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Who: Greta, Roxas and later Sora
What: Going to save the hero!
Where: Yubaba's Bathhouse
When: Fourth of July weekend
Warnings: Freaky Japanese spirits! :O

As the Gummi Ship approached the world of bathhouse, Greta was preparing making last preperations before they were to teleport to the surface to the world. She had cleared her hammerspace bag out of everything but her stockpile of Potions and Ethers. It would be rather embarassing to pull out one of her bras in the middle of the fight in front of two 16 year olds, after all.

"Okay, uh, the inhabitants of the Bathhouse don't really like humans," Greta explained, "So we can't just barge in, we're gonna have to be... sneaky about this."

That's probably how Sora got in trouble, he's not really subtle. Greta just sighed at that thought. The ship's computer beeped, signaling that they were in range to teleport to the world.

"Ready, Roxas?" She asked as she slung her sword over her shoulder.

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"I'm about as ready as I can be, I think," he replied, checking his own items. He didn't have much and now he owed Pence's family a crapload of munny.

Two potions, an ether and his key chains were all there was to check on. He supposed he should have asked if someone could possibly fetch that mail shirt he'd gotten from the Moogles, but there was a possibility it wouldn't help him here.

"Sneaky, huh?" Well, he could do sneaky. Sora apparently couldn't, although lacking any knowledge on the world couldn't have helped either.

"Yeah...I think Chihiro used a secret passage to get into the bathhouse in the movie, so I think we should try to find that."

But after they made it in... then what? Maybe Haku, Kamaji or Rin could help if they found them, but Greta didn't even know where in the timeline this world was. She was hoping they would just find Sora in the boiler room playing with the sootballs.

She walked over to the ship's computer and teleported them down to a patch of grass near a river. It wasn't hard to miss the bathhouse, it kind of dominated the skyline.

Edited 2009-07-03 07:16 (UTC)

This was going to be interesting.... to say the least. They were in the territory of creatures with a bit of dislike for humans and one of them could apparently wipe your mind if she knew your name. The worst of it was that that might be why Sora wasn't checking in.

And what if it came to a fight? What were these creatures capable of in combat? With any luck, they wouldn't have to find out, but Roxas knew better than to trust his luck... or that of anyone else he knew...

Hopefully they wouldn't have to fight. The spirits here were mostly peaceful, in spite of the fact that they didn't like people. But considering their luck in general...?

"Okay, this way" Greta said in a hushed voice, as she started to head to the Bathhouse's back wall

Roxas followed, knowing they weren't likely to catch a break, but hoping for one all the same. How in all the worlds Sora could've gotten himself into trouble on a world that seemed to be at peace, Roxas wasn't sure he wanted to know. But... going by what Greta had said to Sora the last time he checked in, apparently there was plenty of trouble for him to get into here.

At least they wouldn't have to deal with Heartless. That made things a little easier. Other monsters may have been tougher in general, but they couldn't swarm quite the way Heartless could and couldn't increase their numbers as readily either. Big plus and also off topic. Roxas shook the thought away and turned his attention to his surroundings.

The worlds had local problems, that how. If the films were any indication, they'd always were supposed to have bad guys messing things up. The Heartless just complicated things.

As the came upon the, uh, staircase thing Chihiro has used in the movie, Greta looked back to make sure Roxas was still behind her. Then she ran up it. It wasn't steady, so they had to move quickly.

Roxas followed Greta's lead, taking the stairs quickly. He knew nothing of this world and was seriously wishing he had looked up some information when he'd had time. Hell, even watching that movie based in this world would probably have helped. But, since he hadn't, he would have to rely on Greta's knowledge of the story and what it told of the world.

"So, what do we do if Sora has done whatever it was you warned him against when he told us he was here?" he asked as they reached the top. Obviously, they had to find Sora first, but Roxas wanted to know. He felt uneasy about this as it was.

Unfourtunatly, it had been a year or two since Greta last saw that movie, so her memory of it wasn't perfect. Greta pried open the door to the boiler room and was met by a blast of hot steam.

"We need to have him remember his name. That's what broke Haku-- Kohaku's contract." Greta said as she pressed herself up against the wall. Looking around the corner for the man with six arms. "I wonder what they're calling him. Sora might be a Japanese name, but our Sora doesn't write it in Japanese."

Roxas grumbled a bit under his breath about the steam, but pressed on. The sooner they found Sora, the better, not only for his sake but Roxas's nerves. This was one of the downsides of having a Heart, but he was learning to deal with... mostly due to excessive exposure to such emotions as worry and frustration as of late.

"Why do I get the feeling that's going to be a lot harder than it sounds?"

