LoliDagger

  "LoliDagger.  Makes them stagger."

  Chesin began reciting the faded words, beautifully written in ink on, now, time-ravaged paper.

  "Be they humble.  Be they bragger."

  Being a demon, he felt rather foolish reciting a children's rhyme, especially in his low, booming voice, but his companion, also a demon, had absolutely no interest in chiding him for it.

  "With her knives, she takes their lives."

  Mind you, the humor is not lost on Tonok.  Aside from wanting the summoning to succeed, he is well aware of Chesin's both ability and willingness squash heads.

  "'Til down to hell the devils drag her."

  Chesin paused, looking up from the wrinkled paper to watch for any activity in the summoning circle.

  After a moment, Tonok said, somewhat nervously, "I think you have to finish the whole thing."

  "I feel ridiculous", Chesin admitted.  "It's not even a real summoning incantation. It's in English, for Hell's sake!"

  "It's all we have.  Remember, LoliDagger was a child.  This is a song made up by children for fun.  For..."  Tonok paused, trying to think of things children did for fun in Victorian England.  "...patty-cake and jump rope."

  "So!" Chesin shouted, angrily.

  Tonok changed his tone to something calmer.  Unsure of how to better explain it, he added, "If you don't finish it, it... doesn't count."

  "That's stupid," Chesin remarked, even though he did accept the answer.

  "That's kids.  What can I say?"  Tonok let out an internal sigh of relief.  The last thing he wanted was to be in a basement with Chesin on a rage-fueled rampage.

  Chesin looked once again at the paper in his massive hand.

  "What she's done, as you can guess, by blood upon her..." Chesin groaned at the next words, but Tonok assured him.  "...pretty dress."

  Chesin paused a couple of seconds, as if to let the bitter taste of the words fade from his tongues.

  "Don't call and let her in unless you want your house a bloody mess."

  Chesin looked again to the summoning circle, waited about 15 fruitless seconds, and then looked downward to Tonok.  "You realize we're using a warning against summoning her AS an incantation to summon her, right?"

  Tonok closed his eyes, noting that even Chesin realized the irony.  "I know.  Like I said, it's all we have."  Opening them again, "This is literally the only remaining reference to her in existence."

  "Are you even sure she's real?" Chesin asked.

  "One of Hell King's highest ranking prison guards said that Hell King has quietly been hunting down every bit of evidence that LoliDagger ever existed, and it's been going on for almost 200 years.  You don't do that for some made up story."

  "Yeah, okay," Chesin waved a dismissive hand.  "What now, genius?"

  "Try reading it again."

  "I don't want to read it again.  I don't want to hear it again."

  "Maybe it didn't work because you stopped before you finished."

  Chesin rolled his eyes, but Tonok continued, "I really think this LoliDagger can really help us get things going agai-"

  *ahem*

  They both paused, uncertain as to whether or not they did really just hear the sound of a softly clearing throat.

  "It's not polite to speak about someone as if they are not in the room."

  Surprised, Chesin and Tonok both turned around to face the voice which came delicately from behind them.

  Standing now before them was a young girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, wearing a dress that looked about 200 years old, as fashion goes, at least.  Straight black hair hung just below her shoulders, and on her face was a nearly imperceptible hint of a smile.

  "I thought you were supposed to appear in the summoning circle," Tonok said, confused.

  Her smile grew somewhat clearer, as she interlocked her fingers behind her back.  She lowered her gazed to the floor as playfully stepped her right foot forward.

  "Well," bouncing slightly to that foot, "You didn't summon me."

  "But we...".  Tonok and Chesin entered a confused silence which amused the girl.

  "Boys, you know how this works.  You can always hear when your true name is spoken, and mine hasn't be spoken in quite a while.  Since I've been tucked away so long, I was naturally very curious."  She looked directly into the eyes of Chesin.  "No one summons me."  She then gave a sweet smile to them both.

  To his amazement, Chesin internally flinched at the combination of the look and the comment.  He felt almost as if he'd just been challenged, but he quickly dismissed the notion.  She was even shorter than Tonok, so no challenge there.  He wadded up the paper and threw it on the floor, as if to reinforce his superiority.

  "So, tell me, boys.  What lovely plans are you two cooking up?"

  Chesin furrowed his brow and bent over to position his face about a foot from hers.  He looked at a forty-five degree angle downward into her eyes.  "I don't take orders from little girls."

