Holiday Spirits

-Capital Crocus, nightfall-

Wearing a new white Steel Matron t-shirt under her gray hoodie with black skirt and bike shorts on underneath the skirt, "Tall Victoria" walked into Capital Crocus with a bottle of Albino Gander vodka in her right hand and a gray messenger bag in which she carried another bottle of Albino Gander in case the first ran out. She walked into the city of her birth and found that it was decorated for Christmas and packed with Christmas revelers. She could hear Christmas carols being sung and could see people dressed in a mix of everyday clothing, those tacky Christmas sweaters, and a few people dressed in red-and-white clothing.

Long ago Victoria had wanted to leave the place and never come back, but lately she had been coming here an awful lot. First she had been called here to meet Eugene Richardson, the former university professor turned recluse who had turned her into "Normal Victoria" at the the request of her parents when she was six years old. Then she met with a lawyer and family friend named Thomas Montgomery to undergo a battery of questions asked by a mage who could tell the truth and undergo two forms of DNA testing to prove that she was Victoria Sheridan. After all of that was over she had finally learned the names of her birth parents. Her father was named Phillip and her mother was named Octavia.

Victoria had also learned that her father Phillip had the same proclivity for drinking alcohol as she did. She wondered what kind of alcohol her late father liked, but she would have to find that out later. Right now she needed an infusion of holiday spirit... or spirits, to be more precise.

Victoria unscrewed the bottle of Albino Gander in her right hand and brought the lip of the bottle to her mouth, taking a swig of the vodka she carried. She tightly screwed the cap back on and put it in her messenger bag, then walked towards a giant Christmas tree that was drawing her attention. It was lit with numerous lights and there was a Christmas tree decorating contest going on with a lot of smaller trees set aside for just that purpose, but Victoria was not particularly interested in decorating a Christmas tree. An activity that was much more to her liking was called "Guess The Gift", an activity of a nature that was self-explanatory and that did not challenge her anemic decorating skills.

Victoria casually walked up to an older gray-haired woman dressed as Mrs. Claus and the woman spoke to her.

"Hello, Dearie. Would you like to play Guess The Gift?" The older woman asked Victoria. The brunette nodded.

"OK, Dearie. Pick a gift box, any gift box, and try to guess what's inside of it! But don't cheat!" The woman laid down the rules of the game. Victoria nodded and walked over to a medium-sized red box with green ribbon sitting on a pile of presents and picked it up. She felt reasonably confident about this box. She felt that it might contain a desirable prize and not some gag gift like a tacky Christmas sweater, socks, or undergarments.

[Post Word Count: 534]
[Victoria's Word Count: 534/2,000]

Victoria Sheridan rolls one Normal Dice.

The member 'Victoria Sheridan' has done the following action : Dice Rolls

---

'Normal Dice' :

Victoria shook the box and felt its weight in her hands as she tried to get enough information to make an educated guess on what was inside. It felt somewhat heavy and sturdy. She also heard hard THUMPs as the box was being shaken, suggesting hard plastic or perhaps even metal.

"What do you think you have, Dearie?" The woman supervising the contest asked Victoria. Victoria felt its weight and had a little bit more information with which to make a guess.

"I think it's a music lacrima player." Victoria ventured a guess as to what the item was. The woman simply smiled at Victoria without giving away anything.

"Are you willing to say that's your guess for Guess The Gift?" The woman asked. Victoria shook the box up and down while keeping a grip on it and felt the weight of the item within. She felt pretty confident that her guess was the right one, so she decided to go for it.

"I'm willing to say that a music lacrima player is my guess." Victoria replied confidently. The old woman smiled again.

"Open the box. If your guess is right you get to keep the item inside." She said to Victoria. Victoria carefully opened the box and carefully undid the alternating layers of red and green tissue paper to find the object within. Once the object had been unwrapped Victoria lifted it out of the box to find... a high-quality music lacrima player that was the same as the one Florence had bought in Sakuramori a few weeks ago!

"You're absolutely right, Dearie! You have amazing intuition!" The woman complimented Victoria on the accuracy of her guess. Victoria was pleased with the gift. Although she would have to buy music lacrimas to play instead of flipping though the online offerings of a music service, she could listen to music without draining her iLac battery to do it. She could also listen to a music lacrima player even if the Lacrimanet could not be accessed for whatever reason... all she needed was an electrical outlet to power the device and music lacrimas to play. That lack of dependence on the Lacrimanet was a benefit of older technology that could not be overlooked.

"Thanks!" Victoria said, rewrapping her new gift in the tissue paper and placing it back in the box it came in. She had two bottles of vodka in her messenger bag and she did not want to ruin those. She also did not want to ruin her new prize by spilling vodka on it since this lacrima player easily cost thousands of Jewels. The old woman approached Victoria and also gave her three red-and-white peppermint sticks that she placed in the gift box, an addition which was a nice bonus.

"Merry Christmas, Dearie!" The woman bade Victoria in a cheerful voice.

"You too." Victoria replied as she walked away with her prize. Victoria had gotten lucky with this gift. Other people playing the game got lesser gifts like socks and ugly Christmas sweaters... the brunette had lucked out and had gotten a genuine prize in the form of something that she could actually use. Maybe her good luck would hold out as she continued to partake in the evening's activities.

[Post Word Count: 542]
[Total Word Count: 1,076/2,000]
Victoria has completed the Guess The Gift activity. She now has three out of five peppermint sticks needed for event completion.

