Some Locations Are Busy Yet Lonely (Seika, Lehanna)

Seika squeezed her way through the door of the building, shoving a man out of the way and casting an apologetic smile over her shoulder. This place was completely packed.

She wasn't actually a citizen of Fiore, having been born elsewhere in Earthland, but nonetheless she supposed there was some way for her to get a passport. The fuss over the borders opening up and died down some from the original complete chaos, but the room was still full of people loitering around and waiting for their number to be called next. Seika slunk over to one of the many giant, grey-painted pillars that bordered the room and were half-built into the walls; she leaned against it, thankful for the support, even if she was still on her feet because oof, these floors looked dirty.

While waiting, she continued to think on ways to get around not being an actual citizen of Fiore.

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Being a prude about timing paid off once in a while. Where as the young girl couldn’t get much accomplished some days, she found herself getting the more important things out of the way. If anything, she was a little mad at herself for having forgotten something so important! She had collected all the legal documents and paperwork together, but she got so focused on getting from one place to the next that she forgot entirely why she had them. She was so close to the town she had to get to now, but Hargeon was the closest town in which she could pick up her ID and finalize her last minute work before she could go get prepared for her schooling. A few small bumps in the road, but she was almost there and with it on the tip of her fingers and out of the reach for now.

While the brunette had sat in the crowded place, she buried her nose in her books as much was possible. She ignored the occasional person asking for a seat, only looking on to her studies. Her tolerance for people was high today as not to be kicked out from this place after being here for a few hours. But, her head had to pick up to look at the ticket number and the new people entering. One had been a lone girl who had to be around her age. She came in with no parents, probably the kind of girl who had to be sent in to find seating for the parent who couldn’t be bothered to come in at the same time. While she had been distracted, a hand grabbed a hold of her wrist and pulled her out of the seat suddenly. “You’re in my seat.” A female voice called out. Her book and papers spilled onto the floor, which got her to only look over to the strange offender to see a grown woman, wreaking of perfume, lips the size of a puckered chimps ass cheeks, a permed bowl cut, and nails like probably 4 to 6 inches long. A frightening beast. ”Excuse me, but I’ve been sitting here since the place opened... that couldn’t possibly have been your seat.” She argued, brushing dirt off of her blazer and skirt.

“No, I went to the bathroom and you STOLE MY SEAT! Where’s your mom and dad so I can tell them what kind of hellspawn you are.” The she beast snapped, which warranted her to just wave her off. She was close to being next anyway. Giving a small sigh, she had pulled a messy pile of paperwork on top of a closed textbook and stood at the pillar with the other young girl, trying to fix everything up before her number would be called. ”Sometimes I feel some adults are like grown toddlers...” Lehanna commented in a low tone, having only a couple of people including this unknown teen to hear her.

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Seika had witnessed the entire scene. Sidling a little bit closer to the shorter girl, she said in a muted tone but loud enough to carry quite a distance, "Ehh? That was nice of you! I wouldn't give a mean lady my seat if she tried to bully me like that. Bullies are.... are meanies!" Seika finished with a huff and then crossed her arms and glared at the woman.

Within a few moments though she dropped her arms and expression and turned back to the other girl. Her voice now at a more properly low volume, Seika laughed a little, "They can be for sure! I like how she wanted to talk to your parents! Where are those again? They exist?~" she pushed up her glasses and peered around as if looking around for these famed adults that were found in story tales.

"My name is Taneda Akies! But, you're nice, so you can call me Seika if you want, right? How long have you been waiting here? It's boring, right? I have snacks, but.... I wanted to wait until longer to eat them, in case I get hungrier later. You know?" she bounced around a little bit as she unloaded everything in the front of her brain onto this stranger.

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The teenage girl looked over as the girl came around to leaning in a little closer. It wasn’t really what she expected to have happen, but the girl quickly commented how nice she was for having let her just claim the seat without fighting the woman. Her choice of words was a little.. off putting, but a bit humorous to say the least. It caused the longer haired brunette to raise a brow at her attitude in the matter. ”I choose not to feed into immature and imbecile like behavior.” She coldly replied, again working on fixing her papers. There was an urgency to be completely prepared to be in and out as soon as possible, and now had only made things more necessary. As she glanced over this girl while she spoke up again, her eyes had settled onto the ticket number she had. Somehow, by dumb luck, they were back-to-back in number. Her bubbly personality had seemed a bit uplifting honestly, despite the rather childish way she went about things... but there was a charm in it.

