Aurora stared out from behind the curtains of her room barely blinking an eye as Downtown Arcadia burst into flame. This shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone - after all the tremors that had shaken this godforsaken city in the past year could only have culminated in this. But fire could be purifying couldn't it? Once the smoke cleared would all of the pain and death be erased or would the same ugly little phoenix rise from the ashes to keep crying blood on this hell scape? It was an interesting idea to ponder, but a rhetorical question really. Of course nothing would change, just another night in Arcadia filled with just enough violence and homicide to keep you on your toes. Aurora turned from the window as her door creaked open.

A slight girl with a round face but fierce eyes slipped in wearing a short mini skirt and an enormous hoodie pulled over her head to obscure her features. 

"There's too much carnage to get an accurate reading of the situation. Could have been a random arsonist and it could have been damned Snow and her cronies. In other words - a clean job. Self consciously clean if you know what I mean," the girl spoke quickly as if she felt she were about to run out time. She pulled the hood off of her head and her brow was drenched in sweat. "It was rough out there A, lots of people hurt. This one's not gonna be ignored like the others." 

"Thank you, that's all I needed to know," Aurora said as she focused her gaze back towards the window. Sirens roared in the distance and the sky was alive again, not with flames this time, but with flashing lights of the emergency vehicles and news vans that swarmed towards the scene like wasps to rotten meat. "Stay in Briar tonight. And tell the other girls the same thing, I don't want any of you caught up in this cluster."

The girl nodded swiftly and ran from the room. When she was sure the girl had left, Aurora took a seat at her desk and withdrew a large file from one of the drawers. She refused to use computers and only called with prepaid minutes. Electronics were the modern day version of writing in stone and she needed to be able to destroy any of her information on a moments notice. She opened the file and was met with the pictures of three of her girls. They were veterans of Briar and knew their way around Arcadia as well as any street rat could. They were smart enough to watch their step and experienced enough to know who to talk up and who to drop. So why had they all disappeared within weeks of each other, only to turn up dead in the harbor? The media suggested some kind of fucked up "vigilante" had been trying to clean up the streets, but Aurora knew better. She wasn't the only Madame in Arcadia yet only her girls were being picked off and in such an orderly manner that it couldn't be written away as coincidence any longer. The night was quieting down and Aurora felt herself too exhausted to stay awake, and after nodding off a couple of times without realizing what was happening, she fell into a deep sleep.

~

[i]Aurora stares at herself as she is sitting by a screen, watching that old movie she would always watch after waking up from a hit of Dreamwalker. Some old Disney movie - the Fox and the Hound. Aurora recognizes herself from years ago. A gaunt, expressionless skeleton staring blankly with dark rimmed eyes as a stupid fox and an even stupider hound defy nature and become the best of friends. Aurora sits by the girl, the girl she used to be, finding her shoulder and resting her hand on it. 

The fox and the hound are rolling around in that absurdly green meadow and the fox grabs the hounds neck with its cartoony yellow eyes beaming out from the screen, staring straight at Aurora. But it's different. The fox never lets go of that hound and starts shaking it around in its mouth. Blood starts flying from the dogs neck and foam starts dripping out the fox's mouth. It's a pink foam, slightly saturated with blood and the fox just keeps shaking the dog as terrifyingly human cries brokenly emerge from that hound's mouth. The meadow isn't quite as green as before, in fact it's downright black. As the background rots the fox never breaks eye contact with Aurora and it keeps shaking and shaking. The fox slices through the jugular with his glimmering fangs and drops of blood fly out of the screen, hitting Aurora square in the face.

"If only the world wouldn't get in the way," the fox says to Aurora, dropping the bloody body of the hound to the ground, while his huge unblinking eyes unwaveringly stare out at her. "If only people would just let me play."[/i]

~

Aurora woke up screaming, scattering the papers she had been sleeping on across her desk. She felt like she screamed for hours before she could stop, but really the files had just settled to the ground. She noticed an odd paper, distinctive among the scattered notes. She picked it up and turned it in her hands. 

It was an envelope of thick sturdy paper that was stamped with a black crown. She opened the envelope carefully, narrowing her eyes as she saw a simple note that's black ink cut sharply across the white page.

"Find me," was written across the card in bold, "Signed the Black Queen."