Rukuriri shivered in the frigid air. Of all the strange things Darjeeling had had her and the others of the St. Gloriana senshado team do, dressing up in a bikini with a Santa hat and dropping down the chimney to arrive at the Tea Garden's Christmas party was the most embarrassing and dangerous by a long shot.
She had watched from afar as a handful of the Oarai girls were forced by their own student council to do an embarrassing dance in front of a large crowd after losing to Darjeeling's elite infantry tank squad, albeit by a narrow margin. Yet her own defeat every time the two schools crossed paths had put her on the list for some odd favors that were supposed to convince her to do better.
Now she was trudging through knee-deep snow in wholly inadequate garb for the season—the temperature was just below freezing and the snow was still falling, yet here she was clad in a bikini, and a skimpy red one at that. It was a good thing she didn't have to spend too long outside, as there was a real risk of frostbite here.
Just keep moving, she thought to herself. Just keep moving. You won't freeze if you keep your body temperature up.
No matter how Rukuriri tried, she couldn't shake the thought that perhaps she should have brought a coat along. While it wouldn't have solved the problem of the snow biting at her bare shins with every step she took, it would have taken the edge off the feeling she got when she sallied forth from the back door of the Tea Garden mansion and into a veritable blast chiller.
The wind whipped at the skin on her back. She was grateful for the tea-filled sack she carried with her as part of her Santa outfit; it was the only thing she had that could slow the wind even a tiny bit. Nevertheless, she would be more than grateful to get back inside.
Stairs. Where are the stairs? She rounded a corner of the huge, palatial residence and plodded up the steps to the terrace, searching for a dark window she could use to make it to the roof without being seen. Her arrival was supposed to be a surprise.
At length, crouching low to avoid being seen from inside and ignoring the sting of the cold on her legs from the snow she was practically swimming in, Rukuriri found such a dark window and stepped up onto its external stone sill. Placing the neck of the sack in her teeth and biting down hard to free up her hands, she began to feel the walls for handholds, which were not easy to see as the moon was illuminating the other side of the mansion. If only the Ark Royal was heading the other way…
Feeling a gap between two stone blocks of the colossal wall where the mortar held them together, she pulled herself up and scrabbled for a toe hold with her boot. This did not work, and she lost her grip, tumbling down into the snow.
Well, I'm al—son of a gun! This hurts! Bloody cold…
She picked herself and dusted herself off. Her arms and legs were covered in goosebumps; the human body was not meant to be out here dressed like this. But she had declined to bring a coat because she thought this would go faster and it would just be a big hassle to retrieve her coat from the roof later. Clearly that call had not paid off, and neither had most of the calls she made on the battlefield.
Not seeing any other way up, she tried again. This time she took it slower and more cautiously, and bit by bit, she was able to climb up until she reached the eave, and hauled herself onto the snow-caked shingles.
For a moment she ignored the burning freeze of the snow against her skin, then stood up. There was just a little more to go and she would be able to return to the warmth of the indoors. Just a little more freezing, just a little more pain. Her muscles were starting to ache and she couldn't feel her fingers anymore. She had made it to the roof just in time.
It was a good thing, she thought, that someone had thought to give the roof a rather shallow angle. It meant she could walk almost upright as opposed to having to crawl up the roof with her belly getting frostbitten. From the ground it looked less imposing; here, less imposing was a good thing. It meant she in her condition wouldn't have to work too hard.
There were a few chimneys in a row along the ridge that ran along the entire length of the building. She couldn't remember for the life of her which one led to the room with the party going on; she just wanted to get back inside. Not that it mattered what chimney she chose; there was probably a small gathering in whichever room she might have picked. She would appear foolish enough coming out of the chimney in a bikini Santa outfit covered in soot as it was.
So she made a beeline for the nearest one. As Rukuriri drew near, she felt the sweet embrace of warm air. It soothed the sting of the cold and restored the sensation in her fingers. Savoring the moment, she climbed atop the little brick structure with her feet apart to stand astride it, and let the rising warm air relax her.
Soon enough, she was feeling a bit more herself again. There was still nothing normal about this, but there didn't have to be. It was time for her to make her entrance.
She lowered herself feet-first into the chimney with her arms on the edges as if it was a hot tub. Grabbing the sack, she pulled it in after her and began maneuvering down the brick tube bit by bit, balancing the sack on her lap while her hands and feet worked tirelessly to avoid skinning her back on the walls.
Down she went, until suddenly it occurred to her—she was very warm. Too warm. Not to mention she was feeling a tad light-headed, and the chimney sounded as though it was alive.
A glance below, the first time she had actually looked down in all of this thanks to her moderate fear of heights, confirmed her suspicions. The fireplace was lit and roaring, throwing out sparks. If she descended into that she would be roasted alive.
New plan. Back up. She began to work the other way, pushing down with her hands and feet to propel herself back out towards the freezing sky, but with the sack weighing her down, it was a lot harder than she bargained for. She strained to keep her back clear of the bricks, a deadly rasp that Darjeeling's little errand did not account for in the slightest. She could not let herself slip.
