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Margarita had been staring at the open display outside the entrance of a newly-established clothing retailer, in a small town outside the large cities a few miles away. The group she traveled with, headed by an eccentric pokémon field researcher, was passing through the area to refill on some odd supplies that they had forgotten in the main city before they had left on the road. Of course, the grimer herself had managed to sneak off while most of them were running errands, and Endymion was too hesitant to even enter the town, even if he knew what sort of shenanigans were likely to happen if Margarita managed to grab hold of her imaginative hyperactivity. Such energy was always inevitable, especially when surrounded by so much stimulation!

After staring for an amount of time that was sure to creep out any of the employees on duty that happened to see her standing outside the building, the child crept forward and tugged at the sleeve of a paisley-marked long sleeved shirt. The fabric felt almost frozen in the chill of the wintery air, but at least the wind was stagnant. The grimer studied the way the clothing was displayed, all held up with hangers in a circular array. Were they protecting something on the inside? Why a circle? Very strange... so she dug her head between the shirt and one it stood next to, attempting to see if they were guarding any treasure.

Her nose scrunched as the grimer child discovered precisely nothing in the middle of the circular clothing rack before her. She had almost fallen in with the clothes pressing on either side of Margarita's small body and holding her fast, but she had managed to grapple for the railing at the top of the display and haul herself back out. Pouting, she spun herself around, thinking that maybe something was hiding in the middle of one of the other ones. Perhaps she should check and make sure of that?

However, before she got much further than driving herself around to find a mysterious needle in a haystack, her eyes grazed the form of something rather shadowy and... lugia-like. The lavender child blinked, slightly confused, and wandered over to the glass. She nearly had her face pressed against the transparent wall as she spotted Elspeth, wondering if that was the same fake-witch she had seen earlier that week, at the lake... As though the girl could hear her clearly through the thin wall, Margarita asked with a point of the finger against the glass, "...Spethy?"

The returned smirk on the other side of the glass was all the indication that Margarita needed to her obscured query. Both her arms shot out as though she were threatening to hug the other child, despite their being a wall of glass between the two of them. Instead, with a plastered smile on her face, she watched as Elspeth did the more intelligent maneuver and headed for the front door. Margarita scrambled to meet her friend there with Elspeth's silent indication, unaware and oblivious to the fact that the shadowy lugia had spotted her unorthodox antics -- or at least had a guess as to what they were. The grimer paid no heed to the fact that some of the clothing had stuck to her, and with her friend's help, she didn't feel the tug they may have otherwise made on the clothes that she wore.

Quickly taking in the front display, Margarita hid behind one of the mannequins that wore a heavy woolen poncho. Once Elspeth opened the door, the grimer tried to leap out in an attempt to startle the newly-transformed pokémon. "Gotcha now!" she cackled, jostling past the mannequin with a lack of grace. It seemed that the lavender girl was not very careful about how she handled herself in department stores, a fact that became much clearer when she knocked the second stand over.

It wasn't until the mannequin had so unceremoniously collapsed to the floor did Margarita realize what had happened. She jolted at the sound, and upon twitching her head to meet the sight, giggled at the view. The poncho was folded over where the head of the mannequin would have been had there been one attached, and it looked like the plastic figure had just fallen off of an embankment. "You're suppose to land on your feet!" she suggested a little late to one that couldn't hear the advice. Quickly hopping to her feet, the grimer-girl took the moment to glance further inside, where many of the shoppers were glancing at the two of them. Some shook their head, most likely muttering something about unsupervised children being a nuisance... Standing her ground, Margarita flashed a glare at them and pointed at the over-sized doll on the floor, "She attacked me!"

Blinking, she turned back to Elspeth, "Hurry, we gotta get it back up before the authorities find us! Paprika told be all about them, they lock people up for doing bad things! Will you help me?" It seemed she genuinely believed she had broken the law by knocking over a stand... And here she thought she was behaving!

Oh... whoops. Noting the reaction she had received from her newly-evolved friend, Margarita was sure that she had missed something amongst her collectively scattered jabbering and actions. Most people only smacked their forehead like that when she had, or they thought she was acting much too strange for their liking. Elspeth wasn't condescending, though, so she must have just missed a beat somewhere. Peering down at the mannequin that had stumbled to the floor, the grimer-child's pointed ears twitched to Elspeth's voiced worry, "That's why you gotta help, so they stop staring! Then they can't tell the police where we went, or what we did!"

Blinking, the banded child gave a small smirk, finding the accusation funny; she giggled, "No no, the headless lady attacked me! Hehe, I was the one that attacked you!" Because she was so caught up in the exchange, she didn't see the countered shot coming, and jumped when Elspeth played up on the notion. After a second or two of staring blankly in surprised, the lavender-haired girl was once more overcome with a fit of giggles, "Aww, and now you got me back! Everyone's picking on meee!"

Once the darkened lugia-girl took on a more reproachful air -- one that Margarita could tell was another joke -- the grimer played her part and seemed to cower at the scolding. At least, it would have seemed that way had Margarita not been grinning so huge, "Yes, Spethy! A cookie?" She shot to the floor, a quick crouch, as she tried to make fast work of flipping the poncho back over the plastic statue's decapitated neck. Idly she wondered why the department store had chopped off all of the displays' heads... and then her hands froze, her body stiffening. Worriedly, Margarita glanced back to her dark-skinned accomplice, her voice just above a whisper, "Spethy, I think... I think this place is owned by the Queen of Hearts. Look! She took 'off with their heads'!" Apparently not only were old wives' and fairy tales in Margarita's repertoire of knowledge, but so was Alice in Wonderland.

