Loop Two - Chapter Twenty-Three - Glare

Amber tapped Morgan on the shoulder. “Can you watch her?” she asked.

Morgan nodded. “It would be my pleasure,” she said.

Amber looked at Seafoam, and found the girl glaring up at her specifically, almost as if Morgan wasn’t standing there with her sword held out to the side ready to make Seafoam’s afternoon even worse. Why is her anger directed at me, specifically? I mean, sure, I stabbed her a little, but so did Morgan. Strange.

Backing up, Amber turned and jogged over to her friends. Jade was sitting on the ground, wrapping her scarf around her calf. The material was stained, faintly, with blood. Seafoam had slashed four neat cuts across the meat of her calf and it looked like the wound didn’t want to stop bleeding.

Amber glanced up and noted that Cassy was on her feet and dusting herself off. Nothing looked broken, even if Cassy was going “Mwap, mwap, mwap,” and snapping her fingers next to her ears. Had she popped her eardrums? Amber decided to check on Jade first.

Popped eardrums could wait a bit, bleeding out was more serious.

“Do we need a tourniquet?” Amber asked as she knelt next to Jade.

“Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so?” Jade said. She winced, and Amber noted the tears clinging to the corners of Jade’s eyes. “This is really not fun. I don’t like getting stabbed.”

“Technically, it was more of a cut,” Amber said. Jade gave her a very flat look, and she subsided. “Sorry. Right. Let me carry you up, we’ll get you to the hospital.

Before Jade could protest, Amber scooped her up, an arm under her knees and another around her back. Jade groaned, then wrapped an arm around Amber’s shoulders to hang on.

“Keep your injured leg up. Maybe gravity would help?”

“Sure,” Jade said. Her scarf rose up and lifted her leg up with it.

“Hey, what do I need to do to get the princess carry treatment?” Cassy asked. Her voice sounded a bit nasal and loud.

“Just start bleeding out and I’ll carry you around,” Amber said.

Cassy blinked. “What?”

“I said… Can you hear me at all?”

“… what?”

Amber rolled her eyes, hiked Jade up—thank goodness she’s so light—and started making her way towards Morgan. The nearest staircase up towards the hospital was that way.

She didn’t make it before a few magicals showed up. Some of them just jumped down from the bridge and jogged over, but the Seelie was ahead of the pack, and with it, an unfamiliar quad of magical boys.

“You captured her,” it said. “Well done.”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “I need to get these two to the hospital, can we talk after?”

“Oh, I can help with that,” One of the boys said. He stepped up and reached for Jade’s leg. She pulled it back, but not before a wash of greenish light flew from the boy’s hand and wrapped itself around Jade’s leg.

“Ah!” Jade squeaked. Then she paused. “Oh, that’s actually really nice.”

“Any other injuries?” he asked.

“Cassy’s deaf,” Amber said. She watched Jade unwrap her scarf to reveal flawless skin beneath. Why didn’t I think of using magic?

The same boy moved over to Cassy, then carefully placed his hands over her ears. Cassy paused, then frowned at him, clearly uncomfortable with the touching before she jumped with a start. “Oh hey, my ears. Nice. You could have told me you were a healer.”

“But… you were deaf?” he said.

“Not entirely!” she said. She worked her jaw, and then winked at the boy. “Thanks anyway.”

Amber watched the boy bob his head nervously. His cheeks had picked up a bit of a pink tint to them. The rest of his team were out by Seafoam, with swords and spears out. One of them seemed able to make stuff out of thin air, and he used that power to create cuffs which he wrapped around Seafoam’s wrists.

“Team Svalinn did well,” the Seelie said.

Amber made sure Jade was safe on her feet, then she bent down and scooped the Seelie up. “Thanks,” she said. “But now’s the hard part, isn’t it? Getting anything out of her.”

“We have ways of convincing people to tell us what they know,” the Seelie said, and Amber had to work to suppress a shiver. “Your team did well though. This girl seems to be more powerful than a mere first-year student should be. Even with all the advantages you had, taking her out is impressive.”

“Thanks,” Amber said. “We had a good plan though, so… yeah, things worked out. But I think it might have been a close thing.”

“What?” Cassy asked. “We did awesome!”

“We almost got exploded,” Jade said. She had her hands on her hips and looked rather indignant about that. “Thank you, by the way,” she said to Cassy. “And you too, Amber. The thing with the knives was good thinking.”

Amber nodded, then remembered to call her knives back. “What are you going to do with Seafoam now?”

“Seafoam?” the Seelie asked.

