A run-down rustbucket of a public bus cmbered to a halt at its stop painfully slowly, a family of squirrels being shooed away by the creaking giant, scampering over a wire fence as the old girl finally managed to stop with a huff of the engines.
The door barely even started to open as a single passenger squeezed herself out through the crack, the driver shooting her a confused look as she rushed out to the crossroads ahead, all but sprinting away from the bus behind her with a small armful of packages in tow.
Gwyn Lapin’s pristine boots met the ground in a frantic rush, kicking up dirt and mud as she stained the painstakingly cleaned material, not even thinking about the mess she was making of them as she ran as fast as she possibly could.
Her panicky storming carried her past house after unremarkable house, the neighborhood all blending together as cookie-cutter homes y evenly spaced between one another, the occasional resident turning to gnce quizzically at the speeding girl rushing past them all before shrugging and returning to their own business once more.
“I-It was… no, not there… the f-fifth house on the… left, I think…?”
She scanned over every st nearly identical wn and front door, only the occasional bench or wnmower or discarded pile of toys distinguishing between each and every building she moved past.
Eventually, almost fully winded, she finally arrived at what she was almost certain was the correct house, gasping air in the early morning air as she knocked hurriedly at the heavy wooden door standing silently in front of her.
After almost an entire second passed with no response to her rushed attempt at entry, she knocked again, louder still, her knuckles rapping against the unresponsive entrance faster still.
Before she could manage to knock more loudly still, a voice from inside called out in response to the barrage of knocking echoing inside now.
“Gods, I’m coming, I’m coming, calm down out there…”
There were slow, unrushed footsteps from behind the door, Gwyn impatiently wiggling side to side as she waited the home’s occupant to finally reach the doorway, worried mumbling spilling from her lips like a leaky faucet as she tried and failed to wait to be allowed in.
An excruciatingly long sequence of moments stretched out as far as they possibly could, the quiet footsteps finally reaching the other side of the door as the person on the other side peered through the peephole set into the thick old door.
“Who the hell is over here in such a rush…?”
There was a brief pause as the older woman stared through the tiny looking gss hole, the multiple locks set into the entryway finally starting to click as they were untched, the door creaking open slowly as Lonnie Ga opened her door quizzically.
“Oh, Gwyn, welcome back. What’s the rush for, kid…?”
“U-Um, is… did Alice h-happen to come back here after… um, i-is she here?!”
“She’s here yeah, she’s out back again right now making another fucking mess out of my backyard.”
“Well, um, i-is it alright for me to come in?”
“Hm? Of course kid, you’re welcome any time-- hey, slow down!”
She nodded politely at the invitation to show herself in, already slipping past Lonnie as she floored it towards the back door in a renewed panicky rush.
“Wait, Gwyn, give her a second, you don’t wanna rush out there, she’s not--”
Having already seen the other girl’s body ripped and torn to shreds in front of her several times now, she was prepared to witness whatever broken, warped approximation of a human shape she’d been left in after she’d been rent apart horribly, wanting nothing more than to know she was okay after the ordeal she’d had to endure all on her own.
Gwyn grabbed the tch for the sliding door leading out back, pulling it to the side hard as she rushed out, eyes scanning over the roomy backyard for whatever remained of her battered and twisted companion’s body.
“Alice, I-I’m here, are you okay--”
Her frantic searching for the other woman was short lived, finding her quite easily, sprawled out once more in the same horrifically messy kiddie pool, the liquid pooled around her lithe form significantly more blood than water at this point, her limbs hanging out over the edges as a pair of sungsses sat loosely over her eyes, the girl wholly devoid of anything else covering her sanguine-soaked body as she baked nude under the sunlight like a piece of jerky left out to dry.
“…eh…? Lonnie, s’that you…? Still can’t… see real well…”
Alice’s head limply twisted towards the sound of Gwyn’s voice, dried blood and old motor oil and exposed muscles all cooking under the te afternoon sun, covering what little normal skin she’d managed to stitch back together over herself.
