No common ground to start from, and we're falling apart

“Hah… wheew… it feels like it’s been a lifetime since we did that…” Kim gasped for breath and stared up at the ceiling as her sweat soaked the mat under her back.

“Yeah, but you were pretty good,” Dani said, sitting up and grinning at her. “You’re getting better and better at this.”

Kim cracked a smile and turned to look at the tomboy. “You really think so?”

Dani nodded. “I know so,” she confirmed. “It’s been a long time since you threw up, after all!”

That made Kim laugh… until it hurt her abs.

She’d been through a hell of a workout, but as strong as she was getting, she still felt weak and nauseous when she was done. She couldn’t help it- but Dani was quite a trooper, standing by and supporting her like this.

“So what do you think of the new girls?” Kim asked, pulling herself up into a seated position. It was a little hard to do given how weak she felt, but she still managed to do it. “I’m not quite sold on that one woman, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin.”

Kim felt rather annoyed that she had to refer to her by that name. It was so long and cumbersome! If only she would let them pick out a different name for her, that would make talking with and about her a lot easier.

Though… maybe I shouldn’t be talking about someone behind their back, Kim begrudgingly admitted. She was about to tell Dani to forget the question, when Dani answered anyway.

“I think she’s okay,” Dani said, which surprised Kim.

“Really?” Kim raised her eyebrow. “She’s an assassin, right? She kills people.”

Then Kim cracked a smile. “Wait… are you only okay with her because of that little show she put on at breakfast?”

Dani glared at the other girl and stood up. “Come on, it’s not like that,” she said, helping Kim to her feet. “Like I’m going to care if someone wants to put on a lesbian show. Although, shouldn’t you be a little more favorable towards her? After all, she was the one who was so nice to you…”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Yeah, if you call that ‘nice’ I guess…”

“Sitting on your lap and seducing you? Yeah, I’d call that nice,” Dani said, cracking a grin. “…Though I see why you don’t.”

“Imagine Nick doing that with you, and you’ll get it,” Kim said sarcastically.

Dani pictured just that, and made a face. “…Fair enough,” she admitted. Although, she personally thought that Kim had seemed more embarrassed than outright upset by the little flirt show Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had put on.

But she definitely wasn’t going to tell her that.

If Kim was having issues about her sexuality, that was something for her to work out. Dani couldn’t really put the screws to her or anything.

“Want to go take a bath?” Dani suggested, rubbing her arms. Even with her superhuman strength, she could still get sore.

“…Sure thing, I got some time before I gotta go to work,” Kim said, cracking a grin. The two girls headed out to the hot springs for a nice, relaxing soak in the water. And no more talking about the other girls, wherever they were.

“So how are you liking the food?” Dawn asked. Almost else had already left, but she and Morgana had stayed with Ella to get some breakfast.

Ella was scarfing down pastries like nobody’s business. Icing and powdered sugar clung to her caramel skin as she devoured more food than Dawn could imagine eating in three whole days.

“Mind your table manners,” Amelia snapped, petrifying the shy girl with a glare. She had decided to stay behind and supervise, out of concern for Ella’s mental health. “…Please,” she added, trying to **** out a smile.

She needed to be better about reaching out to people. It would be rather tragic if Ella freaked out over Amelia’s coldness, and turned into Cinder again. Amelia wasn’t sure how to keep that from happening, but she was quite certain that whether she was dealing with Cinder or Ella, the girl needed someone looking out for her. And she wasn’t sure if Dawn was equipped to be that person.

Amelia suddenly felt an urge to be more caretaking. Before she even realized what she was doing, she reached out with a napkin and wiped Ella’s face, making sure that she was clean.

Ella’s jaw dropped and she stared at Amelia in wonder.

“Um… what was that for?” She stammered. Maybe she should have said “thank you” instead, but she wasn’t exactly used to being in situations where that would be necessary.

People didn’t tend to do nice things for her.

Amelia pinched her lips together, trying and failing to smile. “Your face was dirty,” she said bluntly. “I was cleaning it.”

“…Oh… sorry…” Ella looked down shamefully at her half-emptied plate of food. “I’ll… I’ll do better… sorry…”

She snapped the rubber-band on her wrist and Amelia winced.

