Author's Note: We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for zombies.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
…Left 4 Dead. In a Middle School.
(Part the first?)
i.
There were many things a girl could mention while waiting for the end of the world.
"I'm going to die hungry," Kyouko announced mournfully. "That is so not fair."
Holed up on the school rooftop and waiting for death by zombie, Mami didn't think it was the time to be thinking about food (a panic attack seemed somewhat more appropriate) but her stomach growled in sympathy anyway. Stupid diet. She clutched the baseball bat in her hands more tightly.
It was dripping blood.
Oh look: her appetite was gone.
"Quiet," Homura whispered, cradling her golf club her firstborn child. No one was entirely certain where she had gotten it. "They can detect sound."
Kyouko looked like she would talk back but Sayaka grabbed the other girl's shoulder and shook her head. Annoying as it was, the four-eyes was right.
Personally, Mami was slightly concerned that Akemi had some sort of split personality disorder. The Homura she recalled was rather… low-key. Wallflower.
This Homura could probably pass as a member of the SDF.
Still, all that meant was that they were the last five survivors of a two thousand plus school population, waiting on the roof for a slow, inevitable death armed with various pieces of sports equipment. Either the zombies wouldn't find them and they'd dehydrate or the zombies would find them and they'd be… well, eaten.
Madoka piped up, a strained cheerfulness that actually came across as heartening rather than profoundly creepy. What was creepy was how good she was with the emergency axe that was supposed to be used in case of fire.
"We need a plan."
ii.
"Okay, so none of us know how to hotwire a car, drive, how to cure the disease or how to use a gun," Kyouko summarized. The redhead frowned and steepled her fingers contemplatively. Slowly, and with great solemnity: "I think we're screwed. I say we all have wild monkey sex so you guys don't die virgins. Rooftop isn't that comfortable but Sayaka is great with her-"
The girl who was great with something-or-another let out a strangled cough and threw herself at the redhead, clapping a hand on her mouth. "Kyouko's suffering from um, shock. Traumatic shock. Very traumatic shock." Nervous, and very fake laughter ensued. She gave them all a pleading expression. "Ignore her. Please?"
"MMmf-mmmf-"
Mami (who was not interested in the proposal at all. Really.) coughed. With some reluctance she admitted: "I can… well, I can kind of use a gun. I guess."
The other four girls stared at her.
Fiddling with the hem of her skirt: "I, um, have you ever heard of LARPing?"
More blank stares.
Oh god. This was so embarrassing. "It's like, well, like medieval re-enactment type stuff but my group was set in the age of Exploration and..." Hurrying through most of the relevant details: "I can load a flintlock musket in seventeen seconds! And I'm a pretty good shot."
Kyouko was clearly trying to say something, but it was Madoka who said, excitedly: "You can use a gun?"
Homura, who was staring at zombies that were dragging themselves towards the baseball diamond nodded decisively. "Good enough. Teach us when we're out. I know where to find more."
"When we're out?" Sayaka hissed. "How are you planning that miracle?"
Kyouko managed to squirm herself out of Sayaka's grip. Grinned. "I have an awesome idea."
iii.
Mitakihara Middle School was gigantic and mostly made of glass. Well, technically it was diamonoid but no one called it that. What was important though, was that zombies couldn't scale the walls to get to the roof but on the other hand, neither could they. The only way in and out was the main stairwell. The five of them had gotten there mostly undetected but getting out again would be…
Well, even in the best-case scenarios it was pretty much a suicide mission.
Which was probably why Kyouko's master plan to get them out in one piece involved getting all the zombies out of the building first. This involved a great deal of vandalism.
Typical.
"I'm not sure it's working," Sayaka noted as she tossed down another piece of masonry, aiming in the general direction of the parking lot. Alarms blared and although a scattering of zombies had been attracted by the noise, it seemed like a great deal of them weren't actually from the school itself but rather from the outside.