Closer and closer she came. The slightly less dark outdoors grew bigger in her view. She would go to the next chimney. That had to be the right one. Hopefully they had thought to leave the fire unlit. There were limitations on how warm she wanted to be!
Then her foot slipped. Her boot caught the wall of the chimney at a weird angle and failed to catch, and the sack hurtled into the inferno. Instinctively she rushed to grab it, and in that instant she lost all grip.
She slid down the chimney, chafing painfully against the bricks, towards the thundering flames beneath her. Her life flashed before her eyes. A hard fall into near-certain third-degree burns would ruin her for life if it didn't kill her.
"Oh god!" she shouted in a panic, scrabbling for handholds that passed her by far too quickly. The heat turned from cozy to being unnervingly warm to a scorching blaze immediately below her—
Her fall stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Her back, arms, and legs all hurt. But she couldn't move at all. She had fallen into a bottleneck close to the bottom of the chimney with her legs up, wedging her body into a V-shape with her arms dangling at her sides.
"Ow…" Rukuriri groaned, but the condition of her skin was the least of her worries. She was trapped in a chimney with no leverage to escape immediately above a very hot fire that could flare up at any moment and burn her. The smell of burning tea filled her nose, but there was almost certainly not much oxygen reaching her. She couldn't breathe very well.
She groaned louder. Perhaps someone would hear her and end her misery. This idea of Darjeeling's had been a bad one from the outset. Why on earth had she agreed to do it? It would only bring her frostbite and an untimely death by suffocation in an embarrassing position inside a chimney.
She tried frantically to push herself up. Her hands were still free. But try as she might she could not get enough leverage to move her entire bodyweight. At best she could force the small of her back away from the bricks, but this merely bent her waist at a more extreme angle, and she was not an especially flexible girl.
The bricks dug into her shoulders and thighs. For all she cared she had fallen into a bed of nails. She felt every last one as it left a welt, and some of them were almost certainly bad enough to draw blood with the speed at which she had hit. It was a miracle she even still had the skin on her back.
"Ughh..." Her breath was limited. She had to use it wisely if she was to have any hope of survival. Never in a million years had she actually thought she would be on the brink of death while trying to spice up a Christmas party at her senpai's behest. Yet here she was, trying to convince herself not to say her goodbyes to her family and friends just yet. There was frustration, and then there was desperation. She was in the latter state right about now.
A spark flew up from the fire and singed her mostly bare buttocks. She fought back a yelp, trying to economize her remaining breath, but it reminded her exactly how bad her situation was. Tears flooded her eyes as the fumes filled the environment all around her.
With the last of the air she could muster to make her voice heard, she flattened her back against the wall and shouted at the top of her shrinking, oxygen-starved lungs, "I'm fucking stuck! Help me…"
That'll do it…she thought as she drifted into unconsciousness. That'll catch someone's ear…profanity always does the trick…
Then her eyelids became too heavy for her and she blacked out.
When Rukuriri awoke, she was laying facedown on the floor. Everything hurt. Her chest hurt, her back hurt, every extremity hurt. What woke her up was the sharp sting of iodine being applied to the scrapes that covered her legs. She let out a yell and reflexively kicked.
"She's awake." A familiar, small voice reached her ears—Orange Pekoe's voice. "Just what were you doing in there?"
Rukuriri didn't answer. She was still getting her bearings.
"And why a bikini of all things? That's so dangerous…you're lucky we smelled the tea and heard you. You might have died!"
Don't I know it, Rukuriri thought, but she didn't feel like saying it. Perhaps it would be better to let Darjeeling explain her idea so she could listen to herself.
Of all the things she had wanted to do for Christmas, this was not one of them. She was too young to die. At any rate, she would be up as soon as her wounds were dressed, she would go get changed, and she wanted some cookies…
She howled as a stinging sensation ripped through her shoulders. It was the iodine again. She looked up at Pekoe, who gently shook her head at her and continued to see to her friend's injuries with that stern bedside manner of hers. Unlike Darjeeling, Pekoe was a natural-born nurse.
Pekoe glanced with a raised eyebrow at Darjeeling, who had just entered the room and seen how badly maimed Rukuriri was. Darjeeling's face turned from surprise to indignant to softness at the results of her request, and she ushered herself out of the room with great haste and Assam in tow.
Then Pekoe turned back to her patient, whose welt-checkered back trembled in anticipation of the next dab of iodine. "Be glad you have your life, Rukuriri-san. Don't ever do anything like that again."
Rukuriri smiled weakly. "I won't—aah!" The iodine caught her mid-sentence.
"Good." Pekoe unwrapped one final bandage and placed it over a huge mark across Rukuriri's shoulder blade. "Now clean yourself up and see to it that you have a merry Christmas. And no funny business with chimneys, okay?"
Rukuriri nodded. "Merry Christmas to you too, Pekoe-san."
With that she stood up, and ignoring the discomfort of every dressed wound, limped out of the room. She would make sure she could still enjoy this Christmas. Somehow.