“...ah, it’s Ms. Lapin, actually, presumably come to check up on you.”
“…oooh… hey Gwyn, welcome back…!~”
She managed to raise an arm a few inches, waving the misshapen limb at her friend with what little energy she could muster in her barely-conscious stupor.
Gwyn’s face rapidly cycled through confusion, happiness, mild worry, etion, dawning comprehension, and finally, overwhelming embarrassment, her face turning a brighter shade of red than Alice’s congealed puddle of her own overflowing bodily fluids as she noticed her complete ck of clothing.
The girl who had spent every mote of energy she could muster running out her turned and looked away as rapidly as she could, Lonnie finally catching up, looking her over and sighing at her.
“I tried to tell ya, kid…”
“I, uh, I-I-I just, well… umm… I j-just wanted to be sure she was alright, a-after all of… all of what I saw reported happened…”
“I’ve… never been better…!~”
Alice smiled from ear to ear, her mouth opening a bit too wide as she did her best to heal it back again, her entire body swaying and wiggling with every motion she forced herself to make.
“You have been far better than this in the time I have been acquainted with you. You have expended nearly three-fourths of your entire manifestable body mass, with the amount you managed to salvage barely still maintaining anything even resembling a normal human body!”
“Ahhhhh, it’s fine, it’ll all grow back eventually, ehe!~”
“…it will, but you could still be a bit more cautious about how recklessly you dispose of it all to begin with.”
“You worry too much you old coot, I’m alive, ain’t I? And I look as good as I always did too!~ You tell ‘em, Gwyn!~”
“Oh, u-um, you look… y-you do look quite nice still actually, yes…”
“See? You should get better taste like her!~”
“Ugh, far be it for me to argue with you while you’re barely even cognizant…”
“Well, her mouth is working again at least… she wasn’t doing much other than just gurgling and drooling when I first got her back here. Kid’s harder to kill than a damn roach.”
Finally overcoming the crash of flustered mortification she’d been struck with when she first stepped out, Gwyn sighed in relief at hearing Alice managing to ugh even in her current state.
“…I was just… really worried about you, i-is all… I’m r-really gd you’re doing alright though!”
“Her innermost yers of magical circuitry still remain mostly intact, so given some time she should make a full recovery in… nearly the exact same shape she began in. Though while she’s like this, the brunt of that process lies entirely on my poor shoulders to accomplish for her.”
“Look, better she’s babbling and drunk than screaming like a dying animal like she was a couple hours ago… lucky the kid’s got a piss-poor tolerance for alcohol, or I might’ve run out of stuff for her by now.”
“Oy, my tolerance is perfectly high I’ll have you know! See, I can even count all… all three of my fingers!~”
She proudly held up her right hand, which did, in fact, currently feature three fully formed fingers as well as the stumps of two more still growing back, loose nerve endings and veins wriggling up from them like reaching hands as they slowly stitched themselves back into an approximation of a human hand.
Gwyn, still pointedly looking away from the particurly prideful corpse sitting behind her, managed a giggle at her, her earlier worries melting away in the afternoon sunlight.
“So, you just head over here to check up on her, kid?”
“Oh, w-well, mostly yeah… but! I-I was told to bring her this as well, s-since she didn’t head back to the Library earlier…”
Remembering her minor assignment and the packages she’d been toting this entire time, she peeked back down at them both, finding the one addressed to Alice before and turning to hand it over to her excitedly… and just as quickly turning right back around, the earlier redness returning to her features as she resumed looking away from her body still stripped of any clothes as well as a sizable amount of skin.
“Eh? Wassat…?”
“I-It’s, um… it’s your c-commission for earlier, as well as y-your other introductory materials since you… w-well, never took them with you before.”
She stood there awkwardly, trying to hold the small package out behind her while remaining faced the fully opposite direction, pointedly refusing to move at all for fear of taking yet another accidental gnce.