“Our codename for the girl,” Amber said. She gestured towards where Seafoam was being carried, literally. Two of the boys had her by the arms and were walking her away, her feet dangling down. She glared at everyone, but her eyes were mostly fixed on the ground.

Amber felt a little bad for her, she looked like a wet cat at that moment, glare and all.

Then again, that sympathy didn’t last very long. The same girl had a bomb on her which she clearly intended to use on the school.

A small crowd had gathered on the edges. Some on the ground, more on the bridge. It was just a dozen or so magicals, but that felt like a lot, especially when a few were filming.

Amber resisted the urge to fix her hair, though she did tug her magical girl costume on straighter. There would have been more people, she imagined, if classes weren’t on at the moment. “Should we go somewhere now?” Amber asked.

The Seelie glanced up. “To class, I imagine.”

“What about Seafoam?” Amber asked.

“I’m afraid that, while your participation here is appreciated, that won’t be enough to allow you to participate in the interrogation. Also, there might be some members of staff who will have questions for you once your classes are over.”

“Right.” Amber said. That made some sense, she supposed.
She turned and found her friends, her teammates, gathering nearby. Cassy was grinning from ear to ear, hands on the shaft of her broom which was hooked over her shoulders. Jade was frowning at her scarf and rubbing the material, which had at some point lost its stains, and Morgan was walking over. She flicked her hand to the side and summoned a sheath into which she slid her sword. The moment the guard met the end of the sheath the sword and her costume disappeared, leaving her in her boy’s school uniform once more.

“Can you put us down, please?” the Seelie asked.

Amber blinked, then placed the Seelie onto the ground. It shook itself, tails and fur ruffling out for a moment.

“Thank you. You really did well. We’re impressed. We’ll be seeing you again.” And with that, the Seelie bounced away. Another magical picked them up, and Amber was pretty sure that they were one of the members of the student council handing out lunch boxes before Ethics class the day before.

“Uh, I guess we get back to class,” Amber said.

“Wait, really?” Cassy asked.

“What else are we going to do?” Morgan asked.

“Relax? Party? Sneak out a few beers from somewhere, kick our feet up and just chill. I don’t know, I’ve got the post-fight jitters right now and sitting down in class is the last thing I want to do,” Cassy said.

Jade hummed and finally looked away from her scarf. “The post-fight jitters… don’t those make you… you know, want to kiss people and stuff?”

Cassy grinned. “You volunteering?”

Jade’s face turned a rather bright shade of red for a moment, then she glared at Cassy. “Not with you, flygirl. You almost flung me into a bomb you know.”

“Ah, but Amber saved you. Then she princess carried you,” Cassy said.

“Jealous?” Jade asked.

“Girls,” Amber warned. “Let’s not fight each other, not after we just won. Let’s just get to class, and then after we’ll do something to calm down.”

Both Cassy and Jade snickered, and Amber sighed.

“Not kissing. I swear, you two are incorrigible.”

Morgan patted Amber on the back, then started heading off towards the nearest staircase up and out of the passage they were in. Amber jogged after her, dismissing her costume as she went with just a bit of focus.

As they walked back, taking their time, Amber changed her trajectory to be next to Jade for a moment. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Jade looked up to her, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m not delicate or anything,” she said. “Just… didn’t expect the blood, you know? But hey, I can dump it out later.”

Amber wondered what she meant, then it hit her. She can put anything in her scarf in her pocket space. So all the blood it soaked up… oh, that’s kinda gross.

“If you need, uh, help with that.”

“I really don’t,” Jade said.

“Right,” Amber agreed. “Did you want me to give Cassy shit for what she did?”

“No,” Jade said. “Cassy knows. She’s trying to improve too, I think. In her own way. She’s not a bad person, just a bit daft sometimes. She’ll apologise in her own way, I think. Mostly with off-colour teasing and by shoving her foot in her mouth.”

“You know I heard all that, right?” Cassy asked.

“Uh-huh,” Jade said.

Amber felt her shoulders loosening as they walked back to class. They’d done it. They’d taken out Seafoam. She didn’t die, and other than a few scratches and bumps that were gone already, her friends were fine.

She’d won, surpassed another version of herself who had failed at the very same challenge, and she’d done it because she relied on her team.

It left her feeling strangely warm inside.

Or maybe these are the post-fight jitters Cassy was talking about. Maybe I should try kissing someone.

She glanced back at Cassy, then started to giggle.

“Huh? Hey, why are you laughing? Is there something on my face?”

***