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[CrouchingMouse]

Both are excellent. I like how you handled the blood descriptions in the They Fight Crime one; it's kind of like getting into her mind.
_________________
Spit out your Stride gum and chew another piece already.
Or we'll find you.

[Kamonichan]

Dell rolled a cigarette back and forth on her desk. It rubbed the notebook sitting before her, and she listened to the sound of papered tobacco on unmarked page. Her pen sat a few inches above the book, lonely and having long since lost the warmth of her fingers. Every time her eyes fell on the pen, she felt a pang in her stomach, telling her to put the graduation present to use. The first and last time she’d written with it was three months ago, and she’d only used it to take down a phone number.

Her eyes glanced over to her phone, charging next to her lamp. She picked it up and opened her address book, noting that it still had only a little charge left. She’d played with her phone so much in high school that she could do it all with muscle memory. Smirking, she wished she could browse her contacts, but there weren’t enough numbers listed to call it browsing. The entries only went: Amanda, Editor, Work, ?.

The phone started buzzing in her hand and she had to stop herself from dropping it. The display read “Amanda.” With a smile and a breath to calm herself, she unplugged the charger and pushed the Talk button.

“Hello? Dell?”

“Amanda, hi. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. I was just wondering how things were going with you.”

“Everything’s fine. Just working.”

On the other side, Amanda laughed. “Oh, you. You never stop, do you?”

She tried her best to give a genuine-sounding laugh back. “What can I say? I just have to keep writing.”

“Is it going well?”

“Four pages in the last hour. It’s like I can’t put my pen down.”

“Of course. Just like back in high school, right?”

“Yeah…just like then…”

“Are you all right? You sound a little down.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She cleared her throat. “Bad signal. How is it wherever you are now? New York, right?”

“Yes, New York. It’s the same as it was last time. You really should come up some time and see me.”

She shook her head and smiled as she ran a hand through her hair. “Only if you’d stay there for more than a day.”

“You know Jerry. His work takes him everywhere, all the time, and I just try to keep up. New York one day, Hong Kong the next.”

“And next Prague, and St. Petersburg, and Rome.”

“And then a two-day vacation back home. Ah, sometimes I forget what my own bed feels like.”

“Probably better than the hotel beds you’re used to.”

Again, she could hear a small laugh on the other end. “Ah, that might be true. I don’t even know. But are you sleeping well? You always had problems keeping a schedule.”

“I sleep so randomly, I don’t even know what time my alarm is set to.”

“That sounds like you. Oh, sorry, I have to go. Jerry’s waiting for me in the lobby.”

“All right. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Next time, Dell.”

She could hear the receiver moving away from Amanda’s mouth, and she gasped.

“Amanda…”

Unexpectedly, the other woman answered. “Yes, Dell?”

“I…” Her breath caught in her throat and she couldn’t make another sound come out.

“What is it?”

She struggled and managed to swallow the air that had lodged itself in the back of her mouth. “I hope you can come see me sometime. Alex would love to see you.”

Another laugh came through the phone. As always, she felt something inside crumble a little.

“We’ll see.”

“Yes…we’ll see…”

“What was that, Dell? I couldn’t hear you.”

She cleared her throat. “Sorry, bad signal. I’ll talk to you later, Amanda.”

“Bye.”

The other side clicked just before she managed to say, “Good bye.”

As she held the phone to her ear, she wished that she had a real phone. She wanted one that plugged into the wall and gave that flat tone when there was no one on the other side. The way cell phones went silent after a call ended, she hated it.

When she finally took the phone away from her ear, she stared at the screen for a few minutes. For a background, she had a picture of her, Amanda, Alex, and Eric when they were in high school. In the picture, she was holding open a notebook with illegible paragraphs scribbled across the pages. Amanda, she was smiling with a pen in her mouth. And Alex, he was sticking his tongue out at the camera, wearing a giant smile. Eric was rolling his eyes.

She brought up her contacts again. Maneuvering the bar down to the last entry, she sighed. Three months after putting the number in her phone, she still had no idea who was on the other side. After finding a bookmark in a novel she’d borrowed from the library, an obscure book Amanda had suggested, she’d transcribed the number from slip to napkin and then to phone. Since then, she’d called ? more times than she cared to admit.

She hit “Talk” and put the phone to her ear. As always, ? picked up after one ring. As always, she waited for ? to say something. As always, ? didn’t say anything, and she just started talking.

“Hello, ?. It’s been a while.”

