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The dinner table was eerily quiet without Gigi. Granted, Raora and Elizabeth had been out for hours now, so the whole house was naturally quieter, but usually Gigi filled the silence with loud screaming, cawing, groaning, and the like.
It’d been silent all day. She hadn’t even seen her walk out of her room, much less make a noise through the door. As she took sips from her tea, she wondered if the last few days trying to track down Bijou had taken a toll on her, or if there really was something wrong behind that closed door of hers.
Cecilia sighed, placed down her cup, and stood up. Should’ve checked earlier, but...
As she approached through the hallway, she could swear she heard the sound of something rustling. The sound only grew louder as she approached, metallic clangs and jingles, the sound of dropped metal pipes and a hissing noise that sounded like a pile of coins being shuffled around. If Cecilia didn’t know better, she’d think Gigi was the automaton in the house.
“Gigi? You, uh, okay in there?” Her pace hastened down the hall. “Did you eat a pile of magnets recently or something?” She held back a snort, thinking about that one gif Gigi sent her last week.
Cecilia stopped at her door, smothered and wrapped in warning tape, multicolored paint, and several tacky posters that made her seem like the definition of “obnoxiously nerdy gamer in the 2000s.” She knocked amidst the sound of jingling keys.
“You haven’t come out all day. Are you sure you’re alright...?” Her worry only got worse. If it was a prank, Gigi would’ve already leapt out the door like a screamer and started biting her. “I’ll, uh...I’ll give you a kiss if you come out of there??”
The noises stopped. She could feel the silence in her ears all of a sudden, white noise failing to replace the sounds that had suddenly stopped behind her door. Cecilia tried to look through the small slit between the door and the doorframe, but there wasn’t a thing.
A voice responded, strained, stumbling over itself like she didn’t know how to talk. It sounded like it was coming from a toy speaker, and Cecilia had just pulled the string. “I’m fine.”
“Gigi?” Cecilia blinked. “You don’t sound fine at all. Can I come in-”
“No.” Her throat sounded dry.
“....no to the sounding fine, or to coming in?”
“No.” It was the same cadence and tone, like she was using a soundboard to respond. “No.”
Cecilia sighed, cracking her knuckles and pulling her lance from a slot in her arm. “Alright. Never been one to listen to you, anyway.” She slowly pushed open Gigi’s door, ready for whatever thing thought it could trick her behind the door.
Gigi’s room was a mess—more than her usual mess. Like staring into a glass prism, everything sparkled in the glow of her room’s light, her floors covered in coins, steel plates, anything that could shine in the sun, stolen from various places across town. There was a stop sign, several of them, rested on the wall, and a traffic light, a full, blinking traffic light, stanced in the corner. The walls were scratched, her metal gauntlets were tossed across the floor.
And Gigi herself, crouched beside her bed, gaze flickering between her room and Cecilia. She could barely make out Gigi’s eyes between unkempt strands of hair, beady eyes that stared with scared, insatiable hunger. Her tail twitched endlessly, flickering and shaking, but maintaining its gaze on Cecilia all the same.
“Gigi?” Cecilia tightened her grip. “Gigi, what the hell is-”
She lunged. In one moment, she was crouched, and in the blink of an eye, her hands were on Cecilia’s lance, as if to say ‘please don’t.’
Out of instinct, Cecilia kicked her away. Gigi slammed against the side of her bed, reeling from the impact with an arm around her stomach. Her tail hovered just behind her, slithering like a snake, seemingly threatening to constrict around her neck.
“Alright.” Cecilia readjusted her key, winding it just a little more, before brandishing her lance at Gigi. “If it’s what it takes, let’s beat it out of you.”
Gigi’s eyes widened, but her body betrayed her expressions. She darted for a nearby pile of coins and tossed them in Cecilila’s face, blinding her enough for Gigi to grab something else from the other side of her room.
