Chapter Text
1
“That’s what I get for holing up all day playing games,” Subaru yawned, eyes watering as he rubbed at his face with a groggy hand. The world felt normal: clean pavements, glowing streetlights, the crinkling of the chipbag in his grip. Then a bell tolled somewhere far away. It wasn’t the cheap ding of a convenience store door, it sounded more like an old church bell, and unless Subaru’s memory of the neighbourhood he quite literally grew up in was failing him, there wasn’t one of those in a 20 kilometre radius. Subaru frowned, head tilting as he tried to track the noise by stubbornness alone, and when he blinked again—
Click.
He heard a click sound come from his wrist. Subaru basically freezeframed with how fast he’d gone still.
“What the hell..?” He looked down, and saw something strange, a black band sat upon his right wrist. His fingers hooked under the edge of it and he tugged once, then harder, then again, it didn't come loose at all, hell he couldn’t even sneak a nail under the seam. Perhaps a more awake him would have questioned the whole thing more altogether. “Is this… a cosplay accessory?” he said, brow raised, lifting his wrist closer to inspect the orange gem set into its center.
Said gem proceeded to flare. Flare like a miniature sun.
“AH MY EYES! MOTHERFU—“
Subaru didn’t even get a full curse out before the light swallowed his vision. It was bright enough to turn his eyes into balls of pain instantly, even with his hands coming up on reflex to block the light. He staggered back, squeezing the bag of chips in his grip causing it to turn into a bag of crumbs, shoulder bumping into something—air? wall?— For a few seconds all he had was glare and the pressure of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears like it wanted out.
And then the light faded.
He lowered his arms slowly, blinking hard, and when he looked around he saw… a world that definitely was not Earth. Stone under his shoes. Wider streets. Buildings straight out of Europe, crowded with signs he couldn’t read in a script that he didn’t recognise. And the people who moved around him were unique too: animal ears, tails, fur, faces that didn’t exist in any place on earth outside maybe a hyper realistic furry convention. A carriage rolled by on heavy wheels, pulled by a creature Subaru’s brain threw up its hands at and labeled “fantasy” just to survive.
He turned in a slow circle, staring so hard it felt like he could burn the scene into place out of pure disbelief, and something hot and electric surged up through his chest—old wish, old fantasy, the stupid dream he’d fed for years when he didn’t want to look at his own life too closely. It rose like a laugh he couldn’t stop.
“Have I been… isekaied to a parallel world?!” he blurted out loudly turning heads, voice climbing even higher with the last word, excitement snapping to his surface as he barely kept himself from laughing from pure joy.
Except the voice that came out of him wasn’t his.
It was higher. Lighter. Wrong enough that the excitement he’d held shattered away. Subaru froze, the grin on his face dying before it could even fully form. He tried again immediately, as if repetition could bully his throat into behaving. “I-I’ve—” But he heard the same voice. His stomach dropped. Panic hit in a brutal rush— His body reacted before his pride could argue; he stumbled around and with how absolutely he’d been avoiding looking down, it was no surprise that his new center of balance would cause him to trip.
“Ghk—!” he pitched forward like the street had tilted. His hands slapped down too late. His face met the ground with a sting that madehis eyes water.
A shadow leaned over him, and a hand reached toward him without grabbing. “Young lady… are you okay?” a woman asked, careful and concerned.
Subaru lifted his head, grit scraping his chin, and stared up at the speaker—and his mind latched onto another detail because it couldn’t parse the bigger one.
The woman was a humanoid wolf. Fur along her cheeks. Upright ears. A worried expression that looked painfully normal on a not-human face. Subaru’s heart kicked with sudden, stupid vindication. Beastman. That settles it. This is real. This is actually— He forced himself upright onto his knees and took the offered hand, trying to pull herself together fast enough to not look like she was about to combust in public.
The wolf woman squinted at her.
Her expression tightened like Subaru’s face wasn’t matching what she expected, then she pulled a pair of reading glasses out and slid them on with a sharp little motion that said she was about to judge something properly. Immediately her eyes widened. “Just what are you wearing young lady?!” she demanded, loud enough that even more people nearby glanced over.
