Cohost: Light the signal bonfires. Let the call ring out. Who will carry the torch? Who will do a “make up a magical girl” page?
Shasta's blearily tabbing through maintenance reports, a box of tissues by her elbow and half a bowl of cold chicken noodle soup in front of her, when V slides onto the seat next to her.
"You okay, baobei?" V says.
"Still not over the bug I picked up last landfall," Shasta says, pressing a knuckle hard at the outside of one eye, as if the point of dull pain will distract from her head full of cotton wool.
V looks at her, head on one side, and raises her own tablet. "Magical girl who is having Doubts," she reads aloud, distinctly pronounced uppercase D and all.
Shasta looks back at her, blinks owlishly several times, and blows her nose. It's not so much stalling as she doesn't have anything to say to that, really. If V knows that Making-up-Magical-Girls is her, there are all kinds of thing she could read into it—
"Not my best," she opts for eventually. "M'not feeling very well."
"Baobei," V says, purses her pretty pink lips, and looks at Shasta like she's a Speed-Legible Diagnostic Readout for her own soul, but doesn't say anything else.
Magical girl whose friend wants to stage an intervention— backspace backspace backspace backspace.
Magical girl whose reason for living loves her very much, as a friend— select everything forward of the comma, delete; select reason for living, delete, substitute friend; pause; select all, delete.
Magical girl who
Shasta wakes up on antibiotic drip in sickbay, V slumped alongside in a chair, one booted foot propped on the bedrail. She's poking at her tablet in her lap, Shasta's stacked neatly underneath it. When Shasta makes some kind of helpless croaking noise, she puts a cool hand on her forehead and frowns at her.
"Thirsty," Shasta says, and leans over the side of the bed to grab her tablet off the chair, just managing not to fall on the floor, while V fetches some water.
The last Magical Girl Who update is timestamped over a day ago. But she remembers — she kinda remembers, she thinks, back in her fevered haze — pressing post. On something. Which manifestly isn't there.
Shasta's logged-in tablet has been sitting in V's lap.
She hurriedly tabs open her report backlog, before V comes back scowling and takes the tablet away.
"None of that, baobei, you need to rest."
"Okay," Shasta says, sips her water and slumps back exhaustedly, and quietly stews in Doubts.