Narishma hands us both a little bottle. "It's the saliva of the vampire we're looking for. Removed from the young ones and the waitress to break the compulsion You two both have good senses, so it might be enough for you to identify him from a distance."
We both nod, I know it's enough for me, and Lala has pretty good senses too.
The work tablet reappears. "This is where he is currently, I'll keep tracking him digitally, while I look for other signatures in the base. We'll go together until we need to split up to corner him."
Silently we start moving down the hall. Not particularly hurrying, but with a pace and serious look that lets everyone know we're busy. A state that fits right in around here.
The vampire doesn't seem to be moving, which is strange he's in a storage room of some sort though, so maybe he's sleeping? In fact, he's still there when we get up to the door. Narishma swings it open with a quick movement and I follow her inside, claws out, just in case.
What we find is not what we expected. We've awoken one very confused elderly man speaking Dutch. Of course it's Dutch, it's always Dutch. Lala starts shouting at him, trying to get him to calm down, and in a few minutes he does.
With a little trouble, due to his mental state, we find out that he was afflicted with a curse on his world, giving him the equivalent of Alzheimers. He was peacefully sleeping in his castle, when a portal must have formed and a clearance team from the base went to check it out. Finding his ornate coffin locked, they brought it back to base for analysis, leaving him lost, confused and determined that he'd been kidnapped.
Now that we've got the basics out of the way, we tried to determine why he'd turned the students, but even under compulsion from the Master Vampire Narishma, he couldn't remember.
He rambled on about building his coven until it ruled the entire valley where he lived, so as best as we can determine, that's what he thought he was doing at the time.
Narishma says she's going to lock him up for his own safety until we can determine if the portal he came from is still open to send him home. If it's not, she says she'll drop him in the next one we find with vampires. I think she's joking. Maybe.
Well, at least we've got a good story to tell the guys when we go for our walk tonight.
I decide we've had enough bar based entertainment to last us, so we pick a random location by code to go visit, ending up at the hair salon.
"What do they do here? Is it like the spa but just for your head?" Lala asks, looking at the wash basins and chairs.
"Close, but not quite. They cut and style your hair. They can even dye it if you'd like?"
Lala's eyes almost pop out of her head at this idea. "Do you think they could do pink highlights and pink tips on my ears?"
I don't even bother to respond, I just drag the hyper Bunny into the salon and have her repeat everything she told me to the stylist.
"OH, I've never done ears before! I'm sure I can though, just leave it to me. You should really get a cut and style with your dye job though"
Lala scans her identification card, which doubles as our on base bank account for non magical services, and the Stylist gets to work. After a bit of back and forth, it's decided Lala will keep her hair very long, just cleaning it up and evening it out, as such a thing was unheard of while she was a slave.
Well, a proper slave, since technically the spell still keeps her bound to Karl, who doesn't treat her like one.
After the trim comes the pink streaks, and pink ear tips. They perfectly match her shirt and look amazing with her bright white hair and fur.
At her insistence, I too get a quick trim, leaving my natural color alone, as I like my strawberry blonde. Once the stylist is done I see Lala sneak up behind me and start braiding my hair.
"What you doing you sneaky Bunny?"
"You'll see, its my favorite look for you."
Favorite look for me? This could be fun.
A few minutes later I've got a tight and sleek pair of Dutch braids in my hair, and the stylist has begun braiding a simple pattern into Lala's long hair, highlighting her ears with a top braid, and pulling the sides back into a crown of sorts, but leaving her hair loose down her back. We're definitely ready for our walk, we just need to change.
Once we arrive back at our floor I arrange a time to meet the boys from the pub. Their idea is the gardens on our floor.
"They're almost always deserted, you just need to watch out for the team that lives there, I hear they're pretty scary." Donovan assures us, making us both laugh.
"We will meet you by the entrance in 2 hours then gentlemen" I message and get to picking dresses.
Lala wants a knee length pink maxi dress with a lace high neckline, paired with matching lip gloss. I tried getting her to do makeup, but she insists it's not necessary. Not that I can really argue, as I never wear much or any either.
I go with an Indian style frock that hangs to mid shin. Black with a high neckline, transparent long sleeves, embroidery at the trim and loose pants underneath. Matched with pale gold sandals that go with the embroidery, I decide we look plenty ready to meet new people in the garden. I even put on a bit of mascara and lip gloss, the only two bits of makeup I can count on to actually stay on my face properly.
We go for dinner first, finding the dining hall totally deserted, not unusual this time of day with so few people living on our floor. Bellies full and a quick freshen up, we head to the main garden entrance.
The boys arrive promptly, 3 minutes before the allotted time, and only a few steps behind us. Both are dressed to their magely best, dress shirts and slacks with polished shoes and the University's signature Royal Blue cloaks with the university emblem on the back. They look quite dashing.
"You both look amazing" Pascal greets us, eyes firmly glued to Lala's ears. "I love what you've done with your hair" Looks like my Bunny has another fan. I'm going to have to keep an eye out or someone's going to snatch her from me.
We start into the garden, the mages talking lovingly of all the plants in the garden, stopping every few dozen paces to discuss a flower that's caught Lala's eye. We agreed beforehand that we'd not tell them this is our floor unless they specifically mention it, so we're just enjoying the solitude.
A half hour of distractions later, we've wandered the short distance to the central benches near the Zen garden and the mages pull out a small basket from under their cloaks. Inside is an assortment of sweets, and we sit down to snack, drawing out the amount of time one can reasonably wander around a 30 acre garden.
Pascal turns out to be just as nerdy as Donovan looks. He's a huge anime fan, and flower aficionado, with a love for Earth magic. Donovan, while soft spoken with very little self confidence around women actually turns out to have taken a lot of MMA classes, hoping to stop getting beat up constantly in grade school. I'm not sure how much it helped, he's still pretty scrawny and nerdy, but at least we've got a common subject to talk about.
A few hours pass, and we've seen each part of the garden in intricate detail, as Lala insists on knowing every plant she doesn't recognize and the boys know each of them on a seemingly personal level.
I love nature and all, being a Lycan, but they're on a whole other level. Apparently it's a necessity for Earth mages, knowledge is power, and they need to know to maintain the gardens, though their magic mostly focuses on non living Elements of the earth, like soil composition and rocks. Living plants are mostly the witches and druids domain, but as the base is short on both, plant loving Earth mages do the duty, so the boys have informed us with pride.
Both mages need to work early in the morning, so they bid us farewell, with goodbye hugs I'm almost certain are just an excuse to snuggle into our ears. Both mages seem enamored with the ears, even more than toned figures and fancy dresses.
"Looks like we made us a few new friends today Lala, let's grab some snacks and watch some shows in bed."