"Oh ye of little faith," Kyouko grunted, trying to lug one of the stone statuettes off its mooring. "It's working. These guys move in packs. We lure a few and then… boom. They do the job for us."
Madoka grabbed one of the tiles they had managed to jimmy from the ground and tossed it. Against all odds, it actually slammed into the back of one of the zombie's heads and it fell.
"Nice," Kyouko congratulated holding out a fist. Madoka bumped hers into the redhead's and they both grinned at each other.
Homura and Mami both frowned simultaneously in a way that totally was not indicative of jealousy.
iv.
All of them were bleeding. Cuts, scrapes, gashes, bites…
Mami tried not to think about zombie movies. Zombie movies meant that they were all going to die within a few days if not hours.
On the other hand…
"I can't believe that actually worked," Sayaka huffed, as they made their way from the school. She was using her baseball bat as if it were a cane but managed to limp along quickly enough.
"What did I say?" Kyouko crowed, equally battered. The bite mark along her collarbone didn't look good. "I'm a genius. Admit it."
"You stopped for snacks," Mami reminded the redhead. Her pockets were still stuffed with dairy products. She would have rather had been holding onto the peanut butter that Kyouko was stuffing her face with but there you had it. Girl with the plan reaped the rewards of having the plan.
"Hey it's food," Kyouko pointed out sagely, mouth thick with sticky, peanut goodness. "During the end of the world, food and water are going to be-"
"We were lucky," Homura said tonelessly, voice sharp like a whip. "And we are going to all die if you three don't stop talking." Her golf club gleamed menacingly although her hands looked like hamburger.
There was a moment of silence as everyone remembered who exactly had taken out nearly a half-dozen zombies with nothing more than a glorified piece of scrap iron when things had gotten… hairy. And lifted the manhole cover with manic strength that she shouldn't have possessed and was now injured because of it.
Madoka patted Homura on the back and made a zipping motion with her fingers to everyone else.
Behind them, a combination of the school's fire alarm and car parking lot, signalled every zombie in a kilometer radius while they trooped through Japan's spacious and (hopefully for now) unoccupied sewers.
v.
They spent maybe two, maybe three hours wandering beneath the earth before they first heard it.
"Someone's… crying," Madoka whispered. The sound of running water, their own tottering footsteps – all of it seemed to fade away at the sound of those sobs.
Being the least injured, Mami got out her baseball bat and tried to peer into the flickering light. "I'll go."
Homura was already hissing: "Don't!" when Mami trudged into the looming darkness.
vi.
Wandering the sewers on one's lonesome - even if they were Japan's sewers and probably one of the more inviting sewage systems in the world – wasn't exactly the most reassuring experience ever. Having a zombie apocalypse just added to the general feeling of anxiety. The light here flickered.
Something wrong with the power grid? Possible.
The sobs and whimpers were getting louder. Mami almost sighed in relief when she turned a corner and spotted the kid curled up in a ball, face clutched in dark hands. She was wearing a hospital gown. Someone else had survived. Oh thank god.
Mami put her bat down. "Hey – are you alright?"
No response except for more whimpers.
"Hey, it's okay," she said, searching through her pockets. Finding the food she'd foraged from the school's kitchens, Mami held it out. "Here, I hope you're not allergic to-"
The kid looked up.
Her eyes glowed.
Mami stumbled backwards, yell muffled by shock as she noticed the hands that tapered off in vicious looking claws, and the teeth that – oh god, those teeth. The girl – obviously not normal - growled, a low, feral noise. The blonde gulped and stumbled backwards, snacks tumbling to the ground as she jerkily reached for her baseball bat.
The girl in the hospital gown screamed.
Mami shrieked and swung blindly.
Claws met wood.
Wood gave way.
