(22)

It had been a remarkably quiet school day, in no small part because the seat right behind Ran had been empty the entire time.

She really didn't consider it a possibility that the being currently posing as Nariko would run away from the issue, refusing to go to school at all to protect her own ego, but she had checked with Haru, anyway. The blonde had confirmed that they had walked to school together as they always did, and had separated upon arrival. Nariko had only told her that she had to make a stop at the teacher's lounge, but that was enough for Ran to know she was doing as she'd been told.

When asked, the teachers all said they'd been told that Kelly was helping Mr. Sato for the day, and when she managed to get hold of Miss Sada between classes, she confirmed the same. A memo had gone around to her teachers that the student's aid had been requested by the math teacher for an unnamed project, and a pass had been issued for the absence.

Ran hoped that this was a sign the apology had gone over well, and her friend was now protected from her counterpart's reckless slip-up. As the day went on, however, she began to feel gnawed by guilt. As much as she hated to admit it, despite her scolding, she could absolutely see the possibility that the entity hadn't actually acted out of character at all. In fact, it was extremely likely that the action was perfectly verbatim for Thunder Witch.

... It was Ran that it was out of character for. It was Ran who didn't like the outburst. It was Ran who didn't think it was appropriate. And ultimately, it was Ran, despite her lecture on the impact of the being's actions on Nariko after it passed on, that may have pushed her into doing something that brought undue consequences.

Thinking of the entity that was not Nariko in such terms also thrummed her chest with guilt. It was such a cold, cruel way to describe someone who was lost and just trying to do her best, and most interactions Ran had with her had shown the being to be friendly and considerate. Very much like a more mature Nariko Kelly, who no longer thought the world revolved around her.

She liked her, would love to call her a friend. But the being was transitory, coming upon Nariko suddenly and likely to leave just as quickly. By all indications, the being would then effectively be dead. She hated death. She hated its permanence. She hated what it did to those left behind.

She didn't want to make a friend that would leave her behind.

Ran shoved such dark thoughts away. Her attachments, or issues thereof, were irrelevant. Ultimately, she referred to the being that was not Nariko that way simply because there was no other way to do so. The entity had no name to share, no identity to reference, no moniker to use as a label. She truly felt like someone erased, a cruel fate for someone to live through. Well, to maintain a coherent consciousness through.

There was another issue, of course, that put an unbreachable distance between them. She couldn't stand knowing a friend was going to die and be powerless to do anything about it. The very thought made her shake a little. She had spoken true the day before, the only thing that mattered to her was protecting her friends, undoubtedly the reason her magical specialty was barriers, a blessing she was normally grateful for.

... No barrier within her power to erect could protect the entity from oblivion.

Again, she forced the dark thoughts to the back of her mind and focused on the classroom door before her. As much as she tended to do so, dwelling was not going to make things any better, nor would they get her to class on time. Mind as clear as she could make it, she pushed the door open to return to her classroom for her Algebra lesson.

Multiple things hit her senses the instant she crossed the threshold. The clip of her uniform's shoes against tile became the clonk of wooden sandals against a bamboo floor. Her lightweight and airy blouse and skirt, cotton and polyester, was instantly much heavier, a linen bodywrap garment secured by a thick belt of cloth about her abdomen underneath a heavier hemp robe. The scent of the air changed from the relatively sterile modern hallway to tatami, ink and a mild incense.

... And there was the distinct sensation of entering a seal, somewhere between the feelings of ears popping and being unable to catch your breath for half a heartbeat.

The desks were gone, she noticed as she looked around. Instead, her classmates knelt on mats and were already dutifully doing their numbers on wide sheets of paper fastened to the stands before them, using thin rods of charcoal instead of pencils. All of them were dressed as she now was, though none of them seemed to notice or care.

Her spot was still open, waiting for her, but the one directly behind it was empty, too. Ran cast her gaze around the room once more and saw her.

Nariko was at the front of the room, in the far corner, kneeling on a silken pillow instead of a tatami mat, and faced sideways relative to the rest of the class, as if her attention was reserved solely for the teacher, rather than for the lesson.

She was also dressed differently from all of the other students, her kimono pure white and the robe over it red-orange silk decorated with pastel roses. Her long, brown hair was pulled back in a carefully arranged ponytail bound in fine bangles, but her face was lowered with her eyes closed.