After winning the music lacrima player Victoria wandered around the area some more in order to search for another activity to do. Victoria stopped in front of a cafe with wreaths hanging from the waist-high wrought iron fence that separated the cafe's outdoor seating area from the street and reached into her messenger bag to take a swig of vodka before resuming her search for an activity. She still did not want to decorate a Christmas tree and she was not particularly interested in making an ugly sweater even if that was the whole point of the activity. Victoria was searching for something else, but she did not know what that "something else" was.

While Victoria was trying to decide what activity she would participate in next she pulled out the vodka bottle she had drank from earlier and took another swig or two from it. No one seemed to really care about her drinking in public, so the brunette took advantage of that privilege to get a few more swigs in until she had slightly over half a bottle. She had drank a bit more of the bottle than she had intended to, but that was no problem... she had another bottle of Albino Gander waiting in the messenger bag on her side. Once the bottle was safely put away Victoria continued to look for something to do.

-Twenty minutes later-

Victoria was starting to get a little bored. She had found no other interesting activities to do and she was thinking about calling it a night and going back to Ace of Spades to drink her one-and-a-half bottles of Albino Gander in peace. She had just walked under an arch decorated with a giant wreath when she was halted in place by a young black-haired woman wearing a red jacket and red skirt with red-and-white striped stockings and black shoes with golden buckles.

"You walked right under the mistletoe! You have to kiss someone!" The young woman informed Victoria, pointing out the sprig of mistletoe which she had just walked under. Victoria looked up and spotted it hanging from a single white thread hung from the arch and frowned. Since when was that an official rule?

"Well, who am I gonna kiss?" Victoria asked the young staff member. Suddenly a young woman with brown hair in a ponytail and blue eyes wearing a blue jacket and black skirt with brown hiking boots approached from the right and kissed Victoria firmly on the lips before the latter could react. The other brunette smiled at Victoria, winked flirtatiously, and walked away before the Sabertooth mage could even muster a coherent sentence. The Sabertooth mage suspected that this was not the last time she would encounter the other brunette.

"Well, you did it! Here you go!" The young event staff member said to Victoria, handing her a peppermint stick as a reward. Victoria opened up her messenger bag, put it away with the first three, and turned her attention to the staff member.

"Thanks." Victoria thanked the staff member before going on her way. She walked towards the sound of singing. Victoria was not a good singer, but given a choice between the Christmas tree decorating contest, the Ugly Sweater Crafting, or karaoke, she would choose karaoke any day. She would just need to fortify herself with plenty of vodka first.

[Post Word Count: 560]
[Total Word Count: 1,636/2,000]
Victoria has completed the Mistletoe Mischief activity. She now has four out of five Peppermint Sticks needed for event completion.

-Twenty minutes later-

After having finished off the bottle of vodka that she had been drinking from Victoria faced the karaoke machine and took a moment to really think about what she was about to inflict on people. Was she really going to put them through singing so terrible that it qualified as noise pollution? It was not that she was drunk... her alcohol tolerance was so high that even after drinking a bottle of vodka over the course of an hour she barely qualified as buzzed. Victoria was more worried about going on a small stage in front of people and singing because she did not want to get pelted by random objects that would inevitably be thrown at her once they heard her "sing."

Victoria put the cap back on the empty bottle and thought about reaching for the second when she thought better of it and held onto her gift box as she approached the small stage that had been set up for karaoke. This was going to be unpleasant for everyone involved, but Victoria would rather do this than decorate a Christmas tree or make an ugly sweater. She just hoped that the crowd would be merciful and not throw rocks and bricks at her. Victoria got on stage, cycled through the Christmas songs to find the shortest one so that both her suffering and that of the crowd would be brief, then picked that old holiday staple "Jingle Bell Rock" and grabbed the microphone. As the music started Victoria braced herself for the first volley of projectiles.

-Two minutes and eleven seconds later-

After singing her way through a mangled rendition of "Jingle Bell Rock" with numerous mistakes and by some miracle not getting pelted with anything Victoria collected her gift box and quickly got off the small stage so that someone who was better at singing could take the stage. A young man who was an event staff member dressed as one of Santa's elves walked over and handed Victoria a peppermint stick, possibly as an incentive to leave and never look at another karaoke machine again. Victoria was glad to take it and never look at another karaoke machine.  She placed it inside her messenger bag and began to walk away as someone began to sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."

Once Victoria was clear of any children she decided to have another drink of vodka to get over the karaoke "experience", so she reached inside her messenger bag, brought out the bottle, and unscrewed the cap. It was time for another infusion of holiday spirits. Victoria raised the lip of the bottle to her lips and took a swig, then another.

She had had a bit of fun at the event with the festive atmosphere and "Guess The Gift", but she was ready to go back to Ace Of Spades and get ready to look for another job. After she had finished this bottle of vodka, of course. Then she might get another one because it was the holidays. Or she would stop at her second bottle and just look for a job.

With the gift box containing the music lacrima player under her left arm and the bottle of Albino Gander vodka in her right hand, Victoria made her way towards the outskirts of Capital Crocus to see what jobs were waiting for her back in Ace of Spades. Maybe she would get lucky and find one that did not involve fighting demons or necromancers. Even if she ended up fighting demons or necromancers, that was better than doing karaoke. If another event like this happened next year she would skip karaoke and just make the ugly sweater.

[Post Word Count: 618]
[Total Word Count: 2,254/2,000]
Victoria has completed the Christmas Karaoke activity. She now has all five Peppermint Sticks needed for event completion.