Chapter 9 - Hey-Ho, Where'd Me Bunny Go?
"Where is the plot?" the man asked in a completely over-emphasized British accent, pulling at one side of his pencil-thin moustache.
"I am not entirely sure," another far too British man replied, perplexed. "Is it up a tree? Is it...over there? Perhaps...in the pantry? Under a rock?"
"No," the first man replied, setting the rock back down. "I do enjoy a good plot. But whatever has become of it?"
"I know not whereupon the plot now rrrrrrrrrests," his companion said, trilling his 'R's rrrrrrrrrrridiculously.
"Wow," Zidane commented, eyes glued to the television screen, "they'll let anyone on TV."
"I quite agree, Zidane," Dagger said disgustedly. "It takes no talent at all to overact."
"What are you saying?!!!!!!!!" Steiner howled in agony, clutching his chest-plate and collapsing to the ground. Notably absent was the Oscar.
"What are you all doing?! We're back! Get that TV out of here! No anachronisms! They're a terrible, terrible thing!" Erin exclaimed, throwing a tarp over the box.
"Speaking of overacting..." Steiner commented huffily, his nose in the air. Then he turned to Zidane and glared accusingly. "And just where were you, Quina, Cat-Girl and Avatar staggering in from this morning?"
"What? Oh, that. Yeah, we were just over in Dagguereo buying food. Oh, and we managed to find some new names for those two." He crooked his thumb toward the nearby corner, where Bezo and Yezo were engaged in a heated thumb-war. "He's Bezo and she's Yezo now."
"Bezo?" Amarant repeated, wandering in to the room. "I'm surprised he didn't call himself Sephiroth."
"I tried," Bezo called, releasing his grip on Yezo's thumb, "but they said it was too long. It can only be eight letters."
"How many does...yeah, it has nine. Hmph...you would have been Sephi-rot. Seems appropriate to me," Amarant smirked, once again withdrawing his oddly- shaped block of wood and pen-knife. Time to put the finishing touches on his creation!
"Ipsen's Castle is just up ahead!" the former Captain Crew Member called from the little steering-thingy.
"Or maybe not," Amarant muttered, leaning against one of the newly-replaced walls. 'If that damn Qu eats these ones, too, I'll throw him so far, he hits his own shadow! Rrr!'
"Hey! Quina!" he called to the Qu, who was currently involved in a lively game of chess (hee-hee! Lively chess...) with Freya. "If you hit these walls, too, I'll throw you so far, you eat your own shadow! Ah, dammit. This is what comes of talking, I suppose."
"You're still talking too much, Amarant," Yezo noted sadly. "Stop it! Be more quiet!"
She gave him a decidedly un-mighty smack upside the head, the force of which ruffled one of his rasta-pleats a little. Said rasta-pleat sailed straight up from his head, and landed, perfectly in place once more. He clapped a hand to his eyes and brushed back the layer of hair covering them in a moment equal in tension and anticipation to when a much-loved snow- suited boy named Kenny in a universe far, far away, in a park significantly below the more northern one, took off his hood for the very first time. His bright pink eyes sparkled in the moonlight...which was odd, as it was still daylight.
"Hee!" Yezo giggled. "You have pink eyes!"
"Shut up!" he whined in a distinctly non-Amarant-ish voice. Yezo was not so easily convinced.
"You have pink eyes! You have pink eyes! You have pink eyes!" she sang childishly, dancing about the increasingly annoyed bounty-hunter.
"That was a bad idea," Freya called to the cat-girl. "He'll throw you so far, you won't finish your sentence!"
"Eep!" Yezo proclaimed, darting over to Avatar. "I must rely on Mighty Sephiroth to protect me! Or, at least, to cuddle me until I forget about my impending doom. Yeah...impending-doom cuddles..." she sighed happily, bouncing over to Bezo and insinuating herself between his arm and his shoulder, snuggling against him.
"Oh," Dagger commented idly. "How cute."
"Yeah," Zidane agreed. "Idiots in love."
"I suppose that explains why you and Dagger are so very adorable," Freya commented, glaring at the Qu currently munching on her Bishop.