Directly before Nariko was the teacher, recognizable as Mr. Sato despite the black kimono he wore with a golden set of libra scales on his breast. He looked younger, too. His hair was thicker and dark, and his skin was smooth and clean-shaven. He didn't look as young as Miss Sada, but he was far younger than he should have been.

He noticed her then, the only one in the room seemingly to do so, and smiled at her. "Miss Wakumi, welcome to class. Please take your place. Or is there something the matter?"

Ran didn't know what to do. The scene before her was too bewildering, there were too many variables to consider, too many people at risk. She needed more. More data, more time. More everything.

So she did as she was told and went to the mat that had previously been her chair, kneeling on it before pulling out her supplies. They, too, had been changed. Her notebook, having been left on the desk, was now the wide pad of off-yellow paper. Her favorite pencil was now a well-kept charcoal stick, wrapped in protective paper and sporting a nicely maintained tip, so she was, at least, pleased that her care had been preserved.

She noticed Mr. Sato watching her, but focused on the paper, beginning the process of transcribing the equations from the wall-spanning slate that had been a dry erase board. She numbered each one as she wrote it down so that she could clearly label the work when she began solving them. The same process as every day. Normally, Mr. Sato would spend the lecture going through each one in turn, explaining how the lesson of the day was used to solve them.

Ran wasn't yet certain what to think about the events. It was unquestionable that they were within a seal, and the implication, given the changes, was strongly that Mr. Sato was now a protodemon. However, he had yet to show any signs of hostility or aggression.

Yes, his previous day's nemesis, Nariko Kelly, was now on display at the front of a room pulled straight from a retro medieval contemporary fusion concept of a classroom, but the students were unharmed, even Nariko. So far, the class was proceeding entirely normally, ornamentation aside.

... Even putting Nariko on a glorified dunce stool as discipline for her behavior was something she could see the teacher doing. Indeed, were it not for it being the classroom they had been in all day, it might have been feasible that the makeover was the project she had supposedly been assisting him with. Cultural appreciation, to remind them of the principles of the past. Yes, very Sato.

On the other hand was the near zombie state of her classmates. Not the comatose zombification they normally had once he started lecturing, but that of mindless drones. At least they had the decency not to all be eerily writing at exactly the same pace; it seemed their own individual intellects still dictated their speed.

Still, none looked up from their paper, none looked to their neighbors. None spoke, their whole world algebra. She had a feeling that would only stop when the lecture started, their unwavering focus instead shifting to Mr. Sato, burning his every word into their brains. Possibly literally.

She was certain they were in danger, increasingly so the longer this went on, but at the same time, she had never seen so many noncombatants in a single seal.

Another classmate came in, a girl with bleached blonde hair and abundant makeup. However, she was now clad in the same uniform as the rest of them, and instead of the girl's normally active nature, she calmly moved to her seat, knelt down and joined the rest of the class in transcribing equations as if oblivious to anything being unusual. Her makeup and jewelry were gone, though Ran noticed the hair was still its artificial color. It wasn't a dye, but a stripping of natural color, so perhaps there was nothing for Mr. Sato to remove.

It was clear now that Ran's demands had directly led Nariko into a protodemon's mental attack with her defenses down, prepared as she was to accept any lecture from her teacher. The gunmetal girl forced the guilt rising like bile up her chest back down by reminding herself that she couldn't have known. Neither of them could have. Still, the idea that this whole mess was to some degree her own fault made her hesitate more.

Nariko would have been decisive if their roles were reversed. She would have transformed instantly and opened fire on Mr. Sato to free Ran from his hold. Regardless of whether it was Nariko or the entity using her name. It wouldn't have mattered that Ran being in danger would have been Nariko's fault. Apologies later, action now, that was very much the operating framework of the lightning witch. That Ran could not bring herself to do the same added to her shame.

She wished Natsumi were there. Her best friend wouldn't have hesitated to act, either. Tamashini would have known exactly what to do, and immediately moved to give her instruction. Even Haru would have been able to gauge the state of the room and the danger to the students, would have been able to tell just how stable or unstable Mr. Sato was and how to coax him to a safe conclusion.

