Eri Gets a Machete

The girls arrived at Santee without any major crashes.

Eri parked her car. "Well, I can drive. Sort of..." she looked up at the school, "Santee still looks magnificent."

"Yeah," Lina said and walked into the main building, "Do you know where they stay?"

Eri followed Lina, "Nope."

A knife landed near Lina.

"WHAT THE BUTT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!" Lina yelled, "I AM CLEARLY A YOUNG GIRL BY THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!"

A teenaged Pakistani girl peered over the edge of the second floor's railing, "Oof. It IS just a kid. So-rry."

"Shouldn't you have been able to tell by my voice?" Lina looked up at the girl.

"Oh please, have you ever heard Shoji's- never mind, you wouldn't know him. What's your business here? If you guys are assassins, well, we have machetes," she said.

"We were... looking for some people," Lina said.

"That makes you sound even more like assassins but okay. What kinda people?" she asked.

"People in association with the Santee Resistance," Eri said.

"Are there Vancouvers here? Tyler and Nancy Vancouver?" Lina asked.

"I believe we have something like that. Let me just check the list," she said, "I'm Amani by the way."

"My friend also wants to check with her family," Lina said.

"Oh yeah. Linh, Aaron, and Andrew Lau please," Eri said.

"Oh yeah! They're on the Canada trip right now, gathering resources and seeing how our neighbors up there are doing!" Amani said.

"So they're all alive?" Lina asked.

"Yes, they all are," Amani said, and she started to fiddle with her machete.

"Oh, good," Lina relaxed a little bit.

"Do you need anything else?" Amani asked.

"When they get back, tell the people we named that we're alive, and that I miss them and would like to see them soon," Lina requested.

"Yeah, I'd do that if I had a name to tell these people," Amani said.

Lina looked towards Eri, a silent request of permission to give out their names.

Eri nodded, and Lina said, "Lina Vancouver and Eri Lau. I don't exactly trust you yet, but if I have to, I'll give you our names."

"Mhm thanks! It's nice to meet you Lina and Eri. Would you guys like any zucchini from the garden? We have a lot," Amani offered.

"You know, that'd actually be really nice," Lina said.

"Okay, I'll be back in a moment," Amani said and walked away.

"I want that machete she has," Eri commented.

"I DON'T want you to have the machete she has," Lina said.

"Wait, I can already get one," Eri conjured a machete similar to Amani's.

Lina rolled her eyes.

"I'm back!" Amani called out with a wicker basket of zucchini. She threw it over the railing for one of the girls to catch.

The girls did not expect for her to throw it. Lina, using her awesome speed, caught it right before it hit the ground. "That was a bit of a challenge."

"Ah, I guess I probably shouldn't have done that," Amani said and noticed Eri's new machete, "Did you have that with you when you first came?"

"Y-yeah! I had it behind my back, so you probably couldn't have seen it!" Eri said, not sure of whether she should reveal their magical author powers.

"We'll be leaving now, but nice to meet you," Lina said and extended a hand out to Amani.

Amani walked down the stairs and shook Lina's hand, "Nice to meet you too."

"Bye!" Eri waved at Amani.

Lina and Eri both left, and before they went into their cars, Eri asked, "Anywhere else we need to go to?"

"I was thinking about checking out or houses, but it's getting kinda late," Lina said, "Let's go back hom- I mean, to the others."

"Okay then," Eri said. She hopped into her car and started speeding back to the hotel.

Lina shook her head at her friend's ignorance of traffic laws. She sighed, went to her car, and started driving back.

While she drove, Eri started monologuing, "Lina, she clearly was going to say 'home.' If we go by that one saying, home should be where her heart is. If she's hesitant to say that the other's are where home is, is her heart not with our group? Argh! Eri, stop thinking like that! Lina is your friend, through and through. She probably didn't call it home because of today's info. After all, finding out that her family is alive but is unable to see her is probably kinda weird. I mean, home is family, right? So, to find her real family would mean her real home is back. I can totally understand her thought process if that's how she's thinking."

