“So what do I need to pack?” Cais asked, as she got a messenger bag out of a cupboard. Natty was sitting on her bed, drinking a strawberry smoothie.

  “Whatever you think you might need. Some weapons. Magic stuff. Poof.”

  Cais turned to gre at Natty.

  “Why do you assume I own all of that. I don’t exactly do magic in css.”

  Natty scoffed. She crossed her legs.

  “Well I can’t help you. Just pack some shirts them. And a toothbrush. Also, food. I don’t know how to cook and neither does my…pal. In any case, you’ll have to survive on your own.”

  “What if Verita comes after me?” Cais stuffed a T-shirt into the bad. Natty finished her drink and pced the empty gss on the floor, to which Cais frowned, went over, picked it up and put it in the sink.

  “She won’t, I can assure you.”

  Cais didn’t answer and instead got some yogurts out of the fridge.

  “Well, I’m done.”

  “Finally” Natty jumped off the bed “Took you long enough! Now let’s go!”

  “Right” Cais turned around and went to the door.

  “What are you doing?” Natty asked. Cais stopped and turned to her “Leaving?” she asked.

  “Through the door?”

  “…Yeah?”

  “Oh no silly!” Natty shook her head “We’re leaving trough…” she motioned with her head towards Cai’s bathroom door “There.”

  “First you sleep in my bathtub and now you…”

  “Actually the sleeping in the bathtub is Beryl’s weird habit, not mine. I wanted to py pretend in a more…realistic manner.”

  Unknown to Natty, Cais had a single wish. Even though when she had first seen Natty in magical Beryl disguise and got scared, Cais really hoped that she would get the opportunity to see her like that again. Or, even better, the real life Beryl herself.

  “Okay but why the bathroom door again?” Natty raised a finger.

  “Allow me to show you…” she then opened said door. And, like in any other fantasy story, the door turned out to be a magical portal.

  “After you” Natty grinned.

  “No, after you, I insist” Cais fake smiled.

  Natty moved towards Cais, grabbed her arm and then dragged her towards the door.

  “Actually maybe I can talk this out with Verita, ha ha…”

  “Too te!” Natty pushed Cais through the portal.

  ??ˋ ? ?ˊ?

  The rebellion headquarters looked terrible. Cais looked around and thought that the pce was really in need of a makeover, ASAP.

  Natty appeared from behind her. She took a seat on the dirtiest couch Cais had ever seen.

  The couch wasn’t the worst thing in the room though. Bck ooze was all around the room. From inside of a wall grew pnts and flowers, all of which looked terrible. The couch was full of other weird pnts. On a table there were dirty gsses, some of them filled halfway with smoothies.

  The carpet hadn’t been cleaned in years. The chandelier didn’t even have light bulbs.

  In short, Cais stared at the whole image in horror.

  As some sort of clean freak, the scenery before her was very disappointing.

  “Are those yours?” she asked Natty, while pointing at the dirty smoothie gsses on the table. Natty spared them a gnce and answered thus:

  “Yeah. I’ll wash them…eventually.”

  “Tch…”

  “In any case” Natty yawned “Vincent’s not here yet. Probably out gambling his life away.”

  The girl then pointed towards a half broken door.

  “There’s a spare room for you there. Go make yourself comfortable.”

  Cais really didn’t want to go. But she had no other choice but to do so. No one knows how she managed to get past the cobwebs on the hallway but she decided to enter the room that looked the cleanest.

  The room itself was dark blue with a single desk mp that lit up the whole area.

  “One, two, three, four…” a sudden voice could be heard. Then the same person whined.

  “I hate this!”

  “Whoa you need to chill” Cais said, even though she didn’t see the person.

  “Go away Natty. You’re the reason I’m broke.”

  “Uhh I’m not Natty.”

  The person got up from underneath the covers where they were hiding.

  “You’re the new one? Ca-i-s?”

  The dude in front of Cais looked very young, like 14 or possibly 15. In any case, his eyes were bright blue and were literally shining.

  “Vincent, nice to meet you” he said “Tell Natty that she owes me 50 bucks, will you?”

  “Sure…uhh, where’s my room…?”

  “Oh. Riiiiight. Natty told me to clean one up for you. Uhhh…I didn’t have time to do it…”

  “No worries. Just tell me where it is.”

  “Uhh…the room next to Natty’s which is in front of mine.”

  “Alright” Cais turned to leave “Also uhh…Vincent. Natty was looking for you. She’s in the living room.”

  “Crap” was all he said before Cais exited.

  Cais got the filthiest room ever. Conveniently, Natty had pced a broom into the room for Vincent to clean, but the boy didn’t do it.

  And so, in the spawn of three hours, Cais had cleaned the room and made it shine.

  Right after she was done and started unpacking her clothes, Natty’s voice called: “DINNERTIME!”

  Surprisingly, the kitchen was cleaner than the rest of the house. Unsurprisingly, dinner was, in fact, not ready.

  Instead, Natty and Vincent were pying cards. Natty won, making the kid throw the cards he had left on the table and sulk.

  “Uhh…dinner was ready? Cais assumed.

  “Oh yeah, we were hoping that you would…cook for us…” Natty expined.

  “What ingredients do you have?”

  “Good question!” Vincent stood up and led Cais to the fridge. He opened it.

  “As you can see, there’s nothing.”

  Cais face palmed and then shared the food she had brought.

  “I was thinking about giving this whole pce some cleaning” Cais suggested “As you can see, it’s very dirty and you two don’t really bother to clean it.”

  “Cleaning yeah…but what about Natty’s pnts?” Vincent pointed out.

  Cais turned towards Natty.

  “Those were yours?”

  Natty averted her gaze and then said:

  “Yeah. I tried using my powers. I sort of failed.”