ISMA Fizzy Beverages, Hand Puppets and Quick Getaways

Frankie smirked at his explanation before shrinking away at his question, she crossed and recrossed her legs and turned away a bit, "Nep... Knows my mother, not like intimately, but knows how she thinks. She is the leader of a nation, no one would question her marching an army to Nep's tower and destroying it. Kidnapping living members of our kingdom and experimenting on them would have sealed his fate, but kidnapping me would prevent her, no one wants to risk a Djinn dying for the first time." She said with a sigh, "And now it's just gonna be a scandal instead of the war it should have been."
 
Soda vaulted that information and logic away in the back of his mind to maybe revisit it later, but the last sentence disagreeable and so, shook his little head vigorously. "Avoiding war was best case scenario. Consider casualties: One vampire, some undead. If war: hundreds dead. Much lost." The little kobold nodded sagely. "You know. Soda small even for kobolds? Most are this tall:" He put his hand about six inches above his head. He hummed for a moment, kicking his legs. He was very unused to company; perhaps it was apparent by his out of the blue factoid, but he'd run out of things to say.
 
Frankie sighed about him saying it's better this way, "But Nep will go free." She offered, hoping to win him over to her side.

She grimaced at his little factoid, standing up and walking out of the room to get Erika, "You know, he's a cute little guy, but I think it's best I leave him with you."

Erika furrowed her brow and almost spoke but decided that it wasn't her place to put the royal in her place, and walked back to the room with Soda after pointing out the door for her and the vampires, "Hey. What was that all about?" She asked, concerned
 
Soda stared blankly as Frankie stood and left, unbothered by her departure. He immediately began occupying himself with his notes, writing what he learned from the mission into the scroll. He was still at it when Erika returned, keeping his head down in it even as he answered.
"We ran out of things to speak about." He told her telepathically, swaying his legs as he wrote. A few seconds later, he looked at his friend, and added: "Also, she seems...mean. Not to Soda, just, in general. Yes."
 
Erika laughed when Soda said that they had run out of things to speak of, "Well, I imagine a royal like that has little to speak of to begin with." She sighed, "Woman doesn't seem to have anyone's best interests at heart." She said, resisting the temptation to pick him up. She cleared her throat and shook the thought out of her head.

"Well, would you like to go get something to eat? James is sure to be stuck on the paperwork for a while."
 
Soda shrugged dismissively. He'd never interacted with royals and didn't know much about them beyond his mental image of a fairy tale princess, which Frankie already partly went against. However, his stomach grumbled at the mention of eating, and after rubbing it to settle it down, he nodded to Erika. "Yis, Soda hungry. We gettin' with Frankie, or..?" He stood up and glanced down the hallway but detected no signs of her.
 
Erika shook her head vigorously at the mention of Frankie, "Oh no, hopefully we won't be seeing her again." She assured him, "At least, not outside the news." Erika said, frowning heavily at the thought of it.

"I was thinking we could go to one of those mongolian grills, the buffet style ones. My treat." She had a good one in mind, as food was one of her three indulgences.
 
Soda didn't know much about what a 'Mongolian grills' was but he trusted Erika and knew she had good 'taste' in food. "Hah! Taste." He put his hat back on, pattering on his little legs over and past Erika. "Yes, Soda want the Mongolian grills. Give coordinates." His coat made a quiet thwipping noise as he was flailing his arms around to open a portal.
 
Erika laughed when he got excited and began opening a portal, she almost protested but decided not too, lest she quash his excitement. "Umm... Coordinates." She pulled up her phone and looked up the coordinates for the address, reading them out to him slowly so that she could get it right. She had no doubt in his ability to make the portal correctly, but she wanted to make sure that she didn't give him the coordinates to the street.
 
"Nyeh. Uhuh. Ehhhh." Soda soon succeeded at opening the portal. At first, it was only large enough for him to comfortably fit through. He shifted his hand, pushing himself through with tactile telekinesis. Soda immediately regretted going through without Erika. His ears pinned against his neck and shoulders and he tensed up. See, stress, he could handle. Soda could look a hellhound in the eyes and make it flinch. But now, he was in a massive crowd without his hat. His sickly green skin was fully exposed and he felt hundreds of eyes glaring at him with a look he hated. He quickly dashed at the nearest corner he could and scrunched himself down against it, completely locking up his body.
 