Leaning back in her chair, she stared at the ceiling. The ceiling fan was squeaking erratically for maintenance, and she waited for three elicitations before continuing.

“I’ve gotten a lot of work done. I’ve gone through four pages in the past hour, but I thought I’d check up on you. I was wondering if you were getting lonely.”

Sliding her seat back into the desk, her arm bumped the edge and knocked over the picture frame that stood isolated in the corner. It would have fallen flat on its face, but four crumbled sheets of page, all of them unmarked, broke its fall. She righted it and looked at the photo for a moment. An image of herself, three years earlier, stared back at her and reminded her of her graduation trip. She’d gone there with a friend but come back alone two days later.

She cleared her throat. “It’s actually rare that I get even this much time to sit down and write. I have so many meetings with publishers and agents nowadays that I can hardly find any time to sit down and do any work. No one told me that just writing for a living would be this busy, but it comes with the occupation. I can’t really complain, what with all the finer things I have piled around me.”

A buzzing sound drew her attention to a black book lying on the floor next to the desk. She swatted at the fly lounging on the gold APPOINTMENTS letters and chased it and a fair bit of dust away in one swipe. The bug flew somewhere deeper into her bedroom and she kept an eye on it. It was easy to see it when it settled, a black spot on a blank wall above a broken stereo.

“Anyway, I just talked with Amanda. She’s doing fine. Living her usual boring life, you know. She says she can barely move, being so bored all day. It’s a little sad to listen to her talk about how little she has to do. It’s…really…”

Her voice broke just as she tried to finish, “sad.”

It took her a moment to collect herself, but she went on. “?, you’re there, right? You’re listening, right?”

The lack of response actually comforted her more than she cared to admit. She even found herself laughing a little, even though her vision seemed a little blurry for some reason.

“Hey, ?, you know everything, right? Whenever I have a question, I can ask you, right? And you’ll answer, right?”

Her nose felt like it was about to run, but when she looked her tissue box was empty. She sniffled once and shook her head.

“?, you know what they say about God? They say that he evens it all out in the end. When everything’s over, he settles everything. Good people who suffered get rewarded, right?”

Her free hand pressed against her eyelids. The pressure should have helped her think, but for some reason, whenever she talked to ?, she couldn’t think things through. Or rather, talking to ? helped her work things out without thinking.

“Why does it have to be that way? Why do we have to wait? Why did he have to wait?”

Her head fell against the desk and she could hear drops of water hitting and soaking the paper.

“Why did it have to be him? He wasn’t very smart. He wasn’t the nicest guy. Sometimes he was mean or he acted stupid, but he always apologized. He always apologized, and then he’d smile. Sometimes he’d wink.”

She could feel her nose running and staining the paper, but she couldn’t stop it. Every time she talked to ?, she couldn’t help herself.

“He said he wanted to go hiking once, go somewhere no one was screaming at anyone, somewhere he could wear short sleeves without people staring or asking questions. He was finally going to college. He was finally getting away. He had a scholarship. He worked hard. So why? Why?”

Something crinkled against paper and she jerked to look to the side of her desk. She had knocked her pen over the edge and it had landed on an old newspaper article. Her hand worked without her will and picked the clipping out from the neglected pile. It had such a stupid headline. Seeing it again reminded her of how much she hated it.

CAMP KILLING, SIBLING SLAYER

“Why, Eric?” she asked ?. “It was only one more year. You would have graduated. There would have been some college you could have gone to. You would have gotten away too. Away from the screaming. Away from that dark, empty room. So why?”

“That room really was dark.”

When she heard a voice coming through the phone, she stopped crying. For some reason, she didn’t have any more tears or a runny nose. In three months, ? had just listened and hadn’t said anything. And now, when she heard ?’s voice, she had a hard time believing it.

“And the screaming was really loud,” the other went on. “The darkness, the screaming, how could anyone go through that alone?”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“Would you have gone through that for a year? Alone?”

She gritted her teeth. She couldn’t feel indignant. She couldn’t feel angry. She just felt shame and embarrassment.

“Wouldn’t you have taken the needle rather than go back to that alone?”

Even though they hadn’t been gone long, her tears came back stronger now. She ground her knuckles into one eye and gripped the phone even tighter with her other hand.

“But I…” she started. “I really wanted to…together…”

“Dell, can you forgive a boy who didn’t want to be left alone in that dark room? Can you forgive a boy who would leave his brother alone in that dark room?”