What could she do? Just sit there and go along with the illusion? Cooperate with a protodemon while it brainwashed her entire class? Her special ability was supposed to be superintelligence, but all it seemed to be good for was overthinking. Overthinking and doing algebra while having a mental breakdown. At least she could seemingly spare enough brainpower to doing both.

Mr. Sato stood and moved over to her desk. She kept working dutifully. If nothing else, she understood that to be distracted was to invite the protodemon's ire. Still, he just stood there and continued to watch her for a while longer before he said anything.

"You have always been a wonderful student, Miss Wakumi," he finally spoke. "You actually listen, you take your notes, you respect your teachers. I find myself ... pleased that you seem to be aware of the changes I've made and yet continue your responsibilities without hiccup."

"Thank you, Mr. Sato," she replied without breaking in her writing.

"Am I correct in assuming that Miss Kelly's apology this morning was your doing?"

"Yes, Mr. Sato."

He nodded. "I thought so. She seemed entirely too remorseful for it to have been completely independent. Oh, she was sincere enough, I'm certain, but she is not prone to such self-awareness on her own."

It seemed like something that didn't require an answer, so she didn't give one, continuing her equations.

Still he stood there, and after a bit, he spoke again. "You are her friend, are you not? Do you think I treated her unfairly?'

She spared only a polite glance to the brunette still kneeling with her head bowed at the front of the classroom before turning back to her paper. "Your intention seems to be an ironic take on the step of shame or the dunce cap. To illustrate how she elevated herself above the rest of the class yesterday."

Again, he nodded, this time more proudly. "Yes, yes. I'm glad the intended meaning is so clear."

She added another thought after a moment, taking the moment of silence to jot down the solution to another variable. "The wedding attire on a student is a little disturbing."

"Yes ..." he said again, this time sounding a little guilty, or at least reflective. "That wasn't quite my intention at the time, but something about her reminded me of my ex-wife, and it just happened."

She ventured a little. "Does that mean you understand what is happening to you, Mr. Sato?"

"You do?" he asked, a note of curiosity in his tone, but then he rubbed his chin. "I see. You are like Miss Kelly, then? One of these ..." he spun his hand as if reluctant to say such an unrealistic word, and the way he accented it reinforced that, "... witches. I suppose that's why you're aware of what is happening around you."

He was silent for a bit, pacing a couple steps away from her before turning back. "When I was told about your little group, I thought they must be a bunch of delinquents, but to learn you are one of them ..."

"The Student President is, as well," she provided, seeing no reason to hide it. Either way, Miss Sada would have to take care of his mind. "To be honest, brutes like Kelly and Homura are there more for their sheer combat prowess."

"Hmm, and what is it you combat, then?"

"Demons usually," she replied, "like the one that cursed you. Though if something else came up to threaten people, I'm sure we'd fight it, too. That's the whole idea, to protect people."

"Are you saying I am a danger to my students?"

There was a dangerous tone to the question that made her hesitate.

"Not necessarily," she answered after a moment of thought. "But if you keep going the way you are now, you will be. What you're doing will make them what we call minions, weaker foot soldiers empowered by your magic but unable to think for themselves, slaved to your will. A substitute for dretches, weaker true demons that fight for greater demons."

"You speak so quietly, Miss Wakumi. Are you afraid of me?"

Again, that made her hesitate a moment. "I ... am afraid of what you might do, Mr. Sato."

"Because I am a demon?"

"Not yet. But the longer you hold onto that power, the more dangerous you'll become, both to yourself and your students."

At that, he wheeled on her. "I'm saving my students with this power! Pulling them back from the jaws of modernity! Their phones, their music, their literature! All drawing them into this cesspool of blasé nihilism! No respect for their elders, no respect for themselves, no respect for the world around them!"

He leaned down to her eye level, gripping the sides of her table stand with his hands. "Surely you can see that, Miss Wakumi! They're your peers, you can see it with your own two eyes!"

At least she had answered the question of his emotional stability. This must have been close to his motivating issue, as the previously conformed teacher practically jumped off the rails when it was brought up. Yet him coming over, the conversation, she couldn't help but think he'd wanted to talk about it. Did he want confirmation? Vindication? Just congratulation?

She continued to work on her equations.

