Coin Toss

Character Sheets-
http://mgcyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Amelia
http://pastebin.com/EZWZWpse

The Keep in the Park-
http://pastebin.com/MNTd8tNJ

TWO DAYS LATER

The church, a stolid, slightly saggy work of 17th century stonework – as all Anglican churches are or pretend to be – disgorges its occupants in a gradual trickle. Many of the churchgoers stay behind after the service, either to consult with the priest standing by the doors, speak with their fellows or just loiter around. Alexa seems sorely tempted to stay for a moment, her eyes on the leader of the congregation – who had given a remarkably rousing sermon on the will of God and how man can best fulfill it, at least in her opinion – but a glance at Amelia convinces her to gather up their effects and leave with only a quick word to the man at the exit.

Amelia stretches as she steps outside into the sunlight. She’s wearing a faded maroon hoodie over jeans and a pair of battered sneakers. The hoodie’s a bit large on her...but that doesn’t really bother her so much as how she’d gotten it. Her smile fades a bit at the memory. She still feels like everyone looking at her just knows, somehow, that she’d looted the bin last night.

She feels a sudden twinge of unease, but does her best to quash it. She’ll make it up to all of them by hunting more often. If she stops more monsters from hurting people, that’ll balance it out, right? She bites her lip.

 As they walk down the stone steps, the crisp feeling of early morning dew on their faces and the vague roar of cars in the distance, Alexa takes a deep breath of fresh air.

“Thank you for indulging me,” she says, turning to Amelia with a smile. She’s a step farther away than normal, her breath tinted as it is with the scent of communion wine. “I, ah… I don’t know how much you got out of that, but it always… I don’t know. Puts me at ease.”

“Hey, no problem!” Amelia looks up at her friend’s voice, smiling back. “Ah, I don’t think I’ve been to one since…” She trails off, thinking.

It still bothers her a bit when she starts to remember something, and then when she keeps talking...her memory just cuts out. Goes blank. Like she’s just a book that someone’s taken to with a pair of scissors.

 “Um…it’s been a while. Yeah.” She finishes awkwardly instead, scuffling her sneakers on the pavement. She shrugs.

Once again, Alexa is struck by Amelia’s far more comprehensive case of amnesia. She feels a twinge of guilt, remembering Amelia consoling her when she was scooping around in her head and coming up empty -- it was hard to imagine how bad it was for her. A pitying expression pulls at her face, and she’s about to say something when Amelia brushes it under the rug.

“Anyway! Yeah, good to hear that you liked it…”

And that she’s spending time away from Kreimhild, Amelia adds mentally. She still has no idea what Kreimhild wants from her friend, just a sinking feeling that it’s nothing good...and that worries her, a lot.

She decides to change the subject again.

“...It was pretty nice to just sit down for a bit. A chance to relax, yeah?”

With a faint sigh, Alexa smiles softly, nodding slowly and sticking her free hand in the pocket of her baby blue fleece. The other folds the grocery list once, fiddling with it absent-mindedly.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to relax,” she chastises with clearly mock-seriousness. “You’re supposed to contemplate the… Well, nevermind. At least you got something out of it. I was a tad worried that you’d be bored to tears.”

Shaking her head dismissively, she shrugs, watching a car pass lackadaisically by. No one was ever in a hurry on a Sunday morning.

“Well, here’s hoping I can drag you out of bed next week, eh?” Alexa nudges Amelia with her elbow, giggling.

Amelia’s mid-yawn, arms stretched over her head. She gasps at the nudge in her side, her arms dropping back to her sides and black hair flying. “Ack! Alexa! How could you?” She splutters, but without any real heat to it.

Alexa giggles, drawing back her arm and skipping a few paces ahead of Amelia. Glancing back at her, she stops just long enough to make sure she didn’t actually do anything worse than possibly give her the hiccups.

“Sorry! You left yourself wide open there, what else was I to do?” She grins, shrugging remorselessly.

“You’re evil, you know that?” Amelia mock-grumbles, waving one hand in her general direction. “Absolutely evil.”

Alexa giggles again, winking as she slows her pace to once again match Amelia’s. Sticking her hands in her pockets, she shakes her head.

