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Anne stepped onto the sidewalk from the crosswalk, but didn't move her phone from her ear. "Ya, I’m okay mom. I’m with Sasha and Marcie, mom."
The other girls, sitting on a bench next to the cross signal, gave her thumbs up and other silent gestures. Sasha did at least, Marcie was more preoccupied with her phone. Anne couldn't help but smile. She still kept a steady but peppy tone of voice. She nodded, "Ya, mom."
She shook her head, "No mom."
She nodded again, "Okay mom. Uh huh. Uh huh. What? Uh huh."
Anne rolled her eyes, "Y’know. I think we might be breaking up. Getting a bzzt bad signal."
There was a small dribble of spit as she buzzed, "I bzzt love bzzt you bzzt mom."
Anne ripped the phone from her ear and flicked the end call button. The teen twisted until so that she could slump her back against the cross signal.
Marcie didn't know if she should laugh or feel pity. She went with a combination of the two, "Man, what a drag."
"Not that we don't deserve it," Sasha shrugged it off, "Seeing what happened the last time the three of us were alone together."
You get trapped in another world one time and your parents never let you forget it. Anne found the thought amusing. Well it was amusing at least compared to her parents reaction when she knocked on the door a year after she disappeared without a trace.
It was a miracle that they allowed her out at all after that.
"Still," Anne nodded, "Good to be free."
"Ya" Sasha rolled her head onto her shoulder and gave her friend a smirk. "Way to join us on the outside," she said as if she was talking to a former prison inmate.
"Yup, good to bask in the sunlight." Anne stretched out her arms and sunk further down the cross signal.
"Yup." Sasha agreed.
"Yup" Anne confirmed. "What should we do now?"
"I think I had enough telling anyone what to do." Sasha had learned that lesson many times by now. She turned to the third member of their crew. "What do you say Marcie?"
Marcie didn't look up from the phone but she bounce the wrist that held said phone on her knee. A small show of anxiety. "I’ve never been good with planning, I was always kind of in the moment. Yknow?" Marcie tilted her head, "Ann, why don’t you choose something."
"Me?" Anne cocked an eyebrow. She slowly waved dismissively at Marcie. "Psh, I’ve just want to chill. Sasha, you have any idea what to do?"
Sasha didn't say anything at first. She just looked at Anne.
Anne looked back.
She turned to Marcie.
Marcie looked at her phone.
"None of us have a clue about what to do, do we?" Sasha laid it out.
Anne smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "Haven’t been planning anything. I’ve been busy basking in the fact that we were teleported to another world and can’t tell anyone because they never believe us." As she spoke her face shifted from a relaxed peace to an uncomfortable realization.
"Well we need to do something." Sasha looked like she was gonna stand, but instead she fell back into a slump on the bench. "This is the first taste of freedom that we have had in forever."
"Ya for real." Anne agreed, "but I don't really remember what we even used to do."
Marcie whined, "Tell me about it. All the memes I used to like have fallen to obscurity."
She shook her cell in front of Anne.
Sasha kicked off the ground. She twisted herself until her head pressed gently against the arm of the bench. She folded her knees so she could fit her legs next to Marcie. She gazed at the clouds above. "What do girls our age do?"
"The park?" Anne absentmindedly suggested.
Marcie shuddered, "Do we need to go back to nature? The beach-"
"-is like a million miles away." Sasha' eyes didn't leave the sky.
Anne sighed, "Man, what I would do for a snail right now."
"The mall?" Sasha looked at Anne through the corner of her eye.
"No place sells the jerky I like." Anne only slumped down through.
Marcie looked away from her phone. Her cheek puffed slightly. She licked her lips. She wanted to bring up something.
"How about boys?" Marcie shyly brought up, "After nearly getting eaten alive daily, guys aren’t so scary now."
"Says you." Anne had experience a lot of things. However she only lived through romance second hand through gossip mags and trying to hook up her best friend with his crush.
"Come on, it’ll be fun." Marcie didn't seem to want the suggestion to die.
"Pass, guys are the worse." Sasha bellowed.
"Really?" Marcie challenged.
Sasha doubled down, "The worse."
Anne knotted her fingers together. With her pointers pushed together she pointed them to Sasha. "I got to go with Sash, here. Boy friends yah, boyfriends nah."
"Boo." Marcie jeered. She wobbled a thumbs down. "If you’re just gonna be downers about it why not just date each other."
