being unable to close has all sorts of books popping out in corners the seams and between the zippers and in the outer pockets. Quite possibly the worst packing jobs in the history of packing jobs.
Well... shit. Looks like someone -is- in the room, and it's the one person she didn't want to run into. Extremely dim light reveals that the red witch is curled up -right- on the books she was looking for. So much for them just being borrowed while she read them in her cabin; looks like Naerose was about to pilfer them right off the ship when they made it to the next port.
A deep frown creases her brow, and Arika takes a step back to consider what to do. Moving the witch will have her waking up. Snagging one of the books might have the same effect. Getting caught here? It's not on the agenda.
Then again....
Tiptoeing around the mess, the diva quickly yanks the top book from the pile and then pulls herself up onto the top bunk. Presumably this is the one that belongs to the witch's bunkmate, but it's hard to tell with the mess this room is actually in.
Okay. That was a pretty hilarious way to go about it. One, Arika made herself right at home, two, she certainly woke the witch with THAT. Naerose' head jerks up with a "Huh ? What? I didn't take your N-gage.. I didn't open the box, please don't make me do the dishes tonight Niesje.. . " She rubs the lenses of her dark shades and looks around. It's truly amazing she can see at all with those things on and yet she seems intent on wearing them.
"Oh right.. Boat.. " Under her head you can see she's writing a letter, well you could see if you were looking, though taking the book it was probably visible briefly as your typical letter home from camp. Written to this mysterious 'Niesje'.
Then she notices there is someone on the top bunk. Huh must be her roomie.. Er.. The witch peeks for good measure.
"Woah! you're a girl?!" she asks in a start, "I mean I thought it was odd that they had me boarded up with some old fella but, er wait.. Hi Arika. " She gives a sheepish smile, "It's er.. hard to see in this light.. wait what are you doing?"
Gack! How'd Naerose figure out it was her? She was trying to hide in the shadows! She's wearing a mask! She...
She forgot to cover her hair. Despite wearing all black, she's got a distinct style of clothing. Not to mention a particular perfume she wears, and there's every possibility that some of her jewelry was causing a glint due to the sparse light in the room.
See? There are reasons why the diva could never work on the side of evil, and certainly many why she couldn't make a living out of doing something like this.
"Wot's it look like I'm doin', mate? I'm readin'."
There is a brief pause for dramatic effect (okay, not really, but it sounded good!)
"Got any orange juice?"
Yes, she really -did- have to ask. It's one of those payback things in a way, though it's mostly just her trying to cover the fact that she was trying to subtly rifle through the witch's things and see if she found anything interesting in those books.
Well it works. Well played missus Bond. The casual reply is so casual that it really throws the witch for a total spin. She can't help but answer now.
"Well er, no I don't , I er.. would of drank it already if I did. Besides, have you tried the tropical mango stuff they have? It's better than orange juice, I think they call it Lasse? It must be named after the dog, I dunno why, except well its yellow. I think Lasse was yellow, the show was black and white, which is kind of boring. So Er.." She looks at the book Arika is reading and scratches her hat.
"Hey, is that my book?"
Of course it is, but for whatever reason the witch seems to be giving a lot of benefit of doubt. Then something strikes her and she breaks out in nervous laughter.
"Heh, I mean eh heh, the book that looks a lot like one of the books I borrowed from the library but that I bought a day later from..." She looks deep in consideration before adding pathetically, "The umm, ship bookstore."
"You mean this book?" Arika idly uses a gloved finger to flip through the pages in the dark. "Nah, I brought this one with me. Didn't know 'ow long you were goin' to be, and thought I'd make meself comfy." All those years of fudging the truth back in London are paying off, but she still has a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. This is just so -wrong-.
"Too bad 'bout the O.J. though. Was really lookin' forward to a glass o' the stuff. Sittin' 'ere in the dark made me thirsty."
"Err.. We could go get you some," The witch says, looking a little uneasy, because the situation was starting to catch up with her, the whole way it was going, something was wrong, you know? There was just a odd vibe and even someone as generally considered inept as Naerose was picking up on it.
She lowers her voice, you know a pit of your tummy you wanna take seriously what she says next kind of voice,
"Say umm Arika, is there something on your mind?" She peers over the rims of her shades, the only times you really see her eyes, "I mean why are you really here?"
"Nah. Moment's passed. I'll suffer the curses of de'ydration if I 'ave to. Ain't no big deal, got plenty of water back in me cabin any'ow." Snapping the book closed, she tucks it under her arm and then jumps down from the bunk. "'sides, it's late and I 'ear that orange juice is a 'orrible diuretic and I don't want to be usin' the loo all night."
