> Make like the tourist you are at heart and go sightseeing.
> …but make sure to keep on the lookout for magical girls while you do that.
You try your best to logically consider the best course of action for you to take, but find yourself repeatedly losing your train of thought, the city below inexorably drawing your gaze back down to it. It's a little irritating, but... truth be told, you wonder if your first priority right now shouldn't just be to enjoy yourself for a while. Yesterday didn't
end badly, but given that it still involved being chopped into, pecked at by birds, and- oh yeah, turning into a witch, it was still a pretty bad day on the whole. Doing something enjoyable to offset that may not actually be a bad idea, and as this is your first time in Mitakihara — so far as you remember, at least — your curiosity is eating you alive. Trivial as that seems, you'd
really like to go sightseeing for a bit...
You know what? You think you're going to go ahead and do that. When it comes down to it, none of your current goals are really running on a schedule, or have any sort of hard time limit you need to abide by, so it's not as if you're in any real rush. You can take some "you time" if you want, and until afternoon hits you probably won't even need to worry about magical girls, so maybe you'll even get to actually rela-
You droop. Orrrrr not. You forgot, it's Sunday — the one day of the week that magical girls are actually likely to be out and about while the sun is still up. Damn...
Well, you think you can still play tourist, but you should definitely keep an eye out while you're doing that. It doesn't really require you to do anything extra at least, and you should probably be staying watchful regardless... you just rather wish you didn't have to. Ah well.
Over the next several minutes or so, you gradually lower your barrier back down to Earth, stopping about fifteen feet over the ground next to the river, which is about as low as you dare go. This is admittedly a bit reckless, but you've already seen most of the city from the air, and it's just not quite the same as seeing it from the perspective it's "supposed" to be viewed from. Besides, you're going to be completely focused on the outside, so any magical girl you might happen to come across, you should see coming long before they manage to actually find you. You'll be fine.
Perfectly fine.
...
-Roughly one hour later-
...
...what? You've been fine.
Your self-guided tour of the city is proceeding pretty smoothly thus far. It's still early enough that there aren't a ton of people out and about, making your exploration fairly peaceful on the whole, and as you expected, there's a lot to see. Highlights thus far have included:
- The titanic disco ball building you saw upon first arriving yesterday. Turns out, it's actually a mall, and you dearly hope the pun was intentional, because you will be very disappointed if you find out that someone made a "disco mall" without consciously realizing it. You gave it a 6/10 for the overall design, and an 8/10 for the inherent joke.
- A bridge which crosses over a small pond that you're surprised was allowed to remain in the center of the city. More like a piece of modern art than a functional walkway, the structure was encircled and framed by dozens of arches, which were themselves connected by an uneven lattice of oddly canted metal bars. It wasn't even trying to be symmetrical, but was rather striking all the same — a shame they didn't paint it in a way that would stand out more. A solid 7 out of 10.
- A six-story-tall train station criss-crossed on the inside by far more walkways than possibly could be necessary, making it look not entirely dissimilar to a giant concrete spiderweb. Everything was lit up in strangely melancholy blue and pink tones, and it overall seemed like a good place to get horribly lost and completely miss one's train. 6/10, for otherwise looking like an average train station.
- The massive monorail circling the city. With the sun only recently having risen, you managed to catch it just before they turned off the neon lights bedecking the rail and its undersides, which made it look like a futuristic amusement park ride that went on for literal miles. A dazzling 9/10 with a good enough view, though you wish you'd gotten to enjoy it for a little bit longer.
Right now, your barrier is parked over the small port that looks out over the bay. Unlike the rest of the city, this area seems fairly restrained design-wise, with the only truly notable feature being an extraordinarily lengthy roadway that passes over the distant water... though Mitakihara has found a way to make even that weird, in that the rectangular inclined plane serving as the central section of the roadway appears to be tilted slightly downward, as though actively trying to dump any cars driving on it off into the water below. The flow of cars once they get on the platform also makes no sense whatsoever so far as you can see, and one of the three exits is a downward slope sharp enough that the closest comparison you can give it is a roller coaster. You cannot fathom the thought process behind the structure's construction, but you give the designer credit for somehow managing to make something as mundane as a
road interesting to look at. 4/10 for design, 7/10 for scope.
You glance around, trying to figure out where to go next. Aimless wandering is nice and all, but it's getting a bit stale having no proper destination...
Your gaze catches on the ridiculously tall building you used as a reference point yesterday, notable even among the numerous other skyscrapers piercing the horizon. Yeah, that should work. With how much it sticks out, you'd probably end up there eventually one way or another.
You start moving in the direction of the needle-like building in the distance, your path bringing you over a more commercial district of the city. You look down on it as you raise your barrier over one of the taller buildings, curious even about the less visually interesting sections of the city. This actually looks somewhat comparable to a few places in Sengeitsu, which you suppose is probably as close to a "normal" city as Mitakihara is liable to get.