"Hmph, I say!" Dagger and Zidane said in as close to unison as two people with completely different vocal registers could. Then, all trace of offence forgotten, they cuddled together adorably. Freya smiled indulgently, and just a wee bit wistfully, before issuing another glare in Quina's direction.
"And give me back my horsie!" she exclaimed severely.
"Wow!" Captain Bob Vious called out. "We're here! That was quick!
"Whys is that plot device guy talking again?" Eiko inquired, ambling into the room.
"Hey, Eiko," Zidane greeted. "How's Vivi?"
"He's almost back to full sentences!" Eiko announced cheerfully. "He should be okay by the time we land."
"Wow! How hard did that dragon kick him?" Zidane demanded.
"Hard enough to make him sing 'The Night Pat Murphy Died' in four different languages...all at the same time," the little summoner replied, sighing as
"They went up to the graveyard,
So holy and sublime,
But they found out when they'd got there,
They'd left the corpse behind!! AHAHA!!!" drifted up the stair.
"Poor Master Vivi," Steiner sighed mournfully. Zidane shrugged.
"Hey, at least he doesn't have to listen to those two." He glared balefully at Bezo and Yezo. Steiner scratched his head.
"Yes! That is true! Where might I find a Grand Dragon and a good deal of head trauma?"
"Alright!" Zidane proclaimed jubilantly, bounding off the ship. "We're here!" He gazed up at the upside-down inside-out castle in awe. 'Ipsen's Castle,' he thought, 'in all its glory. All...its...glory? Where the hell did that come from?'
"How did that happen?!" Dagger exclaimed, blinking. "We were in the air two seconds ago, and the next thing we know, we're on the ground!"
"I think the authors got bored with that scene," Zidane told her in a whisper. She nodded, understanding immediately.
"So," Steiner began, "who shall go in with you?"
"Uh...why don't we all just go in?" Bezo asked, confused. Steiner looked aghast.
"Because we would be a party of ten! That is simply not done!"
"Yeah!" Zidane agreed, frowning at Bezo. Geez, who did this guy think he was, anyway? Oh, right. Sephiroth.
"Whatever," Amarant commented. "Do what you want. I'm gonna go in and get those damn plate-thingies."
"Mirrors," Freya corrected absently.
"Shut up!" he shot back. Then he turned back to Zidane. "Whatever the hell they are, I'm going to get them and prove to you how much these bozos are slowing you down."
Zidane glared.
"Hey, I didn't ask for Bezo and Yezo to show up! It's not like I WANT them along."
"I'm not just talking about Pseudoroth and Cat-Girl," he replied with a smirk. "Although, mostly, to be sure...Anyway, you're wasting time working with all these people. 'He travels fastest who travels alone.'"
"Or who has a convertible," Bezo added.
"Yeah!" Yezo chirped. "Just like Phoenix! Those girls in the thongs said he moved really fast, so there you go!"
A long silence fell. A clump of tumbleweed rolled past. The doors of the ship creaked open and shut. Someone whistled a jaunty repeating fourth interval with a definite Western lilt.
"Uh...right."
And with this pearl of wisdom, Amarant turned and began climbing the rather excessively long stairway to Ipsen's Castle.
"Erm...should we be letting him do that?" Freya asked hesitantly. Zidane shrugged.
"Sure - why not?"
"Well...that doesn't seem to me to be very good group solidarity..." she replied, flustered.
"Eh, let him go. He probably just needs some 'alone time,'" the fair-haired youth inferred, nodding sagely. Then he continued, rubbing his hands together briskly. "Alright! Well, I think I'll go in - "
"Big surprise," Quina muttered sourly. "Prima donna."
" - and Steiner, Dagger, and Vivi are gonna come in with me."
"Big surprise," Eiko muttered, just as sourly. "Prima donna's pets."
"So, we're all agreed, then?" Zidane glanced about the circle hopefully. "The four of us'll go in, and Freya, Quina, and Eiko can stay out here and hold down the fort?"
"Great! So, what do Bezo and I do, Cap?" Yezo asked, leaning forward eagerly. Zidane raised an eyebrow.
"You two? Uh...you sit right there - " He pointed to a tuft of grass. " - and try not to hurt yourselves."