"I know that the modern world has changed things," she finally answered as she did three digit long division in her head faster than her charcoal rod could relay the work to the paper. "I know not all of it is good, some of it may be really bad, and most of it is beyond my frame of reference. Of course there is value in remembering the past, and having never known the adult world, we are dependent upon adults to impress upon us that value."

This, more than the math on the paper, was straining her brain. Abstract philosophical thought had never been a strength of hers. She was more comfortable coding a program to pass a Turing test than she was with wrestling against existential truths.

That she was doing so against a protodemon for the lives of over two dozen fellow classmates was even more stressful. Worse, she had to keep focused on the math. She wasn't allowed to stress out over her answers. If she did, if she got distracted, it might set Mr. Sato off.

"Then you do understand what I'm doing!"

But that ... at that, she had to put the charcoal down, and the motion seemed to surprise him almost as much as her looking up from her work to look him in the eyes. She knew he could see it, the steel in her soul that would never allow her barriers to break.

"I understand what you are trying to do, Mr. Sato," she replied. "I even think it's laudable, if a touch overzealous. This arrangement of the classroom is something we should remember for getting us in the proper spirit for cultural week."

The teacher said nothing. He was eyeing her. He knew there was a but coming.

Ran took a deep breath before delivering it. "But that's not what you're doing. Mr. Sato, I beg you, please, take a step back and actually analyze what your magic is doing to the students. Please, just for a moment."

And he did. He stepped back from her table and looked back and forth across the students' faces as they bent over their work with machine-like dedication. They still plodded along at their own paces, but all, to a name, plodded along.

In some back corner of her mind, Ran morbidly wondered what they would do if they wrote for so long that they ran out of rod to write with.

"Class ..." Mr. Sato spoke after a long pause. His voice wavered in uncertainty as he did so, and it was a soft-spoken thing.

Yet, to a student, they all set their charcoal rods down and turned their heads to look at him. There was no hesitation, no mockery, no mutterings of what was the matter. just eyes, nearly five dozen of them, turned up toward him, waiting for instruction. Only Nariko's head remained bowed, like a subservient statue set apart from those that would be her peers, not to be considered of their number.

He looked over at her, and Ran could tell he knew why she remained unmoving, though she, herself, could only guess at the specifics. After a moment, he pointed to the brunette. "Look at her!"

Immediately, all of the heads, save his own, Ran's and, of course, Riko's, obediently swiveled to comply, but there was no recognition on their faces. They had no response to it. After all, to speak out of turn would be disruptive. Disruptive was rude. Rude was disrespectful. Disrespectful was dishonorable. They could not respond, so they did not.

Another long, tense moment passed, and Mr. Sato pointed to a random student in the front row. "What do you see?!" The uncertainty in his tone was growing more to a panic now.

Obediently, the student, a young man, stood from his cushion as was appropriate, his posture straight and stiff. "Teacher, I see a student who did not obey your will and is being punished for her dishonor." His tone was as stiff as his stance, and his word choice had an echo of archaic traditionalism to it.

He pointed to another, this one a girl. "You! What do you see?!"

She stood the same way and spoke in the same tone, while the boy remained standing since he hadn't been relieved. "Teacher, I see a student who did not obey your will and is being punished for her dishonor."

He called on a third and a fourth and each responded verbatim to the first. Finally, four students still standing, he flung his hand to the brunette, herself. "Miss Kelly, what do you see?!"

"The back of my eyelids."

Ran barely suppressed a laugh at that, covering it with a cough as she covered her mouth with her hand. Unlike the students, she had not stood, nor used honorifics toward him, but as amusing as the literal response was, and very likely the answer Riko would have given in sarcasm, the gunmetal girl could tell the brunette's words lacked the ... energy that was typical of her. It was an answer only, and nothing more. All she was allowed to give.

Ran cleared her throat to correct for the cough. "You see it now, don't you, Mr. Sato? Already, they're not thinking for themselves. You're thinking for them. The longer this goes on, the less they'll be able to do so ever again."

At her words, Mr. Sato bent down over his own table, larger and grander than that of any of the students, gripping it in white-knuckled hands as expressions warred across his face. "It's for them!" he insisted. "I'm doing it for them! I'm saving them!"

The girl stood now, making it five students off of their tatami mats, but she did so under her own will. She took one step toward him, steel eyes pinning him down. "You're killing them, Mr. Sato. You're killing them and enslaving their corpses to your will. They're your charges. By your honor, you protect and guide them. Mr. Sato, you are failing your duty!"