“I prefer to think of myself as an opportunist,” she says coyly as the two of them round the corner. “I do only what my fellow magical girl will let me~”

Amelia snickers. “Not very heroic of you~” She teases. Suddenly, her hand darts out, one slender finger tapping Alexa on the nose. “Ha! Justice.”

Alexa stops short all of a sudden, going cross-eyed to stare at her nose in shock. Then her hands leap up to clutch it as if it were a gaping wound, and she swoons.

“Oh, what a world, what a world! How could my dearest friend strike me down?” She cries, all smiles beneath her hands.

Amelia folds her arms firmly. “Hmph. You deserved it.” she huffs. She can’t keep a straight face either. “Magical girls have a duty to punish the wicked, dontcha know?” She tries for a drawl, but winds up coughing instead.

Alexa draws her hands away from her nose, smirking for a moment before drawing back in faux-offense.

“But aren’t I special? Surely you couldn’t raise a hand against me?” She gasps. As they walk, more than one person gives them a sideways glance at their conversation, but no one stops them, presumably dismissing them as two girls horsing around, as young girls are wont to do.

Amelia ignores them right back as she chatters with Alexa. She nods. “Hmm...I guess you do have a point…I mean, we’re friends and all...” She trails off, blue eyes sparkling with mischief, then suddenly makes as though to dart towards Alexa. “But I still have to stop your evil ways!” She laughs, giving chase. “It’s my duty to yawners everywhere!”

Darting away from Amelia, Alexa laughs as she skips past her down the street, casting a broad grin over her shoulder. She sticks out her tongue again as she dodges around a garbage bin.

“You owe them nothing!” She turns around, smoothly jogging backwards -- at least until she plows into a streetlamp. Then it’s a bit less smooth, but she staunchly ignores this as she falls into a poor Darth Vader impression. “Join me, and together we can rule this galaxy as… sister and sister!”

Amelia skids to a stop...then blinks at her. “Did...Did you really just give a Star Wars speech?” She asks, trying not to laugh as she plays along. Whenever she’s feeling down, Alexa’s always there to laugh with her. “No! I’ll never join you!” She poses dramatically, then hesitates. “I...Aha…Sorry...forgot how the rest of that goes…”

“... I do, too, honestly,” Alexa snickers with a shrug, looking mildly embarrassed at the sudden failure of her nerd knowledge. She adjusts her glasses, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps we should rent -- wait, nobody rents anymore. Scratch that. Maybe we should torrent those, watch them together sometime.”

Alexa shakes her head as if in admonishment.

“That’s something you just have to remember -- it’s a matter of principle.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Amelia nods. A thought strikes her. “...We’re skipping the prequels, right?”

Alexa scoffs, rolling her eyes, though her smile clings to her face.

“Of course,” she says, as if it Amelia had just asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow. “I’m not trying to kill you.”

“Just checking.” Amelia smirks. A thought strikes her, and she sobers up a bit. “So...what now? Want to head back? Go hunting again or something?”

Their last hunt had turned up empty. Maybe that gremlin with the club had been the only magical thing around Belfast- other than them and Kreimhild, of course. Somehow, Amelia doubted it.

“Hm? Well, Kreimhild asked me to run a few errands while we were out…” Alexa reaches into the worn brown messenger bag wound around her “new” blue fleece, pulling out a flimsy sheet of paper. A grocery list is written on it, in the German’s harsh, brutal handwriting. She waggles it meaningfully. “Apparently we need some meat. I think Kreimhild likes to cook, if you can imagine that.”

“Huh. Well, everyone needs a hobby...” Amelia comments, thinking back to the time she’d glimpsed the monstergirl’s yellow eyes. What does she really look like? She shakes her head. No, she’s just being silly. Probably.  “Guess we’re doing that then...lead the way?”

“Of course. I think I know the place -- it’s just this way,” Alexa nods shortly, quickening her stride as she whirls around to face the direction she’s walking, so as to avoid any more unfortunate collisions. She whistles a faint tune as she walks, her eyes on the various small, squat shops they pass, keeping an eye out for the right one. “Shouldn’t take long at all.”