Lady..? Wait— hold on— Subaru’s eyes finally flicked down on reflex even as he tried to resist, and his vision caught sight of matte-black plating, orange trim, and the feathered edge of a cape hanging at his waist. His gaze snapped away so hard his neck twinged, and heat rushed to his face like his body was trying to boil his alive. “No no I— I didn’t—” he started, and his own unfamiliar pitch made the words feel brittle in her mouth.
“You didn’t get forced into that get up by some thugs or something did you? How scandalous!”
“I…I..!” Subaru started, and the second that higher voice came out again his brain shorted. He took a half-step back, then another, and then before he knew it he was scooting away on instinct trying to make as much distance as he could. His hands had flailed once like he was going to explain, like he was going to fix this with words, and then he decided that he would rather die than finish talking in front of those strangers.
Subaru turned around and bolted, boots scraping stone,
“Hey! watch it girlie! Hold still or don’t run around so much!” Her shoulder clipped past a passerby as she burst back into the street.
The old wolf reached out reflexively—more out of habit than conviction—fingers stretching toward the fleeing “young lady,” but then she paused as if even she realized there was nothing useful she could do here. She let her arm drop with a tired sigh and shook her head. “The youth nowadays,” she muttered to nobody in particular, voice flat with long practice. “Aren’t they’re strange…” Then she turned and kept walking, like this was just one more odd moment she’d file away and never mention again.
—
Subaru ran straight into the main street and immediately became even more of a problem, darting between people who did not appreciate being treated like obstacles. “Watch where you’re going!” someone yelped as he cut too close. “Hey—!” another barked when he nearly clipped a basket. Subaru didn’t apologize. He couldn’t. His eyes were wide and frantic, scanning for anywhere—anywhere—secluded, anywhere without faces and voices and the words ‘young lady’ which were chasing him like hounding dogs. He spotted an alley ahead, narrow and dark, and his body started to pivot toward it on pure survival—
—and then everything snapped sharp.
The noise around him thinned out like someone had cupped her ears. The crowd blurred. Subaru’s eyes and ears locked onto the alley with sick, clean focus, and there he saw outlines deeper inside: three people of differing heights and of greatly differing builds, He caught the faintest edge of bickering—
“Man it’s been really slow today huh?” Said the tiniest one
“Hey! Don’t talk like we’re servers at a cafe Camberley we’re thugs! We rob people!”
“And?! All I’m sayin’ is that there’s been no one to rob!”
—he only heard bits and pieces of their conversation, and that was enough. Subaru shook his head hard, he basically tried to shake his senses out of his skull, and then street slammed back into him, full speed and full sound all at once.
“Nope,” he breathed in deeply, I can’t go in there but..! Where do I go?! His gaze wandered around the entire place trying its best to not linger on all the little kids looking at him and the bigger adults looking at him and the weird lizard things looking at hi—
GODAMNIT SUBARU! Not right now! Finally, it landed on a small building off to the side of the road—it was plain stone and had two no door entrances on its front, no one was lingering near it either. More importantly, that weird sharpness that seemed to have picked our danger didn’t flare up from him looking at it either. Nothing in his head screamed. And at a time like this that was all he could ask for. Score he though. He bolted straight for it and her pace went strange again, his feet leaving the ground for longer than his old stride had ever allowed for even if he had supposedly grown shorter. He didn’t have time to think about it, he just ran harder then before.
Reaching the entrance of the building he found himself confronted with two choices. Two doors he could go into. Subarus racked his brain for a way to decide between the two and then, his intuition kicked in telling him to go right.
So naturally he ducked straight into the left entrance without a care further, and shot straight for the far wall within.
He hit it too fast, boots scraping as he slid, palms swinging outwards and slapping the stone so as to let him could catch himself before fully face planting for the second time in five minutes. His chest rose and fell on reflex, his lungs were expecting to feel like they were on fire, his body expected to be covered in sweat and his legs to be shaking. In other words, he expected to be experiencing any form of exhaustion. But his body didn’t seem to care for what he expected. His breathing smoothed out almost immediately when he stopped panting by habit, letting his breathing come calm and natural. Even with his experience in track, Natsuki Subaru had never gone as fast as he had just gone in his entire life. And yet, he found no exhaustion gripped him.
