Magical (A Quest of Vacations, or Starsigns, or Something Else)

"Actually, I'd been sort of wondering about that, too," You pitch in. While you're almost certain that Caramel was trying to break the rules, it won't help Mokka befriend your fellow students if he gets into trouble over it. "There's someone we know who wants to paint a picture of every kind of spirit together, but she can only see Beauty Spirits. And there aren't a lot of people who can see Machinery Spirits at all, so..." So asking the robot only makes sense.

You don't know if Raspberry would respond well to knowing her art was being used to keep one of her friends out of trouble, but maybe if she's distracted by getting the accurate reference material she needs... Or if she just never finds out. That could work, too.

For a moment, there is silence. You aren't sure if the robot believes you or not, even though what you said is entirely true. Or maybe he's decided it doesn't matter, compared to however Nutmeg has been asked to use her world-shaping magic while everyone is confined to the same area. Or maybe he's just messing with you.

He seems to buy it, though, if his eventual answer is anything to go by. "I do not believe I could create a drawing of sufficient detail. There would be too many curves required."

That's... genuinely disappointing. You're sure it would have made Raspberry more comfortable around him. Caramel appears to agree, dipping his head. "That's... too bad."

"However, if your friend would be all right using something that is not a drawing, I could provide her with a proper picture."

Nutmeg looks up in surprise, or maybe a bit of confusion. "Really? How?"

"There is a printer in the staff lounge. I will simply use my magical abilities to provide the initial picture, and let the machine do the rest. The printer spirit is agreeable enough that it likely won't even ask me for Alti silver." You aren't sure why he'd need an offering just to get the printer to do its job, but maybe it just likes its privacy.

Why that would extend to others not knowing what it looks like, though... spirits are weird.

"I think that would work," Caramel says, visibly relieved by the successful change of subject. "I mean, as long as it's accurate, I don't think Raspberry would care too much about how it was made... but the depiction has to be as average as you can possibly make it."

"That should be simple enough." With how Mokka talks mostly in a monotone, it's generally impossible to tell what he's thinking. "The one who needs this picture... is Raspberry Dazemirror, correct?"

You nod. "She already has pictures of a Water Spirit and a Sound Spirit. And I think she's figured out where to get one of a Light Spirit. So with this, she'll already be able to draw five of them." You haven't known her for very long, but you're happy for her.

"Then I will go acquire a picture." As he leaves, however, he turns back towards the three of you. "And I would not recommend using that wall to break into the music room. It is load-bearing, and both of your rooms are right above it." And then he actually does leave.

Caramel sinks to the floor. "I guess it's back to the drawing board, then." Nutmeg shakes her head.

"And here I was hoping to do something cool..."

"...Have you considered asking a teacher if someone could go get his lyre?" You suggest. "The worst they can do is say no..."

From the surprised looks both Caramel and Nutmeg are giving you, neither of them thought of that possibility.

...Honestly, you're sort of worried about them.

---

Your first week at the academy was... not what you expected.

From the whispers still circulating the cafeteria at mealtimes, it's really not what anyone expected. Apparently, the school has never been locked down outside of term before.

It's... sort of concerning, really. You don't think you're going to tell your family about this when you write to them.

But Biscotti shows up for dinner tonight, along with a man who has light, wavy hair. From where you're sitting, you can see Raspberry standing on her seat, constantly jumping to get a better look.

That is... not something you would have expected of her.



[ ] Go over to Raspberry. Is she okay?

[ ] Ask if anyone at your table recognizes the new person.

[ ] Just focus on enjoying your sandwiches.

[ ] Talk to the people at your table about something else.
-[ ] What Caramel tried to do earlier.
-[ ] Raspberry's project.
-[ ] Suggest that they talk to Mokka at some point.

Inspiration was not simple.

Cider Rainbow knew this, lived it, had basically used it as his mantra during his school days. When it came to art, he'd had all the technical abilities in the world... and nothing he could do with them that satisfied him. Even his magic, crafted according to his ideal of beauty, took on the simple forms of rose petals because he simply couldn't envision the shape they were meant to take.

