Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The incessant cry of an arm clock rang out unending from outside her sleeping mind, the familiar noise a knife tearing down through the fabric of her sugar-sweet dreamscape.

  Eyes crusted over with sleep slowly pulled themselves open once more as sunlight trickled in past thin curtains, a girl completely engulfed under amassed bnkets beginning to stir from slumber.

  A single arm was freed from the wad of tangled and knotted sheets, clumsily filing off to it’s owner’s side, blindly slung about until it found the button to silence the unyielding scream of the cheap arm clock.

  It was slightly past 8:00 on some weekday. The sounds of early morning traffic echoed from just past the bedroom as a girl did her best to stir to life like the rest of the city around her.

  Gwyn Lapin slowly awoke, arms stretching wide above her as she yawned deeply.

  There was a grumble as she remained nearly awake enough to free herself from bed, eyes still not quite fully opened as she allowed her brain to very slowly boot itself up once again.

  She wiggled her previously injured arm a bit, testing to be sure it was healed enough to not hurt anymore, finding the limb good as new again aside from some lingering soreness around the joints.

  Sighing, she untangled her lower body from the cocoon of fabric she’d spun around herself in her sleep, begrudgingly forcing herself to remain awake as she got up.

  Her dreams had been significantly nicer than usual this time too… her usual anxiety-den awakenings after resurfacing memories of failed exams or missed csses or earning a scolding from a teacher completely absent this morning, instead repced by sleepy hallucinations she dearly wished to return to already.

  Cutesy kitten-covered pajamas covered her as she shakily rose to her feet, matching slippers being joined to the attire as she wrestled one of her seemingly infinite bnkets free of the mass it had become a part of, wrapping it tightly around herself as she wandered half-asleep towards the rest of her apartment.

  She’d dreamed that she’d actually managed to muster up the courage to ask Alice out, that the two of them had gone for a perfect, cozy little date to the aquarium, that she’d even managed to ask her to come back home with her.

  She rubbed at her face with a damp towel, clearing the sleep from her eyes before slipping her gsses on, her hair a wholly disheveled mess atop her head as she stared at herself in the mirror for a short bit.

  It was a hell of a fantasy, and she sighed as she remembered it, lingering in her brain so much clearer than most of her dreams.

  Her stomach grumbled as she chastised herself, pulling her back to the present as she realized she should probably eat something before worrying herself to death over silly little dreams.

  Pulling her bnket tighter around herself, she resumed her long march towards her kitchen, voice creaking to life from her throat as she unconsciously started singing to herself, swaying along to it while she walked.

  The cocooned organism slowly made her way through the full breadth of her modest apartment, voice waking up alongside her as she cleared her head, letting the familiar sounds of the early morning fill her ears as she serenaded the otherwise unoccupied residence.

  The thrum of cars speeding past on the street outside, the chirp of songbirds nesting right outside her windows, the crackle of food atop a hot stove sizzling.

  “Oh hey, morning.”

  “Mmm…? O-Oh, g’morning…”

  She mumbled out a greeting in response before quickly returning to singing tunelessly to herself, inhaling deeply as the smell of cooking food tickled her nostrils and warmed her senses.

  …

  ……?

  ………?!

  Dial-up noises rung out inside her head as beted reactions finally started to process all at once, only just now registering a second person standing in her apartment cooking breakfast when she lived alone.

  She spun on her heel in her sleep-addled daze, a startled yelp escaping out from her mid-song, the sudden shocked motion throwing her entirely off bance as she toppled over gracelessly, her portable bnket fort absorbing the entirety of the blow as she filed like a tortoise flipped over onto its shell.

  The other woman present, decidedly less armed by the situation, still nearly leapt out of her skin at Gwyn’s sudden screech, scrambling to keep the pan in front of her from flipping out into the floor below and earning some pained inhations as hot grease spshed out onto her bare arms.

  “Gah, shit, don’t just-- fucking hell, you good over there?”

  “I-I, who… what are… w-what’s…”

  Breakfast successfully protected and returned to the stovetop, the other girl winced as she scratched at her arms, the worst of the grease stains cleaned off before she rushed over, crouching down low to yank Gwyn back up to her feet.

  “C’mon now, up and at ‘em dumbass.”

  Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to clear her head still, the familiar face finally registering to her still-sleeping brain.