Upon receiving no angry response to this - indeed, no response of any kind - Zidane glanced over at the young couple...and slumped forward in despair to find that his request had gone completely unheard by Yezo, who had become distracted by a bunny, and was bouncing energetically about, trying to catch up with it. His warning also went unheard and unheeded by Bezo, who was equally distracted by his girlfriend's posterior as she chased her new friend relentlessly around the flat patch of ground before the massive staircase.
"Alright, let's just go, okay, guys?" Zidane called to Vivi, Dagger, and Steiner.
Shrugging as one in a brilliant show of much-rehearsed choreography, the party of four trudged up the stairway to Ipsen's Castle.
"Good luck, guys," Eiko called after them before casting a despairing glance at Bezo and Yezo, who were...well, who were being Bezo and Yezo. "Although, we may need it more than you..."
"Erm...Yezo," Freya called as Yezo, having caught her bunny in a small, low- hanging cave nearby, gave an incautious hop of joy. The result was immediate and disastrous as Yezo's head connected with the rock, her ears doing little to cushion her from the impact. The dragoon winced in sympathy at the 'thunk' of skull against stone, then sighed. "...You might want to watch that."
"Ow..." the cat-girl whimpered, then crawled from the cave and over to Bezo's comforting arms, and pouted, eyes tearing up again. "My bunny ran away!"
"Over there, Yezo!" Eiko called, pointing at a small shape bounding for all it was worth in the opposite direction. "Quick! Don't let it get away!"
As Yezo tore herself from Bezo's embrace and leapt to her feet with a gasp and scampered off again, Freya looked down at Eiko, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.
"You know," she began slowly, suppressing a grin with great difficulty, "you really shouldn't encourage her that way."
"I know," Eiko replied with a sheepish smile. "But it's kind of irresistible."
"BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY!!!" Yezo shrieked as she darted past.
"YEZO YEZO YEZO YEZO YEZO!!!" Bezo echoed...sort of...as he darted past after her. Then disaster struck...for the second time in two minutes, as the bunny saw its chance for escape up the nearby insanely long stairway.
"Ah-hah!" the bunny proclaimed, holding up a forepaw. It darted to the left and bounded up the stairs to freedom. Yezo stopped and gazed about her, puzzled.
"Hey-ho, where'd me bunny go?" she sang softly in a distinctly Loreena McKennit-esque accent.
"Up there!" Bezo shouted, pointing at the small furry brown shape beating a hasty retreat upwards.
"Hah!" the cat-girl chirped happily as she caught sight of her little would- be pal. And so, Freya, Quina, Eiko, and Bezo watched in consternation as the young woman bounded up the stairs after the bunny. No good would come of this...
And, of course, no good did.
"Yezoooooooo!!!" Bezo howled after his retreating girlfriend. She turned around and cocked her head to the side.
"Yeah?"
"Where ya goin'?"
"After my bunny!"
"...Oh," he replied after a long moment. "Well, if they have a snack bar in there, pick me up a hot-dog, okay?"
"Roger-dodger-doo!" she called back with a giggle, saluting. And then she was gone again.
"Hey, anyone wanna play Black-Jack?" Bezo asked, glancing about the ever- decreasing circle hopefully. Freya sighed, sending up a quick prayer for patience...or at least, for a well-timed, well-placed lightning bolt to end this boy's insistent rambling.
"With what?" she demanded.
"Oh...right," he agreed with a pout. Then a horrifying realization jolted him. "Yezo's gonna forget to put mustard on my hot dog! I've gotta go after her!"
And with that, he leapt to his feet and tore up the endless staircase. "Besides," he added, turning, "I can't let that nicely-tailed little piece get away."
And then he was gone.
"Well," Freya sighed as Bezo bounced up the steps after his bunny-chasing love, "someone has to go in and make sure they don't hurt themselves. Go on, Quina."
Quina, quite unsatisfied with this conclusion, glared as best two lovely red petunias possibly could.
"Why you all hate Quina?! No more! Quina stay right here!" the Qu concluded, plunking down on the ground and crossing his arms...best as he could. Freya blinked.
