Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ Boil and Bubble: A Tale of Two Witches ❯ Bag Drag ( Chapter 2 )

A/N: Well, it took a little bit, but I'm quite satisfied with this chapter.

 

Chapter the Second: Bag Drag - In which two witches are subjected to the unyielding torture of luggage claim and the author dances sadistically on the broken plaster-ish rubble that was once the fourth wall.

 

Airports, Mimete realized, were not the sort of place to pick up dates. In fact, as they went through customs, Mimete realized that airports were not the sort of place to smile, laugh or have fun of any sort. If one of the security guards even thought that you were thinking of having fun, you would be dragged to the nearest police station and flogged mercilessly.

 

It didn't help that she was here with the Snail Lady, perhaps the most boring person on the planet. The girl must hold some sort of record in dullness, honestly. Mimete had never known someone so completely against having a good time. And it irked her.

 

Admittedly, Mimete was not in her happy place just about now, either.

 

“Look,” hissed Eudial, “we just want to know where our bags went.”

 

The washed-out blonde behind the counter gave her a vapid stare.

 

“Bags? Did you, like, check over there?” She nodded to a crowded area, where confused travelers attempted to identify their bags and remove them from the conveyor belt. (Because a giant grocery-story facsimile is the best that modern technology can do to return luggage to weary vacationers.)

 

“Yes.” Eudial bared her teeth. “We. Already. Looked. There. Why would I be here talking to you if I hadn't?”

 

“Uh…” The blonde popped her gum. A vein in Eudial's head pulsed dangerously.

 

Mimete sighed. This might take a while.

 

It did. Twenty minutes later, their bags were still missing in action.

 

The Snail Lady gritted her teeth. Of course, Mimete thought. Uncouth and unattractive, how very like her.

 

“We'll have to go on without them,” she barked, in Mimete's general direction.

 

“We can't! All my important things were in those bags!” Mimete went cold at the thought of it. She'd spent hours packing. Hours and hours out of her valuable and glamorous life, down the toilet!

 

“What important things could you have?”

 

“Only my limited edition violet-blue GoGo Girl easy glide eye shadow, and my magazines and pictures of … Gustav Valcignione, oh!” The Snail Lady just didn't have the mental capacity to comprehend such matters, poor slug. Gustav was just about the dreamiest male model/actor/singer/songwriter she'd ever seen. And Mimete had seen a lot of male model/actor/singer/songwriters. Granted, not all in the same package, like Gustav, but that only made him even dreamier, in Mimete's book, (which, to be fair, had rather more glossy photographs and hair-care tips than your average book. From time to time, it was even known to have a perfume sample tucked in the middle.)

 

The unenlightened Snail Lady snorted. “We're going to miss our transit flight. We'll have to go without the bags.”

 

“What? Never! We can't go without the bags!”

 

“Listen, your eye shadow is not important enough to jeopardize our mission—“

 

“Of course it is! I can't meet Gustav Valcignione without it! But, even if limited edition violet-blue GoGo Girl easy glide eye shadow just fell off the trees, we still won't be able to leave without those bags!”

 

“Why, got a six-billion yen nail file stashed in there?” Eudial sneered.

 

“For your information, it was only 20,000 yen, and that was a bargain! But, we have to find them because ourboardingpasseswereinthosebags!” Mimete flushed deeply. Now look what she's done! She's ruined my perfect complextion! Mimete seethed.

 

“What did you say?!” The look on Eudial's face went past murderous and burned a smoldering five-foot hole though the other side.

 

“I said our boarding passes were in those bags!” Mimete crossed her arms, refusing to meet the other's glare.

 

“Excuse me?” The Snail Lady's cheeks and forehead were now turning a completely unsightly shade of purple. (Though Mimete would never admit it, the color actually bore quite some resemblance to her limited edition violet-blue GoGo Girl easy glide eye shadow.)

 

“Um, I stowed them in my bag so you wouldn't lose them and…”

 

“How could you be so irresponsible? What are we going to do now?”

