(oops. I knew I should have had Asha kill the cat :p)
Right after the visit at the veterinarian clinic, Asha sighed in relief. She had thought things over, and the verdict of the veterinarian was definitely the best outcome she could wish for. And so with a slightly heavy heart, she decided to part with the cat. Maybe what happened to the small animal would just happen again soon. And this time, no one would be there for the cat. But Asha couldn't keep the cat, and part of her told her it was for the best. Listening to this feeling, she left the cat in an empty street, wishing it a better life.
And now, there were these girls whose names she didn't even remember, trying to make Tooru do what felt to Asha as a public execution. She couldn't help but wonder, how did it come to this? She didn't like these unbecoming displays that people had to show to tell their lives were "definitely better" than the others.
Truth be told, maybe she was jealous. She thought to herself:
(If someone can happily sing in public without caring about the world, then it certainly means that person is living a better life than my own.)
Pondering all of that in her own little world, she just watched at the scene from the sideline.
(Whoops. Time to google whatever the hell thirteen year old Japanese girls are listening to.
Fake edit: turns out those stats are actually impossible to find, so I'm improvising.)
Tooru, for her part, isn't what one would consider shy. It didn't take a ton of convincing to get her to pick a song and start belting out lyrics; the only real hangup she had was Sasha's. . . interesting attitude.
Asha slips away with the cat just after Sandra starts bugging the other girls about singing, somewhat worried about being selected
herself, and her mind made up about what to do with the animal. She doesn't exactly have much presence to begin with, so the others don't notice her absence, even though it takes Tooru several minutes to decide on a song. Once she does, however,
she wastes no time and begins to belt out the song without hesitation.[Joy]
Her performance is flawless, and both Sandra and Ingrid are visibly taken aback by how well she sings the song; though they can still hear the
actual song echoing out of the phone's small speaker, to them it sounds tinny and empty compared to Tooru's voice, even without her being backed by equivalently high-quality instruments. Tooru notices their amazed gazes immediately, and though she also notices Asha's absence a few seconds later, her elation at impressing the other girls keeps her from worrying about her sullen friend. Her happiness drives her to put even more effort into the song, and she can feel her magic flowing into the sound, empowering it, and changing it; she sings the song as if it were radiantly happy, and somehow the shift in tone only
improves the music, despite the dissonantly dark lyrics.
Asha's already on her way back to the group by the time Tooru starts singing, her voice carrying well. Even from a distance it's captivating, and Asha feels herself start to cheer up and smile despite herself. She quietly rejoins the others shortly just after the first chorus ends, happily listening to Tooru's clearly magical performance--at least until Sandra tugs on her sleeve and gives her a worried look. Asha dodges away from the handsy girl and shoots her an annoyed look, but Sandra doesn't relent, yelling at Tooru to stop singing. Tooru promptly complies, confused and a bit miffed, and Sandra anxiously asks Asha what happened to her cat; Asha, who had already managed to put the cat out of her mind, blithely says that she left it in an alleyway.
Sandra recoils away from the girl, aghast, and starts yelling at her and calling her terrible for abandoning it. She then grabs Ingrid by the arm and drags her in the direction Asha came from, declaring that she's going to find the cat. Tooru, for her part, stands there dumbly, stunned by how quickly things deteriorated. After a few seconds she starts to talk to Asha, trying to apologize for Sandra's rudeness, but the ashen-haired girl just shoots her an angry look and storms away at record speed. Tooru doesn't give chase, instead just sitting down and hoping that one of her friends will calm down and come back.
Eventually, Sandra does return, protectively cradling the cat, which seems much less happy in her arms than it did with Asha. She immediately launches into a tirade about how cruel Asha is, leaving a poor defenseless kitten to
die on the streets, and when Tooru tries to defend her friend, she just gets shouted at herself. Needless to say, the group disperses shortly afterward, everyone going home unhappy.
>Tooru:Only when you arrive back at home, do you remember that your original purpose in going out was to find some way to contact Asha. You pause just before opening the front door, and lightly bang your forehead against it, not quite hard enough to hurt. You had one goal, and managed to forget about it. And instead accidentally got two of your friends to hate each other. You let out a sigh, and shrug to yourself. You'll try and repair things when you meet Asha in school during the week, you've had enough drama for one day. And hey, at least you did learn that your magic apparently makes your singing
awesome. With that positive thought, you go through the front door, and then into the kitchen, hoping there's something sweet you can snatch.
...Neither Asha nor Sandra end up coming back to school on Monday, though that doesn't really surprise you when you think about it. Sandra has a habit of throwing little tantrums and is pretty good at convincing her parents to let her stay home, and Asha seems...
fragile is probably the best way to put it. You're sure Sandra will be fine--she always is--but Asha worries you a bit, since you don't really know her. You want to talk about it with someone, at which point you realize something that
really makes you worried: Violet, your best friend, is
also absent from school.