A moment later, Mami hit the ground as the creature pounced, claws wrapping around her neck so tight that she couldn't breathe let alone make a sound. They dug into her flesh and Mami had the fleeting thought that at least she wouldn't have to worry about becoming a zombie –
After a heartbeat, Mami noticed she wasn't dead and was justifiably confused. She cracked open a tentative eye.
The super-zombie-thing had raised its head and was sniffing the air. Glowing eyes peered away before blinking several times. It crawled off of her and began pawing at the ground. Mami clapped hands onto her neck, staunching the blood flow as she scooted backwards.
She tried to leave but the zombie growled at her and she froze, swallowing thickly.
The girl-creature went back to clawing at the ground, long clumsy fingers picking at the cement and hunting for the fallen...
Cheese.
vi.
"We're going after her," Sayaka hissed.
Homura continued to bar the way. "No."
Sayaka tried to shove her way past but Kyouko, looking apologetic put a hand on the teal-haired girl's shoulder. "Mami can take care of herself-"
Mami's scream echoed down the sewer system and the redhead winced.
"…then again, maybe not," Kyouko admitted, shoving Homura out of the way herself as she charged into the gloom, Sayaka hot on her footsteps. Madoka helped Homura to her tottering feet.
"Homura, we need to at least try," Madoka pointed out gently.
"…if they cannot listen to orders, we will all die," Homura grimaced. Her eyes were pleading. "Madoka-"
Madoka stroked Homura' hair before kissing her on the forehead. "Don't worry. We'll all make it. I promise."
Then she picked up her axe and smiled impishly. "Shall we?"
vii.
Kyouko and Sayaka running about in the half-dark were fairly noisy.
Mami thus had a lot of time to prepare a very elaborate, very intelligent warning for them while she was pinned by the creepy, zombie child's surprisingly attentive and numerous glares.
"Ow!"
"Why'd you stop?"
"Something hit me!"
"Guys!" Mami hissed, now minus one shoe which she had somehow managed to bounce around the corner of the tunnel so that it smacked into a charging Kyouko. "Stay back!"
"What?" Sayaka asked loudly.
The littlest cancer patient with mutated hands and teeth fit for tearing through raw meat was making low, growly sounds. She was also poking at her dairy products in dainty, neat motions. It was kind of adorable… in a freakish, disgusting way. Was there a word for that? Grotesque cute? Ugdorable?
"Stay back!" Mami repeated, voice a piercing whisper. "Go away! Shoo! Get as far away as you can!"
The girl-zombie-thingy looked up at Mami suspiciously but then went back to poking at the fallen dairy products.
"…did you piss yourself?" Kyouko asked, completely serious.
"Wh-what?" Mami spluttered, completely forgetting her intentions to being stealthy and possibly saving everyone's lives in the process. "Of - of course not!"
"Then what's the problem?" The redhead demanded.
Ms. Creepy-little-zombie's head went up again.
Mami gulped and tried to steady her pounding heart. She hated how strangled her voice came out.
"Do you guys have more cheese?"
viii.
As it turned out, they didn't have more cheese. Thankfully though, the somewhat unexpected question threw Kyouko and Sayaka for a loop as they scrambled to look for it and that meant they didn't immediately charge in, guns blazing.
Not that they had guns. More was the pity.
Mami did have more cheese though.
The monster girl growled at her when she reached for some but the red eyes switched from homicide to awe when the blonde pulled out small block from her blazer pocket.
Mami offered it tentatively.
ix.
"I think Mami adopted a zombie," Kyouko announced when Homura and Madoka had caught up.
Madoka, predictably, oooh'd and tried to pat the zombie on the head. Kyouko saved her from an impromptu amputation and explained that you needed cheese to gain her trust. Madoka somehow produced a piece and went on to do just that.
Homura, meanwhile, tried not to bash her head against the nearest wall.
Sayaka had the grace to look slightly ashamed and scuffed her foot on the floor and said, rather lamely: "She's just a kid. Maybe if we raise her right-"
"That's really not the problem here," Homura muttered.