"Don't like people staring, Spethy?" Margarita asked from her crouch on the floor, the hem of the mannequin's upturned poncho grasped in both hands. Slowly, a sly grin crept across her face, as though she was scheming something, "Aww, but people do it all the time to me! It's not so bad!" Never mind that it was bad, considering she now looked like a child that had been separated from her parents; she didn't get the notion of 'protective services,' it seemed. "Then we just gotta go into hiding! I can help with that next, once you help with the plastic lady that fell over. And then maybe you can tell me how to be less klutzy," she stated with a sagely nod.

The grimer child mused on the sentiment whispered in her tapered ear, eyes locked on the section of neck on the mannequin that would have otherwise seated a head. "So... you think it's only the oversized dolls that the Queen of Hearts here takes the heads of? So I'm safe?" she cautiously asked, eyes rolling to land back on Elspeth. It was then that she scrunched her nose, "Do dolls have a soul to haunt with?" That would be interesting if they did! The only ghost she had ever seen was Myrrh, and she wasn't scary at all! Did Myrrh use to be a decapitated mannequin? She'd have to remember to ask her that...

Steadying the store display back on its feet, Margarita hopped back around to fully face Elspeth in triumph of her accomplishment. She was quickly rewarded with a cookie, giving the grimer reason to squeal with glee, "Cookie!" It didn't even matter what flavor it happened to be, her teeth were soon latched onto it without query into the matter. At Elspeth's idea of taking a walk, the violet child sharply shook her head, grabbing the black-tinged lugia lightly by the wrist, "No, no! I gotta better idea!" It didn't cross the child's mind to swallow the cookie in her mouth first, so her words were slightly muffled until she did so, "Let's hide inside the store! The police will never think to look for us in that direction!" Yes, she was still convinced that they would want to arrest her for knocking down the nice decapitated, poncho-clad mannequin at the front. "Ooh, I know! Let's pretend to haunt the store!" she exclaimed excitedly, motioning to a circular display of shirts further in; they could hide in the middle! She checked, there was nothing else there!

Margarita considered Elspeth's more informed comment for a moment, considered some more... and found herself confused, "Why else would they be staring at you that you'd want them to stop?" Did she think they were going to do something worse to the two of them, if they stared? Did she think they wanted to eat the two of them in a pot of stew? No, that was back to witches, and neither one of them was named Hansel or Gretel... and this department store didn't look like much of a gingerbread house. Was it like the urban myth about cameras stealing souls, then? "Oh, I didn't scare you, did I? I didn't mean that we should really haunting the store, only that we should pretend to!" the grimer-child hastily concluded, falling out of a completely different ballpark altogether in her assumptions. It was blatantly obvious that the violet-garnered child was entirely oblivious to pokémon rarity, or the fact that it was out-of-the-ordinary that they both looked like some strange mash-up of both beast and man. Or... pile-of-pollution and man, in Margarita's case.

"Past the basics?" she piped up with another question, though this one she had a better grasp on the answer to. There were a few things that most of the population was aware of when it came to ghosts, things that a person knew without ever needing to meet one in person. In-corporeal. Eh, whatever the term would be, in this case. That they were what was left after something died, a lingering soul, and usually used in scare tactics when it came to hauntings. It left some questions, and it was likely they weren't altogether accurate anyway, but it was something to go by. Margarita bounced a little, "Okay, you find out and then you tell me what you discover by doing so!" Sounded like a good deal to her; then she wouldn't have to pester Myrrh with all her questions. Some people didn't seem to like being asked a million questions, all at once.

Hearing Elspeth's insecurity on testing out Margarita's suggestion, the grimer-girl rocked a bit in place, taking another glance to the mannequin to make sure it was staying put. "You think something would go wrong? But Spethy, with both of us here, I don't think anything bad could happen!" she exclaimed with a giggle. Oh yes, she was having a great deal of fun in her insistence in acting the part of the imaginative, invincible child -- who wouldn't want to do the same? However, she was not always as ignorant as she may have seemed, at least most of the time, "Do you have any suggestions to make sure everything goes smoothly? I think it would be fun. There's nowhere that we could really 'haunt' people with outside, and Paprika has told me that sometimes it's best to hide in plain view." Was this not one of those times? Aww, but she just wanted to goof off! Catching her friend's observant gaze, the poison-type caught on to what the shadow-touched lugia-child was likely aiming for, "Got somewhere better in mind that we could haunt the place from?"

Margarita attempted to slow down, as instructed, and locked her jaw shut for the time being. Oh right, she was supposed to let people answer before rambling on a few more hundred questions. She'd forget what she just asked if she didn't, and they decided to answer! "I'm wrong?" she asked, immediately forgetting what it was she had just told herself to be mindful of, "More interesting? I thought it was a pretty good idea, but I've never actually scared someone on purpose before." Deliberation was difficult in the imagination department when the initial idea seemed like a flop, and most especially when the one that had taught the grimer such basics was not currently present. Of course it would be the one time she hadn't brought Paprika along!

The violet girl shook her head, blushing a little. No, she still didn't understand, and it didn't seem that asking about it was going to get her the answers. Improvising was what she had always done in the past, though, so the child shrugged it off and moved on. "Aww, I can't be a troublemaker at all?" she pouted, "Does that mean I'm not allowed to haunt the store, either? If I want to learn about ghosts?" She felt like she was missing something, but with how in and out of a stable attention span, it was easily attributed to the fluke.

Curiously, Margarita watched Elspeth's energetic demeanor, following her gaze to the hollowed mannequin without a head and back to the lugia-girl. "Mm? I didn't have any other ideas, that one just came to me and I thought you'd like it," she considered aloud, "I've never been in one'a these before, the store. I'm not usually allowed, so I don't know what's in 'em. What about you? What do you want to do?" Elspeth seemed to want to do something specific, or at least something different than where Margarita's interests lie, so why not let her take the lead?