Liz finally felt like herself again. A fresh manicure and a blowout did wonders after having a horrible nightmare about being, well, half the cheesy guys she ever dated. More accurately, who they pretended to be. It wasn't long before they got entitled and let the act slip, and she found the boys chasing after her just wanted to clout that came from dating a weapon so close to Lord Death.
"I remember saying fuck Cinderella," she sang, "always waiting someone to save her." She got out of bed and flipped through a wardrobe of clothes for something light and flattering. It looked sunny today, and she'd been itching to show off her newest finds to all her friends. "Now I can't say that I'm much better. Had the right looks for a golden ticket." The opulent lifestyle she found herself in was a sheer stroke of luck, not her birth right. People rarely had identical weapon forms, and Kid had needed symmetrical weapons to avoid getting matched to a weapon he couldn't use. If he hadn't seen her and Patty abusing their gifts, they'd still be on the streets. "Now I'm looking like a well-fed heiress." There was always a fear that without Kid, she'd be waking in bug filled motels again. For now, she could enjoy the gossamer curtains and crystal chandeliers. "Mama always said, if the shoe fits wear it." Her bedroom was almost blindingly white, with hand crafted furniture that cost more than their tuition. With her clothes set on the quilted comforters, she took a seat at her vanity and paused.
None of her products were out where she usually kept them.
She opened a few drawers, expecting to find Kid had neatly organized them in a fashion only he understood, but they too were empty. Her box of nail polishes, her skin care products, all her makeup was gone. When she caught her reflection in the mirror, she was already sporting a sharp winged eyeliner and artfully plated braids over her long silky hair. She'd woken up like this, but that was wrong. A look like this took her two hours of hard work. She also didn't' know what song she'd been singing, she had to have heard it somewhere before.
Then the uncanny nature of her bedroom caught her attention, like lifting a filter off of a photo. These were all nice things she'd seen while scrolling online, but she hadn't had the heart to order every little thing she wanted when they were already living on Kid's dime. She bolted up, knocking the vanity chair into the plush carpet.
It wasn't real, it was a distraction to keep them from finding Kid.
They were really nice clothes, but until she caught up with Tsubaki, she didn't want to risk changing into something else while they were here. Even if that did mean running out of the fake room in what old Hollywood glamour would consider pajamas. Out in the hall see saw the long hallway of a luxury hotel with rooms suggesting she was on the seventh floor.
She drummed on the doors as she ran down the hall, hoping a familiar face would peer out into the hall and follow her out. No one answered. She came to a set of golden elevators, next to which, was a fire alarm. She pulled it, only for the ornate box to come off into her hand. Not trusting the elevator, she ran for the stairs and out into the main street to find the others.
Chapter 2 : GLUTTONY
The morning light was disorienting. A chill radiated off the hand laid bricks, baked in from a nonexistent night. Purple stalks of flowers sprouted from carefully maintained flowerbeds along the sidewalk. They complimented the rich tans and golds of the buildings surrounding the town square. The only spot of darkness in town were the cast iron lamp posts, but they too had been decorated in purple and gold.
A quaint little town, that sung the praises of a by gone era of prosperity. Or at the very least, a romanticized ideal of that era, immortalized in the advertisements of the day to sell soaps and other household items. Soft music ebbed and flowed from unseen speakers as women in vintage dress busied themselves decorating tables for the Princess Festival.
How Liz knew it was the Princess Festival today was unclear. There was also the strange notion that the small town was Death City. Even though it lacked any reference to death and the scale of the town couldn't possible be more than 3,000 strong. The sort of place where everyone knew everyone. All the women smiled and tittered at Liz's state of dress as she ran down the street in her plastic mules.
She made it as far as a large concrete fountain in town square, before she slowed to a stop. The vintage clock face on a tall bell tower smiled down at her. The path laid out before her was a clear circle, but this place had marked streets that went off in odd directions. She crossed her arms and thought of where her friends might have been whisked away to.
She'd woken up in a place that was almost like home, but everyone else had been staying in student housing, plus her sister was still nowhere to be found. Something about the hotel had been chosen specifically to appeal to her, and only her. The room was full of things she would typically indulge in, but usually not all at once like that.
She needed to find a library, or a book store. Maka shared pictures of overly athetized book collections on her page all the time. Surely if anything else had been drafted up for her, it should stick out a bit, and she'd catch them along the way. She glanced back at the hotel that loomed in the distance like a historical building. It was eerie how much more cohesive the town look compared to the previous chapter.
For the last few weeks, everyone Maka knew had been preparing for the festival. She attended large gatherings like that out of obligation more than anything. Not that she didn't enjoy going herself, it just always seemed more effort than it was worth. Besides, none of her friends had brought up if or when they wanted to go this year. So what did it matter if she spent the hours leading up to it curled up with a book instead of forcing her hair into painful configurations.
