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Phew! Who knew such a long day of shopping could be so exhilirating and tiring all at the same time? Well, this is common knowledge to everyone, but Alexi hadn't gone shopping in so long she'd forgotten what it was like. The Christmas Ball was tomorrow and she'd needed to get ready. She bought just about everything she would need, even a new wig (despite her cute new hairstyle it didn't really have enough style options for such a fancy event as the ball.)

"Goodness gracious Alexi would you just wait up a minute?" Total toddled around behind her, looking as if he was about to faint.

Alexi looked back. "Sure thing Total." She put her shopping bags down and waited for him to catch up.

"Honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do with you," he told her once he caught up. "You're tiring me out with all your wanderlust and shopping and all-around girly-ness..."

"Hey shut up!" Alexi said, hitting him in the head with one of her shopping bags. "I'm not the one with short stubby legs you know."

"Hey YOU shut up!" Total said back.

Just then they heard a loud voice yelling in the distance. It was calling Alexi's name.

"Is that Zain?" Alexi asked. She got up and started running toward the nearby lake in the wreckage. Luckily she took her bags with her, so Total didn't need to worry about grabbing those.

He did need to worry about following her though.

"Good grief," he said as he took off after the girl. "Why do I put up with her craziness? Why can't I just tell her to calm down for once? Why can't I tell her..."

"...that I love her?"

He couldn't finish his sentence, but he knew that was what he'd meant to say.

Dec. 23


"Yes! The WeedBot is finished!" Xeiashi shouted for the world to hear. The 'Weedbot' in question was a wood-framed, carbon fiber-wrapped cylindrical piece of machinery. It rested on four wheel-legs, and had a cannibalized camera mounted on the front, if only for object avoidance. Within, on the circuit board of said camera, was software designed to recognize common weeds and drop a sulfur-based pesticide on them. The whole works was powered by the battery from the camera. It was difficult to recharge, but what can you expect from something made in 10 days by a complete amateur.

The software now, that was difficult to come by. Without easy access to a computer, Xeiashi had to resort to scanning the radio waves from the direction of civilization. This was done from a very high height, using magic to fly around over the nearby population centers. By chance, if you could call flying around a city for 6 days -minus time spent scribing for the trail- and finding what you wanted 'chance,' some hacker was accessing recognition software to 'jailbreak' his iPod to do...something or other. After that, it was relatively simple trial and error to get it to work properly, although it tended to count frogs as weeds, an error he couldn't quite fix.

Which brings us back to the still-exclaiming Xeiashi, still excited because it had went after a patch of dandelions instead of a frog...it later went for the frog, of course, but at least it did it later. Now his only mission was to get the chemicals needed for weed killing. He figured that he could use some kind of weak acid for that, and some research in the Library told him all he needed to know to make some diluted sulfuric acid. Apparently sulfur was in concrete, and there was an excess of broken concrete in the areas where the blast had thrown it. It was almost...convenient.

So he set off, robes on and fastened (there was an incident on his second day of software-scanning, which sent him even further skyward to preserve what dignity he had) with the WeedBot in hand for the epicenter of the blast. He figured that, if he walked straight away from the blast, he would eventually hit rubble-concrete. He briefly marveled at the new lake in the area, surprised at its size even though he vaguely remembered passing it a few times before. There were some slag piles on the far side that might very well be concrete, so he decided to set off for them.

He turned back to the task at hand when the WeedBot began spinning its tires futilely, for it wasn't smart enough to know that it wasn't on the ground. Startled, Xei turned until the 'Bot was trying to go straight. He looked around and saw a strange, green plant-thing...walking? This plant thing was walking??? Like the aura experiments before, the Bot's weed killer was completely forgotten while he investigated this new phenomenon. Tact had never been his strong suit, though, so he blurted out,

"What are you?"

Zain squeaked excitedly at each of the new items, his interest culminating in a long 'Ooooooooh!' at the long, stunning gown.

"I LOVE IT ALL!!" he exploded, flailing around happily in the water. Squealing with delight, he suddenly performed a backwards flip, his tail going right over and splashing down hard on the surface. The water shot up in the opposite direction from where Alexi was sitting, dousing a passerby in salty spray.