"I can't! I won't!" His expressions, the contortions of his jaw, the writhing agony of his eyebrows grew more and more extreme. Were it still possible, one might think he was having a stroke. Perhaps, in a manner of speaking, the internal struggle between the man and the protodemon wasn't so far off from one. "They're my students! Mine! I must protect them! I will! From themselves! From the world!"

"From you!" Ran dared take another step forward. "You must protect them from you! You are killing your students! You must protect them!"

"HOW?!" The teacher's outcry was almost a howl of agony.

"Send them from the seal! Mr. Sato, you are killing your students! You must protect them! You must eject them from the seal right now!"

It was a gamble, playing with the driving motivations of a protodemon, but it paid off. With a loud cry that was as much anguish as it was fury, Mr. Sato gave a great wave of his hand, and the room was far more empty. Only Ran, Nariko and Mr. Sato remained, and the last half collapsed over his desk as he panted from the struggle that had been decided inside of him.

A weight left Ran's shoulders at the same time, and they slumped slightly with the release. The biggest concern had passed. The students were all safe. Probably piled in the classroom, confused and disoriented, but even though there were likely still several within arms reach of her, the threat was contained within the seal.

Even if things went south with the protodemon, it would be very hard to get them back into it. Miss Sada had no doubt already picked up on the large release of energy from so many leaving it at once and was on her way to see to them.

There was time for both of them to catch their breaths, perhaps several actual minutes of it even, though it was hard to say. Then, slowly, like a man coming back to life, Mr. Sato began the process of extricating himself from the things on his desk.

"... What ..." he began, then smacked his lips and swallowed before trying again. "... What now ...?"

Ran took a deep breath of her own. That really was the question, wasn't it? Potential hostility from the protodemon felt lower than ever. It had sacrificed its own cause for that same cause, and now was lost, without direction or focus.

"... That's ... pretty much up to you ..." she finally concluded. "It may not feel like it, but you can pretty much release the curse at any time before it takes you over fully. You let it grip you in the first place, and the choice to keep it or not remains yours. It will mean giving up your magical powers, since you didn't have any before, and you would return to being a regular human. Most who are cursed are too lost in the emotions driving them to do so, emotions that in turn feed the curse, itself. In this moment of clarity, you could do what they could not."

Mr. Sato slumped down onto his cushion, not on his knees, but straight to his butt. His elbows pressed into his table as his hands clasped over his face. It was clear that his struggle between his driving curse and his corrupted sense of duty that inspired it had left him weakened and disoriented. He looked exhausted, almost like an old man again.

He pulled one hand away from his face and turned it over and back before his gaze. "... Will I ... become an old man again? Weak and fading?"

She considered the question for a moment. "I ... don't know. I'm sorry, Mr. Sato. I suppose it depends on how you changed yourself in the first place. I think it could go either way."

The teacher didn't answer, didn't even nod in reception of her response. Instead, after another slow pause as he gathered his thoughts and energy, he lowered his other hand and testingly clenched it into a fist. "And if I chose to keep the curse? If I didn't give it up? If I liked it too much?"

But Ran shook her head. "That would again be up to you. What you did with it. Eventually, it would turn you into a demon entirely, but demons vary wildly in their natures. If yours remained unchanged, I do not see why you couldn't even continue being our teacher, if that was what you wanted.

"Unless a greater power forced you, you wouldn't return to their plane until you were destroyed. You would effectively be immortal. Even if you died somehow, your energy would return to that plane and eventually recoalesce into a corporeal state. It would, however, be impossible to ever return to being human again. Beyond that, I'm sorry, but it's not something we know much about. You would have to ask Miss Sada for more."

At that, he looked up at her, one eyebrow shooting up in bewildered confusion. "Sada?! What does your history teacher have to do with this?!"

"She is our mentor," Ran answered honestly. "She's not a witch or a demon, though. She is a fifth dimensional being that came from outside of our concept of reality to keep an eye on us."

Instead of rising, his brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed. "Sarasa? A fifth-- Miss Wakumi, what does that even mean?"

