Step two! When I'm done I can get food!

Enjoy!

Veronica tore through the halls, cleaning each room with blinding speed. She estimated she was cleaning at a rate of 1.5 square meters a second. At this rate, she would be done with cleaning all of the floors within the hour. She avoided bathrooms and small constricted spaces, she would get those later.

"I wonder... if I manage to actually clean each room, if I will impress her further?" Veronica contemplated this, and slowed her rate down to approximately .75 square meters a second, but changed the units around to accommodate an extra meter of vertical volume

She may have slowed down, but she was no longer just tidying up the grounds. Now, she was cleaning the walls and objects within each room.

"Mr. Klaus, watch out!" Matthias shouted in Japanese at the old butler.

In an instant, the Belle patriarch had Klaus and Julie pinned against a wall. The next instant a whirl of scarlet color swept the hall, leaving sparkles in its wake.

"What in blazes was that thing?" Klaus shouted, upset that he was saved.

"My daughter packs a punch. When she is given orders, and follows through with them, it is hard to stop her zeal."

Klaus knelt down and swiped a finger on the ground. "Not a speck of dust... and at a speed that fast? She outperforms any social worker I have ever seen. Surely those European schools aren't all like this?"

"I am not entirely sure what sort of school she went to, but I assure you it was the best of the best, and the only reason she managed to get out so quickly was because they had nothing more to teach her." Matthias admitted, trying not to be boastful.

Klaus just looked down at the floor in wonder.

"If she is as good as you say..." Klaus blinked, thoroughly impressed. "Per-perhaps we should continue our tour?"

Klaus guided them along, trying to avoid Veronica if possible.

"Veronica!" Nagi called, the duo was in hot pursuit, "Stop right there!"

Veronica, skating forwards, took the command painfully literally, and froze all motor functions, smashing into the wall, and falling backwards.

Nagi and Hayate winced.

"Y-Y-Yes, my M-M-Mistress?" Veronica forced out.

"I would like you to do something else now." Nagi decided.

"But I haven't finished the-" Veronica stopped herself and hopped to her feet, gently standing upon her wheels. "And what would you have me do?" She smiled so wide her eyes began to close.

Nagi glanced at Hayate, making sure the difficulty of her idea. "I want to see how well you clean the bathrooms."

"Where shall I begin? Or do you have a preference?"

"Your choice."

The smile continued. "Very well. I take it you wish to observe me while I work?"

The two nodded.

"If that's the case, let's travel to the Mistress's private bathroom, so I can give a thorough demonstration." Veronica straightened herself, patted down her skirt with care, and casually skated forwards in the wooden halls. Hayate and Nagi walked behind her briskly.

Within a minute, stairs had been climbed, and the trio found themselves in Nagi's personal bedroom.

"Hayate, did you make my bed?" Nagi asked, confused.

"Yes Milady."

"How? You've been at my side since I woke up." Nagi retorted.

Hayate just smiled. Nagi blushed, but looked away to hide it.

Veronica glanced back at the two to observe. She contemplating commenting, but knew she was on a short leash.

"Well, here we are. Your master bathroom. Wow. This dwarves European luxury housing. Still not sure how it compares to American housing though... that one percent, blah." She waved a hand, dismissing her thoughts. "So, I need to clean this bathroom." She strolled in, "Bathtub needs a scrubbing, as do the tiles. Toilet... bueso! Might as well replace that, it might be beyond my assistance." She opened the cabinet behind the main mirror and grimaced. "Mistress Nagi! All of these bottles of-" Veronica sighed.

She took a step back, looked at other key objects in the room. There was clutter around and behind a teak room divider, folded in a strange, unappealing fashion that irritated one's obsessive compulsive disorder.

Veronica's eye twitched. It was highly conceivable that she had an extreme case of OCD.

"Well then, I'll hop right to it!"

She pulled herself to the main sink, and began taking out all of Nagi's special bottles, ranging from perfume to facial creams, and removed them from every drawer beneath the sink and behind the mirror. Nagi's face turned red as Hayate had to see some of the objects taken out of these drawers. Some of them weren't generally seen by men.

In the matter of two and a half minutes, Veronica had opened each bottle, and, using only her sense of smell, determined whether or not it was still good or not. She had the pile organized into trash and not trash by the end of the first three minutes, and by the end five since she began, they were organized.

"You see, everything you have here is either hygienic or superficial. Hygienic items will be in the toppermost drawer, as it is the most important: do you know what it's like to kiss a girl with bad breath? I'm sure that man does." She gestured to Hayate. Nagi was flustered, unable to determine whether or not she was happy or angry with the new maid. "The superficial things can be divided further. You have your nail polishing items second to the bottom, because they are some sort of an accessory, and they include your toes, which are located towards the bottom of your body. I put anything I deemed distinctly ah- feminine in the bottom drawer." She said, stashing away the feminine objects in the lower-most drawer. "Because we'd all like to forget they exist."

"Milady, I wasn't under the impression that-" Hayate tried to stop himself, but it was too late.

"That. What. Hayate?" Nagi's normally green eyes were replaced with fire, and she glared at him with the wrath of a dragon.

