Description: Two girls, a basket of goodies, and bubble bath. Does this log need any more description than that? Well, yeah, it probably does, but you're not gonna get it!
Outside the castle, a light rain is falling. Not too odd for this time of year, the temperature being just warm enough to prevent the drizzle from turning into large fluffy flakes of snow. The steady pattering of the rain dropping upon the stones reverberates throughout the halls creating a soothing rhythm. Plink, plink, drip, blop. Plink, plink, drip, blop.
Early as the morning is, it's not surprising to find no one in the hallway of the rooms that have been set up for the fighters. Granted, this is likely because a few of the fighters are already up and about either exploring the castle or looking for breakfast. The gymnast is hoping on the latter, so that she can sneak into the witch's room and play Christkindle -- the German version of Santa Claus.
Little feet pad down the stones of the hall, arms wrapped around a rather large object. So large, in fact that Alexis can barely be seen behind it. She looks much like a gigantic wrapped basket with legs.
Early in the morning was a good bet that the witch would be asleep too. Alexis made a good bet on that but she probably wasn't expecting the door to be ajar. What scandal is this? Murder? Robbery? Crime? No. Just a sprawled witch who failed to get more than ten steps into the room before crashing on the ground clutching her broom stick as if it were a teddy bear and snoring loudly. The room isn't very clean either, though it isn't exactly messy. She doesn't have many spare clothes to scatter all over, she doesn't have food wrappers to make a mess of, all she has is the complimetry things that came with her room, all spent, and a horribly unmade bed currently organized to look like a bird's nest. This was clearly on purpose for some super late night movie watching. This is a day in the life of Naerose Delphine!
First she wakes up in the wee hours of the afternoon. Probably sometime after one, but before three. After that it's all a blur. End a day in the life of Naerose Delphine. Was it almost time for another holiday special? Didn't Naerose miss a couple? Doesn't she always, but rarely does she miss the chance to give gifts. Still she already did the jolly holiday. She should do the Jewish one that happens at the same time, or that one with the cool colors (more than red and white) she can't quite spell it though. She sure can snore though.
Ooops! Alexis did make a bet, but she figured the witch would be wherever the food was. Not sprawled in the middle of the floor. Before even noticing this, she notices the ajar door and frowns.
How she's seeing anything beyond the basket is anyone's guess.
Her foot slips against the ajar door, and she peers both up, then down the hallway to ensure there's no intruder lurking about trying to make off with a witch hat, or... well, the gymnast isn't sure /what/ exactly Naerose has or doesn't have, but she knows that if it were /her/ room she wouldn't want anyone stealing anything!
Which is why the voice shouting from down the hallway spooks her.
"HEY! YOU THERE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THAT'S NOT YOUR ROOM!"
"I...." With the spooking comes the tumbling. "Eeeeeek!" Both girl and basket go through the ajar door, the basket flying toward the nesting place on the bed, the girl very likely landing with a WHUMP atop the witch.
Dead.
The scene looks sort of like it came out of monty pyhton. There is a big basket atop a witch, but you can't see the witch, just a jumble of disjointed arms and legs that twitchingly stick out from the basket on a few impossible sides and angles. There might even be a sound of 'Ugggh' coming from underneath the basket. This was the sort of awakening that didn't occur in the sugar plum dreams of the red witch. Far from it.
Further details can be now assessed about the room. For one, decoration. The light bulbs give off a rosey light, almost pink, this is due to a filter having been applied to them in order to cast the different glow. It's pretty, if a bit tacky. A dufflebag, some of the witches only luggage has been shoved into the closet with a note for the maide to not touch, it smells funny and looks rather slimey making it unlikely the maid would of anyway. The bathroom has far too many bubble bath mixtueres. While bubble bath is just a matter of soap in water, the witch seems not happy with that, she wants something better something of more variety. The options are staggering. Multi colored and smelling bubbles stand out the most. Also various toys. Mainly boats and seamonsters. Oh wait, is the witch still under that basket? Yep.
"Ack!"
The exclamation comes as the voice draws closer to the door.
"I SAID WHAT ARE YOU.... OH! OH MY..."
The sound of shoe falls on the stones can be heard scurrying down in the other direction. Obviously the owner of the voice doesn't even want to make a guess as to what's going on in the room, with people looking like corpses squished beneath baskets and a rather embarrassed looking gymnast laying there.
"Gawd! I'm sorry!" This squeaked as Alexis rolls to the side and hefts the basket up. She knows that sometimes things don't exactly go according to plan, but it's a rare occasion when something goes /this/ far off track.
"Uhhmm... cool room... I guess I'll just leave this here and uhh..." Eyes darting back and forth to one side of the room than the other, she keeps stopping on that dufflebag, not quite certain what to make of it.