“Just what the hell is… going on here?!” Subaru shouted, voice bouncing off the walls. He stamped the ground hard enough for his foot to send a jolt up his leg, cheeks burning as his frustration piled on top of his panic. He kept catching flashes of his altered form in the edges of her vision—flashes of a person that wasn’t Natsuki Subaru. Hair swinging too long, dyed black and orange where there shouldn't have been orange, a feather brushing at the back of his thigh, etc etc. Every time his mind tried to focus on these details he continued to yank it away, because looking at all these changes felt like acknowledging a monster in a horror movie. And everyone knew that increased your chances of being killed for plot progression by 70%.
He shoved himself into the corner, dragged his knees up to her chest, and curled tight like he could compress himself back to normal if he tried hard enough. “What the hell is going on…” he muttered, staring at the floor like it of all things owed him an explanation.
He’d been isekaied. That should’ve been the dream, the fresh start, the big stupid moment where everything in his dumb life finally changed for the better. Except his current predicament was eating away at that vision alive, hell it was barely alive by now. He was in another world and… she wasn’t himself anymore. That much was obvious no matter how much he ignored it. He might not even be a h—
“Hey… um. Young lady. Are you okay?”
Subaru snapped his head up so fast it made him dizzy.
Another one?! Just what the hell is with this place why is everyone trying to reach out to a random stranger? Since when were fantasy world’s this fantastically kind?!
There he saw a human girl kneeling a few steps away from her, worry etched into her face. Unlike the old wolf she took care to keep her distance even with how curious she looked. She moved like she didn’t want to scare Subaru by moving too fast. He tried to answer her immediately—tried to not worry the second person he’d talked in this world and ruin his social interaction track record further.
“I-I’m fin—” But the second that voice came out of his throat he stumbled over it again, the sound catching in his trachea like it didn’t belong there. He swallowed hard, forced his face into something that was supposed to be reassuring, and pushed the words out slower. He couldn’t be having problems with this forever after all,
“I’m… fine… I’ll be okay miss just, please give me a little space…” he said, doing his best to make it sound like he wasn’t one sentence away from screaming even when he really was.
Ok ok come on Subaru! Focus! We got isekaied! We got a fresh start! Whatever happened to our body is something we’ll figure it out later we just gotta make the most of this…
He pulled in a breath through his nose and tried to straighten up as though it wasn’t too late for him to develop good posture. Actually- in a new body maybe it really wasn't. His fingers were fidgeting in his lap as his eyes drifted past the girl and finally registered the room he’d sprinted into—and when they did, his brain just stopped.
Toilets. Bathroom stalls. Sinks. A long mirror stretched across the wall, reflecting everything within with picture perfect clarity. Only one type of place would look like this, and only one half of the world’s version of it would look this clean.
More women had filtered in behind the human girl—six or seven of them—crowding near him yet still attempting to keep their distance, they were all wearing clothing that screamed medieval, all of them not even human. Subaru couldn’t focus on any of their faces. Not with the mirror there. Not with the awful, obvious truth staring at her new body through it as ‘he’ refused to stare back.
Don’t tell me… To start off my new life in this new world, I’ve ended up wandering into the women’s restroom..?
A small part of Subaru’s soul left ‘his’ body with that realisation.
2
A good half hour had passed since the light had swallowed him whole.
He was still in the corner of the women’s lavatory, knees hugged to his chest, staring at the tiles like they were going to crack open and —hopefully— swallow him whole. The room had emptied out over time, seemingly in respect for her earlier request. One by one the curious glances had drifted away. The whispers had died. Even the human girl had eventually left after lingering near the sinks.
Now it was just Subaru and that mirror on the wall that she had been actively refusing to acknowledge.
“Okay,” Subaru muttered, his own voice still wrong in his own ears. He cleared her throat wearily. “Okay. Enough. It’s been… long enough. I can’t just sit here until I fossilize.”
He collected her strength and energy and pushed his palms to the floor before leaning forward, feeling the entire ensemble shift with his movement in a way that made his stomach clench. “Come on, Subaru,” He told himself, through her teeth. “You got this. You can’t just lay here. Nope. No sir. Or rather—” he stopped, grimaced. “Ma’am. Maybe. Ugh.”
His gaze flicked—traitorously—toward the mirror.
Subaru inhaled and stood up mechanically. He kept her eyes up at first, focused on the wall above the sinks, then on the edge of the frame, then on anything except the center of the glass. The longer he let his vision hover, the more his heart thudded. Finally, with a slow, deliberate step, he moved in front of it, looking straight.
And looked.
