Pinky closed the door so quickly that it could break steel plates. I was honestly a little surprised that the frame remained. I sat down on what amounted to her lawn after she pardoned herself to clean for a minute, listening to the sounds of Pinky cleaning like a mad woman.

Over the course of a minute, I heard noises from inside that should not have been, including the sound of a metal pipe dropping on solid concrete, two cats snarling, and the sounds of violent movement.

I was half tempted to actually break in and make sure she was still alive, but she came out a whole 60 seconds later, and I blinked at her.

I had expected it to take a hell of a lot longer than 60 seconds.

“I can wait if you need more-” I tried to say before she reached down and pulled me to my feet.

She didn’t look like she could, but as I was coming to know all too well, her looks were deceiving.

“It’s all good, nothing wrong in there, ha. Come on in,” she said, tugging me to the door before bowing slightly, and gesturing inside.

I turned and looked in… A clean house.

I could swear the light glinted off the wood panel.

The room was… well, not spotless, but damn near close to it.

I walked in, shoes clacking in the inner alcove of the front door before I stepped up and onto the wood.

I walked in to get a good look and found only a few drops here or there, where the shine dimmed.

Not a bag in site... Anywhere

Considering how cartoonish Pinky could be, I was halfway to looking under the rug by the holo as if she had somehow stacked them all under it, and I would lift the edge only for them to spill out.

“Where…”

The door closed, and I stopped my possibly insulting check, turning to look at her with awe and not just a little fear.

“Where did…” I asked, a little lost.

“A girl has to have her secrets,” she said coyly, slipping off her shoes and into what looked like pink bunny slippers before stepping up into the living room.

She stepped up before gesturing to the bulky holo and the couch, “Feel free to sit; I’ll turn on something for you while I get dinner.”

I looked between her and the couch and did the most suspicious thing I could.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, fighting the words as they came automatically to my mouth so I could be the one saying them, and I took a seat.

The couch was a bit rough around the edges, but it was still a comfy cushion under my rear, and with the day I had just had, it felt better than almost anything I had ever sat on.

Pinky walked over and fiddled with a few nobs and buttons, and the great big thing sprang to life, a tiny two-foot screen lighting up, scan lines crawling down the screen as the news sprang to life, several Lunatics talking back and forth in fine flowy garb that made them look stuffy.

Pinky left, and I just kind of vegetated for a while, watching as they talked about nothing in particular, just nice, good old-fashioned brain rot. The blooms are projected to bloom next week; little Timmy fell down the well on so and so street. Ten best products for youthful skin: you won't guess where snake oil ranks, as usual.

I started to take in the place, looking at the shelves of tiny neat bound thin books and the black technological boxes off to the side of the room let, when the adrenaline died, and I came down like a brick, enervation hitting every limb with lead weight and my stomach protesting that it demanded sacrifice, that I turned to pay attention to Pinky.

I stared past the big box and looked over into the kitchen at her boiling water, and she looked back at me, supernatural senses keenly feeling my gaze.

We just stared at one another, my eyes droopy, and she waved back.

My stomach growled, and I looked down at its protests.

“Shush you,” I murmured, sneaking my head back behind the monitor.

Then I stood up and walked over to her because the silence was killing me, and I couldn’t sit still on a good day. I also couldn’t stand the news. It was just so boring and sanitized that I couldn’t bear myself to watch it.

“What's up?” Pinky asked, looking at me and not at some kind of noodle she was cooking.

“Don’t like sitting still. Anything I can help with?”

“Hmm… I suppose you could get some dishes. Oh, and would you like some tea?”

“Sure, I’ll get some dishes. I don’t suppose you have coffee?” I asked her.

Pinky looked at me and asked as if I were a little dim, “Tea?”

I nodded, “Sure… Now, where are your dishes?”

She pointed past me, and I brought a few down, eyeing one of the open cabinets.

It held dishes with little spiny bits inside, and it was stacked in a manner that evoked a raccoon on opium.

“Don’t stare,” Pinky called out, but it was too late.

I put down the plates and got to looking at the weird shelf, then I re-stacked it with every orderly neuron I had, every part of me that was good at understanding how something physically worked I had inherited. Normally, I was the chaos gremlin, and I couldn’t be shown up by Pinky.

I stepped back when I had it stacked so fine it could be used in a commercial, washed my hands and picked the plates back up.

Pinky stared at me like I was some manner of harmless psychotic, gently whispering sweet nothings into a wall.

“Did you have to do that?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” I told her straight-faced.

She sighed and shooed me.

“Get. Let me cook. You’re a guest; stop cleaning my kitchen.”

I did so, though I didn’t sit down, instead pacing around for a bit, trying to pull myself from the crash and force my body to keep releasing endorphins, and keep me awake, walk off the activity, and let my body wake back up from the crash. I walked around until Pinky cussed me out for wearing a hole through the floor before I sat down and just sucked it up.