You text her during math class, and by the end of the class have managed to wheedle a something of an explanation out of her: Apparently she had an accident during volleyball practice last Friday, and got fairly badly injured. She refuses to provide any details, but it sounds like she got hit really bad by someone else who wasn't paying attention. She does make sure to say--repeatedly--that it was completely an accident, apparently predicting that you'd be worried about someone bullying her, but you already know that isn't the case. Instead you're just worried about her injury, which she
also heavily downplays. The way she writes, you'd think her parents are panicking over a papercut, and yet she's apparently being kept out of school for most of the week.
You go to visit her as soon as you can, and are relieved to see that she looks perfectly fine. She's a lot less energetic than usual, but doesn't seem to be in any pain; she says the worst she has to deal with is being confined to her house with nobody except her parents around. She actually
misses school, and doesn't want to be away even for a day. You promise to visit her every day until she gets better, which she immediately says is too much, but she notably cheers up anyway.
You hold true to your promise, visiting her every day up until she returns to class on Thursday. You didn't forget about your other absent friends, but at least for the time being they took second place; both of were are just being immature, while Violet actually got hurt. But now that Violet's back in class, you start to worry more about them. Sandra hasn't responded to any texts, which is very weird for her, especially during her moods, and Asha... well, you just worry about her. You consider going out to search for her again, or maybe go visit Sandra at her house--though that went
terribly last time you visited--but Violet talks you down. She says that they have other people taking care of them, and don't seem to want company from you currently, so the best thing to do is to wait and not stress yourself out. She has a point, you admit.
By the time Saturday rolls around, Asha and Sandra still haven't shown up. Maybe Violet's right about the latter girl, but Asha's different. She's magical, like you, and that means she might have problems those around her can't solve. You're not certain you can help, but she's really starting to worry you, and you don't feel comfortable sitting and waiting any longer.
>Asha:You spend the rest of the day hiding away in your room, sulking about how horrible your day has been, and the other girls, and the cat, probably lost and starving again... you try and focus on how terrible everything
is, determinedly running over the day's few events in your mind repeatedly. Trying to blame how horrible you feel, the nasuea and exhaustion that's creeping into you, on those events.
As you're vomiting into the toilet, you give up. You feel like you're dying, and you figure that's because you might as well be dead. You haven't really been alive the last two weeks, you've been just going day-to-day while trying not to think about anything that could remind you of what happened right before your wish. It occurs to you then, as you waste away in the bathroom, that you hadn't actually wished to live. You only wished to not die, but didn't say anything about suffering. An unpleasant thought.
Over the next few days, your condition steadily worsens, a near constant burning in your head making it impossible to think straight, and a burning in your gut making it unpleasant to even consider eating. It's for the best, you think; this way you don't feel hungry anymore, and eating only gives you something to vomit up anyway. The other girls you share the room with initially offer to find help, but you tell them to stay away from you, and be silent, and they
listen. You know they can't help you. You've been watching your soul gem slowly darken as your body degrades, and you just know that this is all some sort of magical illness, some kind of cosmic punishment for... something. It doesn't really matter in the end, and it hurts to think about it...
You wake up to something small and soft roughly pushing on your cheek, the sensation oddly distant and numb, despite being hard enough to rock your head. You open your eyes to a pitch black room, no light anywhere, except for two golden eyes hovering above your face. Looking down at you with worry. Everything is so sore, except for your head--your head is a mass of burning knives.Alida is going to look after her family, go to school, and try to earn some money. Maybe loading or unloading trucks would be good, since she's stronger than she was before.
Life proceeds fairly normally for you over the next week, without any nightmares, or visits from Pumsy. It takes you a couple days to work up the courage to try any sports again, but when you do return to volleyball you find that it's fairly easy to control your strength. You don't have much free time to go looking for a paying job, between looking afterthe younger kids, and keeping up with school, but eventually you do find something. A mechanic's shop, not too far from your home, which is hiring. It's not lifting, and they apparently want a trained mechanic... but your Dad did teach you a little about mechanics a long time ago, and the hardest part was always the strength stuff anyway. You decide it's worth a shot to ask if they'll hire you, there's no risk.
[Love]
You walk straight into the garage, and look around for someone who looks like a boss. There isn't anyone in a suit or anything, but you do see a rather heavyset man in overalls who's splitting his attention between the engine block of an old white SUV and a laptop set up on a rolling workbench. You walk up to him and ask if he'll hire you.
The man jumps a little when you speak, retreating away from the guts of the vehicle with an annoyed expression. He rubs sweat off his brow with an oily hand while looking down and inspecting you. There's a long pause, before he simply asks "What?"
You reiterate that you want to be hired, and his face tightens up with confusion. After a moment, the confusion fades and stretches out into amusement, which builds until he bursts out laughing, a deep belly laugh that grates on your ears. You pull yourself up in an effort to look a bit taller, and point out that your Dad always said you were really good with mechanical stuff, and that you're much stronger than you look. He just laughs harder, apparently completely unwilling to even
consider you for the job, just because you're young. You scowl at him, and mentally toy with the thought of punching him in his fat gut. You bet he'd take you seriously after that.
