The next day, Jennifer and Natalya were on the way to the chemistry lab after classes had concluded.

  “You know, I had the time to think about your club.”

  “And?”

  They both stopped in front of the door and Jennifer glared.

  “I'm definitely not joining your lame club. But congratulations, you found a way to make Dora look even more pathetic and managed to assassinate her reputation for good.”

  Natalya raised her voice in confusion.

  “Huh? I thought clubs made people look awesome. You know, people who do things are automatically more interesting than people who are lazy bums.”

  Jennifer scoffed and raised her eyebrows and one side of her mouth into a smug smile.

  “I sure hope you guys don't actually do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “You're right, people who do things are cool. But only if they do them alone and out of free will, not in a little designated wank corner in a school room like a bunch of holed up rats.”

  “Of course it's gonna sound bad if you describe it like this. But how would you explain sport clubs then? Surely you can't think they're nerdy or lame, right?”

  Jennifer waved with her hand in front of her face.

  “Athletic people give off a cooler vibe by virtue of being fit. It's something completely different. Also their clubs are more official and more competitive as well as more combative for lack of a better word.”

  Natalya smirked under her mask.

  “Sounds like excuses. Are you sure you're not the only one who thinks about her this way?”

  Jennifer scoffed.

  “Pfft. If you can't refute anything I said and have to refer to my emotional state you have already lost and have run out of arguments. Shut up and get your fat ass inside.”

  After opening the door they both entered.

  “Excuse me”, Natalya approached a young man with glasses and fluffy hair which made him look like a sheep whom she recognised as a substitute teacher.

  “Have you seen a sixteen year old girl with long, fuzzy black hair pass through here? Maybe she did anything suspicious you can think of?”

  “Hmm? Well, let me think, hmm.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes.

  “Let me expedite your thinking process.”

  “Jennifer, what are you up to?!”

  The ruffian slammed her lower arm against the young man’s throat and pushed him against the chalkboard which created a white cloud.

  “Loser! Have you seen Emma recently?!”

  “Jennifer, stop! We'll get in trouble!”

  “I said relax! He's not even a real teacher!”

  “Yes!”

  Under tears, the substitute teacher confessed.

  “I tried to stop her when I saw her run out with supplies!”

  “What kind of supplies?!”

  “S-s-”

  “Suhsuh what?!”

  Jennifer raised her fist.

  “Sulfuric acid, acetone and hydrochloric acid!”

  “Hmph.”

  She dropped him and stepped outside with Natalya.

  “Oh Emma, what have you gotten yourself into.”

  “More importantly, what have you got US into?! We are so expelled!”

  “Relax. Obviously that nerd can't tell on us, otherwise his career is over before it even started.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean ‘what do you mean’? Aren't you supposed to be the smart one? Think, you dumb horse! What do you think will happen if the school director finds out that this dude allowed a student to vanish under his supervision with chemicals needed to make drugs?”

  “Oh. I understand it now.”

  Natalya sighed and grabbed a tissue to wipe the sweat off her face under her mask.

  “Wait, you think Emma was trying to make drugs? Why?”

  “I think she was trying to help me. What a dumbass! Now we are all in trouble.”

  “Still, this doesn't explain why we found her all beaten up and why she was poisoned.”

  “Maybe she got mixed up in shady company. Right after she performed her foolish little experiments and inhaled a few too many fumes.”

  “Either way, we should wait for Dora. Let's head to the cafeteria.”

  “Yeah.” Jennifer nodded in exasperation. “Let's.”

  “What am I doing with my life? I am soooo getting expelled. I started talking to myself out loud. Not like it matters anymore.”

  Dora whimpered in self-pity as she crouched past the lunch lady and sneaked into the storage room. Various food items were stored here and looked brittle in their mantle of ice, from chicken over vegetables to fish fingers and fries.

  She then looked over her shoulder and took a deep breath.

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  “Squeak!”

  “Huh?”

  Looking forward and on the ground, Dora noticed a little rodent in grey fur and immediately lightened up.