"Oh, nothing." Hayate smiled, trying to inch away.

"No, say it, I'm interested." Nagi tempted.

"It's just that- OW! Don't- Milady!" Nagi stomped on his foot, trying to break a toe.

"As I was saying," Veronica cut in, the two simmered down, reunited by a common foe, "Those, will go in the bottom drawer. Now, makeup items go into the middle drawers, here. Easily accessible. They are arranged in the same fashion the perfume is in the cabinet behind the mirror. On the left, you have the 'I am adorable! Look at me!' persona. And on the right, you have the more womanly 'Come here, boy' persona. Unfortunately, the sets just aren't complete. With your permission, I would love to go out and shop for some new additions to the latter persona."

Nagi's face was a red as Veronica's dress. "Y-yes, th-that might be a good idea."

"I'm glad!" Veronica held her hands together and tilted her head to one side, seemingly overjoyed.

"Now, to actually put them there, but first..." Veronica expertly cleaned off each bottle, dusting the tops and the insides of the drawers with a duster that seemed to materialize out of thin air. In half a minute, all of the bottles were organized and cleaned.

She then pulled out a cleaner from another drawer, somehow knowing it was there. She sprayed the inside of the sink with the cleaner, and wiped it thoroughly. She polished the piping, the faucet, the handles, being gentle as to not loosen anything. Just in case she did loosen anything, she used her bare hands as a wrench to tighten each one of the pipes, assuring their function.

She wiped the entire sink top clean, and backed away, letting the sparkles shine to Hayate and Nagi for a few seconds longer before she fell forwards onto the ground in the corner where the changing station presumably was.

"These clothes, some are genuinely not cared for, but, judging on the lack of dust collectivity of most of them, I can determine that they were deliberately placed there... around yesterday at 1500 hours, 3:00 in the afternoon... just a little bit after I sent my application and responded to Mr. Klaus."

A bead of sweat dropped from both Nagi and Hayate.

"No matter. These clothes here the Mistress wears nearly every day, this outfit is a size too small, she grabbed it from her old drawer, probably that one in the back of her closet there, and haphazardly placed it on the changing wall. But this one..." Veronica held up a black pair of panties, suspiciously lacking in the rear section.

Hayate gawked, and Nagi cringed.

"This neither appears to have fit the Mistress nor fits her at present. Which begs the question, what is its purpose, and where does it go? It is too big for Mistress Nagi now," Veronica said, looking at her, "and unless my Mistress has a dark side, then it has to belong to..."

"Maria would never wear something like that." Hayate looked down, shaking his head.

Somewhere in the upper limits of the atmosphere, an angry young woman pounded the force field preventing her fall to the planet.

"And why wouldn't I ever wear something like that Hayate? I can be a little adventurous too! I am only seventeen after all! I have my own fantasies!"

But the trio couldn't hear her.

"I guess that is a mystery for later." Veronica decided, tossing most of the old clothes into an unused hamper in the room across from the bathroom.

Veronica, on her knees, began sanitizing the floor, getting the hard to reach places first. She managed to get to the bathtub, where she paused. She glanced back at Nagi who was smiling evilly at her. What Veronica needed to do was clean the showerhead. Unfortunately, she needed to stand up in a slippery tub in roller skates to do that.

In spite, Veronica hopped into the tub, grabbing a side for stability. She stood up, reaching the shower head for a second, then her footing collapsed and she fell on her face in the tub.

Hayate watched the scene for a moment, but then was seriously worried for his safety when he realized beneath the skirt, Veronica's favorite color was red as well.

"EEK! Don't look you fool!" She yelped.

"Ha-Ya-Te." Nagi fumed, glowing with fire from the earth's core.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Hayate groveled.

"IDIOT!" Nagi slapped him, then sat content observing Veronica's failure.

I'm too short. Veronica concluded. I need to... yes... that will work.

Grabbing hold of the side of the tub again, she hooked her roller skates to the lip of the bathtub, letting her front two wheels dangle over the edge. She held her hands on the wall and hooked her other foot in a similar fashion on the opposite end of the tub. Now, she scooted forwards with a spray and a cleaning rag to polish the showerhead.

Less than a minute later, the bathtub sparkled with a lustrous sheen.

And a few moments after that, the room was tidied, and made spotless, down to the very light switches, and up to the paintings on the walls.

The ceiling was avoided, which Hayate noted.

"What next?" Veronica asked eagerly.

"I am unsure. Resume with cleaning the floors as Hayate and I discuss your work." Nagi shooed her away.

Veronica took this opportunity to travel downstairs to clean more of the first floor.

"Milady, look," Hayate pointed out. "It may sound ridiculous, but, she didn't clean the ceiling."

Nagi nodded, smiling. "Good work Hayate. This Veronica has a weakness, and it is heights. She can't climb stairs with ease, and she can't get up much higher than she can reach."

Hayate nodded. "So what shall we do?"

"Fetch Tama, I'll fetch Veronica, and I will give her an impossible task."

"Yes Milady."

The two parted ways, each with plans to dispatch the new maid.

Much ado about bathrooms. Ok, I liked writing parts of this chapter, it was sorta fun.

Chapter added 17:23, 2/20/2012