[color=#f4cccc][indent][indent][indent][color=#ff9dad][right][sub][color=#ff9dad]⬛[/color][/sub]  [b]mitsu, co.[/b] — [b]warehouse A[/b] >> [b]outside[/b]
[sub][color=#ff9dad]⬜[/color] [@blackdragon]; [@LuckyBlackCat]; [@NiceSpice]; [@Thanarosa][/sub][/right]
“She’s just fine.”[/color] [b]Karen[/b] finds her voice, as if overpowered, in a crowd of presence and preternaturalism. Everyone in their thematic dress — maybe with her pink hair she’d be the protagonist but, right now, [b]Karen[/b] feels like an audience member. Invisible. She stands transfixed as a girl’s wound puckers, reverse-moulders, and disappears in a perversion of time. She stands mesmerized in the emergence of another girl from thin air, as if melting into this dimension. Like a circus without tricks, but paradoxically, even less believable, with a harlequin to boot — so accurate, it has to be unconscious. Jungian, almost. A dream.

What can she make of it? Well, the clown girl may represent a doe-eyed innocence. The brown-haired young woman behind her, fringed in renaissance frill and roses, is that gloominess belying. And the girl dressed to hunt, armed to the teeth, is full-force reality. Together, they symbolize… a transition? Based on how they’re tiered. As for the lucky cat, she is that glimmer of golden optimism which confronts reality. And the angel, the healer — Karen didn’t at all catch the incredulity in her senior's tone — she is, hopefully, salvation. 

So in this narrative she’s built, [b]Karen[/b] can’t take Haruko’s hand, as it would just faze straight through. The dream would snap-crack-fizzle like TV static. 

When she comes to, it is at the indication of a sudden heat ringing sensitive in her rabbit ears. [b]Karen[/b] recognizes the girl-on-fire and, for some reason, starts, as if she hadn’t expected her to come around. Especially like this: the phoenix, sprung from a ring of smouldered structural steel in Warehouse B’s second story, is now traipsing towards her and shouting all the while. 

The sheer irascibility and fume coming off of this girl. Mad, mad, and what for? So: you bust a hole in the wall of the abandoned property of a failed enterprise. So what? Here’s what: I saved you! Saved you from a fight that left these other girls in a state where they have to sew their own skin back together! You’re welcome, that’s what, was what Karen could’ve, should’ve, countered as the girl shook her head with finality. She can’t meet those eyes. The obduracy surfaced in her own gaze, as swiftly, rolls off, evanesces, and dies. The Karen that remains, thoroughly discouraged and embarrassed, can take no greater initiative than to herself disappear. 

A mumbled half-apology — [color=#ff9dad]“...I’ve been intrusive”[/color] is the only part audible. Then, like a gymnast, [b]Karen[/b] belts, kicks off the ground, kicks off a column, lands on those metal stairs extending to the upper floor. Turns back; hesitates. [color=#ff9dad]“I… have someone to check on.”[/color]

[i]Haruko.[/i] Apparently, she was worth a first name basis. [color=#ff9dad]“It’s Karen.”[/color]

She reaches out to the clouded world outside the windows. [i]Snap[/i] — a mirror her size, [i]fwip[/i], faces the conglomerate of vice-fighters. And [b]Karen[/b], outside, she’s falling. She’s out of there.[hr][center][color=#575757][i][color=#ff9dad]ᴍᴀɢɪᴄᴀʟ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴛʏ ᴄʜᴇʀʀʏ[/color][/i]  ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇ ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇꜱ! [b]♪[/b][/color][/center][/indent][/indent][/indent][/color]