Explosive mixtures

Valerie nodded.

"I really want to see the town from above! I promise I won't be frightened!" She told Elie. Her eyes were so shiny from the excitement, the Elie agreed.

"In this case we thankfully accept your offer, Sir."

"Thank you very much!" The girl smiled to the old man.

Matsuda Mitsuhiro smiled back. He had never been able to put a smile on a child's face with such a trifle. A smile usually cost a lot more money.

"I am Bond!" The girl introduced herself and bowed.

"But not James, are you?" The old man asked, because he was surprised by the sudden polite gesture.

"No! I am Valerie. Valerie Bond. She is my friend, Elie." Valerie pointed to her companion.

"I am Uncle Mitsuhiro, and this is my friend, Giorgio!"

The girl and the young woman shook hands with Giorgio, which they didn't do with the old man.

"Ladies, after you!" He bowed and let the girls enter to the elevator first.

"It looks like the elevator in the Mall, but I suppose we fly higher!"Valerie said, excited. She showed herself brave, but she held Elie's hand, and didn't plan to let it free.

The elevator slowly started to move upward, and Valerie was amazed. She liked how the buildings shrunk, the cars on the roads looked like busy ants, the people were not seen at all. The other skyscrapers were the only things beside them, and the sky was suddenly bloomed. It was really like flying. Valerie enjoyed the experience speechless, and drank it into every cell of her body. She really liked flying, and she felt, that she could be weightless, in any minute, and took wing, like a bird, to fly around the town and the hills, and vanishing into the horizon... So she became a bit disappointed, when they arrived with a sound of "cling". She didn't want to land yet.

"We have arrived." Elie patted her shoulder to bring her back to the reality, and guide her from the elevator.

"Thank you very much for the ride, Uncle Mitsuhiro!" Elie thanked the travel to the old man.

"Not at all. "He smiled. "I hope Valerie enjoyed it!"

"Really! I enjoyed it very much!" Valerie cried, and bowed to the man. The old man bowed to her.

"Where did you learned it?" He asked. " Bowing."

"My best friend is Japanese too. She said, that Japanese people don't shake hands, but bow."

"She was right! What is your friend's name?"

"Miya. Toyama Miya. She is very good at jumping rope. She is the best at the coal mine, where we live now. Miya taught me how to jump."

"Oh, that's great! My granddaughter's name is Miya too."

"Is she also good at jumping rope?"

"I don't think so." Mitsuhiro shook his head. He never ever saw his granddaughter playing with such a common toy.

"If she wants to to play, tell her that we look forward to seeing her!" The girl took her offer so open, so carelessly, that the old man almost laughed hard.

"She is a bit older than you. My Miya is around your sister's age."

Valerie looked at Elie, surprised.

"Elie is not my sister, she is my friend!" She informed the old man.

"I am her assigned guardian." Elie smiled to the old man, who was saddened for hearing the title.

"And why did you come here?" He asked, after he cleared his throat.

"We are going to buy salt mixture for our rockets!" Valerie said cheerfully. Her happiness is brightened the worlds around the old man.

"How many rockets will you make?"

"Five!" She showed the numbers on her fingers. "One from each available color!"

"Then hurry up! Go and buy them, or else they sold out all of them!"

Valerie was startled, and turned to Elie, to ask where exactly they have to go. The girls quickly said good-bye from the two men, and hurried to the reception of the firework company.

"Sir?" Giorgio asked his boss, who was watching after the girl and the young woman.

"You should look for a certain temple in the Lithium Kingdom!" Uncle Matsuda told to his secretary.

"Aye, Sir!" He said, and wrote down what his boss was telling him.

Meanwhile Valerie and Elie had reached the office, they were heading. Elie knocked, and when she opened the door, there was the most exclusive, most elegant reception, they had ever seen. There were nothing extraordinary, like palm trees, on living parrots, there weren't even monkeys. Just the materials of the curtains, the style of the furniture, the placement of them showed elegance. Valerie couldn't even say a word, when the receptionist asked her, if she could help her.

"I want to buy salt mixtures." She stuttered.

"What kind of mixture do you want to buy?"

"Five basic color." Elie replied, instead of the reserved girl.

"Fill the form, please." The receptionist asked them, and handed over a tablet to them.

Elie only started to fill the form, when Valerie pointed to the color palette.