One hand reaches behind her and deftly unties the pirate mask. The material is shoved into her pocket and she paces through the junk on the floor until she reaches the overloaded suitcase once more. That same hand swoops down and plucks up another book, scattering stray papers onto the nearest pile of clutter. "Nothin' rightly on me mind, just wanted a peek at some'a these books befor' you made off with'em. Kind'a curious why you were so interested in these particular ones."
"Oh!." The witch says with a look of realization and understanding before looking at the books and sort of scratching her head a little before giving a casual shrug.
"Well I peered at most of them but they really not that interesting, the ones I picked were a lot of the hand written stuff, you have some war books, like tactics, some economics and weird stuff, but what's really weird is a fair few are hand written books with no author or anything listed. I thought those were neat, but I'm not really planning on reading them, they're er.. boring." She gives a sheepish sort of grin,
"But I plan to unload all this real soon, first though.. I wanna show you something."
Says the witch and starts to march toward the door, picking her broom up from the bed as she goes and reaching to take Arika's wrist and sort of drag her along if she can.
Undeterred by the fact that the books are apparently handwritten and utterly boring, the diva pilfers through the suitcase and pulls out a few that could be what she's looking for. Once she has hold of them, she's not planning on letting them go either. Deep blue eyes glance around the mess really quickly and she finds an empty grocery bag atop a pile. Books are shoved into it...
... just in the nick of time, by the look of it. As the last book makes a crinkly plop into the plastic bag, Arika's wrist is grabbed and she starts to get dragged through the mess. In a comical fashion, the grocery bag of books is nearly left behind, but the punk princess reaches her free arm out and grabs it before she goes along with Naerose. "Oh? Don't know if we should be wanderin' 'round the boat so late at night. Kasugano'd likely lock us up in irons if she caught us..." (Or try to kill them. Yeah, Arika -still- doesn't trust Sakura at all.)
"Awesome, we can be like ninjas, you know, I'll be Red Lightening and you can be Yell- er.. Black cloud I guess, you know Arika if you're gonna go ninja you ought to wear something more striking. Havn't you ever watched those movies or played Mortal Kombat?" Asks the witch before moving into the dark corridor. She waits a moment, no sentry, and proceeds. She drags Arika to a door to hide in and peer around again. This is probably getting really old fast. She continues this until they reach the library which by now is missing quite a few books from her visits and subsequent raids.
"Here we go," she says in a whisper, "Ni ni ni," she also says whenever sneaking and making the comical tip toe like motions, in heeled knee high boots. Er seriously Naerose.
Then she pulls on a book and. . .
"Here we go, isn't this awesome?" She says with a broad grin,
"Er, don't tell anyone I showed you and don't like steal anything please please please?" Cause she's totally planning on wiping this place clean.
"Ain't that the point of this wee lil' pleasure cruise?" Being like ninjas that is. As she's continually dragged throughout the ship, the diva holds tight to the grocery bag of books. A little light bedtime reading before turning in for the night. The books can be put back in the library in the morning... unless they prove to be useful. "Never 'ad the time for video games. You know 'ow it is, life on the road is busy." Never you mind the fact that she's only been on the road with Femme Fatale since March.
Watching the witch carefully, Arika raises her brow. Teeth actually have to clamp down on her lower lip to keep her from laughing at the cartoon character antics Naerose is wandering around doing. Deep blue eyes snap onto the title of the book that the witch pulls, and then she blinks. So there -was- something useful in this library after all.
Interesting.
"Girl Scouts 'onor," she says with a matching grin. Though she's never -been- a Girl Scout, who else would she tell? Eva is always a possibility, but maybe...
... just maybe she should corner Miss Security herself and get a straight answer about this.
"Right, scouts honor sounds pretty honorable, " Naerose says, though she wouldn't herself know having also not ever been a girl scout. None of that was important, instead the witch leans on her broom and looks around a moment then turns to Arika.
"Right so.. umm.. Have fun, sorry about not having any Orange juice and.." she bits her bottom lip,
"If I show up at your house sometime and am totally starving or something," she gives a really hopeful look at Arika. The odd part was she wasn't too concerned it seemed with Arika taking some of the books. Maybe she had already gotten what she needed out of them or maybe she had something else up her sleeve. Who knows. .
Log created on 20:19:12 09/08/2007 by Arika, and last modified on 06:27:48 09/10/2007.