His guffaws eventually come to a stop, and he starts talking down to you with a patronizing tone, saying that he wants
men who actually have
experience, and
knowledge. You try to interrupt, saying you're all of that except for the sexist men-only part, but he just continues talking over you, jamming a meaty finger towards you and saying that you couldn't even turn a wrench. Fed up, you grab his thick wrist on reflex,
twisting it and giving it a hard yank out of your personal space, while reiterating with a shout that you're much stronger than you look. You hear, and
feel, a crackling sound, followed by a pop, and then the man bellows in pain and confusion, pulling himself away.
Stunned, you take a few steps back as he turns to flee while clutching his limp arm and yelling at someone named Chris to call the police. You turn around and run out of the shop, panicking about whether you just ruined your life--you've never had cops called on you before, you've never even hurt anyone that bad before, and you're pretty sure violent crimes stick with you forever. Horrible scenarios run through your mind; if there was a camera in there, they'll have your face, and they'll be able to find you, hunt you down. You sprint all the way home, continually worried about police cars coming out of nowhere to chase you down, and then lock yourself in the bedroom you share with two of your sisters once you get there.
...Over the next few days, you never tell anyone what happened, and nothing seems to come of it. There's no armed police squad smashing through the windows and shooting your family members. Not even a lone officer knocking on the door asking about your whereabouts. Given time to reflect, you eventually realize that you overreacted. The mechanics probably didn't have cameras, and nobody would ever believe that a fourteen year old girl broke a man's arm. You still feel horribly guilty over what you did, but now you're able to relax.
Were you planning to do anything else this weekend?Mina took a deep breath. Alright. Calm down. Caaaaalm. Down. Alright, this is... concerning. But... at least she has what will probably be a functional hand and not a weird, sort of pathetic feather-mass. She tries once more to return it to what her right hand once was - focus, what was your right hand actually like? Maybe find some old pictures or something for a reference? It was just... turning one hand into a slightly different hand. Didn't look that different, physically or magically, so it shouldn't be hard, right? It wasn't like it was something hard to replicate.
...She was never a self-y kind of girl, but maybe taking some would be smart. Just in case she can change more than a hand.
It takes you a few minutes to calm down after your mother leaves, and soon afterward you decide to start searching for pictures of yourself, hoping that you'll find record of what your right hand looks like. Barely a minute later you stop, deflating as you realize the absolute futility of that. You've hated having pictures taken of you for a long time, because of your near-constant sickness; seeing at pictures of yourself usually just reminded you of how bad you looked. Your parents might still have some, but asking them directly might not be a good idea--can't exactly tell your mom that you forgot what your hand looks like so you need pictures of it--and even if they do have pictures, you're not sure it would help. Looking down at your hands now, they look full and healthy, notably different from how they did mere days ago, before you made your wish. It occurs to you that your
true form has already been permanently lost to magic.
You involuntarily imagine shapeshifting your body back into sickness, and a shiver runs down your spine. No, a cloned hand is
far better than that.
You spend the rest of the day taking pictures of yourself with your smartphone, trying to capture yourself from every angle you can, and later, in the cuter outfits you have in your (sadly quite limited) wardrobe. It's actually pretty fun, and you find yourself taking pride in your appearance for the first time in... well, for the first time that you can remember. Too soon, you're out of outfits and have taken more than enough selfies for your purposes. You toy with the thought of maybe shapeshifting yourself slightly to maybe take pictures from difficult angles, or maybe try to improve your appearance slightly, but you chicken out, still uncomfortable with your powers. You end up just going back to studying until your mother calls you down for dinner.
The rest of your week ends up being defined by boredom. You consciously know you should be doing a lot of studying, you
want to be ready for school, but it's impossible to concentrate on textbooks. You eventually just give up and decide to play video games, but they just make it worse--you've always liked imagining that you were some hero in a game, fighting evil with cool powers, but
now you actually have cool powers, but just don't have any use for them, or are a little scared of them. Instead of distracting you, everything fun you try to do just makes you unhappy about sitting around and not actually doing anything. You end up spending a lot of time sitting and staring out your window, fantasizing about climbing out and going on adventures.
You never do work up the courage to actually leave, but adventure eventually does show up, in the form of a small pink feline which shows up on your window early Saturday night.Follow Alida. I don't have anything else to do, I think? If she refuses, just go back home with Pumsy.
I guess she will either go back home unless Pumsy wants her to go somewhere else. Maybe chat in the way, like asking what are the various powers girls and witches have.
((Well... that happens, then. Feel free to ask Pumsy anything you like, IC, and he'll answer. Before the actual update, even. Aleksandra is pretty much free to do as she likes, nothing significant is changing over the week, so you have a carte blanche for her to do whatever.))
Sheets and more to come tomorrow.
Author
Topic: Pumsy's Seeds - A ~MAGICAL GIRL~ game inspired by PMMM (Read 149100 times)