Though, despite it all, she couldn’t feign even a fake smile at the mention of parents. She couldn’t look this girl in the eyes as she had mused about it, but just gave a small shrug. ”Yeah.. right...” She said, spoken with a horrible attempt at hiding it to say the least. There wasn’t any way Lehanna was going to take out any emotions on this girl. It wasn’t her fault, after all. But that pain would always be there, whether it just stung a bit or hit her hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs would be a whole other story. ”It’s uh.. nice to meet you, Seika. I’m Lehanna. Lehanna Seraph.” She hadn’t ever thought of nicknames for herself, generally because she didn’t tend to socialize much. If her nose wasn’t stuffed into a book, she wasn’t having a good day.

The fire slayer simply looked up at the sign that had the numbers listed of whom the workers were taking. She turned back to Seika as she saw the girl had mentioned snacks. Looking towards her outfit, she wondered what kind of snacks she could have hidden them, but quickly pushed that thought aside and chuckled at the idea. ”I’ve been here since the place opened, rather much before then. I’ve only been here so long because I passed my nimbler along a couple times to older people who were here for simple things. But now that you mention it... I am getting hungry.” She stopped and thought the idea over for a moment, then smiled as an idea hit her. ”I have a lot of extra time left before I have to get going... do you want to go get some lunch with me when we’re done?” Just then, the lacrima speaker system would call out three numbers; E16, I4, and I5. Both of which were Lehanna and Seika’s respectively. ”We can meet back up outside and decide from there.” She smiled, genuinely. Who knew, maybe Seika was good for her to have around as a friend. Someone seemingly about her age, independent, outgoing.

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"Nice to meet you, Lehanna! Let's be friends, okay?" she clapped excitedly and then straightened up to her full height, brushing off her sweater and eyeing the other girl. "I think I'm taller than you!~" she sang happily, swishing her sleeves back and forth as she briefly enjoyed the feeling of having a height advantage over someone.

Soon enough, she dropped her arms and then tapped her finger against her chin thoughtfully, listening to Lehanna explain her situation. To be honest, practically all she heard at first was Lehanna admitting that she was a bit hungry. "Food! Great! Wait, you said you gave your tickets to other people? Ahh, you really are so nice!" Seika peered curiously at Lehanna's face, as if scrutinizing if she was real or not. Not only was the shorter girl absolutely a cutie pie, but she also seemed to be thoughtful and aware of other people and their problems. As much as she tried, Seika managed that barely half the time.

"Ah!! Your smile is so pretty, Lehanna! What are you think-" but then she realized if she just stopped to listen ever so slightly, the other girl was saying what she was thinking already. "Mm, I like that idea! Lunch with Lehanna! It has a... a ring to it! Let's meet, then, and I'll buy you lunch! If I find money before then! Yeah... okay!" Seika beamed at Lehanna, her expression radiant. She was so caught up in her excitement that she barely registered the sound of the lacrima loud speaker. A few moments passed before she noticed Lehanna had left their place on the side of the room in favor of approaching the counters, and she did the same.

As the peachy haired mage skipped over to the counter after an extended reaction time. "Hi there! I'm Taneda Akies! From um, the Rune Knights! Yes, that's me! Defender of justice! And I hate littering, that's something only meanies do! So, I became a Rune Knight when I was..." she babbled on for a few more minutes until finally the clerk got sick of hearing her supposed life story. Having already sped up the process as much as possible, they issued Seika a passport and she was soon well on her way.

Once outside, she stretched languidly and shook out herself. "There were so many people in there! It smelled like people!" Seika announced out loud to nobody in particular before flouncing over to the side of the building and rounding the corner until she saw a mostly empty wall. "I wanna sit down, but... not yet! This place is dirty, ew, who even litters? Where does all this trash come from?" She resisted the urge to pick it up.