For a second his brain tried to reject what it saw outright. Too much at once. Strange armor, a feathered cape, traitorously long hair—longer than it had any right being, spilling into twintails with orange at their ends like they’d been dip painted in neon. The shape of her face entirely different from what it had been before and now framed by bangs. The eyes—glowing, amber, staring back at him like they belonged to someone who was definitely not Natsuki Subaru. And that assessment was right. The person looking back at Natsuki Subaru in the mirror was not him. It was a girl, a younger looking girl who seemed scared, and that was all there was to it.
…except it wasn’t was it? There was infact ‘more to it’ so to speak. Because even if the girl looking back wasn’t ‘Natsuki Subaru,’ she was the person Natsuki Subaru had currently become.
For a moment there, a thought stubbornly lingered in the girl’s head. Was there any way for her to turn back? To return to being Natsuki Subaru? Surely there was right? The idea rung out dully in her head. But for better or for worse, she had a clue on what was going on here. Natsuki Subaru was a big enjoyer of isekai stories, and as a result of this she knew that within isekai there existed a subgenre, one where not only was a person brought to another world, but there were also transported into a new body as well. Frankly it seemed kinda silly to treat this all like some sort or novel or anime but she had nothing else to base her understanding off of. If she were to assume that that was what happened to natsuki Subaru, then there was genuinely a concern that she would never be able to turn back. Subaru’s shoulders went tight over time. She kept staring at the mirror without blinking even once. Her eyes began to sting, but not from dryness.
They say you can only truly appreciate something you’ve had when you lose it. And currently Subaru was finding that to be very true. She missed it, it all. Her parents she might never see again, who she didn't even have anything to remember by now; Her friends; Her… body; Her tracksuit; Her, her life.
She looked at her reflection for just a moment longer. Tracing every last detail of the younger than before face looking back at her, and then without a moment’s notice or hesitation she looked away, one hand lifting to press against her forehead as if to physically push her face to turn away.
“Relax,” she told herself, voice strained. “Relax, Subaru. We’ll figure this out. We’ll find a way to turn back. There’s gotta be some… button. Some mechanic. Some—something.” Her fingers curled and uncurled at her sides, like her hands couldn’t decide whether to punch the wall or pray. “And even if there isn’t, we can live with this. We’ll find ways to cope we’ve crossdressed before haven’t we? Well, this sure as hell feels different from that but still, we can survive being a girl with superpowers for a little. Even if we are some sort of weird mecha mahou shoujo…”
She exhaled hard, then forced her shoulders to return to their resting positions. Right. Second chances and all ‘they weren’t supposed to be wasted’ yada yada yada.
Even if Subaru didn’t exactly love this spawn she’d make due. Now then to find some actual quests to do! R-right thats what you were supposed to do in this situation wasn’t it?
She slapped the sides of her face. “Come on Natsuki Subaru! Let’s go face the world! And try to avoid all the people we’ve met so far in this world incase we run into them again—
She marched to the exit with the stiff determination and unowned bravado. Walking through the doorway the sight of the street graced her again, and immediately she felt rejuvenated as she put her all into making this ‘the best isekai it could be’ —all things considered— Her first job was simple all she had to do was find an adventurer’s guild or look around for a notice board or someplace to stay or something.
She kept repeating these ideas to herself as she walked down the street nodding to herself as got closer and closer towards where she’d first appeared, deciding to check back there first while praying for no repeat encounters. Along the way she also was praying for the mental strength it took to avoid all the eyes she could feel on her but that was more of a lost cause than the former right now.
“Why the hell did I have to get starting gear that makes me look like some sort of figure I’d have on my shelf? Haaahhh.” She whined annoyedly turning to face the sky, hoping to find solace in the clouds. Though eventually she had to look back down and when she did—
The sight before her perturbed her. She could see the fountain she’d spawned in by not too far down the street, but looking around she saw a lot more oddities in this particular part of the road than in any other. It looked… disturbed. Not in the sense that it was packed or anything but rather in the sense that everyone looked cautious. People walked around the area with a little extra caution and slowed paces, giving a wide berth to a stretch of wall—
—where shards of ice were embedded like thrown knives.