“Okay, um… this is… yeah…” Morgana tried in vain to interject herself into the conversation, but she wasn’t sure where to start. She looked to Dawn desperately for help, because it was obvious that Ella and Amelia just weren’t vibing together.

Dawn wasn’t quite sure what to do herself.

“Ella, I don’t think Amelia is upset with you or anything,” she said, trying to soothe the reserved girl’s concerns. “I think she’s just worried and is trying to make sure you’re taken care of.”

Ella’s eyes widened and she raised her head, peering curiously at Amelia from behind her bangs. “Is… really?”

Amelia blushed a little herself. “…Yes,” she admitted, squirming in her seat a little. Then she remembered that she was the mature one, the grown adult, and that she needed to put on a more respectable front. “I’m very worried about you.”

“She’s Nick’s stepmother!” Morgana blurted out. “She’s used to caring about people!”

A tremor ran through Ella and she froze stiff. Dawn noticed the look of panic run across her face, and realized the issue.

Then she kicked Morgana in the leg.

“Ow!” Morgana groaned. “Hey! What was that for?”

“It’s clear that Ella is bothered by what you said,” Dawn said softly, turning to the other girl. “It’s about Amelia being Nick’s stepmother, isn’t it?”

Ella swallowed and nodded warily.

“What? But why would that bother you?” Amelia wondered. She couldn’t help but glance at the rubber-band on Ella’s wrist, and scrunched up her face into a frown. “Is this about…”

She caught herself before she said anything else once she saw the look of dread in Ella’s eyes. She knew that she should keep her mouth shut and shook her head. “No, never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about things like that.”

“Things like what!?” Morgana wailed, looking around in confusion. “What’s going on? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

Dawn and Amelia shared a look of mutual realization. They both knew at the same time that the other person was thinking the same thing they were. And then they both looked to Ella, who looked back at them and trembled with fear.

“Pl-please,” she stammered, shaking her head. She moved to scoot out from the table. “I don’t know what’s going on, but… I-I have to go!”

“THWAP! THWAP!”

She snapped the rubber-band on her wrist twice more as she felt Cinder’s pressure push against her head.

“Ella, Ella, it’s okay,” Dawn said, holding up her hands. “It’s okay. I’m just trying to be your friend, alright? I’m not going to hurt you.”

Ella looked warily at her and took a step back, not sure if she could trust the other woman or not. Then she turned to Morgana.

“M-Morgana… right?” She whispered.

“Y-yeah, that’s my name…” Morgana said, standing up.

Ella swallowed.

“You… you’re my friend, yeah?”

Morgana brightened, glad to hear that Ella thought that way. “I-I want to be, yeah,” she nodded in confirmation.

Ella swallowed. “Then… and you please just… leave me alone?” She begged. “I’m not doing so well right now… too much pressure… I just… I…”

“THWAP!” She snapped her rubber-band again for good measure. She’d do anything she could to keep Cinder at bay.

“That rubber-band… why do you keep doing that?” Amelia asked.

Ella bit her lip and refused to answer.

“Ella, we’re just trying to help,” Dawn said, circling around the table to approach her. “You can trust me. If you can trust Morgana, then you can trust me, right, Morgana?”

“Y-yeah!” Morgana nodded. “Dawn is a really nice person, for real! She’s one of my best friends, you can trust her!”

Ella looked at Dawn with newfound optimism and lowered her hands loosely to her sides. “…Really?” She sounded so hopeful, like she wanted to believe desperately what Morgana was saying, but just lacked the faith to do so.

“Really,” Dawn nodded. “But I’m concerned about you, Ella.”

The dark-haired girl stiffened. She knew why that would be- there could only be one reason someone would be concerned about her.

“Please don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I promise, I’m not going to hurt anybody again! You don’t have to be concerned about me…”

“What? No, that’s not-! Hurt anybody?” Dawn stammered.

Amelia wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what to say. She froze in place. She had never been good at talking to others, and this was one of those times when she was completely caught off-guard.

Her mouth opened and closed limply and she just shook her head.

“Um… uh…” She lowered her head as wordless sounds escaped her lips, and her face burned with shame. She was being shown up by a woman ten years her junior.

“Ella… I have a very good memory,” Dawn said, tapping the side of her head.