That was about as far as the Book of Eibon had been able to feed her before she snapped out of her hazy thinking. She'd been on her second book, when an irrational guilt set in that she should be doing something else. Which wasn't uncommon on days when there was no school, but then it really started to bother her she'd been able to sit so long without being interrupted. Usually some comedy of errors pulled her away every two to four paragraphs when she tried to read. Then she recognized a few of the structures in the library being from different buildings she'd been to.
It was all very pretty, with four stories worth of books and natural plants to brighten to place. To her surprise the book she had been reading was real, instead of cover to cover gibberish. She pawed through six or seven of them, just to see, and each one was an accurate transcription of what was on the cover. Even if the town was fake, the library seemed real. She wasn't proud of how quickly she'd been side tracked after remembering they were in a simulation, but the attention to detail was significantly more impressive than before.
Then Liz burst through the double doors and Maka threw the book she'd been inspecting like it would incriminate her somehow. The librarian shushed them with a finger to her lips before disappearing around a shelf. On instinct, Maka apologized to the book keeper. Even if she was fictitious, it seemed rude to abandon all manners when there were dozens of people staring with mild interest.
"Once Patty smells the food, she'll be lured out to the streets." Liz said. Maka hurried out of the library after her, with a slight flinch at the deafening clang the doors made behind them. "You grew up in a place like this, right?" The tight twin buns and plain knit clothes suited Maka well, so she just assumed. "Do you know any place Soul might go?"
"If we can find old town, probably." Despite not knowing anything about the town a few seconds ago, she answered with ease. Like someone reaching through the curtains back stage to hand her a stack of note cards, she had a general idea of where the town had been sectioned off, but not where the exit was. "About earlier..." She felt the need to apologize. After her first battle with Chrona, she tried her hardest to be a reliable meister to everyone in the group, not just her own partner. To not only be useless, but a brainless liability, it was mortifying.
"Don't worry about it." Liz pulled at the back of her slip to keep herself descent. "I have a bad feeling that was the tip of the iceberg." Her flushed face scrunched up like she'd eaten a lemon. "I am going to get so much shit for the things I said, poor Patty."
"Yeah." There was a used record shop on the corner of main street, but when they ventured inside it was empty, save for one bored looking shop keep. "Soul seemed kind of... I mean I know we were all acting different, but he was actually upset." They tried a music shop a few doors down, then a hole in the wall coffee shop, still nothing. "I've only ever seen him lash out like that when we were training with Stein." She absolutely wouldn't forgive him for hitting her with Freudian pseudoscience out of pocket. Still, part of her wondered if it really had been jealousy. The idea didn't bother her as much as it should. "Do you hear music?"
"Yeah," Liz narrowed her eyes, "this morning-" She caught herself, it wasn't the morning, the book just made it look like it was morning. It was probably the middle of the night outside the hex. "Earlier I was kind of singing." A look of shameful dread took hold of Maka's features, and she looked back down at her clothes with a more critical eye.
"It couldn't be," Maka said, "I mean, we're aware of it, so it's non-diegetic. It's not going to make us sing in front of everyone, is it?"
"I think, to be safe, we should probably avoid thinking of anything deeply emotional." Liz said. "Or too upbeat, that might cause a dance number. We got to stay neutral." She met Maka's eyes and they nodded. Though as soon as they looked away, they were struck with the fact they were probably the least neutral person either of them knew. "It's probably nothing." Liz finished weakly and they continued down the rows of shops.
Black Star was truly in his element. This place was all about showboating in an unserious way, the towns people were an eager audience and quick to encourage his self-indulgent behavior. He had woken like a child within arm's reach of an alarm clock, abusing the snooze button for five more minutes of harmless fun. He was more than capable of searching the town at the same time. Any other number of excuses came to mind as he strolled down the colorful walkway.
"Whatcha doing?" He had found his partner Tsubaki with her hands clamped around her mouth as a music sting gently replayed the first couple notes of a song over and over. She had planted herself in the middle of the walkway in silent defiance. When he blocked out the sun with his halo of blue hair, she gazed up at him like a savior before quickly turning away to glare at a nearby bush. The beginning of the song repeated again. "Aww, what's there to be shy about?" Her glare turned towards him and he held out his arms. "This is the perfect opportunity to sing my praises."The music cut out like a record being ripped from the machine. "Rude."
Cautiously she pulled one hand away from her face and then the other. There was a slight crackle as the benign theme park music started up again and at last she could breathe a sigh of relief.
"Black Star!" She stood up to tower over him. "I could hear you three blocks down. What were you thinking?" He laughed the second a flash of scarlet crossed her features.