Amelia nods, peering through the various windows in passing. Most of the shops are still closed with the lights off. Stationary, tourist trap...antiques...She pauses for a moment near a window display of old coins and other junk, then catches up to Alexa. “Um...Do you go there often?” She asks. “Running errands for Kreim, I mean?”

“Hm?” Alexa starts, glancing up from the paper and into the window. She frowns, her brow furrowing, before she flicks her head in something that wasn’t quite a nod.

“She’s sent me there once. Didn’t find… what she was looking for,” she shakes her head, dismissing the matter. When she speaks again, her chipper demeanour returns. “I’ve come by of my own accord since then. There are so many fascinating things in there!”

“Hmm?” Amelia prompts, tilting her head as though to invite elaboration. “What were they selling?”

“Oh, all sorts of things!” Alexa clearly doesn’t need to be invited. She practically leaps in place with eagerness to share. “A lot of it was boring furniture -- pottery and chairs and the like. But they also had bronze swords -- not quite from the Bronze Age, but fine imitations -- and they had these paintings -- nothing by anyone famous, unfortunately -- and they had all sorts of neat stuff like clocks and coins and sculptures and brassworks and… I’m sorry, listen to me going on.”

She snickers derisively at herself.

“You get the picture.”

“Eh? All that in a grocery?” Amelia blurts in confusion after Alexa’s rant. She’s pretty sure that groceries normally don’t stock all that- though given some of the things she saw in the Overcity, she wouldn’t be too surprised at this point…

“... Huh?” Alexa stumbles, looking back at Amelia sharply. It’s possible to see the gears churning in her head right until she jolts in place, her ears turning red as she waggles a finger unsteadily in the direction of the antique shop they just passed. Then the gears lock up. “N-no, no, uh, sorry, I thought you meant -- that place, over there, um, sorry. Don’t know why, that’s -- I mean, she sends me to the grocer’s, too, but… Well, she sends me all over the place, so I guess I got, you know… confused.”

Amelia’s buried her face in her hands, blushing furiously. “R-right. Of course...Never mind, I’m an idiot. I just thought...you know...since the shops in the Overcity and all that...Never mind.” She babbles.

There’s a moment of awkward silence. Something Alexa said earlier suddenly seems to click, and Amelia looks back up. “Um, wait...why’d she send you to the antique shop then?”

Alexa jolts in place, realizing all of a sudden that she may have said something that she wasn’t exactly supposed to. She hesitates for a moment, looking at Amelia oddly. Then she sighs, shaking her head.

“Coins,” she says, almost bitterly. “She says occasionally… ‘normal’ humans find them, and can’t quite place them, so they end up in places like… that. So she wanted me to give it a good once-over.”

There’s a strange reservation about her, like she’s holding something back.

Amelia’s not even hiding her concern as she looks at her friend. “I...I guess that makes sense, but...Alexa, are you...do you…” She takes a deep breath and moves a step closer.

“What’s wrong?” Amelia asks quietly. “Is Kreim...making you do stuff you don’t want to? There was that time after we came back, when she wanted to talk. You didn’t seem like you wanted to...and she is a monster...I guess what I’m asking is...are you sure you’re okay?”

She hesitates, thinking, then presses on.

“Alexa, if...if you don’t want to listen to her, we...we could just go. Find somewhere else to stay, or something. I’m sure we could figure something out.” A slightly forced smile. “I’m sure that haunted motel’s still got vacancies…”

Alexa is silent for a moment, digging her hands into her fleece’s pockets. She stares down at the ground, casting furtive glances back up at Amelia as she hovers there anxiously. A sardonic smile tugs at one corner of her mouth at Amelia’s attempt at a joke. Shaking her head, she sighs.

“I’m fine,” Alexa insists. “Kreimhild’s been… very good to me. She looks out for me, and she… she saved my life.”

“... Do you remember that… black coin? The one that we found after we killed the… whatever it was?” She flicks a hand in a meaningless gesture, her expression pensive.

Amelia frowns, confused by the sudden topic change, but nods. She remembers its strange beauty, the way it’d almost seemed to swallow the light around it. If it was rare, and Kreim’d seen it...