The girl adjusted her glasses, which had remained even with the shift in attire. "It means she is a being beyond the comprehension of either humans or demons. A true Cthulhuian entity. Fortunately, her people's code of ethics prohibits her from taking any direct action. She can do little more than observe and advise."

"But I saw her at the grocery store just last week," he protested. "She was musing over on-sale hams! We groused about grading tests! I- I advised her on replacing the light bulb in her fridge!"

"Yes," Ran frowned apologetically, keenly aware of how adept the woman in question was at slipping into the natural flow of things. "She enjoys putting in the effort to appear normal and make small talk. I think she finds it ... quaint. And perhaps a small victory when she pulls it off, like she's successfully tricked us."

* * *

Mr. Sato bowed his head again, slowly shaking it back and forth in his hands. Trying to square away this latest revelation. One more thing without the common decency or respect for tradition to be as it ought to be. Accepting the existence of demons was easy when you were cursed by one. Being told the young, approachable history teacher was actually an ancient and unknowable force treading lightly so as not to shatter their reality was a bit more of a stretch.

It wouldn't be until he looked up again that he would realize he no longer had Ran's attention. She was looking past him. Toward Nariko.

He heard it then, too, reaching his awareness before he had time to overreact and lash out at the bespectacled student. Soft, quick steps. Humming? Was that ... a camera shutter?

"Hey! What are you doing?!" Ran's indignant voice, impressively almost reaching a raised volume, rang out before the teacher, himself, could turn around to see what was happening.

It was the icy-haired boy from the night before. The demon that had given him the power to-- No, the demon that had endangered his students by encouraging his indulgence without informing him of the consequences. He was stepping back, forth and around Nariko's kneeling form, snapping pictures with a smartphone and being all giggly about the shots he was taking.

He paused at Ran's question and turned his attention from the device to her. Mr. Sato felt the urge to put himself between the two, to tell his student to run, to not anger a demon, to shove her out of the seal. But the demon just smiled like any other boy. Like they knew each other, even.

"Ah! Getting pictures," he explained unabashedly and full of excitement. "How could I call myself a fan and pass up memorializing such a rare costume?!" He shook the phone for emphasis. "Oh, but don't worry, yours is great, too! I got lots of shots of you and your classmates already! Oh, but if you'd like to pose with her--"

Wakumi's face was getting more and more red as the demon rambled on, and Sato was wracked with guilt that he had been the one to render Kelly completely unable to do anything but sit there, posed for this young man's amusement. It was revolting, dishonorable behavior to treat a woman like that, and he was doing it to his students!

He was back to his feet with such force he had shoved the heavy desk a foot away from him. His muscles seized as they demanded his movement, his fists clenched as they longed to strike the boy down. Black energy began to flicker around him. "You filthy, degenerate bastard!"

That seemed to shock the demon boy out of his elation, turning his attention to Mr. Sato with a surprised expression on his face, as if he had completely forgotten the older man was there and had just been reminded. "Eh?" he asked, pointing to himself with his free hand. "'Scuse me?"

Sato launched himself at the blue-skinned boy, and as he drew his fist back, he felt his arm ... unwind from itself as the fist, itself, grew bigger and heavier. The chained arm of a great scale, drawn back like a medieval flail and igniting with righteous fire to strike down the dishonorable.

"YOU GET AWAY FROM HER!!!"

He stopped mid-stride, mere paces from the boy. The demon's mirthful expression was gone, turned dark with a sinister smile as he held that free hand out toward the teacher. His every muscle wasn't so much locked as it was simply unmoving, even those halfway through tensing or releasing themselves. He couldn't so much as twitch his nose. It was as if someone had hit pause on his entire body.

"You stupid old man," the boy mocked him. "I am your sire! Do you really think a demon would give a mortal power he couldn't control?! So long as you are a protodemon, you are my slave! And by the time you are a real demon, you'll understand your place. In the meantime, I'll explain it to you one more time."

The demon pointed over his shoulder, toward Miss Wakumi, and Sato found his body turning around without any input from him. Turning to face his student.

"Your job," the arrogant demon continued, "is to destroy the witches! Make it happen!"

The dark energy began to surge around him again, suffusing every fiber of his being with more power than he had ever felt in his life, and his last fading thought as his gaze, still paralyzed into the rage he had so foolishly aimed at the demon, fell on Wakumi ...

Run, you fool girl ... run!