“…why don’t you wait inside for a bit, Gwyn? I don’t think she’s got the hand-eye coordination for opening stuff right now… or much of a hand or an eye for that matter.”
“I am still working on that, allow me just a tiny measure longer!”
“…o-oh, okay, right, yeah…”
Gwyn nodded rapidly while only half-focusing, Lonnie patting her on the back with a sigh as she ushered her back into the house, Alice kicking her ripped feet pyfully and flicking mildly moist blood up around herself as Sclera was left having to keep patching their charge together yet again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sun had drifted well along its path by the time Alice was finally able to return to her feet, wobbling and nearly falling back into her sickly red nest before she recalled how to bance on her own two feet once more, taking a deep breath as she wandered slowly towards the back door several agonizingly long steps away.
She managed to hose herself off fairly thoroughly, fingernails scraping at the most persistent specks of her blood still staining her skin as she washed up, toweling off as best as she could and shaking herself dry like a dog before finally stepping out of the cold and back into Lonnie’s home.
The sounds of the city were completely drowned out in here as she gingerly pulled the door shut behind her, instead repced with the sounds of a hissing stove, the idle noise of local television stations, and two women chatting happily a few rooms away.
Alice grabbed at her newly cleaned clothes, the threads miraculously mostly undamaged aside from frayed edges and dried-in stains she was almost certainly responsible for leaving, pulling them over and on as she redressed herself, noticing immediately how loosely they hung off of her body.
“…am I gonna keep shrinking like this every time…?”
“Only if you refuse to adequately recuperate and replenish your basic biological needs between attempts to exsanguinate yourself.”
“…?”
“…if you eat enough to satiate your overactive metabolism, your body will fill itself back out again.”
“Ooooohh… thank gods, I didn’t wanna be a runt a week from now.”
“Hm…? Are you not already small enough to be considered one currently? Based on my personal records, your height is already well below the average range for--”
“Y’know, if I grabbed a fork I could probably pry most of your teeth out with it pretty quick.”
“…point taken, even if quite a bit excessive.”
She offered the least sincere smile she could manage as she slowly stumbled her way along, heading towards the exceedingly active kitchen just a little ways in.
Once she finally arrived, she found Gwyn and Lonnie both totally engrossed in their work, the two of them running back and forth as they tended to several different dishes all cooking at once.
“U-Um… was it the stew that I needed to check, or…?”
“Stew’s fine, but the potatoes are gonna burn if they stay in there much longer.”
“...oh, right, s-sorry!”
Gwyn rushed over to the stove, her eyes panning over the exit to the hallway briefly before snapping back a second ter upon registering the emaciated woman leaning against the door frame watching them cook.
“…Alice, you’re up!~”
“Hmm…? Oh, didn’t hear you step in. Mornin’ kid.”
“Yeah, you two really are making enough of a racket to wake the dead, couldn’t just… stay outside all night, heh…”
“Easy now, you probably should be standing up again yet. Even someone as rockheaded as you needs time to rest.”
“Y-Yeah, please don’t push yourself, we’ve got dinner a-all taken care of!”
“Yep, the little miss insisted on getting you fed again, and I told her you both need to get something heartier than takeout on your stomachs.”
“…I-I wouldn’t say I insisted, just that I was w-worried she looked hungry…”
“…kid, you were already rushing out the door without a word two hours ago when she still didn’t even have her legs grown back in--”
“Well, s-she still looked hungry, so…!!”
Lonnie smiled and ughed at the earnestly worried girl in front of her, Gwyn having put her foot down as she tried to muster up excuses for her excessive worry, the two of them back to lighthearted teasing and bickering again already before the sound like a wild roaring beast rumbled up over them both, drowning them both out until it eventually faded out as quickly as it’d begun.
“…urgh, sorry, kinda just… hard to keep it quiet, ehe…”
Their attentions turned back to the door way, Alice having slid down the door frame, clutching at her stomach as she sat on the cold floor below, doing her best not to pass out from how much energy she’d exerted just walking here.