“Yeah? What about it? Is that what she sent you to look for?” Her frown deepens as another, ugly thought strikes her. “She didn’t try and take it off you, did she?”

If that monstergirl’s shaking down her friend for valuables, they’re going to have words, rent or no rent. Fiery words. Her fists clench.

Alexa laughs sharply -- it’s a starkly different sound than her usual subdued titter. She shakes her head, her bitter smile giving way to a haggard grin before it abruptly collapses into a grimace.

“Q-quite the contrary, actually,” she says, inclining her head. “She wants me to have it. I’m trying to get her to take it, but she won’t hear anything of it.”

“She sent me in there looking for one -- this was before it… dropped into my bloody lap,” a scowl flits across her face. “She says… says that I have… potential. That she can see something in me, something that the B-Black Coin can… bring out. Make me better.”

She shakes her head like a dog breaking a rabbit’s neck.

“I don’t know. I don’t like it. I-I’m sure she means well, but… I don’t know. Something feels wrong about that thing...”

Amelia’s frown has only been deepening. Kreim wants- is desperate- for Alexa to have that coin. The coin Amelia’d given her, unwittingly. She wants Alexa to...use it somehow? It’s magical. Who knows what it does?

Alexa’s last words make her mind for her. She’s worried about it. Kreim isn’t- or is for the wrong reasons. It’s an easy choice to make.

“Do you have it on you?” Amelia asks, almost casually. “The coin, I mean.”

"... Yes, I do," Alexa admits with a slightly suspicious sideways glance. She begins rifling around in the messenger bag. A quickened exhale leaves her, and she smiles again. "It's funny. It must be Kreimhild always talking about it -- but I find I can't leave the house without it."

Amelia’s brow is furrowed deeply enough that the lines have lines and she’s tense as a wound spring. She finds herself wishing she was transformed- right now, the inner fire that comes with her magic would be comforting. Instead, all she has is sick worry for Alexa gnawing away at her. “Yeah, funny…What else does she say about it, anyway?”

It’s all she can do to keep her voice level. They’re all alone on the street.

Alexa opens her mouth to answer. Then it clamps shut again, and she looks considerably uncomfortable, like she had just taken a wrong turn and was only now realizing she wasn’t sure where she was. Her hand stops its probing in her bag.

“... Well, there’s… there’s some… I mean… Well, she says a great many things,” she stalls, thinking on her feet. A bead of sweat runs down the side of her head. “She-- She mostly just talks of- of how it can, you know, improve me. Help me. Make me better. That- that sort of thing. It’s… I- I’m not sure how much there is to it, really.”

She laughs nervously.

Amelia bites down on her lip sharply. A sting of pain, but she ignores it. She winces, then shakes her head. “I...I think she’s wrong. If you think there’s something wrong with it...I trust you more.” She seems about to say something else, but thinks better of it. “Can I see it for a sec?” She says instead, thinking furiously back to that first day. Why hadn’t she thought about it then? She should have noticed, should have said or done something...A monster’d had it in the first place, shouldn’t that have been a clue?

“Please, Alexa.” She adds quietly. “Trust me.”

Alexa’s arm tenses, her fingers closing around something in the messenger bag, but she doesn’t withdraw it. She stares back at Amelia with a strange, almost hunted look in her eyes, her jaw tight. At Amelia’s plea, she winces as if struck, but she still doesn’t move.

“Why?” She asks, just a bit too loudly. A nervous smile bursts across her face. When she speaks again, it’s at a much more reasonable volume. “It- it looks the same as w-when you last saw it. It’s j-just a c-coin, however m-magical. It c-can’t be too bad.”

“I…” She can’t lie to her. “I want to take a closer look. It’s magical, after all. And…” Her lip stings where she’d bitten it. “If you think something feels wrong with it...I trust your feelings. I think there’s something weird going on, and...y-you don’t need a coin to i-improve you, whatever that means...Y-you’re already a good magical girl, and...and a better friend.” She shakes her head, hand outstretched slightly, looking at Alexa pleadingly. She means it.

Again, Alexa hesitates. She looks Amelia up and down as if seeing her for the first time. Her lip curls unpleasantly. Then the tension leaves her, and she nods slowly. Withdrawing her arm, her hand is clenched in a fist, which she partway extends to Amelia. Her fingers uncurl like they’re being pried apart, but there, clearly visible in her open palm, is the Black Coin.