"If it got your attention, everyone else should be on their way soon." A flashy number all about how strong he was, was nothing new to his friends. "Is it just me, or are all the 'people' here girls?" The chapter of Lust had been mostly empty, with vague suggestions that there were other creatures lurking in the dark. Here, there were women of all ages bustling about with large platters of decadent meats and pies.
"It's not just you." Tsubaki muttered, her face darker than before. Then she caught his eye follow a large roasted bird and snapped her fingers. "We can't eat anything here, you said so yourself."'
"Yeah, when I was being whiny and boring." He followed the foot traffic toward the festival with a slouch in his step. "And right." He added, equally frustrated with his stomach as he was with the situation. Tsubaki caught up to him as they rounded into shoulder to shoulder traffic. A sea of colorful bonnets bobbed around them and she had to crane her neck to keep him in her line of sight.
"You weren't whiny." She said.
"How would you know? You weren't there." Foolishly, he thought if anyone found someone, they'd all still get along. So, it kind of hurt the two people closest to him might choose to be with people distant or cruel. He straightened his spine and put on a happy smile.
"I was." Tsubaki said quietly. "I know I should have said something sooner, but I was making sure you were safe. I just didn't want people to see me."
"Then why didn't you use your dummy star mode?" Black Star asked. "You would have looked like me then." Tsubaki covered her face and crouched down. The thought hadn't even occurred to her, mostly because it would have involved Black Star knowing she had something to hide. "Come on." He grabbed her by the back of the collar with a laugh and dragged her deeper into the festival. "Next time, try relying on your partner a little."
A wailing croon of a note is what pulled Soul out of the book's trance. He was just outside of the music hall he'd been guided to in order to do something for the Princess Festival. What that something was, he wasn't quite sure, nor what exactly this fake holiday was supposed to be for. However, an cheerful voice going playfully off key did not fit with the trajectory the book was pulling them in.
"Uptown girl," neither were the words, "you know I can't afford to buy her pearls~" The background music that played from the planters was the farthest thing from Billy Joel, but annoyingly the singer was matching the rythem without changing a thing about the lyrics or pacing. The denizens of the chapter seemed annoyed at Patty as she nicked a present bow to put a pop of red on her otherwise boyish outfit. "But maybe, someday, when my ship comes in~" The second she saw Soul watch her from the music hall's upper railing, she tipped her grey cap. "Fancy seeing you here!" She shouted out. If Soul were a meister, he could have hopped over the short concrete railing to the ground below, but he wasn't. So, he made the winding walk down to the street level, all while Patty grinned at him. "How many braincells do you have today?"
"Plenty." He really hoped that people would forget what happened here. "You seem like yourself too." He said when she laughed like a hyena.
"Good, cause I haven't exactly looked in a mirror yet." There was this knowing glint in her eye, but she quickly looked away toward the nearest burst of activity in the background. Three women were setting up carnival games in the area. "Not that it should matter, none of this is real." She played with the ends of her hair, she could never grow it out like Liz did. It always gave her headaches. "I'm surprised you never thought about that sort of thing considering all the love letters you've been getting lately." She teased.
"Ugh, not you too." Soul sighed. "They're not love letters, and I really wish people would stop shoving things in my locker, it's creepy." He already talked to Sid about it, but there were technically no rules that barred students from slipping things through the cracks in the door. Whenever he got a new one, no one was going to make sure no one knew where it was.
"I mean, it's kind of cute." Patty linked her hands behind her back to keep them from fidgeting. "Every shojo manga has a scene like that some where or the other. Aren't surprise notes up there with valentines chocolates?"
"Maybe if you're Black Star," he shook his head, "but I'd rather not have a bunch of 'fans' begging me to switch partners just because I bagged a witch. Maka and I worked way too hard, twice, just to get this far. She hasn't said anything, but I can tell it's been bugging her too."
"Right, that'd be super mean to her." How dare anime lie to her, and Liz for that matter. It wasn't like she'd been trying to go behind Maka's back and confess or anything, she just thought he'd like a little gift or something after working so hard. Giving him a card in front of people would just make it weird, though apparently not as weird as slipping it into his locker. "So you haven't read any of them then?"
"Nope," he said "straight in the trash." She would never tell him what she did for as long as she lived. Though it did sting he didn't even glance through them. "A lock of hair fell out of one of them, and I figured it was better not to know."
"Eww." Patty shivered at the thought. The festival stalls were up and running, with all kinds of attractions and treats. She loved these sorts of things. Anytime she went to one of them with Liz and Kid, they'd be late for one reason or another and end up having to leave early anyway. "We should go to something like this once we're outside, all of us." There were only going to be so many chances they could do fun stuff together before everyone tried to part ways for good. "I bet Kid was so focused on the mess this book is, he didn't even notice it could change how he looked. It might not even be able to, he can't dye his hair." She wiped her eyes, of course they were going to find him, but it still sucked.