(16)

The bedroom rang with the laughter from the two girls.

The brunette jumped up onto her bed as she acted out the scene for the sake of the blonde sitting at the desk. "But when he came at her, she backed away so fast, her own legs couldn't keep up with her!"

She laced her left leg around behind her right and clawed at the air before her. "She starts falling, she scrabbles for anything she can get hold of, and catches his sleeve and collar ..."

Despite what probably happened in the described events, the brunette only leaned her upper body back so she didn't fall, herself, as she unwrapped her left leg and raised it against an imaginary foe. "But she's still going back, and her foot kicks out, and that poor boy falls right into an honest-to-goodness picture perfect circle throw!"

With a small yelp, the girl finally lost her own balance and fell back onto her bed, the springs bouncing her to absorb the impact. She quickly sat back up, however, and motioned widely with both arms. "The place is quiet. Even the judge hasn't decided what to say. And when she sits up, if I'm lying, I'm dying, the first words out of her mouth are, Did I lose?"

Haru was trying to stifle her laughter with her hand, but it came out more like snorting as she bent over with the effort. "Oh no!" she managed between the convulsions in her chest. "I don't know which of them to feel worse for!"

Her best friend swung her legs back off of the bed to return to a more normal sitting posture. "Apparently, this wasn't even the first time! Her teacher says she missed her calling, should've studied Drunken Master."

The blonde had finally managed to calm herself to fits of giggles, and eventually those settled, too. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sniffed. "Is she going to be okay? With a track record like that, she's not going to fail out of her tests, is she?"

"Nah." The brunette shook her head as she waved the concern off. "Tests are strictly knowledge and control. Forms, technique, that sort of thing. From what I hear, Cho's been practicing that stuff obsessively. She should pass anything they throw at her, so long as it's not a human opponent."

"Is that going to work, though? I know she hasn't been attending the dojo long, but is it really going to help her any if she can't use it?"

The girl that used Nariko's name sighed more seriously at that, but didn't answer immediately. Instead, she stood and walked over to the shelves of dolls and stuffed animals as if their plastic eyes might give her the right words.

Hisoka longed for strength. Her own insecurities had made her a target for the dark curse of a demon that had never announced itself. As part of getting the girl to let the witches heal her, they'd promised to help her find real strength that wouldn't corrupt her.

Martial arts had seemed, at the time, an obvious path for that, and by all accounts, she was giving it her all. Any time it came to a practical test, though, the council secretary's unfortunate sense of coordination had proven a bigger hurdle than they had anticipated.

"Homura told me she's been having more and more accidents like that and fewer where she's just ending up sprawled out in a mess of limbs," she finally said, referring to the spectacular and unexpected throw she'd been relaying to Haru. "I'd like to think it's getting through to her in spite of herself. Her biggest issue is having the confidence and trust in herself to stop fighting her own body so hard."

She stayed in front of the dolls, though, as she went silent again. After standing there a moment, she reached out and ran a finger over one, only to examine the dust the digit pulled away.

She'd like to think it would be so simple. That Hisoka wasn't swimming by on dumb luck. That it was all in the girl's head. But she'd made Cho a promise. The possibility that she was just wasting the secretary's time and hard effort ate at her.

Haru stood, as well, and stepped over so she was behind and to the side of the brunette. Of course, with her empathy, she knew what wasn't being said. But she had the good sense not to call it out directly.

"You don't share her love of brightly colored stuffed critters, I see," she said instead, no longer referring to Hisoka.

"I like them well enough," she entertained the change of subject. "I just don't know what to do with them."

"Cleaning them would be a good start," Haru suggested. "They haven't seen so much as a fox tail since you got here, have they?" She stepped in to lift a seal from the display, and she turned it over in her hands. "You keep leaving them without any care like this, and she's going to be mad at you when she gets back."

"I don't know. It just seems like we've always got something bigger on our plates."

The blonde moved up next to her friend and nestled the stuffed animal into the brunette's hand. "Y'know, Riko, sometimes, if you want something to matter, you've got to put the time in to make it matter."

Haru let her words marinate for a moment before spinning in a full circle, arms outstretched, back to her chair, where she flopped back down with her legs crossed and a grin on her face. "And with that fortune cookie, Chiaki-fucius is closed for the day! Walk me home, Riko!"

The brunette stared at her for a moment, but finally chuckled to herself as she put the seal back on the shelf.