It looks as sinister as ever. Even in the placid morning sun, it seems to absorb the light, radiating malice. And power.

Amelia gapes. Even untransformed, she can feel just how wrong this thing is. The way it feels sick. Diseased. Unnatural. It could be her imagination, but she thinks she feels the faintest flare of her power in response- but that’s impossible. She hasn’t transformed- yet.

How had she missed this the first time?

She swallows, but the sight of the thing’s pushed away any doubts she might have had. “Alexa?” She says quietly. Almost gently, if not for how tense she is.  “Do you feel that?”

Alexa looks between Amelia and the coin, several times for good measure. There’s nothing but confusion on her face -- at least, at first glance. Beneath that, lurking in her eye, is the unmistakable flash of hunger.

“What? Wh-what are you talking about?” Alexa asks, her voice earnestly curious safe for the vague nervous tremor in it. “I- I don’t feel anything. It’s just a coin.”

It all happens in a flash. Amelia’s hand darts out, grabbing the coin, and she turns and throws it away as far as she can with a shrill, almost panicked, scream. It soars through the air, not catching the light so much as swallowing it as it flies out of sight. There’s a quiet splash. The coin’s gone. Amelia slumps, still breathing fast. She’s shaking now as she turns back to Alexa.

“S-sorry…” She stammers. “I-I had to...That...It was...Something was w-wrong about it.” She shakes her head, looking to Alexa pleadingly. Hoping she’d understand.

If one were to base their impression purely on their first glance at Alexa in that moment, they would probably think she had just been stabbed. She’s white as a sheet, staring at Amelia in nothing short of horror. Her eyes snap in the direction the coin vanished in. Her still outstretched palm clenches into a fist. For the first time Amelia has known her, a particular emotion mixes itself with her shock: anger.

“... Well you could have bloody asked!” She shouts, clenching her fists at her sides. She’s trembling, her breath suddenly coming in hot, heavy bursts. “That-- That-- Christ alive, a simple ‘by-your-leave’ wouldn’t have gone amiss! Why-- It was just a coin!”

Amelia cringes back- for an outside observer, it might almost seem comical the way she shrinks back from the younger and shorter girl’s anger.

Her head snaps back up sharply at Alexa’s last words. She shakes it furiously, some of the fire back in her eyes. “N-no, it wasn’t! You said y-yourself...It was worrying you! It was bothering you that much a-and you didn’t...you didn’t talk about it! At all! Something wasn’t right about it- I didn’t know it was like that when you took it! And if it’s magical…” Her eyes are watering. She forces herself to take a breath. Her voice is thick when she continues.

“Damnit, Alexa, I-I just didn’t want you to get hurt…” The words almost sound silly to her...but she remembers what she’d just felt. “That thing...it was w-wrong, somehow. Evil.”

Alex shakes her head, scowling furiously. For a half-second, it’s almost possible to see her teeth blur oddly, like her canines are just a bit longer than they should be. The irises of her eyes narrow. As quickly as they appeared, they’re gone again, replaced by ordinary, run-of-the-mill rage.

“I worry about lots of stupid things! Like you!” She snarls at Amelia. “It was just a stupid bloody coin -- and MAYBE there was something in there, but nothing worth throwing it away over! For Christ’s sake -- do you do that with EVERYTHING you don’t understand?! I- I earned it, it’s MY choice what to do with it!”

Amelia seems to crumple at her words, as though gutshot. She takes a faltering, blind step back. “I...Sorry…”

“Oh yes, I’m SURE you are,” Alexa nods savagely. Her fists are clenched tightly -- unnoticed by her, her palms start bleeding. Even without the strange mirage, there’s an odd light in her eyes. “Maybe you should have thought about how sorry you’d be BEFORE you threw it away!”

“I-I’m sorry for...c-choosing for you. N-not that I threw it away.” Amelia manages to say- even faltering, she sounds certain about that. “It….It could have hurt you.”