  “You must be Retsuko the rat. Come here.”

  Dora took a step forward and went down on a knee, spreading out her hands to offer the pet rat a ride. However, it vanished, along with the entire storage room and was overridden by a white vastness. One of her hands began to ache.

  “Eh?”

  Dora looked left. Then right. Finally she got up and turned around.

  “This is definitely not the storage anymore.”

  Her eye twitched. The teenager fell to the ground and slammed her fists to the ground causing them to slowly sink into a cold surface and resonate in a crunching sound. She then raised her upper body and slumped backwards, then she screamed before rolling around.

  “Ahhh, cold cold cold!”

  Dora got up and frantically looked around, but all she could see was falling snow and a seemingly never ending ocean of ice and snow.

  “I'm going blind! I'm cold! I will dieee!”

  Dora tried her best to run through the snow all the while wildly pinching her cheeks.

  “This is a dream! It's not possible! Retsuko, become huge and save me!”

  Minutes passed. At least Dora assumed that, as even after such a short time it had become difficult for her to judge the passage of time. Her phone had run out of batteries. The sun looked pale and white and almost artificial as it hung above the horizon, but refused to provide warmth. Or perhaps it did provide it, but lost the fight against the atmosphere and cold. Meanwhile, Dora tried to come up with theories about what was going on. Maybe she was asleep and had been caught in a gas leak? Or she had been abducted by aliens like in a movie. Perhaps she stubbed her toe, fell unfortunately and then died and this was her personal hell.

  Regardless, she just kept trudging through the snow, snot coming out of her nose that immediately froze and stuck to her face. Her eyes were in pain and felt dry while her skin turned numb and felt like it was going to tear like paper if she made a hasty movement.

  Dora came to a halt.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  Crunch.

  A sound that came towards her. Despite not knowing what it was, Dora felt a weird sense of relief as it at least meant some kind of diversion.

  She could make something out in the snowy fog, a rodent-like shape.

  “R-Retsuko, have you come to save me?”

  The mist cleared up and revealed a large creature, around seven or eight feet in height and ten feet in length. Its fur was auburn mixed with dirty looking, dark red spots. The ears protruding from the head seemed dull and lacked the sharpness or triangular form you'd expect from this animal, as if something had taken a bite from it. A huge thick green stalk was sticking out of the middle of its torso. And the one eye visible to Dora had white foam flowing out of it, bubbling like a hot bath which only made her desire to go home grow further.

  In a monotonous, swift voice Dora proclaimed.

  “Wait, you're not Retsuko, Retsuko is a rat and you're a, hmm, squirrel. A giant squirrel, a Ra-Ratatoskr?”

  She wearily took a step backward as the giant creature slowly turned its head to face Dora, revealing brain matter and even more foam, this time red squirting from the other side.

  It screamed and prepared to run. And so did she.

  Dora stumbled in place and almost tripped as she turned around and rushed into a sprint.

  Her heart and lungs were aching and blood began rushing back into her extremities. She clenched her teeth. However, it was not good enough. The poor weak girl fell over the high snow, onto her back. She raised her arm in a lost hope that it would somehow stop the horrible enraged creature that was terrifyingly swift for its body size as it leaped towards Dora Rey.

  Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion for her as she started to come to peace with the fact that she would die in a few blinks of the eye.

  “Ora!”

  A large milk can came flying from the side and slammed with a metal sound into the Ratatoskr, as Dora had called it.

  The squirrel beast was torn from midair and screeched as it rolled across the snowy plain, twitching and coming to a halt as soon as the plant stalk broke its fall.

  “Don't just sit there, get up!”

  Tears came over Dora’s face as she was finally allowed to hear a human voice. Human steps approached her quickly and she found herself being held under someone's arm. The sun blinded her, so that was all she could make out.

  “Who are you?”

  “I'm saving your behind. Let's go.”

  Dora rocked up and down as her saviour made rapid short steps across the snow to avoid sinking in. Behind them, she could hear the growls and panting of the oversized rodent that was trying to get a snack.