Alexis will just have to hope that it's not one of the witch's partners from a previous tournament that she stuffed in a bag and left to rot.
Shudder.
There is a perfect indentation in the shape of a witch, CRUSHED under a basket and for a moment there all she can do is twitch. Probably somewhere under those black, round framed shades she has her eyes opened wide. Eventually the witch sloooowly peels herself out of the indentation and then managse to look around. It sure looked like a room she'd stay in. Was it even hers? She didn't know. Maybe someone knew, she didn't know that either.
"Ahh, " she groans and then notices Alexis, "Hey, I totally know you." *YAAAAAAAAAAWWWNN*
"I feel like I've been hit by a bus." She doesn't drink, and so her breath doesn't smell like drinking, but she as crushed under a basket, so who knows maybe that's why she feels like she was crushed under a bus, but come on, isn't that a little extreme? Probably.
"Whatcha up to?" she asks brightly.
The dufflebag doesn't smell quite like a dead person. But it wouuld be fun to try and guess what is inside.
Peridots shift from the bag, to the witch, back to the bag, then back once more to the witch. Wrinkling her nose, Alexis steps /away/ from the bag, and moves over toward the bed to place the basket down.
"So, like, are you okay and stuff? I mean, it wasn't a bus, just a basket, but it didn't like break anything, did it?" The basket isn't exactly light, but it's probably not skull-crushing in weight either.
"Yeaaaaah... sorry to barge in and stuff, but I saw that the door was open and I wanted to make sure no one was stealing your uhh..." Peering around the room again she nods toward the toiletries. "Bubblebaths. But there wasn't."
"Bubble baths?" Asks the witch before looking in the direction indicated to discover that there was indeed bubble baths there. What happens next can be rather unexpeected. Some of them are clearly used, so she should know that they are there, but instead the witch gives a pleased squeel of delight,
"I totally love bubble baths! Is there a swimming pool in this castle? Wouldn't it be awesome if we filled it with some of these? Man this is great, I must of been dreaming of something cool and it came true. Oh oh oh, this is going to be awesome! Wait. Is there a swimming pool here?" Truth be told Naerose had been looking and has thus far failed to find such a thing. There was an ocean and that she discovered the hard way was freezing cold.
"Or maybe an indoor heated fountain.." she murmurs to herself in thought, "Or a really big sink. I mean like.. huge." No, not a bathtub.
"I... don't know? I mean, I've not really fully explored the castle. There's a lake, but it's probably freezing this time of year." Alexis rubs the back of her neck for half a second, then clears her throat.
"Anyway, I can ask for you if you want. I mean, in a castle this size they've likely got one of those huge bathing chambers, with the tub that's sunk into the floor or something, like in the medieval times, right? But I dunno how well that'd work for what you're looking for." Sweatdrop. She's created a Naemonster.
"Look, I know our team kind'a sucks, right? Or would that be 'sucked'? I dunno. Either way, it doesn't matter now since we're out. But it's almost the holidays, and you totally did a good job even though you fell asleep during our last fight and I got trounced by Ryu and uhh... stuff, so here."
Once more the basket is hefted up (boy are her arms getting tired). This time, she thrusts the gift out toward the witch. "For you."
"What? For me?!" Exclaims the witch with joy ever growing because gifts for her were always good. She of course did not get anything and is forced to scramble, looking all around and trying to figure out how to make this right. Then it hits her. "Wait here!" and the witch darts into the bathroom, grabs a bad usually reserved for ice, uses paper towel for wrapping paper and soon re-emerges with a crudle wrapped package, clearly containing a fair number of the mostly unused bottles of bubble bath.
"Ah here." Exlcaims the witch. She wears a biig smile then thinks about the other things she was just told.
"The team? Don't worry about it.. " The witch offers, "But if you wanna be on a real awesome team, you should join Strongest! team. They're the bestest team ever." The witch states, proudly, then reconsiders. She had another 'tea' she wanted to populate at some point, but first, she peeks in the basket.
"Mmhmm, for you." Alexis waits for the witch to unwrap the gift, but then sees her running to the bathroom. Uh oh! Maybe Naerose had too much weird stuff to eat and it's hurting her tummy? She backs away from the door, glances at the floor and starts to hum. That's right, she's humming. It makes more sense than standing their quietly staring at the door to the bathroom which isn't... closed?
When the witch returns, the gymnast smiles. "Uhh, you totally didn't have to do that, but thanks?" She's certain that this is all bubble bath. Not some food sludge shoved into bottles. To be on the safe side though, she'll likely test a few out /first/ before dumping any into the tub.