"Alright, then," she said slowly. "Go ahead, Eiko!"
"What?! Me?! I'm only six years old!"
"Do you or do you not have Madeen?"
"That's beside the point! Madeen is no help against the stupidity of those two! Making me talk to them? That's child abuse! Why don't you go in, if you're so worried?!"
"Why does it have to be me? Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't my people been ruthlessly slaughtered?...twice?! Haven't I had to put up with being thrown all across creation by a grumpy Rasta-Chicken?!"
"Maybe he'd stop being grumpy if you stopped calling him that..." Eiko suggested mildly, only to be completely ignored by Freya, who was now on something of a roll, the dramatic side of her personality leaping to the foreground and striking a ridiculous dramatic pose.
"I'm not nearly done!" she exclaimed. "As far as I know, there are only about ten of us left...and the only one I really care about doesn't even know who I am! We're supposed to be rebuilding our home with the other eight, and he's off somewhere, trying to remember how to make toast!!! You think this doesn't frustrate me?! You think I don't have enough stress in my life?! Well, think again, little missy!!!"
"Little...missy? I think she's lost it," Eiko murmured sadly to Quina, whose only acknowledgement was to 'hmph' even more pointedly.
"Well!" the Burmecian chirped brightly. "I suppose I'll go in, then. It's good to let these things out every once in a while. Otherwise, they just build up, and you start being all pissy, and leaning against things, and throwing everything in sight. Who wants to end up like Amarant? Gods, I'd sooner reduce the numbers to nine by ending my own life."
With this, she turned and skipped up the steps, merrily whistling a jaunty Riverdance tune.
Eiko watched, blinking.
"I think she likes him."
"Who?" Quina tilted his head to the side, puzzled.
Eiko whispered something in his ear, to the effect of Freya's having something of a fondness for a certain...red-headed someone, and his flower- eyes widened.
"You crazy! Why you think that?!"
"Well, you see, when a girl really likes a guy, she sometimes says things about him that aren't so nice. Watch: I think Vivi is a big stupid-head, and his hat is too yellow and pointy. See?" Then she sighed. 'Oh, Vivi...'
"Where is the plot?" the man asked in a completely over-emphasized British accent, pulling at one side of his pencil-thin moustache.
"I am not entirely sure," another far too British man replied, perplexed. "Is it up a tree? Is it...over there? Perhaps...in the pantry? Under a rock?"
"No," the first man replied, setting the rock back down. "I do enjoy a good plot. But whatever has become of it?"
"I know not whereupon the plot now rrrrrrrrrests," his companion said, trilling his 'R's rrrrrrrrrrridiculously.
"Wow," Zidane commented, eyes glued to the television screen, "they'll let anyone on TV."
"I quite agree, Zidane," Dagger said disgustedly. "It takes no talent at all to overact."
"What are you saying?!!!!!!!!" Steiner howled in agony, clutching his chest-plate and collapsing to the ground. Notably absent was the Oscar.
"What are you all doing?! We're back! Get that TV out of here! No anachronisms! They're a terrible, terrible thing!" Erin exclaimed, throwing a tarp over the box.
"Speaking of overacting..." Steiner commented huffily, his nose in the air. Then he turned to Zidane and glared accusingly. "And just where were you, Quina, Cat-Girl and Avatar staggering in from this morning?"
"What? Oh, that. Yeah, we were just over in Dagguereo buying food. Oh, and we managed to find some new names for those two." He crooked his thumb toward the nearby corner, where Bezo and Yezo were engaged in a heated thumb-war. "He's Bezo and she's Yezo now."
"Bezo?" Amarant repeated, wandering in to the room. "I'm surprised he didn't call himself Sephiroth."
"I tried," Bezo called, releasing his grip on Yezo's thumb, "but they said it was too long. It can only be eight letters."
"How many does...yeah, it has nine. Hmph...you would have been Sephi-rot. Seems appropriate to me," Amarant smirked, once again withdrawing his oddly- shaped block of wood and pen-knife. Time to put the finishing touches on his creation!
"Ipsen's Castle is just up ahead!" the former Captain Crew Member called from the little steering-thingy.
