So, here we go again, let's see how Hibiki is doing with Kylie.
"Who are you?" The little red head asked.
Hibiki gulped.
"U-Uh...I'm Hibiki, but..."
"Oh, hi Mr. Hibiki. I'm Kylie."
The girl than stifled a yawn, her eyes closing and he head tilting back slightly.
"I'd better go get my snack and go back to bed, I'll tell Mama and Papa your here so you can get a room too. Are you here to join the guild?"
Hibiki took at once to his charms in an attempt to keep the girl from giving him away to her parents, who were apparently guild members.
"No, but I am still an amazing wizard!" He pulled up a large, purposely overzealous archive screen.
"I can make a picture of anything appear, right out of thin air!" Kylie's mouth dropped open wide at the appearance of the glowing screen.
"I've never seen magic like that!" She cried.
"Anything you can think, I can make it appear!" The Pegasus wizard thought he'd gotten the the key to keeping Kylie busy.
"A bunny!" She exclaimed, running up stand next to Hibiki, who crouched down so she could see the screen well.
Hibiki's fingers flitted across the keyboard he'd summoned along with his screen, the buttons produced different noises and the screen flickered for a moment.
"Ta-da!"
Hibiki exclaimed for good effect as an image of a white rabbit appeared onscreen.
"Wow!" Kylie was awed.
"Oh! Oh! How about a rabbit?" She asked.
Hibiki blinked, than smiled down at her kindly.
"Sweetie, I'm afraid rabbits and bunnies are pretty much the same thing."
"Hmph." Kylie huffed, crossing her arms and pouted.
"Well...why not a hare?" She asked.
Does this girl have an obsession with bunnies or something?
Hibiki thought miserably as he dutifully pulled up a hare onscreen.
"So cute!" The little girl squealed, her eyes glittering in the glow of the archive page.
"I know, can you do a turtle, Mr. Rabbit?"
Wait, whoa, when did I go from Mr. Hibiki to Mr. Rabbit?
Hibiki thought confusedly, but he still pulled up a picture of a turtle for the little girl.
After all, if I let her go back to her parents, she'll tell them I'm here and we'll all be busted. I don't wanna know what they'll do to us if they find us, Draconem Heart is a light guild, technically we're breaking the law!
As Kylie oohed and ahed at the photo of the turtle, she thought of another request.
"I know, now I want a tortoise Mr. Bunny! A tortoise!"
Hibiki wanted to smack his head against the nearest wall.
This is gonna be a looooong night.
Meanwhile, in the stairway leading down into the dungeons.
"FINALLY!" Rina panted as she leaned on her knees.
God, Snowy is heavier than he looks.
"W-What? What happened?"
Rina glanced up to see Eve was at last awake from her knocking him unconscious in her bedroom.
Rina felt an evil smirk spread across her face as she threw her back into the glacier she'd frozen the hapless snow mage into yet again.
"Wait!" Eve shouted, covering his eyes with his free hand, the rest of him still trapped in ice.
Rina stopped with Eve teetering on the edge of the staircase.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry ok! We didn't mean to break in!" Eve exclaimed.
"You didn't mean to break in and yet you were under my bed!"
Rina barked at him, her eyes blazing and her blue hair bouncing with her movements when she whirled to face him.
"Look, look, just hear me out! Please!" Eve begged.
Rina crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the ground, glaring at him.
"Go." She ordered.
"So Hibiki and Ren and I all came back to our guild hall but our master and Sensei Ichiyia had drunk themselves stupid again and we didn't want to say with them so we grabbed a random job and bolted but than we found out it was for investigating a possible dark guild location we came here and questioned these village people and one of them gave us a hint I tried to convince the guys it was a bad idea to come here but they wouldn't listen to me and kept going into this big creepy forest and than we ended up at this castle and we flew into the moat twice and got shocked before we made it over the wall and we saw a dark figure in the hall and ran off and got separated and I randomly picked a room to hide in and it was your room and I dove under the bed hoping you wouldn't find me but than a cockroach crawled on me and I jumped out and you froze me and thats the end!"
Eve's head sagged as he gasped for breath, having blurted all of this out in a single sentence, he rested his chin against the cool surface of his icy restraints and looked hopefully at Rina, praying she'd understand and release him.
Rina raised her eyebrows at him.
"The flags." She said simply.
Eve blinked, "Pardon?"
"You didn't see the flags with our guild mark? The twelve flags on the twelve towers and the giant banner over the drawbridge that has the words 'Draconem Heart' woven onto it?" She asked.
Eve stuttered without really saying anything definite.
"What about the arc over the path that you guys had to have walked on that had our name in the metalwork?" Rina pressed, putting a finger against the ice imprisoning the snow mage, giving him another push until he teetered dangerously close to the edge of the darkening file of stairs into the dungeon.
Again, Eve was caught without a response.
"And what about when you were inside and saw the names of the girls on the rooms signs? The portraits of the guild members, you had have passed at least one person you recognized."
"Well...we, didn't read them or look at them." Eve gulped finally.
Rina narrowed her eyes at him and gave him one more tiny shove.
Eve felt himself tilt backwards as Rina gave him a three fingered wave.
"I'll meet you down there, Snowy." She sang.
Than Eve suffered a very unpleasant trip down an unusually long, dark, stone flight of stairs.