She threw the phone away. It bounced off the wall and clattered against the desk. She didn’t know if that act had ended the call; she couldn’t hear either a voice or a tone. Just silence.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t…but I…”

Just as suddenly as the tears had gone and come back, her eyes were dry now. Her nose was still a little runny and her vision a little blurred, but she was able to look at the ceiling again.

Loud enough for the phone to pick up, if it was even on still, she said,

“I forgive you.”

The person on the other side might have said something, but right then her alarm clock went off. By the time she had turned it off and picked up the phone again, it was turned off. No battery. Still, she held the phone to her lips and repeated herself.

After plugging the phone in again, she opened her contact list. She smiled again at the fact she couldn’t browse the list, because the entries only went: Amanda, Editor, Work.
_________________

No reason. Just Horo.

Look me up. Maybe we can have some fun.

[Kamonichan]

All right, finally, some writing after a long dry spell. Anyway, prepare to be surprised, because I'm actually rescinding my previous statements on the merits of fan fiction in general. Much like the outcome of Vatican II, I will admit to the possibility that not all fan fiction is wrong. Anyway, don't know why I did this one, but huzzah for a BlazBlue fanfic!

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“Poor girl, you were looking for someone to take care of you. How very droll. How absolutely infuriating.”

The young girl, who looked like an expensive doll and acted like a woman much older than she appeared, looked down at Noel with pure contempt. Her companions, whom the girl obviously didn’t respect at all, hung close to her. Looking at them, Noel could tell that despite their position with the girl, they felt they were superior to her.

Reflecting on her situation, Noel knew she really was pathetic at that moment. Lying face-down in the mud, bruised, cut, and battered, her Bolverk lying just inches from her fingers, she didn’t look at all like an officer for the Librarium. She had lost to a young girl. After their battle, Noel knew the girl was stronger than her youthful appearance, but that didn’t help her pride. In fact, it hurt even more, because she had misjudged her opponent and acted based on appearances.

Lifting herself onto all fours, she reached for one of her guns. Now that she’d lost, she had to return to the Kagutsuchi Librarium headquarters and make a report. She had to let them know a powerful and potentially hostile person had entered their jurisdiction. She knew she couldn’t leave her weapon, and the girl must have realized their battle was over.

That assumption shattered when a platform boot pushed her back down into the mud. She grimaced as the boot ground in between her shoulders. Though she couldn’t tell what they were saying, she could hear the two familiars speaking. Even on the ground, in the mud, she could hear their mocking tone, not that she needed to hear it to know what they were doing.

“You pathetic little girl. What on earth makes you think you have any right to possess a Nox Nyctores? You certainly are an insolent little girl. Now I wonder, what would be a suitable punishment for you?”

“Isn’t this enough?” Noel wanted to say, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. She had to retreat for now so she could get reinforcements.

“Someone to take care of you.”

Noel froze as the girl’s earlier insult echoed in her head. Was that really what she wanted? Wasn’t running back for back-up just her search for someone stronger to help her? Wasn’t she an officer of the Librarium? Wasn’t that worth something? Wasn’t she worth something?

She had orders to find the Major and bring him back to headquarters. That was her vital mission, what she had to accomplish by any means, to the extent of using force. Her superiors had trusted her to find him. But before she had come close to finding him, she was lying in the mud while an unknown girl insulted her. Was she really not even worth a simple search-investigation mission?

Though, when she thought about it, the Major didn’t like her. It was impossible that her superiors in the Librarium not to have known, and yet they had sent her on a mission for a man who actively disliked her. In fact, she was certain he outright hated her. She had begun to suspect as much when they first met, on that grassy hill, but as time went on, she was sure he despised her. She had done her best to change his opinion, performing her duties well, helping where she could, and enduring the brutal combat training, but she found ways to mess up her attempts. And at those times, she had always looked to Tsubaki for comfort.

“Someone to take care of you.”

She had relied on Tsubaki just as a friend, didn’t she? Their connection had to be more than her looking to Tsubaki for comfort when her life was almost unbearable. Her relationship with Tsubaki had to be more than that. Tsubaki had an innate caring nature, so she would have done that on her own. But when Noel thought back to that time, that was all she ever did. The Major would berate her and destroy her self-confidence, and Tsubaki would reassure her. They ate and studied together, like friends were supposed to, but Tsubaki always paid for the meals when Noel didn’t have enough money, and Tsubaki always tutored her so she could pass her exams.

