Welcome to Gaia! ::

Spring was coming, you could feel it in the air. Blanche was decidedly feeling it in her wardrobe that day, and had gone all-out. It was a special occasion, for she was about to meet Ray at his school and they could travel home together after one of her typical days listening to the strange jargon and interesting colloquialisms of the Average American Teenager.

Personally, it gave her a headache. But it was the quickest way to learn a language except for straight-up speaking it to another person. It was somewhat unfortunate that Blanche had no interest in speaking to anyone, had no desire to make friends around the town. Speaking to that other girl, Robin, had been nice enough but it wasn't the same at all. She wanted to go home!

So there was a certain amount of dismay when the spiky-haired blonde came barreling around and slammed straight into her, almost knocking both to the ground. Had she gotten anything on the pastel tea dress, she might have killed the girl then and there. Thankfully, all it did was push them back a few steps and rough up her arm somewhat against a nearby wall. The girl spoke quickly, as they all did, but Blanche distinctly caught the important word - 'sorry'. Brushing the sleeve of her beige coat off with a light sigh, she shook her long pigtails.

"Sorry, yes. Watch please?" Blanche tried, she really tried, to keep the irritation out of her voice, before noticing that with the jolt her bag had spilled all over the pavement. Notes were moving in the light spring wind, and a look of horror flickered through red eyes as she realized that both iPod and cell phone had painfully hit the concrete. Crying out exclamations in her native Japanese, the young woman bent to scoop them up, but was too slow and a gust started to blow her carefully-written daily notes across the sidewalk.

"Quick! Get!" A hand flew out as her angry and panicked face expressed to the girl who'd so rudely bumped her the dire need to catch those pieces of yellow paper.

Oh god, it was a dialect. Though Blanche tried to smile warmly and thankfully as she gathered up the papers and folded them up in her purse, she couldn't keep the dawning horror at the total language gap between the sidewalk occupants. The language on its own was bad enough, but to add in the various ways of speaking?! It was like going down to Osaka and trying to hold a civilized conversation, the accents were absolutely atrocious sometimes! Not that Blanche had ever done this, but she'd heard stories and that was enough, really.

"Injured? No, I am fine. Broke...broke..." she murmured before eyes lit up with understanding and she beamed. "Broken! No, I do not think! Thank you very much!" Bowing politely as she'd been taught, the young woman introduced her self. "Blanche Williams, pleased to meet you miss." It was the first full phrase in English she had mastered, as manners were everything. Ray had been surprised, and then amused to teach her this. "You are in...a big rush?" The words were a bit clumsy still on her Japanese-taught tongue, but came out clearly enough.

Why were there so many words in this language?!

Looking at the hand, Blanche all but sighed. She knew that. She'd known that, but had been so disoriented by the strange version of English the girl - Ellie was spouting that she had defaulted to her heavily ingrained set of manners. Of course, all she'd caught was the gesture and 'ya shake hands'. She could only surmise that 'ya' was some strange dialect for the word 'you'. She tried using it.

"Sorry, ya made me forget." That didn't sound right on her tongue, the carefully and precise voice along with that shortened pair of vowels. Laughing softly at the strange sound of it, she smiled and shook Ellie's hand. "I am from Tokyo. Japan?" Recalling her birthplace she turned her smile to the tower in the distance. "Much much more big, but not so pretty now and then." There was some amusement in her voice at the word 'kiddo', a word she'd learned from Ray early on. She was indeed younger than him in any form, but for this obvious highschooler to call her that was indeed amusing.

Thinking of the dialect, Blanche was pleased to have a question to ask in return. "You are from here?"

Blanche was suddenly, horribly tempted to start spouting Japanese at the girl in her most proper dialect, the one that she'd learned in Crystal Tokyo and was generally called her 'princess' voice. Of course it would probably confuse her even more if she used the form of Japanese popular with Usagi and her friends in Tokyo, with random English words borrowed here and there.

But that would be mean, and she was trying very hard to keep this identity as differentiated from Black Lady as she possibly could. To suddenly antagonize poor American teenagers who couldn't help the fact that she knew no English would absolutely blow the idea of the poor, innocent sister in law now wouldn't it? So Blanche simply took off the words she could understand like 'lost' and 'show', surmising that 'tryin t'go' was akin to possibly going, and pointed in the direction of the Destiny City suburbs. "I am going home, that way. I think?" Pulling the chic phone from her purse, Miss Williams looked down at it and positively groaned. Of course it was dead now. Of course the battery had fallen out.

"Nee, maybe you can? Walk a bit maybe?" Maybe she could learn to decipher the girl's accent by then, and could tell Ray all about it. He would probably be thrilled with the idea that she was figuring things out all on her own, though hopefully this particular pattern of speech wouldn't be used overly much. Otherwise, she'd go crazy.

Food? It would take a whole lot more than a language barrier, a decent heaping of corruption, and the promise of Ray Gordon home for dinner to divert Blanche's attention from any sort of proffered food. Even if she was mildly annoyed and developing a headache, the idea of free dinner sooner rather than later was a lure too irresistible to the former Tsukino Usagi. Red eyes lit up and almost astonishingly her attitude towards the teen who'd knocked her down changed drastically.

"Free food is best! I love to eat. I very much do!" Excitement shone in her lovely face and almost immediately she started to move on before realizing that she was, perhaps, going in the wrong direction and laughing softly to herself. "Ano...which way?" Hands crossed and each pointed in a different direction almost comically as the young woman became exponentially more likable. Apparently, the way to anyone's heart was generally through their stomach, not just men!

The ringing clap on her back had made her wince just slightly in surprise more than pain, but this was not unusual to Blanche who had grown up in a ridiculously demonstrative extended family. In fact, it was generally considered odd if Minako wasn't exuberantly thrusting herself onto you for some sort of affection. In fact, living with Ray, Blanche had begun to miss it. Heels clicking rhythmically as they walked, her buns all but bounced with excitement of trying new food. Maybe she'd pick up a few goods words to use on Ray too, and that would impress him and potentially make up for the fact he would probably wonder where she was.

But sometimes, it was good for men to worry. Smiling a bit wider at this, she responded enthusiastically to Ellie's question. "I am not here for long, my husband's brother is here. We had a small problem, so I came here for now. I like it, Destiny City is very nice." Except for that small senshi problem, and the fact that she was under some very strict instructions to not wipe the city off the face of the planet. Other than that, it was very nice. "What do you do here?" Innocent question!

With a flippant wave of her hand, Blanche dismissed her marriage and did not try at all to try and change the tomboy's mind on the subject. As far as she was concerned, this fake marriage was as much a hassle as a help to her, but as always, Ray's image had to be taken into consideration. It was always quite important that things not seem out of place, if you were going to hide out in the open. It had been covered in the rudimentary Bad People course somewhere along the line.

"It will not last long, I think. I am...well. It is not nice to ask that! But I am over twenty-one. Under twenty-five." Arms folded across her chest though she was still sort of smiling. The thought that she was actually fourteen would probably not have gone over well, especially as she was claiming to be married. With the urging, she picked up her pace and jogged ahead in her heels, an old practice at doing Strange Things in the pointy shoes. Being a senshi did have some perks from time to time! "Well I do not work, do you? School maybe? Those things." The concept of 'stirring s**t up' was still new and something she would have to mention to her housemate. Swearing was not really something she'd picked up so well, not yet.

Holding the door, she took one look inside and could have clapped again with delight. It looked like definitely one of those seedier places, where the best food was always found. Promising times were ahead, for sure!