Pinky brought over two bowls of noodles, a kettle and a set of wood sticks, turning off the kitchen lights.

I stared at the sticks as Pinky served the tea, unsure as to what the hell to do with them until Pinky picked them up and held them in hand.

I studied her and then tried to pick up the two sticks and use the angled tips to clamp the noodle and failed repeatedly.

To my great shame, Pinky watched, and I could see her holding back a laugh.

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“How do you-” I dropped them and cut myself off with a curse, which pushed her over.

She let out a belly laugh, stifling it as best as she could, only to give up. Her laugh was a deeper thing, similar to the few times before when she had dropped in pitch.

“You should… Ha, oh… By Luna and the spirits, you're like a kid. Ha, he-you can’t hold them right at all…” She said, her laughter coking out into a chortle that just seemed to grow louder as she watched me pick up the sticks again.

“Stupid sticks, stupid fingers… Who uses a wood stick anyways?” I mumbled sourly.

“It’s- Heh, not wood, not really. It’s bamboo. The stuff grows faster than we make Bio-Wood, so we use it in everything. We even use it to make Bio-Wood because it's long and stringy. It’s just a really tough grass. Here, let me-”

I wasn’t about to let Pinky show me up on finger dexterity; that was literally the number one trait that made a gunslinger, tied only with sight.

“It’s these stupid flabby hands, hold on…” I told her, before asking quietly, “Lilly can you?”

“I can, one moment,” she told me before I could feel the building of light in me.

Like before, I could feel my entire body hum, vibrating as the heat built within me to a boiling point where I cast a flash of light, and then my body returned to its default.

My pale hands clutched up the stupid sticks, and I tried again, holding them in one hand, diving down to clamp a noodle and…

And it slipped out of my fingers into the broth.

I stared at my treacherous hand and looked over to Pinky, who was staring at me.

I blinked at her.

“Would you like a hand?” She asked, smirking.

I felt like I had swallowed a frog, a very sour frog.

“Why do I feel like you’re never going to let me live this down?” I asked her.

“Because you’re a cynic? Come on, give me your hand…”

Pinky eventually got my hand, but only after I tried six more times, getting a little better at holding my hand right. In the end, she got it because she held them so effortlessly.

After two attempts with her, I got a hold of the chopsticks and managed to start eating.

The noodles were nice, though I was becoming so used to ship food that any amount of flavour was simply incomparable.

We chowed down on the noodles. Pinky and her infectious personality slowly got me to open up and relax.

Pinky got up after we both complained about the news and turned a nob, flicking through several different stations like radio, only to land on something odd.

It was animation.

“Oh, sweet, I caught the recap,” she said, giddily, “Mind if we watch this?”

“I don’t mind watching anything, as long as it's not more boring stories about someone finding a turnip that looks like a face,” I groaned.

“Nah,” she said with surety, “That is nothing like this,” before coming back to sit next to me as we continued to eat.

I watched the cartoony girls doing stuff, shouting stuff as a colourful cast of other characters fought someone that could best be described as faceless monster 6, because it certainly wasn’t the first one, and I figured they had fought at least four more after that.

I watched it, not quite understanding what the deal was until I heard the narrator, who explained nonsensical things that had happened, said, “This week on Magical Girl Saint Maki!” in a voice so serious that only someone who cared wouldn’t see it as ridiculous before it dived into an animated sequence with music and I took my eye off the holo and looked at Pinky.

Pinky was jamming out to it, doing a kind of half-hearted dance while eating, her attention glued to it.

I waited for it to end and Pinky to come out of her dance trance, and the show seemed to start for real, the tone changing on a dime as the beleaguered cast of cutesy, big-eyed girls started fighting with scuffed-up clothes.

Pinky somehow became even more engrossed, and I had to ask her, “Why are they fighting a random octopus thing?”

She turned to me, stars in her eyes, for a moment as she began to explain the nonsense.

She began to watch, and whenever I had a question, she would explain it, and so I asked, and she answered, starting to pick up on whatever she believed I would need, and her infectious energy began to rub off on me.

I got caught up in the tiny details, not quite having Pinky’s spirit, but softening up to it as the fight ramped up and eventually concluded as the characters shouted platitudes about truth and justice and all that good stuff and blew the enemy to dust with some kind of super attack that only seemed to target the betentacled monster, and not any of the buildings around it in a flash of light.

It felt like a lot longer than half an hour after it ended, and Pinky asked, “You want to watch some more? I have a bunch of stuff we can watch that’s better than... Whatever this is,” she said, gesturing to something that looked and sounded like a commercial but looked like a show.

“You know what, sure,” I told her, “Pick what you want, though; I have no taste.”

She did, and so we watched a different show about students doing stuff.

I honestly didn’t get the appeal, but I couldn’t bring myself to complain. Pinky’s enthusiasm and unbridled positive energy was so powerful that it was enjoyable to watch just because she was having a good time.