Alexa seethes. An apology, however partial, throws some cold water on her red hot fury -- it’s hard to stay mad at someone who won’t react. She pinches the bridge of her nose, pushing up her glasses. Then she tears them off, fiddling with the round, delicate frame. She heaves a heavy sigh.

“Could have,” she repeats exasperatedly. “That’s the operative term. It could have. You don’t know. I don’t know. You can’t… you can’t protect me from everything, Amelia. Eventually I’ll have to make a choice.”

She still sounds quite angry, but her last sentence sounded slightly absent, more to herself than Amelia. It would have been a mutter if her fury hadn’t robbed her of control of the volume of her voice.

Amelia looks miserable. “I...I still have to try.” She blurts, hands clenched. She blinks as Alexa’s last words sink in. “Wait...what do you mean by that?”

Alexa shifts uncomfortably for a moment, sighing. She pinches the bridge of her nose again, her glasses disappearing into a hand. Red rivulets run down the black frames.

“... I don’t… I don’t understand it. Not yet. But I will soon, I imagine,” she shakes her head with an air of finality. Wiping off her frames on her fleece, she only now seems to notice what happened to them. She stares down at her hand blankly for a moment, then slips her glasses back onto her head without comment.

“I-I’m sorry. It’s nothing. D-don’t… don’t worry about it. I’m just being… my stupid, worrywart self.” She flicks her hand in a vague gesture of frustration. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If...If you say so...and you’re not stupid…” Amelia mumbles, still looking torn but reluctant to press her friend so soon after the Black Coin. “Just...If you want to talk about it...or if you’re worried…” She trails off. “Talk to me, okay? Please?”

“... I will,” she says, and for a moment her normal kindness pokes through the resounding bitterness from losing the coin. Then she heaves a rough sigh. “Another time, perhaps. Right now… As much as I want to send you chasing after my coin, I think we have some errands to run.”

Amelia just nods, uncharacteristically quiet. As far as she’s concerned though...she doesn’t regret the coin being washed away. Not one bit.

Alexa feeling bad on the other hand…

She fumbles in her pocket, and holds out a handful of coins. Looks like most or all of the ones she’s collected these past few days. A few bronzes and coppers. “Here...I know it’s not the same, but...it was yours…” she offers.

Alexa stares down at the coins, a foul look on her face. She narrows her eyes and flicks her gaze across them as if searching for something. Whatever it is, she doesn’t find it. Sighing, she turns away, shaking her head.

“No. No, those are yours,” she adjusts her fleece’s collar, glaring at the pavement. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t… don’t worry about it. It’s not…”

She places a hand against her forehead and screws her eyes shut, as if suddenly woozy.

“It doesn’t matter. It… it was just a coin. Just a coin…”

Amelia starts to reach out to her, but thinks better of it and drops her hand again halfway. She nods feebly. “I...yeah…” She trails off, anxiously watching her friend.

Alexa takes several deep, measured breaths that might be recognized as breathing exercises. She glances down at her hand before hiding it behind her waist. She shakes her head again.

“It doesn’t matter,” she repeats, as if to herself. She turns away in full, already tromping off down the street. “Come along. The… Shopping, got to do that. Nevermind the coin. Just a stupid coin, that’s all…”

Amelia follows her, hands clasped together white-knuckled in the hoodie pocket. She’s second-guessing herself, seeing how much it’s upsetting Alexa that she threw it away...but she remembers what the coin had been like. She only hopes she’ll forgive her for it.

It hasn’t been all that long since she met Alexa, but she really doesn’t want to lose her- only- friend. Not over this.

“Hey…” she ventures eventually, trying to distract Alexa. She can’t quite hide her anxiousness though. “So...um...what else did Kreim want us to get? Other than the meat…”

Alexa curses under her breath. In all this ‘excitement,’ she went and forgot the list. She digs back into her pocket, pulling out the list. The wound on her hand has mostly clotted, so fortunately she doesn’t ruin the paper. She narrows her eyes; Kreimhild’s handwriting is brutal, but mostly legible.

“Let’s see… Bread, eggs, milk… crisps? I’ve never seen her eat those. Ah… pancake mix -- guess that’s my fault… orange juice, coffee, tea…Hrm. I can’t quite read this one,” she takes off her glasses and peers intensely at the paper. Then her frown deepens.

