'Ow.... My head...'
Maria was not having a good week. First the unlucky Alexandrian Soldier had managed to twist her ankle and be reassigned to guard duty limping around the castle during the attack on Burmecia, and now she had the mother of all headaches... And felt cold.
'Why do I feel so...'
She blinked her eyes open, seeing only blurry brown and shadows. She was face down... and as her vision cleared a little it became clear she was under a bush.
She felt some dread.
'Wait, no, Terra and Rosa were on the mission! I can't have got drunk and.... and... I was on duty anyway so...'
Slowly she moved her hand to check her body. Looking for any sign of clothing, of her uniform...
Of something other than her birthday suit. Which, she did not find.
A small voice in the back of her head groaned at the fact it was experience and not logic that meant she did not shriek at this discovery. It was drowned out though by the fact that the vocal scream had simply moved to the front of her head and any mind readers in the area would hear an ear piercing wail of embarrassment. Fortunately, there were none.
Any observers in the area, a small garden a few hundred metres away from the jetty for the moat ferry, would have saw an Alexandrian soldier, minus helmet, pop her head out of a small bush and examine her surroundings. Had there been any she would have ducked away and tried to scurry out under cover of the shrubbery.
The sun had risen, and from her guess it was around seven AM since the sun was only just up. She had last remembered cursing the stupid uniforms in the early morning chill, and this March morning was showing little sign of warming up fast.
Still, even that uniform that left her legs and arms cold and had too much chilly metal was far better than this... How had this happened? She last remembered looking in the moat after hearing a noise, then complaining about the uniform to herself when there was nothing but some frogs... and then she woke up naked in a bush.
She mentally added "Again" and then subtracted it since this time she clearly wasn't drunk... and the back of her head hurt so she assumed she had been knocked out.
'Useless freaking helmets! Someone's snuck into the castle... so soon after Princess Garnet was kidnapped... again... and with those prisoners... I need to report this but I can't go anywhere like this!'
She fretted for a moment. If she ran she may raise the alarm in time and stop whoever had broke in and attacked her. The trouble was, she'd be running naked and... well, Queen and Country was fine to serve but she had no plans to become a heroine whilst stark naked for all to see.
Where would they pin the medal anyway?
She made her mind up. She would rush to her barracks or the laundry drying room, get a new uniform or something, and raise the alarm as fast as she could.
Of course, the truth was that half an hour before, she had not been deliberately struck around the head. The two intruders had simply made a mistake.
An hour earlier
"Okay, let's go over this again..." Mikoto said, as even Garnet's royal patience wore slightly thin at just how nervous the supposedly more world-experienced woman was.
"Mikoto... We've planned and planned. You were up all night worrying about this, and all we can do now is to proceed." She said gently, reassuring the natural blonde.
"But... "
Garnet looked across at the castle as Mikoto's sentence hung in the air.
"He'll be fine. We'll all be fine. I won't be recognised with my hair dyed blonde, no one will challenge us if we can get a uniform for me, and if I am challenged about wandering around I simply tell the truth that I don't actually know where the dungeons are..."
Mikoto sighed.
"So we swim across the moat... And somehow I have to do that with all my clothes on while you get that swimsuit..."
"Well, if I leave my clothes damp beside a missing uniform or unconscious soldier it will be something of a clue as to who is sneaking back in, would it not?"
"I guess... So it's cross the moat, find a uniform somehow, you take me as a fake prisoner, we try find the others, break them out then try and get out of the castle again?"
Garnet nodded her now-blonde hair in the pre-dawn gloom.
"Yes, that would be the plan in summary..."
"Alright. Why couldn't I be a soldier too?"
"Your hair is too short, and your tail is rather obvious." Garnet reminded her.
"I can hide the tail! And I said we could have broke into that shop..."
"Mikoto, no offence, but the apothecary was open to buy hair dye. I was not going to resort to petty theft no matter what."
Mikoto stared at her.
"...So, what do you call breaking into the castle, possibly attacking a solider to steal her uniform, then breaking out four prisoners from death row?"
Garnet shrugged.
"High treason. But it's the principle of things."
"Petty theft is too lower class for royalty, any crime you commit has to carry a death sentence or something?" Mikoto grumbled.
"Don't be like that, Mikoto. And anyway, under that logic you're practically a princess committing such a regal crime."
Mikoto sighed.
"Just don't let Zidane know. He'll claim being on death row makes him practically a prince then."
Garnet grinned, glad to see Mikoto wasn't worrying so much any more.
"Well, he can be a royal pain..."