"They have a lot of colors!" She said, amazed.

"We only make five rockets, so let's buy those colors, we have already agreed. It was Conrad's choice after all!"

"Okkkay." Valerie replied bored. The color palette was really interesting.

"Moreover, we only buy enough stock for five rockets! There's no meaning to buy more salt mixture, than we need!" Elie tousled the girl's hair a bit.

"Okay, okay, I understood." She said.

"Next year we will come again, at least two weeks before the festival, and make minimum twenty rockets! Do you want it?"

"Yes!" She nodded happily.

"So it is the average color set." The receptionist mentioned, and made their bill.

Valerie was a little bit impatient, since it was the third reception on the same day, where she had to wait patiently. But the receptionist was reluctant to see them in such an exclusive location, so she quickly finished the bill. There was also an advantage to someone who does not belong to the top ten thousand. Valerie touched her device to the tablet and paid for the salt mixtures.

At that very moment the door was banged wide open, and two other customers stormed in.

"I still need 52 of the blue and 27 of the snow white! " A familiar voice cried the order. " Tell it to Mitsuo!"

"Aye, Miss Date, a moment, please!" The receptionist bowed to the new customer, hurried and vanished behind a door.

The two new customers then noticed the two older ones. There was no cinema tipping over, they didn't smile at each other, but they didn't even talk to each other. Elie and the older Date just stared at them, when Valerie wanted to take a preventive attack, so Elie had to pull her to the other side, from where Valerie couldn't see the annoying kinship. Elie hugged the girls to herself. They were waiting silently, since they couldn't do anything else.

The door opened and a young couple same out, and cheerfully welcomed the Dates.

"I didn't even know that you were serving riffraff lately!" Evie declared in a honey-glazed voice.

"I wouldn't have thought you were giving up below the standard." The older Eve Date remarked coolly too.

"Oh, don't be angry, sometimes we have to serve those who the central festival office sends here as well." The young lady said, and haughtily scanned the other two customers. She wasn't openly condescending, only from watching her eyes told everybody, that she didn't consider them appropriate to the company.

"Who are they?" The young man asked the assistant. The woman gave her their order. "We cannot fulfill their order. We are deeply sorry. Your money will be returned at this moment. We hope you have more luck elsewhere." He smiled to the commoners.

But that smile was so irritating, that even Elie wanted to break his nose. However, she didn't have a chance to do that because Valerie decided to get the job done. Elie had to hold her back, so her hands were literally and physically full.

"Why did you come here, such monkeys are not served here, but thrown out!" Evie laughed at the struggling girls.

So Valerie changed her mind and turned to her classmate, now she decided to beat her first. Unfortunately Elie was strong enough to hold her tight.

"Let me go! I'll tear out the rest of her hair too!" Valerie cried, and almost escaped from the woman's embrace.

As the raging Valerie almost broke free, the other girl run behind the adults in that blink of an eye for protection. Elie almost burst out in laughter, the situation was so ridiculous, but she also had to deal with the angry Valerie.

"Hey, Valerie! Stop it!"

"But this is an injustice! I paid for the salt mixtures!" She cried out loud.

"Calm down. Don't sink to their level!" She said, and let go of the girl.

"And if we don't get a salt mixture anywhere else?" Valerie asked calmly, with tears in her eyes.

"Then you will not be attending the festival! It's not for the likes of you anyway." Evie laughed, and the other adults smiled with them. They thought the same thing in themselves, but it was not appropriate to say it.

Elie quickly hugged Valerie and whispered into her ear.

"Then we will only have a red rockets. I still have some lithium, it also fits into the rockets."

Valerie nodded.

"Well, then we ask you to double our money back!" Elie smiled to the assistant.

"But you didn't buy that much! We just return your money, you have paid." The man smiled.

"The rest is compensation for mental pain." She smiley sweetly, and she fluttered her eyelashes like a little silly girl.

"Well, I hope you also understand that we can't give you more, even though we want to. But we can't." The man said with namby-pamby smile.

"I would rather change my mind, if I were you, sir!" Elie switched to an icy, official voice. "Because we're going to tell everyone what happened here!"

The others burst out in laugh to hear of that childish threat. But that smile froze to their faces, when an old man came to the reception hall.

"What the hell is going on here?"