The bike helmet does only minor damage to the Aesthetic. Her cartoon bike works fine.

And now she's making much better time. It doesn't improve her mood all that much, though. (Food would help. Maybe she'll find someplace properly empty, soon; the bodega was open and the bakery had a light on in the back.)

This liquor store has a rack of munchies and candies.

That helps, yeah. She's still hungry, but it's back to being ignorable at least. She continues on.

A party of three magical girls bearing a searchlight flies slowly overhead in goose-skein formation.

UM.

She loses the bike and ducks into the nearest empty-looking building.

The nearest empty looking building is a bank.

It transpires that the girls are calling her name: "DENICE? DENICE?"

She will just huddle all shivery on the floor, then.

One of them lands, not outside the bank but cattycorner to it. "DENICE? PEOPLE ARE WORRIED, DENICE."

She goes face-down onto the floor, pressing herself against it, not resisting not resisting not resisting don't hurt me don't hurt me don't hurt me. Can't stop shaking.

The girl has a flashlight. She crosses the street. Aims the beam in through the bank windows.

Spots Denice on the floor, goes and knocks on the window. "Hey! Denice? Is that you?"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

(She doesn't move. Barely breathes. Not resisting not resisting not resisting don't hurt me don't hurt me don't hurt me. Still can't stop shaking, hard enough that it's probably visible. Hurts. That's fine. It'd be weird if this didn't hurt.)

"Hey - we're not gonna hurt you -" The glass muffles her. She signals the still-airborne other girls; they land, and one teleports into the bank.

She couldn't move if she wanted to, right now. Couldn't want to, for that matter.

"Denice? Are you hurt?" asks the teleporter girl. She's in a steampunk outfit covered in gears with a fake corset and everything, carefully organized around the wings. "Your wings look pretty fragile, do you have enough else changed to get rid of them to put them back right? - That's a bike helmet. Do you have a bike somewhere?"

She twitches hard when the teleporter starts talking near her, something like an attempt to curl into a fetal position. Doesn't make it. Doesn't otherwise respond.

"- do I need to call you an ambulance?"

She manages to curl up, this time. She doesn't seem injured, but she's shaking like a leaf.

"You look like you might be cold or - or hungry or something? Janie has some raisins, do you want Janie's raisins -"

She's far too far gone to make out the words, but the tone is off-script enough that she notices. It takes only the barest edge off the panic, but that's enough for Denice to be present in her head at all, for her world to contain anything besides the certainty that it's ending.

There's not much she can do; moving is an option in only the most technical sense, and talking is right out. She could make a cartoon thing, but she's too terrified to think about what to make. She has this telepathy, though. There's only one thing to send with it. It might not be a good idea, but it's not like she's in a position to think about that, right now.

Steampunk girl is suddenly very aware that this entire situation is terrifying.

Steampunk girl rocks back on her heels. "Whoa, whoa, not gonna hurt you - did somebody hurt you -"

Terrifying.

The effect fades out after a second or so; it's still long enough to be pretty uncomfortable.

"Okay, you're clearly - really scared - but we're not here to hurt you."

Institutional hallways. Hunger. Being held down by someone much larger; pain in overstressed joints. Trapped trapped trapped; the horror of never, ever, ever being safe. The vague sense of a battle of wills that creeps along over days, weeks, years, never ending, no hope of ever ending, where even if she wins she loses.

"Do you want Janie's raisins -"