Swimming across the calm moat was easy, if not fun. The cold water chilled the pair to the bone and they were thankful to have spotted a guard very close to shore.
"Okay... You slip up the side, make sure the coast is clear, then throw a rock into the water just downstream from her. When she investigates, I'll cast sleep on her, you move and grab her to stop her falling in or hitting the ground, then we drag her to the bushes and I change."
"Right. So.... How do you explain me being wet and your hair being wet?"
Garnet paused. She had her normal clothing and a towel in a waterproofed bag (and in fact her normal clothes would be wrapped around her wet swimsuit later in order to keep the towel dry), but Mikoto had a point.
"...We swim back over, dry off as much as we can with the towel, and hopefully the guard at the other side of the boat jetty won't notice we're wet... and then we fall in and take the guard on the boat with us."
Mikoto sighed.
"Great. More cold water swimming..."
Mikoto slipped up, and a moment later, threw the rock. A distraction and a signal all in one, as Garnet hid in the shadowy water a few metres from her target, readying the spell as quietly as she could.
However, something went a little wrong. She winced as the soldier fell backwards too fast for Mikoto to catch her. The clang of her helmet on the ground surely would raise an alarm...
...But nothing came. No shouts, no running feet... Just a soldier, unconscious and with a bump to her head likely. Sleep had either held somehow, or the soldier was now in a less gentle state of unconsciousness. Either way, the two had to move fast.
It didn't take too long, Mikoto and Garnet swiftly stripping the hapless soldier, stuffing the wet swimsuit into the bag, wrapped in Garnet's clothing.
"You know, we could have stole more towels and both swam fully clothed rather than buy a swimsuit and one towel with what little money we had... And is it really right to leave one of your soldiers like this?"
Garnet sighed.
"I'll ignore that first part... but the second part, well... When we're out of here I have some strange stories to tell you about some of the soldiers here..."
Mikoto nodded.
"I'm not sure I want to know. Anyway, let's swim back now..."
Maria knew none of this of course. She didn't know that her attackers had swam back, taken ten minutes or so to dry off, and were now only just arriving back at the dock after getting back into the boat, and nor did she know who had actually attacked her. She had seen nothing.
And she hoped that in her case, nothing would be seen as she tried to enter into the castle. Nervously hiding behind a crate, two of her fellow soldiers walked past, oblivious to their nude comrade concealed nearby.
'Am I glad we still had all these delivery boxes from Dali lying here...' She thought, watching the others go past.
She slipped her way towards a side entrance of the castle, diving into another bush as a Knight of Pluto's loud voice approached. It was Weimar, the most flirtatious of the inept knights, once more harassing one of her comrades.
"...It doesn't matter to me if it's only an hour, Aeris..."
"Aerith. My name is Aerith. Aeris is the one in the infirmary with the stab wound you moron."
Maria recalled that. Very unusual for a Burmecian dragoon to use a long sword like that... and very cowardly to attack as someone was praying. Aeris wasa devout woman, and had been rather lucky to be alive given that she had been stabbed in the back and straight through. Sadly, the dragoon that had been captured yesterday was not the one behind her injury, given that her attacker had long white hair, wore black, and was most importantly, male.
"...Aerith. An hour with you before my shift on guard would make my day perfect. We can be at the restaurant and back in time..."
Aerith stopped right in front of Maria's hiding spot, causing the streaking soldier to silently eep in fear she had been spotted. But the other soldier merely had reached breaking point.
"Weimar, no means no! I have a boyfriend! And so does Maria before you walk down to the moatside to annoy her!"
"...What about Rosa?"
"She's in Burmecia."
"Celes?"
"Married, idiot, to that treasure hunter."
"Cloudia?"
"...You know what she and Tifa are."
"Tifa?"
"I just... gha!"
"Claire?"
"She took her leave to help plan her sister's wedding. "
Maria suppressed a groan as Weimar and Aerith ran through a virtual roll call of the whole Alexandrian army...
Eventually, Aerith gave up and stormed off. Weimar wandered off in another direction, and Maria fumed. At least five minutes wasted... Who knows what the intruder could have done already.
She managed to make it into the castle, and was nearly at the laundry room... When she heard voices inside. The door was ajar slightly, and she could see that two soldiers inside were loading a trolley with a basket. A basket full of washed clothes.
"Well, that's everything. Let's go take this load over to the drying room..."
Maria backed away from the door
'Crap... They have to come this way... And they have all the clothes washed already! Why didn't I head for the drying room?!'
She searched for somewhere to hide as the laundry room door opened. She dashed into another door, hoping that this room was empty.