  “…A-Alice?”

  “…yeah?”

  “W-Why are you… when did you…?”

  “…you, uh, sleepwalking or something? I mean, you’re the one that told me to sleep over here…?”

  Further dial-up noises, exhausted neurons finally stirring back up to full operations once more as she was lugged back up to her feet once more by the decidedly more muscur of the two of them.

  …right. That expined why her dream seemed strangely clear in her mind still. To be perfectly fair to herself, it did seem like something she’d dream up.

  “…o-oh! Oh, I did, yeah… yeah I just… e-ehehe…”

  She giggled awkwardly as she was unceremoniously pulled back up again, Alice staring back at her with a single raised eyebrow, wholly less shocked by the entire arrangement than her still-sleepy host.

  “You, u-um… you didn’t… hear anything, r-right?”

  “Hmm? Not the foggiest idea what you mean.”

  “…oh, well, g-good! That’s good!”

  “…you got a pretty cute singing voice.”

  Alice smirked to herself, already facing away as she returned to the lit stove, leaving Gwyn’s features to fre up with color once more as she got back to cooking.

  Storming off into another room, Gwyn left her to it as she tended to her own assorted morning routines, cleaning the unkempt mess of fluff atop her head and repcing her pajamas with clean clothes, quickly assembling herself back into an actually presentable state once more.

  In the other end of the house, Alice wiped the sleep from her eye with the back of her hand, yawning as the smell of frying food kept her from dozing back off again, stripped down to nothing but her dingy old tank top and a pair of ill-fitting briefs with the rest of her clothes tossed unceremoniously about the living room, her own mane of hair completely untamed and loose as it poured down over her shoulders.

  By the time Gwyn raced back around the corner and into the main room again, Alice was already tossing ptes onto the small table for them both, the pair flopping down across from one another, two stomachs growling loud and long.

  They both dug in without waiting, massive ptes of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast steaming in front of them, Gwyn taking her time to really appreciate Alice’s cooking, while Alice herself snarfed it down like a raw steak thrown to a wild animal.

  Breakfast vanished as suddenly as it had shown up in front of them, a pair of greasy ptes all that remained afterwards, the two of them sighing contentedly as they finally looked up from their food and over at one another.

  “Morning, Gwyn.”

  “…ehe, morning Alice.”

  The duo smiled softly, letting the early day quiet waft over them both as they leaned back and enjoyed the cozy domestic morning just a little longer, exhaustion still seeped all the way into their bones.

  A soft chirping broke the pleasant silence eventually, a sound ringing in Alice’s ear as she was stirred back to the present, head darting from side to side to try and find the source before recalling the old communications earpiece she’d gotten from the old dy ages ago.

  Clumsily flicking at where she assumed it was, the thing eventually re-manifested itself, Alice searching along it for a button or anything before finally finding a way to get the damn thing to pick up.

  “…uh, this thing on? I think that was the--”

  “Where the hell have you been?!”

  The screaming from the other side was like a shotgun bst directly to the eardrum, Alice recoiling hard enough to be sent toppling out of her chair and into the floor below, Gwyn bolting up from her own chair to rush over to her aid.

  “…guh. Good morning to you too, Lonnie.”

  Alice managed to get herself scraped off the floor, leaning back against Gwyn’s couch for support as she stood back up, the comfortably familiar voice on the other end not getting any quieter.

  “Don’t you ‘good morning’ me after you vanished off the face of the goddamn earth for half a week! Shit, kid, I thought…”

  “I’m fine, Lonnie. Promise. Just been… a bit out of commission the st little while, I guess. Same for this idiot I’m sitting here with.”

  She nodded over at Gwyn, the other girl finally realizing she was talking into an invisible earpiece, rapidly twiddling with her own as soon as she remembered about it.

  “Gwyn’s with you? How is she? Good, or…”

  “I-I’m fine too, no worries. I didn’t think to c-call or anything, we kinda just stayed busy since we l-left yesterday, is all…”

  There was another tiny chirp as Gwyn joined herself to the call, her voice significantly quieter than the explosion of worry Lonnie had started off with.

  “…making me worry like that after the both of you ran off like that… ugh, stupid kids are gonna knock a few more years off my life at this rate.”