There was insanity where the world decided it was the end of days and sent a zombie plague to kill everyone.
Then there was the insanity when you went off alone without backup into an unknown situation just because you heard someone crying when you knew that zombies were attracted to noise.
And then there was Madoka's friends adopting one of the said zombies and feeding it Cheetos.
"Her name is Charlotte," Mami said, sounding victorious. "It's on her nametag, see?"
There was, indeed, a nametag.
'Charlotte' continued poking at her small horde of cheese as if she couldn't quite believe it was actually there. Homura went back to contemplating the wall.
x.
Life with an eight-year-old zombie-child-monster-thing probably should have been more trying than it was.
But there was probably a piece of them, deep inside, that was pretty sure that the cuts and scrapes they'd sustained meant that they were all going to become zombies soon anyway so they didn't exactly care.
On the other hand-
"Why are guns hidden in the sewers?" Sayaka asked, sounding peeved.
"Emergency," Homura said succinctly taking out various very large and clunky looking weapons out of a disguised wall and laying them on the concrete of the sewers. There were scopes, laser pointers, flashlights, duffel bags, cylindrical metal thingies, grenades… Mami gulped: this was definitely not what a flintlock-era weapons looked like.
"Were you preparing for a war?" Kyouko asked.
The redhead sounded like she would start salivating soon. Mami made a mental note to keep Kyouko as far away from the guns as she could while they did their preliminary investigation. Like figuring out which bullets went where. And how safeties worked.
"Sort of." Homura admitted. She lifted what looked like a shotgun and handed it to Mami. "Teach. We don't have much time."
"Before what?" Mami asked, mouth dry as she accepted the imposing weapon.
"Before the zombies go underground." Homura said ominously.
xi.
There should have been more questions asked – like, how the hell did Homura know about these weapons? Why couldn't she use them? Where did they come from? Who owned them?– but there was the rather more pressing issue of the zombie apocalypse and Mami spent her time tinkering with guns she'd never used before.
Charlotte sat on the side, legs dangling towards the sewer water as she hummed some nonsense tune. Madoka was apparently trying to teach her how to speak. So far she had gotten Charlotte to say 'Ch-grrk-sah.'
Apparently that meant cheese. Then again, so did most sounds Charlotte made as far as they could tell.
Mami knew basic gun safety (probably better than most gun enthusiasts, it wasn't like they dealt with crap made black powder on a regular basis) but there was a big difference between a firearm that had been designed in the seventeenth century and one that had been made ten years ago.
Some things were simpler. Other things… weren't.
"I have no idea how to disassemble and clean any of these," Mami noted seriously. It had taken her a good ten minutes to even find the safety on quite a few of them. "Firearms require maintenance, Homura."
Off to the side, Kyouko opened her mouth and reached for the weapons.
Mami and Homura both simultaneously swatted Kyouko's hand away. She gave them a hurt look.
"Sayaka." She whined. "Mami and Homura aren't sharing their toys." She stuck her tongue out. "Meanies."
"You are supposed to be organizing supplies with me," Sayaka retorted.
"Oh. Heh. That was me? I thought it was the other Kyouko-"
It probably took a minor miracle, but they somehow managed to get most of the firearms organized by type, calibre and by the end, Mami had even managed to get them all to figure out which end was supposed to be pointed where.
Still, Mami winced.
They were so gonna end up shooting each other in the back it was not funny.
xii.
On the first trial run, Mami discovered something extraordinary.
"How the hell can you do that?" She asked disbelievingly.
"It just seems natural," Madoka admitted holding out the disassembled gun. Within moments she had reassembled it and then pointed it at the far end of the sewer.
Mami would have bet her last juice box that Madoka was a crack shot too.
Still.
"How can it seem 'natural'-"
"Let's not question our good fortune," Kyouko cut in before sidling next to Madoka. "Heeeey, teach me?"
"Of course!"
xiii.