Sasha eyes widen for a moment. That she got a face splitting grin. "That sounds like a plan." She put weight on her elbow. Picking herself up enough that she could twist her waist. She looked up at Anne and blew a kiss. "Hey Anne, marry me."
She fought down a giggle as she tried to put on her most seductive face.
"Okay. Okay." Anne nodded, giving the declaration the same importance as choosing where you wanted to go for dinner. Probably less so. She rubbed her chin "but I want kids."
"Why though?" Sasha groaned dramatically, "They smell." Her torso fell back down on the bench. Her arm kissed the ground. She was doing her best imitation of a corpse.
Anne was having none of it. She flicked her wrist and gave her suitor the hand. "Hey if you want to put a ring on this, kids are part of it." Another flick of her wrist and she wiggled her ring finger.
"But how even." Sasha giving up the obvious problem brought by biology.
Anne gave it a second. "We could adopt."
"But adopting is so hard." Sasha groaned again. This time with extra desperation.
Marcie tilted her head "How do you know that?"
Sasha gave her a look as if the girl had asked her what 1+1 was. "Mars, it's like common knowledge. Isn't that why all those celebrities adopt children from other countries?"
"Makes sense," Anne relented, "but you're gonna have to deal. Mama wants babies."
Marcie tapped on her phone. Offhandedly she suggested. "You could do artificial insemination."
Anneb blinked, "What’s that?
"Basically take DNA from a donor."
"That doesn't involve a turkey baster or a long stick does it?" Anne was spectacular for obvious reasons.
"It's what people do." Marcie chose to ignore that specific question. She tapped on her phone one more. Her eyes widened and she grinned. "They say that you can even insert DNA from a second mother." She tapped on her phone once more "Well for genetic diseases and stuff but still."
"That doesn't sound so bad." Sasha smirked. She lifted her torso once more "Anne. Ready to have a gaggle of science babies?"
"A mishmash of babies." Anne joined excitedly. "Pull up for soccer practice. All them kids just start spilling out the moment the door opens like a clown car."
Marcie looked at Anne and then Sasha. A finger was brought up to her chin, "So who will be the mother?"
"Huh?" Anne questioned, "If we frankensteining it with 3 sets of genes, can't we just make it a test tube kind of thing."
"Nope." Marcie noped.
"Can't argue against that." Sasha snarked.
"For real." Anne joined. "Well in that case I think the choice is obvious."
"Agreed."
The two future mothers looked at each other and nodded. It was blatantly obvious who would actually carry the child. There simply couldn't be an argument.
"Sasha." Anne revealed to Marcie.
"Anne." Sasha also revealed to Marcie.
"Sasha?"
"Anne?"
"Sasha!"
"Anne!"
Marcie looked between the two girl glaring at each other and put on a small smile. "Marcie", she joked.
"Anne, you can’t be seriously." Sasha for the first time in a long while sat up. "Do you really wanna ruin this body with a kid?" She gestured to from her neck to her toe before crossing her arms.
"Your body?" Anne flinched. "You're forgetting about Tennis? I’m a student athlete." The girl showed off her right bicep.
Sasha stood. "Aren’t you forgetting that I’m an athlete too. Cheerleading."
"Well unlike I’ve been spending the last year eating nothing but veggies and protein while you were putting on weight and being pampered." Anne accused the girl.
"Excuse me." Sasha seemed taken back for a moment. "I was leading an army. That’s not exactly easy work. Besides I deserve to be pampered. I’m a trophy wife."
"Why can’t I be the trophy wife?"
"Just look at me." Sasha played with her a moment before flicking her ponytail. "Besides i think the trophy should be the more feminine one."
"Well I think maybe I think that the trophy wife should be the one who’s more grounded." Anne fired back.
Sasha glared. "Well I think that the trophy wife should be the one who can lead."
"Well I think that the trophy wife should be the one who’s understanding" Anne glared back.
Marcie's eyes flicked between the two.
"Well I think…" Sasha stated.
"Well I think…" Anne declared.
"Well I think.." Sasha argued.
"Well I think…" Anne countered.
"Well I think…" Sasha forced.
"Well I think…" Anne shouted.
Marcie stood up and stomped between the two. "Well I think that this is going nowhere. For the sake of any future nieces and nephew I think you guys need to decide this in a more civil manner."
Then unprompted the girl's face was split by a devilish smile. "I think that Aunt Marcie might have a solution."