Eight hundred years later, and he still hadn't figured that part out. Perhaps roses had just become an integral part of his magic, dyed in such a spectrum of colors that his spellwork earned him just as many prizes as his art did.

But he wasn't satisfied with his magic... and it wasn't until he was into his eight-hundreds that he found a way to be satisfied with his art.

Her name was Souffle, and she was his adorable baby sister. His parents- who had always been more proud of him than he thought was justified, when he still couldn't create his perfect work of art- had asked him to try and paint a picture of her, which was, in hindsight, probably because they knew he'd be willing to do it for free.

That had also been the first time he met her, because he had been busy trying to... he couldn't remember what it was he had been doing, but it had involved some of the ruins the twins had convinced their class to excavate, once upon a time.

They'd skipped class to do so, and ended up with a week's worth of detention for it, but they'd come back with a number of treasure and new friends. Cider still wasn't sure if it had been worth the trouble or not, but they'd made headlines once again, and by that point they'd all been more or less numb to danger.

They had to be, in order to survive.

And that might have been the feeling he was trying to capture. He didn't actually know, and he hadn't yet gotten the chance to go back and try again. He wasn't even sure he would, if he had no idea what he was even trying to do.

That had been a common problem for him. He had the ability to put anything he wanted to canvas or paper, he just couldn't see what he wanted to do with it, and so could never be fully satisfied. Even the things he deemed good enough to sell- that he had to sell, because he wasn't going to be able to make rent otherwise- just weren't good enough. Because he just couldn't see the point to it.

With Souffle, however... the realization was immediate. Meeting her for the first time, their mother passing her to him to hold... Cider knew, for once, exactly what he wanted to do.

And it was perfect. Not the technical perfection that those who hung his art in museums were used to, but something subtler, that stirred his heart in a way that nothing had before.

It was the first piece he made that he was ever truly happy with, and it was one that would never, ever appear in any sort of museum.

---

It got easier, after that. Cider stopped trying to force inspiration upon himself, decided to simply enjoy the world, and sometimes something happened that he could make use of. There were still paintings sold just to pay the bills, still those that failed to live up to his exacting standards, but he was occasionally creating something that he couldn't find any obvious fault with.

They weren't his most popular pieces. He didn't often employ incredibly advanced techniques, and the subject material wasn't always all that special. But they were his favorites, all the same, because they were the ones he felt he could call a success.

Souffle loved all of his pieces. "Ci-dah! Ci-dah!" She'd cheer when he visited "Mo' paint!" She couldn't see the spirits infused into them, but that was fine, the Rainbow family had never had any consistent source of magic. Unlike the Nighthawks, who he was sure were going to cover Kovomaka in users of dark magic eventually. Well... maybe not Vanilla. And almost definitely not Ganache. But they had cousins, so it was still a possibility.

And it wasn't just paintings he showed her, either. Sculptures, poetry... he took her to one of Arancia's concerts once, because she kept randomly sending out free tickets to former classmates and Chocolat had the musical appreciation ability of a brick. Possibly even less.

"So, this is your sister?" The woman asked, afterward, standing up so that Souffle couldn't pull on her long black ringlets. "You never told me about her."

Of course not. He'd barely spoken to her since they broke up. Not because he was mad or anything- he could tell now that they were going to crash and burn if they had stayed together, maybe even literally, he saw what she did to Kirche- but because he knew exactly how Ketchup would have chosen to interpret the situation... and, worse than her, the paparazzi. As annoying as it was to have a friend on the same wavelength as the press, it could certainly be useful when it came to judging people's reactions.

"Well, she's still pretty young," He said instead, because Arancia probably didn't need the reminder that her life past Will-O-Wisp was just one failed relationship after another. "We think she might be a wizard of some kind, but we can't tell yet." Her babbling to things everyone else couldn't see was either spirits or an imaginary friend, and Cider wasn't sure he wanted to know just yet.

"I see." His friend gained an evil grin, the kind he would have thought he'd be more likely to see on Mustard or Ganache. "Well, I'm sure we could find out. Souffle? Could you tell me when you see little floaty things hanging around?"