"Or maybe not," Amarant muttered, leaning against one of the newly-replaced walls. 'If that damn Qu eats these ones, too, I'll throw him so far, he hits his own shadow! Rrr!'
"Hey! Quina!" he called to the Qu, who was currently involved in a lively game of chess (hee-hee! Lively chess...) with Freya. "If you hit these walls, too, I'll throw you so far, you eat your own shadow! Ah, dammit. This is what comes of talking, I suppose."
"You're still talking too much, Amarant," Yezo noted sadly. "Stop it! Be more quiet!"
She gave him a decidedly un-mighty smack upside the head, the force of which ruffled one of his rasta-pleats a little. Said rasta-pleat sailed straight up from his head, and landed, perfectly in place once more. He clapped a hand to his eyes and brushed back the layer of hair covering them in a moment equal in tension and anticipation to when a much-loved snow- suited boy named Kenny in a universe far, far away, in a park significantly below the more northern one, took off his hood for the very first time. His bright pink eyes sparkled in the moonlight...which was odd, as it was still daylight.
"Hee!" Yezo giggled. "You have pink eyes!"
"Shut up!" he whined in a distinctly non-Amarant-ish voice. Yezo was not so easily convinced.
"You have pink eyes! You have pink eyes! You have pink eyes!" she sang childishly, dancing about the increasingly annoyed bounty-hunter.
"That was a bad idea," Freya called to the cat-girl. "He'll throw you so far, you won't finish your sentence!"
"Eep!" Yezo proclaimed, darting over to Avatar. "I must rely on Mighty Sephiroth to protect me! Or, at least, to cuddle me until I forget about my impending doom. Yeah...impending-doom cuddles..." she sighed happily, bouncing over to Bezo and insinuating herself between his arm and his shoulder, snuggling against him.
"Oh," Dagger commented idly. "How cute."
"Yeah," Zidane agreed. "Idiots in love."
"I suppose that explains why you and Dagger are so very adorable," Freya commented, glaring at the Qu currently munching on her Bishop.
"Hmph, I say!" Dagger and Zidane said in as close to unison as two people with completely different vocal registers could. Then, all trace of offence forgotten, they cuddled together adorably. Freya smiled indulgently, and just a wee bit wistfully, before issuing another glare in Quina's direction.
"And give me back my horsie!" she exclaimed severely.
"Wow!" Captain Bob Vious called out. "We're here! That was quick!
"Whys is that plot device guy talking again?" Eiko inquired, ambling into the room.
"Hey, Eiko," Zidane greeted. "How's Vivi?"
"He's almost back to full sentences!" Eiko announced cheerfully. "He should be okay by the time we land."
"Wow! How hard did that dragon kick him?" Zidane demanded.
"Hard enough to make him sing 'The Night Pat Murphy Died' in four different languages...all at the same time," the little summoner replied, sighing as
"They went up to the graveyard,
So holy and sublime,
But they found out when they'd got there,
They'd left the corpse behind!! AHAHA!!!" drifted up the stair.
"Poor Master Vivi," Steiner sighed mournfully. Zidane shrugged.
"Hey, at least he doesn't have to listen to those two." He glared balefully at Bezo and Yezo. Steiner scratched his head.
"Yes! That is true! Where might I find a Grand Dragon and a good deal of head trauma?"
"Alright!" Zidane proclaimed jubilantly, bounding off the ship. "We're here!" He gazed up at the upside-down inside-out castle in awe. 'Ipsen's Castle,' he thought, 'in all its glory. All...its...glory? Where the hell did that come from?'
"How did that happen?!" Dagger exclaimed, blinking. "We were in the air two seconds ago, and the next thing we know, we're on the ground!"
"I think the authors got bored with that scene," Zidane told her in a whisper. She nodded, understanding immediately.
"So," Steiner began, "who shall go in with you?"
"Uh...why don't we all just go in?" Bezo asked, confused. Steiner looked aghast.
"Because we would be a party of ten! That is simply not done!"
"Yeah!" Zidane agreed, frowning at Bezo. Geez, who did this guy think he was, anyway? Oh, right. Sephiroth.
"Whatever," Amarant commented. "Do what you want. I'm gonna go in and get those damn plate-thingies."