The signs of several familiar fast food joints flash in your exterior vision as you pass them by, making you wish you could go in and get some breakfast for yourself. If only you had money... or a mouth... or a way to leave your barrier, or any number of other things, for that matter. Sigh...
You soon find yourself drifting into a more residential area, and a rather ritzy-looking one at that. The houses all seem to be either mansions or just one step below, many of them clearly inspired by wholly different styles of architecture. They clash pretty heavily with each other, but you actually rather enjoy the hodgepodge look of it all. Gives it a certain character that Sengeitsu didn't really-
*Ooooonnnnnnnnnnngggggg*
A sound akin to that of a struck church bell noise rings out from a point directly to your left, badly startling you in the process. You immediately turn your attention back to the inside of your barrier and whirl around, coming face to face with...
A large, floating rock?
The floating rock in question slowly rotates as it drifts slightly closer, stopping about twenty feet away from you. Its surface is mostly spherical, though a bit lumpy in places, as if someone rolled up an enormous ball of mud and then baked it in an oven to harden it. What in the-
Ugh. It's him.
Your witchstincts rear their head for the first time since yesterday, and you suddenly realize exactly what it is you're looking at.
...oh.
The rock abruptly begins to change, rapidly inflating like a giant balloon. As its surface swells, clear blue water begins seeping through small cracks in the stone, quickly covering the entire exterior of the sphere. As the rock's growth finishes, leaving it almost as tall as you and
far wider, tiny spots of white light begin shining intermittently from beneath the newly watery surface.
You watch the process with a steady gaze, not bothering to prepare any defenses for yourself as you do, or even move away from it, as you're not actually worried about being attacked by the rock — or should you say planetoid — in the slightest. After all, it, or rather,
he is Shemesh, your singular non-Ummashtart familiar. A rather powerful one, at that — in fact, if you hadn't subsumed Saar yesterday, you're pretty sure he would have more magic than
you right now. While you weren't, and still aren't exactly the pinnacle of witches, you're fairly sure that's pretty darn impressive for a familiar.
...and yet... there's something about him that just seems to inexplicably
irk you. You can't quite put your finger on why, but whatever the reason, you don't particularly want him hanging around you, especially while you're trying to focus on something else.
You start making shooing motions in Shemesh's direction, not sure exactly how to make yourself understood. Um... shoo? Go on, get out of here, you weirdly vexsome giant sphere. The only things you're on the lookout for right now are interesting sights and teenage girls, not some sort of... size-shifting, miniature planet-shaped familiar, or whatever you are.
Shemesh shifts again, his surface becoming covered in expansive green continents and wispy white clouds as he compresses back to his previous size. He issues the same strange noise as before, a strangely deep chiming sound that seems to resonate throughout his body, then floats off, silently drifting off towards the split between your barrier's now separate sections.
Once he's left your immediate presence, you find yourself puzzling over why you even reacted that way. You really don't know why he annoyed you so much. All he did was approach you, and it wasn't as if you felt particularly threatened or anything. In fact, you felt almost certain he
wouldn't hurt you. Maybe he just exudes some sort of intrinsic "annoyance aura"...?
Deciding that's a mystery for some other time, you allow the matter to drop from mind and commence moving again, leaving the rich neighborhood behind as you continue to head for the distant spire.
All of five minutes later however, a crooning chime from behind you alerts you to the fact that Shemesh seems to have returned for some reason. You're heavily inclined to just ignore him at first, since you feel you clearly already indicated you wanted to be left alone, but as the noise continues to sound out, your irritation slowly begins to turn to anger.
After about 30 straight seconds of nonstop chiming, you finally get fed up. Bringing your barrier to a halt over a small nearby park filled with bizarre-looking statues, you swivel around, silently questioning what the hell your familiar wants now.
You're greeted by the sight of a terrified-looking green-haired girl being held in place over Shemesh's rounded surface by some unseen force. She quivers in fear, no sound escaping her lips.
...what the FUCK.
(Choose any number of options.)
[-] Scold Shemesh. Bad familiar! Naughty,
naughty familiar! We do not bring those into the house!
[-] Back away. You're sure the girl would prefer that you give her some space rather than looming over her like some sort of papery beanstalk.
[-] Do something to make her feel less threatened. [Write in.]
[-] Grab her. You might scare her doing this, but better than leaving her in your familiar's metaphorical hands.
[-] Her hair… it looks so fluffy… (Give in to urge to pet her like a cat.)
[-] Introduce yourself. It seems sort of obligatory…?
[-] Subsume them both. Out-of-sight out-of-mind is
NOT an appropriate stance to take here!
[-] Write in.