As the night went on and Pinky gave a refill on food, I came to realize that despite me dropping my form, Pinky had not dropped hers and I couldn’t help but wonder why.

It stewed in me as she came back, and we kept watching until I felt like I needed to say something. Not wanting to be a total shitter about it, I decided to instead ask her something else a little less personal than, ‘Hey, why are you not showing me what you look like for real.’

Who said I couldn’t be a diplomat outside of a transformation?

“Why do you insist on being a magical girl instead of anything else? Do you just like the shows or whatever? What's with everything being magical to you anyway?” I asked her.

She snorted a little, “Because it is. I don’t care what our Oracles call it because of the fact is they can’t properly explain anything about it. No matter how you cut it, manipulating things with resonance makes no sense, and if it makes no sense. But if something makes no sense, and it is anyway, it's at least a little magical.”

I looked at her, rolled it around for a moment in my mind, and asked her, “Are you sure it's not just that we don’t know it? I’m not all that well educated in that extra stuff… Are you sure you’re just not well-educated enough to understand it? If it is and makes no sense, it’s only reasonable to say that it's not magic; you just don’t understand it?”

She looked at me, somewhat cross and said, “I don’t know… Maybe I am uneducated. I only have a master's, but, in my personal understanding, I should not be able to transform in a flash of light, spontaneously changing my body’s shape, bone structure, genetic expression, fat content, and a host of other things.”

“Point taken,” I told her.

Ok, maybe I should avoid diplomacy and stick to my guns instead, where I couldn’t stick a gun in my mouth on accident like I was able to stick my foot in it.

“That’s… Darn it, how do I explain myself… The point is that I know my stuff, and everything I know tells me it shouldn’t work. It’s like how a teacher or whatever dumbed stuff down so you could understand it as a general idea. I don’t think they understand the full extent of how it works well enough to explain it without using metaphors,” she said somewhat exhaustively.

“And if they can’t explain it without relying on ‘It’s like this, but this,’ you what? Call it magic because it's an unexplained phenomenon?”

She sighed, “Because it's unexplained… And honestly, it's a little easier to understand it like that. Some of the stuff I’ve run into seems to work on pure dream logic sometimes, it's like forecasting the weather via astrology.”

I made a grunt of agreement, and she grunted back, an unexpected speaker of my native tongue.

“Well, that makes a little more sense. I was starting to think you thought magic was real. I never was much into astrology or whatever. I got my palms read one time,”

“Oh? I could give you a second opinion on the answer if you want, though you would have three of them now.”

“Hmm?”

“Because there are three forms? Each one has a different palm.”

“Sorry, wrong Hmm. I can do the math, I meant the second opinion part,” I asked her.

She snorted and gestured at the holo.

“I’m a fan of magic. Do you think I can’t read a palm? I love that occult stuff. Superstition might be superstition, but it’s always cool to try it out once in a while and see where it brings you, you know?”

“I’ll pass for now. The last thing I want is you telling my doom in your living room before I take a smoke break… You mind if I smoke in here?” I asked her.

“I would prefer if you didn’t. No offence, but it gets everywhere and stays there. There's a little balcony thing over there where you can smoke, though; just close the wall behind you.”

“Gotcha, your house, your rules. I’ll be back in a minute then, and you can read my pasty pale hand lines should you wish to.” I told her to lift myself off the couch and head for the door/wall thing.

It was a damn weird sliding door. It had a handle, a lock, and everything, but I got out without hassle and made my way onto a tiny balcony above a lowered alley. I hadn’t noticed that the road led down next to Pinky’s house, but I was glad for the separation from ground level.

I closed the door and lit up.

It was relaxing to have a nice little corner where there was no one else; it helped me decompress a little. I was not used to being close to other people for long stretches of time without a quiet area where I could just breathe outside of the line of sight of everyone.

I leaned on the little railing, which was just as scuffed, if not as pointy, as the front and just thought over everything I was going to try to do.

I also thought about Pinky, the not-so-little bundle of energy, good times, and an upbeat outlook, and it caught me thinking that Pinky and I might not be so different.

I wonder if this was her decompressing, too, if instead of smoking, she just watched stuff.

Hell, I didn’t even know how she was taking the fight. I was fine, but I was the kind of person fucked in the head enough to think shooting people for money was ok. Pinky didn’t seem a killer to me. Was she coping, hiding it away under a smile?

It was plausible, I supposed. She had her peacekeeper form up; it's not like I could tell with how much control she seemed to have. She could be fucking losing it in there for all I knew.

I decided not to make any assumptions because if I was going to try and not be a total ass hole towards someone, I should probably do it in a manner they would be fine with. And Pinky did not like assumptions.

So I would continue along without making them about pinky, as best as I could.

I was still weary of her and still didn’t know her well enough to trust her implicitly, but no matter how I looked at it, she seemed like good people material. And good people were rare enough that I didn’t want to push them away when I found them.

Even if they wanted to style themselves after animated characters.