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Boogey Nausicaa imagines herself a hero
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"Yeah! My friends are really brave, too."

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"I can tell!"

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Nausicaa laughs, and it's back to playground games.

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And, on the walk home, the Boogeyman contacts Makoto.

'The Flesh Things are a concern,' he says, entirely without preamble.

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I figured. What have you been doing about them?

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'Killing them as they come. Dissecting the ones that aren't too badly damaged, and trying to find how they're made. Patrolling for more, and talking to the other monsters - I've been trying to contact the vampire and werewolf, but that's hindered by my inability to talk.'

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I can probably help with diplomacy. Anything interesting turn up in the dissections?

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'They're not made like humans. They don't have organs. They're just meat and fat and sometimes bones on the stronger ones. I haven't been able to identify the meat, but most of it's red meat. I think one had fragments of a crystal in its neck.'

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Definitely made things, then. Have you see anything like the crystal before?

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'No, but I haven't seen many things. It's not like pictures in my books. I have it still, in Shadow Home.'

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Shadow Home?

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'Where I rest, and where I keep my things. It is a place between waking and dreams. I can bring things out of it.'

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Neat. I might want to take a look at it, see if the Nanny has any ideas.

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'The crystal?'

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Oh. Sorry, yes, the crystal, not Shadow Home. I wasn't clear.

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'You're more clear than the Girl usually is, at least. I can retrieve it, when we're home.'

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Well, I've been practicing talking for longer. Thanks.

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Nod.

The walk home is without incident, and the Boogeyman slides beneath the bed, returning with a few shards of dark crystal cupped in his shadows.

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She takes them.

Thanks.

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He nods.

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(The crystals feel weird. They almost hum, in a way that sets teeth on edge and sings at the back of hearing.)

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Almost like an overfull grief cube. Weird.

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If grief cubes are the essence of grief, these are the essence of fear - or its cause. A yawning chasm, impossibly deep; the hairs on the back of your neck rising; darkness and odd shadows, distilled into a few shattered shards.

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Very creepy. Does she still get the effect if she sets them down and stops touching them?

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It fades, though not instantly. 

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