"Chris! Chris! Hunter! How nice it is to see you guys!"
Mari said,
grinning suspiciously.
The three looked at each other in confusion. "Uhm….yeah, nice
to see you too."
Chris F. said.
Jericho was a bit braver. "You seem happy. Does that mean you aren't mad at us?"
Mari's smile got bigger. "Of course I'm not mad. I'm ABSOLUTELY
FURIOUS!!!!"
She bent down to retrieve something from her bag and that's when the
others figured out what she had bought.
"Oh no it's a MOP!!!" Hunter screamed in terror.
"Hunter, I'm a-scared. Hold me!" Jericho whined, wrapping his arms around Hunter's waist.
Chris F. glared at the two muses in jealousy, then turned back to Mari, who was holding the mop high above her head and preparing to strike. "C'mon, you don't want to do this…think of all the fun we had with them…"
"Well I'm gonna have more fun bashing their heads in!"
Chris tried a different tactic. "Mall security will arrest us."
"I don't care!"
Finally, Chris F. had to whip out her special tactic. Her face
crumpled and she began to whimper. "I need the muses! Without
muses, I can't write and then I'd be really sad because I like to write
and I wouldn't be able to post to the list and I'd just be a total lurker
and….." she sat down on the bench and sobbed.
Mari sighed and set the mop down. "Ok, I won't hurt them…this time."
Chris jumped up, showing no sign she had ever been upset in the first place. "Ok! Let's go shopping!!!"
Ignoring the protests from Jericho and Hunter that they had already shopped enough, Chris and Mari hit almost every store in the mall, at times even making their very embarrassed muses try on clothing. The most fun came in Toys-R-Us, where all four grabbed wrestling action figures and began to fight each other with them, until they were kicked out.
They ended up at McDonalds where all ordered Happy Meals. The small plastic toys amused them for about ten minutes, until Jericho's broke. "Hey! What a filthy, disgusting, brutal, bottom-feeding, trash bag toy this is!" he whined.
"Oh, stop it, here, you can have my toy." Mari said to him.
"No!!!! I want my toy!!!!" Jericho threw the pieces of his broken toy to the floor. and started to pout.
Hunter took one look at Chris's adorably pouting face and decided it would be a good idea to get him alone because what he wanted to do to him was not a good idea in polite company. "I'm...uhm...I'm gonna go get him to shut up." He dragged Jericho by the arm over towards the bathrooms.
"I'm coming with you!!!" Chris F. and Mari said in unison. Mari stopped Chris. "No, you got them in the mall. It's my turn."
Chris waited patiently for the three of them to finish, but they were
in the bathroom forever. She finished her milkshake and just sat
there until she saw two people approaching. "You must be Kasy."
she said. "Mari will be with us in a moment...she's a bit occupied
right now...."