Madeleine opens a drawer, stares at the contents through dead and distressed eyes, and closes it again without a word. 

Repeat five times. That can't actually be it, can it? She repeats her repetition. Then she does it again. [i]Then[/i], she tears open the rest of the room looking for the hidden switch that would swing open the fake wall and reveal... anything, really? Anything other than this. Because there has to be something else. There has to be a look somewhere in here that is something other than the desperate cry for help that filled this entire-- 

Well actually that was the other thing! It's not even the whole room! All this space! All this space and, and, and!!

"I am no longer asking you. This has become an emergency. I insist that..."

Madeleine halts halfway across the room and simply stares at what she sees. She is dressed now in plain, but powder blue underwear and the only acceptable thing in the entire apartment: Machia's lab coat. Even as a piece of battlewear it was still the softest and most beautiful thing that she could find. It did not fit her the way it did Titanomachia; the coat sat flat on Madeleine's hips whereas it always flattered Machia's curves. And the sleeves were a hair too long for her arms so they rested unfashionably far past her wrists to around the base of her palms.

But for all of that it was beautiful, and she was beautiful in it. But not half as beautiful as the sight she was witnessing now. She closes her mouth. She sets aside her demands to go clothes shopping, to burn her rest day at a shopping center giving this wastefully gorgeous woman a makeover. She sets aside the list of complaints and her arsenal of arguments as to why addressing them was necessary. All of that could come later. It's a point she could better make inside her own apartment, where she could show off the full depth of her knowledge and reveal herself to Machia as a proper magician. 

Her furious pout melts into a quiet smile. Right now it did not matter. Right now her heart is melting. Right now...

She reaches over Machia's shoulder and lifts Blanche's left paw. 

"The first steps are the simplest," she says, turning the little leg so Machia can see the silver thread stitched into the paw pad, "I enhanced her with materials that conduct mystics better than stuffing. Her tail is also weighted with iron pellets, if you were wondering. And there are the... alignments, so that the rest of it will stick. The materials for this are largely irrelevant, compared to getting the shape and the runes correct. There is a second set with trigrams, as well. I could draw them for you later, if you'd like? Originally, I did the whole thing in red pen and a stack of printer paper I, uh, borrowed... from a shipping store."

Madeleine coughs and releases Blanche back into Machia's care. She walks around the pair of them and settles down on her knees with a smile. The back of the lab coat and its many ribbons splay out behind her like the tail of some strange sea creature. And she smiles.

"But that is all armament and accelerant. I put a sword and a shield in her little hands so she could be my brave warrior, and I opened up her ears. Of much greater importance... is communing. The totem guards you when you are at your most vulnerable, so you must build it pathways through your soul with sympathetic connections. All children know this innately, of course. Your guardian animal is the one you speak to. Ask it for advice, and listen when it answers. Tell it all the things it missed while you were away. Trust it with your fears, your secrets, your insecurities. The longer you do it, the more powerful she becomes. Blanche is very powerful; I trust her with my life. And now I'm trusting her with yours."

She holds out her hand from her spot on the floor. Perhaps in offer, perhaps in a vain attempt to snatch her stuffed animal back, perhaps to close the distance between them even a little bit, perhaps in silent demand to be helped off of the floor again. Or maybe all of these, or maybe none of them. Maybe she's just casting magic right now. That is the mystery of the moment.

"Do you... want to try it yourself? It doesn't have to be a tiger necessarily, whatever you own can be made to work. Or if you prefer you can work with Blanche for a while. She [i]is[/i] going to be guarding your stuff for a while, you might as well get to know one another."