Tadao, along with Kiersey, observed Alicia's sudden and strange behavior, as she stared absently at her opaque reflection in the engineered oak's glazed finish. Her demeanor softened as she pondered something…
Tadao could not help but to notice his sponsor giving that particular spot on the floor a noticeably intense look. One usually did not have that kind of expression on their visage when performing mundane things such as household cleaning, after all. That look… reminded him somewhat of an expression one might have on their face when preparing for battle. Goodness knows he's seen that expression on the face of his comrades before.
Standing back onto her feet, she walked over to the island to put the cleaner away and dispose of the soiled towels in the trash. Placing her hands on the counter to support her weight as she leaned, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, seemingly taking it all in. She rolled her neck around, popping the cervical vertebrae all nice and good. When she opened her eyes, Tadao and Kiersey were (still) staring at her as if waiting for a stampede or a gusts of locusts to run through the living room.
"What?"
"Lady, you tell us!" Kiersey cried, humored at her weirdo mom. "I'm sitting here expecting you to start yodeling like the opening scene of The Lion Empire!"
Alicia snorted and laughed. That was pretty funny. She clapped her hands together. "-SO," she looked at Tadao: "Do you have any underwear?"
If not for the scales covering his skin, his face would have been beet-red. "Uhhhhh…I…"
"...Dude, I am so done with this woman," Kiersey said, unable to take it anymore, about to suffocate from holding in her laughter. She promptly got up and bee-lined towards the auxiliary staircase.
"-And clean that room, young lady!"
"Okay, mom!" Kiersey Alaer Ciriano called out before turning the corner to board the stairs.
No one left downstairs 'cept Alicia and Tadao.
"Um… Where was I? Oh! Um… Ahem. I meant: do you have a change of underwear?"
"Oh, uh," Alicia could see Tadao's sense of physical relief after correcting herself. "...No, I only came with the clothes on my back."
"Okay, well, let's fix that!" Alicia suggested cheerfully. "I'm going to run upstairs and get squared away, meet back here at…" Alicia looked at her smartwatch, "1700 hours?"
"What is the occasion?" Tadao wondered.
"I thought we'd step out, pick you up a few things."
Tadao pondered the request… He thought it a little odd that she used military time, seeing as how it was not that common amongst civilians. It was really strange coming from someone like her. But when she mentioned shopping, he had some mixed feelings
On one hand, it might be interesting to see this new place he called home. On the other hand… He wondered if his experience with Derek might have been a microcosm of things he'd have directed at him while he was out and about in Corneria City. Nonetheless, he couldn't hide in this house for the rest of his days, as much as he couldn't have hidden in that cave on Fortuna for the rest of his life, so he supposed that the sooner he got moving around the city, the better. Surely it couldn't be as dangerous as the Lylat Wars, could it?
He put on a smile, though Alicia could probably see that it seemed a little forced. "Sure, we can go out."
"Fabulous! I'm going upstairs to get squared away. Hang tight, okay?" With that, she scurried to the foyer staircase and went to her room.
While he waited downstairs, Tadao wasn't entirely sure what to do, considering he came here with nothing but the clothes on his back, so he decided to hang out and wait.
Walking into her bathroom, Alicia stopped before one of the dual vanities to examine her reflection. She touched her nose gingerly, feeling that it was a little sore. Stepping into the walk in wardrobe, she went to one of the racks and began leafing through the assortment of blouses and pashmina tee shirts before pulling out one in particular: an off-white pashmina Le Chien graphic tee, emblazoned with the lockring "LC" logo in glittery black sequins.
Downstairs, Tadao kept his hands in his pockets as he casually looked around the greatroom. Again, it was like an art museum, terrified of the idea of getting fingerprints in her nice stuff. Walking around the dining table, he approached the sofa console behind the sectional, decorated with sweetly-spiced scented candles and framed photos of her family when her kids were a little younger. One in particular was of Derek and Alicia on their wedding day from worlds ago…
Hearing someone descending the stairs (heeled shoes clacking on wood), He turned and looked up to see Alicia had returned, entering from the foyer wearing that aforementioned tee shirt, the heels she had left in her bathroom, along with the ripped jeans she already wore. "Ready to burn rubber?"
Tadao raised his eyebrows. "Uhh, why would we want to burn rubber? Would that not simply release toxic chemicals into the air?"
"What? No!" Alicia laughed. "It's an expression, I'm asking if you're ready to get going."
Tadao almost did a head tilt as Alicia tried to explain the meaning of the phrase, although after a moment, he understood what burning rubber had to do with leaving. He blinked and began smiling "...oh. Automobiles have rubber tires. If you accelerate to vigorously, the tires will go up in smoke. E.G.: burning rubber, yes?"
"Precisely!" Alicia smiled. Going to the fridge, she procured a bottle of water to tuck into her bag, an oversized brown leather bag, with a prolific miscellany of gold buckles and clasps for the exterior pockets. "Alright, let's rock!" she said as she walked towards the front door, beckoning Tadao to follow.
Come to think of it, what is her car like? He'd seen the exterior at least: a sleek, black compact sport utility vehicle… On Macbeth, the best vehicles he'd seen locally produced were very cheap (but expensive compared to the average income in the area): cheap hatchbacks, bare bones basic, with no frills or anything.
Once they went outside, Tadao got a good look at the neighborhood. A definite far-cry from the droll communist apartment blocks of his home. Instead it was an idyllic, quiet, and affluent landscape of enormous (to Tadao), most as big as Alicia's, single family homes. Terracotta roofs, sandstone stucco, and exotic landscaping of manicured lawns as green as golf course pastures.
