The nudge turned into a brutal smack on the forehead. "Wake up, Jo-chan," a gruff, yet female voice said. Celly’s eyes flew open and she jumped up into a fighting stance. Then she blinked and stared at Remy (who for some reason was wearing a red bandana tied across her forehead). Celly blinked again, assessing the other Otaku and rubbed her eyes. She dropped out of the fighting stance.

"Remy?"

Remy’s posture shifted to the more familiar one. "Yes, it’s me, Celly."

Celly flicked her glance over to Mercy, who looked like she was struggling hard not to laugh. "Umm... nice look."

Remy looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. "I found a nice pool with clean water not far from here."

"Water?" Mercy repeated. Then she looked down at herself and the other two girls. All three of them were not at their cleanest, having been dragged to both Woodstocks in a short period of time. The lower halves of their bodies were splattered in mud and generally they looked like what the cat had dragged in. "Water! We can bathe! Yes! We’re three girls, right? I suppose it’s okay if we wash off together."

Remy and Celly voiced their agreement and headed of towards the pool. After a few minutes they arrived at a sparkling pool of water, there was even a small waterfall. It seemed like heaven to the bedraggled girls. Remy got to the water first and looked at her reflection in the pool.

She screamed.

Celly and Mercy ran up. "What’s wrong?" Celly asked.

"What the hell happened to my hair?!" Remy exclaimed in outrage. "And what’s with these clothes?!?" Remy gestured to her raven hair which had been unevenly chopped off somewhere above her shoulders, and her clothes. Her shirt had been ripped as well, ending well above her midriff, and her jeans were slashed through turning them into a pair of very, very short shorts.

"I thought you did that yourself!" Mercy said. "That’s why me and Celly were so surprised when you came back!"

Remy fumed before it hit her. "SANO!!!" The laughter in her head was all the response she needed.

"Maa, maa!" Celly said, trying to calm Remy down. "You can’t do anything about it now. Let’s just take our baths and then we can try to figure out a way to get out of here."

"Oh, yes. Give the idiot more to ogle at," Remy said in a dry tone. Then she slapped her hands over her mouth. "Gomen nasai! That was Aoshi... All three of them are in my head, so they can see everything that I see... so if we all take our baths..."

Mercy started laughing and Celly simply looked amused.

With a jerk, Remy started taking off her shirt with her right hand. "Come on, Re-chan! Be a sport!" she said loudly. Remy fought with herself and used her left hand to keep her shirt down. "Sano! Yamete! Aoshi! Beat him up!" As Remy started to fight with herself, Celly giggled and walked over to the beleaguered girl. Reaching out, she snatched the red bandanna off of Remy’s head. With a quick movement, she looped it around her head and blindfolded the empath.

"There. You can bathe blindfolded. That way the boys don’t get anything interesting to see."

"Aww, jo-chan. You took all the fun out of it!"

TBC...