  Without changing her smile, she closed her eyes, tilted her head in a small bowing nod, and lifted the edges of her dress slightly as she curtsied.  "Please," she offered as a polite gesture, although it was unclear to either Chesin or Tonok whether or not it was meant to mock.

  Tonok decided to interject as a precautionary step, just in case Chesin decided to take it for the worse.  "Things have been in disarray since Hell King was... killed."  Tonok was still uncomfortable with the fact that the ruler of Hell COULD die, much less WAS dead.

  She put a couple of fingers to her lips and giggled briefly.

  "What?"  Chesin asked angrily.  He was losing patience with her impudence.

  "You call him Hell King."

  "What of it," Chesin shouted.  She didn't flinch at all, and he did not like that.

  "Nothing.  Please carry on."

  Tonok continued.  "I've got connections.  I know things, and what I don't know, I can find out.  You how they say knowledge is power, right?"

  Chesin gave a small disapproving groan.  Knowledge doesn't squash heads, he thought to himself.

  Tonok remembered that Chesin hated that phrase, but he continued, after a short pause of acknowledgment.

  "Anyway... If you think about it, I'm like the most qualified guy to help get things organized and working smoothly again, but I need to do something to get me really noticed.  Something that'll get me more respect."

  This was becoming even more amusing to her, but she didn't let it show.  "That's quite ambitious.  And what part might I play in this endeavor?"

  "Well, with Chesin's obvious talents, and your penchant for killing, I figure we go on a hard and fast spree somewhere.  You know, go for the body count, but maybe, like, do it with style, or something."

  Tonok added, incidentally, "And you were a pretty high priority prisoner.  That's gotta count for something, right?"

  "I should think so," she agreed.

  "So, you wanna join us and have some fun?  A good ol' human blood bath?"

  "Well, that is a very kind offer....  I'm afraid I don't know your name."

  "Tonok".

  She giggled, sounding very convincingly like an innocent child.  "That's a silly name."

  "Hey," Chesin began, but Tonok stopped him.

  "No.  No.  It's fine.  I know it sounds silly.  Like somebody stubbed their toe on something."

  "I'm flattered that you would think of me for this, Tonok, but I'm just not interested in killing humans anymore."

  "What?"  Chesin spoke up, confused by this concept.  "How does a demon not like killing humans?  You sure liked it fine when you were one."

  "Yeah," Tonok added.  "You killed, like, 50 of them."

  "I never kept count," she admitted, in a sigh.  "For me it was more about succeeding, and a bit about not getting caught."  She grinned as if sharing a secret as she added, "And the blood was lovely, of course."

  "So, why not now," Tonok asked.

  "Have either of you ever held a knife to the throat of a queen?"

  "No," answered Tonok.

  "I don't use knives.  They're too small," Chesin said, holding out his massive hands.

  "Quite sensible,’ she said, validating Chesin, then returned to the topic.  "But where does one really go from there?"

  The two fellows stood in silent confusion, so she continued to explain.

  "If I had killed the the Queen of England, then that would have been the end.  There would have been nothing greater to achieve."

  "Wait, so you didn't do it," Tonok inquired.

  She was taken aback by the question.  She looked at him rather seriously, and stated in monotone, "You've just asked me whether or not I slit the throat of Queen Victoria."

  Tonok recognized the absurdity of the question as worded.  "Yeah, yeah-"

  "I've obviously not slit the throat of Queen Victoria," she interrupted in the same monotone.

  "I meeeaaan... why didn't you go ahead and do it?  Sure you wouldn't have gotten away with it, but that's some bragging rights around here."

  "Actually, I WOULD have gotten away with it if I HAD done it, but what would my life have been after that?  Who wants to peak at thirteen years old?  No, I decided to let her guards be done with me."

  "The human world's changed a lot in 200 years, you know.  Maybe you'll change your mind.  Why don't you come kill a few dozen people with us and see if it gets the ol' juices flowing again... so to speak?"  Tonok smiled at his own pun, and even Chesin thought it was funny.

  "Heh heh, that was good," Chesin quietly, mostly to himself.

  She offered a smile and a wink as she pointed an acknowledging finger towards Tonok, but gave no verbal response.

  Getting back on topic, she spoke again.  "This is all a very curious thing, you see."

  "How's that," Tonok asked.

  "That delightful nursery rhyme, there."  She pointed to the crumpled up paper that Chesin had discarded.

  "Huh?"  Tonok waited.

  "I did not know your name, but I do remember your voice, Tonok, and I remember one of my cell guards talking to you about that very item."

  "Really?"

