Her day and night rhythm was a bit off. After travelling for a lot of days, going on for day and night, automatic pilot system. It happened that she was up early in the morning, she had done a job in the beginning of the afternoon and headed back to the Crossroad inn where she stayed. She pulled one of the two teddy bears that she bought for Ophelia out of her bag and gave it to the small pet. She herself dropped on the bed and decided that it might be something to take a nap. Restore her energy and everything that was necessary for her to continue on.

The Cleffa called Ophelia had no option but to climb over her owner Alice if she wanted to leave, she was sort of sandwiched between the wall and the body of Alice. Which was actually Alice her plan. She hoped she would wake up in case Ophelia decided that she wanted to leave the bed. Quickly the red head braided her long orange hair to make sure that the mess would be able to be handled in case she woke up. She didn’t like the idea of her hair being too tangled. She yawned and before she knew it she already fell asleep. Not caring about the jeans that she was wearing or the black crop-top. Her dreams came soon as well and they were peaceful enough. About her journey from Oak to Marigold. About the Cleffa Ophelia and the party that she had attended minutes before. She did see Yami this time, using his wind magic but he wasn’t really nice to the guest. Nothing bad happened to him though, it was but a dream. She did see other mages that she didn’t know. Even the guy from the spa was there but he wasn’t a mage, or that’s what he said. Her eyes darted from left to right when she looked out of the window. Instead of being on the first floor of the Castle of the Lord of Marigold, she was in a tower. She couldn’t remember arriving there but it had just happened and it made her scared. Not because she was afraid of the reason how she got here, no. Alice was afraid of heights. She had always been or well for as far as she could remember and that had been two years now. She thought it had been something that she always had. She didn’t recognize the stones, the colour of the castle was different as well but she didn’t know where she had seen it before. She was shaking and held on to the glass less window frame and stared with big brown eyes down at the ground. She remembered that she had seen it before, in one adventure that she would never want to join again. The White Claudia that doctor Stephan Mabuz had used on her and Yu. She had not seen the tower but the sight was the same and she wondered for a split second if this was a memory. Why a tower and why was she trembling so heavy.

Out of nowhere she felt a hand between her shoulder blades. A hand that pushed her out of the window like structure. She screamed as she fell out of the tower and.. and nothing. She sat up straight in the bed and her big hazel brown eyes stared from left to right through the room. Ophelia was huddled in the pillows, little tears in her small eyes. She must have been scared from Alice her scream. Because the red head could feel that she had screamed in the real life situation, her throat was dry. She shook the horrid feeling off her, she was on the first floor of the Crossroad Inn, in Marigold. Nothing about towers would scare her for now. There weren’t any. She yawned and stretched up her arms. She scratched Ophelia behind her ear and got out of the bed. She dusted off the invisible dust from her crop top. It would have been more comfortable if she had taken it off but that was too late anyway. She walked into the bathroom that was a part of her room and drank a little bit of water as well as wash her face. She yawned one more time and checked out of the window what time it would be. It must be near the end of the evening and that meant that she would have to hurry to find something decent to eat. She picked up her little light blue bag and Ophelia and headed out. The girl behind the desk, close to her room, asked if she was fine because she heard the scream. Alice muttered that she simply had a nightmare but thanked her for her concern. She asked for a bar or restaurant where she could still eat and she got a map and walked there. As soon as she had a table, she went to search through the menu with the Cleffa on her lap. Ophelia would just have to eat tiny bits of what she was eating. Although most of the time Alice made sure it was something that the little pet should be able to consume. She picked a few sushi things, some misou soup and fried rice. She had read upon the information about the Cleffa so she was sure she could take care of her companion. The sushi sure was tasty and extra tasty because she was that hungry. When she finished her food, she paid for it and stood up. Before she was ready to leave, a guard or something that looked like one entered the restaurant and stared at her with piercing blue eyes. ”You were at the Banquet this afternoon, right?” She nodded, ”Yes, the name is Alice. Something wrong?” The guard nodded and asked her to step outside so he could explain the situation to her without worrying others. She followed him to the alley next to the restaurant. He told her that his boss Lord de Syllas was looking for mages that would be willing to help the city and that he, the guard, remembered Alice from this afternoon. She was a bit flattered but didn’t say that out loud. She held up Ophelia a bit taller because the little thing was wiggling to get out of her arms. But she wouldn’t let her go. The Guard told her the situation about the bandits and what they did. She agreed that someone had to stop them and she joined the guards in where they were waiting. The bandits were always attacking around midnight. Since someone had to stay in the look-out for the castle, Alice could leave Ophelia there. She was only a bit worried about that idea because what if the bandits decided to go for the castle this time. Although Ophelia was asleep, it would be alright to carry her around in the little blue backpack so Alice changed her mind. She took Ophelia with her.