And Cider's sweet little sister looked up at the living orchestra to cheerfully chirp out, "Night!"

...Of course.

---

Ordinarily, Cider would have gone to Ganache for advice. He came from a family blessed by the Dark Spirits, was probably the most stereotypical user of dark magic the user of beauty magic had ever met that wasn't actually evil, and would probably have some idea how to keep Souffle from offending anything important.

Sadly, Ganache was not on the planet at the moment. He'd left a bit over a decade ago to look for something in the wider solar system, and they were lucky if he got into contact more than once a month.

But he did keep contact, and Candy had had a tag on him from the very beginning, and Candy's tags were probably the most reliable way of finding someone there was, so Cider wasn't too worried about him.

It just made things a bit awkward, because the other user of dark magic he knew that was his age was Vanilla. Ganache's sister. When Cider first met her, he'd had to help her brother knock her out because she was being a danger to herself and others, and he'd never had much of an opportunity to get to know her since.

But the sooner he could convince his parents that the stereotypes surrounding wizards who were able to talk to Dark Spirits were just that, the better, and Souffle deserved better.

She deserved the best he could give her, and if that meant taking her with him because their father had offended an Enigma before Cider had been born, then that was what he was going to do.

---

The second part, however, was pure spite. "I can't help but think there were better ways to go about this," The pink-haired woman stated, her eyes narrowed at Cider over the dinner menu.

Cider shrugged. "I mean, neither of us expect this to go anywhere, but the instant my parents see the headlines..." They didn't like the Dark Spirits? Fine. He'd just go out on a not-date with a Nighthawk while Chocolat babysat. See how they liked that.

(The answer, as it turned out, was 'not much.')

Vanilla was unimpressed. And conflicted. "I'd tell you not to get me involved in your family drama, but you were sort of pulled into mine..." He wondered if she remembered he'd been the one to knock her out. With flower petals. That tended to leave a nice bit of bruising on anyone's ego.

"That... was a long time ago." Sort of. It was a time only wizards could be alive from. But that was what happened, when you lived almost a hundred times as long as the magicless... well, aside from the dwarves, anyway, but they didn't count. He was still positive that they were all secret machinery mages. Or something. "And... we were probably going to be dragged into things either way." Biscotti had chosen so many of them to be his students, it was a temptation that would be impossible to resist.

She leaned back in her seat, looking like she could have done without the reminder. "I... suppose so. But I don't imagine Ganache would have made it any easier."

Actually, he'd been a surprisingly good leader, even if he never actually told anyone anything. "Honestly, Candy was more of a problem about it than he was." And given the consequences that she'd faced for it, he'd eventually had to accept that there wasn't any point in staying mad at her. Even if it had forced them into combat with an Equillekrew. Odds were they would have had to fight it either way.

They ended up talking a lot about Cider's school days, and less about Souffle's magic, but he still managed to get Kovomaka's second- or third-most-powerful wizard to agree to tutoring sessions, and that was the most important part of it.

---

Cider was not famous on Puffoon. The inner solar system as a whole was not entirely certain that the Magic Planet Kovomaka existed, and there was just about nobody who could talk to spirits. This made it, in a sense, the ideal vacation spot.

...Aside from everything being overpriced, that is. But he supposed he had been warned... "No, Souffle, we can't get you a bracelet."

"But it's pretty!" She insisted, and that much was true, to the point where there was a minor Beauty Spirit hanging around it, chattering with his fellow accessories.

"I know, we just don't have the money." He had a few projects that were all coming along well... but he'd left them on his home planet, because he didn't have the resources needed to properly prepare them for spaceflight.

Monster fighting was an option, but... he'd had enough of that for a lifetime. "Come on, we're meeting my friend Ganache for lunch. He's Vanilla's brother. You remember Vanilla, right?" He'd hope so, they'd known each other for about a year.

Souffle nodded. "Uh-huh! She's really pretty, and strong, too!" Which one of them was the beauty mage, again? Not that he disagreed on Vanilla's relative physical attractiveness, but Souffle was four. Was this sort of thing normal for four-year-olds?