Scratch that, she couldn't resist the urge anymore. Ignoring the fact that someone probably- no, definitely touched this with dirty hands, Seika leaned down and started collecting wrappers and plastic bags that were lying around. "Who could do this!! And so close to the sea too... if these got in the ocean, imagine what the baby fish would say! Nothing! Because they would be dead!" she let out a huff of exasperation. It was honestly pretty tiresome for the mage to be constantly confronted with people that just didn't seem to care about wildlife at all. Of course, Seika herself couldn't always keep track of the results of everything she did, down to every drop of waste that was created to pollute the world. Still, she did her best to be conscientious and when it was blatant that her actions would have consequences, such as with littering like this, she was sure to either take responsibility or simply fix the problem. Taking responsibility could mean any number of things, either acknowledging her mistake and accepting that she was acting like a terrible human being or doing something to reverse whatever had happened.

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This was a rather unexpected feeling in how quickly it was addressed, or rather suggested that they be friends. She blinked silently a couple of times, not really replying to it as the girl had honestly caught her off guard. But, her positivity in light of recent events made her feel a little better, so it wasn’t a bother. That was ok though. ”You know, that’s not a bad idea.” The slightly younger brunette did manage to go from a small look of confusion and surprise to a smile. She was a bit of an out there person, but she seemed to have a heart of a good person and in her book, sometimes it meant more to have a person like that around her than someone whom was completely driven by the work and had no personality at all. That had been her for so long, to see her polar opposite felt a bit more invigorating to say the least.

Her face quickly turned to a look of shock. The declaration of their height difference got her to look slightly up to the top of the girls hairline, drawing an imaginary dotted line in her mind of the girl over her before the look sunk into one of a pout. ”Y-Y-You’re not th-that much taller than me!” She huffed, not in the least bit entertained by the remark that was made. It seemed Seika was so ecstatic though that it wasn’t really easy to hold any resentment, even petty against the girl for so long seeing as how she bounced around so easily. Well, so easy as compared to the fire slayer. While she had been much of a one track mind, her fellow brunette had been much more of a spring flower; bright and vibrant. It was admirable to say the least. As the girl complimented her so much over her kind act, Lehanna had only been able to shrug it off. ”I chose to study more. I hadn’t anywhere else to be today so I chose to just do what I had to. Besides, I was getting tired of being cramped up in libraries for hours at a time, but after Karen over there, I won’t take that for granted again.”

Pushing the topic aside, she tried to move forward from the conversation before the sudden burst of how pretty her smile had been to Seika caused Lehanna’s cheeks to flush. ”I-I-It isn’t that pretty. Y-You’re just being too generous now...” She tried to reply, her words tripping over her embarrassment of the words. The sound of lunch though was a good and quick Segway to the idea of lunch, to which the girl childishly remarked sounded rather adorable in a sense putting as “lunch with Lehanna”. As silly as it sounded, the context and attitude from it didn’t really chime as well to her as she would have. Even with the past, even this wasn’t much of a comical thing. Maybe that was in part to the offer of buying, but mentioning that she had no money to do it. Why offer to buy if you have no money? Giving a small sigh, the slightly shorter brunette shook her head at the offer. ”No, I’ll treat you. I have plenty of jewels to feed us currently. It’s not too much, but a little meal for us won’t break my bank. I’ll just need to go on a job soon enough to make more. These hotel stays are killing me.” Placing one hand into her blazer, she pulled out a wallet and opened it to quickly scan her count of jewels and then set it back inside. ”Mm.. perfect, actually. I can get us lunch and still get my iLac after this. That job will need to be sooner than expected though.. darn it.”

Now her sigh was a little heavier than before, but she just shrugged it off. Enough to get by for the time being was all she wanted currently, and as such, she moved on toward her counter and presented her papers. She took no time at all as it was processed and then got her documentation taken care of. Being she had to get documents certified and then her passport filled out, she took longer than Seika did, however that thankfully wasn’t too long. When she was done, the Silver Wolf mage looked around. Seika wasn’t here... maybe she left. With just a shrug, she headed out now in a calm manner when she opened the doors. She could hear the girl nearby, thankfully from those good senses, but as she went away from the door after letting someone in, she heard the belching of the beast. She stopped for a moment and the woman from earlier began to rear her head again.

