Prepared For This (Amy Faust)

Prepared For This (Amy Faust)
Date of Cutscene:	04 November 2023
Location:	Radiant Heart Academy - Classrooms
Synopsis:	Amy is manning an eccentric haunted house exhibit of her own devising when someone brings in a bunch of toys that used to be people. Confronted by a horror story come to life, she tries to cope by acting in control of the situation and devises a plan to keep the ensorcelled students distracted. When the last changes back, nearly an hour has passed, far longer than a youma fight. What could have happened...?
Thanks to:	Usagi Tsukino
Cast of Characters:	Amanda Faust
Tinyplot:	Lunar Eclipse

---

Amy was supposed to just be helping with SFX. Some combination of miscommunication and someone else's plan not working out has forced her to improvise "something scary" with minimal time to prepare specialized supplies. She gets some time with a fancy printer and can borrow from the drama club, at least...

Amanda sits behind a table in a small 'room' delimited by black curtains. An end table along one curtain-wall has various odds and ends upon it -- an analog clock, one of those toy monkeys with the cymbals, a pair of sunglasses, a ballpoint pen, just random mundane items and bits of kitsch. Next to it is a hat rack, upon which some disused hats from the drama club have been hung, and against the opposite 'wall' is a clothing rack with similarly disused items of clothing. The table in front of Amanda has a prop crystal ball, a cheap tea set and a bottle of water upon it.

And next to every item is a mock-up Student ID card, with random names and AI-generated pictures. (Lanyards are hung next to the hats and clothes.)

Amanda herself is dressed in a vaguely old-fashioned black dress with red trim and a sash around her waist with a bow on the back, a matching bow just below the collar in front, and a matching alice band with a little bow on it in her hair.

"You know, a witch hat would go really well with that outfit. You're... supposed to be a witch or something, right?" asks the random teenage boy in a Radiant Heart uniform who's currently wandered in and whom she's been talking with for the past couple of minutes.

Amy leans forward, steepling her fingers together and grinning as sinisterly as she can manage. "Oh, you think so? Are you volunteering to help me with that? Are you perhaps considering a... career in fashion?"

The boy has no reaction at all. "Oh, well um... not really actually. I figured I'd do something with computers."

Amy pauses briefly, irritated. He still hasn't figured it out. "Computers, eh? I suppose it's a bit unconventional for a witch, but I'm a forward-thinking woman. Perhaps that could be quite useful... Tell me, would you say you're more of a..." She looks meaningfully at the table, "Laptop kind of guy, or desktop kind of guy?"

"Huh? Why does that matter?"

Amy's sinister look returns. "You could say it will... determine the shape of your future."

He blinks, once. "I use a laptop at school, but I helped put together my family's desktops when I was little. ...So uh, are you gonna tell my fortune, or...?"

Amanda sighs, exasperated. "I'm a witch and I turned all these other students into objects. That's the bit."

He blinks again, and looks at the things in the room.

Amy makes a 'go on' gesture with her hand as she continues explaining, "Thus the ID cards. A reminder of the humanity lost, now just objects, their lives reduced to unchanging, inanimate stillness for all eternity, fated to be used until they are forgotten and discarded like mere things."

The boy looks back at her with a raised eyebrow. "Who thinks about that? Wouldn't it have worked better if you just dressed up as a zombie and jumped out at people?"

Amy sighs. "That's so... I hate jumpscares, though! Like come on, isn't this psychologically horrifying, if you think about it?" She reaches for the lanyard around her own neck and places the card upon the table in front of her. "I, too, am trapped here, imprisoned with these victims in the role of curator, turned into the witch, their minder." It's Mallory's old ID card. A little joke no one will get.

The boy glances down at it, then back up at her. "It's too high-concept. How many people could you have scared as a zombie by now?"

Amanda sighs. "It's psychologically horrifying. I'm above jumping out at people and boo!-ing at them! Besides, after all her help there should be at least one thing here at the haunted house that isn't about startling screams out of Tsukino-san--"

"Miss witch are you still in there?!" calls a voice from behind the curtains.