Back in the bathhouse of the girls dorms
"Trickster Magic: Clawing Clowns!"
Layla shouted, summoning her magical jack in the box.
Ren felt recognition itching at the back of his mind, but pushed it away when a terrifying clown with enormous claws that ripped out of it's white gloves burst from the jack in the box and let out a devilish as it charged at Ren.
"ARRRRRGH!" He screamed loudly, the thing was terrifying.
Ren dove hastily out of the way behind a large dragon statue acting as the privacy screen through part of the bath if one wanted to bathe in solitude.
The wind mage sheltered behind the dragon as the clown exploded against it with another ominous cackle.
Ren winced as another clown smashed into the statue.
Then it clicked.
"Dammit, that's that girl who chased us at the Grand Ball...Layla...wait, this is...oh crap, Draconem..."
His eyes widened as his watch began to flash.
He hit the reply button and held the device to his mouth.
"WHAT THE %&*# DO YOU WANT HIBIKI!?"
In the Dragons Hangout, Hibiki had shown Kylie how to scroll through the photos herself so he could get to his watch and attempt to make contact with his friends.
"Ren, I need you to come help me!"
"I'm kinda...ARRRGH...busy!" Ren dove from behind the statue as it was shattered by another flying clown, and he was forced to lunge to the safety of the opposite dragon statue, all the while sloshing his way through the waist deep water, soaked to the skin.
"Where's Eve?" Hibiki hissed into his watch.
"I-I'm here..." A weak voice joined the conversation.
"Eve! You don't sound good, buddy, are you ok?" Hibiki asked, sounding worried.
"My pride is hurt worse than my body. That's bad considering I was just shoved down a really long flight of stairs and kicked into a dungeon cell." The snow mage groaned.
"You were caught, are you STUPID!?" Ren screamed as he dodged out to fire off a blast of wind at Layla, causing the girl, still wrapped in nothing but a fluffy white towel, to perform a handspring out of the way.
"N-No!" Eve stuttered miserably.
"Why not break out of the cell? You've got magic, right?" Hibiki asked, glancing over at Kylie to make sure she was still entertained.
Down in his dungeon cell, with nothing but a small barred window letting in a few slits of pale moonlight, Eve frowned as he glanced down at the slowly melting ice, his other arm was almost free, but his legs we completely numb and if he were to launch an attack now it would do him no good.
"Well...I'm kinda stuck." He said slowly.
"STUCK!? YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORD!" Ren barked harshly as he shot through the water with a burst of wind to dodge another clown, his two fellows on the watch ignoring the steady stream of curses that followed the loud amount of splashing and yelling.
"Well, I'm...frozen into an iceberg."
Hibiki snorted and Ren sounded like he was going to explode with fury.
"YOU #$% GOT FROZEN!? ARE YOU #$%ING TRYING TO GET US KILLED!?"
Eve winced at the harsh treatment he was getting, it wasn't like he had tried to get himself captured.
"And guys, I think I've figured something out." The blonde mage said next.
"Yeah?" Hibiki questioned.
"What!?" Ren yelled.
"This is Draconem Heart." Eve stated seriously.
Hibiki sighed in disappointment and Ren screamed.
"NO DUH SHERLOCK!"
"Honestly Eve, we all figured that out and now you've gotten yourself frozen. Even though your a snow mage..." Hibiki left it at that.
"Oh, and how have you been doing this fine evening Mr. Lates?" Eve demanded.
Hibiki glanced over at Kylie, he face alight with joy as she studied a picture of a bunny/rabbit/hare.
"Well...I'm...getting called Mr. Bunny/Rabbit and entertaining a little girl."
Ren was pissed.
"You two idiots! I'm up here in the #$% ladies bathhouse fighting for my life and you guys are dancing with little girls and getting frozen!? SERIOUSLY!? AM I THE ONLY CAPABLE ONE ON THIS TEAM?" The dark haired wizard roared into the device.
"Well we haven't danced any but..." Hibiki began his reply when he heard.
"Hey Mr. Hare!"
"Gotta go, sorry!"
"Hibiki no!"
"HIBIKI WAIT YOU..."
The archive mage cut the connection before Ren's expected profanity could burst through, and turned to the fiery haired girl.
"What is it, sweetheart?" He asked, kneeling down to her level and already preparing to summon another archive screen.
She pointed at the watch on his wrist.
"That thingy, what is it?" She demanded.
"Oh, this is an advanced communications lacrima built into a specially prepared metal alloy wrist unit that allows me to confer vocal messages between myself and my comrades."
Hibiki said, gesturing to his equipment.
Kylie blinked.
"Huh?"
"I can talk to my friends with it." Hibiki decided to dumb it down a bit.
Understanding dawned in the little dragon's eyes.
"Ooh, so that was your friend yelling."
Hibiki gave her a closed eyed smile and nodded, doing his best to play his sparkling charm side.
"That's right."
"Well if it was your friend than you must know, so I'll ask you."
"Ask me anything, little one."
"What does #$% mean?"
I made Ren curse solely to be able to use that joke. There was no other real reason, but I hope you found it funny! Pretty soon we'll be getting a bit more serious, a few more chapters of the bumbling Pegasus trio we all love so much and than, boom, action! So, please favorite, please follow, please review! Thanks for reading!