Mari unlocks the door to her apartment before walking through, holding it open from the other side.

  “Do you need any help there, Meg?” She asks before her beloved walks through the door, carrying a rge wooden basket of fish, all wrapped in parchment, they purchased at the market.

  “I got it, thanks for holding the door!” Meg pces the basket on the newly repced, not to mention extra sturdy, dining room table as Mari walks over to the kitchen. “What about you, though? I can’t arsk you to cook all of these fish on your own.”

  “Don’t worry about it! I said I was gonna treat you tonight, and I meant it!” Mari lights the burners on the stovetop, and proceeds to grab some frying pans and other implements from her cupboards. “If you really have to help though, you can be the official food checker! Unwrap the fish and check they’re okay before sending them my way to cook up.”

  “Sure, I can do that!” Meg then starts unwrapping one of the fish, only getting a little distracted by the smell, and takes a moment to inspect it, making sure it’s suitable to cook. Once she’s confident that the fish will be suitably delicious, she calls out to let Mari know.

  “Okeh! Thish one’sh guud!”

  “Hmm?” Having struggled to understand what she just said, Mari turns to look at Meg, only to break out into a giggle upon taking a look at what’s going on.

  “You’re soooo silly, Meg! I asked you to check the fish, not taste test them.”

  Meg looks back at her confusedly. “Buh, ah am chechin ir…”

  “With your mouth?”

  “Yeh, wif mah mou- whaa?” Meg finally realises what’s wrong. She does indeed have the fish in her mouth, softly biting down on it to test its quality. She immediately removes it, staring at the fish as she holds it in both hands.

  “S-Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking… I was just… You arsked me to check the fish, and I don’t know why, but that was what came to mind, it just felt natural for some reason… The fish is definitely good, though.”

  “Well I’m not sure it’s meant to taste that good before I cook it up, but I’m gd to hear it. Just make sure not to bite into too many of them until after I’ve worked my magic on them!” Mari giggles again.

  “O-Okay, here.” Meg moves to hand Mari the fish, only to hesitate when she starts wondering if that would be weird, opting to pce it directly into one of the frypans instead.

  “How’s your jaw feeling, by the way?” Mari asks as she starts to cook it.

  “It harrdly hurts at all right now, still not sure why it’s sore in the first pce, though…” Meg pces a hand below one of her cheeks.

  “Just tell me if it gets worse, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Marri.” Meg says as she returns to the basket to begin checking the rest of the fish.

  After the awkward start, dinner goes quite well, if not a little slowly due to the sheer amount of time it takes to cook that many fish. It was also a fairly messy meal, as for the most part Meg opted to not use the cutlery she was given, instead picking up her meal with her hands and biting into it like a starving animal. Mari didn’t mind, though, as long as Meg is happy, that’s what’s important. The Erune comes away satisfied with her own, much smaller, meal as well, although she can’t help but notice the other woman sporting a bit of a sour expression after emptying her pte for the final time.

  “What’s wrong? Was there something wrong with the fish?”

  “No, it was delicious, Marri. It’s just…” Mari follows Meg’s line of sight, and realising she’s looking at the basket they carried the fish in with. “I really did eat all of that, didn’t I? Not to mention everything else today. That’s way more than I ate even just yesterday… What if I just keep getting hungrier?”

  Mari puts a hand on Meg’s shoulder, and gives her a bright smile. “Then I’ll just have to keep feeding you!”

  “But that’s too much to arsk, Marri. You‘ve already helped a bunch, and-”

  “Hey, we don’t need to worry about that right now. I mentioned earlier that there’s more to tonight than just dinner, and I know something special that’ll really help you rex~”

  “S-Special? What do you-”

  “Come on Meg!” Mari grabs Meg’s hand, and while she’s not nearly strong enough to actually pull the much rger woman out of her seat, Meg follows her implicit command regardless. “We gotta go to the bedroom for this.”

  “The… The bedroom!?”

  Meg helplessly follows Mari, her face turning red in the process. After Mari walks through the broken doorway, it’ll be another couple days before anyone can come in and fix it, she releases Meg’s hand.

  “Okay, lie face-down on the bed, and then we can get started!” She says cheerily.