  "Indeed.  I know the guard owed you a favor, and you wanted that," she pointed again to the ball of paper, "before it was handed over to your 'Hell King',’ she punctuated the title with air quotations, "for destruction."

  "Okay."  Tonok was not sure where this was going.

  "Surely, you are aware of how demons are made, correct?"

  "Yeah.  Of course.  Evil humans die, and then their souls take on their true form," Tonok answered.

  "And your Hell King, being an angel, or former, if you prefer, has the power to stop that process."

  "I knew he could, but I never heard of him actually doing it before.  Are you saying he sealed you shut?"

  "Exactly," she affirmed.

  "Why'd he do that," Chesin asked.  "You mouth off too much?"  He chuckled internally.

  She flashed a patronizing smile.  "Why, indeed.  Why do you suppose the ruler of all of Hell would imprison me immediately upon arrival, and then prevent me from taking my true form?"

  It was not exactly common knowledge that Hell King could see what form a newly released soul would take before it transformed.  In fact, Tonok was not supposed to know it.  He also knew that it was more than just the outward appearance that Hell King could foresee.

  "I guess it means you were going to be pretty powerful then," Tonok concluded.

  "Well, I don't want to brag."

  Chesin had had about as much of her as he could stand.  "You might think you're somthin', little girl, but-"  He stopped at the sound from the stairs.

  Everyone looked to see a small creature scurry down the steps and run to the girl.  She happily knelt and picked it up in her arms, cuddling it like a puppy.

  "Oh, you've made it, Punc.  How lovely."  She nuzzled it and lightly scratched the creature's hairless body.  It made short sounds, almost squeaks, of approval.

  "What the..." Tonok began.

  The creature's body was only a vague quadrupedal animalistic form.  Tonok was hard-pressed to think of anything to compare it to, but then, to his amazement, the thing morphed into something a little more ferret-like, and then crawl up the girl's arm to sit on her shoulder.  It took a few seconds, but he finally realized what it was.

  He pointed and almost shouted, "That's a fuckin' Familiar Imp."

  Frowning, "Now, now.  No need for a potty mouth," she scolded.

  "I hate Imps," Chesin growled, clinching a fist.

  "Yeah, but these aren't even real Imps.  They're not even supposed to exist anymore," Tonok explained.  "Familiar Imps were MADE from real Imps."

  "Never heard of 'em," Chesin said.

  "You wouldn't.  This was like thousands of years ago.  These things were made to be spies.  They can morph, plus they're telepathic.  It was a great idea, but, without fail, every single one of them eventually betrayed they're masters.  Hell King ordered them all destroyed, even the ones that were still loyal.  How did that one survive for so long without being found out?"

  She looked at the creature and scratched its head.  "You must be a very clever little Punc."

  "Was it never bonded?  Did its master die," Tonok attempted to deduce.

  "The little traitor probably killed him," Chesin offered.

  "I don't know. That's not how it ever went down.  They were more about mischief than murder.  That's the Imp in them.  They were made to be spies, and sometimes saboteurs, but never assassins.  Besides, Hell King would have still been able to sniff it out."  He looked at the girl.  "How did you find it?"

  She tilted her head lovingly against Punc's head.  "He found me, actually.  It was just after I had decided to let the Queen's guards finish me.  This dear fellow, told me some very interesting things."

  "Like what," Tonok asked.

  "Oh, some delicious secrets, like how demons are made."  She looked directly into Tonok's eyes.  "How a human can choose what they'll be, if they know how."

  Tonok almost audibly gasped.  "That's forbidden knowledge."

  "Now, how would you know," she put him on the spot.

  "Hey, I admit I know a lot of things I shouldn't, but telling them to a human is another thing entirely.  And the only others who would even HAVE that knowledge are Hell King and a few of his personal guards, and they never had any Familiar Imp, so..."  Tonok's eyes widened as it started to become clear.  "This was Hell King's own Familiar Imp?"

  She did not respond.

  "I don't understand.  He knew they always betrayed their masters.  Why did he let his live?"  The look in Tonok's eyes begged for an answer.

  "Punc is a special little chap.  Aren't you?"  She smiled, and then the creature became invisible.

  That time Tonok and Chesin both did audibly gasp.

  She laughed.  "Listen to you two.  That's not what I meant."  Then Punc reappeared.

  "What?"  What more could there be?  Even Tonok had never heard of a Familiar Imp capable of turning invisible.

  She looked at Chesin.  "Forgive me, Chesin,"  She returned her attention to Tonok. "But as you said, knowledge is power."

  "Yeah."