"Mirrors," Freya corrected absently.
"Shut up!" he shot back. Then he turned back to Zidane. "Whatever the hell they are, I'm going to get them and prove to you how much these bozos are slowing you down."
Zidane glared.
"Hey, I didn't ask for Bezo and Yezo to show up! It's not like I WANT them along."
"I'm not just talking about Pseudoroth and Cat-Girl," he replied with a smirk. "Although, mostly, to be sure...Anyway, you're wasting time working with all these people. 'He travels fastest who travels alone.'"
"Or who has a convertible," Bezo added.
"Yeah!" Yezo chirped. "Just like Phoenix! Those girls in the thongs said he moved really fast, so there you go!"
A long silence fell. A clump of tumbleweed rolled past. The doors of the ship creaked open and shut. Someone whistled a jaunty repeating fourth interval with a definite Western lilt.
"Uh...right."
And with this pearl of wisdom, Amarant turned and began climbing the rather excessively long stairway to Ipsen's Castle.
"Erm...should we be letting him do that?" Freya asked hesitantly. Zidane shrugged.
"Sure - why not?"
"Well...that doesn't seem to me to be very good group solidarity..." she replied, flustered.
"Eh, let him go. He probably just needs some 'alone time,'" the fair-haired youth inferred, nodding sagely. Then he continued, rubbing his hands together briskly. "Alright! Well, I think I'll go in - "
"Big surprise," Quina muttered sourly. "Prima donna."
" - and Steiner, Dagger, and Vivi are gonna come in with me."
"Big surprise," Eiko muttered, just as sourly. "Prima donna's pets."
"So, we're all agreed, then?" Zidane glanced about the circle hopefully. "The four of us'll go in, and Freya, Quina, and Eiko can stay out here and hold down the fort?"
"Great! So, what do Bezo and I do, Cap?" Yezo asked, leaning forward eagerly. Zidane raised an eyebrow.
"You two? Uh...you sit right there - " He pointed to a tuft of grass. " - and try not to hurt yourselves."
Upon receiving no angry response to this - indeed, no response of any kind - Zidane glanced over at the young couple...and slumped forward in despair to find that his request had gone completely unheard by Yezo, who had become distracted by a bunny, and was bouncing energetically about, trying to catch up with it. His warning also went unheard and unheeded by Bezo, who was equally distracted by his girlfriend's posterior as she chased her new friend relentlessly around the flat patch of ground before the massive staircase.
"Alright, let's just go, okay, guys?" Zidane called to Vivi, Dagger, and Steiner.
Shrugging as one in a brilliant show of much-rehearsed choreography, the party of four trudged up the stairway to Ipsen's Castle.
"Good luck, guys," Eiko called after them before casting a despairing glance at Bezo and Yezo, who were...well, who were being Bezo and Yezo. "Although, we may need it more than you..."
"Erm...Yezo," Freya called as Yezo, having caught her bunny in a small, low- hanging cave nearby, gave an incautious hop of joy. The result was immediate and disastrous as Yezo's head connected with the rock, her ears doing little to cushion her from the impact. The dragoon winced in sympathy at the 'thunk' of skull against stone, then sighed. "...You might want to watch that."
"Ow..." the cat-girl whimpered, then crawled from the cave and over to Bezo's comforting arms, and pouted, eyes tearing up again. "My bunny ran away!"
"Over there, Yezo!" Eiko called, pointing at a small shape bounding for all it was worth in the opposite direction. "Quick! Don't let it get away!"
As Yezo tore herself from Bezo's embrace and leapt to her feet with a gasp and scampered off again, Freya looked down at Eiko, arms crossed, eyebrow raised.
"You know," she began slowly, suppressing a grin with great difficulty, "you really shouldn't encourage her that way."
"I know," Eiko replied with a sheepish smile. "But it's kind of irresistible."
"BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY!!!" Yezo shrieked as she darted past.
"YEZO YEZO YEZO YEZO YEZO!!!" Bezo echoed...sort of...as he darted past after her. Then disaster struck...for the second time in two minutes, as the bunny saw its chance for escape up the nearby insanely long stairway.