“... Nevermind. That- that’s a doodle,” she sighs, shoving the paper back into her pocket with a shake of the head. “That’s it. Can’t imagine it’ll take long. Come along.”

It’s a good ten minutes or so of awkward quiet before the two girls reach the grocery store. It’s a bit newer than the surrounding buildings, all concrete and glass, and there are cars parked outside alongside a neat row of shopping carts. Amelia’s a step behind her friend as they step inside through the automatic doors.

There’s a smell of fresh bread and flour in the air as the two of them head inside. The bored looking security guard at the door doesn’t even look up from his morning newspaper, an empty coffee cup on the floor next to his chair. There are a few other people here this early- mostly locals getting their weekly shopping done.

 Amelia scoops up a basket from a pile, looking to Alexa. “Um...what first?”

Though she has calmed down significantly, she’s still clearly a little sullen. She glares at the shopping list one more time, as if for posterity. With an aimless shrug, she hesitates for a moment, trying to recall the layout of the store and therefore the most efficient route to get everything they want. It’s almost possible to see her abruptly stop caring and come to a completely arbitrary decision.

“Let’s get the meat first. It can vanish quickly,” she says over her shoulder, already taking off through the aisles. “It’s at the back, unless they’ve gone and moved it.”

“...Alright.” Amelia sighs. At least she’s still talking to her.

Sure enough, there’s a small line of people waiting in front of the meat counter, with an old man with graying hair leaning heavily on a walking stick near the front. The employee manning the counter’s nowhere in sight. It’s a bit colder here, so close to the freezers.

“...Yeah, I see what you meant by vanish...” Amelia comments after a moment of hesitation. A glance to the empty counter. “...We could get the other stuff first.” She suggests.

There’s a muffled noise from the back room, almost inaudible over the hum of the freezers.

Alexa purses her lips into a thin, sardonic scowl, staring at the counter with a distinctly displeased look. Shaking her head, she turns on her heel, glancing up at the ceiling. Small wooden signs hang from the ceilings over each aisle, helpfully proclaiming what goods are stored in the aisles. She stops to read one, adjusting her glasses -- and then she hears the noise.

“... Do you hear something?” She asks, turning halfway around, casting a suspicious sideways glance around the back -- then the noise comes again, sharper and louder, and undeniably from the backroom. It sounds vaguely like someone groaning, but there’s something off about it: an unnatural tenor.

“Huh?” Amelia stops too, looking to Alexa for a moment, head turning from side to side.

“S-sorry, I… I’m being silly. Must just be something malfunctioning…” Alexa says, but she lingers a moment longer, unmoving.

“What was it?” Amelia asks, voice suddenly low and serious. Then she hears it too. Is that...someone’s voice? Her hand drops reflexively to her side for a sword that isn’t there- yet.

“...Hello?” She calls out, taking a step closer to the counter. A woman in the line gives her an annoyed look- she ignores her. There’s no reply.

Alexa follows her, only a step behind. Her gaze is locked on the door, and she wrings her hands uncertainly. Shaking her head, she tries to reassure herself.

“P-perhaps someone just stubbed their toe?” She tries to joke, and makes to turn away. “I’m sure it’s nothing--”

Then something slams into the door. It’s an unmistakable sound, and even if it could have possibly been misconstrued, there’s suddenly a deep dent jutting out of the door. Alexa jumps, but her legs lock up and freeze her in place. Amelia’s similarly frozen, a step closer to the door. The door rattles as something rams into it again.

The third time around, something crucial shatters, and it swings open.

The thing standing -- or rather, floating -- in the doorway is not human. It looks sort of human -- it has a human silhouette -- but it is most certainly not. Its legs hover above the ground, bare, translucent feet utterly motionless, and its midnight black robes emit a strange, vile green light. Long white hair drifts down from its scalp in an untamed tangle, despite the bright silver comb lodged in it.

But the most horrible detail is the face. It’s almost like an old woman’s face, but the mouth is a long, wide, gaping pit. Her wrinkles are as deep as stab wounds, and her eyes are black, empty pits.

The banshee stares at the two of them.

Then it screams loud enough to rattle the shelves.