Chapter 2: The Harrowing Garbage Adventures
It's 9 AM, and Homura's still wondering what insane person would be up at this hellhole of a theatre at such a god forsaken time of day, but then she remembers that, oh right, it's her. For reasons she would never understand. And where in the blazes is Kyouko? She knows they have the same shifts today, so there's really no excuse for her to be an hour late. Not that she's particularly keen on seeing her or anything, but her stupid boss put her in charge of that rat, and if she wants to keep her job (which she really doesn't but knows she has to) then she had better ensure the redhead's doing hers. Which she isn't, by not being here. And that's not good. She just really hopes her boss doesn't notice.
At this time of day, the lobby's not particularly occupied with many people save for some pockets of them, but she's still stuck on usher duty. Because somehow, at this time of day, people are still lively enough to throw food around.
She's crouched on the carpeted floor sweeping some stray popcorn into her dustpan when she hears a steady rhythm of fast, heavy footsteps approaching her from behind.
"Hey!" Kyouko gasps, doubling over with her hands on her knees as she pulls up beside Homura. "I'm here!"
"An hour late," Homura grumpily reminds her as she dumps the contents of her dustpan into the trashcan she's been dragging around. "Where the hell were you?"
"Oh, uh… I just overslept, that's all," Kyouko replies as she straightens up, looking very keen on avoiding Homura's gaze and instead staring at the trashcan like it's the most interesting thing in the world. Which it really isn't. With Kyouko stranding up straight now, Homura sees a large bruise covering her right cheek. Her clothes look disheveled as well as her hair — somehow her disaster of hair manages to look even more unkempt than it did yesterday, which Homura finds rather impressive. It's so obvious to her that Kyouko is lying, but she doesn't call her out on it. It's none of her business, anyways. She's just relieved that this lazy piece of shit rookie finally showed up to work so she won't have to worry about her boss giving her a hard time about it. Not that she's even in control of the other girl anyways so she really couldn't be blamed, but she still couldn't help but feel nervous — on occasion he's aggravatingly unreasonable. However, all that was thankfully now irrelevant thanks to her presence.
"Whatever, just try not to do it again if you want to keep your job," Homura grumbles as she pulls out the extra broom and dustpan attached to the sides of the trashcan and thrusts them into Kyouko's hefty hands. "Now come on, you have usher duty today as well." Kyouko stares at the weapons of cleanliness now gripped in her hands like they're foreign objects.
"Oh. Cleaning," she reiterates unnecessarily, to which Homura nods.
"Yes, cleaning. Don't tell me you don't know how to clean." She glares at the redhead, who huffs and puffs out her chest.
"Of course I do! I'm not stupid, ya know. Let's do this!" She wields the broom like a spear and thrusts it in the direction of one of the hallways branching off from the lobby. "Where to?" Homura glances at the big clock mounted atop the crest of the archway in front of the entrance.
"Auditorium Three just let out I think, so we'll need to go clean up there for the next show," she replies, pointing to the hall branching out of the wall opposite to the one Kyouko had been pointing to. The redhead turns around and points the broom in the same direction Homura is like as if she hadn't just been pointing the wrong way. Homura just stares at her like she's crazy. And she's pretty sure she's not very far off the mark, either. She isn't sure whether to be exasperated or amused by the redhead's antics. Or both. She shakes her head. Enough of that.
"Okay! This'll probably be easy," Kyouko exclaims confidently, and heads off in the direction Homura had pointed out. The black-haired girl stares at her back for a moment before sighing heavily and following after her, loathingly dragging the trashcan behind her. God, it really is too early for this.
By the time they arrive at the designated auditorium all the people have already cleared out, much to Homura's relief — she's really not fond of crowds. Or people in general. Again, she wonders why the hell she even works here. Kyouko interrupts her internal grumbles by pushing open one of the big double doors leading into what will most likely be a wretched hellhole of garbage. She steps back to the wall and holds the door open for Homura, who drags herself and the trashcan through the offered entryway. She gives a small nod to Kyouko as the other girl lets the door shut behind her.
"Thanks," she mumbles. She's honestly surprised the wild girl has some shred of politeness in her.
"No problem." Kyouko smiles, and walks ahead of her, now brandishing her broom like a sword and the dustpan a shield. "Time to slay some popcorn demons."
"It's really not that exciting," Homura replies blandly as they walk further into the auditorium. The sight that reveals itself to her eyes then has her shoulders and overall posture sagging significantly.
"Oh, wow, it looks like a fucking warzone," Kyouko remarks in a horrified sort of awe, her vermillion eyes roving across the expanses of various foods, popcorn, and containers strewn across all the seats and floors. Homura just releases a deep, earth-loathing sigh in reply and drags the trashcan up to closest row of seats.