 

“What am I supposed to do about it?” When someone is angry at you for doing something stupid, Mimete found that it helped a lot to get angry at them for getting angry at you for doing something stupid rather than doing something stupid like apologizing. Apologizing was only for the guilty, and you weren't guilty. After all, it wasn't your fault and you were only trying to help and you could never in a million years have predicted that the idiotic airline was going to lose your bags. In fact, in Mimete's eyes, the person who was angry at you for doing something stupid was actually more in the wrong than you were for doing something stupid in the first place. It wasn't like that person (who, by the way, was oh-so-much less attractive and clever and interesting as you were and was probably jealous about it to boot) hadn't known you for years. It wasn't like that person, that red-headed person (and Mimete would not name names, no. She wasn't petty, like that person) couldn't have taken some initiative for once and put the passes in her own stylistically inferior pocket. No!

 

It was all that person's fault.

 

“You tell me!” Mimete shouted, balling her fists.

 

“Attention travelers!” A pleasant voice came over the intercom, “Flight 147B from New York to Las Angeles will be leaving in ten minutes. All last minute boarders, please report to terminal 14C immediately. Have a nice flight.”

 

“What was that?” said Mimete, whose English was a little rusty. She didn't have all that free time in high-school to spend studying like that person, after all. Some people actually had dates.

 

The person in question blew her decidedly stringy hair out of her eyes. “It means we're late. Come on, then. I'll go talk to the officials at the terminal and see if I can't fix your mistake.”

 

Mimete grumbled at this obvious misdistribution of blame, but followed.

 

“Can't you look up our tickets in the computer or something?” Eudial asked.

 

“Oh, sure,” said the official. “Hold on.” It turned out that he was a one-fingered typer. “Sorry,” he said, looking sheepish, “It's my first day on the job.”

 

“How special,” Eudial scoffed.

 

“Oh, yes, it is really,” said the man, oblivious to Eudial's sarcasm. “I thought they'd never let me out of the facility, not after …well, there was this incident at the shopping mall a few years back, let's just say I sort of—“

 

“Can you work any faster?” Mimete tapped the counter. She'd barely understood a word the man said, but talking was always her strong point. (Plus, that particular phrase always came in handy, no matter what language you were speaking.)

 

“Wait just a sec…Okay, the page is loading!”

 

“Hey, what are you doing?” Eudial whipped around as a woman by the gate began closing the doors.

 

“Still loading!” said the official, ever-cheerful.

 

“Sorry, Ma'am, the plane is about to take off. We can't allow any more passengers to board at this time.”

 

“What! But we paid to get on this plane! Can't you hold it just a minute?”

 

“Still loading!”

 

“I'm sorry. It's airline policy. They're already going down the runway.” The woman shrugged.

 

“Almost there!” The official waved his arms in excitement. He gave Mimete a thumbs up.

 

Eudial growled.

 

“Okay!” The official grinned, pulling two pieces of paper from a slot on the computer. “Here are your new boarding passes. Enjoy your flight!”

 

“It's already left!”

 

“Oh, bread-baskets with gooseberry jam! That's a shame. Do you want to book another flight?”

 

For a split-second, it seemed as though Eudial was about to strangle him. (For once, Mimete wouldn't have blamed her.) However, she clenched and unclenched her fists and began taking deep calming breaths. Those Tomoe-ordered anger management classes must've really taken effect, Mimete realized.

 

“Happy thoughts, happy thoughts,” Eudial muttered, eyes winched such. After several minutes, she opened her eyes, bared her teeth in what may have been meant to be a smile, but somewhere along the way had metamorphosed into a painful grimace, and addressed the official.

 

“Yes, we probably will need to book a new flight. First, we'll have to get in contact with our employer, though. He's paying.” Eudial stomped away from the counter.

 

Eudial whipped out a cell phone. “You call him. It was your stupidity that got us into this.”

 

“My stupidity!” Mimete drew herself up to her full height, but then remembered that Eudial would be several inches taller than her anyway.

 

“Just do it. Or, do you want to stand here in this airport for the rest of our lives?”

 

“With you? Never!” Furiously, Mimete began to dial.