* * *

Marcus and Misaki, Nariko's parents, were watching the evening news when the girls came downstairs. Apparently, seismologists were still scratching their heads over a freak earthquake that had hit a local school last month.

"Mom, Dad," the brunette announced as the two teens rounded the corner, "I'm walking Haru home."

"Thank you for having me, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly," the blonde girl bowed. "And thank you for dinner."

"Any time, Haru," Saki replied as the two adults turned their attention to them. "You know you're practically a third daughter to us."

"Stay safe and stick to the sidewalk," her husband insisted. "No detours this late at night. Too many weirdos out there lately."

"Oh, you listen to the news too much," Saki teasingly scolded him. "Those people were probably just dressing up as characters."

"Well, it's not a problem," the brunette reassured them both as the girls sat by the door to slip their shoes on. "We weren't planning any detours, anyway." She finished first and got to her feet. "We're off!"

Once the two girls were out the door, the couple turned back toward each other.

"I'm so glad Riko's feeling better," the woman told her husband with a smile. "When the school year started, she was suddenly so distant that it felt like we were living with a stranger!"

Marcus put an arm over his wife's shoulders and squeezed her far arm reassuringly. "I told you it was just nerves. High school intimidating her. Now that she's gotten into the flow of things, it all eased up."

"I'm glad I listened to you, dear, and didn't make a big fuss about it."

* * *

Haru didn't say anything more until the two of them were past the Kelly's privacy fence, but the brunette could tell it wasn't for lack of something to say. Sure enough, as if the gate were a signal, she started immediately after it clanged against the latch.

"Is it true she knows who we are?"

It felt strange to the brunette, who had the burden of unspeakable secrets for the first three days of her life in this world of magic and witches and demons, how uncomfortable the other girls were over having someone in on the loop. Oh, she understood the reticence all too well. To her own sense of scale, however, she had opened up to them so long ago. It was only once she'd done so that her own burdens had become manageable.

It was with a sense of fragility that one realized they had an essential secret in the hands of someone they didn't know, though. Haru was not the first to ask if this had been a wise course of action, either. Oddly, Sword Witch was one of the only two that hadn't. The other was, of course, Sacred Witch, who trusted her secretary utterly.

"She begged and pleaded," the brunette answered her friend's question as the two set off down the street. "First with Reina, then with Miss Sada. Cho said that if she was going to be trying to change herself, she didn't think she could do it if she didn't remember why."

She lowered her head with a chuckle before she gave her own thoughts on the matter, however. "Personally, I think she's hoping if she doesn't get her memory wiped, she might wake up one morning with a magical skirt of her own."

"Do you think it could happen?" Haru asked the question after considering it, herself. "That luck of hers certainly sounds like something crazy enough to be a power."

"It's a possibility," and, in fact, it was something Sword Witch had already given a decent amount of thought. "My gut tells me it's not terribly likely, though. It's telling me she lacks something fundamental every witch I've ever met has."

"Lots of magic?" the pigtailed girl tried to guess. "A dark inner secret? Convenient preexisting connections to the rest of the team?"

The brunette chuckled. Obviously, two of those were tropes. Or at least she hoped Haru meant them as tropes. But no, those weren't what her gut said Hisoka Cho lacked. "Will."

"Will?" Haru repeated the one word with bewilderment as she looked over at her friend.

She nodded. "Every witch has this core in them. Sure, Cho seems like she'd endure a lot for something she wants, but I get a different sense from Witches. This bedrock in each of you. Even Ran has it. As scared of everything as she is, she'll never stop. Nothing could make her. She'd protect her friends to her very last breath, no matter what it'd cost her."

Haru was nodding along with the idea. "And you don't think Hisoka has that?"

"No, not quite." The brunette shook her head. "She's got a lot, like I said, and she'll go further than most, but I don't think she'd go as far as a Witch would. She'd have to take what she wanted like a pit bull and lock down on it so she couldn't let go even if she wanted. As it is, I think she'd fold long before she ever got to that point."

"Could she learn it?"

"Maybe, but it'd have to be for the right reasons." The brunette hung her head with a sigh. "As it is, I think she just likes magical girls and hasn't really processed the dangers we face, or the costs if we failed. It's a lot of weight, emotionally. All she sees is the glitter and power."

But Haru giggled at that thought. "You have to admit, it's a lot of glitter and power, don't you think?"

She chuckled, too. "Perhaps, but some of us have more glitter than others, Miss Ribbon."

"Hey, my outfit looks amazing!"