  "Tell me, what would you have given for five minutes of access to your Hell King's mind?"

  How did he not see this sooner?  This thing had a near constant window into the mind of the most powerful being in Hell.  "Why would he allow that?"

  "Well," she paused, "You know what goeth before a fall," she said somewhat playfully.

  Tonok was in awe.  He put his hands to the sides of his face.  "Oh, shit."

  She pouted, "Language, please."

  Barely hearing her, Tonok continued.  "You killed Hell King."

  She laughed and bounced up and down a few times.  "No, silly.  How would I do that sealed away?  Besides, you know humans killed him... for the most part."  She looked at Punc again, and pet his head.

  "He betrayed his master."  Tonok sounded almost defeated by the realization, perhaps mostly because in hindsight it was so obvious.  "Just like all the other ones.  Except Hell King thought it never would, or never would be able to.  Because no one's smarter or more clever than Hell King."

  Tonok removed his hands from his face and looked at Chesin, who had been curiously silent.  Chesin looked nearly catatonic, which was probably for the best.  Tonok returned his attention to the girl.  "But I don't see how you play in all of this.  Were the humans Plan B?  You couldn't do anything.  What was the point?  Especially if you're not interested in killing anymore."

  She looked at Tonok with a tilted head and smiled, innocently twisting her body a bit to the right, and then a bit to the left, and back, and again.  "Whoever said that?"  Punc began making a quiet coughing sound.

  "But you said..."

  Punc opened his mouth wide, the girl reached in, and then pulled out a dagger.  Punc leaped from her shoulder to the floor as she simultaneously spun around in a full circle and moved toward Tonok.  With a dancer's grace, and unexpected speed, she completed her motion, then took a half step backward for a better view.  She was positively giddy with her fingers covering her lips, as if to hold in her excitement.

  It took Tonok a few seconds to realize the sensation of liquid making its way down his neck.  He attempted to question her, but all he managed was a spurt and gurgle.  His yellow eyes were as wide as they could possibly be.  He was unable to complete any rational thought.  The only certainty was that he was in trouble and he needed Chesin's help.

  He turned toward the behemoth and flailed a desperate hand at Chesin's muscular arm.  He slapped at it a few times, and then pulled downward on it, in part to keep himself balanced, but also to shake awake his companion.

  "Huh?"  Chesin came halfway out of his trance of absolute disbelief in what he had been hearing.  He heard a strange spurting sound and felt a pull at his arm.  He looked downward to his right to find Tonok holding his own throat with one hand, and blood flowing out from all around it.

  "Tonok!" Chesin looked to the girl, in the hope of understanding what was happening, and what he saw was her holding a knife with Tonok's blood on it.  The girl looked at him, lifted one hand from her smiling lips, and then moved her fingers up and down in a wave of hello that infuriated Chesin more than he'd ever been.

  He released a shout that shook the entire house and lunged towards the impudent little girl.  She managed to spin out of the way before he could wrap his thick fingers around her tiny body.  To add insult to injury, she let out a half-laugh as she evaded him.

  If he could grab her, then he would pound her.  He followed her movements, swinging his hands and arms wildly, but missed again and again, until, almost to his surprise, he felt contact.

  To him, the sensation was negligible, but the outcome was the girl flying like a doll across the room and crashing literally through some wooden shelves as if they were made of Styrofoam.

  Chesin looked over to his friend.  Tonok was sitting on the floor, still holding his throat.  They both knew there was nothing Chesin could do to help him, so Tonok used his free hand to direct Chesin toward the girl.

  Chesin understood and quickly walked to where she landed.  He looked down on her, and to his dismay, her eyes were open and she was smiling.

  "That was quite invigorating," she said, pleasantly surprised.

  Chesin let out an enraged growl as he raised his fists into the air, and then brought them back down with a mighty force that broke the floor boards beneath the girl, yet somehow she still remained unharmed.  Chesin was confused by a strange sensation in his left arm.  He looked and found a shard of broken glass wedged firmly into his muscle tissue.

  "How..."  This made no sense to him.  His skin can withstand steel, fire, and even lightning.  How could he have possibly been stabbed with a piece of glass?  He took the shard between two fingers and pulled it out.  He'd never felt pain before, and he did not like it, but his curiosity must be satisfied.  He attempted to stab himself with the same shard, but it simply shattered upon contact.

  "How can you do that," he asked.

  "With great ease, apparently.  Besides, how else would I kill you?"

