Mitzi was right. I was starving. A happy hum escaped me as the scrambled eggs melted in my mouth. I peeked over to Remington, who was drumming their fingers on their still closed to-go container.

"Is something wrong?" I asked before taking another bite.

Remington was suddenly alert. They straightened their posture and laid their hands out flat. "O-Oh, no," they stuttered. "I'm a bit of a shy eater, is all."

"Do you want me to turn my back, or—"

"No! No, you don't have to go through all that trouble." Remington leaned forward. "I'll get around to it in a bit. I appreciate it, though."

They turned to me with that smile again. I fed the moths fluttering around in my stomach an offering of bacon to leave me alone. The flavor was sweeter than normal, but the salty fat of the pork belly balanced it out quite nicely. It tempted me to go back and get a BLT sandwich.

"Did the ringing come back?"

"What?"

I heard them, but my brain was delayed in processing the question. I also took a pause as I waited for Remington to repeat themself, as everyone usually did. However, they patiently waited. Had they figured out I had ADHD?

"Once we got away from the glass factory, it stopped. I guess we’ll see if it happens again on the way back."

Remington peeked inside their container. "I'll keep an eye on ya until you're back safe in your salon then."

I couldn't help but snort in amusement at their longing face. Quickly, I tried to cover it with a cough. "Uh, thank you."

They detected my deceit as Remington gave a pout.

I swung my legs up on the bench, so that my back was facing toward them. Another spoonful of eggs was shoveled into my mouth soon after. I wanted to finish those first before they got cold.

"There is something else bothering me though," I confessed.

There was a grunt. I assumed that meant Remington finally took a bite of food, so I went on.

"There's a heavy feeling of doom and gloom in the air," I pointed off to the side with my spoon, "and it's not because it's spooky season."

"Is that your way of sayin' I make you uncomfortable?" Remington asked in a small voice.

I was about to take the last bite of egg, but dropped the utensil back into the container. "What? No! I've had a wonderful afternoon hanging out with you."

"It kinda feels wrong, don't it?"

I scraped the last of the egg back up slowly, not sure what direction Remington was going. I stayed quiet. I didn't want to assume anything, then end up panicking for no reason. Again.

Remington slowly continued, "Like, we should be friends by now if destiny or whatever didn't keep us apart."

A shy smile formed on my lips. "Yeah. Guess that means we have a lot to catch up on, huh?"

Whatever Remington replied went on deaf ears. My stomach dropped as a powerful magic suffocated the air. Those around us pixelated into nothing like we were in some kind of video game. Within seconds, the only things that remained were our surroundings. It was an eerie silence broken by me releasing my held breath.

"What was that?" Remington asked.

I weakly laughed. "We should throw away our lunch just in case we need to run."

"Aww, hell no." Remington dropped their shoulders with a groan. "I liked it better when I didn't know anything about magic."

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I was beginning to feel the same way. If only Papa did like his best friend, Fernando, did with Estelle and chose not to teach us magic. Then again, with everything going on, it made me realize how little I really knew. Maybe that was exactly what Papa did in his own way.

That was too big of a thought to explore right now. We needed to find a place to hide until this passed over. I let my feet fall heavy as I turned myself back around on the bench. Remington had already stood up. They nudged their head in the direction of a trash can.

“Alright,” Remington reluctantly groaned as they threw away their half-eaten lunch. “What’s going on?”

I slid my thumb across the styrofoam. Goodbye delicious food. Your send off will be one that I will always remember. I lifted my arms over the trash can and dropped the container.

"Well, it's most likely the Archive created a huge pocket macrocosm. It's a small copy of the area, keeping all magical things in and everything else out. It's to protect the general public's peace."

"Then, why are we here? Ain't we general public?"

"I don't know." I looked at them as reality sat heavy over my body. "According to Papa, one this size would be used to take down Nightmares that have crossed over into a living dimension."

Remington clicked their tongue. "You should have led with that. Should we hide or somethin'?"

"Oh, most definitely."

We looked around, trying to find the best place to go. There were a few stalls around, but those weren't too sound of structures. The vendor hall was strong on the outside. However, if something were to get in, all those tables and booths would go everywhere.

That only left the livestock auction house. Remington and I looked at each other displeased. "Does the spell take away the manure?"

"Sadly, no," I sighed. "Let's just hope we don't have to go out back."

We couldn't even take a step toward safety before the ground shook beneath us. Both Remington and I took a wide stance to keep our balance.

I glanced at them once the quaking stopped. I threw my arms up to make crab hands. A stupid grin on my face. They were unimpressed. This must be why I'm single.

"I don't think now's the time, Tetsuo."

"Oh no, the name drop. Guess I really am in trou-"

Karma quickly set in as a massive wind pushed me right into Remington. We both fell to the ground along with the trash can. I quickly threw up my arm as if it had a shield on it. Wrong superhero by name, but it ...worked? A barrier had gone up. I watched as the revenge of the lunch went right over our heads, along with the barrel itself.

The barrier went down as I looked at my hands. "I did it?" I waved my arms around in excitement. Then, I jazzed my hands at Remington. "I really did it!"

They looked at me confused. I should have expected as much. Not at any point had I had told them how difficult it was for me to use magic.

"What the fuck is that?" Remington asked, their hand flying out toward the creature.

All my excitement dropped as the blood left my face. The source of the wind was the Nightmare crashing down at the far end of the fairground. It was on its back. Its eight legs were wiggling around as its longer clawed arms were trying to flip itself over.

"A Nightmare," I replied.

It was exactly how Papa described them. It was as big as a semi was long. The body was the shape of a scorpion without a tail. Like our little shadowy friend, an exoskeleton could be seen through the inky skin. Its body shifted more as a defense mechanism to trick its enemies which direction it would go. Our Nightmare, or whatever it was, seemed more confused how a body should be structured. I would really prefer it here than the acid dripping clawed, well, Nightmare in the distance.

Uniformed Archive Agents appeared from between the buildings. They ran down the path. All except one. Their sandy hair whipped around as they stopped to look at us. Their eyes made contact with mine.

"Aiden!" another called out.

They snarled their teeth. After one last look up and down, they finally whirled around to join the other agents.

I turned to Remington, who was glaring in the direction of the Archivists. "Hey," I called out. They gave a heavy blink back to reality before looking at me. "You okay?"

"I don't know how to answer that right now."

"Fair."

It didn't take us long after that to get into the auction house. The benches circling the ring were empty, some random cups left behind by the spell. And there was a cow. It stood in the display ring and greeted us with a moo.

Remington hurried over to it to give it a pet. "Are cows magical or somethin'?" they asked.

"No, they're just weird," I replied. "It's why aliens like to abduct them, at least that's what Estelle heard."

I took a look around. The only place to really hide was the booth. Once the spell dropped, it was going to be an odd one to explain how we got back there. That was a future Tetsuo problem though.

The scream of the Nightmare outside pierced through the building. I covered my ears. "This is going down as one of the worst lunch breaks ever."

We went up to the door that had the staff only sign. I honestly was half expecting it to be locked with how things were going. Luckily, that wasn't the case.

"Five bucks it leads back to the live cattle," I joked.

"Maybe there's another cow and we can ride off into the sunset," Remington chuckled.

The imagery was funny enough that I kind of wanted it to be true. Not that we could get far with the spell. I put my hands on my hips. We'd look damn good in cowboy hats though.

"Tetsuo." I glanced up to Remington, who nudged their head at the opened door. "Let's get inside."