Erika saw the size of the portal and watched Soda squeeze through with a sigh. She pressed her hands against the edges of the portal and used her conjuration magic to force it bigger. She couldn't make a portal to the same plane of existence herself, but if she got a hold of one she could alter it. Noticing Soda had left his hat in the room, she leaned back, keeping a hand on the portal to keep it open, and grabbed the hat. She hopped through the portal and let it close behind her and began to look around for Soda.

He was quite small and curled up in a corner so it was hard to see him through the crowd, but she found him fairly quickly. She moved to him and placed his hat on his head, "Hey, you gonna be ok?" She asked, legitimately concerned, "We don't have to eat here, I could get us someplace less crowded." She offered, knowing his insecurities.
 
Soda took the hat and pulled it tight onto his head and stayed still in that position until he was sure nobody who may have been staring at him was still doing so. It took about thirty seconds for him to get comfortable and stand back up, but when he did he had his standard neutral expression. "No. Soda is fine." He sold it a little harder by giving Erika a confident thumbs up. "Nobody is looking." He took a deep breath and turned around, his terrible eyesight meant he couldn't make out much more than blurs that vaguely resembled words on the signs.
 
Erika smiled at Soda when he had gotten comfortable again and returned his thumbs up.

"Well, the restaurant is just across the street." She said, pointing as she began to walk, expecting her friend to follow her and holding the door to the restaurant open for him. The smells of cooked meat and vegetables coming out to greet them.
 
Soda followed - more closely than he usually would. His hat was being pushed downwards by telekinetic force to keep it from coming up, and he was peering through his brim by focusing on Erika's mental signature - she had a unique thought process that made it fairly effortless - a necessity when one is as small as Soda was. Soon enough, he was able to track the smell as easily as he could track his friend.

"Smells good." Soda remarked. Telepathically, of course.
 
Erika saw her friend wasn't looking and worked hard to assemble her thoughts so that she would be smiling in her head for him to see. She focused on how she had looked in the mirror that morning and worked with the memory, trying to remember the curve of her lips from the smile. Once she was satisfied with her work, she closed the door of the restaurant behind them and paid for their meals.

"this place is good, you get to pick out the foods you want in your dish and then they cook it in front of you." she explained, leading soda to where the bowls for them to prepare their foods were.
 
"Erika has been here before? Soda like already. No need to cook." He nodded conclusively and raised his arms, something he did when he expected to be lifted up higher. Should Erika not do so, he was still happy to simply telekinetically lift himself, though.

That said, to his unrefined tastes, all of it kind of just looked like...food. He looked at what was on offer and for the life of him could not identify any option from another, and the smells all blending together didn't help either.
 
Erika helped him up, wrapping an arm around his waist and settling him on her hip as she went through the line herself. There was thinly sliced meats to begin with and then a variety of vegetables that one could add. She grabbed two bowls for herself and one bowl for soda, beginning to pile lamb into one of her bowls, "There's lamb, beef and pork for meat. And sometimes they have shrimp but it looks like not today." She said, mild disappointment in her voice.

Once they got their meat she moved onto vegetables and piled baby corn and mung bean stalks into her dish, "What kind of veggies would you like? I don't know if you've cooked spinach before, but I wouldn't recommend you put it in your dish, it reduces down to nothing when cooked."
 
Generally, Soda detested being touched, and especially detested being manhandled. He had been known to bite, even. Erika, though, he trusted and very much trusted and liked; so he was happy with the contact and the assist. With some help, he picked out a little bit of everything, in small enough portions that he'd be able to try it all out and be able to pick what he wanted to come back for; taking mental note of what everything was as he grabbed. Though, with the advice that spinach reduces, he simply piled that on - trusting it'd reduce down to a digestible quantity when it cooked. Plus, spinach was great.

"Does Soda get a second go if still hungry? Or is pay for one?"
 
Erika nodded when soda asked if he got a second go if he was still hungry, "yeah, we can go back as many times as we want for more." she said, taking their completed dishes to the counter where the cooks would prepare it. The bowls were dumped out and the food began to fry in front of them.
 
"Yay." Soda floated himself up onto his seat, fabricating a booster for himself before parking next to Erika. He stared intently at the hot plate as his food cooked, like a fisherman at a river waiting for a bite.
"Erika, Soda has been thinking: perhaps we have enough money to fight the monsters?"
 
Back
Top