Subaru slowed, eyes narrowing. Embedded into the wall were chunks of jagged and thick ice, practically launched into stone at odd angles. Weirdly enough the ice seemed to show no signs of melting either, all of the crystals were frozen solid to the touch. On closer inspection there were more shards embedded in the walls around this spot too, as though a barrage had been fired in this general direction.
“What the hell…” Subaru murmured as she leaned in for a better look. Well ice spontaneously appearing in the wall probably was enough to say that magic existed in this isekai. Hell with gender bender mahou shoujo and medieval what even was the genre anymore? Chuck in high fantasy and isekai and boom, you’ve got the dumbest combination known to man.
Stupid it was all just so stupid… But as long as it didn’t turn out to also be an otome or anything, she’d manage. Somehow.
Then a voice spoke right behind her cutting her out of the tangent she’d been mentally on.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have any idea what led to this damage to the property?”
“GAH!”
Subaru yelped like she’d been stabbed in the spine with a fork. Turning as fast as she could she was met with the sight of—
—Red hair. Bright blue eyes. A fine coat. A smile that looked like it was worn by someone who grew up being liked by strangers. Before her stood a man in what seemed to be formal attire, judging by how a house seal was on his jacket and he had a sword at his waist. It was probably safe to assume he was a solider or knight of some sorts. But that wasn’t what caught Subaru’s eye no. The thing she focused on was how annoyingly, immediately, and objectively handsome the man was.
Yes. Subaru was salty. He’d just been robbed of his own —notably meagre— handsomeness and that made looking at god’s gift to the eyes of quite literally every non-blind individual kinda irksome.
Oh, and the fact that he’d flash-stepped behind her at some point definitely didn’t help either.
“Gah—! Who the hell are you?!” Subaru blurted out, voice cracking at the end.
The man blinked once, and then dipped his head slightly, polite even as Subaru practically glowed with alarm. “Ah. My apologies. I shouldn’t have approached you without introducing myself.” He straightened, calm and warm as though he were trying to comfort a scared civilian, which to be fair he was. “I am Reinhard van Astrea, a knight of the Kingdom of Lugunica. Could I have a moment of your tim—”
Unfortunately for the kind man however, Subaru was probably the one person around who his looks made harder to talk to. And her current cracking Tempermant didn’t help either.
“NO!” Subaru snapped, immediate. “No the hell you may not!”
Reinhard paused—not offended, just… surprised. His expression softened further, he continued to try and descalate further. “Ma’am, I only wished to ask if you witnessed the disturbance. If you are uncomfortable, I can keep my distance.”
“Distance is good,” Subaru said, backing up anyway. “Distance is great. Distance is my favorite thing. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know where I am.”
Reinhard’s brows lifted a fraction. “Then are you lost?”
“I am beyond lost,” Subaru said, and then immediately regretted giving him anything to work with. She backed up another step, heel bumping a stone. Reinhard took a single step forward in response to her stumbling as though to catch her if she fell, and Subaru responded like a cornered animal. Her tensions just kept running higher and higher something about all of this, about the fear for her own life she felt looking at this guy’s eyes. He wasn’t a bad person or at least didn’t look like one. But whatever that energy he had to him was… It felt terrifying.
“Ma’am,” he said gently, “please wait. If you are in need of assistance—”
“Nope!” Subaru barked, voice rising. “Nope nope nope. I’m good. I’m so good. I-I’LL SEE YOU AROUND!” She turned on her heel and booked it.
Reinhard didn’t surge after her like an attacker. He followed at a brisk pace, clearly trying to keep the situation from escalating while also not letting a suspicious armored girl sprint away from a fresh crime scene.
“Please wait!” he called, still absurdly courteous for someone chasing her. “I am not attempting to harm you!”
“That’s what a charming knight would say before the plot eats me alive!” Subaru yelled back without thinking, and immediately hated that she’d said it out loud in public.
Her heart hammered. People were looking. Of course they were looking. Her mind screamed at her to stop, to explain, to calm down—then screamed louder that if she stopped she’d end up in a cell or a castle or a situation she didn’t want to be in. She pumped her legs harder, once again running. …Even if she hated it.
Subaru’s throat tightened. She wanted—desperately—desperately—to disappear.
“Just— go away!” she shouted out her eyes shut, she planted her feet, and shoved off the ground as hard as she could, like she could stomp the world into letting her escape.
And somehow, she succeeded in that endeavour. She didn’t come back down. The world had keeled.