  As they made progress, Dora could make out the face of the girl who saved her. Despite her looking young, around in her early twenties or late teens, her hair was white. It was styled in a peekaboo or emo hairdo and covered one of her eyes in a triangular arc. Underneath that arc, she wore old-fashioned sunglasses with a dark blue rim. Dora recognized her shoewear to be snowshoes which must have been the reason why she could avoid sinking into the snow with proper footwork. Fitting with the shoes, the young woman also wore a dark brown winter jacket which, according to Dora being pressed against it, must have been warm and fuzzy.

  The student's heart was beating faster as she heard the Ratatoskr approach.

  “We're almost there! I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to toss you.”

  “What! No!”

  “Brace yourself!”

  “...”

  Her voice became demonic upon the utterance of the next word, with a deep tone that sounded as if the air, no, as if reality itself was being violently cut by her vocal chords.

  “ABR.”

  A dark blue top hat appeared in her right hand as if conjured from thin air.

  “By the way, my name is Harriet.”

  The next thing Dora saw was her face and body being shoved down that hat, then pure darkness. The light sensation of floating overcame her followed by a soft impact. She must have landed in the snow along with the hat.

  Somehow, Dora managed to peek out the hat by placing her hands to the sides until she felt a silky textile to the touch and pulled herself up.

  Looking backwards, there was a set of metal stairs leading down towards a basement or bunker locked by a door.

  Curiosity overcame Dora, so she felt compelled to gaze towards Harriet who braked with her shoes and turned around on the spot gracefully.

  “ABR! Smoke!”

  Darkness covered the snowy field she had been standing on, and as it changed back to normal, so did Harriet’s attire change. In place of a winter jacket she wore a dark blue leotard that accentuated her toned legs, revealing strong pale thighs and wedge heels which made her appear taller than before. A black cape covered one of her arms and fluttered in the howling wind. On her head was another top hat and below it, a birdlike white mask with a long, sharp thin beak akin to that of a hummingbird obscured Harriet’s face.

  “Face me.”

  With bloodshot eyes and a foaming mouth, the ferocious rodent lunged at the magician.

  “ABR, deck! Shuffle! Reshuffle, reshuffle, reshuffle…!”

  A set of cards appeared in Harriet’s gloved hand. With incredible speed she shuffled them and produced one card after another between her middle finger and index until she was satisfied with the result and finally came to a stop.

  Dora gasped. Tears flowed into her eyeducts and rushed out. The squirrel got ahold of Harriet's other arm with its razor-like incisors and tore it off as easily as people eat chicken from a drumstick.

  Harriet raised her voice into a demonic battlecry to the point where Dora could not tell whether it was due to battle spirit or pain, but regardless of that, it gave her goosebumps.

  “ABR! LOCK DECK! REVERSE CARD!”

  Harriet flipped the card between her fingers and presented it to her adversary whose head came flying off, leaving behind a sputtering arc of blood before it finally landed at Harriet’s feet. With a wet squish sound she kicked it away. The squirrel’s body twitched violently.

  The magician turned to Dora who gasped as she got a glimpse of Harriet’s grey eyes. She bowed to grab her severed arm and placed it under her black cloak. After turning around on the spot, she presented her arm reattached to her shoulder as if nothing had happened.

  Dora couldn’t help but contort her face into a wide grin in hype which caused her skin to hurt due to the cold and stiffness. Sparks appeared in her eyes as she marvelled at the sight before her.

  “Whooaaaa! Just like in my anime shows! Heck yeah!”

  Harriet stumbled towards Dora, exhausted.

  “Ah, a macska rúgja meg..”

  Quietly groaning in pain, she lifted the top hat with Dora’s head sticking out which would serve as a bizarre sight for any bystander. With echoing steps she made her way down the stairs and opened the heavy metal door by turning the creaking wheel with one hand. The wind’s cutting howl’s were finally shut up and the two girls were given precious respite. Or were they?