Amy fixes her sinister expression from before and smiles. "Oh? Is someone there? Would you care to join me as-- ah, I mean for tea?"

"Ohhhhhhhh that's why you asked me that when I came in." The boy finally gets it.

Before Amy can respond beyond nodding and tapping the ID card next to one of the teacups, a teenage girl in a Radiant Heart uniform and an armful of toys, mostly little inches-high stuffed dolls. "You must be a real witch, right? You were here in case this happened?!"

Amy blinks at her, a bit confused by this apparent improvization. "Uhhhhh, what do you mean?"

The girl sets the toys down on the table and points towards the curtain-wall. "Magic is real. I just saw it! There's some evil girl who turned people into toys and magical girls were fighting her and she ran off and then they ran off--"

As she explains, some of the stuffies on the table stand up on little felt legs, and a weeble wobbles, turning slightly. "Help..." one of them pleas. Amanda stares in horror and awe, ice running through her veins. Situations out of stories have turned real before -- she's living one, after all -- but this... she literally picked very nearly this as the most horrifying thing she could improvise for a part of the class project! It's the bananas all over again!

The boy screams and points and jumps back. "How did you do that?!" He looks at Amy, amazed.

"--and, and now you can change them back, right? You knew she'd be here and you came to help, right?"

The boy relaxes a bit and starts clapping. "Okay, okay, I'm impressed. I think you overcomplicated it but the moving toys are a *really* nice touch."

One of the stuffies turns to face him. "What are you talking about?"

The boy looks creeped out and steps back again. "...Ooookay, your uh, thing with the objects was just weird but actually I'm kinda creeped out by moving toys so I'm gonna go..." he backs out of the curtain and a moment later, can be heard screaming at something outside.

The girl watches him go, then turns back to Amy. "You can help them, right?"

Amanda looks down at the toys. They look up at her. She looks up at the girl. What.

What.

WHAT.

Amy tries to find words. "You said... other magical girls went after the one who did this?"

"Yeah?"

Amanda sighs. "I'm not really a witch, I was just doing a bit." She picks up her own ID card. "I just wanted to see if anyone else here was-- nevermind."

"You... can't help them?"

"They'll probably turn back on their own when the one who did it is defeated. But we can help them in other ways. Keep them safe. Make sure no one puts them in a backpack and walks off. Keep them calm. Talk to them. Make sure the ones that can't move get intellectual stimulation. Something to focus on. Bring, uh, bring the rest in here..." The girl nods and hurries back out, and Amy stands and walks over to her backpack in the back corner of the room, getting out her phone. "Stories, stories, what's a good story..."

"What's going to happen to us?" asks one toy. "Is this a dream?" asks another. Yet another just starts screaming, and scooching backward across the table, pointing one little felt arm at the other toys.

"I don't... it's complicated. It'll seem like a dream when it's all over. Magic is weird. You'll... you should turn back soon. I'm gonna... I'm gonna find you all something to do, alright?"

The screaming one scootches right off the table and falls, then goes silent in surprise when it hits the floor. Amy gently scoops it up -- "I fell..." "Yeah you're made of um... plush and you only fell a few feet." -- and sets it back on the table, by others that are curiously poking and prodding eachother or looking at felt limbs in confusion.

"How do you know what to do?" One of the stuffie dolls, a boy (judging by the felt uniform including pants rather than a skirt, anyway) asks.

"Wh... what do you mean?" Amy glances down at him.

He's standing near the edge of the table, facing her, looking up at her. "You said 'make sure the ones that can't move get intellectual stimulation.' You sound like someone telling people how to do first aid. Has this happened before? Does this happen often?!"

"No..." Amy looks down at the floor, awkwardly. "At least, I don't think so." Actually, that's kind of a horrifying thought. If it happened before she was magic, she wouldn't know. Has this happened to her and she doesn't remember? She shivers.