Ella just stared at her in confusion. “…Okay?”

“So… what I mean is, I remember the wording used to describe your transformations,” Dawn explained. “And I also remember how you were acting when you came back the first time. From your time with Nick, I mean.”

Ella had seemed like a completely different person. And Dawn suspected… she was.

“Who’s Cinder?” Dawn asked directly. “Is she… an alter of yours? You don’t have to worry! I’m not upset or anything, and I’m not going to make fun of you or spite you! I just want to know, so… so I can help you, that’s all.”

Ella looked like she was about to throw up. Her fingers leapt to her wrist and she started frantically snapping her rubber-band. “THWAP! THWAP! THWAP!”

“Ella…” Dawn weakly protested, but she could see that the frightened woman wanted nothing to do with her anymore. She was almost 100% sure that Ella had dissociative identity disorder now. And from how she was acting, she had a pretty severe case of it, which was a problem.

A bigger problem was the fact that Dawn couldn’t really do anything about it even if she wanted to. It wasn’t like there was a cure for the condition. And even if there was, she was pretty sure that Dakota was encouraging this.

It was the only thing that made sense.

“I-I… you’re right…” Ella choked out, her eyes welling up with tears. “I have a problem…” She sniffled and wiped her eyes.

Morgana approached her, but stopped a few steps short. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She wanted to be there for the other girl, but something was giving her a bad vibe, and it made her hesitate.

“It’s dissociative identity disorder, isn’t it?” Amelia stated directly. “That’s your condition.”

Ella nodded.

“I knew it!” Dawn gasped. “So that means Cinder is one of your alters, then?”

And then, Ella stopped shaking. She didn’t answer Dawn’s question in so many words. Her hands fell to her sides, and she ran away.

But not physically.

She could have fought her off. She could have put up a struggle. But she just gave up. Now that they knew the truth… what would even be the point?

So she ran. She ran for cover, to the one place she would be safe.

The deepest recesses of her mind.

Dawn, Amelia, and Morgana watched the woman in front of them slowly raise her head. A smirk crawled up her lips and her left eye narrowed. She wore Ella’s facial features, and Ella’s clothes, but the woman in front of them definitely wasn’t Ella.

“Have you three been picking on my poor girl?” The hissing words escaped from Ella’s lips, but they weren’t spoken by Ella.

This was the woman Dawn remembered. The woman who she’d struggled to associate with the fragile, emotionally-unstable girl that she’d come to know over the last few hours.

This was Cinder.

Vivian stepped out of the elevator and held her arms over her head. She stretched and smiled, and ran into someone that she didn’t expect who had been waiting to use the elevator herself.

“O-oh, hello,” Gina said, a little surprised to see the heiress. “Were you… you didn’t just come down from the Master’s Suite, did you?”

That was the only place this elevator would have gone… at least in Gina’s mind, anyway. She knew there were a dozen places in the hotel Vivian might have been, but her instincts were telling her that the heiress had been paying a visit to Nick.

They were good instincts, because that’s just where Vivian had been- and she was happy to admit it with a smile on her first.

“That’s right,” she purred, and nodded. “I was paying a visit to Nick… but he kicked me out, unfortunately…”

She scanned Gina up and down. “What about you?” She wondered. “Are you going to see him, then?”

Gina nodded, cracking a smile. Unlike the other girls, she wasn’t that intimidated by Vivian and her wealth. She didn’t give a damn about stuff like that. “Yep,” she sighed, leaning against the wall. “Though, I don’t think he’s going to be kicking me out.”

“Oh really?” Vivian raised her eyebrow curiously. “And why is that?”

“Because we’re old friends,” Gina boasted. “And because I know how to take care of him.”

She really couldn’t keep her mouth shut under any circumstances. Maybe if she hadn’t split off from Sylvia, then the other girl could have warned her about Vivian, but Gina didn’t really care about stuff like that.

Which worked out just fine for Vivian, she delighted in being a little tease.

“Oh, I see how it is,” the brunette giggled. “You’re going to service him, I take it?”

Gina’s jaw dropped. “H-huh?!”

“Well, it’s just a guess,” the heiress shrugged. “I mean, going up to pay Nick a visit, right after breakfast? When tonight isn’t even your night with the master? I gotta think you’re going for a little bit of extracurricular fun, you know?”