“What the hell?!” Cecilia snapped at her, genuinely offended. She swiftly dodged several more coins tossed at her, thrown with enough speed to embed themselves in Gigi’s already ruined walls, before she was pinned against the wall in the blink of an eye.
Gigi had shoved the side of a stop sign up to her throat like a blade. In one motion, she toppled Cecilia’s balance and kicked her through the wall, straight into Raora’s room.
She was still dazed from the impact when a torrent of stolen keys smacked her in the face from across the rooms. They sparkled at the perfect angle to blind Cecilia, again and again, before Gigi ran straight through her with a single swing of the stop sign.
As much as she hated it, she couldn’t keep up with Gigi. Not when she had range to back up her speed, darting between Raora’s stacks of plushies to scratch and scrape at Cecilia’s steel skin. She could block and strike back when Gigi faltered, staring at shiny things in Raora’s room, but she was pitifully outmatched. If Gigi was this good with a stop sign, why’d she pick fists instead?
As steel bars and road signs grazed her cheek and littered the floor, Cecilia caught glimpses of Gigi’s face. Strained, sweating, partially bruised and wholly conflicted.
Before she could even open her mouth to address Gigi’s expression, Gigi swung at her with a yield sign. Her tail joined in, swinging at arms that were poised to block and yanking Cecilia’s guard away. Cecilia managed a few strikes at Gigi’s arms and legs before Gigi darted back into the shadows again.
“Gigi-” She dodged out of the way of a swing and leapt over her tail. “Blink twice if-ack!”
The entire traffic light suddenly loomed into her view from between rooms. She was too overextended to dodge it, forced to take the brunt of it as it collapsed on top of her with a painful thud. Her lance clattered against the floor.
Cecilia gasped as Gigi emerged behind the light, barely catching Gigi’s foot and her subsequent attempt to stab her in the throat. Even if Cecilia was stronger, she knew Gigi would find a way to win out a struggle like this in the end. A thought crossed her mind, and, face already flushed with shame, she spat it out.
“Take me out to dinner before you step on me in the bedroom, sheesh.” Cecilia winced as the words left her mouth, but she somehow found it in herself to double down. “Not like I’m complaining, though?”
Gigi stared. Her tail was disgusted, but her eyes glimmered, almost proud.
Cecilia reached for her lance and poked Gigi in her eyes with the blunt end. As she screamed—the first real noise she’d made the whole conflict—Cecilia broke the traffic light in two under her heel, and punched Gigi into the wall at the other end of her room.
Bricks and rubble fell on top of her as her already unstable wall fell to pieces. The TV was completely ruined, all of her consoles promptly shredded underneath the rock, piles of acrylic stands and the metal sheets she’d seemingly collected from various parts of town.
“Gigi-!” She darted across rooms. “I hit her too hard, oh god,” she panted.
But Gigi still remained standing. Her tail was covered in dust, battered and bruised, but it’d somehow kept her alive.
...is it her tail?
The ceiling cracked once more. Cecilia realized her workshop was right above them, and that all of her heavy metalworking and machinery was about to fall. Without thinking, she dived towards Gigi, catching just as one of her tables tumbled to the ground.
Gigi growled and kicked her off, but her advance was promptly stopped as soon as she saw what fell. She darted towards the rubble and rummaged through it immediately, both her hands and her tail shoving things in her pockets that she had absolutely no use for, in the fight and outside of it.
Cecilia glanced at the rubble. It was full of all of her little wind-up toys, the little side projects she’d made between some of the larger ones. When you wound them up, they’d move a little. Not actually walking around or anything, just a cute animation that was for show and nothing else. There were small figures of Raora’s Chattinis, Liz’s Rosarians, and...
Gigi stared at the small Grem figure that Cecilia had made. She’d kept that one in a drawer, meant for it to be for her upcoming birthday, but, here she was, looking at it early. She twisted its key, and it flailed its arms. Gigi let out a single, small huff. Maybe a laugh, maybe a scoff, she couldn’t tell with her hair covering her eyes.