"Then how..." the stuffy asks.

She continues to look at the floor, feeling ashamed of all things. "I'm just... weird. I've always been weird. I just... I think about... certain impossible situations a lot. And since I thought of them... Like, I'd feel extra silly if I thought of them and then they actually happened and I wasn't prepared, right? This is why I don't use biometrics on my phone. Can't use fingerprints or Face ID like that..."

"...Can felt use a touchscreen?"

Amy walks back to her backpack, unzips the front pocket, and digs in it to pull out two-pack of touchscreen styluses, which she sets down on the table near the stuffy talking to her, smiling at her cleverness. "Okay, I wasn't preparing for this specifically, but it did occur to me that I might end up in a form that might lack fingers for precisely tapping letters on an on-screen keyboard. Might be painfully slow to hold it in paws or your mouth, but at least you could text friends for help."

The stuffy looks at the stylus for a moment. "...How would you get it open? How would you unzip your backpack?" He holds up his nubby little felt-hands.

Amy's pride in her cleverness vanishes as she feels really stupid for overlooking that. She slumps. "...Okay. If it'd happened to me I would feel so stupid right now. See, this is exactly what I mean about being properly prepared..." She tears open the package and puts the styluses back in her bag. "I'll add some kind of pull tag to the zipper later..."

"...Are you really sure we're gonna turn back?"

Her hesitation and the look on her face answer for her, although after a moment she says, "...Probably a few minutes at most."

She claps her hands. As the girl from before comes back in with another armful of gathered toys and sets them on the table (some of the stuffies help them to their feet, those that have feet anyway, or at least legs,) she announces, "Alright everyone! Just think of this as a dream and try not to focus on... Well. I'm gonna tell you a story!"

Amy continues, "I heard this tale from another witch. Once, in the distant land of Eire, lived the Eternal Witch Vivian, known by all for her beauty and mastery of plants. But despite this mastery, one day she was cursed, with thorny vines that grew from and threatened to consume her body. Even with all her magic, she could only slow their growth. Before they could finish her, she halted the curse by drinking a sleeping potion, and left to her apprentice, the Herbal Witch Betty, a list of incredients for the potion that would cure her."

"Betty could handle most of the ingredients -- she was known as the Herbal Witch even at her young age, after all -- but she was but a child, and would have difficulty obtaining things like 'the ashes of a vampire' and 'the Demon Lord's horns.' Thus it fell to her assistant, Arsenio, a man who'd been cursed to become a monster but whose heart was no less pure, to travel to the demon lord's castle..."

---

It's been nearly fifty minutes, according to her watch. After the first person turned back, accidentally pushing everyone else off and almost breaking the table, she moved storytime to the floor, sitting in front of them as she speaks. Her audience have, one by one, changed back, freaked out or become very anxious, and left. All that remains is a poor weeble, sometimes so still she begins to worry until it wobbles again.

"And so Eric stung the scorpion girl with her own stinger, for he'd read that scorpions were venemous, not poisonous, and so not resistant to their own toxins, and she was paralyzed, allowing himself and Arsenio to drag the others back home through the mirror so he could prepare a cure. They escaped, barely, but clearly, they'd need to prepare better next time if they were to have any hope of obtaining--"

There's a shocked girl sitting in front of her. Amy blinks, then smiles. "You're back!"

The ex-weeble, having regained the capability both to fall down and to stand up, rises to her feet. "I'm... how did I get here? I've... I've got to go..." She backs out of the 'room'.

Amy looks at the clock. The civilians are taken care of. Now, she can finally find out what happened. And how did it take nearly an hour?

...And just which magical girl does she need to ask, exactly? Tsukino-san never did come by despite this being her class, and wasn't among the toys brought to her. Could Sailor Moon have been involved, or did she leave earlier to avoid the tests of courage altogether?

Amy rubs her head, feeling a bit like a spell has lifted from her, too. She got kind of absorbed in telling the story, so focused on distracting the toys from their fate. What even happened out there?