1: Fancy Meeting You Here
"Welcome to Coffeebucks. What can I get for you?"
The words were robotic, her face almost dead-eyed as the long shift started getting to her.
"Um…could I get a nonfat iced latte? Oh, and a coffee cake?"
"Sure." Punching in the appropriate buttons and scrawling the appropriate letters on the cup, nearly on automatic, the woman's mind started wandering a bit. She still had two hours left on her shift, and she was already exhausted. Her legs felt like they were trying to reach up through my torso and kill her, and the migraine from this morning was coming back again.
'I think this is what professional runners call the Wall…' she thought to herself.
"That'll be five fifty-two."
He handed her a debit card, which she dutifully swiped. The receipt printed, the money went through, and she made a quick detour to the pastry cabinet to grab the appropriate cake.
"There you go, sir! Have a wonderful day!"
"Th-thanks. You too."
'It will only be wonderful if this entire building gets crushed by a meteor or some shit. Anything to make this shift end.'
The man moved off to the side to get his drink, while the barista looked over the near-empty café. Very few people were here, and those that were simply sat at tables and idly stared at their computers. It was a dead day in every sense of the phrase.
She picked at what semi-short dirty-blonde hair fell into her doe-brown eyes. For reasons she couldn't fathom, her hair had been particularly stubborn about the whole 'looking nice' thing, and it still wasn't cooperating. Probably something to do with the weirdly humid weather that was causing all kinds of other problems in her life.
It struck her that she was being melodramatic.
It also struck her that she had good reasons to be melodramatic.
After all, today was shaping up to be one of Those Days.
Those Days when you bump into every single one of your bitterest exes within an hour of each other. Those Days when you're on your way to a job interview and step in dog shit just outside the building, with just slightly too little time to go home and change. Those Days when everything goes wrong, the world feels like it's slowly ending, and you just want to curl up and—
"Hey, you."
"Bwuh? EEP! Um…h-hey."
Immediately, she could feel traces of heat running to her cheeks. Because here…here was a penultimate specimen of female beauty. A few inches taller than the barista was (though most people were), with long black hair that was tied up in a pony that stretched to her shoulder blades. Piercing blue eyes that glimmered with a kind of tenderness, no matter what the rest of her face looked like. Healthily-tanned skin, with a sparse population of freckles that had settled below the middle of her cheekbones. A small, thin scar that stretched from her right cheek to her adams apple, jumping a smidgeon of space in-between, that she just wanted to kiss and nibble at forever. A simple grey-green longsleeve and jeans, covered by a long black jacket and a pair of black leather boots that the barista desperately wanted to tear from her body because…just…GUH! Beautiful didn't even begin to describe it! She practically radiated glamour and awesome in the kind of way only an angel could!
"How've you been, Annie?" she asked, with a voice smooth as silk and just rough enough around the edges to make her sound like a tomboy.
Annie blushed harder. Again with that nickname. "Annie." Not "Nika", not "Annika", not "Ms. Mara". "Annie". It made her feel like this woman was special enough to get a nickname only she was allowed to use, and it made her feel lighter than you haven't answered the question, Nika, COME ON!
Covering her silence with a quick little cough, she answered, "A-alright. I mean…it's been one of those days, but I'm getting by, y'know?" 'Oh god, you're babbling, quick, hand off the torch!' "W-what about you, Serena? How're you doing?"
Serena chuckled. "Busy. Work's been getting pretty hectic lately, so I've been keeping on my toes a lot."
"Oh yeah. You work at a Delivery Company, right?"
"Right again. Geez, at this point, you know me better than I do."
"Well, it's just that you told me a couple weeks ago."
"O-oh. Right."
"You honestly don't remember that?"
"Must've slipped my mind."
There was a brief moment of silence, in which Annie realized something.
'This is it. You're not gonna get a chance better than this!'
"Speaking of things slipping my mind, maybe I should actually order something."
"Oh! Right, yeah. I take it you want the usual?"
Rather than nodding or saying yes, Serena simply stared at the menu on the wall, face scrunching up in thought in ways that tickled something deep in Annie's gut.