She sneaked through the streets, making use of the dark. Making sure no one would see her and that her boots wouldn’t make unnecessary noises. She was mostly dressed in dark blue and black so that was alright. She had made a tight knot of her red hair. That might be easily spot in the dark but she did her best to hid herself completely. She heard footsteps, not hers and also not the guards, she was sure of that. So she followed the noise, hoping Ophelia wouldn’t be startled and cry out. But up to now it went alright. She did see one of the bandits making an effort to break the window of a shop not too far from her away. There were more and she was sure that she couldn’t handle all of them at once, she muttered an apology under her breath because of what she was going to do. Ophelia wouldn’t like it. Since she was still covered by the dark, she hoped it would work, ”Hey, don’t even think about it!” she yelled, that gave the signal to the guards that were roaming around as well, Ophelia did wake up and some bandits immediately ran away into the darkness as well, leaving only one guy behind. Of course, the biggest, the toughest looking and so on. She growled at herself, the guy looked intimidating but she had fought alongside Yu and she knew the erupting of dark magic and that made her more scared than this. She muttered a small prayer for the sake of Ophelia, whom she felt wriggling before she dashed off to the bandit that was there. She summoned her straight spear and held on to it with her left and right hand, her left in front and her right at the back. She first tried to pierce him but quickly moved the back of the spear forward to hit the guy on his temple. At least that one she managed but she got one in the gut herself. Which definitely wasn’t a great feeling. But she wouldn’t stop because of that. She let go of her right hand and slung the back end of the spear between the legs of the bandit. She gave him a smile as he hunched down to hold on to the pain. Which was the moment she entirely let go of her spear and let it disappear into the dimensional pocket. She clenched her right hand into a fist and slammed it underneath his chin, knocking him out with that one move. Because he wasn’t anticipating on that he fell backwards. She calculated quickly that the guards weren’t there yet and thus she quickly kicked the bandit on the place where his liver should be. The guy was absolutely not happy about her, she had seen the look in his eyes but he would probably now never look at red haired girls that way anymore. Which made her satisfied of the job.

Finally two guards showed up, ”What took you guys so long?” she asked crossing her arms in front of her, ”We had to arrest the others.” She rolled her eyes, she had been left all alone, did they have to arrest the other people with five? They lifted up the guy she knocked to the ground and started to drag him off. In the mean time Alice switched her bag to her stomach so she could look at Ophelia, ”I’m sorry,” she said, scratching the pet softly behind her sort of ear and petting her to make sure the baby pet would calm down. She lifted her up out of the bag and pulled her close as she followed the guards to their post. Once she reached the post, they pulled him further away, something about interrogation and she simply waved them off with that sarcastic look on her face. No longer her problem. She hoped that this would bring her back to her normal day and night rhythm for she was exhausted for fighting that guy. Finally the guy that had invited her to this job came over to her and handed her the jewels the job gave. She counted them on the table before putting them in the pocket of her black leather jacket, ”Pleasure doing business.” With that she walked back to the Crossroad Inn and put Ophelia to bed first before she went to take off her crop top. She looked at the bruise that came on the low part of her ribcage and when she softly touched it, she could only curse.
But for now she would first sleep. So she changed into some oversized shirt that would be way more comfortable than a bra, croptop and jeans and made her way into the bed. Her spear had worked fine, but the hit with her fist was the better, although she definitely needed to train a bit to fix that more, it would be a shame to hurt herself by hurting others.

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