Thomas, face crinkled with shock and distaste, wiped the liquid from his eyes with one hand. The other clutched more tightly at the (soaked) library books in his arm.

"Goddamn mer..." he muttered, skulking off to 'his' (unofficial) antechamber. He shot one baleful glare at the merman, who remained totally oblivious, flopping around in the water like a weazel ball on acid.

"BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL....!!"

"YOU HAVEN'T ASKED WHAT I'M GOING TO WEAR!" he squealed with glee, bouncing up and down out of the water, "ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME!"

Zain came to a sudden halt, freezing in place as if he'd overloaded and short-circuited in an instant. He practically vibrated with glee.

"Oh my dear," he breathed, "I cannot bear it! It is just TOO AWESOME!!!"

Shooting under the water, he came back up... with the most elaborate headpiece ever to have been seen emerging from the water. A host of gold, lime green, dark green, royal blue - a swathe of peacock feathers attached to an exceedingly expensive-looking tribal crown. He dove back down and came back up with an armful of royal blue cape material. Everything, shockingly, was perfectly dry, as if it had never touched the water at all.

"They're ENCHANTED!" Zain explained cheerfully, "Adeline did them for me! She said she'll do my hair, too! Isn't that awesome?! I can look like a hoomin at the ball! EVERYONE WILL SEE HOW PRETTY MY HAIR REALLY IS!!!"

"Yes, I know!! I'm going to be the - hey, now that is NOT true!" Zain began, performing a quick turnaround halfway through speaking, "Your DRESS is gorgeous, you are going to BE gorgeous!! We're going to be gorgeous TOGETHER!!" he enthused, bouncing up and grabbing at her hands. He practically pulled her into the water - and then, suddenly, did! He yanked her in and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, spinning around happily with his friend.

"WE ARE GOING TO BE THE BELLES OF THE BAAAALL~~"

This was unexpected.

This was very unexpected.

Not only could this plant move...it could talk!

The shock of this revelation make him pause for a minute to assimilate this fact. By the time he got over it, the plant-thing was already turned toward some commotion in the water. There shouldn't be that much splashing...there probably shouldn't even be people in there? Only one logical -well, close enough- explanation came to mind.

"AHH! Someone's drowning!"

He made a mad dash for the lake, a commendable effort because it wasn't very far away, and leapt for the commotion. What that accomplished, he didn't really know. Someone was drowning, for crying out loud! The WeedBot was lying, forgotten, on the ground, angrily whirring its wheels in the soggy ground to get at the plant. Soon after, it got traction, probably too much traction, and went out of control and into a rolling-tackle of sorts. The diminutive, can-like robot hurtled towards the plant at a surprising speed, completely out of control. But of course,

In hindsight, many things shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have jumped directly into the splash, because he quickly got sucked under, partly due to the weight of his robes, partly because of the vortex created by the spinning bodies. He also shouldn't have started to drown himself, because in hindsight he remembered that he had survived worse near-drownings before. But hindsight, as they say, is 20-20, and now wasn't the time for hindsight.

So he began struggling as well, a wiggling-type motion that almost looked like a minnow in pain. It didn't do much, but Xei wasn't in a position to realize this. He continued writhing about for a few moments before a lack of oxygen forced his brain to calm down.

His only thought was, 'Oh great...not again'

"Ugh" Xeiashi replied weakly.

Cough! Hack! Sputter!

"Uhh...yeah, -Cough!- I guess...you weren't drowning...were you?"
Seeing as how she had just saved him, probably not. Score two for stupid ideas, the first being that he had brought the WeedBot with him and...

"Oh...umm, did -Cough, Cough, Cough- you happen to see a small robot around? I think I dropped it, but I can't remember..." Xei added sheepishly as he started to tread water, albeit poorly. Truly, bringing a robot to a lake wasn't a brilliant idea, but then again, nobody had ever accused him of having common sense. He saw a dull shape in the grass.

"Oh...is that it over there?"