  Both of them did their best to recount the series of events since Alice had left Lonnie’s house days ago, Gwyn having not seen even a second of Alice’s abnormal transformation, and Alice herself only having some vague and fuzzy memories to attach to what she’d been told after she woke up again.

  Unsurprisingly, neither one of them seemed to take it all that well, Gwyn’s eyes widening in concern while Lonnie fell almost deathly quiet while she listened.

  “I-I… they didn’t tell me about any of that when I woke up, j-just… just that you showed up and protected me, t-that’s all…”

  “That’s… shit, kid, I saw some blurry news shots but…”

  “Look, it worked out fine and all, yeah? Ain’t anything to worry about now.”

  “Like hell it isn’t! You can’t tell me turning into… whatever that thing was supposed to be was fine!”

  “It was fine! I’m still here, ain’t I?”

  “Just because you’re a stubborn idiot that’s hard to kill doesn’t mean you can just ignore it! Hell, it knocked you out cold for a week!”

  “Yeah, that part wasn’t great, sure. But look, Sclera over here said it was his magic or whatever anyways, so next time it should go over a lot smoother--”

  “Next time?!”

  “N-Next time?!”

  Both of them screamed back at her in unison, Gwyn on top of her nearly instantly, looking at her like a mother finding their child with a pair of scissors.

  “…well, it did help, so… just kinda seems like a waste to just not use it if it’s gonna stick in there, y’know…”

  Alice pointedly looked away, twiddling her fingers as she was preemptively scolded by the both of them, a kid hiding a particurly bad report card from their parents.

  “…can you at least try to look after yourself for once, kid…? You really gotta stop worrying the both of us both to death any time you do anything.”

  “Y-Yeah… just… I just don’t want you p-pushing yourself that hard if you don’t have to, y’know? Partners are supposed to support one another, r-right?”

  “Yeah, yeah… I get it already, I promise I’m not putting my hand on the stove any more than I gotta, yeah? So enough of the sappy shit from the both of you, christ.”

  She sighed, still just barely smiling as she leaned back over the couch below.

  “…I’m real gd you’re both okay.”

  Lonnie sighed over the call as well, tension audibly leaving her shoulders as she finally rexed a bit for the first time in days, hearing both their voices doing wonders for easing her worries.

  The trio caught up a bit longer, Gwyn and Alice slowly getting themselves dressed and fixed up for the day as they talked, the sun rising higher in the sky outside the window as light spilled into the apartment around them.

  By the time they finished getting themselves cleaned up and ready, they both wished Lonnie well, promising they’d stop by sometime soon before dropping the call.

  Alice gave herself a once over, twisting and pulling at her muscles and joints, making sure everything was well and truly put back together correctly, finding both knees facing the right way and all her organs more or less back in the right pce.

  “A-All good, then?”

  Gwyn peeked in from around the corner, all dolled up and looking significantly nicer off than Alice’s same old wrinkled and bloodied outfit she’d pulled back on.

  “Hm? Oh, yeah, all good.”

  “Then… w-what now, then?”

  “…huh. Good question, been a while since I woke up without shit to do… what were you pnning to do?”

  “W-Well… I dunno, I guess. I usually just spend most all my off time at the Library still, e-ehe…”

  “Little workaholic, eh?”

  “You did say you’d h-help me practice, after all…”

  “...oh yeah, I did, huh? Well, shit, guess that works for me.”

  Gwyn smiled happily, all but spinning around the corner as she rushed towards the door, already stepping outside as she waited for her partner to catch up.

  Alice rushed after her, rubbing some of the sleep from her eyes still as the door was locked behind her, squinting to adjust to the early morning light beating down against her face.

  “Well, sugar girl, after you--”

  The zy morning haze they were both still comfortably underneath was yanked off of the two of them, the sounds of cars screeching and scraped and crunching into hard concrete snapping them both to attention immediately.

  Sounds of distant panic followed soon after, only a block or two away from them from the sounds of it, the duo looking at one another for half a moment as it registered to the two magical girls.

  Gwyn ran for the stairs, storming down the ground level as fast as she could, Alice eschewing that entirely as she instead leapt the guardrail and let herself drop from the second story walkway, feet scraping along the wall behind her before she hit the sidewalk below already running.

  The both of them sprinted towards the rapidly increasing noises of disaster from a few streets down, shoes spping against the pavement as they ran right back into it all yet again.