Mami was trying to educate Charlotte on the finer points of clothing (i.e., wear it) when Sayaka sat down next to her.
"Do you think I should put ribbons on?" The tomboy asked, fiddling with her hair.
Mami blinked.
Put pink and red together and added teal-
Oh hell no.
Jealous? Sayaka?
Charlotte mewled in discontent as Mami shoved her back into the hospital gown but didn't complain too much. Mami had become the unofficial dispenser of cheese and thus, apparently, Charlotte's favoritest person in the world.
In the meantime, Mami tried to think of a… sensible answer.
"…I don't think there will be many ribbons in our future," the blonde said cautiously, deciding not to bother with a lecture on accessories and color coordination.
"Maybe we could find some?" Sayaka suggested hopefully, as if being stuck in the sewers during a zombie apocalypse was an inconvenience on par with a broken vacuum cleaner or empty fridge.
"Have you asked Kyouko for her opinion?" Mami hinted.
Sayaka actually jumped. A good foot and a half. From a sitting position.
"W-who said anything about Kyouko?" Came the startled hiss.
It was pretty hard to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Subtle was not Sayaka's niche.
"No one," Mami replied blandly, tying up the string on the back of the gown. "I just thought, seeing as how you two are together-"
"W-well, you thought wrong," Sayaka said, getting up. "I should go. Um. Count our supplies. Again." She nodded jerkily. "Good day. Mami."
Mami waved as Sayaka stumbled off. Charlotte copied her motion, claws gleaming.
Okay, upgrading from ugdorable to adorable.
"You're not going to make Mami stress over you at all, are you?" Mami cooed, placing her chin on Charlotte's head.
"Ch-grrk-saaaah," Charlotte said, beaming.
xiv.
Dinner was interrupted by zombies.
"Oh come on," Kyouko complained. She and Sayaka still couldn't hit a stationary target from five feet let alone fifty so her job mostly involved giving pep talks and hitting things with Madoka's axe. "I was eating."
Frankly, Mami was a little more concerned about how the zombies had gotten into the sewers in the first place.
…then again, Charlotte had made it down somehow.
Well, too late for that now.
Holding the handgun in both hands, Mami centred herself and tried to aim for the head.
xv.
"Well, that went spectacularly well," Kyouko said, planting her axe down. It was wet with blood. "Sorry, but you guys suck."
So as it turned out, Madoka wasn't a crack shot.
Yeah, that probably was a little too much to expect.
On the plus side, no one had been shot in the back and there were ten or so dead zombies so they must have been doing something right.
"We will get better or die trying," Homura noted, eyes chasing shadows.
It took a moment for Mami to realize that she meant that literally.
xvi.
Sometime during the fight Charlotte had scampered off. Mami found her, perched inside a storm drain, hands clapped over her ears. The blonde gave it thirty seconds before she started sobbing again.
"Hey, it's okay," she coaxed, holding out her hands.
The zombie child continued to shake.
"Charlotte? The bad people went away. You can come out now."
Charlotte looked up. Apparently the hands over her ears were just for show.
"G-g-aargh?"
Mami nearly sighed in relief. "Yes, yes, they're all gone. Let's go."
Charlotte carefully slipped her hand onto Mami's.
xvii.
"Alright, where do we go and why?" Sayaka was saying when Mami and Charlotte got back. The rest of the girls were huddled over a map.
Well. Almost all of them. Homura had a handgun out and was eying the corridor warily. She still managed to fit herself into the conversation. "Exit the city. Head for depopulated areas. Survive."
"So like… forests?" Madoka wondered.
Mami had never seen a forest in her life. She wasn't sure if she liked this idea. There were wolves and such inside of them, right?
"What if the SDF has quarantined the city?" Sayaka muttered. "Worst case scenario, they're shooting everything that moves on sight."