  "I'll kill YOU!"  He began to lunge, but stopped as she moved to the side and down, and then picked up a 2x4 from the floor.  She swung the approximate five feet of it at him, but he raised an arm in defense.  The board broke in half with Chesin no worse for wear.  "Ha!" he mocked.

  She did not expect that, and so looked curiously at the splintered end of her now shorter weapon.  "Hmm."  She looked at Chesin's stomach and then stabbed at it with the broken board.

  Chesin cried out in pain as the splinters pierced his skin.  The still solid portion of the board did not penetrate, but the large pointed parts wounded him.  She quickly looked around the mess on the floor in search of the dagger Punc had retrieved for her.  Spotting it, she narrowly dodged another swing of Chesin's mighty arm as she rolled to pick up the weapon.

  Gripping the handle, blade down, she moved toward her opponent, feinted right, tricking him into swinging at her again.  He missed and was momentarily left off balance and open.  She ran at him, jumped up, and then plunged the blade into Chesin's eye.  Chesin cried out in great pain and angrily swung the other arm at her.  She held onto the blade, and used the force of his swing to catapult her around his shoulder and onto his back.

  She pulled the blade out, climbed up to sit on his shoulders.  The pain in his eye overshadowed his already natural inability to feel much physical sensation outside of his body, so he did not yet know where she had disappeared to.  He quickly looked around the basement with his one remaining useful eye, but could not find her.  He spun around, as quickly as he could, to check behind him, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  "Where are you," he shouted.

  "Behind you," she obliged.

  He spun around again, saw nothing, but then felt a sharp pain in his skull.  He made an attempt to swat her off, but his arms did not move very much.  He tried to speak, but only slight grunts came out.  His legs began to fail him, and he dropped to his knees.

  She pulled the knife out, climbed up to lay over the top of his bleeding head and looked into his good eye.

  "Hello," she said playfully, waving her fingers to greet him, and then she stabbed the knife into that socket as well.

  Chesin stopped moving entirely.

  The girl held the handle of the knife with both hands and slid sideways off of his head.  The knife twisted as she swung downward to eventually land on her feet.  She pulled out the knife and just looked at him.  A satisfied smile spread on her face as she breathed heavily from the exercise.

  Chesin began to fall towards her, catching her by surprise. "Oop," she let out as she skipped back and sideways to avoid being fallen on.

  She stepped over the beefy right arm of the slain demon, and then set her attention on Tonok, still mostly alive, sitting on the floor.  She looked at the state of him as she casually walked closer, and then looked at the fear in his eyes.  Still holding the knife, she bent over, propping her self up with her hands on her knees, and her head level with his, with mere inches between their noses.

  "Do you understand now?  There's only so much a human can do in a world of humans.  Even if I lived a thousands of years and could kill unhindered, I would eventually just run out of people.  But, you see, If I leave the humans alone..."  She tilted her head and lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "I'll never run out of demons."  She paused, untilting her head.  "Demons are more of a challenge, anyway."  She looked down his body, and then back to his eyes.  "Some of you are, at least."

  She quickly forced the point of the knife upward through Tonok's skull from below, never breaking her gaze.  She watched his eyes go white, roll back, and then his lids fluttered closed.  His hand fell from his neck, and then she pulled the knife back out of his skull, letting the rest of his body fall to the floor.

  She stood upright, looked around the destroyed basement, and happened upon the crumpled ball that was the nursery rhyme about her.  She picked it up, spread it out, and skimmed the words.

  "Well, they weren't wrong."  She folded it in half and looked around again.  "Punc, dear?"  The creature reappeared at her feet.  She held the paper out to her companion.  "Would you mind?"  He quickly took the page into his mouth and proceeded to eat it.

  As he chewed, she looked at her dress, blood stained and torn.  "I shall need some new clothes."  She ascended the staircase and Punc followed.

  It's the one night of the year when many demons can walk freely among the humans without screams of terror filling the air.  It's the night when demons were forbidden to harm humans, before the ruler of all of Hell was slain.  While it's technically no longer a rule, it was actually appreciated by most demons, and so it remains in practice.

  In a New York City alley, two demons have encountered each other.  One is tallish and fat.  He can easily pass as a bit of a slob wearing a rather unpleasant looking mask, provided the lighting is not very bright.  The other is, by all accounts, a 13 year old girl with long black hair and an educated English accent, who, incidentally, looks quite lovely in any light.

  She was in striking contrast to the filthy alleyway, among numerous garbage bags in various states of insecurity.  He, on the other hand, looked right at home, so much so, that one could easily be convinced that the closed dumpster, in front of which he was standing, might actually be his home, although, in actuality, it was not.

