The sensation of ones body fixing itself is often a thing we barely notice. It was slow and somewhat uncomfortable but there was never the feeling of… well what the med gave me.

I had no idea what manner of wizardry Pinky had given me, but she was no lier when she said it would heal me, and that there wasn’t anything to dope me up in it.

In fact there was nothing particularly good for pain, or for the horrifying sensation it gave me as it filled my wound.

My wound begin to rapidly close, as if by magic, far faster than I expected, and far faster then even my rapid and automatic mending. Dealing with the burns, quickly breaking and ejected the crusty burns from my pitted skin into the great beyond of the blasted hellscape we resided in.

It also had the side effect of wiggling.

Like visible, tactile wiggling, my flesh and skin winding like thousands of minute worms, backed together.

Lilly “Ohhed,” and said things like, “Didn’t think about that,” and, “Would kill a normal person,” and about, “Telomeres,” and, “Stem Cells.” Whatever all of those were, it was obvious that she thought Pinky’s medicine was the best god damn thing for me she had ever seen.

I disliked it greatly, the chief reason among them was how the movement felt too close to the horror of the dogs and their ever shifting squick insides.

I felt as if my skin had become possessed, and it made me wish to hurl.

Blessedly the period of intense healing me, was brief, and the rest of the time it did it's work it instead made my body tingle pleasantly. As if all the healing went into fixing the minutia.

Surprisingly I hooked up some phlegm thick with black tar which, while horrifying, was also self-explanatory as my lungs felt suddenly fresh.

After clearing my mouth, I also suddenly felt the urge to smoke, which left me with a jitter, but a manageable one.

I managed to get up after a brief minute.

I listened to the machine gun, who knew we were here, and no doubt waited to try and do something should we crawl up behind it.

I sucked in a short, disgusted breath through my nose, before I asked Pinky, “Next time I need one of those, please knock me out before using it… Or better yet, just fucking kill me.”

Pinky looked genuinely ok with the first option, but at speaking the second she gained a look of slight annoyance.

“I’ll make sure to put it on the data sheet: new lady is a winey baby.”

“It… It just reaches too close to recent horrors I wish I had never seen,” I told her, shuddering before murmuring, “Fucking Dogs.”

I felt my hand hold the handles of my guns, an instinctive move that helped me stay rooted, even if it was weakly. It helped me find the nerve to pull myself up, so to speak, bootstraps not included.

“Lets… Lets finish this up. Silence the gun, and exit before anyone gets an extra stupid idea in their head.”

Pinky nodded twice with an audible, “Mmhum, Mmhum,” the noise coming out a bit deeper than her normal voice.

We got up and quickly got up and around, out the back of the hole and behind the main gun.

It looked welcoming, an easy way to get in and silence the man who fired out at the Lunatic forces.

The problem was, that I didn’t trust it.

The gunner knew we were back here, and a machine gun was not a solo operation.

One man shot, yes, but you often had a loader and sometimes a squad to keep people off that gun.

Would there be just the one? Or many more in there.

“Pinky, can you do anything to deal with it, without entering? Or am I going to need to go in there? Because it feels like a trap,” I asked her in a whisper.

She hummed, thinking, her voice once again deeper than normal.

Was she putting on a cutesy voice? Maybe she just liked it, or didn’t like her normal voice? It certainly fit with the whole look. The idea of Pinky acting the same way but with a deeper voice was funny, but it certainly didn’t fit her actions.

She got a look on her face, her eyes opening in a dramatic look of comprehension.

Reaching into her get up, some fold of cloth or another, she withdrew a tube.

Quickly she rotated it around to reveal a button and pressed it before tossing it into the bunker.

I caught hexagonal panels of glass as it passed, not dissimilar to my plasma shots, a minor artifact that the lunatics no doubt harvested in great abundance from the black fabricators on so many planets.

I also caught suspicious green liquid inside, seemingly foaming and I looked over to her.

“What was that, and should we still be here?” I asked her.

“Hmm? Oh… no. We should probably leave.”

I looked back at the bunker, confused buy I kept close to her as we left the machine gun nest, quickly moving down towards what looked like a staging area. Backpacks and what looked like a power source. Tools, a grenade that I took two of, and other bits littered around in a mess that spoke of rushed actions.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I kept looking back towards the nest at the sound of a loud pop, glass shattering before a plume of pink mist floated out the entrance.

“I wouldn’t look if I were you, its really gross,” Pinky said.

I could see the plastics and faux wood and concrete… melting. The prior beginning to smoke as the cloud washed over it and decided that despite my generally bullet proof grit, I would not indeed want to see whatever it did to a person.

We made our way down and towards the way out of here, as the gun went silent. Confusion began to settle over the crowd as we made our way behind another piece of cover and slaughtered its inhabitance. They didn’t even see much of us as I tore into them with the big blade.

We saw the lunatic forces pushing in, the long range riflemen taking shots with their laser lances, popping heads as their frontline troops begin to close in number on the stranglers. I imagined the left flank of that attack would have a much easier time, considering we had massacred our way here.

A sizeable group was also coming our way and upon pointing it out, Pinky groaned.

“That’s him alright… See the guy? The one in the red? That’s him.”

“The crimson guy you mentioned?” I asked her.

“MMhmm,” she said normally, upbeat and simultaneously annoyed, “Arch enemy material…”

“So you’ve fought him before or something?”

“Not fought,” she said, “he just always shouts a bunch as I run away mostly. It’s always, nonsense about… well it changes depending on what I got caught up in, but this time I bet It’ll be about me being a terrorist, and him shouting that I won’t get away with whatever he thinks I’ve done.”

