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Mauve Sweety Bringer
94e610
> Work on expanding the aura to give Kuroko more landing zone. She knew the story by name, so she likely has a 'safe' entry point in mind for teleporting in. Try and figure that out, and cover it.
The ice-cream shop's interior is distorted, but it's at least close to what it's supposed to be. Ice-cream bar, there along one wall. The raspberry sauce is now a puddle of bubbling red liquid. The pistachio has coalesced into tripods, and is slowly crawling towards you. You can't tell where the front of the soft-serve machine is, but its gears and tubes are exposed and...
Cancerous. It's all cancerous, like the walls, oozing down, dripping, and it's getting to you. You can feel it on your skin. It's crawling, trying to burrow through your flesh, but it can't. It's nowhere near smart enough to manage that.
You shake away the errant thought, and ask yourself where Kuroko is likely to aim for when she's teleporting in. When the four of you go here for ice-cream, you usually sit outside or eat it while walking. There's a seating section, but the seats are too tall and it's too crowded. There's no place to sit down, really.
The shop floor is empty, and it'd be a good target, assuming Kuroko guesses it is. There's not even much of the "ice-cream" there. But if she thinks there could be other people here, then she'll try to aim for somewhere there's not likely to be any people. Or she'll stop outside, and walk in—Hikari as much as told her she won't be able to see what's happening, and Kuroko's told you she hates teleporting anywhere she can't see. That it's dangerous.
But if she arrives from the outside, then she'd have to make it through the teeth, and–
Does it still look like a normal ice-cream shop from the outside? You stare at the front of the shop, with the teeth. It's faint, but you think you can hear screams from the outside. There's no windows anymore, is the thing.
"Hikari?" you say, gently untangling her from your waist. "Come on. Let's get away from the landing zone."
Kuroko will either teleport to the middle of the room, or to right underneath the ceiling, probably above the bar. If you're in between them, then you think you can push your 'aura' out to cover both. Although, it's weird. You're not supposed to have one.
...also it's nothing like an esper power, but you won't think about that right now.
You take Hikari's hand, and she follows without resistance. Then you stare at the bar, and concentrate.
You can feel the ice-cream shop's corruption creeping up your legs, crawling up your torso. It's disgusting, it's wrong, and most of all it's *weak*.
It's so weak.
Flickering streams of light cover your body, concentrating on your right hand, where you're holding Hikari. They push upwards, and then you let go, and they shoot up to the ceiling, where Kuroko will be. It's the only place where the geometry's stable enough to support a teleport.
The ice-cream reacts like it's been struck by lightning. The soft-serve machine parts, and the tubes and gears burst into vicious, desperate growth, tearing their way through the walls. You can hear the ceiling groan.
It's weak, but there's a lot of it.
Kuroko will be her soon. You tell yourself that, though you feel as though you're seeing all of this at one remove. Like you're not quite real.
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