Disclaimer: I do not own Treasure Planet or any material related to Walt Disney in any way or form.
He'd been chewed out. Man, had he been chewed out. Jim's mother, Sarah Hawkins, had yelled at him in front of two robotic policemen as well as all of the Benbow Inn's patrons. Jim knew that she had had to have been pretty mad if she lost track of where she was to give him a loud, stern lecture. As guilty as he already felt, his mother just had to make him feel worse by saying she didn't want to see him throw away his future.
To this argument, Jim made the feeble reply, "What future?" as he withdrew into the kitchen with a tub full of dirty plates.
Once within the relatively quiet sanctity of the kitchen, and ignoring the soft crackling of several fires beneath bubbling pots of stew, Jim set to work washing the multitude of dirty dishes in an enormous steel sink at one end of the kitchen. As he worked, the brunette's thoughts turned to the person he had met that morning. Well, more like they had run into him. The frown on his face deepened as he thought about them: the timbre of the voice had been one to match a girl who spoke in a low tone, so he assumed the surfer he'd met was a girl. He'd met only a few girls his age who liked to solar surf, but none of them had the skill the girl had possessed.
"And none of them dress like a boy, that's for sure," he thought. The more Jim thought about her, the more he wanted to see her again. It would be fun to have someone to challenge, someone he could truly test his abilities against.
"Lai, what are you doing here? I told you you could start tomorrow." Curious, Jim paused in the middle of drying a dish, and tiptoed to the kitchen door, where there was a small circular glass window he could look out of. He wondered who his mother could be talking to.
"Mrs. Hawkins, I thank you greatly, However, I just happened to drop by, and I noticed you seemed to be rather short-handed tonight. So I decided to come in and help you." There, no less than ten feet away from where Jim stood behind the kitchen door, was a girl who looked similar to the solar surfer he'd seen earlier that day. The girl, Lai, as Jim recalled his mother calling her, was slightly shorter than he was, with shoulder-length dark brown, wavy hair that framed a pretty, oval face. Her eyes were light brown, and her lips a delicious lemonade-pink. She wore an unzipped black leather jacket, which contrasted nicely with the dove-white shirt she wore underneath. The girl's pants were slightly baggy, travel-worn jeans, and she wore the same style of half-gloves the person he'd met earlier had worn. A black, ribbon-like bandana was tied around Lai's forehead and through her hair, the tail ends trailing down the back of her head and ending at the nape of her neck. Jim watched as she shifted her footing, noting how even her boots were black. A simple black leather choker and obsidian-colored wristbands completed the interesting outfit. Jim saw his mother raise an inquisitive eyebrow, but sighed, smiling slightly, and pointed in Jim's direction. The brunette immediately dashed back to his post at the sink, and began to furiously scrub more dishes, pulling up the collar of his jacket as he did so.
"Well, well. The troublesome solar surfer." Jim jumped. He turned to face the girl Lai standing right beside him. He hadn't even heard the door open, and any possible footsteps he might have heard must have been lost over the rushing of the tap. Jim struggled to keep his hold on the dish in hands as a pair of light brown eyes looked over him amusedly.
"I think if you'd been a little faster, you might actually have made it, Brownie." Jim frowned at the nickname, immediately deciding he didn't like Lai. The girl merely smiled, before turning to an abandoned apron and rolling up her sleeves. Jim caught sight of a short, thin piece of what looked like metal tied to her belt as she removed her jacket to tie the apron on.
"Not only does she insult people, she could be dangerous as well," he thought as he dried his hands on a towel. Humming to herself, Lai proceeded to pick up a knife and slice away swiftly at a purp she picked from a barrel in the corner. Jim thought he'd try to snatch the small piece of metal when she was preoccupied, so he walked seemingly casually past her, his hand dropping to his side as he came up to her left side.
"I wouldn't if I were you," Lai said. Jim froze, his fingers brushing the cool, black metal. Lai gently placed the knife and fruit on the cutting board in front of her. She wiped her hands on her apron, before tapping the cylindrical object at her waist.
"You don't want to know what it can do." She spoke in a hushed voice, as if confiding a great secret. But this only proved to intensify Jim's curiosity, to which Lai shook her head, returning her attention back to her work. The brunette exhaled noisily, blowing his bangs out of his eyes, before shoving his hands in his pockets and turning away, walking through the kitchen door and up to his room. Once there, Jim slammed the door, irritated, and flopped onto his bed, his water-chafed hands massaging his eyes. He sighed.
"Great. If mom hired that girl, I'm going to be in for it…"