“A-Are you okay?! Come on, l-let’s get you up, easy does it…”
Gwyn was already on top of her, gingerly lifting her upwards before slowly walking her over to the dining room table and helping her sit down, Alice still trying to catch her breath as she was all but carried over to her new resting spot.
“Well, good thing dinner’s already done, huh? If nothing else, you’ve got a damn good sense of timing.”
“Thanks, I… I got it, I’m okay here. And yeah, I’m great at knowing the best pce to be for getting myself torn to shit or scooped up by crazy old--”
“What was that? Couldn’t hear you too well, was just about to throw all this food in the fridge, maybe wait till tomorrow to eat anything.”
“--lovely young women who are bastions of kindness and generosity!”
“Uh huh, I’m sure that’s exactly how you meant to end that sentence.”
“…I don’t understand, would it not be correct to acknowledge her significantly greater age compared to yours? I don’t believe it to be--”
“Hey Lonnie, you got any… any real big forks? I got some shit in my eye that needs taking care of--”
“Fine, fine! Ugh, yes, how dare I make an attempt to understand your incomprehensible human conversation rituals.”
Gwyn giggled at Sclera’s overstepping curiosity, making sure Alice was comfortable and not about to fall out of her chair before rushing back to the kitchen again.
“W-We’ll have the food out in just a second, okay?”
Alice somehow barely managed a thumbs up, eyes mostly gzed over as she cked the energy to mutter out a reply, Gwyn returning to the very active kitchen as she assisted Lonnie with moving several rge pots and ptters of food out and over to the dusty and hastily cleared off dining room table.
The feast id out in front of her was more food than Alice had seen in one pce almost ever, her slightly-agape mouth drooling already as she weakly reached for a juicy looking piece of meat, leaning into the table to keep herself mostly banced.
Gwyn quickly moved over to assist with feeding her, scooping hearty portions of everything out onto a pte for her, the barely cognizant woman’s head rested on the table as she stared hungrily at the meal.
“This is… you didn’t have to make… all of this…”
“Of course I didn’t. But it’s been way too long before I had any reason to cook this much, and all of it’d probably just spoil if I didn’t make it now. And I like you both just enough that I may as well throw this crap at a pair of dumb kids instead of in a dumpster.”
“…heh. Guess I’ll do my best to be a good little trash can for it all.”
“…o-oh, um…! Thank you f-for the meal, Miss-- u-um, thank you, Lonnie…!~”
“And here I thought kids these days were all impolite little pricks.”
Lonnie managed a smile, holding up a fatty slice of ham on her fork, pointing it at her two-and-a-half guests.
“Now are you both gonna eat, or are you just gonna let that all get cold?”
“Right, s-sorry! But, um… d-did you maybe need some help, Alice…?”
Her head still resting on the cool wood of the table, she eyed up her piping hot pte right next to her, slowly pushing herself upwards, her stiff and sore bones creaking just as much as the table below until she was finally sitting upright again.
She stared at the pte of food below, both hands still attempting to keep her sitting up, salivating as she briefly considered the offer of being fed… and eventually her own pride lost to her appetite, nodding weakly, much to the excitement of the other magical girl present.
A fork and knife cttered against her pte, cutting free a sizable morsel of juicy meat, Gwyn holding her hand below it to prevent making a mess, slowly moving it over towards Alice’s waiting mouth.
“Okay, c-careful now, it’s still--”
She wasn’t even able to finish warning her that it would still be incredibly hot, the smaller girl’s tongue poking out past her lips, snaking forward a wholly unnatural distance to meet the meat-den fork, wrapping around it and tugging roughly until it freed the succulent bite of food and ssoed it back into Alice’s waiting maw.
The stunt caught Gwyn off guard, still limply holding the fork up for a few moments longer before registering what had happened and returning to a familiar shade of red in response to it.