"Ah-hah!" the bunny proclaimed, holding up a forepaw. It darted to the left and bounded up the stairs to freedom. Yezo stopped and gazed about her, puzzled.
"Hey-ho, where'd me bunny go?" she sang softly in a distinctly Loreena McKennit-esque accent.
"Up there!" Bezo shouted, pointing at the small furry brown shape beating a hasty retreat upwards.
"Hah!" the cat-girl chirped happily as she caught sight of her little would- be pal. And so, Freya, Quina, Eiko, and Bezo watched in consternation as the young woman bounded up the stairs after the bunny. No good would come of this...
And, of course, no good did.
"Yezoooooooo!!!" Bezo howled after his retreating girlfriend. She turned around and cocked her head to the side.
"Yeah?"
"Where ya goin'?"
"After my bunny!"
"...Oh," he replied after a long moment. "Well, if they have a snack bar in there, pick me up a hot-dog, okay?"
"Roger-dodger-doo!" she called back with a giggle, saluting. And then she was gone again.
"Hey, anyone wanna play Black-Jack?" Bezo asked, glancing about the ever- decreasing circle hopefully. Freya sighed, sending up a quick prayer for patience...or at least, for a well-timed, well-placed lightning bolt to end this boy's insistent rambling.
"With what?" she demanded.
"Oh...right," he agreed with a pout. Then a horrifying realization jolted him. "Yezo's gonna forget to put mustard on my hot dog! I've gotta go after her!"
And with that, he leapt to his feet and tore up the endless staircase. "Besides," he added, turning, "I can't let that nicely-tailed little piece get away."
And then he was gone.
"Well," Freya sighed as Bezo bounced up the steps after his bunny-chasing love, "someone has to go in and make sure they don't hurt themselves. Go on, Quina."
Quina, quite unsatisfied with this conclusion, glared as best two lovely red petunias possibly could.
"Why you all hate Quina?! No more! Quina stay right here!" the Qu concluded, plunking down on the ground and crossing his arms...best as he could. Freya blinked.
"Alright, then," she said slowly. "Go ahead, Eiko!"
"What?! Me?! I'm only six years old!"
"Do you or do you not have Madeen?"
"That's beside the point! Madeen is no help against the stupidity of those two! Making me talk to them? That's child abuse! Why don't you go in, if you're so worried?!"
"Why does it have to be me? Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't my people been ruthlessly slaughtered?...twice?! Haven't I had to put up with being thrown all across creation by a grumpy Rasta-Chicken?!"
"Maybe he'd stop being grumpy if you stopped calling him that..." Eiko suggested mildly, only to be completely ignored by Freya, who was now on something of a roll, the dramatic side of her personality leaping to the foreground and striking a ridiculous dramatic pose.
"I'm not nearly done!" she exclaimed. "As far as I know, there are only about ten of us left...and the only one I really care about doesn't even know who I am! We're supposed to be rebuilding our home with the other eight, and he's off somewhere, trying to remember how to make toast!!! You think this doesn't frustrate me?! You think I don't have enough stress in my life?! Well, think again, little missy!!!"
"Little...missy? I think she's lost it," Eiko murmured sadly to Quina, whose only acknowledgement was to 'hmph' even more pointedly.
"Well!" the Burmecian chirped brightly. "I suppose I'll go in, then. It's good to let these things out every once in a while. Otherwise, they just build up, and you start being all pissy, and leaning against things, and throwing everything in sight. Who wants to end up like Amarant? Gods, I'd sooner reduce the numbers to nine by ending my own life."
With this, she turned and skipped up the steps, merrily whistling a jaunty Riverdance tune.
Eiko watched, blinking.
"I think she likes him."
"Who?" Quina tilted his head to the side, puzzled.
Eiko whispered something in his ear, to the effect of Freya's having something of a fondness for a certain...red-headed someone, and his flower- eyes widened.
"You crazy! Why you think that?!"
"Well, you see, when a girl really likes a guy, she sometimes says things about him that aren't so nice. Watch: I think Vivi is a big stupid-head, and his hat is too yellow and pointy. See?" Then she sighed. 'Oh, Vivi...'