"Your outfit looks like a glitter bomb went off in the middle of a ribbon factory."

"Exactly," the blonde insisted, turning half toward her friend to shake her finger. "Like I said, amazing!"

After letting her defense soak in for a moment, Haru's face turned impish as she directed it halfway back away from the brunette again.

It just screamed, You're about to regret making fun of my dress!

"But about this will, do you think Sword Witch has it?"

The brunette held her chin in thought, her other arm across her chest. After a moment, though, she didn't bring herself to answer directly. "The humble part of me tells me to say I'm the wrong one to ask. That's not something the individual can really, fully answer from their own perspective."

The impish look vanished, replaced with utter shock - too much shock, in fact, to be taken seriously. "Nariko Kelly has a sense of humility?!" The pigtailed blonde's face became one of suspicion and accusation, again overplayed. "Who are you and what did you do with my best friend?!"

The outsider would see the common surface joke, but when the brunette gave an uncomfortable chuckle, it was at the double joke's other, literal meaning. She knew Haru accepted her, but the empath had chosen her counter-barb well.

"Okay, I'm sorry for making fun of Flare Witch's dress."

Haru's grin of victory was again impish, even turned away as it was. "You should be!"

Still, the blonde turned her attention back to the question she'd raised. Unlike her friend, her own thinking pose was to clasp her hands behind the base of her tailbone and take slower, wider strides with her steps. "Hmm, but if that's what the humble part of you says, then that means you're pretty sure you do."

"I've pushed through a lot of hard times through sheer willpower," the other girl agreed. She couldn't exactly say what those situations were, but she was positive she'd been tried by fire more than once. "Bleeding, broken, bound, it doesn't matter. If you can even think, you're still in the fight, and there's still something you can do. But the moment you give up, anything that happens after that is entirely your fault."

Haru turned to look over at her friend's familiar face in the twilight with a frown on her own. No doubt the idea of Nariko Kelly pushing herself so hard through so much disturbed her, even if the one that had been doing it wasn't actually Nariko Kelly. "Sounds hardcore."

It was accusation, not praise.

"Does it?" she asked, as if the thought had only just occurred to her. "If it's either that or die, I can't say I care for the alternative."

Haru's fists balled. "You shouldn't be putting yourself in those sorts of situations in the first place!"

The brunette's face went red in embarrassment as she rubbed the back of her head. "Ehehe, in my defense, I didn't exactly have much in the way to hold me accountable. No one as nice as you to worry about me coming back!"

The blonde's fist thumped against her chest, and she was struck by the idea that such a weak blow had previously pushed away Dakunaito. "Don't do that, Riko! Don't pull that flirty otherworldly protagonist nonsense on me! I'm serious! You've said it, yourself, that you weren't a Witch in that life and there weren't any demons to fight, so I know you didn't have to be there!"

A seed of guilt popped into her head at that. Was that true? Yes, she had a feeling it was. Maybe it wasn't true for every time she'd been in such a tight spot, but she had a guilty sense that, more often than not, she'd been looking for it.

Haru looked into her face pleadingly. "Riko, I want you to promise me. You might not be erased. Sarasa said it's impossible, after all. You might end up back in your own life someday. If you do, Riko, I want you to promise me you won't be so needlessly reckless. Because even if you don't have to answer to me face to face the next morning, you're not alone anymore."

Awkwardly, the brunette wrapped her arms around the blonde to hug her because she couldn't find the words to reply. When she did, it was just two words. "I promise."

It was actually Haru who was first to break the moment, having regained her temperament after the bit of reassurance. She stepped back with a wry grin. "Well, enough of that, Riko, before someone starts shipping us."

She started walking again, and the brunette shook her head before catching up with her.

The two walked on a bit further before Haru was again the one to start talking first, albeit on a different topic. Apparently, she had heard her fill on the topic of a witch's will, and how far her friend had been willing to go to test her own in her previous life.

"So how's airsoft?"

After Reina's concerns about her finding a club, the brunette had sought Haru's advice on finding one that wouldn't seem odd, but still wouldn't have been one she'd chosen. The two had settled on the airsoft club. After all, Nariko liked showing off her combat cleverness, and was primarily a ranged combatant, while Sword Witch was more interested in personal improvement and favored melee combat.

It was better than some of the alternatives they had considered. The school had both a gaming and larping club, as well as a battle card club, and either would have likely been twice broken by her joining. The first break at a girl joining their club, and the second when she inevitably beat them. The fencing club had already rejected her, somehow getting it in their heads she was some kind of monster.