'Come on, come on, come ON! You can do this! You've been practicing for how long now!?'
"Actually, how's the…pumpkin spice latte thing?"
"Oh, that? I haven't tried it, but my friend Linda tells me it's pretty good."
"Mmm. In that case, I think I'll get that instead. Feeling kind of adventurous."
Serena handed over her card, which Annika mechanically took while punching buttons.
'She even said she's feeling adventurous! It doesn't get better than this! Go! GO!'
"S-so…" Annie stammered out, before collecting her words and trying again. "So…my best friend is having her housewarming party on Friday, and we're all gonna get drunk and heckle whatever bad B-movies we can find. Wanna come along?"
"Ha! Sounds awesome! What time is it?"
"Um…6, I think. It'll probably go kinda late."
"Oh. Actually…I think I'll have work then."
"O-oh." Annie did her best to keep the pain of rejection off her face. "How late?"
"Ten."
"Oh."
"Yeah. Some other time, though!"
"Y-yeah." The machine printed out the receipt, and she handed it back along with the card. "Some other time."
"Well, have fun at that party!"
"Thanks."
"Catcha later!"
"You too."
"SHE TURNED ME DOWN!" Flump!
From behind the counter, Don simply turned and quirked an eyebrow at Annika. Upon entering the restaurant, she had immediately cried out those words and flumped onto the counter. The two of them got one or two weird looks, but most people were too busy with their own lives.
"Who did what now?" he asked, once he was close enough.
"That girl! That one girl who I was telling you about and who I wanted to ask out tomorrow but she ended up coming in today so I asked her out anyway and she turned me down!"
"…Serena, right?"
"Mmm."
"Ouch. I'm sorry, Nika."
Annika groaned, moving her head and arms so that they rested a little more comfortably. "Why does this kind of thing always end up happening?"
Don just chuckled as he prepared a plate of sushi. "I wouldn't say always…"
"I guess you're right. Still, it's frustrating."
"Well…" he placed the finished plate in front of her before moving on to another. "…honestly, I think you're taking this a little too hard." When she moved to glare at him, he cut her off, "By which I mean this: we both know you're the kind of person who gets obsessive when it comes to romance. Hell, it's part of your charm. But it also means that you never realize how times like these aren't the end of the world. Yeah, it hurts, but life will go on, and the sooner you realize that, the better it'll be for everyone. Okay?"
Annika simply mulled those words over, before reaching out, grabbing a piece of sushi from the plate, and popping it into her mouth. While she registered the taste, she also didn't care enough to notice it. Which was a shame, because Don made some damn good sushi.
"Still sucks, though," she finally muttered.
"Yeah, love tends to do that. But it'll work out."
"Work out like you and Cerise?"
"Exactly."
Annika narrowed her eyes at him, before finally letting out a long sigh.
"I just felt like she was the one, y'know? And then the minute I ask, she throws out some excuse and bails? Auuuugh! Why can't I ever have nice things!?"
"What were her words, exactly?"
"That she had work until ten, and we'd save it for some other time."
"Then she's busy, and you'll see her again. Geez, and here I was thinking she'd actually said no."
"But she did say no! Come on, Don, when a girl says, 'maybe some other time,' it means no!"
"Unless that girl has a legitimate excuse out of her control, otherwise known as work. Just watch, come Wednesday, she'll be right there at her normal time." And with that, he set her usual drink before her and went back to making his sushi.
Nika just sighed again, taking a sip of the offered green tea.
The week had passed with no sign of Serena.
Even though she normally came in at 10 on Wednesdays and Fridays, she had simply vanished.
'Did I scare her off? Has she gone running to a different coffee shop or something? What if she never comes back?'
Nika took a deep breath and forced herself to let it out slowly. Despite her heart's best attempts to make it go otherwise, the week had gotten better as Don predicted it would. There was no point in diving back into heartbreak land now that things were looking up.
