Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Seung?” Jessie’s voice echoed out from the book stacks. “Hold on. I’ll be there in a moment,” there was a soft thump as a box was placed on the carpet that covered the entire store, “There we go.” Using a rag to clean her hands the brunette bibliophile made her way out of the crowd of books and to the front of the store. “Annyeong, Seung. Eotteohke jinaeseyo?” She greeted the younger man and asked how he was in Korean, after so long learning the language she could atleast do this much. Hold a full and intelligent conversation in it, maybe not. But she knew that she was better than your average tourist if she ever actually went to South Korea…. Or even little korea here in the city.

“If you're ok with it I think it would be nice to eat outside. I added a very nice little table in the garden and with some citronella candles I think it would be quite nice.” Summer really had kicked in with the heat and the mugginess that was typical of the middle atlantic region that Destany City occupied. Even with the AC on the store could feel rather closed off, it didn’t help that Jessie had to be careful with the store temperature so it wouldn’t damage the books. Even her clothes reflected the weather, she was in loose capri pants and a light and blousy shirt. With her hair up in a high ponytail she looked years younger than her actual age of 29…. She was 29? Jessie had to do a mental check on the date to realize that yes she was a year older and had completely forgotten her birthday. Eh, it wasn’t the first time and likely wouldn’t be the last. Dates, days in general, tended to become rather fluid.

“Just let me ‘close up’ and grab a lighter and we can head outside. The garden is pretty perfect right now. Most of the flowers have bloomed or were still in bloom and everything is green.” She liked puttering in the garden so was rather quite proud of the small green space she made for herself. It was more work then just a lawn would have been but it was more amusing when the kids found the little statuets and hidden features in all the plantlife.

After the pleasantries were performed, in korean of course because what would be the point of the months of learning it if one did not use it, Jessie waved off his offer to help. “Nope. I’ve got it. Just need to close out the register and put everything in the safe.” She would do the complete daily tally and total after dinner since it could take a bit of time and she didn’t want to inconvenience Seung by waiting. It didn’t take long to cash out the system and shut it down for the night. With the sealed money bag in her hand she asked Seung to wait by the door while she secured the money the bookstore made that day.

It didn’t take long at all and before the food could get cold she was back down from her apartment with a lighter and a smile on her face. It was a bit of a minor miracle that she found a lighter that fast… or that she had one at all. Giving her something that could catch things on fire was not generally a good idea, mostly because she tended to forget that she had lit a candle or put something a bit too close to a flame. Fire and paper were not friends. Not at all.

“Off to the garden we go!” With a laugh she scooped up a big stack of paper towels and hit the bank of light switches before herding the young man out the front door. The trip to the garden was short, just a jaunt around the deck to the stairs leading into the whimsical spot. “Hold on, hold on.” Hurry around Jessie quickly got the candles lit, not that they were needed since the switches she had hit earlier lit the garden up quite nicely. Between the candles, the house lights, and even the setting sun, there was more than enough light to take in the garden. Green everywhere, flowers still bloomed adding splashes of colors here and there, and for the astute… statues of gnomes, fairies, and even dragons lurked in the shadows, peeking out of the bushes.

A quick wipe down of the table and a dusting of the chairs had everything ready. Flopping into a chair and giving a stretch Jessie enjoyed the warmth and the end of the day. “Summer is always my favorite time of year but it’s always so busy in the store.” She sighed and gave her back a quick crack, “I’ve really got to find more people to hire on.” So many of her part timers pass through that it was hard to keep help around.

“That's actually a great idea. I can start out by passing the word in monday’s meeting. Maybe one of the regulars know someone looking for part time work.” Jessie tended to go for students or younger adults just to help them get work experience and because it was a more flexible schedule that way but the biggest issue with that was her employee turnaround was pretty high. Between school, personalities, and better jobs she was lucky sometimes to hold onto an employee beyond a year or two. Jackson, her last long term employee, worked four years before he graduated. Not employee of the decade for sure but really good guy nonetheless.