“My knowledge of human dining customs is woefully incomplete, but even I am aware that this is a notable misuse of your own abilities, especially in your current state…!”
“…fuck, that tastes good!~”
Life rapidly returned to Alice’s gaunt form from just the single bite of food, barely even chewing the meat as she mostly just let the fvor of it melt into her mouth, savoring it like heaven’s finest ambrosia before finally swallowing it all down with a satisfied exhation.
“Gd to hear it, and maybe you’ll remember some table manners for the rest…”
“…s-so, you still need help eating, right? Lemme g-get you some more, here--”
Gwyn was already hurriedly cutting into the ham again, hands shaking as she rushed herself, significantly less composed than she’d just been as she held a much rger, juicier slice of it aloft this time.
“Don’t you go encouraging her, she’s gonna-- hey, keep that damn thing inside your mouth, you little cretin, I’m trying to eat here!”
The four of them kept bickering and ughing and chatting long into the night, silverware cttering against ptes and pots and the table below as they ate, leaving barely a scrap of anything uneaten by the time they finished.
“…mmm… t-that was all delicious, Lonnie, t-thank you so much for letting me help with preparing it all.”
“You were a damn nice help to have in the kitchen, kid. Anytime you need something to eat, the both of you are welcome over here, okay? It gets too damn quiet here without someone coming to visit every now and then.”
“Ehe… I’ll make sure to stop by when I can, then…!”
Smiling ear to ear at the older woman, she eventually turned to Alice, who seemed to have promptly fallen back asleep as soon as she’d finished eating, food stains all around her mouth from how ravenously she’d shoveled it all in.
“…she looks like she’s feeling better already.”
“She does… I-I’m gd to see her so… peaceful like this, for once.”
“Yeah, she’s had a hell of a st couple days alright. I’ll make sure she gets a good night’s sleep, at least.”
Pushing her seat away from the table, Lonnie stepped over to Alice’s seat, pulling it back as well before picking the tiny girl up in both arms, her chest rising and falling with her slow breathing, both her and Sclera’s mouths agape, the both of them completely passed out.
“Heh… she really does look like my sister when she’s like this…”
“Y-You have a sister, Lonnie?”
“…hmm? Oh, sorry, just talking to myself is all, don’t pay me any mind.”
“Oh, um… i-if you’re sure…”
“So what about you, kid? What’re you gonna do for the rest of the night?”
“Hm? O-Oh, I was just gonna head home, I think. It’s a b-bit te to head in for any kind of evening practice sessions, s-so I’ll just rest today and do that tomorrow instead.”
“Quite the workaholic, aren’t you?”
“Not at all, ehe… j-just realizing I should probably be trying to be better at… well, a-anything at this point. Gotta be a r-real magical girl at some point, yeah?”
“I won’t tell ya off for just trying to work on yourself like that… but don’t be too hard on yourself, okay kid?”
“Ehe, I-I’ll try not to be.”
Lonnie gingerly lowered Alice onto the couch a room over, making sure she wasn’t about to toss herself face first onto the floor before turning back to Gwyn.
“…y’know, if you wanna stay the night too, you’re free to. Meatloaf over there ain’t exactly the best roommate or anything, but she’s pretty quiet when she’s knocked out like that at least.”
Gwyn peeked over at Alice’s sleeping form, one of her legs hanging off the couch as she slept peacefully, an unoccupied, comfortable-looking recliner across from her.
“Actually, I’d… n-no, sorry, I shouldn’t make myself any more of a bother than I a-already have been. Thank you so much for the meal, Lonnie, I-I hope you have a nice quiet rest of your night…!~”
“You haven’t been any kind of bother, kid, I-- hey…!”
She had already shown herself out, her share of dishes neatly stacked up as stood in the front doorway, waving politely at her gracious host before rushing off into the night, her thoughts already restless, unable to think about much of anything aside from her own stalled out progress, the would-be magical girl surrendering her thoughts to the evening gloom as she raced home.