That said, it was a little telling that Serena would suddenly disappear once Nika'd finally asked her out. If it'd been a legitimate work thing, she'd have come in anyways. Her only reason to not drop by Coffeebucks was Nika herself, which…yeah, that was pretty telling.
Nika shook her head again. Then sighed and stretched at the crosswalk.
One way or another, it was over and done with.
"Guess there really is no point in worrying, is there?"
So she stuck her hands back in her coat pockets to escape the early-December chill, and resumed her walk home from the party.
To say that housewarming party had been unexpectedly short was like saying driving through downtown during rush hour causes slight delays. Everyone there had fully expected the party to last well into the night, maybe even turn into a sleepover. But then, drinks flowed a little too quickly, Brie passed out, and Cerise and Don decided to break in the new apartment by seeing just how much sex they could get away with without actually calling it sex. It certainly made things awkward enough (particularly for Nika), so most people left after that, and no one wanted to keep the party going when both the venue and the hosts were elsewhere.
Which left Nika walking the long way back home, barely even buzzed and definitely not thinking about what she would have done if Serena had been there too.
She paused as she walked by a Burnin' Bagels.
...…she was kinda peckish. The party had been more about booze and less about sustenance.
After only a few more seconds of indecision, Nika crossed the street and dropped in. After ordering a simple spinach/egg/cheese/ham sandwich, she stood off to the side and idly waited for her bagel.
Until something across the street caught her eye.
It took a few seconds for her to get a good look at it. But when she did, her heart nearly skipped a beat.
Serena.
Wearing her usual outfit, holding something shiny in one hand and idly glancing around as she walked.
Nika couldn't keep her gut from twisting in frustration. Didn't she have work!? Y'know, the kind of thing where people wear uniforms and drive around in special trucks lugging cardboard boxes and generally not doing what Serena was doing right now!?
So that whole thing with her being busy was some kind of sham? Just to get out of going on a date? Seriously, what the hell!?
As Serena started vanishing from view down the road, Nika shot a quick glance at her bagel.
Still cooking.
…if she didn't leave now, she'd lose her. Maybe never find out what the hell was going on.
…
"God damn it," she muttered under her breath, and power-walked out. She thought she'd heard someone say something behind her, but she made sure that she didn't hear them.
She kept tailing her, making sure she stayed just far enough back to look inconspicuous. From what she could tell, Serena simply walked along, taking turns at random and occasionally stopping to consult whatever shiny thing she was holding in her hand. It also looked like she was talking to someone, but Nika couldn't see who.
Wait a minute…she was on the phone!
So who was she talking to? What was in her other hand? And why were the two of them suddenly in a less-friendly part of town, which was sparsely populated at best?
Seeming to notice their change in surroundings, Serena glanced around one last time before closing her phone and slipping it into her pocket.
'Huh?'
Taking another glance at the shiny…whatever…in her hand, Serena turned down a nearby alleyway. Figuring it was more or less safe, Annika started getting a little closer in her tailing efforts. Within earshot, at least.
"How can it not be around here? Just take a damn feel!"
'Ooookay…'
After a couple seconds where she looked like she was listening to a particularly startling monologue, she finally just muttered, "Well, whatever the case is, it's nearby."
Another pause.
"Because I can, okay!? I can smell it."
There was another brief pause, before she snapped at nothing, "Stop with the logic, dammit!"
Serena continued walking in relative silence, resorting to her old pattern of walking for a bit, then checking the shiny thing (which Nika could now see was shaped like an egg, only slightly smaller) before continuing onward.
And with every step she took, Annika simply got more and more confused. For starters, why was she talking to herself like that? It was getting more than a little creepy. And most importantly, what was she looking for in this part of town, and what'd it have to do with that shiny blue egg thing?
It was weird. At first, she'd just wanted to know why Serena'd lied about having work. But now, Annika desperately wanted to know just what the hell her friend was involved in.
Well...friend…acquaintance may have been more accurate.
After another minute of walking, Serena finally stopped in front of a large, abandoned warehouse-looking building. She took another glance at the shiny egg-thing, then back at the building, before closing her hands together.
"Alright, I guess this is it."