The brunette settled into the seat and looked on with avid interest as the young man pulled out all the food. “It all looks fantastic. As for allergies I completely understand. I’m pretty sure there are some herbal remedies and homeopathic stuff you can try. For instance I heard about…” And she was off discussing allergies remedies which morphed into plants which switched into books, as all good topics needed to do. The meal progressed like this, their conversation drifting from topic to topic. Bouncing between Korean and English as the duo polished off the bag of food, with some left over of course. Lunch for the next day.

By the time they were done the sun had well and truly set. Even with the dozen or so citronella candles burning there was a army of bugs flying around enjoying the light that was illuminating the garden… and bats enjoying the buffet of bugs. Still chatting the two packed up and started to head back in, Jessie trailing behind Seung as she snuffed the candles leaving only the house flood lights lighting up the garden, something it was struggling to do. It flickered a few times causing the young woman, not so young now it seemed, to look up at the lights and mentally make a note to get Lucas to look at it. Maybe its a bulb. I hope it's not the wiring. That would be a pain in the a** to deal with. Shrugging she hurried to catch up with the younger man, pausing once she was on the porch to glance back and make sure the candles really had gone out.

At worse she was expecting the telltale glow of a candle but what she saw instead had her blood run cold. A shadow. A dark and menacing shadow hiding in her bushes. She knew what it was even without seeing its shape. A normal person would be excused for writing it off as a figment of their imagination or perhaps a stray animal but Jessie knew better. She knew better and there was no way in hell was she going to let a repeat of last time happen. The last youma that had come near her store had actually gotten inside and did some serious damage. It wasn’t the bookcases or the trinkets that she was still boiling mad over… it was the books.

“Seung, go inside.” Her command was firm and tinged with ice, not something he would have heard before. She would protect the boy and her books. Giving him enough time to go around the buildings corner, but failing to make sure he did so, Jess growled softly in anger as the youma creeped closer. When she deemed that enough time had passed she let go and in the shadows of her porch she powered up. Jessie the civilian could hold her own against a youma but Pompeii… She could destroy it. She would destroy it.

Pompeii received two major shocks that shoved her back from the black rage that had started to creep up inside her. The same darkness that had prompted her to beat a youma to dust with her shoe after it had destroyed her brand new book that she hadn’t even finished reading yet. Even thinking about it was enough to get her mad. It had taken a few weeks of youma hunting to smother that anger but this… this rage was so much worse. Like a candle flame to a wild fire. So many books were damaged and destroyed the last time a youma came around. So many authors, words, pages… gone. If she hadn’t had to fix the store and everything else that came along with being a business owner there would have been true hell to pay, as it was she dusted youma whenever she got the chance.

That burning anger in the pit of her stomach sputtered for a moment though when Seung spoke. s**t! It was the first thing she thought as her eyes flicked over to the young man that she had assumed had gone back inside. He had seen her go from Jessie to Pompeii… something that he shouldn’t have. Before she could even start to contemplate the s**t that was going to need explaining, or do more than just gape a bit at him, Seung changed. He became a knight himself. If her eyes weren’t bugging out already they sure as s**t were now. A Squire if his aura was any indication. “Ganymed?” The symbol on his uniform, what there was of it, was familiar to her but it was still a shock to see it on her young friend.

The youma on the other hand hadn’t done more then hesitate a moment before it slipped closer. Two starseeds beat one always. It would just need to strike fast and strong. Sadly the shadow creature wasn’t expecting all the Tchotchke scattered throughout the garden and it brushed past one sending the ceramic gnome tumbling into a rock, shattering it.

The sound of the gnome breaking had Pompeii focusing back on the youma. “Discussion later, dusting now.” Figuring out what had just happened had to wait until that damn creature was gone and her store was safe.

“That works for me,” Even if the young man next to her had suggested something else she would still be the one to kill the youma, she had a damn bone to pick with the creature. The youma realized that it lost even the little bit of surprise it had when his two targets became knights and broke the gnome redrawing the attention of the two knights. With a growl the creature charged at the duo only to be met in the garden by the purple female.

