Night 57: Grand Ballroom

[ninelivesonce]

Taura jogged down the stairs, and looked around. The room seemed far too large to belong down here. More benefits of being at the bottom of a gravity well -- space was cheap, and air was free. The fountains wouldn't be out of place in a fancy hotel lobby, though the rest of the decor was a little macabre

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[boketa]

Hmm there were just so many options. Goku ultimately grabbed a pork shoulder and hefted it into his arms for a quick test of substance. It was just a big block of muscle and shaved fat that was bigger than his head.

"Hee hee..." This would do nicely. The monkey boy bet it would taste pretty good if he dipped it in the ice-cream too!. "Okay, I'm ready--Ah..." The first big problem was he had more items than arms. If only he had his nyoibo, the kid would have a holster for it and then he would be free to pig out with both hands. So the question was how would he rectify this?

It took a bit of thinking (also known as staring vacantly into the distance), but Goku finally came up with a solution. Pulling his pole closer, he took the raw slab of meat and skewered it on his newfound staff. Now he had a weapon and food in one! It was time for ass kicking!

Following the girls down the stairs, Goku cooed loudly from the ballroom's entrance. It was so spacious and gleaming, even the black floor glowed like magic. He wasn't sure what the flaming metal contraption hanging from the ceiling was, but it sure was curious.

As the young boy gaped slack-jawed at the chandelier, he ran into the back of Taura when the girls suddenly stopped to make a plan.

"Door?" He looked between them at the three doors. They all looked the same to him, so what did it matter? "Yeah let's just go already. I wanna fight somethin'!"

[bodhiandspirit]

As Taura led the way down the stairwell, Rita left her bag of cookies on a shelf inside the refrigerator. Most of the fruit, along with another banana peel, were left alongside it. She didn't want to carry a whole armful of food into what could be a trap. One apple was brought along with her, and she took a few bites from it as she descended.

Just as before, the brightly lit ballroom was stunning to look at. It took a moment for Rita to take in the change of scenery, but soon she began walking to the east door. They might as well try the one that wasn't working last night, she figured. It would prove whether what Taura said had any truth to it or not.

Without a word, she approached the door, reached for the handle, and pushed...

To her surprise, the door easily opened. Startled, Rita took a step back. "It opened!? But it wouldn't budge yesterday! How..." She looked around, trying to find some kind of logical explanation for the change. Was it really just because they had a third person...?

"Well, whatever. It looks like we can move forward now," she decided, realizing the others probably weren't interested in figuring out the trick to the door. She could think on that later. "There's just one thing I need to do before we go."

Rita stepped aside and discarded the core of her recently finished apple at the side of the room. While it would look sloppy and disrespectful to drop garbage in such an elegant-looking place, Rita honestly didn't have any respect to spare for their captors. Besides, she wasn't going to carry garbage with her when they moved on.

That wasn't the one thing she needed to do, though. Now that her hands were free, she held up her right hand and examined the ring on it. The broken gem had sharp edges. Bringing her left hand over it, she winced as she pressed one finger into the gem, pricking it. There was a tiny amount of blood, but it was enough. She rubbed the blood onto the gem of the ring... and like magic, the stone began to repair itself.

Moments later, the red stone was back to its original round shape. "There. Now we can return here any time," she explained, showing the ring to the others (but mostly Taura). Now the ring was both an emergency exit and a shortcut if they needed to return another night.

[ninelivesonce]

There was one thing Taura wanted to try, too, and Rita had just handed her a golden -- or, er, blood-red -- opportunity. Literally handed it to her. "Give me a second, yeah?" Taura reached into her pocket and pulled out the materia Rita had managed to make heal her cut the previous night, and looked at it.

What did she do now? Think at it? Physician, heal thyself!

Something blasted its way out of her mind on a jet of flame, turned, with the effortlessness of zero-G maneuvering, and sped off in a different direction -- towards Rita. None of it was visible, except for a faint green glow from the stone, reflected in her eyes. And the skin on Rita's finger, which was as perfectly repaired as the ring had been, save for a little smear of blood.

"It worked!" Her stomach growled, as if celebrating the victory as well. Huh. She hadn't really been doing anything to burn off dinner, not yet -- but the energy to heal had had to come from somewhere, hadn't it? She popped the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. "And now we've got a little insurance in case someone gets really hurt."

She pushed the door open, carefully, and then slipped through.

[to here]