chikaidestroyer | ∞ 103: Doors to anywhere [voice/action]

[With the summer weather being what it is, it's been somewhat difficult to sleep at reasonable times -- even more so when you're still attempting to fix your sleeping schedule after resting from a mission. This is the only reason that Albert is preparing to take a shower at midnight, having collected his clothes for changing afterwards.

However, those plans vanish upon passing through the bathroom door as darkness immediately floods his vision. The air is thick and smells of sulfur, and the breeze tells him he's no longer safely indoors. He stumbles blindly for all of ten seconds before he stubs his foot on something and falls forward--

--right into the hot springs. With a resounding splash.

His journal luckily does not land in the water, but hits the ground in just the right way to start recording. There's coughing and several other splashes as Albert drags himself out of the water.

A few minutes more pass before the recording is stopped. It starts again several minutes later. Albert sounds hoarse, and the journal screen may be dim with firelight.]

[voice]

"The fun starts at midnight," indeed. Do be careful of the weather today, everyone; it looks like it's going to be raining.

[action]

[Once he gets his bearings and has changed out of his soaked clothes into his drier set, Albert will attempt to leave the hot springs. This unfortunately means passing through another doorway to ... somewhere. Beware the accidental intruder in the middle of the night.

In the morning, he can be found drowsily sitting on the front steps of house 42. He's not taking the chance of walking through the front door and ending up somewhere else.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Water drawn out of the ground. [He shakes his head, having to look away from the scene in order to process the idea quickly.] ...You may wish to get out there before something comes along and finds you in the grass.

[The grass? Yun steps to one side to avoid another puddle of water pooling up out of the earth and looks up towards the tops of the plants. With that in mind, it's true. They do look like blades of grass!]

So that's why it wasn't familiar.

[There's a moment of hesitation, like maybe she doesn't want to leave yet, but she will. Yun returns to the door, walking around other raindrops as she goes. She stops at it just long enough to dust dirt off of her feet before stepping back in.]

But wouldn't it have been interesting to see a grasshopper or a butterfly at that size? If you could avoid all the spiders and such, I suppose.

I'm sure it would be, if it was guaranteed that you could be out of harm's way before the environment turned against you. [His voice is a bit flat as he thinks about what this could mean for the rest of this experiment ... and the rest of his evening.]

It's not much of an adventure if there isn't some danger, right?

[Not that it's easy to sneak up on her, so she, quite frankly, wouldn't be worried. Being able to move out of the way in time on such small legs, however... That'd be a problem.

But they won't be having that particular adventure today, since she's shutting the door once more.]

An adventure would be more welcome-- [or more tolerated, for that matter] --if it was not the middle of the night. [...Which brings something else to mind that he had questioned earlier.]

What are you still doing up at this hour?

[Someone isn't a late night person, huh?]

I was reading. I think you may have met my book firsthand. [Ah, right. She did throw that.] Sorry.

[While he does stay up late a fair amount, he's rather surprised to see a girl Yun's age up so late.]

It's fine; that was certainly not the most ... eventful thing to happen tonight. [She may be able to see his falling head-first into the hot springs.]

[That's worth a giggle. It's not as if a random laugh from such a cheerful child is too strange, anyway.]

That's true. You may want to try looking through the door before stepping through it next time.