And now that she had graduated early, Noel couldn’t go to her friend anymore. She had no one to comfort her. Working for superiors who didn’t respect her, performing her duties without thanks, having her fellow officers and even her subordinates jeer at her silently, through all that, she hadn’t gone to see Tsubaki even once. They had long since stopped writing each other letters.

Noel squeezed her eyes shut at the thought. She had lost her safe haven, and no one had comforted or supported her since she’d left the academy. She’d made it through all her trials on her own. That was an accomplishment, wasn’t it? Didn’t she have the right to be proud about that? She had made it on her own. But she still wanted someone to take care of her.

But was that really so wrong?

Fighting the girl’s pressure, she pushed herself onto all fours again. She could tell the girl was talking, but she couldn’t hear it with the blood pounding in her head, probably from the effort. Using what strength she had left, she threw the girl backwards. A strong wind blew as Noel grabbed Bolverk, and she spotted the girl floating gently to the ground. Even though she was fighting again, Noel didn’t have the strength to bring her guns to bear.

“Ho, what’s this? Do you think you can win against me in your pathetic state?”

“You’ll never defeat the princess,” the black familiar shouted.

“Yeah, just give up!” the pink one joined in.

“Shut up!”

All three were taken by surprise by her outburst, and they fell silent for the first time since she had gone down. She couldn’t even lift her head to face the girl, but she went on anyway, not thinking about what she was saying. The words simply flowed.

“I don’t know why you’re so powerful when you look so young, but I know I’m not a match for you. I don’t have the strength to stand on my own. Not yet.”

Straining lift her head, she looked the girl in the eye.

“But I won’t always need someone to take care of me; someday, I’ll stand on my own. And when I don’t need to be supported, I’ll be the one supporting the people who need it. But I won’t forget or abandon the people who helped me. And I’ll definitely put my power to better use than a bored little girl who only comes out to attack people they’ve never met.”

The girl looked at her with a mixed expression of annoyance and amusement. Her two familiars shifted their eyes nervously from the girl to her. After a few seconds, the girl smiled, turned around, and said,

“That was the resolve I had hoped to find in the first place. I certainly hope you don’t forget it when you need it most.”

With a great gust of wind, a black vortex engulfed the girl and Noel was alone.

She stood fixed in her spot for several minutes before turning around and limping her way to where she thought the Kagutsuchi Librarium branch was. She would become stronger someday to stand on her own, but until then, she would rely on others, just a little.
_________________

No reason. Just Horo.

Look me up. Maybe we can have some fun.

[Kamonichan]

Hmmm. 'Allo again. I guess whatever drove me to write a BlazBlue fanfic also drove me to write a Gurren Lagann fanfic. Crazy stuff, right? It's a respectable size, so I won't post it here. I actually made it to the 12th page. Not a bad accomplishment. Anyway, if you care to read it, you can find it on my DeviantArt page.

Blargh, I need to find a better place to submit writing. People who visit DA prefer to look at pictures rather than prose, and it's a little lonely to see a story I really liked doesn't have many views.
_________________

No reason. Just Horo.

Look me up. Maybe we can have some fun.

[CrouchingMouse]

Damn, Ian, that was amazing. It was definitely easy to notice in the show how left-out Yoko felt, but I never thought about the repercussions it might have on her psyche. In terms of fanfiction at least, I usually prefer character-centric pieces, and I really enjoyed reading this. Excellent work.

Well, there's always fanfiction.net for your fanfic needs. And they also have a sister site for regular fiction called fictionpress.com. Other than those, I don't really know of any good places to post stories online...
_________________
Spit out your Stride gum and chew another piece already.
Or we'll find you.

[Kamonichan]

Not sure what to think about what I was thinking when I wrote this... Ah well.

------

People looked like fish. Alexander, watching the flow of traffic from the roof of his apartment, couldn’t help but think that the people below really did look exactly like fish. They darted in and out of the coral-buildings, walk-swimming and quickly moving their feet-fins. They stayed in their group-schools and tried to avoid running into other people-fish, and never once stopping to look at the city-ocean around them.

Standing on the ledge, Alexander wondered how many on the ground-sea had passed without ever looking up. He’d been watching for the past three hours, completely motionless except for whenever the wind tugged at his clothes. The people-fish might have thought he was just a statue. Of course, standing on a building labeled ART AND SCULPTURE ACADEMY, before a background of actual statues, he couldn’t blame them.

Right now, he was looking for a person amidst the fish, person whose name he didn’t know, whose face he’d never seen, whose voice he’d never heard. Every day, at the morning and evening tide, that person would walk through all the swimming fish. The fish would stand-float and watch that person pass, and they would converse in their pedestrian-fish language about that person as they walked-swam away.