Pompeii grinned at the creature and rushed to meet it, refusing to even let the shadowy creature touch the porch. She could have summoned her shawl, she could have used magic to immobilized the youma, but she wanted to feel her fists strike the flesh of the creature. Even if it was hard to make out the true shape of the youma since it was hidden in a shroud of its own, like a shadowy fog dispersing off the four legged beast. The porch light flickered once more and died with a nearly inaudible pop, the bulb burnt out, plunging the garden into darkness just as Pompeii kicked out at the youma. In a convergence of ill timing, magic, and anger the two fighters were sucked into one strange illusion.

Seung, or whatever he was called as a knight, had also followed through with his side of the plan and cast his magic just as Pompeii kicked the youma. One moment she was in her dark garden silently cursing the ill timed darkness of the bulb blowing and the next she was in what appeared to be a ball. Gilt everywhere, red velvet draping walls of gold veined marble, hundreds of thousands of candles casting a golden glow of the most shocking thing ever. She wasn’t alone in this hall, not by a long shot, but everyone else was indulging themselves in everything from food to each other… mostly each other. It was surprising but not horribly shocking, one would be surprised at what she researched sometimes, the thing she felt most was anger.

Anger at being removed from the fight, anger at the youma, anger at the negaverse, anger at everything, anger and rage boiled inside of her. With a scream of annoyance she stomped her foot like a child, her bootheel cracking the stone. The magic that Seung had cast dissolved around her, returning her to the garden.

For a second all Pompeii could do was stare into the darkness, trying to comprehend that she was back in her garden full of flowers and not that bacchanalian garden full of lust and temptation. Were traditional bacchanalia celebrations always like that? Full of food, drink, and sexual revelry? Some of those things she saw in her dream... vision... hallucination... the name didn’t really matter anyway, the things, those things that were there in that magical construct were things that she had only read about, or seen animated. There were things that just didn’t seem possible and she had done extensive research for… well for a reason she wouldn’t even admit to herself. A particular face formed in her mind and Pompeii’s face turned red with embarrassment, at least until Seung spoke up.

“What?” Blinking the brunette looked over at the young man, mentally wiping the thoughts from her mind… at least trying too. Her blush was slowly fading as she focused back on the task at hand. It didn’t take more than Seung reminding her about the youma that the anger she had felt moments ago came flooding back in. The blush disappeared like dew at dawn and once more a harder look crossed her face. “With pleasure.” It's that damn youmas fault. Damaging her store, breaking stuff in her garden, being a total nuisance.

With a growl of anger she rapidly approached the bespelled youma. It didn’t take long to dust the creature; a few kicks, a bit of a struggle, and a rather sharp shard of the broken garden gnome was all it took. With the shard still in her hand Pompeii stared at the rapidly dwindling pile of youma dust and muttered angrily “And stay out!” She had to give herself a shake, like a bird ruffling her feathers, before she turned to face the other knight. “Well that magic is handy. A bit perverted but hey, it does the trick.”

After taking another moment to calm down fully, she was still annoyed as hell that another youma had dared step foot on her property, she asked the rather important question. “So what's your name?”

“Pompeii,” She answered Venice’s return question even as she started to basicly heard the younger man towards the porch. They might be in the dark and her neighbors probably aren't watching but no reason to just advertise their presence by staying in the garden. “Squire of Saturn by the way. Come on let's get out of view and power down. I have a feeling you have questions and I do not want yet another of those bastards anywhere near my books. One inside is one two many.” Her dislike of the chaos creatures was pretty clear in her voice. She had disliked them prior to one half destroying her store, now she loathed them will every fiber of her being. She would be hunting them now across the city and back if she had the personnel to run her store. Only responsibilities held her back and even that was a weak leash since she still went youma hunting every chance she got.