  “The be… the b-b-b-BED!?” A million thoughts run through Meg’s head, all with one very simir theme in common, as she wheezes out the words.

  Mari’s response to the very flustered woman is little more than a nod and a “M-hm!”

  “O-Okay…” Meg lies in the bed, extremely nervous but unwilling to refuse a request from Mari.

  “Great! Now it’s my turn!”

  “Your turn to wh- HAAAAARRR!?” Meg’s question about Mari’s gleeful excmation is suddenly cut short as the Erune climbs on top, straddling her lower torso.

  “W-W-W-W-What arre you d-d-doing, M-Marri?” She asks, feeling Mari’s thick legs press into her body. She tries to turn her head to look back at Mari, who just wags her finger at her pyfully.

  “Nuh-Uh! Don’t try to move, Meg, just lie down and let me do my thing. I know exactly how to help you feel better~”

  “Huh!?” Meg tenses up, having no clue how she’s suddenly found herself in this situation. Regardless, she does as Mari says and just looks at the wall in front of her in dreadful anticipation of something she doesn’t feel remotely prepared for.

  She flinches when she feels an unexpected sensation on her shoulders, only to realise it’s a pair of soft hands starting to rub her.

  “This is just a little something I picked up when I was working at the Cerulean Spa this summer. It might not be quite as nice as when I used the vihta on you when you came to visit, but I think this has its own charm.” Mari says as she begins the massage. “I’d pnned to save this for a bit ter in the vacation, buuuuut it really seemed like you needed it today. How do you feel? Hopefully this helps you rex a bit.”

  “It feels… Really good…” Meg barely manages to squeak out. She’s not lying, it feels great, but her heart rate is so high that rexing is the st thing on her mind right now. “My jaw… has starrted to hurt… a bit more since dinner… but this is… very nice…”

  “I’m gd! Hopefully this helps you forget all about that jaw pain!”

  “What about… your arm, though…?”

  Mari stops the massage for just a moment to pat the bandage on her right arm. “Don’t worry about it! A scrape like that isn’t the sort of injury that’d stop me from being able to do this.”

  “If you say so… Thanks for… the massarge..”

  Mari grins. “No worries! I’ll admit I wasn’t really sure how this would feel for you when your skin is… you know…”

  “It’s… It’s all over my back too, then? The sharrk skin?” Meg asks after a moment.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to tell with that top on, but it looks like your whole back is grey right up to your neck. But don’t worry about that right now, just focus on this massage, and getting a good night’s sleep afterwards.”

  “O-Okay…”

  Mari’s hands start moving a bit lower, now massaging the uppermost part of her back. “Oof. I have to say, though, I’m gd I did do this tonight. You are super tense, Meg. But that’s okay! it’s why I’m doing this, after all!”

  “Yeah… Thanks, Marri… Feels good…” Meg begins to mumble as the effects of the soothing massage really start to kick in, and she finds herself being able to rex in a way she hasn’t since she arrived in Auguste. It’s working so well in fact, that she’s starting to get drowsy as all the exhaustion from the past few days catches up to her. Feeling Mari’s weight shift on top of her as she moves her arms back and forth is also doing a lot to calm her, although she’ll never admit that part out loud.

  “You know, Meg…” Mari says softly, leaning forward to get just a bit closer to Meg’s ear. “This doesn’t have to be a one-time thing either.”

  “Mmmmmmhhh?” Meg moans as Mari works through a particurly bad knot.

  “I know we don’t get to be together all that often, but whenever we are, I’ll give you as many massages as you want, okay? If something’s ever bothering you, whether it’s big stuff or small stuff, I’ll help you out. Even if I can’t fix the problem, I can at least do something like this to help you feel better.”

  “Yer... the best… Marri…”

  Mari lets out a small giggle. “Thanks Meg, so are you.”

  The massage continues in silence for a couple minutes, Mari allowing Meg to enjoy herself in the peace and quiet, until she starts to hesitate before moving her hands a bit further down Meg’s back.

  “Huh?”

  “Mmm?” Meg wearily mumbles.

  “Sorry, there’s just, like, a really weird knot or something, right here in the middle of your back. It’s not like anything we covered when they trained me at the spa, it’s so big I can actually see it…” Mari inspects the spot, noticing that it almost looks like a thin, vertical growth, before giving it a quick poke.