"I'm quite certain this auditorium just showed some children's movie. I saw a bunch of children heading down this wing earlier when I came in for work," she elaborates miserably as she futilely sweeps at a spilled container of popcorn on the floor.
"Jeez, destructive little demons, aren't they?" Kyouko watches her sweep the discarded food for a few moments. "Where do we even begin?"
"It doesn't matter; just pick somewhere. It's usually not this bad," Homura replies curtly as she bends down to sweep the trash into the dustpan. The other girl stands there for a moment, eyes roving over the auditorium once more before she picks the row right after Homura's to start on. The black-haired girl has to hold in a sigh at this motion — she was hoping the other girl would move somewhere further away, but apparently she's determined to stick to Homura like glue. She's really not in the mood for conversation, either.
"You'd think the kids' parents would try to stop them at least," the redhead comments as she starts to sweep the floor. Homura casts a sideways glance at her for a moment before picking up a discarded bottle of Coke and dropping it into the trashcan. Of course she would start talking.
"With the amount of rude customers I've faced, it honestly doesn't surprise me," she responds droopily. Oddly enough, there's a beat of silence between them. Homura turns her head a bit to look at Kyouko, who's staring at the wall, the broom now still in her hands.
"Yea," she replies after a moment, touching the bruise on her cheek. "People are fucking assholes, let's put it at that." Homura blinks. What had that just been? She shakes her head, too exhausted to bother dwelling on the redhead's apparent personal problems.
"Something we can both agree on," she replies tiredly. Kyouko just nods, picking back up her cleaning motions.
Surprisingly enough, they get through a good number of rows in relative silence after that — broken up only by a few small comments and grumbles of 'eugh gross what the hell is that?' However, exhaustion soon sets deep in Homura's bones, and even Kyouko looks drained about halfway through. Though, Homura has a feeling it's not just the cleaning that has the redhead looking so world-weary.
Homura steals a glance over to the redhead's figure standing a few rows over from her towards the back at that thought, only to see a mixture of confusion and disgust on her face as she stands staring down at something on the floor that Homura can't see. Curious, she abandons her row to make her way over to her companion.
"What's wrong?" she asks as she sidles up behind her, leaning to the left slightly to look around the other girl's taller form. Kyouko twists her head to look down at her, and shrugs helplessly.
"I don't even know what to think of this," she comments, gesturing to the articles of clothing laying strewn about the seats and the floor. "Like, what, were they just completely plowing each other over in the back of this crowded theatre? And they left their clothes, at that? What the hell?" Homura's eyes widen at that, a blush immediately dusting her usually pale cheeks.
"O-Oh my," she stutters out, straightening up. "Let's… let's not dwell on that, okay?" Kyouko looks just as uncomfortable as her at the thought, and nods quickly in agreement.
"What… what should we even do about this?" she asks. "Fuck, there'd better not be any goddamn STDs laying around here." Homura slaps her arm right as she says that, making the redhead flinch and whirl around on her.
"Ow! What was that for?" she grumbles, rubbing her offended arm. "I said not to touch me, you dolt!" The black-haired girl huffs and turns away, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I said not to dwell on it," she shoots back, her blush growing. Shaking her head, she makes her way over to the nearby trashcan they'd been dragging around in their god forsaken cleaning adventures — or torture sentence, she should say — to retrieve a pair of rubber gloves. She slips them on her slender hands and returns to Kyouko's side, pushing past her to deal with the aftermath of one of Satan's grand summonings. Kyouko cracks a smirk, taking a step back so as not to be in the other girl's way.
"Really? You're popping out the gloves? Germ freak," she snorts, crossing her arms. Homura glares at her menacingly.
"You're the one who was so concerned about germs!" she retorts, refusing to admit that maybe the other girl had made her a bit paranoid. Kyouko's smirk turns into a frown and she exhales an audible gust of air out of her nose, turning away with a haughty 'hmph,' in an effort to not admit the fact that Homura's completely right, even though it's completely obvious that Kyouko's been bested. A triumphant smirk twitches at the corners of Homura's lips for a brief moment before instantly falling back into a disgruntled frown as she turns back towards her task.
"I'll take these to the Lost and Found box; you finish cleaning up here," she commands, already performing the grotesque, harrowing task of lifting the abandoned clothing from its offending position in the auditorium. Kyouko crinkles her nose in disgust when Homura lifts up a pair of khaki pants for them to behold.