Well. It didn't matter.

On the way out, they were stopped by a woman whose fashions were vaguely reminiscent of those of the Envoys of Love, if the Envoys of Love were entirely colorblind. "Excuse me, would the two of you happen to be magicians?"

That was this planet's word for wizards, right? "Why do you need to know?" He asked, already on his guard. Souffle looked at the two of them in confusion, but didn't say anything.

"Oh, call it simple curiosity." He didn't believe her.

Souffle, meanwhile, was confused. "What's a ma-jee-sheen?"

"Someone who can use magic," The woman replied. "...You aren't from this planet, are you?"

"Nuh-uh. We're from Ko-vo-ma-ka." Which probably didn't mean anything to the woman. The Magic Planet had been left to its own devices for so long just about nobody had heard of it, even in fairy tales. The fact that the ones who ventured into the inner solar system were the likes of Ganache probably didn't help with that.

But apparently it meant something to the woman, who looked at him with more scrutiny than ever before, before her lips twisted into an evil grin. "I see... Cider Rainbow, is it? From Madeleine's class of XOXEO? One of the children from Valencia Beach who battled the Enigmas?"

Cider wondered if, if the sun had gone dark, the Starsign of Night would have blazed bright upon this woman's body. Her actions certainly weren't all that different from an Enigma's. "How do you know about that?" Sure, only Mokka had an actual gag order, but between Vanilla's career, Candy's reputation, and everyone's trauma, nobody ever really mentioned it to anyone.

"Let's just say... a little locust told me." An insect mage? There weren't a lot of those around here, were there?

"Leave us alone!" Well, if the woman had been affiliated with the Enigmas, either they didn't care much about their allies or one of them hadn't gotten the message, because the Pooka that appeared from nothing over Souffle's head had no qualms about striking her down.

And then it turned against the two of them. Because of course it did.

Of course, it was also challenging a master of beauty magic right outside an accessory shop. Poor thing never stood a chance.

---

They returned to Kovomaka almost immediately after that, because this was the sort of thing that definitely needed a professional opinion. "She did what!?" And a calm head, but apparently that wasn't going to be Vanilla at the moment.

Cider should have dragged Ganache back with him, he realized that now. "I don't know what happened, really. I don't even think she meant to do it. It's just... one moment she was getting upset, and the next..." At least it had been the weakest kind of Enigma. He didn't fancy a round two with Equillekrew when it was just him.

"And the next, there was an Enigma in Puffoon's capital city. I don't think I have to explain why this is a bad thing." Of course not. Near-death experiences were not easily forgotten. "Have you taken her to Candy yet?"

He shook his head. "I haven't had the chance. And I don't know if she's old enough to not let people know Candy still has her magic even if the application's changed a bit. It's the sort of thing best kept secret, right?"

"Normally, I'd agree with you..." The leader of the Elite Mage Force sighed. "But your sister has just become a target for any and all Enigma sympathizers still extant. Here and in the wider Baklava system. Are you sure you should have left her at home?"

"Kale's watching her, it'll be fine."

Except it wasn't. Because he'd known that fifth of the Will-O-Wisp graduates from previous classes couldn't necessarily be trusted. He'd known that, as beings of pure darkness, new Enigmas could come into existence at any time, and that they wouldn't necessarily be kinder than the last set. He knew that even members of his own class had been tempted, back then, even if they'd all eventually gone on to fight.

But it had never, ever occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he couldn't trust Kale.

You tear your gaze away from Raspberry. While you're sure that she'd be able to explain exactly what's going on- or, at least, who the new person is- she's giving you uncomfortable reminders of your cousins on a sugar rush. You'd... rather not approach that, all things considered.

"Do any of you know who that is?" You ask the people at your table instead, giving a pointed glance in the man's direction so they all know who you're talking about. "I mean, if he's here, he has to be on staff, right?" You can't imagine anyone else being allowed in, what with the school being on lockdown and all.

"I don't recognize him, but the school does have a lot of staff." Merlot glances around the room. "But everyone seems to either not recognize him, or..." Or they're similar to Raspberry. If a bit more subdued about it.