  “Ngh!” Meg grunts, tensing up a bit.

  “It’s that tender, huh? Must be a real bad knot… Guess I’ll really have to go all out on it, then!”

  The moment Mari presses her hands into it, Meg jolts awake, immediately jumping onto her hands and knees as she lets out a beastly roar.

  “ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHH!”

  The sudden movement causes Mari to lose her bance, letting out a yelp as she starts tipping to the side. Luckily, Meg realises what’s happening and manages to catch her before she falls off the bed, but a soft mattress is not the most stable of surfaces to perform such a manoeuvre on, and she stumbles a bit as she brings Mari back towards her, leading to the both of them nding on their sides, facing each other as they now lie on the mattress.

  “S-Sorry, Meg!” Mari excims, still shocked from nearly falling. “I… I didn’t realise massaging you there was going to hurt you so much. Maybe it isn’t a knot…”

  “I-It’s okay, it didn’t hurt!” Meg reassures her, much more awake than she was just moments ago. “It’s just, whatever’s happening on that parrt of my back, it’s… really sensitive. Sorry for scaring you like that…”

  “It’s not your fault, we can continue your massage another time. Besides, I like this a whole lot too, hehehe!” Mari smiles as she shuffles closer to Meg, wrapping her arms around her as best she can, a noticeably harder task than it was just a day ago, and pcing her head against Meg’s chest. “We can just take it easy for the rest of the night.”

  “Y-Yeah… I could use the rest…” Meg sighs as the weariness catches up to her again. She adjusts herself to get comfortable when a thought comes to mind. She’s already initiated, so it’ll be fine, right?

  Mari then finds a muscur arm gently and nervously wrapping around her, responding to her own hug. She lets out another giggle as the two cuddle in quiet bliss. After a few minutes Mari feels a sleepy Meg pull her in just a bit closer.

  “I don’t know why, but you’ve been smelling really nice these parst couple days, Marri.”

  “Hm?”

  “N-Not that you didn’t smell good before, it’s just-”

  One more ugh from Mari Interrupts the hurried apology. “It’s okay Meg, I’ll take the compliment either way, even if I’m not sure what could have changed. I’ve been wearing the same perfume I always do.”

  “I don’t know either…” Meg tilts her head forward, putting her face closer to Mari as she wraps her other arm around her. “It’s just… really… nice…”

  Before she knows it, Meg has fallen asleep mid conversation, leaving an unusually flustered Mari to her thoughts.

  Wow, she was ying it on real thick for a moment there, maybe the massage really did help her come out of her shell like I hoped it would! Ohhh, it’s a bit of a shame she fell asleep so soon, though… I’ll have to learn how to give a massage that helps her rex without knocking her out like this for next time.

  Mari finds herself letting out a quiet yawn.

  It has been a busy couple of days though. I guess an early night isn’t such a bad idea…

  It takes a few minutes for Mari to calm down, and from there it isn’t long until both women are asleep in each other’s embrace.

  —

  “Ngh…” Mari stirs awake in the dead of night once more, and just like st time, she realises after a few moments that she no longer finds Meg in the bed with her.

  “Guess she needed another midnight snack…” She yawns before taking a moment to listen out for the shuffling sounds from st night. She can indeed hear something, but it’s not like the sounds she could hear coming from the kitchen yesterday…

  It sounds like… someone’s moans of sadness…?

  “Meg…?” The odd sound combined with Meg’s absence is enough for Mari to start worrying. She starts getting out of bed when she feels her hand brush against something strange on the mattress, and after a few moments of feeling around she manages to pick it up. It’s too dark to make out, but it's a very small, hard object, almost like an oddly shaped corn kernel that tapers off to a point on one side, and it seems to be a little wet as well?

  She gets out of bed with the strange object in hand and picks up her shark ntern. Upon lighting it up, she’s shocked to discover the item in the bed was… a tooth…

  A… human tooth.

  “W-What?” The shock is enough for her to drop the tooth, where it nds harmlessly on the floor.