“Where do you think you’re going!?” She screeched. The woman received a very confused look. ”Not that it’s shy of your business? But I’m going to meet a friend for lunch. Do you need anything-” Cut off, the woman’s hand has raised up and went right in the girls face. “Children DONT speak unless spoken to. Where are your parents?” The mere audacity she had in asking someone that astounded her, but she simply pulled out her passport, with a clear label underneath that read “independent minor”. The woman grabbed her arm and began to pull her back inside. “I don’t care what that fake passport says. I’m getting them to call the police and arrest you for having fake documents.” At this point, she hit a tipping point. Heat was pouring out of her skin and she grabbed the aggressive woman’s arm and yanked her back, pulling her out of her heels and onto the ground. Her free hand gripped hard on the woman’s clothes, beginning to singe them from the heat radiating from her. ”You’re gonna instead shut your mouth and go back inside. You’ll leave me alone and if you so much as cause trouble again, I’ll come after you.”

The grip released and Lehanna simply collected her textbook and a book then walked off. She made her way to Seika and once she had, she was going to ignore what just happened s she was not happy having lost her temper, but the woman had crossed lines too many times with her to care. With just a sigh, she played on a smile and pointed down the way to the iLac store. ”Should we stop here first? They give free ones to mages with passports~ I overheard the Rune knight bit while they were doing my paperwork, so they should have no problem giving you one.” Trying to keep from the topic, she could easily explain, but it would be a bit better not to.

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As Seika was cleaning up the litter, she deposited the scraps a few at a time into a nearby trash can. Despite her efforts, it seemed like the flow of wrappers, pieces of gum, napkins, and other dropped garbage was never ending. Every piece picked up had her watching another one falling on the ground from some careless person's hand, just a few meters away. Seika yelled at them when she witnessed it, but they completely ignored her. Huffing, the girl studiously picked up the litter until she finally saw Lehanna leave the passport building. Seika watched her new friend hold the door open for someone; inwardly, the peachy haired mage clapped- or was that outwardly? Either way, she was clapping, amazed by her politeness. To be honest, she didn't feel so bad about not having money. It was nice- really nice of Lehanna to offer to treat her back there, especially since she seemed to have only enough. While the mage should have probably felt worse about offering to pay for lunch when she was absolutely broke, Seika didn't feel any shame about that sort of thing. She had trusted in her ability to scrounge up money, despite Lehanna's disapproval and lack of amusement. The shorter girl really was so nice and... and proper! Maybe that wasn't the right word, but she had a grown up feeling about her.

Even though the teen (or at least Seika assumed her fellow passport goer had been around her age, in the teens) was fairly mature, it looked like she was having trouble with adults who lacked the same level of control over their tempers and emotions. A certain adult, at least. Seika watched with wide eyes as the angry, seat-claiming woman from earlier yelled something at Lehanna. The girl replied with an answer in a much more fitting, lower voice, which meant that Seika couldn't hear, but she couldn't think fast enough to process their words anyway. However, she did understand when after a bit more of a heated exchange, the woman grabbed her arm. Seika winced at that, but her expression soon changed to awe when Lehanna pulled her away and sent her tumbling to the ground. "Oh my gosh, is that smoke?" Seika exclaimed to nobody in particular as she squinted at the scene, but she couldn't see anything after that brief possible greyish wisp.

As Lehanna approached her with a smile pasted across her face, Seika returned her smile with an enormous grin. "Lehanna! Oh my gosh, you're so cool! That lady was so mean and you were being so calm to her. Really, and then you did that thingy where she was suddenly on the ground and it was awesome!" The mage walked further down the street, her arms swinging, carefree, at her sides. "Ooh, look at that!" She pointed to the window of a store, at a lovely pale blue sweater with white buttons. "It's so pretty!" She rushed over to the window and pressed her palms and nose against the glass, momentarily distracted. Then she looked back at Lehanna; as her gaze traveled, she saw a small cafe with what looked like outdoor seating. "Oh! Should we eat there?" Seika pointed it out.

1551 Words, 3167 Total, -1000 for Earthland and Beyond, 2167 New Total