She socked Gina lightly in the shoulder. “Don’t worry! I’m not gonna get in your way. Have a blast!” She winked at the punk girl and stepped aside so Gina could head into the elevator. “Oh, but just so you know, he’s not alone up there. He’s got like four girls already, so you’ll have a bit of an audience! Just thought I’d tell ya.”

Gina smirked. Like she cared if people were watching. She wasn’t some shy girl like Morgana, she could rock with a crowd.

“Thanks for the heads-up!” She called after Vivian. “But I’m gonna be just fine, don’t worry about me!”

“Alright then!” Vivian tossed her answer over her shoulder and sauntered down the hall. She had places of her own to check out.

As Gina headed up to the Master’s Suite to finally satiate her hunger, Vivian decided the time had come to be fashionably late for the Banquet Hall, even though she’d already eaten her breakfast thanks to Octavia.

But she stopped before she got there, because of who she saw coming towards her.

The one upstairs with Nick is Marley… which means this must be the sister, Carly. The actual contestant of the two.

“Good morning!” Vivian greeted the cosplayer with a smile. “I just love your outfit! Did you make it yourself?” Her eye for fashion was attuned as always and she could recognize a good design when she saw one. With that being said, she doubted it was homemade. It looked too professional- almost supernaturally so.

Carly brightened. She hadn’t really gotten to know Vivian that well yet, but she always appreciated being praised. “Oh, you do? Thank you! It’s not mine, though.”

“It’s not?” Vivian stroked her chin, remembering what Carly had been wearing the day before. She looked completely different, including her hair. “What’s up with that?”

“It’s a transformation,” Carly explained. “My first transformation, actually. Every day, I wear a new cosplay outfit. And this is today’s.”

“Every day, huh?” Vivian shook her head sympathetically. “I can’t even imagine… that must be pretty hard on ya, yeah? I can’t imagine not getting to even pick out my own clothes. That sounds like a nightmare if you ask me!”

“It can be pretty rough,” Carly admitted. “But hey, the outfits are usually pretty sexy, and I can always change my hair to suit whatever I’m wearing, so it’s not that big of a deal. Plus, I can always go naked if I want to!”

Vivian stared blankly at her.

“…That was a joke,” Carly clarified. “I’m not just gonna strip naked whenever I’m wearing a costume I don’t want to wear.”

When Vivian heard that clarification, she burst out laughing. “Oh, sorry, no, that’s not what I was thinking at all,” she giggled, shaking her head. “I just thought… well, I’m glad you’re not an exhibitionist or anything. Me, I prefer showing off my body when I’m wearing an excellent outfit, too!”

The two shared a laugh over their mutual interest.

“This isn’t one of mine,” Carly said, doing a little twirl to show off how nice she looked in her current outfit, “but I do make my own costumes sometimes. I’m a bit of a seamstress if I’m being honest. You’re a fashion designer, right? So you make your own clothes?”

She blushed and scratched her head. “Actually… I follow you, you know? On social media?”

Vivian’s eyes widened. “Oh, really?”

Carly bit her lip and smiled shyly. “Back when you were doing fashion videos? Altering your own clothes to make them look fancier? I took some of your tips, and, well… that’s how I got started making my own costumes.”

“No way! Get out!” Vivian playfully shoved Carly in the shoulder. “What’re the odds of that happening? Must say… that’s really something!”

“Yeah, it’s just… wow, it’s amazing to see you here,” Carly giggled. She felt like Rose, she was so flustered. “Just wanted to say that.”

“Nah, it’s always nice to meet a fan,” Vivian nodded. She cracked a conspiratorial grin. “But hey… how would you feel about doing a little something for me?”

“Hm?” Carly blinked, and looked at the other woman in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re a model, of a sort, right?” Vivian pointed out. “So how would you like to take those modeling skills… and put them to use for me?”

Carly wasn’t sure what Vivian was talking about. But she liked the sound of it. “You’d really want me to model for you? Seriously?”

Vivian nodded, raking her eyes over Carly’s curves. She’d thought that Marley would make a lovely canvas… but Carly was just as blessed in that area. “Seriously.”