“Didn’t you shoot at both sides?”

She puffed up her cheeks. “I only shot after they shot at me; I was just checking what the fuss was about.”

I shrugged, at least he didn’t seem like the collector, more likely he was just a senior guard, some kind of commander that frequently bumped into her.

“So were going to book it? Just run the hell away?”

She nodded and I looked over to the now visible street.

It wasn’t that far away, though it was open, so we might get shot at.

“Then lets book it,” I told her, holding one hand out.

She got flustered for a second, before giving me a secretive smile.

“Offering to run off with a bad girl? My, my, how exciting.”

I sighed.

“What are you, like eight? Are we running away as teenage woman?”

“No. But I can joke all I want,” she said, my chiding not getting to her as she took my hand.

We got up and ran to the exit, I slowed my steps to keep pace with her, and Lilly obliged ensuring my springy shoes did not catapult me toward the exit, even if I did pull my friend along a little.

A voice bellowed out from the guard closing in, “Stop right there terrorist scum! You shall not flee today!”

It came from the man in red, Pinky’s Commander Crimson whatever.

Pinky strangely enough, did stop, putting on hand on her hips and forcing me to draw short a step and stop to avoid pulling her.

“Commander Crimson Crane,” she said, “You’ll never catch me, or my name isn’t Magical Girl Sparkling Bubblegum.”

I tried to slap a hand over her mouth, a gut instinct to stop her from saying something stupid like her name, but when it came out of her mouth, it instead made me want to cringe into a tiny ball, while simultaneously wanting to laugh.

As far as pseudonyms were concerned, it was a bad one, full stop.

“Magical Girl Sparkling Bubblegum?” I asked, more to myself then to her.

“Crimson Crane? That isn’t my…”

Pinky whispered to me, “Come on, while he’s distracted,” And started to cheese it as fast as she could.

Taken off guard by the rapid change in direction as she started running before me, almost pulling me over until my sense of balance began to kick in and I moved in an effort to balance, only for my body to kick in and start moving.

They were still quite a distance from us though closing quickly.

Just too quickly to properly clear two groups of black clad figures entrenched in their positions.

The commander, still monologuing shouted, “You won’t escape you little pink terrorist, you or your orange friend!” as he got suddenly shot at.

His troops thankfully weren’t blown away, and began to fight back, and he got tied up in the fight rather quickly.

As we ran, I let go of her hand and instead scooped her up, though it was a strain on my flabby transformed arms, pulling her in despite her being taller. She ended up over my shoulder which let me carry us away with far more celerity than with her.

A bit ironic considering her legs were longer than mine.

I heard Pinky, because there was no way I was going to use the name she used, blow a raspberry at the commander.

I could hear him in the combat behind us shout a few obscenity’s before finishing it up with, “I’ll get you next time you pink haired menace! You and your little orange friend too!”

And then we were out of the line of fire and into the city.

I kept running until I started to get a stitch in my side and my shoulder hurt from Pinky’s knee, I stopped and let her down, gave her sword to her and caught my breath on a wood panel wall.

Finaly it was over.

I could feel the exhaustion begin to seep into me and I leaned down into the wall, falling flat on my ass.

I pressed my back into the wall and just breathed, centering myself, making sure to keep control of myself.

Pinky, was not out of breath from running her ass off while carrying a second person, and decided to use her ample breath and unshakeable good mood.

“You’re new to all of this, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been in more gun fights then you can shake a stick at,” I managed between breaths, “I’ve been doing it since I was old enough to move away.”

“I didn’t mean the gun fight. I meant the being a magical girl bit,” she told me.

“I’m not a magical girl,” I groaned, “Magic doesn’t exist.”

“Sure, sure.” She said obviously not caring that magic was not real, and could not hurt me, “Whatever you want to call it. Your new to this whole thing.”

“Maybe,” I told her, still not willing to tell her at a short coming that she might use against me.

As quickly as we had become friendly under fire, I didn’t trust her that much. We were friendly, not friends… Not yet… Probably not yet.

I had come to use collective words, using us, or we instead of me and she or she and me.

She was worming her way in for sure, but she wasn’t in, she was too new.

I settled on that as she said, “I can show you the ropes, you know. I know it sucked for me because I was specialized, and considering it seems like you can’t use your war form, you are probably specialized too. I can help you find your footing. And while I’m at it, if you want to, you can stay at my place, considering you seem to be from out of town.”

I gave her a light snort, “a bit of an understatement, I’m from out of planet.”

“Even more accurate than, anyway, it’s up to you. You could run off, but I don’t know where you would go. There are places, but you would need to pay out upfront as an outsider. And I don’t know any.”

“I’d give a small fortune for something to sleep on. If your offering hospitality, I won’t snub my nose at a couch.”

She nodded, “Come on then, hopefully nothing else will show its head.”

I nodded, and pulled out a smoke and got to smoking as I got up, my added flexibility aiding me.

I even thought about switching my shoes. Considering my boots were in my pockets it wasn’t so easy while smoking and carrying my gear, but I figured I could get the magnetic souls on quick enough when we stopped, their weight and lack of spring would be familiar and welcoming, but we were currently running from a theoretical crime scene.

She frowned at the smell, but didn’t cuss me out over it, and I tried to keep it out of her face as we went on a walk back to wherever she lived.

That’s about when the phrase, nothing else will show its head entered my thoughts, and I looked at her and asked, “Wait what did you mean nothing else?”

She said, casually, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “Luna’s Haunted.”

I sighed out grey smoke.

Of course it was.