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If pressed, Dia would say she was a person who over prepared and always planned in enough time for any issue. Take the current days worth of occurrences for instance.
She had accounted for a number of things, which included but were not limited to a long list of extra time-slots. Such as giving Chika an extra twenty to browse local idol-like bands, providing Riko ten minutes to sneak off when she thought nobody would notice so she could go and buy some weirdly specific sapphic wall smut, correctly predicting that You would try to haggle with some flight attendants over an extra uniform and even more correctly predicting that Mari would aid by providing a budget the size of which Dia assumed the flight attendants could all retire on if they took it- the latter of which they wisely did.
As well planned as she was, Dia had also allotted ample time to both lose and find Yohane on the way between gates and terminals- which happened thrice and in which yelling “Yoshiko” was enough to locate her by her very loud, very indignant response of “Yohane!”. Kanan she didn’t have to worry about- as long as Mari was around, the girl had to occupy herself by reining in her girlfriend. Kanan was only the reasonable one when both of them were around, and almost had to be as the bar was very low, but that would do for the trip they were on. And the only planning Ruby had required was extra time to visit a candy store.
Now.
Dia had thought this would also apply to Hanamaru, who could really only be ripped away from her books by food. But what she had not accounted for, in her infinite planning, was for Hanamaru to be so engrossed in her current novel that she completely missed both Dias announcement that they had to get off of the train and, miraculously, Rubys tug on her arm to indicate the same thing.
And now they had lost Hanamaru.
In the middle of London.
Multiple stops out from the airport they needed to get to.
Right in a country where none of them spoke the language to any useful degree.
This was just lovely.
Dia sighed, trying to keep her rising heart rate steady. This wasn’t as bad as Tokyo and she wasn’t a child. She could do this. Maybe even, if some of her friends found their braincells, they could do this.
“We should maybe make an announcement? If we can?” Riko's head seemed to be set on straight today, ironically enough.
“As if they’ll let us do so for the entirety of the London train system.” Yohane shot back, ever the pessimist.
“All of London? Wouldn’t the next stop be enough?” Kanan joined the conversation, interrupting whatever small chat she and Mari had been having.
“It’s Hanamaru- We’ll be lucky if she even notices we’re gone before the train stops running for the day..” Ruby trailed off.
“Yeah, once Zuramarus got her head in a book, it stays there until it’s done. And that thing was so big it could be used as a murder weapon so she’ll be there for a while.”
Dia sighed at the thought.
“Oh!” Chika and Yous singular braincells seemed to have connected at the same moment as their attention turned to Mari. “Bribe the attendant!”
“Oh you betcha! Good olde money solves the problem!” The blonde gave an enthusiastic grin at that.
What an enabler.
How she still had a credit card at this point was beyond Dia's comprehension, though having met Maris mother, it did explain at least some of her friend’s eccentricities.
But all things considered, an announcement wouldn’t be the worst idea. It would hopefully grab even Hanamaru's attention. If she had noticed she was lost by now.
“Right, so say they are open to be bribed- which one of us is proficient enough in english to have that conversation?”
The group pondered for a moment, rubbing their collective braincell together for a spark.
“Kanan?” Ruby offered.
“I can try but- I think Mari is better than me.”
Oh no.
“Absolutely not.” Dia jumped in, nipping that horrible idea in the bud before it could grow any further.
“Rude.” Mari scoffed with a grin.
“No offense Mari but we need a bit higher proficiency than a high pitched “shiny” and some memeified english.” Dia hoped starting that sentence with “no offense” would be deceiving enough because quite frankly, Mari did not seem to possess a solid understanding of the english language beyond the few words she periodically spouted in a high pitched voice where the pronunciation and especially the humor of it all seemed far more important than getting the context right.
“This is an emergency after all. We lost the one girl in the group who cannot use a gps or any app to save her life. She’s completely reliant on us finding her.” Dia added on for good measure, deepening the blondes scowl.
“I mean we really just need to contact Hanamaru in some way. We have time and money to do so.” Riko spoke up as a rare voice of reason to Dias rising panic at being lost in yet another large city transportation network. “I wouldn’t call it an emergency just yet. Maybe a pinch.”
“Or a pickle!” Chika decided to add in her observation before the headphones went right back on her ears.
“Oh! A predicament!” Ruby, God bless her soul, joined with enthusiasm at the new game that was forming.
As the girls started hurling synonyms at each other- none of which Dia thought fully grasped the severity of their situation- Mari walked up to her and gave her shoulder a small pat, shit eating grin on her face.
“Watch and learn, Dia-babes.” Dia gave a groan at the new honorific- if it could be called that at all, and she doubted it could.
Mari didn’t seem to care as she strode up to the information desk, hailing a clerk in.
Dia braced her ears for a squealed “shiny”- something she knew Mari would not be above doing to some poor minimum wage worker- before tipping them a random 100 in their respective currency after.
That was not what met her ears however.
It was something altogether more horrifying.
Mari. Mari Ohara. Mari-jump-fully-clothed-into-the-ocean-to-save-some-music-and-be-dramatic-Ohara, turned into a reasonable, capable adult, right in front of Dias very own, horrified eyes.
“Hiya babes, so sorry to bother ya, but can I perchance interest you in a bribe?” Maybe not quite reasonable adult- but capable was still on the table as the attendant not only took her money, but let her into the booth to the microphone.
But that wasn’t even first on Dias priority list right now.
No it was so, so, so far from it.
“That little shit.” Yohane clamped her hands over Ruby’s ears as Dia swore for maybe the third time in her life in front of other people in real life.
“She- the fucker- she!” Dia was struggling for words as she kept hearing the conversation between the attendant and Mari.
Mari who never spoke more than small english words.
Who never scored well on english exams.
Mari who would randomly bring vocabulary that made no sense for a situation.
That Mari!
Was speaking english.
Fluent english.
Fucking fluent, valley girl accented english!
“She is fluent… she is fucking fluent..”
“Where did ya think I learned?” Kanan gave a snort of laughter as she asked. Before this moment, Dia would have named pretty much any person under the sun before she would have thought of Mari.
Literally anyone.
Mari's voice through the loudspeakers broke Dia's dazed mutterings which made her, quite frankly, look a bit touched in the head.
“Lovely to speak to everyone on this shiny afternoon-“ Mari continued in her ridiculous, flawless english. “I don’t usually have an audience this large- quite an honor!” Dia hoped her seething glares of “focus” reached Mari in the booth.
“So sorry to disturb ya- it’s just we seem to have lost our child on one of the trains.” Mari switched the last word back to her presumably mother tongue of Japanese- though Dia wasn’t so sure about that fact anymore.
“Heya Hanamaru! If you don’t want to be left in England you best get back to us kiddo!” Way to not make the girl panic.
Mari held up her phone and a second later, Dia found a live location dropped into their group chat. Mari was surprisingly using her brain.
Good for her.
“Just hand your phone- that’s the glowing rectangle with the buttons- to an attendant and have them help ya, alrighty?”
Ruby gave a small snort of laughter. “I think she knows what her phone is. Just not how to use it.” The girl gave another laugh, which Yohane joined.
“Seeya in a bit! Toodles✨” Mari gave the attendant a quick bow, more money, and rejoined the group of girls, shit eating grin never having left her face.
“And now we-“
Her voice pitched up as that stupid grin got wider, her smugness increasing to unfathomable levels.
“Waiting!”
Mari finished her sentence in english again.
Incorrectly.