Alexander didn’t know who the person was, or where the person walked every day. The person just walked from right to left in the morning and left to right in the evening, and always exactly in the center of the sidewalk-stream. In summer the person wore a heaving-looking, loose sweater, and in winter a thin-looking, sleeveless shirt.

From five stories up, he couldn’t really tell if the person was male or female, but he felt that the person was definitely a woman. The way the fish gaped, the person couldn’t be anything but a woman. He knew it. Both men and women inspired admiration, fear, or jealousy when they were that noticeable. But a woman, and only a woman, could grip passers-by with complete and total awe.

Those few women, perhaps one in ten thousand, weren’t beautiful by any definition. They weren’t even pretty or attractive in any way. Somehow, they managed to be completely plain, average, invisible to everyone except those who looked specifically for her. But once someone noticed her, that person would never look away.

When Alexander had first seen her, he knew she was that kind of woman, and for the past six years, he had stood on the ledge for three hours in the morning and three in the evening, just to watch her pass. The ledge was stained where his had feet blocked the sun for so long. In those six years, he had somehow become addicted to watching her pass. As she parted the crowd-schools, he would follow her.

But somehow, in the past week, he hadn’t seen her once. The people-fish didn’t stop to stare at anyone, and the three hours were completely empty. In the seven long, void-filled days, he hadn’t eaten anything. He couldn’t rest quietly, and he his skin itched for lack of washing. More than once, pigeons had roosted on his shoulders and head.

Six o’clock, the absolute latest time for her to pass, came and went on this seventh day. Somewhere inside him, he felt a part of himself lurch. In seven days, his addiction had become an obsession. Everyday day he hoped, but every night, he knew. The time he feared had come.

Behind him, an alarm rung. The time was now 6:01pm. The sound waves washed over him, and he felt the tide push on his back. He tilted, leaned, and finally tipped over the side. His body as still as a rock, he fell over the edge and dove past one, two, four stories. He hit the ground-seafloor and felt himself break. Pieces of him scattered across the pavement-sand, and the people-fish swam around the disturbance. Some stopped, but everyone eventually just walked-swam past.

While he stared at the sky, someone actually stopped to look at him. A woman who wasn’t attractive in anyway, who was completely plain gazed at him for a moment. His eyes caught a glint of metal on her fourth finger, a glint that made her stand out and made people look at her. He smiled and said,

“Congratulations.”

She smiled back, said thank you, and disappeared into the crowd.

Picking himself up, he looked after the woman, but she was already gone. He sighed and walked up the steps to the academy. Before opening the door and entering the building again, he couldn’t help but think that the people didn’t look so much like fish from the ground.
_________________

No reason. Just Horo.

Look me up. Maybe we can have some fun.

[Kamonichan]

Wow. I hadn't thought it had been so long since I'd last written something. Haaa... Life, it comes at you fast. Ah well. Here's something, at least. No idea how long it took me to write, but it took a while. Haaa...

------

Standing in her workshop, Andra watched Alex as the latter woman placed drops of water at the corner of a mannequin’s eyes. Alex was ten minutes into the hour-long ritual she did every week and had done every week for the past three years. As she had done every week for three years, Andra watched her friend silently, only her eyes moving to follow Alex through the shop. The younger woman, eyedropper in hand, made every model cry two tears. Thirty seconds for each mannequin, and one hundred and twenty mannequins in the shop added up to one hour.

Once she was finished, Alex dropped the jar out the window. Andra pshted a beer can and passed it to the worker, and the two of them admired the job recently finished. Ten dozen female mannequins stood in place, talking to each other, remembering the past week, sharing fun stories. A hundred and twenty women looked each other in the face, and none of them mentioned that the others were crying. Andra chugged the remainder of her beer and chucked it at the wall. The mannequins didn’t let the noise interrupt their conversations.

Andra caught Alex, squatting on the floor, glancing at her out the corner of her eye. She looked away from her friend’s upward stare and yanked another beer from the now-three pack. Pshting it open, she threw her head back and poured the entire can directly into her stomach. Her hand slammed the can down onto the desk she had propped herself against. The aluminum crumpled flat beneath her palm, and a pillar of dust exploded from the impact point.

