Xaviers!

Doom turned to walk back to his cabin, pausing for a moment next to Jez.

"The cord on your left, Sherlock. A solid tug.


The Bodyguard is right. Symkaria will never accept a princess whose heart has been stolen by one such as yourself.

Doom cares not how many concubines the princess desires. Food for your thought."

And before Jez could reply to that, he had gone.

Jez tried not to think too much about what Doom had said. After all, he was a master manipulator. But she had to admit that some of it rang true. She fussed over her buckles and snaps, making sure that everything was tight and secure and rechecking as she approached Nika.

"Where we droppin' boys?"

Nika tries really hard not to roll her eyes, but she can't help that she knows what Jez is talking about and she hates it.

Fortunately, she has an extremely easy out and she throws open the door and leaps into the resulting depressurization gust, out of the plane.

Jez hadn't been holding onto anything, and had her head down as she was stowing her glasses, which meant that the sudden depressurizing caught her off guard. So while Nika got to enjoy a fairly controlled descent, the first-timer was sent tumbling head over heels into a freefall.

For all her dislike of Jez, she does not actually want the girl to die plummeting from the sky. Spreading her arms and legs wide she slightly breaks her fall to bring herself closer towards her, reaching out a hand to try and stop the girl's flailing. She shouts her name, but it gets swallowed up by the wind rushing past them.

Jez somehow looked stark white and green at the same time, a mixture of terror and nausea. Nika was able to get ahold of her and steady her though.

Well, one of her. Another one continued to erratically plummet toward the Earth. Probably spawned as part of a panicked fight or flight response.

Hopefully Nika grabbed the right one.

Did the other one duplicate the parachute as well? Well, that one is on her own one way or another. Once she has Jez stabilized and her attention she wraps her legs around the girls waist so she has her hands free to find Jez' ripcord and place it in her hand, pressing both against her chest so she doesn't immediately yank it. She taps her wrist where a watch would be with one fingers that she holds up. "One. Minute." she shouts. "Count. Then pull!"

Jez probably would have grabbed and clung to Nika instinctively had the stronger woman not taken ahold of her wrists, potentially dooming them both. But the sudden embrace and instructions helped to bring her out of her panic and back into reality. She gripped the ripcord with white knuckles and nodded her head, closing her eyes as her lips began to mouth "One mississippi, two Mississippi...."

Nika nods at Jez and holds on to her for a couple seconds, then lets herself drift a couple of meters away, watching her and waiting for her to pull her parachute before she deploys her own. Just in case.

Jez continued her counting, alternating between closing her eyes so that she could concentrate, and opening them to make sure she wasn't about to hit the ground. At sixty Mississippi she yanked the ripcord and was yanked into the air from Nika's perspective once the sheet fully deployed.

Nika continues to fall for a couple more seconds, then deploys her own parachute. Hopefully Jez will figure out how to steer to follow her, but there was no explaining that in much detail in the middle of a freefall.

Both parachutes opened without a hitch -- a credit to find Latverian engineering!

Their timing was fairly good, too -- they were headed for a nice open farm, so there was plenty of room to land without making too much of a mess of themselves. And it wasn't that long of a hike from the small village up the road, nor the castle on the hill overlooking everything -- Prince Alex's home, and presumably Katarina's for the moment, as well.

Whether the two were spotted floating out of the sky is a different matter...

There was definitely a lot of over-correcting in Jez's descent, and not having been taught how to land meant that she was sent tumbling through the grass. At least now she'd look more the part, right?

There was no sign of the other one.

Nika's already stomping her way over to Jez while dragging and bundling up her parachute in her arms.

"You okay?" she asks in a tone that sounds less like concern and more like she's checking if she's clear to go on with their mission.

Jezabelle nodded her head, but from how much trouble her shakey hands had in opening the clasps of the parachute straps it was pretty easy to see that she had fared better physically than mentally.

"I'll... be fine. Let's keep moving."

Nika gives her a dubious glance, one eyebrow raised but doesn't say anything.

"Alright, let's go then. It's a bit of a hike, if we come across anybody we're just out on a hike, gathering mushrooms. Once we get close enough we'll figure out a good infiltration point into the castle."

It's not too long of a hike to get to the small town of Sablov -- and it was no coincidence that the name of the town was the same as Prince Alex's family line. His family had been in some degree of power here for centuries, after all.

