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11. Needleafy - We're Beautiful

Length: 1300 words

I wasn't too keen on Needleafy at first but I've come round to it. Nowhere near being a spicy meatball, but it's cute I guess. 5.5/10
This is based on a comic that I can't find...

Requested by: @Aquanoodle

The electricity coursed through her body in a wave. It only lasted a second, but the photocysation hurt like she'd never experienced pain before. Her body was shot through with it, changing from top to bottom, converting her into a photo-being. She looked around at herself, dazed and confused, trying to work out what had happened. All else she could remember about that night was Pin's soft hand of reassurance resting on her arm.

"Needle!"
She didn't want to hear Leafy's voice right now. But it seemed to follow her around, shadowing as she ran. No, she didn't want to talk to Leafy right now. Not after how she'd caused her to become so disfigured. So ugly. Even more so than she already was.
"Needle! Please! Come back!"
No! She wouldn't stop. She would run faster than she climbed the 500 steps. She'd leave her far behind. That'd teach her for photocysing a friend with some crazy poisoned real-life cake.
"NEEDLE!"
The calls were angrier now. Needle quickened her pace, speeding swiftly behind the trees, her own guilt catching up with her no matter how fast she ran. Hauling herself up into the branches, she managed to fit her thin form into a crack in the trunk, only a hair's breadth wide. She could hear Leafy flickering red and green with fury as she circled the trunk, probably wielding one of her knives.
"I'll find you!" she threatened, her disembodied voice carrying the savage words that Needle had little doubt were true. Her heart jolted and jumpstarted as a blade lodged itself in the trunk just below her, making a sound not unlike that of a ruler being bounced over the corner of a table.
"I need to see you. To talk. I just wanna talk, Needle. Is that too much to ask? Hell. Of course it is. Nobody wants to talk to me since I stole that bloody island."
Needle's silence seemed to stir a zephyr from the still air. It pirouetted over the leaves of the trees, rustling them into innocent lies of denial that their branches held any secrets whatsoever. The female object still lay wedged into the crack, breathing shallowly for fear of detection. Eventually Leafy must've given up searching, as footsteps crackled away under fallen leaves. Extricating herself from her hiding place, she slipped down the knotted trunk and padded curiously after her.
She noticed the dejected almond-shaped lemon leaf walk dejectedly backwards and forwards in front of the forest periphery, muttering insanely to herself. Her lip would curl up in a snarl and she would shout-whisper some important point of how she had been wrong, or right, or justified, or anything she wanted herself to be. Suddenly nervous, Needle approached from the woods.
"Um, Leafy?"
Leafy spun around faster than the speed of sound. Her mouth seemed to open in an unhinged smile long before the words appeared to her. Her creepy over-friendliness sent Needle reeling backwards a little in shock.
"HEY NEEDLE! Hi! You're going to talk to me? Great! That's great. Since that cake I've been thinking about you a lot. When DON'T I think about you to be honest –"
After that last phrase, she bridled and reeled herself in, sweating and shutting her mouth tightly. Her eyes seemed to expand to two times their normal size, and they shifted around guiltily in their sockets. Scared, Needle stuttered.
"Are you... are you alright?"
"No, no. I mean yes. It's just we haven't properly talked since I was... exiled. I'm still getting used to..."
"Contact?"
"Yeah, exactly! Contact."
Both of the objects stood there in silence. So much had happened to both of them in the past six or seven years, yet neither could find the heart to tell the other about it. The moment felt... enormous. Heavy. Overweight. Fat, even. But still far from anything sentimental. Eventually Needle found the courage to speak.
"So, that cake. Did you mean for it to do this to me?" she asked, the slightest dregs of anger brewing up once again as she remembered the crippling wave of agony. Leafy shook her head wildly.
"No! No, I've never meant to harm you. Well, excep-"
"Except that time in Yoyleland."
Silence again. Struggling against the face of death itself, the conversation dodged a bullet and was somehow revived.
"W-was it nice?"
"What?"
"The cake. Did it taste good?"
Needle gave a genuine wholehearted nod of agreement; there was no problem with the cake itself, oh no, the cake was fine – it was just the feelings behind the cake that she was preoccupied about. Leafy grinned sheepishly and shuffled her feet against the grass.
"Has... has anyone commented on your photocysation yet?"
Needle's stare hardened even more, and her reply was cold.
"Now, let me see... Lightning called it a 'hideous transformation', as I'm sure you'll remember, as you were there."
"O-oh. Yeah. I forgot about that. But you see, here's the thing!"
"You think I'm ugly too?"
Leafy looked genuinely upset.
"No! I think you're precisely the opposite. No matter what anybody says about you, I'll always firmly believe that you're not ugly. Lightning was wrong, and so was everybody else whoever talked bad about you. No amount of photocysation is ever going to change how beautiful you are to me!"
Needle stuttered, blushing, trying to formulate a reply.
"Y-you think I'm – beautiful?"
Leafy turned a bright crimson, almost the colour she was in her evil form, but this time it was due to a very different extreme of emotion. She stumbled over words and sentences trying to excuse herself, but it was no use.
"Well, uhm... N-needle, y-you – I – you're... well, I... goodbye."
And with a rustle of grass, she was gone.
"Wait, Leafy! Come back! I didn't get the chance to tell you that you're beautiful too!"
Leafy slowed down, falling from a run into a jog, then into a walk. She stopped.
"Beautiful?"
"Yeah!"
Silence. Leafy gave a cruel, cold hearted laugh.
"Beautiful. Let me guess. On the outside?"
"Well, yes -"
"Exactly. That's it. People don't want to know me anymore because of what's inside me. It's KILLING me, Needle. I thought you, of all people, would understand how I truly am and at the very least tolerate what I've become. But no, I was wrong about you. And to think I let myself fall in love with you."
Leafy instantly regretted what she'd said. Stiffening up into a plank of wood, she attempted to turn and leave Needle gawping to herself.
Let her gasp.
Leave her be.
But she couldn't.
"I don't even know what I want anymore. One minute I'm running after you, next minute I'm running from you... I don't - understand it."
"I'll help you understand it."
Leafy found that she was stooping dejectedly towards the ground, tears blurring her vision, as she saw two arms come seemingly out of nowhere and take her hands.
"I know that you're confused! But that's ok, because I am too. We're both as bad as each other."
The two objects laughed awkwardly, yet genuinely, lifting a light weight off the conversation.
"Thanks, that makes me feel a little better." Leafy sighed with a sad smile etched over her face.
"Hey. Anything to forget how badly we treated each other. Especially how people treated you. I wish I could take away all those years..."
"Me too."
The next thing they knew, they were both crying harder than they ever had before into each other's arms, both wishing that the bittersweet moment could last just a little longer. An oak leaf swept over the meadow, twirling up higher and higher into the brilliant sky, the sunlight striking over its orange surface. Hope. Hope for the future. Beauty incarnate.
"We're beautiful together."

I'm so fucking hungry I need beans
ALSO I FINALLY PROOFREAD AGAIN YAYAYAYAY