Then she glanced back around, and Annika was forced to hide briefly behind the corner of a building. And after waiting a couple seconds, there was a weird sound, like a hundred phonebooks getting ripped all at once.
And when she glanced back around the corner, all she got were more questions.
Because sitting right there, just inside the abandoned warehouse, was a bright white portal-looking thing. Shimmering light and color spilling out and twirling and twisting inside it like a piece of abstract art. And Serena was nowhere to be found.
Nika glanced around a few more times, before finally tiptoeing closer to the weird portal thing. Only to realize that it was closing. Once again, if she delayed, she'd never find out whatever the hell was going on.
So she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sprinted through.
There was a brief, yet powerful, tingling throughout her entire body, accompanied by a weird pulsating hum. But it was over as soon as it began, and when Nika opened her eyes again, what she saw was a whole new kind of hell.
Everything around her looked subtly off, like it was made of paper cutouts without ever slimming down to two dimensions. The whole world was made of narrow corridors, a veritable labyrinth of towering shoddy buildings, rusty fire escapes, and boarded-up windows. The sky wasn't even present, with the buildings just fading into smog a few dozen meters above her. And even worse, despite the fact that every building was clearly abandoned, she could see shadowy figures flitting around in the buildings and through the foggy skies.
And Serena herself had all but vanished.
She turned around, looking for the portal, but the corridor simply continued on behind her.
"Serena…where the hell have you gone?"
She began walking, searching desperately for any sign of her wayward friend (acquaintance, really). Once she came to her first intersection, though, she realized fairly quickly that she'd run into a small problem. Namely, navigating this place was damn near impossible.
"Well, the rule to mazes is always go left, right?"
The world didn't really respond, in any other form than distant snickering and snarling.
Suddenly, she felt the faint sense of someone breathing on the back of her neck. Nika frantically jumped and spun on one heel, eyes scouring the area behind her. But...no. Nothing there. Just the faint wisps of robed figures always just out of sight.
Backing away as much as she could while still working her hardest to look in every direction at once, she turned to the left and began sprinting.
This wasn't her sprints to catch the bus, or even the paced-out nature of the Mile way back in high school. This was Annika Mara's honest-to-god sprint for her life.
Which was only made worse by the fact that the robed figures, getting closer while still staying hidden in the shadows, were easily keeping pace with her.
Her gaze darted to one who'd gotten pretty close, and she finally got her first good look at her pursuers.
It was vaguely humanoid, if taller than anyone she'd met, and clad entirely in an androgynous white robe. Its skin was the pale grey of really old corpses, its body long and lanky. Its face seemed normal in shape, but where its eyes should've been, there was only multicolored static surrounding that part of its face like a goddamn cloud of fog.
Nika's eyes took all this information in, but her brain only noticed three key facts.
1) This thing was NOT human.
2) There were at least two dozen more of these chasing her, laughing and giggling as they did like this was some kind of game.
3) This particular zombie-robed abomination was staring at her with a predatory grin on its face.
It squealed in a voice that she couldn't pin any kind of gender or age or anything to, turning through a blown-out storefront window to dive straight for her head. Long, taloned arms appeared from under its robe, reaching out to grab her, and she nearly let herself get caught just by being paralyzed with terror.
She ducked under the attack, letting it sail overhead as she stumbled slightly and nearly lost her footing.
Another corner! She turned down it, nearly crashing into the far wall before getting her footing back and picking up the pace again.
There! At the end of this (really long) alleyway! There was a door! It looked fairly unassuming, but she didn't give a damn. It was something she could hide behind! That's what mattered!
Her legs started to give out, and she could hear the giggles from almost right behind her.
"Come on! Just...just a little...!"
Her lungs were starting to give out, as if trying to punish her for working them so hard.
Her legs were cramping, making her stagger and stumble every other step.
But that didn't matter! She was so...so close!
Then, with one final giggle, the robed flying creeps vanished. Turned tail and scattered in all directions. She was left with precisely two seconds to gauge the meaning of that when the door slammed open.