The girl had been so lost in her monologue, she failed to notice a deer walking in front of her car.

Back at the hotel, Qibli and Ocotillo were having an extreme staring contest, and Hazel and Hermione were talking quietly at the bottom of the stairs.

"We'reeeeeeeee back!" Lina shouted and slammed the door open.

"That was an awfully long walk you and Eri took," Snow commented.

Lina frowned, "Well, I enjoyed it."

"Where'd you get that food from?" Qibli asked after noticing the basket of zucchini.

"Uh, we found it?" Lina answered.

"You suck," Ocotillo said and added, "At lying to us. You don't suck in general."

Eri sighed, "I guess we did say no secrets, so I'll tell. We drove cars to Santee. Cara almost got stabbed by a resistance member who gave us zucchini. I also almost ran into a deer."

Lina looked off to the side, "Yeah. What she said."

"Why in secret though? You could've asked me to drive," Snow said.

"It was for our own personal reasons. You don't need to stick your nose in everything," Lina said.

"Yeah. We probably should have told you where we going, but we're fine going on our own. We're not Ocotillo who gets into a mess during every walk she takes," Eri said.

"Hey!" Ocotillo said.

"Fair enough," Snow said.

"Oh! I also got a machete!" Eri twirled her machete around.

"Agh! Don't do that!" Lina shouted.

"Ah, sorry," Eri said and stopped.

"Ya know what I think this group is missing right now?" Lina asked.

"Unnecessary drama and violence?" Eri guessed.

"No, we need that mysterious metal thing back. It could hold more secrets than what we originally found," Lina said.

"Oh yeah, I guess I could poof that back here," Eri said.

Many miles away, in the mountains of South Dakota, a red-headed girl peered into the cave of a group of people she'd met not too long ago.

"It's been unnaturally quiet around here... they're... gone?" Riley said to herself and walked into the cave.

A piece of metal fell off a ledge. Riley went over to examine it and saw that it was written in a language she didn't know.

Rabbit burst out of another room and grabbed Riley's shoulders, "WHERE ARE THEY?! Alice, Cheshire, Hatter, and the others, where have they gone?!"

"I don't know! Now, let go!" Riley yelled and gripped tightly onto the metal.

Rabbit was about to let go of Riley when both he and Riley were teleported to the hotel.

"Ugh. Rabbit's here. I didn't plan that," Eri said.

"Oh, hi Riley!" Lina said.

"Hi," Riley said.

Rabbit noticed Ocotillo and started swooning, "Oh Alice! On the spot where I stand, I sway! It's unbearable to think I've spent a few days away!"

"I AM NOT SINGLE!" Ocotillo said.

"It is true!" Lina chimed in.

"I'm with her right now!" Qibli said.

"Ah, I see," Rabbit said and went to a corner where he started plotting on ways to get rid of Qibli.

"Don't kill him. You should be killed. Not him," Ocotillo said. "Did I say that aloud?"

"Yes," Eri said.

"Oops. Sorry. Don't think I turned crazy again," Ocotillo said.

"No need to apologize," Cheshire said, "He should be used to the death threats by now."

"Haha! True!" Ocotillo laughed.

"Hey, Riley, sorry if you didn't want to get transported here. We didn't intend for that to happen," Eri said.

Smoke-Storm scratched at Rabbit and let out a tiny hiss.

"It's fine," Riley said.

"Do you want to stay with us for now at least?" Eri offered.

"Sure," Riley said.

"You could stay with Brenda and Teresa. Their room is the least full," Eri said.

"Got it," Riley said.

"I'm fine with that," Brenda said.

"Me too," Teresa said.

Somewhere, a bunch of Greek Gods were playing a game. This game would include the group in Charleston. It would be a dark time, indeed.

A/N: Why did I ever think it was a good idea to roleplay someone who is a borderline pedophile...?