"Aren't you brave," she comments, shaking her head as Homura continues to gingerly lift the felonious articles of clothing from their wayward positions on the theatre chairs and floor with an impassive expression on her face. She sighs heavily, and flashes Homura a weary salute as she grasps the handle of the broom leaning against the seats. "Leave it to me." Homura nods at that, and then straightens up with all the clothes gathered in her arms. She turns to begin her journey to the box to dispose of these disgusting pieces of fabric that smell like some abhorrent mix of popcorn and other substances she really doesn't want to identify. She shudders at that last thought, and vows to vigorously dispel any of the visceral substances that may have dared to tread upon the vicinity of her arms as soon as she's rid herself of her fabric burden.
"Meet me in the break room when you're done so we can figure out our next position," she adds to her previous order, voice strained as she tries to not think about what she's holding. She continues her walk to the door once she hears a mumbled 'okay' from Kyouko. Their theatre is rather understaffed unfortunately, so often they perform multiple positions throughout the day to make up for it. It would explain how the wild, unkempt redhead had managed to get a job here. And her, as much as she didn't like to admit it. Her boss won't even admit it either; he continues to praise her even though she often glares at the customers and radiates some sort of deathly aura. Customer service really isn't her thing.
Homura's trudging down the hall with her eyes closed and her arms feeling a freezing numbness and rawness when she knocks straight into someone, her chin colliding right into the other person's collarbone. She hears a gruff 'oof' and the sound of boots stumbling back trying to find purchase on the floor. Her weary eyes immediately fly open.
"Ah, I'm sorr— oh it's you." The apologetic expression she had assumed immediately falls into a disgruntled frown once she realizes who she bumped into. Kyouko straightens up, grumpily rubbing her collarbone like she's trying to wipe off the stain of Homura's touch.
"Hey, what's with that?" she gripes, glaring at the shorter girl with a frown etched into her features. Homura just shakes her head and waves her off, which causes the older girl to huff and cross her arms across her chest.
"Anyways, I expected you to already be in the break room. What took you so long?" she asks.
"I had to purge my arms of that disgusting vitriol," she explains, holding her arms up to emphasize her point. She'd had her sleeves rolled up all day for cleaning duty, so of course her skin needed to be cleansed of any impurities the revolting discarded clothes may have contained. Kyouko studies her proffered arms for a moment before sighing and pushing past her.
"I hope you didn't use up all the soap," she sneers as she continues on her way to the place they were supposed to meet up at. Homura rolls her eyes and turns around to follow after her, only now stupidly realizing she'd walked past the break room in her miserable trudge down the hall.
They arrive at the designated room shortly enough, and Homura's looking forward to the chance to sit down for a moment — she didn't think exhaustion could set so deep in someone's bones as it was in hers. It feels like her very soul has several heavy weights clinging to it, sapping her energy like a gaggle of bloodthirsty leeches. She pulls the door to the break room open, only for her heart to sag at the realization it's occupied. It's not that there aren't any more chairs for her to sit down in — there's still two more at the small table inhabiting a portion of the right side of the room — but that her introvert reserves are already despairingly low, so more people to deal with isn't a very welcome sight.
A pink-haired girl stands up from her seat at the table upon her entrance into the room.
"Homura-chan!" she exclaims, waving at the black-haired girl happily. Homura weakly waves at her in return as she makes her way over to them, with Kyouko reluctantly trailing behind her. "Hi!"
"Good morning, Madoka," she wearily returns the greeting, drowsily plunking down into one of the remaining hard metal chairs. She'll never understand how the diminutive girl can be so damn chipper at this god forsaken time of day in this hellhole of a theatre. She nods to the other girl seated next to Madoka across the table, who looks just about as beat as her. "Sayaka." The blue-haired girl returns the nod.
"Hey, Homura." Right after the words leave her lips, the girl's eyes drift up past Homura to the redhead standing behind her. "Is this the newbie?"
"Yes," Homura affirms, propping her chin up on her hand as she finds difficulty in keeping her head up. Kyouko splutters for a moment before outright glowering at the girl seated across the table, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.
"Newbie! Who're you callin' a newbie, blueberry?" she shoots back. The other girl's eyes widen for a moment in surprise before narrowing menacingly.
"Jeez, somebody has an attitude!" she retorts indignantly. Madoka winces at the harshness of her companion's tone and places a placating hand on her shoulder.
"S-Sayaka-chan, calm down," she mumbles. Sayaka huffs and leans back in her chair, mouth clamped shut in a tight line. Kyouko puffs air out of her nose. Madoka looks uncomfortable at the sudden shift in mood between the two, and raises her other hand up apologetically.
"Uh, sorry about that; she's kind of grumpy at this time of day," Madoka apologizes.