It rushed up toward her, sweeping her through it despite her never moving at all. She was greeted by another identical door, rushing up to her and slamming open before sweeping her through it.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And when the final door greeted her, she met the strangest, most terrifying sight she'd ever seen.
The whole room was covered in a layer of grime and dirt and spray paint, so much so that the tiny patches of brickwork peeking through seemed more like the covering than the substance. The concrete flooring was cracked and pitted with toxin-filled potholes. Discarded bottles, empty syringes, scraps of paper, cigarette butts, and other assorted trash seeped from every crevice, littering the ground like a second floor. Rusty old chains were draped across the walls, broken balconies, and across the plaza-like space like some kind of spiderweb. And sitting in the middle of this spiderweb was, of course, the spider.
It was huge, easily five meters across, made from grimy rusted metal. Rather than palps, it had two scorpion-like claws, both wide open and eager. And rather than the typical spider head, it had another one of those grinning eyeless faces (though the static was weirdly asymmetrical, sliding down the left side of its face towards its mouth and dear god why am I noticing this!?). Just being around this thing made her want to curl up in a ball and cry, as well as run for the hills screaming her head off.
The two conflicting emotions battled in her head for a second or two, before she finally settled on "Get the fuck out of here".
Her hand slipped behind her, patting at the wall to look for the doorknob, only to land on a particularly slimy patch of grime.
It grinned wider, crawling towards her with the sound of creaking metal, claws snapping with a sound like gunshots as it seemingly reveled in her terror.
She finally took her eyes off it, turning to search for the door only to find...
...nothing.
"But..." the words fell from her mouth as fast as her hope did. "...but I just...but where...?"
She turned back to it, only to realize it was close enough to spit on. It was grinning in earnest now, revealing pointed teeth inside jaws big enough to fit her head.
Annika wanted to scream.
Wanted to turn and run.
Wanted to do anything other than stand there like a useless lump about to die.
But...where could she run to?
Where could she go?
Part of her knew that, no matter where she ran, she'd just end up flowing here.
All the trash of the world flowed here.
Yeah...that's all she was, really.
Trash.
Just floating along behind her friends for whatever selfish reason she wanted, never actually considering how much she was screwing things up for them.
'I guess...this is a fitting punishment...'
The fear began to ebb out of her as the spider-thing opened its mouth, replaced by a numbing realization.
She would die here.
And for what?
For nothing.
CLANG!
Like a lightning bolt, a long silver halberd came streaking in from nowhere, tearing right through the monster's face and planting itself between the spider and Nika.
The spider simply screamed, staggering backwards, glaring evilly at the windows ringing the "plaza" (at least, that's what she assumed it was doing. It was hard to tell without it having eyes). The robed figures that had clustered around the room were now charging into the windows, screeching in anger.
Only for some across the plaza from Annika to suddenly vaporize into clouds of black smoke.
The halberd in front of her vanished in a flourish of navy-blue light, whereupon Annika finally caught sight of her.
Serena.
Wearing the strangest outfit she'd ever seen: some kind of half-coat over a frilly dress, with a wrist-piece on her right arm that had some six-pointed-star blue gem set into it.
Leaping from a window with another identical halberd raised like a spear.
Then the halberd flashed blue, and grew until it definitely looked like a spear. Whereupon she threw it down at the spider that was now turning to her.
With a streak of blue and a sound like thunder, the spear-berd shot out of her hand and skewered through the spider, severing one of its legs. Its scream reverberated through the room, leaving Nika clutching her head in pain while Serena jumped over to her.
"Nika! Nika, you okay!?"
"I...just...WHAT!? You, and...and that thing, and...!"
"Yeah, you're fine. Just stay here!" Another halberd formed in her hand, which she slammed into the ground. Hundreds of long cords sprouted out of it, forming a protective bubble around Annika.
Serena, apparently satisfied with her work, turned back to the giant junk-spider, yet another halberd forming in her outstretched hand (how many of those did she have!?). The spider rounded on her and charged, but Serena jumped up out of the way just in time, slashing at it again and again to drive it away from the bubble.