She was lucky that it indeed was, but unlucky to accidentally discover the hard way what this room was when she dislodged a glowing blue glass sphere from a shelf. It shattered with a dull puff, and Maria felt her coldness get even worse. She only had time to eep a little.
'Oh no! The freeze bo-'
She was interrupted by being frozen solid.
It took her five minutes to thaw. She finished her thought first.
'-mbs! Crap.... This is cold....'
A few moments later, her body was thawed out enough to shiver, helping dislodge the ice that formed on her skin, and making her curse the infernal things. This store room was full of them.... and other "spell bombs".
She looked over the shelves, and found what she needed. A few careful uses of Fire Bombs and she was warmed up a little.
'Useless things. The effects don't last for long, they don't do much damage... Wait. The stone bomb... and the stop and freeze bombs. They only last ten minutes at mist because the magic in the bombs is so weak! I can use them!'
Grabbing a belt (and cursing the fact that she had to enter the only armoury in the castle that didn't have any armour she could have used to cover up, even if just a breastplate and chainmail would have been freezing) she loaded it with a few of the freeze, stop, and stone bombs, trying not to take too many and hoping that her plight would be understood. She still had visions of it all coming out of her wages though. Uniform, these bombs...
...Not to mention the trouble she might be in if she had to use them. She hoped she didn't. But she had to to what she had to do... Except deliberately be seen naked. There were limits to how far one could go. Temporarily freezing people to slip past, yes. Being seen naked, no...
She had decided to head for the barracks instead, seeking her spare uniform. Then she could report the attack, own up to her misuse of army property, have the bombs returned and hopefully not be in too much trouble as she was doing it to thwart an attack.
However, once again she heard voices, and was out of options.
"...Come on, how can you not know where the damn dungeons are?!"
"I told you, I've never been to them before! It's hardly my hobby..."
"Well, they're usually in a basement..."
"Yes, but there are many holding cells and I can't presume anything!"
'Crap. It's some rookies that are lost...' Maria winced. Well, freezing was nasty since the victim was left awake... And Stone did the same. It also made sneaking past harder since they could see her... Stop it would be. She'd try to apologise to the rookies later but for now, she threw her bomb.
"What the?!" A voice cried, followed by the dull explosion. Maria rounded the corner... And almost screamed.
'That was a stone bomb! Now they're still able to see... me?'
Her shock was replaced for a moment with confusion. One statue was the soldier she expected, holding her prisoner at sword point but... Something seemed off. Her hair was a shade too long, she felt. But more interesting was the other statue.
It was a woman in blue and black, wearing a poncho. She had her hands behind her back, and also had a long tail, like... Like the woman who had been part of the group that kidnapped Princess Garnet in January.
And just like the blond male prisoner that had been captured yesterday.
Maria groaned. This was the intruder! She'd already been caught... And she'd just petrified a rookie who had been behind the capturing...
...If it was a rookie. Paranoia took hold and she neared the stone pair. The two had damp clothing for some reason, and... the uniform seemed a little too big on the rookie. And some of the dents in the armour seemed familiar.
The next surprise was to see the "rope" tying the hands of the presumed-prisoner.
It was wrapped around her wrists and held in place not by the knot at the top, but by the prisoner's own fingers. Pulling the knot made it come away.
It was fake. This was no prisoner. And that meant this was no...
She removed the helmet from the presumed impostor, and was about to snatch her sword back when she saw the face of the fake. The face of her presumed attacker. The face of who she assumed had stripped her, and stolen her uniform to sneak the woman with a tail in here to rescue her... whatever the other tailed person was. Brother, cousin, father, boyfriend, whatever. It didn't matter.
What did matter was the fake soldier was none other than Princess Garnet herself.
"...Oh crap. Um... Sorry about this Princess but..."
Maria suddenly remembered she was naked, and in front of a Princess.
'Okay, go get dressed, come back, hope they're still stone, wait for them to turn back and find out what the hell the Princess is up to!' She told herself as she ran off, not noticing she had dropped the helmet behind her with a clatter, as well as dropping something else.
The next mistake she had made was, she mis-timed it. The stone effect lasted only a few minutes, the few minutes she had spent running to her barracks room.. Mikoto and Garnet blinked in surprise as they reverted.
"...I think we're found out." Garnet noted.
"You don't say... " Mikoto noted, still a little surprised at the turn of events.
"...New plan. We find somewhere for me to get into my normal clothing, I give you your daggers back, you hold me hostage and we demand they release the others?"
Mikoto shook her head, and picked up something the soldier had dropped.
"Or we go nuts with these bombs..." Mikoto grinned, surveying the temporary, but useful, small selection of the glass spheres.