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Lianne and Kaylee in PMMM
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"I think ten minutes? Though we're probably faster than a whole classroom full of ninth graders."

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Kaylee laughs.  "Probably.  Lead the way!"

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Without the need to herd recalcitrant teenagers, it's closer to a six or seven minute walk. The trail ends at a little gazebo-like structure next to a gravel road, overlooking a wheat field. There's a little placard explaining the site's history with a button you can push for a voice-over.

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Kaylee reads the placard with some interest, and admires the view for a while.

When she turns away, she spots an odd sort of shimmering in the air near the trail back.

She frowns bemusedly.  "Lianne, do you see that?  What is it?"

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"Yeah, that's - weird. Maybe it's heat? - It's the wrong place and season, though..."

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"Yeah, I don't..."

She takes a few steps toward it, almost in a trance.  "It's not like heat haze, it's - in one place.  I can walk up to it."

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"That's - really weird. Like, really, I think we should go - "

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"It's pretty," Kaylee says.  Step.  Step.

She holds up one hand, and the shimmer concentrates into a glow where her hand enters it, and then her hand vanishes.

"It leads somewhere," she murmurs.  "You can go through it."

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Ahhhhh

Lianne rushes up to her and grabs her other hand. "Okay, magical portals to another world are not on, we're not anime characters, let's at least tell someone where we are before we disappear - "

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Kaylee's hand wriggles out of hers.  She steps through.

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Okay freaky magical portal just ate her friend.

Lianne darts through after her.

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It does lead somewhere.

It's dark and cramped and concrete, and it smells like dust and rats.  Like a crawlspace, or a basement - unfinished, unadorned, a room that exists as an implication of other rooms.  But what basement would have two intersecting hallways - long hallways, stretching into the darkness beyond the unshaded bulb that hangs from the ceiling.  There are pipes sprouting from the walls.  It's cold, and damp.  Ancient dusty cobwebs hang from the corners of the walls, and harvestman spiders move across them in their strange thrashing panic.

It doesn't feel like a real basement.  It feels like the idea of a basement, a fleeting image, magnified and caricatured.  The cold rough solidity of concrete, angularly twisting copper pipes, harsh-edged shadows, purposefulness but no purpose.  There is an aliveness in the air.

She catches a glimpse of Kaylee disappearing down one hallway.

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She runs after her, calling her name.

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No reply.  She disappears around a corner - was it there before?  The new passage seems larger but somehow no less claustrophobic.  There's something moving in the darkness that Lianne can't quite see; Kaylee's running straight for it.

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She's in track she can sprint and keep Kaylee away from that thing.

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Nope.

It comes barrelling out of the darkness toward Kaylee - an enormous rat the size of a dog.  At first it doesn't seem to have a mouth, but then its entire head splits apart into a three-part jaw with teeth like scythe blades, spraying strands of spittle as it lets out a raspy bellow.  It snaps at Kaylee's chest, and her arm as she falls over, leaving deep, bloody gashes.

She screams.

 

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The creature sees Lianne and starts advancing.  (How long is the hallway?  How close was she before, how close is she now?  Why doesn't this place make sense?)

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Ahhhhh

She keeps sprinting, intending to kick the terrifying rat demon thing in the head or something.

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Something else appears, alights on the ground in front of her.  This one's a mutant cat, but at least it's normal cat size and not hideously ugly.

It speaks.  "You should run."

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She tries to go around it. "Like hell! That thing's got Kaylee!"

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"You can save her, but not like this!  It's too much for you!  Get to safety and I can help you!"

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"How."

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"You'll have to make a contract with me to become a magical girl.  When you do, you can wish her healed!  But we have to put some distance between us and the familiar or it'll interrupt the contract!"

It is getting pretty close, now.

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...The rat demon seems pretty focused on her. Maybe she can lead it away from Kaylee some. (Maybe this is a horrible dream and she should just try and wake up.)

She grabs the cat-thing, shouts some invective or another at the rat, turns, and runs, retracing her steps. 

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Her steps aren't easily retraceable; the halls aren't quite how she remembers them.

"Once we're far enough away from the familiar, put me down and wish for Kaylee to be healed, and I'll grant your wish in exchange for turning you into a magical girl.  It takes a few seconds, so we should be sure we've lost the familiar before you make the contract."

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