  She looks at the bed again, just in case there are any more teeth to be found, but what she finds instead is a small blood stain around the spot she found the tooth, plus a few more drops that almost seem to form a trail leading off of the bed and onto the floor. Following the trail leads her to finding yet another tooth near the doorway.

  “What the heck? Are… Are these…?” The moaning seems to grow louder before Mari can finish her question, and she realises she needs to follow the sound, especially if these teeth belong to who she’s worried they do.

  “Meeeg? Are you out here?” She asks as she carefully treads out into the living room, and the sounds immediately stop.

  “Marrri… Don’t… Don’t come in here!” She hears Meg call out, her wavering voice sounding deeper than usual.

  “What’s going on? Are you okay?” She asks in return, holding the ntern out to see the small blood trail continue towards the bathroom, with a couple more teeth along the way.

  “Please… go back to bed…” Meg sniffles. “I… I don’t want you to s-see me like this…”

  Mari cautiously starts following the trail to its destination. “Meg, please. If something’s wrong, I want to help.”

  “I… I don’t know if you can help with this one… Something is very wrong… I don’t know what’s going on…” Meg’s voice grows weak towards the end of her sentence, and Mari can hear her try to stifle a sob.

  Is… Is she crying…? Mari sees those piercing pink eyes in the darkness as she approaches the bathroom, but the moment she raises the ntern, Meg uses her right hand to cover the bottom half of her face, preventing Mari from seeing whatever is going on.

  …Was her right hand grey and white like her left hand before they went to bed, or is that new?

  “Please, Marrri… Don’t look at me… I’m… I’m hideous…” Meg’s hand trembles as she holds said hand over her face.

  Mari steps closer, noticing the height gap between them has increased yet again. She can swear she can see something strange on Meg’s back as well, right around that sensitive spot she tried to massage earlier, but she’s too concerned about how Meg is doing to focus on it. “Come on, it can’t be that bad…” Looking over, she realises that Meg’s clutching something over the sink in her other hand, with the hand itself sporting a couple trails of partially dried blood.

  Mari leans over to take a look at what’s in her hand. It’s… even more teeth…

  “They… They all just starrrted falling out…” Meg says once she sees where Mari’s looking, shifting her body and her right hand to make sure Mari still can’t get a good look at her face. “I… I didn’t know what to do with them…”

  “Please, just show me what happened.”

  “I… I carrn’t… I don’t know… what you’ll think of me…”

  “It’s okay, you can trust me. You were still there for me when I became a zombie, weren’t you? Let me do the same for you.” Mari pces her hand on Meg’s right forearm, and after Meg shows no signs of trying to resist, she gently pulls it down, revealing her face.

  Meg turns her head away, unwilling to look Mari in the eyes, but the damage is pin to see. The changes to her skin have finally reached her face, and everything below her nose has changed colour to match what most of the rest of her body now looks like. Meg doesn’t say anything, but her expression, and the damp trails of tears leading down her face tell Mari exactly how she’s feeling about this development.

  “See, Meg? I’m still here for you.”

  Mari’s words of reassurance seem to fall on deaf ears as Meg looks down nervously, and she can’t help but feel something about this is just a little odd. She doesn’t bme Meg for being upset, but she seemed to be coping pretty okay a few hours ago, how did just a bit more skin changing upset her this badly? Unless…

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

  Meg looks around for a few moments, thinking about how to respond, before simply nodding.

  “Can you show me?”

  This time she shakes her head, giving no eboration.

  “Why? You haven’t said a thing since you showed me your face, and you already know I’ve seen all these loose teeth around. Something’s going on in your mouth, isn’t it?”

  She weakly nods again, stifling a sob as her lip starts trembling.

  “Please let me take a look, I promise I just want to help however I can.”

  Meg lets out a sound that nds somewhere between a whine and a groan as she hesitates to reveal what’s happened, but when Mari puts a hand on her shoulder and gives her a reassuring smile, she takes the deepest breath she can manage in her current state, and finally opens her mouth.

  Mari can’t help but gasp as she looks inside Meg’s mouth to see a brand new set of razor sharp teeth poking out of gums that still have a bit of blood dribbling out of them from when these shark-like teeth forced their way out from underneath her regur teeth.