In the driveway, Alicia's car was just about what he expected. Alicia seemed to enjoy spending money quite a bit, and once Tadao got a good look at it, it looked very ornate and fancy, even for a somewhat smaller vehicle. He noticed the tri-pointed star emblem in the chrome grille, which he recognized as the prestige brand Miuccia-Bauer. As stated before, everyone who had a car drove basic, ramshackle Macbethian makes that were basic in features, and Miuccia-Bauer and other prestige makes were used as limousines for government officials. In any case, she unlocked the car remotely upon their approach and he Tadao climbed into the passenger seat.
The car seemed very new; not just in terms of being a recent model year, but as she must have just purchased it. It had a strange, rubbery, plastic-y smell that hung in the sleek leather interior. It was definitely a distinction from cars back home, because everything he looked at from the carbon-effect brushed aluminum accents around the A/C vents, to the big tablet-like screen that extended from in front of the leather-wrapped steering wheel to to top of the center stack, it seemed to be deliberately made to please the senses.
"Hi, Alicia! Welcome!" read the information screen in front of the driver. "To start the engine, depress the brake pedal and press the START/STOP button."
Wow, Tadao thought. The cars here greet and talk to you too?
Alicia wasn't paying attention to all of this; it is her car after all and she probably knows the features inside and out. She placed her bag in the driver footwell after rummaging through it for a piece of gum, and pressed the start button, and the turbo-charged 4-cylinder coming to life almost sounded like music as it filtered through the car's sound-insulating structure. The A/C automatically turned on at its highest setting, blasting them with cold air for a moment before Alicia immediately reached over to the vent controls to adjust the settings to a more palatable tune. And when she shifted into reverse (using a little stalk on the column easily mistaken for a wiper or light switch), the section of the big tablet thing above the center stack turned into a camera feed that came from the rear exterior of the car.
Tadao took all of this in. It was a lot to unpack in just less than thirty seconds of sitting in her car.
Backing out onto the street, she cranked the steering wheel in the direction she intended to go and pulled off. As they rode up to the first stop sign, Alicia reached to the side of her and fumbled for the seatbelt, and she asked, "Tadao, mind buckling up?"
"Oh…" Tadao said in response to Alicia's request. Less expensive cars back home did not have much even in the way of basic safety features, so he'd forgotten about seat belts. He quickly buckled his up.
Alicia allowed a minivan to pass by on the cross street before signaling a left, going in the opposite direction of the neighborhood's gateway boulevard, which confused Tadao slightly. But he said nothing. Meanwhile he looked around at the scenery, again taking in the size and affluence of the homes. He imagined the big houses being home to several families, which is what would make sense to him, a maximal use of space.
The car stopped behind a flatbed truck, loaded with wooden roof trusses, waiting to be hoisted by crane onto the adjacent construction site, which, to Tadao, was a marvel of timber frame and concrete masonry. Construction workers were diligently crafting some lucky family's new dream home. Absently, Tadao looked at a small corrugated plastic sign posted as a lot marker to the construction site: Lot 97, Whyndam Carlton Homes.
Alicia waited, inching slowly across the center line, for oncoming traffic to pass before moving around the truck.
Tadao thought about all of this. Alicia lived in such a fine home herself, and this place was full of houses like hers, and still with more popping up by the moment, it seemed. He could see those trucks in his mind's eye running around and hurrying to construct more. Tadao could not remember the last time anything new had been built where he came from, save for more stuff for the factories that everyone in his town worked in so they could get a penance while making Cornerian corporations richer…
"How many people live in these houses?" Tadao wondered.
"Uhhh…" Alicia began pulling forward now that traffic was clear, moving around the truck and crossing back over into the correct lane. "A recent census was done for this postal code. Among that data, it said that an average of five to seven residents per household? A little under sixty percent of the homes held individuals under the age of eighteen and twenty percent of the households had at least one resident above sixty-five." She went on to explain that the census was taken one or two years ago? At that time, there were about seven thousand households in the census-designated place of Lago Paolomino, and that figure had increased almost fifteen percent since then. "...This section of the neighborhood we live in - Cataleya Estates," she motioned around to the area outside the vehicle as they drove, all of the upscale new-build luxury homes, "- this was not here a year ago. They just started this phase of the neighborhood."
Tadao was baffled by the information she provided. Certainly, it was a lot more lore than he asked for… Nonetheless, he found himself fixed on the five-to-seven figure she'd brought up. Just six people for these massive dwellings? Back home, these houses could house six families rather than just six people, with each family given basically a few rooms to themselves with a common area in the center where people might gather. This area felt… extremely low density to him, and quite wasteful as well. Even just having just one room to oneself on Macbeth would be equitable to having your own palace.
He shook his head, staring at the new constructing gliding past. Corneria… There was so much wealth flowing through here. He could not even fathom something like this were he not seeing it with his own eyes. He doesn't think he's ever seen a new building in his lifetime until he joined Andross… Well, with the exception of those Cornerian factories that sucked up all of his home's resources.
In any case, they pulled up to the motorized gate of Cataleya Estates' East entrance/exit point. No guard shack on this side, just key card/code access and retractable road spikes to deter unlawful entry into the neighborhood. Tadao had seen a little bit of Corneria City when he first arrived, but had no opportunity to explore. He wondered what lay beyond those motorized gates of Cataleya Estates.