A rolling fog covered the landscape. Soldiers in an unforgivable time slew each other for domination.
If by "soldiers" you meant children, "unforgivable time" you meant the present and "domination" you meant fun.
Deadly deadly fun.
The children chasing each other while carrying chucks of plastic at least could pretend such a thing was deadly.
They ran through a black and purple labyrinth that in reality only looked large because of the light fog that was being made by some machine.
The girls stood in the middle of it. They carried their own chunks of plastic, toy rifles. They each had a glowing purple belt strapped along their torso.
"Laser tag?" Anne scoffed, "This is a more civil manner?"
"You said that like five times from the corner to here." Marcie counted, "This way is as good as any."
"This place smells like paint fumes." Sasha waves vigorously in front of her face like her life depended on it. Her eye caught something and she paused. She placed her palm against the wall. It sunk slowly, "Are the walls just mattresses?"
“This used to be a mattress store.” Marcie stepped between the two girls and gave them each a little push on the back. They stumbled forward awkwardly as a response. “Now get out there and settle this. While you do that I’m going to go bully some little kids.”
Right on time Marcie spotted a kid a feet away. The germ catcher was sucking on the barrel of his imitation weapon.
Marcie lifted her firearm, armed carefully at the obvious little one and fired.
There was a buzzing that came from him as his chest plate lit up.
He started crying.
“Woohoo” Marcie pumped her arm, “Winning.”
The two other girls only gave a glance as they wandered further into the area. Anne gave her weapon a look like she didn’t even want to look at it, let alone hold it.
“This is dumb.” Sasha said, “We’re supposed to what? Battle to the death in a children’s game?” the blonde gave a dismissive once over of her own gun. “Anne, I think maybe we took this joke a little bit too far."
Anne nodded. She had already felt a bit embarrassed be surrounded by rugrats. "Ya, I think you're right. I mean what are we even fighting about? Even in some made up future where we have a baby do we really want to tell them that we decided who gave birth over laser tag? I mean why are we even talking about babies. We're fourteen and it's not like we're in that kind of- where did you go?"
Anne turned her head just in time to see Sasha book it in the direction of a chest high wall. The cheerleader flipped over the purple heap of plastic and popped right back out. Her weapon trained on Anne.
"Oh you cheater." Anne had time to shout just before she dodged an invisible infrared shot. She ended up jumping to the side, flopping on her belly to the ground.
"I play to win." Sasha could be heard as Anne crawled and rolled to cover. The barrel of the gun followed her. "You made a huge mistake agreeing to this Ann."
"Says you." Anne lifted her laser rifle. She taunted a smile even though the other girl couldn't see her expression. "This reminds me of the battle of high mud. Remind me, frogs or toads, who won that again?"
"I don’t make the same mistake twice." Sasha seeing the other girl not peak, ducked and started to move behind the trenches. She closed her eyes.
Anne was moving as well. "Ya, now you get the chance to make a whole bunch of new mistakes."
Sasha could hear Anne's taunts. She knew where the other girl was. She traveled around her voice, around where Anne was. Upwards, atop a ramp to a small tower. She would gain the height advantage. With a quick breath as a prologue to her actions, the girl lifted herself up and aimed on the other side of cover "Got you."
She flinched. There was no one on the ground below.
Before she could even ask she had her answer. There was a shout. A warcry.
Anne came barreling to her side. She practically had the tip of her gun jammed into Sasha side. "You know you were wrong Sash, you did make a mistake twice." She flashed a cocky smile. "Going against me."
Sasha glared. "I wouldn't be too sure about that." Her elbow smacked the gun off her side. She aimed quickly at Anne's chestpad but the other girl was quicker.
Anne resisted the shove and force her gun back just in time to hit Sasha's gun with her own and misaligned the shot.
Sasha pushed back and soon too gave up firing at the other girl instead preferring a contest of strength where gun met gun. Anne could feel the heat as Sasha's nostril flared.
"You're going down Anne"
"Why are you taking this so seriously?" Anne whined between struggled breathes. "This is hypothetical."
Anne didn't answer she instead moved. She stepped giving up the clash. A move Sasha didn't see coming, one that sent her tumbling before just where Anne was before.
"Why are you?" Sasha shot back.
Anne kept her lips shut. Instead she chose to focus her efforts to her next move, an obvious illegal laser tag maneuver. She pulled back for a moment and shoulder checked the blonde.