Having never been to Symkaria, and with her only experience being with Katarina's royal shenanigans, Jezabelle may not have known exactly what to expect from a Symkarian town. The colorful buildings and cobblestone roads made it look almost something out of a postcard, though the occasional small car, internet cafe, and cheap kabob shops were a reminder that this was the real world and not a storybook.

There was a fair bit of activity in the town to get lost in. People were setting up a large pole in the center of the town square, and the various garlands and decorations on the surrounding buildings seemed to indicate some kind of festivities were being planned.

And looming over it all, perhaps being given an extra sense of weightiness from what Nika and Jez knew was happening inside, was Castle Sablinova. The path to the castle was easy enough to get to, though access to the castle itself would require a little more head scratchin'.

It seemed as good of a plan as any, and now that they were in Nika's homeland it was only right that she should take the lead. Despite the apparent couch-potato normal appearance of the girl Jez was able to weather the hike with relative ease, even if her skirt did get caught on a branch once or twice - she simply wasn't used to that much fabric down there. The Symkarian town was a bit of a surprise to her though, while England had given her numerous old buildings to look at few of them were this colourful. The presence of modern conveniences were also a bit of a shock, though it shouldn't have been - the internet truly was world-wide, so of course it was here as well.

"I don't suppose you know about some secret tunnel or something, do you?" She quietly asked Nika.

"Not to this castle. We could scale the walls but we'd have to wait for nightfall." she says as they're making their way through town. "If they're keeping with Spring's End traditions..." she adds, glancing at the colorful pole being set up, "...then the літній регент will be granted the honor of being invited to the local ruler's castle."

It was a workable plan, but Jez didn't like the waiting part. "Something tells me that security is a little more tight than just putting on a paid of coveralls and saying you're here to deliver the ice for the carved statue." She tilted her head a bit at Nika's comment. "I'm sorry, who'll be invited?"

"The Summer..." she grasps for the right English word for a moment. "Ruler? Regent? Honorary summer... leader for the town."

"Oh, a festival queen?" Jez asked. "We have those in the states, they're usually themed around the festival itself, like if it's celebrating the town's history of growing crops or something.

"... are you thinking about entering the running?"

"What? No! No one's going to buy me in a flower crown. Don't be ridiculous."

"Their loss then. A bit of bicep in a sleeveless dress..." She trailed off.

"Well if one of us could win it we'd have an easy in. Although I still think scaling the wall might be simpler."

"What kind of a contest is it?" Jez asked curiously.

"Dancing around the pole."

Jez narrowed her eyes.

"It's... gotta be more complex than that, right? Like it's a special dance?"

"I mean... there's traditional moves and patterns. But really, you just try to outdance everyone else."

"Well, can you teach me? I'm not usually used to dancing by myself... well like just one of myself, but what's the harm in trying?"

Nika side-eyes Jez for a moment.

"You're not really dancing by yourself, you just follow along with everyone else. Besides, I don't really know the moves either and it differs by region anyway."

"Then... how do they know which one is the best?"

"Last one remaining wins."

Jez started to grin a bit. Uh oh.

"You looks like you have a plan. Good, let's do this."

Jez bounces in place a bit. "I used to play DDR for hours back in middle school. If I'm not able to outlast 'em, at least I'll burn enough calories that I'll be lighter for you to carry over the wall."

And she might have a plan B too.

It wasn't too difficult to weasel their way into the competition, even with Jez's lack of Symkarian language and the fact that no one had seen either of them before.

The other young girls who were setting up to participate all looked varying shades of nervous -- this was apparently not a small deal to them. And they were stretching and drinking bottles of water, to better prepare themselves for the task ahead.

Nika made sure to fabricate a story about how their families used to live here ages ago and they're visiting to reconnect with their roots etc etc to smooth over some of the stares they're getting. Perhaps to Jez' surprise she does sign herself up as well.

Jez let Nika take the reigns when it came to signing up for the competition, really putting on the facade of a painfully shy wallflower, and just nodding when Nika prompted her to. Now that they were in the thick of things she kept her English in check, if she needed to ask Nika something it was through whispers. The competition was a longshot, but so long as she didn't majorly screw up there was little risk of her being found out and losing the element of surprise.

As some of the other girls began taking their positions, Jez would notice that quite a few of them were closer to Nika's size than Jez's. What, was the Symkiarian Water Polo team participating in this year's celebration.

Quite a few of them were eying each other up, as well, taking the measure of their competitors.