"That's not the worst case scenario," Kyouko said. Everyone looked to the redhead in askance. "What?" Kyouko blurted. "America could nuke us. It happened in Resident Evil, remember? I mean, they'd nuke themselves. I read about this."
"…well, that's a lovely thought," Mami murmured. Sayaka was the only who whirled. Everyone else must have noticed her arrival. "But before we think about getting out – Sayaka, Madoka…don't you have families waiting for you?"
It either said something about orphanhood that of the five, three were missing their biological parents. Possibly four, depending on whether or not you counted Charlotte as a survivor.
"My mom and dad are on a business trip overseas," Sayaka said, biting her lip.
Madoka shrugged. "Mom had to get away the from her co-workers for a bit. They went up to the cottage with Tatsuya. I hope they stay there."
Apparently Charlotte knew that Madoka and Sayaka weren't feeling one hundred percent confident because she patted them clumsily on the shoulders with the palms of her hands.
"Awww, thank you Charlotte," Madoka said happily, giving the girl a hug.
Charlotte took the opportunity to try to rifle through Madoka's pockets and delicately extract a bag of cheese-flavoured Doritos.
Kyouko clapped her hands, trying to get everyone's attention. "With that settled, first we got to figure out how to get out, how to survive, how to fight and most importantly of all…"
The redhead snatched the chips away from Charlotte, eliciting a squawk of protest from the girl.
"How we're going to freaking feed ourselves. Because that ain't happening in a forest."
xviii.
To Mami's surprise, they kept to the sewers. Although the blonde was almost certain that the jangling weapons they'd shoved into the duffel bags were going to get them all killed in one messy, fiery explosion (they had homemade bombs inside their bags, bombs for goodness sakes) it didn't happen.
Because Charlotte didn't like flashlights, Mami had her hands clapped over the little girl's eyes, leading her forwards through gentle nudges while Kyouko and Sayaka lead the way with baseball bat and axe.
Madoka was cheerfully skipping behind them while toting a combat shotgun. It was really quite the disconcerting picture.
"Homura," Mami whispered as they continued onwards. "Why are we still down here?"
Homura's voice was very dry. "Do you like Charlotte?"
Blinking at the unexpected question Mami actually gave it some serious thought. "She's… I mean, yeah, I guess so?"
Charlotte chose at this moment to stop and giggled when Mami crashed into her.
"If there are survivors above ground," Homura said bluntly as Mami did her best not to trip and fall. "They will shoot her on sight."
Well.
That was a good reason.
But…
"What else aren't you telling me?" Mami demanded.
Homura's mouth curled into an expression that might have been a smirk. "I made the pipe bombs, there were more than six zombies down there with us but they're not here anymore and Sayaka has a crush on you."
xix.
Mami watched Homura walk off open-mouthed.
What?
xx.
Okay.
Okay. You know what?
You didn't just say something like that and-
Gaaaah, she didn't have time to deal with this.
xxi.
When they surfaced, Mitakihara had turned into something vaguely resembling a nightmare. It was as if the city itself knew it was time to panic: alarms blared, fire rose, lights flickered. Cars lay abandoned in the middle of the street.
There were no people but they could hear sporadic gunfire, out in the distance.
Either that was a good sign or a really bad one.
They, however, exited at the river. It had taken some controlled explosions to get the grill out, but other than that, they seemed in the clear.
There were no roadblocks out of the city though. Not that they could see.
"Someone's fighting and the zombies-" Homura noted.
"-are being distracted yes," Kyouko crowed. "Go and loot something." When everyone looked at her she rolled her eyes. "Hurry. Bottled water as a priority, vitamin tablets if you can swing it. Some fruit, but not too much – and anything that can last for longer than a month. Preferably not chips. Take up too much space, they're mostly packaged air. Oh, and get more batteries for the flashlights. And a first-aid kit. And actual clothes. And the uh, other stuff. You know."
When they continued looking at her she rolled her eyes. "Hey! I got us out of the school, trust me on this, we'll need it." When no one moved she slapped her hands together. "Come on, chop chop."