As for what's inside the basket? Well! It's filled with goodies. Goodies like different gourmet foods, cookies, chocolates, pretzels, cheese straws and almond pecan crunch! Tucked inside with the food are three small cookbooks:
The 99-cent Only Stores Cookbook
101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles
And finally...
Hot Damn and Hell Yeah!: Recipes for Hungry Banditos.
(And yes those are all real cookbooks, honest).
Lets hope Naerose can read. Clearly Alexis put a lot of thought into this. All of these things the witch would love, though where she'll put them all, is anyone's guess. There can't possibly be that much realestate in her hat can there? We won't know anytime soon, because the witch doesn't even try to put these things away, she just leafs through the books before deciding to pay more attention to her guest again.
"So hey, whatcha gonna do next? Got any plans?" One might point out it is a good idea often not to ask questions you don't want turned around on you. For instance, are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich? If you yourself will eat yours and they ask you that same question, the answer is likely that you will both end up eating only your own sandwich. Similarly if you said no perhaps you could share.. Naerose wouldn't try that though.
Well even if she can't read, at least one of those books has very... interesting images, so she could at least attempt to create foods that look similar. By 'attempt', Alexis figures the woman will just jam foods together until they resemble other foods.
"I hope you like it. They don't have a whole lot in the way of gifts that aren't souvenirs all the way out here." Which royally sucks when you're trying to find the best present possible for your twin for the holidays in order to outdo him for once.
"Well, I guess I'm sticking around," she wrinkles her nose again as she thinks of having to team with Benimaru one last time, "at least until our exhibition thingamajigger is done. Then I'll prob'ly just head back to Southtown to get caught up on my schoolwork." Then it's back to the Embassy for the holidays with the 'rents, and possibly the boyfriend? Who knows. Last she heard, he was in Japan waiting on his next match in the world tour.
Ugh! She's such a bad fangirl.
"Actually, I might prob'ly head back before that, then just come back here for the exhibition match. I mean, I know it'll cost a lot to fly back and forth, but there's things I need to do."
"I don't have any plane tickets anywhere else." The witch admits. "so I've been kind of stuck here and you know it's too cold for beaches. I was really hoping for a beach vacation with this tournement, I guess, I sort of gave up when I learned that it wouldn't be. " That was day one then. "So, I havn't really got any plans." Naerose offers, in response to her own question, even if it wasn't going to be asked. She didn't have a boyfriend but neither was she truly interested in that sort of thing. She didn't have family and didn't know what she was missing. She didn't have school, it sounded boring. She didn't even have a job these days.
"Yep. No rush to get anywhere." Except maybe Metro.
"Weeeell..." Alexis ponders for a moment. Was she being rude in not asking if the witch had plans? Well, not in her mind. She figured Naerose would probably hop right on that broomstick and fly off, like she has in the past.
"Depending on whether I can get my dad to send the jet... which might be hard, 'cuz he's prob'ly angry at me..." Fidgeting, she takes a look at the mix-and-match bubblebaths again and grins. "Well anyway, if I can get the jet, you're welcome to come along to Tokyo. I mean, from there you can bus it to Southtown or whatever." Shrug. The offer's been made at least.
"You totally got a deal." Naerose says with a wink over the round spectacled black shades.
It maybe figuratively true about Naerose just hopping on her broom and flying off, but literaly it wasn't. She couldn't maintain lift on the broom for very long. It would do only for short stints. From one object to another and control was very difficult to maintain. This was the reality of one of the most difficult abilities there were. Almost no one managed even the little bit Naerose did, but what Naerose could do was by no means travel. Even so she was flighty i nthe sense that Naerose came and went as she pleased. It seemed random, even she probably didn't predict her fancies. Sometimes she had a purpose, sometimes not but since she had a tendancy not to tell anyone what that purpose was, it can be assumed that having or not having didn't matter.
"So we'll fly to .. Japan. When?"
She's... actually being taken up on her offer? Alexis peers at the witch, who for all she knows is peering back from beneath those dark glasses. "I'll have to call to see if he's coming over this'a way for a soiree or political event or something. Chances are he's not, but..." Shoulders come up in another shrug. Her father is sometimes as hard to predict as the witch is.
"Either way, soon as I know, I'll let'cha know, okay?"
"Alright!" exclaims the witch, then gets to her feet, reaches for Alexi's' wrist and tries to tug her along toward the door, "Lets go look for that pool now." On her way out, she picks up her broom which she left for looking at the basket. She didn't bother taking off her hat (or her shades obviously) while sleeping and therefore is already fully dressed. Pajamas were not a thought to the witch who passed out on the ground. And on the way to ward the hall the witch goes on to talk chattily about random things. Very random.
Log created on 11:09:53 12/17/2008 by Alexis, and last modified on 17:58:54 12/18/2008.