Three days later, I was cursing James's name as I crawled through some sort of sewer system between the fallout shelter and my former school's boiler room. If all had gone according to plan, my dear accomplice had located Elizabeth earlier and instructed her to meet me here around this time.

Coughing as I hauled myself up onto the soot-covered floor, I shed my vest and wiped my face with it in a futile attempt to remove some of the grime that had accumulated there. (I'd rather die than know its composition.)

"You look like you just crawled up from hell."

The sugar in her voice sent a wave of nausea over me so potent I swayed once before rounding on her. "Yes...your dignity sends its regards."

She grit her teeth. "What do you want from me?"

Ah, so we were skipping the unpleasantries. Thank the stars above.

"Information. Nothing more." I narrowed my eyes at her, but sadly, my intimidation tactics were never quite as successful on Elizabeth as they were on others. "How could someone so brainless rig up such an elaborate scheme to get me expelled, not to mention a contraption to accompany it?"

Her smirk was carcinogenic. "Maybe I'm not as brainless as you think."

"Please." I rolled my eyes as dramatically as physically possible. "I didn't come here to have my time wasted. Save your jokes for clown school."

She opened her lip-glossed mouth to spit out a fiery retort, but then appeared to change her mind. Strange. Why was she so hesitant?

I knew better than anyone that it took more than that to shut her up.

Suddenly suspicious, I crossed my arms. "Well? Out with it. I crawled through a sewer for this."

"Why should I tell you anything, anyways?" she sneered. Much to my confoundment, I detected that the venom in her voice was, at least in part, forced.

She's...acting?

I stared at her. "Are you possessed? We hate each other, remember?"

Her eyes became nasty, poop-colored slits. "Oh, I remember, alright. Why do you think I'm doing this?"

"Doing what?" I stepped forward, my eyes searching her out of apprehension. "Being obnoxiously cryptic?"

More hesitation. It was starting to freak me out a little, the way it would if you walked outside one morning to find that the sky glowed crimson rather than blue. As surely as the sun rose every morning, Elizabeth despised me with every fiber of her being. This staged animosity was unnatural in every sense of the word.

"Are you alright?" It was a question not of concern, but of befuddlement. She had become a pesky little mystery, chipping away at the edge of my mind until solved.

How poetic. Even now, she managed to aggravate me.

"More alright than you'll be when she gets ahold of you," she mumbled under her breath, so quiet in the shadow of the boiler's roar that if not for my superhuman hearing, I would have surely missed it.

But I didn't.

"When who gets ahold of me?" I demanded. The plot thickens.

"No one!" she squeaked, her eyes expanding to twice their typical size. As she regained her composure-I'd caught her off guard-that bizarre, rehearsed smugness settled back over her mien like a sheet over a deathbed. "No one. It's just you and me, face to face for the last time."

"What is your damage!?" I exclaimed in bewilderment, throwing my arms into the air. "I came here to antagonize you, to demand answers. You think you can maybe, I don't know. Focus long enough to respond to that?"

"My damage is this," the auburn hissed, edging towards me. The closer she got, the more the hatred burning in her eyes looked real. "I'm gonna get rid of you, and you're gonna get what you deserve. Finally." She was close enough I could feel the heat of her cafeteria-pizza-twinged breath when she halted. "And all I have to do is make you mad."

Uhh…

Well, it's official. One of us has lost it. Because if she's speaking coherently right now, I'm missing it.

Before the question bubbling in my throat could reach my mouth, Elizabeth did perhaps the most foolish thing she had done in her life. In a flash, she snatched the chain around my neck which held my crystal and propelled it into the incinerator.

A switch flipped inside me.

The next events are a blurred memory that has come back to me in shattered pieces over time. I remember her screaming, the sheer and utter terror in her eyes when my wings ripped through my shirt. She just kept gaping at them in some mixture of disbelief and horror, as if her pea brain couldn't begin to comprehend what was happening, but her primal instincts knew.

Vaguely, I recall holding her in the air by her throat, though I fail to remember picking her up. I remember her feet skidding against the floor in protest. I remember her fingers desperately gripping the scorching, rusty iron of the furnace's maw, clinging to the threshold between life and death.

I remember them going limp as I slammed her head into the top of the incinerator and prepared to shove her in.

...

...

When next my bleary eyes blinked open, they locked onto none other than James. He was covered in the same sewer muck as I, making that trademark horrified expression that I'd grown so acquainted with.

With a groan, I set about attempting to recall what I'd done to elicit it this time.

"Alida?" he nearly whispered, as if afraid I would bite. "Are you...there?"

I cocked my head, grumpy as I always am when I'm coaxed from sleep into the waking world. "I sure hope so."

He deflated immediately, his entire body sagging in relief. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, jarring me back to reality. "James? What's wrong?"

He rubbed his eyes with trembling hands. "Bloody hell. I think I'm gonna throw up."

Another mystery nagging at the edge of my consciousness. What was I missing? Last thing I knew, Elizabeth was being vaguely threatening and I was trying to figure out what she was talking about. And then, a blank.

I really have to deal with a frustrating amount of those, in case you haven't noticed.

"You're...done, aren't you?"

I squinted at him. "Done with what?"

Ignoring my query, he gingerly poked my stomach. "Your, uh, coloration seems to have returned to normal…"

Peering downwards, I realized I was without shirt and immediately screeched, kicking him off of me.

His eyes widened like he was having war flashbacks. "CALM DOWN! Please calm down, stars above-"

"What the hell are you doing!" I shrieked, wrapping my arms around myself as if it would actually help. "What happened to my shirt? James, I swear on Majora's mask, if you think you can take advantage of me while I'm unconscious, I will drop kick you so violently your grandchildren will come out screaming in agony!"

He visibly relaxed for a second time. I'd never seen him so drained. "I think you know me a little better than that," he snorted, some of the James I was used to leaking back into his mannerisms. Something must have actually scared him out of his wits to get him like this. "You're the one who ripped your shirt off. The only thing I did was follow you."

"Follow me?"

"Well, and knock you out." He faltered, as if remembering something. "And carry you."

"Kn-excuse me!?"

Lowering himself down to the edge of my bed, James released a sigh deep enough to rival Mariana's Trench. "Why don't we start with this: tell me what you remember."

...

...