As a team sport, the brunette would rarely have to compete against her own fellow club members outside of drills. This would minimize the amount of clashing she could do with them, and she was fine as a team player, so they figured it would be both closer to a choice Nariko would make and less likely to tick others off.

The brunette didn't answer the question immediately, though. She silently gathered her thoughts about the last three weeks she'd been a member first. "I have trouble taking them seriously, honestly. They're basically glorified air guns, and we're running around playing soldier when it's really more like live Team Deathmatch. If it were paintball, at least there'd be more sting to make it feel like there's actual threat."

Again, the blonde swatted her arm. "Riko! That's why it's not paintball! You want to get your club closed down fast, send a kid home to their parents covered in welts and their clothes permanently tie-dyed!"

The other girl frowned. "It's not that bad. Most of the pain even from taking that many shots would fade in a half hour. They probably wouldn't even have broken any skin."

Haru's lower lip jutted out accusingly. "Don't you tell me you believe even for a moment that's how the parents would see it."

The brunette just let her head hang and sighed in defeat. "I get it, I get it," she insisted as she raised her hands in surrender. "I'm just saying it'd be my preference."

She got a distant look in her eyes as she turned away from the conversation for just a moment. The expression just made Haru step in front of her again.

"I know that sparkle, Riko! You're thinking you'd look so cool coming over a barricade in a billowing white shirt covered in paint splats and welts on your forearms. Well, stop it, because you wouldn't!"

The brunette gave her a sideways grin without turning fully back toward her. "Yes, I would."

"Gah!" Haru's twintailed locks trailed behind her as she spun away, throwing her hands to the sky. "I'm not talking about this anymore! You ... you masochist!"

She chuckled and walked after her again before getting back to what Haru had actually asked about. "The people are good, though. Mostly. Friendly, silly, happy to have another person taking interest in their hobby."

"Mostly?"

Her face shifted to a sterner gaze. "Mostly. Most of them understand it's just a game and they're playing pretend. But the captain's an arrogant, self-righteous ass."

"Language, Riko," the blonde scolded like a pecking hen.

But the brunette ignored the interruption. "He's the one that pushes for all of the military garb and stomps around throwing orders like he thinks he's the world's greatest general. Absolutely loathes being questioned, but he's spineless about it. When I wouldn't actually drop and do push-ups on his command, he just grumbled and walked off. Been mad about it ever since, though."

Haru's eyebrows went high at that. "He actually tried to make you do push-ups?"

"Yeah. I got the impression he's why they have trouble recruiting, but his dad's the teacher sponsoring the club, so nobody can get him out of the captain's seat."

"Oh no. Don't tell me your captain is Chesil Wort?!"

The brunette scoffed. "Heard of him, huh?"

"I heard stories about him back in middle school," Haru informed her friend gravely. "He used his father's clout to start up a HEMA club and pulled this same routine. He knew all there was to know about knightly fighting, and went around correcting anyone who joined and knew better.

"By the time they went to competition, he'd ruined any chance they had by destroying their forms. All but one of them got completely wiped out."

"Let me guess, the one that made it had ignored all of Chesil's instructions."

The blonde nodded, but smirked. "Reina was kicked from the club without notice by the next meeting."

She glanced askance at Haru for a moment as she processed that, then threw her head back and laughed. "Of course it was Reina! Of course it was!"

The blonde giggled, too. "As a first-year, too! Oh, his rage was legendary."

"I can imagine," she nodded. "At least if he tries the same thing on me, I know I've got a friend on the council that wouldn't be afraid of him."

"Oh, absolutely," Haru gushed, excited for the gossip. "It was what got her into council activities in the first place! By the time he knew what hit him, she had three different orders getting the HEMA club shut down for everything from lack of decorum to abuse of members. Probably why he's so spineless about pushing stuff now."

The brunette smirked at the thought, but then got a thoughtful look as she tapped her chin. "Hmm, maybe instead of just holding it in my back pocket, then, I should push back, see if he'll squirm ..."

It was Haru's time to scoff. "Really, now you're too much like Riko! Don't you think causing trouble just because you can is going to be the worst way possible to deal with him?"

Her eyebrow raised as she realized her error, then lowered her face apologetically. After a moment, though, she was thoughtful again. "You're right, of course. Oh, but there is a better way ... Tell me what you think ..."

The girls chatted and brewed the framework of the plan the rest of the way home.