"Because of the tropes" Greta said wryly. "But maybe we'll be lucky, and he'll just playing with the soot balls?"

But if he was fine, wouldn't he have checked in? Sora wasn't that easily distraced.

"Always those damn tropes," Roxas muttered. He kind of wished he didn't know what she was talking about, but sometimes boredom overruled common sense and he browsed Earth's network. Hopefully they would find Sora soon, but if he'd signed a contract as he was warned not to and forgotten his name, how could they make him remember it? Could they just tell him or could they only give him hints? Would hearing or thinking of a name that was just an anagram of his with a letter added remind him?

Other than that concern, he was thinking the same thing about why Sora didn't check in.

The boiler room was bit on the fantastical side, with one guy... who seemed to have six arms... working on what appeared to be herbal concoctions that he mixed into the hot water and sent on its way to the baths above. His arms also seemed somewhat elastic as they stretched to walls of drawers behind him to fetch the ingredients he needed. Whether he was alone or not was not immediately apparent. The coals for the boiler seemed to be moving across the floor on their own until one looked closer and saw that there were actually small black creatures carrying each one. Roxas guessed these must be the soot balls Greta spoke of. They were actually kind of cute and he could imagine Sora wanting to play with them.

However, he didn't see Sora anywhere just yet.

He wasn't quite sure why he had come down here, only that the lady had asked (well, demanded) that he do so. And it wasn't like he was in any position to argue with her, and she was a little intimidating... a lot intimidating... he had a feeling that she was quite possibly one of the strangest and scariest people he had ever met.

He made a face, dodging around two people who were just sort of standing there and- wait. He blinked, turning around, momentarily forgetting about his assignment. "Greta? Roxas?" He then lowered his voice into an exaggerated whisper, "what are you doing here?"

"We're here to get you out of whatever mess you've gotten yourself into this time." Greta said.
Even though she sounded annoyed at him, she was obviously concered, and he face fell into a worried frown. "You dissapeared off face of the internet. We were worried about you, Sora..."

Worried was an understatement. Roxas hadn't slept very much since the shift had dropped him in digital Twilight Town and this was mostly due to knowing that his friends were potentially in danger. Kairi being cut off in the middle of a comment while on Merlin's home world could mean very bad things and Sora being within the reach of a spirit who could force you to work for her if you signed a contract with her made for a very nervous Roxas, not counting the scred he's had when he'd been shifted.

Sora seemed okay now, though how he responded to hearing his name would be telling.

He blinked at Greta. "Yeah, sorry about-" He stopped and hesitated, scratching the back of his head. "Uh, what did you just call me?"

Greta's jaw dropped.

"You didn't?" She just couldn't believe it, they all warned him not to make deals with Yubaba, but he'd gone and done it anyway. "You gave her your name? You know better than that!"

She then let out an annoyed sigh and buried her face into Roxas's shirt in exasperation.

Roxas pretty much wilted, paying no mind at all to Greta leaning on him. He had been hoping not to hear that.

"She called you by your name," he said quietly, "You were warned not to sign a contract."

If he'd been much more stressed, Roxas might have felt like crying. As it was, he was barely suppressing a grumbling whimper and that had probably been noticed.

"Now what?"

"My... name...?" He blinked again. He remembered asking about the world on the network, but by the time he had done that, he had already been in a lot of mess. He had told Yubaba something, but... his name? He wouldn't have forgotten something like that, would he?

He glanced at Roxas, having heard the noise, and offered his Other a bright smile that no amount of memory loss could erase. "Hey, it'll be alright. I mean, what's the worse that could happen? We've been through tougher situations, right?"

Sora's optimisim was nothing if not contagious. She straightened back up and clapped her hands together.

"Yeah, all we gotta do is break the contract. How hard could that be?" Probablly really hard, but they could get Sora out of this mess.
"Oh, uh, I'm curious, what do you think your name is?"

Roxas sighed. Sora's optimism was rubbing off on him a little.

"I guess you're not in as much trouble as we thought you might be," he said, letting a teasing tone seep in, "But now what?"

He tapped his chin thoughtfully, but even as he did, a girl came running into the room, her dark brown ponytail flying behind her. She nearly stumbled as she ran past them. "Kamaji! Rin!" She nearly collided with Roxas, but collected herself just in time to gasp out an "excuse me, sir!" before continuing past them into the boiler room.

She then paused and turned back, waving frantically at the tiny group. "Ten! Hurry up or Yubaba's gonna yell at us! A river spirit is here!"

"Ten" made a face and gestured apologetically to Greta and Roxas. "I gotta go - we'll figure something out, okay?" And then he was gone, running after the girl, slamming the door to the boiler room shut behind them.

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