"It'd be a lot easier to figure out if we knew the people that recognized him..." Sorbet sighs. "Unless any of you know them?"

You nod. "That Envoy of Love over there is called Raspberry. She's friends with the Beauty Spirits." Spirits that are simple enough to gain assistance from, but fickle when it comes to matters of loyalty, to hear Uncle Almond talk about them. But again, you still don't know if he's a blade mage or just insane. You aren't sure how good his advice is.

Sugar reaches for more peanut butter to add to her sandwich. You aren't sure when the people who stock your table learned of her sweet tooth, let along why they're encouraging it, but she seems happy enough. "So maybe they're all beauty mages? That or it's something else and we're entirely off track..."

Technically, you could go ask Raspberry yourself. But when you look at her, she's vibrating in place, and that's not something you particularly want to deal with at the moment.

So you just shrug and pick up another fish sandwich.

---

As the meal winds down, Principal Biscotti stands up to make an announcement. This is probably something important, if it's coming from the man in charge of the school, so everyone pays attention.

"First of all, I would like to thank everyone for being so patient and following lockdown procedure. As stated before, this will continue until the start of term, so that we can be sure there won't be any problems popping up during the school year. Your supervisors have told me you are all cooperating, and I would like to hope that this good behavior lasts."

He still hasn't said anything on whether what's going on is dangerous or not. Even if it's being dealt with at the moment, you're sure people are going to talk about that later. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, you have no idea.

"Secondly, I would like you to welcome our new librarian, Cider Rainbow. He has graciously agreed to take time off of his own projects to come back and help us organize our collection of knowledge, as due to circumstances beyond our control, Mrs. Sammich cannot return this year. Some of you might recognize him, but I would advise you to allow him time to settle in before peppering him with questions. To enforce this, Miss Ketchup will remain on duty in the library until classes start up again."

The new librarian's name isn't familiar to you at all. "Do... any of you know what he's talking about?" You think it might be a bit too late to go ask Raspberry, particularly as Caramel is trying to get her to calm down now.

"I... think he might be famous or something?" Chai ventures, while everyone else shakes their heads. "I don't know, the den doesn't really pay much attention to wizards."

Merlot gives him a skeptical glance. "They don't?"

He shakes his head. "Well... the magicless don't live as long as wizards do. I think the exact degree depends on their race, but salamanders only live for about sixty years. And compared to how long wizards stick around for... They always said that wizards should be considered separate, not part of the same world."

"You're a wizard, too, you know," Sugar points out, and the salamander flinches, just as the Starsign of Gren activates, and various students around the cafeteria gain a lime green glow to their skin. You aren't sure how long a year is on Gren, but when the light fades away again, you'll know a fifth of it has passed.

Chai more or less refuses to so much as look at himself until you're all leaving to go to bed.

That's probably a bad sign.

---

Principal Biscotti is there at breakfast again. Well... for a bit, at least. He talks quietly with Miss Ketchup and her brother for a bit, before leaving. You suppose he's more than capable of getting food elsewhere, but that begs the question of what he was doing here to begin with.

You suppose you could always go up and ask, but... You wouldn't want to poke into something you're not supposed to. Classes haven't even started yet, there's no reason to try and get yourself in trouble.

No, you're going to try and follow the rules... or, at least, not be caught obviously breaking them. So long as you're better at it than Caramel and Nutmeg, it should be fine.


[ ] Stay in the cafeteria and talk to people.
-[ ] Chai.
-[ ] Sugar, the felin who uses wind magic, and Lassi.
-[ ] Mokka and Nutmeg.

[ ] Go to the library in order to read about things.
-[ ] The other planets.
-[ ] Monsters native to Kovomaka.
-[ ] ...Are those old school papers?
-[ ] Different kinds of spirits.
-[ ] The cultures of various races on Kovomaka.
-[ ] Families of wizards.

[ ] You may as well go to the meditation room...
-[ ] And see if there's a spirit in the pond.
-[ ] And see just what it is that Raspberry's doing.
-[ ] And see if the magic dolls can't teach you to throw a punch without hurting yourself.