"What the fuck is going on!?" Nika found herself shouting.
"Simple. She's a Magical Girl, battling a Nightmare."
The voice had come from right next to her, and at her feet. But when she looked down, all she could see was a little white cat thing with two hand-looking appendages hanging from its ears and a little red teardrop on its back.
"Did you just...talk!?"
"You could certainly call it that, yes."
"A stuffed cat is talking to me..."
"That's rude. I'm not a stuffed cat. I'm Kyubey."
She was about to ask what the ever-loving fuck was going on, when an explosive rattling noise dragged her attention out of the blue bubble. Rusty chains had shot out from every window ringing the building, wrapping around Serena with incredible speed. The spider was huddled off in the opposite corner of the room, several long halberds sticking out of its hide.
"Serena!" she shouted, as the spider began to charge now that its prey was trapped.
Or...was trapped.
Because only a split-second latter, the chains that had wrapped around her shattered, leaving her very much mobile with the spider now in close range.
Another halberd flashed into existence, which Serena proceeded to ram right into the static field that marked its eyes.
That thing screamed, letting out a noise not even the truly tortured could pull off.
All the while, a smiling Serena calmly hovered in front of it and snapped her fingers.
Immediately, silver bolts shout out from the bottom of every halberd lodged into the spider, connected by those same iridescent blue ribbons that made up the bubble of safety. They lodged into the walls, then the cords tightened, dragging the spider off the web and into the air.
With nothing to grab onto, it angrily flailed and tried to shake itself loose, even swinging a few legs in Serena's direction.
But Serena wasn't there anymore. She was just at the base of the smog above them, halberd formed into more of a scythe as it cut through a dozen robed figures (most of the rest of them were fleeing like mad).
At the peak of her jump, her scythe-berd flashed blue and morphed into a spear-berd, which she threw down into the spider.
Kra-THOOM!
Shot by a streak of blue, the spider-thing (hadn't that cat called it a Nightmare?) split in half, then exploded into a cloud of black smoke with one final screech.
And to put the cherry on top of the whole thing, Serena stuck the landing, arms outstretched like a true acrobat.
After only a couple seconds to breathe, the bubble of safety popped and vanished, as the world around them started to twist and bend, before finally fading away and revealing nothing more than the inside of an abandoned warehouse, littered with little black cubes.
Serena's weird outfit flashed blue and vanished, revealing same old (hot as hell) Serena, standing back up to gather the black cubes.
"Well done, Serena," Said the little white cat as it trotted up to her, with a voice that had something off about it she couldn't place. "For a moment, I wasn't sure you could handle a Nightmare that large by yourself."
"Yeah, but I burned way too much magic with that bind and that barrier. Rookie mistake."
"Given the circumstances, a few mistakes are to be expected."
"Expected, but not tolerated." Having gathered up the various black cubes off the ground, Serena stuffed them into her jacket pocket and turned to Nika. "You okay, Annie? You hurt?"
"N-no...no, I'm f-fine..."
"Great. In that case..." Serena marched up to her and grabbed her by the collar, hauling her into the air as her face twisted into pure fury. "WHAT the HELL were you THINKING!? You see a portal to a potentially-lethal Labyrinth, and your first reaction is to JUMP RIGHT IN!? If Kyubey hadn't noticed, or I'd been a few seconds late, you would be DEAD!"
"I'm sorry! I didn't know!"
She looked like she wanted to shout some more, but finally just relented with a long sigh. "Just promise me you won't deal with stuff like that without sticking close to me, okay?"
"Okay, I promise."
"Good. I'm glad you're safe. Just don't scare me like that again."
Serena let Annika go, standing back up to fix her hair and outfit, which had gotten frazzled by her outburst (and presumably, the giant battle not even a minute ago).
"All in all, I'd say a job well done, Serena. And it's very nice to meet you, Ms. Mara."
The cat was placidly smiling at her as he(?) said it, but it was because of that that she finally placed what was wrong with his voice.
She wasn't hearing it with her ears.
She was hearing it inside her head.
"...what?"