Alex stood up and offered her beer. Nodding her thanks, Andra snatched it, dumped it down her throat, and crushed the empty can with her fist. She tossed it at the corner, where it came to rest on three years’ worth of empty cans. The two women stared at the mannequins in silence for a while before they both wordlessly left the building. Alex locked up behind them and they walked down the cold winter streets toward the abandoned church.

They climbed the hill in silence. An occasional wind bit at their exposed skin, but neither of them flinched. Andra caught their image in the broken glass as they passed empty shop windows. Through the cracks she saw her own reflection, wearing a cutoff tank top, complete with a few tears, stains, and ratty jeans. Alex’s reflection wore a v-neck men’s undershirt, work gloves, and baggy khakis. On a street with no people, the two of them stood out from the crowd.

When they reached their destination, the two of them looked at the grand broken doors to the St. J sep s Ca l c Church. Only the first and last word on the sign had survived the fifty years since the city had abandoned its downtown. Alex had told Andra that it was a miracle the doors were still on their hinges. Andra considered it a miracle that no one was crushed when the hinges had fallen off the jam.

Stepping over the cracked wood onto the marble floor, they dipped their fingers in the water basin and crossed themselves on the way to the altar. Their footsteps reverberated off the walls made of stained glass, and they didn’t bother acknowledging the pews’ only occupants: stray cats and an old dog that was missing one leg. They passed the familiar confessionals and climbed the steps to the bare altar after genuflecting at the base.

Alex walked behind carved marble and reached into the hole where the relic used to be. Andra remembered that Fr. Paul had taken the relic of St. Potamiana, a scrap of cloth, when they closed the church for good. That same day, they had officially desecrated the church, making the holy ground profane again. As Alex put it, they made it official that even God had abandoned this place.

Andra waited as her friend pulled out a newspaper clipping and placed it where they could both see. The ink had worn off and the words were illegible. Even the image had faded away. Really, it was just a beaten up piece of paper that no one could decipher, but the two of them could read it plainly. Alex slid it across the altar, and Andra smoothed out the wrinkles before sliding it back.

Clearing her throat, Alex read the article aloud to the congregation. Andra kept her hands folded and head down through the reading, and everyone present said, meowed, or barked “Amen” when the reading ended. They both skipped the Homily, and Andra followed her friend over to the confessionals. Alex entered one booth and Andra the other.

Once inside, Andra knelt, made the sign, and bowed her head toward the screen. She could hear Alex as her friend knelt down on the other side. Staring through the mesh that separated them, Andra could see Alex marveling at how the separation between her and forgiveness had endured for three years. A smile tugged at Alex’s lips, but she wiped it away in a hurry and began.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession.”

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three years since my last confession.

“I said something mean to Tony, stole four dollars and fifty-seven cents from the register at work, and forgot to feed our parrot, Bezelvof.”

I lied.

“Say three Hail Mary’s and an Our Father,” Andra said.

“Yes, Father.”

“Is there anything else you would like to confess?”

“…”

“Be not afraid, my child.”

“Father, the truth is, I _ied.”

“Mmhmm,” Andra nodded. “What made you feel like _ying?”

Another smile started pulling the corners of the mouth past the screen. “I’m not sure. I’m not sure if it was what happened, or how people reacted when I told them. I don’t know why, but I started _ying. They all said I was _ying, and I _ied. I _ied so much, until I wasn’t sure if I was _ying about how I was _ying. It all just blurs together. It’s like they’re the same thing now.”

“Mm.”

“I should go. I need to say my prayers.”

“Go with God, child.”

“Thank you, Father.”

The two of them exited the confessional, genuflected toward where the Tabernacle had once been, and crossed themselves at the basin before exiting into downtown again. They marched down the hill and paused at the entrance to their studio. Alex checked the lock one more time and Andra scanned the empty streets to make sure they really were just that. When they were both satisfied, they continued walking.

“I’ll take the blame,” one half said. She knew the other wasn’t looking at her, but she went on, “You can keep cr_ing until you feel better. I’ll take all the blame for l_ing, so just cr_ for now. Until someone believes you.”

“Until the day we can be Alexandra again,” the other half nodded.

The two halves left the house filled with women crying behind closed doors, and they proceeded down the long road, away from the house that even God had abandoned.
_________________

No reason. Just Horo.

Look me up. Maybe we can have some fun.

[CrouchingMouse]

Always nice to see some new stuff from you, even if I keep forgetting to comment. DX I found it interesting that with the theme of incompleteness, you left out certain letters in certain words. And the beer can sound effects are fun.
_________________
Spit out your Stride gum and chew another piece already.
Or we'll find you.