Cecilia wondered if it was Gigi who was holding it so tenderly, eyes glazing over it from every angle, or if it was her tail, staring with its beady eye like a curious cat.
She slowly approached Gigi, and, with one gentle-
Gigi swiped at her with the broken remains of a stop sign, tearing steel from steel and exposing Cecilia’s gears to the air. She fell to the ground unceremoniously.
“Hey, Gigi, uh, about that kiss...” The stop sign was at her neck. She laughed nervously. “I can give you ten! If you just don’t kill me right now! Please?”
With one swing, Gigi would’ve shut her up there. But her arm lowered the sign. Her tail tried to push her arm back up, but it was far too heavy. Her breaths were strained, stumbling backwards with gritted teeth, beginning to feel the bruises and cuts Cecilia had given her. Her face was barely visible now, only the silhouette of a mouth.
Cecilia’s breaths barely managed to leave her lungs. “Gigi? Is it your tail that’s-”
Gigi snatched her tail out of the air. She coughed in pain, but gritted her teeth harder, knowing what she was about to do was far worse.
With the hand that’d threatened to decapitate Cecilia, she drove the sign into her tail.
She gasped as her tail was severed. But the wound wasn’t deep enough, and so she pressed, dug further and further, searing pain shooting up her spine and down through her legs until she could barely even stand.
And then, the tail was loose. What was left of her tail whimpered before falling flat between her legs. She held the head of her tail in one hand, panting, tears formed at the edges of her fear-shattered eyes. It was still squirming.
Gigi looked up, managing to part some of her hair with her free hand, and tried her best to smile. The voice that left her lips was full of pain, but it was far, far more alive than what Cecilia had heard behind the door.
“I’ll take twenty, if...if that’s okay with you.” She struggled, but somehow found it in her to laugh. That stupid laugh, the one that Cecilia just couldn’t help but be enamoured by. And now, Cecilia couldn’t help but laugh, too.
“You are...disgusting,” Cecilia huffed. “So demanding, even after you ruined my workshop and stole a billion dollars worth of Ceci-memorabilia. ”
“And you asked if I could step on you!”
They both laughed again, followed by coughs.
“C’mere,” Cecilia stumbled to her feet, offering her a hand. “We can get to the first aid quicker together.”
She stopped when she saw the tail. “Shouldn’t we kill that thing?” It was still flailing in her hand, staring at Cecilia, then at Gigi, terrified of both of them.
“Woah, woah, okay, you murderer,” Gigi held it close to her chest. “You can’t kill an innocent little thing!”
Cecilia stared.
“...seriously, though. It does like shiny things, but it’s usually not this...berserk, I guess.” Gigi looked down at the tail, and its eye looked back at her. “I think staying super close to Biboo the past few missions made it really overwhelmed. Didn’t help that I grabbed her with it that one time. You think she liked being grabbed like that?”
The tail stopped being scared, and just glared at Gigi in blatant disappointment.
Cecilia blinked. “Ignoring the last question...”She held out her hand again. “If it’s fine to hold, then let’s get to first aid before you go and bleed out here.”
Gigi looked back, and realized she was bleeding a lot. No wonder she felt lightheaded. Without a word, she dropped the sign, barely holding back a laugh at the sound it made when it clattered against the ground, and took Cecilia’s hand.
“Are the kisses part of the deal?”
Cecilia leaned down to reach her neck, bruised and swollen, and gave her a few small pecks with her lips. Gigi giggled, practically kicking her blood-stained legs.
“Yippee!!” She coughed, but Cecilia gave her several more kisses. “Ow. Okay, later-ow! Stop! Stop!!!”
“Payment for the roof cave-in,” Cecilia smirked. “And for straight up stealing a traffic light. Do you realize how bad that’s gonna look for us when we go tell the city?”
“The government won’t tell you, but they’re free, Ceci-” She simultaneously winced and laughed at another kiss on the cheek. “They’re free! They’re FREE! You’re just a coward-OW, ow, I yield, okay-!”
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