As everyone prepared to rush off, Homura put her foot down. Quietly. "Travel in groups. Mami take Charlotte and, stay with Kyouko. Sayaka, Madoka, stay quiet and follow. No gunfire or light unless absolutely necessary. We meet in fifty."
As Homura passed Mami, there came the unnecessary reminder: "keep her hidden."
"Pick up some cheese," Mami hissed back.
xxii.
"What exactly are we doing?" Mami whispered as she and Kyouko combed the riverbank.
"We are looking for evidence of zombie fish."
"Really?"
"No. Well, yes, but mostly no." Kyouko sighed. "Do you know anything about boating?"
"Paddle goes in water? You want to go boating?"
"Unless there's zombie squid, it's probably one of the safest places to be. Other than on a space station or something. We wouldn't need to get far. Just hug the shoreline until we got somewhere half-way deserted."
"These are artificial rivers, Kyouko. We won't find boats," Mami pointed out.
Kyouko stopped. Gave an exasperated sigh. "You should have mentioned that sooner. Now we have to go with plan B. I like Plan B."
"Shouldn't it be Plan A then?"
"No, plans I like tend to backfire spectacularly."
xxiii.
"We're stealing bicycles." Mami noted. To be fair, she might not have delivered the line entirely positively. Indeed, one might even consider it a bit… flat.
"What, you wanted a moped?" Kyouko asked cheerfully.
"Not exactly," Mami said, trying to remain politic. "Um- couldn't we… ah, hotwire a car?"
"Yes, because a car alarm is so what we need right now." The redhead muttered, waving to the cluttered streets. Out of the corner of her eyes, Mami thought that she constantly saw movement. Couldn't really be, of course. The zombies surely would have attacked.
"How are we going to carry Charlotte along?" Mami asked, not exactly liking the idea of bicycling through a zombie apocalypse.
"Oh. I think I saw a tricycle."
"…a tricycle." Mami repeated.
xxiv.
"…and you got her a tricycle." Sayaka said, giant bag of food on her back. She had three brand new duffel bags with other necessities.
Homura looked somewhere between laughter and open-mouthed dismay. Mami noticed a new blood splatter on her blazer. They must have met zombies. Odd since Kyouko and her hadn't meant any.
"You sound just like Mami," Kyouko complained. "Look, it's a great idea and it will work."
Madoka was carrying giant boxes. Each was clearly labelled. "Oh! That's so cute! And it matches her hair!"
"Madoka? I think I love you right now. And not just because you remembered to get duct tape and two-dozen bags of dried fruit. And pants."
xxv.
"Okay, so maybe it didn't work." Kyouko admitted, scratching her head.
"First, the tricycle was made for a three year old," Mami pointed out, feeling like they should be attacked by zombies just for having a conversation this inane, "second, Charlotte's a-"
Madoka stumbled forward.
"She's just special." The pink-haired girl squeaked, placing her hands on Charlotte's ears. Charlotte seemed to mind and managed to squeeze herself out of Madoka's grasp.
"Um. Yes, yes exactly," Mami said, managing not to lose her train of thought in the face of Madoka's reality-bending powers of optimism, "special and with special needs."
"Ch-grrrk?"
Everyone turned around to see Charlotte badly mangling the handlebars of a bike much too big for her. But her feet were in the pedals and she seemed to be balancing well enough.
"I am a genius," Kyouko whispered.
xxvi.
Biking around with a huge load of groceries and other sundry items (plus looking after Charlotte) was definitely a novel experience. Too much weight on the bike, corners were difficult, speed was barely faster than a good, quick run.
But they were out.
Home free.
Author's note: This may be one of the fluffiest zombie apocalypse fics ever. I highly suspect that this is because there are very few actual zombies in it. One day I might even write a second chapter. Dear lord.
Right right, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei next chapter. Hopefully.