A bit dirty but effective.
It unbalanced the girl. More than Anne thought it would've. She didn't even think about taking a shot against the vulnerable opponent as her torso flipped right over the edge of the tower.
Weapon dropped as Anne followed her friend's body. She looked down. Sasha's fingers gripped the edge.
Her eyes were up, meeting Anne's own.
"Hold on." Anne bent her stomach onto the wall of the tower and gripped her hands around Sasha's wrists. She pulled. "Sasha I got you"
It wasn't enough. Wrist were slipping through the grip. All that was accomplished was a slight pain where the gut high barrier was pressed against Anne.
Anne kicked the wall, thinking that would help her pull Sasha up as she struggled.
It did the opposite.
Despite how soft the wall was the sole of Anne's foot slid right, unbalancing her. The weight of Sasha pulled her forward.
There was no catching themselves.
They were falling.
They were falling like five-six feet.
Which is tall for children but in reality Sasha's toe was hovering just above the ground from where she was.
It only took like two inches for Sasha's feet to touch the ground. She was only worse for ware because Anne came tumbling down on her. The two rolled a bit onto the matted floor as a result.
Sasha had to rub her temple. She was pretty sure she got smacked by Anne's forearm on their way down. Sasha got up on her knees when she saw it, her weapon that she dropped when she was knocked off the tower. She had to pick it up quickly. Anne was probably better off considering she at least got to use Sasha as a cushion.
Hands snatched the laser gun. Sasha swerved her torso in a right angle and fired neatly point blank.
Anne's chestpad flared and Sasha cheered, "Ha, got you Ann."
Where Sasha thought would be a groan or curse, any sign of disappointment, there wasn't. There was just silence. Anne didn't say anything. She just sat on her knees, her hair covering her face.
"Anne," Sasha reached for her shoulder, "Are you okay?"
Anne rubbed her eyes then tried to say something. It didn't come out. She shifted, stepped on knees so she could turn away. "You were falling."
"Anne, this is a laser gun place. Everything is covered in cushions and play mats." Sasha laughed. She papped the ground with one hand to demonstrate.
Anne didn't pay it any attention. Her voice for a moment was raspy. "I wasn't able to save you before."
"Oh." Sasha didn't have a response prepared. She wanted to say something but all she did was bite the inside of her lip.
"Oh," she repeated. She recalled that night at Toad Tower.
She could only stare at Anne who in turn kept her eyes on the ground in front of her.
"Anne." The girl didn't turn at the mention of her name. "It’s okay. I’m here. I’m safe. We’re all safe. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I made that happen."
"But I’m the one who made you feel like you needed to." Anne muttered to the ground.
"I don't know what to say Anne." Sasha didn't know if there was anything to say. "I did feel like it had to happen, but not just because of you. It just click to me a lot of things that I did to you that wasn't nice. I never wanted you to think that it was your fault that it happened," but somehow despite all her having actual good intentions for once, that is what happened. Sasha scooted herself over to Anne. She hugged her legs into her chest. She fell softly to one side until she was leaning on the other girl's back. "I don't think me just saying it will change your mind, but none of that was your fault. It was mine."
A hand hesitated, but found it way onto Anne's shoulder. "I'm here and we have all the time in the world now. So I don't mind staying with you until you don't feel sad about what happened. Even if that day might not come."
Sasha's palm left, but her fingers still traced against her back. The blonde stood. She presented her other hand to Anne. "Come on, you want to get some ice cream? It's okay if you don't."
It almost looks like she wouldn't grabbed her hand. Sasha almost felt a little silly. Sasha almost allow her hand to die down back to her side, but then with a speed that betrayed her melancholy mood, Anne captured not only the hand but the entire arm. She clung close to her, hugging the limb to her chest. "I'll have the babies." Anne blubbered softly.
Sasha looked up to the air, amused. She would have laughed if the other girl was in a better mood. She didn't understand how they came back to that subject but it was a welcomed shift. "Only if you want to." Sasha accepted.
"Aw" Marcie cooed. She intercepted them by the door. Which was a good thing cause Sasha honestly forgot about her for a moment. Marcie smiled at them. She interlaced her fingers together when she saw them. "You lesbians."
She was sure that Anne would have corrected it if she was feeling better. Sasha had a hard time responding for reasons unrelated to the red tint that shrieked her cheeks.
"Hypothetical lesbians." Was the only argument Sasha could give as they left laser tag.