Once she hit the darkness of the porch and out of all direct sight Pompeii dropped the magic that made her a knight and once more stood on the wooden boards as Jessie. It had been a short fight as fights went but she suspected that it would have many far reaching consequences. “Come on. Let's go inside. A little Irish coffee would probably be a good thing right about now.” What she really wanted to do was hunt down more youma but those damn responsibilities. Making sure Seung… or Venice actually… was ok took precedence.

It didn’t take long to get back inside and direct Seung up the stairs into her apartment. Much like the space below nearly every conceivable surface was covered in books. Shelves, tables, chairs, even the floor. All covered in literature of every type. The kurage kicked in with a gurgle, a fairly new addition to her kitchen. Apparently they are stupid proof or damn near it... This is the third one she had been through. Although in her defence the first one wasn’t her fault, it was a manufacture defect. The second one was totally her fault. Running it with no water apparently kinda screwed it up, go figure.

“According to what I remember, and it's been a while actually, Irish coffee is hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar, stirred before being topped with thick cream. But I don't have Irish whiskey just plain whiskey and not thick cream but some whipped stuff so I guess technically I’m not doing an Irish coffee just a spiked coffee.” She rambled a bit as she pulled out the ingredients for her spiked drink. Her memory of the actual drink was a bit spotty. The last time she looked it up was years ago after hearing about it in a book, her curiosity got the better of her and she ended up learning a lot about random beverages. Very little she fully remembered now.

While her mind was wandering the first mug of coffee finished, the beep drawing her attention. It didn’t take much to doctor the drink, it was likely a bit heavy on the whiskey and the cream but after the situation they just found themselves in a stiff drink didn’t seem out of place. A second one was nearly done when Seung’s question about his magic distracted Jessie. Hot coffee overflowed the simple ceramic mug as more than necessary whiskey was added. The hot liquid scalding her fingers and making a mess of her counter. Muttering rather unpleasant things in both english and Korean she cleaned up the mess and shoved her hand under running water. The burn wasn’t bad, she had actually done worse while cooking… fairly often actually. Perhaps Seung should have been teaching her cooking not Korean.

“So, um, your magic? You want to know what happened?” With everything cleaned up she picked up her mug and took a sip, grimacing at the overwhelming taste of whiskey. “It was like a milion porn shoots all at once. A true bacchanalian celebration. Decadance out the a**… i think there was an actual a** there, as well as a sheep. Personally I don’t understand bestality and why it is so prevalent in hentai. It just makes no sense.” And just like that she went off on a tangent. Her train of thought quickly veering from the original topic onto hentai, porn, the industry in general, magazines, self help, even toys and various adult accoutrement that her research had introduced her too. Her curiosity and research really did take her to strange a** places. Before she even realized it she was done her coffee and was actually fairly tipsy, a lightweight in every sense of the word, and had transitioned into a tirade about youma.

“Mo’sters. Don't know good book if it smacked ‘um in the face. Two weeks! It took two weeks to clean up after the last one ********’ got in. The books! Sun, the books! Soooo many broken. So many destroyed.” Her words were a bit slurred and mumbled. Her head fuzzy and a bit dull. Maybe an Irish coffee wasn’t such a good idea.

“Oh, pshaw. I’m fine.” Atleast thats what she meant to say when Seung suggested she sleep off the whiskey with coffee flavor. Instead it was slurred and muzzy, a native english speaker likely would have had a hard time understanding let alone Seung. It was only till the young man helped her too her feet that she the rather buzzed Jessie realized he might be right. “‘Aight. ‘Aight. I’ll bed. Gots to lock up tho.” She fumbled in her pocket for the keys and once they were free shoved them at Seung.

“You lock up. Goin ta read now.” She stumbled away from him to snuggle up on the couch, a book clutched to her chest. It didn’t take long for her eyes to shut and her breathing to even out into sleep. She will be a bit sore and a touch hung over in the morning but at least she didn’t break anything… besides the tile in the garden but that and the broken gnome would be dealt with in the light of day. After she had a few aspirin.