  It is unfortunate, however, that the portly demon's manner is just as unpleasant as his appearance, as can be witnessed in the fact that he has captured the girl's small companion, and is quite adamant in his refusal to release the creature.

  One might suspect that such a predicament would have a young girl in tears, or at least dismayed, but this particular young girl is one of almost constant good cheer and always optimistic that events will invariably turn out in her favor.  She stood in very good posture and with her fingers entwined behind her back.

  With her unfailing smile, she addressed the brute.

  "Would you mind, terribly, releasing my little friend?  He'd rather not be handled in such a way."

  The creature struggled to escape the fellow's grasp, but to no avail, and the insensitive protagonist began to roughly stroke, if you could call it that, the hide of the creature.

  "He's MY friend, now.  You can have one of those rats," he suggested, briefly gesturing towards one of the piles of garbage serving as a meal to a small collection of rodents.

  "I'm afraid that won't do.  You see, I'm quite fond of Punc, here, and I would never consider abandoning him.  Please be a good chap and release him."

  The oaf leaned over her a bit and said, with very deliberate words, "I ain't doin' it."

  "Oh, dear," she responded as, unbeknownst to the monster, she began withdrawing a dagger, which she kept sheathed against the small of her back, concealed from view.

  The dagger was only partially removed, when a thick, meaty, crack of a sound was heard.

  Punc's captor suddenly released his grip.  Punc launched himself away and onto the ground, seeking refuge behind the girl.

  The girl's eyes were trained on the suddenly expressionless face of the tall demon as he began to lean to one side, and turn as he ultimately landed face down onto the pavement.

  "Well, that was unexpected," she remarked and then noticed that a sledgehammer was embedded in his skull.

  Confused, she looked up to find a pale, young girl standing on top of the closed lid of the dumpster, immediately behind where the demon had been standing.

  This pale girl wore pajamas and short, black pigtails, and there was a very disapproving look on her face as she gazed down upon her defeated foe.

  The girl with the dagger slid it back fully into its sheath and released the handle.

  "Hello, there," she offered, pleasantly.

  It took a few seconds for the pale girl to notice the greeting, but when she did, she looked at the long-haired girl and then quickly relaxed her expression.  She merely stared, saying nothing.

  The long-haired girl, looked to the body and then stepped nearer, grasping the handle the the sledgehammer.  With a bit of levering, she freed the heavy mass of metal from the brute's gaping skull.  She moved her grip closer the weighted end and then held the weapon up to the pale girl.

  "I believe this is yours."

  The pale girl accepted the sledgehammer, but still offered no change of expression.  She climbed down from the dumpster and stood not two feet in front of the long-haired girl.  The pale girl, while still short, was taller than the other girl, by about a head, at least.  She wore fuzzy slippers matted with dried blood, and there were spatterings of blood on her pajamas as well.  In fact, even the handle of her sledgehammer seemed to be painted in a coat of dried blood.

  The two stared at each other for a moment, saying nothing, but then the pale girl looked down to the creature who was now sitting at the side of the long-haired girl's feet.

  The long-haired girl looked as well.  "Oh, yes.  This is Punc.  He is a very dear friend of mine."  As her gaze traveled back upward, she noticed that the pale girl held a string attached as a leash to a small, floppy stuffed animal.

  "I see you have a friend of your own.  What's his name?"

  The pale girl looked at her stuffed animal, and then brought it into her arms as she looked again into the eyes of the long-haired girl, but still said nothing.

  She curiously looked the pale girl over for a moment.  "You're a little ghostie, aren't you," she asked, rather pleased with her findings.  "I've always wanted to meet a ghostie."

  The pale girl looked a bit confused, but still made to reply.

  "You don't talk very much, do you," she guessed.  "Well, that's not a problem at all.  If it's alright with you, Punc, here, can tell me what your thinking.  By the way, my name is LoliDagger."  She raised an index finger to her lips in a silencing gesture, then added, "But don't tell anyone," punctuating it with a wink.

  Excitement spread across the long-haired girl's face.  "You're name is Princess Jack?"  She clapped and bounced.  "Oh, I absolutely love it!"

  The long-haired girl stepped back, holding out a hand that welcomed the pale girl to accompany her away from the alley.  "I simply must know more."

  The pale girl hesitated briefly, but soon enough the two were walking side by side down the dimly lit sidewalk with Punc trailing close behind.

  "What a coincidence.  I killed my parents, as well."