Yuki nods to Ante. "I will find the bottle. Cover me."
The assassin then approaches the wine racks, and begins to search for the Merlot the fox requested.
Spoiler
Skill: [roll0]
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And Ante....just sorta follows her, trying to keep an eye out for any cellar danger.
SpoilerCunning: [roll0]
She finds the merlot relatively easily; it seems to have been placed to be accessible.
-----
"Don't worry, don't worry, I won't tell...Let's just go get that ink, huh?"
He pads off towards Leon's room.
Without realizing where she was or even caring she had somehow run all the way into an empty stone cobbled courtyard. A small bench resting in the morning sunlight was all that grabbed her attention. Curling up into herself, a tiny ball of a human being, she let the world drift away.
In her mind, the secrets she had kept from him unfolded and blossomed into horrible thoughts. She couldn't say it, not to herself, not to anyone. What happens when they all find out?
I wish there was a way Astrid and I could both live but that's just the girl who's lived the fairytale life talking. Astrid, why did you do this to me? Why can't you be the fake and I, the sleeping beauty who he'll love?
For now, she would cry and cry until there were no more tears and only then would she pick herself up and get back to work with that smile plastered on her face. Maybe if she smiled all the time, no one could tell how much she felt like screaming inside.
Yuki picks up the bottle and frowns. "Way too easy. Ante, watch your back."
"Or perhaps this is the one place here where absolutely nothing dangerous will come out and attack us or charge at us or request our help in adorable little french accents that are not really french...speaking of which, let's just get this wine to that fox."
Ante proceeds towards the exit they came in.
And then...Something small lands on the back of her neck!
Yuki:
SpoilerIt is a small spider.
Yuki slightly raises her eyebrow. "There's a spider on you," she deadpans.
Ante freezes in place.
Now it may have been months since this narrator created Ante, spawned from the combination of random fate and thoughtful construction, and he may have not paid much heed to some of these more superfluous traits in the past, but he has remembered, in this case, that the demon girl is, in fact, a bit of a neat freak.
It is bad enough that she has been subject to quite a lot of dirt and grime today. The fact that a spider is currently crawling up her neck...well...
Spoiler[roll0]
That alone is quite a stressful experience.
"Y-yuki...in your experience, have you any knowledge of what types of spiders are and are not...poisonous?" Ante says, remaining as still as a statue.
Another deadpan response. "Do you really want to know the answer to that question?"
"...It will be okay...as long as...I don't...pan...pani..GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITO FF!!"
Ante starts flailing about wildly, her sense of responsibility finally being outweighed by her sense of being creeped out by a spider on her neck.
Yuki takes a step back so as not to be hit by a flailing limb. Her expression is still a neutral deadpan, aside from the slightly raised brow.
Wine Cellar
The spider is flung up with such force that it breaks through the ceiling of the cellar, and up through the kitchen ceiling, and up and up through the ruined floors...
For a moment, it hangs high in the air above the manor, seeing everything -- Lune returining indoors with a fake smile, Leon sulking in the rose maze, the manor with its damages...
It even sees the path of birds and clouds beneath it.
And then it plummets back to earth.
....
Meanwhile, in the garden...
Where it lands on Terran's nose at a speed that renders it like a punch, slamming into Terran's nose. Terran sighs and -- with care because he suspects Hani of delicate sensibilities -- brushes it aside, where it skitters away.
He massages his nose.
"...Allowed narry a moment's peace, eh, Miss Hani?"
-------------
Leon's Room
Mozart doesn't even bother checking the door; he just strides in like he owns the place.
The room, as described before, is an opulent-looking room. It's divided into the front area, with an armchair and loveseat, and a nice desk facing the window. Beyond the divider is the sleeping area, with its 4-poster bed.
The desk has on it a few pieces of sheet music fluttering about... And several large drawers.
"Hm. I've never gotten this stuff, no matter how much of it he talks to me about. How do you make sound from tadpoles?"
Mozart picks up the music with a complete lack of care, crumpling it in his hand.
Having removed the offending arachnid, Ante stands up and dusts herself off of any cobwebs or...dust that got on her.
"Is it gone? Is it off? Has the offending venomous deadly creature left my body?"
Yuki stares for a moment, before rendering her answer in the same deadpan as before, her face a mask of neutrality.
"No."
Ante continues to Flail.
It's not very effective...
"I believe it is now in your hair," Yuki deadpans.
She proceeds to throw off her headdress and start shaking her hair about wildly, making it even more unruly than it originally was.
It also, inadvertently, completely exposes her demon horns, as well as her slightly pointed ears, not as long as an elf's but curved all the same.
Lune sighed. The edges of her smile tried to fade. She didn't want to do this. Pretending was better for all of them but it was going to be that much harder to hide it.
Catching herself in a mirror as she turned in a hallway she stared back at the pink haired girl in the mirror.
The eyes betrayed everything. No longer was she doll with the fake, plastic smile. She now wore the face of a real person. Happiness and sadness etched in a pale design.
" I'll just have to try my best then won't I?" She spoke more then just to talk to herself but to see if she could speak without it being obvious she had cried.
And it sounded so much more fine then the way she looked.
Yuki slightly raises a brow at the horns. "Hm. Interesting."
She then tilts her head slightly to the side. "Oh dear," she deadpans. "The spider is now doing an extravagant little dance towards your bottom."
Hopefully Ante will pick up on the purposefully silly wording, and realize she's being messed with.
"NOOO GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT...off...me."
She is halfway through her own silly little dance before realizing that she is being had.
She adjusts her maid uniform , fumbling a bit with her headdress before re-aligning it with her horns and tying it back on, while attempting to hold some air of dignity, and largely just holding an air of flustered embarrassment.
"...Tis a mean trick, to prey upon one who has been assaulted by such...vile creatures." She says with a huff.
Yuki smiles in amusement. "Tit for tat, after the fiasco of this morning," she remarks with an air of aloof playfulness. "All in good fun."
She looks up. "I think you killed the vile creature, by the by. That, or sent it somewhere into the lower stratosphere."
"Good, good." Ante says, fighting with her apron, still feeling a bit embarrassed about the whole affair.
"We should ah...deliver this wine to the fox...it is a sorry state of affairs when our daily tasks begin to sound like spy code."
Yuki smirks faintly. "That actually would make this job more normal for me, were it the case."
She then begins to make for the door. "Now, to find our way back to that fox."
"Right, hopefully he hasn't gone far." She says, following Yuki as they seek out the fox once again.
The fox was in the lab, sniffing at the now-open, now-vacant box.
---
"Oh, yeah...Well, there's bound to be some ink here; maybe the drawers?"
Mozart dropped the paper. It landed back on the desk, a little worse for the wear of being handled by Mozart.
"...And what have YOU done here, Renard?" Ante says, boiling rage beneath a sea of calm...well more like a puddle of calm.