  “Oh, Meg, you poor thing…” Mari puts a hand to Meg’s cheek as she continues to inspect the teeth. “This must have been why your jaw was hurting earlier…”

  “W-Why is this happening to me?” Meg cries out, willing to talk again now that there’s nothing to hide. “I j-just… want to be a n-normal girl… but e-everything just keeps getting w-worse… and now… I d-don’t even… k-know what I… what I…”

  It all becomes too much for her, and she falls to her knees, dropping her human teeth all over the sink and floor as she starts to cry into her hands.

  “Meg…” A guilty expression appears on Mari’s face as she looks at the sight in front of her. She does the only thing she can think to do, and gives the weeping Meg as big of a hug as she can manage. “I’m so sorry… I had no clue how badly all of this was getting to you… I should’ve taken this more seriously, I wasted so much time walking you around town today when we could have been trying to fix this...”

  “No… it’s… it’s not… your fault… Marrri…” Meg barely manages to say between sobs. “I keep… m-messing everything up…”

  “None of this is your fault, either, it’s that core that’s doing all of this. We’ll figure out how to fix it, okay? First thing tomorrow, we’ll get the others and-”

  “N-No!” Meg says in a panic. “Don’t tell the others! We can’t let V-V-Virarr find out! Who… Who knows what she’ll do if she sees what’s happening to me!”

  Mari releases Meg from the hug in order to look her in the face. “What are you talking about? Why would Vira-”

  “She keeps saying she’ll do whatever it takes to eliminate anything that threatens Auguste! What if I’m the threat this time!? What if she wants to eliminate me!?” Meg’s breathing grows rapid as she looks at Mari with fear and anger in her eyes.

  “Meg, you’re not a threat. We all know you’d never do anything like that.” Mari rubs Meg’s shoulders a bit to try and soothe her.

  “She doesn't know that, though! We’ve only known Virarr for a few days, but she’s clearly serious about this! What if… What if she tries to kill me?”

  “Do you really think she’d just attack you without asking any questions if she saw you like this?”

  “Why wouldn’t she!? It’s…” Meg takes a deep breath as a sorrowful expression appears on her face. “It’s what I’d do if I was her…”

  “Meg…” Mari tries to find the words to help, but she draws a bnk.

  “I… I don’t know what to do… Marrri… I’m meant to be keeping Auguste safe from monsters and bad guys, but… but look at me!” Meg starts trembling again as the sobs return. “I’m… I’m a m-monster now! A hideous… disgusting… sharrrky monster!”

  Meg sms a fist into the ground in frustration as her emotions get the better of her, leaving a rge crack in the solid floor. She looks at the crack, and her fist, as a feeling of horror sets in.

  “Why carrn’t I stop!? Why carrn’t I stop breaking things!”

  “It’s okay Meg, it’s just a crack. We can just get it fixed.”

  “No it’s not okay! No matter what I do, everything just keeps getting worse! I-I-I need to stop this somehow before I hurt someone! Before I hurt… before I… I… n-n-no…” Meg’s words trail off as she looks directly at Mari, whatever thought going on in her head being too horrifying to vocalise. She falls to her hands and knees, letting out a wail of intense sorrow.

  “Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!”

  Mari gets on her knees as well, and simply holds the inconsoble woman, too emotional herself to take much notice of the strange lump she can feel on Meg’s back. “Meg… It’s okay… If you don’t want to tell the others, we can just… find a way to help you ourselves, right? W-We’ll sort it out… Just like we a-always do…”

  She doesn’t even try to hide the tears that are starting to fall from her face, Meg’s in no state to notice them anyway. She’s always prided herself on knowing exactly how to lift Meg’s spirits, but now, at the point where she might need her the most, she doesn’t have a clue how to help, she doesn’t know how to fix this, and that only makes everything hurt all that much more.

  With no solution to the problem, and no way to make Meg feel better, the best she can do is stay by her side as she cries her heart out. It’s going to be a long night for the both of them, but if Mari can at least do that, however small of a comfort it might provide in the grand scheme of things, she’ll do so without hesitation.

  Mari sits down on the cold floor next to Meg, holding her tight. Hopefully they’ll be able to think of something in the morning.

  SyntaxSpeedway