"Aren't we all?" Homura interjects loathingly, too exhausted to even bother contributing much to the situation. Kyouko just gives the girls seated across the table a lopsided frown before finally seating herself in the remaining unoccupied chair next to Homura.
"It's fine," she replies, waving the situation off, but she still shoots a glare at Sayaka for a fraction of a second before returning a more neutral gaze to Madoka. "Name's Sakura Kyouko. Nice to meet you." Madoka flashes Kyouko an angelically pure smile.
"I'm Kaname Madoka, and this is Miki Sayaka," she replies, gesturing to the short-haired girl seated beside her. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Sakura-san." She extends a hand diagonally across the table to offer the new girl a handshake.
"Just Kyouko's fine," she corrects her casually, accepting the handshake. She gives Madoka's small, dainty hand a firm squeeze with her burlier one. Madoka winces slightly at the force of Kyouko's squeeze, but quickly covers it up with a smile as the other girl releases her and returns her hand back to her own lap. Homura raises an eyebrow at this exchange, but says nothing. The four girls sit there in silence for a few long moments after introductions were accounted for, with Madoka and Kyouko looking awkward at the lack of conversation while Sayaka and Homura seem to be about half-way asleep already.
"Um—" Madoka finally starts up, but is cut off by Sayaka choosing that exact moment to interject some conversation into the silence.
"Why do you look like you just crawled out of a dumpster and got the shit beaten out of you? Is that why I didn't see you during the morning shift?" she asks, tiredly glaring at the redhead. Madoka's eyes widen, mortified by what her friend has just said.
"Sayaka—"
"How about you mind your own damn business, huh?" Kyouko shoots back aggressively, leaning forward in her seat to level the other girl with a fierce glare. Sayaka meets her glare steadily with one of her own, unrelenting in the face of the other girl's fiery expression. Madoka cringes.
"G-Guys, let's just calm down now, okay?" She leans forward in her seat trying to catch someone's eye, but they both ignore her and continue their intense glaring contest. Meanwhile, Homura's head has fallen further to simply rest on her bent arm on the table, watching the exchange through half-lidded eyes.
"You don't need to be so defensive; I was just asking a question!" Sayaka growls.
"Well, maybe I really don't want you asking questions? You don't need to be so nosy!"
"I'm not nosy!"
"It sure seems like it to m—"
"ANYWAYS!" Madoka loudly proclaims as she stands up from her chair and leans over the table, startling both girls out of their reverie and finally drawing their attention to her. "The manager said that we're supposed to switch positions with you two around this time for the next shift, so we should probably go do that! Which means Kyouko-chan and Homura-chan will be working at the concession stand and Sayaka-chan and I will switch to usher duty. So, we probably shouldn't be wasting any more time sitting here and stuff!" She grabs Sayaka's arm and hauls the girl out of her chair.
"M-Madoka!" Sayaka protests, but Madoka ignores her and practically drags her out of the room.
"It was nice meeting you, Kyouko-chan! I look forward to working with you from now on!" she hastily calls out to Kyouko as she makes her way out the door with Sayaka in tow. Kyouko seems bewildered by the sudden change in situation and can only manage a mumbled 'uh, you too!' before the door slams shut. The break room is cast into silence once more. Kyouko sits back in her seat and stares at the wall for a few moments with her arms crossed, looking like she's trying to process everything that just happened. She casts a glance over to Homura, who just stares at her with foggy, half-lidded eyes that make it apparent that she's not actually looking at her. The redhead cracks an amused smile.
"Homura?" she queries.
"Mmm," the other girl murmurs in reply.
"Are you falling asleep?"
"Probably," Homura mumbles, her cheek sliding off of her arm to hit the table. Kyouko snickers at that, and pushes herself up and out of her seat.
"Well, don't you have to show me how concession duty's done?" she asks, smirking. Homura just sighs heavily in reply, but makes no effort to move from her position.
"C'mon." Kyouko grabs her arm in both hands and hauls her work partner to her feet, the other girl making no movements in protest to the action. Homura leans against the table for a moment, rubbing her bleary eyes with her hands in an effort to awaken herself further before straightening up. There's still a noticeable slouch to her posture though — her whole body seems to droop as if the earth were insistently tugging her down to its dark depths.
"God, do I hate that concession stand," she grumbles under her breath as she trudges over to the door. Kyouko's amused smirk doesn't let up as she follows after the shorter girl. Homura exhales a deep, earth-loathing sigh as she tugs the door open. "Let's just get this over with." She has a feeling their next shift will be positively awful.
A/N: Aaand Madoka and Sayaka are in! Yay. What a silly chapter, good grief. 'Till next time.