Her eyes snapped open when she felt wind hit her face, her entire body really. The street had dropped away beneath her. Her stomach lurched and she made a sound that wasn’t a scream but really wanted to be one, lost in the air. Her arms were flailing as her body rose carried by trails of light forming from her cape, said cape had split into two and now resembled wings. People below shouted in surprise, heads tipping back, pointing. Subaru shot upward uncontrollably, disappearing into the sky and climbing into open air with reckless accidental confidence which she did not possess. At her back that supposed cape had now fully splayed out into a pair of grand wings.
“I— I’M FLYING?!” she shrieked. Because of course she was. Why wouldn’t she be?
She didn’t so much fly as she did get launched into the sky and then immediately regret every life choice that had led to this moment. Every time she twitched, the “wings” twitched back like they were listening to a different set of controls, and the light trails they left behind made her feel even more visible, which was the last thing she wanted when she’d just sprinted away from what she had.
“Okay— okay, okay, calm down,” Subaru said while hyperventilating, mostly because if she didn’t talk she was going to scream. She tried to angle her body the way she’d seen superheroes do in anime, arms out, legs tucked, the whole “aerodynamic” pose she’d known, …and it did absolutely nothing except make her wobble worse. The light behind her was stuttering in little bursts like they were running out of juice, and Subaru immediately got the feeling she wasn’t supposed to be doing this on fumes. She looked down and her stomach dropped hard, because the capital was small now. People were dots. Roofs were numerous specks of red against an otherwise beige backdrop.
“Nope,” she whispered, then louder, because the wind was stealing everything. “Nope. Not like this. Not like this—” She jerked her shoulders left, then right, and then the wings responded half a beat later overcorrecting like they were drunk and not even attached to her.
She clenched her jaw, forced herself to stop flailing, and tried to think like a person who wasn’t actively having the worst day of her life. She’d gone up when she wanted to get away. She’d just—willed it. She’d wanted distance and this armor that she woke up wearing had responded. That meant… that meant it was intent-based. It had to be. And if it wasn’t then boy was she in for a world of hurt.
“Okay,” Subaru said, voice shaking but focused now. “So if it listens to intent… then… then we can do this.” She pulled in a breath of cold air, and squeezed her eyes shut for half a second, not to avoid having to acknowledging how high up she was but rather to block everything out. No knights. No streets. No people. No screaming. Just one thought. One simple, clear instruction. That was all she let her mind’s eye rest on.
“I want to land,” Subaru said, meaning it with everything she had.
And in response to her request, the world answered.
Her wings folded inward, the light trails thinning and then cutting off entirely as if someone had snuffed them with a hand. The pressure behind her eased, and for a beautiful, blessed second Subaru felt herself slowing down instead of being pushed faster. The cape settled back into its feathered shape against her, Subaru visibly released the tension in her chest so fast it almost made her cry.
“Oh my god,” she breathed, eyes opening as she watched the ground rise to meet her. “It worked. It actually—”
But then her breath caught. She wasn’t easing down. She was dropping. Not in a glide or in a gentle drift but rather in a straight, rapid fall that made her stomach lurch up into her ribs and her ears start to ring. The rooftops below were getting bigger way too fast, and Subaru’s mind did one frantic scan of the situation and came back with a single, screaming conclusion.
“IM GONNA DIEEEEEE!”
She snapped her focus back up, sheer terror forcing her brain to sprint. “Okay okay okay— no, no, fly again, fly again, fly again!” Subaru tried to shove the intent back into her cape the way she had a moment ago. Her cape twitched once, feathered edges lifting like they wanted to become wings again, and a faint orange shimmer sparked—
—and then it sputtered out.
Subaru felt it immediately, dread seeping into her very core.
Her eyes went wide. Her hands opened and closed, useless. She looked down, then up, then down again like looking twice would change the outcome. Her brain offered her options at high speed and every single one of them was garbage. She couldn’t fly. She couldn’t steer. She couldn’t even scream loud enough for it to matter.
Her only riposte was—
“Please, don’t kill me.” Subaru whispered, and it came out small and wrecked, sucked away by the wind. She folded her arms in tight, bracing without knowing what she was bracing for, there wasn’t time to think and there wasn’t time to bargain and there wasn’t time to do anything except beg whatever god was running this stupid nightmare to not splatter her across somebody’s roof.
CRASH!