Forever and Always

13

"Oh shut up!" Kansas yelled, jumping out of Arkansas' way as he threw a hit at her. Oklahoma laughed from where she was standing, perched up on the rafters, blasting them with wind to further piss them off.

Nebraska snickered as Arkansas landed a punch, Kansas coughing wildly for a few seconds, throwing a thrasher back at him.

"What the hell are you two- four, doing?!" Virginia, always the circumspect one, roared, breaking Alaska's fun time. She started backing away just as the black magic surrounded her sister, getting far out of the blast radius, just like the others were doing.

West was starting to laugh, looking down at his sister. He was the taller one, the tallest out of everyone in the room.

Virginia spun around to glare at her twin. Unlike all the others, they were the only two with the same ability: an affinity for dark arts.

Alaska smirked once again, pulsing energy into her scarf to grab onto the rafters and wrapping her scarf around them, using it to pull her up. She leaned over the rafter and looked down on them, smiling as she did. She watched the black surround them, turning into a cloud. Tentacles swept up and around them like slenderman, wrapping around the cloud.

Michigan burst into the room just then, a tired look on her face, "Knock it off you two or I'll get mom!" she yelled.

The cloud slowly dispersed, showing the two pretty wrapped up.

"Leave mom out of this!" Virginia exclaimed.

"This is our fight, stay out of it!" West added.

Alaska sighed, laying down. It looked like the fun was about to stop, which bore her half to death.

They continued yelling nonsense back and forth, until Arizona wandered in.

"Do you three ever shut up?" she asked, her voice completely emotionless. Alaska moved again so that she could see them.

"Get out of our business, pipsqueak," West growled, and Arizona squared him up. She paused for a second in front of him, before she opened her mouth wide.

Something in her throat started to move, pushing out her mouth. Like second arms, they rested straight until she closed her mouth, in which they flinched back into a better position.

She had two large pedipalp coming out of her mouth.

West screamed. Alaska chuckled under her breath, bringing her scarf up to cover the noise. West was deathly afraid of spiders- apparently a black widow bit him when he was like, five, and he never recovered. Arizona shifted her pedipalp for a moment, before reaching out to him with them.

He ran for it. Virginia was laughing, as was Michigan.

Alaska jumped up then, crouching down before jumping to another rafter. She almost sneezed, but she pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and closed her eyes before jumping to the next.

She got to the wall and crawled into the vent, puffing up her chest for a second on impulse before flattening herself out, army crawling through the smallest vents before standing up when she got to a crossway. She turned to the right, because she knew to the left was a fan, and jumped down the shaft.

A few more turns and she was in the safehouse- a pocket in the house that could only be accessed through the vents. An air mattress without sheets, an old blanket, a stack of books, a coloring book and crayons, an old gameboy, and a mini refrigerator were all that filled it.

Hawaii was sitting there on the mattress, coloring in the coloring book. Alaska walked over to her slowly. She always felt closer to her than anyone else- they were both off the mainland, which meant when they were young they didn't exactly have a border shared with another state.